Chapter 10

That very night, Cinco de Mayo, I was at an Indian restaurant with seven grad students, Porter Shreve and Bich Nguyen, and Andre Dubus III. The restaurant smelled like honey and fennel, curry and fried dough. It was nearly the end of the school year, the last week of classes. My mood was expansive; I loved everyone: I would be on sabbatical starting a week hence. Until January. And nothing puts a spring in the step of a professor like an upcoming sabbatical. When Andre asked what I was working on, I felt comfortable saying, “A post-9/11 novel.” At that time there hadn’t been more than one or two. But now, let’s face it, most stories are post-9/11, in that we are living under the radiation cloud of all that happened that morning. Does a day go by without thinking of it?

Mid-morning on 9/11, 2001, I was coming out of our local indie bookstore. Into that peculiarly transient but viscous September sunlight. A colleague, Professor Ester Austin, came the other way, from the parking lot, crying. Her ethereal blond curly hair illuminated like a figure in a medieval manuscript. I asked her what was wrong and when she told me, I went to St. Tom’s, the Catholic Church across from campus. Colleagues I hadn’t seen in over a year embraced me, people with whom I had petty issues I hadn’t thought of as petty until that moment. Two thoughts kept surfacing: This will change art. And, What a setback for the peace movement. I did not know what writing project loomed on the horizon. I did not know Joe and Emma or Uncle Leo, Gandalfian peace activist, whose presence in the novel is a bright thread of resistance I’ve been lucky to perceive. Resistance is always there, if only you discern it. You can jail the resisters, but you can’t jail the resistance. But right now, it’s Cinco de Mayo, 2002.  Our dinner with Andre.

The crowd at his reading had been standing-room only. There wasn’t much money left for readings, and he came to Dowdyville almost as a favor. Andre Dubus III is a force of nature, a wild man, sweet of heart, strong-willed, dispensing good cheer and advice and permission to claim the requisite writerly intensity as if it is your birthright. His reading had been prophetic, sobering, an interview with a woman soldier. Later in the evening there would be shots of tequila in excess at a bar until last call. At the Indian restaurant, while the others ordered, he told me this joke.

A writer comes home late at night and sees that his house is on fire and it’s surrounded by cops and firemen. He goes up to the first man in uniform and says, “My God, what happened?” The cop says, “Do you live here?” “Yes!” the writer says. The cop says, “Your agent came to your house, killed everyone in your family, and set your house on fire.” And the writer says, “My agent came to my house?”

A waiter leaned over me and lit a candle. He set down a basket of crispy, peppery bread. My mouth puckered pleasantly with the red wine. My cell phone rang like a doorbell. I glanced at my phone: Benny’s number.  I excused myself and went outdoors to talk to Benny. It was a balmy spring night. Across the street, on a bench, girls dressed prematurely in halter tops ate ice cream cones. Boys in a convertible screamed at them.

“What’s up?” I said to Benny.

His voice sounded as if he were strangling, choking. “Come up here, kid. Please.”

“What’s going on?”

“Chanti.”

“What about Chanti?”

He sobbed.

“What happened, Benny?”

There was that strangling, tearful sound again. “I can’t. Talk. Just come.”

I went back in and said goodbye and got in my car. Trembling with adrenaline all the way to Chicago.

 

 

Chapter 11

Liquor bottles gleam and wink on the card table Sophie has dressed up with a sheet of rice paper flecked with bits of flowers. Behind the card table Sophie has erected a full-size cardboard cut-out – faux bartender – of Steve Martin, another of Emma’s heart throbs. I suggest a glass of wine for you. You will meet people you haven’t met before; go with the flow.

Smoking, Emma watches from the landing, sheltered by a trellis newly bestraddled with vine and leaf, and she is pleased to see Tiff down there. Tiff always takes the edge off her irritation with Joe. Russell, Tiff’s new man, sits on the picnic bench with his leg raised, a cast on his ankle, a burly public-school vice principal, reckless skier, so Emma has heard.

There’s Chanti’s pregnant sister Dulcy, her breasts nearly escaping her top and her hair tipped with electric blue. Her husband Rick high-fives Benny. Benny is handsome in black, a diamond stud in one earlobe. And Sophie’s friend Liberty, she’ll be the only one warm, practical in winter clothes, tights and a turtleneck, her red cowboy boots scuffed. So awkward that it becomes an odd angelic grace, Liberty turns a dish this way or that, lifts and re-positions a spray of baby’s breath in the vase of tulips Joe brought home earlier in the day. When Liberty laughs it is as if the years have vanished and Liberty is ten years old, arriving for a sleepover.

