Howard's wife was talking about the yard again, before his breakfast, that back forty he’d bought when the Fishers moved away. She didn't want him to clear it, said she’d spotted some special flower. Weed, more likely. Fond of wasteland, Fay was – stumps and berries. Stout as she was, she took the dog out there every day.  Howard rustled the newspaper. He’d be the one to clear it, he told her, maybe someday even mark out a softball diamond for the kids. He could just about feel himself snug in the high seat of a rented bulldozer, the engine grinding through his ribs. Maybe wearing an umpire’s cap, setting the kids straight on the rules.

"What kids?" She was forking his potatoes, humming the way she did, her gray hairdo springing over her forehead.

"Those spuds are not done yet," he told her.

"Yeh," she said. "Guess I like to coax them.”

He checked the classifieds for the ad about his car dealership. He didn’t much like seeing himself in living color: straight mouth, broken nose, bristling haircut. Big neck. He looked choked by a striped necktie, stifled enough that he closed the paper and stuck a finger inside his shirt collar.

Fay whistled for the dog, bent her square frame for the dog food. "I didn't think you were so fond of neighbor kids coming through."

"With the parents too. You know. A place to play ball on a Saturday."

"Yeh, well, that sounds like fun then." She poured water in the bowl and Trixie came wheezing in on her little corgi legs.

He knew she hadn’t really changed her mind, so he changed the subject.  "You feed that dog too much.”

"Yeh well, she likes it. She likes it, don't she?" She bent again for a dripping doggie kiss. “Oof!"

"She been to the vet?" He lit up his cigarette.

"Sure. Plus, she got a bath, didn't she?" She baby-talked the dog again, squatted all the way down so its paws could get to her shoulders. They rested on her big front really. "Give me a hug now, Trixie.”

"You'll get stuck down there some day," he told her, and she laughed right out. He nodded. Made him glad to see the dog and Fay look at each other there in the kitchen, hear the dog's claws click on the linoleum he’d laid himself. And the potatoes, and the steak, and his cigarette – manly smells in the pleasure of his kitchen. He stretched his back a little, comfy. "Here now, you'll get your front all dirty."

"Oh, I will not." She had to lean on a chair to get up, so he helped her, propped up her backside with both hands.

“Don’t break yourself, now, I might need you later,” he said, their old joke from their first date years ago. He did need her now, kind of. She had a good habit of asking had he thought of this or that for the dealership. He helped her brush herself off before turning back to his breakfast.

"I'll have a walk back there today, to picture it," she said. "I never pictured us clearing it."

"I did. That's what I bought it for." He put his cigarette out, because she was loading his plate.

"Yeh well, I guess you forgot to tell me then," she said mildly. "I'll just take a walk back there." He had his breakfast. She went back to the magazine she'd left when he came down, and her small cup of black coffee.

***

Why do you marry someone, then? He drove along, puzzling it out. You just do it, that's why. Everybody does it. You do it to get along. That's why. It's comfy, and then you get along. They’d got along fine so far. She’d impressed him the first time he saw her, how she drove up in her company car when he was still a salesman, how straight she stood in her smart suit. She was the one her firm picked to get their new car. Pretty unusual back then, but she knew what was what. Straight and direct, like him, usually.

The two-lane highway swung up and down the hills, past cows and crops, past vegetables stands with their painted signs: "Squash. Corn. Pumpkins 25 cents/lb." Halloween already. The kids'd be out crazy for Halloween. Not at his house, though. Not yet.

He was almost alone on the town road, passing orange foliage in his black Lincoln. The leaf-peepers never got to see these trees. He smoked deeply and tuned the radio to some background music. It was worth it just to drive. He opened up his jacket, loosened his tie so he could breathe.

Leather on the wheel, one finger steering, that was the way to go. You get along, you get some comforts – you earn them! – and then maybe – maybe a little bit more. He was almost there now, almost to the town where he'd set up his other one. She was fine for now, but he'd have to do something about her before spring – her and the kids.

It's not about sex, that's one thing, he thought, continuing on the subject of marriage, marriage and women. This other one here now, he found her for sex originally, but neither of them cared so much about that now. The kids gave that one her magnetic power. Protecting them. He’d stop on the road to take a leak rather than use their john. His nosy little girls. He was duty-bound to them like any man worth his salt would be.

