Chapter 7

A Fool and His Principles

1973–2002

1

A man, Ted, had moved on. It was November 1973, and Carol’s children were four and two. Brenda didn’t live near them now, and sometimes her hands and arms ached with the wish to hold them. First, she had glumly followed Carol around, gingerly helping with Gabriel. She had a one-room apartment and a job waiting tables, sure she’d screw up anything in which she had to do with people for more than an hour at a time. She babysat Gabe and then his sister, Ruthie. A teacher left their day-care center without warning, and Brenda was hired part-time, then full-time. By then she’d met Ted.

She moved to Concord, New Hampshire, to live with him and work in the business where he had just gotten a job, and the business had come to interest her more than it interested Ted, more than either of them interested each other. So it was not terrible that he was gone. And not terrible—still hard to believe, though—that she was six months pregnant. A child she hadn’t known about until weeks after he left now kicked steadily in Brenda’s belly.

Her laundry luxuriated in gray suds, diving and rising on the other side of a round glass door framed in steel, and she had nothing to do but look at it. She’d forgotten to bring a book, and there were no magazines. She owned three pairs of men’s overalls, and two were in the washing machine. The buckles clicked on the window. Her shoulders hurt after a day at work, wearing her third pair of overalls. Next time she did laundry, she’d wear one of the other pairs and wash this one, the time after that the third pair, and she saw that she could count out her life in the movement of overalls—or other clothing—into and out of washing machines. She’d worn skirts to teach in California, jeans or overalls at the day-care center, where she could get dirty at work: there was mud outside, paint in the art room, sticky children at meals and snacks. Maybe her present overalls wouldn’t fit during her last weeks of pregnancy and she’d need a larger size. The baby would make a division in her life, a before and after. Still, whatever happened, as long as you had the wherewithal to acquire and wash clothing, you could describe a life as so many pairs of clean underpants, so many pairs of socks, washed and worn again, washed again.

The washing machine shuddered to a stop, and she moved her clothes to a dryer. It was hard to be patient, to keep putting in coins until everything dried thoroughly, but if she brought her laundry home damp, she’d live for days with clothing draped on furniture. She wished for a cigarette, but she’d quit smoking—for good, she hoped—when she found out she was pregnant. Next to the dryer was a newspaper she hadn’t noticed, the Concord Monitor. Because of Watergate, there was always something new, but this paper was a few days old. I’m not a crook, Nixon had said. She knew about that.

She scanned the comics, the horoscope, the classified ads. The dryer stopped and she removed bras, a T-shirt, and three socks, then inserted more coins.

Ted didn’t know and would not be interested. She would manage. She leaned on the table where people folded laundry, turning pages. A small item announced a talk to be given in a local church: “When Your Child Tells You He’s Gay.” Some of us are girls, Brenda said out loud. Wait a minute.

She put the paper down, walked to the front of the empty laundry, looked out at the wind-scoured street and a street lamp. She had heard herself speak, and she knew what she meant: the title of the talk should say He or She Is Gay, not just He. But she had said us. If someone had asked her whether she was gay or straight, right until this moment, Brenda would have said she was straight, not consciously lying. She looked at the street lamp. A scrap of paper blew sideways along the sidewalk, then, for some reason, stopped. Brenda ran her hands slowly up her sides, past her hips, up her overall bib and her breasts, over her cheeks. She would have been lying. She had always loved women. She walked back to the dryers, asking herself when she had known this. She was crying. Before Ted. She’d been lying to herself for a while. Well, I wanted a baby, she said.

—I’m a lesbian, she said tentatively to the rattling, shaking dryers, which looked as if they might fly open in astonishment, but they always looked that way. She wondered if the people at work would be astonished: a middle-aged owner, his son, and a woman older than Brenda who’d worked there for years. Probably not. They made wooden playground equipment, and Brenda had learned to use power tools on the lovely maple and oak, to shape the posts that held swing sets and climbing structures, to finish them so they were smooth and golden. Here she got dirty but in a different way. She had ideas about the equipment they built. She was thinking about an arrangement of uprights they had not tried, with crisscrossing pieces to give children another way to climb.

She looked around. Everything was different—everything was different—having said that she loved women, though here doing laundry there was no woman to love. All these years, into her thirties, she had poked her thoughts into the alignment they should have, constructing shapes more complicated than the clever climbing structures they made at Mountainside Playgrounds—she and Gene, his son (also Gene), Lydia—along with Ted, for a few weeks. Her ideas about herself had climbed up, down again, across, negotiated a little twist and then leaped over a barrier, all to avoid the knowledge she had just come to.

Her secular parents—her unconventional father—had not brought her up to think homosexuality was sinful or sick, but her parents and friends, and she herself, had believed, until recently, that it was not a good idea: inconvenient, frightening because illegal, not quite the real thing. She’d gradually learned that it was a good idea, as large and as real a thing as loving men. She’d understood this since gay liberation—the public declaration that it was all right to be gay, after the Stonewall uprising—made everyone who thought like Brenda acknowledge abruptly, with relief, that homosexuals didn’t lead lesser lives or need to be fixed. It was fine to be gay, she had reasoned, but she had slept with so many men. Yet often, all these years, there had been a woman, some woman she wanted, whom she explained away. Just now it was a neighbor, a woman who’d come over with a basket of apples when she had extra, who had stood in the doorway, talking, after Brenda took the basket. She might or might not try to seduce her neighbor—the woman seemed to have a boyfriend—but how much better even to know it was possible. Brenda was not religious, but what she felt at this moment was gratitude. Her laundry was dry and electrified, and she gathered it in her arms—overalls with flopping straps and hot buckles, flannel nightgown, pullovers, plaid flannel shirts, cotton underpants—transferred it to the table, smoothed and folded it, and stacked it in her laundry basket. Then she went out to her car to see if she felt the same way after the drive home or in the morning.

2

Wind blew March rain sideways and made Harold’s umbrella a useless encumbrance. He needed one hand to hold the campaign literature, which he should have put into a plastic bag, and the other to press doorbells and insert brochures into mail slots and mailboxes. He also had a chart on a clipboard, on which he was supposed to note down a number for each person he talked to: 1 meant definitely voting for Senator Kennedy in the Democratic presidential primary that was now three days off, 2 meant leaning toward Kennedy, 3 was undecided, 4 was leaning toward President Carter, and 5 was definitely for Carter. It was a neighborhood of brownstones, shabby blocks in Chelsea, and his legs hurt from walking up and down stone steps. Why had he agreed to do this? A friend had asked. He was seventy and still a fool. Well, he had agreed to do it, as he had agreed to give any help asked of him in these last eight months, because Nelson was dead and had not asked for help before he took the pills.

A quiet death, Harold had said to himself more than once, and more than once he’d admitted that after all these years, despite his wild grief, there was some relief in knowing he no longer had Nelson’s death to expect and fear. Nelson had left notes for Harold, for Myra, and for Paul. He had never learned to live, but after many tries he’d learned to die compassionately. And what was the benefit in that, Harold had asked Naomi, over and over, these months. Were they better off because Nelson had been kind in his death? He had left his notes, along with a list of telephone numbers of family members, in a sealed envelope in his apartment, and on the outside he had written the name of a friend, a coworker at the bookstore where he had a job. He had given this friend a key to his apartment and asked him to come at a certain day and time.

—Didn’t you know? Naomi had asked the friend, who had phoned when he found Nelson dead and then delivered the notes. She barely kept back her fury. Didn’t you know you had to go for help? Couldn’t you have done that much for him? They were at the door of Harold’s apartment. They had not asked the man in—he was a sad, shy man, a little older than Nelson, pained but resolute.

—He picked me because he knew I wouldn’t, the man said. If he thought I’d have done that, he’d have asked someone else. Isn’t this better than having the police break in and find his body, after none of you heard from him for weeks?

—It would be better if he was in a hospital, Naomi said.

—He knew the inside of too many hospitals, the man said, and Harold knew that was true. Even Naomi quieted.

He and Naomi had thanked the friend, eight months ago, and had gone inside. He had read the note, which was loving. Naomi sat opposite, her thin arms stretched on a chair that made her look even smaller than she was. She was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, and her hair was gone. She had put on her wig to receive Nelson’s friend, but it was uncomfortable, and now she took it off. Harold put down the note and studied Naomi’s cherished bald head in the diminishing evening light. Its paleness seemed to draw what light was in the room.

—We should marry, she said at last. I’ve pretended too long that I’m not your wife.

There was and would be no comfort, but alongside the weight that made it hard to breathe, alongside this new, permanent pain, came something light and cool, lovely.

