Blue Shoe
by
Anne Lamott


also by anne la mott

Hard Laughter (1980)

Rosie (1983)

joe Jones (1985)

All New People (1989) Operating Instructions (1993)

Bird by Bird (1994)

Crooked Little Heart (1997)

Traveling Mercies (1999)

 This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Riverhead Books a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10001

Copyright 2002 by Anne Lamott

All rights reserved.  This book, or parts thereof, may not be
reproduced in any form without permission.

Published simultaneously in Canada

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to quote:

"I Am Not I," from Lorca and Jtmenez by Robert Ely.  Copyright 1973,

1977 Robert Ely.  Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston.

Lines from "Hope," from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.

Copyright 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes.

Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf,

a division of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lamott, Anne.  Blue shoe / by Anne Lamott.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57322-226-7

1. Northern California--Fiction.  2. Mothers and daughters--Fiction. 
3. Female friendship--Fiction.  4. Divorced women--Fiction.

5. Single mothers--Fiction.  I. Title.

PS3562.A464 B57 2002 2002022824

813'.54--dc21

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

BOOK DESIGN BY AM AND A DEWEY

Acknowledgments.

I am so grateful to David Talbot, who published some of this material
in slightly different form, at salon.  com  Over the years, he has
offered me the ideal space in which to try out new work, and I greatly
value his friendship, and his magazine.  It would be hard to capture my
gratitude to Sarah Chalfant and Andrew Wylie, my agents.  Sarah's
constancy and faith in this book were the small campfire at which I
warmed myself whenever I was afraid.  Sonesh Chainani at the Wylie
agency was always there for me, working too hard and making me laugh.

Cindy Spiegel, my editor at Riverhead, took a huge chance on me, and I
greatly value her work on this book.  My copy editor, Anna Jardinc, was
dogged and brilliant: together she and Cindy saved me from my gravest
writerly defects.  Cindy's assistant, Venetia van Kuffeler, is a
marvel.

Doug Foster worked with me every step of the way, as editor and birth
coach.  This book would not exist without his contributions.

Neshama Franklin, Mark Childress, and Robyn Posin, so wise, smart, and
funny, helped me more than I can say.

I could not get by without the tenderness and direction of the
congregation of St.  Andrew Presbyterian Church, Marin City,
California, the Reverend Ms.  Veronica Goines, pastor.

And I want to say a special thanks to Pat Gomez, of Tiburon,
California, who in 1982 took me in for a year and a half, when I was
drunk and sad and lonelier than I had ever been before, and with whom I
discovered a little blue shoe.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

Douglas Foster and Steven Barclay.

 I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom
at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; who
remains calm and silent while I talk, and forgives, gently, when I
hate, who walks where I am not, who will remain standing when I die.

juan ramon jimenez

 one.

The world outside the window was in flames.  The leaves on the
pistachio trees shone fire-red and orange.  Mattie studied the
early-morning light.  She was lying on the side of the bed where her
husband should have been sleeping.  Those trees were one reason she'd
moved back into her parents' old home after leaving Nicholas, these
trees and the sloping grassy hillside behind the house.  Also, there
was no mortgage: her parents had paid it off during the course of their
marriage.  She and her brother, Al, had grown up playing on the hill
and in the buckeyes with their low, broad branches; her six year-old,
Harry, played there now, and her daughter, Ella, two, would also climb
one day soon.  The leaves of the delicate Japanese maple between
Mattie's window and the wobbly fence were still green, but elsewhere in
the garden were russets and butterscotch oranges, other trees giddy
with color, almost garish, like gypsy

dresses.  When she strained to listen, she could imagine them saying,
We gave you shade, and now we'll give you a little kick-ass beauty
before we die.  A choir of chickadees and finches sang above the sounds
of a quiet neighborhood waking up, the cars of people heading to work
and school, the clatter and thumps of the recycling truck, a dog
barking, leaves rustling in a gentle wind, silence.  A moment later she
heard the rats in the walls begin to stir.

Her mother, Isa (it rhymed with "Lisa"), who still owned the house, had
failed to mention that there were rats in the walls.  Rats, and the
green rug in the master bedroom that for many years had been peed on by
Isa's cats.  A faint odor of urine clung to it despite Mattie's every
effort at eradication.  Isa had been planning to sell the house as a
fixer-upper in the wildly inflated San Francisco Bay area real estate
market, but a month after she'd reached the top of the waiting list for
The Sequoias, a retirement community where she hoped to grow old, she'd
moved out.  She had some money socked away from her husband Alfred's
small life insurance policy, which, coupled with Social Security, was
enough to pay for her expenses in the new apartment.

Her unwanted stuff was still on the shelves, and in the garage and
attic.  The house looked much as it always had, or at least for the
nearly twenty years Isa had lived there alone, after Mattie and Al had
moved out and Alfred had died.  Isa had taken one couch with her to the
new apartment, a few chairs, a dresser, and Al's old twin bed, and had
sent the rest of her furniture to the dump or Goodwill.  There were
mirrors in every room of the house.  Isa had always liked to look at
herself, striking movie star poses.  Mattie avoided the mirrors
whenever possible.  What she saw when she did glance at her reflection
was chestnut-brown hair, which she usually wore in a braid; tired eyes,
so dark that the pupils didn't show; fair English skin and a broad snub
nose from her mother; black lashes and brows from her dad, as well as
his big teeth; and full lips, set off nicely by a

white ring of scar on her chin from a rock Al had thrown at her when
they were young.

Isa had left her house vacant for six months at Mattie's request, while
Mattie got up the nerve to leave her husband.  She'd been planning to
break away from Nicky in spring, because she'd had it with his mammoth
inconsistency--his hilarious and brilliant conversations, interspersed
with brooding narcissism; his charming and amiable contributions to the
business of raising children together, wedged in between immobilization
and depression, for which he would not seek help; his inexhaustible
interest in her thoughts about the world, progressive politics, and the
arts, marbled into the slow, cold gaze with which he looked up from his
secret phone calls when she entered his study; the silent, wounding way
he stopped making love to her for weeks at a time, right after nights
of hot, tender sex.  Then, in March, when the world was wild and green,
full of blossom and fragrance and mud, Mattie's best friend, Angela,
had told her gently that she was moving to Los Angeles, to live with
Julie, the woman she'd recently fallen for.

"But you're my only real friend!"  Mattie wept, and Angela had cried
too.  They had been talking in different kitchens for years now, ever
since the night they met over a stranger's stove during a party for
Nicky, when the College of Marin made him an assistant professor of
literature.  Minutes after meeting, the two women broke off entirely
from the others.  They sat on the kitchen floor and talked like
teenagers about their mothers and their bodies and God, to whom they
were both devoted, and their pets, to whom they were also devoted, and
Nicky, about whom they were both ambivalent.  Angela worked with him at
the college, where she read and graded papers for the entire English
department, and while she enjoyed his sense of humor, she disliked his
elitism.  He liked to discuss books and politics; he had no patience
for stories of real people trying to get through the day.  Angela and
Mattie started getting together several times a

week, to hike or cook or help each other around the house.  Nicky
accused Mattie of being in love, of going gay.  At the same time, he
had dropped hints that he didn't think Angela was a real lesbian: she
just hadn't met the right man yet, it was a phase, and would pass.  And
a few years ago, Angela noticed that Nicky had taken off after classes
with one of his students, a beautiful twenty-two year-old black woman.
Mattie was six months pregnant with Ella at the time.  Several years
before, he had had an affair that nearly ended the marriage, although
he had never given Mattie further cause to doubt his fidelity.  But one
day after she and Mattie had become inseparable friends, Angela
followed Nicky and the young woman to the Tamal pais Motel, and then
she told Mattie.  Mattie confronted Nicky, and he broke off the affair,
and while Mattie eventually forgave him, without forgetting, Nicky
never forgave Angela, and Angela never forgave Nicky.

Angela sometimes wore her short honey-colored hair in two vertical
tufts, like velvet giraffe horns.  Her wide eyes were steel-blue.  She
was Jewish, expansive and yeasty and un contained as if she had a
birthright for outrageousness.  She knew things.  Mattie couldn't live
without her.

The smell of wet soil, blossoms, and grass wafted through the kitchen
window as Mattie heard Angela's news.  "But you're not going to have to
live without me," Angela said, crying.  "We'll talk every day, and I'll
come up every chance I can."

Mattie went back into therapy to deal with the devastation of losing
Angela.  The therapist pointed out gently that some of her grief must
be related to her deteriorating marriage.  In some ways, losing Angela
was harder.  It was like the death some years before of Mattie's old
cat, who had loved her the way her parents were supposed to have loved
her: purely, without conditions.  In any case, for a few months Mattie
didn't have the strength to bear both her friend's departure and the
end of her marriage.  And then one day, she did.

When the leaves began to blaze and the days grew shorter, she brought
her children and their things to the house she had grown up in.  She
brought some furniture, their dog, two cats, a couple of porno movies
stolen from Nicky, and his bottle of Valium.  He did not ask her about
them.  It was assumed that the children would live with her, and visit
him on the weekends.  He adored them but would not have been willing or
able to share custody, even if Mattie had been willing.  As it was, he
took them most weekends, often late Saturday morning, then dropped them
off Sunday nights with an air of weary heroism, like a Hrerighter
returning the engine to the Are house after a particularly difficult
outing.  The children were grief stricken that he did not live with
them anymore.  Mattie prayed with them every night, then prayed
separately for their hearts to heal, even prayed for Nicky's happiness
and half meant it.  After a month of weekend visits with Nicky, the
children's distress lessened.

Mattie hadn't worried so much about Ella, who had ways of comforting
herself and a generally sunny disposition.  But Harry was sad and
concerned.  He was erratic, like Nicky: sometimes he acted so mean to
Mattie and Ella that Mattie wanted to strike him, and at other times he
could be utterly charming, especially with his sister.  He'd carry her
around from room to room as if she were an animated grocery sack,
making faces and wisecracks to amuse her.  Mattie saw how much he
wanted Ella to disappear sometimes, but that he also listened for her
when she was in her crib.  He put his face right into hers to make her
laugh, and she chortled, pleased that something was so grabbably close.
Then he'd pinch her and make her cry.  He took things from her, and
she wailed, while he looked blank and innocent.  He hugged her too
tightly, he loved her too much, he hated all the same things he loved
about her--her ineptitude, her cuteness, her messiness, her smells.

Mattie stopped seeing the therapist, and paid for Harry to go
instead.

It helped; time's passing helped.  Nothing really helped.  And the
house--it had been a mistake to move back in.  It was falling apart,
revealing mold and memories and ghosts.  Mattie's beloved father had
died of a heart attack in the laundry room, twenty years before.  He
was fifty-one and had never looked better than in the moments before
his death.  He had looked a lot like Mattie's brother Al did now, but
trimmer, tall, with thicker brown hair, and the huge teeth that hardly
fit in his mouth.  Everyone had loved her father, including, about half
the time, Isa.  Still, it had been a miserable marriage, a shifting,
malignant lava-lamp of a marriage, although it always looked great from
the outside, two tall handsome parents well known in the town for their
willingness to serve on the city council, the school board, liberals
who agitated for the poor, who had an air of being with it, hikers in
the days when knapsacks were avantgarde.  They were people to whom
others turned for advice.  But inside the house, which they had bought
for $20,000 in 1963, slammed doors and loud silences filled the spaces
between exquisite meals and good California wine.

Mattie had thought she was getting such a great deal when she moved
back in--free rent on a house with a bedroom for each of her children.
But it didn't take long to notice the secrets and memories tiptoeing
around, holding their highballs, debonair and amused at first, then
hissing in the master bedroom as her mother had when her father
returned from his monthly trips to Washington, D.C. Harry was now
sleeping in the bedroom where Al had grown up, where at fifteen he had
started doing drugs while Isa and Alfred pretended he was doing
homework; Ella slept in Mattie's old room, the one with the slanted
ceiling and eaves, behind which all manner of nightmares had waited
quietly.

The laundry room where her father had died looked almost exactly the
same as before, with its old washer-dryer from Sears, lots of sunlight
and trees outside the window, and space to move around.  Isa had spent
hours here, pawing through her husband's clothes,

looking for clues to his absences, searching her teenage son's
pockets.  What did she think she would find--needles, bindles, a
treasure map?  She'd searched her daughter's clothes here too, for
cigarettes and birth control pills, which she'd found and seized like a
customs inspector.

Why, in the current crisis of divorce and bottomless loss, had Mattie
run back to the past, to her parents' home, her husband's side of the
bed?  She hadn't known where else to go.  It was free and it was
familiar.

"Where else can I go?  Nicky owned that house before we got married.
It's his.  Otherwise, he doesn't have much money, I don't make much.
He'll help us, but I can't afford to rent anything as nice as this.
With a yard."

When Mattie moved in, Angela, who called herself a Newj, for New Age
Jew, flew up to perform an exorcism, a deep-smoke smudge with Xative
American herbs that made the house smell for days as if the Grateful
Dead had been practicing in the garage.

After the first autumn rains, Mattie discovered just how much damage
her mother had been disguising over the years with paint and caulking
and cabinets.  Isa had evidently installed cabinets wherever rot or
cracks or mold had appeared.  So there were cabinets everywhere, which
was great for storage.  But if you removed even one section, you
discovered that behind the shelves were moldy patches of Sheetrock,
exposed live wires in broken sockets, ugly swatches of bore beetle
infestation.  Mattie shuddered to think what was behind the cabinets in
the damper areas--the garage and laundry room.

The rats scratching grew louder.  She asked her mother to pay for an
exterminator.  Mattie was barely getting by with child support and a
little extra from Nicky and the money she made as a fit model for
Sears: she was a perfect size 12.  But she had forgotten to get an
education.

"Oh, for Chrissakes," Isa had said when Mattie asked her for the

money.  "What is it with you?  Why don't you count your blessings for
a change."  Mattie did count her blessings, all the time.  She always
had.  She'd always believed in a freelance God, but kept it to herself,
as her parents and brother were devout atheists.  A few years into her
marriage, she'd found a church nearby, where she staggered like
Monsieur Hulot into a relationship with Jesus.  And she had come out of
the closet as a believer.  Her brother referred to it as her blind
spot.  Her mother refused to discuss it, as if Mattie believed in
pyramid power.  Mattie didn't care.  She thanked God several times a
day for what she had, and trusted Him for what she needed.  She thanked
Him for two healthy children, for her church, for a house with a yard.
She thanked God for helping her finally get out of her marriage, and
for helping her more or less survive the pain of Angela's leaving.  She
even thanked God for giving her such a difficult mother, because she
believed that while it had been nearly life-threatening to survive
Isa's mothering, the price she and Al had paid was exactly what it cost
to become who they were.  She thanked God, and her mother, for giving
her Al.  And she prayed to accept and believe that she had everything
she needed.  But she also had rats.

Ella lay in her crib one afternoon playing with her belly button, in
the room where Mattie had grown up.  Ella had just woken from the nap
she took every day after a vigorous morning at day care.  Mattie
couldn't take her eyes off Ella--her blond hair, pudgy limbs, sweet and
self-sufficient character.  When Ella was born, she'd been colicky and
had to suckle all the time; when she wasn't nursing, she'd needed to
suck on Mattie's fingers.  She'd graduated to a pacifier for a while,
then found her thumb.  The discovery of her belly button at a year and
a half had marked the start of a new relationship, one of pleasure and
comfort.

Whenever her shirt and pants gaped open, she'd put her Anger inside.
She twiddled the belly button, played it as if thumping the twangy
connection between her and her mother, her belly a guitar.

Her belly button was an extra sense organ: if something had a nice
texture, if it was slippery, say, or warm, she put it against her
tummy; her voice would grow thick and furry, and she would say clearly,
as if there could be any mistake, "My belly."  Mattie had to make sure
she had access through her clothes so she could find it.  When she did,
her whole body went soft and she let out a sigh.

Mattie reached down in the crib and lifted Ella out.  "Let's go make
something with blocks.  Harry will be home soon, and we'll have grilled
cheese sandwiches."  Both of them missed Harry when he was at
school--he had just started first grade--but life was much more
peaceful in the hours when he was gone.  Harry was busy, and loud, and
lived in movement.  He took life by the throat and shook it.  He had
his father's temper, his gift for instilling fear in others.  He'd made
an instant friend of the boy who lived next door, right after they'd
arrived in the house.  While she walked one afternoon with Ella and
Harry, Mattie had noticed a towheaded boy, a year or so younger than
Harry, in costume chain mail, a wooden sword dangling from his belt, in
the yard next door.  He'd been watering a hydrangea bush, as his blonde
mother watched from the back step with a dish towel draped over her
shoulder.  Mattie stopped and waved to the mother, and the boy had
whipped around, still holding the hose, so that Ella and Mattie had
been sprayed.  The mother had come running, with everyone laughing but
Ella.  Mattie wiped Ella's face with her T-shirt while Ella tried to
decide whether to cry, and the boy's mother handed Mattie the dish
towel.  The two boys faced off, staring at each other as if seeing
themselves in a mirror.

The mother's name was Margrethe.  She was from Denmark, but had only a
faint accent.  The boy was named Stefan, and he only whispered.  He
could hardly contain himself; he had something

marvelous hidden in his fist behind his back.  His mother urged him to
share it.

"No, no, is my little itty tro," he said with great pleased worry.

"Show Harry your itty tro," said the mother.  Mattie was alarmed to see
the agitation on Harry's face.  He seemed to be in a battle to restrain
himself from knocking the boy over, as if he was about to say, "I'm
going to shoot it out of your hand, boy."

Stefan peered into the opening of his fist.

"Is my itty tro," he chirped.  "My little itty tro."

"But what is it?"  asked Harry.  "What do you do with it?"

Stefan moved his fist through the air like a toy plane.  "Zah!  Zah!"

Mattie reached for Harry, who was breathing hard now.  She felt heat
spreading through his T-shirt, and his heart pounding beneath her
hand.

"What is his little itty tro?"  Mattie asked as nicely as possible.

"I don't know, this is the first I've heard of it," said the mother.

"Is my itty tro!"  Stefan proclaimed, and flew his fist through the
air.  "Zah zah zah!"

Harry studied Stefan in a hard, bored way.  Then he said, quietly, too
quietly, "Give me the itty tro."

Stefan looked at him, worried as a kitten, and took one step back.

"Give me the itty tro!"  Harry said.  Stefan made a quiet strangled
sound, like the sound a hurt deer might make.  Harry raised his fist,
and Stefan opened his own hand to reveal a feather.

Somehow they ended up best friends.  They played together nearly every
day.

Mattie now held Ella in her arms.  The rats in the walls were
squeaking.  God, they had gotten so loud.  The scratching had been bad
enough, but the squeaks sounded like a mob was assembling back there,
lighting torches.  Beams and rafters were being nibbled into battering
rams.  Mattie scurried out, carrying Ella, and went to call her
mother.

Isa answered right away, but as usual she was running out the door.
"I'll call you later, darling," she said.

"No, Mom.  We've waited long enough.  The rats are getting worse and
worse, and I really need you to pay for an exterminator."

"Oh, for Chrissakes, this can't wait till I get home?  Two hours?"

Mattie sighed.  Of course it could wait two hours, but with Isa, two
hours could turn into two months or two years.  "Call me later," Mattie
said, and hung up.  "Ees go?"  Ella asked.  Mattie nodded: Isa go,
always go, going, going, gone.  She was in her prime at seventy one, an
inspiration to everyone in town, beautiful like an aging model in a
vitamin commercial, elegant, lively, opinionated.  Mattie was in awe of
her energy and drive.  Her sharp corners had been sanded over the
years, and she'd mellowed slightly along the way, was gentler now,
sometimes even able to listen.

Mattie wondered, looking at Ella, how different she herself would have
been if Isa had been this way thirty years before, instead of so
anxious and critical.  Mattie could see that Angela's best
qualities--her spiritual thirst, her soulfulness, her equal capacity
for playfulness and grief--were the direct result of having had a tense
and neglectful mother like Isa.  Angela had suggested that Isa's gift
had been as a foil: looking at her charming unhappiness all those
years, Mattie could see exactly who she didn't want to be when she grew
up.  Either you became like that, as Mattie and Angela hadn't, or you
became the antidote for the mother's poison.  What you needed you
invented, and then gave away, so there would be some of it in your
world.  What would Ella decide to become--or not?  Mattie saw herself
and Angela as the trees that grew out of cliffs and boulders above the
ocean near Monterey--evergreen creatures, windswept, magnificent,
twisty, gnarled pines growing out of the layers of rock, where maybe
there had once been some nutrition,

maybe there had once been soil from which the trees had sprung, but
then the soil had blown away, and they still grew.

Mattie and Ella sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, eating
crackers, building a castle, still waiting for Harry.  Their aging
Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Marjorie, lay beside them.  She had
soulful brown eyes and a creamy white coat dappled with reddish-brown.
She was old and sick.  "Marjorie," Mattie said, "will you pay for an
exterminator?"  Like the Little Red Hen trying to get someone to help
her with the wheat.

Harry wept when he got home that afternoon and overheard Mattie tell Al
on the phone that she was going to have the rats poisoned.  "All they
want is a chance to live and take care of their tiny families," Harry
cried in protest.  So she abandoned the idea for a time.  She took the
children to the hardware store and bought some Have-a Heart traps.

She baited and set them, but it turned out that Have-a-Heart traps were
called Have-a-Heart because they didn't actually trap rats.  They did
just the opposite, in fact; they seemed to provide the rats with a
lovely late-night snack of cheese.

Now she was afraid again all the time.

She wasn't particularly afraid of mice, but rats were more like
snakes--snakes in bad fur coats.

In bed alone at night with no husband or best friend within range to
protect her, a snail between two shells, she listened to the mewling of
the rats.  Sometimes there was an awful soft slithering sound, as if a
rat was slowly drawing its tail across the wall behind her bed, and
when that happened she went and got Harry and brought him into her bed.
Having him in bed with you was about as peaceful as sleeping with a
monkey, but better than being alone with the rats.

By mid-November, darkness had truly arrived, like the darkness that
had been inside her for many months now.  Go to bed, put on some thick
socks, the cold weather said, and she did.  She knew she was not going
to get the lift she'd gotten used to from October's sun, so she looked
for domestic sun: candles, lamplight, fires in the fireplace.

The storms of winter began, tossed down by towering clouds and marked
by sudden shifts of light.  The stark changes helped: she felt less
stuck because the sky wasn't ever stuck.  It grew dark and threatening,
and then the sun came out and lit up the leaves.  The leaves shone
back.  Darkness descended again, but through the dark and dreary skies,
sunbeams slanted, bright and operatic.  She'd had days like this when
she'd first met Nicky--dark, bright, dreary, operatic.  He had been a
lecturer of English at San Francisco State; she was the manager of a
restaurant on Shattuck.  She had bummed around the country for a while
after college, with a boyfriend she expected to marry.  He went to live
in Spain and she had joined him for a couple of years, but he drank too
much and they fought, and she had returned to California without him.
She slept in her old room at Isa's until her mother's frantic schedule
and wild mood swings started to drive her nuts.  Mattie moved out,
rented a cheap studio in San Francisco.  She went to work as a manager
in a waterfront dive, and finally decided to study literature at San
Francisco State.  She was exhausted by her work load at the restaurant
and school, feeling half dead, until she met Nicky.  He reached down
and pulled her to her feet, made her laugh again, took her dancing,
took her to bed, took her to Paris.  How had her marriage gone from
there, the glorious place where it began, to this ugly end?

Somehow the arithmetic had stopped working.  For a long time, the
marriage worked like a mostly reliable car.  He had been unfaithful to
her once, with a student, and she'd almost left him.  But they

patched things back together, and then she got pregnant with Harry.
Harry changed everything, for a while.  And then Nicky began to
withdraw, and she thought he was having more affairs, although he'd
never admit it, and she wanted to leave with Harry, but then she got
pregnant again, with Ella.  Things were sweeter again briefly, and then
horrible when he had the affair with the twenty-two-year old, then
better again after Ella's birth.  Then they grew apart again.  She
added up the columns every few months, and the positive column won,
even if only by a tiny margin.  Then one day she added things up, and
she was short.  And then she was short more often than not.  Children,
and the house, and the life they'd put together--hikes, walks on the
beaches of West Marin, dinners with friends, mostly from the college,
work for left-wing causes and candidates--were no longer enough of an
excuse to stay together.  Nothing worked consistently anymore, not the
illusion or the self made glue that had held them together, not even
the armature of habit.  For years, when she was scared enough, she made
it a point not to hang out with the hollowness and dead spots in her
heart.  She made the dog of doubt go lie under the bed and stop
sniffing around so much.  And the physical pieces had fit, until the
end.  At bedtime they'd still snuggled and made love.  They might lie
down grim, but their limbs found themselves in old habits soon
enough.

Angela and Al had advised Mattie to leave, but she stayed on.  Finally
the machine of the marriage broke down, and she said to herself, "If I
stay, I'm going to the bottom."  She was more afraid of this than of
leaving, and so she left.

The rats were the first thing she heard one morning as she woke up,
even before the songbirds and the artillery of the recycling truck. 
She bolted awake, then lay listening miserably.  Rat tails were so
naked, like bone.

Mattie called Evergreen Pest Control.  They would charge two hundred
dollars for the first visit, and the check from Nicky wasn't due for
another two weeks, but she went ahead and made the appointment.

She'd thought about asking Nicky if he would split the cost with
Isa--the rats were, after all, in the house where his children
lived-but when she called, Nicky's new girlfriend answered and Mattie
hung up.  He insisted that he had started seeing Lee only after Mattie
filed for divorce, but this young blonde Scottish woman, two years out
of college, had sprung so instantly into being his serious girlfriend
that Mattie knew he must have been seeing her even before the
separation.  All of a sudden one day in October he was routinely
referring to a girlfriend, and the children came back from a weekend
with him reporting that she had been there overnight Saturday, and in
the kitchen making pancakes when they woke up the next morning.

Lee was tall and thin and had the thick blond hair of a Breck girl.
Mattie's hair was growing thin, while her waist grew thick.  She wanted
to murder both of them in Nicky's bed.  Lee was at least ten years
younger than Mattie.  For months after they split up, Mattie and Nicky
fought about the children, schedules, money-everything except Lee. They
never said her name.  Eventually there was improvement the size of a
ladybug in their relationship, and then improvement the size of a
tadpole.  Mattie felt ill only some of the time.  Her automotive
hypochondria decreased and she only intermittently heard axles about to
drop, tires about to blow.  After hours of prayers and reading
Scripture and endless talks with Angela and Al and her pastor, Mattie
could talk to Lee, if Lee happened to answer the phone at Nicky's,
without feeling like hanging herself.

So she called Nicky's house that night after making the Evergreen
appointment, and he answered.  He said that he would be glad to pay.
He'd bring her a check the next afternoon.

When he came over for lunch the next day, they had a beer or two and
talked about the rats, and the children.  Then they went to bed.  She
had not planned on this, although it had been her idea to take him to
the bedroom so he could hear the rats himself.  "Oh, baby," he said,
with a look of compassionate misery on his suave, gypsy face.  She
looked out the window at the persimmons on the tree across the street,
hanging like little orange Japanese lanterns.  Their neighbor had given
them a basketful.  Mattie had baked persimmon puddings.  She could
almost smell them now.  She looked back at Nicky.

A few days later he came by, looking for insurance papers she had
accidentally packed up, and then, the day before the exterminator's
appointment, he dropped the children off late on a Sunday night, read
them to sleep after their baths, and one thing led to another.

Mattie remembered the apostle Paul, crying out that he did all the
things he was desperate not to do.  and so few of the things he knew he
ought to do.  She promised herself she would never do it again.

She might not have, either, if Evergreen Pest Control hadn't postponed
the appointment until the end of the week.  They were so sorry for the
cancellation that they offered to take ten percent off the bill.  Nicky
called that night to see if the rats had been taken care of.  She told
him about the delay.  He came over to console her.

The evening before the rescheduled exterminator's appointment, Mattie
was sitting in the garden with Harry and Ella.  The early December dusk
was juicy and brisk, with an ache of diminishing light, and it made her
feel both pensive and relieved; the days were so short now.  She was
yearning for bedtime when she heard the phone ring inside.  It was Isa,
calling to say that she was bringing a friend's two grandchildren by
for the night.  Their house had burned down earlier that day, and the
parents were in the hospital for observation.  They were going to be
fine, but Isa needed to stay with them at the hospital.  This was so
Isa: Isa the hero, Mattie the chambermaid to her mother's need to do
big, visible good deeds.  But Mattie smiled; it was a role she loved.

Just before eight, Mattie and the kids heard Isa pull up in her
Volkswagen bug.  They ran outside to greet her.  Under the streetlight,
Isa's bumper glowed with decals like Girl Scout badges, the alphabet
soup of her days--decals for UNICEF, of which she was regional director
for the Halloween collection; the NAACP, under whose auspices she
tutored a teenage girl and registered voters; the ACLU, for which she
did clerical work for death penalty appeals; AARP, which she had only
recently joined; NOW, for which she did fund-raising; and AAA, her auto
club, which she didn't need, because men of all ages jockeyed to work
on her car.

Two black boys sat solemnly on top of ACLU literature in the backseat,
wrapped in one bright green blanket, so that they floated like a pair
of sea otter babies swaddled in kelp while their parents went looking
for food.

On the passenger seat sat a panting bug-eyed pug.

"Oh darling, I'm so sorry to do this to you," Isa said, unfolding
herself from the cramped front seat like a long-legged bird.  "But what
else could I have done?"  She indicated the children, then the dog.
"And we couldn't leave the dog behind, the kitchen has no roof, the
plastic is all melted."

"It's okay, Mom.  Really.  They'll be fine.  You can go now."

But Isa came in with the boys, Alfie and Rue.  She helped them get set
up in the living room with Harry and Ella, and blocks, colored pencils,
glasses of chocolate milk.  Their awful pug, who had perhaps been tense
even before the fire, ran around the living room and peed.

Isa let Mattie clean up the pee, and then the pellets, which popped out
of the dog like bullets.  Harry and Ella and Marjorie sat quietly on
the oversize easy--Marjorie's chair, it was called--watching all the
commotion, while Isa bustled about, running command central, calling
friends of the family and hospital personnel.

After Isa left, Mattie played with the kids--drew, built with blocks,
read--and at ten put them to bed on the living room floor.  At one, she
heard her mother's car pull up in front of the house.  Wrapping herself
in a quilt, she went outside.  Isa rolled down her window.  A handsome
black man sat in the passenger seat.  Isa introduced him as the
children's father, and he got out of the car to fetch his sons.  Mattie
offered to accompany him, but when he declined her help she simply told
him where they were sleeping.

In the streetlight, Isa looked like a skeleton in a cheap wig, a
figurine from the Mexican Day of the Dead.  Mattie reached out to
stroke her bony arm.

"I don't know where we'd have been without your mother," the man told
Mattie when he returned, a sleeping child over one shoulder and the
other boy walking beside him.  People had been telling Mattie this
since she was four or five.  She shook her head and smiled at the
ground.  Somehow the man shoe horned the children into the backseat of
the car without waking the younger boy.  The man got in, and the dog
sat on his lap.  Mattie went to the driver's side to kiss her mother
good-bye, and they exchanged tired smiles.  "You were a hero," said
Isa, and they gazed at each other, until she put the car in first and
inched forward.  The moon glowed like a porthole seen from the inside
of a ship, looking out into an ocean of light.

Mattie could not fall asleep that night.  She was too keyed up, and the
rats had never been louder.  She spent half the night trying, through
force of will, to keep them from getting out and finding her children.
She imagined them nosing Ella with their sharp furry snouts.  Mattie
could imagine one digging into her stomach, clutching at her aorta,
trying to tear it loose.  A rat was the only animal that

would actually crawl over your head, as if you were a corpse, or a
crop it was checking, and it might come back in a week to see how you
were doing.  Rats owned the night.

Mattie dragged herself out of bed at seven and got the children ready
for day care and school.  She made them breakfast, packed their
lunches, got them dressed.  Then she and Ella walked Harry to the bus
stop at the corner, waited to see him get on the bus, and continued on
to Ella's day-care center.  Mattie lumbered home feeling like a crabby,
bloated robot, and called the men at Evergreen to see what time they
were coming.  When she found out not until the afternoon, she almost
went back to bed.  but there were boxes to unpack in the garage, and
she had promised herself she would try to unpack one or two every day.
She hadn't returned calls from the week before, and she went around
feeling as if she was several weeks behind on her housework all the
time.  There always seemed to be another batch of dishes in the sink,
bottomless baskets of laundry.

She went out to the garage and opened a box at random.  It contained
her framed photographs.  This gave Mattie a brief lift.  She could set
them out on the mantel.  She unwrapped each photograph like a present.
Isa looked up at her from forty years before, all soft waves and
painted eyebrows.  One side of her lips was turned up as though in a
moment she might smile, and the other was turned down in prim disgust,
like a person of nobility trying to suppress the horror of finding
herself standing next to you.  Mattie covered the disgusted side of
Isa's face with her hand, smiled at nice Isa with her crinkly brown
eyes.  The next picture she unwrapped was of Isa at age nine, not long
after her father had died.  She wore a dress, and ribbons in her hair,
but looked as desperate and hungry as the wild child found in the
forests of France.  While looking at this picture with Mattie, her
father had said that when you're eating

in the wild, you eat when the food is there.  If you wait, someone
might grab the potato out of your paws.  "That's the reason your mother
is the way she is," he'd said.  "Starving.  That's how she gets so much
done."

When she found a photo of her brother at four, Mattie reached out to
touch the scar on his forehead, which he'd gotten by falling onto the
coffee table, soon after Mattie was born.  He'd fallen a lot as a
child; he'd had poor coordination and terrible vision.  He was an angry
kid, and no one knew exactly why.  He wept whenever Alfred went away on
business.  He wept when his parents brought Mattie home from the
hospital, and told them to give her to the neighbors down the
street--Isa loved to tell this story.  He sometimes punched Mattie in
the arm, and wrecked her things.  He was unfriendly to Isa and Alfred's
frequent dinner guests, which made Isa madder than anything.  He was
often sent to his room without dinner, and Mattie sneaked him oranges
and saltines and boxes of Jell-O.

His parents sent him to a psychiatrist when he was twelve, after the
counselors at school said they could not welcome him back the next year
if his aggression was unchecked.  He was often sick in the mornings
during those early adolescent years.  When he was ten, he'd hurt a
neighbor's cat (although not badly, as Isa was quick to point out, as
if the cat had overreacted).  He'd caused a child to have a hiking
accident, started a fire in a neighbor's garage, blown up Mattie's
dollhouse in the backyard.  Isa had insisted on the therapy, after the
family had moved from an apartment into the house.