The wife now, Fay -– Fay was getting to be a mystery. She kept on getting older. The five or six years between them made much more difference now than ten years ago. Back then, she was – solid was the word for her, a word for selling cars. A sound investment: hit her on the rump and feel the steel. His spot coming up. He loosened his belt and prepared to pull over. A good, practical investment: a wife.  They got along.

Fifteen or something years they’d been married. He’d been – what? Forty? Fay forty-five?  She’d had to have them do it in front of a priest. Even now she went to church most Sundays.  All her relatives knew him for a Protestant. He’d never been Protestant or anything else – too busy getting out of the boonies, working, building the business. He didn’t believe or disbelieve. Different for Fay: she’d lost things – her first husband, a baby. He never had anything he wasn’t able to hang onto. Whatever he had, he’d made it himself.

But none of them, including him, ever rolled around for sex or talked goo goo romance. He spat. He was out of the car now, down by the trees, swatting a bug off himself. Tender skin he had. They both liked that, the women. Anything soft – soft couches, soft living, soft toys for the kids, Fay's damn dog.

The car looked perfect when he turned around: up on the highway, sky setting it off, the glint that was the letters of his name, his dealership. The only thing in sight: big, solid, shiny, with the land and everything falling away from it all around.

***

He couldn't stand to walk into the other place, practically, it was so dirty. But that's where the kids were, two of them, five and two, and another one on the way. The woman never did anything around the house as far as he could tell, never worked, never earned her keep or a penny. She had the kids, so how could she?

He let the two little girls climb all over him when he came in now at lunchtime. The littler one liked to rub his head, feel the short points of his zip cut, until he said, that’s enough now, and she asked why men had short hair and he told her that was the difference between men and women. He told them all about the yard, their yard, while their mother sat on a stool by the counter, stirring something. She was showing now, had her blouse out over the bulge. Otherwise, you could practically see through her, the skinny wrists, the long fingers. She was healthy, all right; she was strong. He'd seen her lift things – arm chairs, mattresses – when he'd moved her in.

"When can we see it?" the bigger one asked. He didn't answer, so she poked Howard’s arm a couple of times. "Daddy? Daddy."

"Shut up now," he said. "You can't go over there till later."

"Tomorrow?"

"No, no, later. It's not ready yet. It's still got broken branches and big rocks all over."

"I don't care. I want to see!"

"It's got snakes there, Paula," her mother said.

"No-oo!" Both kids ran out of the room, screaming.

She wiped her hands on her pants and came over. "Tuna fish?" she said.

"No, no." He put his hand on the baby. "How's it going?"

"OK. Only they're driving me nuts. Kristen's into everything now. She almost pulled the dish rack over on herself this morning. I'd love to clap her one."

"Yeh well, don't

"Of course I don't."

"Don't, then."

He got out the blue checkbook where he kept track of everything, and she got out her little notebook. It's the only thing she keeps clean, he thought. The figuring was right, though. She'd go well in the business someday, like the wife did now.

"You shouldn't have told them," she said. "What would she think if she saw you out there with two little kids, huh?"

"She won't see them out there," he said.

"And they called you Daddy, huh?"

He took out his pen. "Calm yourself," he said. "She just walks down there sometimes with the dog. She's not going to think about kids being there or even about the ball field being there till she sees it. She won't see it till spring, anyway. I'm not clearing the yard till then."

Spring was when the littlest one was due, the one that was supposed to be a boy.  Soon as she’d told him, practically, that back forty had come up for sale.  They winked at each other. "OK," she said, smoothing her belly, and nodded that he should sign the check.

***

Of course, she and the kids lived in a different town. He didn't know his way around so well as around home.  Walking these streets looking for cigarettes, he had the feeling he was someplace else, almost like he was going through the yard again that first time after he’d bought it.

That was nonsense.  The broken-up sidewalk wasn’t like the underbrush, the pedestrians and kids on bikes were nothing like bushes and prickles in the face. The only open air to the town was blazing sky up top of the buildings. Still, to Howard, walking those town blocks felt like being deep in his overgrown yard.