In a lawn chair lie four gifts, wrapped in tissue and curly bows. Certain that Sophie wrote No Gifts on the invitations, Emma feels as if she has been greedy. Chanti burned extra CDs and they will go home with everyone, lagniappe, what GG would call it, extra, unexpected pleasure. She wonders at her own appetite; fifty-four years old and she hasn’t had enough of anything.

Chanti pounds down the steps from the third floor, his hair damp, shirt sleeves rolled above his wrists, but he turns so precisely at the landing that he does not notice Emma in the dusk. At the bottom of the stairs, he slips the CD into the player and the courtyard is silken with “Unforgettable” – Natalie Cole.     

When Emma was a girl no one made much of birthdays.

It’s all right to want a party.

Her cigarette burns fast in the blue night coming on. She can see straight over the fence into the rental hall across the alley to a Cinco de Mayo party. A gaggle of women gather, smoking, on the back alley porch.

Joe is probably still lying on the bed with Peggy Lee, and Emma hopes he doesn’t spoil the night. She doesn’t think he will.

Sometimes birthdays were not mentioned; or there might have been promise of a special dinner or ice cream after, but her mother would forget. A new promise would be made: what would happen on the weekend or the next payday.

An aversion to parties used to run in the family.

GG would be ninety on her next birthday, four days before Christmas.

Emma tries to picture the four generations together, GG, her mother – Nana Jane – and herself and the girls. But they are scattered, GG in assisted living in the Garden District, Nana Jane in Apalachicola. And who knows where Liz might be by then? If she goes back to work, she might be flying on Christmas Day. A reunion is unlikely to come about unless Emma goes to great lengths. Still, New Orleans at the holidays would be delicious.

All this flies through Emma’s mind, waiting to go down. Past birthdays, holidays, the fanfare and freedom she feels walking down a jet way to go somewhere else, the cobblestone streets of the French Quarter, the voice of a street singer, a man in stained khakis, his hat in hand, under a street lamp, singing “Amazing Grace,” and the niggling worry about Liz and what’s to become of her.

Joe steps out of the kitchen. She plants her cigarette in the geranium pot, opens the box of Altoids she brought out with her, and takes a wintergreen mint on her tongue. He touches her cheek. “Here’s the birthday girl. Let’s go down.”

The mélange of music and scents and glasses tinkling with ice, laughter – all that swirls to greet Emma. Sophie perches on Chanti’s lap; Liberty whispers to Zyad, a student she met at the Laundromat Emma has been apprised; Tiff rubs Russ’s shoulders; and Shiatsu, Russ’s white poodle, finds a friend in Uncle Leo, who kneels and roughs up Shiatsu playfully. What happened in the bedroom fades, fallen from the train that is her life with Joe. If she looks back, there are many such moments – detritus of marriage.

Benevolently, she hugs them, one by one.

Liberty pulls her aside and says, “I know you didn’t want presents. So we didn’t wrap them.” She passes a journal to Emma, a blank book bound in Celtic cords. Inside, Liberty has hand-drawn and hand-lettered flattering caricatures of Emma traveling, lugging suitcases, sipping aperitifs, climbing mountains, cartoon balloons above her head, wherein she muses about art and love. So Liberty had been listening all these years to Emma’s unsolicited advice and admonitions.

Woman, be wise. Never advertise your man.

Art is made to disturb. Science reassures.

Wholeheartedness is contagious.

A great artist must be shaken by the naked truths that cannot be comforted.

Love is friendship set afire.

 In the middle of the journal, Liberty has pasted a paper pocket, ornamented with an elaborate paisley design. “There’s a Tarot card in there,” she says. “Don’t look at it, yet –“

“It’s a secret?” What difference will it make? Tarot cards aren’t her style.

“It’s a message. For mid-trip. Something you taught us.”

 A red Canadian maple leaf – made of stiff fabric – has been tucked into the back of the journal. “You can sew that on your daypack or purse,” Liberty says. “For protection.”

“I’m not really traveling anywhere I’ll need it –“

Zyad, hovering over them, says, “You might. Someday. We have to prepare ourselves. For what’s coming.”  

One gathering without politics would be a relief, Emma wants to say.  She has no inkling that this is the start of her hero’s journey. Talismans of her quest are being offered.  Like the ruby red slippers given Dorothy by Glenda the Good Witch. Canadian maple leaf and a tarot card.  Emma’s quest remains ill-defined, fuzzy.  If only a plainly marked yellow brick road lay ahead. She says, “Thank you for thinking of me.” Emma’s default response. She’ll put the maple leaf in a desk drawer.  “And Liberty, I hadn’t gotten around to a journal yet.”

