Love, Dad

14

At the breakfast table on New Year’s Day, Lissie casually mentioned that she was infested with crabs, and that maybe they should all get something to wash with or whatever, because they’d all been doing a lot of hugging and kissing the night before. Jamie went immediately to the phone and called Harry Landau, who’d been their family physician ever since they’d moved to Rutledge. It was 1:00 P.M. but Harry was still asleep. Alice Landau asked if this was an emergency. Jamie said No, it wasn’t, but he’d appreciate it if Harry could get back to him as soon as possible. Harry returned the call at two-thirty.

“Happy New Year,” he said.

“Happy New Year,” Jamie said. “I need some help, Harry.”

“What with? A hangover?”

“I only wish. Crabs,” Jamie said.

“Crabs?”

“Yeah. And head lice, too.”

“Where you been sleeping, Jamie?” Harry said, and laughed.

“Well, it’s—” He felt suddenly embarrassed. Crabs were associated with... well... with sexual intercourse. He felt suddenly as if his daughter had come home from India with a venereal disease. “What should we do for them, Harry?”

“Put ’em on a long leash, and take ’em for a walk,” Harry said, and laughed again. “Are you serious about this?”

“I am,” Jamie said.

“Crabs,” Harry said, and Jamie could visualize him shaking his head. “Well, here’s what you do.”

What you did, Jamie discovered, was you went to the Rutledge drugstore for two bottles of lotion (one for Lissie, one for himself and Connie) only to learn that the drugstore was closed on New Year’s Day, and then what you did was you drove to the Talmadge alternate listed on a card hanging in the window, and you listened to the Talmadge pharmacist warning you about getting any of this stuff in your eyes, “Because what it is, you see, is an insecticide, you understand? I mean, this is just as strong as anything you’d go spraying on a cockroach or a spider, you understand? I mean, those are insects you’ve got crawling around on your body, and if you want to get rid of ’em you’ve got to use an insecticide. So be careful of your eyes.” Jamie itched all the way home.

The directions said that they were to apply the lotion to every patch of hair on their bodies and then wash it off the next day. In the tub the following night, vigorously scrubbing her groin, Connie said, “I haven’t had such action down here in a long time,” a comment Jamie let pass. He simply nodded and waited his turn at the tub.

The crabs, as it turned out, were the least of the joys she’d brought home from India. They did not learn until the Tuesday after her return that there was an open sore the size of a half-dollar on the instep of her right foot. Jamie rushed her over to Harry’s office that same morning. Harry glanced at the festering sore, said it looked like a cut that had got infected, examined it more carefully and told them exactly how lucky they were: the wound was on the verge of becoming gangrenous; another week or so, and Lissie might have lost the foot. In the car on the way home, Jamie dared to say, “You didn’t take very good care of yourself in India, did you?” Lissie shrugged and replied, “I got that cut in Brussels, on the way home.” Jamie was silent the rest of the way to the house, trying to understand his own feelings.

In Harry’s office, he’d initially felt only embarrassment. “You remember, Liss, don’t you, Harry? She’s just back from India, I thought you ought to take a look at that sore on her foot.” Harry scanning her from top to bottom, the realization in his eyes that here was the crab-carrier: “Yes, how are you, Lissie, good to see you.” Jamie’s embarrassment heightened by her appearance, the threadbare jeans, the unpressed blouse she’d bought in India, the black velvet vest she’d been wearing on New Year’s Eve (“Turkish,” she’d told them. “Cost only four lira”), the tattered sandals she’d insisted on wearing without stockings or socks even though there was a pus-dripping sore on her right foot and the temperature outside stubbornly refused to budge higher than eighteen degrees. The embarrassment dissipated to be replaced by fear when he learned how dangerously close to amputation her foot had been, and then anger at the thought of her allowing this to happen to herself, didn’t she know there was a foot attached to her body, hadn’t she realized the sore was badly infected, hadn’t she even thought of going to a doctor, weren’t there any doctors in India?

“Weren’t there any doctors in India?” he asked, as they went into the house.

“I told you I got it in Brussels,” she said, and hung her fighter-pilot’s jacket (“Railway Lost in London,” she’d told them, “cost only eight pounds”) on the rack in the entrance hall, and then went directly upstairs to her room.

Having her home was, in many respects, rather like not having her home. She spent a great deal of time in her room, listening to the rock-and-roll records she’d missed all the while she was abroad. “It’s like having friends you can always come back to and understand,” she told them at dinner one night. She was eating vegetables and only vegetables, and whereas she rarely told them much about her travels — she still had not revealed all the details, for example, of the Iranian border incident, or the attack of the wild dogs in Shahnur, or the “living in caves and whatnot” in the Himalayas or any of the other “many, many incredible things” that had happened to her in the eight months she’d been gone — she did tell them why she’d decided to become a vegetarian.

“It was after coming through Iran, and then Afghanistan, and Pakistan, where all we were eating day and night was this broiled mutton. Well, it suddenly occurred to me that what I was eating was sheep! I mean, this was ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb!’I was eating — and besides it tasted lousy. So I figured I could do without it entirely, I mean without the kind of meat you could get over there. But I haven’t had an urge for any other kind of meat, either, I mean I’m not desperate for a steak or a hamburger or anything like that. Besides, it makes me feel a lot cleaner inside.”

To her parents, she continued to look... well... there was no other word for how they thought she looked: dirty. On the outside, at least. She rarely combed her hair, and even after she’d showered it seemed a tangle of knots, a mare’s nest sitting on top of her narrow face, and framing it in tatters. She wore no makeup except the kohl she’d brought home from India, and this she applied in heavy black outline around each eye for a rather spooky effect. Her tent dresses were never pressed, her jeans were worn straight from the dryer, her feet were invariably bare and invariably dirty. But inside, she claimed to be immaculate, and often went into rapturous explanations of her sanitary routines, reminding them of the letter that had detailed all the symptoms of her dysentery.

“When I get up each morning,” she said, “I go to the toilet first thing. That’s something I learned from this girl I met in India after I split with Paul, Marjorie Kildare, who’s buying and shipping the stuff I’ll be selling here. You’ve got to get all the shit and piss out of your system first thing in the morning, otherwise it remains in your body poisoning you. There’s no sense avoiding meat or other unclean foods, if you keep all the shit and piss inside, do you see? So what you do, you empty your bladder and move your bowels first thing in the morning, to get all the poisons out of your system. Then you shower to wash off any residue that’s clinging to your anus or your vagina, and then you’re clean both inside and out.”

(So how come you get crabs? Jamie wondered.)

These conversations usually took place at dinner, the one meal at which Lissie joined them with any regularity. She invariably slept till noon, sometimes later, on occasion not rising till two or three in the afternoon. She would eat a “breakfast” of raisins and skim milk, and then would walk out in her robe, barefooted, to check the mailbox, eagerly awaiting word from her partner in Bombay, who, Jamie was sure, had absconded with the money left in her trust. He knew better than to mention such a thought to Lissie, nor did he or Connie ever comment on the lingering smell of stale marijuana in her room. Her friends came and went, most of them girlfriends, every now and then a boy the Crofts knew. In a rare intimacy one night at the dinner table, Lissie told them that Sally Landers was “doing speed.” When Jamie said he was going to the phone right that minute to call her parents, Lissie warned him that she’d never tell him anything again as long as she lived if he did such a terrible thing.

When Lissie received the long-awaited letter from Marjorie Kildare, listing the various items of merchandise she’d purchased with their modest, joint hundred-dollar investment, and advising her that the shipments, in separate parcels, would be going out of Bombay that same day, she was ecstatic. She immediately got on the phone to Rusty Klein, who was home on a long weekend from Bennington, and told her the good news. “Rusty’s very depressed these days,” she later told her parents, but again did not amplify. Her parents were by then used to these mysterious allusions, the letter-from-camp syndrome that Lissie seemed to have adopted as part of her normal life-style.

In the beginning, they used to question her further, hoping for elucidation, but she’d only go into rather long and (they suspected) deliberately convoluted stories that obfuscated rather than illuminated. Eventually, they’d given up. Similarly, Connie — toward the middle of the month — gave up preparing special salads or cooking additional vegetable dishes for Lissie. She told her flatly, and not without sympathy for her daughter’s dietary preferences, that she worked too hard every day of the week to have to come home and worry about what Lissie would be eating that was different from what the rest of the family was eating. This was not a restaurant she was running here, and if Lissie wanted to maintain a diet that was not necessitated by any physical ailment, then she herself would have to—

“I do consider it a physical need,” Lissie said.

“I said physical ailment.”

“Eating meat would make me physically ill,” Lissie said.

“I’m not suggesting that you eat meat.”

“You’re telling me you won’t cook for me if I insist on eating only vegetables.”

“I’ll cook only the vegetables I would normally cook with each meal,” Connie said.

“Fine, that’ll be a fucking starvation diet,” Lissie said.

“Whatever other vegetables you want, you can cook for yourself,” Connie said. “And watch your language.”

The embarrassment lingered like a fever.

It was an embarrassment lessened in intensity for Jamie only because Lissie was a girl. Even if she refused to put on a proper dress and stockings and shoes when they took her out to dinner, even if her hair looked dirty and uncombed most of the time, even if her ridiculous eye makeup made her look like a braless bride of Frankenstein, there was still something less embarrassing about her and all the other girls than there was about the boys.

One afternoon, alone with Joanna in her apartment, he tried to explore this with her. She had, at first, and in direct contradiction to Jamie’s unbridled joy, been exceedingly wary about Lissie’s homecoming, suspecting at once that her reappearance in his life might cause changes Joanna was not prepared to accept yet another time. He had stilled her fears. He was here to stay, he’d told her, a declaration she’d found a trifle overstated since the length of his stay each week varied from between two to three hours, after which he caught the train home to his loving wife and resurrected daughter. Count your blessings, Joanna had cautioned herself. He loves you, he keeps saying he loves you, don’t rock the boat. But he rarely discussed his daughter with her — seeming in his mind to have created dichotomous territories, one exclusively Connie’s and Lissie’s, the other Joanna’s — and she was surprised when he began talking about her that afternoon.

“Maybe I’m kidding myself,” he said. “I am, after all, the father of a daughter, and maybe I want to believe she doesn’t look as ridiculous as the boys do. But I think it’s true, Joanna. And I think it’s because women have always been the ones who wore the feathers and paints.”

“Tell that to Geronimo,” Joanna said.

“Well, isn’t it true that women are the style-conscious ones?”

“So?”

“And that they’ll wear outlandish clothes...”

“Thanks.”

“... until a style catches on and becomes a fashion?”

“So?”

“So if Lissie chooses to run around looking like a freak... that’s what she’s begun calling herself, you know. No more hippie. Now it’s freak.”

“I hate that word,” Joanna said.

“Freak,” Jamie said, and sighed.

When Lissie’s merchandise arrived from India, she spread it on the living room Bokhara, squatting cross-legged behind it like a merchant realized, the Oriental rug lending credence to her trade, holding up each garment and artifact, slipping bangles over her wrists, fastening earrings to her ears, babbling all the while in a rapid monologue that sounded almost Persian, words tripping over words as she excitedly described how she would begin selling all of this stuff as soon as she’d inventoried it and figured out a proper markup, popping a little ivory pipe into her mouth, grinning around the stem and puffing imaginary smoke like an imaginary pasha. Two days later, a letter arrived from Brenner University, surprising both Jamie and Connie, but not Lissie, for she was the one who’d written asking for information about reenrolling in the fall. She had been home for almost two full months by then, and Jamie was beginning to believe that everything was going to be all right.

Even Lissie’s initial disappointment over the New York reaction to her Indian merchandise proved to be temporary. She had cruised the shops along Lexington Avenue, had decided they were selling only stuff for plastic hippies, and had then walked down to Grand Central and shuttled over to Times Square, where she’d caught an express downtown. She was carrying a suitcase filled with items similar to the ones she herself was wearing (and still wearing at the dinner table that night as she related her story), an embroidered, long-sleeved blouse over her jeans, silver bangles, a mirrored vest, a turquoise necklace. The response had been the same all over the Village. She’d sold one or two items, but for the most part the shop owners had dealers with whom they did business regularly on a volume basis, and they weren’t interested in buying odds and ends from what one shopkeeper called “itinerant peddlers.”

Disappointed but undismayed, she left for Boston at the beginning of March, determined to sell her goods to the head shops in Cambridge.

The day was very cold, but she found herself working up a good sweat nonetheless as she carried the suitcase up the steps from the Harvard Square station, emerging from the kiosk into a wintry sunlight, blinking against it, zipping up her fighter-pilot’s jacket, and then beginning to walk up Mass Ave.

Her hope was to sell all the merchandise to a single shop, find a little place that specialized in fine imported stuff, unload all the goods at once, even if it meant making a smaller profit than a shop-by-shop, door-to-door sort of salesmanship might bring. The important thing was the turnaround. Make the small profit, send the money to Marjorie in India so she could buy more stuff this time, and then make a larger profit next time around because of the increased volume, and so on until they had a going business that would practically run itself.

But if she couldn’t find any one shop that would take all the stuff, there was really quite a variety, then she planned to lug this damn suitcase all over Boston, selling bits and pieces of the goods wherever she could, and unloading it all before she went home at the end of the—

“Carry your bag, honey?”

The voice startled her. She had been looking into the far distance, scanning the shop signs up the street, searching for a suitable prospect, and hadn’t noticed the young man who sidled up beside her and who was now reaching for the handle of her suitcase. She pulled away instinctively.

“Hey, come on,” he said, “lemmee hep you with that.”

He was tall and slender and black. He was wearing blue jeans, brown desert boots, and a brown leather car coat. A patch of black hair hung under his lower lip. Not quite a beard, it sat like a small upturned isosceles triangle pointing downward to a square chin. Above the hairy patch, his smile was a dazzling white.

“I can manage,” Lissie said.

“The name’s Sparky,” he said, grinning.

“Goodbye, Sparky,” she said, and he burst out laughing. “I mean it,” she said. “Disappear.”

“Ony want to hep you with your burden,” he said.

“I don’t need any help,” she said, and stopped before a shop window brimming with just the sort of merchandise she was carrying in the valise — a wide assortment of silver and turquoise jewelry, brass bells and bowls, leather sandals, pouches and belts, cotton shirts and vests, an Oriental bazaar right here in Cambridge.

“Gonna buy yourself some gear?” Sparky said.

Without answering, Lissie opened the door. A bell tinkled over it as she hefted her suitcase into the shop. Through the plate-glass window, she could see Sparky still standing there on the sidewalk, grinning in at her. She turned away from him abruptly. A pair of hanging green curtains at the rear of the shop parted, and a dumpy little bald-headed man stepped through them, beaming, his blue eyes twinkling in a moon face, a fringe of brown hair over each ear. As he approached her, she realized that the baldness and the roly-poly waddle created a mistaken impression of advanced age. He could not have been much older than Lissie herself, perhaps twenty-one or — two. He was wearing baggy brown pants and a long-sleeved, white shirt, the cuffs rolled up. A square, she thought. Running a head shop, no less.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Melissa Croft, and I...”

“What are you selling, Melissa Craft?”

“Croft,” she said.

“Croft, Craft, let me hear it.”

His voice had a good rich timbre, surprising for someone so short — she guessed he was five eight, five nine, certainly no taller than that. She’d always associated deep voices with tall men, but maybe they came with the stout ones, too. He was definitely overweight.

“Who’s your friend outside with the evil eye?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Lissie said. “He wanted to carry my bag.”

“He looks like a pimp.”

“That’s just what I thought.”

“Saw the suitcase, probably figured you stepped straight off a bus and headed for the street life in Cambridge.” He paused. “You didn’t step straight off a bus, did you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re selling something, am I right?”

“Right.”

“Are you selling what’s in my window?”

“Well, not exactly what’s in your wind—”

“But similar to what’s in my window?”

“Similar, yes.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you’re selling what’s not selling, why should I buy it?”

“I’ve got some beautiful stuff here,” Lissie said.

“Save your breath.”

“Don’t you even want to see it?”

“Is it from India?”

“Well... yes.”

“No way,” he said, and shook his head.

“Why? What’s wrong with Indian merchandise?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it.”

“Then why won’t you look at it?”

“You want to waste your time? Okay, open the bag, waste your time, show me the stuff.”

“What for? You said you won’t buy any of it.”

“I may buy some of it, okay? Out of pity, okay?”

“I don’t need pity.”

“What do you need? A cup of coffee? Come on, I’ll lock the shop and buy you a cup of coffee.”

She looked at him.

“What do you say?”

She kept looking at him.

“Fat men are very light on their feet,” he said, and grinned. “Terrific dancers,” he said, and snapped his fingers in the air on either side of his head, like a flamenco dancer. “Besides, if you have a cup of coffee with me, I’ll tell you why you’re going to have a hard time selling your stuff. Okay?”

“Deal,” she said, and nodded.

He extended his hand over the counter. “Matthew Hobbs,” he said, “nice to know you.” He came around the counter, and reached for a coat on a wall hook. “You can leave your bag here if you like,” he said.

Sparky was still waiting on the sidewalk outside. He glanced at Lissie as Matthew was locking the door, muttered, “Ain’t no accountin’ for taste,” and then put his hands in the pockets of the leather coat and went slouching off up the street, affecting the sort of cool, hunched-over, shit-kicking style the street-gang kids used to use back in the fifties.

At an espresso joint on Ellery Street, they sat close to a blazing fire and ordered two cappuccinos from a blond waitress wearing a black leotard. “Where are you from?” Matthew asked.

“Connecticut.”

“You don’t sound Connecticut.”

“What do I sound?”

“New York.”

“Well, I was born in New York. And grew up there, actually.”

“You grew up nice,” he said, and grinned. “What do I sound?”

“Boston.”

“I do? Shit,” he said.

“Like the Kennedys sound.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s good, I guess. I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged. “You said you’d tell me...”

“Okay. First of all, the shirts don’t fit right.”

“What do you mean? I’m wearing one of them right now. It fits fine.”

“You’re very slender, Melissa.”

“Call me Lissie, will you?”

“Why? What’s wrong with Melissa?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it, I just happen to prefer Lissie.”

“What are you sore about, all of a sudden?”

“I’m not sore. Well, yes, I am a little annoyed. You don’t know a thing about the kind of shirts I’ve got, and you’re telling me they don’t fit right.”

“Most of them don’t, okay? Especially on the men. The shoulders are too narrow. We’ve got husky brutes here in America,” he said, and raised both arms in a weight-lifter’s pose and flexed his muscles and grinned again. “And the madras stuff needs special care which nobody today is interested in; they want to throw it in the washer and dryer and if you do that you ruin madras. And the little pipes for holding roaches, and the bigger ones for smoking opium or whatever turns you on, we can get cheaper here in the States, made in Korea, so who wants to spend additional loot for fancy Indian ones? The silver jewelry is cheaper and better from Mexico, and the turquoise...”

“I happen to have fabulous turquoise.”

“Ah, you’re a turquoise expert?”

“No, but I’ve seen the stuff they’re selling here in Cambridge, and I know mine...”

“What makes you think hippies care about quality?”

“What?”

“Good turquoise is expensive, Lissie, I’m sure you know that. The best stones...”

“I’ve got some very good stones, and they didn’t cost a fortune.”

“Unpolished stones?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got to be a good judge to appreciate an unpolished stone.”

“My partner’s had experience.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“In Bombay.”

“How’d you and her like to buy a store?” Matthew said, and grinned again.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going out of business next week.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Would I kid a beautiful girl like you? Don’t look so glum, here’s the coffee.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You’re thinking ‘Where am I going to sell my stuff,’ right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll sell it, don’t worry.”

“Sure. The way you’re selling it.”

“Maybe my location isn’t a good one,” he said, and shrugged. “I don’t know, I just don’t know what’s happening. Everybody today is into the Sergeant Pepper shit. Costumes, you know? Civil war uniforms and opera capes, like that. Took awhile to catch on, but here it is, folks. The Beatles could’ve ruled the world if they wanted to. Instead, they went out of business... the way I’m going out of business next week.”

“Wait’ll I tell Marjorie about this.”

“Who’s Marjorie?”

“My partner in Bombay.”

“It’s not the end of the world. Would you like to go to a movie or something?”

“What? Oh. No. No, thanks. I’ve got to... I guess I’ve got to... I don’t know. I’ll just keep lugging that bag around, I guess, until I sell what’s in it. This is some letdown, I’ve got to tell you. I thought we’d make a fortune, I mean it.”

“Easy come, easy go,” Matthew said. “What’s your number, can I call you sometime?”

“Well...”

“Will you be here in Boston for a while?”

“What I planned to do was sell the stuff and head right home.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’m crashing with a friend of mine. A junior at Brenner.”

“Male or female?”

“Female.”

“Want to go to a movie with me sometime?”

“Maybe.”

“Light on the feet,” he said, and again brought up his hands and did his flamenco-dancer finger-snaps.

“Her name’s in the book,” Lissie said. “Brooke Hastings.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll give you a call.”

“What are you going to do now?” she asked. “I mean, if you go out of business.”

“When I go, not if I go. Maybe go back to dental school.”

“Dental school?”

“Yeah, I dropped out to start the business. Have you ever seen a fat dentist? I’ve never seen a fat dentist in my life. I figured nobody would go to a fat dentist, so I dropped out and opened the business. My draft number also had something to do with it — three-twenty-seven out of a possible three-sixty-five, not bad, huh? So I dropped out. Fuck my father.” He leaned conspiratorially across the table and whispered, “My father’s a dentist.”

“So now you’ll go back to school.”

