The New Yorker Stories

Little Thomas was a sneaky child. He’d sneak around for no good reason, padding through the house in his socks, sometimes scaring his mother and his sister Lilly when they turned a corner and found him standing there like a statue. His mother always said Little Thomas had no radar. No instinct for avoiding people and things. His going around in his socks made things worse, because if you were frightened and yelped he would become frightened, too, and burst into tears or topple something from a table in his fright. But he wouldn’t wear shoes in the house—to get even with his mother, he said, for making him wear boots to school on days when it wasn’t even raining, only damp—and no amount of pleading or punishment could make him change his ways. As he got older, he deliberately frightened his sister from time to time, because he loved to see her jump, but most of the scares with his mother were unintentional, he later maintained.

Little Thomas’s mother was named Etta Sue. She was five years older than my mother, Alice Dawn Rose. There was a brother in between, who had died of rheumatic fever. Though Etta Sue married a man named Thomas Kurbell, she maintained that Little Thomas was named not for him but for her dead brother, Thomas Wyatt. Little Thomas’s middle name was Nathaniel. “She put that name in because she wanted to include everybody, even the milkman,” Thomas Sr. used to say. Apparently, the milkman was a subject of fond kidding between them: she really did like the milkman, and he became a family friend. He’d push open the back door, come in, and wipe off the milk bottles before putting them on the top shelf of the refrigerator, and then pour himself some tea and sit and talk to whoever happened to be in the kitchen—Thomas Sr.; my mother, on a visit; me. He was Nat the Milkman. One time when I wasn’t there, Little Thomas jumped out of the broom closet and startled Nat the Milkman, and Nat grabbed him and flipped him over, holding him upside down by his ankles for a good long while. This was the reason Little Thomas hated him.

As well as slipping around in his stocking feet, Little Thomas was quiet and rarely could be coaxed into a conversation. He was quiet and troubled—that much the family would finally allow, though they refused to admit that there were any real problems. It was said he was troubled because he’d had to wear glasses as a child. Or because his father was so personable that he’d presented his son with a hard act to follow. Later, Little Thomas’s asthma was blamed, and then his guilt over the fact that Punkin Puppy, the family’s russet-colored mutt, had to be given away because of Little Thomas’s allergies. Growing up, I heard these things over and over. The reasons were like a mantra, or like the stages of grief being explained—the steps from denial to acceptance. By the time he was a teenager, it was no longer a question just of his being troubled but of his actively troubling others. Garden hoses were turned on in the neighbors’ gardens late at night, washing their flowers away in great landslides of mud; brown bags filled with dog excrement were set burning on some neighbor’s porch, so whoever opened the door would be ankle deep in dog shit when he stomped out the flames. Things got worse, and then Little Thomas was sent away to a special school.

Yesterday I visited my mother in her new apartment in Alexandria. She was afraid of crime in downtown Washington and thought she should relocate. Her nurse-companion came with her, a kindhearted woman named Zalla, who attended the school of nursing at American University two nights a week and every summer. When she got her nursing degree, Zalla intended to return to her home, Belize, where she was going to work in a hospital. The hospital was still under construction. Building had to be stopped when the architect was accused of embezzling; then the hurricane struck. But Zalla had faith that the hospital would be completed, that she would eventually graduate from nursing school, and that—though this went unsaid—she would not be with my mother forever. My mother has emphysema and diabetes, and needs someone with her. Zalla cooks and washes and does any number of things no one expects her to do, and during the day she’s never off her feet. At night she watches James Bond movies over and over on my mother’s VCR. My mother sits in the TV room with her, rereading Dickens. She says the James Bond movies provide wonderful soundtracks for the stories: Carly Simon singing “Nobody Does It Better” in The Spy Who Loved Me as my mother’s reading about Mr. Pickwick.

Anyway, what happened was in no way Zalla’s fault, but she was tortured by guilt. Days after the incident I’m going to tell about, which I heard of when I visited, Zalla was still upset.

That Monday, my mother had checked into Sibley Hospital for a day of tests. In the afternoon, there was a knock on the door and Zalla looked out of the peephole and saw Little Thomas. She’d met him several times through the years, so of course she let him in. He said he was there to return some dishes my mother had let him borrow when he was setting up housekeeping. He also wanted to say goodbye, because he was moving out of the apartment he’d been sharing with other people in Landover, Maryland, and was headed down to the Florida Keys to tend bar. Then he worked the conversation around to asking Zalla for a loan: fifty dollars, which he’d send back as soon as he got to Key West and opened a bank account and deposited some checks. She had thirty-some dollars and gave him everything she had, minus the bus fare she needed to get to Sibley Hospital that evening. He asked for a sheet of paper so he could write a goodbye note to my mother, and Zalla found him a notepad. He sat at the kitchen table, writing. It didn’t occur to her to stand over him. She unpacked the dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher, and then tidied up in the TV room. He wrote and wrote. He was writing my mother a nasty note, telling her that through therapy he had come to realize that the family perpetuated harmful myths, and that no one had ever chosen to “come clean” about his father’s death, because his father had actually died of pneumonia, not from the fall off a wagon. He told her how horrifying it had been to see his father slipping away in the hospital, and he blamed her and Etta Sue for always discussing Cousin Pete’s last moments when they talked about his father’s death. “Fact is, lightning impressed you more than simple pneumonia,” he wrote. He also thought they should have talked more to him about his father’s accomplishments. He thought they should have told about his father’s love for him. He made no mention of his sister Lilly, from whom he was estranged. He folded the note and put it under the saltshaker, and then he mixed himself a cup of instant cocoa and left, taking the mug he was drinking from.

Zalla was nervous. She thought he might have been drinking, though his breath didn’t smell of alcohol. He’d gone to the bathroom while he was there, so Zalla went into the bathroom to make sure everything was all right. It was, but she still had an uneasy feeling. It wasn’t until that evening, when she left for the hospital to escort my mother home, that she saw the black felt-pen graffiti on the wall in the downstairs hallway: stick people with corkscrew hair like Martians’ antennae, and a quickly scrawled SCREW YOU BLOWING THIS JOINT. She was horrified, and at first she thought she’d keep quiet about Little Thomas’s visit—just pretend it was all a mystery—but she knew that was wrong and she’d have to make a full disclosure.

By the time I heard the story, Zalla and my mother had agreed he was probably drunk—or, worse, on drugs—and that he was a coward to pretend to confront my mother, when all he did was write a note. He also hadn’t had the nerve to face his own mother, who was still living on Twentieth Street, and tell her that he was moving away. Zalla kept quiet about the thirty dollars, but the next morning she confessed that, too. In with the dishes he’d brought back were several strange, gold-bordered plates my mother had not given him; neither she nor Zalla knew exactly what to make of that. Both feared, irrationally, that someone would now come for the plates. They seemed to understand, though, that Little Thomas was gone and wouldn’t be heard from for some time, if ever. Zalla remained afraid of him, in the abstract. She said he’d crept around like a burglar. That gave my mother and me a good laugh, because he’d been sneaky all his life. Good that he spared Mother’s bathroom wall, I joked: bad enough that they’d had to call the management to apologize and to arrange to have the hallway repainted.

While Zalla watched Goldfinger, my mother led me into her bedroom and told me one of the Dark Secrets she’d never before revealed. It turned out she had always feared Little Thomas would do something really awful, because he had done something very bad as a child. My mother had been furious, but she had never told on him, because she was embarrassed at her own fury, and also because she felt that Little Thomas’s demons tortured him enough.

She asked whether I remembered the silhouettes. I did remember them, vaguely, though I had to be reminded that they’d once hung on a satin ribbon in Etta Sue’s living room. I remembered them from later on, when they’d hung below the light above the bed in my mother’s bedroom, attached to the same ribbon. There had also been one of Lilly, as a baby, and another of Punkin Puppy, in separate frames. The three framed silhouettes on the ribbon had been of Thomas Sr., Etta Sue, and the man who, Etta Sue told my mother, had cut the silhouettes. Etta Sue explained this somewhat humorous fact by saying that the silhouette cutter was going to throw his self-portrait away—he probably did it the way secretaries practice their typing, or something—and that she had rescued it from the trash. Little Thomas had destroyed his silhouette before it got into the frame, and though Etta Sue always meant to have another one cut, Little Thomas wouldn’t sit still a second time. My mother shook her head. She said that she supposed the silhouette cutter’s self-portrait was sort of like Alfred Hitchcock’s including himself in his own films, though that wasn’t a good comparison, because Etta Sue had hung it up, not the man himself.

When Etta Sue was forced to move out of her house and into the Twentieth Street apartment after Thomas Sr.’s death, she had to discard many things. The furniture my mother could understand, but parting with so many personal possessions had seemed to her a mistake. When the ribbon with the framed silhouettes went into the trash, my mother grabbed it out and said she would keep it for Etta Sue until she felt better. And Etta Sue had given her the strangest look. First shocked, then sad, my mother thought. And in all the years my mother had the silhouettes hung in her bedroom, Etta Sue never mentioned them, although she did eventually ask for Thomas Sr.’s shaving mug back, and for the framed picture of herself and her husband taken at a Chinese restaurant on their first anniversary.

But the point of the story, my mother said, was this: One weekend a few months after Thomas Sr.’s death, she was taking care of Little Thomas and Lilly, and Little Thomas had gone into the bedroom while all the rest of us were in the backyard and he had taken the silhouettes out of the frames and cut the noses off. Then he slipped them all back into their frames and rehung them. It was days before my mother noticed—everyone with his or her nose chopped off, plus Punkin Puppy, earless.

She hurried right over to Little Thomas’s school and waited for him to get out. He walked home, but that day he didn’t go anywhere before she confronted him. By her own account, she grabbed the tip of his nose and squeezed it, asking him how he thought he’d like being without his nose. Then she grabbed his ears and asked him if he thought he might like to spend the rest of his life not hearing, too. She crouched and made him look her in the eye and tell her why he’d done it. It was amazing that someone didn’t notice her making such a scene and come over, she said. Little Thomas gasped when she pulled him around and shook him by his shoulders, but he never cried.

He had done it, he told her, because the faces in the frames were miniature black ghosts, there to haunt people. He disfigured them because they were ghost monsters with special powers of sneaking inside people. If he got rid of the black ghosts, cut them up a little, they would become white ghosts, with no special power.

My mother was so horrified she couldn’t stand. He had given a quite specific, terribly upsetting answer, and she had no idea what response to make, because if he really thought those things he was mad. That would make it the first incidence of real madness in the family. She was 90 percent sure he was telling her what he really believed, but she also thought there was some small chance he might be having her on. She stayed there quite a while, weak in the knees, staring into his face, looking for more information.

“You think I’d care if I didn’t have a nose?” he said. “I wouldn’t care if I didn’t have a nose or a mouth or eyes. I wish the sperm had never gone into the egg. I wouldn’t mind if there was no me, and you wouldn’t either.”

My mother remembered being surprised that he knew about sex—that he knew such words as “sperm” and “egg.” She didn’t remember what she said to him next, but it had something to do with how she understood that he was very upset that his father was dead and had disappeared, but that he mustn’t confuse that with thinking his father didn’t love him.

Little Thomas broke away from her. “You stupid fool,” he said. She remembered that distinctly: “You stupid fool.”

After Little Thomas’s father’s death, my mother now suddenly reminded me, someone courted Etta Sue for a bit, but eventually faded away. In retrospect, my mother said, she thought it might quite possibly have been (“Now, don’t laugh,” she said) the milkman. Because, come to think of it, why else—unless she was a little embarrassed—would Etta Sue refuse to let anyone in the family know whom she was seeing? Also, Nat the Milkman had been a Sunday painter, so perhaps he had also cut silhouettes.

“Say nothing of this to Zalla,” my mother said. It was something she had begun to say increasingly, as an afterthought, in recent years—or perhaps as an end to each of her stories, not as an afterthought, really.

I kissed her cheek and gave her hand a squeeze, turning off her bedside lamp with my free hand. It was early evening and dark. We were in autumn, the season when Thomas Sr. had slipped from high atop the mounded hay—slipped in slow motion, compared to the way his cousin Pete had been struck by lightning.

That was the past. I imagined the future: the graffiti figures that had already disappeared in the downstairs hallway, whited out by a paint roller. Then I thought about the hospital in Belize, to which for all intents and purposes that paint roller could travel like a comet, to whiten the drywall that had at long last been installed in the corridors of the new hospital. Zalla would be standing there, her starched white nurse’s uniform contrasting with her dark skin, and in a blink my mother would be dead, quite unexpectedly—gone from her white-sheeted bed to the darkness, as Zalla paused in her busy day to remember us, a nice American family.

The Women of This World

The dinner was going to be good. Dale had pureed leeks and salsify to add to the pumpkin in the food processor—a tablespoon or so of sweet vermouth might give it a little zing—and as baby-girl pink streaked through the gray-blue sky over the field, she dropped a CD into the player and listened matter-of-factly to Lou Reed singing matter-of-factly, “I’m just a gift to the women of this world.”

By now her husband, Nelson, would be on his way back from Logan, bringing his stepfather, Jerome, and Jerome’s girlfriend, Brenda—who had taken the shuttle from New York, after much debate about plane versus train versus driving—for the annual (did three years in a row make something annual?) pre-Thanksgiving dinner. They could have come on Thanksgiving, but Didi, Jerome’s ex (and Nelson’s mother), was coming that day, and there was no love lost between them. Brenda didn’t like big gatherings, anyway. Brenda was much younger than Jerome. She used to nap half the afternoon—because she was shy, Jerome said—but lately her occupation had become glamorous and she had quit teaching gym at the middle school to work as a personal trainer, and suddenly she was communicative, energized, radiant—if that wasn’t a cliché for women in love.

Dale turned on the food processor and felt relieved as the ingredients liquified. It wasn’t that the food processor hadn’t always worked—when she placed the blade in the bottom correctly, that is—but that she feared it wouldn’t work. She always ran through a scenario in which she’d have to scoop everything out and dump it in the old Waring blender that had come with the rented house in Maine and that didn’t always work. With blenders so cheap, she amazed herself by not simply buying a new one.

Nelson was forever indebted to Jerome for appearing on the scene when he was five years old, and staying until he was sixteen. Jerome had seen to it that Nelson was spared going to Groton, and had taught him to play every known sport—at least every ordinary sport. But would Nelson have wanted to learn, say, archery?

Nelson wanted to learn everything, though he didn’t want to do everything. He was happy to have quit teaching and wanted to do very little. He liked to know about things, though. That way, he could talk about them. Her cruel nickname for him was No-Firsthand-Knowledge Nelson. It got tedious sometimes: people writing down the names of books from which Nelson had gotten his often esoteric information. People calling after the party was over, having looked up some strange assertion of Nelson’s in their kid’s Encyclopedia Britannica and discovered that he was essentially right, but not entirely. They often left these quibbles and refutations on the answering machine: “Dick here. Listen, you weren’t exactly right about Mercury. It’s because Hermes means ‘mediator’ in Greek, so there is an element of logic to his taking the souls of the dead to the underworld”; “Nelson? This is Pauline. Listen, Rushdie did write the introduction to that Glen Baxter book. I can bring it next time and show you. He really does write introductions all the time. Well, thanks to you both for a great evening. My sister really appreciated Dale’s copying that recipe for her—though no one can make butterflied lamb like Dale, I told her. Anyway. Okay. Bye. Thanks again.”

Jerome and Brenda would be twenty or thirty minutes away, assuming the plane landed on time, which you could never assume if you knew anything about Logan. Still: Dale could manage a quick shower, if not a bath, and she should probably change into a dress because it seemed a little oblivious to have people over when you were wearing sweats, even if you did have a cashmere sweater pulled over them. Maybe a bra under the sweater. A pair of corduroys, instead of the supercomfortable sweats. And shoes . . . definitely some sort of shoes.

Nelson called from the cell phone. “Need anything?” he said. She could hear Terry Gross’s well-modulated, entirely reasonable voice on the radio. Only Nelson and Terry and her guest were talking in the car: the passengers were silent, in case Dale had forgotten some necessary ingredient. Yes, pink peppercorns. Try finding them on 95 North. And, of course, they weren’t really peppercorns; they were only called peppercorns because they looked like black peppercorns. Or: purple oregano. An entirely different flavor from green.

“Not a thing,” she said. She had changed into black corduroy pants and a white shirt. Keeping it clean would preoccupy her, give her some way to stay a little detached from everyone. She was shy, too. Though she wore bad-girl black boots.

“Brenda wants to see the Wedding Cake House. I thought we’d swing by. Would that mess up your timing?”

“I didn’t cook anything,” Dale said.

Silence, then. Unkind of her, to set his mind scrambling for alternatives.

“Kidding,” she said.

She had toured the Wedding Cake House soon after they moved to the area. It was in Kennebunkport, a huge yellow-and-white creation, with Gothic spires like pointed phalluses. Legend had it that it had been built by a sea captain for his bride, to remind her of their wedding night when he left for sea.

“We’ll be back around four.”

Someone else was talking to Terry Gross in a deep, earnest voice.

“See you soon,” Nelson said. “Hon?” he said.

“Bye,” Dale said. She picked up two bottles of red wine from the wine rack near the phone. A little too close to the heat grate, so no wine was kept on the last four shelves. Not a problem in summer, but a minor inconvenience come cold weather. She remembered that Brenda had been delighted with a Fumé Blanc she’d served last time, and bought the same bottle for her again. Jerome, of course, because of his years in Paris, would have the Saint-Émilion. Nelson had taken to sipping Jameson’s lately. Still, she’d chilled several bottles of white, because he was unpredictable. On the top rack lay the bottle of Opus One an appreciative student from the photography workshop she’d taught had given her. Two nights later, she planned to serve it to the doctor who had diagnosed both her hypoglycemia and her Ménière’s disease, which meant, ironically, that she could no longer drink. If she did, she’d risk more attacks of the sickening vertigo that had plagued her and gone misdiagnosed for years, leaving her sweaty and trembling and so weak she’d often have to stay in bed the day after the attack. “Like taking acid and getting swept up in a tidal wave,” she had said to the otolaryngologist. The woman had looked at her with surprise, as if she’d been gathering strawberries and suddenly come upon a watermelon. “Quite a vivid description,” the doctor had said. “My husband is a writer. He sometimes stops me dead in my tracks the same way.”

“Is he Brian McCambry?” Dale had asked.

“Yes,” the doctor said. Again, she seemed surprised.

Nelson had been the one who speculated that Dr. Anna McCambry might be the wife of Brian McCambry. Dale, herself, had read only a few pieces by McCambry, though Nelson—as she told the doctor—had read her many others.

“I’ll pass on the compliment,” the doctor said. “Now back to the real world.”

What a strange way to announce the transition, Dale had thought, though her symptoms sometimes were the real world for her, crowding out any other concerns. What was more real than telescoping vision, things blurring and swarming you, so that you had no depth perception, no ability to stand? The doctor talked to her about alterations in her diet. Prescribed diuretics. Said so many things so fast that Dale had to call the nurse later that afternoon, to be reminded what several of them had been. The doctor had overheard the call. “Bring your husband and come for drinks and I’ll go over this with you while they talk,” the doctor had said. “ ‘Drinks’ in your case means seltzer.”

“Thanks,” Dale said. No doctor had ever asked to see her out of the office.