—You don’t want to rush into something like that, he had said, smiling.

Some people didn’t know there was a primary; some didn’t know that as Democrats—nearly everyone in this neighborhood was a Democrat—they could vote; and a few didn’t know who was running against Jimmy Carter. When he said it was Senator Kennedy—Teddy Kennedy—they had seen that on the news, they now recalled, but one woman said, holding up her hand to block the offered brochure, I wouldn’t vote for that scum. What he did to that girl!

—He isn’t perfect, Harold conceded. None of us is perfect. He’s strong on gun control. He’ll deal with the economy. Get the hostages out of Iran—

Harold tried to keep the brochures from flying away as he walked down her steps and farther along the block. The next man was voting for Kennedy because Carter was bad for the Jews. Harold didn’t think Carter was bad for the Jews, even though the United States had voted against Israel on the issue of Israeli settlement in occupied Arab lands, but he agreed because he was glad to mark down a 1. Nobody answered at the next three houses, and then a woman said she was voting for Carter because everyone knew Reagan would get the Republican nomination, and Carter was more likely to defeat Reagan. She quoted a poll Harold didn’t know about. Carter would beat Reagan 63 percent to 32 percent. Kennedy would beat him too, Harold noted.

—But not as definitively, she said. The main thing is, Reagan has to lose.

—You don’t think Ronald Reagan is a serious threat, do you? Harold said. She was a rumpled, brainy-looking woman, maybe in her fifties.

—Of course he is, she said. The only thing that matters is to defeat Reagan. He’s an idiot. Did you hear about that joke?

Harold had heard about the joke. On the campaign bus, Reagan had told an ethnic joke: How do you tell the Polish one at a cockfight? He’s the one with the duck. How do you tell the Italian? He bets on the duck. How do you know the Mafia is there? The duck wins. Edwin Meese, his political adviser, had said, There goes Connecticut.

—People will see through Reagan, Harold said.

—No, they won’t. Kennedy won’t ever be president because of Chappaquiddick. Who wants to win now so we can lose in November?

—But if you could just choose your favorite, Harold said, it would be Kennedy?

—Yeah, she said. It would be Kennedy. She took a brochure and closed the door. He put her down as a 3. Next came a man who said, I hate Kennedy, but I’m voting for him because I hate Carter more. Harold looked at his watch. He had promised to meet Naomi at her old apartment. She had moved out, but there were little things to do. Real estate was getting so expensive they had despaired of finding an apartment where they could live together comfortably, but at last they had found a co-op apartment they could afford. Harold had now lived there for a month and Naomi for a week. He could hardly believe that something in his life, at this late date, could be new and yet good—a gain, not a loss. They were to be married the next day: Sunday, March 23, 1980—two days, as it would turn out, before Kennedy won the New York primary—and at first Naomi had said he had no business volunteering for the primary the day before his wedding. Then she relented because the wedding would be so simple. Really, there was nothing to do.

He quit early, tired, and took a cab to her old place. She was cleaning the kitchen. The furniture was gone, and he didn’t know how to help but couldn’t sit down. He stood and watched her. Her hair had grown back, dark gray, spiky, charming. I should help, he said.

—I’ll tell you when I think of something.

He was tired and leaned on the counter. I should have brought coffee.

—I’d love coffee. He went into the rain again, leaving behind his clipboard and brochures, and found an open coffee shop. He brought back two containers, with two muffins in a bag in his raincoat pocket. Walking in the rain—again the umbrella was useless, and now he needed both hands for the coffee containers, but they were warm—he looked forward to the next day.

There was always a next day and a next, and each took him further from Nelson’s life, each was a day that Nelson would not live, and each took Harold closer to his own death. But each took him further from the day of Nelson’s death, and that was worth it, further from the moment of finding out. They would be a small, quiet group at the wedding tomorrow. He was being married by a rabbi—would wonders never cease? As he walked carefully with the hot containers, head down against the rain, it seemed that if he concentrated enough, it would already be that next day, which was predicted to be sunny. He would be unmarried and then, as if he went over a bump, married. Naomi had wanted a rabbi, and Artie had produced one: Carol’s husband, Lenny, in midlife had gone to rabbinical school. Not too much God, Harold said to Artie.

—Are you kidding? With me for a father-in-law? He doesn’t dare. Harold knew Lenny wasn’t afraid of anyone, but so what? They’d be married at Paul’s substantial home near Poughkeepsie—he taught history at Vassar—and Paul and his wife, Martha, were having lunch catered. The only guests would be Artie and Evelyn, Brenda and her little boy, David—who was six or seven—and her latest girlfriend (I try not to like them too much, Evelyn had told Harold, because they just don’t last). Carol and Lenny had two children, but Harold had no idea how old they were or whether they were coming. His own grandchildren would certainly be there: Paul and Martha had two boys and a girl, Amanda, who at three somehow knew about weddings and had insisted that she would be the flower girl in Grandpa Harold and Grandma Naomi’s wedding. So there would be no fuss—except that Amanda would carry a basket of petals and, if she could be persuaded to give them up, would strew them on the ground. Like Harold, Naomi was an only child, but two of her friends were coming to the wedding.

After Nelson died, Artie and Evelyn had sat silently with Harold for hours, then returned day after day. They sat near him, bent forward as if their chairs had no backs, as if they sat on stools, as Jews are supposed to in mourning, though they were not on stools.

Did you pick up your dress from the cleaners? he said, when he’d brought the coffee back and was leaning again on the sink.

—What do you think? Huh? Do you think I picked up my dress? Or do you think I just left it there? She finished cleaning the stove, drank more coffee, elbowed him away from the sink and shook some cleanser into it. I’ve lived in this apartment all these years, she said, scrubbing. Decades. Decades, not just years. That stain in the sink. I clean it every week. It never changes. Oh my life, she said. What did I do with my life?

3

These days there were more homeless people in Grand Central Station than people taking trains. This was not true, Artie acknowledged to himself, but the homeless took up more room and were more noticeable than the people hurrying to or from the tracks, or even the people like him, waiting at the clock. A person who might be a man or a woman—in a woolen hat pulled down over the ears—sprawled against a wall, surrounded by battered suitcases. Artie’s bum knee was bothering him, and he walked repeatedly around the information kiosk in the center of the station because walking was easier than standing. He had arrived twenty minutes early for David’s train. Only eleven, the kid was coming by himself from New Haven, where Brenda had driven from New Hampshire to visit her girlfriend. The two of them would be alone for the weekend, while he and Evelyn got to keep David, which was good. But he didn’t see why she couldn’t have driven David into New York. Maybe the kid liked trains. He could remember being eleven, and he would have wanted to come alone, to come on the train alone. In a way, Artie was still eleven.

Or Artie could have taken the train to New Haven, said hello to the girlfriend, Jess, whom he liked, and picked up David. Well, Brenda thought the way Brenda thought, and there was no point in arguing.

Seventeen minutes until the train was due. Maybe Brenda thought taking the train back and forth would wear Artie out—that he was too old. She’d given him a funny look the last time they were together, as if she was shocked at how old he was, all of a sudden.

Or maybe the kid insisted. Probably that was it. He enlarged his walk. No point in circling the information booth for seventeen minutes, giving himself the same circular explanations. He toured the station, studied the stupid Kodak ad, studied the homeless. The indeterminate person was a woman. Fourteen minutes. If you often showed up early to meet trains, life would not seem short.

Retired, he had too much thinking time. At the moment he was not worrying about the goddamn country four years after Reagan was elected or about Brenda’s love life—Jess had lasted for a while; maybe she was permanent—but, more immediately, about whether David would get safely off the train and into his arms and whether Evelyn would be standing inside the entrance of Macy’s closest to Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street when he and David arrived. What would Evelyn say if he couldn’t find David? What would David say if he couldn’t find Evelyn? Evelyn might get mixed up and go to the wrong place. He should have thought of something simpler. Macy’s had a million entrances. Thirteen minutes. Did he have time to go to the men’s room and get back before the train? He should have thought of that before. The impulse had been unexpected. Instead of wasting time deciding, he hurried down the stairs. He could still run. All that tennis. If everyone played tennis, the world would be a healthier place.

He got back with two minutes to spare. Now he circled the information kiosk again, but when the train came in, he couldn’t help it, he went to the gate where David would come out. Then he thought that was a mistake, they’d miss each other, and he started back. Grandpa! called David, and Artie turned and opened his arms wide for a skinny boy and a fat, dilapidated backpack. David was wearing a Red Sox jacket.

