CHAPTER 8

Claire took Floozie up to the woods and let her run around a little bit. It did Claire good as well. The air was fresher here, although the leaves had fallen. The bleak trees cut sharp and crooked lines against one another. Already the light was dim, and this only late afternoon. It was so still. She followed Floozie a little bit in off the road, but she didn’t like to go too far. Danger didn’t fascinate Claire. She was put off by those wild dogs. And, of course, the unlikely but persistent fear of Mrs. Dixon’s presence. There were some horseback riders coming through the path, so Claire let herself wander a wee bit farther in. Then a jogger flew past. An elderly Bavarian couple bummeled by. Those two were always in the woods; they walked in any weather, looking for pilzen or firewood or wild-flowers, according to the season. Claire saw them just about every time she came in here. They were reassuringly constant fixtures in this always-changing place. Claire waved and the couple nodded.

She was glad she had Floozie as an excuse to get away from it all, if only for fifteen minutes. Floozie glanced up from her reverie. She was happy to be here, too, she demonstrated with a wag of her tail. Claire wandered over towards “Make-out Rock,” a monstrous relic from no-one-knew-when and just about everyone’s past. This forest was gaping with glacier holes. The rock probably came from the same era. Way taller than a child it was, and even she still had to reach up to hoist herself up onto it. She looked down at Floozie sniffing along the path, and her eyes stopped at the top of the stone stairway, just visible from her perch on this great rock that was hers and Tree’s old meeting place. From here they had planned to run away, she remembered. She supposed she’d come here for that reason now. As children, they had planned to meet here at midnight and take a Greyhound bus to—where was it? Florida? How they would have found their way to a bus station was beyond them, or at least her. Tree had probably had it all figured out, even back then. Claire had, of course, slept through that nocturnal appointment, never meaning to keep it anyway, just enjoying the thought of hurling such preadolescent defiance at her parents.

Claire wondered if Tree really had snuck out and waited for her, as she always claimed to have done. For Tree had always revelled in her enterprising truancy, had even stolen a gaudy tin biscuit box from her mother and filled it with treasure and buried it just here. So they would have something “to fall back on.” She remembered there was a great deal of trouble from Tree’s mother over that treasure. Tree had sworn her to secrecy or she would “really get killed.” Tree’s parents had both been old, even then, and sickly. Although knowing now what she hadn’t then, Claire figured that they might have both been heavy drinkers. She could remember the smell of stale old people at Tree’s house, that and no other children—a privileged, narrow smell that took her and Tree straight to Tree’s bedroom, no stopping for cookies or popsicles from a nosy, nice mother. Mother-daughter communication amounted to just a call through on the way upstairs and a nod from behind a half-closed curtain amid the drone of muffled afternoon television. And there’d been nobody, Claire remembered distinctly, to bother their play.

She had a quick, fleeting memory of Carmela. Carmela? she asked herself. Yes, something with Carmela, angry and in tears, screaming at the both of them. It was … no, wait, it was because they had taken her paper dolls, or paper doll clothes. Oh, well. With Carmela it had always been something. Her list of atrocities was so long, Claire thought affectionately of her crazy sister.

She looked at her watch. If she went now, she could stop in at rehearsal. She could take a few shots for them as well. Maybe they could use them for the bulletin board outside the church. Or for the playbill. She marched from the woods with the eager enjoyment of someone who’d just gotten her good shot of oxygen, plopped Floozie into what was now “her” bag, and waited at the red light to cross Park Lane South. The traffic was a blur. Suddenly Claire had to go back. She turned and walked up the hill to where she’d stood before. It was just an absurd chance—a shot in the dark—but, she went over to the spot they’d just left, dropped to her knees, and started to dig. Floozie, thrust to the ground without sufficient reason, stood baffled with her feet still in the purse.

Claire huffed and heaved. The ground wasn’t frozen yet and she made good headway. She put a hefty dent in the earth and then she sat back on her heels and inspected her work. Aside from some pine cones, fossilized Hershey’s chocolate wrappers, and a beer bottle cap, there was nothing. But of course there was nothing. What had she expected, a perfectly intact tin box, unbothered by time and six neighborhoods full of enterprising children? She looked up at the black bony treetops, wood etchings against the purple sky. She loved a winter sky. So cold and clear and full of stars. The Bavarian couple passed by again, this time exchanging glances. Claire flogged herself mentally. It was just because of that letter, Tree’s last living letter and what she had written about “revisiting the secret places of their childhood.” And, “only she would know what she meant.” Well, she didn’t know what the hell Tree had meant, and she was getting a little darn tired of making a jackass out of herself. She stood up and brushed herself off. Her hands were filthy. “Let’s get out of here,” she told the dog out loud, as much to reassure herself as the puppy, and they marched down the pretty, now-dark hill, not daring to look over at the pine forest where the notorious Mrs. Dixon had not that long ago brutally murdered two children.

The auditorium at Holy Child converted magically into a gym and so Carmela and her cast seldom got to practice there. Rehearsals were held at the Union Congregational Church Community Room, a wonderful old place, one enormous space surrounded by wooden balconies from start to finish, its deep stage framed in walnut carvings. There were small milk-glass windows near the ceiling that let in shoots of street-lamp light.

“These are Protestants here, Floozie,” Claire explained the importance of anonymity in this place to the dog. “They’ll not take any bending of the rules.” It wasn’t like over at the Catholic Church, where the decrees were so precise with dogmatic rigidity that they tended to skate majestically through with a kind-hearted, understanding look the other way. You didn’t have to tell Floozie twice about the complexities of the human condition. When necessary, as now, she obligingly made herself scarce, burrowing cozily against her old friend the Olympus, and she went accommodatingly to sleep.

Carmela was striding importantly back and forth across the stage. One thing about Carmela, she had the posture and the presence of an aggrieved mother superior. And she had, Claire noted—uh oh, look out—one hand on her hip. Claire made herself invisible and sat down in one of the darkened back rows where she could watch the rehearsal unobserved. The Seven Dorks, Carmela’s rock group, seemed to have been recruited from the hallways of Alcoholics Anonymous, where, indeed, they had been assembled. They milled about, happy house painters-turned-actors, smoking cigarettes and drinking lots and lots of coffee. They had their shiny, fifty-four-cup percolator on the card table there, red light reassuringly set to On. There were things to eat laid out as well. Lots of Boston eclairs and the more sensible carbuncle crullers. Carmela’s scornful authoritativeness didn’t much affect these guys. Oh, they did as they were told, shuffling back and forth into position the minute they were instructed, but they didn’t take her rantings seriously, having faced their own tremendous burdens of self at one time or another in the recovery process. Each one of them had hit incontrovertible bottom and knew who he wasn’t. So each was also, somehow, free. And—to Carmela—alarmingly unafraid. Although she badgered her cast members, Carmela also had a wary respect for them, an innate knowledge that you don’t pick a real fight with someone who has nothing to lose.

She also didn’t like the look of the things they read. Good things by important authors. The Will to Happiness by Hutschnecker. Marguerite Duras in French. In French? She’d picked the book up just to make sure. Yes. She’d dropped it like a hot potato. Let’s see. What else? Oh. The Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen. Here were men, who, despite their obvious weaknesses, thought profound and wonderful thoughts. So, beneath their dissipated bodies in plain, plaid shirts and jeans from Sears, they might even be judging her. And what was this? She nudged the pile of books to get a look at the last. Harold Robbins? Carmela snorted, reassured, and clicked her gum.

She looked down at her dialogue and wondered what, if anything, she was doing. There wasn’t enough action in her play, she knew that. But she didn’t know about things like action. Claire did. Zinnie certainly did. She only knew about motivation. Different kinds of motivation in different kinds of people. Or the lack of it. So she would stay with that. If her womanliness was a failure—she looked down at her useless, flat belly—and her marriage was a failure—she looked mournfully across the stage to Stefan, his cool blue eyes pretending to read a magazine but riveted on that idiotic Portia McTavish … (Oh, she was an idiot all right: She carried an imitation Gucci bag for all the world to see.) Anyway—if all those things about herself were no good, then the least she could do for her long-ago vanished self-respect was to make this little play, out in the neverland of Queens, a good play. A play that would stand up to the scrutiny of, if no one else, herself.

At the same moment, Claire was also watching Stefan, sitting there in the second row behind a copy of Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair? thought Claire. Good grief. He was majestically sprawled out and dapper in his navy blue and camel, had just dropped benevolently by on his way out to Kennedy Airport, supporting his wife in her artistic endeavor, he was, while nonchalantly smoking a Davidoff cigarillo from Havana. They really were well suited, those two, she thought, then stopped herself. No need to be catty.

Zinnie wasn’t here; she wouldn’t be off duty until six, and then she always went straight back to Claire’s house first to look in on Michaelaen. It didn’t matter that she was starring in Carmela’s play. At least not to her it didn’t. She would yawn and laugh, unimpressed. “All right, all right, I’m coming,” she would say. When on any given afternoon you’re sending people off to prison for seven years, and then you’re watching someone else get carried out in a body bag to boot, well, your priorities become simply and carefully organized. Zinnie also didn’t much care for the rest of the cast. She’d locked up nicer whores plenty of times, she’d told Claire out of the side of her mouth, as they’d stood there watching Portia recite her lines. The Dorks were all right, she’d decided although she had a funny feeling one of them was wanted for mail fraud. Anyway, Zinnie wasn’t here now. And where was Narayan? Claire looked around uneasily. Wasn’t he supposed to be here, too? She guessed not, then.

Ah. Portia McTavish was taking the stage. She had most of the lines. Zinnie had refused to memorize very much. “Look,” she’d said, “if you want me in your friggin’ play you can cut down my dialogue to the minimum or I won’t be in it. It’s as simple as that, so you can take it or leave it.”

“We’ll take it.” Carmela had slammed the script down onto the table, shutting up the objecting Stefan. She believed her sister. One word from Stefan and she’d up and leave. Carmela needed Zinnie and she knew it. It wasn’t a great play she had written. It was just a little story no better or worse than any other story out there, but it was brought to life by Zinnie’s magical talent. Now all they had to do was pray she wouldn’t be forced to go make an arrest the day of the performance or she’d be late and God knew what would happen. Stefan was inviting all his snooty friends, and although Carmela had been the one to insist he did, she was worried. What if the show fell on its face and she were made the laughingstock? There were moments she wished she’d never left her cushy magazine job and her nasty column. She sighed. At least then she was the critic and not the other way around. Oh well. Oh God. What were they doing to her dialogue?