She opened the Fumé Blanc but left the bottle of Saint-Émilion corked. How did she know? Maybe Jerome would decide to go directly to the white French burgundy. What hadn’t seemed fussy and precious before did now, a little: people and their wine preferences. Still, she indulged the vegetarians in their restrictions, knew better than to prepare veal for anyone, unless she was sure it wouldn’t result in a tirade. Her friend Andy liked still water, her photography student Nance preferred Perrier. Dale’s mind was full of people’s preferences and quirks, their mystical beliefs and food taboos, their ways of demonstrating their independence and their dependency at table. The little tests: would there happen to be sea salt? Was there a way to adjust the pepper grinder to grind a little more coarsely? A call for chutney. That one had really put her over the top. There was Stonewall Kitchen Roasted Onion and Garlic Jam already on the table. She had sent Nelson for the chutney, since Paul was more his friend than hers.

She went into the downstairs bathroom and brushed her hair, gathering it back in a ponytail. She took off the white shirt and changed back into her cashmere sweater, giving it a tug she knew she shouldn’t give it to make sure it fell just right. She looked at her boots and wished it was still summer; she’d be more comfortable barefoot, but it wasn’t summer, and her feet would freeze. She remembered that Julia Roberts had been barefoot when she married Lyle Lovett. Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett: not as strange as Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.

Brenda came in first, shaking her thick mane of prematurely white hair. She was full of enthusiasm about the trip to the Wedding Cake House. It was amazing, beautiful, somehow sort of weird—a little creepy, some woman living inside her wedding cake like the old woman who lived in a shoe. Then Brenda began apologizing: she had insisted they drive down the longest dirt road in history, to get a basket of apples. Nelson put the basket down on the kitchen island, which Dale would soon need every inch of to do the final dinner preparations. She could no longer eat apples, or anything excessively sweet. She was sick of explaining to people what she couldn’t eat, and why. In fact, she had started to say she was diabetic, since everyone seemed to know that that meant you couldn’t eat sugar. There was also the possibility that the apples might be Brenda and Jerome’s, to take back to New York, so she said, “Nice,” rather than “Thank you.”

The real owners of the house obviously must have loved to cook. The kitchen was well laid out, with the exception of the dishwasher being to the left of the sink. Dale had become so adept at using her left hand to load the dishwasher that she thought it might be amusing to be both diabetic and left-handed. By the time she left the house, she might be an entirely different person.

“It’s great to see you. Did you get my note? You didn’t go to a lot of trouble, did you?” Jerome said, squeezing Dale, then letting go.

Brenda was still in a dither. “We didn’t mess you up, did we?” she said.

“Not at all,” Dale said.

“I shouldn’t ask, but I’ve been cooped up in the plane, and then in the car. Would there be time to take a walk? A quick walk?”

“Sure,” Dale said. She had just put the roast in the oven to bake. There was plenty of time.

“Would you mind if Nelson and I take a look at that wiring problem? I’m much better when there’s natural light,” Jerome said.

“Oh, he’s on his kick again about how he can’t see or hear!” Brenda said. She added, as if they didn’t know, “He’s sixty-four.”

“What wiring problem?” Dale said. She wanted to be barefoot. She wanted to be Julia Roberts, with a big, dazzling smile. Instead, she could feel the skin between her eyebrows tightening. Wiring problem? The way Brenda talked got into her brain; in her presence, she started thinking in concerned italics.

“I was trying to hook up speakers in the upstairs hallway. I can get one of them going but not the other. Might be a bad speaker,” Nelson said.

Nelson had spent a good portion of his book advance on new sound equipment. His compromise with Dale was: when guests arrived, there would be no music. So far, the day had consisted of bluegrass, Dylan’s first electric album, Japanese ceremonial music, an hour or so of La Bohème, and Astor Piazzolla. Dale had listened to the weather report and one cut from a Lou Reed CD that she imagined might be Jerome’s theme song. She was fond of Jerome, but he did think he was God’s gift to women.

“You’ll come on a walk with me, won’t you?” Brenda said. She was wearing shoes that would have been inappropriate for a walk, if she hadn’t been Brenda: brown pointy-toed boots with three-inch heels. This year’s hip look, while Dale’s had become the generic. Brenda had shrink-wrapped herself into a black leather skirt, worn over patterned pantyhose. On top was a sweater with a stretched-out turtleneck that Dale thought must be one of Jerome’s. He had kept his collection of French handknit sweaters for twenty-some years.

“Just down the road?” Dale said, gesturing to the dirt road that went past the collapsed greenhouse behind the garage. She liked the road. You could usually see deer this time of the evening. Also, because of the way the road dipped, it seemed like you were walking right into the sky, which had now turned Hudson River School radiant. Dale’s friend Janet Lebow was the only year-rounder at the end of the road. When the nasty summer people left, taking their Dobermans and their shiny four-wheel drives with them, Janet was happy not only to let Dale walk the No Trespassing/Danger/Posted/Keep Out road; Janet usually sent her dog, Tyrone (who was afraid of the summer dogs), out to exercise with Dale. Janet was divorced, fifty going on twenty-five, devoted to tabloids, late-night movies, astrological forecasts, and “fun” temporary tattoos of things like unicorns leaping over rainbows. She was not a stupid woman, only childish and a little too upbeat, traumatized by her ex-husband’s verbal abuse. Janet shuddered when she mentioned her ex-husband’s name and rarely talked about the marriage. Tyrone was a smart golden retriever–black lab mix. When he wasn’t in the tributary to the York River, he was wriggling in the field, trying to shed fleas. The dog and the kitchen were the two things Dale felt sure she would miss most when they had to vacate the house. They had it through the following summer, when the philosophy professor and his wife would return from their year in Munich. By then, Nelson’s book would supposedly be finished. Dale knew she was not going to enjoy the home stretch. Nelson had written other books, which inevitably made him morose because of the enormousness of the task. Then the music selections would really become eclectic.

Dale reached into the flour bin of the Hoosier cabinet and took out her secret stash of doughnut holes, which she bought on Saturdays at the Portsmouth Farmers’ Market. She did not eat doughnut holes: they were exclusively for Tyrone, who thought Dale had invented the best game of fetch imaginable. He would race for the doughnut hole, sniff through the field for it, throw it in the air so Dale could see he’d gotten it, then gulp it down in one swallow. She had taken to applauding. Lately, she had started to add “Good dog, Tyrone” to the applause.

“Is that cigarettes?” Brenda whispered to Dale, though Nelson and Jerome were already walking up the stairs.

“Doughnut holes,” Dale whispered back. “You’ll see.” She plunged what remained of them, in their plastic bag, into the deep pocket of her coat.

“I keep peanut M&M’s in my lingerie drawer,” Brenda said. “And Jerome—you know, he doesn’t think I know he still drinks Pernod.”

“It’s for a dog,” Dale said.

“Pernod?” Brenda asked.

“No. Doughnut holes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on,” Dale said. “You’ll see.”

At dinner—during which Dale could sense Brenda’s respect for her, both as a cook and as a crazy woman (she’d sent three doughnut holes up in the air at the same time, like the last moments of the Fourth of July fireworks)—they discussed the brass sundial Dale had placed atop autumn leaves in the center of the table. Nelson informed everyone that the piece sticking up was called the gnomon.

“No mon is an island,” Jerome said. Jerome very much enjoyed wordplay and imitating dialects. Dialect from de islands was currently his favorite. He and Brenda had recently vacationed in Montego Bay.

“And this is the shadow,” Nelson said, pointing, ignoring Jerome’s silly contribution. “This is the plate, this the hour line, this the dial, or diagram.”

“You are a born teacher,” Brenda said.

“I broke that habit,” Nelson said. He had. He had resigned when the theorists outnumbered what he called “the sane art historians.” Worried that his ex-colleagues would resent his work with Roman coins, he was fond of stressing that he was not a numismatist. Dale had left with him, retaining only two loyal students who drove hours each week to work with her in the darkroom.

“Groton or no Groton, he had such an interest in knowledge that we had nothing to worry about with Nelson. I wore her down, and I was right to have done it,” Jerome said. The time would never come when Jerome would not want to be thanked, one more time, for having saved Nelson—as they both thought of it—from the clutches of Groton.

“Which I thank you for,” Nelson said.

“And, if I’d been around at your birth, I could have stopped her from naming you for a sea captain,” Jerome said.

“Oh, Nelson is a lovely name,” Brenda said.

“Of course, if I’d been around at your birth, people might have suspected something funny was going on,” Jerome said.

“I thought you met Didi in Paris, when Nelson was five or six,” Brenda said.

“He was four. He was five when we got married.”

Didi had gone to Paris to study painting. Actually, she had gone to have an affair with her Theosophy instructor. That hadn’t had a happy ending, though Didi had met Jerome at Les Deux Magots. No snail-like dawdling; by her own admission, she had struck with the speed of a snake.

“I didn’t understand what you meant then, when you said ‘If I’d been around,’ ” Brenda said.

“I was just saying if. If things had been otherwise. Other than what they were. If.”

“But I think you implied that you knew Didi when she gave birth. Didn’t he?” Brenda said.

“Brenda, you were a child when all this happened. You need not be jealous,” Jerome said.

“I know I should let this drop, Jerome, but it seemed sort of strange to suggest you might have been there,” Brenda said. “Am I being too literal-minded again?”

“Yes,” Nelson said.

“Well, no, I mean, sometimes I feel like something is being said between the lines and because I’m a newcomer I don’t quite get it.”

“I’ve lived with you for six years, Brenda,” Jerome said. He said it with finality, as if she would do well to drop the subject, if she wanted to live with him another six seconds.

Brenda said nothing. Dale gestured to the soup tureen, beside the sundial. Also on the table was a silver bowl of freshly snipped chives and a little Chinese dish, enameled inside, that Dale had found for a quarter at a tag sale. People in the area did not value anything they were selling that was smaller than a beachball. The Chinese dish was an antique. Inside, there was a pyramid of unsweetened whipped cream.

“Fabulous. Fabulous soup,” Jerome said. “So when are you going to let me bankroll your restaurant?”

He’d wanted Dale to open a restaurant in New York for years. Jerome had all the money in the world, inherited when his parents died and left him half the state of Rhode Island. Since Jerome was a part-time stockbroker, he’d managed to invest it wisely. Back in the days before Dale showed her photographs at a gallery on Newbury Street, in Boston, it had been more difficult to dismiss Jerome’s ideas.

“So how’s the photography coming?” he said, when she didn’t answer. Brenda was still eating her soup, not looking up.

“I’ve got some interesting stuff I’ve been working on,” Dale said. “The woman down the road . . .” She gestured into the dark. Only a tiny blinking light from the bridge to Portsmouth could be seen, far in the distance. “There’s one woman who lives there year-round—heating with a woodstove—and I’ve taken photographs. . . . Well, it always sounds so stupid, talking about what you’re photographing. It’s like paraphrasing a book,” she said, hoping to elicit Nelson’s sympathy.

“Just the general idea,” Jerome said.

“Well, she does astrological charts for people, and they’re really quite beautiful. And she has amazing hands, like Georgia O’Keeffe’s. I’ve photographed her hands as she makes marks on the parchment paper. Hands say so much about a person, because you can’t change your hands.”

The longer she talked, the more stupid she felt.

“Have you had your chart done?” Jerome said. The stiffness of disapproval registered in his voice.

“No,” Dale said.

“I had my chart done once,” Brenda said. “I have it somewhere. It was apparently very unusual, because all my moons were in one house.”

Jerome looked at her. “Didi believed in astrology,” he said. “She thought we were mismatched because she was a Libra and I was a Scorpio. This apparently gave her license to have an affair with a policeman.”

“I’m not Didi,” Brenda said flatly. She had evidently decided not to let Jerome relegate her to silence. Dale was proud of her for that.

“Will you carve the roast?” Dale said to Nelson. “I’ll get the vegetables out of the oven.”

She felt a little bad about leaving Brenda alone at the table with Jerome, but Nelson was much better at carving than she was. She stood and began collecting soup bowls.

“Does that woman with the earmuffs still see you?” Dale said to Brenda as she picked up her bowl. Very offhanded. As if the conversation had been going fine. It would give Brenda the excuse to rise and follow her into the kitchen, if she wanted to. But Brenda didn’t do that. She said, “Yeah. I’ve gotten to like her a little better, but her worrying about losing body heat through her ears—you’ve got to wonder.”

“All the world is exercising,” Jerome said. “Brenda has more requests for her services than she can keep up with. The gym stays open until ten at night now on Thursdays. Do you two exercise?”

“There’s an Exercycle in the downstairs bedroom. Sometimes I do it while I’m watching CNN,” Nelson said.

Jerome gave his little half nod again. “And you?” he said to Dale. “Still doing the fifty situps? You’re looking wonderful, I must say.”

“She can’t,” Nelson said, answering for her. “The Ménière’s thing. It screws up her inner ear if she does that sort of repetitive activity.”

“Oh, I forgot,” Brenda said. “How are you feeling, Dale?”

“Fine,” she said. Things were better. The problem would never go away unless, of course, it spontaneously went away. Things had been so bad because the hypoglycemia complicated the problem, and that was pretty much under control, but she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Remind me of what you can’t eat,” Jerome said. “Not that we wouldn’t be too intimidated to have you to dinner anyway. Better to reciprocate at a restaurant in the city.”

“You don’t have to reciprocate,” Dale said. “I like to cook.”

“I wouldn’t be intimidated,” Brenda said.

“You wouldn’t,” he said. “I stand corrected.”

“It can be a problem, when you’re really good at something, no one will even try to do that thing for you,” Brenda said. “There’s a girl at work who gives the best massage in the world, and nobody will touch her because she’s the best. The other day, I rubbed just her shoulders, and she almost swooned.”

“Taking up massage also?” Jerome said.

“What do you mean, also?” Brenda said. “This is about the fact that you don’t like me working late on Thursdays, isn’t it? I might remind you that if a client calls, whatever time it is, it’s nothing for you to be on the phone for an hour.”

“No fighting!” Nelson said.

“We’re not fighting,” Jerome said.

“Well, you’ve been trying to provoke a fight with me,” Brenda said.

“Then it was unconscious. I apologize,” Jerome said.

“Oh, honey,” Brenda said, getting up, putting her napkin on the table. She went around the table and hugged Jerome.

“She likes me again,” Jerome said.

“We all like you,” Nelson said. “I, personally, think you saved my life.”

“That goes too far,” Jerome said. “I just wasn’t one of those stereotypically disinterested stepfathers. I considered it a real bonus that I could help raise you.”

“If only you’d taught me more about electrical problems,” Nelson said.

“It’s toggled together, but it should hold until I get my hands on a soldering gun,” Jerome said. “But seriously—Dale—what do they think the prognosis is about this thing you have?”

Roasted vegetables cascaded into the bowl. Dale put the Pyrex dish carefully in the sink and opened the drawer, looking for a serving spoon. “I’m fine,” she said.

“It’s complicated,” Nelson said. “She eats nothing but walnuts and cheese sticks for breakfast. You think she looks good? Will she still, if she loses another fifteen pounds?”

“Cheese is full of calories,” Dale said. It was going to be impossible not to talk about it until everyone else’s anxiety was alleviated. She lowered her voice. “Come on, Nelson,” she said. “It’s boring to talk about.”

“Cheese? What’s with the cheese?” Jerome said.

“Honey, you are cross-examining her,” Brenda said.

“So—here is some fresh applesauce, and here are the vegetables—I’ll put them by you, Jerome—and Nelson’s got the roast,” Dale said, going back to her chair. The chairs were Danish Modern, with a geometric quilted pattern on the seats. Apparently, the professor and his wife had also had a sabbatical in Denmark.

“Oh, you already had apples. I knew you would,” Brenda said.

“She won’t touch the applesauce. Pure sugar,” Nelson said.

“Nelson,” Dale said, “please stop talking about it.” She asked, “Does anyone want water?”

“I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll have that Mâcon-Lugny Les Charmes Nelson told me you laid in,” Jerome said.

“Absolutely,” Dale said, getting up. Nelson walked around her with the platter.

“She has some wine called Opus One for the doctor, who’s coming to dinner—when is it, Thursday?” Nelson said. “We were supposed to go there for drinks, but Dale countered with dinner. Talk about being grateful.”

“What year?” Jerome said.

“It was a present,” Dale said. “From a student who’s married to a wine importer, so I suspect it’s good.”

Nelson held the platter for Brenda to serve herself.

“Has it been properly stored?” Jerome said. “That could be an excellent wine. We can only hope nothing happened to it.”

Dale looked at him. As interested as he’d ostensibly been in her health, the concern about the wine was far greater. She had thought, to begin with, that being so solicitous had actually been Jerome’s way of pointing out her vulnerability. Poor Dale, who might have to be stretched out on the floor any second. It fit with his concept of women.

Nelson moved to Jerome’s side. He was holding the bottle. “Nineteen eighty-five,” he said.

“You know, that is a very elegant wine indeed. Let me see that,” Jerome said. Jerome cradled the bottle against his chest. He looked down at it, smiling. “May I, as the person who once saved your husband’s life, ask what would you think about my opening this to go with dinner?” he said.

“Jerome!” Brenda said. “Give that back to Nelson.”

Nelson looked at Dale, with an expression somewhere between perplexity and pleading. It was just a bottle of wine. She had no reason to think the doctor or her husband were wine connoisseurs. There was the bottle of Saint-Émilion, but it would have seemed churlish to mention it now. “Absolutely,” Dale said. She pushed her chair back and went to the cupboard and took out their own stemmed glasses with a wide bowl which they had brought with them, along with her duvet and the collection of cooking magazines.

Dale put a glass at everyone’s place. Jerome was smiling. “We can only hope,” he said.

Brenda was looking at Dale, but Dale did not meet her eyes. She was determined to let them all see that she was unconcerned. Jerome was usually so polite.

“Tell me,” he said, wine bottle clamped between his legs, turning the corkscrew. “Surely you aren’t going to decline one small glass of this, Dale?”

“I can’t drink,” she said.

“Then what is that glass for?” he said.

“Perrier,” she said, pronouncing the word very distinctly.

Jerome looked attentively at the bottle as he slowly withdrew the cork. He picked up the bottle slowly and sniffed. Then he put his white linen napkin over his finger and worked it around the top, inside the bottle. That was the first time it became clear to her that he was doing what he was doing out of anger. She picked up her fork and speared a piece of eggplant.

“You’ve fallen quiet, Dale,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” she said, trying to sound mildly surprised.

“It’s just that you’re so quiet,” he persisted.

Brenda seemed about to speak, but said nothing. Dale managed a shrug. “I hope there are enough spices on the vegetables,” she said. “I roasted them without salt. Would anyone like salt?”

Of course, since they had all now turned their attention to Dale, whatever she said sounded false and shallow.

“I appreciate your laying in Mâcon-Lugny for me,” Jerome went on. “In most cases, white would go well with pork roast. But an ’85 Opus One—that, of course, is completely divine.” Jerome sniffed the bottle. It might have been snuff, he inhaled so deeply. Then he sat the bottle on the table, near the sundial. “Let it breathe for a moment,” he said. He turned his chair at an angle, feigning closeness with Dale.

Dale picked up a piece of carrot with her fingers and bit into it. She said nothing.

“You had Didi to dinner last month with some friends of yours, I hear,” he said.

Who had told him, since he and Didi didn’t speak? Nelson, obviously. Why?

“Yes,” Dale said.

Jerome took a bite of meat and a bite of vegetable. He reached for the applesauce and ladled some on his plate. He said nothing about the food.

“I understand you’ve made a portrait of her,” he said.

Brenda was chewing slowly. She knew, and Dale knew, that Jerome was warming up to something. In fact, Dale herself didn’t much like Didi—in part because they seemed to have little in common. On top of that, Didi condescended by acting as if Dale was the sophisticate, and she—the world traveler—just a poor old lady. Dale had thought that photographing her—in spite of the momentary imbalance of power—might ultimately get the two of them on a more even footing.

