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Reynolds and Wall passed through New York, Texas-tornado style, conducting a fast-paced meeting before going on to Boston where they were going to have a similar meeting. They presented the results of a new survey showing readership of articles within the newspaper. Wall pointed out that sports which tallied high on a recent “Which sport do you follow?” survey did not always perform well in “finishing the article” statistics.

“Our conclusion is,” Wall said, “the articles were not well-written enough.”

“So there are going to be replacements in our bureaus, unless people can improve their ‘finishing the article’ stats,” Reynolds said.

Wall presented another set of tallies, “finishing the article” for
Sports Day
compared with the
Chicago Tribune
and USA
Today.

“We do better than the
Chicago Trib,
which is not surprising, since we’re a special-interest newspaper, but not as well as USA
Today,
” Wall told them.

“Why do you think that is, fellas? Doug, surely you have an opinion here,” Reynolds said.

“You’re comparing apples and oranges. What USA
Today
is all about is the short piece. They do a very good job on short, compact pieces and features. If you’re looking for ‘finishing the article,’ of course, they’re going to score better. That’s what they do.”

“I think you’re right, Doug,” Reynolds said. “And that’s why we’re initiating a new policy. All news stories and features will be cut fifteen percent in length. All columns five percent. Only five percent, Doug, because we see the reading patterns for columns are a little different, a little more brand loyalty.”

“These changes will be effective immediately,” Wall said. “The computers will be programmed so that if you file copy that’s over your line quota, you’ll get an indication on the screen.”

“It’s exciting, fellas, to identify a pattern and to be able to act scientifically,” Reynolds said. “We’re going to pass the
Inquirer
next, guys. Keep it up!”

Reynolds and Wall left the conference room.

“Not so bad,” Wilkes said. “We get the same amount of money for writing less.”

“That’s an opportunistic way of looking at it,” Lahey said. “So long as you don’t mind your copy getting cut.”

“Mr. Gardner,” Sally, the receptionist, called to him, “Mr. Reynolds is still here. He wants to see you.”

Reynolds was standing in Doug’s office.

“I wanted to mention that track column. Wes Santee? This is not a history seminar we’re running here. It was very self-indulgent.”

“That’s what a column is, Robby. By definition it’s self-indulgent or it wouldn’t be a column in the first place. It would be a news story.”

Reynolds looked at Doug as if he were being entertained.

“Sounds to me like while I’m trying to educate you, you’re trying to educate me. Who do you think is ahead?” And he walked out of the office.

Independence from the father was necessary for the growth of children. Doug knew the text. For all the hours he spent with these children he thought somehow he might receive an amnesty from generation gap. Not a chance. “Yes, we heard that before, Dad,” Andy would say to him. Karen, too, sometimes said, “Yes, you told us.”

Am I repeating myself more often? Is my brain disintegrating even as I speak?

Andy asked Doug about the movie
Shane,
which one of his friends had recommended. “Did you ever see it, Dad?”

“I did. It’s a good movie.”

“Is it in black and white?”

“That’s how you place me? All my movies were in black and white?”

Doug took Karen and Andy for a weekend to his brother and sister-in-law’s vacation house in the Poconos. Marty Gardner was a year older than Doug, a short man with reddish hair and a cheerful face; his wife, Ellen, was a shy, pretty brunette, five feet one. When they met she had been a salesgirl in a dress shop on Seventy-second Street. Marty had a job nearby. After graduating from high school he worked in a dry-cleaning store and fashioned his dream, to have his own dry-cleaning store. He eventually bought out the owner, who retired, he started a second store, and was able to buy a little country house on a half acre of woodland in a middle-class development. Marty and Ellen had two girls, Sandy and Ricky, 17 and 16, both very physical, mountain climbers, cyclists, and when Doug visited with Karen and Andy there was considerable outdoor activity, long walks, bicycling. Marty was a social director in his house, eager for everyone to have a good time. “Okay, we’ll take a nice walk, we can go boating, the kids can ride bikes, anything. I’ve got beautiful steaks for dinner and I rented a couple of movies for the VCR, we can make a fire, watch a movie, play Ping-Pong, whatever you want.” The adults and children walked to a lake where they took out rowboats. Karen set up her easel and worked on a watercolor of the scene. On the way back Marty and Ellen’s golden retriever and Harry took turns chasing each other. At the house Marty set up his gas-fired barbecue grill.