—You come to New York like that?

—Like what? He smelled fresh and familiar, pressing his face into Artie’s chest—eager, cool, aromatic—as if he’d been outdoors, not cooped up in a train. Don’t you know better than to come to New York in a Red Sox jacket? Some Yankee fan will knock your block off. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I’ll turn you into a Mets fan. Dwight Gooden. You know who that is?

The kid was trembling. Maybe he’d been frightened after all, alone in the train. Artie held his skinny shoulders. You want me to carry your pack?

He shook his head. I’m okay.

—What’s the matter?

—Nothing.

—You know, Artie said, when I was eleven, I didn’t have a grandfather. I never had one. They stayed back in Russia. Horrible, what happened. So I have no experience with how you talk to a grandfather.

David shook his head. I’m okay.

—We’ll go find Grandma, Artie said. He’d taught children David’s age for years and years, but he’d rarely thought about them one at a time. If there were thirty, he’d know what to do. But this was true for kids too: they liked being with adults if there were plenty of kids around. He remembered being eleven, being with adults at eleven—embarrassment, bafflement. He said, Do you have to go to the bathroom?

—No, David said. Yes.

Back to the men’s room. David went into a stall. Artie stood watch. A homeless man washed clothes in a basin. Did you see that? David said as they left. They crossed the main concourse.

—You want something to eat? Can you wait for lunch? He could buy him a knockwurst. A place in the station had great knockwurst. We’re having lunch soon—can you wait? I don’t want to spoil your appetite.

—I can wait. David had straight, dark hair, like Artie’s own before it turned white.

—I’ll tell you what. We’ll get one knockwurst and share it.

—Okay, David said. He seemed excited. Artie gave him most of the knockwurst. They walked to Broadway—Times Square—and down Broadway. Did you see that? David said again, after a silence.

—See what?

—A man in the men’s room was washing clothes in the basin.

—Homeless, Artie said. Reagan’s homeless. It’s 1984 and we’ve got 1932 all over again. People with no place to live. Now they’re throwing them out of the station. Soon that guy will be out in the street with dirty clothes. A woman got thrown out in the cold a couple of months ago and she died. You know what your friendly president says? He says they’re homeless by choice. Homeless by choice.

—He’s not my friendly president.

—Good boy. He’s disgusting. And, you’ll see, he’ll be reelected in November.

—My mom’s not voting for him.

—I should hope not! Artie said. How’s your mom, anyway?

—She’s good.

—So this Jess—is she going to last? Is she better than the others?

—I liked some of the others, David said. I liked Karen. Karen had been Brenda’s partner for two years.

—Everybody liked Karen, Artie said. A block later, he said, Hey David, you like limericks? Listen to this:

A woman in females delighted,

And by many of them was excited,

But they’d shout or they’d pout.

They didn’t work out.

Would her troth ever be plighted?

David was silent.

—You don’t like it? Artie said.

—I don’t know, he said. They walked, and Artie looked for something else to talk about. The weather was warm, and he opened his jacket. You want to take your jacket off? Is that thing heavy?

—It’s not funny, David said.

—What isn’t? Oh, I know what. Artie didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, I know, kiddo. You’re right. It’s not funny. They didn’t speak for a couple of blocks. He should have skipped the goddamned limerick.

When they were almost at Thirty-fourth Street, David said, Grandpa?

—We’re almost there. Let’s see if we can find your grandma.

—I was scared I wouldn’t find you, David said, and burst into tears. He was almost a teenager, Artie saw, looking at him before he put his arms around him, skinny and short but with the beginnings of a man’s face, a jaggedness. His cheeks no longer stuck out—that was the difference. David had had round little cheeks Artie liked to pinch. Now he had a bony face. He sobbed and trembled.

—She shouldn’t have sent you alone! Artie said. I don’t know why the hell she sent you alone!

—I wanted to, David said. But then I was afraid I’d be lost in New York.

—You’re not a New Yorker, Artie said. He had almost never known anyone well who was not a New Yorker. A grandson growing up in Concord, New Hampshire! That’s okay. I’ll teach you to be a New Yorker. I’ll teach you what to do. First thing, I gotta take you to a Mets game. I think they’re playing tonight—I should have thought. Now Evelyn will want to make a big dinner, the whole bit. Well, we’ll watch it on television. But I don’t think Gooden is pitching.

If he could find Evelyn. The kid wasn’t the only one who worried. Evelyn got mixed up these days. She’d worked at the nursing home for so long, and then one day, before she’d thought about retiring, they told her they were having a big party, a dinner to honor her years of service. I get the message, she said to Artie.

Holding David’s hand though the boy protested, Artie went into Macy’s and stopped just to the side of the entrance closest to Thirty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. He looked at his watch. They were ten minutes late. He didn’t see Evelyn. He would count to a hundred and not say anything. He would count to three hundred. Five hundred. There she was, dressed up in a spring coat but with flat shoes. Evelyn had finally stopped wearing heels. A broken ankle I don’t need, she said. She was getting shorter. She and David were the same height. I’m late, she said, after she hugged him. Don’t say anything, Artie, I know I’m late. I bought you some shirts, David, and there was a line to pay. Wait till you see—very nice shirts.

4

Finding their way in an unfamiliar store, they forgot soup when they were in the soup aisle, so Jess went back. Brenda pushed the cart across the front of the store toward cookies but stopped when she found piles of newspapers. Here in the Adirondacks, they carried the New York Times but not the Boston Globe, which they read at home in New Hampshire. The Soviets were withdrawing from Afghanistan. What she wanted to know was how the Red Sox—in second place—had done yesterday, but New York papers neglected the Sox. Jess had grown up in New York and Connecticut. She rooted for the Mets, though now she’d lived in New Hampshire for four years. She’d moved in with Brenda in Concord when—weeping and hugging, arguing, teasing each other for their nervousness—they made up their minds after months of discussion to live together, even if David didn’t seem to like Jess much—these days David didn’t like anybody much—and even if Jess was a Mets fan. Brenda (who’d been away from New York for years and years, whose son had become a Sox fan the minute she let him out the door) liked the Red Sox.

Two years ago, in 1986, their relationship had survived Bill Buckner’s error and the Mets’ defeat of the Red Sox in the World Series. If we can handle that, we can handle anything, Jess had said. Now the Mets were in first place in the National League East, the Sox in second place in the American League East. Would they meet again? Could Brenda and Jess still handle it? When nobody was looking, Brenda leafed through the Sports section. Oh shit. Roger Clemens had screwed up early in the game and the Sox had lost.

They had lost in 103-degree heat in Fenway Park, and the paper said it was hot in New York, but here in the mountains it was raining. After weeks of heat and humidity, they’d packed for a hot weather camping trip, and it was cold. Now Brenda was restless. She’d have walked up a mountain, but Jess hated hiking in the rain. Brenda wore the only sweatshirt she’d brought, now grubby. But here came tall Jess down the coffee aisle, grasping the top of a can of Progresso soup with each long-fingered hand, her thin arms bare, her high round breasts discernible under her dark green T-shirt. Looking capable, looking happy. Nobody else in the store carried two cans of soup, one in each hand, and if they did, they would not look as if carrying soup was original and slightly scary. If the arm swung wide, a can of soup could become a weapon. But Jess was gentle. You are my sunshine, Brenda said.

—And it’s all the sunshine you’re getting, said Jess. What now?

—Cookies, bananas, bread.

—I mean when we’re done.

—Let’s go for a ride.

—Where?

Brenda said, The map’s in the car. They found cookies, bananas, bread. They bought wine. She knew where she wanted to go, the reason she’d proposed the Adirondacks in the first place.

—At least we don’t have David to amuse, she said as she carried their groceries to the car. David had a summer job this year, busing tables, and was spending the week back home in Concord with a friend.

—And to tell us our misdeeds, Jess said.

—I can’t help it, I miss him, Brenda said, lowering the bag into the trunk, then stretching her arms and fingers. But I’m glad he’s not here. This long-necked, complicated but essentially lighthearted woman lived with her and loved her. It was still astonishing, and Brenda was never sure Jess wouldn’t change her mind. Jess was driving. She got back on the road. Look, Brenda said, pointing at the map Jess couldn’t see, pretending she’d just thought this up. Here’s where I used to go when I was a kid. The cabin. Let’s look for it.

—You know where it is?

—I think so. I loved being there. My parents would quiet down and forget I existed. I could think.

—I love these roads in the rain, Jess said, but she sounded resistant. The dark green hills curved around them, two minutes away from the store. I don’t care if it’s raining. Here we are, not at work. We are not at work.

