Noah's Compass

12

Liam’s rocking chair, where he had so fondly imagined himself whiling away his old age, was not really all that comfortable. The slats seemed to hit his back wrong. And the smaller of the armchairs was too small, too short in the seat for his thighs. But the larger armchair was fine. He could sit in the larger armchair for days.

And he did.

He watched how the sun changed the color of the pines as it moved across the sky, turning the needles from black to green, sending dusty slants of light through the branches. There was a moment every afternoon when the line of shade coincided precisely with the line of the parking-lot curb out front. Liam waited for that moment. If it happened to pass without his noticing, he felt cheated.

He told himself that the shine would soon enough have worn off, if he and Eunice had stayed together. He would have started correcting her grammar, and she would have begun to notice his age and his irritability. He would ask why she had to stomp so heavily when she walked, and she would say he never used to mind the way she walked.

Oh, and anyhow, the world was full of people whose lives were meaningless. There were men who spent their entire careers picking up litter from city streets, or fitting the same bolt into the same bolt-hole over and over and over. There were men in prison, men in mental wards, men confined to hospital beds who could move only one little finger.

But even so…

He remembered an art project he had read about someplace where you wrote your deepest, darkest secrets on postcards and mailed them in to be read by the public. He thought that his own postcard would say, I am not especially unhappy, but I don’t see any particular reason to go on living.

One morning as he was sitting there he heard a knock, and he sprang up to answer even though he knew he shouldn’t. But he opened the door to find a stranger, a lipsticked woman with wildly bushy red hair and brass earrings the size of coasters. She stood with one hip slung out, holding a can of Diet Pepsi. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“I’m Bootsie Twill. Can I come in?”

“Well…”

“You’re Liam, right?”

“Well, yes…”

“I’m Lamont’s mom. The guy they arrested?”

“Oh,” Liam said.

He stepped back a pace, and she walked in. She took a swig from her can and looked around the living room. “You get way more light than I do,” she said. “Which direction is this place facing?”

“Um, north?”

“Maybe I should lose my window treatments,” she said. She crossed the room to plunk herself down in the chair he had just vacated. She was wearing pedal pushers in a geometric red-and-yellow print, and when she set her right ankle on her left knee the hems rode up to expose gleaming, bronzed shins.

This was not the plump little Jack-and-the-Beanstalk widow Liam had envisioned when he heard of her son’s arrest.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Twill?” he asked, settling in the rocking chair.

“Bootsie,” she said. She took another swig of soda. “Lamont is out on bail,” she said. “He wants to have a jury trial. He’s going to plead not guilty.”

Liam wondered how that could possibly work. But then, what did he know about such things? He tried to look sympathetic.

“I figured I would ask you if you’d be a character witness,” she told him.

“Character witness!”

“Right.”

“Mrs. Twill-”

“Bootsie.”

“Bootsie, your son assaulted me, did you know that? He knocked me out with a blow to the head and he bit me in the palm.”

“Yes, but, see, he didn’t take anything, now, did he. He did not take one thing of yours. He was probably, like, overcome with remorse when he saw what he’d done, and he left.”

Liam rocked back in his chair and stared at her. He considered the possibility that this was all a joke-some sort of Candid Camera situation set up by, maybe, Bundy or someone.

“Don’t you think?” she prodded him.

“No,” he said levelly. “I think I made a noise and the neighbors heard and he got scared and ran away.”

“Oh, why are you so judgmental?”

He chose not to answer that.

“Hey,” she said. “I realize you’ve got reason to be mad at him, but you don’t know his whole story. This is a good, kind, good-hearted, kindhearted boy we’re talking about. Only he’s the product of a broken home and his father was a shit-head and in school he had dyslexia which gave him low self-esteem. Plus I think he might be bipolar, or whatchamacallit, ADD. So okay, all I’m asking is a second chance for him, right? If you could tell the jury how he broke into your apartment but then had remorseful thoughts-”

“Look. Mrs. Twill.”

“Bootsie.”

“I was unconscious,” Liam said. “Your son knocked me unconscious; are you hearing me? I don’t have the slightest idea what thoughts he may have had because I was out cold. I don’t even know what he looked like. I don’t even remember hearing him break in. I’ve completely lost all memory of it.”

“Okay, fine, but it might come back to you, maybe. I mean if you were to see him. So here’s what we could do: I could take you to visit him. Or bring him to your place, if you want. Sure! Whatever’s most convenient for you; you get to call the shots, absolutely. And he could tell you how he was overcome with remorse and such, which would be interesting for you to hear; you haven’t heard his side of it. And then meanwhile you would be looking at him and you might think, Hey! Now I remember! Seeing him would, like, bring it all back to your mind, you know?”

Liam did know. It was the sort of scenario he had fantasized when he had been so distressed about his amnesia. But at some point, he seemed to have stopped caring about that; he couldn’t say just when. If the memory of his attack were handed to him today, he would just ask, Is that it?