“Sure. Maybe. I figure if I can’t become a multimillionaire merchant, I might as well become a multimillionaire dentist. Matthew Hobbs, D.D.S. Dr. Matthew Hobbs. It doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”

“If it’s what you want,” Lissie said.

“Who knows what I want? Does anyone know what he wants anymore?” he said, and shook his head. “Would you like another cappuccino?”

“No, thanks.”

“I don’t know anybody who knows what he really wants,” Matthew said. “My father knew he wanted to be a dentist from the minute he saw an oil-drilling rig outside Tucson, Arizona. Do I want to be a dentist? Who the hell knows? Do I want an air-conditioned Cadillac like my father’s got? Probably. Do I want a two-hundred-thousand-dollar house in Lexington, swimming pool in the backyard, membership at the golf and tennis club? Again, probably. But it’d be so nice to have all those things without having to become what those things force you to become. Am I making any sense? Do you know what you want?”

“I thought I’d make a little money, you know, and then go back to school in the fall.”

“Okay.”

“But now I don’t know.”

“Do you want to go back to school?”

“Oh, sure. Well, I guess so. I mean... what else is there to do? I guess I could go back to India. But... I don’t know,” she said, and shrugged.

Sparky was waiting on the sidewalk when they got back to the shop. “Thought you’d never get here,” he said, and grinned. “I’m about to freeze my ass off.”

They tried to ignore him as Matthew unlocked the door, but the moment the shop was open, he stepped inside and began studying the various pieces of jewelry in the display case.

“Can I help you?” Matthew asked.

“Just lookin’,” Sparky said.

Lissie picked up her suitcase.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said.

“Stick around awhile,” Matthew said.

“No, if I’m going to sell this stuff, I’d better get...”

“Whut you sellin, honey?” Sparky said at once, and turned from the counter.

“You’re beginning to annoy me, you know?” Lissie said.

“Annoy you? I hear you’re sellin’, so I may be buyin’, so how is that annoyin’?”

“I’m not what you think. I didn’t just get off the bus, so fuck off, will you?”

“Nice talk on the lady,” Sparky said. “Who said you’re off any bus?”

“You’re a pimp, am I right?” Lissie said.

“Whut? Me?” He clenched both fists over his chest. “Me? a pimp? Do I look like a pimp?” he asked Matthew.

“Yes,” Matthew said.

“I am not no pimp,” Sparky said. “Is that why you been runnin’ from me, honey? ’Cause you think I’m a pimp? I am not no pimp, cross my heart an’ hope to die,” he said, spitting on the pressed-together index and middle fingers of his right hand, and then making an X over his heart with them. “Whut you got in that valise there? If it’s somethin’ you want to sell, then maybe I’d be innerusted in buyin’. So whut is it? You gonna open that bag for Sparky?”

Lissie looked at him.

“Well, whut is it now, honey? Was I goin’ to rip it off, it’d be easier closed than open. Now come on, open it for me.”

Lissie looked at Matthew. Matthew shrugged. She knelt before the suitcase, laid it flat on the floor, and unfastened the clasps.

“Well, well, whut have we here?” Sparky said, kneeling beside her. There was the smell of strong cologne on him. She was worried he would stink up the fabrics in the bag.

“Just don’t touch it, okay?” she said. “Anything you want to see, I’ll show it to you.”

“Still afraid I’m gonna rip it off, huh?” he said and shook his head. “First she thinks I’m a pimp,” he said to Matthew, “and now I’m some kinda thief. My, my. How much you want for this whole bag of shit here?” he asked.

“What?” Lissie said.

“The whole bag. Whut was you hopin to get for it door-to-door?”

“Well... what difference would that make to you?”

“Name a price,” he said, and reached into his pocket.

“For the... the whole bag here? The whole...?”

“The whole bag of shit, raaaht,” Sparky said, and pulled out a thick roll of bills fastened with a rubber band. A pusher, she thought, he’s a pusher. “So?” he said, taking off the rubber band and sliding it over his hand and onto his wrist, “how much?”

“Three hundred,” she said.

A hundred percent markup would have brought $200 for the lot. After listening to Matthew, she realized she’d be lucky if she and Marjorie made a $50 profit on their $100 investment. She was now asking for three times what they’d paid for the stuff.

“Sounds steep,” Sparky said, raising his eyebrows.

“That’s the price,” Lissie said. “Take it or leave it.”

“You just sold a whole bunch of shit,” Sparky said, and began peeling off $50 bills from the roll. His hand stopped. He looked up from the roll and grinned. “Provided,” he said.

“Here it comes,” Lissie said, and nodded knowingly to Matthew. “What’s the catch?”

“Two catches,” Sparky said. “First, the price includes that ratty suitcase.”

“Okay.”

“And second, you let me take you to lunch. To celebrate.” Lissie hesitated a moment. Then she nodded and said, “Deal.” They ate in a hamburger joint near the Harvard Coop, the suitcase on the floor beside the table, the $300 in fifties tucked into the right front pocket of Lissie’s jeans. Every now and then, she ran her hand over the bulge of the money; she was certain Sparky was a pusher who might try to pick her pocket or else later send a confederate to mug her on the way home. Lissie ordered a salad. Sparky spread relish and ketchup on his hamburger, and then looked up at her and said, “So whut’s your name?”

“Lissie,” she said.

“For Melissa, right? Got a cousin named Melissa down home. Melissa whut?”

She hesitated. “Melissa Green,” she lied.

“Green. Is that Jewish?”

“No.”

“Green,” he said. “Where d’you live, Melissa?”

“Connecticut,” she said. “New Canaan, Connecticut.” Another lie. Chewing, she looked up from her salad to check his face. He seemed to have bought both lies.

“Food okay?” he asked.

“Yes, thanks. Yours?”

“Fine. Melissa Green of New Canaan, Connecticut, huh?” he said, and grinned. “How about that?”

“What’s the Sparky for?” she asked.

“Spartacus.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Spartacus Marshall, uh-huh. He was a slave, you know, Spartacus. So was my great-granddaddy.”

“Where are you from?”

“From?”

“You said ‘down home’ a minute ago...”

“Oh, that’s where my momma’s from. Down home, Shiloam, Georgia, population three hundred and nineteen. Me, I was born and raised right here in Boston.”

“Are you a pimp?” she asked suddenly.

“Nope.”

“Cross your heart?”

“An’ hope to die,” he said, grinning.

“What then? A pusher?”

He looked at her. His eyes were intensely brown, his hair formed a tightly knit woolen cap over his skull, his nostrils flared, his lips were thick, he was altogether black and altogether handsome. She lowered her eyes, refusing to meet his. Her gaze lingered on his hands, the huge knuckles of a street fighter, the contradictorily slender fingers of a pianist.

“You want an answer?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes were still on his hands.

“Then look at me.”

She raised her eyes.

“An’ ask me again.”

“Are you a pusher?”

“I’m a pusher,” he said.

She nodded.

“Why you want to know? You doin’ some kind of shit?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then why you so innerusted in if I’m a pusher. You lookin’ for some quality grass?”

“No.”

“You smoke grass, don’t you?”

“I do,” she said simply.

“Sure you don’t want to buy some fine grass with all that money you got for your goods?”

“Positive.”

“Where’d you get all that stuff, anyway?”

“India.”

“What’s the dope scene like over there?”

“Wide open.”

“But you never done none, huh?”

“Only grass.”

“Want a hit of something stronger?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Want to come smoke some grass with me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? I thought we were celebratin’.”

“We are, but...”

“Paid you five times what you paid for that shit, least you could do is smoke some grass with me.”

“Three times,” she said.

“Whut?”

“Three times what I paid.”

“Well, sheee-it!” he said, and burst out laughing. “What are you, some kinda honest mother honkie? I really dig you, Melissa. Whut’s your real name?”

“That’s it. Melissa.”

“Ain’t no honkie in the whole world named Melissa, that’s a nigger name if ever I heard one. Whut’s your real name? Come on, if I can tell you I’m a pusher, you can at least give me your real name.”

“That’s it. Melissa. But most people call me Lissie.”

“Lissie.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lissie Green, huh?”

“Well...”

“That ain’t it, is it? That’s the name to fool the big bad nigger pusher, ain’t it? So he don’t come hangin’ ’roun your doorstep peddlin’ his dope.”

“It’s Melissa Croft,” she said. “And I don’t live in New Canaan, I live in Rutledge.”

“Where you stayin here in Boston?”

“With a friend of mine.”

“Whut’s her name?”

“Brooke Hastings.”

“Where’s she live?”

“Near Brenner.”

“Maybe I’ll give you a call, tell you how much I appreciate bein’ charged three times whut...”

“If you think I overcharged you for that stuff...”

“Well, you did, didn’t you?”

“Fine, then I’ll give you your money back.”

“Ha!” he said.

“I will.”

“Okay, give it back,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and reached into her pocket.

“You try to give that money back, I’ll break your arm,” he said. “A deal’s a deal.”

“You have no use for any of that stuff,” Lissie said.

“I’ll give it to all my friends as presents. Throw a party, invite all my friends, and lay this stuff on ’em. How long you gonna be here in Boston?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Give you a call, invite you to m’party.”

“No, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why? ’Cause I’m black?”

“That’s part of it, yes.”

“What’s the rest of it?”

“You’re a pusher,” she said. “That’s the rest of it.”

“I coulda said I was a civil engineer.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I’ll tell you a story, Liss,” he said, and somehow his use of the diminutive put them instantly on a more familiar basis. “When I was in the third grade, teacher went out the room for a coupla minutes, an’ when she come back she ast the class, ‘Who was talkin’ while I was out the room?’ Well, ever’body was talkin’, but nobody raised their hand. ’Cept me. I’m the dummy raised his hand. So teacher — her name was Mrs. Rosen, she taught me the biggest lesson I ever learned — she says to me, ‘All right, Spartacus, you may stay after school for a half-hour today.’ You dig? For bein’ honest, I’m the one gets the heavy shit laid on him. Never again. Never. Never confess to nothin’ an’ never volunteer for nothin’. When I was in Nam—”

“Vietnam? You were in the Army?”

“Yeah.”

“When was that?”

“Got out six months ago.”

“And started pushing.”

“Listen, Mrs. Rosen, I’m sorry I opened my fuckin’ mouth, okay? It was a way to make a quick buck, okay, get me back on my feet again. Ain’t too many patriotic Americans eager to hire us war vets, you know, even if we’re lily-white pure, which I don’t happen to be, as you already pointed out,” he said, and grinned.

“I’ve got a thing about pushing dope, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”

“’Fraid I’ll try to turn you on? Hook the honkie from Connecticut?”

“No, I’m not afraid of that. I’d never stick a needle in my body as long as I live.”

“They’s other than needles, Lissie chile. You best beware the mean ole pusher,” he said, and cocked his head to one side and curled his hands into a witch’s claws.

“I really don’t think that’s funny,” she said.

“Anyway, I’m plannin’ on gettin’ out of it,” he said.

“Sure you are.”

“I mean it. Maybe go to India like you did. See the world. I got me quite a bit of money stashed away...”

“I’ll bet. The blood of innocent...”

“Hey, lay off that shit, okay?” he said, and reached across the table and grabbed her wrist.

“Let go of me,” she said.

“Just lay off, okay?”

“Just keep your hands off me.”

“Black nigger hands, right?”

“No, black fucking pusher hands, let go of me!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, and released her wrist. “Man, you really do have a thing, don’t you?”

“I said I did.”

“I’m hearin’ you, I’m hearin’ you.”

“Don’t ever do that again. I don’t like to be... to be... I just don’t like it.”

“Okay.”

They were silent for a moment.

“I meant what I said about maybe gettin’ out.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe go to Spain. You ever been to Spain?”

“No.”

“Want to come with me?”

“Sure, when do we leave?”

“You mean it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then how about comin’ up to my place instead? Have a little smoke together.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You smoke, you tole me you...”

“Yes, but I don’t want to.”

“Come on,” he said.

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“I’ll call you sometime, okay?”

“No.”

“I’ll call you.”

“No.”

“I’ll call you.”

Sparky Marshall was a black man in his mid-twenties, Jamie guessed, wearing just under his lower lip an ornamental patch of hair Jamie had learned to call a “Dizzy kick” when Gillespie was turning the music world around with his bop in the late forties. Above the miniature spade beard (No pun intended, Jamie thought) Sparky’s smile was a dazzling white. His eyes were intensely brown, his hair formed a tightly knit woolen cap over his skull, his nostrils flared, his lips were thick, he was altogether black and altogether handsome, and he was, moreover, fucking Jamie’s daughter.

“The Sparky is for Spartacus,” he said, extending his hand and taking Jamie’s in a firm grip. “Spartacus was a slave. So was my great-granddaddy.”

Jamie was wondering whether Lissie expected Sparky to sleep in the same room with her that night. He discussed this privately with Connie. Then they discussed it with Lissie.

“We feel Sparky should sleep in the guest room over at the barn,” Jamie said.

“What for?” Lissie said. “We’re sleeping together in Boston, what kind of hypocrisy is this?”

“I don’t care what you’re doing in Boston,” Connie said. “This is Connecticut, and this is my house, and in my house Sparky sleeps in the barn.”

“You don’t know how funny that is,” Lissie said.

“I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

“What you just said. About in your house Sparky sleeps in the barn.”

“I think you know exactly what I mean, Liss.”

“Okay. He sleeps in the barn, I sleep in the barn. Does that take the curse off?”

“I don’t know what curse you’re talking about,” Connie said. “It simply seems to me that if you were visiting Sparky’s parents for the weekend, as he is visiting us for the weekend, then I’d expect them to find a room for you while you were there, a private room of your own, and that’s what I intend to provide for Sparky. In the barn.”

“You’re not at all concerned about his privacy,” Lissie said. “This is sheer hypocrisy. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with his being black.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Jamie said.

“Some of my best friends are black, right?” Lissie said.

“As a matter of fact, some of them are,” Jamie said.

“Sure, Dad.”

“Lissie, he sleeps in the barn,” Jamie said flatly.

“Then so do I.”

“What you do is your business,” Jamie said. “If you want to go creeping over there in your nightgown in the middle of the night, that’s up to you. But while Mom and I are both awake, then you’re in your room in the house, and Sparky’s in his room in the barn.”

“Hypocrisy,” Lissie said, but she was smiling.

Connie’s parents were in Rutledge that weekend for their usual monthly visit; they would be leaving soon for two weeks in the Caribbean. At the dinner table that Friday night, Jamie tried to explain (to a less than fascinated audience) an idea he had for something he thought he might call “The Face Book.”

“I’d start with the premise that there are only two or three dozen perfect facial types in the entire world,” he said, “and then I’d find the definitive example for each type, and then start looking for people who resembled whoever it might be, Lena Horne, let’s say,” and he glanced at Sparky. “I’ll take their pictures and then do a sort of color-spectrum thing, string them all out, maybe fifty or so photographs on facing pages. It’d be like they did in Jekyll and Hyde, the way Spencer Tracy changed—”

“Who’s Spencer Tracy?” Lissie asked.

“—on the screen from Jekyll to Hyde or vice versa. Like that, a gradual metamorphosis, an evolution. Here’s the crudest example of this particular facial type, and here it is getting a little more refined, and here it is getting closer to perfection and here’s perfection itself, this is what we in this day and age consider perfection.”

Connie’s father, surprising Jamie (he was, after all, a retired businessman), said it sounded somewhat like the action photographs Muybridge had taken as a guide for artists, the frame-by-frame pictures of a man running or leaping or climbing or whatever. Jamie said that wasn’t the idea at all, and used the color-spectrum concept as a metaphor once again, the subtle gradation from white to red, if they could visualize that, with each of the intervening shades of pink in between.

“The idea sucks, Dad,” Lissie said, and everyone at the table laughed, except Connie’s mother, who thought Lissie had said something dirty. Sparky was quiet all through dinner. He might just as well have not been there. Early the next morning, he caught a train into the city, “to handle some business in Harlem.” He did not specify what the business was. They all took a long walk by the river, and when they got back to the house Jamie laid a fire and mixed some Bloody Marys. The fire was still crackling in the living room when they sat down to lunch. The day was crisp and clear. Slanting rays of pale March sunlight streamed through the dining room windows, the kind of light Jamie loved for black-and-white shooting. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. There was no indication of what was about to happen. It simply happened, all at once, startling all of them.

Whenever Connie’s mother or father were visiting, Jamie invariably drank too much, the better to dull their numbing effect on him. He had, as usual, drunk one too many Bloody Marys before lunch, and there was a glazed look on his face even before they sat down at the table together. But Lissie’s unspeakable behavior should have penetrated even the thickest of alcoholic hazes. From time to time during the unexpected outburst, as Connie was drawn more deeply into the argument, Peter Harding virtually forgotten in the heat of the daughter-mother exchange, Connie found herself turning to Jamie for support, her eyes flicking to his face, her daughter’s sharp words yanking her back again, Jamie giving nothing. Not support, not admonition, not even seeming notice of anything that was happening there in the harsh wintry sunlight. Silence. Only silence in the midst of a storm as frightening as it was sudden:

PETER: Where’d your young man go, Lissie?

LISSIE: Into the city, Grandpa.

PETER: Ah, the city.

LISSIE: Could you please pass the stringbeans, Mom?

PETER: Is he enjoying his visit with us?

LISSIE: Yep.

PETER: I can imagine.

LISSIE: What does that mean?

PETER: What?

LISSIE: That you can imagine he’s enjoying his visit with us?

PETER: Well, isn’t he?

LISSIE: Of course he is.

CONNIE: Lissie, I don’t like the tone of your voice.

LISSIE: Really? Well, I don’t like the tone of Grandpa’s voice.

PETER: Me? What did I say?

LISSIE: Implying that because Sparky’s black, he should be tickled to death we’re offering him our—

CONNIE: Lissie, that’s your grandfather you’re—

LISSIE: So what? He’s talking like a goddamn fool!

CONNIE: Lissie!

LISSIE: Well, he is!

CONNIE: Lissie, shut up!

LISSIE: Okay.

CONNIE: I said shut up.

LISSIE: And I said okay.

PETER: What did she think? That because her young man’s black...?

CONNIE: Let it go, Pop.

PETER: No, what did she mean? Is she saying I’m...?

CONNIE: Pop, please let it—

LISSIE: He knows damn well what I thought.

PETER: And what’s that, Melissa?

LISSIE: Fuck it!

CONNIE: Lissie!

PETER: That’s all right. I’ve heard the word before.

LISSIE: I’m just sick and tired of this family thinking I’m some kind of six-year-old who doesn’t know what she wants or needs. I’m just sick and tired of it. And of all the innuendoes about Sparky because he’s black.

PETER: Is he black? I hadn’t noticed.

LISSIE: Very funny, Grandpa.

PETER: There’s a black lady in our building — isn’t there, Stephanie? — who’d enjoy knowing how I...

LISSIE: Some of my best friends...

CONNIE: Oh, for God’s sake, Lissie, get off that tired old line!

LISSIE: Okay, tell me something.

CONNIE: Finish your—

LISSIE: No, tell me. Are you glad, or are you not glad that Sparky isn’t here today?

CONNIE: Me? Are you asking me?

LISSIE: I’m asking all of you.

CONNIE: I’m glad he’s not here, all right?

LISSIE: Ah! Why?

CONNIE: I don’t like him.

LISSIE: Ah! Why don’t you like him?

CONNIE: Because he accepts our hospitality without a word of thanks, which may be etiquette down home in Shiloam, Georgia...

LISSIE: His mother’s from Shiloam. Sparky was born in Boston. And that last remark was racist, in case you don’t know it.

CONNIE: Rudeness is rudeness in any color.

LISSIE: You just can’t forget he’s black, can you?

CONNIE: Can you? You’re the one who keeps—

LISSIE: Oh, fuck this! Just fuck it! I don’t have to sit here and listen to this shit, I really don’t. I’m going upstairs to pack, fuck it.

PETER: What did I say, Connie?

CONNIE: Go talk to her, Jamie.

JAMIE: What?

CONNIE: Go upstairs and talk to her, goddammit!

She was in her room on the top floor of the house, hurling clothes into a suitcase when he climbed the stairs. She looked up angrily, and said, “Doesn’t anybody knock in this house?”

“I’m sorry, the door was open, I thought...”

“You’re still supposed to knock.”

“Sorry,” he said, and sat on the edge of one of the twin beds. “Are you really leaving?”

“I am.”

“What about Sparky? He said he’d be back...”

“I’ve already called him. He’s meeting me in Boston.”

“I really don’t think there’s any need to—”

“Well, I think there is.”

“Lissie, you surely can’t believe that whatever Mom and I feel about Sparky has anything to do with the color of his skin.”

“That’s just what I believe.”

“And in any case, you had no right talking to your grandfather that way.”

“Didn’t I? When he was insinuating that Sparky’s a watermelon-eating nigger who should be thrilled to be in white massa’s house? Come on, Dad.”

“He wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort. In fact, I think he likes Sparky.”

“How about you? Do you like Sparky?”

Jamie hesitated. “No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because he seems distant and remote, and I can’t shake the feeling that inside he’s sneering at us. If you think that’s racist, I’m sorry. I do happen to work with a great many blacks, Lissie, and no one has ever accused me of racist attitudes. And if you knew how many black children Mom patiently helps and teaches...”

“The white man’s burden, right?”

“Lissie, you’re being particularly dense. I’m trying to say that neither Mom nor I — and certainly not your grandfather, who innocently stepped into a buzz saw — was trying to put down your friend Sparky.”

“It seemed that way to me.”