Jerome said: “I’d be curious to see it.”

“No,” Dale said.

“No? Why ever not?” Jerome said.

“You don’t like your ex-wife,” she said. “There’s no reason to look at a picture of her.”

“Listen to her!” Jerome said, jutting his chin in Nelson’s direction.

“Jerome—what’s wrong?” Nelson said quietly.

“What’s wrong? There’s something wrong about my request to see a photograph? I have a curiosity about what Didi looks like. We were married for years, you’ll remember.”

“I don’t want to see it,” Brenda said.

“You don’t have to. If you don’t want any of the wine, you don’t have to have that, either.” Jerome twirled the bottle. As the label revolved in front of him, he picked up the bottle and poured. A thin stream of wine went into the glass.

“I don’t quite see how not wanting to look at a photograph of your ex means I don’t want wine,” Brenda said.

“You prefer white. Isn’t that so?” Jerome said.

“Usually. But you made this wine sound very good.”

“It’s good, but not great,” Jerome said, inhaling. He had not yet taken a sip. He swirled the wine in his glass, then put the glass to his lips and slowly tilted it back. “Mmm,” he said. He nodded. “Quite good, but not perfect,” he said. He cut a piece of roast.

Nelson kept his eyes on Dale, who was intent upon not looking at Brenda. Brenda was doing worse than anyone else with Jerome’s behavior. “May I talk to you in the kitchen?” Brenda said to Jerome.

“Oh, just take me to task right here. In the great tradition of Didi, who never lowered her voice or avoided any confrontation.”

“I’m not Didi,” Brenda said. “What I want to know is whether you’re acting this way because you’re pissed off I have a job I enjoy and that means I’m not there to answer your every whim, or whether there’s some real bone you have to pick with Dale.”

“Forget it,” Nelson said. “Come on. Dale has made this wonderful meal.”

“Don’t tell me what not to say to Jerome,” Brenda said.

“Let’s take another walk and cool off,” Dale said to Brenda. “Maybe they’d like to talk. Maybe we could use some air.”

“All right,” Brenda said, surprising Dale. She had thought Brenda would dig her heels in, but she seemed relieved by the suggestion. She got up and walked through the kitchen and into the hallway where the coats were hung. In the dark, she put on Dale’s jacket instead of her own. Dale noticed, but since they wore the same size, she put on Brenda’s without comment. Outside, Brenda realized her error when she plunged her hand in the pocket and felt the doughnut holes. “Oh, this is yours,” she said, and began to unzip the jacket.

“We wear the same size. Keep it on,” Dale said. Brenda looked at her, making sure she meant it. Then she took her fingers off the zipper. As they walked, Brenda began apologizing for Jerome. She said she’d only been guessing, back at the house. She didn’t really know what he was so angry about, though she assumed they knew that he was more fond of them than his own children—these being the daughter he’d had between Didi and Brenda, and the son whose mother was married to someone else. “He had a couple of beers on the plane. They took a bottle upstairs when they went to fix the wiring, too. Maybe he just had too much to drink,” Brenda said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dale said. She pointed at the Portsmouth light. “I like that,” she said. “In the evening I like the colorful sky, but at night I like that one little light almost as much.”

Dale tried to see her watch, but couldn’t read it. “Too late to round up Tyrone,” she said. She knew that it was, even without being able to see the time. In the distance, wind rustled the willows. They were walking where the path turned and narrowed, between the divided field. It was Dale and Nelson’s responsibility, as renters, to have the fields plowed so the scrub wouldn’t take over. In the distance, you could hear the white noise of cars on the highway. That, and the wind rustling, disguised the sound of tires until a black car with its headlights off was almost upon them. Brenda clutched Dale’s arm as she jumped in fear, moving so quickly into the grass in her high-heeled boots that she lost her balance and fell, toppling both of them. “Oh, shit, my ankle,” she said. “Oh, no.” Both were sprawled in the field, the hoarfrost on the grass crunching like wintery quicksand as they struggled to stand. A car without headlights? And after nearly sideswiping them, it accelerated. The big shadow of the car moved quickly away, crunching stones more loudly as it receded than it had on the approach.

Brenda had turned her ankle. Dale helped her up, dusting wetness from her own jacket on Brenda’s back, wanting to delay the moment when Brenda would say she couldn’t walk. “Some God-damned maniac,” Dale said. “Can you put pressure on it? How does it feel?”

“It hurts, but I don’t think it’s broken,” Brenda said.

Dale looked into the distance, Brenda’s hand still on her shoulder. “Shit,” Brenda said again. “I’d better take these things off and walk home in my tights. You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that was Jerome, zeroing in for the kill.”

Kill. With a worse chill than the night air explained, she had realized that the car must have been speeding away from Janet’s house. That they would have to go on—she, at least, would have to go on—and see what had happened.

“It’s something bad—” Dale began.

“I know,” Brenda said, crying now. “But the worst thing is that I’m pregnant, and I don’t dare tell him, he’s been so shitty lately. It’s like he hates me. I feel like he’d like it if my ankle was broken.”

“No,” Dale said, hearing what Brenda said, but not quite hearing it. “Something at the house down there. Janet’s house.”

Brenda’s hand seized Dale’s shoulder. “Oh, my God,” she said.

“Wait here,” Dale said.

“No! I’m coming with you,” Brenda told her.

“I’ve got a very bad feeling,” Dale said.

“We don’t know,” Brenda said. “It could have been kids—drunk, playing a game with the lights out.” From the tenuous way she spoke, it was clear she didn’t believe herself.

Slowly, helping her to walk, Brenda’s boots in one of her hands, the other around Brenda’s waist, the two of them walked until the little house came in sight. “Not exactly a wedding cake,” Brenda said, squinting at what was hardly more than a clapboard shack. There was one light on, which was an ambiguous sign: it could be good, or it could mean nothing at all.

The front door slightly ajar was the worst possible sign. Dale surprised herself by having the courage to push it open. Inside, the wood fire had burned out. A cushion was on the floor. A mug lay near it, in a puddle of whatever had been inside. The house was horribly, eerily silent. It was rare that Dale found herself surrounded by silence.

“Janet?” Dale said. “It’s Dale. Janet?”

She was on the kitchen floor. They saw her when Dale turned on the light. Janet was breathing shallowly, a small trickle of blood congealed at one side of her mouth. Dale’s impulse was to gather Janet in her arms, but she knew she should not move her head. “Janet? Everything’s going to be okay,” she heard herself say dully. She meant to be emphatic, but instead her voice was monotonic. Her ears had begun to close—the warning that she would soon have an attack of vertigo. But why? She had drunk no wine; she had eaten no sugar. Panic attacks had been ruled out when Ménière’s had been ruled in. “You must learn the power of positive thinking,” she heard the doctor saying to her. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it works. I’m not a mystical person. It’s more like biofeedback. Say to yourself, ‘This will not happen to me.’ ”

The room was quivering, as if the walls themselves were vibrating because of some tremor in the earth. Dale repeated the words, silently. She could see Janet’s chest rising and falling. Her breathing did not seem to be labored, though whoever had been there had tried to strangle her with a piece of rope. From the color of her face, it was obvious she had been deprived of oxygen. Her long fingers were balled into fists. Blood oozed from a cut on her arm. An ankh cross dangled from one end of the rope. The Dictionary of Symbols lay on the floor, a blood-smudged chart beside it. Beside that, torn from the wall, was a photograph Dale had taken of Janet’s hand holding the fine pearwood brush she used to draw symbols. The photograph had been ripped so that the brush was broken in half. Remembering, suddenly, what she must do, Dale went to the wall phone and dialed 911. “Someone is unconscious at the end of Harmony Lane,” she said. It was difficult to tell how loud, or soft, her words were. Harmony Lane—was that what she had just said? What ridiculous place was that? Some fake street in some ridiculous Walt Disney development? But no—they hadn’t gone there. They had rented a house in Maine, that was where they were. She squinted against the star shining through the kitchen window, like a bright dart aimed at her eye. It was not a star, though. It was the light from Portsmouth.

The woman who answered told Dale to stay calm. She insisted she stay where she was. It was as if all this was about Dale—not Janet, but Dale, standing in Janet’s kitchen. For a second the voice of the woman at 911 got confused with the voice of the doctor saying, This will not happen to me.

There was a shriek of sirens. They sounded far, far away, yet distinct: background music that portended trouble. Dale was so stunned that, instead of hanging up, she stood with the phone in her hand, imagining she’d hung up. She had seen Janet two days before. Three? They had talked about squash. The squash Janet would appreciate Dale’s buying for her at the Farmers’ Market. “This is her neighbor, Dale,” she said, in what she thought was an answer to the question the woman was asking, faintly, on the opposite end of the phone. Why didn’t the woman ask about Janet? “We saw a car,” she heard herself say, though her mouth was not near enough for the 911 operator to hear.

That was the moment when Tyrone burst out from underneath the two-seat sofa, charging so quickly he overshot Dale and knocked Brenda down. She screamed with fear long after she might have realized it was only a dog. Tyrone was as afraid as they were; everything was made worse by Brenda’s high-pitched scream.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” Brenda said, apologizing to the cowering dog, its back legs shaking so pathetically, Dale could not see how he remained upright. “Oh, God, here,” Brenda said, inching closer, reaching in the jacket pocket with trembling hands for a doughnut hole and holding it out to the dog, who did not approach but stood shakily leaning into Dale’s leg. No one looked at Janet’s body. Wind rattled the glass, but the louder sound was that of sirens. Dale saw Brenda cock her head and turn, as if she could see the sound. Brenda turned back and threw the doughnut hole to the dog, missing by a mile.

“It’s okay,” Dale said, moving her leg astride the dog and edging the doughnut hole toward him with the toe of her boot. It was a powdered-sugar doughnut hole that left a streak of white on the floorboards. By Janet’s hand had been a streak—no: a puddle, not a streak—of blood. Dale did not look in that direction; she was so afraid Janet might have stopped breathing.

Dale looked across the room at Brenda. Brenda, dejectedly, was about to throw another doughnut hole. Dale watched as she tossed it slowly, repeating Dale’s words: “It’s okay.” Then she took a step forward and said to Dale: “Make him forgive me. Make him like me again.”

Dale was stroking Tyrone’s head. Tyrone had become her dog. Brenda and Jerome’s child, she thought, would become Brenda’s child. All of Jerome’s women had wanted babies, and he had bitterly resented every one: the son born to the married woman in France, whose husband believed the child to be his; the daughter born as his marriage to his second wife was disintegrating. Nelson had been the only one he wanted. Well—if you had what you already considered the perfect child, maybe that made sense. Nelson was intellectually curious, smart, obedient, favoring his stepfather over his mother, a loyal child.

Nelson and Jerome would be at the table, finishing dinner, Nelson having found a way to excuse Jerome, Jerome’s passive aggression subsiding into agreeableness—as if, by the two women’s disappearing, any problem automatically disappeared, too. Without them, Nelson and Jerome could move on to the salad course. Drink the entire bottle of Opus One. Nelson would probably have brought down the photograph of Didi, her face deeply lined by years of having kept up with Jerome in his drinking, as well as other bad decisions she had made, and of course from the years at Saint-Tropez, enjoying too much sun.

Too much sun. Too much son. Jerome would like to play with that.

Though what Jerome was talking about, having already told Nelson he was seriously considering separating from Brenda, was the story of Baron Philippe de Rothschild: the Baron, being a clever businessman, and, more important, a visionary, realized that much might be gained by joining forces with the California winegrower, Robert Mondavi. Mondavi was invited to the Baron’s, where both men dined on fabulous food and drank great wine. It was a social evening: business was not discussed. It was not until the next morning that the Baron—by this point, Mondavi genuinely admired him, for his taste, elegance, and good manners—summoned Mondavi to his bedside, like a character in a fairy tale. The possibility of combining their efforts was discussed, and of sharing the profits fifty-fifty. Mondavi suggested producing only one wine, which would be similar to a great Bordeaux. Did he say this tentatively? The Baron agreed. Would he have said the same? The wine would be made in California, where the Baron’s winemaker would visit. Mondavi, flattered, was thrilled as well. His name linked to that of Baron Philippe de Rothschild! The Baron also triumphed, realizing that embracing his would-be adversary would lead both men to profit. Nothing remained except the ceremonial drinking of a hundred-year-old Mouton, followed by a very cold Château d’Yquem: a perfect deal; a perfect meal—it even rhymed, as Jerome pointed out. A brilliant label was designed, providing the perfect finishing touch.

The talk back at the house was about perfection. In a perfect world, all wines would be perfect. Ditto marriages. All books brilliant (a toast was drunk). Superior music (again, glasses were raised) would be listened to, keenly. In that fairy tale, which was not Dale’s, and which was not Brenda’s, either, no woman would lie badly wounded on her kitchen floor.

Brenda crossed the room and stood at Dale’s side. “Doughnut hole,” she said quietly, looking down, then picked it up, at the end of its trail of powdered sugar, as if plucking a shooting star from the darkness.

This time, Tyrone showed interest. Dale picked up the other two. The dog was definitely interested. There was no dirt on the doughnut holes that Dale and Brenda could see, as they examined them closely.

“Why not?” Dale said, giving voice to what Brenda was thinking. They could pretend to be people at a cocktail party, eating pleasant tidbits.

But sirens pierced the night.

They signified a problem for someone, Nelson knew. Another problem, Jerome also thought.

The sound overwhelmed Bartók on the stereo. The sirens were shrill and constant: a sound you might say was annoyingly like a woman’s voice—if one could still say such things, but of course one could not.

Then the crescendo of noise, demanding their attention.

One man preceded the other out of the house. That door, too, was left open to the wind.

A police car, a second police car, an ambulance, a fire engine—the full militia leading the way.

To what? The two words were like a heartbeat: to what, to what.

Down a dirt road in a country far from France.

Down a narrow road across from a rented house.

The meal left behind, one or the other having remembered to extinguish the candles.

That Last Odd Day in L.A.

Keller went back and forth about going into Cambridge to see Lynn, his daughter, for Thanksgiving. If he went in November, he’d miss his niece and nephew, who made the trip back East only in December, for Christmas. They probably could have got away from their jobs and returned for both holidays, but they never did. The family had gathered for Thanksgiving at his daughter’s ever since she moved into her own apartment, which was going on six years now; Christmas dinner was at Keller’s sister’s house, in Arlington. His daughter’s apartment was near Porter Square. She had once lived there with Ray Ceruto, before she decided she was too good for a car mechanic. A nice man, a hard worker, a gentleman—so naturally she chose instead to live in serial monogamy with men Keller found it almost impossible to get along with. Oh, but they had white-collar jobs and white-collar aspirations: with her current boyfriend, she had recently flown to England for all of three days in order to see the white cliffs of Dover. If there had been bluebirds, they had gone unmentioned.

Years ago, Keller’s wife, Sue Anne, had moved back to Roanoke, Virginia, where she now rented a “mother-in-law apartment” from a woman she had gone to school with back in the days when she and Keller were courting. Sue Anne joked that she herself had become a sort of ideal mother-in-law, gardening and taking care of the pets when her friends went away. She was happy to have returned to gardening. During the almost twenty years that she and Keller had been together, their little house in the Boston suburbs, shaded by trees, had allowed for the growth of almost nothing but springtime bulbs, and even those had to be planted in raised beds because the soil was of such poor quality. Eventually, the squirrels discovered the beds. Sue Anne’s breakdown had had to do with the squirrels.

So: call his daughter, or do the more important thing and call his neighbor and travel agent, Sigrid, at Pleasure Travel, to apologize for their recent, rather uneventful dinner at the local Chinese restaurant, which had been interrupted by a thunderstorm grand enough to announce the presence of Charlton Heston, which had reminded Keller that he’d left his windows open. He probably should not have refused to have the food packed to go. But when he’d thought of having her to his house to eat the dinner—his house was a complete mess—or of going to her house and having to deal with her son’s sour disdain, it had seemed easier just to bolt down his food.

A few days after the ill-fated dinner, he had bought six raffle tickets and sent them to her, in the hope that a winning number would provide a bicycle for her son, though he obviously hadn’t given her a winning ticket, or she would have called. Her son’s expensive bicycle had been taken at knifepoint, in a neighborhood he had promised his mother he would not ride through.

Two or three weeks before, Sigrid and Keller had driven into Boston to see a show at the MFA and afterward had gone to a coffee shop where he had clumsily, stupidly, splashed a cup of tea onto her when he was jostled by a mother with a stroller the size of an infantry vehicle. He had brought dish towels to the door of the ladies’ room for Sigrid to dry herself off with, and he had even—rather gallantly, some might have said—thought to bite the end off his daily vitamin-E capsule from the little packet of multivitamins he carried in his shirt pocket and urged her to scrape the goop from the tip of his finger and spread it on the burn. She maintained that she had not been burned. Later, on the way to the car, they had got into a tiff when he said that it wasn’t necessary for her to pretend that everything was fine, that he liked women who spoke honestly. “It could not have been all right that I scalded you, Sigrid,” he’d told her.

“Well, I just don’t see the need to criticize you over an accident, Keller,” she had replied. Everyone called him by his last name. He had been born Joseph Francis, but neither Joe nor Joseph nor Frank nor Francis fit.

“It was clumsy of me, and I wasn’t quick enough to help,” he said.

“You were fine,” she said. “It would have brought you more pleasure if I’d cried, or if I’d become irrational, wouldn’t it? There’s some part of you that’s always on guard, because the other person is sure to become irrational.”

“You know a little something about my wife’s personality,” he said.

Sigrid had lived next door before, during, and after Sue Anne’s departure. “So everyone’s your wife?” she said. “Is that what you think?”

“No,” he said. “I’m apologizing. I didn’t do enough for my wife, either. Apparently I didn’t act soon enough or effectively enough or—”

“You’re always looking for forgiveness!” she said. “I don’t forgive you or not forgive you. How about that? I don’t know enough about the situation, but I doubt that you’re entirely to blame for the way things turned out.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Some people say I’m too closemouthed and I don’t give anyone a chance to know me, and others—such as you or my daughter—maintain that I’m self-critical as a ploy to keep their attention focused on me.”

“I didn’t say any such thing! Don’t put words in my mouth. I said that my getting tea dumped on my back by accident and the no doubt very complicated relationship you had with your wife really don’t—”

“It was certainly too complicated for me,” Keller said quietly.

“Stop whispering. If we’re going to have a discussion, at least let me hear what you’re saying.”

“I wasn’t whispering,” Keller said. “That was just the wheezing of an old man out of steam.”

“Now it’s your age! I should pity you for your advanced age! What age are you, exactly, since you refer to it so often?”

“You’re too young to count that high.” He smiled. “You’re a young, attractive, successful woman. People are happy to see you walk into the room. When they look up and see me, they see an old man, and they avert their eyes. When I walk into the travel agency, they all but duck into the kneeholes of their desks. That’s how we got acquainted, as you recall, since calling on one’s neighbors is not the American Way. Only your radiant face met mine with a smile. Everybody else was pretending I wasn’t there.”

“Listen: Are you sure this is where we parked the car?”

“I’m not sure of anything. That’s why I had you drive.”

“I drove because your optometrist put drops in to dilate your pupils shortly before we left,” she said.

“But I’m fine now. At least, my usual imperfect vision has returned. I can drive back,” he said, pointing to her silver Avalon. “Too noble a vehicle for me, to be sure, but driving would be the least I could do, after ruining your day.”

“Why are you saying that?” she said. “Because you’re pleased to think that some little problem has the ability to ruin my day? You are being impossible, Keller. And don’t whisper that that’s exactly what your wife would say. Except that she’s a fellow human being occupying planet Earth, I don’t care about your wife.”

