Every year, I drove a luxury car like most people never in their whole lives have ever been in. I have driven a dozen of them. I picked up their children from school in them; I drove their grandchildren in them. I cooked their dinner. I washed their clothes. I did the shopping. I cleaned their house. It was I, Fay Fenton Black, who raised their children. The Missus? Oh, she was there was all right. She was there. But not like Fay was. The way I saw it, I had my position to keep, and my family to raise.

 

Biff had one those names that did not make sense anytime you said it. It is not a name for any man, and it is not a name for any boy. Maybe if Biff had been in a Batman show, then it would be a name, all right. Besides that, it is not. So, when Love and Biff were home, she was making him a snuggle already in the sofa when I came into the den with sodas. "Mister Doctor, he will be home soon, Love," I told her. "Fay," she goes, "this is my friend, Biff. He is staying for dinner."

 

When she said that, I already saw the worried look in his eyes. I saw he wondered if she meant he was supposed to go after dinner. I saw he was frightened. He was afraid. I told her her father did not like it when she kept her feet up up on the table. "That is a fine piece of furniture you keep putting up your feet up on, Love," I told her. "Your father has had that piece of furniture in the family for many many years," "One of Daddy's conquests," she says, and moved her feet off of it, in socks.

 

I saw also this: he was not used to people talking past him like he was not there. "Nice to meet you, Mister Biff," I said. He said nothing. He did not know what to call me. He cannot say: Fay. He will not say: Missus Fay. So he is silent. He does not know what to say to me. He does not know this household. He just looked away like only he and Love were there, but they were not. It was me, too.

 

When she married, I saw it was right. They were both business lawyers. He was from a good family; she was from a good family. Even though they were Jews, both of them. That did not matter to me, so long as they were good families. Lots of houses; places to go to: Florence in Italy, Lake Balaton in Hungary, London in England, the Midi in France, I have been on all their vacations even before Love and her brother were born.

 

How Mark Steeplechase killed himself, I will not go on about. He is out of my story. He is out. The other Mark, Love's husband, I will talk plenty more about him. Before Biff, Love knew so many boys, why, I cannot even tell myself how many more times I told her to take her foot off from her father's mahogany table—before Biff, and also after him.

 

The second time I am seeing Biff, some thirty years later, he is just as scrappy as he was the first time I saw him. "Hello, Biff," I say to him, when I see him. He again does not know what to say. He does not see who I am. I see that. "Biff," Love says, "maybe you do not remember Fay? She worked for my parents." Of course if he does, he does not see exactly straight now why I am here at Love's house; and if he does not, he just does not.

 

He is almost fifty and the same confused man he was thirty years ago. "Nice to meet you, Fay, if we have not met before," he goes. He is just one mistake after next. "Oh, we met before. You were one of those boys that never took his foot off a coffee table." "Fay!" Love goes. "That was me!" "Of course it was," I go, "it always was you with all those boys back at the Mister Doctor's house." "Fay," she goes now, "the girls are going to their father's." "Yes, Love, I am taking them there right away, right away now." "It is nice to meet you again, Biff," I say to him. "You, too," he says, all confused.

 

Now, the girls were only little when their father and Love divorced. Mark Richman only lives five minutes down the road from them. Of course he works late and does not spend so much time with them, no more than Love's own father did. And I drive them over to Mark's after school two times a week before bringing them back to sleep at home with their mother. Besides, I do not mind her sending me off to pick up her girls like that. They are really mine, too, just like Love was.

 

The way I see it, the whole family is mine. Why, the way I see it, I had three homes: the Doctor's, Love's, and the husband's. Though Love hates it when I call Mark her exhusband and prefers I call him just the girls' father to her. You have got to call things right in this world, or people get all upset. Now, it was not like I was trying to make Biff believe Love was casual in her personal relations; that is no business for me to make if she is, or if she is not. She is a grown woman. What I mean to show him is not to be so high on himself that he is with her. A shaggy kind of dog like he is. Why, with his long hair. And a winter coat that smells.

