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“Dear Sally, When I look into your eyes the world stands still …”

The letter was snatched from my hands before I finished reading it.

“What’s the big idea, snooping around?” Armand asked, his face crimson. “Can’t a guy have any privacy?”

He had never mentioned privacy before. “It was on the floor,” I said. “I didn’t know it was a letter. Who’s Sally?”

He flung himself across the bed. “You tell anybody and I’ll muckalize you,” he threatened. “Sally Knowlton.”

Nobody in Frenchtown had a name like Knowlton.

“A girl from the North Side?” I asked, incredulous.

He rolled over and faced me, anger in his eyes, and a kind of despair too.

“What’s the matter with that? Think she’s too good for me?” he asked. “I’m warning you, Jerry, if you tell anybody …”

“Don’t worry,” I said. Love had no particular place in my life; it seemed an unnecessary waste of time. And a girl from the North Side was so remote that for all practical purposes she did not exist. But I was curious. “What are you writing her a letter for? Did she leave town, or something?”

“She hasn’t left town,” he answered. “I wasn’t going to send it. I just felt like writing to her.”

I was glad that I had never become involved with love—love that brought desperation to your eyes, that caused you to write letters you did not plan to send. Shrugging with indifference, I began to search in the closet for the old baseball glove. I found it on the shelf, under some old sneakers. The webbing was torn and the padding gone. I thought of the sting I would feel when a sharp grounder slapped into the glove, and I winced.

“You tell anybody about me and Sally and I’ll—”

“I know. You’ll muckalize me.”

I did not divulge his secret and often shared his agony, particularly when he sat at the supper table and left my mother’s special butterscotch pie untouched. I had never realized before how terrible love could be. But my compassion was shortlived because I had other things to worry about: report cards due at Eastertime; the loss of income from old Mrs. Belander, who had gone to live with a daughter in Boston; and, of course, the Presidents.

Because a stalemate had been reached, the President cards were the dominant force in our lives—mine, Roger Lussier’s and Rollie Tremaine’s. For three weeks, as the baseball season approached, each of us had a complete set—complete except for one President, Grover Cleveland. Each time a box of cards arrived at the store we hurriedly bought them (as hurriedly as our funds allowed) and tore off the wrappers, only to be confronted by James Monroe or Martin Van
Buren or someone else. But never Grover Cleveland, never the man who had been the twenty-second
and
the twenty-fourth President of the United States. We argued about Grover Cleveland. Should he be placed between Chester Alan Arthur and Benjamin Harrison as the twenty-second President or did he belong between Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley as the twenty-fourth President? Was the card company playing fair? Roger Lussier brought up a horrifying possibility—did we need
two
Grover Clevelands to complete the set?

Indignant, we stormed Lemire’s and protested to the harassed storeowner, who had long since vowed never to stock a new series. Muttering angrily, he searched his bills and receipts for a list of rules.

“All right,” he announced. “Says here you only need one Grover Cleveland to finish the set. Now get out, all of you, unless you’ve got money to spend.”

Outside the store, Rollie Tremaine picked up an empty tobacco tin and scaled it across the street. “Boy,” he said. “I’d give five dollars for a Grover Cleveland.”

When I returned home I found Armand sitting on the piazza steps, his chin in his hands. His mood of dejection mirrored my own, and I sat down beside him. We did not say anything for a while.

“Want to throw the ball around?” I asked.

He sighed, not bothering to answer.

“You sick?” I asked.

He stood up and hitched up his trousers, pulled
at his ear and finally told me what the matter was —there was a big dance next week at the high school, the Spring Promenade, and Sally had asked him to be her escort.

I shook my head at the folly of love. “Well, what’s so bad about that?”

“How can I take Sally to a fancy dance?” he asked desperately. “I’d have to buy her a corsage … And my shoes are practically falling apart. Pa’s got too many worries now to buy me new shoes or give me money for flowers for a girl.”

