Mary was not a pretty girl. But there was an animation to her face, an intelligence, which nullified her plainness. She read her favorite authors in curiously appropriate ways—Proust supinely, Faulkner with bourbon, O’Casey wearing my father’s turtleneck. She was a fine swimmer and tennis player, although at times there seemed a touch of condescension in her attitude toward sport; it was all so easy, so predictable in outcome. She treated the family almost the same way she might treat her tennis racket, with rough affection and a charming lighthearted contempt. The latter did not extend to me, however. Her kid brother. I think she loved me very much. Almost everything my father said was received by Mary in a spirit of high delight. “Daddy,” she used to say, “you’re almost as funny as Eisenhower.” But he was not delighted by her as much as bewildered. I think she made my father question the structure of his own nature, for to him it was surely apparent that only the rebel mischief of his seed could have produced this stray comedienne.