"You sure you'll be all right?" Bill Pierce asked Carolyn as he headed out the door on Saturday. Yeah, she was in the house alone 5 days a week, but he didn't want to leave her when he didn't have to.

"Don't worry, Bill. I'm not going to run away from you. We'll all be here when you get back." She patted her stomach. Well, he wasn't afraid of her running away. He was afraid of her starting into labor. But, then, everyone said that lasted hours and he wouldn't be gone that long.

He waited outside the classroom while Professor Kindle finished teaching. Even when classes changed, the professor stayed behind with some of the students who were arguing some abstract point. Carolyn was highly impressed with the guy, but Bill could not see anything impressive about him.

"I don't think there is a class here this hour," Kindle said when Bill finally went into the room.

"I came to see you, Professor Kindle. Carolyn Pierce, your student, sent this draft of her dissertation to you." He handed it over, and Kindle put it in his briefcase. It probably wouldn't be lost, Carolyn had told him, if it once got into the briefcase. Even so, she had a carbon and he'd taken a Xerox. "I'm her husband."

"Yes, Mr. Pierce. I'll look at it later when I can give it my full attention."

Carolyn was fine when he got back. As a matter of fact, it was two more weeks before she went to the hospital. The weeks after she came home were hectic. He tried to help, but there was only so much he could do. In particular, Carolyn breastfed the boys; that wasn't something he could help with. Then she started to recover her strength.

"You sure you got the dissertation to Kindle?" she asked out of the blue one evening.

"I went to the classroom you told me to. I addressed him by name. I mentioned your name, and he didn't say 'Who?' He addressed me by name. He put the dissertation in his briefcase. It was as full and as scruffy as you had described it. I really think it was Kindle."

"I should call him." She presumably did. Kindle came to supper that Saturday, and it was the same guy. The Professor was on time, which Carolyn and he weren't. The boys had decided that they weren't going to cooperate with Mommy's schedule. He was carrying John when he answered the door. Paul was getting fed, and John wasn't. John was telling the world how unfair that was. If John was at his least charming right then, Kindle was charmed nevertheless. He left him in Bill's arms, but spoke to him and gave him a finger to hold.

When Carolyn called, he went in and traded babies. He burped Paul and changed him. Then he brought him out to meet Mommy's professor. Paul was in a better mood than his brother had been, and he was soon in Kindle's arms. Bill went to wash his hands, and then offered the professor a drink. From the choice Bill offered, Kindle took Scotch and soda.

"But afterwards," he said. He nodded at Paul who was fascinated by his glasses. "Both my hands are busy now." Bill poured himself one, too. He sipped his, as he'd have his own hands full soon enough. And he did. When Carolyn came in and handed John to him, he went back to the kids' room and put him in the cradle. He wasn't ready for sleep yet, but he was getting close. The mobile would hold his attention 'til his eyes closed. He went back to collect Paul, and handled him the same way.

The professor brought his drink, half full by that time, to the table with him. The conversation began with the kids and went on to the dissertation. Apparently, Kindle thought it was coming along, too.

"The details may seem niggling. They are, in fact, niggling, but the audience for that dissertation, tiny as it is, will be very important to your future, and they will frown at any imprecision. The difference between absolute clarity, clarity for your professional peers, not for the general reader, who won't ever take the opportunity -- will never have the opportunity -- to read it, and enough clarity for them to understand what you meant even if you didn't quite say it, is the difference between their occasionally citing you when they need a particular fact and their referring to you as an exemplar of how the facts should be gathered and presented." If that speech had been in a movie, he would have considered the parody of a mad professor over the top.

"My dear," the professor replied to a question from Carolyn, "it's acceptable now. These last changes will make it exemplary."

Carolyn fussed with it some more, and he played delivery boy some more, but the dissertation was finally accepted. He brought the boys to witness Mommy's getting her degree. They wouldn't remember it, of course, but he took a picture to commemorate the event. Really, they should have a better picture than he could produce. He should have a better picture than he could produce.

"You can keep the robe another few days, can't you?" he asked her.

"Bachelor's robes are rented. I purchased the doctoral robe. We wear them again. Didn't you see all the faculty in the parade?" That was fine. Even so, they should move quickly. The robe would look the same in a year; the twins wouldn't look the same in even a week.

"Great! Now, what I want to do is to get a real portrait-style photo of you in the robe with the twins. We can go to a studio where the guy will do it right."

"Why?" That was a weird question. If you wanted something done right, you didn't do it yourself.

"Because my snapshots are just that. We want a professional job."

"Why? I mean, not why the professional will do a better job than the amateur, but why do you want the picture at all?" Why the emphasis on 'you'? Did she think him really that selfish. Even if he were selfish, it was his wife and his kids that they would be celebrating.