She took her key ring out of her pocket and tossed the keys to him.

He was glad he caught them, because she sent them higher into the air than necessary. But he did catch them, and he did remember to step in front of her to hold open her door as he pushed the button to unlock the car. Coming around the back, he saw the PETA bumper sticker her husband had adorned the car with shortly before leaving her for a years-younger Buddhist vegan animal-rights activist.

At least he had worked his way into his craziness slowly, subscribing first to Smithsonian magazine and only later to newsletters with pictures of starved, manacled horses and pawless animals with startled eyes—material she was embarrassed to have delivered to the house. In the year before he left, he had worked at the animal-rescue league on weekends. When she told him he was becoming obsessed with the plight of animals at the expense of their marriage and their son, he’d rolled up one of his publications and slapped his palm with it over and over, protesting vehemently, like someone scolding a bad dog. As she recalled, he had somehow turned the conversation to the continued illegal importation of elephant tusks into Asia.

“You always want to get into a fight,” she said, when she finally spoke again, as Keller wound his way out of Boston. “It makes it difficult to be with you.”

“I know it’s difficult. I’m sorry.”

“Come over and we can watch some Perry Mason reruns,” she said. “It’s on every night at eleven.”

“I don’t stay up that late,” he said. “I’m an old man.”

Keller spoke to his daughter on the phone—the first time the phone had rung in days—and listened patiently while she set forth her conditions, living her life in the imperative. In advance of their speaking, she wanted him to know that she would hang up if he asked when she intended to break up with Addison (Addison!) Page. Also, as he well knew, she did not want to be questioned about her mother, even though, yes, they were in phone contact. She also did not want to hear any criticism of her glamorous life, based on her recently having spent three days in England with her spendthrift boyfriend, and also, yes, she had got her flu shot.

“This being November, would it be possible to ask who you’re going to vote for?”

“No,” she said. “Even if you were voting for the same candidate, you’d find some way to make fun of me.”

“What if I said, ‘Close your eyes and imagine either an elephant or a donkey’?”

“If I close my eyes, I see . . . I see a horse’s ass, and it’s you,” she said. “May I continue?”

He snorted. She had a quick wit, his daughter. She had got that from him, not from his wife, who neither made jokes nor understood them. In the distant past, his wife had found an entirely humorless psychiatrist who had summoned Keller and urged him to speak to Sue Anne directly, not in figurative language or through allusions or—God forbid—with humor. “What should I do if I’m just chomping at the bit to tell a racist joke?” he had asked. The idea was of course ludicrous; he had never made a racist joke in his life. But of course the psychiatrist missed his tone. “You anticipate the necessity of telling racist jokes to your wife?” he had said, pausing to scribble something on his pad. “Only if one came up in a dream or something,” Keller had deadpanned.

“I thought you were going to continue, Lynn,” he said. “Which I mean as an observation, not as a reproach,” he hurried to add.

“Keller,” she said (since her teenage years, she had called him Keller), “I need to know whether you’re coming to Thanksgiving.”

“Because you would get a turkey weighing six or seven ounces more?”

“In fact, I thought about cooking a ham this year, because Addison prefers ham. It’s just a simple request, Keller: that you let me know whether or not you plan to come. Thanksgiving is three weeks away.”

“I’ve come up against Amy Vanderbilt’s timetable for accepting a social invitation at Thanksgiving?” he said.

She sighed deeply. “I would like you to come, whether you believe that or not, but since the twins aren’t coming from L.A., and since Addison’s sister invited us to her house, I thought I might not cook this year, if you didn’t intend to come.”

“Oh, by all means don’t cook for me. I’ll mind my manners and call fifty-one weeks from today and we’ll set this up for next year,” he said. “A turkey potpie from the grocery store is good enough for me.”

“And the next night you could be your usual frugal self and eat the leftover packaging,” she said.

“Horses don’t eat cardboard. You’re thinking of mice,” he said.

“I stand corrected,” she said, echoing the sentence he often said to her. “But let me ask you another thing. Addison’s sister lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and she issued a personal invitation for you to join us at her house for dinner. Would you like to have Thanksgiving there?”

“How could she issue a personal invitation if she’s never met me?” he said.

“Stop it,” his daughter said. “Just answer.”

He thought about it. Not about whether he would go but about the holiday itself. The revisionist thinking on Thanksgiving was that it commemorated the subjugation of the Native Americans (formerly the Indians). Not as bad a holiday as Columbus Day, but still.

“I take it your silence means that you prefer to be far from the maddening crowd,” she said.

“That title is much misquoted,” he said. “Hardy’s novel is Far from the Madding Crowd, which has an entirely different connotation, madding meaning ‘frenzied.’ There’s quite a difference between frenzied and annoying. Consider, for instance, your mother’s personality versus mine.”

“You are incredibly annoying,” Lynn said. “If I didn’t know that you cared for me, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone and let myself in for your mockery, over and over.”

“I thought it was because you pitied me.”

He heard the click, and there was silence. He replaced the phone in its cradle, which made him think of another cradle—Lynn’s—with the decal of the cow jumping over the moon on the headboard and blue and pink beads (the cradle manufacturer having hedged his bets) on the rails. He could remember spinning the beads and watching Lynn sleep. The cradle was now in the downstairs hallway, used to store papers and magazines for recycling. Over the years, some of the decal had peeled away, so that on last inspection only a torso with two legs was successfully making the jump over the brightly smiling moon.

He bought a frozen turkey potpie and, as a treat to himself (it was not true that he constantly denied himself happiness, as Lynn said—one could not deny what was rarely to be found), a new radio whose FM quality was excellent—though what did he know, with his imperfect hearing? As he ate Thanksgiving dinner (two nights before Thanksgiving, but why stand on formality?—a choice of Dinty Moore beef stew or Lean Cuisine vegetable lasagna remained for the day of thanks itself), he listened with pleasure to Respighi’s Pini di Roma. He and Sue Anne had almost gone to Rome on their honeymoon, but instead they had gone to Paris. His wife had just finished her second semester of college, in which she had declared herself an art history major. They had gone to the Louvre and to the Jeu de Paume and on the last day of the trip he had bought her a little watercolor of Venice she kept admiring, in a rather elaborate frame that probably accounted for the gouache’s high price—it was a gouache, not a watercolor, as she always corrected him. They both wanted three children, preferably a son followed by either another son or a daughter, though if their second child was a son, then of course they would devoutly wish their last to be a daughter. He remembered with bemusement the way they had prattled on, strolling by the Seine, earnestly discussing those things that were most out of their control: Life’s Important Matters.

Sue Anne conceived only once, and although they (she, to be honest) had vaguely considered adoption, Lynn remained their only child. Lacking brothers and sisters, she had been fortunate to grow up among relatives, because Keller’s sister had given birth to twins a year or so after Lynn was born, and in those days the two families lived only half an hour apart and saw each other almost every weekend. Now Sue Anne and his sister Carolynne (now merely Carol), who lived in Arlington with her doctor husband (or who lived apart from him—he was forbidden to inquire about the status of their union), had not spoken for months, and the twins, Richard and Rita, who worked as stockbrokers and had never married—smart!—and shared a house in the Hollywood Hills, were more at ease with him than his own daughter was. For years Keller had promised to visit the twins, and the previous summer, Richard had called his bluff and sent him a ticket to Los Angeles. Richard and Rita had picked Keller up at LAX in a BMW convertible and taken him to a sushi restaurant where at periodic intervals laser images on the wall blinked on and off like sexually animated hieroglyphics dry-humping to a recording of “Walk Like an Egyptian.” The next morning, the twins had taken him to a museum that had been created as a satire of museums, with descriptions of the bizarre exhibits that were so tongue-in-cheek he was sure the majority of people there thought that they were touring an actual museum. That night, they turned on the lights in their pool and provided him with bathing trunks (how would he have thought to pack such a thing?—he never thought of a visit to sprawling Los Angeles as a visit to a beach), and on Sunday they had eaten their lunch of fresh pineapple and prosciutto poolside, drinking prosecco instead of mineral water (the only beverages in the house, except for extraordinarily good red wine, as far as he could tell), and in the late afternoon they had been joined by a beautiful blonde woman who had apparently been, or might still be, Jack Nicholson’s lover. Then he went with Rita and Richard to a screening (a shoot-’em-up none of them wanted to see, though the twins felt they must, because the cinematographer was their longtime client), and on Monday they had sent a car to the house so Keller wouldn’t get lost trying to find his way around the freeways. It transported him to a lunch with the twins at a restaurant built around a beautiful terraced garden, after which he’d been dropped off to take the MGM tour and then picked up by the same driver—a dropout from Hollywood High who was working on a screenplay.

It was good they had bought him a ticket for only a brief visit, because if he’d stayed longer he might never have gone home. Though who would have cared if he hadn’t? His wife didn’t care where he lived, as long as she lived in the opposite direction. His daughter might be relieved that he had moved away. He lived where he lived for no apparent reason—at least, no reason apparent to him. He had no friends, unless you called Don Kim a friend—Don, with whom he played handball on Mondays and Thursdays. And his accountant, Ralph Bazzorocco. He supposed Bazzorocco was his friend, though with the exception of a couple of golf games each spring and the annual buffet dinner he and Bazzorocco’s other clients were invited to every April 16—and except for Bazzorocco’s calling to wish him a happy birthday, and “Famiglia Bazzorocco” (as the gift card always read) sending him an enormous box of biscotti and Baci at Christmas . . . oh, he didn’t know. Probably that was what friendship was, he thought, a little ashamed of himself. He had gone to the hospital to visit Bazzorocco’s son after the boy injured his pelvis and lost his spleen playing football. He’d driven Bazzorocco’s weeping wife home in the rain so she could shower and change her clothes, then driven her, still weeping, back to the hospital. Okay: he had friends. But would any of them care if he lived in Los Angeles? Don Kim could easily find another partner (perhaps a younger man more worthy as a competitor); Bazzorocco could remain his accountant via the miracle of modern technology. In any case, Keller had returned to the North Shore.

Though not before that last odd day in L.A. He had said, though he hadn’t planned to say it (Lynn was not correct in believing that everything that escaped his lips was premeditated), that he’d like to spend his last day lounging around the house. So they wouldn’t feel too sorry for him, he even asked if he could open a bottle of Merlot—whatever they recommended, of course—and raid their refrigerator for lunch. After all, the refrigerator contained a tub of mascarpone instead of cottage cheese, and the fruit drawer was stocked with organic plums rather than puckered supermarket grapes. Richard wasn’t so keen on the idea, but Rita said that of course that was fine. It was Keller’s vacation, she stressed. They’d make a reservation at a restaurant out at the beach that night, and if he felt rested enough to eat out, fine; if not, they’d cancel the reservation and Richard would cook his famous chicken breasts marinated in Vidalia-onion sauce.

When Keller woke up, the house was empty. He made coffee (at home, he drank instant) and wandered out through the open doors to the patio as it brewed. He surveyed the hillside, admired the lantana growing from Mexican pottery urns flanking one side of the pool. Some magazine had been rained on—it must have rained during the night; he hadn’t heard it, but then, he’d fallen asleep with earphones on, listening to Brahms. He walked toward the magazine—as offensive as litter along the highway, this copy of Vogue deteriorating on the green tiles—then drew back, startled. There was a small possum: a baby possum, all snout and pale narrow body, clawing the water, trying futilely to scramble up the edge of the pool. He looked around quickly for the pool net. The night before, it had been leaning against the sliding glass door, but it was no longer there. He went quickly to the side of the house, then ran to the opposite side, all the while acutely aware that the drowning possum was in desperate need of rescue. No pool net. He went into the kitchen, which was now suffused with the odor of coffee, and threw open door after door looking for a pot. He finally found a bucket containing cleaning supplies, quickly removed them, then ran back to the pool, where he dipped the bucket in, missing, frightening the poor creature and adding to its problems by making it go under. He recoiled in fear, then realized that the emotion he felt was not fear but self-loathing. Introspection was not his favorite mode, but no matter: he dipped again, leaning farther over this time, accepting the ludicrous prospect of his falling in, though the second time he managed to scoop up the possum—it was only a tiny thing—and lift it out of the water. The bucket was full, because he had dipped deep, and much to his dismay, when he saw the possum curled up at the bottom, he knew immediately that it was already dead. The possum had drowned. He set the bucket down and crouched on the tile beside it before he had a second, most welcome epiphany and realized almost with a laugh that it wasn’t dead: it was playing possum. Though if he didn’t get it out of the bucket, it really would drown. He jumped up, turned the bucket on its side, and stood back as water and possum flowed out. The water dispersed. The possum lay still. That must be because he was watching it, he decided, although he once more considered the grim possibility that it was dead.

He stood still. Then he thought to walk back into the house, far away from it. It was dead; it wasn’t. Time passed. Then, finally, as he stood unmoving, the possum twitched and waddled off—the flicker of life in its body resonated in Keller’s own heart—and then the event was over. He continued to stand there, cognizant of how much he had loathed himself just moments before. Then he went out to retrieve the bucket. As he grasped the handle, tears welled up in his eyes. What the hell! He cried at the sink as he rinsed the bucket.

He dried his eyes on the crook of his arm and washed the bucket thoroughly, much longer than necessary, then dried it with a towel. He put the Comet, the Windex, and the rag and the brush back inside and returned the bucket to its place under the sink and tried to remember what he had planned to do that day, and again he was overwhelmed. The image that popped into his mind was of Jack Nicholson’s girlfriend, the blonde in the bikini with the denim shirt thrown over it. He thought . . . what? That he was going to get together with Jack Nicholson’s girlfriend? Whose last name he didn’t even know?

But that had been what he was thinking. No way to act on it, but yes—that was what he had been thinking, all along.

The water had run off, though the tiles still glistened. No sign, of course, of the possum. It was doubtless off assimilating its important life lesson. On a little redwood table was a waterproof radio that he turned on, finding the classical station, adjusting the volume. Then he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his fly, stepped out of his pants and underpants, and took off his shirt. Carrying the radio, he walked to the deep end of the pool, placed the radio on the rim, and dove in. He swam underwater for a while, and then, as his head broke the surface, he had the distinct feeling that he was being watched. He looked back at the house, then looked slowly around the pool area. The fence that walled it off from the neighbors was at least ten feet high. Behind the pool, the terrace was filled with bushes and fruit trees and pink and white irises—Keller was crazy: he was alone in a private compound; no one was there. He went under the water again, refreshed by its silky coolness, and breaststroked to the far end, where he came up for air, then used his feet to push off the side of the pool so he could float on his back. When he reached the end, he pulled himself out, then saw, in the corner of his eye, who was watching him. High up on the terrace, a deer was looking down. The second their eyes met, the deer was gone, but in that second it had come clear to him—on this day of endless revelations—that the deer had been casting a beneficent look, as if in thanks. He had felt that: that a deer was acknowledging and thanking him. He was flabbergasted at the odd workings of his brain. How could a grown man—a grown man without any religious beliefs, a father who, in what now seemed like a different lifetime, had accompanied his little daughter to Bambi and whispered, as every parent does, “It’s only a movie,” when Bambi’s mother was killed . . . how could a man with such knowledge of the world, whose most meaningful accomplishment in as long as he could remember had been to fish an animal out of a swimming pool—how could such a man feel unequivocally that a deer had appeared to bless him?

But he knew it had.

As it turned out, the blessing hadn’t exactly changed his life, though why should one expect so much of blessings, just because they were blessings?

Something that had profoundly changed his life had been Richard’s urging him, several years before, to take a chance, take a gamble, trust him, because the word he was about to speak was going to change his life. “Plastics?” he’d said, but Richard was too young: he hadn’t seen the movie. No, the word had been Microsoft. Keller had been in a strange frame of mind that day (one month earlier, to the day, his father had killed himself). At that point, he had hated his job so much, had stopped telling half-truths and finally admitted to Sue Anne that their marriage had become a dead end, that he assumed he was indulging the self-destructiveness his wife and daughter always maintained was the core of his being when he turned over almost everything he had to his nephew to invest in a company whose very name suggested smallness and insubstantiality. But, as it turned out, Richard had blessed him, as had the deer, now. The blonde had not, but then, very few men, very few indeed, would ever be lucky enough to have such a woman give them her benediction.

“You’re fun!” Rita laughed, dropping him off at LAX. On the way, he had taken off his white T-shirt and raised it in the air, saying, “I hereby surrender to the madness that is the City of Angels.” It had long been Rita’s opinion that no one in the family understood her uncle; that all of them were so defensive that they were intimidated by his erudition and willfully misunderstood his sense of humor. Richard was working late, but he had sent, by way of his sister (she ran back to the car, having almost forgotten the treat in the glove compartment), a tin of white-chocolate brownies to eat on the plane, along with a note Keller would later read that thanked him for having set an example when he and Rita were kids, for not unthinkingly going with the flow, and for his wry pronouncements in a family where, Richard said, everyone else was “afraid of his own shadow.” “Come back soon,” Richard had written. “We miss you.”

Back home, on the telephone, his daughter had greeted him with a warning: “I don’t want to hear about my cousins who are happy and successful, which are synonymous, in your mind, with being rich. Spare me details of their life and just tell me what you did. I’d like to hear about your trip without feeling diminished by my insignificance in the face of my cousins’ perfection.”

“I can leave them out of it entirely,” he said. “I can say, quite honestly, that the most significant moment of my trip happened not in their company but in the meeting of my eyes with the eyes of a deer that looked at me with indescribable kindness and understanding.”

Lynn snorted. “This was on the freeway, I suppose? It was on its way to be an extra in a remake of The Deer Hunter?”

He had understood, then, the urge she so often felt when speaking to him—the urge to hang up on a person who had not even tried to understand one word you had said.

“How was your Thanksgiving?” Sigrid asked. Keller was sitting across from her at the travel agency, arranging to buy Don Kim’s stepdaughter a ticket to Germany so she could pay a final visit to her dying friend. The girl was dying of ALS. The details were too terrible to think about. Jennifer had known her for eleven of her seventeen years, and now the girl was dying. Don Kim barely made it from paycheck to paycheck. It had been necessary to tell Don that he had what he called “a considerable windfall from the eighties stock market” in order to persuade him that in offering to buy Jennifer a ticket, he was not making a gesture he could not afford. He had had to work hard to persuade him. He had to insist on it several times, and swear that in no way had he thought Don had been hinting (which was true). The only worry was how Jennifer would handle such a trip, but they had both agreed she was a very mature girl.

“Very nice,” Keller replied. In fact, that day he had eaten canned stew and listened to Albinoni (probably some depressed DJ who hadn’t wanted to work Thanksgiving night). He had made a fire in the fireplace and caught up on his reading of The Economist. He felt a great distance between himself and Sigrid. He said, trying not to sound too perfunctorily polite, “And yours?”

“I was actually . . .” She dropped her eyes. “You know, my ex-husband has Brad for a week at Thanksgiving and I have him for Christmas. He’s such a big boy now, I don’t know why he doesn’t put his foot down, but he doesn’t. If I knew then what I know now, I’d never have let him go, no matter what rights the court gave that lunatic. You know what he did before Thanksgiving? I guess you must not have read the paper. They recruited Brad to liberate turkeys. They got arrested. His father thinks that’s fine: traumatizing Brad, letting him get hauled into custody. And the worst of it is, Brad’s scared to death, but he doesn’t dare not go along, and then he has to pretend to me that he thinks it was a great idea, that I’m an indifferent—” She searched for the word. “That I’m subhuman because I eat dead animals.”

Keller had no idea what to say. Lately, things didn’t seem funny enough to play off of. Everything just seemed weird and sad. Sigrid’s ex-husband had taken their son to liberate turkeys. How could you extemporize about that?