I nodded in sympathy. “Yeah,” I said. “Look at me. Baseball time is almost here, and all I’ve got is that old glove. And no Grover Cleveland card yet …”

“Grover Cleveland?” he asked. “They’ve got some of those up on the North Side. Some kid was telling me there’s a store that’s got them. He says they’re looking for Warren G. Harding.”

“Holy Smoke!” I said. “I’ve got an extra Warren G. Harding!” Pure joy sang in my veins. I ran to my bicycle, swung into the seat—and found that the front tire was flat.

“I’ll help you fix it,” Armand said.

Within half an hour I was at the North Side Drugstore, where several boys were matching cards on the sidewalk. Silently but blissfully I shouted: President Grover Cleveland, here I come!

After Armand had left for the dance, all dressed up as if it were Sunday, the small green box containing the corsage under his arm, I sat on the railing of the piazza, letting my feet dangle. The
neighborhood was quiet because the Frenchtown Tigers were at Daggett’s Field, practicing for the first baseball game of the season.

I thought of Armand and the ridiculous expression on his face when he’d stood before the mirror in the bedroom. I’d avoided looking at his new black shoes. “Love,” I muttered.

Spring had arrived in a sudden stampede of apple blossoms and fragrant breezes. Windows had been thrown open and dust mops had banged on the sills all day long as the women busied themselves with housecleaning. I was puzzled by my lethargy. Wasn’t spring supposed to make everything bright and gay?

I turned at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Roger Lussier greeted me with a sour face.

“I thought you were practicing with the Tigers,” I said.

“Rollie Tremaine,” he said. “I just couldn’t stand him.” He slammed his fist against the railing. “Jeez, why did
he
have to be the one to get a Grover Cleveland? You should see him showing off. He won’t let anybody even touch that glove …”

I felt like Benedict Arnold and knew that I had to confess what I had done.

“Roger,” I said, “I got a Grover Cleveland card up on the North Side. I sold it to Rollie Tremaine for five dollars.”

“Are you crazy?” he asked.

“I needed that five dollars. It was an—an emergency.”

“Boy!” he said, looking down at the ground and
shaking his head. “What did you have to do a thing like that for?”

I watched him as he turned away and began walking down the stairs.

“Hey, Roger!” I called.

He squinted up at me as if I were a stranger, someone he’d never seen before.

“What?” he asked, his voice flat.

“I had to do it,” I said. “Honest.”

He didn’t answer. He headed toward the fence, searching for the board we had loosened to give us a secret passage.

I thought of my father and Armand and Rollie Tremaine and Grover Cleveland and wished that I could go away someplace far away. But there was no place to go.

Roger found the loose slat in the fence and slipped through. I felt betrayed: weren’t you supposed to feel good when you did something fine and noble?

A moment later two hands gripped the top of the fence and Roger’s face appeared. “Was it a real emergency?” he yelled.

“A real one!” I called. “Something important!”

His face dropped from sight and his voice reached me across the yard: “All right.”

“See you tomorrow!” I yelled.

I swung my legs over the railing again. The gathering dusk began to soften the sharp edges of the fence, the rooftops, the distant church steeple. I sat there a long time, waiting for the good feeling to come.

When the story that follows appeared in
Woman’s Day,
it carried the title “A Bad Time for Fathers,” a drastic departure from its original title, “The Indians Don’t Attack at Dawn Anymore.” I accepted the change philosophically, thinking that an apt title for a certain aspect of my writing career could be called “A Bad Time for Titles.”

Most of my titles arrive in a flash, usually about the time the idea of the story comes to life. Because the titles are with me during the entire experience of writing any change is unsettling. It’s as if you called your child John while he was growing up and, suddenly, when he begins school, the teacher calls him George. George may be fine—but you named him John.

I don’t try to be perversely flamboyant with titles, although I must confess a weakness for long ones. Yet, could any title be shorter than “The Moustache?” Why should a title always be brief and obvious? Why not a title that seems obscure, although it evokes the mood of the story? A story I once wrote has a title that sets the tone of the story—“Charlie Mitchell, You Rat, Be Kind to My Little
Girl”—light, direct, but with a hint of poignance in those last three words
, my little girl.
Or so it seems to me.