“We’ve always welcomed your friends in our home, but whenever you bring guests here...”

“Oh? When did your daughter suddenly become a guest?”

“I didn’t say that. Sparky’s the guest, Sparky’s...”

“Sparky’s a person I love and admire, and if you could for a moment see past the fact that’s he black, then you might be able to share my feelings, which apparently you’re unwilling to do. It seems the only thing that’ll please you and Mom would be a goddamn Harvard graduate, knowing how much education means to you, even if the only reason it’s important is as a means of making money. Money doesn’t mean very much to me, Dad. I was living in India on thirty cents a day. The important thing to me is experiencing life and living it to the fullest, and also loving someone with whom I can completely share that fulfilling experience. I’m trying to make it clear that I won’t tolerate any unkind remarks about a person I love deeply. I don’t consider Sparky a guest in my house. I don’t consider Sparky...”

“I do,” Jamie said.

“Well, I don’t.”

Jamie sighed.

“When are you coming home, Liss?” he asked.

“Not for a while. I’m going back to Boston, and I’ll...”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant when are you coming back from wherever you disappeared to last April?”

She looked at him steadily for a moment, and then said, “I’m back, you know I’m back.”

He shook his head. “Someone’s back,” he said, “but I’m not sure it’s Melissa Croft.”

“It’s Melissa Croft,” she said and nodded emphatically.

He sighed again. “Two things,” he said.

“Yes, what are they?”

“First, I don’t think your grandparents appreciate the kind of language you use with such frequency these days. Nor do I. It makes you sound cheap, Lissie, and if you had any respect for...”

“The way I talk is the way I talk,” she said. “What’s the second thing?”

“I’d like you to go downstairs and apologize to your grandfather.”

“No way,” she said.

15

Jamie was parked several buildings up the street from Dr. Mandelbaum’s building, sitting behind the steering wheel of the Corvette and reading a copy of House Beautiful in which there was a layout of pictures he’d taken of a poet’s house in Katonah. When someone knocked on the curbside window, startling him half out of his wits, he threw up his hands and the magazine as if a gun had just been thrust in his back. The face that materialized in the car’s window frame was round and beaming, with brown eyes magnified behind thick-lensed glasses and a gray Freudian beard clinging to the jowls and chin of none other than Dr. Frank Lipscombe, Rutledge’s own psychological seer.

Jamie rolled down the window. “Hello, Frank,” he said.

He knew Lipscombe worked on this street, had in fact cautioned himself a thousand times to be careful of Ninety-sixth Street where Dr. Frank Lipscombe dispensed psychological tidbits cheek by jowl with Dr. Marvin Mandelbaum. But if Lipscombe worked here then what was he doing in the street here at a quarter to two in the afternoon, instead of upstairs making some schizophrenic patient whole and sound again? What the hell are you doing downstairs, Jamie wondered, five minutes before Joanna is due to come out of number sixty up the block?

“What brings you to Nightmare Alley?” Lipscombe asked, smiling through the open window.

Jamie could not immediately think of a lie. He smiled back at Lipscombe, hoping desperately that a lie would miraculously appear on his lips, flow mellifluously from his mouth — “What am I doing here? Why, what I’m doing here is is is is” — but not a single lie would come, not a single fabrication to explain why a man would be sitting in a parked automobile reading House Beautiful at 1:45 P.M. on a bitterly cold winter’s day. He pulled an old psychiatric trick: he asked a question in answer to a question.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be working?”

“Came down for lunch,” Lipscombe said. “One to two every day. Late lunch. My last appointment is at six, which means I’m through at six-fifty and home in Rutledge at eight-thirty. If I eat a late lunch, I can wait for a late dinner. How about you?” He said all this hunched over, his arms folded on the frame of the window, his smiling face peering into the car, the blustery March wind gusting around him.

“I’m waiting for my assistant,” Jamie said.

“Assistant?”

“Guy who works with me,” Jamie said. “Had to drop off some lenses.”

“Ah,” Lipscombe said.

“And pick up a strobe.”

Snow him with jargon, Jamie thought.

“Should be down any minute now, in fact,” he said, and looked at his watch.

The little hand was almost on the two and the big hand was almost on the ten, which meant that in about thirty or forty seconds, Joanna would leave Mandelbaum’s office, and take the elevator down seven floors to the street, and come sashaying out of number sixty up the street and right over to the car where Frank Lipscombe was leaning in the window, oblivious to the cold. But no, she was smarter than that; if she saw Frank, she’d walk right on by, she’d know better than to—

Still looking at the watch, he saw the minute hand lurch perceptibly. It was now exactly one-fifty. Joanna was bidding Mandelbaum goodbye and perhaps handing him a check for his deep perceptions during the month of February.

“Mind if I sit down?” Lipscombe said, opening the car door.

“What?”

“Sit for a minute?”

“Well, uh, sure, but he’s, uh, he’ll be down in a minute, he...”

“I just wanted to say,” Lipscombe said, opening the door and sliding onto the front seat beside Jamie, “that you did a hell of a job at that memorial service.” The door slammed shut behind him. He rolled up the window. Jamie glanced into the rear-view mirror. Up the street, he could see the green awning over the door to Mandelbaum’s building. No Joanna yet. The dashboard clock read five minutes to two, but it always ran fast. He looked at his own watch again. Only a minute had gone by. She was probably still up on the seventh floor, pressing the button for the elevator.

“A very nice job,” Lipscombe said.

“Thank you,” Jamie said.

“With more insight into what’s troubling today’s kids than one might expect from a layman.”

“Well, thank you, Frank.”

“The entire concept of leaving before they ever got here. I liked that. It created an instant image, almost a double-exposure, coming and going at the same time, a concept of speed... perhaps an unconscious association with drugs, eh? I’ll bet any amount of money you see the entire world through a viewfinder, am I correct, Jamie, you don’t have to answer me.”

Through the viewfinder that was the rear-view mirror, Jamie saw a blonde in a blue overcoat coming out of Mandelbaum’s building. His heart leaped. No, she was too short, her walk was different, her hair—

“I’ll tell you something I’ve never told to anyone else in the world,” Lipscombe said, and stretched out, leaning his head back against the seat. Oh, Jesus, Jamie thought, he’s making himself comfortable, he’s going to be here for the next fifty minutes, unburdening himself. How much should I charge? What does Mandelbaum charge Joanna? Please, honey, please notice him sitting here in the car before you pull open the door and say hello, okay? Please!

“Are you interested?” Lipscombe asked.

“In what?” Jamie said.

“In what I’ve never told anyone else in the world.”

“Yes... certainly.”

“I love my work,” Lipscombe said.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s what I’ve never told anyone else in the world.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Love it,” Lipscombe said. “Do you love yours?”

“Yes. I do. Yes.”

“I knew you would.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Because our work is similar, you see.”

“Similar? Photography and psychiatry?”

“Voyeurs,” Lipscombe said.

“Ah.”

“We’re both voyeurs.”

“Ah.”

“You look in a viewfinder, I look into somebody’s mind. All day long they tell me stories, Jamie. I sit in my big leather chair, with my hands folded over my belly, and they lie on the couch looking up at the ceiling and they tell me stories. It’s like going to the movies every day but Sunday. My job is like going to the movies, can you beat a job like that? I close my eyes and listen to their voices, and I see the motion pictures they’ve produced for me, all these wonderful movies they’ve written and directed and are starring in for me. What’s even better, most of the movies are pornographic.

“I sit there with my hands on my belly, and a patient tells me how she’s cheating on her husband by running downstairs every morning the minute he’s gone, to apartment 3C on the floor below, where a bachelor is living, she runs down every morning the minute her husband leaves for work and she sucks this guy off while he’s eating his cornflakes, can you believe it? She tells me this, and I see the movie in my mind. I hear the cornflakes crunching, I hear the zipper as she pulls it down, I hear her slurping around on his cock, a movie.”

In the tiny movie that appeared in the rear-view mirror, Jamie saw Joanna step out through the door of Mandelbaum’s building, hesitate for a moment under the awning, look up the street and down the street, first toward Madison, and then toward Park where she spotted the Corvette and began moving swiftly toward it. She was wearing purple that clashed violently with the overhead green of the awning as she stepped out like a filly breaking from the gate, long legs flashing, trotting rather close to the brick wall of the building as though wanting to stay on the inside rail, and then sidestepping toward the curb in a quick glide, thirty seconds away from the car, twenty seconds, ten seconds, in an instant she would open the door and trip over Lipscombe.

He lost her in the rear-view mirror.

He caught his breath, jerked his head sharply to the right, and saw her gliding past the automobile, high heels clicking on the pavement, purple slacks and short purple coat, blond hair caught in a streaming purple scarf, not so much a glance at the car she knew so well — she had spotted Lipscombe.

Jamie let out his breath.

“Or sometimes,” Lipscombe said, “they’ll tell me dreams or fantasies that are even more marvelous than the true stories, the work of a Fellini or a Bergman, for example, as compared to the shlock shit of a Brooks or an Altman — passions exploding in colors unimaginable, described to me in Technicolor brilliance, the senses heightened. I can smell the musk, I can taste the juices, I can hear the pounding of a heart in the stillness of the theater of my mind.”

Silence.

Lazily, Lipscombe looked at his watch.

“I’d better get upstairs,” he said. “I have a patient at two.”

“They should charge you,” Jamie said, and smiled.

“Hmh?”

“Admission.”

“Oh. Yes,” Lipscombe said and, chuckling, opened the car door. “But don’t suggest it to them.”

“I won’t,” Jamie said, chuckling himself. He looked toward Park Avenue. Joanna in full purple sail was crossing the street against the light, glancing toward the Corvette to see if Jamie’s visitor was still in it. A Cadillac honked its horn at her and then almost ran her down, the son of a bitch!

“... saw you on Ninety-sixth Street,” Lipscombe said.

“What?” Jamie said.

“I won’t tell Connie I saw you on Ninety-sixth Street.”

Jamie looked at him.

“She may think you’re seeing a shrink on the sly,” Lipscombe said, and winked, and slammed the door shut.

Jamie’s heart was pounding.

He watched Lipscombe go into his building, tempted to follow him, make sure he got on the goddamn elevator. Instead, he alternated his attention from the doorway to the steady progress of Joanna approaching on the opposite side of the street. She stopped just across from his car, looked to make sure the visitor was truly gone, and then crossed against traffic again, dodging cars until she reached the safety of the curb. Yanking open the door, she said at once, “Who was that?”

“Lipscombe.”

“Who?”

“The Rutledge shrink.”

“Oh, my God!” Joanna said.

At a party that Friday night, in the center of a circle of men and women, Frank Lipscombe began holding forth on adultery and its effects on marriages of long-standing. It was the doctor’s learned opinion that middle age was a particularly dangerous time for the survival of marriages that had until then “weathered the storms of conviviality,” especially during this very confusing epoch when the young people of America were setting examples that seemed to encourage every fantasy entertained by any male beyond the age of forty.

“Who among the men here,” Lipscombe asked, “has not been tempted by the sight of nubile nipples puckering naked beneath paper-thin T-shirts? Who among us...?”

“Oh, Frank, be serious,” his wife said.

“I wish I were being less serious,” Lipscombe said, a faintly offended look on his bearded face. “Who among us has not considered the thought of flight to a commune, no more catching of the commuter train at eight-oh-seven, no more mortgages to worry about, or tax bills or fuel bills, or kids to send through college...”

“Well, there’s the crux of it,” Jeff Landers said, clearing his throat. “Once the kids are gone, the tendency is to relax a little, loosen the restraints of the moral code, consider entertaining the fantasies that...”

“Precisely my point,” Lipscombe said.

“Well, maybe that’s the way men begin feeling when their children go off to school,” Diana Blair said, “but I don’t think women get the urge to wander, or even begin to consider entertaining...”

“Yes, their fantasies,” Lipscombe said.

“I just don’t think so,” Diana said, and smiled.

“Well, perhaps the inclination toward straying is strongest in the male,” Lipscombe conceded, and here he glanced at Jamie with what seemed more than casual interest. “And in the case of the middle-aged man who’s been married half his lifetime and who can hardly be considered a novice in the field of connubial stress, we’ve got to assume that before embarking on a philandering course he has taken into consideration the risks involved and the possibility that a marriage of considerable duration may be severely undermined should the relationship with the intruder force—”

“The what?” Diana asked.

“The intruder force.”

“Oh.”

“Should the relationship with the intruder force become something more than casual and in fact assume dimensions that might eventually destroy the existing marriage.”

“Oh,” Diana said again.

“In short, the middle-aged man can be forgiven for ogling the pair of teeny-bopper tits thrust at him by every highway hitchhiker he passes — and excuse me, ladies, if you have teenage daughters, as I know some of you have — and can be forgiven further for assuming these young ladies are not entirely blameless for arousing...”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Frank,” his wife said, “you sound like a fucking sexist pig!”

“I do? Forgive me, darling. I’m only saying that there really isn’t much danger in the menopausal male’s fantasies or even his acting-out of those fantasies with an occasional partner — usually younger than he is, I might add — provided the relationship doesn’t take.”

“Take?” Connie said.

“Take,” Lipscombe repeated. “As with an inoculation for smallpox. We inquire whether or not it has taken, whether or not the toxin-antitoxin has been effective. In the same way, a middle-aged man’s philandering can mean everything or nothing at all. If the romance takes, it will oftentimes result in the dissolution of a marriage of many years’ duration. End of lecture, and I would like another martini.”

“Jamie?”

“Mmm.”

“Are you asleep?”

“Mmm.”

“What did you think of Frank?”

“Frank?”

“Lipscombe.”

“What about him?”

“What he said.”

“What’d he say?”

“Always talking about male menopause and middle-aged men running around after...”

“He’s boring and he’s full of shit.”

“Always the same stuff, isn’t it?”

“Always. But tonight he had a new audience.”

“Do you believe any of the things he says?”

“Not a word,” Jamie said.

“Not any of it?”

“None of it. Why? Do you?”

“Well, maybe it’s just that he keeps saying it over and over again. After a while...”

“Connie, I’ve got a nineteen-year-old daughter. When I hear Frank talking about teeny-bopper tits...”

“What’s she got to do with it?”

“Lissie? Well, if you can’t see what she would have to do with... with... with... with whatever it was Frank was implying...”

“He was implying, he was stating, actually, that men past the age of forty...”

“Well, I certainly would qualify for that, I guess.”

“Yes, you would, Jamie. Are prone was what he said. To having affairs.”

“Mm. Well, I’m sleepy, honey, so if you don’t mind...”

“But you don’t think so, huh? That middle-aged men are susceptible to having affairs.”

“I guess some middle-aged men are susceptible and others aren’t.”

“How about you, Jamie? Are you susceptible?”

“I told you...”

“Do you find younger women attractive?”

“Younger than whom?”

“Than meem, for example.”

“No. Besides, it wouldn’t matter. If you’re asking me...”

“Yes, whether you’d be susceptible.”

“The answer is no.”

“Because your nineteen-year-old daughter in Boston would magically prevent...”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What did you say?”

“That it wouldn’t be seemly for a man with a nineteen-year-old daughter...”

“Ah, seemly.”

“Yes, what’s wrong with seemly?”

“It’s just that it’s such an old-fashioned word.”

“Well, maybe I’m an old-fashioned person.”

“Do you find Diana Blair attractive?”

“Diana?”

“Yes, Diana Blair. Remember Diana? She’s the one with the big tits who said women don’t fuck around when their kids go off to school. When Frank was explaining how middle-aged men...”

“Connie...”

“Yes?”

“I’m not sure I like being pounded over the head with all this middle-aged shit. I’m forty-four years old...”

“Yes, I know how old you are.”

“I’ll be forty-five in July, and I’m not sure I really enjoy being reminded of it so vigorously. I mean, if there’s some reason you’re harping on that asshole’s dissertation...”

“No reason.”

“Then if you don’t mind...”

“But you haven’t answered my question.”

“What was the question?”

“Do you find Diana attractive?”

“Yes, all right? In a cheap sort of way.”

“What does that mean, a cheap sort of way? Does that mean you’d like to screw her?”

“No.”

“I think you are,” Connie said. “Screwing her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Then who are you screwing?”

“Nobody.”

“Because it sure as hell isn’t me,” Connie said.

“Connie, I’d like to go to sleep now,” he said. “Really. If that fucking dope Lipscombe can provoke this kind of discussion between a man and his wife...”

“Jamie?”

“Mm?”

“You are having an affair with someone, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Because if you are, you can tell me. Really. It won’t be the end of the world.”

“I am not having an affair.”

“Okay, Jamie.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“Good night, Jamie.”

“Good night.”

They were silent for several moments.

“I’m not,” he said again.

She did not answer.

Lying in the dark beside her, listening to her breathing, he wondered why he hadn’t told her the truth. She suspected the truth, she obviously suspected it, so why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t he been able to find the courage to tell her he was in love with another woman? How long could he continue living the lie?

“Connie?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Connie,” he said, and hesitated. “I love you,” he said.

She was silent for a moment.

Then she asked, “Why are you telling me this now, Jamie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why now?” she asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“All right,” she said, “go to sleep.”

“I love you,” he said.

“All right,” she said.

He could not fall asleep. He lay in bed beside her, thinking of what Lipscombe had said at the party, thinking of the conversation he had just had with Connie.

He had known her almost half his life.

She was his history.

She was bonfires in the streets of New York on election night, and Alf Landon buttons, and Mayor La Guardia reading the comics during the newspaper strike. She was the Lindbergh baby being kidnapped, and the Dionne quintuplets, and the Duke of Windsor abdicating his throne for Wally Simpson. She was radio, lines like “Who’s Yehudi?” and “One of these days I’ll have to clean out that hall closet,” shows like “Grand Central Station” and “The Green Hornet,” she was Woody Herman coming from the roof of the New Yorker Hotel, she was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the conquest of polio, the McCarthy hearings on television when Lissie wasn’t born and Joanna was only six. She was his past, she was himself, so how could he leave her? He loved her. How could he possibly leave her?

Ah, but he loved Joanna more.

Ah.

He got out of bed, went into the bathroom to take a robe from the hook behind the door, and then tiptoed back to Connie’s side of the bed and turned off the burglar alarm. He did not put on any outside lights. In the dark, he made his way barefoot over the flagstone path to the barn, and unlocked the studio door, and then turned on only the light over his desk. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. He dialed her number and waited.

“Hello?” she said.

“Joanna?”

“Jamie?” she said, surprised, instantly awake. “What is it?”

“Honey,” he said, “I had to call, I don’t know what to do. I want to tell her about us, but...”

“Why?” she asked, suddenly panicked. “Are you about to—?”

“No, no...”

“Jamie, don’t walk out on me again. Please don’t do that.”

“No, that’s not...”

“You said you wanted to tell her.”

“Yes.”

“Then...”

“I want to leave her,” he said, and paused. “Joanna, I want to marry you.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Joanna?”

“Is that a... a proposal?” she said.

“Yes, I think it’s a proposal.”

“Because... Jamie, please don’t fool around at two in the morning, okay? Because...”

“Joanna, will you marry me?”

“... because I cry very easily when people I love ask me to marry them.”

“Will you, Joanna?”

“Jamie, you don’t have to marry me, you don’t have to tell her, no one’s forcing you to...”

“It doesn’t make any sense this way, Joanna.”

“Jamie, darling...”

“I want to marry you, will you marry me?”

“Jamie, Jamie, please, I will cry.”

“Please say you’ll marry me.”

“Yes, Jamie, I’ll marry you. Jamie, do you mean it? Do you really...?”

“I mean it.”

“Jamie, you’re not going to call me in the morning and tell me...”

“No, I’m not going to do that.”

“Because then I’d shoot myself, or stick my head in the oven. So please don’t do that to me.”

“I won’t, darling, I promise.”

“Jamie, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said.

“What time will you be in on Monday?”

“I’m seeing Lew at ten. I should be through at eleven, eleven-thirty. Give me ten minutes after that.”

“Make it five.”

“I’ll make it three.”

“I love you,” she said again.

“I love you, too.”

“Call me tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“Sleep well, darling.”

“You, too,” he said.

He put the receiver back on the cradle. He took a deep breath, and rose from his chair at the desk. He was turning to walk toward the door when he saw Connie standing there in her nightgown. He did not know how long she’d been standing there, just inside the door, did not know how much, if any, of the conversation she’d overheard. As with most important events in his life, he had the feeling that this one, too, would happen by accident.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“A friend,” he said.

“A friend you call at two in the morning?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What friend?”

No more lies, he thought.

“A... woman I know,” he said.

“A woman you call ‘darling’?”

“Yes,” he said. “A woman I call ‘darling.’ ”

“Who? Diana Blair?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head wearily. “Not Diana Blair.”

“Then who? Tell me who she is. This woman you call ‘darling.’ ”

“Her name is Joanna Berkowitz.”

“Do I know her?”

“You’ve met her.”

“When? Joanna...? Oh. The Vineyard. The one in the gold top.”

“Yes.”

“But that was...”

“Yes.”

“Almost two years ago, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the summer of...”

“Yes.”

“How old is she? She’s just a child, isn’t she? She can’t be much older than Lissie.”

“She’s twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six.”

“She’ll be twenty-seven in...”

“How long has this... did this start on the Vineyard?”

“Yes. Connie...”

“So what... so what does... what does... you said... I heard you say you... you... you loved her. You said you loved her. So what does... what do you plan to... what?”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“Love her?”

“Yes.”

“Love her?”

“Yes.”

“Then what...? Jamie, what does... Jamie, what do you...?”

“I think we...”

“No.”

