"Dad, how can you keep thinking about money all the time?"

"Somebody has to. A week is a thousand dollars minimum. Minimum."

"You have Blue Cross."

"Not for daughter-in-laws I don't. Not for you either, once you're over nineteen."

"Well I don't know," Nelson says, "but I don't like her being in a ward with all those other women barfing and moaning all night. One of 'em was even black, did you notice?"

"How did you get so prejudiced? Not from me. Anyway that's not a ward, that's what you call a semi-private," Harry says.

"I want my wife to have a private room," Nelson says.

"Is that a fact? You want, you want. And who's going to foot the bill, big shot? Not you."

Ma Springer says, "I know when I had my diverticulitis, Fred wouldn't hear of anything but a private room for me. And it was a corner room at that. A wonderful view of the arboretum, the magnolias just in bloom."

Janice asks, "How about at the lot, isn't he under the group insurance there?"

Harry tells her, "Maternity benefits don't start till you've worked for Springer Motors nine months."

"A broken arm isn't what I'd call maternity," Nelson says.

"Yeah but if it weren't for her maternity she'd be out walking around with it."

"Maybe Mildred could look into it," Janice suggests.

"O.K.," he concedes, with ill grace. "I don't know what our exact policy is."

Nelson should let it go at that. Instead he says, leaning forward from the back seat so his voice presses on Harry's ear, "Without Mildred and Charlie there isn't much you do know exactly. I mean -"

"I know what you mean and I know a lot more about the car business than you ever will at the rate you're going, if you don't stop futzing around with these old Detroit hotrods that lose us a bundle and start focusing on the line we carry."

"I wouldn't mind if they were Datsuns or Hondas, but frankly Dad, Toyotas -"

"The Toyota franchise is what old Fred Springer landed and Toyotas are what we sell. Bessie, why doncha slap the kid around a little? I can't reach him."

His mother-in-law's voice comes from the back seat after a pause. "I was wondering if I should go to church after all. I know his heart's set on a big drive for the organ and there aren't too many that enthusiastic. If I show up I might get made a committee head and I'm too old for that."

"Didn't Teresa seem sweet?" Janice asks aloud. "It seemed like she'd grown up overnight."

"Yeah," Harry says, "and if she'd fallen down all two flights she'd be older than we are."

"Jesus, Dad," Nelson says. "Who do you like?"

"I like everybody," Harry says. "I just don't like getting boxed in."

The way from St. Joseph's to Mt. Judge is to keep going straight over the railroad tracks and then continue right on Locust past Brewer High and on through Cityview Park and then left past the shopping mall as usual. On a Sunday morning the people out in cars are mostly the older American type, the women with hair tinted blue or pink like the feathers of those Easter chicks before they outlawed it and the men gripping the steering wheel with two hands like the thing might start to buck and bray: with nolead up to a dollar thirteen at some city stations thanks to the old Ayatollah they have to try to squeeze value out of every drop. Actually, people's philosophy seems to be they'll burn it while it's here and when it's fourth down and twenty-seven Carter can punt. The four features at the mall cinema are BREAKING AWAY STARTING OVER RUNNING and "10." He'd like to see "10," he knows from the ads this Swedish-looking girl has her hair in corn rows like a black chick out of Zaire. One world: everybody fucks everybody. When he thinks of all the fucking there's been in the world and all the fucking there's going to be, and none ofit for him, here he sits in this stuffy car dying, his heart just sinks. He'll never fuck anybody again in his lifetime except poor Janice Springer, he sees this possibility ahead of him straight and grim as the known road. His stomach, sour from last night's fun, binds as it used to when he was running to school late. He says suddenly to Nelson, "How the hell could you let her fall, why didn't you keep ahold of her? What were you doing out so late anyway? When your mother was pregnant with you we never went anywhere."

"Together at least," the boy says. "You went a lot of places by yourself the way I heard it."

"Not when she was pregnant with you, we sat there night after night with the boob tube, 1 Love Lucy and all that family comedy, didn't we Bessie? And we weren't snorting any dope, either."

"You don't snort dope, you smoke it. Coke is what you snort."

Ma Springer responds slowly to his question. "Oh I don't know how you and Janice managed exactly," she says wearily, in a voice that is looking out the window. "The young people are different now."

"I'll say they are. You fire somebody to give 'em a job and they knock the product."

"It's an O.K. product if all you want is to get from here to there," Nelson begins.

Harry interrupts furiously, thinking of poor Pru lying there with a snivelling baby burying his head in her side instead of a husband, of Melanie slaving away at the Crépe House for all those creeps from the banks that lunch downtown, of his own sweet hopeful daughter stuck with that big red-faced Jamie, of poor little Cindy having to put on a grin at being fucked from behind so old Webb can have his kicks with his SX-70, of Mim going down on all those wop thugs out there all those years, of Mom plunging her old arms in gray suds and crying the kitchen blues until Parkinson's at last took mercy and got her upstairs for a rest, of all the women put upon and wasted in the world as far as he can see so little punks like this can come along. "Let me tell you something about Toyotas," he calls back at Nelson. "They're put together by little yellow guys in white smocks that work in one plant cradle to grave and go crazy if there's a fleck of dust in the fuel injector system and those jalopies Detroit puts out are slapped together by jigaboos wearing headphones pumping music into their ears and so zonked on drugs they don't know a slothead screw from a lug nut and furthermore are taught by the NAACP -to hate the company. Half the cars come through the Ford assembly line are deliberately sabotaged, I forget where I read all this, it wasn't Consumer Reports."

"Dad, you're so prejudiced. What would Skeeter say?"

Skeeter. In quite another voice Harry says, "Skeeter was killed in Philly last April, did I tell ya?"

"You keep telling me."

"I'm not blaming the blacks on the assembly line, I'm just saying it sure makes for lousy cars."

Nelson is on the attack, frazzled and feeling rotten, poor kid. "And who are you to criticize me and Pru for going out to see some friends when you were off with yours seeing those ridiculous exotic dancers? How could you stand it, Mom?"

Janice says, "It wasn't as bad as I'd thought. They keep it within bounds. It really wasn't any worse than it used to be at the old fairgrounds."

"Don't answer him," Harry tells her. "Who's he to criticize?"

"The funny thing," Janice goes on, "is how Cindy and Thelma and I could agree which girl was the best and the men had picked some girl entirely different. We all liked this tall Oriental who was very graceful and artistic and they liked, Mother, the men liked some little chinless blonde who couldn't even dance."

"She had that look about her," Harry explains. "I mean, she meant it."

"And then that tubby dark one that turned you on. With the feather."

"Olive-complected. She was nice too. The feather I could have done without."

"Mom-mom doesn't want to hear all this disgusting stuff," Nelson says from the back seat.

"Mom-mom doesn't mind," Harry tells him. "Nothing fazes Bessie Springer. Mom-mom loves life."