Aloft

three

THE HOUSE THAT Jack built is in a gated development called Haymarket Estates, a brand-new luxury "enclave" that sits on what was a patch of scrubby land a few exits east of where I live. From the Expressway you can actually catch a glimpse of the rooftops peeking out over the barrier wall, the covenant-defined cedar shake or slate tile shingles trimmed out with polished copper ice dams and gutters, the stone-faced chimneys and handcrafted lintel work fresh and gleaming, with the sole unglamorous detail being all the mini — satellite dishes looking up toward the southern 'sky with a strange kind of succor. When Jack bought the dusty.47-acre lot a few years ago for what seemed an inexcusable amount of money, he assured me that it'd be worth at least twice as much now, which has proven true despite the flagging economy, given what the last remaining parcels sold for in recent months. The heady rise in land values prompted him and Eunice to go ahead with plans for a much bigger house than they had originally wanted, not minding that the structure would take up most of their property, rendering it useless for any large-scale kids' play or a decent-sized pool. The proportion is really the opposite of my place, where my modest ranch house sits right smack in the middle of the property (just over an acre), so that I have plenty of trees and shrubs and lawn to buffer me from my good neighbors.

The side of Jack's house, on the other hand, is only about ten of my paces from the side wall of his neighbor's, which would be normal-looking in an old suburban neighborhood of row-type houses but feels as narrow as an olde London alleyway given the immensity of the houses. But as Jack has pointed out, who wants to be outside where it's buggy and noisy with the Expressway and in the summertime the rumble of the AC com-pressors (four for his house alone)? Jack's house is around 6500

square feet, not including the full-length basement or three-car garage, which is pretty typical of the development, or more than three times bigger than the house he grew up in. Eunice decorated the place herself, which continues to be a full-time job. You walk in to a vaulted two-and-a-half-story circular en-tryway with green marble floors inlaid with a multicolored sunburst, a double-landed soapstone stairwell rising up to the second floor. On the main level there's a media room with a widescreen television and every kind of audio component, including ones that seem not to do anything but monitor the sound, for frequency response and digital dropouts and some such. There's a separate rolling caddy for the army of remotes, which Jack has actually just replaced with a console-sized touch-screen unit that supposedly controls everything in the house, including the lights and HVAC and security system.

There's of course the French country manor living room that no one ever uses and then the "library," which is in fact pretty gorgeous, lined as it is with panels of glass-smooth walnut and custom cabinetry and furnished with leather club chairs and sofas and antique Persian rugs. Jack even installed a special ventilation system in there, so he can smoke cigars with his golf buddies when they come back to play poker. The funny thing is that the bookshelves are mostly taken up by rows and rows of home and design magazines that Eunice gets each month, and then the big coffee-table art and design books, though Eunice says that they'll be getting some "shipments" of real books soon enough, as she's joined several book-of-the-month clubs, where you get twelve tomes for a penny. And there's a television, too, as there is in every room, though this one is regular-sized and discreetly tucked behind cabinet doors, maybe in deference to the dying world of letters.

The stainless-steel-and-granite kitchen is enormous, certainly, as it has to house two of everything, from refrigerators to dishwashers to trash compactors. Eunice and Jack like to entertain, as they are doing today, but on a wedding caterer's scale, which you can tell by the size of their baking sheets and stockpots, the latter being the kind you see in cartoons in which the natives are making soup of the hapless explorer. Off the kitchen is the plain two-room suite where the nanny/cook/

housekeeper, Rosario, stays six nights a week, only leaving on Sunday morning to spend a day and night with her husband and two children and mother, who live somewhere deep in Queens. Eunice, in the parlance, doesn't work "outside the house," but as far as I can tell Rosario is doing all the heavy lifting inside, plus the light duty, too. I don't blame Eunice, as it's her prerogative and privilege to spend her days poring over her decorating books and taking yoga and not toasting a slice of bread unless it's a full-blown event (when she transforms into Lady Sub-Zero, her tools and prep lists and chopped and measured ingredients c/o Rosario laid out on her island counter in military formation), but I wish sometimes she'd spend more casual, horsing-around time with the kids, just lollygagging, rather than scheduling the endless "enrichment" exercises and activities for them that are undoubtedly brain-expanding but must be as fun as memorizing pi to twenty-five places. At bedtime she or Jack will read them only library-recommended books and then retreat to their 1500-square-foot master bedroom suite featuring his and her tumbled-stone bathrooms fitted with steam shower/sauna and then the lounge-in closets that could make perfectly nice studio condos in Manhattan, Jack checking the company website and e-mail and Eunice surfing the six hundred channels for a movie she hasn't seen yet.

(Once, in the downstairs media room, I browsed all the channels one by one, pausing long enough to get a good glimpse of each, and it took about thirty minutes to get back to where I started, which I realized was like watching a TV show in itself, and not in fact a half-bad one, relatively speaking.) And as I drive past the gate (where the surly goateed guard still calls up the house to check if they're expecting me, this after about thirty visits) and turn onto the single long circular street of the development past the other not-so-mini mansions, I have to tell myself again that my son is doing more than all right, that I should be so lucky to have to worry that these bulwarks of his prosperity (not just the house but his German sedan, the luxury SUVs, the country club membership, the seasonal five-star vacations) are maybe too much for anyone to handle, and especially Jack, who's always been a bit impressionable and unsure of himself and sometimes too eager to please. Why he's like this I don't like to muse upon too much, as it more than likely has to do with what happened to Daisy when he was nine, though maybe this is not the whole story; Theresa (only a year younger) went through the same shitstorna of unhappiness and is totally different. Though again this may be her particular psychic response to misery and sadness, which made her become more like herself than she would have been had she been raised under neutrally pleasant laboratory conditions.

I suppose the Grandeur of Life does this to all of us, forging us into figures more like ourselves than we'd otherwise be, for better and/or worse, and so you wonder what ramifications in.

substance and detail there'd be, say, what kind of house Jack would be living in, had his mother never died, whether he would have married an altogether together woman like Eunice, whether he would have taken up the business of Battle Brothers at all. Naturally I think too of what might have become of me in that time line with Daisy still alive, if I'd be with her still, or else have gotten divorced and married Rita forthwith and had children with her. With the exception of the first six months and a few assorted days early on (the birth of the kids, a couple of anniversaries, that one Thanksgiving when Daisy practically car-bonized the bird and we ended up in the city at Tavern on the Green, jaunting afterward down Fifty-ninth Street giddy with the Christmas lights and a bottle of Chablis, the kids riding high on our shoulders), there was rarely if ever joyousness or glee, with Daisy scuttled and sunk down in the troughs of her gray day moods. Probably I dug everything a bit deeper with my attitude, which back then was one of constant irritation and stress, as the economy was in the dumper and my father hadn't yet fully retired from Battle Brothers and the kids seemed only to speak the language of lament and whine, being generally neglected and cast aside, and then that episode of the $7000 Bloomingdale's charge. Still, I was a jerk, seriously unhappy as jerks often are, though this is no excuse for anything, and certainly not for what would become my chronic habit of abstain-ing from the familial activities of the house, in the evenings sitting alone in my study poring over the travel guides to places I wanted to go, highlighting the sights and restaurants like I was already on the tour charter, the little bottles of wine lined up on my tray.

