1

Her Father’s House

Over the loudspeaker the stewardess’s voice disintegrated, crackling like cellophane. Erica stood up and herded Anatole into the aisle.

“Goodbye,” said the stewardess. “My, you’re real big for three years old. I’ll bet your grandma’s going to give you a big hug.”

“I’m going to hug my grandma,” said Anatole. “My old grandpa died.”

The stewardess smiled. Erica’s husband, Theo, made a space for them, carrying the suitcase, and they all three hurried through the carpeted tunnel into the terminal. Erica saw John, looking more bald than she had remembered him and paler, wiping his glasses on his T-shirt the way he always did just before he lifted Papa into his chair at the table or took Papa the paper. She wondered if he was looking for a new job or if her mother would let him stay on to take care of the house. Perhaps he’d already put his advertisement in the newspaper—the same advertisement that had brought him into their family three years ago.

Then she caught sight of her mother at the gate and ran forward and hugged her, astonished at how small she had become.

“Mother, you’ve gotten thinner since I saw you at Christmas.”

“I am thinner,” said her mother. “I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I know I won’t sleep tomorrow night, either.”

“Your sister and her kids got in yesterday,” John said.

“Kirsten’s here?”

“But not Harold,” added her mother. “He couldn’t get away. I’ve got to make a reservation for Kirsten and the children at Grubb’s for Saturday. Joan wants to go there for her last free birthday. After your tenth you have to pay for the cake and ice cream. Danny went there for all his birthdays.”

“I thought you said the funeral’s on Saturday,” said Erica.

“Funeral’s tomorrow. This dragging it all out, I’m a wreck.”

“I’ll get the car,” said John as Anatole and Theo joined them. “I’ll meet you outside the baggage gate.”

The four of them watched him hobble down the escalator.

“How’s his foot?” asked Theo.

“It turns all dark in the morning,” Erica’s mother said. “It’s his circulation. And he keeps on smoking. And he won’t have an operation. Yesterday he cut the toes out of his shoes. Too bad his room is on the third floor. It takes him forever to get there. And he can’t lift as well as he used to. But he was so good with Hal.”

John turned onto the expressway and opened the window. The warm winds of May blessed them. Traffic at this early hour was not heavy; the air smelled fresh. In the front seat, her mother turned around and talked to the space between Erica and Theo, just over Anatole’s head.

“Hal had such a good day Monday. He ate a big lunch——”

“Not quite as big as the day before,” said John.

“Why, he ate some nut loaf and a bowl of yogurt and a dish of prunes. And he shaved all by himself. The bridge club was coming over, so I got him dressed in his best suit. He looked real nice. I asked him did he want to go downstairs and watch TV, and he said no, he’d rather read in the study. All the ladies came to see him when they went upstairs for their coats, and he talked to them.”

“Did he talk?” asked Erica. “He hardly spoke a word to me at Christmas.”

“He did. He showed Mrs. Nordlund his book on the Grand Canyon. He used to read it every night. I’d sit up with him when he couldn’t sleep. I can still see him reading that book, the tears running down his face.”

“Was he in pain?” asked Theo.

Erica’s mother shook her head vigorously.

“No,” she said. “He told me his grandfather used to cry too, for no reason. They called it sunstroke in those days. Look at the new shopping center that’s gone up since you were here last.”

Over a drive-in restaurant a giant chef balanced a hamburger on his upraised palm and turned slowly on a pedestal. Erica tried to recall what had stood there before. An open field? Stands of oak and hickory, holding the twilight like a cup?

“I used to tote a tray like that,” Theo said quietly.

“You worked as a waiter?” asked her mother, surprised.

“Six months.”

“And now Erica tells me you’re working with birds for some research project.”

Theo nodded. “Only till my teaching fellowship comes through.”

“I didn’t know you knew anything about birds,” said John.

“I don’t,” said Theo. “I was only hired to feed them and clean their cages.”

“What kind of birds do you work with?” asked John.

“All kinds,” answered Theo, suddenly vague, as if he had very nearly divulged a great secret.

Her mother blew her nose.

“And after dinner I took him into the sunroom to watch TV, and then I took him upstairs to bed and got his nightshirt on, and he said, ‘I have a bad pain,’ and I said, ‘Where?’ And he pointed to his heart. And I said, ‘I’m right here, Hal’—he always liked to know I was there—but his eyes were going all funny and I ran downstairs to call for the ambulance.”

“I’d already called the police,” said John. “They came right away.”

