She was suddenly ecstatic to think that they were happily married. Perhaps their open show of sensual appetite in the TV room, though inappropriate and inexcusable in Tom and Liz's youth, merely demonstrated the changing times and the fact that they were indeed happy.

They were all sitting in the living room having their after-dinner cocktails. The light was dim and relaxing. Liz was drinking too much, she tried to warn herself, but everything seemed so utterly right and pleasant. Then she could have sworn she heard Natalie say something that was impossible to believe.

"Kevin," the girl's soft voice interrupted a long silence. Liz noticed how pretty her voice was when she wasn't being energetic or giggly. "I think you have an absolutely gorgeous mother with that rich auburn hair that glows sparks of fire in the light. Look where the lamp hits it. You two would make a beautiful couple." What took the edge off the remark for Liz was that her consciousness seemed to travel back in time, and she was not only looking across at Tom over there, Tom, whom Kevin so completely resembled, but the remark seemed to be about her and Tom, though she knew that logically it was her son.

The young man pushed forward in his chair. He, too, had overindulged, first in brandy Alexanders and then in martinis. His hand darted to the plane of his little wife's knee, but his darkened face turned ominously toward his mother. "I can handle two women at once," he chuckled dreamily and sank back in something deeper than an alcoholic daze. "Imagine me, a blond and a redhead, one on each side!" he said. God! Liz thought. Was she hearing him correctly? Surely he didn't mean what he said! Perhaps Natalie had whispered something to him of her mother-in-law's frustrations and questions.