Noah's Compass

5

There was a parking space in front of the Mission for Indigent Men, but Liam didn’t stop there. He drove on past it, past Cope Development and Curtis Plumbing Supply, and turned right at the corner and pulled in at a meter halfway up the next block. When he got out of his car he found he didn’t have any quarters-the only coins the meter accepted-but he decided to take his chances.

He walked back to Bunker Street, turned left, and slowed until he was nearly at a standstill. Already, at not even nine a.m., the sun felt uncomfortably hot on his head and the back of his neck. He came to a halt near a hydrant and painstakingly, deliberatively rolled his shirtsleeves up, flattening each fold with great care. Two men in suits strode past. He watched after them, but they didn’t turn in at Cope Development.

He studied the graffiti painted across the base of the hydrant: BLAST, in luminous white, with a sloppily drawn star before and after. He examined the word closely, frowning, as if he were pondering its meaning. Blast. A woman clipped by with a jingling sound of keys or maybe jewelry. She had a purposeful, confident gait. At Cope Development, she pivoted smartly and climbed the steps and disappeared inside.

A green Corolla approached from the other end of the block, stopped just past the mission, and backed into the parking space there.

Liam abandoned the hydrant. He straightened and resumed walking in the direction of Cope Development.

The assistant’s unfortunate fashion statements were becoming familiar to him. Even from a distance he recognized the too-long skirt (in some bandanna-type print of red and blue, today) that made her seem to be walking on her knees as she rounded her car, and the sleeveless blouse that rode up and exposed a bulge of bare midriff when she bent to help Ishmael Cope from the passenger seat. Liam was close enough now to hear the inconclusive clucking sound the car door made as she clumsily nudged it almost shut with one hip. He heard the pat-pat of Ishmael Cope’s crablike hands checking all his suit pockets before he took hold of the arm she offered.

Liam sped up.

They met in front of the Cope building. The assistant was preparing to inch the old man up the steps. Liam said, “Why! Mr. Cope!”

The two of them turned and peered into his face, wearing almost comically similar expressions of puzzlement and concern.

“Fancy running into you!” Liam said. “It’s Liam Pennywell. Remember?”

Ishmael Cope said, “Um…”

He turned to his assistant, who instantly flushed all over-a mottled, dark-red flush beginning at the deep V-neck of her blouse and rising to her round cheeks.

“We met at the gala,” Liam said. “For juvenile diabetes; remember? We had a long conversation. You suggested I come in sometime and interview for a job.”

From their instantaneous reaction-no longer confusion but outright shock-Liam sensed at once that he had made a mistake. Maybe Ishmael Cope didn’t have anything to do anymore with hiring employees. Well, of course he wouldn’t. Liam cursed his own stupidity. Ishmael Cope said, “A job?”

“Why, ah, that is…”

“I was going to hire someone?”

Ishmael Cope and his assistant exchanged a glance. Clearly a con man, they must be thinking. Or no, perhaps not; for next Mr. Cope said, in a wondering tone, “I promised a man a job!”

So this is what it had come to, was what that glance had meant. A whole new symptom, more advanced than any they’d seen before.

All Liam wanted now was to take back everything he’d said. He had never intended to cause the man distress. In fact, he wasn’t sure what he’d intended, beyond gaining a few moments of conversation with the assistant. He said, “Oh, no, it wasn’t an actual promise. It was more like…” He turned to the assistant, hoping she could somehow rescue him. “Maybe I misunderstood,” he told her. “I must have. I’m sure I did. You know how it is at these galas: glasses clinking, music playing, everyone talking at once…”

“Oh, sometimes people can’t hear themselves think,” she said.