After he turned thirteen, Als troubles grew more serious.  He started
smoking, and stealing hubcaps.  Then he took to dressing like Illya
Kuryakin on The Man F.R.O.M.E. UNCLE.  and stealing spotlights off
people's roofs.  He stole a slingshot from a friend's father, and
staked out neighbors' houses for days, planning his assaults; he hurled
good-size rocks through their windows.  Late one night, after a few
beers at a dance, he shot at a neighbor's upstairs window.  The

man was cut by a big shard of glass and needed treatment, but first he
called the cops, and they caught Al and threatened to send him to
juvenile hall.

His psychiatric appointments increased to two a week.  There went
Mattie's ballet lessons and family vacations.  And Alfred started
picking fights with Isa: Wasn't one session a week enough, at eighty
dollars an hour--for Christ's sake?  Did she think that money grew on
trees?  Alfred was a lawyer at a small firm in San Rafael and worked as
a legal advisor to congressional committees on civil liberties and
welfare, and Isa worked part-time, running an office at a furniture
warehouse, but they barely got by.

Isa soldiered on, though, signing on as an office temp to pay for the
second appointment.  So she grew even more impossible.

Next Al was drawn to the fast cars of older boys.  He continued to see
his therapist, and to smoke and drink and take LSD with his longhaired
friends from high school.  Mattie tried to save her family, by being
good and helpful, trying to need almost nothing, willing to give all
she had.  She danced with her father, rubbed his feet, helped her
mother with the cooking and cleaning.  She remembered the first time
Isa took Al to the therapist, leaving her alone in the house on a
Saturday morning when Alfred was away in Washington.  Mattie had been
only eight.  She'd walked around the house, feeling its hugeness, and
its boundary--like standing inside a tree's hollowed stump.  She'd felt
that if she made a sound, it would echo, and so she sat motionless in
the rocking chair holding her cat for dear life.

Mattie loved her big brother, even though--or because--he didn't seem
to love her very much, or at any rate, very often.  She understood why
he never seemed to want to come home, hanging out down at the
boardwalk, smoking, into the early evenings: home was hard.  Alfred and
Isa were unhappy, silently most of the time, but

sometimes exploding.  Mattie felt it was somehow her fault: she
imagined they had all been happy before she was born.  Alfred was often
looped, Isa was always cleaning, or updating precinct lists, or baking
bread, or putting stamps on mailers, or folding UNICEF boxes for
trick-or-treaters, and Al found it hard to be there.  Mattie felt she
had to stick around, because it always cheered up her father to see
her.

Occasionally, Al and Mattie shared joints in his bedroom and listened
to the Grateful Dead on his stereo, and these were memories she
savored.  He went to the therapist for years, and eventually stopped
ruining and stealing Mattie's things, her 45's, her babysitting money,
all the things Isa let him get away with, maybe because she would have
liked to do them herself, and then Al even started liking school, a
little hippie school in San Francisco.  He learned to drive his
father's Volkswagen bus, and he'd always give Mattie a ride, anywhere,
anytime, just to get to drive.  When he was not withdrawn or grounded
or mad at the world, he and Mattie could make each other laugh.  Then
he'd gotten a scholarship to Cal, and as soon as he moved out of the
family home, he finally began to love Mattie, confiding in her,
listening to her tell him her problems with boys.  He stayed at Cal
until he had a graduate degree in political science.  Al gave a lot of
credit to Isa.  He remained ferociously loyal to her, even though, as
he'd put it once, "First she keeps me from totally losing my mind, then
she seems to try and drive me crazy."

"Al," Mattie said out loud now, and went to the phone to call him.  He
was teaching, though.  The secretary said she'd give him the message.

Al looked both like their father and like Harry, except that he had
gained weight in his face and stomach.  Both he and Mattie had two huge
front teeth, not especially white, which had required two years of
braces for each of them.  Neither of them had been able to close their
mouths until after the braces, but they ended up with the

shy, pleasant smiles of the formerly bucktoothed.  Al taught addicted
public high school students in a program called Smith and Wilson High,
after AA's founders.  He'd been sober himself for a long time now.  In
his late twenties, no longer using drugs but drunk most nights, he
realized he was deteriorating faster than he could lower his standards,
and he quit.  Now he lived in a glade at the edge of a twenty-acre
estate owned by a local actor who'd hit it big.  It was in the country,
across a dirt road from the estate, inside a giant ring of fallen logs.
Al had converted a chicken coop on the property into a real cabin, snug
and warm, with illegal plumbing, and plants everywhere.

Sometimes his girlfriend, Katherine, lived with him, a lanky woman of
forty who looked like an overgrown girl.  She was out of town a lot, a
social worker who traveled to poor communities around the country and
helped set up medical clinics.  She had a cabin of her own in Fairfax.
Mattie was very fond of her.  Katherine was so shy that it was hard to
imagine her telling doctors and nurses and community leaders what to
do.  When she sat down, she curled around herself, wrapping one leg
around the other as if she were made out of pipe cleaners.  She had
short glossy black hair, and was allergic to cats--she took medicine
before visiting Mattie's house or Isa's.  She and Al split up every six
months or so--she wanted to have children, and he was not ready, and
her time was running out.  But they worked things out, and had stayed
together for six years now.

Isa was not particularly taken with Katherine.  "I find her
rather--blah," Isa told Mattie.  "Al with that marvelous sense of
humor, and Katherine a bit of a bump on a log, don't you think?  Not
someone to show off to your friends."

Mattie drove to pick Ella up at the day-care center at one.  She felt
too tired to walk the four blocks.  They lay down for a nap together
when they got home, but the phone beside Mattie's bed rang almost

immediately.  "Oh, what's the matter?  You sound so sleepy," Angela
said on the other end.

"I was up all night.  I hate my life.  The only good part is the kids.
Do you have any sarin gas?"

"I'll go look as soon as we get off the phone."

"Why did I leave Nicky, again?  I'm so lonely, and so broke."

"Because he was a total shit," Angela said.  "He used to look at you
with contempt.  Most of his friends were old girlfriends, and he wore
them around his waist like a belt of shrunken heads, and shook them at
you from time to time."

"Oh, now I remember."

"He's just a mean guy."

"But now I have rats."

"It's a good trade.  Poor Mattie.  Let me tell you the big difference
between Nicky and God, okay?"

"Okay."

"God doesn't ever think He's Nicky."

Nicky was like the shipwrecked Professor on Gilligan's Island,
constantly coming up with ingenious inventions made of foliage,
generators made from coconut husks, ice chests made from seashells, yet
apparently never getting around to repairing the SS Minnow.

Mattie wished the man from Evergreen would show up.  She was hungry.
Maybe she should make Ella and herself a nice grilled cheese sandwich.
But there was no bread.  She'd been trying to remember bread for days.
One of the last arguments she and Nicky had had before she left was
over bread.  He had called from the college to see if they needed
anything, and she'd said bread, for toast and Harry's lunches, and he
had come home with a bag of fancy sourdough rolls, and she'd cried out,
"Bread.  I said 'bread."  Bread bread."  And he'd looked at her
pityingly because she was so clearly crazy--disgusting and petty.  The
children loved the rolls.  Still, Nicky continued to look at Mattie
with such dead meanness, such smugness in his eyes as they tore into
the buns, that she knew in that

instant she could leave.  The next day she'd told him the marriage was
over.  She'd found him in the bedroom, in his special chair by the huge
window, the one place inside where he was allowed to smoke, if the
window was open.  He was smoking, as usual, with the cigarette down in
the webbing of his fingers instead of up at the top, as if he were at
the Village Vanguard listening to Thelonious Monk and smoking a
Gauloise Blonde instead of a Merit Ultra Light menthol.  "It's over,"
she said quietly.  He smirked, and took a long drag on his cigarette.

Free at last, free at last.  And going down the tubes.

Ella turned to the sound of the doorbell.  Marjorie barked from the
other room.  The Evergreen man was here.

two.

When Mattie opened the front door, Ella in her arms, she found a woeful
longhaired man in a brown jumpsuit on the front step.  The Evergreen
Pest Control patch above his pocket was not filled in with a name.  He
appeared to be in his mid-to-late thirties, with a fuzzy brown
ponytail, long straight nose, black goatee, and closely set brown eyes
that made him look like an incompetent bird of prey.

"So you have rats," he said.  When she nodded, he shuddered.

She thought he was joking, but the worried expression stayed on his
face.

"I'm Mattie," she said, "and this is Ella."  Ella burrowed into her
neck.

"I'm Daniel," he replied, staring at his feet.  So Mattie stared at
hers.  Ella peered down at all four feet, as if looking over a cliff.

"Do you want to come in?"

"No, thank you.  I'm going to start in the garage and the yard.  I'll
set some traps, with bait in them for the rats to eat.  That drives
them out with a terrible thirst, in search of water."

She imagined rats all over her yard, pulling themselves along on their
bellies like thirsty men in cartoon deserts.  "Is it safe for my
animals.""

"Yep."  He sighed and stood straight.

"How long is this going to take?"

"An hour, maybe less.  I'll come back when I'm done."

"Okay," Mattie said, and closed the door.  She sat on the living room
floor with Ella and began playing with wooden blocks.  They were
building a castle with many windows.

After ten minutes the doorbell rang and the door opened.  Daniel poked
his head in.  Mattie looked up from the floor.

"Do you need something?"  she asked.

"Look, I'm going to be honest," he said.  "I don't have the stomach for
this job."

"Pardon me?"

"This was my first day."  He pointed to the blank Evergreen patch.  "My
wife and I need the money.  I'm a carpenter, but there's not much work
right now.  I thought I'd have what it took to be an Evergreen rat
man."

She stared at him perplexed.

"If I can use the phone, I'll explain that I just quit, and that they
need to send someone else over as soon as possible."

She looked at him.  "That's fine."

"Could I have a drink of water?"  he asked.

"All right," she said.  By the time she returned to the living room
with a glass of water, he was already sitting on the floor working on
the castle with Ella and talking on the cordless phone.  "Great," he
was saying.  Mattie sat down nearby, feeling suddenly shy.  Ella was at
her most engaging.  Mattie listened to her making grunty sounds

while adding to the castle, and to Daniel talking on the phone.  She
stared through the window at the persimmon tree across the street,
still heavily laden with its fruit, a Renaissance color, like gilded
borders, giving off warm light.

"They'll send someone tomorrow," he announced.  "I don't suppose you
have any other work for me, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Things where I don't have to kill anything--like carpentry, or
electrical repairs."

"Like odd jobs?"  she asked.  Daniel nodded.  Ella handed him a yellow
cone.  He studied the castle and slid the cone carefully into an open
window, as if it were a candle flame.

Mattie looked out the window.  "Isn't the world orange right now?"  she
asked.  She sounded, even to herself, like a fruitcake.

But looking up from his work, Daniel said, "Orange keeps us warm." This
time Mattie nodded.  "I'm cold," he said, like a child.

"Would you like a cup of tea instead of water?"

He had large hands and long fingers.  He filled the windows of the
castle with colored cones and blocks and figurines that lay all over
the rug--warriors, dinosaurs, sea creatures.  Then, suddenly, he leapt
to his feet.

"What is it?"  she asked.

"I'm late for my next appointment.  I have to go."

Mattie frowned.  "But you just quit your job."

He thought about this.  "Good point."  He inhaled loudly.  Ella handed
him a green wooden triangle.  He used it to stab himself in the head.
"I have to make some money today.  I promised my wife.  Thank you for
the tea and for letting me play," he said to Ella.  Mattie felt
afraid--she imagined Daniel as having killed the real Evergreen rat
man, stolen his uniform, stuffed him into the

trunk of his car so he could worm his way into her house.  But a
bigger part of her was desperate for him to stay.  Daniel's eyes were
quiet and kind.

"Do you want to chop firewood?  I could pay fifteen dollars an hour,"
Mattie blurted out.  She wanted him to stay.  She'd come up with the
money.

"Really?  Sure."

She took him out to the backyard, showed him a pile of logs Isa had
bought long before, her father's hatchet, and an old stump slashed with
hatchet blows her father and Al had made over the years.

Inside, Mattie and Ella listened to the sound of splitting wood.  Ella
looked down at her belly button for the answer, as if it were a
mailbox.  They worked on the castle until Harry and Stefan burst
through the door.  "Do you boys want something to eat?"  Mattie called.
Without answering, they walked toward Harry's room with the oddest
possible gait, as if they were squeezing the cheeks of their bottoms
tightly together.  And when Mattie followed them to Harry's room, she
discovered they did have the cheeks of their bottoms squeezed tight, to
hold Band-Aids in place, as Harry explained.  They had each put an
unwrapped Band-Aid in the crack of their bottoms in case they got hurt
while playing.  The two boys twisted logically to extract the Band-Aids
from their underpants.

"It's okay," Mattie said.  "It's good to be prepared.  But go do that
in the bathroom.  Throw those in the trash.  Why didn't you carry them
in your pockets?"  she asked.

"Because we're spies."

Stefan was courtly with Ella, and stopped to admire her castle on his
way to the bathroom, but Harry sidestepped her reach as you would the
family octopus.  "Who's the guy in the back chopping up our wood?"  he
called to Mattie.

"He used to be the Evergreen man.  Now he's--well, I don't

know what he is now.  He needed work, we needed wood for the fire."

The days got shorter and darker, and there was the beginning of a ruddy
sunset when Isa came over for late tea a week later.  She wore pleated
black linen pants, a gray wool sweater, and a periwinkle scarf, and
moved like a woman balancing a tray on her head.  She brought a perfect
gift, beautifully wrapped, for everyone.  For Mattie, a green serving
plate with "Plate" written with a finger in the clay by the handicapped
person who'd made it at the foundation on whose board Isa served.  For
Harry a set of fancy felt-tip pens, for Ella a stuffed bear with hair
you could braid.  "What's the occasion?"  Mattie asked.  Isa sat on the
floor and helped Ella braid the bear's hair.  Harry lay beside them
petting Marjorie, the package of pens shoved into the pocket of his
jeans.  Although he was always drawing meticulous tiny figures,
frightful animals, detailed buildings, he would not open it for days.
He preferred the perfect look of brand new things to the things
themselves, loved the brief suspended moments before the inevitable
depreciation of dulled tips and chewed caps.

"Your mother has a nice new man in her life," Isa told Mattie.  "But
that's all I'm going to say."  Isa zipped her lips as though Mattie
were a three-year-old.  Poor guy, thought Mattie.  Watching her play
with Ella, she tried to imagine her mother sitting with her and Al on
the floor, and knew it had never happened.  Her mother had always been
so busy.  She had always arrived home from work just minutes before
Mattie and Al got home from school.  She'd greet them warmly, still
dressed for the office, and then turn on the TV.  Sometimes she turned
on the radio too, as if trying to create a little party with lots of
voices.  Her role was spokesperson for both parents: Clear the dishes,
clean your rooms, study harder--in Al's case, study

at all.  Commitment and routines: homework, showers, dental
appointments.

Mattie's father took the joyful parts.  He drank and danced, stood at
his bookcases looking up a poem that he loved, or stared off into space
after putting the needle down on a new album on the hi-fi.  There was
always music on when he was home, and he was always trying to get Isa
to dance.  But she would never have anything to do with him after
dinner, there was too much work, and so he settled for Mattie, dancing
around on the wall-to-wall carpet, first with her on his shoes like
three-dimensional Arthur Murray footprints, then on her own feet,
dipping, twirling, looking up to meet his eyes.  He'd collapse on the
couch with his drink and try to get Mattie to take off his garters and
rub his feet, while Al hid in his room and Isa sterilized their living
quarters.  Isa would have put the house in an autoclave if she could
have.

Watching Isa with Ella--they were both named Isabella--Mattie felt a
pang of admiration for her mother.  She had kept the family together
all those years, with a husband who was gone every month, and a
troubled son; she was always committed to her causes, and had even been
jailed once after a mass protest at a nuclear power site.  In her early
seventies she was still quite beautiful.  Mattie hoped she would age as
gracefully as her mother.  Isa had perfectly smooth silver hair, pearly
dentures, crinkly eyes.  Something dormant had woken in her when Harry
was born.  She seemed curious about the world again, no longer
completely rooted to her routines and efficiency.  This was the
blessing of being a grandmother.  She was no longer so hurried and
paranoid.

Mattie felt jealous: when she was little, Isa had seen threats
everywhere, things to fear and protect oneself and one's children
from-strangers, germs, dogs and dog shit, the Russians.  But when Harry
came along, and then Ella, Isa had relaxed, opened entirely to their
love, holding their soft, warm bodies close, all that skin so fresh
and

new, not loaded with shame, not guarded against her or anyone else.
Their heads were like fountains at which she might finally drink.

Isa looked up at Mattie, self-conscious now.  "What?"  she demanded.

"Oh, nothing," Mattie said, looking away so that Isa could go back to
her granddaughter's sweet smells--her breath, her baby hair.  Then it
went on too long: Mattie pursed her lips and wanted to break it up,
like a cop nudging someone slumped over at a bar.  These were her
babies, and she loved them more than anything--the delicious smells of
their heads, so visceral, vibrational, intoxicating: all of it, all
those baptisms, tears and soppy diapers, leaky breast milk, spilled
formula, baths in the sink.  Isa had had her chance.

Harry ran off with Ella's bear, and Ella howled.  Mattie yelled at him
to come back, and he did.  He picked up Ella and lugged her around the
room as if she were the legless pencil man outside Macy's.  She sniffed
back tears.  "Chicken alert!"  he shouted, and she started cracking up.
"Chicken alert!"  he shouted again, and she squawked.

One morning when the sky was moody and dark, Mattie found herself
thinking of Daniel while she was folding laundry.  It had been a couple
of weeks since he'd come to kill her rats.  The tiny mole on his bottom
lid had made him seem smart and watchful as a whale.  She entertained
the fantasy of calling him up and asking him over, to play with the
blocks, or chop more wood, or maybe watch one of Nicky's nice movies
with her.  Andrea's Big Day was a good one.  Very tasteful.  Rear Entry
was equally tender.

At last, she was sleeping again.  The rats were gone.  Another man from
Evergreen had come the day after Daniel's visit, enthusiastically
placed the poison in plastic tubs, and wiped out her rats.  She tried
to imagine what kind of wife Daniel would have, someone quiet, she
believed, a little plain perhaps.  He certainly wasn't much to look at,
but something about him had stirred things up inside her.

She called the Evergreen number and told the receptionist that Daniel
had left something at her house; was there a way they could let him
know: The receptionist sounded skeptical.  "He left something there a
couple weeks ago?  Like what?"  she asked.  Like his panty hose, Mattie
wanted to say.

The next morning she found him on her doorstep, a loaf of homemade
bread in his hands.  He was squinting at her.

"Did I really leave something here?"  he asked.  Mattie shook her head.
She could hardly breathe.  She hated being caught in a lie.

"I had some more odd jobs I hoped you could do, and I didn't want
Evergreen to know I was giving you work."

"Oh," Daniel said.  "Well, great.  Here.  My wife and I baked bread
this morning.  I grabbed you a loaf on my way out."

He fixed the drip under the kitchen sink, replaced a porch light
fixture, went to the hardware store and got a new splatter guard for
the garbage disposal, replaced the doorknob in Harry's room, cut up
more firewood, stacked it, washed down the walkway to the house with
diluted bleach to remove the slime, repaired a hole in the fence where
Marjorie had gotten out.  He worked for four hours straight, and when
he was done, she gave him eighty dollars.

"This is too much," he said.

"No, no," she insisted.  "It's fine.  I just got paid."

Mattie made them tea, and toast from the bread he had brought.  She
wanted to ask if he had a church.  Asking the question was a habit of
hers that used to make Nicky furious; he said it made him feel he was
married to a Jehovah's Witness.  As hard as she tried not to say
anything, she blurted it out.

"No, I don't.  My wife's not a believer, but I am.  More or less.  Do
you go to church?"  he asked.

"Oh, yeah."

"Is the music nice?"

"You've got to come sometime," she replied.  It gave her a lift just
to think of it.  She loved how ragged the music sounded some days.  The
church was racially integrated, with more women than men, fifty to
sixty in all most Sundays, plus twenty children from infants to teens.
It was the only place where she could sing.  She loved the big proud
bodies of the women in the choir, and how they could swing, and how
planted on the earth they seemed, with no apology for taking up so much
space.  It was as if they assumed they were beautiful, and only needed
to decide what color to dress the beauty in.  "Corner of Drake and
First.  Services at eleven every Sunday."

And the very next Sunday, Daniel was there, sitting by himself near the
door.

Mattie didn't even see him at first.  She was greeting her friends,
helping the older people find seats, checking what songs they'd be
singing, when she noticed him flipping through a hymnal.  She caught
his eye while the choir filed in, and blinked out hello in Morse code.
He bowed in greeting, and now it was her turn to look down.

The choir sang her favorite songs, "Just As I Am" and "Softly and
Tenderly."  Mattie heard the desperation and generosity beneath the
notes.  She listened with her eyes closed to the sermon, which was
about letting God into your worst drawers and closets, and how healing
could not happen if you let God into a living room that had been
cleaned for the occasion.  If you wanted the healing, you had to show
God the mess.

"I loved it," Daniel told her afterward.  "Can I come again?"

"Hey, cutie," a man said over static when she picked up the phone the
next day.  For a brief moment she thought it was Daniel, and her heart
jumped.  She flushed when she realized it was her brother.  "How are
you?"  she asked.

"Well, I'm fine, honey chile," Al said, "but you're not going to
believe what I saw this morning.  I found Daddy's old car, our old

VW."

"No you didn't.  That car doesn't exist anymore."

"Yes I did, miss.  It passed me in front of the library.  A-I-M eight
five-two."

"Holy cow."  Hearing the license plate number triggered the adrenaline
in her--A-I-M, Alfred or Al, Isa, Mattie, 852.

"Did it... recognize you?"

"Yes, I think it did.  I think it gave me a furtive little wave."

Mattie quieted her mind.  "Didn't Dad sell it to Neil?"  Neil Grann had
been her father's best friend when Mattie and Al were growing up.  He
lived out near the coast with his only child, Abby, who was about
Mattie's age, and his girlfriend, Yvonne Lang.  They hosted afternoon
gatherings every few weeks, with wine and the newest jazz recordings,
and people always brought their kids, who played in the woodsy backyard
while the grown-ups drank and talked.

"He sold it to Abby for a thousand dollars, the year he bought the
Mazda.  After Neil died.  A-I-M eight-five-two.  Abby smashed it up
almost immediately, and that's the last I'd heard."

Mattie saw the car herself a few days later, in the parking lot at
Albertsons.  She waited for the driver to come out, not knowing what
she would say if he did.  No one came during the fifteen minutes she
waited.  But not long afterward, while she was crossing the street from
the post office, she saw the Volkswagen begin to pull away in front of
her, and she'd pounded on the side.  The driver stopped.

She stepped to the window, smiling at the shaggy old man behind the
wheel.  He rolled down the window.

"This is my old family car," she said.  "I learned to drive in it."

"I'll be damned."  The man patted the steering wheel.  "This is the
best car I ever owned.  I bought it from Sam Ray back in the seventies,
after Neil Grann's daughter nearly totaled it."

"Abby."

"Right, Abby," the man said.  "Wait, let me pull over."  He eased the
Volkswagen to the curb, and Mattie walked slowly over.  She remembered
Abby so well, running like a colt behind Neil's ramshackle house.  She
had long reddish-blond hair and smooth fair skin, delicate features,
long legs, knobby knees, a quick mind.  Neil, Yvonne, Alfred, and other
friends sat on the porch drinking when it was warm, or around the fire
in winter, listening to jazz on the hi-fi, dancing when they were
inside, reading poems aloud, planning revolution and saying sexy
things, laughing so loud at their own stories you could hear from the
fort the children would be building behind the house, until one of the
women, usually Yvonne, would call everyone in for dinner.

"Wait, which one was your dad?"  the man asked.

"Alfred Ryder.  Did you know him?  Dark shaggy hair, kind of handsome."
With big, slightly buck teeth?"

"I never actually met him.  But when the guy un dented the glove box, I
found a few odds and ends, some IDs of your father's, a library card,
an old registration.  There was a bracelet, a funny little blue rubber
shoe, a paint-can key, like, you know, you'd pry open the lid off a can
of paint with?  My wife made me save it all in a Ziploc bag.  I'm sure
we still have it somewhere.  Here's my number, if you ever want the
stuff."

Mattie handed Al the paint-can key.  It was flecked with dried paint,
winter-sky blue.  The daisy bracelet was one she had made twenty-five
years before, lavender and light blue, with a rose border, her favorite
colors, and she put it on now, while Al turned the splattered key over
in his hand.  Their father's signature on the library card and car
registration made Al double over with only slightly exaggerated
grief--those small, precise letters, straight up and down

like fence slats.  There was a bottle opener from the bait shop in
Marshall, the kind Alfred called a church key.  And the odd blue shoe,
an inch and a half long, soft rubber, a turquoise high-top sneaker with
finely detailed laces, complete with a toe guard.  The blue shoe fit
perfectly in the space where her fingers met the palm of her hand.  She
curled her fingers around it and held on.  Mattie and Al looked at each
other.

She asked if she could keep the shoe, and he said, "Of course you can."
Maybe she was just missing her dad, maybe she was losing her mind, but
for whatever reason she found herself unable to put it down.  She held
it while pushing the shopping cart with Ella in the front; she shoved
it in her pocket when she thought someone might see her, but then took
it out and made sure not to wash it with the laundry.  She kept it
overnight on the mantel above the fireplace and in the mornings stuffed
it back in her pocket when she walked Harry to the bus stop and Ella to
day care.  She took it out when she got home.  She had it all the way
through December, her least favorite month.  She took it when she went
Christmas shopping, placed it on the mantel on Christmas Eve while she
filled the children's stockings with chocolates and trinkets and
tangerines, had it in the pocket of her jeans when she handed the kids
over to Nicky at lunchtime--he and Lee got the children for Christmas
dinner.  Al and Catherine, Isa and Lewis came to Mattie's that night,
bearing side dishes to eat with the turkey she had cooked, the blue
shoe beside the cutting board like a tiny enchanted creature from the
Brothers Grimm.  She held the shoe inside the crook of her fingers
while she pushed the vacuum cleaner around, held it when she talked on
the phone, unfurling her fingers to take in the intricate details, the
laces, the toe guard.  She hid it in her fist when Nicky stopped by for
the children, and it made her feel powerful again, as

if there were parts of her he didn't know about.  Nicky looked at her
curiously these days, and she smiled, as mysteriously as she could,
back at him, at his beautiful eyes, his thick, curly hair.  She no
longer ached to see him, no longer hoped he would stay over.  She
bustled Harry and Ella off with exuberant kisses when he came to pick
them up, calling out that she loved them, would see them the next day,
and then she'd go inside, to putter or put away things that were still
unpacked, or stretch on the couch with whatever she was reading.  No
matter what she was doing, she almost always held the little shoe in
her hand.  It felt good to have something to hold on to.

She'd read somewhere that after World War II ended in Europe, lost
children wandered around until they were gathered in camps run by the
Allies.  There they were fed and cared for while relatives were located
or new families found who could take them in.  In one camp it was
discovered that none of the children was sleeping well.  Their nerves
were shot, the memories fresh and haunting.  Then a social worker
determined that if the children were each given a piece of bread to
hold at night, they could fall asleep.  This was not bread to
eat--there was plenty of that when the children were hungry.  No, this
piece of bread was just to hold on to, to reassure the children through
the night that they were safe now, that there would be bread to eat in
the morning.

She saw Daniel at church the following Sunday and asked if he could
come work again.  When he came by two days later, she showed him the
little shoe.

"Very interesting," he said.  He had brought her more bread, black with
seeds, still warm.

"When do I get to meet Pauline?"  Mattie asked.  She felt she should
meet his wife.

"She's picking me up today at five.  My car's in the shop."

Pauline was beautiful.  Mattie was amazed.  Daniel had never

mentioned this.  She was small and slight on top, with a large, round
bottom, and her features were too big for her frame--her long nose,
lips, hazel eyes, chin, her cheekbones.  Ropes and tendrils of curly
blond hair were piled high on her head.  She wore rings on every
finger, a silver anklet, a velvet skirt, and an antique lace blouse.
She spoke in warm, vigorous tones.  She moved like a dancer, and in
fact had trained for ballet until college, when it became clear she
would never be great.  She had a lovely laugh, and paid very close
attention whenever anyone spoke, actually cocking her head to listen.

Mattie had a puzzling and immediate aversion to her.

Ella fell instantly in love, with the velvet and lace, the apricot nail
polish, the tinkling of all that silver.  Within minutes, Pauline was
dandling her on her knees, asking her questions about the cats, who
milled around the floor at her feet as if Ella were their queen.

"Did you like her?  What's she like?"  Al asked Mattie on the phone
that night.

"She looks like an aging teenage hooker."

"Would you give her my number?"  he asked.

Mattie considered, smiling.  "Where's Katherine?"

Al paused too.  "She's in Vermont.  She went to see her parents, and
decided to stay for a few weeks.  She's sort of mad at me."

"The bad news for you is that Pauline clearly adores Daniel.  She's a
bit dramatic for my blood.  She told me she's in therapy twice a week.
So maybe she's cuckoo.  Eike I should talk."

Mattie still felt shaky these days.  She was okay in church, or doing
certain things with the children--playing with blocks was helpful, and
reading to them in bed was even better--but her head was often filled
with terrible thoughts, sadistic and vengeful, usually directed at her
mother, or Nicky, or his girlfriend, cute little Scottish Lee.  Mattie
had dented her own car twice, and then gouged the fender on a rental;
she told Al and Isa that if they saw her coming, they should pull off
the road and assume the crash position.  Mattie didn't know who was
still friends with her since

the divorce--the couples Nicky had introduced her to from the college
were mostly his friends now, friendly to her but belonging to him.  She
wasn't in the mood to make new ones.  Encounters of more than a few
minutes made her long to be home with the kids and the animals.  Other
people grated on her nerves.  Life grated on her nerves.  She was
getting a little funny.  She felt out of body, drifting and alone, with
only the children and her mother and Al to tether her to the dock.

Lee, pretty enough to be an actress, liked to drop mentions of
auditions and movie roles into her infrequent conversations with
Mattie.  "And what would some of your bigger credits include?"  Mattie
wanted to ask.  Lee had a straight nose, dark eyes, good teeth, and the
beautiful Scottish accent.  It was all too much.  "I want to kill
myself," Mattie told Angela one night on the phone.  "And then get on
with my life."

"Honey," Angela replied, "you don't know yourself well enough right now
to commit suicide.  So it would be considered a homicide."

One Saturday, Lee showed up to get the kids.  Mattie smiled warmly as
she opened the door for her, but inwardly, a vile kaleidoscope of
feelings spun slowly--pangs of shame, even though Lee had almost
certainly slept with Nicky while Mattie was still married to him, and
then calm, erotic power, and then hatred for Nicky, and then hatred for
herself.  Ella began to cry when she saw Lee.  Mattie carried her into
the kitchen, and Lee followed.  Ella needed to be held in Mattie's arms
at the table for a few minutes before she would agree to leave.  Lee
tried to interest her in all the marvelous things they would be doing
that day--they'd go to the park until Nicky was done with his meeting,
and then drive to Olema.  But Ella wasn't having any of it.  She rocked
back and forth in her mother's arms, rubbing her cheek against Mattie's
sweater, Mattie nuzzling the top of her head.  Harry said hello to

Lee in a high, earnest voice, but sat next to Mattie at the table,
holding the package of pens Isa had given him.  He arranged them
gravely in the order in which they'd first arrived, the spectrum of the
rainbow, while Lee looked to Mattie for help.  Harry dug in, putting
each pen's stamped logo into alignment inside the plastic sleeve.

Mattie hated the idea that her kids would wake up with Nicky and Lee,
when the children would be at their sleepiest and sweetest, un armored
and snuggly.  She prayed, but it was hopeless.  When she wasn't in bed
with him--and sometimes when she was--she wished Nicky would die,
badly.  Cancer, murder, even--right after he had left late one
night--Lou Gehrig's disease.  She buried her face in her hands at
stoplights and prayed for healing, and then she'd imagine a torrid
movie of Nicky and Lee in bed, screaming first in erotic joy, then in
terror when Mattie appeared in their doorway to toss a rattlesnake at
them.  Nicky thrived, grew handsomer, while Mattie looked wizened.  She
did not believe she would ever stop hating Nicky and Lee, until her
pastor told her that when God was going to do something wonderful, it
started with something hard, and when God was going to do something
exquisite, He or She started with an impossibility.

Daniel called her every few days, or she called him.  It was fun to
have a new friend.  He met her at church every Sunday, and it seemed
natural that they would start driving there together.  One afternoon
they went for a walk out to the beach on the Tennessee Valley Trail.
Mattie had made a point of inviting Pauline along.

"I'm not a hiker, Mattie," Pauline told her.  "But Daniel loves to. 
You go without me."

And so Mattie and Daniel had gone for a walk alone.

"My bedroom smells like cat pee," she said as they walked toward the
salt and roar of the ocean.  "My mother had a cat disorder.  I've

tried everything.  Odor mute.  Nature's Miracle.  I even rented a
steam cleaner."

"We may have to pull up the whole rug," he said.  "And toss it."

"I would pay you fifteen bucks an hour."

"You can if you want, but you don't need to," he said.

The following weekend they carried the mattress together into the
living room, the mattress as boneless as a drunk, so that they
staggered under its weight.  It buckled in half and they tripped, but
they managed to lug it out through two doorways and onto the floor by
the fireplace.  In her mind she saw them flop down on the mattress and
lie there breathless, staring at the ceiling, catching their breath,
and then growing still, like in the movies.  But in the visible world,
they dusted off their hands and returned to the bedroom for the night
tables, the dresser, the bookshelf.  Pauline called a couple of hours
into their work, and Daniel talked to her warmly for a few minutes.
Mattie strained to listen.

When everything was out of the room, they took X-acto knives, chisels,
and screwdrivers and pried up sections of rug.  Mattie felt as
embarrassed as if she herself had peed on the rug over the years, but
when she alluded to this, Daniel shrugged and said, "Let's just do it.
We'll get this monstrosity up and figure out what we have on our hands.
Then we'll take it from there."  They listened to CDs, and talked about
their marriages, Pauline's depressions, Mattie's children.  It took
hours to pull up the carpet and padding, tufts embedded in all the
staples on the floorboards.  There were urine stains on the boards, and
Daniel said, "We'll pry these up too."

When Pauline called again, Daniel held his hand over the receiver and
asked Mattie if they could take a ten-minute break.  "Sure," she said
enthusiastically, and he sprawled on the floor and asked his wife about
her day.