“Script!” she cried, and the script girl came running, a girl from the high school Carmela had chosen for her docile nature and her uniform. She liked uniforms. They all did in her family, she remembered. Carmela stood center stage, tapping her head with a yellow number-two pencil. Portia McTavish puffed her sumptuous hair back from her face and perched seductively atop the green velvet settee that Stan had bolted to the floor there for her. It had had to be bolted because Carmela had contrived a scene where the Dorks toppled it over at the end of “Sixteen Tons,” landing prettily in a propositional position at Portia/Snow White’s feet. Carmela had finally decided upon a name for Snow White. It was Lola Schneewittchen.

“Lola Schneewittchen?!!” Portia had cried, horrified. “That’s not a good name!”

“That’s the idea.” Carmela had filed her nails under Portia’s nose. “It’s what you call a spoof.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She’d whirled on Carmela, smelling a rat.

“It means,” Zinnie’d told her, “you keep the new name or you go back to Snow White and you dye your hair black or wear a wig.”

Portia instinctively, protectively grasped her cascade of honey-blond hair. “I’m an actress,” she’d sniffed. “I can make the most out of any name.”

“That’s the spirit.” Stefan had winked at Carmela. “A real trouper.”

This was supposed to have been a dress rehearsal, Claire knew, but the only one who seemed to be in costume was Lola Schneewittchen. Low-cut, off-the-shoulder, and matching the sofa, Portia’s dress made her look no more than a bust of ivory, posed there with her hubba-hubba shoulders going ever so slightly back and forth for all the world to see. It was disconcerting. At least it was annoying Carmela, Claire could tell, what with Stefan sitting there pretending to read.

Down the center aisle came Freddy. He was laden with costumes on hangers and in ripped-up dry-cleaner bags. He could barely see over the bundle as he tripped and grumbled his way down the dark and littered center aisle to the front of the hall. “Why the hell didn’t you send one of your good-for-nothing actors to help me?” he snarled.

“Why didn’t you get one of your useless waiters to go along with you?” Carmela yelled back. “You’re an hour late!”

“The seamstress was late finishing! I stood around that godforsaken dry cleaners on Jamaica Avenue just waiting and with nothing to do! Nothing! With not even a telephone. Christ!” he rasped, struggling up to the stage and dumping the costumes all over Portia.

“That seamstress was your idea,” Carmela followed him with her pointer finger out.

“Watch out!” Portia opened her delicate hands to the air and wriggled free from the pile.

“Well, you see what I’ve got here,” he shouted at her. “Why don’t you try being a little bit accommodating? Who are you, all of a sudden, Her Majesty?”

Portia pulled herself up to her full haughty height and said, “No, dear, we all know the queen here is you.”

“Well, if you know it”—Freddy whirled around and spat back without missing a beat—“then please act like it. ’Cause if you don’t, I’ll just hack off your eyelashes. And heaven knows they’re skimpy enough as it is.” Carmela clapped her hands, delighted.

“That’s it. That’s just the tone I want, Portia. Let’s try it again and I want you to do the last scene just that way, can you do that?” You couldn’t blame Portia; Freddy had walked right into that one. Knowing Freddy, he’d probably done it on purpose.

Portia shrugged and made a face. “Well, I can, of course I can, if you’re sure that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Just fine.” Freddy stamped his foot. “And what about my costumes?”

“Help Freddy get them over to the dressing room,” Carmela ordered Grumpy and Sneezy. She pushed them out of the way. “Kinkaid! Kinkaid, wake up and put that spotlight on Lola Schneewittchen. The purple one. Kinkaid!”

Kinkaid? Claire marveled at Carmela’s aggressive powers of organization. Why indeed not Kinkaid? Retired electrical company employee. Who else? Free labor for Carmela. All workers got a piece of the door. And it would give him something to do, to be a part of this, and make him feel useful. He only had to set it up and show the high school kids what to do. His name would appear stoutly on the program. Claire remembered Iris von Lillienfeld mournfully. Iris would be at the window now, waiting for Kinkaid to come before the leek pie was cold. Was there no end to women’s suffering, she wondered, enjoying herself despite herself. You had to hand it to Carmela, she smiled in the dark; she knew what would work and what wouldn’t. An appreciative laugh rang out from the crew over something Lola Schneewittchen had just said.

Carmela nodded her head. “And wait one-two-three—” She held one hand in the air.”—for the laugh—not too long now—don’t let the silence hit—just take it three counts into the laugh. Piano.” She signalled to the piano player with the other hand, “Begin,” and the song started up. Claire watched her admiringly. If Carmela were jealous of Portia, at least she used it to her own advantage.

The dog moved suddenly around with urgency. “Oh, all right,” Claire whispered and they snuck out the side door to the garden. It was thick with grass and bushes and Claire made herself comfortable on a stone bench between a yew and a Sunday services announcement sign while Floozie gadded about. Claire raised her long brown skirt up to her knees and inspected her naked legs above their old Frye boots in the cold lamplight. She had just recently allowed herself the luxury of not shaving, and had accomplished soft and downy limbs, something she had never had before. All her adolescent and adult life she had thought it necessary to remove what was hers. But now she had defied the dictate. She was at last complete. She had—she used Andrew Dover’s phrase—no remorse. Funny thing to say about your feelings towards a dead wife, that, she mulled, unless you’d killed her yourself. But then maybe not. She checked her suspicions, remembering the police had been quite happy with his alibi, remembering her mother’s and Swamiji’s exchanges of concerned looks. She would not allow suspicion to become paranoia. She breathed calmly in and out. What had been his alibi, after all? He’d been showing, no, he’d gone to look at an empty house with Portia McTavish, hadn’t he? Claire made a face to herself. Those two could very easily be in cahoots. Of course, the cops weren’t stupid. They could figure who was up to no good with whom as well as she could. But they didn’t know any more than anyone else about what had happened that terrible night. There was no evidence of foul play, was there? And treachery isn’t always planned. Lots of times it is a horrible, timely accident whose result benefits someone, as in a sin of omission. It was clear to her if to no one else that Andrew couldn’t be happier over the death of his wife. He could hardly keep it jarred up, he was bubbling over with such enthusiasm. Claire sucked the evening air in greedily and grasped her healthy knees. She was alive. And Tree’s young body lay confined to her grave just across Victory Field and the groaning uncaring traffic rushing up and down Woodhaven Boulevard.

The door she’d come out of opened up, revealing a sliver of yellow. She thought for a moment the large frame to be dealt with was Andrew’s again, but it wasn’t. It was Stefan’s. When she saw him like that, away from Carmela, her first thought was that she ought to make some borscht. That was one thing Stefan swore nobody made like she did, and he was right. Nobody did. Fresh with dill and carrots and dahl, was her soup. She would slice up mushrooms and baby lima beans and barley, and add lots of onions, garlic, and black pepper. A lovely dollop of sour cream on top and croutons fried in butter were the finishing touch.

“What are you doing all alone out here?” Stefan smiled, delighted to see her.

“I just thought I must make you some borscht,” she said. “You made me think of it.”

He sat down beside her. “It’s certainly cold enough.”

“I like it.” She breathed out to demonstrate she could blow tidy puffs of steam.

“So do I.”

There was an undercurrent here. What kind, Claire wasn’t sure, but she admitted grudgingly to herself that she did like to be alone with Stefan now and again. Not to flirt. It was just that Carmela was so consistently uptight whenever the two of them were together that usually they both chose not to talk nor even to look at each other in her presence lest they risk the inevitable squall of silence that would follow.

Rhythmic music filtered out from the hall.

“I hate that song,” Stefan said.

“How can anybody hate ‘Let Yourself Go’?” She looked at him, astonished.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said.

“I was just thinking how terrific it is.” She put her arms out and did a little shimmy-shimmy à la Ginger Rogers with the top of her body. “Really, Stefan. I defy anyone, anyone but you, that is, to sit still during that song.”

“It’s not that,” he bristled, “but you can’t have a musical and have each song come from another era. It’s outrageous. She’s got the thirties, she’s got the sixties, she’s got the eighties. It’s not done. She’s got that song from the opera and the other one from the Temptations. She’s even got that sentimental Disney thing! I mean for God’s sake!”

“Well, maybe that’s the fun of it. And it works. Everything fits. More or less.”

“Era, yes. Category, no. You can’t put a tap-dance number together with ‘Stormy Weather.’”

“That’s Zinnie’s favorite song. She sings it great.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Who says you can’t?”

“Oh. That’s what she says. Now you sound like her. You’ve all got that stubborn Irish streak, you girls.”

“Well, I think it’s a great idea,” Claire retorted. “It’s enjoyable. There’s nothing wrong with enjoyable, is there, Stefan? Or does it interfere with your introspective Polish streak?”

Uh-oh. She knew that flinch. As in control as Stefan was, as able and ready as he always was to dish it out, he couldn’t take much of it himself. His posture would become ramrod-straight, and you’d have to ply him with vodka if you wanted any more conversation. “Come on,” she gave him a bossy, friendly whack, the kind of blow with which she’d seen an Australian photomodel girlfriend bop the male models when she wanted them to play along for a shot. The technique had always worked for her.

Strangely enough it seemed to work for Claire, too. She saw some glimmer of participation reenter Stefan’s blue eyes. Then, across the yard, behind the trees, the other door opened and Andrew Dover came outside with Carmela. Oh, thought Claire, him. And she was just about to call out and wave to her sister when Andrew turned back and—what was he doing? Was he kissing her sister? For a moment she wasn’t sure, and then Andrew’s hands were gone and then they were holding Carmela’s face. Claire almost slid to the ground on behalf of Stefan, who sat on, who didn’t move an iota, though she could feel his heart like a stone in the courtyard. They both stayed frozen still.

“And she wonders why I won’t let her get pregnant,” Stefan snorted.

