There were many times during the bicentennial summer when Carolyn Pierce wondered why she bothered. She was an assistant professor, but she would have achieved that rank -- if 'achieved' was the proper verb for such peon work as she did -- if she had never published squat after her dissertation. Between the boys and the teaching, she didn't have much time during the school year. Which left the summers. While her students were enjoying themselves on the beach, she had to travel from one hardware store to another in the northern suburbs to talk to managers and owners about what factors led them to their locations.

America had been independent for 200 years. She couldn't get independent for one day. Partly, she'd done it to herself two years ago. Others did regional economics by library research, looking at where the firms of a particular industry were located and using that location to tell why. She went and talked with the people making that decision. What they told you wasn't necessarily the whole story. She was quite aware that the people moving out to a new suburban development would talk about space for their children; they'd never say that they were moving because the government would subsidize their travel and amenities. Nevertheless, she knew that those subsidies fed the exodus.

Interviews weren't a foolproof road to insight. They were, however, her trademark road to insight. If she wrote a paper using library research, the review committee would ask themselves why. It could probably get published, but she wouldn't be asked to present it at a conference. And, if she were ever to get beyond her present teaching peonage, she would need to keep going to conferences and presenting papers.

Still, it was a drag. UIC made sure that it got its money's worth from her teaching. Her research was fitted into the cracks and into summer. There were days she wondered why she bothered -- why she didn't just stay home. Then she stayed home for a day and found two good reasons for being out and about. They were named John and Paul.

Mothers of single children talked about the terrible twos. They had no idea. Johnny annoyed her; he annoyed Bill when he was home; he annoyed Barb. He annoyed Paul more than anyone else. And Paul, besides annoying any adult within earshot, returned the favor. The boys had scratched a line down the center of their room. (She and Bill hadn't told the landlord.) Crossing that line meant instant war. Which didn't stop either boy from crossing it.

Carolyn left Barb to cope as often as she could. She had an office at Circle, and sometimes drove there to work on her writing rather than suffer the interruptions from the Terrible Two. But Barb only worked 40 hours a week. Bill, theoretically, worked 40 hours a week, too. Bill, however, was expected to be in his office in the Loop at 9:00 a.m. and not to leave before 5:00 p.m. He had evening meetings and dinners, besides. Sometimes, she suspected that Bill looked for evening meetings to escape. That meant that she fed Bill breakfast, fed the boys breakfast, and -- if she were lucky -- fed herself breakfast before Barb arrived. During the school year, she had to be showered and dressed before the boys got up.

Evenings, she got home first. She finished supper prep. Sometimes, when she really wanted to be fancy, she cooked the whole thing. Barb was a good survival cook, but wasn't up to planning a gourmet dinner. When Bill got home, he had some time with the boys. Then they all sat down to eat. Then the boys fought against going to bed. Then Johnny got a drink of water; then Paul needed to go to the bathroom; then Johnny needed to go to the bathroom; then Paul got a drink of water. Sometimes, they alternated.

When the Terrible Two were finally sleeping the deep sleep of the utterly conscienceless, she had time for either TV or Bill or another two hours of clear thought for planning out her current paper. Somehow, the paper almost never won.

On this Wednesday, things got worse. Barb was getting her things together to leave. The boys were watching TV, but beginning to quarrel over what show to watch. Then Gladys Hagopian called.

"Your woman told me you wouldn't be back much before now," she began.

"Yeah. I just got in the door." And, with a job and children not grown, she was much busier than Gladys was.

"I'll try to be brief." Hanging up would be even briefer, but Gladys wasn't about to hang up. "You know that the UMW is expanding. I've got the empty-nesters, Judy the high-school and a little of the college crowd." These were the mothers of those students. "Beth is handling the grade-school moms. Well, now it's time for the preschool moms to organize. Really, you guys have more to share than we do."

"Great, Gladys. And when you have one of the experienced moms from your or Judy's circle sharing, I'll try to make time to attend a meeting." Bill already took the kids every Thursday night for her choir rehearsals. Maybe he'd take them for another night a month. Still, she could tell that this wasn't why Gladys was calling.