Later, while they removed staples from the floor and cleaned away
fibers and dust like smudges off a child's face, Daniel looked so happy
and proud that Mattie was reminded of someone.  It took a

while for her to remember who it was he reminded her of.  Finally she
recalled a magazine photograph she had torn out and saved because she
loved it so: the picture of a joyful East Indian, with rocks tied up in
a net hanging from his penis.  He shone with the power of the weight,
and of bearing the weight, and he didn't need more power than that.

She worked as long as she could, but her eyelids grew heavy and she
couldn't fight her exhaustion.  "I didn't sleep last night," she said.
"I have to go lie down."

She dropped off to sleep for an hour on Ella's bed.

Daniel was still at work when she got up.  "Now what?"  she asked.

"Now we clean up, and figure out how to buy some new flooring."

She got them cold glasses of apple juice, and they sat on the bare wood
side by side.  "So.  Tell me how you met Pauline," she said.

Daniel smiled.  "I met her at a party.  It was at her house, on her
twenty-fifth birthday.  Some mutual friends brought me along.  They
wanted us to meet, although they warned me she was coming out of a bad
depression.  So I went with them to dinner at her house the following
weekend.  I liked the way she looked.  I was so sick of these skinny
girls who wouldn't eat with me--and boy, Pauline would eat with me. And
then--this is what did me in--her cat came in, this big orange male,
and she took him in her lap and began stroking him, kneading him,
working him over, and he was slavering, and she just worked him, like
she'd been sent over from the escort service.  And I thought, boy, I'd
love to let her have a go at me."

"So now what?"

"Now we do the best we can.  Some days go better than others."

"I mean, how do we get money for a floor?"

Daniel turned red.  "Oh!"  They looked away from each other.  "We can
do it cheaply--put in parquet.  We'll have a garage sale next weekend,"
he said.  "It'll give us all a chance to clean our closets."

And they did.  They held it in front of Daniel and Pauline's house, and
raised nearly three hundred dollars, which they split.  Mattie

bought some cheap parquet.  She and Daniel put it down over several
days when Harry was at school and Ella at day care.  Mattie borrowed a
hundred dollars from Isa to give to Daniel.

The new floor transformed Mattie, both the look of it and the marvelous
absence of cat urine.  Now there were sweet new smells, flowers from
her garden in a vase, fresh air wafting through the windows.  It looked
and smelled like a miracle.  Mattie decided to celebrate.  It was time
for a housewarming party: they had been here long enough.

Angela said, "I know a guy who can play the didgeridoo."

"You make that sound like a good thing," said Mattie.  But she ended up
hiring him anyway to play at the party, which would be in late
January.

She invited Al and Katherine, her mother, and the new boyfriend, Lewis,
a dapper old man from the South who lived in the same retirement
community.  He was half black, cocoa brown with a spray of moles across
his cheeks and a film of near-blindness over his black eyes.  She
invited Daniel and Pauline, Angela and Julie, some friends from church,
and some friends of Nicky's and hers from before the divorce.

Curiously, Mattie's spirits began to rise, even though many days in a
row brought cold rain.  Some mornings the sun hauled itself up
reluctantly, rolling like a slow bowling ball across the sky.  As
Mattie started to come out of her funk, everyone else grew depressed;
she called Angela one night and found her grumpy and withdrawn.

"I've been so down too," said Mattie.  "But for no reason, a few days
ago I woke up feeling lighter inside.  As if help was on the way.
Someday soon, the light will return.  That was the message of Advent,
right?  And Hanukkah.  I was thinking we could have a little
retroactive ritual at my party."

"Ix-nay, ix-nay," Angela said.

"Come on--a ceremony with candles?"

"No, no, no."

"Look--you're Reform, right?"

"Of course I'm Reform.  I've got a crucifix on my front door."

"Well, what if we made it a party for the depressed."

"Listen, Mattie, I left you alone when you were down.  Can you call me
tomorrow when the drugs wear off?"

Al was in a bad mood too, and said he wouldn't come to the party if
there was a ceremony, unless it was a small-animal sacrifice.  Pauline
was depressed as well, but then, as Mattie had learned, Pauline was
often depressed.  One Sunday, Mattie had made her some soup and tried
to talk her into going to church, but she had not been interested.

"I'm a dancer," she said, as if this explained anything.

Daniel and Mattie went to church without Pauline.  They sat together
whispering before the service began.  Their shoulders touched.  They
shared a hymnal when they stood to sing.  The sermon was on
forgiveness, not one of Mattie's strong suits.  She asked Daniel if he
could fix the porch light after church, and he said sure.

Mattie made them lunch when he was done, quesadillas and homemade salsa
and lemonade.

"Daniel, Has there ever been anyone you couldn't forgive?"

He thought about this.  "Yeah, there was this guy, it took me three or
four years.  It was a man Pauline had danced with, when she was a
dancer, in her twenties.  He was very handsome, and they'd been
together before she and I hooked up.  She was always on the phone with
him, and I hated this guy.  Hated him.  But I prayed for him anyway.
One morning I woke up, and the first thing I did was to feel around for
my hostility toward him, like for my wallet, and in that instant, I saw
that I had become his jailer.  But being his jailer was making me his
prisoner."

"Then what happened?"  Mattie felt glum.  He was telling her the story
of her and Nicky.

"When I got out of the loop, their friendship fell apart.  Pauline
fell apart too.  She had what I guess you'd call a minor breakdown."

"And now she's okay?"

"Yeah, she's fine."

I'm Nicky's jailer, Mattie said to herself.  The mole on Daniel's
bottom eyelid was no bigger than the head of a pin.  It hung suspended
near his iris like a star.

So she did exactly what Daniel had done.  She went around praying for
Nicky and Lee, and when one of them called, she made herself be sweet.
She didn't sleep with Nicky for a while, claiming, whenever he hinted,
to have a cold.  She let the machine pick up when he called late at
night, and she silently repeated, a dozen times a day, "I pray for you
both to have everything that will make you happy."  She did it even
though she really felt no peace, just hatred and jealousy and
self-loathing.  Then one morning she woke up in the cold and the dark,
and the ugly feelings were gone.

Now when Mattie thought of Nicky or Lee or heard their voices, the
needle didn't always move to the right or the left.  She had to pinch
herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming.  An infected splinter had
worked itself loose, risen to the surface.  Quirky blessings began to
arrive.  A family with a girl Ella's age moved in down the block, and
then their cat had a single kitten, a calico, which Ella and Harry
talked Mattie into taking; so now they had three cats.  But the best
development of all came one Saturday morning when Mattie was having
toast with Daniel and Pauline in the breakfast nook and Lee arrived to
get the children.  The three of them had been celebrating when Lee
arrived, because all three had been working lately.  Mattie had had a
few weeks' work at Sears; if she sucked in her stomach, she was still a
perfect size 12.  Pauline had been assisting at dance classes at a
local theater.  And Daniel was doing carpentry, and odd jobs, including
the delivery of a sandwich he'd invented to the best delis in
town--Daniel's Chopped Salad Sandwich.  The sandwich

was good, with lettuce, tomato, artichoke heart, avocado, water
chestnuts, and a lemony aioli, on thick slices of white bread that
Pauline baked every day.  Mattie sometimes helped make the sandwiches,
and Pauline gave her a third of the profits when she did, often a
hundred dollars a week for a few hours' work a day in their
light-filled kitchen.

Lee knocked on the kitchen door that Saturday morning, "come in,"
Mattie said, and called for the children.  She smiled and introduced
Lee to Pauline and Daniel, and then Pauline cocked her head to
listen.

"You have such a pretty voice," she told Lee, "all trills and burrs.
But I can't quite put my finger on your accent.  Are you from
Glasgow?"

Lee smiled sheepishly.  "Well, actually," she admitted, "I'm from
Oregon.  But my parents are both Scottish, and I guess that influenced
me when I was learning to speak."

Mattie's face broke into a smile, and she wanted to crow, but instead
said, "Ahh!"  warmly.  It was too good to be true: Lee had been faking
her cute little accent.  Her little burrs, her little itty tro!  Mattie
couldn't stop beaming, beaming at Harry when he burst into the kitchen.
He burrowed up against his mother loyally, and Mattie hummed and
imagined Lee in a kilt, blowing away on bagpipes.

A dozen people came to the housewarming party, the last Saturday in
January.  Angela had flown up alone the day before, and she and Mattie
stayed up all night cooking: jambalaya, fried chicken, bell peppers
fried with mustard seed, chocolate mousse.

Al and Catherine were the first to arrive.  He was wearing a tie dyed
Rastafarian T-shirt, and dribbling a basketball he'd brought for Harry.
Catherine wore her usual organic medley of cotton and suede and silk,
with the brown shoes that Al called her frog stompers  She

brought Mattie a jar of pumpkin butter.  She tried to peer into the
living room to see who else might be there, like a girl at her first
boy girl party.

Isa arrived next.  "Are you getting a little fat, Al?"  she asked after
exchanging kisses with him and Catherine, as if this were the wittiest
possible thing to say.  She'd come with Lewis, who doffed his brown
fedora the moment he stepped inside.  A few old friends trickled in,
all wonderfully dressed.

Daniel wore a dark green silk shirt tucked into black pleated pants,
and the kind of sandals men wear in advertisements for Puerto Rican
rum.  He had twisted his wiry hair into short dreadlocks, and had never
looked better.  Pauline's thick curls were piled high and loose on top
of her head.  She had gained weight because of the new antidepressant
she was on.  Mattie wanted to ask, "Would you mind coming into the
bathroom and hopping up on the scales for me?"  Then she began to worry
Pauline was pregnant.  People had babies so late nowadays.  Pauline was
coming up on forty.  It pleased Mattie to think that Pauline was older
than she and Daniel were.  Daniel fluttered around her, bringing her
plates of food from the table set up outdoors beneath an umbrella.
Mattie kept noticing Pauline's hands resting on the swell of her belly
under a simple stylish black linen dress and found herself growing more
anxious.  She prayed to have a moment of clarity, and by God, she did.
It was that she was mad as a hatter.  That's okay, she said, patting
her own shoulder.  All your better people were.

"You look wonderful," Mattie told Pauline, and that was true-she looked
stunning.  Two other women were wearing simple black linen shifts
similar to Pauline's, but they were poised and lean and busy, darting
around as if trying to catch something they could put to use, while
Pauline just sat there, regally.  Finally she got slowly to her feet,
and said, loudly enough that anyone nearby could hear, "Is there Tampax
in your bathroom?"

Mattie nodded kindly, flooded with relief.

She hadn't seen some of her guests since before she and Nicky had
split up.  She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed them, but she felt shy
too.  She sat with Daniel, Pauline, and Lewis on the periphery of the
group.  They all grilled Lewis as if he were a teenage boy who wanted
to date their daughter.  He held up to scrutiny, telling the story of
his coming to live in California.  He'd moved from Alabama during World
War II to work in the Sausalito boatyards, then stayed on in Marin City
afterward.  He had been a welder by trade, but was retired since 1980,
when his vision began to fail.

"Marin City--that's where we go to church," Mattie said, meaning
herself and Daniel.

"Really, which one?"  When Mattie told him, Lewis clapped his hands to
his cheeks.  "Would you consider bringing me along?"  he asked.  "We
lost our pastor at New Hope Baptist, and I don't like his replacement
at all.

Mattie made plans to pick him up at The Sequoias on her way to Daniel's
the next day.  This made Isa look as if she might put her finger down
her throat.  Mattie ignored her.

"How much can you see?"  Mattie asked Lewis.

"The outline of you, and the palette of you.  Not much else."

"Why don't you leave him alone?  Let the poor man eat in peace."

"Isa, darling," Lewis said.  "This is how people get to know one
another."

Mattie wanted to make a bullhorn of her hands and bellow, " For the
love of God, run while you can," but Isa was now wrapping her silky
strings of touch and attention around Lewis, gripping his hand with
reassurance, smoothing a crumb of food from beside his mouth.

Guests came over to pay their respects to Isa as if she was the
Godfather.  It was quite touching to hear them lay their lives out like
smorgasbords.  Oh, Isa, this is so tasty, and I think you'll like this,
it

will make you proud of me, and Here's an interesting morsel.  And Isa
would taste it, and say with her kind face, You've made such a good
banquet.  Oh, these are such delicious dishes.

Nicky honked when he pulled up in front of the house.  Harry and Ella
poured out of the backseat, dressed in their best clothes: Harry in
cords and a white dress shirt, Ella in a black velvet party dress
trimmed with lace.  Harry picked her up like a sack of potatoes and
carried her over to Mattie.  After hugging and kissing Mattie, Angela,
Isa, and Al, he hauled her off toward the sandbox.

Mattie listened to songbirds over people's voices, the tinkle of
glasses and ice cubes, the clink of forks on plates, and then, all at
once, to her son's sharp cries from the sandbox.  Red-faced, Harry was
weeping, clutching at one of his eyes like the Cyclops, while Ella
looked on with horror and people streamed over to help.  "What is it?"
Mattie asked, bending in close.  "Let me see."

Katherine came over and squatted beside Harry.  "Take your hand away,
sweetheart," she said.  She opened his eye with her long pale fingers.
"You've got a little sand in your eye," she said.  "Will you come
inside and let me flush it out?"

"I've torn my cornea," Harry sobbed.  "As if you even care."

"Harry, you can watch your tone," said Mattie.

"Will you come inside with me?"  Katherine asked again.

"No, I want my mom to do it."

Katherine shrugged at Mattie.

Mattie put her arm around Harry's shoulders and looked into his eyes.
She wondered whether she had known the word cornea at six years old.
When he didn't stop crying, she sighed quietly, took him by the hand,
and said, "Come on, honey.  Let's go flush out your eye."

He looked as if someone had splashed acid in his face.  In the
bathroom, she tried to wash out whatever it was with water, and when
that didn't work, she plopped down on the toilet to think.

"The crying will wash it out," she said, pulling him into her lap.  He
tore at his eye, rubbed hard, whimpered, and she cooed and patted him
with mounting hostility- The sand did not dislodge, but if it was
indeed sand, the crying would wash his eyes for him.  What would Jesus
do?  Roll his eyes and growl softly, as she was doing?  She pictured
Jesus and the men He lived with, whiny bachelors all-"Can I be first?"
"What about me, Lord?"--and saw Him sigh and head back up the mountain.
Where could she go?

Her child sobbed in her arms, and she held him.  Boy, she thought, when
Jesus said we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of
heaven, He was definitely not referring to Harry.  Maybe He had been
misquoted.  Maybe He did not say you must be like little children, but
that you should eat little children--with a little butter and garlic.
She exhaled softly, and Harry heard.  He lurched out of her lap and
tried to figure out whether she was mocking him.  With his hand cupped
over his eye as if to keep it from spilling out of its socket, he
careened around the bathroom.  "Stop!"  she wanted to cry.  "It's sand
in your eye, not napalm!"  She did not believe he was in any real
distress, and her heart refused to budge, to give, to breathe.  She did
not like children.  She should not have had any.  This one was already
ruined.

"I want to go to the hospital," he said, reedy, imperious, blaming.

"I'm having a party!"  she implored.  He was gasping for breath now,
but she persuaded him to take off his clothes and step under the
shower.  She watched him through the glass door.  "Open your eyes!" she
called to him.  Open your heart, she heard in silent reply; but she
couldn't.  So she did what she could: she opened her own eyes
instead.

And under the torrent of water she saw a hunched and miserable boy,
skinny, lonely, exiled--a refugee camp of one.  "Honey?"  she said.  He
stared up at the spray with his eyes open, looking demented.  She
tapped the glass.  He looked over at her, and she was softened by his
bleary agony.  Suffering was suffering.  She opened

the door and reached gently inside for him, holding out a towel.
"Honey, let's get you some help."

"Who could help us?"

"I don't know."  Harry didn't say anything, and she toweled him off.
When she finished with his hair, she draped the towel over him like a
drop cloth over an old lamp.  She lifted one corner and peered into his
wild face.  "What's going on?"  she whispered.

"Daddy's going to have a baby," he wailed.

"What?"  The news knocked the wind out of her.

"Daddy and Lee are going to have a baby!"

Heat rose in her.  "They are?"

Harry nodded.  "I heard her tell it on the phone."  He gasped for
breath, quavering.  "Daddy didn't tell me."  They sat together on the
toilet while he wept.  Finally he grew quiet and fell asleep.  Amazing
that he was so like her.  She held him sprawled across her lap.

She listened to him sleep, and to the sounds of the party.  After a
while she carried him to his bedroom, where she laid him on his bed.
She dressed him in a T-shirt and Power Rangers underpants, and covered
him with a blanket.  She went to the kitchen, found the little blue
shoe on the counter, put it in her pocket, and walked back outside.

Lewis turned his head toward her, but his eyes looked up, as if to the
hills, from the shelter of his brows and deep folds of skin.  His eyes
were as black and round as knots in a tree.  He was eating jambalaya
with great pleasure, his loud digestion surprising them all from time
to time.  Mattie offered him the shoe and he turned it over in his
hand.  "It was my father's," she said when he gave it back.

"Of course it was not your father's," Isa insisted from beside him.

"It was, Mom," said Al.  "It was in the old VW bus."

"Why on earth would your father have had such a preposterous gewgaw?
I'm sure it was not Alfred's."

Mattie felt she would burst with resentment.  "Why are you being so
mean today?"

"It's simply idiotic, Mattie."  Isa waved her away.  Al growled.
Katherine patted him on the knee.

"Why would you call me an idiot at my own party?"  Mattie cried.

"Oh, for Chrissakes," Isa exclaimed, sounding genuinely distressed.  "I
only meant, what do you think you'll find by poking around Alfred's old
things: It's gruesome."

Mattie went inside to compose herself.  She sat at the kitchen table
and closed her eyes.  She was thinking of a line from a poem by Rumi,
"Through love, all pain will turn to medicine," and in her mind she
flicked the poem like holy water onto Isa's haughty face.

The didgeridoo player arrived just in time, as Isa was trying to
persuade Lewis to throw away his brown fedora.  When Ella saw the
musician carrying the long instrument over his shoulder, she ran to
greet him.  Al went inside to wake Harry.  The musician set up in the
garden, near the food table, and soon began to play.  Out came a low,
windy moan, an eerie dirge.  Isa drew back and looked at Lewis with
horror.  "Oh, for Chrissakes," she said, laughing.  Mattie covered her
eyes to block out her mother.  She sensed someone sitting down on the
bench beside her--Pauline.  Mattie felt a stir of affection for her,
and took her hand.  Ella climbed into Mattie's lap.  Al stepped into
sight, with Harry gripping his new basketball in his arms.  They sat
down on the ground together, Al crossing his legs Indian style,
enveloping Harry.

The voice of the didgeridoo was a call from far away, from centuries
back.  If you pressed your ear to the ground, Mattie thought, this was
the tone the earth would make.  The music resonated like an ancient
god, or what desert winds must have sounded like to the first ears on
earth.  She closed her eyes again.  She felt doomed, and lumpy, fat and
old.  She tried to recall the women from church, their triumphant
wideness, centered and vigorous, and this helped.  Ella clung to her
like a baby koala.  Mattie nuzzled her, snorfled her neck.

The didgeridoo sounded like an enormous animal panting at the end of
its life.  Mattie looked up and found Daniel standing before her,
lifting her daughter into his arms.  He held her in front of his chest,
his long hands knitted together effortlessly to make a seat in which
round, rosy Ella perched, somewhat worried, but curious.  "Want to
dance?"  he asked her.  "I'm probably the only person you know who can
dance to the didgeridoo."  Ella thought this over, tugging on her chin
like an alchemist.

Mattie opened her fingers slowly so she could peek in at the little
rubber shoe, as if examining a poker hand.  Harry and Al were talking,
and Daniel still held Ella in his arms, turning in slow circles. 
Mattie watched, listened, breathed in deep and slow: if the sound of
the didgeridoo was a color, it would be rich and earthy, plant purple,
like eggplant with light behind it.

three.

It was the rainiest May ever.  A sense of ordinary life had established
itself by late winter, had risen from the chaos and comfort of
schedules and lazy weekends, school and vacations, colds and flus and
dentist appointments, long sleepy Saturday mornings of drawing together
in Mattie's bed.  In early spring, they threw off their jackets and
tore outside.  The garden was in full crazy bloom and the children were
growing like Topsy too, as Isa always said.  They now spent three
weekends a month with Nicky and Lee, so that Mattie could bring them to
church one Sunday, piled into the car with Daniel and Lewis.  She was
just getting by financially: she had a lot of work at Sears, Nicky had
increased her child support by one hundred dollars a month, the
sandwich-making business continued to thrive.

Al had lost ten pounds since Christmas.  He and Daniel were playing
tennis once a week now.  They were equally terrible, but fascinating to
watch.  Al struck frozen poses before hitting each return, as if a
stream of water might pour from the statuary of his head; Daniel moved
with the her ky-jerk robot steps of someone in ski boots.  Harry had
his seventh birthday, Ella her third.  Although she was both bright and
watchful, she was still not talking very much.  Mattie could see that
she communicated brilliantly in other ways, but Nicky insisted on
taking her to the doctor.  Some people were just naturally quieter than
others, the doctor said.  Isa sometimes tried to badger Ella into
conversing with her, and if Ella resisted, Isa would demand, "Cat got
cher tongue'" until Mattie would threaten her with a raised fist. The
animals were fine, the kitten growing into a real cat and less of a
holy terror.  Marjorie was slowing down more.  Isa and Lewis were
together all the time: Isa seemed amused by this late-in-life affair.
Lewis always smiled at her gently, and came to church with Mattie and
Daniel on Sundays.

A storm woke Mattie at dawn.  She lay in the dark room and listened to
Marjorie snore, more like a bear than a sick dog.  Two cats were asleep
on the bed, the third on the chair.  She had promised to take the
children to Samuel P. Taylor Park today, even in the rain.  She did not
mind this weather, and certainly preferred it to the tyranny of a
bright blue day, when old voices told you to get off your duff and go
outside.  Hours after a storm passed, the wet enlivening grayness--a
watercolor brush on wet paper--made the wind and the howl all
worthwhile.

She got up to make coffee.  The animals sprinted to the kitchen at her
heels like hungry Secret Service agents, so she fed them before putting
the water on to boil.  It was only seven.  The paper was on the front
step.  She heard old man Buell across the street putting out his empty
bottles for recycling, and Kathy Brock next door shaking a

bag of kibble like maracas to summon her playboy cat.  Ella would be
getting glasses today, and then they could go to the park.  Mattie
hoped Al and Isa would come too.  With Nicky and Lee's wedding around
the corner, the baby on the way, all that amniotic fluid drawing the
children out of their gravitational orbits, they had to pull together
now.

But Al called at eight, sounding worried.  "Something strange has
happened, and I don't know what to make of it.  The woman from The
Sequoias just called to say that Mom was found this morning over by
Safeway, wandering around in her pajamas."

"What?  What'd you just say?"

"It's strange.  She was apparently sleepwalking.  Someone from Safeway
stopped to help her, and walked her back home.  He said she was fine as
soon as he shook her.  But the woman at the front desk was worried.  I
should take her in to the Saturday clinic at Kaiser."

Isa refused to see the doctor.  Al called Mattie later in the morning
to report that he was at Isa's and she had all but put the dresser up
against the door to keep him out.  She had eventually let him in, made
him toast, and they had looked through an old photo album together. She
seemed fine.  He stopped by Mattie's at lunchtime, and she made him
beans and dirty rice; he played fairies in the rain with Ella.  It was
two weeks more before they made it to the park, on another rainy day.
The children rode in the back of the car, Isa next to Mattie.  They
sang along to Peter, Paul and Mary as they drove past green meadows and
pastures carpeted with lupine, furnished with horses and sheep and
cows, colts, lambs, calves.

After a while Harry whined, "Why are we going out there in the rain? We
could be home drinking cocoa."

"Oh, don't be a poop," said Isa.

"But this is dangerous to be driving around in the rain, with
alcoholics driving around so fastly in their cars."

"Why are you such an old worry wart?"  Isa demanded.

The weather grew worse.  When they got out of the car at the park, the
children shielded their faces as they raced ahead toward their tree.
Isa was walking tentatively, and Mattie spotted her as if she were on a
balance beam.

"You okay, Mom?"

Isa nodded.

Harry and Ella burst into the opening of a tree, the same one that
Mattie and Al had burst into when they were little, and Isa and Mattie
followed.  The tree was called a family-circle redwood, a great mother
tree with several trunks around her, grown into her, and a tepee-shaped
space inside.  Half of the mother trunk was charred, perhaps from a
lightning strike, and smelled like campfire; the unburnt parts were
russet.

Mattie spread an oilcloth on the ground, deep wine-red against the
duff, and they all sat down with their backs against the trunk.  She
poured paper cups of cocoa from a thermos.  When the children had
finished drinking, they asked to go outside.  Mattie sat close to her
mother, picking out her faint almond scent amid the smell of trees and
burnt wood.

Inside the tree were slits and clefts and openings to another world
within.  The bark above them was more male, testicular, as Mattie
pointed out to Isa.  They laughed.

"Speaking of which, how are things with Lewis," Mattie asked.

Isa yelped with indignation.  "You get your head out of the gutter,"
she cried, hitting Mattie on the shoulder with an imaginary purse,
blushing but pleased.

The hollow rose high inside the tree.  Much had burned away, but more
was left than had been taken, so the tree had kept growing.

Mattie went to bed again with Nicky in June, two weeks before the
wedding.  This was a new low.  She prayed to God to help her say no

when Nicky called, asked for the strength to call him back and cancel.
But she didn't cancel, and he came.  Maybe the reasons she so wanted to
stop sleeping with him--the secrecy, the sinfulness, the disgust--were
also the things that pulled her into bed with him.  Sleeping with Nicky
helped kill the desire, for weeks at a time, to get back together with
him.  But there was a sweetness this time too, a quiet familiarity.
Their bodies still fit so wonderfully in motion, like hands rubbing
lotion into each other.

"It's hard to imagine giving this up," Nicky said.  "I suppose we ought
to, though."

"Yes, of course," she replied.  "It's not good for the kids, and the
baby you're going to have.  Or Lee.  Or us.  But other than that..."

They were quiet awhile.  "Remember when we were in Idaho, when you were
pregnant with Harry?"  Nicky asked.  She nodded in the dark.  She
remembered the scent of the lodgepole pines, and the river at night
where the salmon were spawning.  How they thrashed and splashed, like
sharks in the starlight.  "Then a few weeks after we got home.  Harry
was born.  That was when life really began for me."  She started to
cry.  He could not stay long enough to console her.

After Nicky left, she put on her robe and went out to stand in the
drizzle.  It was cold but the water felt good, like punctuation.  The
rain got inside her robe, and she walked around the garden feeling wet
and silverv.

In the morning, while she made breakfast, the children stood at the
window in the kitchen, hypnotized by the drops of rain on the glass.
Ella's white-blond hair, mussed with sleep, was the brightest thing in
the room.  Harry, with his brown skin and dark hedgehog brush cut,
glowed like wood.  Mattie stood next to them while the eggs fried,
watching the rain on the window.  It was like watching ants march in a
line to their colony, from many into one.  The kids tracked drops

that threaded their way down the glass, and Harry, endlessly
competitive, cheered on rivals in a horse race of water beads, shoving
Ella when she tapped on the window and interfered with one drop's
natural course.  "People don't shove people, Harry," she cried.

Mattie went back to the stove to flip the eggs.  Harry, now drawing
faces on the steamy glass, said, "Mom?  How will you and Daddy get back
together if he marries Lee?"

Her heart sank.

"Daddy and I aren't going to get back together.  We are never going to
be married again.  Lee is going to be your stepmother."

"Should we call her Mom too?"

Mattie spun around and jabbed at the air with her spatula.  "Don't you
dare."

Harry considered her.  Then his face darkened.  "So will Lee die at the
same time as me and Ella?  Or just you?"

"What?"

"Won't you and I die at the exact same time?"  he asked in rising
panic.

Mattie placed food on the table.  "No, honey.  Where did you hear
that?"

"From Stefan.  He and his mom are dying at the exact same second."

"No, they're not, darling.  And besides, I'm thirty years older than
you.  So you and Ella--and Stefan--will probably live much longer."

Harry gaped at her.  He pushed his eggs away.  Then he covered his face
with his hands and began to sob, which got Ella started too.  "If I had
known that," he cried, running back to the window, "I would never have
agreed to be born."

The sun returned and poured through the kitchen and bedroom windows,
but the living room remained dreary, because it had only one window.
Mattie wanted to install a bigger window, but she had

no money, and the windows Daniel inherited at work sites were
single-paned, like the one in the already drafty living room.

Then Pauline called one day to say she'd had a brainstorm.  "Let's find
a mirror to put above the fireplace."

"There are already too many mirrors in this house.  Anyway, I need a
real window in the living room, not a mirror."  Mattie was suspicious
of Pauline's kindness.  "I want to look at myself less, not more. Plus,
they must be very expensive."

"First of all, mirrors are a kind of window," Pauline said.  "They
bring light and the outside world to a wall that doesn't have an
opening in it.  They can be an opening of light.  You don't have one in
the living room.  And you can buy a fancy, beautiful one at a junk
shop."

So Mattie went to a used-furniture store with the bedside tables she
had bought with Nicky, and traded them for a big mirror with a white
ropy wooden frame around it.  And it did let in the world, the garden
and the sky, it did let in the light, and the darkness.  The only thing
Mattie didn't like about it was having to see her own tired reflection,
the tinsel of gray in her hair.

When Nicky came by to pick up the children on the afternoon before his
wedding, Mattie tried to act both as harried and as nonchalant as she
could.  She was wearing a sleeveless blouse that she'd meant to change,
as she was sweaty from cleaning.  She raced about, getting Ella ready.
Lee had picked out the children's wedding finery.  Mattie could not
remember having felt so phony and smiley, so un fine in her entire
life.  She was with Ella in her bedroom when the doorbell rang.  "Oh,
there's your daddy now," Mattie said, and Ella clung to her.  They
walked to the kitchen and Mattie called for Harry, but he did not come,
and when they opened the door, they found Nicky there looking
chagrined.

"Hey," he said to Mattie.  "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she replied, with enormous hostility.

He reached for Ella, who stuck to Mattie like a bandage.

"Come on in," Mattie told him.  "We're not quite together yet."  She
handed him the children's overnight bag, and sat at the table with
Ella.

"Where's Harry?"

"I don't know.  He's here somewhere."  Ella put her thumb in her mouth
and sucked, and Mattie nuzzled her hair.  Ella ducked her head.

"Honey, don't suck your thumb," Nicky wheedled, and Mattie glowered at
him.  He winced, and got up to look for Harry.

Mattie looked fondly at the expanse of chubby belly between Ella's
pants and her T-shirt.  After a moment Ella peered down too, as if over
the side of a low bridge.  She slowly inserted her thumb in her belly
button and pushed it in, making contact after a moment with something
deep inside.  "My belly," she whispered to Mattie.

"Yes."

Ella pushed her thumb deeper into her belly button.  Her gaze lost
focus and she began to relax in Mattie's arms.  Nicky, looking grim,
appeared in the doorway to say he couldn't find Harry.  Mattie went to
search, and found him in a corner of the laundry room, holding Marjorie
tightly.

When Nicky and the children finally left, Mattie went to cry in the
bathroom.  She cried so hard that she threw up.  Then she sat on the
couch in the dark living room and cried even more.  The three cats
gathered around her like physicians, and Marjorie crawled onto her lap.
In the dark, the new mirror looked like an underground tunnel.

After a few hours she went to get the little blue shoe, which was now
in an empty sugar bowl on the kitchen table.  She took out an album of
family photographs and looked at pictures of her father-as a young
groom, and then with baby Al in his arms; on the porch at Neil Grann's
with his arm around Yvonne, Neil's girlfriend; with Mattie on his
shoulders, him holding on tight to her skinny ankles.  She checked the
messages on her answering machine.

Angela had called twice, and Isa had called to invite her to a Meg
Ryan movie--leave it to Isa to have the world's worst solutions for
grief.  Al had called to say he and Katherine would come over if Mattie
just gave the word.  Mattie did not feel like being around a couple.
Daniel had called to say that he and Pauline were going to the ballet
and sent their love, and Harry had left a message, in a tiny voice,
that he wanted to ask her a question about the sky.  Mattie really
listened, as if he were there: "When does what you smell become the
sky?  When is it not just the air right around you?  Like when would
the smell of grass that was coming up from the dirt be the bottom of
the sky?"

Daniel and Pauline took her to the movies the next day.  Nicky and Lee
would be at City Hall about then.  Mattie sat in the aisle seat with
Daniel beside her.  Pauline handed her some Kleenex across Daniel's
lap.  Mattie felt better when the movie was over, because that meant
the wedding was over too.  Pauline invited her for dinner, but she
wanted to be alone, with her pets, and maybe a small cheese pizza.  In
a perfect world, she would have had Daniel over alone.  It was not a
perfect world.  She ate pizza, drank beer, took a Valium, and read
herself to sleep.

Al called the next day and announced, "I think we're going to have to
put Mom in a loony bin."  "Okay," Mattie said.

There was silence.  "You're supposed to ask why."  "Oh, I'm sorry.  Why
do we have to put Mom in the bin?"  "Because she has ten bags of cat
food in the cabinet next to the stove, all opened, none of them even
half empty.  And she has three bowls of kibble on a place mat all the
same brand and flavor, for the one cat."

"I've noticed that, but it's not so bad.  It's not like sleepwalking
to Safeway."

"I don't think she should be driving.  I mean, do you let an old person
drive until they kill somebody, or crash into a parked car?"

"I don't know.  I don't actually have an owner's manual for Isa."

When Micky dropped the children off that night, he poked his head in
long enough to say that everything had gone fine.  The children ran
into her arms.  Harry smelled as sweet and pungent as sawdust, Ella as
deliciously odd as puppy breath.  The touch of their skin, the smells,
made her whole again, like an animal lost in the wilds that finds its
mother.

She looked up to see Nicky watching them, and she tried to appear
elegant and maternal and spiritual, but inside she thought,
Nyaah-nyaah, our children don't do this with you.

Soon after the wedding, she decided to remodel her bedroom.  It was
dark and ugly, with walnut paneling from the fifties.  Daniel and
Pauline's bedroom looked like a solarium for honeymooners, cozy and
sweet and filled with light and a nice view.  She asked Daniel if he'd
help her.

"Yeah!  Let's tear down that horrible paneling.  And maybe put in more
windows.  I'd love to, it would be fun.  A great project."

He asked her if the walls had insulation; she didn't know.  "Let's take
off one or two panels and see," he suggested, but she didn't want to do
it; she was afraid of what might be underneath.

