MEMORABLE lacuna

could always, owing to the accident of her sex, start squeezing out young’ns. Her 35 year-old architect husband, Phil, would love nothing more, in fact. When they married at St. Bridget’s in Alexandria, he was 32 and between between 87 and 92% positive he’d never want yard apes. Now, three years later, his wife conveniently unemployed, often literally barefoot and in the kitchen, he heard his biological clock ticking. Hence the pug he’d bought her. And hence the robot – the Baka 3000. Clearly he was trying to rouse whatever maternal impulses lay dormant in her. But the wall-eyed pug sulked and cried all day till Phil came home. And the bucket-sized Baka – a Neiman-Marcus frivolity whose price tag Sharona trembled to contemplate – laid it on a little thick. In thunderstorms it scurried into the master bedroom, making the pug howl, squealing “Mommy!” with its synthesized voice. She and Phil would lie there with it between them on the mattress, all three of them staring at the ceiling, the Baka actually shaking in terror at each flash and boom. And Sharona would wonder if Phil had had it specially programmed to speak that creepy word.