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This is normal, but does not seem to them to be so. With burning-red face, the woman accepts the role of aggressor as penance for the fact, the incessant shameful fact, that he has to wrestle with the world while she hides here, in solitude, at home. But from his cringing attitude he would seem to an outsider the one being flailed. “Marion, you don't understand that man like I do he has a heart of gold.” His father's charade is very complex: the world, which he fears, is used as a flail on his wife. His parents each want something from the other. Below him, irksome voices grind on, like machines working their way through tunnels. Up in de mornin', down at de school, work like a debil for my grades. Songs of the time go through his head, as he scribbles new words. He has volunteered to prepare a high-school assembly program people will sing.

He is upstairs, writing a musical comedy. He takes an interest in the newspaper now, the front page as well as the sports, in this tiring year of 1973. After a quarrel, if he cannot go outside and kick a ball, he retreats to a corner of the house and reclines on the beanbag chair in an attitude of strange-infantile or leonine*-torpor**. But time has tricked him, has made him a son. He would be a better father than his father.

His younger sister tussles with the dogs, getting them overexcited, avoiding doing her homework. His older sister leaves unbuttoned the top button of her blouses. His younger brother chews with his mouth open. He would like to destroy us, for we are, variously, too fat, too jocular, too sloppy, too affectionate, too grotesque and heedless in our ways. Yet his sleep is so solid he sweats like a stone in the wall of a well. The other day, he had the flu, and a fever, and I gave him a back rub, marveling at the symmetrical knit of muscle, the organic tension. I love touching him, but don't often dare. He is almost sixteen, though beardless still, a man's mind indig­nantly captive in the frame of a child. He is often upstairs, when he has to be home. For online information about other Random House, Inc., books and authors, see the Internet website at. “Son,” from The Early Stories: 1953–1975 by John Updike, © 2003 by John Updike.