Jack would sometimes come in and tell me Daisy wasn't in the house, and after a few times I'd stop asking where she'd gone to and just put him back to bed. Daisy would then come home at two or three in the morning wearing a fuck-me outfit smelling of cigarettes and Lancer's wine, and if we argued at all it was about her making too much noise when she came in. Jack would run out of his room crying for us to stop yelling, sometimes getting upset enough that he'd pee in his pants. It thus makes sense to me that Jack would end up being the one to feature this grand house (Theresa perfectly content with whatever post-doc-style housing she and Paul can flop in each academic autumn with their fold-up Ikea furniture), and then always gathering us for dinners and parties and taking "candid" black-and-white pictures, as if he and Eunice were trying to recast our family into one that might appear in a fashion magazine spread titled something like "The Spoils of Battle."

We'd probably be just right, too, for such a shoot, not only because we have a nice generational mix going (white-haired patriarch, sportive young parents, peach-cheeked toddlers) but also because we're an ethnically jumbled bunch, a grab bag miscegenation of Korean (Daisy) and Italian (us Battles) and English-German (Eunice) expressing itself in my and Jack's offspring with particularly handsome and even stunning results. As a group you can't really tell what the hell we are, though more and more these days the very question is apparently dubious, if not downright crass, at least to folks like Theresa and Paul, whose race-consciousness is clearly quite different from mine. I suppose what's critical to them is who's asking the question, for if it's an average white guy like me there's only awkwardness and embarrassment ahead, the assumption being I'm going to blindly buy into a whole raft of historical "typologies" and "an-tecedents" and turn around and plonk somebody with the label of Other. This, by the way, is and isn't a terrible thing. They in-ordinately fear and respect the power of the word, having steadily drawn down the distinctions between Life and Text. Let me say that when I was growing up the issues could be a lot heavier than that, a switchblade or Louisville Slugger being the text of choice, and one not so easily parsed or critiqued.

Jack, on the other hand, seems totally unconcerned about such matters, and always has been, but I can't say for certain, because we've never discussed the subject. He's never been what anybody would call a brainy kid, and not just in the test-taking academic sense (which was how smarts used to be measured), but I suppose none of that mattered much because he's done more than fine and seems happy enough and doesn't seem to wrestle with questions too big or medium or small. Maybe he has strong feelings and painful memories of awkward and searing experiences as to his identity and character but it's just as likely not. I've often thought it's because he's very fair and Anglo-looking, tall and long-legged and with barely a lilt to the angle of his eyes. Such as it is, I believe he's always passed any lingering questions quickly squashed by his model-good looks and good-guy demeanor, which have always attracted plenty of the popular crowd to the house, to my eye at least. I can't remember his once dating a girl who wasn't your classic American blonde (from the bottle or not), Eunice (you-NEECE) Linzer Robeson being the most impressive of the bunch, and easily the sharpest. I see her now, outside on the massive slatestone front landing of her house, cordless phone ever in hand. She waves, and I pull into the semicircular part of the driveway already packed with cars. This surprises, as I thought the party was to be an intimate family affair, but then I should know that the Battles of Haymarket Estates can't do anything too downscale/downnaarket, as if they'd ever really have a cookout of burgers and dogs.

"Where have you been, Terry?" she says brightly, covering the mouth holes. "Jack's out getting more ice and juice boxes."

Eunice kisses me and sends me inside, signaling Rosario's teenage daughter, Nidia, as she's now getting into issues with the caterer about the flatware and wineglasses, which as usual aren't exactly what she requested. In these situations Eunice never yells or raises her voice, but rather speaks at the downward angle of a third-grade teacher, with a patient, if often chilly, enunciation. In the clickety marble rotunda Nidia, in a crisp white shirt and black skirt, greets me with a flute of Champagne, and I note that she's looking exceptionally womanly, particularly in the important parts, and I contrive to make her linger a little as I down the first glass and then take another.

I've seen her perhaps once a year for the last four, each time appreciating more deeply the march of youth's time. She smiles (not unwickedly?), and trots off. In the rotunda I notice the walls have been stripped of the "old" wallpaper and freshly painted, and the windows newly shaded with a single panel of muted silken fabric, clearly redone to complement the quartet of abstract paintings that recently arrived from the auction house, which, at least to my Art History 101 eye, look like real Kandinskys (and I very much hope are not).

In the great room/media room, Jack's kids, Tyler (girl) and Pierce (boy), are watching a Britney Spears concert DVD on the widescreen with a handful of other slack-jawed toddlers and young children who I'm sure are also named for minor presidents, and when I kneel down to kiss them they do manage a faint grunt and smile. This is true love, given the circumstance, which I appreciate and don't question. Along my sight line from here through the kitchen I can see the score or so of grownups mingling outside on the back deck, friends of Jack's and Eunice's and old buddies of Theresa's, some of whom I recognize and could speak to of specific times way back when but whose names I could hardly remember then and have no clue to now Theresa used to get furious at me whenever she'd bring friends home and I'd dance around having to address them and afterward I'd plead early Alzheimer's but she knew it was because I never quite paid full attention. Unfortunately she thought it was only her but really it was a much more global problem than that and something I'm not sure she's over yet, or will ever be.

It's funny how my grandkids (and their playmates) are now the ones calling the shots, as they're endlessly fussed over by Rosario and their preschool teachers and by Eunice and Jack and then even by me. The only one not readily kowtowing is my father, whose firm and sometimes gruff stance with them is not so much about teaching deference or respect but reminding one and all of his own status as family patriarch/biggest boy.

He's nowhere to be found, though, and I head out onto the massive multilevel redwood deck, where Theresa and Paul are holding court by the buffet table. Paul sees me first and waves the big wave. Theresa glances over and nods, still talking to her friends, while Paul approaches. As mentioned, Paul grew up only a short distance from here, but after having spent a number of years on the West Coast he's no longer outwardly pushy and irritable like a lot of people on the Island. He talks softly, with an almost Western, cowboyish loll to his speech, which frankly is strange to hear from an Asian face. He wears his straight black hair quite long and somewhat ratty, though today he's gathered it in a ponytail, which is neater but still gives me the willies. From the back you'd swear he was a girl, with his short, slightish frame and periodic horsey tosses of the head, but from what I gather these days long tresses on a man usually indicate a hetero-supreme, a type, surprisingly, to which Theresa has always been drawn, and then to older ones, which Paul is (by eight years). I like him very much, despite his hemp-cloth-and-bead exterior, as deep down he's a thoroughly decent and affable fellow without a lot of that self-important artistic gaseousness that has to fill whatever room its owner finds himself in.

