Roo, though more grudgingly, also took to his mother. “I don’t care if it’s raining, I want to go for a walk,” she said as soon as they were alone on the first afternoon of her first visit to his family. “It really gets to me after a while, this whole uptight place… Well, your mother’s okay. She had to put us in separate rooms, so it’d look respectable, but I notice she gave us ones with a connecting bath. And she sure is great-looking; almost as great-looking as you.” Roo leant warmly against Fred. “I bet she’s had a lot of adventures.”

“How do you mean, adventures?” Fred stopped caressing Roo’s left breast.

“Like, you know: love affairs and stuff. Well, maybe not a lot,” Roo qualified, registering his expression. “But enough to make her life interesting. I mean, hell, you’d have to do something to stay awake in a place like this.”

“You’ve got her all wrong,” Fred said. For the first time he considered his mother as a possible adulteress, and recognized that her qualifications for this role were excellent. His memory, without any prompting, even suggested possible partners. There was a visiting professor in History she used to dance with at parties; his father always made sour cracks about him. And of course the old guy that ran the riding stable-it was a family joke how he had a crush on her. And once when he was little (four? five?) he suddenly remembers, there was a man sitting in their dining-room fixing a toaster, and Freddy hates him, and his mother, in a red sweater, is standing too near the man, and Freddy hates her too-what was all that about? No, certainly not; his parents are very happy together. “Not that I don’t think she could have, if she’s ever wanted to, but-”

“Okay, okay. Forget I said it. She’s your mother, so you want her to be like one of those Virgin Mary statues in your church. Maybe she is, how should I know?”