Outside his window five-year-old Priscilla Hess, square and squat as a mailbox (red sweater, blue lumpy corduroy pants), looked around poignantly for someoo wipe her overflowing here was a butterfly locked ihat mailbox, surely; would it ever escape? Or was the quality of mailboxness stuck to her forever, like her parents, like her he sky was sunny and blue. A filet of green Silly Putty disappeared into fat Priscilla Hess auro greet his wife who was crawling through the door on her hands and knees.
"Yes?" he said. "What now?"
"Im ugly," she said, sitting ba her haunches. "Our children are ugly."
"Nonsense," Brian said sharply. "Theyre wonderful children. Wonderful aiful. Other peoples children are ugly, not our children. Now get up and go back out to the smokeroom. Youre supposed to be g a ham."
"The ham died," she said. "I couldnt cure it. I tried everything. You dont love me any more. The penicillin was stale. Im ugly and so are the children. It said to tell you goodbye."
"It?"
"The ham," she said. "Is one of our children named Ambrose? Somebody named Ambrose has been sending us telegrams. How many do we have now? Four? Five? Do you think theyre heterosexual?" She made a moue and ran a hand through her artichoke hair. "The house is rusting away. Why did you want a steel house? Why did I think I wao live in ecticut? I dont know."
"Get up," he said softly, "get up, dearly beloved. Stand up and sing. Sing Parsifal."
"I want a Triumph," she said from the floor. "A TR-4. Everyone in Stamford, every single person, has o me. If you gave me a TR-4 Id put ly children in it and drive away. To Wellfleet. Id take all the ugliness out of your life."
"A green one?"
"A red one," she said menagly. "Red with red leather seats."
"Arent you supposed to be chipping paint?" he asked. "I bought us aronic data processing system. An IBM."
"I want to go to Wellfleet," she said. "I want to talk to Edmund Wilson and take him for a ride in my red TR-4- The children dig clams. We have a lot to talk about, Bunny and me."
"Why dont you remove those shoulder pads?" Brian said kindly. "Its too bad about the ham."
"I loved that ham," she said viciously. "When you galloped into the Uy of Texas on your roan Volvo, I thought you were going to be somebody. I gave you my hand. You put rings on it. Rings that my mave me. I thought you were going to be distinguished, like Bunny."
He showed her his broad, shouldered back. "Everything is in flitters," he said. "Play the piano, wont you?"
"You always were afraid of my piano," she said. "My four or five children are afraid of the piano. You taught them to be afraid of it. The giraffe is on fire, but I dont suppose you care."
"What we eat," he asked, "with the ham gone?"
"Theres some Silly Putty in the deepfreeze," she said tonelessly.
"Rain is falling," he observed. "Rain or something."
"When you graduated from the Wharton School of Business," she said, "I thought at last! I thought now we move to Stamford and have iing neighbors. But theyre not iing. The giraffe is iing but he sleeps so much of the time. The mailbox is rather iing. The man didnt open it at 3:31 p.m. today. He was five minutes late. The gover lied again."
With a gesture of impatience, Brian turned on the light. The great burst of electricity illuminated her upturiny face. Eyes like snow peas, he thought. Tamar dang. My name in the d