His parents, Dr. and Dr. Pyun, who aren't here today because this party was only recently planned and they had long booked (through me) an eighteen-day Bella Extravanganza tour to all the famous spots in Italy, are a sweet and always smiling couple, at least on the surface, though I can tell, too, like the few other Asians I've come into contact with over the years, that they are not so quietly tenacious about what they want. When they came into the office to set up their trip I got the distinct feeling that they were sure I was going to sell them the most expensive package, and were intent upon starting from the bargain-bin tours I'd normally only recommend for pensioners and Catholic school teachers. I'd heard from Paul that they were interested in going to Italy (for the first time), and I called them directly and urged them to come in to see me. Maybe my zeal was suspicious, plus the fact that they weren't sold on the idea that I was a travel agent for reasons other than the sorry pay and needling customers (they'd certainly never imagine passing their retirement that way). Mrs. Dr. Pyun even asked a few times what the trip would cost "not counting commissions."

Undeterred, I took them through the whole range of offerings, noting what I thought were the best values and itineraries, and they decided to go with a great mid-priced tour called "Savors of the Past," which mixes art and ruins with food-and-wine-oriented excursions. When I informed them that I'd of course not only credit them my commission but also try to sneak them in at a special industry rate, they positively burst with happy re-fusals, saying there was absolutely no need, and Dr. Pyun said something to his wife in Korean and she said something back that somehow sounded to me like Why not) Soon enough they were insisting on taking the ultraluxe package I had only briefly mentioned, and only if they paid the regular price, Afterward we had a gyro lunch at the Greek place next door, where they basically told me that they believed Paul (much unlike their two other sons, who were Ivy League grads and established attorneys) had no real prospects and they would not be surprised if I was very upset, being Theresa's father. I told them I wasn't, and that I was confident Paul's career would soon take off, and that his talents would be fully appreciated, if not in financial terms. They both sort of laughed, which I took to be their way of throwing up their hands, and Dr. Pyun said with finality, "Ahh — he's never going to be famous."

But apparently Paul is somewhat famous, at least in certain rarefied academic/literary circles, which is great if true but also means that no one I've met on a train or plane or in a waiting room has ever heard of him, much less read his books. And I do always ask. I've read his books (three novels and a chapbook of poetry), and I can say with great confidence that he's the sort of writer who can put together a nice-sounding sentence or two and does it with feeling but never quite gets to the point. Not that I've figured out what his point might be, though I get the sense that the very fact I'm missing it means I'm sort of in on it, too. I guess if you put a gun to my head I'd say he writes about The Problem with Being Sort of Himself — namely, the terribly conflicted and complicated state of being Asian and American and thoughtful and male, which would be just dandy in a slightly different culture or society but in this one isn't the hottest ticket. I know, for example, that his big New York publisher just recently parted company with him, deciding not to publish his latest manuscript, which was also passed on by the other major houses and will be issued instead by a small outfit called Seven Tentacle Press near where they live in Florence, Oregon, in a softcover format.

"Hey there, Jerry," Paul says, giving me his usual lovechild hug, wiry and sneaky strong. "What's shaking?"

"Nothing much. Congratulations, by the way."

"Thank you," Paul says, his eyes checking me. "You truly okay with this?"

"Are you kidding? I'm thrilled. Theresa is lucky to have you."

"That's what you think. She's the one with regular employ-ment."

"Of course she is," I say. "But you're the one everyone should support. You're the artist."

"The Artist Formerly Known as Publishable."

"Come on, now, you'll get this new one out and those editors in the city will come begging, checkbooks ready. There'll be piles of the book at Costco, right next to Crichton and Grisham."

"Sure," he says. "I bet there are remaindered copies at the All for $1 store, between bins of cheap nail polish and Spanish-labeled cat food."

"Well, you're wrong." But this makes me pause for a half second, as last year in fact I did find his second novel, Drastic Alter-ations, at such a place in the Walt Whitman Mall. I ended up buying all seventeen copies and giving them as Christmas gifts to the employees of Battle Brothers, only one of whom, my longtime foreman, Boots, e-mailed me with comments ("Kinda tough read for me, skip, but English wasn't my best subject.

Also, I didn't get the small print at the bottom. Thanks, anyway"). I began to reply that the "small print" was footnotes, as in a research term paper, except that this was a story with avant-garde features, but then I realized Boots might not have finished high school, or even middle school for that matter, and I just commended him for trying. Of course I would never tell Paul about any of this, as I'm sure it would plainly depress the crap out of him, and further ratify his recent thinking about how his career was going, as he's put it, from "mid-list" to "no-list."

In our last few conversations he's joked a bit too pointedly about self-publishing and getting into teaching or editing or even Hollywood screenwriting, perhaps trying to warn me that my daughter was marrying a fellow with ever-diminishing prospects. But that's the case with almost everyone in the broaden-ing swath of middle age, isn't it, that we're all fatiguing in some critical way (sex, job, family), some prior area of happy vitality and self-definition that is now instead a source of anxiety and dread.

"Hey," I say, glancing over to Theresa, who's likewise been glancing over to me while talking to her friends, "I think it's high time you introduced me to your fiancée."

"Of course, of course," Paul says, and we slide over into the group, and Theresa steps forward and gives me a light hug.

"Hello, Jerry," she says, pecking me on the cheek. Theresa has called me Jerry pretty much since her mother died. I didn't correct her then, out of fear she'd be further traumatized or something like that, letting her do whatever she wanted, and we both grew accustomed to it. Right now I'm happy she's clearly not unhappy to see me, which is a welcomed happenstance, as more often than not she'd have been simmering about something I said or did since the last time we got together, gathering up this prickly potential energy to let loose on me when I was thinking all was perfectly fine. And she looks great to me, a little fuller everywhere, her skin warm with a summer glow.

"You remember Alice Woo and Jadie Srinivasan, don't you?"

"I certainly do," I say, shaking their smooth, petite hands.