All elbows, Liberty leans in and hugs her and whispers, “I hope to see it. When you’ve finished. If it’s not too private.” 

Liz and Neil and Neil’s son Tommy arrive through the gate. In her customary black, a sleeveless dress with a full skirt, Liz has put in effort, her face made up, her lipstick high-drama magenta, and her hair not so stern as usual, tousled deliberately. She might have been tearful earlier; mascara feathers under her eyes. Emma would not ask about it. Liz would say, “Don’t take my emotional temperature.” How many of them have had difficult moments just prior to arriving? How many misunderstandings? Emma wants to handle everyone with tenderness.

 Neil kisses Emma’s cheek – a first for him – and says, “You look swell. Happy happies.“

 Tommy wanders over to Shiatsu. Liz makes a beeline to the liquor table and pours gin in a silvery stream into glasses for her and Neil.

In the alley, Cinco de Mayo revelers who may have lost their way kick empty glass bottles down the alley. Chanti strides over to the alley, but the next time Emma checks out what’s going on, he and Joe are talking with Dom Silva and the men – or boys – kicking the bottles have passed on. Dom’s little dog Brandy yips at the sight of Shiatsu; Shiatsu scampers to the gate, where the two dogs sniff between the gate’s balusters, tails vibrating.

 “We’re the same age,” Dom calls to Emma.  “Many happy returns of the day.” Rocking slightly toe to heel, his pleated slacks pendulating like drapes at a window, he doffs his fedora. 

 Emma squirms inwardly. Once they taught at the same school, in the neighborhood, before she moved to Friends School. Those mornings in the teachers’ lounge, the flirtatiousness they teased out of the coffee break – Emma does not like to be reminded of all that. How cleansed she felt when he quit teaching for real estate.

“So what’s up?” She doesn’t sound tenderhearted, or like the birthday girl.

“It’s unfolding. It’s all unfolding, Emma.”

She slips her arm through Joe’s. “Let’s dance.”

And they do.

Joe is a good dancer. At weddings younger women admire him, his sure-footed, light steps and the way he and Emma fit. It is one thing they always do well, no matter what else is going on. They dance and Chanti and Sophie dance and Liz and Neil dance, and for a moment, a song’s worth, Emma has the sense that they are lashed together not by the March family roles but by delizia, a lust or zest. When she thinks the word delizia it is with anticipatory pleasure; she wants to speak Italian again, even haltingly. Their old school nestles against the mountains near Locarno, where the Swiss speak Italian, and she wants to take mountain air into her lungs, snack on deli food (those tough salty olives), return to a hotel patio and read to her heart’s content with dark evergreens on the horizon, the lake a black brew, a tonic.

“Earth to Emma,” Joe whispers.

 

 

Chapter 12

Soapy has outdone herself tonight, with her elastic waistband beneath her flat brown belly and a little glint of navel ring. Liz wants to say to her sister, “Don’t you know that the sun is essentially an on-going nuclear explosion? The high-energy radiation it sends streaming into our atmosphere penetrates deeply into human skin – your precious skin, Soapy.”

She locks eyes with Tommy. He sits cross-legged on the sidewalk. Forming letters with her fingers – TV – she signals him. And Tommy shrugs.

 She fills a plate with bread and chunks of cheese and deposits herself on the picnic bench under an electric brazier. The table is littered with the remains of the feast and quarter full glasses of wine. Russ, with his purple cast hiked up, smokes a stubby cheroot, his attention focused on her father. The horseshoe of smoke above Russ’s head is sniffable, sweetish. Neil wanders over to her father and Uncle Leo and Chanti and Zyad and Benny, to talk baseball – it’s what they do. Chanti and she glance awkwardly at each other; she doesn’t know him, after all these years. He is so handsome you can hardly stand to look at him. She imagines retaliatory things Sophie might have said to him about her. She’s not part of the male conversation but she gets the drift – something about Pete Rose’s gambling. $15,000 a day for years. Crimes against baseball. The ostrich-skin coat and shoes he’s been spotted in. The way he charges fans for his autograph in Cooperstown.

Liz wishes for home, to shed the black dress that chafes her ribs. 

His white soccer jersey bright, Tommy leans toward her, intimately, and says, “Lizard. When’re they going to cut the cake?”