“I had the downstairs looking good for bridge club but I’d thrown everything into the bedroom. And that’s where everybody came. The police, the ambulance, the rescue squad. All the kids on the block were lined up across the street. The doctor gave Hal oxygen all the way to the hospital.”

John turned off the highway, down Norfolk Drive.

“I shouldn’t have had bridge club,” said her mother, rolling up the window. “I shouldn’t have gone to that college reunion with Minnie. It was my fiftieth. After that you don’t get any more.”

Far ahead of them, Erica could see the pear trees blossoming on both sides of the front walk like a wedding procession, spangling the grass with petals.

“He was ninety-two,” said John. “He had a good and fruitful life.”

“I never knew his age when I married him,” her mother said. “I was twenty-six. He didn’t look forty-five.”

“The trees,” said Theo. “They’re beautiful.”

“They carried him out on the stretcher under the pear blossoms,” her mother continued. “I remember that shock of white hair sticking out of the blanket. You know, he had so much hair. Oh, those doctors, they all lie! There was a nice young intern who told me, ‘His heart is getting stronger. He’s going to make it. He’ll be fine in a few days.’”

John drew up to the curb. Her mother opened the door for herself, still talking. “Kirsten and the kids are in Hal’s and my room. Kirsten can sleep in my bed and Danny can sleep in Hal’s, and I’ve put up a cot for Joan. I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s awful for me, looking from my bed over at Hal’s empty one. The night he died I had to push the dresser between them.”

“You should have moved into the guest room,” said Erica.

Her mother shook her head.

“No. I knew if I didn’t sleep there right away, I’d never sleep there again. Anatole can have the cot in Hal’s study. When Kirsten comes back, she can help us pick out a suit for Hal. She went downtown to get some ice cream with Joan and Danny.”

Standing in the upstairs hall, Erica looked for a place to unpack. The house seemed smaller every time she returned to it. The walls in the hall were done in diplomas; whenever her mother uncovered a new certificate she added it, and now the plaster was almost invisible. There were baptismal certificates and marriage certificates; certificates stating that long ago Erica and Kirsten had finished a summer program here, a Bible program there. There were Papa’s chemistry awards and his Ph.D. diploma.

Her mother puffed upstairs with the laundry.

“Where’s Theo?”

“Outside.”

“He has his B.A., doesn’t he? Why didn’t he pick up his diploma?”

“He says he doesn’t need a diploma.”

“Of course he needs a diploma. Who will believe him if he doesn’t have a diploma?”

… And an enormous certificate on shriveled parchment stating that somebody—the name could not be read—was Bearer of Dispatches to Denmark. There were Kirsten’s certificate of graduation from the Powers modeling program, Aunt Minnie’s Dale Carnegie award, Erica’s mother’s fiftieth-reunion certificate, an Arthur Murray diploma that came with the house; and then the wall turned a corner and there were the photographs, the family and the family and the family.… But her father’s family was notably absent, having died long before the births and marriages celebrated in this house.

Erica could hear Theo counting to ten outside and Anatole and the other children calling him.

“Hide, hide!”

“Here I come—ready or not!”

Her sister’s suitcase lay open on the floor. A dozen navy socks and Danny’s eighth-grade yearbook spilled out of the corner. And whose wristwatch and bikini pants lay folded together on top of the clothes? Joan’s? At ten years old? At ten, Erica was wearing undershirts suitable for either sex and she still couldn’t tell time, having been sick the week it was taught in second grade. And then one day she was too old to admit she did not know how.

But what difference did it make? Her father owned no watch. Yet he was always punctual, home for dinner at five-thirty and back to the lab by eight. For half an hour he listened to Lowell Thomas and Drew Pearson; for half an hour he read the newspaper with such concentration that he didn’t notice the time that Kirsten and Erica combed his hair and wound it in curlers. It took him ten minutes to straighten the curls. He never looked at a clock; it was as if these events measured themselves. Beyond the front door lay his work, of which Erica understood nothing until one April day her mother said:

“Your father has been given an important award. I want you to see the presentation and to hear his acceptance speech. I know you will not understand it, but I want you to hear him.”

In the auditorium, her mother led Kirsten and Erica proudly past papa’s students and colleagues to the front row. For Kirsten, always a lady, her mother had not brought so much as a single crayon. For Erica she had brought ten “Little Lulu” comic books.

The crowd applauded. Her father stood at the podium. The microphones leaned toward him, a field of cattails. And then he began to speak.

Erica put down her comic books. She tried to listen. If I listen hard enough, she thought, I will understand him.