Claire groped for what to say. “I’m sure it didn’t mean anything,” she mumbled.

He turned his body to her. “Did you think they were kissing?”

“They weren’t?”

“They were snorting coke.”

“You’re right,” Claire realized, remembering the glint of what must have been a shiny box. “For a minute, I thought …” She had to laugh at herself. She was so out of the scene she thought all foul play had to do with procreation. Drugs had never occurred to her.

Andrew and Carmela slipped back inside the hall just as quickly as they’d come out.

“Tell me, Claire,” Stefan said after some moments’ pause. “Have you ever thought about divorce?”

Claire said nothing. There seemed nothing appropriate to say. They sat silently on, keeping each other’s vigil. There were cats out, making their horrendous prowling address. Sometimes, she did, she thought about divorce. But really, only when Johnny’d hurt her again and she didn’t know what to do. When he would want to go off and play cards or pool, and she would hole up on their bed with her books. He would be down there by the phone, weighing the nonchalance of her voice—“Not at all dear. Go ahead”—against the atmosphere that would rattle with bitterness behind each word.

For after all, she couldn’t go anywhere, with a child fast asleep. And even if she could, it wasn’t she Johnny wanted to be with just now. It didn’t really bother her; once he was gone she was fine. But she couldn’t bear his loud, sneaky precautions. “Can I get you anything, Claire?” She always knew it was cards or pool when he said that so nicely, “Can I get you anything, Claire?” But, no, she really didn’t want a divorce, even at those times. She was just sulking about not getting all his attention. And cards or pool (or, nowadays, a horse) were anyway better than a woman.

“No,” she lied to Stefan after a while. “I don’t ever think about divorce.” It wouldn’t do to pretend she were emotionally free. She felt sorry for him, and she could probably even have an affair with him, if she were one for affairs. But she wasn’t, and that was that. She wished she could cheer him up. But there was no cheering him now. He would have to stew in his own juice, would Stefan. The way she and everyone else did. Would. Must. Oh, the world was a sorry place.

“You know,” he said, suddenly, relighting his stagnant cigarillo. “I was told when I married your sister that she was bad blood. I might have listened.”

“Really? Who told you that, your filthy servants?”

“Pardon?”

“Not for nothing, Stefan, and I’m sure you are hurt and that’s why you say something like that, but I don’t see your family about, nor have I ever. And if it’s a question of blood, perhaps yours is tainted as well.”

He laughed, a hearty genuine laugh, and she felt better.

“Now about that borscht,” she said.

He pulled back. “You are the most arbitrary person I’ve ever known,” he said scornfully.

It hadn’t bothered her what he’d said but how he’d said it. She wanted to know exactly what it was he meant, but he wouldn’t go on, just left it at that. Claire said nothing. She was just beginning to enjoy the music again herself, tapping her foot and thinking how nice it was. Stefan always made you feel like a jerk, he was good for that. Mary had always told them that charm was the ability to make someone else feel clever, feel good-looking, feel exceptional. Well, Stefan had that power, but it wasn’t really charm, because the minute he had you feeling that way, he’d pull your pants down with some other, more telling observation about you, some weakness he would weed out and call you on, and he would leave you there in the middle of the room like that. So it wasn’t charm he had. It was the power to demean. Claire felt suddenly very sorry indeed for her sister, and she marveled once again at the innate strength and gumption she must have had to take a chance like this with a husband like that.

Stefan, with his uncanny sense for discerning insurrection, leaned calmly over and kissed Claire’s downy cheek. Stung, she sat bolt upright and rattled the heel of her shoe. She wasn’t going to let him think he had enough power to really upset her, but she wouldn’t have disrespect toward her sister. She wouldn’t have it. She wiped her cheek with disgusted fingers and made as if to fling the kiss with her fingers to the grass. Stefan smiled, amused. Claire spat like a crosscountry trucker on top of the discarded kiss.

“You are wicked.” His eyes sparkled.

She knew she wasn’t, but she didn’t mind anyone thinking she was. She just sat there, and he began to tell her a story about when he was a little boy, some kilometers outside Krakow. She didn’t really listen. Stefan was always telling one heartwarming tales of his youth in the fields riding on the hay-laden horse carts, playing in the hallowed halls with inbred Tarnowian servants, visiting in the offices of friends of his father’s. He had told her once of a grand duke who had given him marzipan and then asked him to carry a clandestine message to his mother. And he had. At least he said he had. If there had really been a grand duke. Knowing Stefan, there had been. Which was why, she supposed, you didn’t just get up and walk off when he was speaking.

As he lit another match, she felt Stefan’s eyes on her dirty hands. Submissively, she put them in her pockets. It wasn’t that she didn’t find Stefan attractive. When they had gone out on a date together, she’d found herself looking him up and down as husband material, even though they’d never been intimate. They had so many things in common. All the things she valued so, those Swedish films and recycling and V. S. Pritchett. She and Johnny didn’t. Johnny made fun of all those things, whereas Stefan found them equally entrancing. So they were certainly more suited in that way.

Only, she remembered, the times when Stefan had come on to her more intently, with his opaque infusion of Parisian scent, she’d longed for the raw, rough smell of Johnny: all boy and tightened fists when he tried to make his way heroically through her outerwear, at the most splashed frugally with Old Spice, his one and only finishing touch. He made her laugh, did Johnny, because he was so pure, and he reminded her of herself before she’d run into and been run over by the big time. Her face softened even as she thought of him. Oh, yes, Johnny was tough and jaded. But only on the outside. Underneath, when you scraped away the callus there was a clear stream of integrity. Stefan, as diplomatic and smooth and polished and well-manicured as he was, Claire had the feeling if you took him apart, his callus would be wrapped and bitter inside, tight and careful as a walnut around his condescending heart.

Stefan’s family ring glinted in the lamplight. Or was it the moon that already gleamed? Oh, it was. She looked up sentimentally and remembered very clearly how she’d coveted the sense of history that went with that family ring. She was glad now that she hadn’t followed through. Oh, you were so much better off following your heart. Carmela said they had no contact whatsoever with his family and would never visit his family seat. There went the family jewels. Oh, well. Carmela had enough jewels. Although, Claire thought fleetingly, she hadn’t chosen to wear them much lately. Claire wondered why. It couldn’t be because of money. Claire remembered the weighty presence of wealth for which their home was so notorious. No, it couldn’t be because of money.

She chuckled to herself. She had imagined a very different life for herself back then, seen herself quite another way. A more pronounced way, full of chocolate. With no swinging banging gate to run out and hitch shut in the middle of a blow. For then she had met Johnny. And then she knew you don’t choose the one you love, love chooses you, and irrevocably. She looked over at Stefan, unkindly inspecting his spotless manicure, and she was sorry for him. She gathered her skirt to stand to go but Stefan, not to be left sitting there, stood first. Floozie, who had sensed Claire’s movement as a sign of departure, ran toward her but stopped when Stefan stood. Stefan was so tall. Claire hated it when Floozie shivered like that. She looked so infernally unattractive. Claire went over to the little ragamuffin and stuffed the dog affectionately into her bag. Stefan held the door open for her and she headed to the back of the theater. She would leave by the front way, the way she’d come in.

“Claire,” Stefan said from behind her, and she turned.

He held her tortoiseshell combs in his hand. “You dropped these,” he said, and she took them back, returning them to her coiffure. Her fingers, passing close to her face, still held the fragrance of the earth she’d dug up just before, and now the newer, lingering cloy of patchouli remained from Stefan’s milky kiss.

When Claire went home, she parked in the street to let Johnny in the driveway first. That way she’d get out in the morning when she wanted, without having to wake him. She walked into the back yard—her back yard, she thought possessively. She leaned against the wooden house and watched the yard in the cold starlit darkness. Floozie went over to the garage. It was a nice garage, with a loft in it from the days it had been a barn or carriage house. “Don’t do anything over there,” she warned the dog, but Floozie was sniffing at the door. Someone had left the light on in there. She clicked her tongue, then realized someone was inside and the door was ajar. Without moving from her spot, she craned her neck and saw a man—she thought it was a man—bent over a pile of something, going through a big old box.

She grabbed hold of the shovel propped against the clothesline pole and backed away. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel the blood pumping into her throat. Then she realized that it was Mr. Kinkaid.

“Mr. Kinkaid,” she yelled, angry and relieved. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Kinkaid looked up, perplexed. “I’m looking for my Vernier caliper, that’s what I’m doing.”

“Your Vernier caliper?” She stalked over to him. “That’s good. I thought we bought this place, to quote the former owner, ‘hook, line, and sinker.’”

“That don’t mean I can’t come and get my stuff,” he frowned, annoyed.

“Oh, really? Next time I come home the stained-glass window upstairs will be on its way to Florida, I suppose.”

He looked up and held the hanging light-bulb towards her, squinting. “My wife gave me that Vernier caliper, fifty years ago. It measures to one thousandth of an inch. You want it?”

“Of course I don’t want it. You just scared me. I didn’t know who was there, that’s all. I never thought it was you.”

“Who’d ja think I was, Mrs. Dixon? Didja?” he grinned horribly. She was glad Swamiji and the warmth of her household were just inside the back door.

“Look. Find your thingamajig and scram, okay? And don’t go touching any of Johnny’s stuff. He doesn’t like anyone touching his stuff.”

“Ohhhh no, we all none of us don’t like nobody go touching our stuff,” he mocked, with his tongue out like a nasty little kid. “Say!” he stopped. “Lookee here.” He sat down on his haunches and picked up a pair of well-oiled, good rose clippers. The short, wrenchy kind, the only ones that are any good to anyone. “Why, these are Grace’s,” he said, struck. He petted them softly. His growly old face turned into some other man’s. A fellow who loved his wife, must have lived for his wife, because Claire had never seen the old boy with a modicum of kindliness to him, and now here he was on her garage floor in the dirt and she thought he was a little bit all right. Or you could see how he must have been. Poor old coot.

“Grace,” he said, “used to keep these in her basket. Hooboy, she loved that basket. She had the gloves, the hat, the trowel, the woiks. You see those flowers out there? The size of them? She’s got them in two different series, so they come up every other year. Them foxglove only come up once every other year, see. So you have to time them. Grace? My wife? She had it all figured out. She had the yellow ones coming up the one year and the pink ones the other. Her hollyhocks were eight, ten feet high.” He shook his head. “A lotta woik.”