“She could go Boston, London, Frankfurt on British Air,” Sigrid said, as if she hadn’t expected him to reply. “It would be somewhere around seven hundred and fifty.” She hit the keyboard again. “Seven eighty-nine plus taxes,” she said. “She’d be flying out at six p.m. Eastern Standard, she’d get there in the morning.” Her fingers stopped moving on the keyboard. She looked at him.

“Can I use your phone to make sure that’s a schedule that’s good for her?” he said. He knew that Sigrid wondered who Jennifer Kim was. He had spoken of her as “my friend, Jennifer Kim.”

“Of course,” she said. She pushed a button and handed him the phone. He had written the Kims’ telephone number on a little piece of paper and slipped it in his shirt pocket. He was aware that she was staring at him as he dialed. The phone rang three times, and then he got the answering machine. “Keller here,” he said. “We’ve got the itinerary, but I want to check it with Jennifer. I’m going to put my travel agent on,” he said. “She’ll give you the times, and maybe you can call her to confirm it. Okay?” He handed the phone to Sigrid. She took it, all business. “Sigrid Crane of Pleasure Travel, Ms. Kim,” she said. “I have a British Airways flight that departs Logan at six zero zero p.m., arrival into Frankfurt by way of London nine five five a.m. My direct line is—”

He looked at the poster of Bali framed on the wall. A view of water. Two people entwined in a hammock. Pink flowers in the foreground.

“Well,” she said, hanging up. “I’ll expect to hear from her. I assume I should let you know if anything changes?”

He cocked his head. “What doesn’t?” he said. “You’d be busy every second of the day if you did that.”

She looked at him, expressionless. “The ticket price,” she said. “Or shall I issue it regardless?”

“Regardless.” (Now, there was a word he didn’t use often!) “Thanks.” He stood.

“Say hello to my colleagues hiding under their desks on your way out,” she said.

In the doorway, he stopped. “What did they do with the turkeys?” he said.

“They took them by truck to a farm in Vermont where they thought they wouldn’t be killed,” she said. “You can read about it in yesterday’s paper. Everybody’s out on bail. Since it’s a first offense, my son might be able to avoid having a record. I’ve hired a lawyer.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded. Unless she had two such garments, she was wearing the same gray sweater he had spilled tea on. It occurred to him that, outside his family, she was the only woman he spoke to. The woman at the post office, women he encountered when running errands, the UPS deliveryperson, who he personally thought might be a hermaphrodite, but in terms of real female acquaintances, Sigrid was the only one. He should have said more to her about the situation with her ex-husband and son, though he could not imagine what he would have said. He also could not get a mental picture, humorous or otherwise, of liberated turkeys, walking around some frozen field in—where had she said? Vermont.

She took an incoming call. He glanced back at the poster, at Sigrid sitting there in her gray sweater, noticing for the first time that she wore a necklace dangling a silver cross. Her high cheekbones, accentuated by her head tipped forward, were her best feature; her worst feature was her eyes, a bit too close together, so that she always seemed slightly perplexed. He raised his hand to indicate goodbye, in case she might be looking, then realized from what he heard Sigrid saying that the person on the other end must be Don Kim’s stepdaughter; Sigrid was reciting the Boston-to-Frankfurt schedule, tapping her pen as she spoke. He hesitated, then went back and sat down, though Sigrid had not invited him back. He sat there while Jennifer Kim told Sigrid the whole sad story—what else could the girl have been saying to her for so long? Sigrid’s eyes were almost crossed when she finally glanced up at him, then put her fingers on the keyboard and began to enter information. “I might stop by tonight,” he said quietly, rising. She nodded, talking into the telephone headset while typing quickly.

Exiting, he thought of a song Groucho Marx had sung in some movie which had the lyrics “Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, and still you had the feeling that you wanted to stay?” He had a sudden mental image of Groucho with his cigar clamped in his teeth (or perhaps it had been Jimmy Durante who sang the song?), and then Groucho’s face evaporated and only the cigar remained, like a moment in Alice in Wonderland. And then—although Keller had quit smoking years before, when his father died—he stopped at a convenience store and bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked one, driving home, listening to some odd space-age music. He drove through Dunkin’ Donuts and got two plain doughnuts to have with coffee as he watched the evening news, remembering the many times Sue Anne had criticized him for eating food without a plate, as if dropped crumbs were proof that your life was about to go out of control.

In his driveway, he saw that his trash can had been knocked over, the plastic bag inside split open, the lid halfway across the yard. He looked out the car window at the rind of a melon, then at the bloody Kleenex he’d held to his chin when he’d nicked himself shaving—he had taken to shaving before turning in, to save time in the morning, now that his beard no longer grew so heavily—as well as issues of The Economist that a better citizen would have bundled together for recycling. He turned off the ignition and stepped out of the car, into the wind, to deal with the mess.

As he gathered it up, he felt as if someone were watching him. He looked up at the house. Soon after Sue Anne left, he had taken down not only the curtains but the blinds as well, liking clear, empty windows that people could go ahead and stare into, if such ordinary life was what they found fascinating. A car passed by—a blue van new to this road, though in the past few weeks he’d seen it often—as he was picking up a mealy apple. Maybe a private detective stalking him, he thought. Someone his wife had hired, to see whether another woman was living in the house. He snatched up the last of the garbage and stuffed it in the can, intending to come out later to rebag it. He wanted to get out of the wind. He planned to eat one of the doughnuts before the six o’clock news.

Sigrid’s son was sitting with his back against the storm door, his knees drawn in tight to his chest, smoking a cigarette. Keller was startled to see him, but did his best to appear unfazed, stopping on the walkway to extract a cigarette of his own from the pack in his pocket. “Can I trouble you for a light?” he said to the boy.

It seemed to work. Brad looked taken aback that Keller wasn’t more taken aback. So much so that he held out the lighter with a trembling hand. Keller towered above him. The boy was thin and short (time would take care of one, if not the other); Keller was just over six feet, with broad shoulders and fifteen or twenty pounds more than he should have been carrying, which happened to him every winter. He said to the boy, “Is this a social call, or did I miss a business appointment?”

The boy hesitated. He missed the humor. He mumbled, “Social.”

Keller hid his smile. “Allow me,” he said, stepping forward. The boy scrambled up and stepped aside so Keller could open the door. Keller sensed a second’s hesitation, though Brad followed him in.

It was cold inside. Keller turned the heat down to fifty-five when he left the house. The boy wrapped his arms around his shoulders. The stub of the cigarette was clasped between his second and third fingers. There was a leather bracelet on his wrist, as well as the spike of some tattoo.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Keller said.

“Do you . . .” The boy was preoccupied, looking around the room.

“Have an ashtray? I use cups for that,” Keller said, handing him the mug from which he’d drunk his morning coffee. He had run out of milk, so he’d had it black. And damn—he had yet again forgotten to get milk. The boy stubbed out his cigarette in the mug without taking it in his hands. Keller set it back on the table, tapping off the ash from his own cigarette. He gestured to a chair, which the boy walked to and sat down.

“Do you, like, work or anything?” the boy blurted out.

“I’m the idle rich,” Keller said. “In fact, I just paid a visit to your mother, to get a ticket to Germany. For a friend, not for me,” he added. “That being the only thing on my agenda today, besides reading The Wall Street Journal”—he had not heard about the boy’s arrest because he never read the local paper, but he’d hesitated to say that to Sigrid—“and once again forgetting to bring home milk.”

Keller sat on the sofa.

“Would you not tell my mother I came here?” the boy said.

“Okay,” Keller said. He waited.

“Were you ever friends with my dad?” the boy asked.

“No, though once we both donated blood on the same day, some years ago, and sat in adjacent chairs.” It was true. For some reason, he had never told Sigrid about it. Not that there was very much to say.

The boy looked puzzled, as if he didn’t understand the words Keller had spoken.

“My dad said you worked together,” the boy said.

“Why would I lie?” Keller said, leaving open the question: Why would your father?

Again, the boy looked puzzled. Keller said, “I taught at the college.”

“I was at my dad’s over Thanksgiving, and he said you worked the same territory.”

In spite of himself, Keller smiled. “That’s an expression,” Keller said. “Like ‘I cover the waterfront.’ ”

“Cover what?” the boy said.

“If he said we ‘worked the same territory,’ he must have meant that we were up to the same thing. A notion I don’t understand, though I do suppose it’s what he meant.”

The boy looked at his feet. “Why did you buy me the raffle tickets?” he said.

What was Keller supposed to tell him? That he’d done it as an oblique form of apology to his mother for something that hadn’t happened, and that he therefore didn’t really need to apologize for? The world had changed: here sat someone who’d never heard the expression “worked the same territory.” But what, exactly, had been Brad’s father’s context? He supposed he could ask, though he knew in advance Brad would have no idea what he meant by context.

“I understand Thanksgiving was a pretty bad time for you,” Keller said. He added, unnecessarily (though he had no tolerance for people who added things unnecessarily), “Your mother told me.”

“Yeah,” the boy said.

They sat in silence.

“Why is it you came to see me?” Keller asked.

“Because I thought you were a friend,” the boy surprised him by answering.

Keller’s eyes betrayed him. He felt his eyebrows rise slightly.

“Because you gave me six raffle tickets,” the boy said.

Clearly, the boy had no concept of one’s being emphatic by varying the expected numbers: one rose instead of a dozen; six chances instead of just one.

Keller got up and retrieved the bag of doughnuts from the hall table. The grease had seeped through and left a glistening smudge on the wood, which he wiped with the ball of his hand. He carried the bag to Brad and lowered it so he could see in. Close up, the boy smelled slightly sour. His hair was dirty. He was sitting with his shoulders hunched. Keller moved the bag forward an inch. The boy shook his head no. Keller folded the top, set the bag on the rug. He walked back to where he’d been sitting.

“If you’d buy me a bike, I’d work next summer and pay you back,” Brad blurted out. “I need another bike to get to some places I got to go.”

Keller decided against unscrambling the syntax and regarded him. The tattoo seemed to depict a spike with something bulbous at the tip. A small skull, he decided, for no good reason except that these days skulls seemed to be a popular image. There was a pimple on Brad’s chin. Miraculously, even to a person who did not believe in miracles, Keller had gone through his own adolescence without ever having a pimple. His daughter had not had similar good luck. She had once refused to go to school because of her bad complexion, and he had made her cry when he’d tried to tease her out of being self-conscious. “Come on,” he’d said to her. “You’re not Dr. Johnson, with scrofula.” His wife, as well as his daughter, had then burst into tears. The following day, Sue Anne had made an appointment for Lynn with a dermatologist.

“Would this be kept secret from your mother?”

“Yeah,” the boy said. He wasn’t emphatic, though; he narrowed his eyes to see if Keller would agree.

He asked, “Where will you tell her you got the bike?”

“I’ll say from my dad.”

Keller nodded. “That’s not something she might ask him about?” he said.

The boy put his thumb to his mouth and bit the cuticle. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You wouldn’t want to tell her it was in exchange for doing yard work for me next summer?”

“Yeah,” the boy said, sitting up straighter. “Yeah, sure, I can do that. I will.”

It occurred to Keller that Molly Bloom couldn’t have pronounced the word will more emphatically. “We might even say that I ran into you and suggested it,” Keller said.

“Say you ran into me at Scotty’s,” the boy said. It was an ice cream store. If that was what the boy wanted him to say, he would. He looked at the bag of doughnuts, expecting that in his newfound happiness the boy would soon reach in. He smiled. He waited for Brad to move toward the bag.

“I threw your trash can over,” Brad said.

Keller’s smile faded. “What?” he said.

“I was mad when I came here. I thought you were some nutcase friend of my dad’s. I know you’ve been dating my mom.”

Keller cocked his head. “So you knocked over my trash can, in preparation for asking me to give you money for a bike?”

“My dad said you were a sleazebag who was dating Mom. You and Mom went to Boston.”

Keller had been called many things. Many, many things. But sleazebag had not been among them. It was unexpected, but it stopped just short of amusing him. “And if I had been dating Sigrid?” he said. “That would mean you should come over and dump out my trash?”

“I never thought you’d lend me money,” Brad mumbled. His thumb was at his mouth again. “I didn’t . . . why would I think you’d give me that kind of money, just because you bought twelve bucks’ worth of raffle tickets?”

“I’m not following the logic here,” Keller said. “If I’m the enemy, why, exactly, did you come to see me?”

“Because I didn’t know. I don’t know what my father’s getting at half the time. My dad’s a major nutcase, in case you don’t know that. Somebody ought to round him up in one of his burlap bags and let him loose far away from here so he can go live with his precious turkeys.”

“I can understand your frustration,” Keller said. “I’m afraid that with all the world’s problems, setting turkeys free doesn’t seem an important priority to me.”

“Why? Because you had a dad that was a nutcase?”

“I’m not understanding,” Keller said.

“You said you understood the way I feel. Is it because you had a dad that was nuts, too?”

Keller thought about it. In retrospect, it was clear that his father’s withdrawal, the year preceding his death, had been because of depression, not old age. He said, “He was quite a nice man. Hardworking. Religious. Very generous, even though he didn’t have much money. He and my mother had a happy marriage.” To his surprise, that sounded right: for years, in revising his father’s history, he had assumed that everything had been a façade, but now that he, himself, was older, he tended to think that people’s unhappiness was rarely caused by anyone else, or alleviated by anyone else.

“I came here and threw over your trash and ripped up a bush you just planted,” Brad said.

The boy was full of surprises.

“I’ll replant it,” Brad said. He seemed, suddenly, to be on the verge of tears. “The bush by the side of the house,” he said tremulously. “There was new dirt around it.”

Indeed. Just the bush Keller thought. On a recent morning, after a rain, he had dug up the azalea and replanted it where it would get more sun. It was the first thing he could remember moving in years. He did almost nothing in the yard—had not worked in it, really, since Sue Anne left.

“Yes, I think you’ll need to do that,” he said.

“What if I don’t?” the boy said shrilly. His voice had changed entirely.

Keller frowned, taken aback at the sudden turnaround.

“What if I do like I came to do?” the boy said.

Suddenly there was a gun pointed at Keller. A pistol. Pointed right at him, in his living room. And, as suddenly, he was flying through the air before his mind even named the object. It went off as he tackled the boy, wresting the gun from his hand. “You’re both fucking nutcases, and you were, too, dating that bitch!” Brad screamed. In that way, because of so much screaming, Keller knew that he had not killed the boy.

The bullet had passed through Keller’s forearm. A “clean wound,” as the doctor in the emergency room would later say, his expression betraying no awareness of the irony inherent in such a description. With an amazing surge of strength, Keller had pinned the boy to the rug with his good arm as the other bled onto the doughnut bag, and then the struggle was over and Keller did not know what to do. It had seemed they might stay that way forever, with him pinning the boy down, one or the other of them—both of them?—screaming. He somehow used his wounded arm as well as his good arm to pull Brad up and clench him to his side as he dragged the suddenly deadweight, sobbing boy to the telephone and dialed 911. Later, he would learn that he had broken two of the boy’s ribs, and that the bullet had missed hitting the bone in his own forearm by fractions of an inch, though the wound required half a dozen surprisingly painful sutures to close.

Keller awaited Sigrid’s arrival in the emergency room with dread. His world had already been stood on its head long ago, and he’d developed some fancy acrobatics to stay upright, but Sigrid was just a beginner. He remembered that he had thought about going to her house that very night. It might have been the night he stayed. Everything might have been very different, but it was not. And this thought: If his wife held him accountable for misjudging the importance of their daughter’s blemishes, might Sigrid think that, somehow, the violent way things had turned out had been his fault? Among the many things he had been called had been provocative. It was his daughter’s favorite word for him. She no longer even tried to find original words to express his shortcomings: he was provocative. Even she would not buy the sleazebag epithet. No: he was provocative.

In the brightly lit room, they insisted he remain on a gurney. Fluid from a bag was dripping into his arm. Sigrid—there was Sigrid!—wept and wept. Her lawyer accompanied her: a young man with bright blue eyes and a brow too wrinkled for his years, who seemed too rattled to be in charge of anything. Did he hover the way he did because he was kind, or was there a little something more between him and Sigrid? Keller’s not having got involved with Sigrid hadn’t spared her any pain, he saw. Once again, he had been instrumental in a woman’s abject misery.

Trauma was a strange thing, because you could be unaware of its presence, like diseased cells lurking in your body (a natural enough thought in a hospital) or like bulbs that would break the soil’s surface only when stirred in their depths by the penetrating warmth of the sun.

Keller remembered the sun—no, the moon—of Lynn’s cradle. The cradle meant to hold three babies that held only one. He had suggested that Sue Anne, depressed after the birth, return to school, get her degree in art history, teach. He had had a notion of her having colleagues. Friends. Because he was not a very good friend to have. Oh, sometimes, sure. It had been a nice gesture to buy a plane ticket for someone who needed to visit a dying friend. How ironic it was, his arranging for that ticket the same day he, himself, might have died.

Sigrid was wearing the gray sweater, the necklace with the cross. Her son had blown apart her world. And Keller was not going to be any help: he would not even consider trying to help her put it together again. All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men . . . even Robert Penn Warren couldn’t put Sigrid together again.

Keller had tried that before: good intentions; good suggestions; and his wife had screamed that whatever she did, it was never enough, never enough, well, maybe it would be enough if she showed him what strength she possessed—what strength he hadn’t depleted with his sarcasm and his comic asides and his endless equivocating—by throwing the lamp on the floor, his typewriter against the wall (the dent was still there), the TV out the window. These thoughts were explained to him later, because he had not been home when she exhibited her significant strength. The squirrels had eaten every bulb. There was not going to be one tulip that would bloom that spring. He suspected otherwise—of course the squirrels had not dug up every bulb—but she was in no state of mind to argue with. Besides, there were rules, and his role in the marriage was not to be moderate, it was to be provocative. His daughter had said so.

And there she was, his daughter, rushing to his side, accompanied by a nurse: the same person who had once been shown to him swaddled in a pink blanket, now grown almost as tall as he, her face wrinkled then, her face wrinkled now.

“Don’t squint,” he said. “Put your glasses on. You’ll still be pretty.”

He stood quickly to show her he was fine, which made the nurse and a doctor who rushed to his side very angry. He said, “I don’t have health insurance. I demand to be discharged. The gun got discharged, so it’s only fair that I be discharged also.”

The nurse said something he couldn’t hear. The effort of standing had left him light-headed. Across the room, Sigrid appeared in duplicate and went out of focus. Lynn was negating what he’d just said, informing everyone in a strident voice that of course he had health insurance. The doctor had quite firmly moved him back to his gurney, and now many hands were buckling straps over his chest and legs.

“Mr. Keller,” the nurse said, “you lost quite a bit of blood before you got here, and we need you to lie down.”

“As opposed to up?” he said.

The doctor, who was walking away, turned. “Keller,” he said, “this isn’t ER, where we’d do anything for you, and the nurse isn’t your straight man.”

“Clearly not,” he said quickly. “She’s a woman, we assume.”

The doctor’s expression did not change. “I knew a wiseass like you in med school,” he said. “He couldn’t do the work, so he developed a comedy routine and made a big joke of flunking out. In the end, I became a doctor and he’s still talking to himself.” He walked away.

Keller was ready with a quick retort, heard it inside his head, but his lips couldn’t form the words. What his nearest and dearest had always wished for was now coming true: his terrible talent with words was for the moment suspended. Truly, he was too tired to speak.

The phrase nearest and dearest carried him back in time and reminded him of the deer. The deer that had disappeared in the Hollywood Hills. His own guardian angel, appropriately enough a little mangy, with hooves rooting it to the ground, instead of gossamer wings to carry it aloft. And his eyes closed.