 

I have seen her with many fine-looking gentlemen. They have got a Brooks Brothers coat. They come into the driveway in a Jaguar. That is a real nice car. This Biff, I saw what kind of car he drove up in. It is an old Toyota, Toyota Corolla. That is the kind of car only poor people drive in. I do not want him thinking he is the only one to put his feet up on her coffee table in so many years since she divorced. He is just like any of these boys she has over whom maybe she will be with a while—a year, two, something like that.

 

But he has got to realize a woman like Love, she can have any man she wants. And she has. That is Love for you. Of course she is cross with me for bringing it up the way I do, but it is for her own self-benefit. He is not exactly an arrogant kind of boy, but I have seen inside him that he thinks he can play around with her. So I leave to pick up Hope and Charity, Love's daughters, with their supper which I have already cooked, while she continues to talk in private with Biff.

 

When Love showed me Mark whom she married, the one thing wrong I saw with him right away, besides that he was too young for her, is he cut his hair up too high. Love, I said to her, I think he is a nice boy except what he does with his sideburns. Maybe he will let them grow some, I say. It is more natural that way, I said to her. Fay, she says to me, I think he will die with those sideburns; or, those no-sideburns! And we both laugh to that. I think you are right, Love; I think you are right.

 

Then she asked me what I was really thinking about: Do you think he is too young, Fay? Right now, he is not; but you will turn older some day, and with all those varicose veins, especially after you have children, five years now will look like twenty then. As soon as a man sees that, he goes out the back door; not in it anymore, I say to her. Not in it anymore!

 

We spent so many good times like this together, real private, before she married Mark Richman—that was the same year she was done with Law School—that I almost forgot how much we used to laugh the two of us together. Of course after they married, Mark only got more rich. And after they divorced, he only bought a bigger house than they had when they were married.

 

She wanted nothing more to do with him than she had to. She is independent, that much will I say about her. She does not take anything more than what she does not need from any man. The less you want from a man, the more you give yourself, I have told her plenty of times. And Mark Richman today, he is President of Triple Goose Fat Clothing Store, (TGFCS), some kind of gangster clothes company making jackets kids wear to school that cost more than three or four hundred dollars.

 

Later that night, as soon as I came back with the girls, I saw something was wrong. First, Biff's banged up car was still there. He is not gone. I am sensing something already, so I take the girls up the back staircase straight to their room. Your mother is busy right now with her friend, I tell both of them. You be good girls and be grown up tonight and go to sleep by yourselves; you will see Mama tomorrow. Hope, she goes: Why do we even come back to this stupid house? It does not even have internet in all the rooms. Only Mama's office does, and she is there 24/7. Fay, she goes, this house sucks.

 

I know, baby, I know. Your mother is getting the internet put in it everywhere, every room real soon, real soon. Fay, Daddy's has it; he has always had it, she says. How come Mama's house does not have internet in all the rooms? I do not know, baby; hush now, and you just be grown up tonight; just tonight, Hope; you both go to sleep now. Fay, she goes again, this house really sucks. The younger one, Charity, she just watches us about to cry the whole time, but I give her a mean look that tells her not to do it, not to do it this time. And she does not, praise God. She does not start crying and bring down the whole house which she can do when she likes to.

 

It is amazing how a quick mean look like that across a child can hush them, though. Of course I do not really mean it, and they know it, but it works like it does because they respect it. They respect that look because it means there is more going on than any child could ever properly know.

 

I am already down the staircase; the lights are out all over the house, and the only room there is any light from is the living room. Love calls it a salon. I go by the salon, just to look in it, and I see him standing with his long dirty hair all down over his shoulder just like a girl, and she is on her knees right in front of him with it in her mouth.

 

There are bright lights on bright all over the walls, the curtains are all open; and paintings she painted herself twenty years ago with bowls of fruit in them are lit up brightly on the walls; and one with a blue sailboat on a lake; and another one with some mountains with cows on them you can hardly see in them in it; and a red one above the fireplace in the center as tall as a man is with a black spider in it with its legs reaching out to the frame; and Biff is there in the middle of my Love's salon with his dirty pant legs dragged down around his knees.

 

He is making a huff huff noise and I see he is almost finished. I walk in the dark to my room without saying anything to her and I know I have never been treated so badly like this before.