Growing old, he almost never spoke to her. Age had eroded the rich soil of his learning and exposed the bedrock of his childhood. He dozed all day, interrupting his long naps for the enormous meals his wife prepared for him and for George Pereau’s television trips to Africa.

Coming to visit on her father’s ninety-second birthday, Erica was appalled at her mother’s haggard face.

“Mother, you sleep in the guest room tonight. I’ll sleep in your bed and keep an eye on Papa. I can listen for Anatole from there.”

Her mother was tucking fresh pillows under Papa’s head. The old man watched her wistfully, a child who did not want to sleep.

“Don’t let him get out of bed. The bedrail won’t stop him. Remember Marie Hetchen, who climbed over the rail and broke her hip? He sleeps pretty well till around two. Then he wants to get up. I’m the only person who can lift him. And he likes the light on, don’t you, Hal?”

“Yes,” came a voice, tiny as a cricket’s.

“The purple lamp?” asked Erica, anxious to please him. “You like it on?”

In the circle of its twilight shone the bottles of lotions and pills and piles of clean handkerchiefs neatly arranged on the bureau. Her mother bent down to adjust the dials on the electric blanket and then motioned Erica to the door.

“I’ve got the two beds tied together. If he tries to get up, you’ll be right there. My sunglasses are on the dresser if you need them.”

“Sunglasses?” asked Erica.

“I can’t sleep a wink with the light on,” said her mother.

Erica climbed into her mother’s bed and gazed attentively at the sharp features of her father’s profile and the shock of white hair on the pillow so near her own. Under his freckled skin, veins lashed the bones of his hand together.

“I want to get up,” he whispered.

“Oh, Papa, you can’t get up. It’s the middle of the night. Shall I read to you?”

She looked wildly around the room but could find nothing except two books he had written himself.

“Papa, let’s sing. Remember how we used to sing in the car whenever we went on a trip?”

He gave her a puzzled look. She hesitated, uncertain of the words, and then started bravely:

“Cruising down the river on a Sunday afternoon”

“The birds above all sing of love …” His voice piped up, faint but exactly on pitch.

“… waiting for the moon.”

And then they both remembered the old accordion playing a sentimental tune and Erica saw the river very clearly; it was the Detroit River, which long ago they had crossed at a family reunion so large that a boat was hired for the occasion. It chugged slowly past the marinas of Grosse Pointe, past the elegant houses of those whom Mother called the “captains of industry,” and whenever a new house, always bigger than the last, glided into view, everyone rushed to the rail for a look. The distant relatives from both sides called each other “Cousin” to save confusion, and when the captain’s voice over the loudspeaker announced a message for Mr. Widholm, men hurried to the captain’s cabin from all quarters of the ship. Queer to find strangers with your face and your name.

“After the ball is over, after the break of dawn——”

“You did not sing that correctly,” admonished her father. “You should have sung, ‘After the break of day.’”

She listened while he carried the song alone, and when he had finished the verse, neither of them spoke for a long time. At last he said, “I want to get up.”

“Oh, Papa, let Mother sleep.”

“I want to get up,” the old man repeated firmly. “This bed’s full of salt.”

Erica bounded out of bed and met her mother in the hall.

“Mother, he won’t stay in bed.”

Her mother hurried into the room. “Hal, do you want some orange juice?”

He nodded happily. “I want to get up. I want to get off this boat.”

“Oh, Hal, how could you possibly be on a boat? Look—there’s your mother’s picture right over your bed.”

Cautiously the old man turned his head. “Why, so it is!” he said.

“He told me the bed had salt in it,” whispered Erica.

Her mother laughed. “Now, Hal, how could there be salt in your bed? There isn’t a body of salt water in the entire state of Michigan. Erica will sit with you while I run down to the kitchen and make your juice. Come. Lean on me.”

She sat down on the edge of his bed, put his arm around her neck, and rose unsteadily, bearing his full weight on her shoulders.

“Grab the bedpost, Hal. Then the doorknob.”

They lurched into the hall—her father in his blue pajamas, her mother in her long, purple nightgown—like a conspiracy of sleepwalkers, he clutching woodwork and doorknobs and she easing him past the diplomas and photographs into his study and letting him down into the overstuffed chair. Then she arranged the afghan around his knees. The tears ran slowly down his cheeks.

“Hal,” shouted her mother, “Hal, here’s Erica come to see you for your birthday! Is that something to cry about?”

“I don’t want to die,” he said, weeping softly.

“Oh, Hal, what makes you think of such a thing? You’re not going to die. Who do you love?”

“You,” he answered at once.

