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endless hill, just dangerous enough to provide a long intensely satisfying thrill. And couples who had parked on other hills to neck, in the marvelous privacy of deep snowbanks, could emerge to observe a curious pink light on all the surrounding miles of white, reflected in all the lakes.
    Lauren Whitfield and Tommy Russell spent considerable time in his car, in that way. They marveled both at each other (so much in love) and at the loveliness of snow, which Lauren had never really seen before.
    â€¦
    Caroline’s kitchen was hung with rows of copper pots, enthusiastically bought in Paris, in the flea market, on Arne and Caroline’s honeymoon (with baby Amy in tow). Never polished, they were now all dark and dull, black-grimed. The blue Mexican tile around the sink, from an attempted second honeymoon, this time without Amy but on which Julie was conceived—the tile had fared somewhat better; though cracked, it retained a bright brave color.
    On the afternoon that Caroline had chosen for Christmas-cookie baking, by the time the children arrived from school there were already smells of burned sugar, and spilled flour on the floor into which Baby continually crawled. Julie had brought both Lauren Whitfield and Egon Heller.
    â€œEgon, and Lauren! How very nice to see you. These days I hardly ever.” Floury, flustered Caroline made effusive welcoming gestures, to which Egon responded with one of his curious stiff bows (he actually bowed), and a smile.
    Julie took over the problem of keeping Baby out of the general mess, and Caroline divided her attention between the cookies, which she judged still salvageable, and an intense old argument with Egon, about Roosevelt.
    â€œBut he’s always—”
    â€œBut what you fail to grasp—”
    â€œPeople of his social class—”
    Lauren seemed quiet, preoccupied and sad, Caroline observed, with a certain impatience. Adolescents are simply very, very self-absorbed, she thought.
    To Egon she said, positively, “Roosevelt will soon declare war on Germany, and he will be able to win it very quickly. And I know a man who’s in a position to know things who tells me that the Nazi-Soviet pact can’t last, not possibly. The Russians will come in on our side. Our strongest allies.”
    â€¦
    â€œLauren and Tommy Russell have broken up,” Julie told her mother one night in February as together they did the supper dishes, Baby being asleep and Amy out.
    â€œWasn’t that rather quick? You just told me, I thought …” Caroline heard her own voice trail off into vagueness.
    â€œQuick and strange. She can’t quite say what happened, or she won’t. She just cries a lot. Like when Amy and Nelson broke up.”
    â€œThat’s too bad,” Caroline began to say, and then did not, as she recognized that in truth she had almost no sympathy for the broken hearts of the very young. “That girl seems to be rushing through her life at quite a rate” was her more sincere comment.
    â€œI think she’ll be okay eventually. It may just take a while.” Judicious Julie.
    â€œWhen I think of Tito’s brave Partisans,” wrote Caroline to the
Capitol Times
(Madison), with copies to the Chicago
Tribune
, the Des Moines
Register
, and the Moline
Dispatch
. She thought of the San Francisco
Chronicle
or even the Palo Alto
Times
(where Arne was) but she censored that impulse as frivolous. Also, they would probably not print letters from an unknown woman in Wisconsin. And anyway, California went for Roosevelt.
    Actually, Caroline was managing considerable detachment from Arne these days, this early and acutely beautiful spring.
    Long walks were a reliable cure for her troubled sleep, she found, and so every afternoon for an hour or so she walked around the lake, noting pussywillows at the muddy edges ofthe water, where small gentle waves lapped, very slowly. And sudden secret wildflowers in what had been a