A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

what else you’ve done? You could’ve created the wireless radio. The wheel. The guy who spends all his time watching rabbits mate, you think he’s doing it for civilization? Or the guy who sits in a dank room pining after his dead child and writes a bitter treatise on the randomness of the beginning of life, changing the course of civilization—why didn’t they tell him to serve in a soup kitchen? The man thought organic matter could grow from inorganic things! Do we judge him? Civilization has always moved forward on the backs and with the sweat of those who recognized their internal needs as equally worthy of the community’s needs. More worthy.”

      “Why can’t you do both?” Maggie piped up.

      “That’s a woman’s answer,” said Ezra, looking at his wife with frank affection.

      “Why can’t you do neither?” asked Larissa.

      Ezra laughed. “That’s a Romantic’s answer,” he replied. “Is that what you are?”

      “A woman can do both,” Maggie persisted.

      “A woman can’t!” Ezra exclaimed. “From ancient times, the woman has made the choice that subservience for the greater good is more important than her own interests. You know this to be true, for biological reasons, for sociological reasons. Which is why women are to be found almost nowhere in the progress of civilization. Women defend the status quo. The nest. The offspring. Women have given themselves over to this purpose.”

      “Yet without women all life would come to a grinding halt.”

      “I’m not saying you don’t serve a purpose, Mary-Margaret,” Ezra said solemnly.

      “Women have made a choice to do this, to take care of their young!” Maggie said. “Because it is for the ultimate good of mankind—so that bastards like you could spend all their time reading idiotic books and playing with your test tubes.” Maggie scored major points with the two women at the table.

      “Yes,” said Ezra with amusement. “It is for the good of mankind. But what about the good of the woman?”

      “Yes, for the good of her, too, Ezra,” said Evelyn. “Larissa and I were discussing this just the other day, right, Larissa?”

      “Right, Ev.”

      “Women are saved through childbirth,” said Evelyn, smiling, with Larissa blinklessly nodding.

      “Exactly,” said Ezra. “But you know why they can be saved? Because someone else hunts and gathers. Someone has to get up each morning, slog to work, deal with people he doesn’t like, do crap things, answer to crap bosses, make boring phone calls, attend numbing meetings. Right, Jared?”

      “I know you love to mock what I do, Professor,” said Jared, “but I run the finances of a company that has global assets totaling $485 billion.” Malcolm whistled. Evelyn looked at him impressed. Maggie glared at Ezra with a “pwned!” expression. Bo glared at her Jonny as if to say, why can’t you get a damned job, even as a dishwasher? Only Larissa was playing with the umbrella in her Sangria and didn’t look up. “We have thirty-five thousand employees,” continued Jared. “That’s a lot of men and women I pay who hunt and gather for their families. I’m not even talking about all the money instruments we offer so an English teacher like you can put Dylan through college. That’s got to be worth something, isn’t it, Ezra?”

      “It is,” Ezra assented. “Because of that, your wife is home. Larissa bakes, which smells good and tastes delicious. She takes care of your offspring, most of whom I assume you love because they do not bang the drums at two in the morning. Larissa, tell us—to take care of things you love, is there slog in that?”

      “There is no slog, Ezra,” agreed Larissa, drink thoroughly stirred.

      “But, Ezra,” said Maggie, “you were just arguing that the woman is a more pathetic creature than man because she lives to serve other people. Yet you paint man as also serving, except serving those he doesn’t love. So who’s got the better life?”

      “Without a doubt, the woman,” said Ezra, and they all laughed. Voices calmed down, emotions ran slower, Jared poured more red wine, the music overhead switched to reggae jazz, quite the combo. When Jared glanced at Larissa sitting on his right, the smile was frozen on her porcelain face, her white teeth as if in a lion’s grimace, her made-up eyes glazed by—drink? And then she spoke in a non-sequitur. She said: “We can do it on a sunny floor … Roll on our backs screaming with mirth, glad in the guilt of our madness