Where’s the rest? Where’s everything else I’ve forgotten: my childhood and my youth, my first marriage and my second marriage and the growing up of my daughters?

Why, he’d had amnesia all along.

“And here’s another thing,” Mrs. Twill was saying. “If you were just to look into his face, then even if it didn’t remind you, you’d understand what a nice kid he is. Just a kid! Real shy and clumsy, always nicks himself shaving. That would tell you about his character. It might even help you get over this. I mean, I know you must feel spooked these days. I bet every time a floorboard creaks, your heart beats faster, am I right?”

She was wrong. Every time a floorboard creaked, he just cleared his throat or rattled his newspaper-covered the sound up in some way, as he had always covered suspicious sounds up even before the break-in.

All along, it seemed, he had experienced only the most glancing relationship with his own life. He had dodged the tough issues, avoided the conflicts, gracefully skirted adventure.

He let Mrs. Twill leave her telephone number because that was the easiest way to get rid of her, and then he showed her out.

When he sat back down in his armchair (unpleasantly warm now from Mrs. Twill’s bony rear end), he found he had lost the thread of his thoughts. He felt restless and distracted. He wondered if he should take a walk. Or go grocery shopping, maybe? He was nearly out of orange juice. He rehearsed the preparations in his mind: make a list, collect his recyclable bags…

He saw Mrs. Twill as she had looked when he’d opened the door-her who-cares posture, her garish lipstick, her unfamiliar, unwelcome, un-Eunice face.

“Oh, Liam,” he heard Eunice say again. O Liam, he saw in her round schoolgirl script, for she had a habit of spelling oh without the h, which had lent her little smiley-face notes an unexpectedly poetic tone. (O I wish Mr. C. didn’t have that budget meeting tomorrow…)

Sometimes, without his say-so, the most specific memories of Eunice would suddenly swim up. Her refusal to drive on major highways, for instance, because she feared what she called the “peer pressure” of the drivers behind her on entrance ramps. Her tendency to talk about any subject that was on her mind, regardless of her audience, so that she was perfectly capable of asking the mailman what gift she should bring to a baby shower. And the way she had of biting her lower lip when she was concentrating on something-her two small, pearly front teeth recalling the teeth of an old-fashioned bisque doll that one of his daughters had owned.

Or the harder memories, from after he’d learned she was married. “But what about our only life?” he heard her say, and it was almost a melody, a plaintive little clear-voiced song hanging in the air of the room.

Why was it that he had known so many sad women?

His mother, to begin with-abandoned by her husband, perennially in poor health, no solace remaining to her but her children, as she was forever pointing out to them. “If you two left me, I don’t know how I’d bear it,” she said. And then what did Liam do? He left her. He accepted a partial scholarship to a college in the Midwest, although the University of Maryland had offered a scholarship too, and a full one at that. How could he? all her church friends asked. Thank the good Lord for Julia; daughters were always a comfort; but wouldn’t you think Liam could stay in the same geographical area, at least? When his mother was so alone, so unfortunate, such a victim of circumstance! A saint, in fact. (As she said so often: “I just seem to put myself last, even though everyone tells me I shouldn’t. I know they must be right, but I’m just made that way, I guess.”)

Liam offered no defense. There really wasn’t any defense. He reminded himself, very sensibly, that somebody would always be saying something disapproving. No point letting it get to him.

Funny, it used to be so simple to sum his mother up, but now that he looked back he seemed to be ambushed by complexities. He saw again the frightened look in her eyes when she was going through her last illness, and her tiny, curled hands. It struck him that life in general was heartbreaking-a word he didn’t toss off lightly.

His girlfriends had been sad types as well, not that he had consciously chosen them for their sadness. Sooner or later, it seemed, every girl he dated ended up revealing some secret sorrow-an alcoholic father or a mentally ill mother or, at the very least, an outcast childhood.

Well, who knows. It could be that the whole world was that way.

Millie, though: Millie was his golden girl. She was tall and slender, with a veil of straight blond hair and a beautiful pale face. Her eyes were deep-set and startlingly light in color, the lids luminous as eggshells, and she had a floating, sashaying style of walking.

Millie, he thought now, forgive me. I’d forgotten how much I loved you.

His first glimpse of her had been at a friend’s apartment. She was playing the cello in an impromptu, very inept and cobbled-together string quartet, which was making her laugh. She laughed with her hair tossed back, her body loose and relaxed, her knees spread open to accommodate her instrument. This was misleading, as it turned out. Millie was not an open-kneed kind of person. She wasn’t even a cellist; she was a harpist. Liam learned later that she’d gone a few months earlier to pick up a skirt from the cleaner’s, but the cleaner had closed for lunch hour and so she’d stepped into the music store next door and bought herself a cello instead. That was Millie for you: whimsical. Fey. A sort of water maiden. Liam had fallen head over heels. He had pursued her single-mindedly until she agreed to marry him, less than six months after they met.

