Kramer vs. Kramer Read Online Free

field, aware of his work, sophisticated about the singles’ scene, exceptionally pretty, star of beach-house decks and Sunday cocktail parties—was his lady.
    The summer was coming, a critical time. Joanna could sense the stirring in the loins of the married executives who were thinking about getting into position with the office girls, even as these men were packing up the station wagons with their weekend underwear, their wives and their children. At his office, Ted had been asked to fill in his vacation schedule.
    “We have a momentous decision to make in our relationship,” he said, and for an instant Joanna was worried that he was alluding to a much more permanent arrangement. She was not up to that part yet.
    “I’ve got two weeks vacation coming. Want to spend it together?”
    “Okay. Why not?”
    “Larry is putting together a group house. We could get a room. We could have two weeks by ourselves plus every weekend.”
    She had never been to Fire Island or any of the usual summer spots attached, and neither had he.
    “It might be all right.”
    “Four hundred a person, full share.”
    “You’re a real wheeler-dealer.”
    “I think it would be nice.”
    “Sure. It’s a bargain. I mean, now that I know you don’t snore.”
    When Mel, the account executive, wife in Vermont, stood at her desk and asked, “What are you doing this summer and who are you doing it with?” Joanna replied, “I’ve got a place on Fire Island with my boyfriend.” This was the first time she had used “boyfriend” in a sentence referring to Ted, and it gave her pleasure to do it, especially when Mel quickly withdrew with an “Oh,” and took his loins elsewhere.
    Being together in a place where so many other people were on the prowl, where they themselves had once been hunting, made them feel unique. When they heard that a porch had collapsed at a singles’ cocktail party practically from the sheer weight of all that social aggression, they were happy not to have been there, to have been at the house eating Sara Lee brownies instead. The singles wandering with drunk or lonely faces along the walks, looking for a party, a conversation, a phone number, the Sunday night ferry rides back, last chance before the highway, people trying to salvage in five minutes what was not found all weekend—made them feel grateful for each other.
    The sex was gamy, salty, the delicious quality of always being on the sneak, angling to find the house empty. Most delicious of all was the knowledge that when the summer was over, they could still be together if they wanted to be.
    “Joanna, I’d like you to marry me. Please. I never said that to anyone in my life. Will you?”
    “Yes. Oh, yes.”
    They embraced with real affection, with feeling, but beneath it all, with gratitude for being able to prove that they were healthy, after all, and whole, and for not having to pace along the walks any more with drinks in their hands, looking.
    T HE BABY HAD BEEN crying for what seemed like two hours. “Only forty-eight minutes on the clock,” Ted said. “Only.”
    They were drained. They had rocked, patted, bounced, walked, put down, picked up, ignored, strolled with, and sang to the baby, and still he cried.
    “One of us should go to sleep,” Ted said.
    “I am asleep.”
    Billy was four months old. Long gone was the baby nurse who handed over a child who never cried during the night, who never cried at all, it seemed. The day she left, this other baby emerged, with needs, who cried—often.
    After the baby was born, the family had descended, Joanna’s parents from Massachusetts, Ted’s parents from Florida—they had finally retired. Ted’s brother and sister-in-law arrived from Chicago, the family came and they sat, waiting to be fed endless snacks and drinks.
    “It’s a good thing I come out of the luncheonette business,” Ted said.
    “But I don’t. If I have to feed one more person, I’m going to hand them a check.”
    What they had