Free 50 by Avery Corman Page A

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