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His father shrugs a to be helpful "I don’t know Clothes? Shoes? Did you take your certificate? I’ of the boy’s second-place award in the Western Reserve District 5 Science Day competition "The Spark of Life: Gibbs-Donnan Equilibriuin of Cell Viability" The certificate, in a plain black fras on the wall above his desk The truth is, it embarrasses him Don’t all Harvard students win first prize? Nevertheless, here in the open suitcase Once in Cae, it will never make it out of his bureau drawer; three years later, he will discover it beneath a pile of , and pitch it into the trash

"That’s the spirit," his father says "Show those Harvard s with"

From the base of the stairs, his : "Tim-o-thy! Are you ready yet?"

She never calls him "Tim"; always it is "Timothy" The name embarrasses him--it feels both courtly and dilish lord on a velvet cushion--though he also secretly likes it That his mother vastly prefers him to her husband is no secret; the reverse is also true The boy loves her far more easily than he loves his father, whose emotional vocabulary is limited totrip Like many only children, the boy is aware of his value in the household economy, and nowhere is this value more lofty than in his mother’s eyes My Timothy, she likes to say, as if there are others not hers; he is her only one You areup there? He’s going to miss the bus!"

"For Pete’s sake, just a minute!" He returns his eyes to the boy "Honestly, I don’t knohat she’s going to do without you to worry about That wo to drive me crazy"

A joke, the boy understands, but in his father’s voice he detects an undertone of seriousness For the first time he considers the full e, but his parents’ lives are changing, too Like a habitat abruptly deprived of a n people, he has no idea who his parents really are; for eighteen years he has experienced their existence only insofar as it has related to his own needs Suddenly his mind is full of questions What do they talk about when he’s not around? What secrets do they hold frouish? What private grievances, held in check by the shared project of child rearing, will now, in his absence, lurch into the light? They love him, but do they love each other? Not as parents or even husband and wife but simply as people--as surely they iest; he can no ine the world before he was alive

Co the difficulty is the fact that the boy has never been in love hih the social patterns of Mercy, Ohio, are such that even a modestly attractive person can find opportunities in the sexual in, has been from time to time its beneficiary, what he has experienced is e, the expression without the soul He wonders if this is a lack within himself Is there a part of the brain from which love comes that in his case has drastically malfunctioned? The world is awash in love--on the radio, in es of novels Romantic love is the comh he has yet to taste the pain that comes with love, he has experienced pain of a different, related sort: the fear of facing a life without it

They meet the boy’s mother in the kitchen He expects to find her dressed and ready to go, but she is wearing her flowered housecoat and terry-cloth slippers Through soreement it has been determined that his father alone will accompany him to the station

"I packed you a lunch," she declares

She thrusts a paper sack into his hands The boy unfolds the crinkled top: a peanut butter sandwich in waxed paper, cut carrots in a baggie, a pint of hteen: he could devour the contents of ten such bags and still be hungry It’s a rateful for this sain?