He came actually to an abrupt hill like the hill behind his house. There was a playground at the foot of it, with kids running around. Seeing them made him smile – or not really smile, but the feeling of a smile going around inside his face. They were a sight to him. He watched awhile, seeing his yard as it would be, cleared, a yard to play softball in. The sky would shine like summer then, even more blue than now in October. Saturdays the neighbors would come, the ones who came over for a drink now with him and Fay. They'd laugh and shake their heads while the kids played; maybe they'd even play themselves, on their own kids' teams. He’d be plain out smiling then.

A cold breeze came, and he went back toward the little downtown. Then he drove to a highway store for the cigarettes instead. Because after all, he didn't want to get too well known in that town, of all the towns for fifty miles around.

***

Howard belonged to the Chamber, like any businessman. Gave to the Red Cross, bought Girl Scout cookies, loaned trucks to the Christmas parade – good as new trucks. Even once drove a flatbed with a float of mermaids, when the YW opened. Belonging to two households was no small potatoes either: two women, two lawns to mow, two roofs to fix. Two kids, plus. Showing up for Fay’s relatives with the one family, staying out of the way with the other. Sheesh, buying treats for the corgi. Lifting it down from his chair. Watching it watch Fay with its tongue dripping, looking at Fay the way the other one looked at him. Stupid love. Aggravating.

But then if he remembered the first time he drove around with Fay all that time ago, this stocky woman with a face like a hawk. How she grinned at him with her hair all mangled from the open window, deciding whether he was offering a good deal. Or whenever those two little girls popped into mind. The kids, Fay, they made something breathe in his chest. So, he was no bad guy.

Someone behind him beeped. He’d been sitting at a green light. Not like him at all.

***

Saturdays Gladys came over from across the street. So did her husband Glenn, also Paul and Roberta from next door, dour Sam, the assistant manager from the dealership. Fay would call up one of the shop girls to bring a girlfriend. Sometimes two girls would show up. That way Sam was kept amused.

Gladys would usually get potted after one drink. She could be very funny when she got potted; it was like she had a hidden talent for comedy.  Fay thought so, too. If there was any lull at all, she turned the conversation over to Gladys.

"So, Gladys," she might say, "tell us about your little Richie in the school play." Gladys would begin with the top hat and flip-flops, and by the time she got to the voice change on his solo, everybody would be on the floor. She was a funny girl.

So that's who they were, pretty much, on Saturdays, adults leaving the kids home. Sometimes somebody would cry or argue or get sloppy, but most times everybody just talked and ate Fay's scallops in bacon and laughed at stupid jokes.

After Howard bought the yard, they’d all go out to look at it come the end of the night.  Fay talked about special weeds she’d find in there, and the girls would get all earth-motherish and the guys would shift their feet. Or Howard might talk about renting a bulldozer, and the women went quiet. Then they'd all leave, and finally Fay'd go in, too, to start the Sunday coffee. And Howard would stay out there, just him and the yard and the stars, if there were any.

***

It turned November. Thursday. Not quite dark after work, though the kitchen light was on. Before he went inside, Howard stood by the bit of stone wall where the yard started. It sloped down, covered with scrub until it flattened out and the scrub turned into brush, then trees. The flat part went for a good ways, rolling just a little, and dry.  He hadn't bought up to the stream. Fay couldn't understand that – why not get the water when it ran so close – but he never wanted a nature preserve anyhow. This yard was for playing, for running and falling down without poking your eye out on a bramble. Sure, the corgi liked the woods. The damn corgi liked everything.

They could have got along. They'd got along for a long time, ever since she rolled into the dealership all those years ago. They were almost middle-aged then; now they were for sure. Anyway, she was.

The kids came along, that was all. The kids came first, period. The yard was for them, not Fay and the corgi. He knew that in time she'd get it. She was a sensible woman. Catholic, though. That would make a tangle.

Cold was on its way. Leaves rattled on the knee-high maple shoots. The sky was getting dim. If he turned around now he'd see the last glow behind his house. He didn't turn, though. He walked a little bit into the brush, where the shoots grew thicker and almost shoulder-high. Just to see, he pulled a skinny one out of the ground. It resisted him before it came out with a pretty good-sized wad of earth stuck in the roots. Still, he was short of breath. He grunted, tossing the shoot down. Be good to get more exercise.

Fay’s voice, sharp, from close by: "Hello!" She came out of the trees with the corgi, shaking a bunch of weeds, like that might scare someone. Like a walking tree herself. "Jeez, you surprised me,” she told him.