Had he been too insistent? Had she harbored some misgivings? He hadn’t thought so at the time, but now he was less sure. At the start of their marriage, he had believed she was content. (Though always, now that he looked back, rather muted, a bit remote.) It was true she was not an enjoyer. She seemed to find sex something of a trial, and she deplored the excessive notice that other people-even Liam, back then-paid to food and drink. In fact she soon became a strict vegetarian, which made her even more pallid and translucent-looking.

But the major change dated from her pregnancy. This was an unplanned pregnancy, admittedly, but not the end of the world. They were both in agreement on that. When she started sleeping too much and grew even more disconnected from everyday life, well, it was only to be expected, wasn’t that so? But then she didn’t change back again after the baby was born.

Or maybe she’d been that way all along, and Liam had just lacked the wisdom to perceive it.

Like being dragged down by the ankles into a swamp, that was how his life began to feel. Millie was already submerged and he was struggling to support the weight of her.

Of course the university psychologist was consulted, but Millie said he didn’t know what he was talking about and so that had come to nothing. And then for a brief time, her doctor had conjectured that she might be suffering from a silent form of appendicitis-some chronic, low-grade infection that would explain her constant tiredness and lack of zest. Both of them (Millie too, it saddened Liam now to recall) had been almost giddy with relief. Oh, then! Just something medical! Something curable with surgery!

But that theory had been discounted, by and by, and she had returned to dreary hopelessness, barely slogging through the days. Often Liam would come home in the evening to find her still in her bathrobe, the baby straggly-haired and fretful, the apartment smelling of soiled diapers, the sink piled high with unwashed dishes. Oh, Lord, just go ahead and die! he’d thought more than once. Not meaning it, of course.

Could it be that underneath, he had guessed ahead of time that she might take those pills? And had done nothing to prevent it?

No, he didn’t think so.

But he had to admit he had blamed her for her unhappiness. He had felt a kind of superiority; he had wondered why she didn’t just pull herself together, for God’s sake.

The old woman from the apartment next door stepped out into the hall as he came home one evening. She said, “Mr. Pennywell, that baby has been crying since morning. Every now and then it gets quiet but then it starts crying again. Since eight o’clock in the morning and its voice has gone all croaky. Twice I rang your bell but nobody answered, and your wife has got the door locked.”

“Well, thanks,” he said, not feeling thankful in the least. Interfering old biddy. He couldn’t be expected to do everything! He let himself into the apartment and then he thought, Since eight o’clock in the morning?

He had left for his carrel in the library shortly after seven. Millie had been a humped shape beneath the afghan on the living-room couch. She often got out of bed at night when she couldn’t sleep and watched old movies on TV. He had switched the TV off and left without trying to wake her.

Eight o’clock in the morning, he thought, and he stood frozen, not even breathing, hearing the great, hollow, echoing silence beneath the baby’s hoarse sobs.

People said, trying to be helpful, “It’s only natural to feel angry.” But Liam shrugged them off.

“I’m not in the least angry,” he said. “Why would you think I was angry?”

Instead he was very brisk and efficient. He devoted the first few weeks to finding childcare, juggling work and a baby. He did love his daughter; or he felt attached to her, at least; or at least he felt deeply concerned for her welfare. Still, his favorite daydream from that time was the vision of himself sitting alone in an empty room for hours and hours and hours, uninterrupted, undisturbed, unneeded by a single human being.

But, “I’m doing fine!” he told friends. “Never better!”

He saw the adjustment in their expressions, a sort of clicking over from solicitous to shocked to carefully neutral. “Well, good for you,” they said.

They said, “It’s wonderful you’re able to get on with your life this way. Put it all behind you! Very healthy.”

He and Xanthe moved back to Baltimore in the fall. It was an admission of defeat; he was learning just how much rearing a toddler could take out of you. He rented an apartment not far from where his mother and his sister lived, and he started teaching at the Fremont School-a comedown, no doubt about it. At his university he’d held an instructor’s position and he was starting his dissertation. At the Fremont School he taught history, not even his field, only peripherally related to the philosophers he loved so much. But it was a very prestigious school, and without any education credits he felt lucky to have been hired.

He put Xanthe in a daycare center that seemed to be closed more often than it was open; it observed holidays he didn’t even know existed, which meant he was always scrambling to find sitters. He relied heavily upon his mother, inadequate though she was, and a few older black women provided by an agency. Xanthe endured these patchy arrangements without objecting-in fact, without reacting in any way whatsoever. She was a stolid child, solemn-faced and watchful and very obviously motherless. Somehow she gave off a visible aura of motherlessness. Her lack of a mother was so pathetically apparent that women took one look at her and turned into crazy people. They brought Liam muffins and cookies and giant country hams. They stood at his door smiling dazzlingly, offering to tidy his place a bit and wondering if his daughter had any particular food preferences. Xanthe ate barely any food at all. He didn’t know how she stayed so chubby, as little as she ate.

These women had extra circus tickets and free passes to Disney movies. They knew of a special spray that would ease the tangles out of little girls’ hair. They loved, loved, loved having picnics on Cow Hill.