“You’re my sweetheart,” his wife told him, kissing his ear. “You know that? Erica, you can go to bed now. Everything’s all right—I have some letters to write and some bills to pay. Look at this from the phone company. A fifty-dollar call to Hawaii! I never called Hawaii.”

“Oh, Mother,” said Erica, “I was going to let you sleep tonight.”

Her mother shrugged. “A lot of people have it worse. What important business do I have? The one who gave us the time didn’t charge us for it. Our real life comes later.”

“We’ll need a tie and a shirt and underwear, everything but shoes.” Her mother’s voice from the closet. “Kirsten, you pick a tie. You’ve got good taste. Erica, can you find some B.V.D.s?”

The crashing of hangers applauded the search. Erica kicked a Monopoly board and a pile of dirty sheets under the bed and opened the bureau drawers. Handkerchiefs. Razor. Shirts. Socks. All I could ever think of to give him was socks, she thought.

“A bolo tie,” said Kirsten’s voice, muffled. “He always wore bolo ties. I suppose that’s too informal for the occasion.”

“Oh, I hate to bury his bolo tie. Danny should have it, Kirsten. Indian jewelry has got so expensive,” said her mother.

Clump, clump: John limping down the third-floor stairs. Kirsten stuck her head out of the closet. Her face was flushed, but her blond hair was immaculately curled and combed under a headband.

“Erica, tell John to see what the kids are doing.”

“Danny’s making gunpowder,” John called back. “For his invention.”

“What invention?” called Erica.

Her mother and her sister emerged from the closet looking like salesmen, their arms draped with trousers.

“His rocket,” said John. “Go see for yourselves.”

“Erica,” said Kirsten, “run down and tell Theo to watch them.”

“He is watching them,” said John.

Erica dropped the B.V.D.s and ran across the hall to the bathroom window. The wisteria hung over the broad roof but the wind blew her a glimpse of three children in the yard below, clambering over a huge box. Danny, blond and large for twelve, was lifting Anatole into it. Joan was clapping her hands, her red hair shaking like fire.

“What are those droopy things on the side?” asked Erica.

“Wings,” muttered John. “Theo brought him that box of feathers, and now Danny figures he’s ready to fly. He got the idea from a man on television who jumped out of a window in a glider. Killed himself.”

“My God,” said Erica.

“He’s rigged them up to your dad’s foot vibrator,” said John gloomily. “These kids, they think nothing can hurt them. They think they’re immortal.”

But when she reached the backyard and they all stopped playing and stared at her, Erica could not remember how she had meant to scold them.

“Theo,” she said. “Mother doesn’t want anyone making gunpowder.”

“Just what I told Danny myself,” Theo said. “Didn’t I? A rocket is a very second-rate mode of travel. Come on, kids—let’s play!” he shouted.

Just as if this were a family reunion instead of a funeral, thought Erica. Then she heard her name called and she ran into the house. Her mother was standing on the back porch with Hal’s clothes lying over her arm.

“Does this suit look okay to you? Hal paid two hundred dollars for it in the days when you could get a good suit for fifty. He picked the material himself.”

Erica remembered her father bending over the little swatches of cloth and asking them all did they like the red stripe on gray? When the suit arrived six months later, the stripes looked enormous and the shoulders sagged and he could have hidden a machine gun in the sleeves. But he continued to order his suits from the tailor and his shoes from a shoemaker in England until he walked so little, he ceased to wear things out.

“There’s a moth hole in the back,” her mother said, her mouth close to Erica’s ear, “but it won’t show. Does Theo have a good suit? We need one more pallbearer.”

“I thought Hank Anderson was going to be the sixth pallbearer.”

“Hank? Why, he can’t even lift a telephone book since his hernia operation.”

“Mother,” called Kirsten’s voice, “are you ready?”

Their mother wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Can Theo watch the kids while we pick out the casket? John is soaking his foot by the TV.”

“I’ll stay,” Erica said quickly.

“No. We need you,” said her mother.

When they arrived at the funeral home a thin rain was falling. The tiny green blossoms from the maple trees crunched underfoot and gave off a heavy sweetness. Her mother, cradling the clothes, opened the door and motioned first Erica and then Kirsten inside.

“I’ve done this twice before—once for my mother and once for my father,” she announced proudly. “When my father died, all the rooms were filled. We nearly didn’t get one. But I’m glad that Hal’s funeral will be in the church.”

They entered the vestibule. A dull light rose from the bronze bowls of the floor lamps that lined the corridor, peculiar trees of an underground kingdom. As they started upstairs a large, silver-haired man sneaked up behind them.