“Likewise.” His breath was still short or he might have said more.

“Mint,” she said, wafting her leaves under his nose. “For the lamb. I knew I saw some right at the edge there.”   She was making her point.

“Good,” he said. “I’m still clearing it.”

“The mint will come back anyway,” she answered, just factual. “You can’t kill it.” They walked back to the house to get the place ready for Saturday drinks.

***

Like always, he wrote up the drinks list Friday morning, while he finished his coffee and Fay fussed around the living room. “Look, look,” he heard, and tuned to see the corgi circling all around itself. It almost jumped at a treat she was holding.  It didn’t rise, it was too fat, but she said, “Good puppy, good doggy, good Trixie!” She went all the way over, nearly, both of them bumping against the old secretary, where he kept the bills all lined up.

“Take care with those papers, now.” He moved past her and pulled the rolltop down, but she paid no attention.

“Who can jump? Can Trixie jump? No-o, no-o.” She gave that rat-a-tat laugh of hers and rubbed the dog’s ears while it panted and just about snapped her to get the treat.

“You watch out for that dog,” he said. “It’ll bite you”

“Aw, you wouldn’t, would you?” she said to the dog. “And anyways if you did, I’d bite you back. Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I?” And she play-growled, showed Trixie her teeth.

“Oh, come on,” said Howard. “You wouldn’t even hit it with a fly swatter. You’re too nice. That’s spoiling it.”

“That’s what he thinks. That’s what Daddy thinks!” The corgi wheezed, eyes fixed on her while she hoisted herself up.

“That is what I think,” he told her, finally taking his hand off the rolltop. “And I’m no dog’s daddy. Bye now, Fay.”

“Bye-bye, Daddy,” she showed him those same teeth, teasing him the way she did. Then she shuffled to the door with him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “See you for dinner, now. Lamb chops.”

“That’s right,” he said. He brushed the dog hair from his face and went out the door.

***

She - the other one, not Fay – had expected him to hit her or something. He realized that driving home from the other place Saturday after work. “I just said the truth,” she’d told him. Then she stood there, shaking, holding her soda can crooked so it spilled, crying that she had no nursery and no stereo, looking at him as if to say Why not?  He almost hit the brake instead, right in the middle of traffic, when it came to him what she'd told.

She’d used his name at the hospital where she went for her baby checkups, with that lady doctor she thought was so friendly. So nosy, in other words. "Holy crap," he said out loud to her, there in the car by himself,  "maybe you do need a smack." Only he would never hit a woman.

Why not, though? Why not? It was beneath him. He didn't feel like it. The quarterly figures came up red at the dealership last time and he felt the same way about them: why shouldn't they, sometimes? Getting upset was beyond him. He opened the window, getting a cold draft that he drank down like a drink.  Drinks later, though. Now the street lights were coming on.

Fay over there now, Fay was making plans. Since we have the yard, she said to him, why not build on the side lot – get this – a little house for her mother. Well, he didn't know what to say. He liked her mother, they got along. It was a good idea, actually. Fay was very sharp. He told her he'd think about it. He'd been thinking about it, all right, but not come up with any answer.

It was funny in a way, the two women. It was kind of fun to keep Fay in the dark while she barreled on with her plans. The other one, she couldn’t do anything. She didn't need to. She knew he'd come through for the kids. The kids, the kids were just funny anyway. Little Paula showing little Kristen the bird egg she'd found. Their mother got the two of them outdoors, anyway.

With Fay, it was all business. He trusted her, period. Trusted her not to pressure him about anything, trusted her to do right by him and to take care of herself and to let him do his business. Really, he preferred her to the other one. He was on the up-and-up with Fay, except for the kids.

His face got cold and he closed the window. It went up smart, with a zzt. The Lincoln still smelled good. He liked American autos. In his business, he got to drive a lot of new models. So did his wife. It showed self-respect. The other one still had the rattletrap she’d bought off the street. She didn’t come to his car lot, not yet.

With one finger on the wheel, he drove around the circle and up the hill, around the corner to his street and his driveway, the driveway he'd paved himself, into the garage with the concrete walls he'd poured himself. He was a self-made man. There was no reason why he shouldn't do anything he wanted to. Right then he wanted, almost irresistibly, so his jaw clenched and he heard the brakes yelp, to drive right through the garage wall and into the yard.

