AMERICAN CENTURY, THE

by Guyer, Murphy

World War II has ended and Tom, just discharged from the Army, returns to his young wife, Margaret, full of hope and enthusiasm, and dreams of a bounteous future. But as they plan their life together they are joined by a brash young stranger who, to their amazement, proceeds to make himself very much at home. He is, he explains, one of the children they will have, and he fills them in so completely about their past and present lives—and the future which awaits them—that Tom and Margaret soon find themselves moving from incredulity to panic. In the most casual, blithely humorous manner he tells of a world gone mad with space races, Watergate and the threat of atomic annihilation; of his siblings who have come to a variety of bad ends; and of Tom and Margaret’s own descent into bankruptcy, booze, and pill-popping. Increasingly aghast as one horror is casually (and hilariously) piled on another, Tom rushes for the door, determined to escape before any of this can occur only to be pursued by his unloving but pragmatic son who suddenly realizes that without a father, his own existence, chancy as it may be, will never happen.