Women and Men

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My thanks to Alice Quinn, my editor at Knopf, for hours, weeks, and months she spent on this book. Thanks also to Margaret Cheney, the copy editor, who has followed every parenthesis and sentence with the most exacting attention. And thanks to my friend Robert Walsh, a young writer and editor of great gifts, who has read the book several times and encouraged me at every turn to believe in the American heart of its common sense and heartfelt and humorous extremities. And thanks to Chris Carroll for help when I needed it.

My thanks also to the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts for grants, and to Queens College of The City University of New York for paid time-off from teaching, and to the University of New Mexico for the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship in San Cristobal, New Mexico.

J.M.

After all she was not so sure what had happened, or when it had started. Which was probably not a correct state to be in, because what had happened made the biggest difference in her life so far. Hours of life that worked her back full to breaking of pain and drained it of its work when the back of her child’s head with a slick of dark hair and its rounded shoulders gave her that last extra push to free its arms still held inside her. She would tell her husband later — she knew she would — and she did tell him. She told her husband and he told others for weeks afterward. Also he had his own side to tell. She loved his excitement.

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