***

Howard had the dealership closed for inventory. People hired just for the day walked around the parts shop with steno notebooks, counting products. One little college girl kept asking questions until Howard told Dot to tell her that was no way to get a job.

He drummed his pencil on the sales figures, unable to get a picture of the quarter. In general, things were up; in general, they had always been up.  Nothing had changed, not his strategy nor his sales force nor the quality of his merchandise. Cars were cars. People needed them, and some of the people who needed them came to him. That was a bedrock truth. If he couldn't get the figures to come out positive, that was because his attention wasn't solid.

It didn't need to be. Sam could easily write up the report instead. Sam could run the whole business if he wanted to, after only what? Seven, eight years.  Sometimes Sam did run it. It went that way – start as a floor salesman, show aptitude, bring in some big sales, work some overtime and boom, you're in charge when the old man retires. But he, Howard, was not retiring yet. Not with a son on the way. Sam would have to wait a long time.

He had thought to make some phone calls, but it was Sunday. The corporations would be closed.  The wife had kicked him out of the house after she watched the TV Mass – said the house needed deep cleaning because the dog had eaten something stupid and gotten sick all over the house, upstairs and down. Swedish housekeeping, she said – some crazy thing she'd read about, where she’d have to disinfect everything, even under the furniture. “Every inch, every scrap,” she said. “They even take all the furniture out of the house. “

He chuckled to think of her wrestling with the armchairs, the corgi getting underfoot.  He’d almost said, I know someone who could help you lug that stuff. Luckily, he’d stifled himself. “If you want to do it,” he told Fay. He didn't do housework, she knew that.

"Just in case, I want it clean," she’d said.  In case what? That was women for you.

She was a funny one – always kept her feet washed in case she had to go to the hospital; always kept the guest bed made up in case somebody called for a surprise visit. "Or somebody might not feel like driving home after a Saturday," she said. It was all for a reason. She liked to clean up.

So now she’d be having her own little inventory. Was she going to lift up the king bed too? And everything – the kitchen table, the recliner, his rolltop desk?

It bothered him a little. He got up and paced his office, checking the counter through the office windows, checking the cars in the showroom and the lot. Dot stood out there with a clipboard beside one of the autos. That would have been him decades ago, filling out forms. He saw her glance up at the shop door, where Sam stood talking with someone — Fay, in her fur coat.

That was her way, getting into her fur coat because it was a Sunday. She wasn't there to help out, because the dog was with her, straining at the leash until Fay finished with Sam and let it back into the car. He heard the starter catch, saw her wave from the driver’s seat as she drove off. Something shifted in the back window when the car turned, caught his eye. Looked like suitcases, jostling above the I Heart My Corgi sticker.

Sam walked over as usual looking at his feet, until he caught Howard's eye through the office window and held up what Fay had left. It was the blue checkbook that he kept for the other one.

***

He saw now how it never had seemed real to him – the kids, the other house in the other town. Only the yard made it real, the back forty, clearing it come spring. Now the checkbook delivered from Fay, that made it real too. She would never put up with that sort of thing.

Thoughts came, like they came from somewhere else. They had a ring of fact to them, like bulletins on new autos, or the six o'clock news. What do you expect, he thought, while he sat in the office looking through entries in the check register, entries for teeth, for rent, for groceries, for the doctor who knew his name.

He could see her, Fay, almost: loading up boxes, holding the car door open for the dog. He knew her pretty well, all right. The house would be empty when he got home. The dishwasher, the wastebaskets, the closet.  Pretty soon would come the letters from the lawyers, the bills, the divorce. The priests. Saturdays would have to change, as well. He wouldn’t want to be hearing the funny new stories Gladys would tell.

He looked up and it was dark, it was suppertime, and his thought went: But then, now the other one can move in faster. She can move in right away with the kids. Maybe they'd get settled before the baby came. Why not?

Or maybe he’d build that other house after all, and Fay would move in there. Why not? He wondered if she’d made him supper. That would be like her – maybe. He thought of her bare teeth ready to bite the corgi.

No, probably he’d be buying lots of tuna fish, serving tuna fish to kids on Saturdays. Good thing the wife had cleaned the house, then, anyway.