Affection for Tommy – wholly unexpected, sweeter because it’s unexpected – flutters against her heart. Wanting in or out? 

“Later.”

“Can I watch TV now?”

“Let’s find one.”

Liz slips behind Joe’s lawn chair and places her hands on his shoulders, the textured Oxford cloth of his shirt familiar. His shoulders feel bony, as if his muscles have atrophied. She leans down and whispers, “I want to set Tommy up inside. Is there still a TV in the shop? Or should we go upstairs?”

Joe pats her hand and says, “The shop. He’ll be closer to us.”

Just inside the back door he pulls the chain on the bare bulb of his storage room where there are piles of lunch boxes and tubes of posters in wire racks. 

Tommy says, “Wow. You could sell this stuff on-line.”

“So I’ve been told.” He pulls up a director’s chair for Tommy, turns on the television, and hands him the remote. Laughter claps from the Sony. “How’s this?”

“Good, thanks. I like it,” Tommy says, in laudable imitation of the socially adept.

To Liz, Joe says, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m moving out to the farm – Uncle Mort’s farm – when we come back from your mother’s trip.” He offers Tommy a bag of miniature candy bars.

Liz pops open the bag and ferrets out an Almond Joy.  “Are you two in a rough patch?”

“It’s nothing like that. I’ll go on the trip with her, if she’ll let me move out there for the rest of the summer.”

“Summer camp,” Liz teases. “Where is the farm exactly?”

“Not far from Saugatuck.”

“Dad and I’ve been there,” Tommy says, his eyes on the screen.

Liz and Joe lean against the counter and watch the re-run of “Saturday Night Live.”  Music from the courtyard reminds them of the party, but they have found, slumped to, their comfort zone, concavity of sweets and old jokes; Joe and Tommy are her buds, her people. But the closer she and Tommy grow, the harder it is to leave Neil, and that is Liz’s stated goal now. Hop out the back, Jack. Make a new plan. She wishes she could expedite the quagmiry end of it all and arrive at a tidy postmortem.

Joe says, as if he’s just thought of it, “Why don’t you two come out to Michigan and visit me this summer?”

Tommy says, “Lizzie – I bet we could find altocumulus out there.”

“Alto what?” Joe says.

“We’re making a Lifetime List of clouds,” Liz says. “We just started a week ago.”

She and Tommy have called it their Lifetime List, free of any enthusiasm dampening tongue-in-cheek inflection, but now Liz spins it diffidently, as if it doesn’t matter much. But it does. It is an hour in the day she looks forward to. When Tommy gets home from school at 3:45 they ride bikes to a park where toddlers toddle in a sandy playground. They lie on the damp grass and watch the clouds and listen to the squeaky voices of the children. Or rather Liz listens to the voices; Tommy has his new MP3 player with him and he drifts with whatever music he has downloaded. His tastes are eclectic: Green Day and Shakira. He tells Liz the titles of the songs. This seems to be the secret to their burgeoning affection: Live and let live. That and their mutual craving for junk food. Afterwards they buy snow cones from a stand; they have a rating system for the flavors, with pineapple the front-runner. At home they get on-line and look at photos of clouds. It is surprising the number of people who watch clouds and photograph them. It seems like an activity Congress and churches would not approve of, Tommy believes, since it does not contribute to productivity and progress. He has lent her his long-sleeve T-shirt that says, doing my part to piss off the religious right. She wears the shirt to the playground, even though the parents accompanying the toddlers might find it offensive. After Cloud Time, it’s Popcorn Time, and they munch their way through a roaster pan of popcorn drenched in butter, watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” She tells Joe, “Where we live we see mostly cirrus and cirrocumulus. Once in a while nimbo stratus.”

“There’s the lake. Ten miles from the farm. Plenty of clouds there,” Joe says. 

“We have the lake here.”

“It’s different over there.”

“It’s the same lake.” Why does she take an acerbic turn?  With her father, one of the easy people. Avoidance, her therapist would say. Such a trip would require mobilization she is not sure she’s capable of. Her Fraidy Cat self would surely quake. Fraidy Cat is merely one tile of that riotous mosaic, her inner life, according to her therapist. There’s Mean Minnie and Feminist Fanny, too. She avoids the question of where she will be in two months. Liz as protagonist! Sans love.

 “I want to go,” Tommy says.

 “See,” Joe says.

 “Maybe we will,” Liz says, plucking another Almond Joy from the cellophane bag. “After you get rid of the rodents. Ems told me about the rodents.”