That low, clear, level voice-the voice that had murmured “Verity” in Dr. Morrow’s waiting room-made Liam feel reassured, although he couldn’t say exactly why. He gave her his widest smile. “I’m sorry,” he told her, “I don’t remember your name.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He knew he must look like a fool, with all these “sorry”s. He was doing everything wrong. “It’s just…” he said, “I mistrust my memory so these days; I always act on the assumption that I’ve met somebody even when I haven’t.” His laugh came out sounding false, at least to his own ears. “I have the world’s worst memory,” he told Ishmael Cope.

Which was a stroke of genius, come to think of it. Without planning to, he had arrived at the subject most likely to enlist the man’s sympathy.

But Ishmael Cope said, “That must be difficult. And you don’t look all that old, either.”

“I’m not. I’m sixty.”

“Only sixty? Then there’s no excuse whatsoever.”

This was becoming annoying. Liam glanced toward the assistant. She was sending Mr. Cope a look of amusement. “Now, now,” she said indulgently, and then she told Liam, “To hear Mr. C. talk, you’d never know we all forget things from time to time.”

“The trick is mental exercise,” Ishmael Cope said to Liam. “Work crossword puzzles. Solve brainteasers.”

“I’ll have to try that,” Liam said.

He was developing an active dislike for the man. But he gave the assistant another wide smile and said, “I didn’t mean to hold you both up.”

“About the interview…” she said. She glanced uncertainly at Ishmael Cope.

But Liam said, “Oh, no, really, it’s not important. It’s quite all right. I don’t need a job. I don’t want a job. I was only, you know…”

He was edging away as he spoke, backing off in the direction he had just come from. “Good to see you both,” he said. “Sorry to… Goodbye.”

He turned and plunged off blindly.

Idiot.

Traffic was picking up now, and more pedestrians dotted the sidewalk, all bustling toward their offices with briefcases and folded newspapers. He was the only one empty-handed. Everyone else had someplace to get to. He slowed his pace and surveyed each building he passed with an intent, abstracted expression, as if he were hunting a specific address.

What on earth had he expected from that encounter, anyway? Even if things had gone as he’d hoped-if he and the assistant had struck up a separate conversation, if she had admitted outright the true nature of her role-how would that have helped him? She wasn’t going to drop everything and come be his rememberer. In any event, she couldn’t help him retrieve an experience she hadn’t been there for. And what good would it have done even if she could retrieve it?

He really was losing his mind, he thought.

When he reached his car he found he’d been issued a parking ticket. Oh, damn. He plucked it from the windshield and frowned at it. Twenty-seven dollars. For nothing.

“Excuse me?” someone called.

He looked up. The assistant was hurrying toward him, pink-faced and out of breath, clutching her purse to her pillowy bosom with both hands. “Excuse me, I just wanted to thank you,” she said when she arrived in front of him.

“Thank me for what?” he asked.

“It was kind of you to be so understanding back there. Somebody else might have… pushed. Might have pressed him.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” he said, meaninglessly.

“Mr… Pennyworth?”

“Pennywell. Liam,” he said.

“Liam. I’m Eunice, Mr. Cope’s assistant. Liam, I’m not at liberty to explain but… I guess you must have realized that Mr. C. is not in charge of hiring.”

“I understand perfectly,” he said. “Don’t give it a thought.”

If he had been the ruthless type, he would have pretended not to understand. He would have forced her to spell it out. But she looked so anxious, with her forehead creased and her oversized glasses slipping down her shiny nose; he didn’t have the heart to add to her discomfort. He said, “I meant it when I said I didn’t need a job. I really don’t. Honest.”

She gazed at him for such a long moment that he wondered if she had misheard him. And he was sure of it when she told him, finally, “You’re a very nice man, Liam.”

“No, no, I-”

“Where is it you’re employed?” she said.

“Right now? Well, right now, um…”

She reached out and laid a hand briefly on his arm. “Forgive me. Please forget I asked that,” she said.

“Oh, it’s not a secret,” he said. “I used to teach fifth grade. The school is downsizing at the moment, but that’s okay. I might retire anyhow.”

She said, “Liam, would you like to get a cup of coffee?”