Claire nodded appreciatively. “I was just admiring her work,” she said. “Just before I saw you.”

“Really?” he whirled around like a dervish. “She must be here.”

“Who?”

“Grace.”

“Oh. Mr. Kinkaid, would you like to come inside for a cup of tea?”

“Now? No, not now. Too much to do.”

Claire remembered Iris and her leek pie.

“Your sister Carmela’s got me buildin’ her a whole new setta row lights.”

“Ah.”

He laughed. A hollow cackle that filled the littered garage with strange and gone-forever memories.

“Well. I’ll be going in the house now. Floozie, come on.”

For the life of her, she didn’t know why she backed out of there, but she did, leaving them to themselves, Grace and Mr. Kinkaid. And the rest of their things.

Claire stood for a moment at the back door and looked in before she turned the knob. Stan and Swamiji sat at the kitchen table. Dharma sat on Swamiji’s lap. A long sloping row of dominoes went across the pinewood table. Mary stood, her calves in laddered stockings, at the old gas stove. All Claire wanted to do was take off her boots and climb up into an easy chair. The door opened to her touch but she was too delighted to be inside to bother carrying on that no one had locked up. Stan anyway always had a gun on him. Some tiny James Bond thing he was extremely fond of. Mary, God bless her, threw her arms up into the air as though she hadn’t seen Claire for years. She plucked the coats up off Claire’s chair. Her throne, Johnny called it, because no one else would have a big wing chair in the kitchen, but she loved it. He’d never brought the rocker downstairs for her, so she’d lugged this thing up from the cellar with Michaelaen and here it stayed, back from the table, right beside what would one day be the hearth. She’d found a pie-crust table at a yard sale to put beside it, and an old-fashioned tall reading lamp that was only ever on when she was at home. She climbed into the chair gratefully now. Stan stood with the coats Mary had dropped into his arms. He looked, puzzled, about him. There were coats in every room lately, whole lots of them. Nobody knew where to put them and no one wanted to bring the subject up. That would entail an enterprising solution, and no one wanted that job just now; hanging a pole from one end of a closet to the other. The measuring. The wedges that would first have to be nailed in.

“Stanley, put them in the dining room.” Mary rattled her face imperiously at Stan, and he did as he was told. The room was full of the grand smell of sauerbraten and red cabbage. “Oh, it’s nothing,” Mary tut-tutted, noticing Claire’s pleasure. “I’ve had it soaking since last week. Don’t you go giving it another thought, now. If I didn’t use it tonight, I’d have to put it in the freezer. Sure, no one’s been coming over to eat by me since the kids are all here at your place,” Mary admitted with a mixture of relief and regret. “Looks like my own mother’s place in here, now,” she sniffed, admiring the warm rosy glow that came from the tobacco-stained lampshade from long ago.

“Oh, Mom,” Claire said, pleased. She was a girl again, content to be curled up and taken care of. “Where’s Anthony?”

“They’re just doing the end of their Nintendo game and then they’ll be down.”

“Freddy fixed up the Nintendo?”

“He did.” Mary beamed proudly. She would never get over the fact that she had the great fortune of having someone in her own family who could fix up computers and “all that.”

“I thought Freddy spent the afternoon at the dry cleaners? Oooh, look at this. You’ve got the dog’s dinner ready as well. Ma, you’re the best.”

“I am. I am that. One splendid mum.”

“I just ran into Kinkaid in the garage. You remember Mr. Kinkaid, Daddy, he used to work for the electric company? We bought the house from the varmint.”

“Oh, Kinkaid’s not so bad,” Stan said. “He’s lived in Richmond Hill longer than I have.”

“I haven’t got the dumplings, now,” Mary lamented. “I’ve only made the egg noodles.” “Egg noodles.” Swamiji’s eyes glowed at Claire. “I can eat those.”

“Yes.” Claire looked at Dharma on his lap. “You can.”

Swamiji, a vegetarian, was the picture of good health. He had hot Quaker Oats in a bowl every morning with fresh cream and honey and bananas. Then he would have a nice bowl of Brown Cow yogurt drizzled with honey and a topping glass of Tropicana. He was fine-boned as ever, but his belly had grown to a stretchedout, accessible, and cozy pot.

“Claire,” Dharma said, addressing her directly for the first time in both their lives. “Do you know you were named for the song ‘Au Claire de la Lune’?

Mary said, “We were telling Dharma the sins of our past.” She laughed.

“And,” Dharma said, gripping Swamiji’s teapot-handle ears dotingly, “do you know what the name ‘Dharma’ means?”

Mary looked at her, interested. “No.”

“It means religion.”

Swamiji nodded. “And moral duty.”

“And,” Dharma added, covering his mouth with her hand, “a way of life.”

“Yes,” Swamiji said.

“No kidding. I never gave it a second thought,” Mary marveled. “I guess I thought it was Italian. Like Parma.”

“My mother,” Dharma said, “wanted to name me ‘Dharana,’ but she pointed to the wrong word on the page of holy words and the nurse copied ‘Dharma.’ Isn’t that a scream?”

“Well, what does ‘Dharana’ mean?”

“It means rapture,” Swamiji said.

“Also good,” said Claire.

“Oh, ‘Dharma’ is far and away the better name,” insisted Mary.

“You would think that.” Claire laughed, knowing as she did, that if her mother weren’t there she’d think it herself.

“Destiny did intervene,” said Swamiji. “You see, dharma is a Buddhist and Hindu word, that on which the law of truth and virtue is based.” He patted Dharma’s head.

“Zinnie’s name is Zenobia,” Mary said. “It’s Greek. ‘Having life from Jupiter,’ it means. Of course, all my girls’ second names are Mary. After Our Lady.”

Stan came back in. “I put the coats in the dining room,” he said. “Claire, you know there are a lot of jackets and coats in there already?”

“I know, Dad. Kinkaid sold off those lion-clawed wardrobes that used to be all over the house. I wish he’d left me just a couple of them.”

“The old fox,” Mary said.

“Ma. Could you see Mr. Kinkaid and Iris von Lillienfeld together?”

“Lord, no.” She threw the noodles into the sieve in the sink with a practiced dunk.

“Neither can I.”

“What a thought! Now where is Zinnie? She said she’d be here for supper and the noodles are done.”

“Calm yourself, calm yourself, calm yourself,” Swamiji stood, deposing Dharma. “I am setting the table and lickety split.”

Claire watched them all through dazed eyes. She knew she was there, but something had her looking at them through a feathery long lens. They were small and far away. She shivered and pulled her soft cardigan around her shoulders. She yawned. The telephone jangled.

“I’ll get it,” Anthony shouted from upstairs. Several moments passed while everyone craned their ears to hear who would be called. Finally: “Ma, pick up,” and Claire picked up.

“Hullo,” Claire said.

“Claire,” Johnny said.

“All right?”

“Wait till you hear this.”

“Where are you? It’s such a racket.”

“Oh. Don Peppe’s. Hang on. Shut up!”

“Johnny?” There was a shuffle and some arguing and then Johnny was back on the phone.

“Honey? You know what happened?”

“Johnny, how come you’re at Don Peppe’s?” Don Peppe’s was their restaurant. It was the place Johnny had officially proposed, or rather where she had officially accepted. He had, at one time, proposed several times a day. Only this time he’d taken her there with Zinnie and Mary and she’d said yes. Of course, by then, she was pretty pregnant. Sometimes she wondered if the pungent, homemade red wine they served had had anything to do with it. Don Peppe’s was bright and loud and boisterous and if you didn’t like garlic you’d just as soon not go. The china was cracked, and if you gave the fellow back a dirty knife, he’d just wipe it good on his white butcher’s apron and smack it back down on the table. The restaurant was over by the track, and all the waiters had a sure-thing horse running tomorrow, or the next day. “Don’t you think you been here long enough?” one of the waiters would chide as he chewed a fat cigar at you as you took your last mouthful of heavenly Italian cheesecake, the wet kind, the kind you only got there or at Angelo’s over on Mulberry Street. So it wasn’t some elegant and luxurious dining spot. It was a joint. But it was a spectacular joint. Claire thought it was romantic. She hated that he was there without her. Vexed, she waited for him to tell her to get in the car and drive down. She would say no, but she still wanted him to ask.

“Are you there, Claire?”

“Me, my mother, my father, Swamiji, and Dharma are here, Johnny.”

“And me,” Anthony said from the extension. “And Michaelaen,” he added, always exact.

“Anthony, get off the phone,” he shouted.

She closed her eyes.

They heard a click. “Claire, the horse broke down.”

“What?”

“Yeah. She fell. She fell down. It was terrible. Claire?”

“Yes, Johnny, I’m here.”

“She was hurt really bad. Her leg. It just broke. The bone was sticking out.”

“Oh my God.” She felt everyone stop in the kitchen around her. “It’s the horse,” she told them, more to relieve them than anything else.

“Johnny, what did they do?” She spoke back into the phone.

“It was bad. The ambulance came.”

Claire watched the gravy on the stove boil up and over the top and down onto the gas jet. Mary jumped to attention and went for a towel. Claire’s emotions did a loop-the-loop. If the horse was dead Johnny would be home again. It would be the end of the episode.

“They were going to put her down, you know. They had the injection all set. The vet had it up in the air. And I … I almost said okay. Only then the fucking horse starts to cry. With tears!” Claire blinked at the heartless nonchalance of fortune. Johnny talked on. He would have to go back to the animal hospital and then to the barn. Then he’d have to drive Pokey Ryan, his old partner, home.

“Yes, yes,” she murmured. Because, that was it. There was nothing else to say. She could argue logic over a dead horse. Or a losing horse. Or even a winning horse. But no one, not even she, could argue over a crying horse. Claire almost felt sorry for him. Then she remembered the great stalagmite of bills that wobbled the blotter on the desk. She heard the clatter and bustle of the waiters rushing by Johnny from the kitchen. She could imagine the overcrowded tables there and smell the oregano. The handsome Italian cooks clattering their copper pans in full view in the kitchen. The men and their wives at the tables, all dressed and made up. There was a pigeon house on top of the restaurant. Neat and painted, tidy with chicken wire. A squadron of the birds would take off suddenly, circling once over Aqueduct and heading dead north above the Queen of Martyrs belfry.