Liam himself hated picnics. He hated the two spots of dampness that always developed on the seat of his trousers even in the driest weather. He seemed to be a magnet for mosquitoes. And it took so much effort to rise to these women’s high pitch. They were all of them, every last one of them, full of gaiety and enthusiasm. He sat by their checkered tablecloths feeling like a puddle of a man, sunken and speechless, next to his speechless child.

Barbara, on the other hand, had required nothing of him. He got to know her when he started eating lunch in the school library in order to avoid the other teachers, two of whom were Picnic Ladies. Of course eating in the library was not allowed, but his lunch was unobtrusive-a slice of cheese, a piece of fruit-and Barbara pretended not to notice. At the time she was in her early thirties, a friendly, pleasant-faced woman a couple of years older than he, not someone he gave any special thought to. Generally she left him to his own devices, or they would have, at most, a brief conversation about some book he’d slipped at random from a shelf. She wasn’t at all like the others.

Through his first year there and half of his second, he plodded along in his comfortable, undemanding routine. Fall semester, spring semester, fall semester again. Young students who were likable enough, by and large, and who occasionally showed a spark of interest in his lessons. Lunches in the library, with Barbara stopping by his table to exchange a few words or occasionally settling for a moment onto the chair beside his. She knew the bare facts of his life by now, and he knew her facts, such as they were. She lived alone on the third floor of an old house on Roland Avenue. She had a father in a nursing home. She found her job very congenial.

One day, as she was showing him a new book about the city-state of Carthage, he kissed her. She kissed him back. They were level-headed adults; they didn’t make a big to-do about it. He certainly didn’t feel that tremulous elation that he’d felt in the early days with Millie, but neither did he want to. He appreciated Barbara’s cheerfulness. He liked her self-reliance.

Oh, but probably he should have made a to-do. He must have been a terrible husband. (Well, obviously he had been, if you considered how it all ended.) When he thought back to how Barbara used to dance at the students’ proms-throwing her whole heart into “Surf City” and “Dr. Octopus”-he asked himself how he could have been so blind. She must have wanted so much, underneath! And he had given her so little.

All this dwelling on the past was Eunice’s fault. If not for her-or the loss of her-he wouldn’t be thinking about such things.

In the most unforeseen way, Eunice really had turned out to be his rememberer.

Kitty came back from Ocean City with skin the color of caramel, except for the bridge of her nose, which was pink and peeling. She walked in with her bag slung over her shoulder, leaving the door wide open behind her. “Poppy!” she said. “Hi there!”

It was Sunday morning, and Liam was fixing scrambled eggs for breakfast. It took him a moment to register her presence.

“Can you give Damian a ride?” she asked him.

“Where to?”

“His mom’s, in a while. Otherwise he’d have to go right now with his aunt and uncle.”

“I guess so.”

She threw her bag on a chair and spun around to return to the door. “It’s okay!” she called in a piercing voice. So much noise, all of a sudden! Liam felt a bit dazed.

When she came back, she had Damian with her. He was carrying a knapsack and he was as white-skinned as when he’d left. “At least someone heeds the warnings,” Liam told him.

Damian said, “Huh?”

“The dermatologists’ warnings.”

Damian looked blank.

“He lay out as much as I did,” Kitty said, “but the sun doesn’t affect him.”

Liam said, “Really.” This seemed a bit creepy, as if Damian were some sort of vampire, but he put the thought out of his mind. “Anybody want breakfast?” he asked.

“Breakfast!” Kitty said. “It’s almost eleven.”

“I got a late start.”

“I’ll say you did.”

“It is the weekend, after all.”

“And you look like a homeless person. Are you growing a beard or something?”

“It’s the weekend!” he said again. He rubbed his chin.

Damian said, “I could go for some breakfast.”

“You ate breakfast hours ago,” Kitty told him.

“That’s why I could eat again.”

“Not now, Damian; we’ve got to talk.”

Liam was puzzled (hadn’t they had the whole beach trip to talk?), but then he realized he was the one she planned to talk to. She stepped up to face him and said, “Poppy, I’ve been thinking.”

He braced himself.

“I’m thinking I should stay here for the school year,” she said.

“What! Stay with me?”

“Right.”

He felt a confusing mixture of reactions to this proposal. How about his privacy, how about his nice solitary life? But also, he was conscious of an odd sense of relief. He set down his spatula. “There’s not enough room, though,” he said. “There’s only my study.”

“You’re not using your study!”

“I haven’t been able to, might I point out.”

“What would you be doing there?”

He couldn’t come up with an answer. He said, “Oh, well, let’s talk about this later. We’ve got plenty of time to discuss it.”

“No, we don’t. Summer’s almost over.”

“It is?”

“School begins in two weeks.”

“It does?”

Last Thursday, a woman had phoned from a place called Bet Ha-Midrash and told him she had heard he might be interested in a job there. “A job,” he’d said, caught off guard.