They address me as Mr. Battle, which fortunately jogs my memory of them, but not as being half as attractive and self-assured as they are now, more like gangly and foreign and shy. When they were young the three of them would sometimes play Charlie's Angels when their had slumber parties at our house, and they'd set up Jack's walkie-talkie, with me in the kitchen and them in the living room, and I'd say, "Hello, angels," which would delight them no end, and they'd act out whatever crazy story line they could come up with, and then vamp around a little bit, too, in sleazy makeup and clothes. But whenever I picked them up at the middle school after band practice or drama they slunk, as if trying to stay under the radar as they walked to the car, other girls running in from the fields in their team uniforms, ruddy-faced, hollering all, hair jouncing in shimmers of chestnut and strawberry and blond. I never drove them to the kinds of parties Jack was always invited to, mostly dropping them off for the train heading for New York or the art house cinema in Huntington Village. Of course I never said anything but wondered to myself what my daughter and her friends really thought of things, and of themselves, whether given a choice they'd remain just as they were or instead trade their black Edgar Allan Poe capes for field hockey skirts and Ray-Bans and the attentions of boys from Jack's crowd, the type who could swim (and soon enough drink) like fish and instinctively lace a pure backhand down the line. It turns out that Theresa and Alice and Jadie are exactly the sort of midnight-eyed young women you see increasingly in magazines and on billboards, which to me is a generally welcome development (being the father of such Diversity), though I'll not lie and say I'm at ease with most of the other attendant signs of our cultural march, one example being how youths from every quarter openly desire to dress as though they're either drug-addled whores or runaways or gangstas or just plain convicts, as though the whole society has embraced dereliction and criminality as its defining functions, with Theresa of course once pointing out to me that decades of governmental neglect and corporate corruption and pilfering have resulted in this hard-edged nihilistic street-level expression. At the risk of sounding like my father, I'll say that her reading of this doesn't really wash with me, though I have recently begun to accept her notions about the ineluctable creep in the realm, that the very ground beneath my feet is shifting with hardly my notice, to travel invisibly, with or without me.

Though I did actually utter "My bad" the other day to Miles Quintana, after messing up a cruise reservation. So maybe I'm moving along, too.

"Do you remember," Theresa says to me, "how the three of us melted the top of the bathroom vanity with a curling iron, and you came home to all those fire engines in the driveway?"

"I don't. Did I get upset?"

"I thought you were going to have a coronary," Alice Woo says. "I'll admit right now that it was all my fault. I desperately wanted curls, just like these guys."

Jadie cries, "We practically fried your hair. But it wouldn't take."

"You needed Jeri-Curl," I say, trying my best. The girls chuckle, Paul laughing loud in his special way, a nasally yuck-yuck.

"You know, Mr. Battle, I was totally afraid of you," Jadie now says. She's very dark-complected, with immense brown eyes and a tiny silver stud piercing in her nose. Later on I'll learn that at merely thirty-one she's chief corporate counsel for a software company, where I suppose piercings and tattoos are a-okay, and maybe recommended issue, like French cuffs used to be. "Theresa can tell you. I'd always ask if you were going to be home. I thought you didn't like us coming over."

"That's not true," I say. "I was always happy for you guys to hang out."

Theresa says, matter-of-factly, "Jerry just didn't like it when people were having fun and he wasn't."

Alice offers, "That's understandable, isn't it?"

"You got that," I say.

"Sure," Theresa says, "but for a parent?"

This momentarily quells the moment, not to mention cutting me deep, because of course she's right in both principle and practice. I've never sat by well when others were at play, not when I was five, or fifteen, or fifty. I'd like to believe this was a question of my desiring involvement and connection, rather than of envy or selfishness. I'd like to blame my ever-indulging, spoiling, obliging mother (God bless her), or my wonderful brother Bobby for guiltlessly using up the years of his brief life; I'd like to blame my father for giving me almost everything I required but really nothing I wanted, but that's the story of us all, isn't it, or of my particular American generation, or maybe just me, and nothing one really needs to hear about again.

"Though to be honest," my daughter now says, actually loop-ing her arm into the crook of mine, "at least Jack and I were instructed by the master. Paul can tell you what an ornery bitch I can be, if I see he's doing a crossword when I'm washing the dishes."

"She once squirted me with the Palmolive," he says. "Right on my pajamas."

Jadie nods. "But our Theresa was like that from the beginning. When we played Barbies, Alice and I always had to keep our dolls in the camper, cleaning and making the beds, while Theresa's Barbie was outside tending the campfire, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows."

"My Barbie was chef de cuisine. You were my femmes de chambre. There had to be a clear order to things."

"This is sounding very sexy," Eunice says, flanked by Rosario, who is bearing a tray of canapes. Eunice explains they are "po-lenta blinis" topped with Sevruga caviar and lobster meat and chived creme fraiche. I'm sure Eunice did put together at least one or two model canapes, as I witnessed once at another party, with Rosario making the rest. Everybody takes one, Rosario nudging me with the tray edge to grab a couple more. I comply.

"Incredible. Did you really make these?" Alice asks, to which Eunice smiles modestly but distinctly. Rosario drifts across the massive deck, to offer them to the others.

"It wasn't so difficult. The key is good components."

"We would have been happy with carrot sticks and onion dip," Theresa says, "but I'm glad you went all out."

"Oh please, it's nothing special."

This is true. Ever since she and Jack got married I've never had so much Muscovy duck and Dungeness crab and Belon oys-ters coursing through the old iron pipes. Rita cooked fancy but always with modest ingredients, being loath to use anything that cost over $3 a pound. With Eunice it's only the rare and cher, artisanal meats and breads and cheeses, exotic flown-in fishes and fruits, wines from exclusive "garage" vintners, coffee from secret hillsides in Kenya and Nepal and Vermont. As she says, it's all about the components, which indeed are often wondrously tasty, reminding one of the fundamental goodness of the plain and natural; but there's still, I think, an even more satisfying gut-strum in what someone can magically do with a little herb and spice and heat, Rita's pulled-pork casserole being exquisite proof of that. Eunice can surely wow almost anybody with her deft arrangements, but I will swear there's a love to be found in your basic Crock-Pot alchemy, which even the sweetest lobster tail or dollop of sturgeon eggs cannot easily provide.

"I still cook the way Jerry taught me," Theresa says. "Remove pork chops from package, generously salt and pepper, bake at 375 degrees until there are no signs of moisture."

"Amazingly, it works with any meat or fish," Paul says.

"Fowl, too."

"Now, I wasn't that bad," I say, mostly for the benefit of Eunice, for Alice and Jadie were sometimes actually there, watching me along with Theresa as I fumbled through the cabinets for the Shake 'n Bake and Hamburger Helper before Rita showed up. I couldn't afford a full-time nanny, and Battle Brothers was sinking fast, and I'd get home at six to cranky, hungry kids and burrow through the freezer for something that wasn't too brown-gray at the edges. "You have to realize I never had to cook until Theresa's mother died. Then it was every night I had to come up with something."

"At least until I took over," Theresa says.

"You were very advanced."

Eunice asks, "Why didn't you have Jack cook? He's older."

"I. don't know. I guess Jack just didn't seem up to it."