“Oh!”

“Someplace nearby?”

“I would love to, but-shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I’m finished with work,” she said.

“You are?”

“Well, at least for…” She checked her watch-a big clunky thing on a leather wristband even thicker than her sandal straps. “At least for an hour or so,” she said. “I just have to be there for transitions.”

“Transitions,” Liam repeated.

“Getting Mr. C. from one place to another place. Till ten o’clock he’ll be in his office, reading The Wall Street Journal.”

“I see.”

Liam allowed her some time to expand on that topic, but she didn’t. Instead she said, “PeeWee’s is good.”

“Pardon?”

“For coffee. PeeWee’s Café.”

“Oh, fine,” Liam said. “Is that in walking distance?”

“It’s right around the corner.”

He looked down at the parking ticket he held. Then he turned and jammed it back under the windshield wiper. “Let’s go, then,” he told her.

He couldn’t believe his luck. As they headed up the street he had to keep fighting back a huge grin.

Although now that he had her all to himself, what was he going to ask? Nothing came to mind. Really he wanted to reach out and touch her-even just touch her skirt, as if she were some sort of talisman. But he dug both hands in his trouser pockets instead, and he was careful not to brush against her as they walked.

“The hiring and firing at Cope is handled by a man named McPherson,” Eunice told him. “Unfortunately, I don’t know him well.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Liam said.

“I was hired myself by Mrs. Cope.”

This was getting more interesting. Liam said, “Why was that?”

“Oh, it’s a long story, but my point is, I didn’t have many dealings with the Personnel Department.”

“How did Mrs. Cope find you?” Liam asked.

“She’s friends with my mother.”

“Oh.”

He waited. Eunice walked beside him in a companionable silence. She had stopped hugging her purse by now. It swung from her shoulder with a faint rattling sound, as if it were full of ping-pong balls.

“The two of them play bridge together,” Eunice said. “So… you know.”

No, he didn’t know. He looked at her expectantly.

“I don’t suppose you play bridge,” Eunice said.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“What?” he asked. “If I did play, you’d get me into a game with Mrs. Cope?”

He was being facetious, but she seemed to give the question serious consideration before she said, “No, I don’t guess that’s too practical. Well, back to Mr. McPherson, then.”

It was on the tip of Liam’s tongue to remind her that he wasn’t job hunting. Since the job hunt seemed to be his main attraction, however, he kept silent.

This block was even more rundown than Bunker Street. Most of the rowhouses were boarded up, and bits of trash flocked the gutters. The café, when they arrived there, didn’t even have a real sign-just PeeWeEs scrawled in downward-slanting whitewash across the window, above a pale avocado tree struggling up from a grapefruit-juice tin on the sill. Liam would never have dared to enter such a place by himself, but Eunice yanked open the baggy screen door without hesitation. He followed her into a small front room-clearly a parlor, once, with dramatic black-and-gold wallpaper and a faded, rose-colored linoleum floor stippled to look like shag carpeting. Three mismatched tables all but filled the space. Through a doorway to the rear, Liam heard pots clanking and water running.

“Hello!” Eunice called, and she pulled out the nearest chair and plunked herself down on it. Liam took the seat across from her. His own chair seemed to have come from a classroom-it was that familiar blend of blond wood and tan-painted steel-but Eunice’s was part of a dinette set, upholstered in bright-yellow vinyl.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Eunice asked him.

“No thanks,” he said-addressing, at the last minute, the large woman in a housecoat who appeared in the rear doorway. “Just coffee, please.”

“I’ll have coffee and a Tastykake,” Eunice told the woman.

“Huh,” the woman said, and she vanished again. Eunice smiled after her. Either she was admirably at ease anywhere or she suffered from a total lack of discrimination; Liam couldn’t decide which.

He hunched forward in his seat as soon as they were alone. (He had to make the most of this one chance.) Keeping his tone casual, he asked, “Why is it that you’re needed only for transitions?”

