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wrapped around her legs, Sheila and David exited the chapel swinging their arms and smiling. Sheila did a dance that ended with her diving into the pool and splashing another couple on their way into the chapel. So graceful! He didn’t know until then that she danced. They became servants for rich people on Long Island, and after five years—timed perfectly because Sheila waspregnant—the daughter of the rich people died, leaving a lot of money to her secret love, David. They left Long Island and went to Vermont, where they opened a restaurant. David wrote his cookbook and Sheila danced through their basement with paper flowers in her hair, followed by young children who looked like they were limping. The restaurant was a success, sushi being then very hard to find in that part of Vermont. He told the patrons about F’s ideas. Her class gave after-dinner performances, throwing their paper flowers to the customers at the end of the show. They made rhubarb wine. He sewed his own shirts, from material shipped to him from Hong Kong. She shaved her eyebrows and penciled thin arcs above her blue-gray eyes when it was
outré
. They had lawn furniture in their house, covered by fur rugs of nonendangered species during the winter. It was suspected that they were serious dopers. Not so. They drank the rhubarb wine, lounged on the fur, and tried to contend with their baby, Wally. At first it wasn’t bad—a small, pinkish, naked thing that lay on its back on a fur rug and played with wine-bottle corks laced together on a string by David. Wally liked the way they smelled. His mother’s pirouettes, the regular creaking of the floor, lulled him to sleep. He learned to speak at an early age, calling the mess he made in his pants “poopy”—which he also called the puppy. They meant to think of a name for the puppy, but nothing seemed appropriate. Wally was named for a male nurse who took care of Sheila after the baby’s birth. “Not really!” the nurse kept saying. Apparently it is untrue that babies are often named for doctors and nurses. The male nurse was extremely flattered and gave Sheila two bed baths a day when other women went to the showers. When Wally was a year old he got a strange look in his eye; he looked pissed off, to tell the truth. He and the puppy would be lying on their backs side by side, and Wally would straighten up and look very pissed off. Heredity? His mother was a bit cynical, but should this influence a one-year-old? Did he somehow sense that Sheila pounded her calves at night, telling them not to bulge? Did he sense an air of dissatisfaction in the house? They took him to a young doctor whom they felt they could speak frankly to, about vibrations … that the baby might be picking up bad vibrations. The doctor was shocked. They foundan older man who was indifferent to the idea of vibrations, and stuck with him. David liked the way the doctor shrugged when he asked if bad vibrations could be getting to Wally. The first doctor had said, “You don’t beat this child, do you?”
    When he was two, Wally began to wander off. A free spirit, Sheila felt. David thought he would fall off a cliff or drown. He
was
more practical; after all, he hadn’t proposed to her in The Silver Slipper Café. “You hold my love against me!” Sheila said, aghast. Wally took the aghast facial expression from his mother and combined it with a very distressed downturned mouth and ran away. You might also say that his eyes were very large and he pouted. It is a little difficult to describe his expression, but it was strange, and Sheila thought so too, although she didn’t say that to David. When he was three, Wally jumped off a table and broke his leg. While he was laid up, he colored to pass the time. Wally’s doctor paid a house call—amazing things happened to these amazing people—and pronounced Wally “just fine.”
    “But his expression,” David said to the doctor as the doctor was leaving. “You wouldn’t