"Jerry was afraid of feminizing him," Theresa says, right on cue. And here comes the rest. But she looks up at me and appears to wink — which is the tiniest thing but wholly a salve. What she says isn't quite right, though, which I can say with some surety because I wasn't completely unaware of what I was doing back then. The fact of the matter was I didn't want Jack to have to think of his dead mother every night, at least in a ritualized way, which in my thinking was sure to happen if he had to don an apron and fry up hamburgers. For a year or so after she died he hardly said a word, he was just a kid with eyes, and as Theresa seemed the sturdier of the two in almost all respects, I made an executive decision to have him do other chores like repainting the back fence and raking leaves and hosing out the garbage cans, which he never once complained about, and I like to think it was the bracing physical activity that eventually snapped him out of it, though I'm probably mistaken on that one.

Some of Theresa's college friends (retro eyeglasses, thrift-store chic clothes, goatees galore) come around, and the talk gets a bit too pop-cultural and swervy and superallusive for me, and so I wander about the deck, briefly mingling with couples who are obviously friends of the hosts. They're decent enough people, well-heeled youngish parents with stiff drinks padding about in upturned collars and Belgian driving loafers, crooning incessantly about the cost of beach houses and Jag convertibles and nannies, the basic tune being why all this good living should be so dear (though of course if it weren't, what would they take such fascination in, or not-so-sly pride?). One magnificently bronzed, lean-armed woman named Kit sits me down and practically goes stone by stone through the immense landscaping project she is having done on her North Fork property, the massive excavation and Teletubbies berming, the football-field-length retaining walls of Vermont slate, the 2000-square-foot limestone patio and the bluestone-decked and — bottomed pool, and the literally hundreds of mature shrubs and trees, the job (which Battle Brothers Excalibur is fortunately doing) to ring up at nearly three hundred grand alone. The recession is not of her world. Kit isn't complaining or angling for special treatment, but rather simply telling me her story, as if she is some Old Testament figure chosen to endure an epochal test from which she might someday emerge righteous and whole.

By the time Kit is all but strapping me into her Mercedes SUV to drive me out east to her place in Southold and show me the work-in-progress, Jack pats me on the shoulder, having returned from the store. Kit practically leaps into his arms, hugging him a bit too firmly for even a pleased and grateful customer, and I'm sure it's nothing even though you still hear stories these days of people offering more than loads of money to get good contractors to sign up for a job. In my day you had to dress nice and chat for as long as the customer wanted when you showed up to give an estimate, parking yourself for a long spell at a lady's kitchen table trying not to stare at the widening gap in her robe and listen to whatever she needed to tell you about her never-home husband or sick mother or super-rotten kids, knowing that nine times out of ten you wouldn't get the job. Jack chastely pecks her on the cheek and excuses us, saying that the Battle men are being requested inside, and Kit tugs at his hand, reflexively unwilling to let him go.

I trail Jack into the house. He's just a shade shorter than I am, 6'1" or so, and built a bit differently, being lower-slung than am, his torso longer and thicker and his gait just like Daisy's was, meaning he moves in a slightly bowlegged fashion, knees pointing outward, a little bit like a pet iguana we once had, their similarities something I used to tease him about. He's got a hockey player's body, though he never played that, sticking to football and lacrosse, sports in which he excelled. As already mentioned, he's very good-looking, probably professionally so, and I can say with.some pride that he's got my best features, which are a strong chin and a thick tousle of naturally wavy hair and those sparkly eyes that some people have, speckled (and in our case, hazel-colored) irises that certain folks not-so-brightly wonder aloud about — namely, whether they're bad for your vision. But it's flattering, anyway, and as Jack knows well enough is almost unfairly attractive to the opposite sex, for really all you need to do is just meet someone's gaze and hold for a moment, like the first time I met his mother, or when I met Rita, take a long, slow-shuttered picture, and watch the thing steadily develop. I go into all this mostly because I find myself admiring Jack and Theresa more and more, not so much for the people they are (they are fine people) but for their physical qualities, and I know you'll think I do so because ultimately it's all about me, my legacy and what I've bestowed upon them and so on, but it's just the opposite. Perhaps it's seeing them both here today, in full-blown adulthood, but the notion occurs that whatever I have given them is in fact very little, and diminishes with each day, and that it's already happened that they define me probably more now than I do them, which of course is just as well.

In the kitchen Nidia points us toward the powder room saying it's Pop, my father, who I didn't realize was already here but of course had to be the whole time. Eunice is talking to him through the locked door, Rosario standing by. When she sees us she steps back and says he's been moaning as though he's in pain but won't let anyone in. Just then Pop yells, "I don't need anybody. You people go away" He says people like we're a crowd on a subway platform, nobody he cares to know.

Jack tries the knob and says, "Come on, Pop. Let's open the door now."

"Everything stinks!" is his answer. For some reason this is my cue to make a try.

"We just want to know that you're not hurt, Pop. Are you hurt?"

"Is that you, Jerome?"

"Yeah."

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Outside on the deck."

"Well, then, everybody clear out. I only want Jerome to help me. I want my son."

"You still have to open the door for me."

"I can't," he says, weakly now. "I can't."

Jack pulls out his fat Swiss Army knife (which I taught him from early on to carry always) and plucks out its embedded plastic toothpick for me, so I can push in the lock.

"Okay, everybody scram," I say loudly. "I'll take it from here." Jack opens his hands and I wave him and Eunice and Rosario away, as well as the few kids — none from our clan—

who've gathered in the hallway to rubberneck. When they've all gone back to the party I tell my father I'm coming in. He grunts, and I click out the tumbler.

My father's on the floor, his pants around his ankles. He tells me to lock the door again. I do. And then I realize that everything does stink, something fierce, like surly death itself, or maybe worse.

"All those damn goat cheese toasts gave me the runs," he says.

Then more sheepishly, "I ran out of paper." The cabinet door to the vanity is ajar, a couple rolls of tissue spilled out onto the floor.

He's made a mess of himself, soiling the edge of the seat and basin. His nose is bleeding. I try to sit him up but he groans hard when I lift him. I'm afraid it's his leg, or worse, his hip. He shrugs me off. "Goddammit, Jerome, just help clean me up first."

The stuff is all over his undershorts and slacks, riding up on his lower back and side. It's no great leap for me to think of the days when Jack and Theresa were swaddled babes, to remember carefully pinning tight their cloth diapers, holding the ends of the dirty ones and flushing them in the toilet, but this job is on another scale entirely, like in middle school when the science teacher brought out models of the Earth and Jupiter. Who could have imagined the actual difference? I know Pop has been having some control difficulty recently, enough so that the case nurse at Ivy Acres has recommended that he wear incontinence pants all the time, to prevent accidents and "needless embarrassment." I didn't bring it up with him, because I know where he'd tell me to stick it, though I note to myself that I'll soon try.

