said. He added, "Do you have any idea what

idea what it costs to have a baby!" Charlene had lost her shape. Her face was so puffy her eyes looked slitted. Her legs had begun to swell, and she wasn't able to be on her feet much. She spent most of the time lying down in her room.

Between them, Walter and Bob did the cooking and the rest of the housework. One evening they had finished the dishes and were sitting at the kitchen table. Walter was talking about something ridiculous that had happened at the market. They were laughing.

When Bob looked up, Charlene was in the doorway.

"Are you boys having fun?" she asked pointedly, and she let her gaze rest on Bob's face for a second or two before she turned and started back upstairs. Walter ran to help her.

Bob sat there, still feeling the chill of the look she had given him. It was a look he knew.

Walter came down. Bob asked him, "Does she know about me? She does, doesn't she?"

"Well-" Walter swallowed. "I guess so."

"What do you mean, you guess so? Did you tell her?"

"Well, yes, I did." Walter looked uncomfortable. "See, our stories about how we met didn't jibe, and she began to ask questions, and I finally had to tell her. She suspected, anyway, because she knows about things like that. One of her cousins was that way, and-"

"You shouldn't have told her!" Bob said angrily.

"What else could I do?" Walter looked so stricken that Bob's anger melted. He touched Walter's arm and said, "I'm sorry."

The baby was born on Thanksgiving Day-a boy named Andrew. The next day at the market Walter passed out cigars and the manager raised his salary. Walter was jubilant when he and Bob went to visit Charlene that evening. "You see, honey," he said, "good things come in pairs."

He bent down to kiss her, and she smelled his breath.

"So you've been celebrating," she said, "while I'm cooped up in this hospital." "Cheer up, sweetie," he said. "Your time is coming."

"You're damned right it is," she said.

Before she had been home a month, she and Walter went out dancing. Bob stayed home with Baby Andrew.

He was a good baby, a beautiful baby, so different from most. When he was a few weeks old, he had his own personality, his own ways of expressing himself.

Bob had had little enough to do with babies before, but between him and Baby Andrew there was a rapport. Both mother and father handled their offspring awkwardly, and as often as not he cried in their arms. In Bob's arms he was content.

"How did you learn to do that?" Walter would say, watching Bob prepare a formula or give Andrew his bath.

"I read the book," Bob would say. "It's all there in the book."

He hurried home after work to be with the baby, and evening after evening they were alone together.

Charlene and Walter had bought a car, and they went out almost every night with a crowd of young married couples.

Bob overheard them talking one day.

"We shouldn't leave Andrew with him so much," Walter said. "It's taking advantage of him."

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