"How bad could it be?"  Daniel asked blithely.  "No offense to your
father--this paneling was a popular look from the pages of Argosy at
that time.  We had it too.  It was just as ugly at our house, with
everything but antlers and a mounted moose head."

"Okay," she said.  Daniel took a chisel from her tool box and pried
off a board.  Underneath was the absence not just of insulation, but of
anything.  There was only framing.  "Oops," said Daniel.  "They forgot
to put up walls."

Mattie examined the void between the two-by-fours.  "What can we do?"

"We need to put in some insulation, some drywall, then prime it, and
paint.  And then this room will be bright and warm."

That night she asked her mother for the money, and called Daniel with
the good news, but got Pauline instead.  They talked and then she asked
to speak to Daniel.  He wasn't home.  "He's delivering sandwiches,"
Pauline said.  "Can I give him a message?"

"Tell him I have the Sheetrock money.  And Saturday would be great."

After a pause, Pauline said, "Saturday's not going to work for us."
Mattie felt a flicker of anxiety.  "I got tickets for Mark Morris, and
I'm hoping to spend the day in the city with Daniel.  That is, if you
can spare him."  Mattie held her breath.  The kitchen grew silent
except for the buzz of a light.  "Can't you do it Sunday?"

"No, we've got church."

"I don't think Daniel will be at church.  We'll be in the city
overnight."

Mattie stammered.  She had been put back in her place.  But as it
turned out, Daniel did want to work the next weekend.

"I don't want to see Mark Morris," he said to Mattie later over the
phone.  "I already told Pauline that.  We just had a terrible fight
about it, and she left.  I couldn't have been clearer--I told her I'd
go with her, but not for the whole day, and not overnight--but she made
plans for us to stay with a friend of hers who I hate, and I'm not
going.  I want to spend the day working on your house.  And I want to
go to church on Sunday."

Mattie thought about calling Pauline to straighten things out.  Instead
she called Angela, who advised her to keep her nose out of it.

"This is really none of your business," she said.  Mattie waited to
see how things worked out, and on Friday, Daniel called saying he would
be there first thing in the morning.

"Is Pauline still mad?"  Mattie asked.

"Oh, yeah.  Big-time."  Daniel cleared his throat.  A bracing warmth
flushed through Mattie, like the first sip of a martini.

Pauline went to the city by herself, and Daniel came over in a subdued
and distracted mood.  He and Mattie took up all the walnut paneling and
piled it into his truck.  They hauled it to the dump in San Rafael, ate
hamburgers at Wendy's, and went to the hardware store in town.  They
bought a roll of insulation, and Sheetrock, then worked through the
afternoon.  By nightfall, they had half of the insulation stapled up.

"I should've gone with Pauline," Daniel said when they were finished.
"I should've arranged to meet her in the city.  And gone to see Mark
Morris with her.  I don't even know if she'll come back in the morning
now.  Once when she got mad, she stayed away for days."

"Where did she stay?"  Mattie asked.

"I don't know.  But I felt sick the whole time she was gone."

His color was terrible, as if he had a stomachache.  Mattie felt better
than she had in quite a while.  Today was the tomorrow she'd been
worrying about before Nicky's wedding, but now, thanks partly to
Daniel, she was okay.  She went and got the blue shoe from the kitchen,
and pressed it into Daniel's hand.  "Here," she said.  "Hold on to
this. You need it more than I do."

He looked at it.  "Wow."  He closed his long fingers around it and
jammed his hand into his pants pocket.

Daniel couldn't go to church the next morning.  Mattie was surprised by
how disappointed she was.  She had picked up Lewis, and they drove
together.  At church they sat near the choir, to be enveloped by all
that singing.  Mattie battled against a rubbery, numb

sensation when she thought about Daniel rushing after Pauline, and she
got a little sick when she thought of Nicky's joy in Lee's pregnancy.
But this is where I am, Lord, she prayed, this is how it is with me
right now.  She felt her own brokenness deeply, a longing to come clean
and be helped, a signal going out from her.  Yet she also found herself
wishing she hadn't given Daniel the blue shoe.  Having the shoe meant
that he would come through; he and Pauline would make up.  Mattie
realized, with a start, that she didn't want them to make up.  When she
got home, she found a message from Daniel on the answering machine: He
had gone to the city and would be back the next day to finish the
job.

He couldn't come the next day, though, or the next, and on Wednesday
she had a fitting gig with Sears.  This was fine with her; she was
still a perfect size 12, her one claim to fame, and she liked being
needed, by grown-ups, at least for the moment, at least by Sears.

Daniel came over on Thursday.  They finished stapling the insulation
and began hammering the Sheetrock, but they didn't talk much.  He had
another job on Friday, so they finished on Saturday.  He showed her how
to smear the Sheetrock with something he called mud.

And then he gave her a report about the previous Saturday night.  He
had gone to the city that night, to the Marines Memorial Theatre,
dressed in his best clothes, and waited outside to spot Pauline and her
friends.  He'd bought a scalped ticket for one hundred dollars, which
she ended up being mad about, because she'd given his ticket away and
now they were out a hundred dollars and didn't even get to watch the
performance together.  He stayed overnight with her at her friend
Adrienne's, the one he hated, and Pauline had forgiven him.  Mattie
said how glad she was.

On Monday, Mattie and Daniel painted the walls and ceiling Navajo
white.  What had been a cold, dark, blotchy room was now warm and full
of light.  Mattie felt as if a big cleansing wind had

swept through both the room and her soul, blowing the ghosts of her
parents away.

A few days later, Al came over, and stretched out on the couch to
relax.  Within five minutes, he was reading the kids a book one of them
had thrust at him.  He was like a jukebox: Harry or Ella made a
selection and then nudged the machine to get it to play the song.  Each
time he finished a book, Al made a great show of exhaustion, crying
out, "That's it!  No more."  The children would titter and glance at
each other, and run off to find another book.

Al escaped, for a moment, to the kitchen.  Mattie was cutting
paper-thin slices of Parmesan, laying each slice on a piece of buttered
sourdough baguette.  He picked one up and dispatched it in a bite.
"Hmmph," she said, and continued slicing.  He picked up another and ate
it too.  "Al," she cried.

"I'm as hungry as a dog."  Hearing the word "dog," Marjorie clicked
into the kitchen, and Al fed her a few chunks of bread.

"How come Katherine gets so mad at me?"  Al asked.  "At cute old me?"

"Maybe because you don't want to have babies with her."

"I don't want to have babies with anyone.  I have Harry and Ella
already."

"And she wants her own."

"But I was such an unhappy kid," Al said.  "How many other people do
you know who had therapists back then when we were kids?  None.  You
had to be really far gone.  And I was.  I was blowing things up at,
like, eight.  Me and my friends stole purses from old ladies.  We stole
beer from the Corner Market when we were ten.  I had huge problems at
school.  And Daddy still didn't want to spend money on a therapist,
till I started with this hand-washing thing.  That got his
attention."

"Why do you think you were so unhappy?"

"Why do you think you were?"

Mattie thought about this.  "Because I was raised by screwed-up,
unhappy people in a bad marriage.  Daddy had some kind of secret life,
in Washington, and Mom was sort of--what's the word?  pathological

Al lifted the lid off the Wedgwood sugar bowl and looked in.  He took
out the paint-can key and began to clean his nails with it.

"Don't do that, Al.  You'll chip the paint off."

"Mattie!"

"I just want to keep it the way it was when we got it.  Like
evidence."

Al laughed.  "Evidence of what?  There's a room painted blue somewhere.
Or not.  So what."

He walked the saltshaker over to the paint-can key, and smashed it into
the key, grimly, like the boy he had been once, when he'd pushed little
toy metal cars and plastic army men around this same table.  He looked
up at her now with such affection that she blushed.  He stood beside
her while she diced an apple, and tugged her braid.  "Toot-toot," he
said.

Pauline came along with Daniel one afternoon, bringing a gift-a bread
machine.  Mattie saw it as a peace offering: they had not spoken since
the Mark Morris weekend.  The bread machine was the same kind Pauline
used.  She had kept it in her garage for a while and thought Mattie
might like it.  Mattie gushed over it, even though she did not want a
bread machine.  She was so tired as it was all the time; when would she
bake bread?  But Pauline wanted her to have it, and Mattie wanted to
get back on good terms with her.  She could always put it in the garage
next to Isa's ice cream machine.  They could be roommates.

"This is great," Mattie assured Pauline, who looked quite pleased with
herself.

"The smell of dough makes you proud to be an animal," Pauline said.
"An animal that sniffs things and gives off smells, salty or sweet or
yeasty."  Mattie nodded.  It was actually true.

After Pauline and Daniel left, Mattie found three aprons and she and
the children began to make their first loaf.  Harry measured flour,
Ella measured salt.

"When I was a child, Isa made bread all the time, white bread, can you
imagine?  This was before she became a health food nut.  White bread,
black bread, Danish pastry for your uncle Al."  She remembered Isa
kneading dough, like a masseuse, wiping at her damp furrowed brow with
the back of her sleeve, punching the dough down--Whap!  Take that!  And
so, wafting through the tension in the house, a house full of books,
the best hi-fi equipment, great jazz albums, fine food and expensive
booze, were comforting smells from a world of gingham aprons.

Isa called and Mattie told her to stop by.  When she arrived, the
children jumped up and down and screamed, and dragged their grandmother
to the kitchen to see the great new machine and the rising dough.  Isa
made a great fuss over it while they were within earshot.  But when
they left the room, she made a face of disapproval.

"What?"  Mattie asked.

"A bread-making machine?  Why on earth would you need a machine to make
bread?  Isn't that the whole point?  The mixing and the kneading and
the slapping and the shaping?"

"Yeah, you're right.  But Pauline really wants us to have it, and you
saw how happy it makes the kids."  Mattie rolled her eyes.  "Let's have
a drink."

"It's going to end up in the garage with the ice cream maker," Isa
predicted.  Mattie smiled, and made old-fashioneds for them both.  Isa
looked worn.  Even the bright African fabric of her pants and tunic
couldn't disguise how dull and perplexed she seemed.  The tan

foundation on her face ended in pasty dewlaps, and she'd taken to
painting eyeliner on her lower lid, so that her eyes would show up
within all those folds.

"Are you okay?"  Mattie asked, and Isa said, yeah, sure, maybe a little
tired.  She launched into stories about the losers at The Sequoias, the
space cadets, the terminally ill, and the nuts on the third floor, as
if to demonstrate that she was as sharp as ever.  There was a floor
where the nuttier people lived, Isa insisted.  They were slackers,
complainers, troublemakers.  They'd gotten Revi, her favorite
housecleaner, fired.  Mattie listened.  Listening was love, somebody
had once said.  Her mother was all too much, too many words, too much
makeup, too much frenzy.  But when Isa brought out a folded-up copy of
a letter she'd written to The Sequoias' director, protesting Revi's
firing, asserting that it was outrageous and possibly racist, that
neither she nor any of the other residents would rest until justice was
served, Mattie felt a rush of love for her mother.  Isa had demanded
that Revi be reinstated at his ten-dollar-an-hour job.  How deeply she
fought for underdogs.  Her whole life she had shown up and protested,
written letters, phoned in fresh troops, agitated for the rights of
those who she felt had been treated poorly, who couldn't speak up for
themselves.  There were framed photos all over the house of her parents
in hard hats, with shovels, placards, paintbrushes.

But there was also such denseness and hostility in Isa, the need to
manipulate and goad, the need for reassurances to which she would not
admit, greediness, grabbiness, contempt.  "Let's have another
old-fashioned," Mattie said.

Isa cast a skeptical, prying eye at her.  "Darling, do you drink more
than you used to?"

"God, Mom!  Of course not."

"I worry.  I have always worried, about you and Al, and maybe watched
you a little carefully, because of your father's binges."

"Binges?  You mean those weekends at Neil's?  Wine with dinner?" 
Mattie felt an uncomfortable stirring.

"I'm going to go," Isa said, and she rose.  "Talk to Al.  He knows."
"Daddy didn't have binges, Mom.  And Al would have told me."  "Okay,
fine."  Isa held up her hands: I come in peace.  She smiled a
self-satisfied smile.

Mattie went right to the phone.  "Al.  Maybe I'm going crazy.  Mom was
just here and she bombed me.  She said to ask you about Daddy's binges.
That you've known all along."

Al groaned.  "That's all such bullshit--so Isa.  I mean, Alfred drank
with his buddies on weekends.  He had a cocktail with Mom every night.
And wine with dinner."  He stopped talking.  Mattie could hear the line
buzz.

"Tell me what else you know."  She'd expected far more protest, a more
reassuring set of memories.  The long silence terrified her.  "Say
something!  You're scaring me."

Al didn't talk for a moment.  "I don't know much, Mattie.  I did use to
see him out in West Marin, when I was a teenager.  I was out there a
lot with my friends.  And I'd see him with Yvonne, from time to time,
but Neil wouldn't be with them.  I saw him once at the Bolinas Fourth
of July parade, and he was pretty loaded, even though it was only nine
in the morning.

"But everyone was getting high then, you know?  Once I was in San
Francisco on a Saturday, when Daddy was supposed to be away on one of
his trips.  I thought he was in Washington.  Me and my friends were
going to a tribal stomp in Golden Gate Park.  We had to go down
Lombard, because someone had a connection there for great acid.  And I
was sitting in the car with Matt Gold, while Jeanie went in to buy the
acid, and I saw Daddy in the doorway of a pizza joint.  I could tell he
was trying to duck out of sight.  But he pretended to be thrilled to
see me."

Mattie took this in.  Did she want to know what came next?  "Alone?"

"No."

"Was he with a woman?"

"No, well, that was the thing--he was with Abby Grann.  She was just a
girl, around your age, right?  They both looked upset, and then Daddy
started waving at me.  He asked where I was going, and I told him.  I
said, "I thought you were away on business," and he said that the
flight had been canceled, he wasn't leaving till that afternoon.  And
he'd happened just that moment to have run into Abby.

"I was so relieved not to get busted that I didn't really think much
about it then.  He was definitely loaded that time.  He asked if I
needed some money, which I did.  He gave me twenty bucks, and then put
his arm around my shoulders.  Then he said good-bye to Abby too, and
walked away from us both."

Mattie and the children put the risen dough in a bread pan and then
into the bread machine.  It sat on the kitchen counter, a squat robot.
Ella closed the lid, Mattie plugged it in, Harry turned it on.

Almost immediately they heard a loud ticking.  The bread machine
sounded like it had a bomb inside.  "What is it?"  Harry cried out, his
face red with worry and pain, while Ella moaned.  Mattie turned off the
machine, unplugged it, then reached her hand down through the dough to
the blade and tightened it.  She turned the machine back on and tiptoed
away, but the ticking started again.

"I don't think I can handle this," Harry fumed, and he pushed Ella
brusquely on his way out of the kitchen.

"People don't do that to people, Harry," Ella cried.

"You draw with your sister," Mattie told him, and set the children up
in the living room.  She returned to tinker with the machine and N at
tie figured out what was wrong: the bread pan was not pushed down onto
the heating coils.  She adjusted it, and soon the machine was making a
low hum.

"Crisis averted," she said to herself, and went into the living room.
But minutes later there was a new noise, a thunk and rumble, like the
sound of unbalanced laundry in the washer, followed by a crash.

Harry raced out of the living room.  Mattie lifted Ella into her arms
and ran for the kitchen too, where they found the bread machine lying
on its side on the floor, the pan nearby, a round blob of dough like a
rejected organ beside it.  It looked as if the machine had committed
suicide.

"Oh, God!"  Harry looked at Mattie wide-eyed.

"What should I do?"  she said.

"Maybe it'll still work," Harry said.  Mattie put the machine back on
the counter and tried to fit the lid on.  The lid was bent, badly
askew, and she loosened screws and tried to realign it.  When she found
she couldn't, she closed the lid, and even though the machine still
looked broken, she decided to try again.

Two hours later they had a perfect loaf of golden-brown bread.  You
could have put it on the cover of a magazine.  God, it was amazing: you
took a pile of flour, some water and sugar and salt and yeast, what
looked like ash, and then not too much later, you had food for your
family.

It turned out to be terrible-tasting, though, with a texture like
sawdust.  The children loved it anyway.  They wanted slices one inch
thick, slathered with butter and honey.  They ate so much bread that
night that Ella almost threw up and Harry passed out on the living room
floor.  But it was great to toast your own bread, even if it didn't
quite turn out: it was a little rough, but comforting, like a soft
beard.

Daniel's dreadlocks were nearly an inch long now, the light brown of
his eyes.  She sat with him and Lewis at church.  Lewis had his black
bowler, but during the service he held it in his lap.  Mattie

sneaked glances at the nappy dreads springing from Daniel's head
Daniel smelled of beeswax candles.

When they dropped Lewis off at The Sequoias, Mattie said, "I wonder
where Mom is.  Her car's gone."

"Probably at the store," said Lewis.  "She shops for us on Sunday."

"Tell her to call me when she gets back, will you?"

Lewis doffed his bowler in reply.

Isa didn't get home that day.  Instead she called in a rage from a
police station, where she was being held.  "Jesus Christ!"  she fumed.
"They wouldn't have brought me in if I were younger.  This is ageism!
Call the ACLU.  Call AARP."

"Mom!  What happened?"

It all tumbled out too fast.  "What happened was, goddamn Cal trans had
their machinery parked illegally by the side of the road.  And I veered
to the right because someone was making an unsafe lane change, and it
startled me, I suppose, and I pulled over to the right and the next
thing I knew, there's a crashing smashing ripping sound, and it's their
goddamn machinery gouging my passenger door like a can opener."

"You drove up on the shoulder of the highway?"

"I told you.  I pulled over because another person was making a lane
change, and Caltrans had abandoned some machinery there."

"Excuse me, ma'am."  Mattie heard a male voice.  "You cannot tie up the
phone.  Do you or don't you want me to talk to your daughter?"

"I want you to leave me the hell alone, young man."

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist on having the phone."

"What are you, the Gestapo?"

After a few more words were exchanged, a man came on and introduced
himself as the arresting officer.

"The what?"  said Mattie.

"Your mother hit some Caltrans machinery that was parked on the
shoulder near the Strawberry exit, machinery that was clearly marked
with a flashing sign.  And then she kept driving."

"Mem Kommandant!"  Isa called out in the background.  "Your mother
destroyed the sign, and her car door."  "Ja, jaja," Isa shouted.

Mattie went with Al to pick up Isa at the police station.  She was pale
and fluttery, clearly unnerved, and the officer behind the front desk
glared at all of them as they passed by.  Mattie and Al had already
examined the passenger door of her VW in the parking lot on their way
in: it was crumpled and torn.  "We're sorry," Al told the officer in
his most placating voice.  The man threw his hands up and wouldn't
speak to them.  Al drove Isa's car to Mattie's, the door secured with a
bungee cord.

Mattie took Isa to see the doctor.  When Dr.  Brodkey asked Isa to
describe the accident, Isa looked at Mattie with pleading eyes, like
someone who did not speak the language.

"Well, my God, it was absolutely reckless endangerment," she cried.  "I
intend to sue for damages."

"Mom, why didn't you just stop?  Why did you keep going: That's where
the trouble came from."

"Caltrans left machinery on the road!"

"On the shoulder of the road!"  Mattie said.

"Shhhh," Dr.  Brodkey soothed.  "Mattie's concerned, Isa.  To tell you
the truth, I'm concerned too.  I'm hearing a faint murmur I've never
noticed before."  She tilted her head to listen again.  "I'm going to
schedule an echocardiogram.  Otherwise, you seem fine.  You can get
dressed now."

Mattie and her mother did not look at each other after the doctor left.
Isa gazed around the room in slow motion, as if toward a mysterious
sound.  When Mattie approached with her camisole, Isa squinted as if
Mattie were far away, or in bright light or shadow.

"Stay with us tonight," said Mattie.  "So I can keep an eye on you."

"Oh, great," Isa replied.  "Just what I always wanted."

A week later Mattie and Lewis took Isa in for her echocardiogram.  In
the waiting room Lewis kept them all talking, distracted and connected.
Mattie smiled at the clarity of his gaze that saw so little, the spray
of small moles on his cheekbones, the crosshatching of his brow.  He
sat upright like a rock, the essence of a benevolent old man, not
truculent or ashamed like so many old white men she'd known.  When it
was time for the test, Isa gripped Mattie's hand so tightly as they
walked that Mattie's fingertips turned purple; still Mattie let her
hold on.  The technician, a woman, sat in front of a bank of machines
and instructed Isa to take off her sweater and bra, then hop up on the
table.

Mattie took her mother's purse and turned to help her out of her
clothes.  Isa lifted her arms like a child, and Mattie pulled the
sweater over her head.  Isa had a slightly sour smell.  And she had on
the same camisole that she'd worn the week before.  It was soiled, as
though she'd been using it as an apron.

The sight of her mother's body still shocked Mattie whenever she saw
it, the withered breasts otherwise so like her own, moles everywhere,
bad-looking ones on her back, along her bra line.

Mattie helped Isa onto the table, where she stretched on her back and
stared like a corpse at the ceiling.

"Okay, darling, now be on your side," said the technician, and the
kindness in her voice shamed Mattie.

Watching Isa's heart was like watching the sonogram of Harry when he
was still inside, a baby floating in sepia-colored clouds in a
fan-shaped frame.  Isa's heart valves opened and shut like the mouth of
a baby bird, a gaping beak opening and closing.  Isa lay stiffly on her
side, as if it hurt when the technician moved the apparatus around on
her chest.

"You okay, Mom?"

Isa nodded, staring straight ahead.  Mattie took her hand, and again
Isa held it tight.  On the screen, the light wavered like sun filtering
down through the surface of a pool.  Mattie thought: My mother's
heart!

"Am I okay?"  Isa asked.

"I'm just taking movies for the doctor," said the technician.

"But do you see anything wrong?"

"You have to talk to your doctor.  This is what all hearts look like,
darling.  There's nothing to be afraid of."

"What a trip," Mattie said.  The technician nodded.

"I'm lighting it so we can see the direction of the blood flow."  On
the screen were patches of fire, explosions, patches of cool blue
ice.

"It looks like aerial spy photography now," Mattie told her mother.
"And now it looks like the surface of Mars!"

"But does it look like everything is okay?"  Isa asked again.

"Yes, Mom.  To me it does.  It looks like everything's fine."

And everything was fine, at least with her heart.  The doctor left a
message on both their answering machines.  On Isa's she said that the
results of the echocardiogram were terrific, no abnormalities, she must
have been hearing things when she thought she heard a murmur, all the
walking over the years and watching her diet that Isa had done had paid
off.  On Mattie's she said this also.  But she added that she was
concerned about something else.

"I can't quite put my finger on it," Dr.  Brodkey said.  "I know that
when I saw her, she was shaken by the accident, and yet she still
didn't seem like her old self.  I sense there's something going on in
there, and I'm going to order a few tests.  I'll tell her they're all
routine."

Al came for dinner that night.  Isa made a halfhearted effort to join
in the dinner-table conversation, chastised Harry to sit up straight,
cut Ella's chicken off the bone for her, and then absentmindedly

began eating off her plate.  Ella watched anxiously as the food
disappeared.  "Thank you, Mom," Mattie said enthusiastically, moving
the plate back onto Ella's place mat and Isa slowly looked around for
her own, which was right in front of her.  "Mattie," she said in a
small voice.  "I think I'm ready for bed."

Mattie helped her out of her chair.  Everyone said good night, and she
took Mattie's arm to steady herself.  Mattie put her to bed in her own
bedroom, after helping her into a nightie, which hung on Isa.  Mattie
sat beside her on the bed, rubbing her back and shoulder blades as she
did Harry's and Ella's, until Isa drifted off; Mattie would make up the
sofa bed in the living room for herself.

Al, meanwhile, tried to get the children into a bubble bath but they
raced away.  Finally he caught Ella and carried her like a rolled up
rug under his arms.  "People don't carry people, Al," she cried, but he
paid her no attention.  Harry got Al to put her down and chase him, by
calling him a doo-doo butt head  Mattie scooped Ella up and buried her
nose in her daughter's neck.  She smelled like a flower bed, dirt and
petals.

When everyone else was asleep, Mattie and Al sat with Marjorie in the
yard, a clear, starry sky overhead.  Through the thick lower branches
of the towering redwood tree, she saw a star flicker, a light as sharp
and bright as a diamond.  She pointed it out to her brother.  How could
that be: The branches were so dense, and yet a glittering pinprick of
light had shone through, like a tiny ornament on the inner branches of
the tree.

Four.  Lee and Nicky had their baby in early July, a big, blond,
hunky, chunky boy, named Alexander.  Mattie came outside in the post
apocalyptic heat to admire him in his infant car seat not long after
his birth, one day when Nicky came to pick up the children.  This was
the most divorced Mattie had ever felt.  After he drove off with his
three children, she lumbered back inside, hearing the sucking sound of
her thighs.  She spent the morning cleaning the house like a domestic
robot, and the afternoon shopping.  She bought several new lipsticks,
skin cream that cost what she spent on food every week, art supplies
for the children, saltwater sandals for Ella, new luggage for traveling
nowhere in particular, and a two-pound box of Godiva truffles.

It was too hot.  The days were endless and too bright and there was
nowhere to hide until it got dark, and the dark was too short.

Mattie felt as if she were in a torture chamber with her eyes taped
open.

In the following weeks, Nicky glowed with an inner light, an angel
revealing himself to unbelievers.  Mattie tried to think spiritual
thoughts, but instead found herself fantasizing about dashing Drano
into his face.  She had all the symptoms of meningitis, and then her
hip went out.  She limped around like Walter Brennan.  Angela tried to
convince her that this was a blessing; she had no choice but to move
really consciously, so each step had meaning.  Secretly, though, Mattie
believed she was dying.  Harry began having nightmares, crying out in
the night for Mattie to come to him, or silently climbing into her bed.
She did her best to comfort him.  Who was supposed to comfort her?  He
kicked all night.  Ella developed a new habit, nuzzling a sore she had
caused on her wrist by chewing on herself, holding her wrist as if it
were sprained, and nibbling at the skin.  Mattie worried about the
sore, and about appearances--what would other mothers think?  That her
daughter was cannibalizing herself?  She tried to move her daughter's
wrists away from those small, perfect white teeth, but Ella always
resumed with a look of satisfaction: I can do something for me that you
can't do.  There must have been comfort in the pain, and in the
stopping of the pain--a circuit: she got to cause the tingle, and she
got to release it.

Earlier in the summer, Isa had fainted near the mailboxes at The
Sequoias, but she had come to quickly.  At first Dr.  Brodkey thought
Isa had suffered a minor stroke, but she decided to wait until the
problem presented itself again.  She put Isa on vitamins, and Isa
improved.  When Mattie picked Lewis up for church on Sundays now, he
stressed how much Isa had done that week, how far she was walking, as
if without these assurances Mattie might pop her into a home.

Then Marjorie began to decline, retiring to the dark, cool space
beneath Mattie's bed.  Mattie lost ten pounds in the months after
Alexander was born, and looked both chic and gaunt.  When she went in
for a fitting at

Sears, it turned out she was no longer a perfect size 12.  Sears had
no choice but to let someone else All in until Mattie gained the weight
back.  The fittings manager, a perfect size 18, obviously felt terrible
as she delivered the news.  But Mattie was euphoric.  She almost quit
forever right then.  She felt a wholeness in being thin, pride in
firmer thighs and an orphan's face.  Anyone would want to comfort her,
encourage and feed her--not that she would eat someone's vile food. 
Yet she worried about how she would pay the bills.  She bought a coffee
milk shake on the way home, and one the next day too.  A month later
she was able to work again.

For a number of weeks, she and Nicky did not sleep together.  It was
too hot and the days were longer than necessary.  Summer meant too much
sunlight and not enough moon, but the break from Nicky brought relief
to her mind, and it settled, like a pond.  The children improved. Harry
slept in his own bed again, and Ella stopped eating her wrist. Then in
August, Daniel and Pauline flew off to Florida to visit her parents,
and Lee drove baby Alexander to Carmel to see her parents and sister
for the weekend.  That night Nicky called after the children were
asleep.  Mattie told him about Marjorie, and they cried together on the
phone.  The next thing she knew, he was in her living room stroking
Marjorie.  A stiff scotch later he was stroking Mattie.

She was hungover in the morning.  She felt caught in a permanent moment
of separation, the letdown of having had sex with someone she no longer
loved; of having had sex to get further away.  She tried to pray and
feel genuine contrition but could not, and she told Jesus, I have to
trust that you still like me this morning.  You said you would never
leave me, and I am holding you to your word.  She made the children
blueberry pancakes.  Harry was sleepy, cross and disorganized as usual,
Ella rather dopey.  Mattie missed Daniel and wondered if he missed her.
She imagined Pauline at the Florida shore, in a bikini, flaunting that
big lasagna ass, saying poetic things to Daniel about the surf.

When Daniel and Pauline returned from Florida, Mattie invited them out
to Samuel P. Taylor Park.  But Pauline wanted to stay home and putter.
"You have him today," she said to Mattie, as if they were Mormon
wives.

Mattie and Daniel sat alone inside the circle of tree.  "The wood in
here is the color of a hawk," he said quietly.

Mattie watched spiders and bugs.  "It reminds me of organ music," she
said.  "It's pulsing, and deep and swelling and rhythmic."

Daniel closed his eyes.  "You're right.  It's like sitting in a big
organ pipe."

They sorted the earth through their fingers like children, the dirt and
the feathery needles, leaves, bony twigs, soft heathery moss, bits and
bones and stones.  Their knees touched once but mostly they kept them
in.  Mattie tucked herself into a corner.  It hid her, although it
filled her with vigor too.  "This is a space out of the world," Daniel
said.  Mattie moved her hand in a circular motion over the bark.  The
wood beneath her palm had been burned.  It was soft and almost furry,
like a horse's neck and flanks.

That week Harry's nightmares began again and he returned to her bed.
She hated to admit it, but she enjoyed the company.  The cats woke up
when Harry came in.  When he slept, the two younger cats leapt on his
feet if he tossed, and the old cat, who slept near the pillows, washed
his face and eyes at his slightest movement.

Ella was working her sores once more, nuzzling and nibbling the red
abraded spots, like someone discovering fire and then trying to keep it
alive.  One spot was on her left wrist, where she would wear a watch
one day.  She looked at the wrist with constant longing, as if to see
what time it was, to see whether it was time to eat her arm again.

One morning Mattie found bloody dog stools on the living room floor.
The vet said it was just a matter of time.  How could the end of the
world be just a matter of time?  The children cried off and on, and lay
with Marjorie beneath Mattie's bed.

There was no time that summer for Mattie or Al to pursue the trail of
the paint-can key, or the little blue shoe.  Al wanted to, but Mattie
no longer felt sure they had even belonged to Alfred.  The kids were
with her more since the baby had been born, at least every other
weekend, and Isa called too often--sometimes seven or eight times in a
day.  She usually got the answering machine and left increasingly
hostile messages, as if Mattie were there but avoiding her.  Mattie
made the rounds, taking the children to their stations-friends' houses,
parks, movies, swimming pools--trying on clothes at Sears when there
was work, shopping for Isa and Lewis, helping Pauline and Daniel make
or deliver sandwiches, and she returned home to listen to the record of
her mother's disapproval.  Isa needed rides now everywhere too, as her
doctor had finally persuaded her to stop driving, and Lewis needed the
rides that Isa could no longer offer.  Mattie felt she had two more
children, big, slow, old children.  At one point Isa grew muzzy and
dazed again, and Mattie took her to the doctor's.  After a thorough
going-over, the doctor administered a test, called a mini-mental, to
check for dementia.  Isa counted back by sevens from one hundred, and
repeated a string of words that the doctor recited at the beginning of
the test: "Red, wheel, rose, Colorado."  She aced the test, and looked
over at Mattie as if she might stick her tongue out: Told you so.

Isa called Mattie the next morning to say, "Red, wheel, rose,
Colorado."  Mattie laughed and shook her head.

Nicky gained weight along with the baby.  It was the first time Mattie
had seen him chubby, and it made her happy to know that he hated his
new soft belly and fat cheeks.  There was no time for him to go to the
gym anymore.  There were only slow hikes on the weekends, with
Alexander in a Snugli, Harry and Ella walking alongside

in expensive hiking boots.  Afterward Harry did impersonations for
Mattie of Nicky on these hikes--wide-eyed and jovial and pretentious:
"Oh, Zander, look at the birdie!  That's a little flycatcher.  See the
yellowthroat?  Hi, birdie!  Can you wave, Zander?  Want to know what
its eggs look like?  Oh, where's the birdie going?  Oh, don't cry,
honey-Mean birdie!  Don't cry, honey."  Mattie would laugh at Harry's
renditions, but she also remembered their own walks three years
earlier, Harry trotting along beside Nicky with Ella in the baby-pack,
learning about the dotted blue-gray eggs of cedar waxwings.

Harry's posture was terrible.  It had worsened since Mattie and Nicky
had separated, but she did not nag him about it.  Harry had enough to
deal with.  He could be funny and sweet, but then he would make Ella
cry with whispered songs about worms and graves.  He grabbed colored
pencils out of her hands, punched her arms when she wouldn't obey him.
And sometimes he was such a whiner.  Where had Mattie gone wrong?  His
friends' mothers said he was the most polite child they knew--Mattie
believed that good manners covered a multitude of sins--but at home he
hurt Ella and some days what came out of his mouth were only
complaints: "I hate this cereal, you knew that."  "You look stupid in
that shirt, like a hippie."  "You read this book all wrong, Daddy reads
it funnier."

When Mattie talked to Daniel about this, he told her a joke to console
her, about a new monk in a silent monastery, who was allowed to speak
only two words every five years.  The first time he came before the
elders, he said, "Cold floors."  Five years later, permitted to speak
again, he said, "Terrible food."  And five years later,

I quit.

The elders looked at one another, and then turned to the monk with
contempt.  "I'm not surprised," one said.  "You haven't done anything
since you got here but complain."

Harry's body was filled with complaint too--rashes, diarrhea, and two
cavities in his teeth, although he flossed and brushed every

night.  It was Angela who recommended counseling again.  Mattie made
an appointment for them to see her therapist.

But when the day came, Harry refused to go.  He escaped Mattie's grip,
diving under her bed, where Marjorie lay sleeping.  "We need to get you
help for these nightmares," Mattie said, peering in at her son and
dog.

Harry looked at her.  "You already know what it is," he whispered.

Flooded with heat and too many heartbeats, she stared back.

"I heard Daddy be here that night.  Another night, too.  Why?"