The question arises: What’s a good title, anyway? What’s it supposed to do? Arouse curiosity, compel the reader to begin reading at once, hint gently at what is to come, or spell out to the reader exactly what awaits? I’m not sure. In fact, I even contradict myself on occasion. “The Indians Don’t Attack at Dawn Anymore” certainly doesn’t convey the plot or the theme of the story. It’s not about the end of the Indian wars. Yet, it’s about the end of
something
only gently indicated, and the reader will learn what that something is eventually. I think the reader receives a pleasant shock of recognition when, suddenly, the meaning of the title becomes clear as the story is being read. I love that kind of surprise in stories and, frankly, I try to write the kind of stories I would enjoy reading.

There’s a big difference between titling a book and titling a story. For one thing, magazine editors don’t advise me when a title change has been made. I learned about “A Bad Time for Fathers” when I opened the magazine. Book titles are discussed at length, are even researched to see if other authors have used them. The title is usually decided upon long before the manuscript goes to the printers.

Perhaps I’m sensitive about the subject because my first published novel—few events can compare with the publication of that first novel—was retitled by the publisher. The novel was about a man dying of cancer, and my title had been
Every Day
They Die Among Us
from a W. H. Auden poem which contained the following:

Of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
Among us, those who were doing us some good,
And knew it was never enough but
Hoped to improve a little by living.

This was such a perfect reflection of the story that I was dismayed when the publisher said my title couldn’t be used. Why? Because it contained the word
die. Die
is a downer. But the novel was about dying. Yes, the publisher said, but we must avoid the word because it would discourage people from reaching for the book. Eventually, the publisher settled on
Now and at the Hour,
which was a reasonable choice, I suppose, because it has a certain ominous ring and it also derives from a Catholic prayer: “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.” Thus, it evokes the aura of death without using the word. Clever. But someone else had baptized my child. I vowed to fight for my titles in the future. Which I have done, when given the chance.

The only other title change in this collection concerns the story that appeared in
McCall’s
as “Another of Mike’s Girls.” Here again, I learned about the change when I turned to the index on the day the magazine arrived. The original title was “Except When You’re Shaving, Don’t Look into Mirrors. “Frankly, I didn’t expect
McCall’s
to keep the original, but how I loved it—and still do.

“A Bad Time for Fathers” was written when I was feeling sentimental about the imminent departure
of our oldest daughter, Bobbie, to college. The trick was to write the story with feeling but without sentimentality. The party in the story never occurred, and the character of the boy friend, Sam, is a complete fabrication, although I myself have been Sam in a thousand manifestations.

A Bad Time for Fathers

Probably the party had been a mistake, after all, because it provided a focus for the farewells, a time and place to say goodbye, the kind of thing “The Imp” disliked intensely. (She wasn’t “The Imp” anymore, either, but simply
Jane
, startlingly formal, almost regal at unexpected moments.) Anyway, it had started out as a small gathering of girls, all of them leaving for college or jobs out of town, an informal get-together at summer’s end, with hamburgers and hot dogs, and probably some activity in the backyard—horseshoes (“So square, Dad”), or croquet, which she didn’t consider square at all because she was expert at the game. But it turned into a party simply because Ellen loves to get her hands on a menu and an invitation list and all the rest of it. What we didn’t realize, Ellen and I, was that the party emphasized Jane’s departure. If we had avoided an official event and merely driven her to college on Sunday, then her entrance into another way of life wouldn’t have been so marked, so jagged in our hearts.

All of which, of course, was much too dramatic for her. And corny.

“Look, guys,” she said, “I’m only going to college. In Boston. I’ll only be a hundred miles away, for crying out loud.” She called everybody guys. Even girls.

“A hundred twelve,” I said.

But she finally relented and allowed Ellen to proceed with plans for a big affair with all the trimmings. And that brought up a sudden problem.

“That means Sam,” she said.

“Why not Sam?” I asked, surprised.