They drove. For miles, nothing but evergreens or clearings where wildflowers drooped in the rain. Then, abruptly, there would be a lake ringed with cottages, lonely with rain, a general store with a gas station outside. Or a break in the woods and a view of mountains, barely visible in mist. They both liked their work, but vacation was exquisite. Jess was a divorce lawyer. Brenda—with Gene Stearns, whose late father had started the company—supervised ten workers who built wooden playground equipment. Mostly they sold it in sections, to schools and community groups. They held workdays to put it together, and Brenda traveled with the equipment and taught people who’d never built anything how to make a playground. She’d been as far south as Maryland, all over New England and parts of New York State. Best and hardest were playgrounds in the backyards of women’s shelters and residences for battered women. Those customers got a discount. She’d spend a week working with the women, showing them how to use tools, how to use their bodies, sleeping in an unoccupied room and eating with them, pretending to get their jokes. She might have lived in a place like that, she reminded herself. It could have happened.

Jess had always known she loved women. Hearing about Brenda’s past troubled her. How could you? she had said.

—I didn’t know who I was.

—I don’t know what that means.

In Schroon Lake village, only a few miles from the cabin, they stopped for coffee, which always made Jess happy. There was decent blueberry pie. Then Brenda said, Let’s walk down to the public beach. The village of Schroon Lake was the way villages ought to be: the stores were a block from the beach, and in between was the library, where Brenda had read as a child while her mother did the shopping. The little street, with shops crowded together—filled with tourists buying postcards and souvenirs, impatient with the rain—was unchanged. There was the Grand Union, the liquor store whose owner had given Brenda a ride to the cabin in 1969—incredibly, nineteen years ago. Nelson was dead, but it was as if she’d find him there, as if he might have escaped everywhere else to be at the cabin. They walked down the curved street and stood above a lawn and the beach, staring out at the big lake. Swimming was possible at the cabin, but Evelyn had preferred this beach with its clean sand, friendly women to chat with, and lifeguards, and Brenda had spent many hours here. Now the lake’s surface was gray-green, rough with wind and rain. No lifeguards in the big chairs on the beach. They descended the lawn and walked in the sand to the edge of the lake. The smell of this country . . . what was the smell? The sounds and smells were not like anywhere, not like southern New Hampshire—what was the difference? Without knowing what she meant, she said, The sky has a different shape at home and here.

—No it doesn’t.

—It circles differently. She’d lived in New Hampshire for something like sixteen years. The sky there curved back to David’s long, difficult babyhood and a list of women: Roz; Karen, whom she’d loved too hard; scary Jean; Annie; and then the first hard year with Jess, when she couldn’t believe she’d found, at last, the person with whom she’d grow old and kept trying to spoil things just to make sure. But the sky here in the Adirondacks made a larger curve, all the way back to her mother under a big hat calling to her and Carol, brushing sand off their backsides and pulling the fabric of their ruffled cotton bathing suits from where it was caught in the cheeks of their buttocks, telling them to stay out of the water because they’d just eaten ice cream. Evelyn was younger then than Brenda was now. How had she caught up to and passed her mother? A fragile, imaginary Evelyn, having seated her girls on the sand where she could see them when she turned her head to breathe, yanked her own rust-colored nylon suit down, tucked her hair into a white rubber cap with a strap under the chin, glanced at the sky—imaginary Evelyn saw sun, not rain—walked purposefully into the lake and swam back and forth parallel to the beach.

Jess looked bored, her arms crossed, and Brenda put her arm around her shoulders to turn her back toward the car. Okay if we look for the house?

—We have enough gas, Jess said.

Brenda made one mistake, then backtracked and had Jess turn down the right road. Nothing much had changed since she’d been there last. At last, came the long driveway. Jess turned down it, but said, What are we going to tell the people here?

—Maybe there won’t be anybody, and we can walk down to the lake. It was a small lake, lost in the hills. She went on, Or we can say we’re lost. Or we can tell the truth.

Nobody was there. The house looked much as it had when she’d been there with Nelson. The grass was high, and the windows were boarded up. A faded FOR SALE sign leaned on its pole near the driveway.

—Does it still belong to Harold’s first wife? Jess said.

—I heard she sold it years ago.

Jess parked the Toyota and slapped the edge of Brenda’s seat. Let’s go, she said. Anybody asks, we’ll say we might buy it.

They walked around the edge of the house. The rain had stopped, but the sky was low and dark above the lake. Brenda walked down to the edge of the water—the familiar round shape, a few houses close together on the opposite shore—then turned to look at Jess coming too. She put an arm around her and Jess leaned into her. She stroked the back of Brenda’s neck and ran her forefinger down Brenda’s back to just below her waist. It was good to be away from people, where they could touch.

—I’m cold, Jess said.

—At last, Brenda said. Let’s go back into town and buy you a sweatshirt.

—Dark green, Jess said. Also—could we get a dog?

—Today?

—When we get home.

—What made you think of it now? Okay.

—I have a past too, Jess said. Brenda turned and took Jess’s face in her hands, thrust her tongue into Jess’s mouth. They both laughed but they prolonged the kiss.

Brenda wondered if the key was still in the Band-Aid box in the place near the door where it had always been. Probably not. The exterior had been painted since her time, though it was in need of paint now. Anyway, she didn’t want to go in. Inside was Nelson’s ghost. She touched Jess’s arm. You still put up with me, she said.

—I like the way your head sits on your shoulders, Jess said.

—Unlike the heads of your old girlfriends, which stuck out of their asses.

—That’s right.

—Maybe I’ll call Harold, tell him the place is for sale, Brenda said.

—How old is Harold? Jess said.

—Same as my father. Seventy-eight. Not too old to answer the phone.

5

Harold—on a bright, cool Sunday morning in September 1995, after an insufferably hot, dry summer—discovered yet again, at eighty-five, that he was a pretentious idiot. When he’d retired from teaching, he had told Naomi, who was already retired, that he was going to write, that he’d write every day in the spare room of their apartment, which he’d made into a study, that he’d write even on weekends.

—A couple of hours on weekend mornings, that’s all, he said. Otherwise, I’ll stop believing I’m worth anything.

Naomi, as emotionally complete as ever—she was a tidy zippered case equipped with every tool—had readily agreed to leave him alone in the mornings, and she accomplished that all too well. On weekdays she took classes, taught illiterates to read, and went to a gym. On weekends she walked with a friend even older than Harold. Today, after that, she was going on to lunch with another friend. Harold usually wrote. Sometimes he couldn’t. Since he’d retired, he’d published a study of Delmore Schwartz he’d worked on for many years and had written some reviews and articles. Nothing he wrote changed anyone. Walking with Naomi would have been appealing, but he had not yet said to her, I’m not going to write on Saturdays and Sundays anymore. I’m going to be with you. She’d probably prefer walking with her friend. Her friend was ninety-one. How long could she walk?

And he—he was about to start another book, though only a fool would start a book at his age. Well, he would be a fool, then. He had bought a computer a few weeks earlier, and mostly, this morning, he had been wasting time, stomping back and forth to the toilet, glancing at the paper (Bosnia, as usual). But he had also learned how to insert page numbers. The real job of the day was continuing to copy notes he’d been making for the last eight months, a plan for this book. Typing the notes on the computer was different from typing them with a typewriter because he was a messy typist, but the computer made everything look good. He disliked the finished look of what he’d typed: his plan, plainly set down as if an office full of assistants would carry it out, made him feel even more like a pretentious idiot. The book—for God’s sake!—the book was an autobiography. A memoir. A memoir of doing things wrong.

And right. Also doing things right. Personally wrong, up to a point, politically right, mostly. Something like that. He had just typed death of Nelson in the list of events to write about. He got up and left the room, though he had three-quarters of an hour of his two hours left.

One reason he felt like a pretentious idiot had nothing to do with Naomi. Evelyn Saltzman had had a heart attack. Artie had been too upset to call, but Carol had called Harold, and he’d gone to see Evelyn in the hospital. Now it was a few weeks later and she was home. When he’d phoned the other day, Artie said, Come see us, it would cheer her up. Come Sunday. Maybe ten or eleven? I’m driving her to Carol and Lenny’s for lunch.

—I write in the morning on Sundays, Harold had said. How about after lunch, when you come back? Artie and Evelyn had never moved out of Brooklyn, but now they lived in Brooklyn Heights and it was easy to get to them.

—Nah, she’ll be worn out. And I want to watch the tennis. Then Evelyn had called to him, and Artie had gotten off the phone.

