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class for a couple of hours and Andy usually read or did homework. On this clear, cool day, after they bought the sneakers, Karen went off to her class and Andy suggested he and Doug take a football into Central Park. Although he was uninterested in athletics, occasionally Andy would make such a suggestion. They went out to the park. As they threw the football, Andy’s passes were erratic and he caught awkwardly. Nearby, another father and son began to play, the boy several years younger than Andy and smaller. The boy threw swift, accurate passes and caught the ball fluidly. Andy’s face was downcast, Doug reading him as saying, “I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that for you, Dad.” No, not for me. This should only be for you. He wanted to gather his 15-year-old in his arms, embarrass him with kisses, hold him as he did when he was little. I don’t care. I love you more than you could know. You don’t have to be a ballplayer for me.
    Doug’s closest friends were Jeannie Martins and his lawyer, Bob Kleinman. The three had met when they had shares in a singles summer house in Amagansett. They had stayed in contact with each other through single life and married life and, after their divorces, through single life again. Bob Kleinman specialized in legal disputes between law firms and between individual lawyers. He was Doug’s age, overweight; the constant adversarial nature of his work seemed to be written in his face and he tended to be sullen and suspicious. He had been married to Helena, a matrimonial lawyer and a feminist. When they were divorced, Bob created a master plan for his next wife. After a year he found her, Sarah Steinmetz, who had taught in a synagogue nursery school but believed a higher calling for a Jewish woman was to be the wife to a man like Bob, the mother of his children and the provider of his hot meals. Bob sat through the lighting of candles he had never bothered with, and the observance of Jewish holidays he had never heard of, to gain a male-dominant position in his household so complete Doug imagined one would have to go to the animal kingdom to find its equivalent.
    “Let me ask you something,” Doug said over lunch. “Do you ever masturbate?”
    “What?” Bob became very concerned with his image and looked around the Chinese restaurant to see if anyone could hear.
    “Shall I define my terms?”
    “I understand the word. Why are you asking me?”
    “Who am I supposed to ask, Dr. Ruth?”
    “Are you talking—regularly?”
    “I’m talking—ever.”
    “Look, I have a decent marriage.”
    “Bob—”
    “Well, let’s say we’ve gone a while without having sex. We’ve been tired. Sarah’s been sick, flu, a cold—”
    “I’m familiar with upper respiratory illnesses in New York.”
    “And I might see somebody at a dinner party. There’s one incredible-looking Israeli girl we know, and you sort of fantasize under the circumstances of not having sex lately, I mean, in that circumstance.”
    Bob looked very uncomfortable and was adjusting his tie.
    “Just don’t quote me.”
    “At least I know I’m not the only man in America my age doing it,” Doug said. “I’ll tell you what inhibits me. That I’ll have a coronary right in the middle and when they discover my body I’ll be found caught in the act and without a date on a Saturday night.”
    “If I ever got found that way, Sarah would probably count what I did as cheating on her.”
    “Here’s the jackpot question. After you split up with Helena, did you ever masturbate fantasizing about her? ”
    “You’ve masturbated to Susan?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “So have I,” he whispered.
    “You have? Behind my back?”
    “Only after you were divorced.”
    They were laughing at the absurdity.
    “But did you ever do it to Helena?”
    “Never,” he said, still laughing. “I wouldn’t want to give her the satisfaction.”
    Robby Reynolds called Doug from Houston. “How ya doing up there in Noo Yawk?