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himself as ethnic. At a Sociology Department party he joked that America was a Wonder Bread culture, soft and white, slickly packaged with pictures of colorful balloons. You think you’re holding something of integrity and substance, but when you squeeze it you have mostly preservatives and air. Maria doesn’t know what to think of herself. Her Spanish isn’t fluent, and she has never been to Mexico, where her grandparents were born. She always feels peculiar checking the box next to H ISPANIC on the equal opportunity forms. Paul is much less American than she, and he has no box to check. Today he comes home unexpectedly early from his teaching job at the university and sees Luke Spencer’s worried face on the screen in black and white, andhe adjusts the knobs, making darker marks with his Flair pen.
    â€œWhy don’t you set this thing right?” he asks Maria. “Why do we have color if you don’t use it?”
    â€œYou’re blocking the picture,” Maria says. She tries to stare past him. “You make a better door than a window.”
    Paul asks Maria if he can get her anything, if she felt O.K. at work, if she wants her feet or back rubbed. Maria waits until a commercial to tell him no, yes, no.
    He checks the morning newspaper to see if the Braves have an afternoon game. Today is an off-day. In the kitchen he pours a glass of apple juice. At the sink he rinses the evening’s vegetables, then chops them at the table in the dining room. He sneaks behind Maria and kisses her on the cheek. He makes the salad and adds the imported black olives she hadn’t seen him slip into the grocery cart. Paul likes doing things for Maria. He loves her, more than he knows, especially now that she is going to have a baby. This is a special, if tense, time in their lives—this spring, a year after the baseball strike, the year Paul is going up for tenure, the year Maria received a higher classification and a 5.2 percent raise at the library, the year they are learning Lamaze. Their afternoons together are cool and peaceful, and Luke Spencer is searching for his missing Laura, and the Braves are hot, on a winning streak. Yesterday the chairman of the department told Paul he needn’t worry. Earlier in the week the obstetrician told Maria she was coming along just fine. The evening news won’t be on for a few more hours. Paul readjusts the color of Luke’s curly mop of hair as Maria chews a slice of celery and then closes her eyes and naps on the sofa facing the portable television.
    Earlier that year they had a dog. Her name was Bingo, and she was a dumb mistake. An impulsive decision made in a shopping mall the day before Christmas Eve two years ago. Paul and Maria paused before a pet store window and predictably Paul said, “Look at the cute puppies.” He had never hada dog. He hadn’t bought Maria’s present yet. A toddler in a harness and leash pulled his mother toward the window, pointing with a wet finger he’d just taken from his mouth. Beneath the vague noise of footsteps and muffled conversations a Christmas carol was playing. From the doorway of the store a salesman in a doctor’s white lab coat smiled at Maria, then caught Paul’s eye and winked.
    Maria and Paul sat inside a paneled cubicle, and the man in the white doctor’s coat brought them the smallest of the puppies swaddled in a clean white towel. The puppy trembled, then licked Maria’s fingers. “He’s so frightened,” she said.
    â€œShe,” corrected the salesman. “But you’ll see that in a moment or two she’ll relax.”
    The dog did. Maria petted the pup’s soft fur. Paul absently touched the checkbook in his sports jacket pocket, then stood and told the salesman they’d have to think about it.
    Outside the store a Salvation Army volunteer rang a silent bell and held up a sign that read RING , RING . Shoppers rushed about. Paul and