Now on Sunday, Harold—amazed that at eighty-five it was still possible to do something he regretted as much as he regretted having said he was writing this morning and couldn’t visit Artie and Evelyn—picked up the phone. Can I come now?

—Sure, Artie said. We’re just about to take a walk. She’s supposed to walk.

—Where?

—The river.

—I’ll find you, Harold said. He took a hat for the sun and left the apartment. All over the city, old people walked. Naomi and her friend, Artie and Evelyn. Well, he and Artie had walked when they were young too. As he hurried to the subway, he spotted a cab. Eagerly, he rode across the Brooklyn Bridge, back into Brooklyn. He sat up straight and looked at the river. The glint of sun hurt his eyes.

He had the taxi drop him near the Promenade, close to Artie and Evelyn’s apartment. As he set out on the paved walk next to the river, he heard Artie call, Hey, you old bastard! and turned.

—One-four-nine is the school for me, drives away all adversity! Artie sang. He was elated now, after being terrified when he thought Evelyn would die. They were sitting on a bench, smiling and waving. Harold stood in front of them, leaning over to kiss Evelyn, who looked old, but whose eyes were bright with humor and pleasure. How do you feel? he said.

—I’m alive, she said, and what crossed her face for a second looked more like despair.

Harold made the choice to ignore it. And you’re out of the hospital. You look wonderful. What a beautiful day.

The wind made crisscrossing lines on the river. There were sailboats.

—Sit, Artie said. We’re resting. How’s the work?

—I’m an idiot, writing about my life.

—From what you tell me, the point of the book is that you’re an idiot. Artie had shriveled and darkened like a nut. His nose looked bigger than the rest of his face.

—I haven’t started writing, Harold said. I’m making notes and typing them on the computer. Did I tell you I bought a computer?

—Who needs it? Artie said.

—No, it’s terrific, Harold said. You want to add something, you just stick it in. With a typewriter, you retype the whole damn thing. I keep finding notes that belong somewhere else, and I just put them where they ought to go. He thought about typing death of Nelson.

—Ridiculous, Artie said.

—How is your wife? Evelyn said. I’m sorry, I forget her name.

—Naomi. She’s fine. She sends regards.

—Where is she?

—With a friend, Harold said. Naomi had kept her friends when they married, and she only rarely saw his.

—She should live so long, Evelyn said. Startled, Harold looked at Artie, who shrugged.

Artie said, You need to walk. They stood and he took Evelyn’s arm. Harold went around to her other side, and the three of them promenaded down the Promenade, part of a cheerful procession of lovers, dog walkers, children in strollers.

—You are so right, Evelyn said, as they set out. She wore a light blue sweatsuit and clean white sneakers.

—In the hospital, Artie said, they made her walk every day. We’d walk to the nurses’ station and back. Then we did it twice. The day before she came home, we did it twice without resting.

—A good walk, Evelyn said, and Harold was relieved that this remark was not a non sequitur. She put one foot deliberately in front of the other, but she was steady. She smiled. I eat such smart food, she said. You should see.

—A lot of fish, Artie said. You want to know my personal recipe for fish? I broil it with lemon. Delicious. A little oil, no butter. But the trick is to know how long it takes. You have to take it out at the right minute.

—It’s very good, Evelyn said.

—So is this Wild Card thing going to ruin baseball? Artie said then.

Harold shook his head. He knew there would be more play-off games this year. He hadn’t followed baseball closely enough to have an opinion, but surely anything done for the benefit of the advertisers was bad. The sun was pleasant on his shoulders. He was a little chilly in a lightweight jacket. Summer was over. Funny how you looked forward to the next thing, even though each one brought you closer to the end. It had to be Darwinian: species survived when they found excitement in the renewal of the seasons. But you didn’t have to be old to die. Nelson was dead. Myra had been dead of lung cancer for years. Thinking of Myra made him think of the cabin. How’s Brenda? he said.

—She was here when Ev was in the hospital, Artie said, and she’s coming back soon. The dog sitter—something. In a few days. She and Jess—they have money, who would think? Getting bought out was the best thing for Brenda’s business. Jess makes a fair chunk of change too, with that law practice. They sent us some stuff to eat.

—Low-fat, Evelyn said.

—Brenda asked me, Artie said, Does Harold go to the cabin? God, I loved that place. Ev, when you’re better, we’ll go stay in a hotel in the mountains.

—Brenda was the one who told me it was for sale, Harold said. She and her partner drove over to see it. Can you imagine? The next day I made an offer—asking price, no inspection. I pay a caretaker so it doesn’t go up in flames. But I’ve never once gone.

—That’s a mistake, Artie said. You should go. You still drive? Take Naomi and just go, take a look. Just make sure the mountains are still around the lake.

Harold was silent.

—It won’t bring him back, staying away, Artie said. And he didn’t die there—I honestly don’t know what that has to do with it.

—You’re right, Harold said. Nelson never liked being there. Maybe if I had helped him have fun there, everything would have been different.

Evelyn spoke slowly, almost making it a chant, with pauses between each word, Honey, it . . . is . . . what . . . it . . . is. She patted his arm. Come on, I’ll race you, she said, and walked a little faster, pulling her arm away from Artie’s and pumping with both elbows, her hands in fists. Her short hair was white, fluffed by the wind.

Gulls screamed above the river, and a red dog stopped to sniff Artie’s shoes. He leaned over and scratched the dog behind the ears, and Harold and Evelyn walked past him. Artie broke into a little jog to catch up. The dog’s owner, a young woman, called, Great day for a walk!

6

Brenda’s mother had complained for years that she couldn’t sleep, and when she died, two months ago, in her honor Brenda had apparently become the new Evelyn Saltzman Insomnia Expert. Jess thought it was Evelyn’s way of being with her.

—It’s a visitation, she said. Brenda knew Jess would have liked a visitation from Evelyn for herself. Her own mother, still alive, was sometimes hostile and sometimes elaborately friendly but never relaxed about Jess’s homosexuality. But Evelyn had been as matter-of-fact about women loving women as she was about everything else. Her only objection to Jess as a partner for Brenda had been that she smoked, but soon Jess quit and then she had no faults.

Brenda had pointed out that Evelyn was too considerate to keep someone awake; any haunting she’d need to do, she’d accomplish at some reasonable hour.

—Heaven is timeless, said Jess. No clocks.

—Jews don’t go to that kind of heaven, Brenda said.

So now she was carrying out her recently acquired duties as an insomniac while Jess breathed steadily in her sleep beside her, lying on her side facing away from Brenda, her butt in flannel pajamas just touching Brenda’s thigh. Brenda checked the red numbers on the clock at their bedside too often, glumly noting the passage of the next to the last day of the first year of the new millennium—it was 2:47 AM on December 30, 2000. Purists said the first day of the new millennium had not been January 1, 2000, but would be January 1, 2001, which didn’t make anybody think planes would fall from the sky, as they had thought last year. Brenda had not worried about Y2K.

She rolled over onto her side, facing away from Jess, and now their rear ends touched. Jess stirred in her sleep and moved away slightly, and when Brenda reached back and just touched what her hand came to—a thigh, she thought—Jess grunted contentedly, as if to say yes. They had driven to Vermont one weekend this fall, with Abby the dog in the backseat, and had a civil union ceremony. Jess said she’d like to marry. Brenda didn’t believe in ceremonies. She told Jess she was having this one because it was important to do everything possible to give other gay people the right to do whatever they wanted, but the truth was that she was happy that Jess wanted—as she herself wanted—to promise to stay together. Brenda saw it as for life; Jess was sure they’d be together after death as well.

—I have no objection to being your partner after death, Brenda said. This was in the motel the night after the ceremony. She lay on the bed flexing her feet. After the ceremony they’d taken a long walk. She’d been wearing the wrong shoes, and her ankles were sore. She said, I needed to make that clear.

—My grandmother must have been so surprised when she got to heaven and found gay couples, Jess said.

—Do you think she spoke to them?

—Oh, she’d speak to anyone.

Now it was 2:53. What was keeping her up, Brenda decided, was an e-mail she’d written to David. Maybe it had been a mistake. These days David was a technical writer in Silicon Valley whose work she didn’t understand. He lived alone in Mountain View and had a long, narrow face and lank black hair. He didn’t look like Brenda, but like her father—her father in a rare mood. David’s face told you he could be hurt; her father’s had more often expressed—less so lately—anger or defensiveness. She scarcely remembered David’s own father’s appearance (but she had supplied Ted’s name when David had requested it as a college sophomore—he had found Ted living on Long Island, and they had met once or twice).