“Mrs. Widholm? I’m Mr. Metzger,” he said, pushing his horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “And you’ve come about the casket. Right upstairs. Just make yourselves at home. My office is across the hall if you need me.”

“Thank you,” said Kirsten, and they all three reached the landing and stepped over the threshold into the fluorescent noon of the display room. The windows were papered over with caged birds, so steeped in stillness they seemed part of some fabulous household under enchantment.

Her mother walked down the first aisle, fingering the caskets that stood open-mouthed like gigantic shells, price tags and guarantees lying inside like pearls.

“The wood is nice,” her mother said, “but I don’t like green ruching, do you? It’s too fancy.”

Erica touched the wooden lid, marveling at the workmanship. The thing could as well go into a living room as into the ground.

“Here’s a rosewood one,” Kirsten said. “It looks like Grandma’s old piano.”

“Maroon velvet,” her mother said. “That’s nice. It’s the color of the bathrobe I gave Hal before we were married.”

They all bent down to examine the price.

“Two thousand dollars,” Kirsten said.

For several moments no one spoke.

“The first one is fifteen hundred,” Kirsten said.

“Let’s think about it,” said her mother, “while we pick out the vault.”

“The vault?” repeated Erica.

She followed her mother to a table set with three boxes, the first painted bronze, the second silver, the third gold, and each of them cut away to show the structure, like a classroom model of the pyramids.

“What’s the difference between them?” asked Kirsten.

Mr. Metzger appeared as if summoned by their ignorance. In the bright light his lips looked heavy, his hands huge; two ruby rings ignited his knuckles.

“The vaults are lined with asphalt or plastic.” He touched first the silver model and then the gold. “Now, if it was me, I’d prefer the plastic. I’ve seen the tests. It’s specially sealed.”

“But are they waterproof?” asked her mother anxiously. “I’d hate to think of Hal floating around down there.”

“The plastic ones are guaranteed. Guaranteed. The asphalt … well”—he opened his palm toward Kirsten—“you can’t be absolutely sure. The bronze-plated model is ordinary steel. It runs about a hundred dollars less.”

“We’ll take the plastic one,” her mother said. “Will it look just like the model?”

“We paint them to match the casket. Have you found one you like?”

“That wooden one over by the wall,” Kirsten said.

Mr. Metzger strolled over to it and studied it gravely.

“Now, if it was me, I think the interior is a little too fussy for a man. The rosewood one behind it has a very simple interior. Very masculine, I think.”

“Why, my goodness,” said her mother, as if caught in an embarrassing mistake. “I guess we’d better take it.”

They followed Mr. Metzger into his office and sat in three chairs drawn into an intimate arc around his desk. Her mother laid the clothes on the papers and pads that littered the desk. Mr. Metzger slid into place like the last piece in a simple puzzle. Erica watched his hands as they glittered among documents.

“This is the death certificate. The doctor will fill it in. The first one costs two dollars. There’s a fifty-cent charge for the others.”

Her mother and Kirsten touched it, bewildered.

“You should have some for all legal purposes. It’s not the expense—it’s the inconvenience of not having one when you need it.”

“I’ll have twenty-five,” her mother said.

Mr. Metzger rubbed his eyes. “Well, that’s quite a lot of them,” he said.

“How about ten?” suggested Kirsten.

Mr. Metzger wrote “10” on his pad.

“And then there’s the minister,” he said.

“How much does he usually get?” asked her mother.

“From fifteen to fifty dollars.”

“I’ll give him fifty,” her mother said.

Mr. Metzger wrote “50.”

“And the organist. Fifteen or ten,” he said.

“Fifteen,” said her mother.

“And the flowers,” he said. “A blanket of roses runs fifty-two dollars. Carnations run a bit cheaper.”

“Roses,” said her mother. “They’re more sentimental.”

“For two dollars more you can have a ribbon lettered with ‘Husband’ or ‘Father.’”

“I’ll have both,” her mother said, “so people will know they’re from the family.”

“For fifteen you can also get half a dozen sweetheart roses and a small white satin pillow lettered with ‘Grandfather’ in gold script.”

“We’ll take one,” said her mother

He wrote “15” and then he reached into a drawer and pulled out a folder and a package of vellum cards.

“The plaque you can pick out later. I understand you have your lots on Sunrise Hill. They don’t allow headstones there. Spoils the landscaping, they say.”

“No headstones?” said Kirsten.

“Just bronze plaques. Mrs. Widholm, was your husband a Mason?”

“A Mason?” her mother said.