"Now, you know we don't do it like that. You have your own wisdom to share. If you want an older woman's opinion, you ask your own mom's." Well, Mama was in Arkansas, not that she wouldn't be willing -- indeed, eager -- to tell Carolyn all the things she was doing wrong. "Anyway, you're in a rush, and I'll stop beating around the bush. The committee has talked about it, and we think that you're the natural leader of that group. The others have mostly been to college, and they'll really respect Professor Pierce."

"No, Gladys."

"Well, think about it. We'll talk after choir." How much talking did 'no' require? "See you." When Gladys hung up the phone, she went to separate the twins. You could pick kittens up by the scruffs of their necks, but that didn't work with boys.

Later, Bill came home carrying his suit coat over his shoulder. He parked close to the EL, and the air in his car never overcame the stored heat before he got home. After he had a couple of minutes before the living-room air conditioner, the show the boys were watching finished. They ran over to mob him. Soon, he was on his knees wrestling with both of them. She could never understand the rules, but it always ended up with him on his back and the twins as victors. She appreciated that he interacted with Johnny and Paul, but she sometimes wished he would do so less violently. What was wrong with reading them a book? She got the table set and the food in the serving dishes while they were distracted.

"Okay, let Daddy up. He has to wash his hands before he eats." They got off. He supervised their washing their hands before he washed his. She got Paul that night, and he got Johnny. The menu was meatloaf, mashed, and peas. That was simple enough that they could feed themselves while feeding the boys, but it had its temptations. Johnny considered that peas would taste better, or maybe be hidden unnoticed, if mashed into the potatoes. Bill didn't interfere, but he did insist that Johnny swallow the nauseating result.

Then, despite her earlier warnings, came more roughhouse. For a miracle, neither kid threw up from being spun around minutes after eating. At 7:30, Bill flipped a coin. Johnny won, or lost, and Bill carried him to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When he came back for Paul, Johnny slipped out of bed. After supervising Paul's urination and tooth brushing, Bill found Johnny in the closet, spanked him, and put him back in bed. He read them a book. They each got their last glasses of water, and lay down with their eyes closed. Having rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, having emptied and rinsed out the potty chair that Bill had left for her to do, she came in for good-night kisses.

"Did you get the vacation days?" She asked when she and Bill were alone. She had a paper to present at a conference in Boulder, and that required either Bill's presence at home or elaborate baby-sitting arrangements. Barb wouldn't really leave the kids if nobody else showed up, but she might well quit if she were stuck with them for long after 5:00. Mrs. Donnely was willing, but she wasn't really young enough anymore to deal with two tornados -- and the kids could be that on any day. Then, too, her health was bad enough that her arrival at 4:30 wasn't absolutely guaranteed.

"I got them. I'm senior enough to get the days I want on a month's notice. The problem is that the reason that I'm senior is that they need me to run things, and I'm needed more in August than in any other month. But I got the week."

"Do you think we could give Barb that week off? She's entitled to two weeks off a year."

"Well, she can have them when you're here to take up the slack. I get three weeks of vacation, total, and I worked years to get up to that. You get three months. I'd think you could use some of those months to actually be with your kids instead of using them to shuttle off to a vacation resort away from our family responsibilities." Vacation resort?? Three months of vacation!!

"Look, Boulder is a college campus. I didn't choose the spot, you know. What I'm going to do is present a paper and meet some colleagues. And as for your generous estimate of my vacation time, that's when I don't have to teach. That's when I do economics. They hire me to teach, but they hire me because I'm a researcher. And I do damn little economics in that plenteous free time because I'm looking after those two monsters day in and day out. You moan and groan over one week's doing what I do after a hard day's research or a hard day's teaching, but that's all you'll be doing. If you so much as take them to the zoo, you'll have Barb along."

"Well, I come home almost every night and play with them. I'm home before they're in bed more often than you are, with your precious conferences." Was that really true? She took concentrated periods away, but he had lots of business dinners during the year. Well, he was away evenings during the year, and he said that they were business dinners. For all she knew, he was boffing his secretary. Maybe not Denise Flaherty Davis, who was newly married, but the place was crawling with file clerks.

"And that play is part of the problem. They've become violent kids, and that's because you're violent with them."

"Violent? Have I ever bitten Paul? Have I ever kicked Johnny? No. So how come their habits of kicking and biting are all my fault. Hell! You used to complain about their kicking before I'd ever met them." That was a different kind of kicking, as he well knew.