“A job as zayda in our three-year-olds’ class.”

“Oh,” he’d said. “Okay…”

“Would you like to send us your application?”

“Okay…”

But somehow he’d been assuming he had weeks and weeks yet to do that, and in fact he hadn’t given it any further thought. “It’s August,” he said now, disbelievingly.

“It’s late August,” Kitty told him.

“Isn’t that always the way?” Liam asked Damian. “Summer just flies right by.”

And Eunice had been merely a summer romance, if you didn’t know the whole story.

Damian had seated himself at the table, and he was biting into a piece of toast-Liam’s toast, as it happened. He might not have realized Liam was addressing him. Kitty said, “Summer didn’t fly by for me. I was buried alive in a dentist’s office.”

“Well, I’ll have to think this over,” Liam said, stalling for time. He dished his eggs onto a plate. “Of course it will depend on what your mother says.”

“She’s going to say no,” Kitty told him.

“So in that case you can’t do it, can you.”

“But if you talked to her-”

“I told you I would.”

“When?”

“Oh… I’ll call her this afternoon.”

“No, not on the phone! It’s too easy for her to say no, on the phone. We should go visit her in person.”

Liam studied her suspiciously.

“I want her to realize we’re serious,” Kitty said. “You and me should drive over there right this very minute and lay out all our reasons.”

“What are our reasons?”

“We don’t get in each other’s hair, for one thing.”

Liam said, “If by that you mean that I’m more lax, then your mother is going to say that you should be with her. And she would be right.”

Oops, he had sent Kitty into her prayerful-maiden pose. Plop onto the floor, hands clasped to her breast. Damian stopped chewing and stared at her. “Please, please, please,” she said. “Have I given you any trouble this summer? Have I violated my curfew by one single eentsy minute? I’m begging you, Poppy. Have mercy. All I could think of at the beach was, School’s about to start and I’m going to have to go back home and deal with Mom again. It’s not fair! I should get to live with you a while. I’ve never lived with you, not when I was old enough to know it. In my whole entire life all I’ve had is this little bit of summer-July and part of August. Xanthe and Louise had lots more time than that. And it’s only for a year, you know. After this I’ll be in college. You’ll never have another chance at me!”

Liam laughed.

It seemed ages since he had laughed.

“Well,” he said, “let’s see what your mother says.”

Kitty clambered to her feet and smoothed her clothes down.

Damian asked, “Have we got any marmalade?”

It was proof of how serious Kitty was about all this that she wouldn’t let Damian come with them to Barbara’s. “You would just complicate things,” she told him. “We’ll drop you off at your mom’s house on the way.”

Damian said, “Thanks a lot!” but Kitty paid no attention; she’d already moved on to Liam.

“I hope you’re planning to shave,” she told him.

“Well, I could do that, I guess. Once I’ve had my breakfast.”

“And how about what you’re wearing?”

“How about it?”

“You’re not planning to go out in those clothes, are you?”

He glanced down at them-a perfectly respectable T-shirt and a pair of pants that he always referred to as his gardening pants, although he didn’t garden. “What’s wrong with them?” he asked. “It’s not as if I’m appearing in public.”

“Mom will think you look… not reliable.”

“Fine, I’ll change. Just let me finish my breakfast, will you?”

Kitty backed off then, but he was conscious of her hovering at the edges of his vision, fidgeting and flouncing about and picking things up and putting them down. Damian, meanwhile, had assumed a horizontal position in an armchair with the sports section from the Sun. Every now and then he read out a baseball score to Kitty, but she didn’t seem to be listening.

As Liam was shaving, it occurred to him to wonder why he had said yes to her. He didn’t want this child living with him permanently! For one thing, he was tired to death of all these fruity-smelling shampoos and conditioners crowding the rim of his bathtub. And the carpet in the den had not been visible since she’d moved in there.

But when he emerged, presentably dressed, he found she had washed and dried the breakfast dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. He was touched by the earnestness of the gesture even though he knew it wouldn’t likely be repeated.

It was an overcast day, but pleasant enough that people were out and about on their Sunday pursuits-tooling down the bike lane along North Charles, jogging, walking, spilling forth from various churches. On the street where Damian’s mother lived, two teenage boys were tossing a football back and forth, and Damian exited the backseat with barely a “Thanks” and went to join them. “I’ll let you know how it goes!” Kitty called after him.

Damian lifted an arm in acknowledgment, but he didn’t turn around. It was his broken arm-the cast gray with dirt by now and scribbled over with graffiti. Evidently it didn’t hinder him, though, because when one of the boys sent the football his way he caught it easily.

“On Tuesday they’re cutting his cast down so it’s not covering his elbow anymore,” Kitty told Liam, “and then he can drive again. You won’t have to chauffeur me around after that. See how it’s all working out for me to live with you?”

“Just don’t get your hopes up,” Liam warned her. “I’m not sure your mother’s going to go for this.”