After taking off his soiled clothes I'm lucky to find a wash-cloth in the vanity, but it's awkward to use the bar of soap to clean him properly, and instantly understanding this Pop points to the spray bottle of Fantastik beneath the sink basin. I tell him it might burn his skin and would undoubtedly be un-healthy in any case but he says, annoyed, "You think. I care about genetic damage or something? Go ahead."

The act of which is very strange, spraying him down like he's some mildewed vinyl couch brought up from the cellar. I can tell that the foam isn't sitting too well with him, his tough olive skin beginning to glimmer pink, but he doesn't wince or say a word. He just lies with his big squared head down on the tiled floor, like a sick horse or mule, not looking at me, which is a great mercy for us both. The sharp industrial scent of the solvent is an unlikely balm, too, and I clean him as quickly and thoroughly as I can. When I sit him up there's a huge grapey bruise on his upper thigh just below his hip. His wrist and elbow still sting from the short fall off the toilet but he says he can get up. I tuck my shoulder beneath his armpit and we rise.

I feel the dense weight of his limbs, more of him now than there ever was, the last few years of sedentary living accruing to him like unpicked fruit, this useless bounty, and I think it's not only his body but his mind, ever cramming with unrequited notions and thoughts. As his clothes are ruined and I'm no doubt the closest in size, I take off my pants and give them to him, so he can get upstairs and shower off.

As I open the powder room door he says, "What the hell are you gonna do, walk around in your skivvies?"

"I'll get some sweatpants from Jack."

"Sounds like that's all that boy's going to be wearing, if things don't get better,"

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you think? Some of us still call over there every day, you know, even though we retired a thousand years ago."

"And?"

"Sal said they've been having cash flow problems. They barely made payroll the last two weeks."

Sal is the bookkeeper for Battle Brothers, and has been since I was a kid. "Jack hasn't said anything to me."

"You ever talk shop with him?"

I don't offer an answer, and my father snorts knowingly. I still care about the business, though certainly not the way he does, and then never enough to shadow Jack all the time, nosing over his shoulder to armchair quarterback. In fact I'd say from the very beginning I tried not to mention Battle Brothers if I could help it, for just those reasons, and then partly in the hope that he would eventually pursue his own career. But I suppose such strategies are flawed and hubristic in the realm of family life and relations, that no matter what you do or don't do in the service of good intentions your aims will get turned about and around and furiously boomerang homeward. I don't doubt that one of the reasons Jack stayed on with Battle Brothers was that I exerted so little pressure on him, probably causing him to wonder why I wasn't bothering, and as a result eliciting in recent years his ever-redoubling efforts in expanding the enterprises of our family concern.

But what my father purports — and it is just that until proven true, given his mental state — deeply troubles me, as I've pon-dered how densely luxurious this house of Jack's has become, a veritable thicket of money-spending; I know for a fact that while there are still a handful of Eighth Wonder of the World jobs like Kit's, there aren't the ready scores of smaller, more modest projects that normally keep our manpower and machin-ery humming at near capacity. Jack is clearly a natural at broadening Battle Brothers' reach — unlike me, he's always been pretty fearless in exploring the unknown and untried, like the time when he was six or seven and without pause scrambled down a drainage pipe to retrieve a baseball I'd overthrown— but it's uncertain how or even if he'll understand that he needs to pull back in slow times, quickly beat a retreat, and if I've bestowed anything on him I hope it's my quick trigger for cutting one's losses, in business always and maybe also in life.

With my help Pop limps through the kitchen to go up the back stairwell, Eunice and Jack and Rosario standing by, just in case.

Tyler, my sharp granddaughter of four, asks no one in particular why I'm wearing only my "panties," and why it stinks like poop.

"Your grandpa Jerome had an accident," Pop whispers to her, winking and paddling her behind. "But don't spread it around."

"Skanky," Tyler sneers, regarding me with what is already a distinctly teenage disdain. I note to myself that I must speak to Eunice about what the kids are watching all day and night.

"Help us upstairs," I say to Jack. He leans under Pop's other side and the three of us trudge upward trying to get our steps in sync. After we finally get Pop in the shower, Jack lends me a pair of Gore-Tex running pants, and we sit in the living area of the master bedroom, the double bathroom doors (of Jack's toilette) swept wide so we can keep an eye on Pop in the shower, who is the picture of old manhood as he lathers up behind the un-frosted safety glass: a hairy; saggy pear on legs. We offered to help but he growled, "You'll get plenty of me before I'm done,"

meaning not now but in the course of his remaining days. This is true, on many levels, though none I can really pause and think deeply about now All I know is that today's episode is merely the beginning of the beginning, like the first intemperate days of winter, which always seem like mildest tonic later on.

While we wait, Jack's grabbed a couple beers for us from the under-counter refrigerator in the kitchenette section of the bedroom. There's a short run of cabinets and a microwave and an A L O F T 9 3

electric stovetop and even a mini-dishwasher, the effect being of a studio apartment, or grad student housing, though of course a lot nicer than that. Basically, he and Eunice wanted to be able to have a snack or make a cup of coffee without having to trek downstairs and to the other end of the house where the kitchen is, which seems reasonable enough until you realize that this is the kind of lifestyle detail that brought down the railroad barons and junk bond kings and dot-commers and whoever else will next rocket up and flame out in miserable infamy.

"You're good to throw Theresa and Paul this party." I say.

"She seems pretty happy, don't you think?"

"For once in her life," Jack says.

"I suppose so," I reply, acknowledging the truth of his state-ment, but also caught off guard by its unexpected edge. "How's everything with you?"

"Couldn't be better."

"The house looks great."

"It's all good. It's all working."

"I guess business must have slowed down a bit."

Jack takes a long pull from his beer bottle. "Some."

"If you ever want me to come in it's no problem. I have all the time in the world."

"Okay."

"I'll ride along with the guys, if you want. Or I can even help Sal with the books."

Jack sits up. "You think Sal needs your help?"

"Why not? He's practically Pop's age. He's got to be making mistakes with that abacus of his. He's still using it, I bet."

"He does," Sack says. "But I check everything over, and everything's fine."

"I'm just saying, that's all."

"Sure you are."

"I am."

"Good, Dad. It's done. Really. It's all good."

There's nothing to counter with, mostly because Jack is a Battle and as a Battle is not unlike me, and thus endowed with a wide range of people-shedding skills, the foremost of which is how to curtail further talk when the talk gets most awkward, and so potentially perilous. Ask Rita, Kelly, maybe you could ask Daisy if she were here, ask Eunice about Jack, ask them all how difficult the footing becomes, how suddenly sheer the incline. Theresa, to be fair, manifests much of the same impassability; though her terrain features the periodic (and unaccidental) rock slide, an avalanche of obstructing analysis and critique and pure reason.