Brenda knew David had written fiction in college, though he’d never let her see it. But two weeks ago, she’d received a priority mail envelope from him containing a short story. This is some real writing I did, he had scrawled on an accompanying sheet of paper from a company scratch pad. The story was about a boy with a lesbian mother who has a girlfriend, Carrie. His babysitter is sick, and Carrie agrees to take care of him. She drives them to a nearby lake, where the boy talks her into giving him money for ice cream. His mother does not allow him to walk to the refreshment stand alone, at a distance, but Carrie doesn’t object. He gets lost, and when he gets back, he can’t find Carrie. Afraid she has drowned, he tearfully begs help from a lifeguard, who leads the boy to a boat shed, behind which is Carrie, making out with another woman.

Brenda had had no idea David could produce a story like this—or any story—and was as impressed by its length and number of characters as by anything else. She thought it seemed good enough to publish. She wondered if it was true, if he’d been afraid to tell her about an infidelity by one of the women she’d loved. There hadn’t been anyone exactly like Carrie, but one—the one they lived with for two years—was Karen, a similar name. She didn’t think Karen had cheated on her; they’d had plenty of other problems but not that. Karen didn’t drive, though.

She wondered what David hoped she’d say, whether he might want her to critique the story, and when she read it again, she found she wasn’t sure she believed the ending. That was what she’d written about, finally. She praised the story effusively, did not mention its similarities to their own life, but questioned the ending. Maybe Carrie should be making out with a man, she suggested. Would Carrie make out with a woman on a New Hampshire beach? And wouldn’t the lifeguard be too embarrassed to lead the boy to the right place? She had written the e-mail several times and sent it three days ago. David hadn’t replied. Maybe she hadn’t praised the story enough. Maybe David hadn’t wanted criticism or praise but something else.

Brenda got up, pulling her robe around her. Abby, who was floppy-limbed in all circumstances, part golden retriever, was a rag doll at night. She was stretched at the foot of the bed. Without noticeably organizing her legs, she rolled onto the floor and padded after Brenda, who went down the wide oak staircase—the first thing she’d loved about the house; it still needed to be refinished—and let Abby out.

A newspaper stained with coffee was spread on the kitchen table. Gore—it now turned out—had won the popular vote by more than half a million. Bush had picked somebody called Donald Rumsfeld to be secretary of defense. Jess kept up with the news, but after the Supreme Court had made Bush president, Brenda couldn’t bear it, read little more than headlines. She bundled the paper into the recycling bin and opened the refrigerator. Then she closed it and ate a banana. Abby barked and she let her in.

She still wouldn’t be able to sleep. She went into the living room. The computer was on a table in the corner. She got a blanket from the sofa, wrapped it around herself, and turned the computer on. It was 3:42 AM. She checked her e-mail. Something had come in just after she’d left the office. It was seven or eight years now since her company had been bought by a firm in Ohio that made similar playgrounds—also imaginative, also put together often by volunteers on the site—but made of steel. Brenda, now in charge of Mountainside and its finely crafted wooden products, kept an eye on design and construction at home, but she also traveled more. She supervised volunteer workdays for both parts of the operation, did some of the teaching herself, and had a staff of two for the rest. A school system in Iowa was buying three playgrounds and wanted to reschedule a workday. She’d deal with that in the office. But there was also a message from David—no, two messages from David.

Mom,

Thanks for the suggestion—it’s interesting, though I’m not sure I agree.

What an astonishing boy. She could never have expressed polite disagreement to her parents. She would say, How can you possibly think something so totally wrong? Often in tears. David was almost twenty-seven. Did she still do that at twenty-seven? Yes.

He went on,

I think the story needs Carrie to cheat on Liz with a woman, and the lifeguard wouldn’t have the nerve to confront them until the kid asked, but then he would. He’d be seething about their shocking behavior. If you’re wondering about the time Annie drove me to the lake, by the way—I assume you are, and thanks for not asking if the story really happened, which is all anybody else I show my stories to seems to care about—she did not kiss another woman behind the boat shed or anywhere else. I don’t think there was a boat shed. I’ve conflated our usual lake, which is where Annie took me, with another one. But I really did go for the ice cream by myself, which you didn’t allow even at our little state park. I felt bad about that for years, but it wouldn’t have made enough of a story.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

D

As so often, Brenda sat back in her chair, reminded that David was someone she could rarely predict. He had said, stories. This was not an isolated story. She deleted two spam messages and read David’s second one.

Not to go on about this too much, but it’s an example of something I think about all the time: I don’t know other writers. I belong to a writing group, but they don’t know shit. I’m thinking about grad school. There are programs where you can go for a week or two and then mail in work, so I wouldn’t have to move or quit my job. More soon.

D

PS Happy New Year

It was past four, and Brenda heard Jess’s footsteps on the stairs. The dog stood up. Sweetie, Jess said, what?

—It’s okay, said Brenda.

—It’s cold in that bed without you.

—I’m coming, Brenda said. I miss my mother, she added. She started to cry. Jess held her arms open, and they embraced awkwardly on the stairs in their two puffy down bathrobes—one blue, one green—which they’d bought each other a couple of years ago rather than replace the heating system. Jess, who also missed Evelyn, cried too.

7

A fool and his money are soon parted, but a fool and his principles are harder to separate, Harold wrote. He didn’t know what came next. How long had he been writing this book? He’d bought his first computer in the mid-nineties and had made notes for months before he started writing. Now it was almost winter, 2002. A long time. When the initial draft—well, the fifteenth draft, which now seemed like the initial draft—was done, a year or two earlier, the editor who had published Harold’s previous books had retired, but his longtime assistant had become an editor. She had accepted the book but sent a letter of suggestions, queries, and complaints that Harold had put aside for months, the months of a cardiac bypass. Whenever he looked at the letter, Harold got so upset he couldn’t read it: it was three pages long.

Paul—author of two books on early nineteenth-century American history—finally persuaded him that they should sit down together and try to make sense of what Harold’s editor wanted. Paul said, You like her, remember?

Harold had known the editor, Jennifer, since she’d started at the company, right out of college. Indeed, how had she become someone Harold was afraid of? Paul spent every free weekend and his long professor’s summers at the cabin in the Adirondacks—after finally talking his father into letting him fix the place up and use it—and one Friday in spring, about a year and a half ago now, Paul had driven to the city, picked Harold up—Naomi was if anything pleased to be left alone for a weekend—and brought him, late at night, to the cabin with a trunkful of groceries, Harold’s manuscript, the editor’s letter, and a laptop computer. Paul took the luggage and said, Wait, but Harold—despite his dimming sight and stiff legs—didn’t want to wait. He walked to the back of the car and around it, his palm flat on the roof, then the trunk. The chilly mountain air and the smell of the evergreens brought a catch to his throat, and he made a surprised sound that caused Paul, ahead of him with his arms full, to turn abruptly and put down the bags.

—Dad, stop, he said.

—No, I’m all right. It had made no sense not to come. It made him think of Nelson, but there wasn’t anything that didn’t make him think of Nelson. Once again, he had been a coward.

The next morning Paul sat at the kitchen table with the manuscript, the letter, and the laptop, while Harold sat and sometimes dozed in the rocker Paul had placed near it. Harold was delighted to be where he was, proud of himself for owning it, for providing a country retreat for Paul.

The sounds and smells were right. The cabin brought Nelson back, but it brought back the pleasure and oddness of Nelson as much as the pain—his quirky goodwill, his tense alertness.

—This isn’t hard, Paul kept saying, looking over the editor’s suggestions. You should have seen the corrections on my last book. Harold’s book was autobiography—memoir—and so most of it came from Harold’s memory and couldn’t be checked. But facts about history could be checked, and Harold had to check them. He had never had trouble before. With this book, he couldn’t begin to think what to do. But Paul knew. You’ve forgotten how to get organized, he said, halfway through the morning. That’s all that’s wrong with you.

—I was never good at that, Harold said.

They took a break and walked slowly to the lakeshore in fleece jackets Paul’s wife had bought for both of them. They sat carefully on the dock. The surface of the lake glinted as it always had.

By the end of that weekend, much had been done, and Harold knew what else was needed. Soon the revision was accepted, but then Jennifer phoned with two more requests. Everybody hates the title, she said cheerfully. This was new! The title had always been Autobiography of a Fool. Think about it, Jennifer said.

—What’s the other thing? Harold said.

