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to spend on Jerry’s just money, and Jerry’s got it. Something his family needs, Jerry wants to know right off, how come and how much?”
    “Where’d you learn this?” the Digger said. “You didn’t know all these songs, I married you. I looked you over pretty good. I didn’t hear nothing like this. Now you got that trap of yours working every minute. I wished I knew what the hell happened to you, made you different.”
    “Some things about you,” she said, “changed a little in sixteen years. I used to be able to go to Confession.”
    “You still can,” the Digger said. “Two blocks down, three over. It’s a church thing, you’ll recognize it right off. Course it don’t sound the same, there’s likely to be some hairy-looking bastard running around talking English like a Protestant, but it’s right there. Every Saturday, Confessions three to five and seven to eight thirty, unless Father Alioto’s got tickets to the ball game. Then seven to seven fifteen.”
    “I can’t go to Confession,” she said. “I can’t tell them what we been doing.”
    “Oh for Christ sake,” the Digger said, “wake up or something. Things’ve changed. Nobody pays any attention, that birth control thing. That’s just the ghinny Pope raving around. Them guys, they must feel like they’re running a drugstore, everybody coming in, one way or the other. They’re used to hearing it.”
    “I’m not used to saying it,” she said. “It’ll bother me . What if he asks me, Jerry, what do I say?”
    “Look him straight inna screen,” the Digger said. “Tell him, ‘The foam.’ Then you say, ‘What difference it make? My husband don’t like the rubber boots, you take the Pill you’re liable to grow a tail or something, and I ain’t letting them put one of them things inside me .’ Then ask him, ‘This how you get your cookies, Father? Asking people?’ That’ll slow him down.”
    “Of course I’ll also be telling him,” she said, “my great Catholic husband don’t want any more children. Doesn’t believe in sex for that any more. Just something he likes to do, like bowling or something.”
    “You can tell him that too,” the Digger said. “Matter of fact, tell him I tried both and I think it over, I hadda give up one or the other, it’d be bowling. I see the ghinny Pope coming around with a couple hundred aweek, the next kid to eat and wear and go to school on, and some more for a bigger house so I can do what I like to do without the whole goddamned world looking on, well then I’ll say, ‘Thanks, Pope,’ and maybe we’ll think about having another kid. Otherwise, my way.”
    “If you didn’t spend every cent on yourself,” she said, “we wouldn’t need the extra. I know lots of families that haven’t got anywhere near what you make, and they live much better. Their kids’re swimming in the ocean this week. Our kids’re over the MDC pool. They go to the Cape, the kids go to camp, and my friends’re all nicely dressed. I never have an extra dime, and when I do, you come back and take it. You and your wonderful friends, that’s where the money goes. You’ve got the big convertible. You’re going to the track. You’re going to New York, to see the Giants. We can’t afford twelve hundred dollars for three weeks at the Cape, but you’ve got a thousand dollars to go to Las Vegas. How much did you lose out there, Jerry, in four days by yourself?”
    “All of it,” the Digger said. “Just like you said.”
    “How much more did you lose?” she said.
    “We been through all of this before,” the Digger said. “I told you, I was taking a hundred bucks extra. I didn’t bring no checks with me. That’s all I took. So all right, I’m a bastard. Get off my back.”
    “Eleven hundred dollars,” she said. “A hundred less’n we couldn’t afford for three weeks. All on yourself. Oh, Jerry, I think that’s selfish. I think that’s very selfish. I thought it was the limit when you paid out