“Or an Elk? You can have any emblem you want put on the plaque. Any emblem at all. And if you pick out a plaque for yourself at this time, we can match the bronze and give you a cheaper rate.”

Mr. Metzger fanned the vellum cards across his desk.

“Some people like to have these by the register for visitors to take. Inside you’ll find the Twenty-third Psalm embossed in gold. You get a hundred for twenty dollars.”

“Kirsten, you’d like these, wouldn’t you? I’ll take a hundred,” said her mother.

“We’ll send a car for you at ten tomorrow morning,” Mr. Metzger promised. “The First Congregational Church, isn’t it? Oh, one more thing. Would you like the casket open or closed?”

“Open,” Kirsten said. “I haven’t seen Papa for a whole year. I want to say goodbye.”

“Here comes Minnie,” said Danny, standing at the front door. “Is it time to eat?”

Erica and Kirsten crowded behind the children and they all pressed their faces against the panes. A short, sprightly woman in slacks and a tweed coat was ransacking the trunk of a Volkswagen parked in the driveway.

“Aunt Minnie’s hair—it’s so white,” Kirsten said.

And her mother, who had trained herself to hear through walls, called out from the kitchen, “She’s let it go natural. But she’s got a wig for the funeral. Wait till you see her in it—she looks just like she always did. At the reunion everybody knew we were sisters.”

“Look at her big suitcase,” Joan said. “Is she moving in?”

“No, that’s her vitamins,” said Erica’s mother, coming into the hall.

Minnie let the door slam behind her and dropped her suitcase in the hall. The mirror over the telephone table rattled.

“I knew I’d be coming here!” Minnie announced. “I got myself weighed at Woolworth’s, and the card said I’d be taking a trip very soon.”

“It’s your ESP,” Erica’s mother said, taking Minnie’s coat and hanging it on the rack. “Dinner’s on the table. Come and eat.”

They trooped into the dining room and everything around them tinkled—the cups and plates stacked unevenly in the china cabinet, the silver set out on the sideboard as if for a consecration.

John had already found his usual place and was unscrewing the lid from a bottle of pickled cherries.

“I can’t take Hal’s chair,” her mother said. “I just can’t.”

Everyone looked at the empty chair. Of all the dining room chairs, her father’s alone had survived two generations of children; it was still upholstered in its original horsehair.

“Let me take it,” said Theo. “Pass me your plates.”

They seated themselves while her mother brought in the salad.

“Anyone want one of my pickled cherries?” John asked. “I marinated them myself.”

Silence.

“Or some dandelion wine? No?”

He poured himself a glass.

“I’ll have some wine,” Theo said.

John hobbled over to the china cabinet and rummaged among the cups for a goblet.

“You and I are the only hard drinkers around here, aren’t we, young man?” John said.

“Mother, stop waiting on us,” Erica pleaded, following her into the kitchen. “Sit down.”

Her mother was looking into the open refrigerator and wiping her eyes with a dish towel.

“Look at those custards I made for Hal. Erica, you always loved custard. I made them the night Hal went to the hospital and I forgot to turn the oven off, but they don’t look too bad.”

“I’ll taste one,” Erica said, taking a spoon from the drawer. She touched the spoon to her lips. She thought of her father’s mouth. She put down the spoon.

In the dark living room after dinner the movie projector clattered to a halt, and the image on the screen vanished. The children, sprawled on the floor, sat up. Erica cocked her head and listened for Theo, hoping he had not gone to bed.

She felt across the end tables for the lamp. Click. Click. Nothing happened.

“You’ve got to jiggle it,” her mother said.

“Mother, where’s John?” asked Kirsten, who hated the absence of anyone at a family gathering.

“Upstairs, soaking his foot.”

“I’m ready,” said Danny, turning on the projector.

Nudging close to Erica on the sofa, Minnie put on her glasses.

The projector hummed. A throng of shades came into focus.

“It’s my wedding!” Kirsten cried.

“Why, there’s Mrs. Corkin,” her mother said, genuinely pleased. “She died last year. How nice to see her again. And there’s my mother!”

“And there’s Jack Teal. And Harold Bitterjohn,” said Kirsten. “Funny how many of Papa’s students are dead now, isn’t it?”

Grandma Schautz was shaking hands with Reverend Lemon; both of them were dead now. It seemed to Erica she was watching a pageant in which the actors wore a makeup that erased time. Her grandfather stood rigid and smiling under the pear blossoms.

Joan reached out and touched Erica’s knee.

“Where are your wedding pictures?”

“In my head,” said Erica. “We eloped.”