A spinning wheel inside her tossed silken lies into the air.  "Oh
honey," she said, "you're right, your daddy was here, but he came to
get some insurance papers, files, things he needed for his work that
got mixed up in my stuff.  I'll show you the files, they're in boxes on
the top shelf of my closet.  Come out, I'll show you."  He did, and she
pointed out boxes filled with shoes she no longer wore, high on the
shelves of her closet, and he looked at them with relief.

Mattie went to see the therapist alone that morning, the last day of
August.  She told Dr.  Nolan about sleeping with Nicky, and Harry's
nightmares, and then sat fidgeting miserably as if she'd been sent to
the principal's office.  "I'm not here to absolve you," Dr.  Nolan said
kindly.  "That's not my job.  But I can tell you a couple of things.
One is something we used to talk about a lot--that when you feel
disgust for yourself, it keeps hope alive.  It means that somehow your
relationship with Nicky is still current, that your dad is still alive,
giving that look of disgust to Isa.  It's home!  Home is still intact.
So that's the vocabulary of being involved with him--disgust with
yourself."  "What do I do?"

"What if you put your children's pain ahead of your own needs?"

After their session, Mattie sat on the front step of the therapist's
building, crying.  The sun was a sheet-metal disk in the deep-blue sky.
The lawns in the neighborhood were brown.  She thought about

driving out to the beach to walk in the surf.  There might be fog at
the beach.  Fog was the moon's cousin, like nurses with cool compresses
for her temples, and she drove out to Point Reyes, and there was fog,
and it was good.

A few days later she went to talk to her pastor, to confess that until
recently she had been an adulterer, who slept with her ex husband, lied
to her children, mocked her mother.  She wanted to start over, she
cried.

He listened kindly.  He must have been about her age, but seemed older,
wore horn-rimmed glasses and lace-up Hush Puppies, gee ky wise, and
sweet.  "That's wonderful, then.  Your new twenty-four hours starts
whenever you decide it does.  I'll tell you what's most amazing to me,"
the pastor said.  "That Jesus comes to people like us.  Cowards,
liars--even mother-mockers!  And entrusts us with the kingdom of God,
with carrying the message of peace.  We get that peace too, when we
surrender to the horrible belief that God loves us anyway.  Surrender,
or just plain run out of bullets."

Marjorie lived longer than anyone expected, but right after school
started, Harry in second grade, Ella in nursery, she began having
seizures.  Katherine often came by to sit with her, and said
encouraging things, as if the dog were a toddler lying miserably under
the table.

One day she took a biscuit out of her pocket and fed it to Marjorie.
She turned sadly to Mattie.  "She doesn't look great.  I would get some
prednisone from your vet, to make her more comfortable.  That's what Al
and I did when our dog was dying."

The prednisone did help, and Marjorie got better for a while.  Her
appetite was good, and Mattie and the children took her for walks every
day, and she walked along sniffing the deep smells of fall, of
hibernation and holiday.  ""O Death,"" Daniel said during one walk with
Mattie and Marjorie, quoting Dorothy Parker, ""O Death,

where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?"" And indeed, life and Marjorie both
continued along.

The leaves changed color again, red, orange, yellow, and purple, and
flew like flags.  Almost a year had passed since she'd opened her front
door and found Daniel standing there, staring down at his feet.

Mattie was so aware of the darkness in the fall.  She put lights up
everywhere, candles, white Christmas tree lights, a string of plastic
fish lights that Al gave her.  She loved the shorter days, frowning,
lowering, Heathcliff days, and she liked the early nights, the wintery
rawness in the air.  Someone kept taking the snow globe and giving it a
good shake, so you went from sunlight piercing through the moody day,
to wind and rain and storm, storms that drove you inside to the fire.
Another shake of the globe, and you woke to the blush and slash of a
winter sunrise.

Isa had a disturbing episode on Thanksgiving.  She was holding a gravy
boat out toward Lewis at Mattie's dinner table, when suddenly the gravy
boat began to tilt.  It all happened in slow motion, people turning to
watch Isa pour a stream of gravy into Lewis's lap, Lewis taking the
gravy boat from her hands.

Again, the doctor was not overly concerned.  Isa seemed fine during an
examination, steady and clear.  Meds adjusted, she began walking two
miles a day with Lewis on the path that ran along the salt marsh beside
The Sequoias.

December seemed like it would never end.  Each day was so short, and
yet lasted forever.  Mattie hated December.  If God would only make her
His West Coast representative, she would cancel the whole month.
Everyone was mentally ill, frantic and tired.  To make matters worse
this year, Harry and Ella spent their first Christmas Eve away, with
Nicky and Lee and little Ratzo, as Al called Alexander, now almost six
months old.  Mattie spent Christmas Eve with Isa and Lewis, Al and
Katherine, and went to the movies Christmas Day until it was time to
pick up the children.  She ached with missing them, ached with missing
her father.  She remembered one Christmas

Eve at Neil Grann's, she must have been ten or so, when all the adults
were thoroughly bombed by dusk.  Her mother had stayed home with the
flu.  Somehow no one had quite gotten dinner together at the Granns'.
Mattie, Al, Abby, and a few other kids had played outside in the
freezing cold, until finally Yvonne thought to make them grilled cheese
sandwiches.  Mattie remembered waking up Christmas morning and knowing
her parents had had a fight.  Her father smelled hungover at breakfast.
Isa had made bacon and cinnamon buns.  "That Yvonne Lang is crazy"
Alfred had declared, by way of placating Isa.  "Absolutely mad," he'd
said with amusement, although Mattie kept thinking, But she was the
only one who remembered to feed us.

Mattie, Harry, and Ella tried to stay up until midnight on New Year's
Eve, but they were all asleep by ten o'clock, on blankets in front of
the fire, Marjorie and the cats curled up with them.  The morning
brought a sense of briskness and new beginnings, brilliant green grass
breaking through the earth.  Mattie had everyone over for black beans
and rice: Isa and Lewis, both bright and excited to be at a party
during the day; Daniel and Pauline, pale and hungover; Katherine and
Al.  Katherine was all in blue--light-blue cap with bugle beads,
light-blue leggings, a gray-blue turtleneck.  She looked like a nurse
for herons.  She mulled cider on the stove, filling the house with the
scent of cloves and apples and cinnamon with cinnamon sticks as
stirrers.  Mattie lit her candles, the Christmas tree lights, the bass
fish lights, to celebrate that the year had turned.  It was going to
whap them around for a while, but it was marching toward more light.

They walked through town after lunch, Marjorie along beside them.  They
faced into wind and drizzle.  Mattie felt goaty in her walk.

The next time Mattie walked into town, Marjorie couldn't make it home
and Mattie had to carry her.  The vet had run out of good ideas. Mattie
found her mind breaking up like a bad cell phone

connection.  She had felt this way as a teenager, but her father had
always been there to see her through.  She went to look for him in the
attic, where his boxes were stored.  But she found only white powder
over everything, fluffed out from the insulating material around the
pipes in the attic, glittering in the flashlight beam like asbestos.

She called Daniel to tell him that she and the children had been
breathing asbestos dust all this time and would surely die.  Daniel
came right over.  He found her crying at the kitchen table because the
children had black lung disease.

Daniel got out the ladder and disappeared for a time.  He came back to
report that there was no asbestos in the attic.  He took her into town
for a hot fudge sundae, and she could breathe again.

Mattie told Al she'd been plunged into a panic over their father.  They
were sitting at the kitchen table, and Mattie was turning the paint-can
key over and over in her hand.  "I don't know why I'm missing Daddy
right now," she said.  "I just feel like if he was around, we would be
okay.  He'd help us when we were broke, he'd be in charge of taking
care of Isa, that wouldn't be on us anymore.  He'd be our dad.  We'd be
people in the world with a dad.  It would be like having a president
there for you, caring for you.  And if you had that, you'd feel
safe."

Al rubbed his eyes.  "Mattie.  That's a fantasy dad.  Right now, I'm
not even sure who Daddy was.  We need to poke around, maybe see if we
can shed some light on how we all got so--lost."

"What's that going to get us?"  Mattie said.  "Maybe just more pain and
disillusionment."

"Maybe, maybe not.  And besides, disillusionment is good."

"But even if I wanted to be more disillusioned, we have nothing to go
on."

"Sure we do," Al said.  "First of all, we have memories, and photos.
We've got boxes of stuff in the attic, details, clues.  And we have
the

desire to pursue this.  Plus, there were all those things in the glove
box of the Volkswagen, right?  There was the daisy bracelet.  That was
yours.  There was the library card, which belonged to him, his car
registration, the bottle opener from the bait shop in Marshall.  So all
that stuff was his.  It could be telling us some kind of story.  A
story about our father; about our family.  It intrigues me--this little
blue shoe, this nothingness little blue shoe, and a paint-can key.  He
opened a can of blue paint with it one day.  What did he paint?  We
never had a light-blue room."

Later that afternoon, when Harry was at Stefan's and Ella was down for
a nap, Al took out the ladder and set it up under the crawl space,
climbed the steps, and pushed the door over onto the floor of the
attic.  Mattie followed.  She felt terribly afraid and teetered on the
stepladder with her head poking through the passage.

She pulled herself up with a hand from Al, and they stood hunched over,
breathing in the fusty smell of things moldering in boxes, stuff Isa
and Alfred hadn't wanted to see anymore.  That was why you put things
in attics.  Mattie smelled mice, mold, moths.  Al switched on the
light.

There was old familiar furniture with limb problems.  "Oh," she could
imagine her father saying, "this would take me five minutes to fix,"
but he had never gotten around to it.  The floor joists and ancient
electrical wires were lit by a dusty, greasy bare bulb.  Mattie turned
her flashlight on and started reading the sides of boxes.  They were
actually labeled: "Hats," "Artwork," "Children Misc.," "School Papers,"
"Alfred."

She imagined her parents bringing their things up here, and the
illusion that if it's there in your attic, it will be held, and it will
be whole, in a museum: memory will not flee, and so neither will you.

She sensed the mice, quicksilver, furtive, hallucinatory.

Al lifted one corner of an old oilcloth.  It had become a mouse

nest, covered with droppings, sawdust, bits of insulation.  Mattie
recoiled, holding one hand to her heart like an elderly aunt.

They walked around in a crablike Quasimodo crouch; they scrabbled.

"Wow," said Al, looking around at the boxes, the plastic garment bags
hanging from a wooden pole, the hobbled furniture, the wrapped pipes.
"Where do we even start?  I guess with the Alfred boxes."

Mattie felt they'd been returned to childhood, spying on their parents,
holding their breath.  They were looking at their parents' insides--at
their mother's handbag collection, their father's uniform from the
Navy, which had been eaten by moths.

"God, this is such a trip, Mat.  I am running on so much adrenaline."

"This is Mom and Dad, saved in boxes.  Mummified.  It's as close to
ancient Egypt as we're ever going to get."

Mattie closed her eyes and inhaled the smell of wood, hot wood,
insulation, and dust, looked up at the pipes, wrapped like mummies.
There was something exposed here that wanted her and Al out; something
trapped.  Once there had been framing and open space and fresh air
flowing over the wood, and you could stand right here on a ladder and
see for a distance in every direction.  But the carpenters had closed
it up.  Now it felt tiny and sealed off, breathing only its own stale
air.

In one of the boxes marked "Alfred" were things that should have gone
in the "Children Misc."  boxes: filigreed, speckled drawings Mattie and
Al had made in elementary school, diplomas from kindergarten and high
school, report cards, which they pored over.  Mattie had gotten all A's
every year, Al had gotten C's and D's, an occasional B-minus.  He fumed
over old injustices.  "That fucking bitch Mrs.  Hauser, I should have
gotten a B-minus in fifth-grade math.  I was robbed.  That's why I
turned out the way I did."

There were the love letters Alfred had written to Isa from his naval
post in Germany, letters Mattie and Al had written from camp, letters
from Neil Grann.  There were letters Alfred's parents and grandparents
had written to him when he was in the Navy and in college.  There were
letters from his brother and sister, postcards from everywhere.

They worked in silence, opening the topmost letters, reading snippets
to each other, carefully refolding the letters and putting them back in
envelopes.  Some of the letters simply could not be opened, almost
turning to dust in their hands.

Neil's letters were in a manila folder, like a manuscript.  Only one of
them was still in its envelope, at the very back of the folder, the
return address being the Cove, which was just north of Marshall-one of
the nearly deserted coastal towns between Stinson and Men docino. There
was a restaurant there called Nick's Cove, with two mounted deer heads
on the wall, a great old pier that fishermen still used, three rickety
huts on stilts attached to the restaurant.  Alfred used to take the
family to the restaurant on Sunday afternoons, for barbecued oysters
and deep-fried-seafood platters, or just past it, to parties at Neil
and Yvonne's.

Neil had wanted to write.  Actually, Neil had wanted to be a famous
writer, although he did not seem to write very much.  Mattie
remembered, over the years, hearing him describe a novel he'd been
working on forever, which he never seemed to finish and which in fact
seemed to decrease in pages over time.  It concerned the latest drunken
marriage of a reclusive bon vivant, who had beatnik friends in their
own unhappy marriages.  "It's just dreadful," Alfred had confided to
Mattie.

"Am building a separate floor for Abby, Ryder," Neil wrote in a nearly
illegible scrawl on a piece of plain paper.  "She has become
impossible.  So it's this, or a private school for bad girls in
Switzerland.  Her mother can't or won't take her.  Her mother's
insane.

Abby's safer here with me.  At any rate, I'm getting ready to hoist
four 6 x 14 x 28-foot Douglas fir beams ten feet in the air, the
slightest misjudgment of which will render me akin to a frog on wet
pavement."

"Ryder," he wrote in another letter, "Absolutely terrible weekend with
Kiernan and his new lady.  I can only think of it as a go-for broke
effort to outrage and violate the concept of' host and that of guest."
Also such peripheral things as 'friendship' and 'reasonably good
manners."  Won't bother with the details, except for the one which goes
that they spent eighteen of their twenty-four hours grousing about the
guest house, keeping the sliding door shut tight against the mild fall
weather, the birds, the water, the trees, the... ah, shit.  Yvonne hung
in with me the whole time.  Ladies are mostly O.K.-to delightful,
unless you are espoused to them.  But Yvonne is gold."

They got to the second-to-last letter.  Mattie let Al read it while she
went to get Ella up from her nap.  When she came out of Ella's room,
her sleepy red-faced daughter draped over her shoulder, she heard Al
call from the kitchen.  He had come down from the attic too, and now
stood by the table, holding up a finger.

"Listen," he said.

He took a deep breath as Mattie sat down beside him.  Ella wandered
off, whispering for the kitties.  ""Abby has moved out to live with a
friend's family,"" Al read.  ""Abby calls sometimes, loaded, to say
hello, but we end up in fights.  Yvonne says to tell you she found a
place for her friend, so not to worry, cheap and remote, rundown, needs
repairs.  Saw two ospreys fishing this a.m. Many ospreys here.""

"Huh," Mattie said.  "Why is it so interesting to you?"

""Run-down,"" he read.  "See?  Maybe it needed a fresh coat of
paint."

"Oh, for Chrissakes, Al."  She widened her eyes.  "God, I just sounded
exactly like Isa."

Al took the last letter out of the envelope, unfolded it, and began

to read.  He handed Mattie the letter.  "Fuck you, Alfred," was all it
said.  "You're dead to me."

Mattie stared at the words on the page.  There was no date on the
letter.  She handed it to Al.  He held the letter to the light, as if a
watermark might appear with further instructions.

There was no time in the new year to do any more sleuthing.  Driving,
laundry and homework, gardening, trips to doctors and the vet all got
in the way.  Ella's wrists were better again, Harry loved his
second-grade teacher, whom he planned to marry one day.  Al and
Katherine were doing well.  She was gone a lot, once to Appalachia,
once to see her parents in Vermont again--her father had heart
disease--but when she was around, she watched and listened to Al with
amused affection.  And Mattie didn't sleep with Nicky once.

She and Nicky had grown into some kind of friendship.  Mattie had held
Alexander for the first time.  She hadn't meant to.  Lee and Nicky had
both made sure to leave him home when either of them came to pick up
Ella and Harry, but finally a day came when Lee needed to bring Alex
with her.  He had grown into a big, solid, jolly boy, who looked like
Nicky, or a fair, chubby version of Harry, and smelled like baby
shampoo.  Mattie felt sick to see Harry in the face of her
replacement's child.  She reeled and could hardly breathe.  But all she
could do was smile at him and say hello.  He threw himself into
Mattie's arms.  Mattie felt his wiggly toughness for a moment, and then
he stopped, stared into her stranger's face, saw that he'd made a
terrible error in judgment, and bellowed for Security.

Mattie asked Isa casually one night if she and Alfred had ever painted
any of their rooms light blue.  "Oh, for Chrissakes, of course

not," Isa brayed.  "We would never have painted any of our rooms
anything but white."  When it came out that Mattie was asking because
of the paint-can key, Isa cried out--in what seemed like real
rage--that Mattie would be the death of her if this insanity, this
chasing of rainbows, kept up.

Marjorie declined more quickly all of a sudden, spent more and more
time under Mattie's bed.  She had bloody stools again.  Her tender
longhaired vet said she would have to be put to sleep soon.  One night
when the kids were with Nicky, Mattie started crying and couldn't stop:
How was she going to survive this?  She called Daniel and Pauline.
Pauline was in the city.  Daniel offered to come over with Chinese
takeout.

They ate with the TV on in the living room.  Suddenly, Last Summer was
on the classic movie channel.

"This will be just the thing," Daniel announced.  They watched in
silence for a while, spaced out but together.  "I'm going to faint in
this heat," Daniel kept saying in a southern voice, exactly like
Elizabeth Taylor fanning herself.  "I'm going to faint."

"Thank you for coming over so quickly," Mattie told him, sniffling.

"I'm going to faint," Daniel trilled.  Mattie looked at him out of the
corners of her eyes, and smiled.  She turned back to the movie.  She
started to feel that she could go on.

"Why did Elizabeth Taylor's son get eaten again?"  she asked.

"I don't remember.  I think the other guys were angry with him."

She smiled but her heart felt infected with sadness about Marjorie.

"Tennessee Williams must have figured out that you really get people's
attention if you have someone eat somebody else," he said.

"Yeah, well.  It certainly got mine."

Marjorie's gas got so bad that it hurt their eyes, but Ella still
crawled under the bed and lay with her in the cool dark.  She took
stuffed animals along for company and made up stories for Marjorie
about fairies and field mice.  Mattie peered under the bed one morning
and found Ella sucking her thumb, which seemed like progress.  At least
she was not gnawing at her skin.  She was stroking Marjorie's back with
her other hand.  Mattie crawled down beside them, while Ella tended to
Marjorie like a candy striper, stroking her dark shape.  Mattie lay on
her back and stared at the slats of the bed from below.  It was like
being in a cage, or inside the ribs of Jonah's whale.

Harry called Nicky at work that day, crying about Marjorie, and Nicky
came over for dinner that night.  He sat at the table with the children
while Mattie cooked roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, which he loved.
Marjorie lay at their feet.

"We have been so lucky to have such a perfect dog, haven't we?"  Nicky
asked, and the children nodded.  Tears streamed down Harry's face.
"There's no way around the awfulness of this part of it, though."  He
took a sip of red wine.  Mattie diced carrots for the salad on a
cutting board, feeling grateful for his help, for his having shown up.
"I never even heard the name Cavalier King Charles spaniel till I met
Marjorie.  In fact, I thought Cavalier meant they didn't care-like,
"Oh, so another cat got run over on Maple, well, fuck it."" Harry
gasped, and Ella clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Nicky!"  Mattie cried, but she laughed too.

"Where did we get her again?"  Harry asked.

"I'd always wanted a little dog," Mattie said, as they started to eat.
So I answered an ad in the newspaper.  This woman had a Cavalier King
Charles spaniel, but the woman was nuts.  She grilled me over the phone
for an hour.

"Then there was a follow-up call.  I arranged to meet Marjorie.  It
was an awful scene.  She was jailed in a crate underneath a birdcage in
the woman's living room.  There were feathers floating down on her
head, which startled her every time they hit.  But for me, it was love
at first sight.  She was so gentle and elegant.

"I asked the woman why she was giving her away.  I couldn't believe it.
The nutcase told me she had too many children and too many pets.  And
she couldn't give away the children.

"So I got to take the dog home.  She climbed onto my chest and sprawled
there like a bearskin rug.  She stared at me without blinking, all the
way home.  It was like she was trying to communicate with me
telepathically, but I wasn't enough on the ball to make the
connection.

"Then your dad fell in love with Marjorie too."  After dinner Nicky lay
with Marjorie in the cool darkness on the floor beneath Mattie's bed,
with Harry and Ella beside him, while Mattie washed the dishes and
cried.

She took Ella to the pediatrician, a kindly man with fluffy silver hair
named Dr.  Silver, who asked Ella if she thought she could find an
alternative to chewing on her wrist.  She told him, to Mattie's
surprise, shyly, yes, she could.  And what was that alternative?

"M&M's," Ella said.

Dr.  Silver wrote her a prescription for a large bag of M&M's.  Mattie
got it filled.

Marjorie stayed alive.  It was an amazing, if gassy, miracle.  The
flatulence was terrible.  Al said it smelled like air wafting up from
bloated corpses in Civil War photographs, but Marjorie hung on.

Then during an uncharacteristically hot week in late February, she took
a turn for the worse.  She stopped eating almost entirely.  Angela flew
up to be with Mattie and the children.  It was over.  Mattie called the
vet and asked if he would come to put Marjorie to

sleep at the house.  Mattie asked Isa to take care of the children.
Mattie and Angela sat with the sick dog in the kitchen, an oscillating
fan on the counter, and drank lemonade while they sweltered and panted,
and Marjorie kept farting from under the table.  Angela peered down at
the dog and said, "Woo-wee, honey.  That is some serious situation
you've got going on down there."  She fanned the air, but then gamely
climbed under the table.

Ella came in and joined Marjorie and Angela, and each time Mattie
peeked, Ella was gazing at Marjorie with wide, round eyes of grief,
taking surreptitious bites on her sore.  Then Harry came home.  He
stormed into the kitchen and sized up the situation, bellowed in pain,
and climbed into Mattie's lap.  Over the sound of the fan, Marjorie's
breathing was loud and labored.

"What's the matter with Marjorie's breathing?"  Harry asked.  Mattie
shrugged.  He got under the table with Ella and Angela.  Mattie went to
join them.  Marjorie's chest rose with a gasp that accompanied each
breath.

"She's very sick, Harry.  We're going to have to put her down."

Ella's wide eyes brimmed with tears.  She bent her head to her wrist
with a balletic grace and nibbled at the sore place.

Mattie located Harry in the bathroom, behind a locked door.  "What will
we do?"  he bawled.  He cried out in grief and pounded the door.  "What
can we do?  I'm so afraid!"

"Please let me in, darling," Mattie pleaded.

"No--no way.  If I do, you'll talk to me about God."

"I promise not to."

"I don't believe in God.  I think when you die you go blank.  I won't
go to church anymore if Marjorie dies.  I don't like anyone at church,
I don't even know their names, they don't mean anything to me."

"I promise not to talk about God," Mattie repeated, and he let her
in.

She sat on the floor near the toilet, Harry on the rug in front of the
sink.  He cried with his head buried in his arms, and shook off her
attempts to touch him.  When he seemed done, he looked at her, his eyes
lined in red, and asked if they could have Marjorie frozen.

"Like cryogenics, where they freeze you and bring you back someday?"

"Yeah, when they find a cure.  Stefan's mom told us about it."

"Well, no one knows if it works.  No real scientists think it does. 
And they don't freeze dogs.  It costs a fortune."

"But wouldn't you try to get the money, if it was me?"  "Honey?"

"Mommy!  I don't want to die.  I'm so afraid."  He started crying
again.

"But darling, you probably won't die for eighty years."

"I don't even want to die in eighty years."

"We're almost too sad about Marjorie to go on, aren't we:"

Harry didn't answer.  Mattie handed him a box of Kleenex.  He wiped his
nose on his sleeve and then shredded a tissue.  He shredded another.  A
snowdrift grew while she thought of what to do.

"What do you believe in?"  she asked.  "I thought you believed in
Jesus."

"I do, I just believe in all the other gods too."

"Oh," Mattie said nicely.  "What other gods?"

"The Greek and Roman gods."

The snowdrift of Kleenex grew higher.

The pastor had said once that when people could not imagine surviving
physical death, he told them that the bulb could not conceive of the
flower it would become.  Mattie tried passing this along to Harry.  He
moaned, butting his nose against the shoulder of her T-shirt, like a
horse trying to get you to give it the lump of sugar.  She found this
touching, until she realized he was wiping his nose on her sleeve.

"Eewwhh," she said.

Harry lay on the bathroom rug, and Mattie gave him a back rub He was
tight and stiff.  The red faded from his face, and she rubbed his
shoulders until he yawned.  "I'm going to fall asleep," he said.

"Right here'"

"Uh-huh."

She stretched out on a small portion of the rug, and Harry moved closer
so she could hold him.  "I just really want to be frozen when I die,"
he whispered.

"Okay," she said.  "You can be frozen."

They fell asleep on the bathroom rug.  The cats sat in the doorway,
watchful, appalled.

While Angela drove the weeping children over to Isa's, Al arrived at
Mattie's with Katherine, whose eyes were red.  She brought wildflowers
from their glade, in a makeshift vase of wet napkins and tinfoil.
Daniel came alone, with a loaf of bread Pauline had made for the
mourners.  He hugged Mattie and slid the little blue shoe into her
hand.  "Oh my God," she whispered.  She jammed it in her pocket.  She
called Nicky, who began to sniffle and said he'd be there soon.

Everyone lay on the floor with Marjorie and did a laying on of hands.
They turned over onto their backs to look at the underside of the
table, as if they were out beneath the stars.

Kafka said that the point of life is that it ends, and Mattie supposed
that to some extent this was true.  She and Angela watched Marjorie,
whose eyes stared at nothing, who struggled for breath.  "She's been
getting ready to leave for a while," Mattie said.

They made a bed for her under the table, with a fluffy blue baby
blanket.  Marjorie looked again at Mattie, weak and sweet and trusting.
Nicky arrived and climbed under the table with them, and Marjorie
wagged her tail.  Mattie and Angela sat up, and Nicky turned to Mattie
and hugged her, and then Angela, their first hug in years, and they all
waited for the vet.

He arrived at a little after six, with his brown bag, and joined the
crowd under the table.  Mattie offered the vet a glass of wine, but he
declined the offer.  He scratched Marjorie behind the ears.  "There are
going to be great cat butts in heaven to sniff," he told her in a
priestly tone.  Marjorie wagged her tail at the sound of his voice.
Mattie and Nicky stroked her, telling her over and over, "You are a
sweet girl, such a sweet girl," and everyone was teary except the vet,
who looked sad and tired.  Marjorie wagged her tail to the end, but
without much life force, like windshield wipers on a car with a nearly
dead battery.  She was making a soft, muffled peeping and cooing that
baby dolphins might make the first moments after they were born.  The
vet gave her an injection in the leg, and a few seconds later, while
Mattie stroked her head, she breathed in and then out for the last
time, like a sigh.

Isa insisted that she and the children be there for the burial that
night.  "They need to say good-bye.  There will be grief, but it's
going to be there anyway.  It's better to see it.  This way, they can
remember how alive she was, but this is what happened, and they can say
goodbye."  Mattie knew that her mother was right.

Mattie carried Marjorie's body, still in the blanket, to the backyard,
near the ranunculus, where she was to be buried.  The flowers were
jaunty and brawny, like their muscular name, in stained-glass colors.

Mattie had shown Nicky where to dig the hole.  It was harder work than
he had expected.  His shovel kept hitting rocks.

The children wept and moaned when they saw Marjorie's body on the
light-blue blanket.  Ella threw herself into Mattie's arms, while Harry
fell to his knees beside the dog and wailed piteously.  It was absurd
and cathartic, and Mattie could see that he was weeping

for everything, all that he had lost so far, all the sad things that
were still to come.  Isa sent Mattie inside for a box, and when she
protested, Isa snapped at her.  "Oh, for Chrissakes, Mattie, of course
you need a box.  We always used a box."  Mattie remembered that this
was true, all those birds and field mice she and Al had buried in this
yard so many years before, old cats, and once a litter of dead kittens,
always in a shoe box.  Isa had believed that children should bury the
family pets, just as she insisted that Mattie and Al watch each litter
of kittens and puppies be born.

Harry and Ella had buried birds before, and mice that the cats had
killed.  They seemed to like burying things.  They knew to make a bed
for Marjorie with the blanket, in the box Mattie found, and they tucked
her in while Nicky dug deeper.  Angela picked rocks out of the growing
pile of dirt.

The light was fading.  Pauline arrived and lingered on the patio away
from the others.  Finally the hole was big enough for the box, and the
children placed Marjorie in her box inside.  Nicky shoveled dirt on
top, and the children pushed in dirt too, and when the box was covered,
they patted the dirt down hard with their fists, as if punching down
bread dough.  They decorated the grave with everything they could find,
a ring of rocks, flowers, wood, crayons, plastic figurines.  Daniel
made a cross from two twigs tied with a bit of dirty string, and Mattie
went inside for a black Magic Marker so they could write Marjorie's
name on the cross.  That's who was there, and everyone should know.
That lump in the ground was our pet, she would say, if anyone were to
ask, and this was her name.

five.

One rainy morning in mid-March, Ella sat at the window staring like a
cat at the snakes of water that raced down the pane.  Mattie stood
beside her chair so that they could watch the storm together.  She
traced the back of Ella's ear with the tip of her nose, and listened to
Harry playing out in the rain.  A few boys from Harry's class were over
at Stefan's today.  One was handsome and blond and cherubic.  This gave
him enormous power and leverage.  Another was doughy and tense, like an
incompetent guard in the yard at San Quentin.  When the sun shone
through the rain, Mattie thought the storm might be nearly over, but
then the sun slid back behind the scrim of clouds, and the rain kept
coming down.

She was glad for the rain.  After pummeling and pricking for days, the
wind had stopped and the rain began to fall.  March was a

teaser, so spring like and soft and warm and bright, the hills lush
and green and dotted with wildflowers, but as soon as your soul relaxed
in the balminess, then whoosh!  A horrible cold stepped forth, worse
than in winter because the days had been promising something and then
reneged.

"How can you do this to me?"  Harry cried one day at the biting wind.

"I can do anything I want, because I'm March," said Mattie.

Mattie was depressed, and agitated.  She felt paranoid and personally
betrayed.  The spiky wind seemed crueler than in other months because
she'd put her winter coat away during those hot days in February, and
she felt silly making a fire in springtime.

She was banking on the vernal equinox, comforting herself with the
belief that on that day, when the darkness ebbed and the light
returned, all sorts of things would fall into place.  She needed to get
out more, she thought, otherwise how would she meet a man?  If she met
a man, she would never have to sleep with Nicky anymore.  It would help
her forgive Nicky, and Lee, and Alexander.  One day she thought she was
getting there, until she saw Harry watching his father and Alex
together out on the lawn, through the window of his bedroom, and Harry
looked like someone who had just discovered his new lawn turned to
Swiss cheese by gophers.  Mattie's heart grew harder.

Harry was having problems in school.  His grades were only part of it.
His homework came home wadded up, as if he had given up before he'd
even started.  His homework said, I hate this!  He said out loud, "I
hate this!"  too, and he fought with Mattie.  Forty minutes of homework
took him two hours.  Mattie called the teacher and left protest
messages on the machine: "When are these children supposed to have
their childhoods?  My kid only weighs fifty pounds,"

she said in despair.  Sometimes Mattie had to iron his papers before
they could be handed in.  It seemed to hurt him physically to write,
but there was no money for a tutor.

Nicky started coming over twice a week to help with homework.  He sat
with Harry in the kitchen and worked on math and spelling, and she
listened from the living room to Harry's endless excuses.  "The teacher
is sexist, she hates all the boys."  He preyed on his parents'
ambivalence toward so much homework.  Still, they made him do it, and
Mattie was amazed that Nicky kept at it.  He stayed till their bedtime
to snuggle with his children and read them to sleep, and one night,
after a particularly rough bout with Harry, he straggled into the
living room and collapsed in a chair across from Mattie.

"What do we do?"  he asked her, massaging his neck.

Mattie shook her head.  "I don't know.  Thanks for being in it with
me."  Nicky shrugged.  "He's starting to learn the material.  I want to
save him, and I want to smack him.  You want a drink.-"

"Yeah," he said.  "Sure.  Let me do the honors."

He sat down across from Mattie.  She swirled her scotch like it was
brandy, or dice.  When she finally looked up, he was rubbing his eyes.
He leaned his forehead against his hand, and appeared to fall asleep.
After a while, he lifted the bottom of his faded black T-shirt and
wiped his glasses clean.  She caught a glimpse of his stomach, soft and
brown.  He set his glasses on the coffee table and looked at her.  She
looked back.  "He's such a sweet boy," he said.  His gaze was
heavy-lidded and sustained.  Mattie could have looked into her lap and
shielded herself, but she saw something like a rueful smirk forming on
his lips, and felt it on her own.

Getting back into bed with Nicky again after all that time both
relieved the anxieties that it was not related to, and created new
ones.  She was momentarily released from her worries about Isa, and

about whether or not Harry would pass second grade.  He did, thanks
largely to Micky's help.  On the last day of school, Harry tore through
the front door shouting for Mattie, holding his report card up like the
Olympic flame.

Isa had improved physically by the beginning of summer.  Her face grew
lightly tanned and rosy from her daily walks beside the salt marsh with
Lewis, and she was steadier on her feet.  She ate a healthy diet,
watched the nightly news, went swimming with Mattie and the children at
the community pool; but she called too often now, and then did not
remember having called even an hour before.  She began referring to
Katherine as Kathleen or Caroline.  It occurred to Mattie that this
might be hostility rather than forgetfulness.

Sometimes she was fine, almost her old self.  One hot afternoon, she
and Mattie drove out to the woods near Samuel P. Taylor Park, and went
for a short walk in the sun, beneath hills that looked like animals,
big old beasts.  The light was crisp and dry, casting hard shadows
because there was no moisture in the air, and Isa was clear as a bell.
They walked more slowly than they would have a year before, but
steadily, as if they had chosen to slow down so they might enjoy the
time.  They talked about the old times and old movies as they walked.
When they found a redwood grove, they stepped into its shade.  Mattie
got the canteen of water out of her knapsack, and Isa, tipping it back
to take a swig, looked positively Austrian with rude good health.  It
was dark and moist under the redwoods, it was a cathedral.

Two days later when Mattie stopped by Isa's with groceries, she found
her mother on all fours in her bedroom, trying to pick up the shadows
of leaves from her rug.