"Because it puts together your successes of this year. You know, you academics think of the doctor's degree as one rung on the ladder. Doctor Smith is inferior to Assistant Professor Jones. But we think of it as a high point. Even if not, and I want the picture for my friends not for your fellow faculty, you aren't going to have a baby -- let alone twins -- the year you make full professor." It was a perfect version of her to present to the other executives. She was bright and educated, but she was a wife and mother, too. Twin infants made you more of a mother than most women ever were.

He brought the snapshot he had taken to the photography studio. Carolyn brought her robe, and they brought several outfits for the twins. If you were going to show two babies off, much less take their picture, then you could be certain that at least one of them would get his clothes covered in urine or spit-up. On a bad day, they both managed both.

"Roughly," he told the photographer, "this is the pose." The gal sold them several other poses, but he insisted that his choice go first before the kids got cranky.

He visited the shop the next Saturday to pick his favorite from among three almost-identical shots the gal had taken of that pose. He got a 30 by 42 inch print for their house and 15 by 21 inch print for the office. She had examples of frames, and he picked out both. The actual framing was done by another business.

He had the office one hung on the wall facing his desk. The home one was for their living room, but Carolyn objected. They compromised on the dining room; he hung it on the wall behind where she sat.

He got four cheap stand-up frames for his desk and changed the snapshots of the boys regularly in them.

Shortly after Carolyn got her degree, his usual summer nightmare began again. Doctors took vacations; representatives took vacations; they didn't balance. He struggled through it, this summer, he had each representative report when a doctor was on vacation and, if the office was open and would tell him, for what dates. That would make the next year easier.

He couldn't touch Carolyn in bed. She, however, took care of his needs. They got into the habit of doing the last feeding of the evening together. When he wasn't changing a boy, he was brushing out her hair. She had lovely, although shorter than before the twins were born, hair. The boys' coordination was much better these days and they had an understandable fascination with Mommy's long, raven hair. She'd had it cut to keep it out of the reach of the one she was nursing. She let him deal with her hair when she was nursing a baby, though. By the time the babies were lying down in their cribs, he'd been stroking her hair and looking down at her exposed breasts for a quite long time. That usually gave him a raging erection.

They would go to bed. He would lie facing away from her while she pressed her moist breasts against his back and reached around. She would stroke him until he erupted into the Kleenex he held in his hand. One night, though, when he turned on his side, she lay on her back on her own side of the bed. She spoke instead of hugging him.

"Do you still have those condoms?" He looked in the drawer of his night stand. The box was there. Did she mean that he could use them?

"Sure?"

"Because the doctor says that the Pill is contraindicated when I'm nursing."

"Do you mean?" Was his long drought ended?

"Yeah. Don't touch the breasts, though. Your sons have been manhandling them already. Doctor says it's been long enough." He scrambled in the box and rolled a Trojan on while she was saying this.

"It's been far too long," he said.

"Yeah. For me, too. But he says it's only been long enough tonight."

Forbidden the most obvious foreplay, he kissed her deeply while stroking her thighs. When his hand got to her snatch, it was wet.

"Darling!"

"Yeah. I've been thinking about this." She had, after all, known for hours before she'd told him. She spread her legs, and he brushed that moisture up to her clit. "Bill!"

Obediently, he Climbed between her legs and entered her. She was as tight as ever, which was even more exciting than before. He was gritting his teeth by the time she went over. His orgasm, which immediately followed hers, was explosive.

"You, are," he told her, "as sexy as ever." As if they'd been waiting for that, he heard a baby cry from the other room.

"Yeah, but I come with more responsibilities than before."

"I'll get it. It's too soon for him to be hungry." John was, however, messy. So was Paul, who woke up when his brother was being changed. Carolyn had to come in to take care of him. They stood side by side changing the boys on what had once been her desk.

Carolyn spent the summer applying for teaching posts in Chicago-area colleges. She landed one at UIC. She was busy swotting up for the course and finding a sitter for the boys. He went with her to buy a car for the commute. She chose a Chevy Nova. He pointed out that the boys would grow and the car wouldn't. She said she needed something that would fit into urban traffic and faculty parking lots. He persuaded her to get a new car instead of suffering the hassle that often accompanies used ones.

Between the cost of childcare, gas, and car payments, the extra they netted from her working full time was surprisingly small. He kept the deductions, and she handed in a W2 with no deductions, even for herself. What she netted, she began to sock away in a savings account towards the down payment on a house.

They were no longer newlyweds, much less the lovers they had been. They were a family, and they should live like a family.