“Oh, well,” Eunice said vaguely. “I’m sort of a… facilitator. Sort of, I don’t know, a social facilitator, maybe you could say.”

“You remind Mr. Cope of appointments and such.”

“Well, yes.”

She picked up an ashtray. Liam hadn’t seen an ashtray on a table in years. This one was a triangle of black plastic, with Flagg Family Crab House, Ocean City, Maryland stamped in white around the rim. She turned it over and examined the bottom.

“Boy, could I ever use reminding,” Liam said. “Especially when it comes to names. If I’m, for instance, walking down the street with someone and another person pops up that I know, and I have to all at once make the introductions… well, I’m at a loss. Both people’s names just fly clean out of my head.”

“Have you ever been involved in any community leadership?” Eunice asked him.

“Pardon?”

“Like, had to explain a project or something at a meeting?”

The large woman reappeared just then, scuffing across the linoleum in rubber flip-flops and carrying a tray. She set down two Styrofoam cups of coffee and a piece of yellow cake wrapped in cellophane.

“Thank you,” Liam said. He waited until she was gone before he told Eunice, “No, I don’t enjoy public speaking.”

“I’m just trying to think what qualities we should stress on your application.”

“Oh, well, I-”

“You have been speaking to classes, all these years.”

“That’s not the same, somehow.”

“But suppose there was a meeting of people objecting to something. And you were asked to make a speech telling them why they were wrong. I’m thinking you would be good at that!”

When she got going this way, he could understand how he had first taken her for a much younger woman. She was leaning toward him eagerly, holding on to her Styrofoam cup with both hands, oblivious to the bra strap that had slid down her left arm. (Her bra would be one of those no-nonsense white cotton items, circle-stitched, in a super-duper size. He could detect its outline through her blouse.) He shifted his gaze to his coffee. Judging from the strand of bubbles skimming the surface, he wondered if it might be instant. “I’m just not a very public person,” he said.

“If we could point up the classroom angle… like, stress your persuasive abilities. Every teacher has persuasive abilities!”

“You really think so,” he said noncommittally.

Then, “Tell me, Eunice. Have you been working for Mr. Cope long?”

“What? Oh, no. Just a few months.”

She sat back and began unwrapping her cake. He seized his advantage. “I like your attitude toward him,” he said.

“How do you mean, my attitude?”

“I mean, you’re helpful but respectful. You allow him his dignity.”

“Well, that’s not so hard.” She took a bite of her cake.

“Not for you, obviously. You must have a knack for it.”

She shrugged. “Want to hear something funny?” she asked when she had swallowed. “My major was biology.”

“Biology!”

“But I couldn’t find a job in biology. Mostly, I’ve been unemployed. My parents think I’m a failure.”

“Well, they’re wrong,” he said. He experienced a kind of rush to his head. He had not felt this strongly in years. “Good Lord, you’re the diametrical opposite of a failure! If only you knew how you seem from outside, so efficient and discreet!”

Eunice looked surprised.

“At least,” he said hastily, “that’s how it struck me when I saw you in front of the Cope building.”

She said, “Why, thank you, Liam.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I do work really hard at this job. Not everybody appreciates that.”

“That’s because your purpose is to make it not look hard,” he said.

“Oh, you’re right!”

He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. Yes, instant, beyond a doubt, and barely lukewarm besides.

“It isn’t only names I was talking about,” he told her. “When I said I could use reminding, I mean.” He shot her a glance. “The fact is, I was hit on the head by a burglar a few weeks ago. Since then I seem to be suffering a bit of amnesia.”

“Amnesia!” she said. “You’ve forgotten your identity?”

“No, no, nothing so extreme as that. It’s just that I’ve forgotten the experience of being hit. I have no recollection of it.”

He waited for her to ask, as everyone did, why he would want such a recollection, but she just made a tsk-ing sound.