The roses in Mattie's garden were in full bloom, the purple hibiscus
was thriving, but many of the flowers were dead.  The bulbs were

long gone, and all the plants that had shot out of the earth like
rockets in spring had spluttered, were dead and played out.  The light
at dusk was discreet.

Harry enjoyed Isa's company, their long talks about science programs
they watched together on TV, her interest in his friends, his opinions.
And Isa adored him, reviving in his presence.  It was clear that she
preferred his company to Ella's.  She cuddled with Ella, and drew, and
played fairies with her on the couch, but Harry was full of questions
and theories and comments, while Ella remained so quiet.  Besides, Isa
had always preferred the company of men, especially handsome men, and
Harry was growing quite handsome.  His permanent teeth were in, the
same huge, slightly buck ones--so big his mouth could hardly contain
them--that Mattie and Al had inherited from Alfred.  He too would need
braces one day.

Harry's love for Isa touched Mattie deeply.  A new creation had emerged
from the woman Isa had been when Mattie was little, the damaged,
betrayed woman who did such good works in the world: manic and wronged,
trying not to sulk, because if she did, Alfred might leave.  Mattie
could still sense the coiled wire inside Isa, the terror and rage that
tried to push their way out of her chest.  Mattie had spent her
childhood trying to help Isa feel good about the coils--They're so
pretty!  So shiny!  But Harry had a knack for getting her to do things
she loved, that benefited him at the same time: bake cookies, sew
clothing for the puppets he made with Popsicle sticks and pipe
cleaners, tell stories about how naughty Al had been when he was a
little boy.

Isa doted on Harry, and to a lesser degree, on Ella, and in the early
fall, the doting turned into a fierce dotage.

Dr.  Brodkey could find nothing wrong.  "She's just getting old," she
told Mattie.

"But so quickly," Mattie protested.

"Believe me, there's still a lot of life in the old girl."

However, when Isa got sick with a virulent stomach flu and had to spend
a week in the medical center at The Sequoias, she did not rebound.
Lewis spent all day every day in the chair beside her bed, reading the
newspaper to her, watching whatever she liked on TV, napping in his
seat when she napped.  Mattie arranged nursing care for Isa when she
was released to her apartment, using Isa's meager savings.  It was
that, or have her come stay with them, which Mattie nearly decided to
do.  Al talked her out of it.  Isa had lost ten pounds and several
inches in height over just six months.  She had been as tall as Mattie;
now Mattie towered over her.

Harry made drawings and clay figurines for Isa, and visited when Mattie
could bring him over.  One afternoon they found Isa hooked up to an IV
of saline and vitamins.  She looked as if she were dying, but a light
went on when she saw her grandson.

That night at dinner, when he would not eat, Mattie asked Harry if he
was worried about Isa, because she looked so sick and old.

He nodded.  "At first I thought it was a sick other woman," he said.

"How did that make you feel?"

"Well, I felt great after I could see that it was her."

"How come you felt so great'"

"Because I got to be with Isa."

One day while fidgeting with the paint-can key and worrying about Isa's
condition, Al had an inspiration.  He and Mattie had tried,
unsuccessfully, to look up Abby's and Yvonne's numbers in the West
Marin phone book, but now Al wondered whether the Cove, where Neil had
lived, was just far enough north past Marshall to be included in the
Petaluma listings.  And indeed, when he looked in the phone book, he
found Abby listed.

When they called, the phone just rang and rang.  Mattie began

phoning obsessively, at various hours, early in the morning, late at
night, but no one answered.  She and Al considered driving to the Cove
for the day, to look around, ask questions.  Everybody had known Neil.
Someone would know something that would lead to something else.  He had
been famous in these parts for his parties, his looks, the poets and
painters he counted as friends: Allen Ginsberg, Wendell Berry, W. S.
Merwin.

But Mattie and Al had a hard time finding a day when they were both
free.  The children grew like weeds, Isa was holding her own, the days
passed in a flash.  When Mattie went to write checks she was shocked
that it was October.  It should have been March 23.

One night Mattie came across a photograph of Abby she'd never seen, in
an album of Isa's that was jammed into a section of cookbooks on her
shelf.  She and Al and Katherine and the children had brought Isa a
dinner of roasted chicken.  Lewis, whose stomach was acting up, stopped
by briefly to say hello, and to ask the children over after dinner.  Al
and Katherine prepared plates for everyone in the kitchen, while Isa
and Mattie looked through the photo album.  Mattie found it impossible
to imagine her mother as the young beauty in the photographs, long and
leggy, her handsome husband's arm around her shoulders in so many
photos, both inevitably smoking, her children on her knees, Isa in the
latest fashions, bright Asian silk blouses with butterfly clasps,
Guatemalan blouses over dungarees, crisp floral blouses with capri
pants.  In one photo, Isa and Alfred sat on the beach in Inverness near
tar-daubed pilings.  An egret stood in the surf almost out of the
frame, a bottle of wine rested in a hole in the sand, surrounded by
pebbles and keyhole limpets as if by ice in a silver bucket.  And
there, a little ways away in the sand, building a sand castle with
Mattie and Al, was Abby Grann.

All three of the children were topless, surrounded in the sand by
constellations of shells, Abby a girl by Fra Angelico, porcelain skin
and delicate features except for long wide lips, her hair streaming

loose down her back, crowned by sunlight.  Mattie glanced sideways at
Isa, who looked stricken, and Mattie felt a rush.  Maybe the answers to
all her questions could be gotten the easy way, right here.

"Look at Abby," Mattie said.

"I don't want a picture of Abby in with my things!"  Isa cried.

"But why not?  I thought you liked Neil."

"I loathed him.  All the Granns.  Especially that awful Abby. Jesus."

"God, Mom.  She was just a little girl."

"You don't know anything."  Isa turned her head away.

"Tell me, then," Mattie said softly.  The air was charged with their
held breath, and Mattie felt meanness flicker inside her.  It shocked
her, this cold sense of pleasure in making Isa squirm.  She reached for
Isa's hand--Mommy, Mommy!--but by then it was too late.  Isa shook her
off.  She peeled back the sheet of plastic that clung to the
photographs, grabbed the picture of Abby, and tore it in half.  Mattie
protested, and Isa tore it again.

"It's my picture," Isa cried.  "Mine!  And I don't want it anymore."
She got up and stalked to the kitchen, stopping to throw the pieces of
the picture into a metal can painted with cheerful gold pears.

Mattie sat stiffly on the couch, holding something invisible in her
lap, a potted plant of shame.  Why couldn't you even ask your mother
questions without feeling like one of the Weathermen?  These photos
were of people Mattie had grown up with.  She and Al had smoked their
first cigarettes with Abby.  Abby had brought Mattie Kotex when Mattie
started her first period, when she'd been trapped out at Neil's for the
weekend with only their fathers.  Abby had given Mattie clean
underpants to put on after a shower, had thrown out the bloody pair in
a paper bag.

Mattie went to the kitchen.  Isa turned away.  Mattie felt deeply
contrite.  "I'm so sorry, Mom," she wailed.  Isa looked past her, and
Al shot Mattie sympathetic looks.

After ten icy minutes and a glass of wine, Isa began to soften. "Would
you please not foist pictures of my enemies at me?"  she said to
Mattie.  "Neil was a playboy," Isa said, "everyone knew it.  And Abby
was a slut and everyone knew that too."  Mattie hung her head to show
her surrender and contrition.  Harry and Ella lifted their faces to
Isa's dark light, grimacing with the hope that she would forgive their
mother.  They were the children of the bad person.  Isa inhaled deeply,
and smiled on the exhale.  She held her head high and looked back and
forth between the young children as if trying to decide between two
desserts.  Finally she leaned sideways so that Mattie could kiss her on
the cheek.  She patted her daughter like the queen's naughty dog.  A
great passing of plates commenced, a bucket brigade of salad, chicken,
and rice.  The fire had been extinguished.  When the children were
excused from the table, they ran down the hall to find Lewis.

Harry was drawing at Lewis's table when Mattie went to retrieve the
children.  Ella was asleep on the couch, covered with a faded afghan.
Lewis's old dog, Precious, snored beside her.  His studio was clean,
except for an easy chair of beige velour with stained armrests and a
cushion that seemed to have had a stroke.

Mattie knew life had been strained for Lewis's family.  One of his sons
had done time in Leavenworth, and no one knew where one of his
daughters had ended up.  A niece was raising his grandchildren; his
wife had died at fifty.  Isa was supposed to have been some kind of
solution: late love.  But what a mess.  Maybe this was why he kept his
temple so clean.  The kitchen area was filled with cleaning utensils,
brooms, dustpan, mop.  Even Precious looked like a duster of some sort.
Clean clothes hung on hangers on the walls.  There were photographs in
cheap-looking frames on every available surface--his wife and parents,
his wedding, him in his welder's gear from his days at

Marin Ship during the war, his sons and daughters, nieces and nephews,
and babies everywhere, dark little faces shining in bassinets and
studio holiday props from Sears.

Mattie kissed Lewis and crossed to the table to admire the children's
artwork.  Ella had drawn cats in dresses and tiaras, Harry was just
finishing a battle scene, with knights and swords and bleeding soldiers
and dragons with pointy teeth.  Mattie looked around at all the lamps,
all of them on, fighting against the darkness of Lewis's failing sight.
There were ornamental plates on the walls, painted with the faces of
Coretta Scott King and JFK; grandchildren's handprints in clay.

"How does my mom seem to you, Lewis?"  Mattie asked.

"Not so good."  He looked toward his window.  "She's getting so old, so
quickly."

Mattie sat beside him.  She searched his aged face, dark and sprayed
with those tiny moles, the face of an old baby.  "Her mind is going,"
he said.  "It's muddied, and she's afraid.  She's standing on a ledge
that has gotten too small for her.  It's breaking my heart.  She walks
around trying to remember what she's walking around looking for."

"We all do it, Lewis.  I do it all the time."

"Well, oh my gosh, me too.  But when Isa does it, she's lost."  His
eyes had filled with tears, and he dabbed at his nose.  "She gets lost
and then truly worried, like she's hearing a siren in the night."
Mattie felt strangely relieved that someone besides her and Al felt so
sad about Isa.  Lewis made her less afraid, less hard and dry, with his
tears and watered words.

Mom?"  She was on the phone to Isa the next day.  "It's me."  "Hi, Me.
How are you?"

"Good.  Dr.  Brodkey just called.  She said your phone has been busy,
so she left a message with me to let you know you have an

appointment next Tuesday.  At nine-thirty.  I'll pick you up at nine."
This was not quite true.  Mattie had approached Dr.  Brodkey: Please
look at my mother.  Help us figure out what to do.

There was a long silence.  Mattie could hear Isa's grandfather clock
chime.

"Then do I get to drive again?"  Isa demanded.  "Answer me, Mattie. You
know, you're not in charge of me."

Dr.  Brodkey gave Isa a thorough exam, and another mini-mental, which
she aced again.  The doctor rather apologetically pronounced her
healthy as a horse.

"Then can I drive again?"  Isa asked.

"Your children are worried, because you may be having little
strokes."

"The children are not in charge of me," Isa cried.

"Would you agree not to drive until our next appointment?"

Isa sulked coquettishly, arms crossed, but she nodded.

Mattie felt that time was playing with her; whole weeks passed like
stones skipping over water.  The vigor and weirdness of Halloween gave
birth to November, stately and ponderous, the dramatic darkening in the
days.  She rested, and tried to dig a deep hole for herself, pull in
her soul's cloak around her.  The light of December was pinched, and it
hung down, glowering and tight, and then rushed toward the winter
solstice.  The surface tension broke.  January had a wonderful
sloppiness, trees in bloom, daffodils and tulips, lush intensity.  I'll
tease you with the light, said the days: Chicken alert!

An early spring arrived, with skies of faded-workshirt blue.  Ella
would be five, amazingly.  She would start kindergarten in the fall.
Harry would be nine.  Some days it was so beautiful outside: nature had
lured the ants and the birds and the bears, blinking their eyes in

the sunlight.  But then the barbed wind returned, and everyone froze
and huddled and crawled into bed.

Thoughts of Daniel were like a salt lick where Mattie comforted
herself.  He always called when she most needed a friend, called to ask
her if she wanted work as a carpenter's apprentice when he had some to
offer.  He called to point out stories in the paper, he called with
words of wisdom.

"Tell me the secret of life," she asked him one day over the phone.

He thought for a moment.  "Take Ella to the park."

"And then I'll be all well?"

"Yep."

Daniel invited her to go to the movies with him and Pauline that
night.

You should ditch her, Mattie wanted to say, her sad-sack, bad mood,
big-butt self.  And just you and me go to the movies, to cuddle.

"That sounds great," she said.  She cradled her head in her hands after
she hung up the phone, and prayed.  Please help me stop coveting
Daniel.  Please help me love Pauline.  Can't you send me someone of my
own?  And then she heard the sound of soft footsteps padding toward the
kitchen.  Ella stepped in, bleary from sleep, her hair in a feathery
white-blond knot on top of her head, so fair and moonlit that she might
start speaking in Norwegian.

They snuggled in the kitchen.  Sunshine washed in through the windows.
Ella described a long dream about horses, and Mattie listened to the
rills in the stream of her daughter's words, and then they went to find
her glasses so she could practice reading.

Mattie and Ella stood in the garden staring at the six-foot stretch of
fence that now lay nearly flat on the ground.  Everything was blooming,
an absurdity of blossoms.  Some were delicate and demure and Asian,
others like popcorn, and there was an apricot tree with testosterone
near the rotted planks of the original fence.

Mattie used to stand on the two-by-fours near the base of the fence
when she was little, peeking over at the life of the street, dogs
walking by as if on the way to work, children on foot or bike, cars and
strangers and fire trucks.  Now anyone nearby could see her standing
there, and she felt as if her pants had fallen to the ground.

She always felt guilty when she began a construction project with
Daniel.  He was like a practice husband to her: This is what it would
be like to have someone who would help you when things broke down,
someone to go to the movies with, someone to whom you could hand off
the plates you had just washed for a quick rinse and stacking in the
dish rack.  This is what it would feel like to sit at church with a
partner, to go for a drive and have someone besides the children with
whom to talk.

Pauline lay on the couch at home much of the time now, according to
Daniel, resting her back, sleepy from a new antidepresssant.  One
Sunday when Mattie had stopped by to pick Daniel up for church, Pauline
came into the living room in her bathrobe, sleepy and sexy and
insolent, and Daniel told Mattie that he'd be staying home today.  He
was sorry he hadn't called and saved her the trip.  Pauline said he
should go anyway.

"Oh, no, I want to be with you," he said.

"Daniel, I want you to go, don't you understand?"  she said sharply.

Daniel looked crushed.  Pauline hung her head.  Mattie felt unhappiness
flowing between them like an air current, and was ashamed to find her
own mood soaring.

"You should do whatever you want," Pauline told him.  "Stay, if you
want to.  I'm going to go lie down."  She turned and limped back to the
bedroom.

Daniel looked blank.  Mattie held her breath, desperately wanting him
to come with her.  "Can I still go with you?"  he asked.

"Yes, of course."

He tore around getting ready, looking for his glasses, ironing a
shirt.  Then he grabbed his worn Bible, and they walked to the car
together.

Pauline was making nice when they went to the movies together that
night.  This put Mattie in an extremely sour mood.  She and the kids
had been late picking up Daniel and Pauline, because Harry would not
wear anything over his T-shirt, although the night was cold, and it was
hard for Mattie to stop trying to goad him or jerk him, because she was
freezing.  Pauline stood up for Harry when Mattie tried to blame him
for their lateness.  She said, "Whether Harry wants a sweater or not is
really none of your business.  He's a big boy now," and Harry sighed
with gratitude.  Ella had dressed up in her parka with a furry hood.

Mattie wanted to grab Pauline by the throat, but she settled for two
boxes of bonbons.  She sat with Ella on one side, Pauline on the other.
Daniel sat on the other side of Pauline.  Mattie kept herself from
leaning across Pauline to talk to Daniel all through the movie, and
comforted herself with the knowledge that they could talk later, in the
car.  She tried to lose herself in the movie, about a little girl on a
farm and her fierce, loving old grandmother, all earth force and
hardwood and velvet.  All of a sudden Mattie sensed motion, and looked
around to see Pauline turning in her seat, beaming at her.  Mattie
smiled and went back to watching the movie, but ten minutes later, she
felt more ducking and bobbing, and looked over to discover Pauline
grinning at her again, in an odd combination of threatening and
submissive expressions.  Stop looking at me, Mattie wanted to cry--why
are you looking at me!  She pulled her shoulders in more closely and
glared at the screen.  More ducking, bobbing, and Pauline's little head
up too close again, covering her mouth as if she'd made a faux pas, a
tiny belch.  This time Mattie refused to

look back.  She moved imperceptibly closer to Ella and stared at the
screen while Pauline stared at her.

This went on for more than an hour, Mattie trying to hide in the magic
of the movie, Pauline tapping shyly at the sides, wanting in.  Mattie,
trying not to be penetrated, missed much of the movie.

"She is so annoying," Mattie complained to Angela on the phone that
night, after putting the children to bed.

"Oh, boy.  How does Daniel react?"

"I couldn't see him.  God.  I am so lonely that I'm going to vomit. 
I'm never going to have a boyfriend.  How do you find people to date? 
I don't even have the right underwear.  It's all hopeless."

"You listen here," Angela replied.  "God is about to put a guy onto
your conveyor belt.  He's assembling him right now, doing a complete
workup on him.  You're going to be doing errands, and this guy is going
to emerge from the conveyor belt of the luggage bin.  And you just have
to lift him up like a duffel bag.  And he'll be single, and
available."

"Why does Daniel love her?  And why was I mean to her tonight?"

"She's so invasive.  It's like some simultaneous need for revenge and
connection, like Isa getting close enough to stick the knife in.  Then
saying, "Look how close we are now!"  "

Outside, the day was balmy and crisp and sparkling, and inside, church
seemed warm and muscular as a heart.  During the first hymn, she felt
the weight of the choir lift her, carry her.  She was sitting, as
usual, between Lewis and Daniel.  Lewis looked older now, but so much
soul shone through his tiredness it didn't really matter.  He was as
excited as a birthday boy because the pastor had asked

him to give the children's sermon on the Gloria Patri.  Lewis was
using a walker today, and he wore a black suit and blue shirt for the
occasion.  After confession, the pastor held his hand out toward him,
as if inviting him to dance.  Lewis made his way to the front, smacking
his walker on the floor with every step.  He stood before the
congregation with his brown face held upward, as if being inspected by
a mother with a washcloth.

He appeared to have fallen asleep standing.  The children fidgeted in
their chairs.  After a moment, he addressed the semicircle of children.
"Glory!"

They looked at him nervously.

"Say that with me: Glory!  That's what we're here to say."

"Glory," the children whispered.

He began to sing the Gloria Patri, so slowly that Mattie held her
breath.  Each word echoed back into itself.  The sound pierced her, got
into her deepest places with oxygen, without the plink of piano or the
distraction of the correct notes.  Lewis sang loud and off-key.  You
could hear the roughness, and in the silence between notes you could
hear a baby snoring in his mother's arms.  Lewis quavered on, and you
could hear the elegance of dusty endings, an old man singing near a
snoring baby boy.

Mattie had high hopes for the vernal equinox, and the new fence.  The
equinox was going to bring a man, and the fence would keep Nicky out.

One Friday, she and Daniel walked along the planks of the fence to
where the rot stopped, then back to where the latch would be placed
once there was healthy wood to attach it to; from where the fence had
to end, to where it could begin, so they would know how many planks to
buy.  Daniel came over before dinner and dug the first hole, a foot
deep, and then poured Quikrete on a board.  Harry

held the hose on it while Daniel stirred everything with a shovel.
Then Harry held the post in place while Daniel poured in the Quikrete.
They held the post while it set.  They slapped five.  Harry did a
chicken dance of joy.

The next morning she and Daniel and Harry tore down the part of the
fence that was going to be replaced.  This immediately improved
things--now there was air and light and view and space, instead of just
collapse.  When the debris was cleared away, the area to be framed
became apparent.  They put in three more posts, and leveled them
carefully.

Daniel showed Harry and Ella how to make sure the wood was straight,
when the bubble rose to the center of the level.  "Now that we know
these posts are level and true, everything can be measured from them.
Once you know where true is, it defines everything else that has to
happen."

He nailed in braces, one near the top of the posts, one near the
bottom, to hold the two-by-fours they put in next.  Then they hammered
in the planks.  Daniel hammered in the first two, and set Harry up with
a hammer at the third.  He arranged planks for Harry to nail in.  He
set Ella up at the first plank, so she could practice hammering. 
Daniel nailed in planks with a few manly strokes, while Mattie nailed
with a girly rat-a-tat woodpecker style.  Harry nailed angrily, Ella as
if she were a holistic nurse and the fence needed a gentle energy
treatment with her hammer.  When they ran out of wood, they looked
through the planks from the old fence.  The salvageable ones filled the
remaining space exactly.

After lunch, Daniel got out his power tools and put in a latch.  He
worked with such humility.  Right after Mattie had moved into the
house, she asked Nicky to come over one afternoon to shorten the legs
on her bedside table.  He swaggered in under his heavy belt of tools,
all but tipping his hat, and flipped the little table over like a
heifer he was about to brand.

Daniel's work made a great fence, solid and true, with hilarious
charm.

"If we had had to make a perfect fence," Daniel said, "we would not
have had to start with what we had on our hands, which was part of a
fence to build on and not much money.  But that's what we did have to
work with."

"Today we arrested entropy," she told Nicky when he happened to call
that night.  "We pushed it back fifteen feet."

"Can I come see it:" he asked, and she tried to say no but after a
moment said okay.  She wanted to get laid, but she also wanted to lie
in bed afterward and talk, about nothing in particular.  He would hold
her close, and he always made her laugh.  The moon shone on the new
wood, as they stood together admiring the fence she had helped build,
to keep him out.

She kept praying for a man of her own.  Some nights she lay in bed and
imagined gazing into Daniel's eyes.  One night she even made out with
the back of her hand, like a teenager.  She remembered lines she loved
from a T. S. Eliot poem: "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without
hope.  For hope would be hope for the wrong thing."  But still, she
hoped.  Sometimes when the phone rang she thought, Oh, maybe that's
him, a man the universe has selected, calling to introduce himself. But
it was usually Isa, forgetting she had just called a few moments
before.

Mattie did not want to be the parent to her parent, but who'd asked?
You just did it, like you did the dishes all those years, because the
dishes needed doing.  She tried to bear witness to her

mother's decline as lovingly as she could.  Some days went better than
others.

Sometimes she could keep her heart open even when Isa was being mean
and bossy.  Other times she imagined running her mother down in the
parking lot.  When she felt like this, but acted humanely, it seemed to
repair something inside herself.  It gave her a sense of how she might
have felt if she hadn't had Isa for a mother.  It was not facing what
life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight
where it was unstraightenable.

Isa came over one morning to watch the children while Mattie did
errands.  When Mattie returned, she found that Isa had apparently gone
snooping in her desk.  Isa held Neil's letters up, like a reprimand.
"Is that what you wanted?"

Mattie put her groceries away, turned from her mother.  "I just want to
know more about my dad."

Isa sneered.  "This is about Neil, not your father."

"I just want to know the truth."

Isa's face was grim and cloudy.  "Oh, you want a little truth?"  she
asked malevolently.  Mattie wanted to run and hide in her bedroom, as
she used to, when Isa looked at Alfred in that way, breathing hard like
a bull.  "Here's a nice Neil story, Mattie.  One year he taught at
Squaw Valley at the writing conference, and he invited us along.  Abby
was with him.  Neil brought her up to the mountains to get her away
from bad influences, right?  But he was the worst influence for miles.
What a joke!  He stood with your father and me on a balcony overlooking
a barbecue, pointing to the women and girls he'd slept with so far that
week.  "I got her," he'd say.  Then point to another.  "And her.  I may
get her tonight."  Your dad laughed, by the way."

Mattie could not take her eyes off her mother, her sudden strength, her
passion.  "God, Mom," she managed finally.  "That's pretty bad."

"Want more truth?  I can give you more.  That awful Yvonne Lang, I
loathed that woman.  Why Neil ditched his first wife for that cow, I'll
never know.  Now, Nancy was a real lady.  She went to Smith.  I don't
even think Yvonne went to junior college.  She's why Abby ran away."

"Why?"  Mattie's voice broke like a little girl's.  She remembered
Yvonne as the only adult in their circle who paid any attention to the
children.  "She was always kind to us kids."

"She let herself go.  All that ridiculous ethnic jewelry.  She looked
like a medicine man."  Isa moved forward in her chair as if she was
about to stand but instead kept falling forward until she slid out of
her chair, unconscious, onto the floor.  Mattie ran to her side.

Isa awoke right away, and looked into Mattie's frightened eyes.  Mattie
fussed, but Isa shushed her.  "Just help me up.  and give me a hand to
my bed."

"You're at my house.  Mom," Mattie reminded her.  Isa lay on the floor
with her daughter crouched beside her, and looked at the floor as if
she were an astronaut, and the air above the blue linoleum were outer
space, rolling out in every direction as far as you could see.

The doctor told Isa that she was fine, it had just been a little spell,
but she called Mattie later to say it was almost definitely a small
stroke.  She didn't know what to try next.  As it was, she ordered more
tests, new medicine, but Isa had more episodes.

It was like watching her play Red Light, Green Light, moving forward
until made to freeze for an instant.  Each time she started again,
there was less of her working.  Her steps were more tentative.  Gone
was the stride of the bossy woman.  Now as often as not she Wanted to
hold on to Mattie's arm, and she moved much more slowly.  One day she
might seem her old self, the next day a version ten years older.  The
complaints never ceased, and the new theme Was that Mattie and Al came
to her house only to take her on

errands; she never got to go anywhere nice with them.  If they did
something fun, they did it with each other.  She was right to some
extent: what made most outings fun was that Isa wasn't there.  So on
the spur of the moment one Saturday, they decided to take her along
with the kids to the beach.

Al had shown up at Mattie's early that morning and announced that today
was the day.  They were going out to find Abby.  Mattie resisted.
"We'll do it another day.  I promised Mom I'd take her somewhere
nice."

"We'll take her to the beach at the Cove instead."  Al insisted.  "She
can play with the kids.  We'll be close by.  She doesn't need to know
what we're up to.  One of us can go into town to look for Abby.  The
other can stay behind and babysit Mom."

The fog burned away before their eyes.  Isa and the children began a
secret project at the north end of the beach.  Mattie and Al stood out
of earshot.  They walked along past heaps of seaweed deposited by the
tide like pieces of wet and tangled fabric, fabulous after the rain, so
many colors and textures that something inside Mattie's soul wanted to
sort them out, at least the lovely cream- and rose-colored ones, hang
them up to dry, or lay them neatly in piles--let someone else deal with
the dark, oily greens.  She had been surprised that morning to find the
blue shoe still in the pocket of the jeans she was wearing when they
built the fence, and she had been rubbing it ever since.  It fit so
perfectly in her fingers; she felt for the slight rise of the laces.
They could still see Isa and the children near a great rock, building a
house of twigs and stones and seaweed.  Mattie was the first to notice
what looked like a piece of driftwood in the surf ten feet from the
shore, a blob caught in the random violence of the waves.  Then a head,
a bird's head, lifted out of

the water and was gone, lost, submerged.  The bird's wing rose a
moment later, flapping.

"Look," she said to Al.  They stopped, and Al made a strangled cry, as
if there were a person in the waters, but suddenly the bird was gone
again.  Nearby, sandpipers, gulls, and murres scrabbled and pecked for
food in the sand.  In the surf, the wing rose like the arm of a swimmer
on his last few breaths, rose again, fell, and the bird was pushed
closer to shore.

"Should we try to save it?"  Al asked.

Mattie held her palms up.  "I think we should sit down and be still."

Eventually the bird washed onto the sand and the waves poured over its
broken wings, marbled brown and gray and white.  It was barely able to
lift its head, sloe eyes full of exhaustion.  It was dying, this was
clear.  All of its tail feathers were gone; it was a raggedy garbage
bird whose body you'd find in the seaweed.  The waves came back for it,
washed it back into the surf.

"We have to try and save it," Al said, now moving toward the bird.

"What, and take it to UC Med?  See if they can put something back
together, with enough pinions and thread?"

The bird was tossed with terrible force on the waves.  "I can't watch,"
Al said, but he did.  Mattie felt for the blue shoe in her pocket.  She
was sure of only one thing: The ocean smelled familiar to this bird;
the ocean, the sand, and the sky were its home.  She and Al would smell
as comforting as wolves.

"Why shouldn't we do something?"  Al asked.

"Because there's no fixing and there's no saving, Al.  There's helping
sometimes, but not this bird."

Mattie looked out toward the horizon.  The bird thrashed in the foam
and spray near the shore.  It flailed and flapped and made it to the
shore like a broken toy, and then began to flop its way toward a heap
of seaweed and bulbs.

Al watched, fidgeting, trying to wash something painful off his hands.
"I don't think either of us should go into town.  This was a bad omen.
I have a bad feeling about the whole thing."

Mattie watched the waves.  "What's your bad feeling, Al?"

"My bad feeling is, maybe Daddy was involved with Abby somehow."  He
pulled at his nose like an old man.  "I saw them on the beach here
once.  My friends and I had come out to drop acid, and sleep on the
beach during a minus tide.  We were hiking through the dune grass, and
I saw Daddy sitting on a blanket with Abby."

"Are you sure it was them?  Why haven't you ever told me?"

"Because it was so fucking weird.  And I'm positive it was Abby and
Daddy.  Her hair was so distinctive."

"How old do you think she was.-"

"Fourteen or fifteen."

"You should have told me that earlier, big brother."

"They were passing a bottle of wine back and forth."

"Did they kiss or anything?  Or see you?"

Al shook his head.  "They were sitting there.  Drinking straight from a
bottle.  Daddy and a fourteen-year-old girl.  I mean, what is wrong
with this picture?"

Isa and the children were screaming for Mattie and Al to walk faster.
They had constructed a house made mostly of stones, balanced one on top
of another, a big flat rock on the boulder, a smaller one on top of
that, nestly and balanced, lumpy and delicate all at once, solid and
also full of motion, surrounded by a fence of twigs stuck in sand.

"That is so amazing," said Mattie, noticing how solid it looked.  One
little bump, though, and it would all tumble over.

She volunteered to drive into town to pick up lunch at the superette.
The man at the butcher counter squinted at her.

"Mattie Ryder?"  She looked more closely at the handsome man with the
resonant voice.

"Yes," she said.  "Do I know you?"

"Eighth grade, Del Mar School.  William Allen."

"No way."  But she could see that this was in fact Billy Allen, former
classmate, a hoodlum in the Summer of Love.  He'd been so short, the
smallest boy in the class.  But now he stood about six feet, and he was
rumpled, nice-looking, with thick brown hair and glasses.  She managed
a half-smile and shook her head.  Interest fluttered through her.  Was
this him?

"What are you doing here?"  she asked.

"My old man owns this store, remember?  That's him over there," and he
jutted his chin toward the older man behind the register.  "I saw you
once, years ago.  But I was too shy to say hello."

"Too shy to talk to me?"  Mattie asked.

"You were with your husband and your boy."

"I have two kids now.  And I'm divorced."

"So am I. Well, what kind of sandwiches do you want?"  William was all
business now, waving his hand over the lunch meats and cheese.

He had nice grayish eyes behind the glasses, and he watched her even as
he spread mayonnaise and mustard on ten slices of bread.

"Let me ask you something," she said, partly just to keep a
conversation going.  "I grew up with Abby Grann.  Her dad and mine were
best friends.  I was sort of hoping to run into her one of these days.
I have something of her dad's I thought she might like to have."

William smiled.  "Abby Grann.  She lived out here until a few years
ago.  My dad always had a soft spot for her.  She knew to come here
when she was hard up.  Hey, Pop."  The older man did not look up from
his newspaper.  "Dad.  Get your old carcass over here."  He folded his
paper and came over.  "What ever happened to Abby Grann?"

"Who's asking?"  He extended his hand.

Mattie shook it.  "Mattie Ryder.  William and I were in school
together.  I grew up with Abby.  I've got something of hers to
return."

"Well, in that case-Actually, I have no idea.  But Noah still lives in
the same old house, out past Marshall."

"Who's Noah?"  Mattie asked.

"Her kid.  He's the librarian here."

"How could she have a kid who's old enough to be a librarian?"

"She had him when she was young, in her teens."

Mattie's heart was pounding so hard she stopped flirting with William.
"When is the library open?"

"Now, if you hurry.  On Saturdays, ten till one."

She sat in the car trying to decide what to do.  The children had to be
really hungry by now.  She started the car and drove too fast through
town, past the old depot for the North Pacific train, a curio shop, a
diner, a boatyard, more cabins, a pasture full of cows, and then she
saw the old library, squat, white, falling into disrepair, paint
flaking, but with a new sign out front.  Mattie looked at her watch. It
was nearly one.  The small parking lot was empty except for a white
truck.  She pulled into a space next to it, turned off the engine, and
sat still.  She rubbed the blue shoe in her pocket and looked out at
the foggy day.  You couldn't see much beyond the library; fog let you
see only what it wanted you to see.  After a while, the door of the
building swung open, and a young man stepped out.  He was a dead ringer
for Neil Grann: tall, with thick chestnut-brown hair, glasses, and a
broad, flat nose.  In his hands was a book, which he read as he walked,
held open on his palms like a hymnal.

SIX.

William called the next night.  Al was over, helping Mattie put the
kids to bed, so she wrote down his number and promised to call later.
After Al left, the house was quiet enough to call back, but before she
did, she stretched out on the couch and held the cordless phone in her
clasped hand.  She closed her eyes to pray.  Look, she said.  I think
You're aware that dating is not one of my strong suits.  So please:
Save me from the disaster of my own thinking.

She and William talked for half an hour.  He was quite gregarious.
Okay, she thought after she hung up, maybe he's not funny, like I was
hoping, but he laughs when I'm funny.  We can give him a partial credit
there.  Who'd have thought that little Billy Allen, in those pegged
black jeans, who smoked at eleven and barely passed eighth grade, would
grow to be a man so fluent in culture, in music and books, in
politics.

They went out two nights later.  They arranged to meet at her favorite
restaurant.  Things were made bittersweet by the fact that for the
first time Isa wouldn't be able to babysit.  No matter how well Isa
appeared some days, Mattie felt that she could not be left alone with
the children, not at Mattie's home, not at her own.  Al and Katherine
were staying with the kids.

William looked wonderful in the soft light of the Royal Thai.  They
shook hands and she looked at her feet.  She wore her hair up, and as
much makeup as she could without appearing to be wearing any.  They
ordered beers, and in the course of the meal two more each; she used
hers to wash down the spicy Chilean sea bass.  William was easy to talk
to, was recently divorced, had never had children, was doing well
financially.  He gave her a quick teenage kiss on the lips when they
said good-bye on the street.