 The issue of whether she’ll be back at work by then doesn’t come up; Liz flushes, thinking, He knows I’m lying about that. Liar, liar, your house is on fire.

Sophie appears at the door, that half-asleep gamin look on her face, Sophie who glows in the dark. “We’re getting our picture taken. Chanti’s mom and dad are here.”

Tommy balks. “I don’t want my picture taken.”

Joe says, “I don’t want to be a stick-in-the-mud.

 “Of course not,” Sophie says, as if she’s speaking to someone in a coma. 

Liz shakes her head. “I don’t want to.” Her period might be starting, that butchery. In spite of being taken out to dinner to celebrate the onset of menstruation when she was thirteen, Liz hates her period.

 Joe’s hand lights on her forearm, tentative touch. “It won’t hurt. Let’s do it for her. Your Ems.”

“Do I have chocolate on my face?”

Tommy snorts.

“Lucky you,” Liz tells him. “You can get away with saying no.”

Liz wants to watch “Saturday Night Live.” She wants to stay there and listen to Tommy talk about global warming during commercials. He knows all the stats about glacial shrinkage, and she finds it soothing to hear him name the mountains and glaciers, Tasman, Tien Shan, Speke, and Upsala. If he knows that much, maybe he will be the one to grow up and make the world work. If there’s time for that. Which she doubts.

They pass by Joe’s Sammy Sosa reliquary: a framed Multi-Exposure photo of Sammy at bat, signed flamboyantly with Sammy’s two S’s like spectacles; posters commemorating Sammy’s 400^th home run; and, her personal favorite, a blurry photo of Sammy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where he received a medal from Cardinal O’Connor for his humanitarian effort – the Cardinal has placed his red cardinal’s skull cap on Sammy’s head. She feels a nearly intolerable sadness – and filial affection toward Joe – at these details and the way he has arranged them. She stalls. “Do you still have that photo of Marilyn Monroe at bat?” 

“Yes, indeedy.”

She thinks that Emma would hate to hear him say indeedy. He sounds old, and Liz feels protective. She does not know how she knows that Emma feels confined by Joe’s age, but that knowledge has been received. She says, “I’ll come out to visit. I will.”

Liz has never been able to call Chanti’s parents Magda and Arturo. Mr. Gonzales clutches a slick digital camera, fiddling with it while they mill about. He is a pretzel of a man, wiry, always twisting himself into angular configurations, whether he is talking to you or taking pictures or changing a tire – he owns a tire shop in Little Village – or giving communion at San Pio. Mrs. Gonzales is stately, with her stiff, coiffed hair, rusty-colored, in a red dress and heels and wine-red jewelry.

Emma shoos everyone, sugary southern generosity in her liquored accent. “Every single one of you all. I want everyone in.” It is her third grade teacher voice – coaxing, insistent – and you can’t say no to that.

Mr. Gonzales says, “Snug up, get cozy,” and they do.

Mariachi rattles in the street; someone guns an engine and a motorbike rages, vicious, vicious efflux, Liz rants, and she is confused: a headache like a gin-tight hat jamming up whatever sense she might have made, but still, they are together and she wants something out of it: to belong, to fit in her niche. At home. Will Neil be cut out of the photo someday? 

Mr. Gonzales says, “Bright eyes now.” He clicks away for a minute or two.

Mrs. Gonzales says, “Arturo. Time to go to the museum.”

Apologetically, he says, “I’m scheduled to photograph the talent show.” He insists on one more, timed, so that he can scramble into the image. 

Once they’ve broken apart, at the drink table, Neil says, “How’re you doing?” He fingers her dress strap, straightening it, and she wants to push him and scream: “Don’t straighten me out.” “I’m okay,” she lies, her voice rising defensively. Then she thinks, It’s not his fault you don’t love him. “How’re you doing?”

He talks, but Sophie has caught Liz’s eye. Sophie and Chanti touch foreheads, his arms around her. Light catches on his St. Chris medal. They might dance; this looks like a seductive moment before dance. Tango – their dance – has never appealed to Liz; all dance is difficult to do without irony. When Liz dances she feels as if she’s watching herself in a parade of intellectual mirrors. And tango is either domination/submission or it is playing at domination/submission. Tensions of class and gender and race are sexualized, so as to make them seem all right. She doesn’t need a woman’s studies professor to tell her that. Sophie flips her hair over her shoulder to give Chanti better access to her skin.

Sophie says, “That’s fine, go ahead.” Chanti waves and says, “Be right back.” He follows his parents out the side gate.

