"Do you want her to see you like this?" Joe said when he returned to the living room.

For a moment Betty thought he was addressing one of the busts. Then she understood.

"Do you want her to see you at all?" she said. She heard and hated the sound of her voice. Oh, Joseph, she wanted to say. Let's stop all this nonsense now.

They could hear Miranda's key in the lock. Joe thought, I have to get that key back. Annie's, too. He glanced at his wife. She was wearing her old white bathrobe, and curled in on herself on the couch, she looked like someone's crumpled, abandoned Kleenex. Joe winced at his own word, the word "abandoned." No one was abandoning anyone. He would be generous. He was generous. She was being irrational. It wasn't like her. She didn't even look like herself, her face puffy from crying. If she would just be reasonable, everything would be fine: she would be so much happier once she moved into her own place.

"This situation is becoming sordid," he said.

"Squalid even."

Miranda came into the living room, walked to the couch, and gave her mother a kiss.

"Whew," she said, sniffing. "Someone got started early."

"I'm suffering."

Miranda sat down and put her arms around her mother.

"My poor darling," Betty said. "So are you, aren't you? There, there, Miranda darling. There, there."

Joe looked at the two of them patting each other's back and murmuring, "There, there." He felt awkward, an ogre standing with an enormous white bath towel. But what had he really done? Was it so wrong to fall in love?

"This is a very unhealthy situation," he said.

The two women ignored him.