“I guess I should be glad,” he told her. “I’m better off forgetting, right? But that’s not how I feel about it.”

“Well, of course it’s not,” she said. “You want to know what happened.”

“Yes, but there’s more to it than that. Even if someone could tell me what happened-even if they told me every detail-I would still feel… I don’t know…”

“You would still feel something was missing,” Eunice said.

“Exactly.”

“Something you yourself have lived through, and it ought to belong to you now, not just to someone who tells you about it. But it doesn’t.”

“That’s it exactly!”

He was grateful to hear it put into words. He felt a sudden flood of affection for her-for the errant bra strap, even, and the headlamp look of her eyes behind her big glasses.

“Eunice,” he said consideringly.

She paused in the midst of licking a dab of frosting off one finger.

“Properly speaking,” he said, “it should be ‘You-nike-ee.’ That’s the way the Greeks would have said it.”

“‘You-niss is bad enough,” she told him. “I’ve always hated my name.”

“Oh, it’s a fine name. It means ‘victorious.’”

She set down her cake. She sat up straighter. “So…” she said, “um, tell me, is your… wife a teacher too?”

“Wife? I’m not married. The Romans would have said ‘You-nice-ee.’ But I can understand how that wouldn’t work in English.”

“Liam?” Eunice said. “I really meant it when I said you should apply for a job.”

“Oh. Well, actually, since I’m sixty years old-”

“They can’t object to that! Age discrimination’s illegal.”

“Yes, but I meant-”

“Is it the résumé you’re worried about? I’ll help you. I’m really good at résumés,” she said, and she gave a little laugh. “I’ve certainly had enough practice.”

“Well, actually-”

“We could get together and whip one up after I finish work. I could come to your house.”

“Apartment,” he said without planning to.

“I could come to your apartment.”

She would walk into his den and see the patio door where the burglar had slipped through. “Hmm,” she would muse aloud. She would turn and examine Liam’s face, cocking her head appraisingly. “In my experience,” she would say, “a memory that’s associated with trauma…” Or, “A memory that’s imprinted in someone roused from deep sleep…”

Oh, don’t be absurd. This was just a glorified secretary, working at a made-up job her mother had cadged from a friend.

But even as he was thinking that, Liam was saying, “Well, if you’re sure you can spare the time.”

“I have all the time in the world! I get off at five o’clock today. Here,” she said, and she reached to the floor for her purse and turned it upside down over the table. A wallet and keys and pill bottles and bits of paper fell out. She chose one of the bits of paper-a ruled sheet torn from a memo pad-and thrust it toward him. Milk, toothpaste, plant food, he read. “Write down your address,” she ordered. “Is it someplace I can find?”

“It’s just up Charles near the Beltway.”

“Perfect! Write your phone number too. Darn it, where’s my pen?”

“I have a pen,” he said.

“Hello? Hello?” she shouted.

Liam was startled, until he realized she was calling their waitress. “Can we get our bill?” she asked when the woman appeared.

Without speaking, the woman dug in her housecoat pocket and handed over a chit of paper that seemed as unofficial as Eunice’s memo page. Liam said, “Please, let me pay.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Eunice said.

“No, really, I insist.”

“Liam!” she barked, and she sent him a mock frown. “We’ll hear no more about this. You can buy me coffee once you land a job.”

Liam looked up at their waitress and found her frowning at him too, but with an expression of utter contempt. He bent meekly over the memo page and wrote down his address.

There was no way on earth that he could work for Cope Development, even if they were misguided enough to offer him a position. And it was nice of Eunice to take an interest, of course; but face it: she was really sort of… hapless. People like Eunice just never had quite figured out how to get along in the world. They might be perfectly intelligent, but they were subject to speckles and flushes; their purses resembled wastepaper baskets; they stepped on their own skirts.

Actually, Eunice was the only person he could think of who answered to that description. But still, there was something familiar about her.