“Connie, I would...”

“No, don’t say it.”

“I would like a divorce.”

“No. The answer is no.”

“Connie...”

“No!”

“Connie, I want...”

“No, I’m not going to give you a divorce so you can run off with a... with a... girl who... who... you son of a bitch.”

“Connie...”

“No older than your daughter, you son of a...”

“She’s—”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Connie, please try to—”

“Get out,” she said.

“Connie—”

“Get out, you fucking son of a bitch.”

On the way from Logan International to the address she had given him in her last letter home, he kept remembering a springtime not too long ago, in 1968, several months after they’d moved into the Rutledge house. They had brought their big black tomcat with them when they moved from the city in December, and he’d run away while they were still unpacking the cartons. One weekend in March as Lissie, home from school, was telling them for the hundredth time how much she missed Midnight the cat, there was a sudden scratching at the back door, and there he was! Sitting there and meowing, just as if he’d never been gone for almost four months. “Well, now, hello,” Jamie had said, and Lissie had scooped poor bewildered Midnight up into her arms and danced around the kitchen with him and then called Scarlett Kreuger to tell her the cat was home, it was a miracle. He was killed the very next weekend, running across the road to escape a big Labrador who was chasing him. Lissie was back at Henderson by then, and her parents were afraid to tell her at first; it was Jamie who finally broke the news to her.

He was about to break the news to her now.

“You’re the one who left,” Connie had told him bitterly on the phone, “so you go tell your daughter.”

He paid the cabdriver and got out of the taxi. He was expecting worse, he supposed. The three-story house she was living in with Sparky was on a residential street lined with trees still bare from the onslaught of winter. A white picket fence surrounded the clapboard building, forsythia bushes tentatively budding against it, jonquils and crocuses timidly beginning to patch the brown lawn. He went to the front door and studied the name plates under the bell buttons. None for either a Croft or a Marshall. He rang the one marked SUPERINTENDENT, and a black woman answered the door and told him his daughter lived on the third floor, in apartment 3B. He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, he hoped Sparky would not be there. He did not want to talk to her in Sparky’s presence.

She was wearing a long granny nightgown when she opened the door. Her hair was sleep-tousled. Her eyes blinked open wide the moment she saw him.

“Jesus!” she said. “Dad! What...?”

“Hello, darling,” he said, and stepped into the apartment, and hugged her. There was the aroma of stale marijuana in the air. The living room was modestly furnished with thrift-shop stuff. A psychedelic poster hung on the wall behind the couch. Beaded curtains separated the living room from the bedroom beyond, where he could see an unmade bed with no one in it. He hoped Sparky was already gone for the day.

“What are you doing in Boston?” she said. “You want some coffee? What time is it, anyway?”

“Eleven,” he said. “Where’s Sparky?”

“Must’ve left early,” she said, and shrugged. “Gee, Dad, this is really a surprise. Wow! I can’t get over it. Come on in the kitchen. Jesus,” she said.

There were dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. The refrigerator was a relic that had been painted white over its original baked enamel. She took a container of orange juice from it, and then poured a jelly glass half-full. “You want some of this?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” he said.

“Sit down,” she said, “I’ll make some coffee. How’s Mom?”

“Fine,” he said, and pulled a chair out from the kitchen table. The table was covered with a patterned oilcloth. It felt sticky to the touch.

“So what are you doing up here?” she asked. She had taken a can of coffee from the wooden cabinet over the sink and was searching for a spoon in one of the drawers. Her back was to him.

“There’s something we’ve got to talk about, Liss,” he said.

“I’ll bet I know what,” she said. “That letter from Brooke, am I right? Asking you to pay my half of the expenses from before I moved out.”

“Well, I’ve already paid those, Liss. It’s...”

“Then what? The long-distance calls Sparky made to Georgia?”

“No, no.”

“Well, it must be something pretty important to drag you all the way up to Boston,” she said, and put the pot on the stove, and struck a match. The gas jet ignited with a small pop.

“Lissie,” he said, “your mother felt I should be the one to tell you this.”

She turned from the stove.

“What is it?” she said.

“Lissie... Mom and I are separated.”

“What do you mean?”

“Living apart from each other,” he said.

“What? Come on,” she said, and smiled. He was watching her intently now, like a scientist gauging the reactions of a laboratory rat. She felt suddenly embarrassed, as if she had done something unspeakably horrible, when really she had done nothing at all. She waited for him to tell her this was just a little joke, he’d come up here to spring a little joke on her, they were still living happily ever after. He said nothing.

“Well... when did... when did this happen?” she asked, and sat at the table beside him.

“Two weeks ago,” he said.

“Gee,” she said. She was no longer smiling. She realized her hands were trembling, and she clenched them on the oilcloth-covered table top. “Well... where are you living? I mean, if you’re separated...”

“Mom went out to California. To see her sister.”

“Why didn’t she call me first? I mean, Jesus...”

“She wanted me to tell you.”

“And... where are you living, Dad? Are you still living at the house?”

“No, the house is closed. Your mother’ll be living there when she gets back.”

“So... so where are you?”

“In New York.”

“Where?”

“I’m living with someone, Liss.”

“Someone? Who?”

“A woman.”

“What?” she said.

“I’m sorry, Liss, but...”

“No, what do you mean? A woman? Who?”

“Her name is Joanna.”

“Well... well, who the hell is Joanna?”

“Joanna Berkowitz.”

“Do I know her?”

“No.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Dad. When did you...”

“Lissie, there’s still a lot we have to talk about.”

“Yeah, it would seem so. Are you getting a divorce? I mean, is this just a separation, or are you getting a divorce? Can you tell me that?”

“I’ve asked for a divorce, Liss.”

“And is Mom giving it to you?”

“Our lawyers are already negotiating. Jerry Warren’s handling it for me, your mother’s hired a law firm in New York. We’re hoping it’ll all be settled before too long.”

“And then what?” Lissie said.

“Joanna and I plan to get married.” He paused. “Lissie, the important thing for you to know is that divorcing a woman doesn’t mean divorcing a child as well. I think you’re old enough at nineteen to accept the fact that whereas I’m your father, I’m also a man in my own...”

“What does that mean, Dad?” she asked. “Does that mean you don’t love Mom anymore?”

“I guess that’s what it means.”

“Well, don’t you for Christ’s sake know? You left home, you’re talking about marrying this Joanna person, whoever the hell she is...”

“Joanna Berkowitz,” Jamie said.

“Great, she’s Joanna Berkowitz, who gives a shit? You’re telling me you’re going to marry her, and in the same breath you’re telling me you guess you don’t love Mom anymore. Do you love her or don’t you? It seems to me that’s the only important thing you’ve...”

“Lissie, I’m not sure I want to go into all that with you.”

“No? Who would you like to go into it with? Joanna? I’m your fucking daughter, I get out of bed one morning and I find out my parents are getting a divorce, who would you like to discuss it with? Shall we get the landlady up here, ask her how she feels about all this?”

“I’m trying to say...”

“You’re trying to say it doesn’t matter what I think about any of this. Isn’t that what you’re trying to say?”

“I’m asking you to understand, Lissie.”

“Understand what? That you’re abandoning your family?”

“I’m doing no such thing!”

“No? What do you call it?”

“People do get divorced, Lissie. I didn’t invent it, it’s been around for...”

“Oh, come on, Dad.”

“Honey, I love you, but this has nothing to do with you, it has only to do with...”

“Nothing at all, right,” Lissie said. “My parents are breaking up, it has nothing to do with me.”

“It has to do with your mother and...”

“Yeah, and Joanna Berkowitz or whoever, but not me.”

“That’s right, Lissie.”

“No, it’s not right, Dad. Don’t try to tell me it’s right, okay? Because I think it’s wrong, I think it stinks. I think when your father runs off with another woman... how old is she, anyway?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Great! The girl you plan to marry is only seven years older than I am.”

“Well, eight. Almost eight.”

“How old are you, Dad?”

“You know how old I am.”

“You’re forty-four, forty-five, whatever the hell you are...”

“I’ll be forty-five in July.”

“Forty-five, and she’s twenty-six...”

“Almost twenty-seven.”

“Well, if that doesn’t tell you something, Dad...”

“What should it tell me, Liss?”

“You’re the grownup, you figure it out yourself, okay?”

“I thought you were a grownup, too.”

“Right now, I don’t feel like one,” she said, and her voice broke, and suddenly she began crying.

“Honey,” he said, “honey, please...”

“Jesus, Dad, why’d you...?”

“Honey, honey,” he said, and pulled his chair closer to hers, and took her in his arms.

“Why’d you have to do this?” she said, sobbing. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I love her,” he said.

“I thought you loved Mom.”

“I did.”

“I thought you loved me.”

“I still do, darling.”

“Does Mom want this divorce?”

“I don’t suppose she does.”

“So that leaves only you and this woman who want it.”

“I guess so.”

“What did Grandma say about it?”

“She said I should do whatever makes me happiest.”

“Grandma said that? Jesus!”

“Honey, this has nothing to do with anyone but your mother and me. This isn’t something we take a vote on.”

“I want a vote!” she said, and began sobbing again, pressing her face against the rough fabric of his jacket, her nose running, the tears streaming down her face, her shoulders heaving uncontrollably. “I have feelings too, you know,” she said, sobbing.

“I know that, darling.”

“I know you’re a man in your own right...”

“I am.”

“... what you said before, but here’s a situation that’s suddenly thrust upon me...”

“Yes, I’m sorry for that. But, Lissie, you had to be told sooner or later, and your mother and I thought this would be the best way.”

“Without my knowledge, I mean all of this was happening without my knowledge.”

“That’s true.”

“I have plans of my own, you know.”

“There’s no reason for you to change any of your plans.”

“Where will I live?”

“That’s a strange question, coming from you, Lissie,” he said, and brushed her hair away from her face, and smiled.

“I mean... where will home be?”

“Wherever you want it to be.”

“I want it to be where it’s always been,” she said, and began sobbing again. “With you and Mom.”

“That isn’t possible anymore, Lissie.”

“It could be possible. If you just told Mom...”

“No, I don’t want to do that.”

“I want to see Mom,” she said, sobbing. “I want to go to California. Can you give me some money to get to California?”

“Yes, if that’s what you want.”

“Life goes on, I know that.”

“Yes, Lissie, it really does.”

“It’s just... I’m going to need time to get used to this. I’d like to go to California, is that all right? Would you mind if I went out there to see Mom?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want. Could we go to the airport now?”

“What?”

“I’d like to go now. I have Aunt Janet’s address, I’d like to pack and catch a plane as soon as I can, and go out there to see Mom.”

“Lissie, don’t you think you should give this a few days, talk to her on the phone, see if she wants you out there in...”

“No,” she said flatly. “I want to go now.”

He looked at her.

“Okay,” he said, and sighed.

“Good,” she said, and nodded, and then sniffed, and wiped her hand across her nose, and went into the bedroom to pack.

It wasn’t until the beginning of June that she went to meet the woman her father was about to marry. She went to the New York apartment only because the wedding had been set for the end of the month, and she knew she would have to attend, and felt it might be less awkward if she met Joanna Berkowitz beforehand. Otherwise, she had no interest whatever in the woman her father had chosen to replace her mother.

Late afternoon sunlight reflected in the upper-story windows of the brownstones as she walked up East Sixty-fifth Street, searching for the address her father had given her on the phone two days earlier. She was wearing a wide flapping tent dress printed with a paisley design, and knee-length red socks tucked into workman’s high-topped shoes. When she’d left Boston early this morning, her landlady said, “You look like Katrinka, miss.” She didn’t know who Katrinka was, but the landlady was smiling so she took it for a compliment.

She found the address in the middle of the block, a three-story brownstone with green drapes showing in the ground-floor windows. She took a deep breath, climbed the front steps to a door the same color as the drapes, and rang the brass bell set into the frame. She could hear nothing beyond the thick front door. She rang the bell again, and almost before she took her finger off the pushbutton, the door jerked open.

The woman standing there, smiling out at her, was truly beautiful, taller even than Lissie was, with straight blond hair falling to her shoulders and framing an oval face with lovely blue eyes and a patrician nose sprinkled with freckles that spilled over onto one cheek. Extending both hands to her, smiling radiantly, she said, “Lissie? Please come in,” and took Lissie’s hand between both her own, and urged her gently into a living room dominated by a huge fireplace. Her father was sitting in a chair near the hearth. He got to his feet at once. Smiling, he came toward Lissie.

They hugged. He kissed her on the cheek, she returned his kisses. They hugged again. She broke away gently and he went to hang her shoulder bag on a wall peg inside the front door. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, her father turning from where he’d hung the bag, June sunlight streaming through the frosted glass panel above the front door, touching his face and his hands, his words coming from his mouth as though at a wrong speed on a broken turntable, he was asking her if she wanted anything to drink and the woman behind him, the beautiful woman named Joanna was saying Lissie might prefer some pot instead, would you like some pot, Liss?

“No, thanks,” Lissie said.

“Something to drink then?” her father said.

“If you have some Scotch...”

“Yes, sure.”

“With a little soda.”

As her father went out to mix the drink, she marveled that only a moment ago this beautiful woman with whom she was now alone had offered her grass! Did her father smoke grass in the privacy of his little Blond Bimbo’s boudoir? That was what her mother called Joanna: “Your father’s Little Blond Bimbo.”

“How was the weather up in Boston?” Joanna asked.

“Hot,” Lissie said. Oh, great, she thought, we’re going to talk about the weather. “This is a nice place,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Have you got the whole house, or what?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Dining room, kitchen and guest room on the second floor, our bedroom on the third.”

Our bedroom, Lissie thought. You cheap cunt.

“Everything all right in here?” Jamie asked, coming down the stairs with the fingers of both hands spread around three tall glasses. “Lissie?” he said. “Yours is the one on the outside here, you want to just take it? Ah, thank you, honey. Joanna, here’s the two cents plain,” he said, handing her the second glass. He lifted his own glass. “Here’s to all of us,” he said.

“I’m not supposed to toast with this,” Joanna said.

“Why not?” Jamie asked.

“Nonalcoholic.”

“What’s two cents plain, anyway?” Lissie asked.

“Seltzer water,” Joanna said. “Don’t you know the story about Harry Golden and his books?”

“No. Who’s Harry Golden?”

“A writer,” Joanna said. “He had a big hit with his first book, which was called Only in America, and then he wrote another one called For Two Cents Plain, which didn’t do as well, and then a third one called Enjoy, Enjoy! which did even worse, and finally someone suggested to his editor that the next one should be called Enough Already!” Joanna laughed and Jamie laughed with her. Lissie sipped at her Scotch. “Those are all Jewish expressions,” Joanna explained, and shrugged.

“You’re Jewish, right?” Lissie said.

“Yes. Uh-huh.”

“There was a kid at Brenner named Berkowitz, Carol Berkowitz. Do you know anybody by that name?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“I thought she might have been related.”

“It’s a common name.”

“She was a pain in the ass, anyway,” Lissie said.

“Maybe she is related, after all,” Joanna said, and laughed.

“How long will you be staying, Lissie?” Jamie asked.

“What do you mean? Here in the city, do you mean?”

“Yes. With us, actually. If you like.”

“My bag’s already at Mom’s.”

“Oh.”

“She’s all alone in the new apartment, I thought I’d spend a few days with her.”

“Well, fine, fine,” Jamie said. He nodded, glanced at Joanna, and then took a swallow of his drink. “Are you hungry, Liss? I made a dinner reservation for seven-thirty, but if you’re getting hungry...”

“I already told Mom I’d be having dinner with her.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess I’ll... uh... have to... uh... change the reservation. I’ll do that later,” he said, as if talking to himself aloud. “Meantime, let’s catch up on what we’ve been doing, it’s been a long time, Liss. How’d you like California?”

“It was fine.”

There was a silence.

“You’re still seeing Sparky, huh?”

“Well, I really don’t want to discuss that, Dad.”

“I was just wondering whether or not he’ll be coming to the wedding.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“He’s more than welcome.”

“I’ll be coming alone.”

“But you are seeing him, is that right?”

“What difference can that possibly make to you?”

“Well, your... your life is of some interest to me, Lissie. I guess you realize your happiness...”

“Uh-huh.”

“It is, darling.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Would anyone like some cheese puffs?” Joanna said, pushing herself up out of her chair. “I’ll put some in the oven.” She smiled at Lissie, patted Jamie’s shoulder as she passed his chair, and then moved swiftly out of the living room and up the stairs.

“She’s very pretty,” Lissie said.

“Thank you,” Jamie said.

“So,” Lissie said.

“So,” Jamie said.

“Where’s the wedding going to be?”

“In Rutledge.”

“You’re not getting married in church, are you?”

“No, no.”

“Then where?”

“At the Kreugers’ house.”

“I didn’t know they were such good friends of yours.”

“They’re not, really. They’re repaying a kindness, Lissie.”

“Uh-huh. To who?”

“Well, to me.”

“But not to Mom.”

“No. Not to your mother.”

“I wish you wouldn’t keep calling her ‘your mother,’ Dad. She’s still Mom to me, okay? You can still call her Mom, it won’t threaten anything you’ve...”

“Lissie...”

“Aw, shit,” Lissie said, and shook her head, and took another swallow of Scotch. “So that’s who you’re marrying, huh?”

“Yes, that’s who I’m marrying.”

“Trading Mom in for a new model, huh?”

“Is that what your mother said?”

“No, that’s not what Mom said, it’s what I’m saying.”

“I love her, Lissie.”

“Good, I hope so. You’re fucking up everybody else’s life, I should hope you’re doing it for a good—”

“Lissie, please lower your voice.”

“Why do you have to get married in Rutledge, for Christ’s sake? Must you, must you... advertise to everybody in that town that this is the woman you were fooling around with while you were still married to Mom? Jesus, Dad, don’t you have any decency at all?”

“Lissie, I wish you’d try to understand. Joanna and I...”

“Forget it, I don’t want to hear about you and Joanna. Let’s talk about the weather again, okay? It was very hot in Boston. The forecasters said it was going to be hot tomorrow, too. What time is it, anyway, I lost my watch. I told Mom I’d be back by six. What time is it now?”

“Four-thirty.”

“So soon? Shows how the minutes fly when you’re having a good time, doesn’t it? I’ll just finish this and run along, I’m sure you and Joanna have a lot you want to talk about, big wedding coming up, you must have millions of things to discuss. So,” she said, and swallowed the Scotch remaining in her glass, and put the glass on the coffee table, and stood up. “You put my bag in the hall, didn’t you, I’ll get it, Dad, you don’t have to bother...”

“Lissie...”

“Say goodbye to Joanna for me, will you, I’ll let myself out.”

She went into the entryway, and took her bag from the wall peg. She shrugged it onto her shoulder, tossed her blond hair, and started for the door. She had one hand on the doorknob when she turned to him, and hesitated, and then said, “I love you, Dad,” and went out of the house.

16

The sky was overcast on that twentieth day of June, and whereas the forecasters had promised sunshine for sometime later in the afternoon, Melanie Kreuger was certain her decision to hold the wedding indoors had been the right one.

The house looked glorious.

There had always been in this house a sense of coziness, the massive beams and posts throughout, the huge brick fireplace in the kitchen, the small, bright pantry with the shelves of china Melanie had brought up from Atlanta, the fine mahogany furniture in the living room and wood-paneled dining room, and in all the bedrooms the canopied beds with their butternut head- and foot-boards and the framed photographs of Civil War soldiers who had been the Kreugers’ ancestors. But today, and this was the Kreugers’ gift to Jamie and Joanna, the house was massed with flowers, the several buckets of riotously blooming daisies on the front doorstep serving only as casual invitations to a profusion of bloom within. The moment they stepped into the house, Jamie and Joanna broke into wide grins.

Larry Kreuger led them into the kitchen where he plucked a bottle of champagne from the tub of ice at the bartender’s feet and popped the cork from it. The bartender looked annoyed as Larry took four stemmed glasses from the row he’d lined up on the wet-sink counter, poured generously into them, and then said, “Before the others arrive. A private toast.” He lifted his glass. “Jamie,” he said, “you’re a good and decent man, and you’ve found yourself a beautiful and gracious woman, and I wish you both every happiness in the world.”

“Amen,” Melanie said, grinning.

“Thank you,” Jamie said, and hugged Joanna close.

There had been talk in the town that it was too early for the Kreugers to be hosting such a celebration; Scarlett had killed herself last October, and this was now only June, barely eight months later. But the occasion was for them, and Melanie told this to Jamie the first time she proposed it on the telephone, a way of coming to terms with life again, of shaking off the persistent grief that seemed threatening to bury her and her husband along with their daughter. Only this past February had the Kreugers been able to spend an entire evening in the company of friends without one or the other of them bursting into tears. Melanie, her voice soft but determined, told Jamie on the phone that she really wanted to do this for him, and that it would be a kindness if he accepted. She did not mention that the first time she’d laughed since the death of her daughter was at a story Joanna told the first time they’d met, in April.