When he opened them, Keller saw that his daughter was looking down at him, and nodding slowly, a tentative smile quivering like a parenthesis at the sides of her mouth, a parenthesis he thought might contain the information that, yes, once he had been able to reassure her easily, as she, in believing, had reassured him.

In appreciation, he attempted his best Jack Nicholson smile.

Find and Replace

True story: my father died in a hospice on Christmas Day, while a clown dressed in big black boots and a beard was down the hall doing his clown-as-Santa act for the amusement of a man my father had befriended, who was dying of ALS. I wasn’t there; I was in Paris to report on how traveling art was being uncrated—a job I got through my cousin Jasper, who works for a New York City ad agency more enchanted with consultants than Julia Child is with chickens. For years, Jasper’s sending work my way has allowed me to keep going while I write the Great American I Won’t Say Its Name.

I’m superstitious. For example, I thought that even though my father was doing well, the minute I left the country he would die. Which he did.

On a globally warmed July day, I flew into Fort Myers and picked up a rental car and set off for my mother’s to observe (her terminology) the occasion of my father’s death, six months after the event. It was actually seven months later, but because I was in Toronto checking out sites for an HBO movie, and there was no way I could make it on June 25, my mother thought the most respectful thing to do would be to wait until the same day, one month later. I don’t ask my mother a lot of questions; when I can, I simply try to keep the peace by doing what she asks. As mothers go, she’s not demanding. Most requests are simple and have to do with her notions of propriety, which often center on the writing of notes. I have friends who are so worried about their parents that they see them every weekend, I have friends who phone home every day, friends who cut their parents’ lawn because no one can be found to do it. With my mother, it’s more a question of: Will I please send Mrs. Fawnes a condolence card because of her dog’s death, or, Will I be so kind as to call a florist near me in New York and ask for an arrangement to be delivered on the birthday of a friend of my mother’s, because ordering flowers when a person isn’t familiar with the florist can be a disastrous experience. I don’t buy flowers, even from Korean markets, but I asked around, and apparently the bouquet that arrived at the friend’s door was a great success.

My mother has a million friends. She keeps the greeting-card industry in business. She would probably send greetings on Groundhog Day, if the cards existed. Also, no one ever seems to disappear from her life (with the notable exception of my father). She still exchanges notes with a maid who cleaned her room at the Swift House Inn fifteen years ago—and my parents were only there for the weekend.

I know I should be grateful that she is such a friendly person. Many of my friends bemoan the fact that their parents get into altercations with everybody, or that they won’t socialize at all.

So: I flew from New York to Fort Myers, took the shuttle to the rental-car place, got in the car and was gratified that the air-conditioning started to blow the second I turned on the ignition, and leaned back, closed my eyes, and counted backward, in French, from thirty, in order to unwind before I began to drive. I then put on loud music, adjusted the bass, and set off, feeling around on the steering wheel to see if there was cruise control, because if I got one more ticket my insurance was going to be canceled. Or maybe I could get my mother to write a nice note pleading my case.

Anyway, all the preliminaries to my story are nothing but that: the almost inevitable five minutes of hard rain midway through the trip; the beautiful bridge; the damned trucks expelling herculean farts. I drove to Venice, singing along with Mick Jagger about beasts of burden. When I got to my mother’s street, which is, it seems, the only quarter-mile-long stretch of America watched directly by God, through the eyes of a Florida policeman in a radar-equipped car, I set the cruise control for twenty and coasted to her driveway.

Hot as it was, my mother was outside, sitting in a lawn chair flanked by pots of red geraniums. Seeing my mother always puts me into a state of confusion. Whenever I first see her, I become disoriented.

“Ann!” she said. “Oh, are you exhausted? Was the flight terrible?”

It’s the subtext that depresses me: the assumption that to arrive anywhere you have to pass through hell. In fact, you do. I had been on a USAir flight, seated in the last seat in the last row, and every time suitcases thudded into the baggage compartment my spine reverberated painfully. My traveling companions had been an obese woman with a squirming baby and her teenage son, whose ears she squeezed when he wouldn’t settle down, producing shrieks and enough flailing to topple my cup of apple juice. I just sat there silently, and I could feel that I was being too quiet and bringing everyone down.

My mother’s face was still quite pink. Shortly before my father’s death, after she had a little skin cancer removed from above her lip, she went to the dermatologist for microdermabrasion. She was wearing the requisite hat with a wide brim and Ari Onassis sunglasses. She had on her uniform: shorts covered with a flap, so that it looked as if she were wearing a skirt, and a T-shirt embellished with sequins. Today’s featured a lion with glittering black ears and, for all I knew, a correctly colored nose. Its eyes, which you might think would be sequins, were painted on. Blue.

“Love you,” I said, hugging her. I had learned not to answer her questions. “Were you sitting out here in the sun waiting for me?”

She had learned, as well, not to answer mine. “We can have lemonade,” she said. “Paul Newman. And that man’s marinara sauce—I never cook it myself anymore.”

The surprise came almost immediately, just after she pressed a pile of papers into my hands: thank-you notes from friends she wanted me to read; a letter she didn’t understand regarding a magazine subscription that was about to expire; an ad she’d gotten about a vacuum cleaner she wanted my advice about buying; two tickets to a Broadway play she’d bought ten years before that she and my father had never used (what was being asked of me?); and—most interesting, at the bottom of the pile—a letter from Drake Dreodadus, her neighbor, asking her to move in with him. “Go for the vacuum instead,” I said, trying to laugh it off.

“I’ve already made my response,” she said. “And you may be very surprised to know what I said.”

Drake Dreodadus had spoken at my father’s memorial service. Before that, I had met him only once, when he was going over my parents’ lawn with a metal detector. But no: as my mother reminded me, I’d had a conversation with him in the drugstore, one time when she and I stopped in to buy medicine for my father. He was a pharmacist.

“The only surprising thing would be if you’d responded in the affirmative,” I said.

“ ‘Responded in the affirmative!’ Listen to you.”

“Mom,” I said, “tell me this is not something you’d give a second of thought to.”

“Several days of thought,” she said. “I decided that it would be a good idea, because we’re very compatible.”

“Mom,” I said, “you’re joking, right?”

“You’ll like him when you get to know him,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “This is someone you hardly know—or am I being naive?”

“Oh, Ann, at my age you don’t necessarily want to know someone extremely well. You want to be compatible, but you can’t let yourself get all involved in the dramas that have already played out—all those accounts of everyone’s youth. You just want to be—you want to come to the point where you’re compatible.”

I was sitting in my father’s chair. The doilies on the armrests that slid around and drove him crazy were gone. I looked at the darker fabric, where they had been. Give me a sign, Dad, I was thinking, looking at the shiny fabric as if it were a crystal ball. I was clutching my glass, which was sweating. “Mom—you can’t be serious,” I said.

She winked.

“Mom—”

“I’m going to live in his house, which is on the street perpendicular to Palm Avenue. You know, one of the big houses they built at first, before the zoning people got after them and they put up these little cookie-cutter numbers.”

“You’re moving in with him?” I said, incredulous. “But you’ve got to keep this house. You are keeping it, aren’t you? If it doesn’t work out.”

“Your father thought he was a fine man,” she said. “They used to be in a Wednesday-night poker game, I guess you know. If your father had lived, Drake was going to teach him how to e-mail.”

“With a, with—you don’t have a computer,” I said stupidly.

“Oh, Ann, I wonder about you sometimes. As if your father and I couldn’t have driven to Circuit City, bought a computer—and he could have e-mailed you! He was excited about it.”

“Well, I don’t—” I seemed unable to finish any thought. I started again. “This could be a big mistake,” I said. “He only lives one block away. Is it really necessary to move in with him?”

“Was it necessary for you to live with Richard Klingham in Vermont?”

I had no idea what to say. I had been staring at her. I dropped my eyes a bit and saw the blue eyes of the lion. I dropped them to the floor. New rug. When had she bought a new rug? Before or after she made her plans?

“When did he ask you about this?” I said.

“About a week ago,” she said.

“He did this by mail? He just wrote you a note?”

“If we’d had a computer, he could have e-mailed!” she said.

“Mom, are you being entirely serious about this?” I said. “What, exactly—”

“What, exactly, what one single thing, what absolutely compelling reason did you have for living with Richard Klingham?”

“Why do you keep saying his last name?” I said.

“Most of the old ladies I know, their daughters would be delighted if their mothers remembered a boyfriend’s first name, let alone a last name,” she said. “Senile old biddies. Really. I get sick of them myself. I see why it drives the children crazy. But I don’t want to get off on that. I want to tell you that we’re going to live in his house for a while, but are thinking seriously of moving to Tucson. He’s very close to his son, who’s a builder there. They speak every single day on the phone, and they e-mail,” she said. She was never reproachful; I decided that she was just being emphatic.

Just a short time before, I had relaxed, counting trois, deux, un. Singing with Mick Jagger. Inching slowly toward my mother’s house.

“But this shouldn’t intrude on a day meant to respect the memory of your father,” she said, almost whispering. “I want you to know, though, and I really mean it: I feel that your father would be pleased that I’m compatible with Drake. I feel it deep in my heart.” She thumped the lion’s face. “He would give this his blessing, if he could,” she said.

“Is he around?” I said.

“Listen to you, disrespecting the memory of your father by joking about his not being among us!” she said. “That is in the poorest taste, Ann.”

I said, “I meant Drake.”

“Oh,” she said. “I see. Yes. Yes, he is. But right now he’s at a matinee. We thought that you and I should talk about this privately.”

“I assume he’ll be joining us for dinner tonight?”

“Actually, he’s meeting some old friends in Sarasota. A dinner that was set up before he knew you were coming. You know, it’s a wonderful testament to a person when they retain old friends. Drake has an active social life with old friends.”

“Well, it’s just perfect for him, then. He can have his social life, and you and he can be compatible.”

“You’ve got a sarcastic streak—you always had it,” my mother said. “You might ask yourself why you’ve had fallings-out with so many friends.”

“So this is an occasion to criticize me? I understand, by the way, that you were also criticizing me when you implied that you didn’t understand my relationship with Richard—or perhaps the reason I ended it? The reason I ended it was because he and an eighteen-year-old student of his became Scientologists and asked me if I wanted to come in the van with them to Santa Monica. He dropped his cat off at the animal shelter before they set out, so I guess I wasn’t the only one to get shafted.”

“Oh!” she said. “I didn’t know!”

“You didn’t know because I never told you.”

“Oh, was it horrible for you? Did you have any idea?”

She was right, of course: I had left too many friends behind. I told myself it was because I traveled so much, because my life was so chaotic. But, really, maybe I should have sent a few more cards myself. Also, maybe I should have picked up on Richard’s philandering. Everybody else in town knew.

“I thought we could have some Paul Newman’s and then maybe when we had dessert we could light those little devotional lights and have a moment’s silence, remembering your father.”

“Fine,” I said.

“We’ll need to go to the drugstore to get candles,” she said. “They burned out the night Drake and I had champagne and toasted our future.” She stood. She put on her hat. “I can drive,” she said.

I straggled behind her like a little kid in a cartoon. I could imagine myself kicking dirt. Some man she hardly knew. It was the last thing I’d expected. “So give me the scenario,” I said. “He wrote you a note and you wrote back, and then he came for champagne?”

“Oh, all right, so it hasn’t been a great romance,” my mother said. “But a person gets tired of all the highs and lows. You get to the point where you need things to be a little easier. In fact, I didn’t write him a note. I thought about it for three days, then I just knocked on his door.”

The candles were cinnamon-scented and made my throat feel constricted. She lit them at the beginning of the meal, and by the end she seemed to have forgotten about talking about my father. She mentioned a book she’d been reading about Arizona. She offered to show me some pictures, but they, too, were forgotten. We watched a movie on TV about a dying ballerina. As she died, she imagined herself doing a pas de deux with an obviously gay actor. We ate M&M’s, which my mother has always maintained are not really candy, and went to bed early. I slept on the foldout sofa. She made me wear one of her nightgowns, saying that Drake might knock on the door in the morning. I traveled light: toothbrush, but nothing to sleep in. Drake did not knock the next morning, but he did put a note under the door saying that he had car problems and would be at the repair shop. My mother seemed very sad. “Maybe you’d want to write him a teeny little note before you go?” she said.

“What could I possibly say?”

“Well, you think up dialogue for characters, don’t you? What would you imagine yourself saying?” She put her hands to her lips. “Never mind,” she said. “If you do write, I’d appreciate it if you’d at least give me a sense of what you said.”

“Mom,” I said, “please give him my best wishes. I don’t want to write him a note.”

She said, “He’s DrDrake@aol.com, if you want to e-mail.”

I nodded. Best just to nod. I thought that I might have reached the point she’d talked about, where you have an overwhelming desire for things to be simple.

We hugged, and I kissed her well-moisturized cheek. She came out to the front lawn to wave as I pulled away.

On the way back to the airport, there was a sudden, brief shower that forced me to the shoulder of the road, during which time I thought that there were obvious advantages in having a priest to call on. I felt that my mother needed someone halfway between a lawyer and a psychiatrist, and that a priest would be perfect. I conjured up a poker-faced Robert De Niro in clerical garb as Cyndi Lauper sang about girls who just wanted to have fun.

But I wasn’t getting away as fast as I hoped. Back at the car-rental lot, my credit card was declined. “It might be my handheld,” the young man said to me, to cover either my embarrassment or his. “Do you have another card, or would you please try inside?”

I didn’t know why there was trouble with the card. It was AmEx, which I always pay immediately, not wanting to forfeit Membership Rewards points by paying late. I was slightly worried. Only one woman was in front of me in line, and after two people behind the counter got out of their huddle, both turned to me. I chose the young man.

“There was some problem processing my credit card outside,” I said.

The man took the card and swiped it. “No problem now,” he said. “It is my pleasure to inform you that today we can offer you an upgrade to a Ford Mustang for only an additional seven dollars a day.”

“I’m returning a car,” I said. “The machine outside wouldn’t process my card.”

“Thank you for bringing that to my attention,” the young man said. He was wearing a badge that said “Trainee” above his name. His name, written smaller, was Jim Brown. He had a kind face and a bad haircut. “Your charges stay on American Express, then?”

An older man walked over to him. “What’s up?” he said.

“The lady’s card was declined, but I ran it through and it was fine,” he said.

The older man looked at me. It was cooler inside, but still, I felt as if I were melting. “She’s returning, not renting?” the man said, as if I weren’t there.

“Yes, sir,” Jim Brown said.

This was getting tedious. I reached for the receipt.

“What was that about the Mustang?” the man said.

“I mistakenly thought—”

“I mentioned to him how much I like Mustangs,” I said.

Jim Brown frowned.

“In fact, how tempted I am to rent one right now.”

Both the older man and Jim Brown looked at me suspiciously.

“Ma’am, you’re returning your Mazda, right?” Jim Brown said, examining the receipt.

“I am, but now I think I’d like to rent a Mustang.”

“Write up a Mustang, nine dollars extra,” the older man said.

“I quoted her seven,” Jim Brown said.

“Let me see.” The man punched a few keys on the keyboard. “Seven,” he said, and walked away.

Jim Brown and I both watched him go. Jim Brown leaned a little forward, and said in a low voice, “Were you trying to help me out?”

“No, not at all. Just thought having a Mustang for a day might be fun. Maybe a convertible.”

“The special only applies to the regular Mustang,” he said.

“It’s only money,” I said.

He hit a key, looked at the monitor.

“One day, returning tomorrow?” he said.

“Right,” I said. “Do I have a choice about the color?”

He had a crooked front tooth. That and the bad haircut were distracting. He had lovely eyes, and his hair was a nice color, like a fawn’s, but the tooth and the jagged bangs got your attention instead of his attributes.

“There’s a red and two white,” he said. “You don’t have a job you’ve got to get back to?”

I said, “I’ll take the red.”

He looked at me.

“I’m freelance,” I said.

He smiled. “Impulsive, too,” he said.

I nodded. “The perks of being self-employed.”

“At what?” he said. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

“Jim, any help needed?” the older man said, coming up behind him.

In response, Jim looked down and began to hit keys. It increased his school-boyish quality: he bit his bottom lip, concentrating. The printer began to print out.

“I used to get in trouble for being impulsive,” he said. “Then I got diagnosed with ADD. My grandmother said, ‘See, I told you he couldn’t help it.’ That was what she kept saying to my mom: ‘Couldn’t help it.’ ” He nodded vigorously. His bangs flopped on his forehead. Outside, they would have stuck to his skin, but inside it was air-conditioned.

His mentioning ADD reminded me of the ALS patient—the man I’d never met. I had a clearer image of a big-footed, bulbous-nosed clown. If I breathed deeply, I could still detect the taste of cinnamon in my throat. I declined every option of coverage, initialing beside every X. He looked at my scribbled initials. “What kind of writing?” he said. “Mysteries?”

“No. Stuff that really happens.”

“Don’t people get mad?” he said.

The older man was looming over the woman at the far end of the counter. They were trying not to be too obvious about watching us. Their heads were close together as they whispered.

“People don’t recognize themselves. And, in case they might, you just program the computer to replace one name with another. So, in the final version, every time the word Mom comes up it’s replaced with Aunt Begonia or something.”

He creased the papers, putting them in a folder. “A-eight,” he said. “Out the door, right, all the way down against the fence.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for the good suggestion.”

“No problem,” he said. He seemed to be waiting for something. At the exit, I looked over my shoulder; sure enough, he was looking at me. So was the older man, and so was the woman he’d been talking to. I ignored them. “You wouldn’t program your computer to replace Mustang convertible with one of those creepy Geo Metros, would you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Easy to learn,” I said. I gave him my best smile and walked out to the parking lot, where the heat rising from the asphalt made me feel like my feet were sliding over a well-oiled griddle. The key was in the car. It didn’t look like the old Mustang at all. The red was very bright and a little unpleasant, at least on such a hot day. The top was already down. I turned the key and saw that the car had less than five hundred miles on it. The seat was comfortable enough. I adjusted the mirror, pulled on my seat belt, and drove to the exit, with no desire to turn on the radio. “That’s a beauty,” the man in the kiosk said, inspecting the folder and handing it back.

“Just got it on impulse,” I said.

“That’s the best way,” he said. He gave a half salute as I drove off.

And then it hit me: the grim reality that I had to talk sense to her, I had to do whatever it took, including insulting her great good friend Drake, so he wouldn’t clean her out financially, devastate her emotionally, take advantage, dominate her—who knew what he had in mind? He’d avoided me on purpose—he didn’t want to hear what I’d say. What did he think? That her busy daughter would conveniently disappear on schedule, or that she might be such a liberal that their plans sounded intriguing? Or maybe he thought she was a pushover, like her mother. Who knew what men like that thought.

The cop who pulled me over for speeding turned on the siren when I didn’t come screeching to a halt. He was frowning deeply, I saw in the rearview mirror, as he approached the car.

“My mother’s dying,” I said.

“License and registration,” he said, looking at me with those reflective sunglasses cops love so much. I could see a little tiny me, like a smudge on the lens. I had been speeding, overcome with worry. After all, it was a terrible situation. The easiest way to express it had been to say that my mother was dying. Replace lost her mind with dying.

“Mustang convertible,” the cop said. “Funny car to rent if your mother’s dying.”

“I used to have a Mustang,” I said, choking back tears. I was telling the truth, too. When I moved from Vermont, I’d left it behind in a friend’s barn, and over the winter the roof had fallen in. There was extensive damage, though the frame had rusted out anyway. “My father bought it for me in 1968, as a bribe to stay in college.”