"Well, you're rough with them, and they're rough with each other -- and with anyone else within reach. And you spank them. That's the sort of example you set."

"Hell! They hide from me when they know I'm going to find them and spank them. The spanking can't be that traumatic. If it was, they'd stop hiding." Well, that spanking didn't leave them in tears. When Bill got serious, it did. The victim would be sobbing and squirming on his lap before his 10 swats got to 3.

"It's just that they live in a culture of violence. Is it any wonder that they're violent themselves?"

"They're two years old. Is it any wonder that they're violent? A little roughhouse, a roughhouse when they're not mad at anybody, is just the exercise they need."

"Yeah. That really helps their meals digest. That really puts them in the mood for sleep."

"Those kids haven't been in the mood for sleep since before you weaned them."

"Now it's my fault!" And that was damned hypocritical of him considering how much he had wanted his playground back.

"I never said that. What part of the word 'before' is too complicated for a professor to understand? It's just fucking idiotic of you to blame their resistance to going to sleep on something I never did until long after they both started refusing to go to sleep. They're boys, and I'm going to raise them to be boys. Not that they wouldn't fight each other anyway."

"And you're sure of the ways of boys. Maybe so. I certainly don't expect you ever to teach them anything about being an adult. Maybe when they've learned, they can teach you. It won't be for another twenty years, but I certainly don't expect you to learn before then."

"Let's see. One of us went to work summers while in college and then full-time right after college. He's been promoted regularly and supervises others. He earns enough to keep a family. Another stayed in school and stayed in school. She doesn't earn enough after paying for child care to feed either herself or her kids, let alone clothing and rent. She is so dissatisfied with the job she finally latched onto that she spends her free time networking in hopes of getting another.

"Now, which one is the adult?" Well, the one he was thinking of sure wasn't acting like an adult. But they were interrupted right then. Paul wanted another glass of water. How much had he heard? She took him to the bathroom and got him his glass of water. When she'd put him back to bed, she got Johnny up to go to the bathroom. It wouldn't last either of them through the night. They still slept in diapers, but they'd be happier the longer those stayed dry.

When she got back, Bill had the TV on. It was his usual cop show, but this one looked interesting. By common consent, She and Bill kept quiet in the hope that the boys would, too. Then the news came on. A business economist mentioned "wage-push inflation" during an interview.

"That," Bill said, "is what it really is. You keep calling it 'cost-push.'"

"Bill, the receipts of OPEC are hardly wages. That's what started, or rather accelerated the recent round."

"And you say that they deserve it."

"Ibn Saud is hardly my favorite international figure. I quite prefer Gerald Ford to him. On the other hand, the oil cartel is not doing any more gouging than domestic companies are.

"Your preference for 'wage-push' is a position on who should take the hit. I call it 'hot-potato inflation' -- though I'll admit I'll never use that term in a paper. Your costs rise, and you pass the hot potato to me. That means my costs rise, and I pass on the hot potato to somebody else. Not you-you and me-me, of course." Bill, for a wonder, didn't take it personally.

"Well, business costs are real costs. If our wages rise, we have to raise prices. The unions are only raising wages because they can."

"And the cost of living of the workers hasn't risen? That's strange; the Pierce family's cost of living has risen."

"Well, their cost of living would fall if they ate hamburger instead of steak."

"How often do you think the guys on your assembly lines actually eat steak -- as opposed to the executive suite."

"Well, I worked hard to get where I could eat steak. I notice that you don't refuse it when I take you out."

"I'm quite happy living well. I'd be even happier if I had time to take a breath. But that I enjoy eating well doesn't mean that the next person shouldn't have that opportunity. And if you have to raise prices when wages rise, you only have to raise prices if profits are going to be maintained."

"And if we made no profits, we'd get no investments, and we'd never have the machinery, let alone the research, to make the new medicines."

"Well, Andalusia, yes. And 'no profits,' yes. But you want every worker to cut back on his consumption. If every company cut its profits by 10% -- hell! by 50% -- the stock-buyers would still buy stocks. They chase higher profits, but the total amount of money put into stocks and bonds has very little to do with the rate of return." She tried to avoid 'savings,' which was the accurate term, and she'd be damned if she'd say 'investment,' which was the term he wanted to use. She might make jokes about 'ethical drugs,' but she never tried to get him to use some other term for what he did, unethical as it sometimes looked to her.