The guests Jamie had invited from his side of the family, so to speak — in addition to his mother and a dozen or more couples from Rutledge and Talmadge — were mostly photographers and their girlfriends or wives, and one might have thought from the number of cameras in evidence that this was a convention of photographic equipment retailers. Even Lew Barker had brought a camera. “First pictures I’ll be taking since I got myself off the street and behind a desk,” he confided to Jamie, and then kissed Joanna on the cheek and said, “There’s still time to get out of this, darling.” The women accompanying the photographers were usually people they’d met in their line of work, which meant that many of the wives and girlfriends were models Joanna instantly recognized from the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

Joanna’s father, a jolly little man who had liked Jamie the moment he’d met him, commented that he had never seen so many beautiful girls in his life. Joanna’s Uncle Izzy Berkowitz, who used to play first desk with the Philharmonic and who had first engendered in her a love for the cello, idly wondered which one of the bearded young men was the rabbi. When Joanna informed him that a Christian minister would be performing the nondenominational ceremony, Uncle Izzy rolled his eyes heavenward and said, “My mother will die.” Joanna’s grandmother, the spry old lady who had first taken Joanna to see Lucia di Lammermoor, whereat Joanna had fallen in love with the lady flute player and the instrument itself, and who had just overheard every word her two no-good sons had exchanged, said, “I haff no intention uff dyink b’fore my dollink iss merrit!” and Jamie suddenly realized upon whom Joanna Jewish patterned her voice. But in addition to Joanna’s many real relatives — and there were many; this was her first marriage — she had also invited “relatives” from her large musical family, all the musicians and composers and conductors and teachers she’d known since starting her lifelong love affair with music in general and the flute in particular. If, like the photographers, all these musicians had brought the tools of their trade with them, there’d have been no room in the house for the people.

The guests kept coming through the front door.

Jamie kept expecting Connie to arrive.

The wedding was set for three o’clock sharp. At five minutes to three, Larry Kreuger asked if he might have everyone’s attention, please, and then he signaled to the minister, and to Jamie and to Joanna, and to Lew Barker who was Jamie’s best man, and to Linda Strong, who played second flute with the New York City Opera Orchestra and who was Joanna’s maid of honor, and to Lissie who’d been standing near the Welsh dresser in the dining room, talking to some kids from Talmadge, and they all went together into the living room.

The words that served as the basis for the simple ceremony were those the minister had suggested, later amended and amplified by Jamie and Joanna to say what they felt should be said about what they were doing here today, in this place, in the company of their fellow men. (He kept expecting Connie to walk through the door.) As they stood before the young pastor whose pregnant wife was sitting just near the window which, open just a crack, billowed the sheer curtains into the room, they each and separately recognized the importance of the vows they would be taking within the next few moments, but Jamie perhaps more than Joanna: he had already taken similar vows once in his lifetime, and he was about to take them again.

Standing just behind them, watching, listening, Lissie thought the same thought that had passed through her father’s head at several different times today. She stood there behind this woman her father was marrying, waiting to hear the words this woman and father had concocted between them to sanctify what they were about to do, looked at this woman, and could think only that somebody was missing here, somebody who should have been here was not here. As the minister began to speak, she realized who was missing. Her mother. She had been expecting her mother to walk into this house from the moment she’d got here this afternoon. Her father was getting married. But some stranger was standing by his side.

“Dearly beloved,” the minister said, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God and these witnesses to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate not to be entered into unadvisedly, but reverently and discreetly. Into this holy estate, these two persons now come to be joined. I charge you both,” he said, “to remember that love and loyalty alone will avail as the foundation of a happy and enduring home. No other human ties are more tender, no other vows more sacred than those you now assume.

“James,” he said, “wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and cherish her, in sickness and in health, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” Jamie said.

“Joanna, wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor and cherish him, in sickness and in health, prosperity and adversity, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” Joanna said.

“The rings, please,” the minister said, and Lew Barker promptly handed him the two gold bands. “The wedding ring is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual bond which unites two loyal hearts in endless love,” the minister said, and gave one of the rings to Jamie and the other to Joanna. As Jamie slipped the ring onto her finger, he said, “In token of the vow made between us, with this ring I thee wed.” Joanna slipped the second ring onto his finger and repeated the, same words.

“Forasmuch as James Croft and Joanna Berkowitz have consented together in holy wedlock,” the minister said, “and have witnessed the same before God and this company, by the authority committed unto me by the church and the laws of this state, I declare that James and Joanna are now man and wife.” He grinned broadly and said, “May God bless your union and grant to you the wisdom, strength and love to nurture and sustain it forever. Amen.”

“Amen,” the assembled guests murmured.

Lissie kissed her father on the cheek. “Congratulations,” she said. As Joanna offered her cheek to her, she extended her hand instead. Their eyes met. Joanna took the hand.

“Good luck,” Lissie said.

With so many musicians in attendance, it would have been surprising if no one played the piano. There were, by Joanna’s count, six genuine pianists at the wedding and at least a dozen other musicians whose second instrument was piano. Politely but pantingly, they waited their turn at the Kreuger piano bench, and the wedding guests were treated in succession first to Scriabin’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor (in its entirety), next to the Allegro and Adagio sections of Mozart’s No. 17 in D Major, then to Lanner’s Valse Viennoises and finally to a melody composed on the spot in honor of the bride and groom, the pianist using a system of note-for-letter substitution wherever a letter actually signified a note — as it did with F, A, C, E and E, G, B, D, F.

As the piano-playing and musical hijinks continued in the living room, the caterers — cleaning up the debris of the wedding feast — tried to be as quiet as mice in the kitchen. After-dinner drinks were still being served, and now that the sun had finally come through, the French doors that led from the living room were open to the sloping vastness of the lawn outside. As sunset stained the western sky, some of the guests wandered out onto the grass, drinks in hand. Cameras clicked every thirty seconds. Professional models, even though they were not the stars here today, seemed to sense the exact instant before a shutter-release button was pressed: the smile magically appeared, the hair was tossed, the champagne glass lifted to just the proper height. Looking at the developed prints later, Joanna was astonished to see how many background people automatically leaped into the foreground with dazzling white smiles and sparkling eyes.

In the dining room and in the living room, in the kitchen and on the lawn, the conversation and the wine and the music flowed. And in what the architect had called the “milk room” and what Melanie still referred to as the playroom, the Rutledge kids gathered together as they did at most parties where there were grownups and kids, isolating themselves from the adults and filling each other in on what was happening where. What they talked about mostly that afternoon and evening was the five-part series the New York Times had begun publishing the Sunday before, under the modest headline VIETNAM ARCHIVE: PENTAGON STUDY TRACES 3 DECADES OF GROWING U.S. INVOLVEMENT.

The kids had not been surprised by the immediate response from the Nixon administration. As soon as the second installment was printed last Monday Attorney General John N. Mitchell fired off a telegram to the Times, citing the espionage law and ordering the newspaper to stop publication of this highly classified material. The Times had responded with a flat refusal, claiming the government was acting in violation of the First Amendment by invoking prior restraint where freedom of the press was concerned.

The kids all felt it was about fucking time the Establishment, as represented by no less stately a symbol than the New York Times, was getting a small taste of the same kind of shit they’d been getting for years. It seemed ironic to them that the issue revolved around the Vietnam war, which all of them had been yelling about forever, only to have their First Amendment rights violated — if not through open suppression, then certainly through ridicule, contempt or intimidation — each and every time they opened their mouths. But oh what a lot of yelling and hollering when the New York Times turned champion of the First Amendment now. As far as they were concerned, this was simply a matter of Establishment vs. Establishment, and whoever won the battle it was still all a lot of bullshit.

Somebody idly asked if anybody was holding.

One of the kids said he was, and they all went out on the lawn together.

Lissie went out on the lawn with the rest of them.

The plan was to spend the night at the Rutledge Inn, an authentic eighteenth-century coaching house, and then drive Lissie back to New York with them in the morning. They had left the reception at six o’clock, checking first with Esther Klein, who assured them Lissie was sleeping over with Rusty that night, and then slipping out the side door while someone in the living room was playing Schumann’s No. 2 in G Minor. At the inn, they made clumsy love in a huge old fourposter bed, called down for drinks and a snack at ten-thirty, watched the eleven o’clock news on television, and then turned out the lights. In the dark, they both agreed that if their marriage lasted as long as the reception that had followed it, which for all they knew was still going on, they’d be doing pretty well.

“Nobody there gives us a year,” Joanna said, suddenly very solemn.

“Who says?”

“I know,” she said.

“They’re wrong,” he whispered, and kissed her gently. “It’ll last forever.”

He was awake earlier than Joanna the next morning, and had showered and shaved even before she began stirring. He went to the bed, gently nudged her, and asked if she wanted him to order breakfast. He called down to room service, and then looked up the Klein number in the directory, and dialed it. It was 9:00 A.M. by then, and he wanted to make sure Lissie was up and around; they had told her yesterday they’d be picking her up sometime between ten and ten-thirty.

Rusty answered the phone.

“Hi,” Jamie said, “this is Mr. Croft.”

“Hi, Mr. Croft,” she said.

“Lissie awake yet?”

“Uh... yeah,” Rusty said.

“Could you call her to the phone, please?”

“Well... yeah,” Rusty said. “Just a second.”

He waited. There had been something strange in Rusty’s voice, a hesitancy, a wariness. No, he was imagining things. He waited. Across the room, Joanna sat up, stretched lazily, yawned, and then plunked her head down on the pillow again. Jamie waited.

“She awake yet?” Joanna murmured into the pillow.

“Well... I guess so.”

“I didn’t get enough sleep,” Joanna said.

“Better get up, hon. Breakfast’ll be here in a minute.”

“Okay,” Joanna said.

“Honey?”

“Okay.”

She sat up, blinked into the room, sighed, and then got out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Jamie waited. He looked at his watch. “Come on,” he said, under his breath. A knock sounded on the door. “Just a minute,” he said. Into the phone, he said, “Rusty?” He put down the phone and went to the door. “I’m on the phone,” he said to the waiter, “just put it down anyplace.” He went back to the phone, picked it up, said, “Hello?” and got no answer. The waiter put the breakfast tray on a coffee table between two wingback chairs, and then brought the check to Jamie to sign. Jamie added a tip to the total, and then signed the check. The waiter went out of the room. There was still no one on the other end of the line. “Hello?” Jamie said. “Rusty? Hello?” In the bathroom, he heard the toilet flushing, and then the sound of water splashing into the sink. He waited. Joanna came out of the bathroom.

“Did you get her?” she asked.

“No, not yet,” he said.

“Well, what...?”

“Hell-o?” a voice said.

“Lissie?” he said.

“Hell-o, Dad,” she said.

The voice sent a sudden chill up his spine. It was the voice of...

“Lissie?”

“Hell-o, Dad.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m o-kay, Dad.”

“Then... then why are you talking that way?”

“What, way, Dad?”

It was the voice he had heard people affecting whenever they told the joke about the idiot painting the horse’s legs. It was the voice of a moron.

“Lissie,” he said, “are you drunk?”

“No, I’m o-kay, Dad.”

The same moronic voice, deep and slow, the word “okay” broken in two, with what seemed an interminable pause between the halves.

“What... what took you so long to get to the phone?” he asked.

“Did, it, Dad?”

“Yes, it took very long.”

“Gee, Dad.”

“Lissie...”

“Gee.”

“You’d better put Rusty on.”

“O-kay, Dad.”

“Get Rusty, will you?”

“O-kay.”

He waited.

“What is it?” Joanna asked.

“Hello?” Rusty said.

“Rusty, what’s the matter there?”

“What do you mean, Mr. Croft?”

“What’s the matter with Lissie?”

“Well... I don’t know, Mr. Croft.”

“Where are your parents? Let me talk to one of your parents.”

“They both left for work already.”

“I’ll be right there,” Jamie said. “Tell Lissie I’m on the way over.”

He hung up without waiting for Rusty’s reply. Across the room, Joanna was watching him, alarmed. “What is it?” she asked again.

“I don’t know, honey. She sounded... strange. I want to run over there, I’ll be right back.”

“Drive carefully,” she said, and went to him, and kissed him on the cheek.

He did not drive at all carefully. He screeched the car around every familiar backroad curve, driving the mile and a half to the Klein house in less than three minutes, racing up the gravel driveway, yanking up the hand brake and turning off the ignition in almost the same swift motion, and then walking quickly to the front door and ringing the bell. Rusty answered the door. She was wearing a long granny nightgown and she was barefooted.

“Where’s Lissie?” he said at once.

“In the bedroom,” Rusty said.

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

He had been in the Klein house before and was fairly familiar with the layout. He took the steps up to the second floor, walking past the Kleins’ treasured collection of clocks ticking on every wall, filling the corridor with a sound that seemed ominous in the otherwise silent house. One of the clocks chimed a single note. He looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. Another clock sounded. And then another. As he glanced through the open doorway to the master bedroom, the bed unmade, Marvin Klein’s pajamas in a heap on the floor beside it, the corridor reverberated with the sound of all the clocks ticking and chiming. The chiming stopped abruptly. Now there was only the ticking. He opened the door at the end of the hall.

Lissie was lying on the bed, on top of the covers, one hand over her eyes. She was wearing a long granny gown, similar to the one Rusty had on. A shaft of morning sunlight angled through the window like a laser beam.

“Lissie?” he said.

“Mm?”

“Lissie? It’s Dad.”

“Mm?”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes, Dad.”

The same slow, deep voice. The moron’s voice.

He took her hand from where it lay covering her eyes. She allowed him to move it. She looked up at him. Her pale blue eyes were glazed. Her face was beaded with perspiration.

“Lissie, what’s the matter with you?” he said.

“I’m o-kay, Dad.”

“What’d you take?” he asked at once.

“Take, Dad?”

“Lissie, damn it, what did you take?”

“Nothing, Dad.”

“Get dressed,” he said. “Can you dress yourself? Rusty!” he shouted. “Damn it,” he said, “what’d you do to yourself? Rusty!” he shouted again.

He heard Rusty running up the corridor. She stopped in the doorframe, as though afraid of entering her own room.

“Help her get dressed,” he said. “Where’s a phone I can use?”

“In the kitchen,” Rusty said. “Or in my parents’ bedroom, if you...”

“Get her dressed,” Jamie said, and went out of the room. As he walked down the corridor, the clocks ticking all around him, he heard Rusty whisper behind him, “Liss? Come on, Liss, we’ve got to get you dressed,” and his daughter answering in her moronic voice, “O-kay, Rust.”

He found the wall phone in the kitchen, looked up the number for the Rutledge Inn, and dialed it at once. He asked for Room 412, and when Joanna came on the line, he said, “Honey, there’s something wrong here, I don’t know what it is, I think she’s taken something.”

“Taken?”

“Some kind of drug. I really don’t know, Joanna, I’m only guessing. I want to run her over to Harry’s.”

“Harry’s?”

“Our doctor. Harry Landau. I’ll call you later, honey. I’m worried about her, I want to get her over to Harry’s right away.”

“All right, darling.”

“Love you,” he said, and hung up. “Rusty?” he yelled. “How’s it going?”

“I need some help,” Rusty called back.

He went up the stairs and through the clock-lined corridor. His daughter was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing only panties. Rusty was struggling to tug a pair of blue jeans over her knees. “Don’t you have a dress she can wear?” Jamie said. “Something she can just pull over her head?”

“Well, yeah, but I thought...”

“We’ll be here all day with those fucking jeans,” he said.

Rusty looked at him, and then went swiftly to her dresser. She found a tent dress in the middle drawer and carried it back to the bed, where Lissie sat motionless, looking down at her feet. “Liss,” she said, “let’s slip this over your head, okay?”

“O-kay, Rust,” Lissie said.

Rusty dropped the dress over Lissie’s head, and then pulled first one arm and then the other through the armholes. “You want to put on her shoes?” she asked Jamie.

“Where are they?” he asked. “What shoes?”

“The ones she had on at the wedding.”

“Heels?”

“Yes.”

“No, she’ll... haven’t you got something low she can put on? Sandals or...?”

“I’ve got some clogs that should fit her.”

“Yes, good.” Rusty went to the closet. As she rummaged around for the clogs, Jamie said, “What’d she take?”

“I don’t know,” Rusty said.

“But she took something, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was there anything there she could have taken?”

Rusty came back with the clogs. As she stooped to put them on Lissie’s feet, she said, “Well, some of us were smoking, but...”

“I’m not talking about grass, Rusty.”

“Well, there was some other stuff, too, I guess.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“I really don’t know, Mr. Croft. But I saw some pills going around.”

He went to his daughter.

“Liss,” he said, “let’s go now.”

“O-kay, Dad,” she said.

She rose unsteadily, wobbled, pushed out her arms for balance, and then clutched at his arm for support. He suddenly realized why it had taken her so long to get to the phone. Looping her left arm over his shoulder, putting his own right arm around her waist, he struggled down the corridor with her, their shoulders brushing against the ticking clocks, Rusty hurrying along behind them, straightening the clocks. As he went out the front door, all the clocks began chiming again, a sustained chiming this time, clock after clock going off and chiming the hour with deep rumbling bongs and high tinkly dings. It was 10:00 A.M. on the morning after Jamie’s wedding, and his daughter looked and sounded and moved like a fucking vegetable.

The Stamford neurologist to whom Harry Landau immediately sent them examined Lissie in private and then told Jamie that she had undoubtedly taken a massive dose of some kind of drug, most likely a barbiturate, which was causing the sluggishness and lethargy. There were laboratory tests that could isolate barbiturates, but he rather suspected the effects of the drug would wear off in a day or so, and that Lissie would most likely come through the episode relatively unaffected by it.

“What do you mean by ‘most likely’?” Jamie asked.

“Well, I don’t know how much of the drug she’s ingested,” the doctor said. “I’m fairly sure it wasn’t injected by syringe, I could find no puncture marks on her arms or legs. But she may have swallowed more than one tablet, perhaps even more than several tablets, in which case... does your daughter have a history of drug abuse?”

“No,” Jamie said, offended by the words “drug abuse.” His daughter was not a goddamn addict. She had, in fact, told him on many occasions that she would never stick a needle in her body.

“Perhaps she decided to experiment,” the doctor said, “like so many other kids these days. And...” He spread his hands wide, and shrugged. “She may just have been unlucky. Whatever she took, it’s had a serious effect on her. Just how serious remains to be seen.”

“What do we do now?” Jamie asked.

“Take her home and put her to bed. Sleep is the best possible thing for her right now. That shouldn’t be difficult, she’s almost out on her feet as it is. My guess is she’ll sleep all day today, and through the night, and part of the morning as well. When she wakes up, you’ll most likely be able to tell.”

“Tell what?” Jamie said.

“Why... how well she’s cerebrating.”

“And if she... if she still sounds the same and... and moves the same?”

“You’d better call me.”

He was embarrassed as he walked her out of the waiting room and down to the car, leading her like one of the handicapped children Connie worked with, Lissie mumbling over and over again “I’m sorr-ee, Dad, I’m sorr-ee, Dad” in that same moronic voice, helping her into the car where she sat still and silent, her hands folded in her lap, all the way back to the inn. He was further embarrassed when he led her into the lobby and asked the desk clerk if they could find a room for her, she was his daughter, and she wasn’t feeling too well, she needed a room for the night. The desk clerk, a pimply-faced kid in his early twenties, took one look at Lissie, and sized the situation up for exactly what it was: the chick was on some kind of bad trip. But he found a room for her, nonetheless, just across the hall from Jamie’s and Joanna’s. It was Joanna who undressed her and washed her hands and face, and then got her into bed, and pulled the covers to her throat.

“Good night, Mom,” Lissie said, and the words caused a new wave of despair in Jamie.

As the neurologist had promised, Lissie slept all that day, and through the night, and most of the next morning. She was stirring when he went into her room again at 11:00 A.M. He raised the shade. June sunlight spilled onto the shag rug. Lissie opened her eyes. He went to the bed and sat on the edge of it.

“Good morning,” he said. “How do you feel?”

He waited.

Lissie smiled.

“Are you feeling any better, darling?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Has, Sant-a, come, yet?” she asked, and his heart sank.

He was forced to call Connie in New York.

“Connie, it’s me,” he said. “Jamie.”

“What is it, Jamie?” she said curtly.

“Connie, please,” he said. “We’ve had enough yelling and screaming to last us a long time, don’t you think?”

“I wasn’t aware that anyone was yelling or screaming,” she said in her V.S. and D.M. voice. “What is it you want, Jamie?”

“Lissie is sick,” he said.

“Sick? What do you mean, sick?”

“She’s taken something,” he said. “Some drug. She’s not... not quite out of it yet.”

“Out of it? What do you mean, Jamie?”

“Well, she’s not behaving quite like herself, Connie. Her... her speech is... is... you know... hesitant and... and... she... she sounds retarded, Connie, that’s the way she sounds. She slept all day yesterday, and she’s sleeping again now, she sat up for a little while this morning, and had some orange juice, but her eyes are still glazed, Connie, and when I called the doctor, he... he said... it may... well, we’ll have to wait a bit longer, to... to see what happens.”

“What did he say may happen?”

“He didn’t know. He doubts if the damage will be permanent, but he simply can’t say yet.”

“Where is she?” Connie asked.

“Here at the inn.”

“What inn? The Rutledge Inn, do you mean?”

“Yes. We’ve taken a room for her. The doctor advised...”

“What doctor? Harry?”

“No, a neurologist Harry sent us to.”

“What’s his name, I want to call him.”

“It’s Steven Loesch, he’s on Strawberry Hill in Stamford, I have the number here if you want it.”

“Yes, please.”

He read off the number to her, and then said, “I’ll call you when I know what’s happening.”

“Do you think I should come up there?” Connie asked.

“Well, that’s up to you.”

“I could open the house and...”

“She’s comfortable here, Connie,” he said.

“Still. She might want to be home.”

The words hung there.

“I think it might be best not to move her,” he said.

There was a long pause on the line.

“How was your wedding?” Connie asked.

“Fine, thank you,” Jamie said.

“Congratulations,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. He hesitated, and then said, “I’ll call you as soon as there’s any change.”