In bed that night, she had a talk with herself.  Let's go slow, let's
keep this in the soda-shop stage for a while.

He called the next morning.  "Can we have coffee today?"

"Sure," she said.  Then she lied and said that she had been headed to
Samuel P. Taylor Park--there was a redwood tree she liked to sit
inside.  Maybe they could meet for coffee there.  Even as she spoke the
words, she knew it was too intimate a setting for a second date.  Oh
well, she shrugged cheerfully.

She wore her clean hair loose, fanned out between her shoulders, over a
long-sleeved black T-shirt with a scooped neckline.  She had stuffed
the blue shoe in her jeans pocket.

April was fragrant and full of whirling blossoms, and the clouds,
though dark, were shot through with light, constantly moving and
rearranging themselves--God the great scribble artist in the sky.

William brought lattes from the market in Lagunitas, and she led the
way to the great family-circle redwood.  Sunlight wafted in through a
long oval slit in the wood, and the dust motes and tiny insects
sparkled.  She and William sat near each other with their backs against
the tree, not touching, drinking their coffee.  They

were shyer here than they'd been at the restaurant.  Mattie nervously
touched the hollows and crevices of the tree like a blind person.
William asked such good questions: What were the kids like?  Ella was
quiet and mellow and sweet, Harry took things more seriously.  Who was
Mattie's best friend?  Well, she had two: Angela, who'd moved away, and
Daniel, with whom she worked sometimes.  How did she get along with her
ex-husband?  Oh, she said, pretty well.

She felt that she was hiding--but also that she'd been found.  Spider
webs hung from the bark like lace.  He asked how her mother was doing,
and she was afraid to say that her mother was spiraling downward, so
she lied.  "Slowing down a little.  A little forgetful."  "What about
your father?"  she asked.  "Ned's great," William said.  "He's still
got all his wits about him.  Working too hard, though."  When sunlight
hit the charred parts of the tree, they turned green, like the feathers
of a grackle, iridescent.  She and William kissed for a bit longer this
time when they parted.

They slept together the next Friday at Mattie's house.  The children
had gone to Nicky's, and William arrived for dinner--roast chicken and
asparagus, with wine, and then cupcakes that Harry had helped her make
that afternoon while Ella slept.  They ate and drank, resisting the
pull as long as they could before tearing to the bedroom to throw off
their clothes.  He put his glasses on the bedside table, and took off
his watch while she took off hers.

They lay facing each other, shyly at first.  But he was a wonderful
kisser, and they slowly began to investigate each other in the dark. 
He sculpted her body with his large warm hands and she opened her legs.
He felt her delicately, as if he had lost something small and fragile
that he wanted to find but didn't want to break when he did.  The
tension, the coiling inside her, was exquisite.

Afterward they lay entangled, and she put her face against his soft,
furry chest.  They talked quietly in the dark for a long time, drifted
off, woke to make love again.  It was all so lovely, but when she gave
his head a gentle nudge when he began to kiss her belly button,

he seemed to resist, and when he finally went down, it was just for a
moment.

In the morning, when they made love again, he did not go down on her at
all.

"It was wonderful, delicious," she told Angela after he had left.  "I
really like this guy.  Everything about him is terrific but--well. He's
not heavily into giving head.  Nicky loved it.  Maybe I'm just
spoiled."

"No you're not.  You like what you like.  And I tell you, it would be a
real deal-breaker for me."

Mattie wondered: If you do the right thing for all the wrong reasons,
does it count?  If you stop sinning because something better has come
along, does this reflect well on you in God's favor?  If you finally
stop sleeping with your ex-husband, who has a baby with his new
ten-year-old wife, because someone cool and available has come along,
do you get a partial credit?

She started talking to William on the phone twice a day, making a plan
for the following weekend.  Two days after they first slept together,
he called from San Rafael to say that he was passing through on his way
back home and wondered if he could stop by and say hello, and she said,
"Yeah, why don't you stay for dinner?"  and he said, "No, I just want
to come by and flirt with you for a while."

He came by and they had a glass of red wine in the garden.  Ella clung
to Mattie like a drowning cat all through William's visit.  But Harry
seemed intrigued, asking William to play catch, and then signaled his
approval by giving him a tour of his room.  William stayed for dinner.
He was so easy to be with, and looked at Mattie often with
appreciation.  She felt pretty again.  It had been a while.  The kids
would not go to sleep.  Mattie tucked them in at nine but they needed
water, they needed to pee, and to talk, and by the time

she got them to sleep, William had to leave because he was getting up
at dawn to go fishing.  She hated saying good-bye.  She got out Nicky's
movies.

It was hard to break the news to Daniel that she'd begun sleeping with
William.  She felt as if she were being unfaithful to him.  Finally one
day when he was over she managed to blurt it out.  Daniel was putting
up a white lattice wall between her house and the neighbor's.  She was
going to grow purple potato vines on it, partly as a privacy screen,
partly for the beauty of a lavender curtain instead of ugly brown
siding.  Birds sang sweet liquid notes.  From the far end of the yard
she could hear Harry at Stefan's.  They were building something in the
backyard with two other neighborhood boys, Evan and Chris.  Ella was at
the park with a chattery new girlfriend from preschool named Pearl.

"So you know William, the guy I ran into at the Cove that day, when I
saw Abby's son?"  Mattie said haltingly.  Daniel nodded.  "He called,
and we've gone out a couple of times, for coffee.  I kind of like
him."

Daniel, shoveling concrete into a posthole, grunted noncommittally.
"Really."  His face showed only the vaguest interest.

She glanced idly around.  Tree swallows, blue-black on top and white
underneath, flew in and out of an abandoned woodpecker's hole in the
cypress.  She looked back at Daniel.  His eyes were triangles, like a
concerned clown's.

"What's the matter?"

He shrugged.  "Have you slept with him yet?"

"Yeah."

Daniel plunged a dagger into his chest.  "Oh, God," he exclaimed.  Then
he laughed at himself.  "It's so scary that you like someone," he
admitted.  "We haven't had to share you--me, Al, and your kids."

Daniel let go of the post.  It held.  He pushed on it lightly and it
didn't move.  He threw his hands up.  "So, fine!  Go off with this

corduroy guy."  They sat on the ground to watch the swallows.  He made
the face of a furious child.

Her children were growing up fast.  Ella would be dating soon.  In the
meantime, she made quiet art: people of clay; villages in the dirt
outside, with twigs and pebbles for walls and bits of broken glass for
tiled walkways; a small bone turned into a vase, upright in the dirt
and holding a daisy.

Harry played loud inside; he got out his army men and drafted them into
terrible battles.  Sometimes all the soldiers were killed at once,
pitched against the wall, kicked to every corner of his room.  When he
grew bored, he brought in bowls, which he set up at one end of his room
and flipped playing cards into from the other end.  His room was a
disaster, army men and cards everywhere.  He roughhoused with the cats
and made them cry, squishing them like whoopee cushions, and Mattie
yelled at him, afraid for everyone, the cats, Harry, herself.

And yet, one afternoon while she napped on the couch with Ella and the
cats, she heard Harry come into the room and walk over to the couch,
and felt him pull the covers up and tuck them in around her.

Mattie noticed how many secrets she kept from William, so that he
wouldn't see her as someone with a lot of problems.  She wanted him to
see her as someone with just a few pieces of colorful carry-on luggage,
instead of multiple body bags requiring special cargo fees and
handling.  What if he found out she'd been sleeping with Nicky until
he'd come along: What if he found out about her father, drinking with
Abby on the beach?  What if he found out that her mother's mind was
dissolving, and that she could no longer take care of herself?

"This is home for me, Angela," Mattie said on the phone.  "I've held
my breath my whole life, waiting for the other shoe to drop."  There
was a silence.  "God only has one shoe," Angela told her.

jhe missed Angela terribly, and called every other day.  She was able
to fall asleep more easily after their conversations.  Angela offered
the relationship her blessing over the phone, although Mattie believed
that her approval was based almost entirely on William's not being
Nicky.  When she accused her of this, Angela said, "Yeah, well, but
that's a lot."

It was one of those long golden May evenings warm enough to sit outside
for a few glasses of wine, the light lasting longer now.  The night did
not close in on you.  A soft breeze wafted through the garden, and they
sipped a good California red, courtesy of William's father, and got a
bit drunk.  Mattie nearly told William about Isa, and Abby, and Noah,
her tongue was so loose.

They lay on top of the sheets in their underpants and T-shirts,
kissing.  Mattie felt his warm, sweet pony's breath on her and smelled
his clean body.  She felt like a teenager in love, radiating shyness
and lust, and told herself not to expect too much, that expectations
were premeditated resentments.  But after ten minutes of the most
wonderful kissing, he started licking her neck, and her breasts, and
then her belly button, and she opened her legs for him to go on with
his grazing.  He moved slowly downward for a nice kiss, and she tried
to hold his head down like a person in the movies who is drowning
someone, but then he moved up and in a few moments slid inside her.

After they made love, she made grilled cheese sandwiches with sliced
tomatoes.  They drank wine and ate their sandwiches in bed.  It was all
fine, she insisted to herself.  Sleeping together was heaven--to spoon,
and sleep, and watch him sleep.

It felt so natural, so quickly, to put on her robe while he put on his
boxers and T-shirt, and go to the kitchen together.  One morning when
she made coffee, she noticed that there were six messages on the
answering machine.  She hit the Play button.

"All" her mother brayed.  "Al.  Oh, for Chrissakes, pick up."

"Why would your mother call Al here?"

"I guess she got confused and dialed the wrong number," said Mattie,
putting ground coffee into the filter.

The second message began.  "A.  For Chrissakes!"  Isa shouted.  "Jesus
Christ on a crutch."

The third message delivered the sounds of Isa sobbing.  "Mattie!  Pick
up.  For Chrissakes!  Jesus!  Why won't anyone talk to me?"

William looked over.  "Your mother seems a bit tense."

Mattie shrugged.

"Shouldn't you call her?"

"Oh, she's fine," Mattie said, a bit tense now herself.

Next up was Daniel, who'd left a message about how lonely

he was feeling because Pauline was staying in the city overnight.  He
said he was thinking of building himself a balcony so he could throw
himself off.  Could she help him work on it today?  Then Nicky had
called to say they had forgotten Ella's bike helmet and so he'd be over
in a minute, because they were going for a bike ride in Sausalito.

"Oh, no," Mattie groaned, feeling very rumpled and sticky and fragrant,
like a bouquet of anchovies, while William ambled about in his boxers.
"We've got to get dressed," she said.  "Nicky's on his way over."

Right then the doorbell rang.  They walked quickly to the bedroom and
put on some clothes.  Mattie pulled her hair back in a rubber band, but
no matter how she smoothed her face and tucked away errant hair, she
looked moist and disheveled.  "Just a minute!"  she shouted, and
William sprinted to the living room to plop down in a chair.

He picked up a copy of Harry's Ranger Rick and thumbed through it with
a look of enormous concentration.  Mattie opened the door.  There was
Nicky, holding her marvelous daughter, who was in glasses and floral
overalls.  He put Ella down, and she threw her arms around her mother's
waist and pressed her face against Mattie's crotch, sniffing like a
dog.

Mattie bent to kiss Ella.  She turned slowly to look at William.

"Hi, Ella," he said.  She looked back at him, puzzled, as if she could
hear his voice but not see him yet.  Nicky pretended not to be
surprised, as William got up.

"This is William," Mattie said.  "William?  This is Nick."

William walked over as if he were about to be sworn in.

Soon they were spending every weekend together, sometimes at her house,
sometimes at his.  One Saturday when she was going out to visit him, Al
asked over the phone if he could come along.

"Can't I go alone?"  she asked.  "I've waited so long for a
romance."

"Nope.  Mom said you have to take me with you."

William looked wonderful that day at the cafe in Point Reyes where
they'd arranged to meet.  A white T-shirt peeked above the top button
of his denim shirt.  She liked the tufts of gray at his temple, his
wire-rimmed glasses.  She liked his shy smile.

He and Al shook hands and stepped back to size each other up, visions
from the past.  "You look good," said Al.  "It's great to see you."

"You too, Al.  Can I drive?"  William asked.  "I want to take you the
back way."

He drove along the old two-lane between Inverness and the beach at
Drakes Bay.  Al rode in the back, the chaperone.  As they drove along,
the scent of wildflowers and cows and salt from the ocean blew in.

Al tapped William on the shoulder.  "Can we go by the Cove library
later on, to say hello to Noah?"

"What is it with you guys and Noah?"  William asked.

"Our dads were close," said Al defensively.  "We grew up playing with
Abby."

"Your dad was close to Neil?  People say Neil was Noah's father."

"Oh, please," said Mattie.  "That's ridiculous.  That's like, small
town Peyton Place bullshit."

"People in town were never entirely convinced that he died a natural
death.  Or even, in Neil's case, a semi-natural death.  There was some
evidence that he OD'ed on medicine his doctor actually had prescribed
for anxiety, to lower his blood pressure."

William shrugged.  Mattie resisted the impulse to turn and gape at Al.
All of a sudden William jammed on the brakes.

"Jesus," he said.  "Did you see that?"  He backed up, pulled off to the
side of the road, and stopped the car, then reached for binoculars in
his glove compartment.  They got out and trooped to where the

dirt road met the hillside, and sat down.  William studied something
in the hills below, a treeless green like Scotland, with a gray-flannel
ocean reaching out to the horizon beyond.

When Mattie looked down, all she saw was a big pale rock.  Then the
rock moved.  William handed her the binoculars, and through them she
could see a tule elk, with broad antlers.  She gasped and handed the
binoculars to Al, who watched in silence.  After a while, they noticed
another, a rock that got to its feet, and then another, and another,
and at some point they counted twelve.

They sat there immersed in the never-ending freight-train sound of
waves below, and the birdsong, loud and varied as in a rain forest.
Mattie looked from Al to William, savoring the moment.  Elk moved
slowly through the grass, and out of sight behind a hill below, making
a crunching murmur as they walked away.

"I'd like to see a black bear," Al whispered.  "I'd like to see some
real nature now."  Mattie laughed quietly.

"People look down and think they're just rocks," William said.

Al peered through the binoculars, smiling in the most menacing way.
"But the crocodile spots them," he said.  Mattie cracked up.

While they drove back to Point Reyes, William told them what he knew
about Noah.  Abby had disappeared after her father died.  Yvonne Lang
took care of Xoah for a while, in an old house she'd bought for very
little, just past Marshall.  Then he went to live with some friends in
Tomales, a boy he went to school with and the kid's parents.  Abby
tried to visit as much as she could, people said, but she was a mess.
Maybe it was better in the long run that she was gone so much.  People
in the town filled in for her.  Noah went to Sonoma State to study
library science on a partial scholarship, the bulk of his tuition paid
by private donations from people in town.  Later he moved back into
town, and lived in the house Yvonne had bought.  "But where did Yvonne
live, then?  What happened to her?"

"She had a heart attack a while ago," William said.  "I haven't seen
her in years."

Lewis was the one who let the cat out of the bag, one night at Isa's.

"I

heard you have a new man in your life," he said.

"What!"  cried Isa, sidling over.  "You have a man in your life?

Why don't I know about this?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!"  Lewis said, realizing his mistake.

"It's brand-new.  That's why I haven't told you.  The only people

I've told are Al and Daniel.  I didn't want to jinx it.  Did Daniel
tell you?"  she asked Lewis.  He nodded miserably.

Isa looked confused and scared, pretending to be happy at the news, as
if Mattie had announced a frightening diagnosis with, however, the
likelihood of a full recovery.  "Who is it?"

"Do you remember William Allen, who I went to junior high with?"

"No, no... William Allen."  Isa smirked.  "Not Billy Allen?"  Mattie
sighed.  "Yes.  He used to be Billy, and now he's William."  "The
little hoodlum in the black jeans?"  Isa drew back.  "Oh, Mom.  Don't
do this to me.  He's not a little guy anymore,

and what if he was?  And he doesn't wear tight jeans anymore, but what
if he did?"  "But his father was in the Mafia."

"Oh, Mom," said Al.  "For Christ's sake.  His father's a grocer."

"He went to prison.  Maybe he's a Mafia grocer now."

Mattie turned slowly to Al.  "Can you do something with her?"

"Mom," said Al, putting his hands on Isa's shoulders as if to keep her
from bouncing up and down.  "Stop.  You've gotten him mixed up with
somebody else.  Trust me.  Ned has owned that grocery store forever."

"Fine.  Whatever you say, Mattie.  Where did you meet him again?

What's it been, thirty years?"

"I ran into him at the Cove that day when we were there with you and
the kids.  At his dad's superette, when I went to get sandwiches.
Believe me, it does not look like a gangland operation."

"Why didn't you say anything at the time?"

"I don't know," Mattie said.  "There was so much going on."

Al drew a Anger across his throat to get Mattie to stop talking.

"What do you mean, so much was going on?  Waves?  Waves were going on?
The kids and I built a structure in the sand was going on?  Hungry for
lunch was going on?"

"God," Mattie yelped.  "Can you pretend to be happy about this, for a
second?"

"I am happy."  Isa rolled her eyes.  "Shrimpy little Billy Allen, with
his Mafia father.  Whoopee!  Okay, I'm sorry, I'm out of line.  But you
have to admit, he wasn't a particularly memorable child."  "Mom!"  Al
shouted.

"He wasn't!  He was--what's the word, Al?--sort of nondescript."

"Well, he's de script now," Al replied.  "He's heavily de script

Isa tried to looked pleased, clasping her hands together as if in
prayer, but Mattie retreated from the kitchen.  She walked down the
hall into her mother's bathroom and sat on the toilet.  Isa had been
badgering Mattie for a year about whether she'd met anyone nice, and
now she reacted like she was going out with John Gotti.  Mattie dug her
fingernails into her hairline, reveling in the pain.

I'm sorry, my darling, my girl," Isa crooned.  She was standing outside
the bathroom door, wringing her hands, when Mattie finally emerged.
"I'm a bad person.  I don't deserve a wonderful daughter like you."
Mattie said nothing.  "Everyone should have a Mattie," Isa said. Mattie
glared.  Pictures of the family peered at them from both sides of the
hallway, Alfred with his arms around Isa, in formal wear, in swim
clothes; Alfred with his kids in his lap, with his arms

around their shoulders; Alfred alone, smiling, smoking, holding a can
of beer.  Mattie heard the crisp rip of triangles appearing in his beer
cans, up on Mount Tarn, out at Nell's, she heard him opening a can of
Coke for her; she heard her mother saying her name.  She desperately
wanted a Coke right now, opened with a church key, opened by her
father.  A can or a little-bitty bottle.  Everything tasted better when
your father was alive.

"Let's go back to the table," Mattie said gently.  Isa's shoulders
looked like those of a skinny child inside her bright paisley shirt.
When they sat down, she reached for Mattie's hand.  At first Mattie
held it too tightly, and with disgust, the way you might hold the hand
of someone else's monkey.  But then she sighed, looked menacingly at
her mother, raised her hand to her mouth, and kissed it.

It was all her fault when Mattie and William had their first unpleasant
incident.  He had called, trying to tempt her out to Olema with the
promise of rock cod he'd caught off a boat at dawn that morning.  She'd
asked if he'd come to church with her and Daniel instead, then cook
them rock cod for lunch.  He seemed flustered.  He wanted to meet
Daniel, he said, but he really didn't like organized religion.  Mattie
promised there would be nothing too organized at her church, but still
he resisted.  She pushed a little harder, and he gave in.

When he arrived an hour later in a suit jacket and tie, she could tell
that he was miserable.  There was only cool distance.  She apologized
at once and asked if he wanted to hang out and watch TV instead of
going along, but he pretended he hadn't heard her.

"It doesn't make sense for you to come if you'll be unhappy," she
said.

"I already told you I didn't want to go, Mattie.  Several times, in
fact.  But you insisted.  So here I am, okay?"

Daniel was waiting for them on his porch.  They walked up to meet him.
He had beaded tubes on some of his dreadlocks now.  He

smiled rather shyly at William.  They shook hands warmly, like people
who had already spoken a number of times by phone.  There were circles
under Daniel's eyes, and when the phone inside rang, he excused himself
and raced in.

"Hello?"  they heard him say.  "When are you coming home?  Why are you
still there?"  He listened for a moment.  Then he protested.  "I'm
going to church.  I'll be home about one.... Of course with Mattie. 
Mattie and her new boyfriend.  William.... Yes, he's right here.  I'm
looking at him!"  He listened.  "All right.  See you then."

Daniel returned to the porch, and the three walked to William's car.

"I wish you were meeting me on a better day," Daniel said.  "I hardly
got any sleep last night.  I can't sleep alone anymore."

He and William sat in front, talking easily.  They seemed to like each
other right off.  They stopped to pick up Lewis, who was waiting
outside, holding on to his walker.  Daniel got out to help Lewis fold
up the contraption.  William caught Mattie's eye in the rearview
mirror.  He looked utterly bad to her, like a corpse who had died with
a resentment.

Old Mrs.  Berry with her fierce walnut face and flowered hat greeted
them in the narthex and handed them each a bulletin.  Mattie felt proud
to introduce her to the handsome man on her arm.  Mattie, Daniel, and
Lewis waved hellos to various members of the congregation as they
walked to seats near the choir.  Mattie sat between William and Lewis,
with Daniel on the other side of Lewis.  William stared ahead.  Daniel
rubbed his eyes.  Lewis scanned the water stained acoustical tiles,
smiling as if Jesus were up there waving to him.  Mattie reached for
William's hand and he held hers for a minute or so.  She felt furious
with herself.  Why had she forced him to come when he hadn't wanted to?
But there was nothing she could do now.  Buoy me up out of the fear,
she prayed, and held her breath and felt as though she were in a big
nickelodeon and if she could just pick the right tune, William and
Daniel would begin to sway and swing, and everyone would be in
harmony.

Mattie sat waiting for God to show her what to do.  She turned to
Lewis.  His eyes were closed in prayer, so she closed hers too, and
prayed out loud, softly, "Help me, help me."  Lewis reached for her
hand.  "Don't let the devil steal your joy," he whispered.  "Keep
looking up."

She glanced at William, who looked as if he were being made to listen
to a sermon in Latvian, and then at Daniel, who seemed barely awake,
and she felt like someone had plugged her oxygen tube back in.  From
time to time William would make a sudden expansive gesture while
whispering to Daniel, and maybe she was paranoid but it seemed a way of
getting back at her, to show that he could be nice to people--just not
to her.  She didn't care so much anymore.  The men seemed far away: she
could have been watching them through the porthole of a quiet
spaceship.  Lewis was looking up, so she looked up too, over the heads
of the choir members, nearly to the ceiling, where the notes hung above
the singers like moths.

She had the family, including Lewis, over at the end of May for a
garden party.  "Casual, Mom, okay?  Low-key.  Quiche and salad."  The
week leading up to it was calm and pleasant.  William was fun to be
with, and even though the sex between them was not fantastic, sleeping
with him, waking with him, felt terrific.  No longer being even vaguely
tempted to sleep with Nicky was even better.

She met William in Olema a couple of times, and he took her to places
he loved--the Bear Valley Trail in Point Reyes for a hike, the Station
House Cafe for popovers.  Finally the day of the party came.

Mattie and Daniel had taken Lewis to church that morning.  It was a
warm, clear day, and the service was wonderful.  The pastor told a
story about a woman who asked her minister whether everyone she loved
would be in heaven.

"What will make it heaven," said the minister, "is that you'll love
everyone who is there."

The wisteria had gone nuts, as it always did in late springtime.  In
March it had looked gritchy and twiggy and crucified, disturbing the
symmetry of the fence, and then it exploded into Oriental craziness,
like a garish beaded curtain.  The yard would have been a perfect
setting for a garden party if it had not begun to drizzle.

So they moved the party indoors.  She and William had a glass of wine
before everyone arrived.  Nicky had promised to return the children at
four, before the party began, so they had the house to themselves.  She
did not want him to show up after the party started, because Isa could
be counted on to be unpleasant.  Nicky wasn't the point anymore.  She'd
asked Al and Katherine to pick up Isa and Lewis at four-thirty.

She and William made soup, tomato and mozzarella salad, and bread with
the bread machine.  Mozart played softly in the background on a boom
box.  By four-thirty, Nicky had still not come by.  When Mattie called,
her anxiety mounting, he answered the phone with great irritation in
his voice.  He and Lee were having a fight, and Alexander was
screaming.  Was there any way she could come get the children?

"No," she snapped.  "I have people arriving.  God damn it, Nicky.  You
promised."  You said, she heard herself whine.

"Fine," he said, and hung up.  Everybody at the party seemed to share
his fine mood.  Al's face had the cold, stiff look of someone who had
been out on the bay too long.  Isa came in on Lewis's arm.  They had
both dressed for a funeral.  Lewis wore his black suit, and looked like
her personal mortician.  Isa had gone for broke, in a dark gray dress
suit, dark gray heels, dark gray hat.  It was definitely not a garden
party outfit.  It was rhino wear; JC Penney's Charging Rhino line.

But Isa suddenly called out, "Mattie!"  so full of endearment that they
might have been meeting at an airport in a distant city, and she waved.
William and Daniel got to their feet.

Mattie took Isa's arm.  "Mom?"  she said.  "This is William.  William,
this is my mother, Isa."  They shook hands.

"I hardly recognize you," said Isa.  "You've gotten so tall."

"Isa, you haven't aged at all," William replied smoothly.  "It's good
to see you again."

Everything about him obviously pleased Isa, because she grew girlish,
giddy and animated.  Mattie watched from the controls of her spaceship,
studied her mother's face, overly made-up, paler than Mattie had ever
seen, ghostly, with gashes of blusher on her cheeks, eyeliner around
her eyes, brows scrawled on.

Isa seemed relieved to discover that William was nice-looking, polite,
and tall.  But in the blink of an eye, she started to sway and her eyes
went out of focus, and she was a dazed rhino.  She lifted her arms to
Mattie the way Ella did when she wanted her mother to pull her out of
the pool.

Everyone clustered around Isa to make sure she was okay, and the
attention helped restore her.  When the children finally arrived, Al
met them at the door to thank Nicky for bringing them home-and to keep
him from coming in.  Mattie and Katherine put food on the table.
Katherine had a knack for arranging things so they looked more
beautiful; she served food inside wreaths of nasturtiums that she had
picked in the garden, sprinkled a glitter of finely minced parsley on
the salad, doodled a design in sour cream on the soup.  William
entertained the children.  They were antsy and stuffed already from a
late lunch of Lucky Charms and Coke that Nicky had fed them.  William
got out paper and drew them mazes.

William and Al reminisced about junior high, and William got Katherine
to talk about her own school days--she had gone to a prestigious
boarding school for girls outside Boston--but did not pay much
attention to Mattie.  Things could have been a lot worse.  Isa had a
second glass of wine and got too loud but not obstreperous.  Lewis fell
asleep briefly in his chair and started to snore.  Ella had a.
stomachache, and spent twenty minutes on the toilet, straining,
grunting, mooing with discomfort.  At least she did not need Mattie to
keep her company.  From Harry's closed door came the steady

thud of something being thrown against the wall, a black hole pulsing.
Al and Isa got into a tiff about Al's weight, which was undeniably on
the rise.  Mattie endured.  She did not drink much, and looked over at
William now and then to see what he was making of her family: Al and
Isa quibbling, Lewis snoring softly, the rhythmic Edgar Allan Poe
thumps from Harry's room, Ella's terrible trumpeting from the bathroom.
William seemed fine.  This is my beautiful screwed-up family, Mattie
thought, and now you have met them all.

Several days later, Mattie headed out to the Cove to return the favor.
William's aunt Esther, his father's elder sister, was throwing a party
at her house in Sebastopol.  Her daughter, William's cousin Diana, had
driven to the superette too, the plan being that William would drive
everyone to Esther's.  Mattie sought out Ned when she arrived at the
store, and he told her how pretty she looked.  She had pinned a
gardenia to her hair, and wore a linen shift that matched her eyes.
"William's in back," he announced, "picking out a bottle of wine."  So
she went to find him, and maybe neck for a moment or two.

"Hey, Mattie, come back here a sec," said Ned.  She turned toward the
register but stopped when she saw who was with him.  "Noah"-Ned pointed
at Mattie--"here's the woman I was telling you about, your mother's old
friend."  Noah's hair was shorter than it had been the first time she'd
seen him.  It fell only an inch or so past his ears.  He had on a
Mexican wedding shirt, worn jeans, scuffed huaraches.  He looked up
tentatively and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose,
appearing so much like Neil that Mattie's heart sank.  Could it be that
Neil had really fathered his daughter's child?

But then Noah smiled at her, and she stepped back, as the room began to
tilt: this was Alfred's smile, this was her own father's smile.  She
stared into Noah's mouth, as if into a cave, at his big ivory teeth,
slightly buck, like hers and Al's before their braces, like Harry's.
"You okay?"  Noah asked kindly, and she saw her father's mouth,

and grabbed the little blue shoe in her pocket as if it were a sturdy
handrail.

Noah called for Ned and reached out to Mattie as she started to faint.
Ned called for William, who came out from the back room to greet her,
only to find Noah and Ned holding her up, the three of them rooted to
the old linoleum floor.  "Oh, my gosh, honey.  Are you okay?"  William
asked.  "You stay right here.  I'm going to get you some water."  Noah
and Ned shored her up.  Mattie turned slowly toward Noah, whose eyes
were hazel like Neil's, stricken behind the wire-rimmed glasses, but
smiling her father's encouraging smile.  He steadied her, and she felt
a rummy floating pain, a sudden memory of her father's arms around her
shoulders after an errant pitch had hit her in the head during a game
of One Old Cat on the beach at Stinson.

Noah and Ned stood beside her, not holding her up exactly but spotting
her, like coaches spotting a gymnast.  All she could think was that she
needed to get to a phone to call Al, but she remembered that William
had said to wait right there, so she did.  The smells of the store made
her think of her grandmother's house, ancient, musty, and safe, where
she could always find her grandmother's smile or her very familiar
scowl.

Mattie reached out for the braid of smells, the floor, the parsley, the
bread, and she held on.  When William returned with a cup of water,
Noah and Ned stepped back to let William take his place at Mattie's
side.

seven.

Mattie got into bed in a white nightgown, somewhere between bridal and
baptismal.  She felt like a Victorian, vaporish, consumptive.  Luckily
the kids were at Nicky's, so she could watch the news until Al
arrived.

When he did, he hurried in and pulled the rattan chair up to where she
lay under the covers.  "Noah is our brother," she said, as if telling
him something simple.  Al studied her.  "Daddy was his father.  He has
his teeth, exactly.  Our teeth."

Al mulled this over.  He went to stand at the window.  He looked like
someone with back trouble carrying the problems of the world.  She
thought he was crying, so she got herself out of bed and went to stand
beside him.  He was staring at the garden.  They stood at the window
with their arms around each other.  Outside the sun played
hide-and-seek through the rain clouds dropping its light onto the

grass and the garden, then ducking behind the gray clouds, bright,
dark, bright, very dark, as if playing peek-a-boo with King Lear.

They spent the day in conversation, Mattie in bed, Al alternately at
the window and slouched in the chair.  He wanted to drive to the Cove
and introduce himself to Noah right away, but Mattie said no.  What
made him think they had the right to foist their need for discovery
onto Noah?  They went back and forth, Ping-Pong players defending their
positions.

"I'm not doing anything until I know what to do," Mattie insisted.

"I need to verify this, though," Al said.  "I'd like to see those
teeth."

"So go see the teeth, then," said Mattie.  "You can see him at the
library on Saturdays."

Al worried his hands like a fretful infant.  "Do you think Isa knew all
this time?"

"Maybe, in some limbic way," Mattie said.  "But let's not tell everyone
else, Al."

"Nobody?"

"Just Katherine, for you, and Daniel and Angela, for me.  Till we know
what we're doing."

"What about William?  You'll have to tell him eventually."

Mattie considered this, and realized with a start how little she wanted
to share with William.  "He lives in the same town," she said, "and
he's a terrible gossip.  So's Ned.  He always says, "Promise not to
tell?"  And Ned had some kind of friendly bond with Abby."

Mattie stayed in bed all Saturday with the cats and did not go to
church the next day.  She told Daniel she was coming down with
something, and asked him to take Lewis to church.  Daniel came over
after the service with chicken soup from Whole Foods.  "I'm worried
about you.  This is the first time you've missed church in I don't know
how long."

"I told you, I'm coming down with something."

"I'm not sure I believe you."

"You won't believe what's true either," she said.  And then she told
him.

He looked at her as if he had not heard right.  "What?"  She told him
again, and his face crumpled.  He pulled his chair closer to the bed so
that he could take her hands in his.  He bowed his head, and held their
hands together as if in prayer.  "God almighty," he whispered.

He heated the soup for them, opened a can of mandarin oranges, and
brought it all on a tray with the little blue shoe, which had been on
the kitchen table.  They lay together on the bed most of the day and
watched old movies on TV.

"Your daddy had a big secret," Daniel said.  "I can't imagine what that
must have been like.  My childhood was so different--me and my mom, and
my iguanas, in our little apartment.  Pretty curtains, toaster cozies,
lots of plants, and cousins.  But no dad.  I always thought if my dad
would come back, we'd be all right.  But we actually were all right,
more or less."

"Well, we had my dad around, but he had other women.  I don't know how
Al and I knew that, but we did.  My dad was a very sexy guy--maybe he
was rapacious, I don't know.  So he never left, but he was never really
there either."

"Is it okay to tell Pauline?"

"Of course.  Go ahead, and tell her I wanted her to know."

Isa called late Sunday afternoon.  She did not notice how quiet and
weak Mattie's voice was.  "Nobody loves me," she sobbed.  Nobody
returns my calls.  No one has called me in a week."

I called you this morning," Mattie said.  "I'm down with some sort of
bug."

"You didn't call me.  I waited by the phone all day."  "Mom.  I called.
And Al talked to you at Lewis's yesterday.  Lewis ate supper and took
you downstairs to hear the Schubert quintet."  Was that yesterday?
Well.  That doesn't get you off the hook."

"What hook!"  Mattie shouted.  "I called!  I'm sick!"  She hung up.
Isa called back an hour later.  "Darling," she said, breathlessly,
"Lewis says you weren't in church."

The children came home after dinner that night and seemed happy to find
their mother in bed.  The three cats lay beside her.  Harry and Ella
kicked off their shoes and crawled in, mauling the cats.

Mattie put the blue shoe, which she'd been clutching, on the
nightstand, and hugged and kissed her dirty, marvelous children.