“Oh, why are you always so negative? Why do you always expect the worst?”

He left the question unanswered.

In Barbara’s neighborhood-his neighborhood, once upon a time, green and manicured and shaded by old trees-the central fishpond was surrounded by children feeding bread crumbs to the ducks. Strollers and tricycles dotted the grass, and blankets were spread here and there for babies to sit on. Liam drove slowly, for safety’s sake. He braked to let a small group cross in front of him, two couples shepherding a little girl and a taller boy who might have been her brother. “It was the same turtle we saw last time; I know it was,” the little girl was saying, and Liam wondered if it was the same turtle he and his daughters used to see. Louise always tried to pet it; she would lean so far over the edge of the pond, reaching a hand toward the water, that Liam had felt the need to grab hold of her overall straps in case she fell in. And once Xanthe actually had fallen in, when the girls went ice skating on a winter afternoon. The pond wasn’t deep enough to be dangerous, but the water had been cruelly cold. She had arrived home in tears, Liam remembered, and Louise had been crying too, in sympathy.

He turned onto Barbara’s street and parked in front of their old house, which was a modest white clapboard Colonial, not half as large or imposing as most of the others. When she and Madigan married there had been some talk of their buying a place in Guilford, but she hadn’t wanted to leave her neighbors. Secretly, Liam had been glad of that. He would have felt even more rejected, more ousted, if she had moved somewhere he couldn’t picture in his mind’s eye when he thought about her.

He was just stepping out from behind the wheel when Kitty said, “Oh, shoot.”

“What is it?”

“Xanthe’s here.”

He looked around him. “She is?” he said. “How do you know?”

“That’s her car in front of us.”

“That’s Xanthe’s car?”

It was one of those new sharp-edged, boxy things, pale blue. The last he’d known, Xanthe drove a red Jetta. But Kitty said, “Yup.”

“What happened to the Jetta?”

“She traded it in.”

“Is that a fact,” Liam said. He tried to remember how long it had been since he and Xanthe had seen each other.

“This is the last thing we need,” Kitty said as they started up the front walk.

“Why’s that?”

“She’s mad at me, I don’t know what for. It would be just like her to take Mom’s side against me out of spite.”

“She’s mad at me too,” Liam said.

“Great.”

If Xanthe was including Kitty in this snit of hers, then it must be true that Damian was the reason. Someone ought to inform her that an entirely different person had been arrested for the break-in. Liam started to say as much to Kitty, but he stopped himself. Kitty probably had no inkling of Xanthe’s suspicions.

They were already at the front door when Kitty said, “Wait, I think I hear them out back,” at the same time that Liam, too, heard voices coming from the rear of the house. They turned to take the path that led through the side yard. When they emerged from under the magnolia tree, they found Barbara and Xanthe eating lunch at the wrought-iron table on the patio. Nearby, Jonah was squatting on the flagstones to draw lopsided little circles with a stick of chalk. He was the first to spot them. “Hi, Kitty. Hi, Poppy,” he said, standing up.

“Hi, Jonah.”

Liam hadn’t realized before that Jonah called him Poppy.

Barbara said, “Well, look who’s here!” but Xanthe, after the briefest glance, took on a flat-faced expression and resumed buttering a roll.

“You didn’t use sunblock, did you?” Barbara asked Kitty. “When I told you and told you! Where are your brains? You’re fried to a crisp.”

“Oh, why, thank you for inquiring, Mother dear,” Kitty said. “I had a perfectly lovely trip.”

Unruffled, Barbara turned to Liam. “I’ve got Jonah for the weekend,” she said, “because Louise and Dougall are off with their church on a Marriage Renewal Retreat.”

Liam had a number of questions about this-did their marriage need renewing? should he be worried?-but before he could ask, Barbara rose, saying, “Let me bring out some more plates. You two sit down.”

“No plate for me, thanks. I just finished breakfast,” Liam said.

But Barbara was already heading toward the back door, and Kitty was making violent shooing motions in his direction. “Go with her!” she mouthed.

Dutifully, Liam set off after Barbara. (It was a relief, anyhow, to leave the chilly atmosphere surrounding Xanthe.) He held the screen door open, and Barbara said, “Oh, thanks.”

As they entered the house, she told him, “I don’t think that child has the least little grain of sense. Just wait till she gets melanoma! Then she’ll be sorry.”

“Ah, well, we grew up without sunblock.”

“That’s different,” she said, illogically.

Liam loved Barbara’s kitchen. It had never once been remodeled, as far as he knew. At some point a dishwasher had been fitted in next to the sink, but the general look of it dated from the 1930s. The worn linoleum floor bore traces of a Mondrian-style pattern, and the refrigerator had rounded corners, and the cupboards had been repainted so many times that the doors wouldn’t quite close anymore. Even the plants on the windowsill seemed old-fashioned: a yellowed philodendron wandering up to the curtain rod and down again, and a prickly, stunted cactus in a ceramic pot shaped like a burro. He could have just sunk onto one of the red wooden chairs and stayed there forever, feeling peaceful and at home.