Pop curses from the shower, and we both nearly jump, though it's just him turning the handle the wrong way for a long second and getting all hot water instead of none. He's okay, if a bit scalded, and Jack gingerly helps him towel off, a splash of pink on one of his shoulders and upper chest. Pop tells us he's tired and wants to take a nap. Jack gives him a T-shirt and we walk him to the bed, tuck him in. Is this what growing old is about: another small though dangerous moment, somehow survived?

Downstairs the kitchen is crowded with people, as it appears everyone has come in from the deck, and Eunice, now seeing me and Jack, gently rings her Champagne glass with a spoon.

The murmur and chatter subside. Rosario and Nidia are quickly going about offering fresh flutes and refilling others.

"We're so thrilled to welcome Theresa and Paul back home.

And we are especially happy on this, the wonderful occasion of their wedding engagement." Eunice beams at Theresa and Paul, who seem tickled enough but also a shade uneasy, as acadernes and other intellectualized types sometimes are in real-life situations not squarely cast to be ironic.

"I'd like to propose a toast on the recent announcement of their nuptials, as well as offer our home as the place where Theresa and Paul and their guests can rendezvous whenever next year they'd like to celebrate the wedding. As all of us old married folks know, the time up through the wedding and honeymoon is the sweetest of all. Sad but true! So may you savor it!

Cheers!"

A call of "Cheers!" goes around, and while everyone bottoms-up I notice that Theresa and Paul are more conferencing than celebrating, Paul shaking his head to whatever Theresa is insisting upon, which is what I imagine anyone dealing regularly and intimately with my daughter must learn to do. Theresa tries to get everyone's attention and Eunice, now seeing that she wants to speak, tinkles her glass again. Theresa nods.

"Paul and I want to thank my sister-in-law for the always luxurious party," Theresa says, her voice low, almost somber.

"We thank Rosario and Nidia for their time and patience. And of course we thank Jack, too, for giving all three complete and total control." This elicits a laugh, and Jack, who's next to me, glumly raises his beer bottle.

"Paul and I wanted to let all of you know, too, that we're not going to get married next year. Don't worry. We're getting married this fall, probably in October."

"That's too soon!" Eunice cries. She's obviously been counting on producing the whole affair, as she does with everything having to do with our clan. (I should quickly note that Eunice is the only child of two very successful and prickly Bostonian parents, which for me is explanation enough for why she's such a zealous and tyrannical arranger.)

Theresa says, "On the plane we decided we didn't want to wait, and while we were never going to have a big wedding it'll be a very small ceremony now. But if I can take up Eunice's generous offer right here on the spot, I hope she'll have all of us back in a few months, for a little celebration."

"Certainly you can," Eunice says, doing her best not to sound curt. "We'd be thrilled."

Now Alice and Jadie and the rest of Theresa's friends pinch in on her and Paul for a new round of congratulatory hugs, and when I murmur to Jack about Theresa maybe being pregnant he responds with a blithe "Who knows?" which wouldn't normally bother me but does now with an unexpected sharpness. I shoot him a look but he's already drifted off, to help Nidia gather some used glasses and plates. Jack is considerate and generous like this and always has been, but if I have to tell the truth about him I would have to say he's never demonstrated the same feeling for me or Theresa that he does for his club buddies and employees or even strangers at the mall. And while I can try to accept our relationship as less than ideal (because of the usual father-son issues of superdefended masculinity and cycles of expectation/resentment and then the one of his mother suddenly dying when he was young, for which he squarely and silently blames yours truly), it pains me to the core to see how meager his expressions are for his younger sister, how bloodless and standard, as if she's merely a person jammed next to him in the middle seat on a plane, a reality and mild inconvenience to be affably addressed and elbow-jockeyed from time to time. Of course I'd always hoped and maybe too quickly assumed that they would cling for dear life to each other after what happened to their mother, but really just the opposite occurred, even as A L O F T

young as they were, both always heading to their rooms before and after supper, both always shutting the doors.

After the lifting hubbub of the news and the subsequent enervation, people start to leave, I walk by and see Paul sitting alone in the empty-shelved library, swirling a glass of white wine. I've already hugged and kissed Theresa, who hugged me quite vigorously back, whispering that we'd all talk later on, tomorrow maybe. Before I could ask what about, she begged off for a quick ride to the 7-Eleven with Jadie and Alice to buy bridal magazines, for what reason she wasn't sure, though citing her interest in cultural fodder and ritual. Yeah, yeah. She said she'd be back after dinner, as they were going to hang out for a while, and it struck me how pleased I was to see her acting so plainly girlish and silly.

Paul says, "Pull up a chair, Jerry. You want some?"

He pours me a glass of Eunice's "house" chardonnay, which it literally is, as a winery out on the North Fork sticks her own handmade labels on her annual ten-case order. We clink and sip and sit without talking, which is unusual for us. Paul is one of the few people who can always draw me out, and not just in a social, good-guy kind of way. I don't know why exactly; though perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he's not like me at all, that we come from dissimilar peoples and times and tradi-tions and hold nearly opposite views on politics and the world, and so have neither the subtle pressure nor the dulling effect of instant concord, an ease and comfort I've enjoyed all my life but find increasingly wanting now Maybe I'm a racialist (or racist?) and simply like the fact that he's different, that he's short and yellow and brainy (his words, originally), and that he makes me somehow different, whether I really wish to be or not.

"You're probably wondering what's going on with us," Paul says.

"Not really," I say. "You kids can get married whenever the hell you want, in my book. And I was going to tell Theresa but I might as well tell you. I'm going to give you twenty-five thousand for the wedding, which I set aside a while ago."

"You know we'll probably just go to a justice, of the peace."

"Doesn't matter to me. The money's yours, to use as you please."

"Well, thanks. But it's not necessary."

"Listen. Maybe you want to use it for a down payment on a real house — you know, one that'll be big enough for all of you."

"We've never needed much room."

"Little ones take up a lot more space than you think," I say.

"I suppose that's so," he replies, though not in a way that inspires a load of confidence, and I'm reminded that these two have very narrow expertise, like probably only knowing how to prepare milk for cappuccinos.

"I'm just suggesting that you keep in mind where you two will be three or four years from now What you might want. I'll always help you out, you know. Jack's doing better than fine, and so I figure I can give you and Theresa whatever you need, funds included. Kids are expensive, too."

Paul has a funny look on his face, a sort of smile if a smile weren't necessarily a wonderful thing, as though I've definitely said something awkward, and suddenly he's got his head in his hands, and barely shuddering with what must be joy, still holding his glass just now sloshing over with wine. I half expect this, given the combination of bardic and new age male sensitivity, and I reach over and pat him on the back, saying how eager I am to be a grandfather again, how happy, though wishing now that they weren't living clear on the other side of the country.

"Is it that obvious?" Paul says, looking up at me now, his eyes red.