“I hope you had a ceremony,” said Minnie.

“I want a cartoon,” said Anatole.

“Look!” said Kirsten sharply. “There’s Papa!”

Erica caught her breath. For there before them stood her father, walking through the rock garden, on the sunny side of the house, which the weeds had long since overtaken. Young, dark-haired, slim in his white flannel suit, he smiled at them engagingly.

“Is that the old grandpa who died?” asked Anatole. “Did he get new again?”

All the next morning the sound of bath water running upstairs drowned out the cries of the children playing by the TV. It was Theo who first noticed they were gone.

“Wouldn’t you know they’d disappear,” said Kirsten, peering out the front door. “With the car coming in half an hour, wouldn’t you know!”

“We’ll fan out,” said Minnie. “I’ll check the basement. They were looking at the old Christmas decorations this morning.”

“I’ll check upstairs,” Erica said. “Theo, you check the yard.”

She glanced perfunctorily into the guest room, the study, the bathroom. The door to her mother and father’s bedroom was closed. She knocked gently and then turned the knob. The door did not open, but as if by some confusion of cause and effect, the telephone rang.

Erica rattled the door. The phone rang again. She raced into the study and snatched the receiver off the hook. “Hello?”

“This is Mrs. Hanson, across the street. I see the children are out on your roof. I hate to butt in, but I thought you should know.”

Though she flew downstairs, Erica was the last person to reach the yard. A little crowd of neighbors had joined Kirsten and Minnie and Theo and her mother. The children were dancing at the edge of the roof that slanted over the sun porch. Anatole fanned the air with his arms; a giant patchwork of feathers, scarfed to his wrists, rippled green and scarlet and blue.

“My turn,” yelled Joan. “My turn to fly.”

“Don’t jump!” called Kirsten. “John’s bringing the ladder.”

A clatter silenced them all. The top of the ladder leaned itself on the opposite edge of the roof. As John’s head appeared over the eaves Joan shouted, “Fly, Anatole! Here they come!”

Anatole gave a loud yell, and flapping his useless wings, he sailed off the roof into the evergreens below.

“Not a scratch on any of them,” said her mother. “Not a scratch.”

The weasel-faced young man driving the limousine shook his head.

“Kids have nine lives,” he observed sagely.

Erica felt faint, as if locked in a capsule. A warm breeze rocked the heads of the trees outside.

“Where’s John?” said Anatole.

“He never goes to funerals any more,” her mother answered.

The car turned onto Washington Avenue and Erica sat up, alert. Her father had always taken this route when he drove Kirsten and her to school, past the Presbyterian church, past the turreted houses on Mansion Street and the gardens gone to ruin around them.

“I don’t suppose you saw the write-up about my husband in the paper?” her mother asked the driver. “All the children’s names were in it.”

“I missed it,” said the driver tragically.

And then, after a silence, he said, “The corner of Market and State streets, isn’t it? I’ll let you off at the front entrance.”

The car drew up to the curb and the driver scurried to let them out. They huddled awkwardly in their dark clothes in the middle of the sidewalk while shoppers eddied around them. The doors of the church stood open. Students lounged in the park across the street, and over the drugstore a rock band wailed. It was a bright, sunny day. Erica looked nervously at the children, washed and combed and sweating.

“I guess you kids haven’t seen a dead person before, have you?” Kirsten said.

“I have,” said Danny. “On TV.”

“That doesn’t count,” said Joan.

“Come on,” Erica urged her mother. “Let’s go in.”

As they entered the church even the children grew quiet. From the vestibule Erica could see the coffin, heaped with red roses.

“We’re early,” said Kirsten. “Nobody’s here.”

Erica took Theo’s arm, and they moved in procession down the aisle.

“Why, look—over by the window,” her mother whispered. “There’s Frank Pederson.”

They all looked. A slim, gray-haired man was just sitting down.

“Who is it?” asked Minnie.

“Frank Pederson. He’s not anybody important, but he always loved Hal. He only took one course with him,” she chattered nervously.

They arrived at the steps of the altar where Erica had knelt, angel-winged, in Christmas pageants. She dropped Theo’s arm and looked into the casket, past the white satin pillow with its gilt inscription, “From the Grandchildren,” pinned to the lining of the lid. She looked at her father’s face, her face close to his face, both astonished.

“It’s Grandpa, all right,” whispered Joan, “but he looks like a dummy.”

“I want to touch him,” said Erica’s mother. “I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t touch him.”