“They have to try and put a pin in the horse’s leg,” Claire told them, her voice under control when she hung up the phone. “Tomorrow. So the horse is sedated and they’ve taken her to the hospital.”

Wordlessly, Mary took a plate away from the table. Claire knew she was saying a silent Hail Mary for the horse, and she wished she herself wasn’t as coldhearted as she, at that moment, felt.

As they sat down to eat, the telephone rang once again. Johnny again, Claire figured, and stood and reached for the phone.

“Claire!”

Hungry and surly, Claire snarled, “Who is this?”

“Why it’s Jupiter Dodd, darling. Anything wrong?”

“Hi!” she squeaked, shushing the table full of noise with the frantic, important, impoverished hope of green cash in her eyes. Mary buttoned their lips with her own, and they all giggled conspiratorially with her. Mary hadn’t raised four kids for nothing.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No.” She pulled the wire as taut as it would go into the other room.

“How’s it coming?” Jupiter asked.

For a moment she had to think what he meant. The pictures. He meant the pictures. The houses he’d given her an advance to shoot and expected—when? Next week? Could it be already next week? “Terrific,” she trilled. “Wait till you see them!” She looked around for the photos, saying this, and spotted them, far from complete, sticking out messily from underneath the lofty mountain range of coats across the table. There was a thud in her chest as if she’d been caught red-handed, just like the moment she got called on when she hadn’t done her homework. But there was also the perverse, self-destructive admiration of another self inside her, standing off to the side and marvelling “now-here’s-a-gal-who-has-more-important-things-to-do-than-make-a-living.”

“What are you doing tonight?” asked Jupiter.

“Tonight?” she envisioned the hours before her: the washing up, the bathtubs—full of children and tears from shampoos—the search for wrinkled pajamas in the great pile of clean laundry in front of the dryer, the teeth to be monitored, the stories to be read, the lights to be put out and then on again for the very, I swear, very last drink of water tonight. “Thought I’d spin down to Monte Carlo for a few rounds of baccarat. Care to join me?”

“I know, I know, your life is a muddle. No sense complaining about it, though, is there?”

“Mmm. I guess not.”

“Want to come into the city? I’ve got a thing, only black tie and cleavage. Everybody who’s anyone will be there. Have you got a nice gown?”

“A gown?”

“Oh, and please not that hippie Nepali thing you had on at Carmela’s.”

“Excuse me! That’s my best frock!”

“That’s what it looks like. A frock. From a be-in.”

“That shows you how old you are. That cycle has gone complete and the only place you see that sort of thing now is on the runway in Paris.”

“More like the Khyber Pass.”

“You bitch. You lied. You told me you loved my beautiful dress!”

“Claire, only you could love that dress.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

“Oh, dear. You do need to get away.”

“I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You could always come here,” she said finally. “I do miss you. Now that I talk to you and hear how you throttle me so neatly.”

“I’ll come for the play. Not before. What are you having for dinner?”

“Sour meat, red cabbage, and noodles. Maybe chocolate pudding.”

Jupiter made an obscene, shlurpy sound.

She looked frantically about at the dust and disorder. “If you hurry, I can keep it nice and warm for you.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Thank God. I thought I’d have to run through the house with a mop.”

“Not to worry.”

“Okay.”

“All my love.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh, and Claire?”

“Yes?”

“Deadline’s next week.”

“Right.”

They hung up. She looked at the ceiling and covered one eye. The phone rang again. She picked it up. “Me again,” said Jupiter. “I forgot. Remember that shot you had in your book? The black-and-white of that awful castle with the big gaudy stones like a sand castle? And the turrets out of cement? With the grotto to the one side?”

“Queens’s classiest catering hall?”

“With the young couple groping each other on the steps. And her all made up like Maria Callas and him skinny and with the unrefined shirt and tie and the pimples?”

“Of course I remember it,” she said defensively. If he wanted her to take it out of her book, she wouldn’t.

“Well, we’ve decided to run it on the cover.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I kid about life and death. Not covers.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“Fooph! They all love it. Diane Arbus stuff, they’re all saying up here.”

“Yes,” she cried excitedly. “That’s just how I meant it. Oh, to be understood!”

She could hear Jupiter smiling over there in Manhattan, underneath his Mary Poppins gold-and-silver stars. “Our Queens issue,” he said. “Can’t you see it?”

She had no doubt that he’d only just decided to use that shot for the cover when they’d hung up the phone. He was a kind-hearted sod, was Jupiter.

“Thank you, Jupiter Dodd.”

“You’re welcome, Claire Breslinsky.”

They hung up again.

Meanwhile, on the south side of Jamaica Avenue over Mrs. Fatima’s exclusive blue lagoon, up a couple of flights of stairs and in the deafening nearness of the el, Zinnie and Narayan, enraptured, removed each other’s soggy, tender clothes. Their bodies glowed against each other and they melted together with an unavoidable, mysterious blank pull. On the corner was an always-open, red-and-yellow bodega that pumped out one torrid marenga on top of the other. He smelled at first of cumin. She of L’air du Temps. They mingled in a brackish, taut embrace. She felt the luster of his hairy body, and he watched her creamy arm clamp hopelessly against his massive self. “Oh boy,” she said, “oh, God.”

He silently moved, under the vertigo spell and the at-last and innermost height of dharana.

Dharma, always the first into pajamas, stood at the bottom of the stairs for the cleaning-of-the-teeth inspection. Claire thought she liked this part of the routine; children always liked to do what they did well, and Dharma was so good at hygiene. Her pink hippopotamus buttons were done up demurely to the top of her soft-flannelled throat. Anthony whooped down the stairs and then came Michaelaen, a casual straggler intent on being viewed as a big boy.

“Let’s see, now,” Mary made a great fuss. Teeth, to the Irish, are of the utmost importance because they cost, if not treated as precious, such a lot. She opened their mouths like a no-nonsense browser at a horse fair.

“I’ll be handling the stories tonight, if you please,” Swamiji announced with a two-steps-back bow. He had a good one. He’d been clandestinely brushing up on his Hans Christian Andersen.

Claire had to go across the street and get Dharma’s things, she remembered. Oh, she didn’t feel like doing that at all. “Mom, will you come with me?” she asked.

“Swamiji and I will just finish up these dishes for you, Claire. We’d be most helpful that way, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Claire agreed, unwilling to tell them she was afraid to go to that house in the dark. Swamiji had her ironing board set up in the kitchen. Mary would wash and wipe the dishes and Swamiji would iron. He was, he said happily, her dhoby. He did have, she noted, a plastic atomizer filled with sachet and water for the collars and cuffs. Not once since they’d moved in had any of them had an ironed shirt or blouse actually on a hanger in a closet. This was always a last-moment thing, done in a hurry on a floor cushion of folded towels. So she was afraid to go to the house alone but, weighing that against the prospect of returning to a lavender-scented wardrobe, decided she would give it a go. She remembered her father was still here.

“Dad?” she called down to the cellar.

“What?” he turned down the radio. He had on the trickling Chopin.

She went down the stairs and sidled up to the workbench where he was re-gluing her chopping block.

“Do you think you could come with me? Daddy,” she said, “I’m afraid to go into Dharma’s house alone.”

“Well, then don’t go, knucklehead.”

“Daddy, please. I have to get Dharma’s clothes for school and—”

“All right,” he stopped her. He’d spent what felt like most of his life interrupting whatever it was he was doing for his kids, to do something else for one of his kids.

They went out the back way and walked around the house. Floozie zoomed out the doggie door and ran up to them. Claire let her walk along beside her. It was good for her. She looked a little pudgy, their Floozie. Claire took out the keys. Stan whistled the good parts of the Chopin. “Smells like snow, don’t it?”

Claire pushed in the Dovers’ door. She looked down on the floor. A tumble of mail cluttered the spot where they stood. She picked it all up and Stan went around turning on lights. Claire paged nosily through the bills and the letters. There was something from a child-services agency. Claire slipped this easily into her pocket.

“Okay,” Stan said. “There you go. No ghosts can get you now.”

“Daddy! You can’t just leave me here.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Honey, you sound like you’re ten years old. Is this the daughter who singlehandedly spent ten years circumnavigating the globe?”

“This is different,” she frowned. “I knew her.”

“All right, I’ll stand right here and wait for you.”

Satisfied, she bolted through to Dharma’s room, noting that the clothes for the dry cleaner Andrew had told her he’d left on the table were actually on the floor. Perhaps he’d come back. Astonishing, she clicked her tongue, how neatly that little girl kept her own things. Claire wasn’t going to be discriminating. She was going to take as much as she could carry. Why not? She wasn’t going to let any child-welfare agency get its hands on her. That was for sure. She had every intention of keeping this child, it dawned on her, amazed at her own determination to accept the responsibility.

“Dad,” she called through. “What do you think about Johnny and me keeping Dharma?”

“She’s got her own home, Claire. No matter what it seems like now. Don’t go getting excited about something that can’t be. And her father might not have time for her now, but get past the tragedy of the moment, he’ll be wanting her back.”

“Sure he will,” Claire muttered sarcastically under her breath.

“What’s that?” he called.

“Nothing.”

“Hurry up, will you?” he complained. “I’ve got to walk the puppies for your mother before they go messing up her kitchen.”

“Right there!” She plunked everything neatly into a laundry basket and started to go, then spotted Dharma’s jewelry box. Imagining Andrew might take offense if she just walked off with the whole thing, she opened it up, meaning to rummage through and just take what Dharma might especially like. An enormous green stone glittered at her. She picked it up. It was an emerald! Claire sat down on her haunches and held the stone between herself and the hourglass lamp. No, it wasn’t an emerald. There was something more dense, more alluring about it. Claire had spent time in Pagan and Mandalay in the north of Myanmar and more time still in Kandy, Sri Lanka. She knew which stones were good and which weren’t. This one, she suspected, was quite magical. It was certainly worth a lot of money. A sapphire, it came to her. Of course! Rare, this color in a sapphire. Although sapphires and emeralds are basically the same stone. And the size! Wherever did she get it? It must have been Tree’s. Claire wrapped it carefully in her handkerchief and put it into her pocket. She didn’t tell her father. She knew why, too. He’d tell her she was overstepping boundaries. It was none of her business. Knowing he was right, she put the box away and they locked up and went back across the street.

