Daddy

But the compliment had not gone unnoticed by her husband, as he smiled down at his bride with the look that still made her tingle. “Give the girl a little credit, Phyllis. She hasn't hurt our boy, and she's given him, and us, two beautiful children.” Indeed they were, and although neither of them looked exactly like their father, they both had some of his classic good looks. Oliver was tall and graceful and athletic-looking, with thick, straight blond hair that had been the envy of every mother when he was a child, and every girl when he was in college. And although Sarah seldom acknowledged it to him, because she didn't want to bloat his ego beyond something she could cope with, more than once she had heard it said that Oliver Watson was the best-looking man in Purchase. For six months of the year, he had a deep tan, and his green eyes seemed to dance with mischief and laughter. And yet he was unaware of his good looks, which made him all the more attractive.

“Do you think they'll have more children, George?” Phyllis often wondered but would never have dared to ask her son, much less Sarah.

“I don't know, darling. I think they have a full life as it is. And these days, you can never be too sure of what's going to happen. Oliver is in an insecure business. Advertising is nothing like banking when I was a young man. You can't count on anything anymore. It's probably wiser for them not to.” George Watson had been talking that way for the past year. He had lived long enough to watch many of his investments, once so sound, begin to shrink and dwindle. The cost of living was astonishingly high, and he and Phyllis had to be careful. They had a pretty little house in Westchester they had bought fifteen years before, around the time when Oliver was in college. They knew that he'd never be coming home again for any great length of time, and it seemed foolish to continue hanging on to their rambling old house in New London. But George worried about their finances constantly now. It wasn't that they were destitute by any means, but if they both lived another twenty-five years, which at fifty-nine and sixty-two they still could, and he hoped they did, it could stretch their savings beyond their limit. He had just retired from the bank and was getting a decent pension. And he had made numerous wise investments over the years, but still … you could never be too careful. It was what he told Oliver every time he saw him. He had seen a lot in his lifetime, one big war and several small ones. He had fought in Guadalcanal, and been lucky enough to survive it. He had been twelve in the crash of '29, he knew just how brutal the Depression had been, and he had seen the economy go up and down over the years. He wanted his son to be careful. “I don't see why they'd want any more children.”

And Sarah completely agreed with him. It was one of the few subjects on which she and George Watson were in total agreement. Whenever the subject came up with Oliver, once in a while in bed late at night, or on a quiet walk in the woods in a remote corner of Purchase, she always told him she thought it was silly to even consider it. “Why would we want more kids now, Ollie? Melissa and Benjamin are growing up. They're easy, they have their own lives. In a few years we'll be able to do anything we want. Why tie ourselves down with all those headaches again?” Even the thought of it made her shudder.

“It wouldn't be the same this time. We could afford someone to help us. I don't know … I just think it would be nice. One day we might regret not having more children.” He looked at her tenderly with the eyes that almost made women swoon at the PTA, but Sarah pretended not to notice.

“The kids wouldn't even like the idea by now. Benjamin's seven, and Melissa's five. A baby would seem like an intrusion to them. You have to think of that. We owe something to them too.” She sounded so definite, so sure, and he smiled and took her hand as they walked back to where they had parked the ear. He had just bought his first Mercedes. And she didn't know it yet, but he was going to give her a fur coat for Christmas. He had just picked it out at Bergdorf Goodman, and it was being monogrammed with her initials.

“You certainly sound sure.” As always, he sounded disappointed.

“I am sure.” And she was. There was no way he was going to talk her into having another baby. She was thirty-one years old, and she liked her life just fine the way it was. She was swamped with committee work all day long, she spent half her life running car pools, and the rest of it going to Cub Scouts and Melissa's ballet class. Enough was enough. He had tamed her as far as she was willing to be tamed. They had the picket fence, and the two kids, and the house in the country, and they had even bought an Irish setter the year before. More than that she could not give, even for Ollie.