—Could you write a little preface? It needs a preface, she said. She rarely sounded so firm. Harold knew at once that she was right: it needed a preface. It started with his birth, but why would anybody care if they didn’t know anything about him? A month’s thought had led to the new title: A Fool and His Principles. And that led—this morning, with not much time left before his deadline—to the new first sentence, the first sentence of the preface.

So that is where Harold Abrams was, that fall morning in 2002: he was writing a preface to his new book, A Fool and His Principles, and the first sentence of the preface was—he read it again and didn’t hate it yet—A fool and his money are soon parted, but a fool and his principles are harder to separate. He still didn’t know what came next, but Naomi was standing in the doorway behind him.

—What? he said. He wouldn’t mind being interrupted. She hardly ever interrupted him, maybe a little more these days, when she’d become so intent on a thought that she’d forget they weren’t already in a conversation about it.

—What? Nothing what.

He swiveled his chair. Small but with sturdy shoulders, Naomi peered at something in her hand. She said, I was just trying to see in the light, tilting her head toward the window in his study. The corridor was long and dim. That was why she’d stopped where she had.

—See what?

—My gloves. I got wax on my gloves last night. How can I get it off? I can hardly see it. White wax.

—Let’s see. He got up. The night before, Naomi had worn black woolen gloves to a candlelight vigil to protest President Bush’s plan to go to war in Iraq. He had stayed home.

—Standing still is harder than walking, she said when she came home. She sat down in the nearest chair, still in her coat. Harold, I can’t believe it. I saw people tonight I haven’t seen since the Vietnam years. I can’t believe we have to do this again. Everybody got old. The kids with peace symbols have gray hair. Everybody my age is a wizened little troll, except for the ones who are dead or in nursing homes.

Harold was older than she was. He took the gloves and sat down, trying to flake off the wax with his thumbnail. Could you melt it?

—Wouldn’t that just make it worse?

—I don’t know.

—We didn’t use to carry candles, she said. It’s a nuisance, but it did look nice. What are you doing?

—The preface.

—Oh, she said, I’m sorry I interrupted!

—That’s okay, he said. I’m stuck, after the first sentence. He read it to her. Before she could speak, the phone rang. There was a phone on his desk, but Naomi usually answered the phone—she had many friends—and she left the gloves and went into the bedroom. He heard her voice—surprised, excited, not faking it, but couldn’t make out the words. Then he heard a tone that suggested Naomi was going to ask the other person to hold the phone while she consulted Harold. Sure enough. She made her slow way back to the doorway, while he worried that she’d trip on the cord. She had broken her hip a year earlier.

—It’s Amanda.

—What’s wrong?

—Nothing’s wrong.

—The baby’s okay? he said. Paul’s youngest child, his daughter Amanda, had married young. Harold and Naomi had defended her decision on illogical grounds that Harold knew were illogical, but he wanted to be on Amanda’s side.

—I didn’t even think of marrying your mother until I was getting old, he had said to Paul. Young isn’t so bad. If I’d been young, I’d have had the nerve to break her heart. It’s not good to wait until your conscience kicks in.

—That only makes sense as a decision not to marry, Paul had said.

Amanda hadn’t cared what either of them thought. She married and had a baby. Paul and Martha had hoped she’d go to medical school. She’d expressed interest in that, and she had the grades, but so far she just took care of her daughter, Nell. She and her husband—at least he earned a living; Harold had forgotten what he did—lived in Boston. Naomi said Amanda was in New York for a couple of days and would like to see them. Harold saved the sentence he’d typed and picked up the phone.

—Amanda?

—Grandpa. I’m in New York. Her voice was confident, a little raspy. She sounded like the boss of a small company or maybe a high school girl with a mild case of stage fright playing the boss of a small company in the senior play.

—So I hear. How’s the baby, honey? She had interested him from the first—always a little more troublesome and unpredictable than her brothers.

—She’s a monster. Aren’t you a monster, Nellie?

—Where are you? he said. How long are you staying?

—Well, said Amanda, here’s the thing. I should have called you before. I’m leaving in a few hours. I was going to call you, but things kept coming up. But I want to see you so much! I don’t want to leave without seeing you.

—Where are you?

—I’m at my friend’s house, but I’m leaving. I thought I’d take Nellie to a playground and hang around there until it’s time for my train. Is there a playground near Penn Station?

—When is your train? Your friend—where does she live?

—Um, Astoria, but we’re right near the subway.

—But you’ve got bags, Harold protested. And a stroller. Don’t you want to take a cab? I’ll come and get you. Could he do that? Which train went to Astoria? He knew there was a good train to Astoria.

—No, I got here fine. I’ve got a backpack for Nell and a suitcase with wheels—it’s easy. But do you know a playground?

He wasn’t hurt that she hadn’t called before—he knew that Amanda liked him. She’d gone to NYU and had dropped in now and then in those years. She’d bring her friends and would pull Harold’s books off the shelves to show them. He liked her independence—but he liked it even more that when she needed something, she turned to him. He couldn’t think of any playgrounds near Penn Station. How should he know? He remembered a playground where he had taken his kids—or maybe he and Paul had taken Amanda and her brothers—near the southwest corner of Central Park. He directed her to meet him on Central Park South in half an hour.

—Let me give you my cell, she said. Do you have one?

He did, but he didn’t remember the number. He hurried to find it while she stayed on the line. He rarely used it, but he did find it and it was charged up. We’re in business, he said.

—We’ve got a date, he said to Naomi, but she had a hairdresser’s appointment. Harold put on an overcoat and a scarf and set out alone for the subway station, elated.

He was a little tired when he came up the stairs, but only a little. He thought he saw Amanda at a distance and hurried toward the girl with the shaggy light hair and a big baby on her back. Yes. While she waited, she’d walked over to show Nellie the horses, waiting to pull tourists in carriages. She turned, saw Harold, and hurried to meet him, her wheeled bag clattering on the paving stones. She was tall and sturdy, and Nell bounced and frowned over her shoulder. She was named after Nelson. Nell and Amanda both had shaggy light hair.

When they reached him, Amanda threw her arms around him and he staggered. Oh my God, I’m going to knock you over and break your hip, and my dad will shoot me! she said, grasping his arms above his elbows, while the bag fell over. Nell cried.

—This is Grandpa, Amanda said. No, Great-Grandpa!

—Horsie! Nell wailed.

—We could go back, Harold said.

—No, let’s go to the playground. She should run around before she’s cooped up in the train.

He insisted on pulling her bag, and they found the playground soon enough, with an unoccupied bench in the sun. She complimented him on the kind of New Yorker he was. My friend Steve’s like that, she said, squatting to set the baby carrier on the bench and shrugging out of it. Steve moved here years ago and he knows everything. He told me all the stations we’d pass.

Harold noted, startled, that the friend Amanda had stayed with was a he. Well, maybe part of a couple.

Amanda lifted Nell out of the carrier and kissed her face, then settled her on the ground. Let’s go on the swing. She carried the baby, and Harold followed, pulling the suitcase. The carrier was slung on his arm. Yeah, I guess we’d better keep an eye on that stuff, Amanda said. I never think of that.

Harold was a little out of breath. The swings would keep a toddler safe: rubber buckets with holes for her legs. Amanda stuffed her daughter into one of them and began pushing her vigorously. The day was bright and chilly, and the gray buildings around them surrounded this tiny light-haired child, her feet in little red sneakers with Velcro closers, her legs in pink corduroy. Harold wasn’t dead yet and could still walk and talk and read and write. After so many deaths I live and write, George Herbert had written. I’ll wait on the bench, Harold said, and once again hoisted the baby carrier and grasped the suitcase by its handle, then made his way back to the sunny bench.

Nell tried what the playground had to offer. At last Amanda led her back to him. She’s cold, she said. I’m freezing. Aren’t you?

—A little, Harold said.

—You’re not hard of hearing, she said. My other grandparents can’t hear me.

—I wear an expensive hearing aid, he said.

—They’re afraid I’ll say something they don’t want to hear, Amanda said, still parked in front of him. You’re not like that.

—I don’t know, he said. Say something bad and see if I pretend not to hear you. Without much consultation, they started down Seventh Avenue in search of a place to warm up and have something to eat. Everything would be expensive in this neighborhood, but he didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t too crowded. Amanda bounced along at his side, seemingly unaffected by the weight of this big baby, who spoke inaudibly. She was telling herself stories, Amanda said. They found a Jewish delicatessen. Harold excused himself to go to the men’s room, and then Amanda carried Nell off to change her diaper. They ordered lunch. With his heart condition, Harold couldn’t order the pastrami he’d have preferred, but he didn’t mind turkey. Then Amanda ordered the same—she didn’t eat red meat. The baby would eat scraps from their plates, and they got her a bowl of applesauce.