Mary was in the kitchen. “They’re all tucked in,” she said. “So all you have to do is lock up.”

Was there a note of disgust in her voice? She was all done in, poor thing. She probably just wanted to be in her own house with her old bones in a nice hot bath.

“You’ve done too much, Mom. Go. Go home.”

Mary touched her head. “Ever since old Mrs. Dixon whacked me with the typewriter I’m feeling a little creaky.”

“Claire’s talking about keeping the Dover girl,” Stan said.

“What rubbish,” Mary said. “She has a grandmother. Although—”

“It’s not rubbish. I even spoke to Andrew about it.”

“Oh, Andrew. That’s a good one. What does he know about what it takes to raise a child?”

“Exactly my point,” Claire said.

Mary turned and scrutinized her daughter. “And then the minute you’ve got her settled in and you’re used to her and she to you, he’ll up and marry someone new and he’ll want her back.”

“And what?” Claire sputtered. “Suddenly set up housekeeping and be a proper daddy? You can’t be serious. He doesn’t even look at Dharma when he speaks to her!”

Mary’s jaw set with disapproval. “You’re so critical of everything about Andrew, Claire. It makes one wonder why. I mean why, so much? He hasn’t had an easy lot, you know. Not by a long shot. Why, the way you speak! As though Theresa had been a decent wife to him. As though her shameless behavior was somehow commendable because she flaunted it at him and called it bohemianism. As though that somehow made it virtuous! I don’t know, but I get the feeling you’ve condemned Andrew Dover on the very grounds that you’ve consecrated your old friend on. Just because he conscientiously went out to work each day, committed the contemptible crime of being steady and conservative and behaving with dignity when his wife was out and hard at it to make him a laughingstock. I’m not one to be speaking ill of the dead, mind, but you mustn’t go allowing yourself to write it off as dullness and tedium that killed Theresa Dover. And it certainly wasn’t Andrew himself. If anything, it was he who stood by her while she behaved abominably! There. I’ve said it. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but there it is.”

Grudgingly, Claire admitted to herself that this was so. But it was also so that treachery often lurked under the guise of respectability.

“And what if,” Mary pounded the table with her pointer finger, “the grandmother turns around and joins AA and cleans up her act?”

“Can you see Andrew, or his mother, wanting Dharma around ever, for any reason?”

Mary shrugged agreement. “Isn’t it sad? You’d think it just the opposite, wouldn’t you? She being such a bonny lass and all. God love ’er.”

“She is that,” Stan said, washing his hands in the sink.

“Is she?” Claire asked. “I mean I know she has beautiful hair and eyes. Is she a beauty?”

“That one?” Stan wiped his hands on the dish towel. “She’ll be having them all coming and going, you watch.”

“You think?”

“Hadn’t you noticed, Claire?” Mary laughed.

Claire shook her head. “No. All I ever see is her mother in her, or her sadness.”

“Well,” Mary sighed, “that takes a sort of an eye as well.” She paused. “Look at all the years I lived next door to Mrs. Dixon. I still can’t believe she would hurt those children.”

“She did, though.” Claire narrowed her eyes. “And by the way, something I never told you: One day she tried to electrocute me. In the bathtub. She pulled on the extension wire from the hall and dropped the live portable radio into the tub with me. She came into our house. So remember that next time you start feeling sorry for her.”

They looked at her, astonished. “You saw her?” Stan asked.

“Well, no, but I know now that it was her. I never told you because I had no proof. But I know it was her.”

“What are you saying?” Mary said. “Now you’re telling us that because time has gone by you don’t need to have proof?”

“She did. It was one day you and Dad had taken Michaelaen bowling. I remember because I stole Carmela’s car afterwards, and she was fit to be tied. Remember? I went to visit Johnny. I wanted to see where he lived.”

“Of course I don’t remember. That was four years ago.”

“Almost five. And I remember everything. Oh, this you’ll remember. You got your hair cut off that day. You must remember that.”

She shook her head, bewildered.

The doorbell rang.

“Get that, Dad,” Claire said, “before it wakes up the kids.”

Carmela came in, kaput.

Claire’s heart sank. Whatever it was Carmela wanted, Claire doubted she had it in her to give.

“Sure you look,” Mary clucked, “like you’ve died and gone to Hades.”

“Still looking,” Stan shuffled in, “better than most folks in Falak al aflak.”

“Except women”—Carmela stared, glaze-eyed, at him—“don’t get in to Falak al aflak. Only men and their horses, but thanks all the same, old faithful.”

“Well nirvana, then,” he said, “apropos Swamiji. Where is the old boy anyway?”

“He’s upstairs,” Claire said.

“What’s wrong with plain old paradise?” Mary wanted to know.

“Mary, you started it,” Stanley yelled at her.

“Let’s go,” Mary said. “All this heathen influence,” she muttered.

“Mary!” Stan yanked her arm. “If it weren’t for him, you’d still be wheezing with your hay fever!”

“I know. You’re right.” She straightened her braids. “I’m ashamed of myself and well I should be. That dried nettle Swamiji got me takin’ cleared me up like a charm.” She smacked her own face. “Take that!” she said.

“’Bye,” they all said at once, and Mary and Stan went down the porch steps. Claire shut the door. “What’s up?”

“Where’s Zinnie?”

“Beats me. Why?”

“Claire! She didn’t come to dress rehearsal!”

“Oh.”

They both looked at the phone. “Nobody called,” Claire assured her. “If they had, somebody would have been here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if she’s not dead, I’m going to kill her.”

“Calm down,” Claire said. They both sat down. “It isn’t like her to not call and say goodnight to Michaelaen.” Undercover cops had all sorts of ex-cons out there who might want them dead. So you never knew.

Carmela took out a cigarette and fished around her Gucci bag for a light.

“Please don’t smoke in here,” Claire begged.

Carmela snapped her Dunhill torch into effect, ignoring her sister. She scanned the room. “That hassock is new,” she accused.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“I just saw one like that at Roche Bobois,” Carmela said, suspicious.

“You know how I haunt the material shops on Liberty Avenue. It’s all crap, which is why nobody bothers over there, but if you’re relentless, you occasionally run into a piece of something breathtaking. As they think you have no money or you wouldn’t be there, they only charge you a pittance.”

Carmela, her bag, cigarette, and ashtray clutched to her lap, crouched across the room to inspect the fabric with her fingers. “I mean, if you think it’s worth risking your life going over there, just to save money,” she said, “be my guest.”

Claire stayed where she was and wouldn’t answer. Carmela would argue about anything right now. Claire had had to go back to the shop five or six times until she’d gotten the merchants to agree to a good price. It was prerequisite to bargaining. If you didn’t, they considered you a fool. But Claire knew very well she wasn’t going to get killed exploring Liberty Avenue, east of Lefferts, despite the fact that she was the only “white” person far and wide. They were used to her. They thought she was quite mad, scooting from store to store. Whenever she was there, she was in a hurry, wearing her warm Tibetan hat—they probably thought she was a Russian woman, which would explain it all.

The marketplace reminded one of Istanbul and Cayenne, Port-au-Prince and Herat all at once. There were strong smells of turmeric and nutmeg, red chile peppers and syrupy coffee. She held her shoulder bag across her chest and tightly in front of her. Where poor people lived and worked and shopped, pickpockets and addicts did too. But there was also honor there, faces not numbed by years of television and white bread. There were sparkling eyes, and children climbing the merchandise while granny was sick because childcare by strangers was unheard of. Claire loved this side of Liberty. Music from Paramaribo bumped into music from Delhi and Montego Bay. So her visits weren’t just a shopping spree, they were travel. When you returned home, you felt that you had been somewhere. Claire regarded the hassock triumphantly. She always valued things that much more when Carmela coveted them.

“I found a poem of yours,” she said, an offering.

“Oh? Which one?”

“That one about Ephesus.”

“Ephesus?”

“And something, ‘spittle in it’?”

“Oh. I hope you threw it away.”

“I never throw anything away.”

“Right. Recycling Claire. But my poems you may dispose of. You have my permission.” She stopped. “I have another.” She looked hopefully at Claire.

“Oh, good.”

Carmela shuffled through her agenda, ripped out a page, and presented it to her. “Read it out loud,” she instructed, pursing her lips in pleased expectation. She wiggled into her seat.

Claire cleared her throat.

Today aboard two subway trains

a rice sprout song to pale the rain

A shiny licorice-looking ant

with pincer wriggling, threadlike gams

came in behind his shadow

called me out, ‘Ondine,’ he said.

And on and on I tasted fruit

that ripened mold and rounded mute

all ready as a nightshade bed

woke up and found my child instead.

The clock ticked on the mantel, the only sound. Claire folded the paper in half.

Carmela grinned. “It was a dream. I mean I really dreamed it. Good, eh?”

“Certainly frightening.”

“Tch. If I thought you were going to qualify it, I wouldn’t have shown you.”

“Well, then, don’t show them to me anymore. You always write your dreams in poems, and then I wind up dreaming about them. So quit it. Or start dreaming nicer stuff. And by the way, how come you never told Tree Dover my telephone number? How come you never even told me she was trying to get in touch with me?”

Carmela’s face fell. “What do you mean?” was all she could think of to say.

“I mean, why is it that Tree Dover asked about me and getting in touch with me on a number of occasions and you never gave her my number, never even mentioned to me that she was starring in your play?”

“I did tell you.”

“You did not.”

Carmela raised open palms in a quick, casual movement. “I thought I had done. It must have slipped my mind.”

“How could it slip your mind? You knew how I felt about Tree, how I adored her while we were growing up.”

“And how she always dumped you when she found someone more interesting to play with?”