He would phone her at Cope Development and cancel their appointment. “I can’t work there!” he would say. “I wouldn’t fit in. Thanks anyhow.”

When he picked up the receiver, though, he realized he didn’t know her last name. Admittedly, this was not an insurmountable problem. How many Eunices were they likely to have on their payroll? But he deplored the sound of it-“May I please speak to Eunice?” So unprofessional.

“This is Liam Pennywell calling Mr. Cope’s assistant. Eunice, I believe it was.”

They would take him for some kind of stalker.

He didn’t make the call.

Though a part of him knew full well what a weak excuse that was.

After lunch-a peanut-butter sandwich-he vacuumed his apartment and dusted all the furniture and fixed a pitcher of iced tea. He found himself talking silently to Eunice as he worked. Somehow, he progressed from “The fact is that I’m not the developer type” to “I’ve had a hard time with this amnesia issue; maybe you can understand.” He pictured her nodding sagely, matter-of-factly, as if this syndrome were old news to her. “Let’s review this for a moment, shall we?” she might say. Or, “A lot of times, when Mr. C. forgets, I’ve learned that it helps to…” To what? Liam couldn’t invent an end for that sentence.

It dawned on him that what he wanted from her was not so much to recover the burglar incident as to make sense of his forgetting it. He wanted her to say, “Oh, yes. I’ve seen this before; it’s nothing new. Other people have these holes in their lives.”

True, various doctors had said that already, but that was different. Why was it different? He couldn’t explain. Something lurked at the edge of his mind but he couldn’t quite grab hold of it.

He sat down in his rocker and stayed there, empty-headed, hands loose on his thighs. Long ago when he was young he used to envision old age this way: man in a rocker, idle. He had read somewhere that old people could sit in their chairs and watch their memories roll past like movies, endlessly entertaining; but so far that hadn’t happened to him. He was beginning to think it never would.

He was glad he hadn’t canceled Eunice’s visit.

She showed up just before six o’clock-later than he had expected. He’d started growing a little fidgety. She was carrying a bag of fried chicken from a takeout place. “I thought we could have supper while we worked,” she said. “I hope you haven’t already fixed us something.”

“Why… no, I haven’t,” Liam said.

Fried chicken tended to upset his stomach, but he had to admit it smelled delicious. He took the bag from her and placed it on the table, assuming they would eat later. Eunice, however, made a beeline for his kitchen. “Plates? Silver?” she asked.

“Oh, um, plates are in that cupboard to your left.”

She rattled among the cabinets and drawers while Liam drew a wad of paper napkins from the takeout bag. “I brought you some materials describing the company,” she called over her shoulder. “Just so you can sound informed about where you’re applying.”

Liam said, “Ah. The company. Well. I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure the company and I would be such a very good match.”

“Not sure!”

She stopped midway to the table, holding an armful of dishes and silverware.

“I guess at heart I’m still a teacher,” he told her.

“Oh, change is always difficult,” she said.

He nodded.

“But if you just gave this a try; just tried it to see how you liked it…” She set the dishes on the table and began distributing them. “Do you have any soft drinks?”

“No, only iced tea,” Liam said. “Or, wait. I think my daughter may have left some Diet Coke.”

“I didn’t know you had a daughter!” Eunice said. She sounded unduly taken aback, as if she knew everything else about him.

“I have three, in fact,” Liam said.

“So you’re, what? Divorced? Widowed?”

“Both,” Liam said. “Which did you want?”

Eunice said, “Excuse me?” She seemed to be having one of her flushes.

“Iced tea or Diet Coke?”

“Oh! Diet Coke, please.”

Liam found a Diet Coke behind the milk and brought it to the table, along with the pitcher of tea for himself. “My refrigerator dispenses ice directly through the door,” he told Eunice. “Would you like some for your Coke?”

“No, thanks, I’ll just drink from the can.”