“You don’t have to eat steak, we’ve got hamburgers, too. What do you like?” When people requested hamburgers, he said, “Any way you like it, medium, I can do medium-rare, just say the word. Are you having a good time? That’s not too well done for you, is it?”

Marty. He offered anything they wanted for dessert, ice cream, apple pie, sundaes, anything anybody wanted, he would go out and get something if they didn’t have it in the house, and Doug put his arm around his brother with affection. After dinner the two brothers went outside to look at the night sky.

“Isn’t this great? God’s country. Tomorrow we can get the papers, sit around and read, take a bike ride, have a nice lunch.”

“You hit a grand slam in your life, Marty.”

“I just got lucky with Ellen, that’s all.”

“How’s business?”

“Food stains are up. Young working kids in the neighborhood, they’ve got a lot of clothes and they eat out a lot.”

“Would you do another store?”

“For more headaches? No. So what’s cooking with you?”

“Nothing spectacular.”

“What are you reading, anything I should know about?”

“A good baseball piece. On black barnstorming.”

“I’d like to read it. And how about women? Anybody?”

“Not at the moment.”

“I wish I had somebody for you. I should be able to come up with someone. All these single girls come into the place. But it’s hard with a customer. You don’t know how they’d take it—‘How would you like to meet my brother?’ ”

“I appreciate the thought.”

“I’ll keep looking. Someone with nice clothes,” he said with innocence and sincerity.

Marty admired Doug for having gone to college, for being a sports columnist. But Doug admired his brother for something Marty would not have thought significant—for the scale of his life. He had his wife, two children, and a dog in the same apartment. People brought in clothes and Marty got the clothes clean. If it all could be so simple.

Doug spent several hours shopping for a gift for Karen’s 13th birthday, finally selecting a sports watch and a book on the art of Georgia O’Keeffe. She was happy to have the gifts, which cost sixty-five dollars, and he gave them to her at a roller-skating party for her friends, which Susan organized. When Karen next came to his apartment she was wearing a luxurious cable-knit pink cashmere sweater, her birthday gift from Susan. It must have cost two hundred dollars.

The Christmas school vacation had to be divided between both parents, and Susan phoned to suggest they combine resources for a skiing vacation. She said the children were interested in trying it and she thought that for social reasons, skiing was a sport that should be in their lives. Susan had found a two-week package at a lodge in Sugarbush in Vermont. She would split the cost with Doug and be with Karen and Andy the first week, he would take over the second. So tentative was his commitment to the idea of skiing that if they manufactured disposable ski wear he would have bought it. In a discount sporting-goods store he found a cheap parka and pants. He took a flight to Burlington, where he was going to rent a car for the drive to Sugarbush. The terminal at Burlington was busy with people carrying boots and skis, high school or college students, he could not distinguish between the age groups, and various people who did not look as young, singles, young marrieds. A depressing thought occurred to him while he was standing on the car-rental line. Am I the oldest person in this entire airlines terminal? A few moments later an elderly couple passed with their grandchildren. All right, then. Am I the oldest person going skiing in the entire terminal? On the way out of the building he saw Lars or Sven, in his early 60s, Nordic, trim, in a beautiful ski jacket. Lars or Sven skied expertly when he wasn’t making love to countless women. I have my category now. I am the oldest
beginner
in this terminal, maybe the world.

Susan returned to New York and Doug began his week, signing up the following morning for his first class. Karen and Andy helped him with the equipment. He ached just from bending to get his boots on. They guided him over to the class and said they would meet him at lunchtime. A week of skiing and they already belonged on a different part of the mountain. After two hours of hobbling sideways and falling in the snow, Doug discovered a sport he loathed more than jogging. The instructor, a strapping lad named Mark, was very enthusiastic, and by the afternoon session he had Doug falling off the rope tow.

