(Oh, Eunice, don’t talk silly! Beloved, happy as I am that we are together, that ‘Generation Gap’ is still there. My fault this time, as I have a lifelong habit of being careful in what I say to a woman, even one I am in bed with—)
(You’re certainly in bed with me!)
(I certainly am. And I’m finding it ever harder to be flatly truthful with you—’tell it bang’ as you say—than it is to adjust to being female. But before Dr. Hedrick brought up the matter I saw the implications—and complications—and consequences—of being female. . . and young and rich.)
(‘Rich.’ I hadn’t thought about that one.)
(Eunice beloved, we’re going to have to think about it. Of course we’re going to be ‘actively female’—)
(Hooray!)
(Quiet, dear. If we were poor, the simplest thing would be to ask your Joe to take us back. If he would have us. But we aren’t poor; we’re embarrassingly rich—and a fortune is harder to get rid of than it is to accumulate. Believe me. When I was about seventy-five, I tried to unload my wealth while I was still living so that it would not go to my granddaughters. But to give away money without wasting most of it in. the process is as difficult as getting the genie back into the bottle. So I gave up and simply arranged my will to keep most of it out of the hands of my alleged descendants.)
(‘Alleged’?)
(Alleged. Eunice, my first wife was a sweet girl, much like yourself, I think. But the poor dear died in childbirth—bearing my one son, also dead for many years now. Agnes had made me promise to marry again and I did, almost at once. One daughter from that marriage and her mother divorced me before the child was a year old. I married a third time—again one daughter, again a divorce.
I never knew my daughters well and outlived both of them and their mothers. But—Eunice, you’re a rare—blood yourself; do you know how blood types are inherited?)
(Not really.)
(Thought you might. Being mathematically inclined, the first time I laid eyes on an inheritance chart for blood types I understood it as well as I understand the multiplication tables. Having lost my first wife to childbirth, with both my second and third wives I made certain that donors were at hand before they went into delivery rooms. Second wife was type A, third was type B—years later I learned that both my putative daughters were type 0.)
(I think I missed something, Boss.)
(Eunice, it is impossible for a type-AB father to sire type-O children. Now wait—I did not hold it against my daughters; it was none of their doing. I would have loved Evelyn and Roberta—tried to, wanted to—but their mothers kept me away from them and turned them against me. Neither girl had any use for me. . . until it turned out that I was going to dispose of a lot of money someday—and then the switch from honest dislike to phony ‘affection’ was nauseating. I feel no obligation to my granddaughters since in fact they are not my granddaughters. Well? What do you think?)
(Uh—Boss, I don’t see any need to comment.)
(So? Who was it not five minutes ago was saying that we ought to be absolutely frank with each other?)
(Well…I don’t disagree with your conclusion, Boss, just with how you reached it. I don’t see that heredity should enter into it. Seems to me you are resenting something that happened a long time ago—and that’s not good. Not good for you, Boss.)
(Child, you don’t know what you’re talking about)
(Maybe not)
(No ‘maybes’ about it. A baby is a baby. Babies are to love and take care of and that’s what this whole bloody mess is about, else none of it makes sense. Eunice, I told you that my first wife was something like you. Agnes was my Annabel Lee and we loved with a love that was more than a love and I had her for only a year—then she died giving me my son. Then I loved him just as much. When he was killed something died inside me. . . and I made a foolish fourth marriage hoping to bring it alive again by having another son. But I was lucky that time—no children and it merely cost me a chunk of money to get shut of it.)