The cop worked his lips until he came up with an entirely different expression. I saw myself reflected, wavering slightly. The cop touched his sunglasses. He snorted. “Okay,” he said, stepping back. “I’m going to give you a warning and let you go, urging you to respect your life and the life of others by driving at the posted speed.”

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

He touched the sunglasses again. Handed me the warning. How lucky I was. How very, very lucky.

It was not until he returned to his car and sped away that I looked at the piece of paper. He had not checked any of the boxes. Instead, he had written his phone number. Well, I thought, if I kill Drake, the number might come in handy.

I also played a little game of my own: replace Richard Klingham with Jim Brown.

He was probably twenty-five, maybe thirty years younger than me. Which would be as reprehensible, almost, as Richard’s picking up the teenager.

Back over the bridge, taking the first Venice exit, driving past the always closed House of Orchids, dismayed at the ever-lengthening strip mall.

My mother, again in the lawn chair, reading the newspaper, but now not bothering to look up as cars passed. I could remember her face vividly from years before, when my father and I had turned in to our driveway in Washington in an aqua Mustang convertible. She had been so shocked. Just shocked. She must have been thinking of the expense. Maybe also of the danger.

My mother seemed less timid now. Obviously, she, too, could be quite impulsive. I was just about to tap the horn when my mother stood and took a minute to steady herself before heading toward the house. Why was she bent over, walking so slowly? Had she been pretending to be spry earlier, or had I just not noticed? Then the door opened, and a man—it was Drake, that was who it was—stood on the threshold, extending a hand and waiting, not going down the steps, just waiting. He stood ramrod straight, but, even driving slowly, I got only a glimpse of him: this man who was not my father, with his big hand extended, and my mother lifting her hand like a lady ascending an elegant, carpeted staircase, instead of three concrete steps.

There was nothing I could say. It had all been decided. There was not a word I could say that would stop either one of them.

I turned left just before the street dead-ended, not wanting to risk passing by a second time. I realized that there was someone waiting to hear from me: possibly two people—the kid and the cop—if not three (my mother, who was probably hoping for an apology for my dire warnings about Drake). I could have made a phone call, had the evening go another way entirely, but everyone will understand why I decided otherwise.

You can’t help understanding. First, because it is the truth, and second, because everyone knows the way things change. They always do, even in a very short time. Back in Fort Myers, the transaction was all business: another shift was at work at the rental agency, and there was only the perfunctory question as I opened the door and got out about whether everything was all right with the car.

The Rabbit Hole

as Likely Explanation

My mother does not remember being invited to my first wedding. This comes up in conversation when I pick her up from the lab, where blood has been drawn to see how she’s doing on her medication. She’s sitting in an orange plastic chair, giving the man next to her advice I’m not sure he asked for about how to fill out forms on a clipboard. Apparently, before I arrived, she told him that she had not been invited to either of my weddings.

“I don’t know why you sent me to have my blood drawn,” she says.

“The doctor asked me to make an appointment. I did not send you.”

“Well, you were late. I sat there waiting and waiting.”

“You showed up an hour before your appointment, Ma. That’s why you were there so long. I arrived fifteen minutes after the nurse called me.” It’s my authoritative but cajoling voice. One tone negates the other and nothing much gets communicated.

“You sound like Perry Mason,” she says.

“Ma, there’s a person trying to get around you.”

“Well, I’m very sorry if I’m holding anyone up. They can just honk and get into the other lane.”

A woman hurries around my mother in the hospital corridor, narrowly missing an oncoming wheelchair brigade: four chairs, taking up most of the hallway.

“She drives a sports car, that one,” my mother says. “You can always tell. But look at the size of her. How does she fit in the car?”

I decide to ignore her. She has on dangling hoop earrings, and there’s a scratch on her forehead and a Band-Aid on her cheekbone. Her face looks a little like an obstacle course. “Who is going to get our car for us?” she asks.

“Who do you think? Sit in the lobby, and I’ll turn in to the driveway.”

“A car makes you think about the future all the time, doesn’t it?” she says. “You have to do all that imagining: how you’ll get out of the garage and into your lane and how you’ll deal with all the traffic, and then one time, remember, just as you got to the driveway a man and a woman stood smack in the center, arguing, and they wouldn’t move so you could pull in.”

“My life is a delight,” I say.

“I don’t think your new job agrees with you. You’re such a beautiful seamstress—a real, old-fashioned talent—and what do you do but work on computers and leave that lovely house in the country and drive into this . . . this crap five days a week.”

“Thank you, Ma, for expressing even more eloquently than I—”

“Did you finish those swordfish costumes?”

“Starfish. I was tired, and I watched TV last night. Now, if you sit in that chair over there you’ll see me pull in. It’s windy. I don’t want you standing outside.”

“You always have some reason why I can’t be outside. You’re afraid of the bees, aren’t you? After that bee stung your toe when you were raking, you got desperate about yellow jackets—that’s what they’re called. You shouldn’t have had on sandals when you were raking. Wear your hiking boots when you rake leaves, if you can’t find another husband to do it for you.”

“Please stop lecturing me and—”

“Get your car! What’s the worst that can happen? I have to stand up for a few minutes? It’s not like I’m one of those guards outside Buckingham Palace who has to look straight ahead until he loses consciousness.”

“Okay. You can stand here and I’ll pull in.”

“What car do you have?”

“The same car I always have.”

“If I don’t come out, come in for me.”

“Well, of course, Ma. But why wouldn’t you come out?”

“SUVs can block your view. They drive right up, like they own the curb. They’ve got those tinted windows like Liz Taylor might be inside, or a gangster. That lovely man from Brunei—why did I say that? I must have been thinking of the Sultan of Brunei. Anyway, that man I was talking to said that in New York City he was getting out of a cab at a hotel at the same exact moment that Elizabeth Taylor got out of a limousine. He said she just kept handing little dogs out the door to everybody. The doorman. The bellhop. Her hairdresser had one under each arm. But they weren’t hers—they were his own dogs! He didn’t have a free hand to help Elizabeth Taylor. So that desperate man—”

“Ma, we’ve got to get going.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“You hate elevators. The last time we tried that, you wouldn’t walk—”

“Well, the stairs didn’t kill me, did they?”

“I wasn’t parked five flights up. Look, just stand by the window and—”

“I know what’s happening. You’re telling me over and over!”

I raise my hands and drop them. “See you soon,” I say.

“Is it the green car? The black car that I always think is green?”

“Yes, Ma. My only car.”

“Well, you don’t have to say it like that. I hope you never know what it’s like to have small confusions about things. I understand that your car is black. It’s when it’s in strong sun that it looks a little green.”

“Back in five,” I say, and enter the revolving door. A man ahead of me, with both arms in casts, pushes on the glass with his forehead. We’re out in a few seconds. Then he turns and looks at me, his face crimson.

“I didn’t know if I pushed, whether it might make the door go too fast,” I say.

“I figured there was an explanation,” he says dully, and walks away.

The fat woman who passed us in the hallway is waiting on the sidewalk for the light to change, chatting on her cell phone. When the light blinks green, she moves forward with her head turned to the side, as if the phone clamped to her ear were leading her. She has on an ill-fitting blazer and one of those long skirts that everybody wears, with sensible shoes and a teeny purse dangling over her shoulder. “Right behind you,” my mother says distinctly, catching up with me halfway to the opposite curb.

“Ma, there’s an elevator.”

“You do enough things for your mother! It’s desperate of you to do this on your lunch hour. Does picking me up mean you won’t get any food? Now that you can see I’m fine, you could send me home in a cab.”

“No, no, it’s no problem. But last night you asked me to drop you at the hairdresser. Wasn’t that where you wanted to go?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s today.”

“Yes. The appointment is in fifteen minutes. With Eloise.”

“I wouldn’t want to be named for somebody who caused a commotion at the Plaza. Would you?”

“No. Ma, why don’t you wait by the ticket booth, and when I drive—”

“You’re full of ideas! Why won’t you just let me go to the car with you?”

“In an elevator? You’re going to get in an elevator? All right. Fine with me.”

“It isn’t one of those glass ones, is it?”

“It does have one glass wall.”

“I’ll be like those other women, then. The ones who’ve hit the glass ceiling.”

“Here we are.”

“It has a funny smell. I’ll sit in a chair and wait for you.”

“Ma, that’s back across the street. You’re here now. I can introduce you to the guy over there in the booth, who collects the money. Or you can just take a deep breath and ride up with me. Okay?”

A man inside the elevator, wearing a suit, holds the door open. “Thank you,” I say. “Ma?”

“I like your suggestion about going to that chapel,” she says. “Pick me up there.”

The man continues to hold the door with his shoulder, his eyes cast down.

“Not a chapel, a booth. Right there? That’s where you’ll be?”

“Yes. Over there with that man.”

“You see the man—” I step off the elevator and the doors close behind me.

“I did see him. He said that his son was getting married in Las Vegas. And I said, ‘I never got to go to my daughter’s weddings.’ And he said, ‘How many weddings did she have?’ and of course I answered honestly. So he said, ‘How did that make you feel?’ and I said that a dog was at one of them.”

“That was the wedding you came to. My first wedding. You don’t remember putting a bow on Ebeneezer’s neck? It was your idea.” I take her arm and guide her toward the elevator.

“Yes, I took it off a beautiful floral display that was meant to be inside the church, but you and that man wouldn’t go inside. There was no flat place to stand. If you were a woman wearing heels, there was no place to stand anywhere, and it was going to rain.”

“It was a sunny day.”

“I don’t remember that. Did Grandma make your dress?”

“No. She offered, but I wore a dress we bought in London.”

“That was just desperate. It must have broken her heart.”

“Her arthritis was so bad she could hardly hold a pen, let alone a needle.”

“You must have broken her heart.”

“Well, Ma, this isn’t getting us to the car. What’s the plan?”

“The Marshall Plan.”

“What?”

“The Marshall Plan. People of my generation don’t scoff at that.”

“Ma, maybe we’d better give standing by the booth another try. You don’t even have to speak to the man. Will you do it?”

“Do you have some objection if I get on the elevator with you?”

“No, but this time if you say you’re going to do it you have to do it. We can’t have people holding doors open all day. People need to get where they’re going.”

“Listen to the things you say! They’re so obvious, I don’t know why you say them.”

She is looking through her purse. Just below the top of her head, I can see her scalp through her hair. “Ma,” I say.

“Yes, yes, coming,” she says. “I thought I might have the card with that hairstylist’s name.”

“It’s Eloise.”

“Thank you, dear. Why didn’t you say so before?”

I call my brother, Tim. “She’s worse,” I say. “If you want to visit her while she’s still more or less with it, I’d suggest you book a flight.”

“You don’t know,” he says. “The fight for tenure. How much rides on this one article.”

“Tim. As your sister. I’m not talking about your problems, I’m—”

“She’s been going downhill for some time. And God bless you for taking care of her! She’s a wonderful woman. And I give you all the credit. You’re a patient person.”

“Tim. She’s losing it by the day. If you care—if you care, see her now.”

“Let’s be honest: I don’t have deep feelings, and I wasn’t her favorite. That was the problem with René: Did I have any deep feelings? I mean, kudos! Kudos to you! Do you have any understanding of why Mom and Dad got together? He was a recluse, and she was such a party animal. She never understood a person turning to books for serious study, did she? Did she? Maybe I’d be the last to know.”

“Tim, I suggest you visit before Christmas.”

“That sounds more than a little ominous. May I say that? You call when I’ve just gotten home from a day I couldn’t paraphrase, and you tell me—as you have so many times—that she’s about to die, or lose her marbles entirely, and then you say—”

“Take care, Tim,” I say, and hang up.

I drive to my mother’s apartment to kill time while she gets her hair done, and go into the living room and see that the plants need watering. Two are new arrivals, plants that friends brought her when she was in the hospital, having her foot operated on: a kalanchoe and a miniature chrysanthemum. I rinse out the mug she probably had her morning coffee in and fill it under the faucet. I douse the plants, refilling the mug twice. My brother is rethinking Wordsworth at a university in Ohio, and for years I have been back in this small town in Virginia where we grew up, looking out for our mother. Kudos, as he would say.

“Okay,” the doctor says. “We’ve known the time was coming. It will be much better if she’s in an environment where her needs are met. I’m only talking about assisted living. If it will help, I’m happy to meet with her and explain that things have reached a point where she needs a more comprehensive support system.”

“She’ll say no.”

“Regardless,” he says. “You and I know that if there was a fire she wouldn’t be capable of processing the necessity of getting out. Does she eat dinner? We can’t say for sure that she eats, now, can we? She needs to maintain her caloric intake. We want to allow her to avail herself of resources structured so that she can best meet her own needs.”

“She’ll say no,” I say again.

“May I suggest that you let Tim operate as a support system?”

“Forget him. He’s already been denied tenure twice.”

“Be that as it may, if your brother knows she’s not eating—”

“Do you know she’s not eating?”

“Let’s say she’s not eating,” he says. “It’s a slippery slope.”

“Pretending that I have my brother as a ‘support system’ has no basis in reality. You want me to admit that she’s thin? Okay. She’s thin.”

“Please grant my point, without—”

“Why? Because you’re a doctor? Because you’re pissed off that she misbehaved at some cashier’s stand in a parking lot?”

“You told me she pulled the fire alarm,” he says. “She’s out of control! Face it.”

“I’m not sure,” I say, my voice quivering.

“I am. I’ve known you forever. I remember your mother making chocolate-chip cookies, my father always going to your house to see if she’d made the damned cookies. I know how difficult it is when a parent isn’t able to take care of himself. My father lived in my house, and Donna took care of him in a way I can never thank her enough for, until he . . . well, until he died.”

“Tim wants me to move her to a cheap nursing home in Ohio.”

“Out of the question.”

“Right. She hasn’t come to the point where she needs to go to Ohio. On the other hand, we should put her in the slammer here.”

“The slammer. We can’t have a serious discussion if you pretend we’re talking to each other in a comic strip.”

I bring my knees to my forehead, clasp my legs, and press the kneecaps hard into my eyes.

“I understand from Dr. Milrus that you’re having a difficult time,” the therapist says. Her office is windowless, the chairs cheerfully mismatched. “Why don’t you fill me in?”

“Well, my mother had a stroke a year ago. It did something. . . . Not that she didn’t have some confusions before, but after the stroke she thought my brother was ten years old. She still sometimes says things about him that I can’t make any sense of, unless I remember that she often, really quite often, thinks he’s still ten. She also believes that I’m sixty. I mean, she thinks I’m only fourteen years younger than she is! And, to her, that’s proof that my father had another family. Our family was an afterthought, my father had had another family, and I’m a child of the first marriage. I’m sixty years old, whereas she herself was only seventy-four when she had the stroke and fell over on the golf course.”

The therapist nods.

“In any case, my brother is forty-four—about to be forty-five—and lately it’s all she’ll talk about.”

“Your brother’s age?”

“No, the revelation. That they—you know, the other wife and children—existed. She thinks the shock made her fall down at the fourth tee.”

“Were your parents happily married?”

“I’ve shown her my baby album and said, ‘If I was some other family’s child, then what is this?’ And she says, ‘More of your father’s chicanery.’ That is the exact word she uses. The thing is, I am not sixty. I’ll be fifty-one next week.”

“It’s difficult, having someone dependent upon us, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes. But that’s because she causes herself so much pain by thinking that my father had a previous family.”

“How do you think you can best care for your mother?”

“She pities me! She really does! She says she’s met every one of them: a son and a daughter, and a woman, a wife, who looks very much like her, which seems to make her sad. Well, I guess it would make her sad. Of course it’s fiction, but I’ve given up trying to tell her that, because in a way I think it’s symbolically important. It’s necessary to her that she think what she thinks, but I’m just so tired of what she thinks. Do you know what I mean?”

“Tell me about yourself,” the therapist says. “You live alone?”

“Me? Well, at this point I’m divorced, after I made the mistake of not marrying my boyfriend, Vic, and married an old friend instead. Vic and I talked about getting married, but I was having a lot of trouble taking care of my mother, and I could never give him enough attention. When we broke up, Vic devoted all his time to his secretary’s dog, Banderas. If Vic was grieving, he did it while he was at the dog park.”

“And you work at Cosmos Computer, it says here?”

“I do. They’re really very family-oriented. They understand absolutely that I have to take time off to do things for my mother. I used to work at an interior-design store, and I still sew. I’ve just finished some starfish costumes for a friend’s third-grade class.”

“Jack Milrus thinks your mother might benefit from being in assisted living.”

“I know, but he doesn’t know—he really doesn’t know—what it’s like to approach my mother about anything.”

“What is the worst thing that might happen if you did approach your mother?”

“The worst thing? My mother turns any subject to the other family, and whatever I want is just caught up in the whirlwind of complexity of this thing I won’t acknowledge, which is my father’s previous life, and, you know, she omits my brother from any discussion because she thinks he’s a ten-year-old child.”

“You feel frustrated.”

“Is there any other way to feel?”

“You could say to yourself, ‘My mother has had a stroke and has certain confusions that I can’t do anything about.’ ”

“You don’t understand. It is absolutely necessary that I acknowledge this other family. If I don’t, I’ve lost all credibility.”

The therapist shifts in her seat. “May I make a suggestion?” she says. “This is your mother’s problem, not yours. You understand something that your mother, whose brain has been affected by a stroke, cannot understand. Just as you would guide a child, who does not know how to function in the world, you are now in a position where—whatever your mother believes—you must nevertheless do what is best for her.”

“You need a vacation,” Jack Milrus says. “If I weren’t on call this weekend, I’d suggest that you and Donna and I go up to Washington and see that show at the Corcoran where all the figures walk out of the paintings.”

“I’m sorry I keep bothering you with this. I know I have to make a decision. It’s just that when I went back to look at the Oaks and that woman had mashed an éclair into her face—”

“It’s funny. Just look at it as funny. Kids make a mess. Old people make a mess. Some old biddy pushed her nose into a pastry.”

“Right,” I say, draining my gin-and-tonic. We are in his backyard. Inside, Donna is making her famous osso buco. “You know, I wanted to ask you something. Sometimes she says ‘desperate.’ She uses the word when you wouldn’t expect to hear it.”

“Strokes,” he says.

“But is she trying to say what she feels?”

“Does it come out like a hiccup or something?” He pulls up a weed.

“No, she just says it, instead of another word.”

He looks at the long taproot of the dandelion he’s twisted up. “The South,” he says. “These things have a horribly long growing season.” He drops it in a wheelbarrow filled with limp things raked up from the yard. “I am desperate to banish dandelions,” he says.

“No, she wouldn’t use it like that. She’d say something like, ‘Oh, it was desperate of you to ask me to dinner.’ ”

“It certainly was. You weren’t paying any attention to me on the telephone.”

“Just about ready!” Donna calls out the kitchen window. Jack raises a hand in acknowledgment. He says, “Donna’s debating whether to tell you that she saw Vic and Banderas having a fight near the dog park. Vic was knocking Banderas on the snout with a baseball cap, Donna says, and Banderas had squared off and was showing teeth. Groceries all over the street.”

“I’m amazed. I thought Banderas could do no wrong.”

“Well, things change.”

In the yard next door, the neighbor’s strange son faces the street lamp and, excruciatingly slowly, begins his many evening sun salutations.

Cora, my brother’s friend, calls me at midnight. I am awake, watching Igby Goes Down on the VCR. Susan Sarandon, as the dying mother, is a wonder. Three friends sent me the tape for my birthday. The only other time such a thing has happened was years ago, when four friends sent me Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion.