"And if they didn't get dividends, where would they get the money to put into the stock market?"

"Well, I said that 'no profits' would bring things to a screeching halt. But so would 'no wages.' You aren't considering wages having no purchasing power; you're considering -- desiring -- that they have less purchasing power. I haven't calculated the size of my hot potato, but it can't be any significant fraction of the size of dividends. I'm not even suggesting that it should all be taken out of dividends or even all out of profits. You're the one suggesting it should be taken all out of wages. I use -- when I'm not confiding in you -- 'cost-push inflation,' and that implies all costs. You want to use 'wage-push,' and that singles out one -- admittedly major -- cost to the exclusion of all others. Sure Andalusia's wages have gone up the last few years, but haven't the cost of raw materials gone up, too? The cost of machinery?"

"Well, their wages have gone up, too."

"As have their other costs. Saying 'wage-push' isn't an analysis of where the pressure comes from. It's an ideological decision as to who should suffer the squeeze without passing it on."

"It's the accurate term." She let him have the last word. If she hadn't shaken his certainty. All she had at her disposal was facts, and facts never seemed to shake Bill's certainty.

Now kids, they could shake him. She remembered Dan's calling him out for criticizing welfare moms in church when a woman on welfare could hear him. She had brought her baby with her, and she had never come back to church. Bill hadn't apologized, or even admitted that he was wrong. She had never afterwards heard him criticize welfare in public, though. He said enough to her that she knew that he hadn't changed his opinion, but he didn't want to offend any mother whose baby he might get to hold.

Too bad that she was the exception. She had to admit, though, that he had a right to hold her kids. They were his as much as hers -- more, she thought some days. If only, though, he held them less violently.

"You knew I was an economist when you married me," she pointed out when the sports were over and Bill clicked off the set.

"Yeah, but I didn't really know what that meant. I sort of thought that people studied for a while, then they graduated, and then they went to work. And, really, while you certainly talked about your studies, all I really had in my mind was that you were a sexy woman. I'm not claiming you hid anything from me. You told me more than I wanted to hear. I'm just saying that your sexual desirability overloaded everything I heard." Yeah, and then she bore twins and her body lost its allure.

"Poor Bill. You married a sex bomb, and you're stuck with an old frump."

"No. I married a sex bomb, and you're still a sex bomb. You're a grouchy sex bomb, but I can't say that I wasn't warned about that. I don't complain that you're not sexy; I complain that you're not here."

"Well, I'm here."

"Yeah, but you won't be in August, and I don't really want you here. Maybe 20 feet from here and with less armor plate." Her clothes -- summer clothes for inside -- were hardly armor plate. He'd taken her out of tight jeans before they were married, and those jeans had been an effort for her to remove. And there'd been a time when he had wanted her outside the bedroom. She could remember his damn-near raping her in the kids' room when it was her office. Still, they were parents, and, if the kids might not notice now, they might, and she'd be worrying about their noticing. She didn't want to do anything outside the bedroom; she would rather that he wanted to do something outside the bedroom. Well, to be fair to Bill, unsexy as she was as a matron, a mother, an exhausted academic, he seemed to want her. If he only talked about the bedroom, he talked about it out here.

Of course, what Bill really wanted was sex. She was convenient. Well, she'd always known that that was what he wanted from her. The truth of the matter was that she wanted sex, too, and sex with Bill had always been especially good. If he'd known that she was an economist when he married her, she had known that he was an arrogant egotist when she married him. She had just wanted her jollies more than she had wanted domestic tranquility. Bill, at least, was as sexy as ever, maybe she was more used to him, but he could still turn her on. And he would, at least, pretend that she turned him on.

What was her choice? She had two kids and a body which showed that she'd borne them. If she left Bill, and times like this leaving Bill was an attractive idea, what sort of other man could she get? Not to mention her two chaperons. Leaving them was an even more attractive idea, but she knew that she never would. Mama and Daddy had to keep quiet and stick to their own room. What would the twins think if Mama left Daddy and invited another man into her room? And how many others would hear about that? Not that men wanting that invitation would be standing in line, either.