But here came Kitty to remind him of his mission. She let the screen door slam behind her and she gave him a conspiratorial glance but then wandered over to the sink, ho hum, and turned the faucet on for no apparent reason.

“By the way,” Liam said. He was speaking to Barbara’s back; she was reaching into the dish cupboard. She wore white linen slacks that made her look crisper than usual and more authoritative. He said, “I’ve been thinking.”

It wasn’t clear if she had heard him over the sound of running water. She set two plates on the counter and opened the silverware drawer.

“I’ve been wondering if Kitty should stay on with me during the school year,” he said.

Assuming sole responsibility for the question-I’ve been wondering-was meant as a gesture of gallantry, but Kitty spoiled the effect by shutting off the water decisively and spinning around to say, “Please, Mom?”

Barbara turned to Liam. “Excuse me?” she said.

“She would stay on at my place,” Liam said, “just for her senior year, I mean. After that she’d be leaving for college.”

“What, Liam: are you saying you’d be willing to monitor her homework, and drive car pool to lacrosse games, and pick her up from swimming practice? Are you going to meet with her college advisor and make sure she gets her allergy shots?”

This sounded like more of a commitment than he had realized, actually. He sent an uncertain glance toward Kitty. She took a step forward, but instead of going into the prayerful-maiden act he half expected, she flung a hand in his direction, palm up, and said, “Someone ought to keep a watch. Just look at him!”

Liam blinked.

Barbara examined him more closely. She said, “Yes, what’s wrong with you?”

“What do you mean, what’s wrong with me?”

“You seem… thinner.”

He had the impression that she had been about to say something else, something less complimentary.

“I’m fine,” he told her.

He scowled at Kitty. He’d be damned if he would say a single word further on her behalf.

Kitty gazed blandly back at him.

Barbara said, “Kitty, would you take these things to the patio, please?”

“But-”

“Go on,” Barbara said, and she handed Kitty the plates with a cluster of silverware laid on top.

Kitty accepted them, but as she backed out the screen door her eyes were fixed beseechingly on Liam.

He refused to give her the slightest sign of encouragement.

“It’s not for my sake at all,” he told Barbara as soon as they were alone. “She’s trying to put one over on you.”

“Yes, yes… Liam, I don’t want to be intrusive, but I’m wondering if your life can accommodate a teenager.”

“Well, maybe it can’t,” Liam said. What the hell.

“You wouldn’t be able to have a person spend the night with you if Kitty were there; you realize that.”

“Spend the night?”

“If I had known you were involved with someone, I never would have let Kitty come stay with you in the first place.”

“I’m not involved with anyone,” he said.

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“Well, the other day it seemed-”

“Not anymore,” he said.

“I see,” she said. Then she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Something in the tone of her voice-so delicate, so tactful-implied that she assumed the breakup was not his own choice. Her face became kind and sorrowful, as if he’d just announced a bereavement.

“But!” he told her. “As for Kitty! You know, you might have a point. I would probably make a terrible father over the long term.”

Barbara gave a short laugh.

“What,” he said.

“Oh, nothing.”

“What’s so amusing?”

“It’s just,” she said, “how you never argue with people’s poor opinions of you. They can say the most negative things-that you’re clueless, that you’re unfeeling-and you say, ‘Yes, well, maybe you’re right.’ If I were you, I’d be devastated!”

“Really?” Liam asked. He was intrigued. “Yes, well, maybe you’re… Or, rather… Would you be devastated even if you truly did agree with them?”

“Especially if I agreed with them!” she said. “Are you telling me that you do agree? You believe you’re a bad person?”

“Oh, not bad in the sense of evil,” Liam said. “But face it: I haven’t exactly covered myself in glory. I just… don’t seem to have the hang of things, somehow. It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.”

She was silent, gazing at him again with that too-kind expression.

He said, “Do you remember a show on TV that Dean Martin used to host? It must have been back in the seventies; Millie liked to watch it. I can’t think now what it was called.”

“The Dean Martin Show?” Barbara suggested.

“Yes, maybe; and he had this running joke about his drinking, remember? Always going on about his drunken binges. And so one night one of the guests was reminiscing about a party they’d been to and Dean Martin asked, ‘Did I have a good time?’”

Barbara smiled faintly, looking not all that amused.

“Did he have a good time,” Liam said. “Ha!”

“What’s your point, Liam?”

“I might ask you the same question,” he told her.

“You might ask what my point is?”

“I might ask if I’d had a good time.”

Barbara wrinkled her forehead.

“Oh,” Liam said, “never mind.”

It was a relief to give up, finally. It was a relief to turn away from her and see Kitty approaching-matter-of-fact, straightforward Kitty yanking open the screen door and saying, “Did you decide?”

“We were just discussing Dean Martin,” Barbara told her drily.

“Who? But what about me?”

“Well,” Barbara said. She reflected a moment. Then she said-out of the blue, it seemed to Liam-“I suppose we could give it a try.”