"No, but this shotgun wedding announcement is a clue."

He chuckles, and we tip our glasses. I say, "You're welcome to stay with me until the wedding, if you like. Unless you have to go right back to Oregon."

"No, we're not doing that," Paul says, a bit uncomfortably.

"We were hoping to hang around for a while, actually. Theresa has the fall term off, and she misses being back East." "I'm happy to hear that."

"Eunice wants us to stay here but I know Theresa would prefer being back at your house."

"Really?"

"Sure," Paul says, "as long as it's all right with you."

"I said you're welcome, didn't I?"

"Just want to make sure."

"It'll be great, like summer vacation again," I say, warmed instantly by the idea that Theresa might ever choose to stay with me at 1 Cold Creek Lane. "Hey, the three of us can take an old-fashioned car trip somewhere."

"Okay," Paul says. "But can't we all fit in your plane?"

"It'd be a little tight. And I'm not sure I like the pressure, of piloting the next generations."

"I thought going by car was the most dangerous way to travel."

"Private planes are probably a close second."

"If there's anybody I'd trust, Jerry, it would be you."

"Oh yeah?" I say, steeling myself for the inevitable warm and fuzzy stage of our conversations, which I in fact have begun to half look forward to, and probably now nudge along, unconsciously and not.

"Certainly. You're the sort of fellow who's totally reliable, in the mechanical arts. I think you're an engineer in your soul.

You have that beautiful machine expertise, that beautiful machine faith."

"I've just been a dirt-mover, Paul. But thank you."

He raises his glass, and we clink. Suddenly I realize that Paul may be a little drunk, or a lot drunk, I don't know, because he normally doesn't partake of more than a glass, for the reason that many of his brethren seem not to, as they turn beet red in the face after a couple of sips, looking as if they've played three sets of tennis in the tropics, teetering on some sweaty brink.

"Well, we don't have to fly," Paul says, brightly. "How about let's drive to D.C. You can give us the Jerry Battle special tour of the Air and Space."

Now he's talking, and I'm reminded yet again of one of the many reasons that I always enjoy his company: Paul is sensitive to what invigorates a guy like me, the kind of acknowledgment that really makes me levitate with a foursquare satisfaction, which is what you feel when you believe you've been thoroughly understood.

I say, "You know it's going to be great having you guys around for a little while. Just the idea makes me wish you didn't live so damn far away. Maybe you can move back. There are plenty of nice colleges around here. Stonybrook's just a short drive."

"Theresa just started her tenure track at Cascadia State. But we're not against coming back East, if there's an opening for her. It certainly doesn't matter where I live. I can write myself into obscurity just about anywhere."

"Hey, you have to stop talking like that, Paul," I say. "I know the literature-making business isn't the sort of thing where you have to be all rah-rah and gung-ho, but it can't help to run yourself down like that."

"You'd be surprised."

"But you're not the miserable angst-ridden writer type. At least not from where I'm sitting. You like the sunlight and kidding around and you genuinely like people. Everybody who knows you knows that. I'm not trying to give you advice, but it seems to me that you could put your easygoing nature to work for you."

"You mean write fluffy coffee-table books?"

"Don't ask me. But hey, come to think of it, Costco is full of them, and people snap them up like they do the twenty-four-count muffin packs. I know you're not in it for the money, but I have to assume the publishers axe."

"You got that right. The one exception is my new publisher.

The patron of my new press does it solely for vanity, so she can lord it over the rest of her Aspen circle that she cultivates boutique international writers."

"See, you're doing it again."

"I'm sorry, Jerry," Paul says, sliding deeper and deeper into the club chair. His face and neck are mottled several shades of lobster red-pink, a pretty clear sign that his genetically challenged liver has begun bucking this unusual overtime shift. I could gently chide him, but what the heck, for it's one of those seriously fortunate pleasures, is it not, to sit down with your (soon-to-be) son-in-law and a bottle of smooth, buttery vino and breezily tie one on and not have to swoop and dodge the baggage-strewn recriminations of a shared past (as you'd have with your own son), but rather wishfully opine on what joys the coming years might bring with unflinching sentimentality that says nothing is beyond our grasp, that the ceiling's limitless.

And in this spirit, I say, unqualified, "Hey, Theresa looks great, really great."

Paul takes a big quaffing gulp. Lets the medicine go down.

He answers, "She does, doesn't she?"

"Her mother got just like that when she was pregnant. I think just before a woman is showing is when she's most beautiful.

Like she's just stepped out of a hot shower. Lucky for me, Daisy showed very late. How far along is she? It can't be too much."

"She's not well, Jerry," Paul says. "I hate to tell you this.

Theresa didn't really want to just yet. But I told her we had to tell you."

"Hold on. There's something wrong with the baby?"

"The baby is fine." Paul tries to smile, or not to, I can't tell.

He says, "It's Theresa."

"Oh yeah? You better tell me."

"She has something."

I don't say anything. I don't want to say anything, but I say, as if I'm out on a job with the crew, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Paul stares down into his wineglass. "It's a cancer, Jerry"

"Jesus, Paul. You're fucking kidding me. Where is it?"

"It's sort of not that kind. Besides, right now, she wouldn't want me to say."

"I don't care what she wants: You tell me now."

Paul takes another big gulp. He says, hardly saying it, "It's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma."

"What the hell is that?"

"It's cancer in the lymph nodes."

"But she'll get treatment, she's getting treatment."

He shakes his head. "We've been to every doctor in Oregon and Washington. We're seeing someone at Yale Medical School tomorrow. But I think it's going to be the same story. It's not something they can operate on, and the chemo and radiation would hurt the baby."

"So what the hell are you two doing? What the hell is this?"

"She doesn't want to hurt the baby, Jerry," he says. "We've fought over this and fought over this and I haven't been able to change her mind. She's going to try to wait until after the baby's born. It's due in December."

"She can have another baby!" I say. "She's only thirty, for heaven's sake! Am I missing something here? You can have a half dozen more, if you wanted."

"There's the problem of the chemo causing infertility. That's not certain, though. But really, it's that she's decided she wants this one. You talk to her tomorrow. Please talk to her. I can't anymore. Right now I just have to support her, Jerry, because there's no other way."

"Dammit, Paul, this is all fucking crazy. You're both fucking crazy!"

"Don't you think I know that?"

"Oh fuck it!"

We're suddenly shouting at one another, standing toe to toe, and I realize that I've gripped my wineglass so tight that it's snapped at the stem. One of the points is digging into my palm.

I'm stuck and bleeding. I drop the two pieces onto the chair cushion. Paul reaches for a box of tissues and gathers me up a wad, and when I press it I get a sharp, ugly surge of that old feeling again, when Daisy was so lovely and so fragile, the feeling like I want to break or ruin something. Something always need.