She was setting out pieces of chicken on a platter. There were biscuits, too, he saw, but no vegetable. He debated fixing a salad but decided against it; too time-consuming. He sat down in his usual place. Eunice took the chair to his left. She smoothed a napkin across her lap and gazed around. “This is a nice apartment,” she said.

“Thanks. I don’t feel entirely settled yet.”

“You’ve just moved in?”

“A few weeks ago.”

He took a drumstick from the platter and put it on his plate. Eunice chose a wing.

“The burglary happened the first night I was here,” he told her. “I went to sleep perfectly fine, and I woke up in the hospital.”

“That’s terrible,” Eunice said. “Didn’t you want to move out again right away?”

“Well, it was more a matter of… I was more concerned about remembering what had happened,” Liam said. “I felt as if I had leapt this sort of ditch. This gap of time that I had skipped completely. I hate that feeling! I hate forgetting.”

“It’s like Mr. C.,” Eunice said.

“Ah,” Liam said, and he grew very alert.

“You won’t breathe a word of this, will you?”

“No, no!”

“What I do for Mr. C. is, like, I’m his external hard drive.”

Liam blinked.

“But that is not to go beyond these walls,” Eunice said. “You have to promise.”

“Yes, of course, but-”

“Mrs. C. was just worried to bits, was what she told my mother.”

“So… excuse me, you’re saying-”

“But forget I mentioned it, okay? Let’s change the subject.”

Liam said, “Okay…”

“How can you be both divorced and widowed?” she asked him.

He tried to collect his thoughts. He said, “The divorce was the second wife. The first wife died.”

“Oh, I am so, so sorry.”

“Well, it was long ago,” Liam said. “I never think about her anymore.”

Eunice started picking her chicken wing apart with the very tips of her fingers, putting slivers of meat in her mouth while she kept her eyes on his. He didn’t want her to ask what Millie had died of. He could see the question forming in her mind, and so he rushed to say, “Two marriages! Sounds pretty bad, right? I’m always embarrassed to tell people.”

“My great-grandfather had three marriages,” Eunice said.

“Three! Well, I’d never go that far. There’s something… exaggerated about three marriages. Cartoonish. No offense to your great-grandfather.”

“This was back in the old days,” Eunice said. “His first two wives died in childbirth.”

“Oh, then,” Liam said.

“How did-?”

“But!” Liam said loudly, slapping both hands on the table. “We don’t have a vegetable! What am I thinking? I’m going to make us a salad.”

“No, really, I don’t need a salad.”

“Let’s see,” he said, and he jumped up and went to the refrigerator. “Lettuce? Tomatoes? Hmm, the lettuce seems a bit…”

He returned with a bag of baby carrots. “Did you know there’s a store on York Road called Greenish Grocery?” he asked as he sat back down. “I’ve driven past it. I always picture they’d have brown-edged lettuce, shriveled radishes, broccoli turning yellow… Here, help yourself.”

Last month, as it happened, had marked the thirty-second anniversary of Millie’s death. He wouldn’t ordinarily have remembered, but he was writing the date on a check and he happened to notice. June fifth. Thirty-two years; good God. She’d been barely twenty-four when she died. If she were to see him today she would think, Who is that old man?

“I understand these carrots aren’t really babies at all,” he told Eunice. “They’re full-sized but they’ve been whittled down by machines to make them little.”

“That’s all right,” Eunice said, and she laid the single carrot she’d selected onto her plate. For someone so well padded, she seemed a very dainty eater. “Now, I haven’t spoken yet to Mr. McPherson,” she said.

“McPherson. Oh. At Cope.”

“I thought first you could write him a letter of inquiry, and then I would stop by his office and put in a word of recommendation.”

“Well, but-” Liam began.

He was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. Maybe he was edgier these days than he realized, because his heart gave a sudden thump. Someone called, “Poppy?”