Kitty said, “Hot dog!”

“Just conditionally, understand.”

“I understand!”

“But if I hear one word about your bending the rules, missy, or giving your father any trouble-”

“I know, I know,” Kitty said, and she was off, racing toward the front stairs, presumably to go pack.

Barbara looked over at Liam. “I meant that about the rules,” she told him.

He nodded. Privately, though, he felt blindsided. What had he gotten himself into?

As if she guessed his thoughts, Barbara smiled and gave him a tap on the wrist. “Come and have some lunch,” she said.

He forgot to remind her that he wasn’t hungry. He followed her back through the kitchen and out the screen door.

On the patio, Jonah had abandoned his chalk and was sitting on the very edge of the chair next to Xanthe. “We saw an animal!” he shouted. “You’ve got an animal in your backyard, Gran! It was either a fox or an anteater.”

“Oh, I hope it was an anteater,” Barbara said. “I haven’t had one of those before.”

“It had a long nose or a long tail, one or the other. Where’s Kitty? I have to tell Kitty.”

“She’ll be here in a minute, sweets. She’s packing.”

Liam pulled up a chair and sat down next to Jonah. He was directly opposite Xanthe, but Xanthe refused to look at him. “Packing for what?” she asked Barbara.

“She’s going to stay on with your dad.”

“Huh?”

“She’s staying on during the school year. If she behaves herself.”

Then Xanthe did look at him, openmouthed. She turned back to Barbara and said, “She’s going to live with him?”

“Why, yes,” Barbara said, but now she sounded doubtful.

“I cannot believe this,” Xanthe told Liam.

Liam said, “Pardon?”

“First you let her stay there all summer. You say, ‘Okay, Kitty, whatever you like. By all means, Kitty. Whatever your heart desires, Kitty.’ Little Miss Princess Kitty lolling about with her deadbeat boyfriend.”

Liam said, “Yes? And?”

“When you never let me live with you!” Xanthe cried. “And I was just a child! And you were all I had! I was way younger than Kitty is when you and Barbara split up. You left me behind with a woman who wasn’t even related to me and off you went, forever!”

Liam felt stunned.

He said, “Is that what you’ve been mad about?”

Barbara said, “Oh, Xanthe, I feel related. I’ve always felt you were truly my daughter; you must know I have.”

“This is not about you, Barbara,” Xanthe said in a gentler tone. “I have no quarrel with you. But him-” And she turned back to Liam.

“I thought I was doing you a favor,” Liam said.

“Yeah, right.”

“You had your two little sisters there, and you seemed so happy, finally, and Barbara was so loving and openhearted and warm.”

“Why, thank you, Liam,” Barbara said.

He stopped in mid-breath and glanced at her. She was looking almost bashful. But he needed to concentrate on Xanthe, and so he turned back. He said, “Epictetus says-”

“Oh, not him again!” Xanthe exploded. “Damn Epictetus!” And she jumped up and began to stack her dishes.

Liam gave her a moment, and then he started over. In his quietest and most pacifying voice, he said, “Epictetus says that everything has two handles, one by which it can be borne and one by which it cannot. If your brother sins against you, he says, don’t take hold of it by the wrong he did you but by the fact that he’s your brother. That’s how it can be borne.”

Xanthe made a tssh! sound and clanked her bread plate onto her dinner plate.

“I’m trying to say I’m sorry, Xanthe,” he said. “I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t realize. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

She snatched up her silverware.

In desperation, he pushed his chair back and slid forward until he was kneeling on the patio. He could feel the unevenness of the flagstones through the fabric of his trousers; he could feel the ache of misery filling his throat. Xanthe froze, gaping at him, still holding her dishes. “Please,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him. “I can’t bear to know I made such a bad mistake. I can’t endure it. I’m begging you, Xanthe.”

Jonah said, “Poppy?”

Xanthe set her dishes down and took a grip on his arm. “For God’s sake, Dad, get up,” she told him. “What on earth! You’re making a fool of yourself!” She pulled him to a standing position and then bent to brush off his knees.

“Goodness, Liam,” Barbara said mildly. She plucked a leaf from his trousers. All around him, it seemed, there was a flutter of pats and murmurs. “What will you think of next?” Xanthe asked, but she was guiding him back to his chair as she spoke.

He sank onto the chair feeling exhausted, like a child who had been through a crying spell. He looked sideways at Jonah and forced himself to smile.

“So,” he said. “Shall we have some lunch?”

Wide-eyed, Jonah pushed a bowl of potato salad a few inches closer to him.

“Thank you,” Liam said. He ladled a spoonful onto his plate.

The two women returned to their seats, but then they just sat watching him.

“What?” Liam asked them.

They didn’t answer.

He chose a deviled egg from a platter and set it on his plate. He reached for a tuna-salad sandwich that had been cut in a dainty triangle.

It occurred to him that here he was, finally, dining with a couple of Picnic Ladies after all.