—The people you stayed with, Harold said, as Amanda dug out toys to amuse Nell, who was in a high chair. Do they have children?

—What people? Amanda said.

—In Astoria, Harold said.

—Oh, you mean Steve—no, he lives alone, Amanda said. He’s divorced.

A bowl of sour and half-sour pickles was on the table, and Amanda ate a pickle with her free hand. Her other hand danced a small plastic animal up and down to amuse Nell. She was looking at Nell, not at Harold, but her shoulder, the side of her face—something—looked self-conscious. How do you know him? Harold said, coming to the slow understanding that Amanda had phoned him not just because he knew his way around New York.

It hadn’t occurred to him before to wonder what Paul had told his children about Harold’s divorce from Myra. Myra had died when Paul’s children were small, but they might remember her; in any case, Paul remembered her. Amanda knew not only that Harold wore a hearing aid because he preferred to hear, she knew how Harold had lived. He’d even written about it—well, tangentially, except for this book he was trying to finish. Which Amanda might read. He didn’t know what reader he’d imagined until now, but now he imagined Amanda reading about his infidelities, his uncertainties, his clumsy use of politics to guide his private life and also justify the private life he felt like leading. Harold had never concluded—he didn’t conclude in this book either—that because he’d been a fool, he was sorry about his life. It seemed all of a piece. He didn’t regret the politics, wrong as they sometimes were. Was it impossible for a lefty to be faithful to a woman? In the book he argued that it would have been impossible for him, that the nerve to break rules made many rules breakable, and made him understand and sympathize with rebellious young people in the sixties.

—Is Steve your lover, Amanda? he asked the side of her face. She focused more intently on Nell, and he wondered how much the little girl understood. But that didn’t seem to be the issue.

—I kept asking myself if I was going to tell you, Amanda said. I don’t know who else to tell—what a crazy thing to say to my grandpa.

He could think of no answer. The food came and Amanda fed Nell applesauce, then turned to her sandwich, offering the baby bits of bread and french fried potatoes.

—He was my professor at NYU, she said. He’s nine years older than I am. He was junior faculty then. Biology. Now he has tenure. We had an affair my junior year—he was married then. I didn’t break up his marriage. Are you shocked by all this? I was careful not to tell you at the time!

—I thought nowadays teachers didn’t do that, he said.

—It wasn’t sexual harassment, Amanda said, and though he hadn’t been particularly shocked by her news, he was shocked at her easy use of the sociological, legal, distancing term. Then she said, Oh, maybe it was. How should I know? But it was harder on him than on me, that’s what I mean. It wasn’t like, I’m weeping in the dorm and he’s callously making me go to bed or he’ll fail my lab report. He was the one who did all the weeping. Now he weeps because it’s the other way around—I’m married. He says to me, I’m a grownup; I should know better. As if I was a child.

—You are a child, Harold said, before he thought, and was afraid she’d say nothing more, as she shook her head in impatient dismissal.

—Sorry, he said. Of course you’re not. You’re a mother.

—Children can be mothers, but I’m not a child, she said. She faced him now, and he saw that her eyes were close together, not crossed but just slightly out of sync. They were not blue or brown—hazel, did they call that? Flecks of gold in them.

—Eat, he said. Shall I take the baby? Nell was getting fussy now, crying a little. He stood and lifted her out of the high chair. But he did it wrong, and her leg was caught and she yelled. Amanda reached to open the high-chair tray, but she didn’t take the child. She put the tray back on the high chair and began eating her sandwich rapidly. He’d finished half of his. He stood Nell on the seat next to him, on the window side, and said, Look, Nellie, a baby! And a dog. Nell pressed her dirty hands to the glass and commented. He wasn’t sure she didn’t want to go through the window to the dog and the baby. Maybe this was the wrong idea. The little girl wriggled in his hands, firm and vigorous. His right arm hurt—it often did—holding her by the waist as she shoved against his grasp.

—So do you think I’m a horrible person? she said. I shouldn’t have told you.

—Don’t be silly. It was hard to think with this baby pulling so. Now she was trying to go under the table, and if he wasn’t careful, she’d bump her forehead on the table’s edge. Finally Amanda took Nell back. To his surprise, she twisted around in the seat and pulled up her sweatshirt to nurse her. He looked around, but nobody seemed to be watching, and Amanda’s breast was covered by the sweatshirt. Now Nell was quiet and Harold was free to give a better answer. He hadn’t had a conversation like this in years—a conversation in which it was this uncertain what would be said, what he and the other person would feel. He had forgotten about this kind of thing.

—Do you love him? he asked.

—Love Steve or love Zack? He’d forgotten her husband’s name—the husband he’d been so quick to argue for, when Amanda suddenly wanted to marry, right out of college. I love them both, she said.

—That’s too easy, he said. That’s the sort of thing I said. He’d had a sandwich, he’d had coffee—coffee, not decaf for once—and it was as if his brain had wandered back into his skull. He knew who they were: a man and a woman who both had trouble with love. He remembered Artie’s disgust, his unvarying disapproval of Harold’s shenanigans, as he called them. But Harold had been seeing Naomi most of those years—not all, but most—not a flibbertigibbet but the love of his life.

—I can’t leave Zack, she said. He’s Nell’s father. He loves me. We do all these things together. Steve’s bored with a lot of stuff I can’t do without. I don’t mean in bed, just things like dancing. Partying. But Steve is the man I really love.

—You married Zack to stop thinking about Steve? he said.

—No, it’s not that bad. I thought it was over. I honestly thought it was over. I didn’t think of Steve for years. But the last time I came to New York—well, I knew where he was and I called him. Nell was tiny then.

She hadn’t called her grandfather that time. Of course not—she didn’t want anybody telling her not to do what she wanted to do. If Nell was tiny, it was a year or more ago.

He looked at his watch. We should get you to your train.

She looked at him, as she eased the baby away from her breast and smoothed her sweatshirt. You weren’t wrong, telling my dad he should stop yelling at me about getting married. Getting married was right. It’s just—

—Marriage should be different?

—Yeah, marriage should be different.

—Zack doesn’t know what you’re doing?

—No, and I don’t want him doing the same thing, she said, and then she laughed, and her face reminded him of her—no, of Paul—as a child. I’m a hypocrite.

—You need a better grandpa than I am, Amanda.

—No, you’re the best, she said. He hadn’t meant she needed someone who was better at being a grandparent. He had meant she needed a grandparent who was a better human being. But he let it go. He held the baby while she flagged down a cab, and they were jostled down Seventh Avenue. He paid the cab, and they made their way into the station, now with him pulling the suitcase and the baby on Amanda’s back. Her train was half an hour late, and they found a place to sit. Nell sat with her face pressed into Amanda’s chest. If I’m lucky, she’ll sleep all the way, Amanda said. If not, she’ll yell.

—I’m glad you called me, Harold said. He patted Amanda’s knee.

—Oh, so am I!

He wanted to come up with something wise—a resolution—but they sat silently, watching people drag their luggage by, eat snacks, study the arrivals and departures board, embrace. Commuters were rushing to Jersey Transit, though it was early. Trains were announced. He felt more like a grandfather now, benevolent and vague, competent to offer money and love. At last the train arrived—forty minutes late—and he kissed her at the barrier, as she scrambled for her ticket and bumped her suitcase behind her, her daughter waving her arm in its white sweater toward everyone who passed.

Harold was tired and did not leave the station for a little, though he didn’t like Penn Station and still missed the famous old masterpiece it had replaced. After he sat doing nothing for ten minutes or so, he had an idea and pulled out a little notebook and a pen. Amid the clamor of the station, its bright lights and hard plastic seats and mixture of sounds and smells, he wrote something else that might belong to the preface:

Certain principles are worth any amount of trouble, any error and pain. Many of us carry out a series of mistakes as parents and do terrible things—unwittingly, unconsciously—to our children. There’s little to be learned from the way we treat our children. But though we’re not much wiser when they come along, we usually do better with our grandchildren. The premise of this book is that even a flawed private life—my own life has been seriously flawed—can provide some guidance for living a public life, for deciding how to live the public life none of us can escape, as we form opinions, join groups, and vote, even if we don’t run for office or work for the government. And maybe it is the way we treat our grandchildren that we should regard as a standard for living as citizens of the world. We must resolve to treat other people’s grandchildren—in our own city or country or elsewhere—in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example—as we treat our own grandchildren. We may not do well even so, but maybe that’s all we can manage.