“Call me anyway,” Connie said. “Even if nothing...”

“Yes, I will.”

“What drug was it?” she asked.

“I don’t know, hon...” He cut himself short. He had almost called her “honey” through force of habit. Graciously, she did not comment on the slip.

“Thank you for letting me know,” she said, and hung up.

By noon the next day, Jamie was convinced she would never recover. Last year, when she’d disappeared from the face of the earth, he was forced to believe at last that she was dead. Now, he believed again that she was dead, the Lissie he’d known and loved was dead, and in her place there was a paler image, a blurred one, an imperfect casting from the Lissie mold. He had looked in on her at nine, and again at ten and eleven, and as he opened the door now, he realized he was hoping she would be sitting at the dressing table combing her hair, or else singing at the top of her lungs in the shower, or brushing her teeth and spitting foam into the sink — anything to indicate life, anything to indicate his daughter was back.

She was still in bed.

As he closed the door behind him, her eyes opened wide. She turned her head toward him.

“Lissie?” he said, tentatively, cautiously. “How do you feel?”

“I’ve got a very bad headache,” she said.

He sat on the edge of the bed, and listened to her telling him — in her normal speaking voice, and at a somewhat breathless pace — that she really hadn’t taken anything at the wedding although there was all kinds of shit to be had, uppers and downers and speed and green flats and white Owsley and even some smack, but really she hadn’t done anything but smoke a little pot.

What she thought was that maybe somebody had dropped something in her drink as a joke, you know? Kids sometimes did that, like they dropped something in somebody’s drink just for the fun of seeing the person get off. This was usually some goody two- shoes they did it to, so maybe somebody decided she was a bit square and figured they’d do a number on her. But she swore to God she hadn’t taken anything on her own, and she was sorry for any trouble she’d caused him over the past several days especially since it was right after his wedding and all.

Jamie held her close and said he’d only been worried for her, that was all, and he was glad she was back, he was glad his darling girl was back again.

17

She called her mother at once to complain, asking Connie for her interpretation of the separation agreement, arguing that studying in India was the same as studying any place else, wasn’t it? Connie told her she agreed completely with the interpretation Jamie had made, and then went on to say that studying art in India was hardly what she expected of a daughter as intelligent as Lissie was (Here we go with the Vassar shit again, Lissie thought), a person who should instead be taking advantage of the many opportunities currently available to young women all over the United States.

“Well, that’s not the point,” Lissie said.

“What is the point, Liss?”

“The point is, if I’m such an intelligent young woman, as you say...”

“Yes, you are, Liss.”

“Then I should be able to make up my own mind about what I want to do and where I want to do it.”

“Not with your father’s money,” Connie said.

“What do you mean? When did you all at once get to be on his side?”

“This isn’t a war,” Connie said.

“I don’t see you refusing his money,” Lissie said. “Those alimony checks that come in every...”

“That’s quite another matter,” Connie said.

“How’s it any different?”

“I was his wife,” Connie said.

“And I’m his daughter.”

“You’re still his daughter. I’m no longer his wife. The alimony is small enough compensation for...”

“You’ll always be his wife,” Lissie said. “You can’t just chalk off...”

“You’re wrong,” Connie said. “It’s over and done with. He’s made a new life for himself, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

“Talk about fast recoveries,” Lissie said.

“Lissie, this is very difficult for me. Please don’t make it any harder than it has to be.”

“Are you crying?” Lissie asked.

“No, I’m not crying.”

“You sound...”

“I’m not crying, Lissie. Would you like it better if I were?”

“Well, no, of course not.”

“In fact, I’m feeling pretty good about myself these days. I’ve cut my hair, I’ve bought myself a new wardrobe. I’m going to Europe sometime in October...”

“Europe?”

“Yes.”

“Aloner?”

“Lissie, you sometimes say things that are much funnier than you realize they are. Yes, alone. Europe. In October. Alone.”

“Well... gee,” Lissie said.

“Honey, I have some people coming for dinner tonight, I’ve really got to get things started. Can we continue this conversation tomorrow?”

“Well, sure, I guess so.”

“I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”

“Sure, Mom. Fine.”

“Goodbye, darling.”

“Goodbye, Mom.”

She hung up feeling rotten. However her mother looked at it, Lissie saw her father’s obstinacy about paying for her studies in India as only another example of his refusal to come to her assistance when she needed him most. The thing she desperately wanted (the one thing she could never tell to either of her parents) was to get Sparky away from Boston, show him a world he’d never been privileged to see because he was black and shit upon in this country, and therefore had turned to the only thing he could possibly do to support himself. She had tried on too many occasions to get him to quit dealing, but after all their arguing she was forced to conclude that he was right. What else could he do? He’d been born poor, had been forced by this country’s prejudice to learn the ways of the street, how to survive in the street, and then had been shipped to a Vietnam jungle where he’d learned that the only people fighting that dumb war were either poor or black or both. If she could only get him away from here, into a climate of acceptance, into an environment that was totally color-blind, why then she felt he could finally realize his full potential as a man and as a human being.

She recognized, of course, the danger the East represented. When Paul was planning his big narcotics coup (God, that seemed centuries ago!) he’d had all the statistics at his fingertips, reeled them off to her the minute she told him she was splitting for home, trying to convince her to stay. Afghanistan produced some 100 tons of heroin annually, most of which was exported to Iran, a country that was one of the largest consumers of narcotics in the world. (“Four hundred thousand addicts there!” Paul had told her. “Why would I have to sell to Americans, if that’s what you’re so fucking worried about?”) Pakistan produced something between 30 and 150 tons of opium a year, much of which also found its way into Iran. Opium was legal in India, and India produced more of it than any other nation on earth, but most of it was for home consumption. All told, the buying and selling of dope was a common practice in Asia and, yes, Lissie recognized the danger of introducing this free-and-easy trade to someone who was already a pusher.

But the danger here was greater.

The reason they had moved from their old apartment, which had really been a great one, despite the roaches and an occasional rat — actually, she’d seen only one rat in all the while they’d lived there — was that they couldn’t afford the rent on it anymore. And the reason they couldn’t afford the rent was that Sparky was taking the profits he made in his brisk college-student trade and using them to buy dope for himself. He had denied this vehemently at first, told her he’d have to be some kind of real sucker to get himself hooked like the jerks he was selling to. But she knew all the signs, had seen them often enough in Goa, knew he was a junkie even before she came upon him in their bedroom one night, cooking smack in a spoon, and threatened to leave if he stuck that fucking needle in his arm. That was the first time he’d hit her, slapped her backhanded across the face because she’d knocked the spoon out of his hand and spilled his precious shit all over the floor. He cooked up another batch. She watched despairingly as he shot up.

Which was why if only her father could see his way clear to sending her the three hundred she’d asked for, well, then, she could combine this with what she’d been able to hide from Sparky, put aside from her waitressing and baby-sitting, and get them both over to Europe. The way she figured it, he’d have to go over there clean because the customs officials would naturally tear apart any young person’s luggage, especially if he was black, and would find whatever he was holding, and Sparky certainly was smart enough to realize that spending his life in a foreign prison wasn’t worth the risk of trying to carry shit off an airplane. So he’d get to London clean, and since England had pretty strict laws about dope even though they gave it to you free if you were an addict and a subject of Her Majesty the Queen, he’d stay clean in England till they got on the road to Greece, and she’d make damn sure he stayed clean there, too. You couldn’t help but stay pure in body and mind and spirit on those beautiful beaches in Greece, she had Samos in mind again, she had been very happy there with Paul. She wouldn’t even mind if Sparky smoked a little grass every now and then, there was nothing wrong with grass. The thing was to get him away from the needle.

Once he’d kicked it cold turkey in London and later in Greece — she figured they’d spend, what, two, three months on the beach, that was surely enough time to kick a habit — then they’d move on to India where she’d get him involved in buying and selling the goods she’d be shipping back to Boston; Sparky was a good businessman who just happened to be in the wrong business. And once she started school there, she’d get him interested in that, too, get him to enroll in a few classes, and with the climate of acceptance there, the knowledge that there he wouldn’t be just another of America’s shit-upon blacks, why then there’d be no problem. Her father was the goddamn problem. She was thinking of her father on that night in August when Sparky tried to turn her on.

He had been in the bedroom for an inordinately long time. Her constant fear was that he would O.D. on bad shit, there was a lot of bad shit floating around Boston. She never watched him after that first time, the time he’d slapped her, because she couldn’t bear seeing him poisoning himself that way. But tonight, when he went in the bedroom to shoot up, and when he was gone so goddamn long in there, she thought she’d better see what he was up to.

The windows were open wide, this was the hottest summer she could ever remember. He was lying on the bed. The charred spoon, the syringe, the empty glassine packet were on the table beside the bed.

“Hey,” he said when she came into the room, and then grinned and waved open-handed at her, his fingers spread like a fan.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

“You’ve been in here a long time.”

“Cain’t move, is what it is. Fuckin’ potent stuff Jimmy laid on me.”

She kept looking at him. He was wearing only undershorts. His eyes were glazed. The grin perched on his mouth like the monkey on his back.

“Whut?” he said.

“Nothing.”

She was thinking that if her father sent her the three hundred dollars they could leave here in a week, pack all their stuff, get the hell out of here.

“Y’look too gloomy,” he said. He was still grinning vacantly.

“You make me gloomy,” she said.

“Not now,” he said, and waved the argument aside before it could begin. “Feelin’ too good, cool the bullshit, Liss.”

“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t give a damn what you...”

“Then love me, an’ shut up.”

“You’re killing yourself,” she said.

“Here it comes.”

“Yes, here it comes. Sparky...”

“Whyn’t you jess go on over there to the dresser, Liss...”

“What?”

“... fine yourself that other bag of shit...”

“What?” she said again.

“Best fuckin’ shit Jimmy ever laid on me. Cook yourself some an’ shut up, Lissie. Do me a goddamn favor.”

She thought suddenly of that day back at Henderson, when Jenny was smoking pot in the locker-room toilet.

“No,” she said.

“Y’really loved me,” Sparky said, “you’d join me, ’stead of fussin’ at me all the time.”

“No,” she said again.

“Go fine it,” he said. “Top drawer of the dresser. I’ll cook it up for you, darlin’, show you how to...”

“Not for you, not for anybody,” she said, and walked out of the room.

The couple on the third floor were sitting on the stoop outside the building. They said nothing to her as she went by. She knew they were trying to force the landlord to evict her and Sparky. They’d told the landlord there was drug traffic on the fourth floor of the building. She knew it was because Sparky was black, this fucking country. The streets were miserably hot. Her tent dress clung sweatily to her thighs as she walked the three blocks to the bus stop. It was almost nine o’clock when she got to Cambridge. She wandered Harvard Square for another half-hour or so, and then bought a ticket to see a movie, anything to get out of the heat. The movie was a foreign film called Blow-Up, they brought back a lot of foreign films in Cambridge, made sure the college kids were up on their culture. It broke at about eleven-twenty, and she was coming out of the theater, into the suffocating heat again, moving past the cashier’s booth, when a voice at her left elbow said, “Hey, look who’s here.”

She did not recognize him at first. He seemed only another of the faceless squares she’d learned to avoid over the years, a dumpy little bald-headed man, blue eyes twinkling in a moon face, a fringe of brown hair over each ear. Then suddenly he brought up his hands and snapped his fingers on both sides of his head like a flamenco dancer.

“Matthew Hobbs,” he said. “Light on my feet.”

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“How’s business?” he said. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“Well, I...”

“Come on, you won’t turn into a pumpkin till midnight.”

She looked at her watch. “Well, okay,” she said, and they began walking up toward the square.

“So tell me, did you ever get your business going?” he asked.

“I gave it up.”

“Wise move,” he said. He was puffing. “Slow down a little,” he said. “Are we running a foot race?”

“I’m sorry, I...”

“I’ve got to lose some weight, I know,” he said. “My love life is suffering, I mean it. My roommate asked me yesterday how I had the nerve to undress in front of strangers. He wasn’t talking about himself, he’s not a stranger, I’ve been sharing the room with him since I started summer school. I’m making up courses, you know? He meant strangers. Girls. People of the female persuasion. I’m too fat, I know it. How tall do you think I am?”

“I don’t know.”

“Five eight. How tall are you?”

“Five nine.”

“You seem much taller,” he said, and looked down at her feet. “Are you wearing heels?”

“No, I...”

“No heels. You’re tall. I’m short and fat. Spencer is right. My roommate. Spencer Larsson, he’s Swedish.”

“Your roommate where?”

“Tufts. I’m gonna be a fucking dentist, would you believe it? Listen, do you really want coffee? It’ll only keep us awake.”

“Well...”

“You want to walk instead? I can use the exercise.”

“Sure, but I have to get home before long.”

“Mother waiting up?”

“Well... not exactly.”

“Man in your life these days? I remember when I met you...”

“Yes, the situation has changed.”

“Brooke Hastings,” he said.

“What?”

“You were crashing with a girl named Brooke Hastings.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Tempus fugit,” Matthew said. “The Charles okay?”

“The Charles is fine.”

They walked by the river. A semblance of a breeze was blowing in off the water.

“Spencer cuts his toenails once a week,” Matthew said. “How often do you cut your toenails?”

“Whenever they get long,” Lissie said.

“Big muscular Swede,” Matthew said, raising his arms and flexing his muscles. “Built like a marble statue. Spencer Larsson, where’d a Swede get a name like Spencer? Cuts his toenails every week. Saturday morning. Every Saturday morning. I didn’t even know I had toenails till I began rooming with him. Well, that’s not exactly true. Did you used to chew on your toenails when you were a kid?”

“No.”

“I did.”

“How’d you get your feet in your mouth?”

“I mean the parings. After your mother cut your nails. Didn’t your mother used to cut your nails?”

“Sure.”

“After your bath, right?”

“Right.”

“So? The parings. Nice clean parings. Toenail soup,” he said. “How’d you like the movie?”

“It was good.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“Sure. I mean I think so.”

“It was about witnessing the primal scene.”

“What’s that?”

“The primal scene? It’s your mother and your father fucking.”

“Oh.”

“Do you remember the part in the film where he’s enlarging the pictures he took in the park?”

“Yes. My father’s a photographer, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that. Of the couple hugging and kissing in the park, do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s trying to dope out what happened? By blowing up the pictures, remember? That’s where the title came from, Blow-Up.”

“Well, it was also a play on words.”

“Oh, sure. But the key scene in the movie is the enlarging of those black-and-white pictures. What’s your father’s name?”

“James Croft.”

“Never heard of him. I thought he might be Steichen or somebody.”

“No.”

“Does that bother you? That I never heard of him?”

“Me? No. It might bother him, though.”

“When I meet him, I’ll tell him how much I admire his work, how’s that?” Matthew said.

Lissie said nothing.

“Anyway, the photographer keeps blowing up all the pictures, bigger and bigger, trying to find out just what the hell those two people were doing there in the park. Because he’s a kid trying to dope out the primal scene he’s just witnessed, you understand? And finally, after all the enlargements, he zeroes in on a big blowup of a pistol.”

“Ah,” Lissie said. “Yes.”

“You know what a pistol stands for, don’t you?”

“Sure, a cock.”

“Right, a penis. So there you are.”

“Well, I think that’s an interesting way of looking at it,” Lissie said, “but I’m not sure that’s what the movie was really about.”

“Did you ever witness the primal scene?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“No lech for your daddy, huh?”

“None at all.”

“What does your mother do? You said your father...”

“She’s a speech pathologist.” Lissie paused. “They’re divorced. My father got married again two months ago.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Your father remarried?”

“No, my mother. And not two months ago. Two years ago.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“About what? The divorce? The remarriage? I don’t think about it anymore.”

“But when you did think about it.”

“I hated them at first. Both of them. My mother and my father both. I tried everything I could think of to get them together again. That’s because I was afraid I’d try fucking my mother now that the competition was out of the way.”

“Come on,” Lissie said.

“I’m serious. Listen, Freud knew what he was talking about. I never even liked my father, I mean there wasn’t the slightest bit of communication between us ever. But all of a sudden my mother was leaving him for this tennis player...”

“Tennis player?”

“Yeah, a pro on the over-forties circuit. Actually, he’s not a bad guy. The point is, my mother was leaving my father, and all of a sudden I was desperate to keep the marriage together. I practically got down on my hands and knees, begging her to give up this adolescent fling of hers.” Matthew shrugged. “I used to be a ninety-seven-pound weakling. The minute my parents separated, I started eating like a pig. You know how much I weigh now? A hundred and eighty-four pounds. That’s a lot. I’m only five eight, did I tell you that?”

“Yes, you told me,” Lissie said.

“How do you like his new wife?”

“She’s okay, I guess.”

“How old is she?”

“She was just twenty-seven.”

“And you?”

“Nineteen.”

“When will you be twenty?”

“In December.”

“Close. I mean your ages.”

“Yes,” Lissie said.

“Makes matters worse,” Matthew said. “Listen, you’ll get over it.”

“Get over what?”

“Your resentment, or whatever it is you’re feeling.”

“I’m not feeling anything at all.”

“I thought maybe you might be. I sure did. But you’ll get over it, believe me. I play tennis with the son of a bitch now. Whenever they invite me over, I try to whip his ass in tennis. They live on Long Island, he’s got his own court — naturally. I try my best to beat him. It’s like I have another father all at once. With my real father, I’m going to dental school and trying to whip his ass that way, and with my stepfather, I try to beat him at tennis. What does your stepmother do?”

“I don’t think of her as that.”

“Well, that’s what she is, you know. You know what they call a stepmother in France?”

“No, what?”

“A belle-mère. That’s kind of nice, don’t you think. Belle-mère? Beautiful mother? A mother you don’t have to take shit from. Very different from the American concept of the wicked stepmother. Belle-mère.”

“My mother calls her the Little Blond Bimbo.”

“Wicked Witch of the West, right?”

“The East. They live in New York.”

“So what does she do?”

“She’s a musician. She plays the flute.”

“Yeah? Hey, cool.”

“Mm,” Lissie said.

“You play any instrument?”

“No.”

“I used to play guitar,” Matthew said. “With a rock group. Well, who didn’t?” he said, and shrugged again. “Amateur Night in Dixie, you know, rehearse in the garage, all that shit— Hey, kids, let’s put on a show! I was the world’s worst guitar player.”

She thought suddenly of Judd, and wondered where he was these days. And then she wondered if Paul was still in India, and felt suddenly as though time were rushing by too quickly. Across the river someplace, a bell tower tolled the hour. It was midnight. She was about to turn into a pumpkin again.

“I’ve got to get home,” she said.

“Sure. Hey, listen, I’m sorry I talked your ear off.”

“No, I enjoyed it.”

“I’m not usually so garrulous. Spencer calls me the ‘Mummy’s Curse.’ That’s because I’m usually so quiet when I’m with that fuckin’ marble statue. Do you like horror movies?”

“Yes. Well, sort of. If they’re not too scary.”

“Want to go see a horror movie with me sometime? I’m an expert on horror movies. I mean, lady, if you think I know all about the primal scene, you ain’t heard nothing till I give you my theory on the horror-movie monster as a metaphor for Death.”

“I’d love to hear it sometime,” Lissie said.

“You just heard it,” Matthew said, and grinned. “So how about it? Can I call you?”

“Well...”

“See a movie, catch a bite to eat.” He shrugged.

“Well, you see...”

“Go dancing?” He brought up his hands and snapped his fingers. “Very light on my feet, lady.”

“It’s just that I’m sort of involved with someone right now.”

“Oh, sure, right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Will you let me know when you get uninvolved?”

“I don’t think that’ll be any time soon.”

“Everything ends sooner or later,” Matthew said.

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“Everything,” he said, and nodded solemnly.

“Well, if it ends...”

“Yes, he said breathlessly?”

“I’ll call you,” she said, and smiled.

“I’m at Tufts.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So call me,” he said.

“If it ends.”

“When it ends. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good,” he said, and looked at her, and nodded. “Good,” he said again.

He missed her desperately.

He missed her debris: the shoes and sweaters she used to leave in the dining room or on the hallway stairs of the old Rutledge house, the bathrobe or nightgown draped over a banister; the books strewn all over the house like the discarded pillage of a barbarian army; the unwashed pots and spoons in the kitchen after she’d made popcorn or fudge; the mysterious little seedlings in glasses full of water she’d left on every windowsill; even the bathpowder footprints that trailed across the dark wooden floors after each of her hour-long showers, during which she used every drop of hot water in the house.

He missed her noise: the banging of screen doors; the shouting down three flights of stairs; the blaring of her bedroom record player, the bass turned up full so that all anyone could hear was the insistent thrum of the electric guitar chords; her single-fingered pounding at the piano as she tried to master a tricky passage from this or that latest rock hit, her foot stubbornly nailed to the loud pedal; the sudden jubilant shriek whenever she received a telephone invitation to a party or learned that a movie she wanted to see was playing in Greenwich. He missed her silences as well: Lissie sitting on the deck, staring at the river, sunlight in her golden hair; Lissie chewing a pencil as she pondered a translation from her French textbook; Lissie sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the usually off-limits living room stereo equipment, earphones on her head, her eyes closed, listening; Lissie’s dark and dangerous sulks at the dinner table whenever she felt she’d been crossed, especially by him. He missed Lissie’s presence and her essence; he missed having his daughter home, if only for a brief visit.

He wrote to her again at the beginning of October. He read the letter several times before putting it in the envelope, and then asked Joanna to read it, and finally he retyped it, making a few changes Joanna had suggested, and mailed it off to her:

She called her mother on the day before she was scheduled to leave for Europe.

