EDGAR REPARING TO TAKE the National Writ?ers Examination, a five-hour fifty-minute examina?tion, for his certificate. He was in his room, fright?ehe prospect of taking the exam again put him in worlds of hurt. He had taken it twice before, with evil results. Now he was studying a book which tained not the actual questions from the examination but similar questions. "Barbara, if I dont knock it for a loop this time I dont know what well do." Barbara tio address her?self to the ironing board. Edgar thought about say?ing something to his younger child, his two-year-old daughter, Rose, earing a white terry-cloth belted bathrobe and looked like a tiny fighter about to climb into the ring. They were all in the room while he was studying for the examination.
"The written part is where I fall down," Edgar said morosely, to everyone in the room. "The oral part is where I do best." He looked at the back of his wife which oi him. "If I dont kick it in the head this time I dont know what were going to do," he repeated. "Barb?" But she failed to respond to this implied question. She felt it was a false hope, taking this examination which he had already failed miserably twid which always got him very worked up, black with fear, before he took it. Now she didnt wish to withe spec?tacle any more so she gave him her back.
"The oral part," Edgar tinued encingly, "is A-okay. I for instance give you a list of answers, I know it so well. Listen, here is an an?swer, you tell me the question?" Barbara, who was very sexually attractive (that was what made Edgar tap on her for a date, many years before) but also deeply mean, said nothing. She put her mind on their silent child, Rose.
"Here is the answer," Edgar said. "The answer is Julia Ward Howe. What is the question?"
This answer was too provocative for Barbara to resist long, because she khe question. "Who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic?" she said. "There is not a grown person in the Uates who doesnt know that."
"Youre right," Edgar said unhappily, for he would have preferred that the answer had been a little more recherche, ohat she would not have known the question to. But she had been a hooker for a period before their marriage and he could resort to this area if her triumph grew too great. "Do you want to try another one?"
"Edgar I dont believe in that examination any more," she told him coldly.
"I dont believe in you Barbara," he tered.
This remark filled her with remorse and anger. She sidered momentarily letting him have one upside the head but fear prevented her from doing it so she turned her back again and thought about the vaunted certificate. With a certificate he could write for all the important and great periodicals, and there would be some money in the house for a ge instead of what they got from his brother and the Unemployment.
"It isnt you who has to pass this National Writ?ers Examination," he shot past her. Then, to mol?lify, he gave her another answer. "Brand, tuck, glave, claymore."
"Is that an answer?" she asked from behind her back.
"It is indeed. Whats the question?"
"I dont know," she admitted, slightly pleased to be put ba a feminine position of not knowing.
"Those are four names for a sword. Theyre archaic."
"Thats why I didnt know them, then."
"Obviously," said Edgar with some malice, for Barbara was sometimes given to saying things that were obvious, just to fill the air. "Yo