The disk Chanti burned has gotten around to “Cry Me a River,” and the song seems anachronistic to Liz. Who would think of love that way now? Are there people who love like that? Had she ever made anyone cry? Would she ever cry like that or worse, admit it? Ella Fitzgerald managed to maintain her dignity, but if you were in the throes of crying, your eyes swollen nearly shut the way they do, hiccupping, head aching, snot clogging your nasal passages, you would have no dignity. And dignity is becoming a feature Liz wants. She can almost taste it. She wants to stop slinking around like a possum in the alley.

Three pops out on the street might be balloons bursting or aborted fireworks. Between the pops and the scream, Mrs. Gonzales wailing, there are perhaps three seconds. Liz won’t ever forget Sophie’s face breaking apart, almost as if she ages, her face in its cubist sections, under the orange heat and the blue soot shadow of the tree branches. Liz does not dart to the gate, but the others are right behind Sophie who bounds out to the street, and Liz is the last to arrive half a block away, in front of the darkened bike shop. Sophie shoves people aside, a beast, surly, growling, “Get – the fuck – out of my way.” She falls to him and what’s left of Chanti is held in the arms of the two women who know him best. Mrs. Gonzales, her mouth open in a black O, cries, “Mother of God,” and Sophie blurts, “Jesus fuck.” Holding her big belly, Dulcy attempts to kneel but she is too ripe with pregnancy to get down on her knees; she nearly falls over and Rick catches her by the elbow and he turns her into his arms. They clutch at each other.  Liz can plainly see the raw tongue of Mrs. Gonzales. Sophie presses her body against him and comes up bloody. Blood like a butterfly on her white sweater. With one hand pressed flat against one ear, Emma speaks into her cell phone.

Liz cants from the outer ring of strangers, I am trained. Not so anyone may hear. I am trained for emergencies. Flight attendants are the last line of defense. The very last line.  We have been trained for fire suppression and medical emergencies. Conflict management. The handling of hazardous substances. Water ditching. The use of Automatic External Defribrillators. I must be able to lift 50 pounds from the floor to shoulder height. I am trained in self-defense and food-borne pathogens. I was. I was.

The shrill woow-woow-woow of a siren unreels. People move out, they shrink from the authorities. A damp wind hammers from the lake; Liz vibrates, as if electric current whips through her.

Where is Neil? A dog barks across the street and there is Dom Silva, his vanilla-colored straw fedora held over his belly. Liz takes a few hesitant steps toward Home Plate where a florescent strip lights up the interior with a blue like ice. Neil and Tommy watch through the metal grille that secures the shop at night, Neil’s arm across Tommy’s shoulder. The television fluttering. He meets her eyes; his gaze is indecipherable. Someone is irretrievable. The phrase High Risk Area jolts Liz’s body.

She circles back to Chanti, to the perimeter. Uncle Leo crouches and prays over him, his oil-soaked thumb on Chanti’s forehead. Mrs. Gonzales wheezes. Her breathing is labored; she takes big gulps, clutching her breasts. “Chanti, Chanti, Oh, Chanti, porque, porque, porque?” One of her red shoes lies near Chanti’s feet. Mr. Gonzales doubles-over, retching, against the bike shop wall, his silver glasses crushed in one hand. Three boys on bikes jerk their front wheels up and pedal away. One is bare-backed, one wears a leather vest with crude signals on the back, letters like razors, and the last is around eight years old, in a too-big Nautica T-shirt.

Joe kneels beside Sophie and beseechingly takes her in his arms. In a time-warp, shallow moat she crosses to get to other feelings, Liz recalls the long-ago, before all the trouble with Sophie, a golden time when she was the big sister who might make wishes come true, rectify slights, enchant with nursery rhymes, who might put her arms around a little sister. If only she could.

Once last winter, driving home from O’Hare, Liz beheld a suburban family burying a dog. It was six in the morning, the ground hard against their pickax. Their faces slung down in grief, their winter parkas unzipped. She thinks of them now: what unites all creatures: it pisses her off that we die.

A paunchy policeman, his helmet askew, rolls up on a Segway. Party music still plays in the courtyard, spilling from the open gate. “How Deep is the Ocean?” Sophie slap-slap-slaps Joe away and sits back on her butt, crying, her skirt twisted against her thighs, her knees skinned and blood-pink from the landing she made on the sidewalk. She bangs her head with her fists and her face is ugly now, Mean Minnie puts into Liz’s head, and she’ll be deluged with attention now. Liz buries that vile thought, what she will never admit to anyone.