“Oh. Now you’re going to tell me that you were protecting me from her hurtful influence? All of a sudden you’re worried about my feelings? Carmela, do you mind? You just had a cigarette.”

“If you must know, I didn’t want you to have Tree back.”

“Have her back? You make it sound like—”

“Well, maybe that’s how it seemed to me. You always doubled off with her. And she was my friend. I found her first. I brought her home first.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Tree was my age, not yours.”

“She was not.”

“She was, too.”

“God, this is ridiculous. Now we’re fighting over the dead.”

Carmela smashed her cigarette out in Claire’s pink seashell. She loosened her thick mane of black hair from its clip, and shook it free, a sign of surrender and reason. She could accept default if it was accompanied by the compensation she took in her own beauty.

Claire wondered, should she confide in Carmela about Tree’s stone? Carmela knew a bit about stones from Stefan. She decided not to. She would ask Iris von Lillienfeld, instead, ensuring it got no further. Iris was tight-lipped as a clam.

“Do you have your car?” she asked Carmela.

“I thought you’d drive me home. Stefan took my car to the airport.”

Resigned, Claire said, “I’ll walk you. I’ve got to take Floozie out anyway.”

Oh, she didn’t like that idea. “What about the kids?”

“Swamiji’s here. I’ll just tell him.”

“He’s always here. When’s he leaving?”

“Mom?” Anthony came down the stairs. His cheek on one side was all crumpled and imprinted with the folds of his pillow. She went up to him and held him around his small, chubby waist. “Mom,” he said, “what do you call these again?” He pointed down his leg.

“Ankles.”

“Ah, ankles!” He turned, glad, and went back up the stairs, ignoring Carmela.

Swamiji stood at the landing, arms out for him. He signalled Claire to go with a couple of waves of his hand, indicating he had heard her plans. Carmela already stood waiting in her cherry-red Susan Slade scarf, and the dog was at the door with her “let’s get this show on the road” attitude. So Claire put on her coat and they left, catching their breath at the snap in the air. They hurried up the block.

“You don’t have to look so smug and satisfied with your life,” Carmela said when they got up by the woods.

“Carmela.” Claire held up her hand like a traffic cop in fair warning. “I don’t want to do this. Whatever it is, just stop. I understand you need a good fight, but I don’t have a shred of spunk left in me right now, so save it for the morning, all right? Just save it, or wait till your husband gets home and give it to him.”

They continued along, Carmela on the sidewalk and Claire in the stiff, grassy dirt. How easy life is when you put your foot down, Claire congratulated herself, enjoying the silence. Here and there dog walkers stopped and went and stopped again, reassured by each other’s presence, people in pajamas and overcoats hoping the dogs would be quick about it. Claire looked sideways at Carmela, knowing she’d be steamed, and saw instead tears rolling down the side of her distorted, silent, wet, red face.

“Melly!” Claire took her in her arms, reverting instantly to childhood and its deeper endearments.

Carmela sagged into the embrace, no defenses. She sobbed and sobbed, not caring who heard, or who saw.

Claire let her cry, then led her to the bench where usually just the gay fellows got acquainted. This was their territory here, and one or two of them, affronted, gave them peremptory looks. Claire scowled back at them. It seemed Carmela would never stop crying. Finally, she sniffed to a teeth-chattering end and wiped her face with a motion that reminded Claire of their mother, a motion that said: Lord oh Lord, the whole world is a-weary. Claire just hoped they wouldn’t get mugged sitting out there like that, unprotected. Who knew?

“You don’t understand,” Carmela finally steadied herself enough to say.

Me, again, Claire thought but didn’t say.

“You have a normal life. A kid. Everything going along nicely. You own a nice house. Your husband loves you.” She went down the list. On and on she went. Claire blew compassionately on her poor hands. Floozie, pleased as Tuesday’s punch, roamed the mangy curb. They looked up Park Lane South toward the fairytale castle Carmela called home. “And don’t hand me that ‘I ought to be grateful’ shit,” she snapped.

“Listen,” Claire whispered, “I understand you’re exhausted. You’ve been doing so much. Why don’t you just go home and get some sleep? I’ll come and pick you up in the morning and we’ll”—She raced silently through an unlikely range of possibilities—“we’ll drive somewhere together. Out to the beach! Just you and me. How about that?”

“I can’t. I have to do the dress rehearsal over. It’s Zinnie’s day off. At least it better be.”

Claire lowered her head so Carmela wouldn’t recognize her relief. “Carmela,” she said kindly, from a loving place, from where you were supposed to be able to say all sorts of otherwise forbidden things. “Maybe you and Stefan ought to think about starting a family. You could stop getting high, you know. And stop taking the pill.”

Carmela stood up with a jerk and sat back down again. She looked up through the webwork of branches above them to the sky. Squirrels and raccoons and rats made last-minute adjustments just beside them in the woods. Carmela snorted. “I haven’t been on the pill for ages.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want you to know, okay?” she sniffed into her ironed linen handkerchief. She spoke so softly that Claire had to lean over to hear her. “Last week I was feeling, you know, randy, and maybe thinking like just what you said. I knew he was home because the light was on in his room.” She laughed. “We’ve always had separate bedrooms. Anyway, I went down the hallway and Piece, his man, gives me this look, like this movement like, blocking me from going down the hall. I mean, I looked at him like he was wacky, but I know how strange Stefan’s servants all are. He moved back, of course, and I kept on going, but I didn’t like him acting like that. I guess I was feeling defensive, this-is-my-house and all that, so I just barged into Stefan’s room without knocking and there he was, down on his knees, in front of page after page of opened-up magazines, and he’s, he was—”

“It’s all right,” Claire stopped her. “I understand.”

Carmela kept on. “That wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that he looked up at me, just as cool as you please, he didn’t miss a beat,” she laughed. “And you know what he said? He looks at me and he goes, ‘Well, get out.’ Like, he lifts up his chin, dismissing me, and he goes, just like this, ‘Get out.’” She shook her head. “The stupid thing was that when I saw him like that, I wasn’t really upset yet. Just shocked. I would have gone over to him and, I mean, I didn’t even care that he was turned on … by pictures.… I would have just …” Here she hesitated. “… just been his wife. Only he said, ‘Well, get out,’ like that.”

Claire’s heart went out to her. “Oh, Carmela,” she said. But what else could you say? It was so brutal.

“Don’t tell Mommy.”

“Tch. Of course not. I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not even Johnny. I swear.”

“All right.” She blew her nose. “I feel better.”

Claire knew she didn’t. But at least the secret wasn’t beating her up, nuts to get out.

“Clairy,” Carmela sobbed, wretched again with a new burst of passion, “I’m out on the birch tree behind the blockade!”

“I know, I know.” Claire held her carefully and they went up the lane together, stepping gingerly so they didn’t see that someone stood behind them and watched them, mouth agape and wondering just what to do here.

So Claire, after she’d seen to it that Carmela was safely in the door of her home, went back down Richmond Hill, distracted with concern and unaware that she was being followed. Floozie, terrified, kept running, and Claire had all she could do to keep up with her. Finally, she did, and gave her a good whack on the tail to boot for running off, then stashed the dog inside her coat as they drew near her house. There was a light on in Iris’s kitchen. Good, Claire thought, and climbed the back steps, her fingers closing around the glamorous stone in her pocket. She knocked on the door. Lü, the cat, a sphinx on the porcelain breadbox, regarded her through the window.

“Iris?” Claire rapped on the glass. She hated to ring the bell. Maybe Iris had gone to sleep and left the light on. Maybe, jeepers creepers, she was in there with Mr. Kinkaid. Of course she wasn’t, Claire checked herself. She leaned on the door to reach over to ring the bell, and the door swung open. “Iris?” she called again. How could she leave the door open like that, she thought angrily. Anyone could just walk in. Maybe Iris was finally losing it, she worried. But no, Iris was far from losing it. She’d been through wars and exile and the equally humbling phenomenon of years of long-unalleviated boredom, and she wasn’t going to lose it over one more uneventful autumn. Or wasn’t that just what one lost it over? On the other hand, she could have hit her head and fallen, or simply fallen and broken her hip.

“Iris?” Claire called again. There was a funny smell. She didn’t like to just barge in. What if Iris was in the tub? She might scare her to death. “Iris?” She walked into the kitchen. The cat didn’t move. She felt Floozie stiffen and shiver. Where was Iris’s dog, Natasha? “Natasha?” she called. “Iris?” She walked across the kitchen. She wasn’t going to go looking all over the house, just through to the dining room. She switched on the light. If there was one thing that terrified Claire, it was a lonely house in the dark. She switched the whole row of lights on at once, peered through to the dining room, didn’t see the woman standing there in the pantry backed up against the shelves of labeled jars, turned back around into the kitchen, noticed a game of double solitaire spread out on the kitchen table, deliberated for a moment, moved a black card onto a red one, then thought, That’s where she is; walking Natasha. I probably would have bumped into her if I’d kept on walking. She smiled in expectation, turned, and looked into the pale open eyes of Mrs. Dixon, dead.

The sound of screams reverberated through the white tile kitchen till Claire realized they were her own. “Now, now,” a voice behind her said, “she’s dead. Stop screaming now, she’s dead.”

It was Iris, behind her, patting her head with loose, old-lady hands. “Shh,” she kept saying from behind Claire, “Sshhh. Ist ja Alles in Ordnung. Ist ja Alles wieder Gut. It’s all right now. Everything’s all right.”

You could hear the rattle of the wind outside and the insistent banging of the door against the can. It was so cold inside the kitchen. So cold and so dreary and white.

A squad car from far away came closer and closer and then, instead of going on, it stopped. Claire could hear its whoop-whoop out on the corner. Red lights spun around the room from its reflection.

“I’ll go,” Iris said. “I’ve got to go. I called nine-one-one.”

In horror, Claire watched her go.

“Don’t leave me here, alone,” she called out in a whimper, but Iris was gone and she looked again into the eyes of Mrs. Dixon. She covered her own face with her hands. She’d hanged herself. Claire just couldn’t look at her.

Iris came back in with a pair of moustachioed policemen. They took one look at Mrs. Dixon and one of them whistled. Things started to happen quickly then. The other one went back outside, and before Claire knew it the room was filled up with cops, both uniforms and undercovers.