“Tim thinks that he and I should do our share and have Mom here for a vacation, which we could do in November, when the college has a reading break,” Cora says. “I would move into Tim’s condominium, if it wouldn’t offend Mom.”

“That’s nice of you,” I say. “But you know that she thinks Tim is ten years old? I’m not sure that she’d be willing to fly to Ohio to have a ten-year-old take care of her.”

“What?”

“Tim hasn’t told you about this? He wrote her a letter, recently, and she saved it to show me how good his penmanship was.”

“Well, when she gets here she’ll see that he’s a grown-up.”

“She might think it’s a Tim impostor, or something. She’ll talk to you constantly about our father’s first family.”

“I still have some Ativan from when a root canal had to be redone,” Cora says.

“Okay, look—I’m not trying to discourage you. But I’m also not convinced that she can make the trip alone. Would Tim consider driving here to pick her up?”

“Gee. My nephew is eleven, and he’s been back and forth to the West Coast several times.”

“I don’t think this is a case of packing snacks in her backpack and giving her a puzzle book for the plane,” I say.

“Oh, I am not trying to infantilize your mother. Quite the opposite: I think that if she suspects there’s doubt about whether she can do it on her own she might not rise to the occasion, but if we just . . .”

“People never finish their sentences anymore,” I say.

“Oh, gosh, I can finish,” Cora says. “I mean, I was saying that she’ll take care of herself if we assume that she can take care of herself.”

“Would a baby take care of itself if we assumed that it could?”

“Oh, my goodness!” Cora says. “Look what time it is! I thought it was nine o’clock! Is it after midnight?”

“Twelve-fifteen.”

“My watch stopped! I’m looking at the kitchen clock and it says twelve-ten.”

I have met Cora twice: once she weighed almost two hundred pounds, and the other time she’d been on Atkins and weighed a hundred and forty. Brides magazine was in the car when she picked me up at the airport. During the last year, however, her dreams have not been fulfilled.

“Many apologies,” Cora says.

“Listen,” I say. “I was awake. No need to apologize. But I don’t feel that we’ve settled anything.”

“I’m going to have Tim call you tomorrow, and I am really sorry!”

“Cora, I didn’t mean anything personal when I said that people don’t finish sentences anymore. I don’t finish my own.”

“You take care, now!” she says, and hangs up.

“She’s where?”

“Right here in my office. She was on a bench in Lee Park. Someone saw her talking to a woman who was drunk—a street person—just before the cops arrived. The woman was throwing bottles she’d gotten out of a restaurant’s recycling at the statue. Your mother said she was keeping score. The woman was winning, the statue losing. The woman had blood all over her face, so eventually somebody called the cops.”

“Blood all over her face?”

“She’d cut her fingers picking up glass after she threw it. It was the other woman who was bloody.”

“Oh, God, my mother’s okay?”

“Yes, but we need to act. I’ve called the Oaks. They can’t do anything today, but tomorrow they can put her in a semiprivate for three nights, which they aren’t allowed to do, but never mind. Believe me: once she’s in there, they’ll find a place.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Hold on,” he says. “We need to have a plan. I don’t want her at your place: I want her hospitalized tonight, and I want an MRI. Tomorrow morning, if there’s no problem, you can take her to the Oaks.”

“What’s the point of scaring her to death? Why does she have to be in a hospital?”

“She’s very confused. It won’t be any help if you don’t get to sleep tonight.”

“I feel like we should—”

“You feel like you should protect your mother, but that’s not really possible, is it? She was picked up in Lee Park. Fortunately, she had my business card and her beautician’s card clipped to a shopping list that contains—it’s right in front of me—items such as Easter eggs and arsenic.”

“Arsenic? Was she going to poison herself ?”

There is a moment of silence. “Let’s say she was,” he says, “for the sake of argument. Now, come and pick her up, and we can get things rolling.”

Tim and Cora were getting married by a justice of the peace at approximately the same time that “Mom” was tracking bottles in Lee Park; they converge on the hospital room with Donna Milrus, who whispers apologetically that her husband is “playing doctor” and avoiding visiting hours.

Cora’s wedding bouquet is in my mother’s water pitcher. Tim cracks his knuckles and clears his throat repeatedly. “They got upset that I’d been sitting in the park. Can you imagine?” my mother says suddenly to the assembled company. “Do you think we’re going to have many more of these desperate fall days?”

The next morning, only Tim and I are there to get her into his rental car and take her to the Oaks. Our mother sits in front, her purse on her lap, occasionally saying something irrational, which I finally figure out is the result of her reading vanity license plates aloud.

From the back seat, I look at the town like a visitor. There’s much too much traffic. People’s faces inside their cars surprise me: no one over the age of twenty seems to have a neutral, let alone happy, expression. Men with jutting jaws and women squinting hard pass by. I find myself wondering why more of them don’t wear sunglasses, and whether that might not help. My thoughts drift: the Gucci sunglasses I lost in London; the time I dressed as a skeleton for Halloween. In childhood, I appeared on Halloween as Felix the Cat, as Jiminy Cricket (I still have the cane, which I often pull out of the closet, mistaking it for an umbrella), and as a tomato.

“You know,” my mother says to my brother, “your father had an entire family before he met us. He never mentioned them, either. Wasn’t that cruel? If we’d met them, we might have liked them, and vice versa. Your sister gets upset if I say that’s the case, but everything you read now suggests that it’s better if the families meet. You have a ten-year-old brother from that first family. You’re too old to be jealous of a child, aren’t you? So there’s no reason why you wouldn’t get along.”

“Mom,” he says breathlessly.

“Your sister tells me every time we see each other that she’s fifty-one. She’s preoccupied with age. Being around an old person can do that. I’m old, but I forget to think about myself that way. Your sister is in the back seat right now thinking about mortality, mark my words.”

My brother’s knuckles are white on the wheel.

“Are we going to the hairdresser?” she says suddenly. She taps the back of her neck. Her fingers move up until they encounter small curls. When Tim realizes that I’m not going to answer, he says, “Your hair looks lovely, Mom. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, I always like to be punctual when I have an appointment,” she says.

I think how strange it is that I was never dressed up as Cleopatra, or as a ballerina. What was wrong with me that I wanted to be a tomato?

“Ma, on Halloween, was I ever dressed as a girl?”

In the mirror, my brother’s eyes dart to mine. For a second, I remember Vic’s eyes as he checked my reactions in the rearview mirror, those times I had my mother sit up front so the two of them could converse more easily.

“Well,” my mother says, “I think one year you thought about being a nurse, but Joanne Willoughby was going to be a nurse. I was in the grocery store, and there was Mrs. Willoughby, fingering the costume we’d thought about the night before. It was wrong of me not to be more decisive. I think that’s what made you impulsive as a grown-up.”

“You think I’m impulsive? I think of myself as somebody who never does anything unexpected.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” my mother says. “Look at that man you married when you didn’t even really know him. The first husband. And then you married that man you knew way back in high school. It makes me wonder if you didn’t inherit some of your father’s fickle tendencies.”

“Let’s not fight,” my brother says.

“What do you think other mothers would say if I told them both my children got married without inviting me to their weddings? I think some of them would think that must say something about me. Maybe it was my inadequacy that made your father consider us second-best. Tim, men tell other men things. Did your father tell you about the other family?”

Tim tightens his grip on the wheel. He doesn’t answer. Our mother pats his arm. She says, “Tim wanted to be Edgar Bergen one year. Do you remember? But your father pointed out that we’d have to buy one of those expensive Charlie McCarthy dolls, and he wasn’t about to do that. Little did we know, he had a whole other family to support.”

Everyone at the Oaks is referred to formally as “Mrs.” You can tell when the nurses really like someone, because they refer to her by the less formal “Miz.”

Miz Banks is my mother’s roommate. She has a tuft of pure white hair that makes her look like an exotic bird. She is ninety-nine.

“Today is Halloween, I understand,” my mother says. “Are we going to have a party?”

The nurse smiles. “Whether or not it’s a special occasion, we always have a lovely midday meal,” she says. “And we hope the family will join us.”

“It’s suppertime?” Miz Banks says.

“No, ma’am, it’s only ten a.m. right now,” the nurse says loudly. “But we’ll come get you for the midday meal, as we always do.”

“Oh, God,” Tim says. “What do we do now?”

The nurse frowns. “Excuse me?” she says.

“I thought Dr. Milrus was going to be here,” he says. He looks around the room, as if Jack Milrus might be hiding somewhere. Not possible, unless he’s wedged himself behind the desk that is sitting at an odd angle in the corner. The nurse follows his gaze and says, “Miz Banks’s nephew has feng-shuied her part of the room.”

Nearest the door—in our part of the room—there is white wicker furniture. Three pink bears teeter on a mobile hung from an air vent in the ceiling. On a bulletin board is a color picture of a baby with one tooth, grinning. Our mother has settled into a yellow chair and looks quite small. She eyes everyone, and says nothing.

“Would this be a convenient time to sign some papers?” the nurse asks. It is the second time that she has mentioned this—both times to my brother, not me.

“Oh, my God,” he says. “How can this be happening?” He is not doing very well.

“Let’s step outside and let the ladies get to know each other,” the nurse says. She takes his arm and leads him through the door. “We don’t want to be negative,” I hear her say.

I sit on my mother’s bed. My mother looks at me blankly. It is as if she doesn’t recognize me in this context. She says, finally, “Whose Greek fisherman’s cap is that?”

She is pointing to the Sony Walkman that I placed on the bed, along with an overnight bag and some magazines.

“That’s a machine that plays music, Ma.”

“No, it isn’t,” she says. “It’s a Greek fisherman’s cap.”

I pick it up and hold it out to her. I press “play,” and music can be heard through the dangling earphones. We both look at it as if it were the most curious thing in the world. I adjust the volume to low and put the earphones on her head. She closes her eyes. Finally, she says, “Is this the beginning of the Halloween party?”

“I threw you off, talking about Halloween,” I say. “Today’s just a day in early November.”

“Thanksgiving is next,” she says, opening her eyes.

“I suppose it is,” I say. I notice that Miz Banks’s head has fallen forward.

“Is that thing over there the turkey?” my mother says, pointing.

“It’s your roommate.”

“I was joking,” she says.

I realize that I am clenching my hands only when I unclench them. I try to smile, but I can’t hold up the corners of my mouth.

My mother arranges the earphones around her neck as if they were a stethoscope. “If I’d let you be what you wanted that time, maybe I’d have my own private nurse now. Maybe I wasn’t so smart, after all.”

“This is just temporary,” I lie.

“Well, I don’t want to go to my grave thinking you blame me for things that were out of my control. It’s perfectly possible that your father was a bigamist. My mother told me not to marry him.”

“Gramma told you not to marry Daddy?”

“She was a smart old fox. She sniffed him out.”

“But he never did what you accuse him of. He came home from the war and married you, and you had us. Maybe we confused you by growing up so fast or something. I don’t want to make you mad by mentioning my age, but maybe all those years that we were a family, so long ago, were like one long Halloween: we were costumed as children, and then we outgrew the costumes and we were grown.”

She looks at me. “That’s an interesting way to put it,” she says.

“And the other family—maybe it’s like the mixup between the man dreaming he’s a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming he’s a man. Maybe you were confused after your stroke, or it came to you in a dream and it seemed real, the way dreams sometimes linger. Maybe you couldn’t understand how we’d all aged, so you invented us again as young people. And for some reason Tim got frozen in time. You said the other wife looked like you. Well, maybe she was you.”

“I don’t know,” my mother says slowly. “I think your father was just attracted to the same type of woman.”

“But nobody ever met these people. There’s no marriage license. He was married to you for almost fifty years. Don’t you see that what I’m saying is a more likely explanation?”

“You really do remind me of that detective, Desperate Mason. You get an idea, and your eyes get big, just the way his do. I feel like you’re about to lean into the witness stand.”

Jack Milrus, a towel around his neck, stands in the doorway. “In a million years, you’ll never guess why I’m late,” he says. “A wheel came off a truck and knocked my car off the road, into a pond. I had to get out through the window and wade back to the highway.”

A nurse comes up behind him with more towels and some dry clothes.

“Maybe it’s just raining out, but it feels to him like he was in a pond,” my mother says, winking at me.

“You understand!” I say.

“Everybody has his little embellishments,” my mother says. “There wouldn’t be any books to read to children and there would be precious few to read to adults if storytellers weren’t allowed a few embellishments.”

“Ma! That is absolutely true.”

“Excuse me while I step into the bathroom and change my clothes.”

“Humor him,” my mother whispers to me behind her hand. “When he comes out, he’ll think he’s a doctor, but you and I will know that Jack is only hoping to go to medical school.”

You think you understand the problem you’re facing, only to find out there is another, totally unexpected problem.

There is much consternation and confusion among the nurses when Tim disappears and has not reappeared after nearly an hour. Jack Milrus weighs in: Tim is immature and irresponsible, he says. Quite possibly a much more severe problem than anyone suspected. My mother suggests slyly that Tim decided to fall down a rabbit hole and have an adventure. She says, “The rabbit hole’s a more likely explanation,” smiling smugly.

Stretched out in bed, her tennis shoes neatly arranged on the floor, my mother says, “He always ran away from difficult situations. Look at you and Jack, with those astonished expressions on your faces! Mr. Mason will find him,” she adds. Then she closes her eyes.

“You see?” Jack Milrus whispers, guiding me out of the room. “She’s adjusted beautifully. And it’s hardly a terrible place, is it?” He answers his own question: “No, it isn’t.”

“What happened to the truck?” I ask.

“Driver apologized. Stood on the shoulder talking on his cell phone. Three cop cars were there in about three seconds. I got away by pointing to my MD plates.”

“Did Tim tell you he just got married?”

“I heard that. During visiting hours, his wife took Donna aside to give her the happy news and to say that we weren’t to slight him in any way, because he was ready, willing, and able—that was the way she said it to Donna—to assume responsibility for his mother’s well-being. She also went to the hospital this morning just after you left and caused a commotion because they’d thrown away her wedding bouquet.”

The phone call the next morning comes as a surprise. Like a telemarketer, Tim seems to be reading from a script: “Our relationship may be strained beyond redemption. When I went to the nurses’ desk and saw that you had included personal information about me on a form you had apparently already filled out elsewhere, in collusion with your doctor friend, I realized that you were yet again condescending to me and subjecting me to humiliation. I was very hurt that you had written both of our names as ‘Person to be notified in an emergency,’ but then undercut that by affixing a Post-it note saying, ‘Call me first. He’s hard to find.’ How would you know? How would you know what my teaching schedule is when you have never expressed the slightest interest? How do you know when I leave my house in the morning and when I return at night? You’ve always wanted to come first. It is also my personal opinion that you okayed the throwing out of my wife’s nosegay, which was on loan to Mom. So go ahead and okay everything. Have her euthanized, if that’s what you want to do, and see if I care. Do you realize that you barely took an insincere second to congratulate me and my wife? If you have no respect for me, I nevertheless expect a modicum of respect for my wife.”

Of course, he does not know that I’m joking when I respond, “No, thanks. I’m very happy with my AT&T service.”

When he slams down the phone, I consider returning to bed and curling into a fetal position, though at the same time I realize that I cannot miss one more day of work. I walk into the bathroom, wearing Vic’s old bathrobe, which I hang on the back of the door. I shower and brush my teeth. I call the Oaks, to see if my mother slept through the night. She did, and is playing bingo. I dress quickly, comb my hair, pick up my purse and keys, and open the front door. A FedEx letter leans against the railing, with Cora’s name and return address on it. I take a step back, walk inside, and open it. There is a sealed envelope with my name on it. I stare at it.

The phone rings. It is Mariah Roberts, 2003 Virginia Teacher of the Year for Grade Three, calling to say that she is embarrassed but it has been pointed out to her that children dressed as starfish and sea horses, dancing in front of dangling nets, represent species that are endangered, and often “collected” or otherwise “preyed upon,” and that she wants to reimburse me for materials, but she most certainly does not want me to sew starfish costumes. I look across the bedroom, to the pointy costumes piled on a chair, only the top one still awaiting its zipper. They suddenly look sad—deflated, more than slightly absurd. I can’t think what to say, and am surprised to realize that I’m too choked up to speak. “Not to worry,” I finally say. “Is the whole performance canceled?” “It’s being reconceived,” she says. “We want sea life that is empowered.” “Barracuda?” I say. “I’ll run that by them,” she says.

When we hang up, I continue to examine the sealed envelope. Then I pick up the phone and dial. To my surprise, Vic answers on the second ring.

“Hey, I’ve been thinking about you,” he says. “Really. I was going to call and see how you were doing. How’s your mother?”

“Fine,” I say. “There’s something that’s been bothering me. Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Shoot.”

“Donna Milrus said she saw you and Banderas having a fight.”

“Yeah,” he says warily.

“It’s none of my business, but what caused it?”

“Jumped on the car and his claws scratched the paint.”

“You said he was the best-trained dog in the world.”

“I know it. He always waits for me to open the door, but that day, you tell me. He jumped up and clawed the hell out of the car. If he’d been scared by something, I might have made an allowance. But there was nobody. And then as soon as I swatted him, who gets out of her Lexus but Donna Milrus, and suddenly the grocery bag slips out of my hands and splits open . . . all this stuff rolling toward her, and she points the toe of one of those expensive shoes she wears and stops an orange.”

“I can’t believe that about you and Banderas. It shakes up all my assumptions.”

“That’s what happened,” he says.

“Thanks for the information.”

“Hey, wait. I really was getting ready to call you. I was going to say maybe we could get together and take your mother to the Italian place for dinner.”

“That’s nice,” I say, “but I don’t think so.”

There is a moment’s silence.

“Bye, Vic,” I say.

“Wait,” he says quickly. “You really called about the dog?”

“Uh-huh. You talked about him a lot, you know. He was a big part of our lives.”

“There was and is absolutely nothing between me and my secretary, if that’s what you think,” he says. “She’s dating a guy who works in Baltimore. I’ve got this dream that she’ll marry him and leave the dog behind, because he’s got cats.”

“I hope for your sake that happens. I’ve got to go to work.”

“How about coffee?” he says.

“Sure,” I say. “We’ll talk again.”

“What’s wrong with coffee right now?”

“Don’t you have a job?”

“I thought we were going to be friends. Wasn’t that your idea? Ditch me because I’m ten years younger than you, because you’re such an ageist, but we can still be great friends, you can even marry some guy and we’ll still be friends, but you never call, and when you do it’s with some question about a dog you took a dislike to before you ever met him, because you’re a jealous woman. The same way you can like somebody’s kid, and not like them, I like the dog.”

“You love the dog.”

“Okay, so I’m a little leery about that word. Can I come over for coffee tonight, if you don’t have time now?”

“Only if you agree in advance to do me a favor.”

“I agree to do you a favor.”

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“No.”

“It calls on one of your little-used skills.”

“Sex?”

“No, not sex. Paper cutting.”

“What do you want me to cut up that you can’t cut up?”

“A letter from my sister-in-law.”

“You don’t have a sister-in-law. Wait: Your brother got married? I’m amazed. I thought he didn’t much care for women.”

“You think Tim is gay?”

“I didn’t say that. I always thought of the guy as a misanthrope. I’m just saying I’m surprised. Why don’t you rip up the letter yourself ?”

“Vic, don’t be obtuse. I want you to do one of those cutout things with it. I want you to take what I’m completely sure is something terrible and transform it. You know—that thing your grandmother taught you.”

“Oh,” he says. “You mean, like the fence and the arbor with the vine?”

“Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t have to be that.”

“I haven’t practiced in a while,” he says. “Did you have something particular in mind?”

“I haven’t read it,” I say. “But I think I know what it says. So how about a skeleton with something driven through its heart?”