Kitty came staggering in with her duffel bag and a large canvas tote. She still wore her work clothes-the pink polyester tunic she always complained about. Her mascara or whatever it was had blurred so she seemed to have two black eyes. “Oh!” she said when she saw Eunice.

Liam said, “Eunice, this is Kitty, my daughter. Kitty, this is Eunice, um…”

“Dunstead,” Eunice said. She was sitting almost sway-backed now with her hands folded under her chin. She looked a little bit like a chipmunk. “It’s such a thrill to meet you, Kitty!”

“Hi,” Kitty said flatly. Then she turned to Liam. “I’ve reached the end of the line, I tell you. I’m not staying under that woman’s roof another minute.”

“Well, why not have a piece of chicken,” Liam said. “Eunice here was kind enough to bring a-”

“First of all, I am seventeen years old. I am not a child. Second, I have always been an extremely reasonable person. Wouldn’t you say I’m reasonable?”

“Should I go?” Eunice asked Liam.

She spoke in a low, urgent voice, as if hoping Kitty wouldn’t hear. Liam glanced at her. In fact, he did wish all at once that she would go. This was not working out the way he’d imagined; it was getting complicated; he felt frazzled and distracted. But he said, “Oh, no, please don’t feel you have to-”

“I think I should,” she said, and she rose, or half rose, watching his face.

Liam said, “Well, then, if you’re sure.”

She stood up all the way and reached for her purse. Kitty was saying, “But some people just take this preconception into their heads and then there’s no convincing them. ‘I know you,’ they say; ‘I don’t trust you as far as I can-’”

“Sorry,” Liam told Eunice as he followed her toward the door.

“That’s all right!” she said. “We can always get together another time. I’ll phone you tomorrow, why don’t I. Meanwhile, you can be looking through those materials I brought. Did I give you those materials? What’d I do with them?”

She stopped walking to peer down into her purse. “Oh. Here,” she said, and she pulled out several sheets of paper folded haphazardly into a wad.

Liam accepted them, but then he said, “Actually, Eunice… you know? I really don’t think I’ll apply there.”

She stared up at him. He took another step toward the door, meaning to urge her on, but she held her ground. (He was never going to get rid of her.) She said, “Are you saying that just because Mr. C. forgot he had met you?”

“What? No!”

“Because it means nothing that he forgot. Nothing at all.”

“Yes, I understand. I just-”

“But we won’t go into the particulars,” she said, and she slid her eyes in Kitty’s direction. “I’ll phone you in the morning, okay?”

“Fine,” he said.

Fine. He would deal with it in the morning.

“Bye-bye for now, Kitty!” she called.

“Bye.”

Liam opened the door for Eunice, but he didn’t follow her out. He stood watching her cross the foyer. At the outer door she turned to wave, and he lifted the wad of papers and nodded.

When he went back inside he found Kitty sitting at the table, grasping a chicken breast with both hands and munching away at great speed. She said, “Any chance you’ll be going by an ATM any time soon?”

“I hadn’t planned to.”

“Because I spent my very last dollar on the taxi.”

“You came by taxi?”

“What do you think, I carried all this luggage on the bus?”

“I gave it no thought at all, I suppose,” he said, and he dropped back down on his chair.

Kitty set her chicken breast on the bare table and wiped her hands on a paper napkin. The napkin turned into a greasy shred. “That woman’s younger than Xanthe,” she told him.

“Yes, you’re probably right.”

“She’s way too young for you.”

“For me! Oh, goodness, she’s got nothing to do with me!”

Kitty raised her eyebrows. “Think not?” she asked him.

“Good Lord, no! She came to help with my résumé.”

“She came because she has this big huge crush on you that sticks out a mile in every direction,” Kitty said.

“What!”

Kitty eyed him in silence as she took a carrot from the bag.

“What a notion,” Liam said.

He didn’t know which was more shocking: the notion itself, or the slow, deep sense of astonished pleasure that began to rise in his chest.