The Progress of Love

didn’t like the way they looked, so she got braces. She planned to lighten her hair—which was plain brown—and buy some new clothes, perhaps even move away and get a different sort of job once the braces came off. By the time they did, her life was changed without these stratagems.
    Some of the other changes came, in the course of time. From a serious-looking thick-waisted girl with an attentive manner, a gentle voice, a heavy bosom, she has become a slender well-dressed woman with short blond-streaked hair—prettier now than other women of her age who were so much prettier than she when they were all young—and an agreeable but decisive way of talking. It’s hard to tell how much difference any of this makes to Dr. Streeter. He used to tell her not to get too glamorous or somebody would spot her and grab her away from him. She was uneasy with this talk, finding a discouraging message in it. He stopped saying such things, and she was glad. Just recently he has started up again, with reference to her trip to Tahiti. But she thinks she knows betternow how to deal with him, and she teases him, saying, You never know, and, Stranger things have happened.
    He liked her when the braces were still on. They were on the first time he made love to her. She turned her head aside, conscious that a mouthful of metal might not be pleasing. He shut his eyes, and she wondered if it might be for that reason. Later she learned that he always closed his eyes. He doesn’t want to be reminded of himself at such times, and probably not of her, either. His is a fierce but solitary relish.
    Across the aisle from Mary Jo are two empty seats and then a young family, mother and father and baby and a little girl about two years old. Italian or Greek or Spanish, Mary Jo thinks, and she soon finds out from their conversation with the stewardess that they are Greek, but living now in Perth, Australia. Their row of seats under the movie screen is the only place on the plane that could have provided room for their equipment and family operations. Insulated bags, plastic food dishes, baby-sized pillows, the folding cot that makes into a seat, milk bottles, juice bottles, and an enormous panda bear for the consolation of the little girl. Both parents busy themselves continually with the children—changing them into pastel pajamas, feeding them, joggling them, singing to them. Yes, they tell the admiring stewardess, very close, only fourteen months between them. The baby is a boy. He has a slight teething problem. She has occasional fits of jealousy. Both are very fond of bananas. Hers whole, his mashed. Get his bib, dear, out of the blue bag. The washcloth, too, he’s drooling a bit. No, the washcloth isn’t there, it’s in the plastic. Hurry. There it is. Hurry. Good.
    Mary Jo is surprised at how ill-disposed she feels toward this harmless family. Why are you shovelling food into him? she feels like saying (for they have mixed up some cereal in a blue bowl). Solid food is a total waste at his age; it just gives you more to mop up at both ends. What a fuss, what accumulation and display and satisfaction, just because they have managed to reproduce. Also, they are delaying the stewardess when she might be serving the drinks.
    In the row behind them is another sort of young family, Indian. The mother wears a gold-embroidered red sari, the father a tight cream-colored suit. Slim, silent, gold-laden mother; well-fed, indolent-looking father, listening to the rock channel on his headphones. You can tell it’s the rock channel by the movement of his fingers on the cream cloth stretched over his full thighs. Between these two parents sit two little girls, all in red, with gold bracelets and earrings and patent-leather shoes, and a younger brother, maybe as old as the little Greek girl in front, dressed up in a suit that is a miniature copy of his father’s—vest, fly, pockets, and all. The stewardess offers crayons and coloring books, but the little girls, glistening with gold, just giggle and hide their faces. She brings them glasses of ginger ale. The little brother shakes his head at the ginger ale. He climbs on his mother’s lap, and she fetches out of her sari a shadowy, serviceable breast. He settles there, lolls and sucks, with his eyes open, looking blissful and commanding.
    This way of going on doesn’t suit Mary Jo any better. She is not used to feeling such aversion; she knows it is not reasonable. She is never like this in the