“Are you all packed and everything?” she asked.

“Hardly,” Connie said. “I’m sure I’m taking too much. I’ll only be gone for three weeks, but you’d think it was a year.”

“Well, just don’t decide to go on to India or someplace,” Lissie said, and was pleased when her mother laughed.

“No chance, don’t worry. Just London, Paris, Rome...”

“Try not to get pinched on the ass, okay?” Lissie said.

“I wouldn’t mind a pinch on the ass,” Connie said, surprising her.

“And be sure to write me, okay?”

“Every day.”

“I’d hate to think it runs in the family. Not writing, you know.”

“Every day, I promise. If only a postcard.”

“Well, some letters, too.”

“Letters, too, I promise.”

“You sound good, Mom.”

“I feel good.”

“Does... uh... Dad know you’re going?”

“I haven’t spoken to your father since... God, I can’t even remember. August sometime.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Lissie said.

There was a silence on the line.

“What do you mean?” Connie said.

“I haven’t talked to him,” Lissie said.

“Your father?”

“Yeah.”

“You haven’t talked to him since August?”

“Well, actually, I guess maybe longer than that.”

“When, Lissie?”

“Well... since after the wedding, I guess.”

“The wedding was in June.”

“Yeah.”

“This is October. Are you telling me you haven’t talked to your father in all that time?”

“Yeah. I guess. Well, he writes to me, you know.”

“Do you answer his letters?”

“Well... no, not really.”

“Lissie, what is this? When you asked me not to give him your phone number, I thought it had something to do with Sparky, your not wanting him to know you were still living with Sparky. Now you tell me...”

“Well, let’s just skip it, okay, Mom?”

“No, let’s not just skip it.”

“Come on, Mom, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why haven’t you spoken to him?”

“I just haven’t felt like it.”

“He’s your father, Liss.”

“Sure, he is.”

“What does that mean? That... sneer in your voice.”

“It wasn’t a sneer.”

“It sounded like one.”

“It’s just that I find this boring.”

“He’s your father, Liss. He loves you, he...”

“Then he shouldn’t have left me. He shouldn’t have...”

“What’s done is done, there’s no changing it now. I want you to call him.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“Then I’ll call him. And I’ll give him your number.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Mom.”

“Lissie, can’t you see how wrong this is?”

“Mom, I called you to say goodbye, I knew you were leaving tomorrow, I just called to say goodbye. I didn’t want to get into a long thing about Dad, really, Mom.”

“I want you to call him.”

“No.”

“Lissie, please do me that favor.”

“I can’t, Mom, I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

“I’d... feel funny.”

“Lissie, you owe it to him.”

“I don’t owe him a goddamn thing!” Lissie said.

There was a long silence on the line. Then, in a very low voice, Connie said, “Don’t you ever say that again, Liss. Not to me, not to anyone. You owe him a great deal more than you may imagine. You’re his daughter. Call him, go to see him. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

“I can’t understand you, Mom, I really can’t...”

“Can’t you? I’m trying to breathe again, Lissie. And I suggest you start doing the same.”

She thought she heard her mother sigh.

“I’ll write to you from London,” Connie said, “as soon as I get there. Take care of yourself, darling.”

“I will,” Lissie said. “And Mom...”

But she had already hung up.

The doorbell rang at ten minutes past midnight.

This was New York City.

“Who the hell?” Jamie said.

Joanna was already sitting up in bed.

“Don’t answer it,” she said.

The doorbell kept ringing.

“It’s another burglar,” Joanna said.

“Burglars don’t ring the doorbell,” Jamie said.

He got out of bed, put on a robe, and then walked through the small library, Joanna’s flute lying in its black leather case, silver against green plush, the tiled Franklin stove and Oriental rugs, out into the corridor with the window at the end of the hall where the burglar had come in that time long ago and down the stairs to the second floor of the house, guest bedroom off to the right, kitchen and dining room just beyond the stairs, and down into the living room and past the fireplace and into the tiny entry hall with its wall pegs and the narrow frosted glass window over the front door. He looked through the peephole. “Jesus,” he said, and took off the nightchain and unlocked the door.

“Hi, Dad,” Lissie said.

She was standing in the doorway with Sparky Marshall. She was wearing a blue paisley tent dress, high-topped workman’s shoes, blue knee-length socks and her fighter-pilot’s jacket. The leather was cracked and peeling at the elbows, and the fur collar had been worn raw around the neck. The fleece lining was a dullish gray color now; he doubted she had ever had the jacket cleaned. Sparky was wearing blue jeans, brown boots, a brown leather coat and a ten-gallon hat tilted rakishly over one eye. His smile, as usual, was dazzling.

“We didn’t wake you, did we?” he asked.

“No, I had to get up to answer the door, anyway,” Jamie said.

Sparky laughed. “Thaass a good one,” he said.

“Well, come in, come in,” Jamie said, and took their coats and hung them on the wall pegs just inside the door, and then closed and locked the door again. He was tempted to tell Lissie that people didn’t normally drop in at midnight without calling first, but she was here at last, and he said nothing, simply hugged her close and kissed her cheek while Sparky stood by grinning. She broke away suddenly, as though embarrassed, and then said, “You remember Sparky, don’t you?”

“Yes, sure. Come in, don’t stand in the doorway.”

Joanna was coming down the stairs in a baby doll nightgown. She saw Sparky putting down a duffel bag just inside the front door, and immediately backed up the steps again.

“Well, come in, please,” Jamie said, “would you like a drink? Something to eat? Are either of you hungry?”

“I wouldn’t mind some Scotch over ice,” Lissie said.

“You got anythin’ sweet?” Sparky asked, and Lissie glanced at him sharply. “Some chocolate or somethin’?”

“I’ll see what’s in the kitchen,” Jamie said. “Joanna,” he called as he started up the stairs. “It’s Lissie!”

“Hey, hi,” Joanna yelled down from the top floor. She had put on a bathrobe and was starting down the stairs again. “What a surprise!” As she moved past Jamie on the second-floor landing, she whispered, “Who’s that with her?”

“Sparky Marshall.”

They were sitting in the easy chairs before the fireplace when Joanna came into the room. Sparky got to his feet at once.

“Joanna, I don’t think you’ve met Sparky,” Lissie said.

“Pleasure,” Sparky said.

“My father’s wife,” Lissie said. “Joanna.”

Joanna extended her hand.

“Sparky Marshall,” Lissie said.

“For Spartacus the slave. My great-granddaddy was a—”

“Oh, lay off the slave shit, will you?” Lissie said.

“Well... please,” Joanna said, “sit down. Is your father getting you something to drink?”

“Is that a television I see there in the bookcase?” Sparky said. “Mind if I catch a little Carson?”

“Well, no, go right ahead.”

Jamie came back with the Scotch for Lissie and a bag of chocolate chip cookies. “All I could find,” he said, handing them to Sparky who had turned on the television set, and was now sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of it. “You did want ice in this, didn’t you, Liss?” Jamie said.

“Yes, thanks,” she said, and took the glass. In front of the television set, Sparky dug into the bag of chocolate chip cookies, and then laughed at a joke Johnny Carson told.

There was a long silence.

“Well,” Jamie said, “this is certainly a surprise.”

“You said I was welcome any time,” Lissie said.

“Well, of course you are, darling.”

“Mom’s in Europe, and we felt like spending a few days in New York, so here we are,” she said, and spread her arms wide, almost spilling some of the Scotch in her glass. “Oops,” she said, and grinned, and brought the glass swiftly to her lips.

“You look great, Liss,” Jamie said. “Doesn’t she look great, Joanna?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, and smiled.

“This guy kills me,” Sparky said, laughing.

“So how’s it going up in Boston?” Jamie said.

“Colder’n a witch’s tit up there,” Sparky said. “Ony October an’ I’m freezin my ass off.”

“Are you still living in the same...?”

“Yeah, well, you know,” Lissie, “it’s tough to find a decent apartment in Boston. Unless you have tons of money, of course.”

“Sure, all those college kids up there,” Joanna said, nodding.

“Yeah, that’s just it. The nice places are pretty scarce.”

“’Specially when you’re doin’ a black-on-white number,” Sparky said, and dug into the bag of cookies again.

Lissie glanced at him again, and then — in needless explanation, it seemed to Jamie — said, “Sweet tooth,” and smiled nervously.

“This’s real nice here,” Sparky said, digging into the bag, looking around. The bag was empty. He crumpled it, and tossed it at the fireplace, missing. Joanna got up from where she was sitting, picked up the bag where it lay on the hearth, and placed it on the grate.

“Listen,” Sparky said, getting to his feet abruptly and turning off the television set, “you mind if we continue this in the mornin’? I’m really whacked out.” He turned to Joanna. “Where you want us, Joanna?”

“Well... I guess one of you can use the couch here,” she said, “and...”

“There’s a guest room, isn’t there?” Lissie said at once.

“Well, yes, but...”

“I think it’ll be okay if they use the guest room,” Jamie said.

Joanna looked at him.

Lissie smiled.

Sparky went to where he’d dropped the duffel just inside the front door, hefted it by its strap onto his shoulder and said, “Just lead the way.”

“It’s upstairs,” Jamie said.

Joanna was still looking at him.

“G’night, Joanna,” Sparky said over his shoulder.

“Good night, Joanna,” Lissie said.

“Good night,” Joanna said. She picked up the glass Lissie had left on the floor, and then watched them as they went up the stairs behind Jamie. As she carried the glass into the kitchen, she saw Lissie and Sparky down the hall, just outside the guest-room door. Lissie peeked in, and then whispered something to Sparky. Sparky giggled. Together, they went into the room.

“Good night, Dad,” Lissie said, and closed the door.

“Good night,” Jamie said, and turned to see Joanna standing just outside the entrance to the kitchen. He went to her and said, “You okay, honey?”

“Sure,” Joanna said.

In bed again, she was silent for a long time. Then, at last, she said, “How long will they be staying?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did ask her to call first, didn’t you? In your letter, I mean.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I mean, you didn’t tell her it would be okay to just...”

“Honey, she’s here.”

“... barge in at midnight, did you? Most people are asleep at midnight, unless they’re...”

“Honey, I haven’t seen her since June...”

“... night watchmen or...”

“Joanna,” he said. “Please.”

The bedroom went silent.

“She’s my daughter,” he said. “We haven’t seen each other or talked to each other in four months. She’s here now. I’m glad she’s here, and I hope this’ll be the start of a better... a better relationship between the two of us.”

“I hate that fucking word relationship.”

“Well, whatever you want to call it,” he said.

“What are we supposed to do about tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

Tomorrow — or rather today, since it was already ten minutes to one on Sunday morning — was the tenth of October, and Joanna’s grandmother had invited them to her house in Great Neck to be with the family on Yom Kippur. Joanna wasn’t religious, and had no intention of spending any time at all in the synagogue with her relatives, listening to the cantor intoning “Kol Nidre,” and then fidgeting through the subsequent prayers and the Confession with its fifty-six categories of sin (all of which she was certain she’d committed at one time or another) and its attendant breast-beating. But sundown and the call of the shofar signaled — at her grandmother’s house, anyway — the start of a feast of enormous proportions, the end of a long day of fasting, prayer and introspection. If there was one day in the Jewish calendar that spoke most strongly to the Jewish conscience and sensibility, it was Yom Kippur. They had planned to leave the apartment sometime around four tomorrow afternoon. But now Lissie and Sparky were here.

“Damn it, I wish she’d called first,” Joanna said.

“I don’t see any problem,” Jamie said. “We’ll spend the day with them, and then just...”

“Just what?”

“Well, she can just run over to her mother’s,” Jamie said.

“No, her mother’s in Europe, you heard her say her mother’s in Europe. You also heard her say they felt like spending a few days in New York. Suppose they want to spend them here?”

“I still don’t see any problem.”

“The problem is I don’t want to leave them here alone.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t want to.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“Sparky isn’t.”

“Well, then I’ll... I’ll just have to tell Lissie we’ve made other plans, and we’re sorry, but we’ll have to leave.”

“And they’ll have to leave when we do.”

“Yes,” he said, and hesitated. “That’s what I’ll have to tell her.”

Oddly, he thought immediately of Lissie’s restriction to campus when she was still a student at the Henderson School, and Connie’s refusal to cancel her plans for the weekend.

“You sound uncertain,” Joanna said.

“No, no, I’ll tell her, don’t worry,” Jamie said.

Joanna hugged him close.

“Maybe I married a mensh,” she said.

At nine the next morning, Jamie knocked on the guest bedroom door.

“Mm?” Lissie said.

“Honey, it’s Dad.”

“What is it, Dad?” she asked sleepily.

“Time to get up,” he said.

“What?”

“Time to get up.”

“What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“That’s the crack of dawn, Dad.”

“I know it’s early, but we’ve got a busy day planned, and I’d like you to get up now, okay?”

“What kind of busy day?”

“Lissie, honey, just get up, please, we’ll discuss it over breakfast.”

“Well... okay,” she said. He waited outside the closed door. “Sparky,” she said gently. “Honey. We have to get up.”

“Whut the fuck for?” Sparky mumbled.

“They’ve got plans for us.”

“I got plans for us, too, baby,” he said, and began laughing. “No, not now, honey, really, we have to get up.”

“Whyn’t you just bring that sweet l’il mouth down here?” he whispered.

“Sparky,” she whispered, “we really have to...”

“Come on down here,” he whispered.

Jamie turned away from the door and walked back down the hallway to the kitchen. The coffee was perking. The toaster popped up two slices of bread as he came through the door.

“Did you wake them?” Joanna asked.

“Yeah,” Jamie said, and nodded.

“Better tell them this coffee’s ready.”

“Well... not just now,” Jamie said.

She looked at him.

He nodded.

They did not come out of the bedroom until a quarter past ten. Jamie and Joanna were still sitting at the kitchen table, finishing their second cups of coffee.

“Good morning,” Lissie said. “Mm, that coffee smells good.”

“Got any orange juice?” Sparky asked, pulling out a chair and sitting beside Joanna.

“In the refrigerator,” Joanna said.

“Liss?”

Lissie opened the refrigerator, took out the container of orange juice, and poured some into two glasses. She carried them to the table and then sat down beside Sparky.

“Some eggs would really hit the spot, Joanna,” she said.

“We’re just having a light breakfast,” Jamie said. “You see, what I thought we’d do...”

“Yeah, what are all these big plans you’ve made for us, Dad?”

“Well, I thought we’d all go out to an early lunch together, twelve-thirty, something like that, and then go over to the Modern, if you like...”

“What’s the modern?” Sparky asked.

“The museum,” Lissie said.

“Oh, terrif,” Sparky said, and rolled his eyes.

“Spend a little time together walking, whatever,” Jamie said. “It’s like a spring day outside, you won’t even need your jacket.”

“Wisht it was springtime in Boston,” Sparky said, and rolled his eyes again.

“Get off the nigger act, will you, please?” Lissie said.

“The thing is,” Jamie said, glancing at Joanna, “we’ll have to cut our visit a little short. I don’t know whether you planned to spend the night here or not, but we’ve made other plans, you see.”

“Oh? What other plans?” Lissie asked.

“We’re going out to Great Neck. To spend Yom Kippur with Joanna’s folks.”

“That’s when they blow the chauffeur, ain’t it?” Sparky said, and grinned.

“We’ll be leaving here about four,” Jamie said, and hesitated. “So... I... I guess you and Sparky’ll have to make other arrangements for tonight.”

“What do you mean, other arrangements?” Lissie said.

“Some place else to stay.”

“Great,” Sparky said. “We come all the way down from Boston...”

“Well, we can still spend the entire afternoon together...”

“Sure, till four o’clock, when you’ll be splitting.”

“We were hoping we’d, you know, see a lot of you over the next few days,” Lissie said. “We hitched all the way down...”

“I’m sorry about that, Liss.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it, really,” she said. “We’ll just have to make the best of it. I’m sorry we got here so late last night, but we had a tough time catching rides. Anyway,” she said, and shrugged and went back to the stove. She came back with the coffeepot, poured some into the cups on the table, returned the pot to the stove, and then sat down beside Sparky again.

“If we’re going for an early lunch,” Joanna said, “I’d better get started. Excuse me,” she said, and went out of the kitchen.

“I’ll be skippin’ lunch, if you don’t mind,” Sparky said, and Lissie quickly looked at him. “Got some business uptown,” he explained to Jamie. “Have to take a rain check.” He looked at his watch. “Fact, I better get crackin’,” he said, and pushed back his chair.

They were alone in the kitchen.

“So,” Lissie said.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Jamie said.

“The thing of it is Mom’s not here, either, you know. I came down here just to see you. Now it’s turning into a big lunch type thing.” She shook her head. “I thought we’d have a chance to talk, you know.”

“Well, if...”

“Instead, it’ll be, you know, polite chitchat. I think we’ve got more to say to each other than just polite chitchat, Dad.”

“Would you like me to ask Joanna...?”

“No, no, I don’t want to upset Joanna.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if we had lunch alone. Just the two of us.”

“Well, that’s what I’d like, really, but if it’ll upset Joanna...”

“I’ll ask her.”

“I’d appreciate it, Dad,” she said, and suddenly hugged him.

Over tempura and sukiyaki in a Japanese restaurant on West Fifty-fifth Street, she told him how truly sorry she was not for having been in real touch with him since June, but she’d had her own life to work out, she’d been in the midst of trying to pick up the wreckage of her own life. And then, startling him because she seemed to be in the midst of an apology, she said, “But I guess you don’t much care about other people’s lives, do you, Dad?”

“Lissie,” he said, “peace,” and smiled and covered her hand with his own. “I’m sure you didn’t come all the way to New York to argue with me.”

“Well, I wasn’t aware we were arguing,” she said. “I’m trying to have a meaningful discussion here. That’s what you asked for in your letter, isn’t it? A more open communication? Okay, I’m trying to communicate.”

“Well, it’s not really communication when you accuse me of...”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything,” Lissie said. “I simply asked whether you cared much about other people’s lives.”

“I care about your life, yes, Lissie.”

“How about Sparky’s life? Do you care about his life?”

“I hardly know Sparky.”

“You could get to know him better...”

“Lissie...”

“... if you’d make any kind of effort. I mean, we’re both decent people, Dad, you don’t have to...”

“I know you are. But, Lissie, I really don’t want to talk about Sparky just now.”

“What do you want to talk about, Dad?”

“I want to know what’s happening to us. I want to mend whatever...”

“It’s a little late to be asking that, isn’t it?”

“No, I don’t think so. If I thought it was too late, I wouldn’t have written that letter to you.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s start all over again.”

“Please,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

“Let’s get it all out of our systems, let’s clear the air.”

“That’s just what I want to do.”

“So,” she said.

“So,” he said, and paused. “I’ve always leveled with you, Liss...”

“I know you have.”

“Not because you’re a decent person, which I’ve never doubted, by the way, but also because you’re my daughter. And I love you.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

“It’s just that each and every time we’ve tried to communicate recently...”

“I know.”

“You’ve misunderstood my concern and interpreted it instead as anger or...”

“No, I...”

“... or reprimand, or scorn...”

“Well, guilt-ridden was what I thought.”

“Whatever.”

“Yes,” she said, and nodded.

“When all I was trying to do was understand what was happening to us.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to correct that situation, Liss. I really would.”

“So would I.”

“If you love me as much as you love your... as much as you love Mom... then my happiness and welfare should at least be of some concern to you.”

“It is, Dad.”

“I’m very happy with Joanna, Liss.”

“I’m glad about that. Really I am.”

“And I hope to stay married to her for the rest of my life.”

“Good, I hope so, too, Dad.”

“I’ve been trying to keep a dialogue open between us, Liss, you know I have. I’ve invited you here repeatedly without response, I’ve sent gifts without your acknowledgment...”

“Well, I’ve been going through a lot, you know. Sparky...”

“Yes, I know that. But still...”

“Anyway, that’s what we’re trying to put behind us, isn’t it? I mean, I’m here, we’re together again...”

“But shouldn’t we discuss this, Liss? I mean...”

“Sure, let’s get it all out in the open.”

“I really do want you to be a part of this family.”

“That’s what I want, too.”

“But it won’t work if you continue to believe your mother... Mom... was unfairly treated. Isn’t that what you really believe, Liss?”

“Well, yes, Dad. Sort of. But I’ll get over it.”

“But why do you feel that way, Lissie? It wasn’t your mother who rushed up to the Henderson School every weekend when you were confined to campus, it was me. It wasn’t your mother... Mom... who nursed you through that drug episode in June. When you tell me...”

“Yeah, Dad, but you’re the one who left, not Mom.”

“Okay, I admit that. But in people’s lives...”

“And you know, being great in tragedies doesn’t necessarily mean a person’s good at other things, too, you know what I mean?”

“I didn’t mean that to sound...”

“No, I know. But, like, what am I supposed to say to that? Gee, too bad there weren’t more tragedies? I mean, do you see what I mean?”

“Yes, Lissie. But I’ve tried to be a good father in other ways as well. I wasn’t saying that rushing you to the doctor...”

“Oh, I know that. I meant... like... well, for example, I had to learn from Mom just how long this thing with Joanna had been going on. You expect your welfare to be of some concern to me, but you never tell me anything. So how can you expect... I mean, it was going on for two years, Dad. And God knows how many other women...”

“There were never any other women.”

“Well, Mom doesn’t seem to think that was the case.”

“Mom is wrong.”

“She thinks you had an affair with Mrs. Blair, for example.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, she thinks so.”

“Your mother...”

“It doesn’t really matter, anyway, does it? I mean, who cares about that, that’s not the point. The point...”