While she'd been thinking this, Bill had taken his bathroom time. Once upon a time, they had occasionally shared a shower; Bill had shampooed her hair. Sometimes, they had gone further. Well, somebody had to be within earshot of the boys, which put a damper on that idea. When Bill came out, she took her own bathroom time. She removed her makeup and applied moisturizer. She came out in her nightie.

"I'll go to them first," Bill said. So? He often did. "You can take the nightie off." Well, the boys were probably too old to see her naked, but was their seeing their father naked all that much better? Especially if he was erect, which he clearly intended to be soon. Besides, she wasn't all that eager to have Bill see her naked, either. When her breasts were in a bra, they looked much like they had when she had been 20. Without a bra, she looked like a cow that was too old to milk. She shook her head and climbed into bed beside him.

"At least pull it up." Well, that was reasonable. She pulled, and he pulled while she raised her ass off the bed. The nightie was soon bunched around her waist. He kissed her and stroked up her body and torso until he reached her left breast. He cupped the tip, and his fingers played with the nipple. Meanwhile, his tongue was exploring her mouth. The adrenalin from the argument started to turn into another sort of excitement.

Whatever Bill's bad points, and she always ran out of time when she tried to list them, he was Mr. Foreplay. She lay back and enjoyed his ministrations. After tasting hers, his tongue explored her entire mouth. His hand brushed down to her mound, and she spread her legs. He stroked her clit gently. With his mouth engaged in something more important than talk, he was a total man -- a sexy, dominant, totally male animal -- instead of an over-age little boy. She responded to his masculinity as he drew her into her femininity. His hand held her down as his mouth dominated hers. The fingers raised her tension to its breaking point. She couldn't stand the tension. Then she flew. He withdrew his tongue just before, and he kissed her forehead until she was done.

"You are the sexiest woman." That would have been great to believe. She would have been happy even to believe that she was the sexiest woman he was seeing currently. The statement was, even though she didn't believe it, nice to hear. He was an entirely male animal, and she was his female. He took her hand and kissed it while she was recovering. When her breath evened, he moved to get over her. She needed him again, but she would take him another way. She pushed back with the hand he was holding.

"Wait. Lie flat. No, help me with this and then lie flat." When she started to pull off the nightie, he helped her. She folded it over the headboard. Like that, it would take only seconds to put on. When she started to move the sheet aside, he helped with that, too. He moved towards the center of the bed, and she straddled him.

She was on hands and knees with her hands resting above his shoulders. Hanging down from this position, her breasts almost looked like they had before she'd breastfed the twins. They still felt different, looser, but gravity was on her side for once. She'd be, for a little while, the woman he'd married. He didn't need any gravity. He was sticking up and towards the head of the bed.

"Darling!" Well, if he had to say something, that word was probably his best option. She didn't want him talking, though. She dropped down a little until her nipples were scraping over his chest as she moved up the bed. She moved to the left so her right nipple bumped over his chin. Bill might not be the subtlest guy alive, but that hint didn't escape him. Neither did the nipple. As he tongued and sucked that, his hands went to her ass.

He squeezed both ass cheeks before moving one hand around to stroke the inside of her thighs. When she shifted so the other nipple was in his mouth, he moved one hand up to hold her right breast. He stroked up her thigh to those lips. He rubbed them together sending thrills through her body even before he parted them to reach her clit. Warmth spread from her left nipple; heat spread from her pussy.

With all the attention she was getting close. When she felt really close, she reached back to move his hand away.

"Not yet." She raised up from his face. She squatted down and adjusted him. Slowly, she sank back until he was in her. "Now." She relaxed slowly and his hardness filled her.

"You have the best ideas." He reached between her legs. As she moved up and down, he stroked her there. She leaned forward a little and braced herself on her hands. She felt him most when she moved up and down an inch or two right there. The feelings were wonderful, even though she felt as though she were burning. She stiffened, and she kept moving as she felt herself tense. She flew. All the pleasure she'd felt in her center flowed out to the rest of her body in one wave after another.

"Yes," he said as he bucked up, bumping her ass with his pelvic bones, filling her cunt completely and lifting her off the mattress. When she collapsed on him, he came out. She lay gasping on top of him.

She heard a cry from the boys' room.

"I said I'd get it, but you'll have to get off."

"No," she answered. Her nightie would cover her, and she didn't want Paul to see Daddy's cock covered with Mama's juice. "I'll get Paul. You just be ready in your robe for Johnny's cry."