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about his first marriage, and if I was relieved at his lack of love for Adelaide, I was worried about and jealous of his great love for his daughters. They had always been Adelaide’s “property,” Charlie said. Things had been clear-cut for Adelaide: work was his, the house and children were hers. She wouldn’t tell him how to teach history or do research if he wouldn’t tell her how to raise children. He had actually felt that he might be able to get closer to his girls, to influence their lives more, to give them more affection, if he were living away from them, if he and Adelaide were divorced.
    He asked me to help him. He had two large, important projects to do that summer, projects he had gotten grant money for, and we needed extra money because of phone calls and legal fees and round-trip fares across half the continent. He asked me to helpentertain and take care of his daughters, to make them feel wanted, to make them happy.
    I wanted to do more than that. I decided to devote my summer completely to the happiness of Charlie and his girls. I decided that I would keep them healthy, I would keep them entertained, I would keep them uproariously, overwhelmingly happy. They would go back to Massachusetts saying that Charlie was the most wonderful father in the world, and that they had had the happiest summer of their lives, and that I was the most beautiful, wonderful, delightful, intelligent, creative, warmhearted creature that had ever lived, a sort of combination Madonna and Barbie doll. I didn’t know what I was getting into.
    Caroline and Cathy arrived on the last day of June, and after the drama of it all, their pale little presences were pretty drab. They were to turn out to be stunningly beautiful women, but of course we didn’t know that at the time, and it certainly didn’t show. Caroline was ten and had buckteeth. Real, obvious buckteeth. But at least she tried to be intelligent and interesting; because she thought she was ugly, she tried to be smart. Cathy, on the other hand, was pretty, in the same classic helpless dumb-blonde baby-doll way her mother was, and as a result she often seemed, although she definitely was not, stupid. What a pair they were! Two pale startled little girls, wearing light blue summer dresses, clean white shoes and socks, white gloves. The sight of them, physically real and there , filled me with consternation; in a flash I realized that from now on my life with Charlie would be changed, would be confused. I wanted to be nice; I smiled. But for a moment I could not move. It did not matter. Charlie, overjoyed to see his daughters, rushed to hug them to him. And he brought them back to introduce us, and then I was able to move, a hand, a foot, everything, and my new life had begun. I was walking out of the airport with my husband and his children. In the car on the way home from the airport Caroline and Cathy sat in the front seat with Charlie while I sat alone in the back.
    I think we were all stunned that first week. I know I certainly was. Immediately after we arrived home, Caroline fished a thick sealed envelope out of her suitcase and handed it to me, carefully, so that her fingers did not touch mine.
    “This is for you,” she said, not looking me in the eyes. “It’s from my mother.”
    “What in the world?” I said, and stared down at the envelope as if it were a toad. What Adelaide might want to send me was frighteningly beyond the reach of myimagination.
    “It’s a list of the foods we like to eat,” Caroline said.
    “I’ll show the girls their room and the rest of the house,” Charlie said. “You sit down and read the letter, Zelda.” His mouth was twitching with a smile.
    Dutifully I sat down in the living room and opened the letter.
    “Zelda,” it began, and I thought, Well, of course, I didn’t think she would call me dear …
As you know, I am very much opposed to this visit. My daughters are extremely fragile both emotionally and physically, and