“The point is I wasn’t.”

“Okay, you weren’t, let’s say you weren’t. The point is you didn’t choose to tell me any of this, I had to hear it from Mom. She’s the one who tells me things, she’s the one who accepts me for what I am, Dad.”

“What are you, Lissie?” he said. “Please tell me what you are.”

“You know what I am, Dad. I’m a hippie.”

“A hippie,” he repeated, and nodded.

“A hippie, yes, Dad.”

“Well,” he said, and sighed. “I guess it’s okay to call yourself a hippie and go running around the street in secondhand clothes when you’re only nineteen. But if you’re still running around the street that way when you’re forty, then you’re not a hippie anymore, Liss, you’re a bum.”

“What are you saying, Dad?”

“I think you know what I’m saying.”

“You’re calling me a bum, right?”

“No, I’m not. But, Liss, have you reenrolled at school, for example?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“Have you made any plans at all for the future?”

“Not yet.”

“What kind of work are you doing now, Liss?”

“Baby-sitting. Waitressing. Like that,” she said, and shrugged.

“And when you’re forty?”

“My life-style doesn’t have to change simply because I get older. I don’t need as much as you do, Dad. I don’t need an apartment with a dozen rooms in it...”

“Six, Liss.”

“I don’t need vacations in the Caribbean...”

“You never seemed to complain about them when you were...”

“I don’t need a goddamn fancy sports car... what are you driving these days, Dad? What’s Joanna driving?”

“Is that your quarrel with us? Our life-style?”

“I don’t have any quarrel with you.”

“Then why haven’t you written? Or called?”

“I’ve been busy making my own life. You kicked me out of your life, so now I’m trying to make a life of my own. Is there anything wrong about that?”

“Only the part about kicking you out. Nobody’s done that, Lissie.”

“No. Then what was marrying Joanna?”

“Marrying Joanna was...”

“Was kicking out me and Mom, that’s what it was.”

“No, Lissie.”

“No? Then what’s today? The same thing all over again, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“We come all the way down from Boston to see you, and you go running off to Long Island. Okay, maybe Yom Kippur is important to Joanna...”

“It’s the most important Jewish—”

“When did you get to be Jewish, Dad? The point is, do you have to kick us out into the street? Do you know what checking into a hotel tonight’ll mean for Sparky and me? Do you have any idea what kind of white-black shit we get dumped on us all the time?”

Jamie glanced at the waitress hovering near one of the screens shielding the kitchen.

“Oh, fuck her,” Lissie said, “this is your daughter here.”

“What do you want me to do, Lissie?”

“What time will you be back tonight?”

“Late.”

“So can’t we stay in the apartment while you’re gone? I mean, will that be such a big deal? If we spent another night with you?”

“I’m not sure how Joanna would feel about that,” he said, even though he already knew exactly how Joanna felt about it.

“Well, yeah, Joanna,” Lissie said.

“But I’ll ask her,” he said.

“It would be a big help, Dad,” Lissie said. “You’ve got no idea what we go through, I mean it.”

“Let me ask her,” he said, and covered her hand with his own. “I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

She put her hand over his, and suddenly grinned across the table at him. “Do you know what I used to love with all my heart?” she asked.

“What’s that, Lissie?”

“When you used to hang my pictures in the living room. On all my birthdays. Do you remember that, Dad? When you used to hang my pictures?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said, and turned away to signal for the check because he did not want her to see the sudden rush of tears to his eyes.

Joanna was sitting in half-slip and bra at the dressing table, putting on her face, when he came into the bedroom at three that afternoon.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Fine, I think.”

“The talk, I mean, not the lunch.”

“The talk especially,” he said, and went to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Well, good, darling,” she said, and smiled at him in the mirror. “Is Sparky back yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, what are we...?” She turned and looked at the clock on the bedside table. “We’ll be leaving in an hour, Jamie.”

“Lissie asked if they could spend the night.”

“What’d you tell her?” Joanna said, and looked up at him.

“That I’d discuss it with you.”

“The answer is no.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like the idea.”

“If you didn’t mind the idea of them sleeping together in the guest room last night...”

“Who says I didn’t mind the idea?”

“Joanna, she’s nineteen years old. That’s old enough to be treated like a grownup. When you were nineteen...”

“When I was nineteen, I didn’t bring men home to my father’s house. I spared him at least that, Jamie.”

“I’d like to do her this one favor,” Jamie said.

“One favor? Jesus! You’ve been running yourself ragged over her ever since I’ve known you. A million and one favors, you mean.”

“I don’t want her to have to check into a hotel, Joanna. I think that would be difficult for her.”

“Fine, then, do what you like.”

“I want your okay on it.”

“Why? You live here, too, don’t you?”

“Then I’ll tell her she can stay, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Joanna?”

“I said sure.”

“Okay, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll tell her,” Jamie said, and went out of the room.

18

It was almost two in the morning when they got back to the Sixty-fifth Street apartment. The weather had turned cold again; he fumbled with stiff fingers to insert the key into the lock, and then opened the door, and turned on the table lamp in the entryway. There was the smell of marijuana in the air, Joanna detected it at once. Jamie went into the living room, snapped on the lights, and then stopped dead in his tracks, as though unexpectedly struck in the face by an unseen intruder. Joanna, turning from where she was hanging her coat on a wall peg beside Lissie’s fighter-pilot jacket, opened her eyes wide, and then went to stand speechlessly beside him. Aghast, they looked into the room.

A trail of debris stretched from the bay window fronting the street to the staircase leading to the upper stories, the flotsam and jetsam of what seemed to have been a wild party. Empty whiskey bottles lay scattered on the floor, glasses were on every table top. The ashtrays were bulging with butts and marijuana roaches, and someone had ground out a cigarette on the polished marble top of the mail table just inside the entrance door. A fire had been started in the fireplace, a log still smoldered there. But the screen had not been replaced afterward, and there were blown ashes and several large scorch marks on the Oriental rug just beyond the hearth. Someone had spilled a drink on one of the red plush-velvet easy chairs that flanked the fireplace. A white sweat sock was draped over one of the lampshades. A pair of panties, the crotch stained with what appeared to be menstrual blood, was crumpled on the floor near the big brass wood bucket.

Like hunters tracking a wild beast loose in their midst, they followed the spoor up the carpeted steps to the second floor of the building. The refrigerator door had been left ajar; its light cast illumination into the kitchen, revealing the stack of dirty dishes in the sink even before Jamie snapped on the overheads. A loaf of bread, an open box of cornflakes, a container of milk, a melting slab of butter were on the kitchen table. The mate to the sweat sock in the living room was on the range top, alongside a copper kettle that had been blackened because the flame under it had been allowed to burn too long and too hot. Down the hall, in the guest bedroom, the bed was unmade, and there were blankets and pillows on the floor. Whoever owned the stained panties in the living room had left her track upstairs as well, her menstrual blood ripening one of the white monogramed bath towels that had been a wedding gift from Joanna’s grandmother. Popcorn, matchsticks and newspapers trailed an uneven path across the carpeting. On the night table beside the bed, there was a syringe with a broken needle. A torn glassine packet lay beside the syringe, and beside that was one of Joanna’s sterling tablespoons, a wedding gift from her father, its bowl blackened.

In the library upstairs, the music stand had been knocked over and the charred remains of a manuscript were under the grate in the Franklin stove, where the pages had been used to start another fire. One of the stove’s tiles was cracked. Joanna’s flute case lay open on the floor. Someone had used the flute as a poker. The end opposite the mouthpiece was black, the hole clogged with ashes. It was the sight of the violated flute that infuriated them most, Joanna because the flute was her life, Jamie simply because he loved her. Eyes blazing, nostrils flaring as though she had at last caught scent of the elusive something they’d been stalking, Joanna threw open the bedroom door. Lissie was asleep on their bed, wearing only a T-shirt and cotton panties. In the ashtray beside the bed, there was a used condom.

“Wake up, Goldilocks,” Joanna said.

She sat up at once, blinked into the room, and then smiled and said, “Oh. Hi.”

“What the hell happened here?” Jamie said.

“Well, we invited some friends in, you know...”

“You had no right to do that.”

“It was just some...”

“Get off that bed!” Joanna said.

“This is where we live,” Jamie said. “This is our home...”

“We were going to clean up,” Lissie said.

“When?” Joanna said. “We told you we’d be home tonight, we told you we’d be home around midnight, it’s two in the morning, when did you...?”

“You’ve made a pigsty of our home!” Jamie said. “Goddammit, Liss, what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me,” Lissie said, suddenly defiant. “We had a fight is what, okay? Sparky and his friends ran out of here...”

“I don’t give a damn about your fight,” Jamie said, taking a step toward the bed. “You’re not six years old, you had no right to...”

“Who the hell gave you permission to use this room?” Joanna said.

“That was Sparky’s idea.”

“Was it Sparky’s idea to leave a rubber in the ashtray? What was that? A little souvenir of your tender romance?”

“He left in a hurry.”

“Which is just the way you’re gonna leave!” Joanna said.

“Listen, you,” Lissie said heatedly, “why don’t you shut the fuck up? My father...”

“Lissie!” Jamie shouted.

“Where’d you get this rotten kid?” Joanna asked.

“My father and I are trying to talk here,” Lissie said. “If you’d...”

“Get dressed,” Joanna said. “Pack your things and get out. Take your boyfriend’s scumbag with you.”

“I don’t have to do what you...”

“Lissie, darling,” Joanna said sweetly, “you almost spoiled our wedding day, but that’s the last thing you’re ever going to spoil. Get out. And don’t come back till you’ve learned a little common decency and respect. If not for me, at least for your father.”

“I do respect my father.”

“And I respect Adolf Hitler! Get rid of her,” Joanna said, and stormed out of the room.

“You heard her,” Jamie said.

“Dad, you don’t know how terrible it was,” Lissie said, and suddenly began sobbing. She got off the bed, and went to him, and hugged him close, her face pressed against his chest, her tears wetting his shirt, and all at once he felt his anger dissolving. He held her tightly and said, “What happened, Lissie?”

“He was a junkie, Dad,” she said in a rush, sobbing, catching her breath, “half the kids here tonight were junkies. I didn’t know that, Dad, I wouldn’t have allowed him to invite them if I’d known. He said it would just be for a few drinks, they tried to turn me on, Dad, it wasn’t the first time, Dad, I just wouldn’t do it, I’d never stick a needle in my body as long as I live, you know that, Dad.”

“Yes, darling, I know that.”

She moved away from him abruptly, as though remembering she was still wearing only T-shirt and panties, and went quickly to the chair across the room, and took her dress from it, and pulled it over her head. Searching for her shoes and socks, she said, “I’ll clean up before I leave, Dad, I promise, it’s just that it happened so suddenly, the fight with him, and he... he was gone before I... before I knew what was happening.” She burst into tears again, and he went to her and embraced her again, and then brushed her hair away from her face, and she nodded, and sniffed, and then, still sobbing, said, “I guess everything has to end sooner or later, doesn’t it, Dad, but oh, God, oh, God!”

“Stop crying, Liss,” he said, and handed her his handkerchief. “Here. Blow your nose.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said, and took the handkerchief. “God, I’m going to miss him, Dad.”

“You’ll get over it,” he said. “Dry your eyes.”

“I hope so, Dad. I mean, you don’t know what a trauma this is for me, Dad, He was the only one I had. When I realized I didn’t have a father anymore...”

“Didn’t have a father? Lissie...”

“You know what I mean, Dad. The distance between us and all.” She sat in the chair beside the dressing table, and pulled on her blue socks, and then began lacing the high-topped workman’s shoes. “Sparky was always there,” she said, “he was at least always there. And he respected me, Dad. I know that may sound strange, him hitting me and all...”

“Hitting you?”

“Yes, Dad,” she said, and looked up at him.

“Jesus, Lissie, why didn’t you tell me any of—?”

“I’m sorry, Dad but it wasn’t the kind of thing I could tell you, not when there were all those hard feelings between us.”

“Did you tell your mother?”

“Please don’t call her that, Dad, please! You have no idea how it hurts me to hear you calling her ‘your mother’ instead of ‘Mom.’ If you had any idea...”

“Lissie, it wouldn’t be right for me to refer to her as ‘Mom.’ We’re divorced now.”

“Yes, I know that, Dad, but couldn’t you please make the effort?”

“Lissie...”

“Knowing how much it means to me?”

She got up from where she was sitting, went to the dresser, and picked up Joanna’s silver hairbrush. As she began brushing her hair, she said, “Do you think Joanna would mind my using this?”

“You’ve used everything else,” Jamie said, “I think it’s a little late to be asking whether...”

“God, she didn’t have to say all those terrible things to me,” Lissie said, standing before the mirror and brushing her hair. “I mean, shit, it’s not as if I wanted any of this to happen, it just sort of got out of control.”

“You shouldn’t have invited those people here in the first place,” Jamie said.

“I didn’t invite them, Sparky did.”

“You’re my daughter, not Sparky.”

“If I’m your daughter, then how could you allow Joanna to say all those horrible things to me? Without once standing up for me. I mean, Jesus, Dad, how could you do that to your own daughter?”

“Lissie... Joanna’s my wife.”

“So she’s your wife! I’m your daughter! Doesn’t that count for anything? I’m your flesh and blood! A six-year-old, great, that’s what she called me, a six-year-old.”

“I was the one who...”

“Not that it should have come as any surprise. I mean, you’ve been telling me forever how immature I am. Or how thoughtless or careless or inconsiderate or whatever the hell. I guess it’s just never occurred to you how hurtful that can be. I mean, Dad, did it ever once occur to you that maybe you owe me a sincere apology? I mean, if you ever expect me to really forgive you.”

“Forgive me? For what?”

“For everything.”

“Everything? Honey, I’m not sure I know what you’re...”

“Well, for example, you never really helped me, no matter what you say now, when Holtzer restricted me to campus that time.”

“I came up to see you every—”

“Sure, but you didn’t get the restriction lifted, and it got into my files, and that’s why I didn’t get accepted at Vassar.”

“Lissie, you don’t know that for a—”

“And then, right after graduation, you ran off to Italy...”

“We’d planned that trip months in advance.”

“... and shipped me off to the Cape while you were having a good time over there. Well, so what? I’d been left alone before. But then you raised that terrible fuss when you found out I was living with Judd...”

“I think you can understand how—”

“And you wouldn’t even trust me with cash when I got stranded in Venice that time.”

“But Lissie, you did cash in the ticket I...”

“And again in India, it took forever to get the five hundred dollars I asked for...”

“I sent it the minute I received your letter. Lissie, I don’t see the point...”

“The point is... and Sparky, all that business with Sparky... the point, Dad, is you never seem to think about how I might be feeling about anything. Can’t you for once wake up in the morning feeling a little happier for me? Mornings are a beautiful time. Can’t you try to dig them?”

“All right, I’ll try to dig them,” he said, and smiled.

“Well, you don’t have to make fun of the way I talk, Dad.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t...”

“I mean, that’s just another sign of disrespect, isn’t it? You keep telling me there are two families now, but until I can become a respected member of this new family, as you call it, then how can I respect you in return? Or Joanna, either.”

“Let’s go back just a bit, okay?”

“Sure.”

“You said you wanted a sincere apology. What kind of...?”

“I don’t want a superficial apology, Dad.”

“You just told me...”

“How the hell can anyone apologize for all the hurt that’s been done to me? Jesus, why do you keep trying to make me feel guilty? What did I do, would you mind telling me?”

“Lissie, let’s try to hear each other, okay? I don’t think we’re hearing each other just now.”

“Maybe ’cause you’re not listening. I thought I was making myself perfectly clear.”

“You said you wanted an apology. All right, I think I’m adult enough to—”

“Meaning I’m not, right?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“When are you going to accept me for what I am, Dad? Mom accepts the real me! I don’t care how generous you are, Dad, I mean fuck the little gifts from Saks or Bonwit’s. It only matters how honest you are. And if you think going to bed with a dozen other women while you were still married to...”

“Lissie, I did not go to...”

“Oh, fuck it, who cares? But it wasn’t honest, can’t you at least admit that?”

“If it isn’t true, why should...?”

“Well, I happen to think it is true. Can’t you even discuss it with me? I’m almost twenty years old, I’ll be twenty in December, I’m not a kid sucking lollipops anymore. You should be able to discuss anything under the sun with...”

“Not what’s private and personal between me and...”

“Joanna, right, Joanna. Everything’s private and personal between you and Joanna, with nothing left over for your daughter. What the hell do you see in her, anyway?” Lissie asked abruptly, turning from the mirror. “Would you mind telling me? What the hell did she offer that none of the others did? All I can see...”

“What I see in Joanna is none of...”

“What is it you share with her, Dad? Your enormous ego?”

“My ego? What...?”

“Yes, your goddamn fame and your financial success and your fucking ego, yes! Where the hell’s the substance, Dad? Jesus, don’t you see what I’m saying?”

“No,” he said tightly. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re saying, Liss?”

“Here comes the anger again, right? I can see it in your eyes, I can hear it in your voice.”

“Yes, here comes the anger again,” he said.

“What the hell have you got to be angry about? You’ve moved on to greener pastures, haven’t you? It’s Mom and me who were abandoned.”

“Lissie, I really don’t want to hear...”

“Oh, fuck, who cares what you want to hear? How the hell can you possibly expect me to accept this new family of yours, this fake fucking family you’ve created, when you...”

“Lissie, I think we’d better...”

“Am I supposed to accept Joanna simply because you love her?”

“You’re making it imposs—”

“Why should I communicate with...”

“All right,” he said, and nodded.

“... people who think I’m a worthless shit?”

“All right,” he said again, very quietly, and she fell suddenly silent.

They stood staring at each other.

He took a deep breath.

“How’d you ever get to be this?” he said, almost to himself. “Blame it on the times,” she said, and suddenly and surprisingly smiled.

“No.”

“Then blame it on yourself.”

“I blame it on you,” he said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“For what? For telling you the truth about...?”

“I’m your father!”

“Then why the fuck don’t you try acting like—”

“Damn you, shut up!” he said.

Her eyes opened wide.

“How dare you?” he said. “What else have you got for me in that sewer of a mouth? What else do you expect me to invite, and accept, and apologize for?”

It took her only a moment to recover.

“I don’t have to take this kind of shit from you or anybody else!” she shouted, and slammed the hairbrush down on the dressing table, and then turned and walked out of the room. He heard her moving angrily through the library, heard her hurried footfalls going down the three flights of stairs and across the living room, heard the front door of the house slam as she went out. The last glimpse he had of her was from the bedroom window as she walked past the lighted lamppost outside the house, her blond head ducked against the wind, her tent dress flapping about her legs, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of the fighter-pilot jacket.

She must have written her letter that same Sunday night. It was undated, and written on YWCA stationery. He received it on Tuesday morning. It repeated much of what she had said to him in anger in the empty hours of the night, as though she wished to give her words the final stamp of permanency:

He read her letter again, and then another time. He sat very still in his chair for a very long while. Then he lumbered to his feet, and went upstairs to the guest room she had shared only Saturday night with Sparky, and went to the closet there, and took from it the several cartons in which he had stacked her photographs. He carried the cartons downstairs to the living room, one at a time, and spread the pictures on the floor around the fireplace in a widening circle, as though he were dropping pebbles into a still lake the exact center of which was the hearth, watching their ripples move out, overlapping, to touch a distant shore.

Here was the picture he’d taken of her in Central Park when she was six years old and stooping to pluck a dandelion from the ragged lawn. Here was the one he’d taken at Martha’s Vineyard in 1965, Lissie almost fourteen and sitting in a flaking, rusting rowboat. He moved back from the hearth, dropping pictures on the floor at his feet, the ripples widening.

Lissie at the age of twelve, tangled in her skis at Stratton. Lissie by the river in Rutledge when she was sixteen, the secret shot taken from the deck above. Lissie at the Jacobsons’ Fourth of July party that same year, grinning around a hot dog dripping mustard. Pictures of her, widening circles, pictures of his daughter.

Lissie in her graduation gown, the mortarboard rakishly tilted, the zoom shot across the lawn. And here... ah... his favorite, Lissie at Jones Beach in the second year of her life, looking down in consternation at a sand-covered lollipop, her blue eyes squinted, her blond hair catching the sun for a dazzling halo effect. She had known who she was on her second birthday. When she’d seen the poster-sized shot of herself squinting at the lollipop, she’d squealed with glee, remembering, and then ran to him and hugged his knees. He’d lifted her into his arms and kissed her plump little cheek and whispered into her hair, “Daddy loves you.”

He picked his way among the photographs, gingerly treading through them as though he were walking a minefield sown with memories. He stood back from them then, surveying the panorama of pictures, the floor covered with them, the room bursting with Lissie. He stood looking at the pictures for a long, long time. Then he went to the dropleaf desk in the corner opposite the fireplace, and lowered the front of it, and took a sheet of stationery from one of the cubbyholes, and picked up a pen. Sighing deeply, he began writing:

He crumpled the sheet of paper, and dropped it in the wastebasket under the desk. He took another sheet from the cubbyhole, looked at it blankly for several seconds, and then began writing again:

Tears were beginning to form in his eyes.

He took a deep breath. His hand began trembling:

He looked up sharply, as though she were standing immediately behind his shoulder silently reading every word as he set it down on the page, the pen moving slowly, the tears coursing down his cheeks:

He read the letter over again, and sat at the desk, crying openly, while across the room the clock ticked away the fleeting minutes. Then he put the letter into an envelope, and addressed it, and sealed it, and went out to mail it.

It was bitterly cold in the street outside.