While his father sat timidly beside him, embarrassed probably by his peremptory manner
he was still a lot more polite than the others, especially that officious man Oliver Lyons, who was basically quite rude.
When men have existential crises—when Richard Ford, for instance, limns the male at midlife—it doesn’t get called by some dumb hormonal name. It’s a “universal human experience.”
Sexual activity was ongoing, occasionally fervent, but usually desultory or mechanical or dutiful.
It was years of family stories that hid the ways women knew in their blood what was wrong or right. Hid truth behind the scrim of romance or, worse, fate.