Her hand caressed his cheek. In the light of the stained glass her silver wedding band winked. An old notebook ring, Erica always called it after the engraved flowers had worn off. Her mother had let her wear it sometimes for a treat.

Erica reached out and touched her father’s forehead. The makeup on his skin had rubbed into his hair. Over her shoulder she saw the guests arriving. The music pumped out from an invisible place behind the pulpit, and a large, bald man in black robes stood up at the lectern and snapped on the light.

Her mother motioned toward him. “That’s Reverend Hurd,” she said.

“Theo, stay with me,” said Erica, but Mr. Metzger stepped between them.

“Pallbearers on the right, family on the left. The front row.”

Sitting next to her mother, Erica rested her chin on her son’s head and fixed her eyes on her father’s profile, the sharp nose and the high forehead jutting above the satin lining.

“‘In my father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you,’” the minister intoned.

Erica listened. Yes, there was enough room in her father’s house, always enough for whoever wanted to sleep there.

Reverend Hurd closed his Bible.

“Is that all?” whispered Anatole.

“Now he says the Meditation,” Erica whispered back.

In the world of clocks, the carillon was chiming the half hour.

“‘We live with death, and die not in a moment. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying. We cannot hope to live so long as our names, as some have done in their persons. Our fathers find their graves in our short memories.’”

The pages sighed, fluttered, and turned. Her mother was staring stonily ahead of her.

“‘The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register of God, not in the record of man. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality.’”

The voice rose on all sides of her. Erica felt people leaning forward to hear him.

“‘But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever.’”

From the car they observed the mourners leaving the church, walking quickly past them.

“There’s Mrs. Bergman,” exclaimed her mother, and waved. “And Mr. Nutt and Mrs. Hanson!”

She waved again. They all waved except Theo.

“Nobody notices us,” Minnie said.

“Is that Frank Pernell? Let’s call to him,” said Kirsten.

Ahead of them, a policeman gunned his motorcycle and the hearse slowly pulled out into traffic.

“Time to go,” Theo said.

The family passed the park. Students on the curb waiting to cross glanced at them with mild interest. An old man in a slouch hat grimaced impatiently.

“In the old days,” said Minnie, “men would have taken off their hats when they saw a hearse.”

Like actors in a theater of silence, the family glided through the busy streets, past the farmers’ market and the trading-stamp redemption center, past the railroad station, past the cement works, past the broken houses and dirt yards of the poor. A black man leaning on a shovel gazed at them.

This was the edge of town; now they drove high into the green hills. The dogwood flared like white fires built all through the woods, their trunks so thin they seemed a shower of petals caught in the act of falling. Forsythia and honeysuckle burst forth on both sides of the road, and far off the black willows were marching across the field, marking the path of the river.

“When I die,” said Theo, “throw my ashes in a mountain stream.”

“I’d like an angel on my grave,” said Erica. “I don’t care what happens to me, but I want to be all in one place.”

Suddenly Danny began to sob. Kirsten folded his head against her shoulder.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered. “Grandpa lived a good life. A good life. And he’s gone to heaven. I know he has.”

As the black car drove out of sight her mother gave a little gasp.

“I forgot to buy anything to drink! People will be stopping by.” She mashed five dollars into Erica’s palm. “Theo, run out and get a bottle of something fancy.”

“You can take my Volkswagen,” Minnie said.

“Erica,” her mother whispered, “go with him and make sure he doesn’t speed.”

“We’ll get the best,” said Theo. “You can count on me.”

They drove down the quiet street into the green cathedral of the elms, turned onto Washington Avenue, and passed the drugstore and the bookshop.

“Let’s try Paccino’s,” said Theo. “It’s the closest.”

Though she did not drink, Erica loved to study the bottles: the golden fish on the bottles of Moselle, and the blue nuns, the red barons, the kings bearing grapes and wands on the bottles of Liebfraumilch. The mysterious city, yellow as an old map, on the squat green flasks of Mateus rosé.

“Where’s your best sherry?” asked Theo.

The man eyed him up and down.

“The imported sherries are on your left. A fifth of Harvey’s Bristol Cream sells for about eleven dollars. It’s the best in the world.”

“We’ll take a gallon,” said Theo.

“Did you say a gallon?” the man said.

“A gallon,” repeated Theo. “Didn’t you say it’s the best in the world?”

As Erica laid her mother’s five on the counter, she saw that Theo was emptying his wallet. The senselessness of it filled her with sudden anger.

“Theo,” she exclaimed, “that money is all we brought with us. How will we get home?”

But the salesman was already wrapping the sherry, medallioned with gold lions, elegant as a reliquary.