By the second day he was now doing snowplow turns at a downhill speed not much faster than the rate at which icicles form. The children glided by to offer encouragement, and in order to turn and say hello to them he fell, for about the thirtieth time in two days. The afternoon of the third day he was so tired he had developed his own snowplow wobble. I am a 48-year-old man on a ski slope in Vermont, my nose is running, my feet are cold. I am doing this to compete in some way with my ex-wife, who is not even here and who is probably in a heated room wearing a normal person’s clothes. I am doing this for my children, for their social advancement, and they are already so socially advanced they breeze by me to say hi. The one person I am not doing this for is me. At which point he hit ice, skidded rapidly and out of control, fell, landing on his rear, and as he slid downhill, his el cheapo pants split and were filling up with snow. He saw skiers at the bottom of the hill and beyond them a lodge. He imagined himself going right down the hill on his rear, past the skiers, crashing through the lodge and coming out the other end, bumping into Lars or Sven, who would look at him with disdain for being so déclassé. He came to a stop and attempted to regain his dignity and his upright position. He felt foolish at this age to be so comically inexpert at anything. Tots on skis were gliding past him. Susan, I give you Sugarbush, Aspen. I give you the beginner’s slopes, the intermediate slopes, the advanced-intermediate slopes. I retire from skiing.

For Saks in White Plains Susan organized a fashion show against a background of one hundred sports cars. For Neiman Marcus in Houston she produced Highland games with pipers, folk dancers, and athletic competitions to feature woolens from Scotland. Her share of the tuition payments were now paid promptly and in full. During the Washington’s Birthday school recess she took the children to St. Thomas. They had never gone to the Caribbean when they were a family—they took less expensive vacations then. One summer they went to the Jersey shore for two weeks. Another to Fire Island. Lake George. Tanglewood. Not elegant but good times. Susan and I talked so much in those years. So many details about the kids. And the birthday parties. Karen’s 6th birthday when the teenage magician lost his rabbit and it ran terrified through the house making all over the place, and the children howling with laughter. It was better than any magic trick and Susan and I laughed ourselves to sleep that night. The playgrounds. The hours in the playgrounds switching off between the swings and the sandbox, sitting on the benches talking about the children, about schools, about what they needed and what kind of parents we should be and who they were going to become. And the physical labor required to get them through a weekend happy. When they’re young, you’re so intense. Then the physical labor stops, the playgrounds stop. They get too old for playgrounds and you never set foot in one again. But we were good at it, at the playgrounds and the vacations and the parties. I forget that sometimes. We were a really good team for a while.

Occasionally the old housemates from single days would meet for lunch during the week. Jeannie, Doug, and Bob were at the Oyster Bar and Jeannie announced she and Susan came to a mutual parting on her press representation. When Susan opened a promotion out of town she was looking for local publicity Jeannie was unable to provide, and Susan was hiring a larger public-relations firm. Bob was fascinated by the cost-efficient nature of the business Susan created. She developed the ideas and produced the events but the department stores paid the entire costs of the promotions.

“If she keeps coming up with accounts, she can pass us all by,” he said.

An article appeared in
Women’s Wear Daily
featuring Susan, “Rising Star of Store Merchandising,” with several pictures, Susan in her New York apartment, Susan at her Highland games, Susan at a horse-show event she staged in Denver. Doug noticed the living room of their marriage had been completely redecorated. That she managed to pay for redecorating and for her share of the children’s expenses, the tuition, the skiing, the Caribbean, was evidence to him that she had already passed him by.

He did not know how he could hold the children’s interest within his budget against treats such as winter vacations in the Caribbean.

Taking him by surprise, Andy said, “Knicks-Atlanta Saturday night. Dominique Wilkins. Can you get us all tickets?”

“You really want to go?”

“I do.”

“Karen?”

“Great.”

When they left Madison Square Garden, Karen took her father’s hand and Andy let his hand rest on Doug’s shoulder.

He smiled and said, “You’re my MVPs.”

Sports Day
moved ahead of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
in circulation, and compared with conventional daily newspapers, at 510,000, was now among the top fifteen in America. A celebration dinner of spareribs and champagne was held in Houston for a hundred staff members from the home office and the bureaus. Reynolds had recently installed a new managing editor and a news editor, men in their 30s who had worked for USA
Today.
He introduced them and they stood to applause. The addition of editors from that newspaper appeared to be consistent with Reynolds’s thinking. He was copying the successful USA
Today
format and layout,
Sports Day
looking more like an all-sports version of USA
Today.
A six-minute film was shown called
“Sports Day
Is Coming at You,” which would be used by the advertising department to sell space, and the presentation ended with a professional singing group performing, “Have a Nice Sports Day,” from the new radio advertising campaign. Doug did not applaud at the conclusion. He was still absorbing the idea that he worked for a newspaper that had its own song.