“I just went to bring a dish a few blocks away. I was only gone for fifteen minutes!” Iris insisted over and over. “She was fine when I left her. She was just staying here for safekeeping. She wouldn’t have hurt nobody else. Dot was over. All dot was over.”

Mary and Stan came from across the street. Mary put a blanket over Claire and then Johnny was there. He picked her up like she was one of the kids and carried her down the stairs and into the car. Claire looked around for Floozie, and the little dog jumped into her still-trembling arms before he slammed the door. She wanted to go home. “Just get me home,” was all she thought, “and let me hold my little boy and go to sleep.”

Johnny was very tender with Claire when they got home. He picked her up and carried her across the threshold like a newly-wed. Then he put her down on the couch and went in to make her a cup of tea. “Claire, there is no more of your oolong,” he called in. “Do you want plain Lipton?”

“Yes. Yes, fine, anything,” she said, astonished that life went on, that normal things like drinking tea and putting on your slippers kept on. What she wanted was a good stiff bourbon, not tea, but even with this ordeal, she knew she’d better not ask for it. Just the smell could start him off on a binge. She got up and went up the stairs to check on Anthony. He was in his bed, so little, so young. She walked over and pulled his blanket up an inch. His fist flew by his lips in some warrior dream episode. She smiled down at him kindly, full of love. He was safe now. No matter what happened, as long as he was all right, she would be, too. She pulled herself together standing there and went down the hallway to check on the others. Swamiji, at the nursery doorway, was sitting upright in lotus position and sound asleep. She knew if she were someone else, his spirit would return and he would jump up with a frightening jolt. She stepped carefully over him. Michaelaen was not in bed. Neither, she realized fearfully, was Dharma. How could they have gotten past Swamiji, she wondered, how? He was worse than a guard dog, and the only thing that would disturb him was what he’d programmed himself for: a threat to the children’s safety. In the closet. She walked over stealthily and opened the door a crack.

“Shh!” Michaelaen said.

“What are you doing?” she hissed. “Where’s Dharma?”

“She’s in here, Aunt Claire. She’s asleep.”

“Well, come out.”

Michaelaen sighed the sigh of the weary. “Aunt Claire,” he explained patiently, “if I make her come out, she’ll get scared again. And I just got her to sleep. She just cries and cries. Please don’t tell, Aunt Claire.”

Claire went into the giant closet with her nephew. Sure enough, Dharma lay, asleep and peaceful, on a pile of coats and quilts and pillows. Claire’s parents were right, she realized. Dharma was a precious child and very, very beautiful there in the flickering waver of flashlight.

“Where is my mother?” Michaelaen demanded suddenly.

“Shh,” Claire signalled him out of the closet. “Your mother is fine. They’re held up in overtime,” she lied, worried now again about Zinnie. “I’m supposed to kiss you once for her and tuck you in good.”

Michaelaen scratched his neck. “Aunt Claire?”

“Yes. Come. Hop into bed.” She went and got the bottle of holy water she kept on the nightstand and sprinkled it onto his and Dharma’s heads. They were always half annoyed at the cold shock before sleep, but they were pleased by the love in the gesture. She screwed the cap back on and blessed herself as well.

“Aunt Claire, please can’t I stay here with Dharma? If she wakes up she’ll be real scared if I’m not here.”

“Of course you can. Your mother will be proud of you,” she added, “taking such good care of someone in need.”

“Well, don’t go tellin’ nobody.” Michaelaen narrowed his eyes nastily at her.

“I won’t. You don’t have to worry about that,” she lied again easily. She brought the sleeping bag over from the bed and placed it on top of their great cozy pile. “Just in case it gets colder,” she said.

Michaelaen nodded, important and world-weary now.

“Michaelaen? May I ask you something?”

“What? Just whisper. What?”

“What is it that Dharma is afraid of?”

Michaelaen shrugged.

“Because,” Claire said gently, “if nobody helps her find a way outside, you know, out of her dreams, well, maybe she’ll always have to have them. I mean, if someone could help her work them out, maybe she could be free of them. Like you, when you went and talked about things to the therapist. See what I mean?”

Michaelaen shrugged again. He knew what she meant. It used to be himself inside the closet for safety, never wanting to come out. Claire sighed and patted his head and got up to go. By tomorrow the news about Mrs. Dixon would be all over school. What he needed most right now was a good night’s sleep. She wondered if she ought to tell him herself. No, she guessed, it was Zinnie’s business. On the other hand, she realized, if Zinnie wasn’t about when he woke up tomorrow morning—and she most probably wouldn’t be—he would hear that she herself had come across Mrs. Dixon hanged, and he’d know Claire hadn’t told him. What would he think about then?

“Michaelaen?”

“What?”

“I’ve got to tell you something. Something terrible. No, don’t worry, not about your mommy. It’s this. Tonight, Mrs. Dixon was found dead. She was here in Queens all along. She was staying in Iris von Lillienfeld’s house. She hanged herself to death. I guess the guilt just finally got to her and she couldn’t live with it anymore.”

Michaelaen, eyes round with this news, came over and stood beside her. She had changed all of their lives for the worse, that terrible woman. Uneasily, Claire realized that she was relieved that Mrs. Dixon was dead. Delighted, even.

“So you never have to be afraid of her. Not ever again.”

“Oh, I was never really afraid of her,” Michaelaen said, scratching Floozie affectionately.

“Well, I was. Michaelaen, there’s no shame to admitting that someone as monstrous as she was frightened you. You don’t have to be macho here. She really was evil.”

“She never hurt me or nuthin’. I mean, she just took our pitchas.”

“Michaelaen, she murdered those children.”

“I know she did, Aunt Claire.”

“And she locked you in her refrigerator.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“All right,” Claire sighed. She didn’t want to make things worse. Michaelaen was doing so well now.

Michaelaen shut his lips tight. He knew he’d gone into that refrigerator on his own. To hide. They kept trying to make him say he hadn’t. Boy.

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to sit here a while?”

“Aunt Claire? Did she kill Miss von Lillienfeld?”

“No, honey, she’s fine. Just sad and sorry she hadn’t told somebody that she was hiding her.” She remembered the day she had gone over there. Iris’s unease. Now she knew why. And she had thought it was because she was waiting for Mr. Kinkaid.

“Maybe she was blackmailing her,” Michaelaen suggested with all the knowledgable sophistication of the seasoned television viewer.

“I don’t think so. They were friends for so many years, you know. I don’t think she was afraid of Mrs. Dixon. Miss von Lillienfeld doesn’t scare that easily. When the police were questioning her, she let them have it pretty good. She’s a pretty tough old cookie.”

“Are they gonna put her in jail?”

“I don’t know. She’s very old. I hope not. Grandma was with her when I left. They were drinking vodka.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes.”

He yawned.

“I’ll let you be. Give me Floozie, now. Give me a kiss … Good night.”

“Good night. Aunt Claire?”

“Yes?”

“That dream. The one Dharma always has again and again?”

“Uh huh?”

“It’s about that big flower in front of the house. When it’s summer.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you know. That flower so pretty, like gorgeous. With the dots and all. That’s what Dharma’s afraid of. She always dreams she cuts it down.”

“The foxglove?”

“That’s it. Foxglove. She told me if she told you it would hurt you.”

“No, it doesn’t hurt me.” She smiled, stunned with pleasure that Dharma should care what she felt. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You’re welcome. And she said she dreamed you put little silverbells on all the more beautiful flowers, so no one will miss them.”

“What?” said Claire.

“Like in The Nightingale. In the garden of the Emperor’s palace. So everyone would see them.”

“Did they do that?”

“Yes. Swamiji read it to us.”

“Michaelaen,” she said, “what else?”

Michaelaen rocked from side to side. Claire interpreted this to mean this session is over, so she turned to go.

“Cause she’s scared if you get scared, then you’ll die, too.”

“Oh, poor thing,” she said.

“Yes,” Michaelaen said.

“You make sure she understands I’m not going to die for a long, long time. Not for as long as the lot of you need me, at least.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night. Oh. One more thing. Did Dharma ever tell you where she got her stones? The pretty stones?”

“Oh, those,” he yawned again. “Her father gave them to her.”

“You’re sure?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“All right. Sleep now. Say your prayers.”

She stepped carefully around Swamiji and left the door open just a crack. The light in the hall was on. However big they acted, Claire knew light was a tangible strength for children. She stood in the hallway at the top of the stairs and looked out the high, stained-glass window at the Dover house across the street. Tree would turn in her grave if she could see that satellite dish atop her good Queen Anne Victorian. Claire pushed open the vent. She turned and heard someone scream. She shut off the light by pulling the plug behind her out of the wall socket, and crept back to the window. The scream again. Up and down the block she saw nothing, only parts of things torn loose from the wind and bumping into crumpled other things. She fine-tuned her ears and eyes. No one was up. Someone was screaming, really screaming. A woman, losing it. It was someone’s TV on the next block. “Oh, God,” she said out loud, remembering the eyes of Mrs. Dixon. She would have to look into them now for lots of long and lonely moments when no Johnny waited down the stairs to comfort her. She’d have to look, because that was the only way to forget it. If you tried not to see it, it would always be there, wouldn’t it?

Imagine Dharma worried that she would perish, too. A natural fear in someone who’d just lost her mother, she supposed. But as she stood there, hesitating at the top of the step, she remembered her own dream just the night before. There were people, officials on the pier at Brighton, explaining to her that she was losing her hearing, they were going to give her a course in communication. She had to go to the restroom and so she did, walking along the vast planks until she got there, and opened the door onto a poisonous, fast-spreading cloudy gas. Quickly thinking, she ran and raced away—gasping for air, coughing already.

Claire shook her head. Funny she should remember that now. Dharma’s dream must have jarred her own. And Carmela’s too. All these dreams at once. What was she, the dream lady? Oh, it made you tired. It made you just want to quit. She rubbed her neck and heard it crack. Suddenly, she had a yen to be wedged up tight against the hard, familiar calm of her husband’s own mysterious body. Down the ever-steepening hardwood stairs she went, strangely unconsoled by the gray and horrifying dragon’s end.