Nicky appeared in the doorway.  "You okay?"  She nodded.  "Can I get
you anything?"  She shook her head.  Harry was thrusting papers at her.
She reached for them.  They were drawings of people, columns of
numbers.  "Mattie?"  She looked up from the drawings.  Nicky walked to
a chair and sat down.

"What is it, Nicky?"  she implored, reaching for his arm.

"Lee and I are expecting again."

"I'm going to have a little baby sister," Ella announced.  Mattie
turned slowly toward the sound of her voice.  Ella's hair was clipped
into sprouts with barrettes, fountains of sunlight.  Her floral-frame
glasses gave her the look of a secretarial kitten gone punk.  Her nails
were painted light pink, and then Mattie saw they had been chewed to
the quick.  Mattie heard Nicky say her name, but she reached for one of
Ella's hands, which had been chewed at like artichoke leaves, with
pricks of blood.  Ella balled her hand into a fist.

"Oh, honey," Mattie said.  Ella looked at her, beseeching.

"I'm going to name my baby sister Poem," she cried.

Mattie had chewed her nails too as a child, but not at five years old.
She watched with a kind of grief in the next few days as Ella's habit
took hold.  She nibbled frequently and furtively at her nails,
driving

toward the vulnerable pink beneath.  Mattie made herself not mention
it.  She remembered the look of disgust on Isa's face when she first
discovered Mattie's mutilated nails: Poor Isa, Mattie thought ruefully
now, her son blowing things up in the backyard, her daughter eating her
own hands, her husband up to God knows what, with who knows who, this
poor damaged, betrayed woman who did such good work for so many. Mattie
remembered looking up at her mother from behind the fan of ruined
fingers, how it hid her mouth, kept her from saying the wrong thing. 
She remembered also the animal pleasure, the trance and satisfaction of
grooming, the nibble, the salty bead of blood, pleasure right on the
edge of hurt.

Couldn't you go back to twiddling your belly button?  she wanted to ask
Ella, but she didn't mention the nail biting at all.  The belly button
had seemed so innocuous and tender, while the nail biting made her
cuticles bleed.  Ella looked like she was slowly eating herself, trying
to erase herself from the picture.

Days passed.  Mattie scared William into staying away by coughing
whenever he called.  She didn't want to tell him the secret of Noah.
Harry and Ella kept her company in bed.  Ella colored in her Little
Mermaid coloring books and Harry drew.  His drawings were becoming more
and more precise.  He had already completed plans for a swimming pool
submarine, a catapult, and a robot.  The robot had two names, depending
on his mood.  When he and it were happy, it was Enon.  When he was mad,
it was Bruton.

On Thursday morning Mattie woke up, got the children off to school, and
then did not crawl back into bed.  This she considered major progress.
When she was dressed, she tucked the little shoe into the pocket of her
jeans.  She recoiled from images of her father, spat at his memory. She
saw him now as irredeemable, a proven pedophile, even as she remembered
standing on his wingtips while he waltzed her around the room, even as
she remembered being on his shoulders, dressed in a panda costume,
walking through this

neighborhood on Halloween, with Al bounding ahead, door to door,
Alfred's hands holding her ankles firmly.  Mattie felt a pang of
anxious compassion for Isa: people must have known that Alfred was
unfaithful.  This was a town where telephone lines hummed with reports
of affairs and divorces.  They used to call it "wandering," when it was
another couple, as in, "Charlie's wandering was always painful for
Marcy."  "Painful" did not do it justice.  When Nicky had been
unfaithful with those students, it had felt like the jungles of Vietnam
inside Mattie.  Isa, on the phone years before, would glow with
horrified pleasure at news of fresh scandals and subsequent divorce,
while elsewhere in town people must have been getting off on the gossip
about Alfred.  Had people at the Cove known about Abby and Noah?  Had
people in the town?  Had Isa?

Mattie prayed about Noah, wishing she could welcome him into her
family--she could call him Poem!  Her children could have a brand-new
uncle.  But this would hurt them, set the mobile of their lives
spinning and tangling.

She never left the house anymore without the blue shoe.  She was
getting a little funny, dissociated, dreamy.  The color of the shoe
reminded her from time to time of a turquoise-blue washtub she'd seen
on an altar near Oaxaca, before she got pregnant with Harry.  She and
Nicky had been camping on a beach beneath the stars, and one Sunday
morning they'd wandered into the nearest town, with its low-slung huts,
depressed dogs slinking around, and people dressed in their finest.
"Iglesia?"  Nicky asked an old woman selling mangoes on sticks, bright
as torches against dust, and she pointed up the road.  Mattie bought a
mango from her, cut into tiers like an artichoke.  She carried it in
front of her like the Olympic flame, and then she and Nicky sat on the
steps of the church and ate it together as they waited for the service
to begin.

Inside, during the mass, Spanish words and songs bur bled over them
like a brook.  Midway through the service, the priest stopped

and said something to his congregation that included an amused
"anglos," and people tittered and murmured.  Turning to Mattie and
Nicky, holding his hands to his heart, the priest said, in English,
"One life, given for all."  Nicky, who was not a believer, wept.  The
woman sitting next to him, who was clutching a coffee-stained paper
napkin, tore it carefully and handed half to Nicky.  On the altar was a
turquoise-blue plastic tub, the kind you would wash dishes in if you
lived in a tiny apartment.  At the end of the service, the priest
carried the tub into the congregation and pulled out a bright red rose,
wet from water in the tub.  He dripped the rose in the water again and
again, and baptized both of them: Nicky and Mattie.

Mattie took Isa to the doctor the day before she and Al planned to go
out to the Cove again.  Everyone had called her with concerns about Isa
that week.  Lewis, close to tears, said that Isa seemed drugged with
confusion.  The woman at the front desk at The Sequoias informed that
she had wandered away one night.  The social worker who looked after
the lower-income seniors, who said she was used to the fogginess and
foibles of her charges, had reported something "really off" with Isa.
"Also, she's incontinent.  It could be a bladder infection," said the
social worker.  "I would take her to the doctor."

Isa was weak and cross when Mattie picked her up.  In the car, she
referred to William as Phil, and claimed not to have spoken to Mattie
in more than a week.  But in the doctor's office she was clear and
animated, witty, coquettish.  She remembered the name of the president,
and the minutiae of that morning's major news stories.  It was as if
she had memorized the front page of the paper.

Al greeted Noah at the front desk of the library when he and Mattie
entered, and Noah gestured pleasantly to a man reading in an easy

chair, so that Al would know to speak quietly.  "Are you okay?"  Noah
asked Mattie, and she nodded, cringing at the memory of having nearly
fainted at the superette.

"I just had a little bug or something," she whispered.

"Good," Noah said, nodding.  "Well, let me know if you need
anything."

Mattie noticed Al trying to sneak a glimpse into Noah's mouth.  But his
full lips covered his teeth, so Al smiled awkwardly and walked to the
fiction shelves.  Mattie, who had covered her nose while saying hello,
as if to stifle a sneeze, headed to history.  She didn't want Noah to
notice her nose--his father's nose--and yelp with recognition.  Mattie
spied on him through the stacks.  Once they looked at each other at the
same moment; he flushed, and looked down.

He had big puppy hands, which he raked through his shaggy hair and with
which he palmed his face when he spoke.  When someone needed a book
checked out or a question answered, he listened without making much eye
contact, staring off with a look of grave attention into the middle
distance, nodding so the person knew he was listening.  A skateboard
was propped against the wall behind his chair.  When he got up to help
a patron find something, Mattie noticed that he had small, almost
dwarfish feet for such a tall, lanky man; he was wearing battered
running shoes.

Mattie sidled up to Al, who was spying on Noah through the space above
the thrillers section.  "Okay?"  she whispered.

"He won't open his mouth."

She walked Al to the desk as if he were a child who needed help getting
his first library card.  "This is a great little place," she whispered
to Noah.  He smiled.

She reported everything to Daniel, who dropped by for a visit that
night.  He listened without interrupting.

"Your brother has little goat feet?"  he asked, and she nodded.  He
drew back, grimaced.  She smiled.  "Like a dwarf?"  Mattie nodded
vigorously.  Daniel pondered this.  "Like little hooves?"

I miss you," William said when he called Mattie that evening.  "Whatcha
doing?"

"Oh, not much.  Can you come over?"  He did, and it was great to see
him, to eat, and watch TV, and make love.  She desperately wanted to
tell him about Noah--but again, she didn't.  He always had gossip about
people they'd seen at the store or the beach, who seemed like lovely,
ordinary people.  She held the secret of Noah in her pocket, like the
blue shoe, or a live grenade.

At church one Sunday, during the Prayers of the People, Mattie said out
loud, "I'm asking prayers for my mother, Isa, who seems to have
something wrong with her mind.  I'm asking prayers for my children,
whose father is having another baby with his new wife.  I'm asking
prayers for me and my brother, that we can come to know God's will. And
I pray for a man named Noah."  She said his name in public for the
first time, in the grave and tender silence of church.

Lee was starting to show.  Mattie saw her whenever she dropped off the
children.  She'd become more beautiful as her belly expanded.  She
still had the fake burr, but it was growing fainter.  One Saturday
morning when Mattie dropped the kids off at Nicky and Lee's, Ella clung
to Mattie so tightly that Mattie had to pry her hands off her neck to
set her down on the manicured lawn.  "You're a big girl now," Isa would
have scolded Mattie, if she, at five, had been so

clingy; but anyone in his right mind could see that Ella was just a
little girl.  Alexander looked even more like Harry now.  It was
devastating to Mattie to see in another child the specific miracle of
her son's own face.  It pierced her.

Isa no longer showered daily.  She smelled like wild onions--another
thing stolen from Mattie: her mother's smell--African violets, tea, and
almonds.  Isa needed even more help now, four or five hours a week.
Mattie and Al kept putting off dealing with it, though, hating to break
the news to Isa, not to mention dreading the added expense.  Lewis
broached the topic with Mattie.  He met her for a walk in front of The
Sequoias.  They went along the salt marsh, Lewis pushing his walker.
"The good Lord will take care of Isa," he said.  "But we must help too.
I have fifteen dollars a week to contribute.  That will buy one hour.
You and Al must pay for two each.  I have taken this to the Lord in
prayer, and I have received my answer--five more hours of assistance
per week."  Mattie was amazed at his certainty and his initiative.  His
pants were flecked with food but his mind was unblemished.  "Okay," she
said.  There were wren tits singing from leafy branches, red-winged
blackbirds everywhere.  They hired a woman named Mai to help around the
apartment, clean, do laundry, be there when Isa showered in case she
fell.  Mattie felt as if she had a new baby, someone to keep clean and
safe from falling: Isa was her eternity, scrolling back to the womb and
beyond, scrolling forward into God knew how many years of decline.

William came over every couple of nights, and he and Mattie talked a
few times every day.  Still she did not tell him about Noah.  She had
been tempted to, but a caution inside her persuaded her to hold her
tongue.  It gave her a sense of power to withhold the information,

and the secret, in turn, hardened her heart against William's
charms.

They pulled away from each other but didn't discuss the idea of
breaking up.  He receded periodically, like a tide; she waited for his
return.  She preferred to be with Daniel.  William had a certain
hostility toward women.  He ogled the young, Mattie began to notice and
made fun of older women.  He was friends with many women he'd been
involved with, and believed that this reflected well on him, but would
say bad things about them to Mattie.  He sometimes mocked their taste
in music, or mentioned their sexual incompatibility, as if this
reflected well on Mattie.

But Mattie liked having a boyfriend.  She also liked not sleeping with
Micky.  William filled the bed; he was a talisman against her
ex-husband.  She liked having someone to hold hands with at the movies.
She and William liked the same books, and music.  They shared the same
liberal politics, although he fancied himself more of a radical than
she because he didn't even bother to vote.  She liked talking with him
on the phone.  She liked obsessing less about Daniel.  Maybe William
didn't have faith; maybe he didn't have that deep visible soul, was
not, when push came to shove, her soul mate, like Daniel, or Angela, or
Al.  Still, he was usually good company.

Pauline called one night to say she and Daniel were going to see Mark
Morris, how about a double dater

On the night of the performance, Mattie got all dolled up in her
fanciest vintage dress.  With Daniel and Pauline she had arranged to
meet William in San Rafael.  He was standing under a streetlight
outside the Double Rainbow ice cream shop, handsome in a black wool
jacket and white shirt.  Pauline gave a whoosh of appreciation when
Mattie pointed him out, and Mattie felt a wave of happiness in having a
good-looking boyfriend.

They ate near the Marines Memorial Theatre.  Pauline's skin

glowed, and her hair was piled on top of her head, tendrils flowing
out everywhere.  "I love modern dance," she said.  "Alvin Ailey most of
all.  I love how those long-legged dancers carry the line with the
least possible interference."

"That's a great way to put it," said William.  Daniel glanced at
Mattie.

Pauline could seem so brilliant, so un depressed Mattie thought.  She
watched her speak, noticed too how Daniel looked at her with pride.
Glancing at William, she could see that he was mesmerized.

"Have you seen Mark Morris before?"  Pauline asked.

"Never," William admitted.  "But I know he's considered a genius."

"He is.  But prepare yourself.  He's--what's the word, Daniel?"

"Elephantine?"  Daniel said.

"Don't be smart, darling."  Pauline turned back to William.  "He's a
wild man.  There are all kinds of body types you won't have seen
onstage before--stocky women, dark and muscular men running to fat,
maybe one or two with long legs and high asses, going bald, in drag."

"I can't wait," he said.  "I've always wanted to see him."

But when Mark Morris came out alone onstage for the first dance, with
his swirly, curly hair and paunch, hammy legs with feet that managed to
point, William drew his head close to Mattie and whispered, "Good
Lord!"  She tried to focus on the dance: I am what I am, Morris seemed
to be saying, and I am going to share what I am, revel in it, and maybe
then you will be able to revel in you too.  William looked skeptical
and appalled.

"I'm a bad boyfriend," he said at the bar during intermission.

"No, no," said Mattie, "you're actually a good boyfriend."

"I just love ballet," he told Pauline.  "So can you help me learn how
to love Mark Morris?"

Pauline began speaking to William with showy passion.  Daniel and
Mattie ended up playing hangman at the bar.  They exchanged secret
glances, like bad kids.  They drank cheap wine and she felt

flirty.  Maybe Pauline and William could fall in love, drink fine
wine, and not believe in God together.

In bed with William that night, Mattie tumbled out with it: "Why isn't
it exhilarating to you that while everyone is usually so busy creeping
around politely, being thin and healthy, cleaning up messes before
anyone can see them, here's Mark Morris celebrating messes and
appetites and middle age and fat butts?"

"Maybe those aren't good things to celebrate," he said.  She felt
stung.

He seemed so constrained, so neatly trimmed, someone who'd been doing
topiary with his soul all his life.  They lay in the dark, dozing off.
He smelled to her like an old iron heating up on an ironing board.

When Mattie went to pick Isa up for dinner a few nights later, she
found her lying on the floor of her apartment.  Her pants were wet.

"Mom!"  Mattie cried.

The children gathered around, and Harry, who'd seen police shows on TV,
started shouting for people to give her air.  He threw open the
windows.

Isa sat up as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on.  She
refused to believe that she had fallen.  It was simply that she had
skipped lunch, and weakness had come over her, she explained.  Mattie
pulled her to her feet, and Isa went to look for her purse.  "Mom!"
said Mattie.  "I don't think we should go out.  I think we should have
some nice soup right here."  She knew that she was speaking slowly, as
though talking to a half-wit.  Isa pleaded, she'd been looking forward
to going out all day.  And so Mattie led her mother to the bathroom,
purposeful, as she had once led her children to the toilet when they
were potty training, and helped her wash and change into dry underpants
and trousers.

At Denny's, Isa ate dreamily, her pinkie in the air.  From time to

 time she looked up and around at the children, hunched over their
drawings, puzzled by their presence here as if Denny's now let dogs sit
on its banquettes.  The circles of Isa's mind were breaking free and
floating away, like stages of a rocket dropping away on blastoff.

"Could we have a neurologist examine her?"  Mattie asked Dr.  Brodkey
over the phone the next day.

"Yes," she replied.  "But I'd recommend that we put it off awhile. 
Once we open that door it's hard to get it closed again entirely."

"That door--what?--of having her diagnosed?  Wouldn't a CAT scan give
you more information about what's up?  And what you could do to help
her?"

"It's an expensive procedure," the doctor explained.  "I'm not sure we
can get it authorized."

"But she was on the floor when I got there.  She's incontinent."

"All right, then.  Bring her to my office again.  Let's see what's
going on."

At Dr.  Brodkey's office, Isa was bright and warm, answering every
challenge tossed her way--counting backward from one hundred by sevens,
remembering the words to the national anthem and the name of the
doctor's grandchild.  By the time Mattie got her home and set out a
simple dinner for her, Isa was all but speaking baby talk.  Mattie put
her in her easy chair in front of the TV, with a glass of cool water on
the table beside her, the remote, her glasses, the phone, and some
grapes to tide her over.  Isa kept looking up at her as if she were a
painting crookedly hung.  "Is the thing with the--you know--the light
in it working?  Could you do the thing where you do it?"

After a brief interrogation, Mattie figured out that Isa wanted the TV
on.

"I feel like we're falling down the rabbit hole," Mattie told Al the
next time she saw him.  "With Brodkey, she's totally lucid, and with
us, she's like Shirley Temple on Quaaludes.  I don't know what's real
anymore.  I think she's usually the way she is around us--confused.

It's like the late, great Philip K. Dick said.  "Reality is that
which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.""

Mattie spent the weekend working with Daniel in the garden, planting
tomatoes and building cages around them to keep the deer away.  Pauline
had gone off again, spending the weekend in the city at a film festival
with friends.  Daniel was distant, concentrating too hard.

"What do you think's going on?"  Mattie asked finally.

"I don't know.  If she wants to spend the weekend inside in the dark
watching movies, fine.  I want to be out in the sun.  Maybe it's my
imagination, but she pulled away from me when you and William started
going out.  Isn't that odd?"  He dug a hole for a tomato plant.  "Can I
tell you something?  Maybe you'll think I'm crazy.  But I've been
thinking about getting an iguana for a long time.  Because I think an
iguana would be good company."

"Oh."  They stopped working and sat in the shade, swilling apple juice.
"Did you just say you wanted to get an iguana?"  He nodded.  He'd had
several iguanas as a boy.  Pets were not allowed in the apartment where
he and his mother had lived, but she'd let him keep iguanas.  He'd had
one named Flor and one named Andy.  A month ago, he found a man selling
iguanas at the flea market in Sonoma.  "It's been a dream of mine
lately, like other men might want a model train," he said, and Mattie
nodded as if he was making sense now, really cooking with gas.

After church the next day, they drove to the flea market and purchased
a year-old iguana, which Daniel named Otis.  "How's Pauline going to be
with this?"  Mattie asked.  Daniel shrugged.  She herself was a little
afraid of Otis.  He was all ridges, green scales, lots of Hashes of
turquoise, bright eyes.  The man at the Oca market had sold Daniel a
long glass box with a mesh top, which had an opening lined in tinfoil
into which you could insert a heat lamp.  On the way home

they bought a collar and leash at a pet store; the man at the flea
market had told them that iguanas like to go for walks on leashes.

Mattie could not imagine that Pauline would want or agree to an iguana.
Maybe she would catch salmonella, which iguanas sometimes carry. Maybe
she'd make Daniel pick between Otis and her, and he'd pick Otis--and
Mattie.  Perhaps Mattie could learn to love Otis.  She hadn't
considered reptiles pets before.  Show me someone on the street with a
boa around his neck, she thought, and I'll show you a very angry
person.

They all drove to Daniel's and set up Otis's glass cage in the living
room.

When Pauline came home the next day, her screams could be heard four
houses away, according to Daniel.  He showed up at Mattie's with Otis
and the glass cage in his car.  Harry was home from school by then, and
he cried out with joy when he saw the iguana at their house.

"But I don't want an iguana either," Mattie said.  Harry and Daniel
stood begging like puppies.

"Please, Mama.  Please, Mama."

"Please, Mat."

So she said yes, because she wanted Daniel and Harry to love her.  This
also gave her a good excuse to call William.

"Want to come over and see my new iguana?"  she asked.

There was a long pause.  "Okay," said William.

When he showed up that evening, there was much fuss and fascination
with Otis.  He was like a miniature dragon, a memento of prehistory.

Al could not believe she now had an iguana.  He knew she was deeply
afraid of reptiles.  "Boy, you really do love Daniel, don't you?"  he
said over the phone.  "Tell me all about the little bugger."

"Well... he's a very strange creature.  He usually doesn't move or

 respond, except to have these terrible episodes from time to time
where he tears around his cage like a balloon losing air, spewing these
thin white ribbons of shit."

"Well, you gotta love that," said Al.

"He's like an elegant and vaguely hostile scrap of leather."

"Sort of like Mom?"

Mattie laughed.  "Harry adores him.  He says, "Oh, Otis, you are such a
good little iguana.""

Otis brought the family closer together.  So much was going on all at
once--Noah's invisible presence in their house, Isa's deterioration,
Lee's pregnancy.  One day after Otis had a terrible episode, Harry came
to sit in Mattie's lap while she read in her rattan chair.  He'd
watched Otis carefully after the outburst, he told her.  She sat with
him in silence.  "I'm very worried about Otis," he said after a while,
near tears.  "I think he may have done something to his mind."

In between bouts of madness, Otis was as basic as it got: stare, stare,
lie on hot rock, stare, sneak to other end of cage, stare.  Mattie
wondered idly if he might be a spy.  She had heard a local comedian
once say that he thought people with Down's syndrome were spies for
God, and she wondered if Otis might be one too.  She could not see a
single redeeming quality in him, except that Harry loved him so.  Maybe
she just preferred pets who sucked up to you.

"I'm going to get an iguana for my boy when I grow up," Harry said.

"How do you know you're going to have a son?

"Well, I want a boy," Harry replied.  "I'd know how to work a boy."

Whenever Mattie went to the Cove to visit William, she looked for Noah
too.  Whenever she saw him on foot or on skateboard, she'd stop to
watch him, like a stalker.  She bumped into him at Ned's store and they
said hello.  She glanced into his basket and saw the makings



for a Thai meal--noodles and fish sauce, lemongrass, a can of coconut
milk, some tofu, red chilies, basil, some limes.  Ned told her,
"Whenever he goes traveling, he comes home and starts making the food
of wherever he's been.  When he went to India, he learned to make all
their curries and flat breads and dal.  That's a beautiful child," Ned
said.  "I love that kid."

Noah was polite, careful, kind, and shy, easygoing, reserved.  Mattie
covertly watched him play basketball with some other young men one
Saturday afternoon at the school on the edge of town.  People gathered
on the bleachers to watch them play; Mattie watched from her car.  The
men moved with balance and poise, like a street gang who had taken up
ballet, but Noah was the most graceful of all.  He could maneuver past
other players, using moves he must have learned on the skateboard,
Huidly darting and weaving, skating for daylight, parting the sea of
crouching legs, faking with a move to the right so he could come in for
a basket on the left.

She went to the library again with Al.  Noah was at his desk, checking
in books.  He looked up and smiled nervously.  Al walked off toward the
biographies.  Mattie lost herself in fiction.  They watched each other
watching him, over dusty spaces in the stacks.

Noah looked up at the two of them when they walked toward the door. Had
they found everything they needed:

Al nodded.  "What are you reading?"

Noah held up a paperback on his desk.  Revolutionary Road, by Richard
Yates.  "It's my favorite book."

It had been a favorite of Alfred's too.  Noah ran his fingers through
his hair a number of times until it stood straight up in a tuft on his
head.  "I've never read it," Mattie said.  Al picked up a long rubber
band and began threading it across the fingers of both hands, as if
making a cat's cradle.

"It's about loneliness," Noah said.  "All these people in families,
trying to connect and love each other, but they can't get it to work.

 It's about sad lies.  You need to read it.  Everybody should.  It's
the best book in the world."

So she and Al did.  She read it with Noah and her father in mind.  It
was so great that it made her a little crazy.

Nights in mid-June stayed light forever, and were sometimes so warm you
could hardly sleep, sometimes cold enough to require a blanket.  Some
nights Mattie went to sleep in a T-shirt and underpants, covered with a
sheet, and woke to rising fog, the willows outside her window tossing
like restless sleepers.

One morning when Harry and Ella were still at Nicky's, Mattie went in
to plug in Otis's heat lamp.  He looked more still than usual.  He
looked utterly dead.  She wasn't positive, so she lifted the lid off
his cage to nudge him, and realized she was too afraid to touch him.

She fetched some chopsticks and nudged him with them.  He seemed to be
in the later stages of rigor mortis.  She cried out.  She called Daniel
and asked if he could come over right away to help her.  Then she paged
the vet.  It was eight o'clock on a Sunday morning and he sounded
tired.  "I think Harry's iguana has died, or is dying," she said.  He
offered to meet her at the office.

Daniel showed up not long after.  He picked Otis up and set him back
down.  "Roy, he's really dead.  Poor Harry.  Poor Otis."  Daniel placed
him in a shoe box through which Mattie had gamely poked some holes.

In the car they were silent, crushed on Harry's behalf.

The vet lifted Otis out of the box and set him on a towel on the
examination table.  Otis lay still, looking small and pathetic and
touching, like a guy with a sunken chest other men would jeer at.  The
vet examined Otis on one side, then turned him over.  Otis was on his
back.  The vet put his stethoscope on Otis's puny chest.  The steel
circle of the stethoscope was almost wider than Otis.  The vet

 closed his eyes and concentrated, as if he were Christiaan Barnard
considering a difficult case.  After a moment he admitted, "I don't
actually know what I'm listening for.  But he's definitely alive."

Mattie's heart leapt.  "Really'" she asked breathlessly, hardly daring
to hope.

"Shouldn't you take his temperature?"  Daniel smiled meanly.  The vet
handed him the thermometer, and he drew back.

"Is this your first iguana?"  Mattie asked.

"Yes."  He stroked Otis for a while, then turned him over onto his
stomach.  Otis blinked, and looked around.  He took one step, then
another.

"Oh my God," Mattie whispered.  "This is like being at Lourdes."

They sat side by side in front of Otis's cage, watching him as you
might watch TV.  Every time Otis moved, she and Daniel smiled, as
though they were watching their baby sleep.  "I'm so happy," Daniel
said sadly.  She saw that his head had dropped as if in prayer, and
then she became aware that he was moving closer to her.  She believed
he might put his arm around her.

His arm was on the couch behind them, but his hand had moved.  His arm
hung in the air for an instant.  Then he lowered it across her back.
His hand cupped the round of one shoulder, the way a hand might cup the
head of an infant, the fullest a hand could ever be.

"That was a beautiful thing you did for Harry," Daniel told Mattie. His
hand was still on her shoulder.  When he lifted it, she couldn't
believe her shoulder hadn't turned to silver.

When William came over that night, he was in a state of testy
exhaustion.  Mattie felt metallic with PMS, lonely and needy.  William
swiftly disappeared into her bedroom to rest before dinner.  Harry was
pitching cards into a salad bowl in his bedroom.  She left

them both alone as long as she could, playing with Ella outside,
helping her make a village in the dirt with acorns and pine needles,
broken glass, bits of plastic.  They paved the streets with patio
gravel, and Ella made a campfire circle of pebbles, with torn red rose
petals for flames, while Mattie worried about William.  When she
couldn't bear worrying anymore, she went inside to hear about his day.
She stepped into her room, expecting to find him resting, but found him
on the phone instead.  When she caught his eye, he said into the
receiver, "Just a sec."  Then he looked up at her as if she were a
salesperson.  "Whatcha need?"  he asked.

She told him she didn't need anything.  In the hallway she heard him
say softly, "So go on."  She felt that something frightening was
happening.  She went back into her room and stretched out on the bed on
her side, then stared at him plaintively, so he really had no choice
but to get off the phone.  He apologized to whoever it was, and
promised to call back later.

Mattie asked, in a child's high, worried voice, "Who was that?"

William sighed.  "I can't do this tonight," he said.  "I'm too tired."
He got to his feet while Mattie dug her fingernails so deeply into her
scalp that she knew there were indents and maybe even blood.

"Don't go," she said with her eyes squinched shut.  "I'm tired.  I need
to be with you."

"All I want," he said tersely from the doorway, "is to come here after
a long day at work and lie down for a while.  Talk to a friend on the
phone, kick back.  Then I'll want to be with you and the children, and
help make some dinner, and catch up with you when we can be alone.  Is
that so fucking much to ask?"

Mattie took a series of rabbity breaths.  "But you seem to be having
this secret phone call."

"Secret phone call?  Jesus."  He sank into the chair cushions.  "If I
wanted to have a secret phone call, I wouldn't have it from your
fucking bed."

She tried to hold it back, but the sentence cascaded out.  "Nicky

 always did."  William heaved another sigh.  Desperation rose inside
her, and she went to sit at his feet like a dog.  She put her head
against his knees and held her breath, and after a long, long moment,
he began to rub her head gently.  Mattie's mind swirled with fearful
scenes of his leaving and what a bad night it would be.  He stroked her
head and made sounds of exasperation, the way she did when Harry or
Ella was up in the middle of the night, when she herself was desperate
for sleep.

As in an epiphany, she suddenly saw the way to keep him here tonight,
to have him drop all current charges.  She said softly, "There's
something I need to tell you."  She took a breath and looked up into
his worried face.  "You're never going to believe this," she said.  She
tried to swallow what she was about to say, tried to think of a decoy.
Please don't let me tell William, she prayed.

"How bad can it be?"  She groaned, and then she told him.

"What?"  he said.

She nodded, miserably, so afraid he would be angry with her for keeping
the secret from him.  She covered her face with her hands and kept
nodding.  His face shifted from angry to concerned.  He helped her to
her feet.  He put his arms around her and nuzzled the side of her cheek
the way she did when her children were afraid, and a few moments later
she began to feel a little better.

eight.

Late June was supposed to be tender and verdant and mild, a cheerleader
for summer.  The promise of June was supposed to signal, "Oh, we're
going to have such fun!"  But May's winds, which were supposed to stop,
never did.  There were conditions from all the wrong seasons, mixed up
together--too much heat one week, and when that passed, the fog
returned, grim, gray, biting.  Then it was glorious for a few days,
mild and blue, until the winds of spring, and two days of rain.  "Ha!
I'm deep summer.  Ha!  Now a winter storm.  Ha!  I'm windy spring,
whooo, whooo."

Life in June and early July mimicked the weather: wind, rain, glorious
heat, fog, blue skies.  Mattie had more money.  Nicky finally made
associate professor, with tenure and a raise, and could offer her three
hundred dollars more a month.  And Ned hired her to work for fifteen
hours a week at the store at a decent hourly wage.  She

 liked it there, stacking fruit, ringing up groceries when Ned stepped
out, sweeping, freshening up the place in general, chasing dogs
outside.  Ned loved her, and she was fond of him, and she loved the way
he smelled, like a blanket.  He let her pick the radio station that
played during the day, and so she could listen to NPR and get paid. 
Ned gave her groceries at a great discount.  She overheard the latest
gossip; everyone seemed to tell Ned everything.

Noah came in from time to time, and she would ask him about books. Then
he would disappear for a while.  There would be a substitute at the
library, who never knew where Noah had gone.  "Oh, you know how Noah
is," she'd tell Mattie, gaily.  Things with William were just barely
okay.  She wasn't in love with him any longer, and he wasn't in love
with her.  Still, she mostly liked having him around.  She liked his
looks, his relationship with his father, and the store, and she liked
that because of him, she no longer slept with Nicky.  It bothered her
when she felt she was using William, but her conscience did not force
her to give him up.  She liked it when old friends saw her with him for
the first time at the movies or a restaurant; Angela referred to him as
Mattie's beard.  Her children liked his presence in their lives too--he
had the basics down: he could draw and play catch.  He took Harry and
his friends to macho movies that Mattie refused to see. Maybe it made
the children feel more secure that their mother was capable of
acquiring a nice-looking boyfriend.  Whenever Mattie thought about
breaking things off, she'd have a pleasant time with him, and she'd
decide to let things ride a while longer.

Isa fell again, and Dr.  Brodkey finally agreed to schedule a CAT scan.
When the results were in, Dr.  Brodkey showed Mattie and Al areas of
her brain that looked more like Swiss cheese than gray matter.  Isa was
definitely having infarcts, the doctor said.

"What an ugly word," said Al.  "And what does it all mean?"

Dr.  Brodkey pointed to spots on the X ray.  "It means strokes big
enough to knock out a small lake of brain tissue, called a lacuna.

They leave behind dead brain tissue, which the body converts to scar
tissue.  So she loses mental ground.  The good news," Dr.  Brodkey said
somberly, "is that it's not Alzheimer's."

"And that's good news because..."  Al sounded skeptical.  "Because
there are medications for what she has," the doctor replied.  "We'll
start her out on Coumadin, an anticoagulant.  A blood thinner.  Dosing
can be tricky in the beginning, but we'll get it right.  She'll need to
avoid foods with vitamin K-like broccoli and spinach because Coumadin
is a vitamin K antagonist.  Coumadin will help slow down the rate and
frequency of these mini-strokes.

Having the children home during the day in summer was a mixed blessing.
Mattie loved seeing them more, but she still needed time for
housekeeping, shopping, gardening, and helping Isa, and for her work at
Sears and the superette.  She had taken a break from making sandwiches
with Daniel and Pauline, as relations with Pauline were trained but
still her life felt dense, compressed.  She set lower standards for
housework, for everything she could.  While this struck her as being
the secret of life, it was a solution that drove William crazy.  He'd
shake his head impatiently at the cats sleeping on a pile of unfolded
laundry on the couch; he'd turn pale when he found out that she'd
accidentally left her car engine idling all day in front of the
superette when she had raced in late, after dropping Ella off at day
camp.

Harry lurked around the house, watching Uris, ripping cards across his
room, begging rides to other boys' homes, needing this needing that. It
was like having a homeless person staying with her.  I need money, I
need food, I need a ride, I need you.  Ella was usually busy with her
art and dolls and her friend Pearl.  She groomed the dolls endlessly,
cooed to them, tucked them into her bed at night and then slept on a
quilt on the floor so she wouldn't disturb them.  She was trying very
hard not to bite her nails, without success.

When Mattie heard Ella tell her dolls, "You'd be so pretty if you
stopped biting your nails," she interrupted her: "Did someone tell you
that?"  Mattie asked, and Ella told her.  Mattie called Pearl's mother
and said she knew that her intentions were good but to please never
mention the nails again.  Mattie prayed for a solution to Ella's
nervous habits; but she did not get an answer.

One Sunday night, when Nicky dropped the children off, Mattie noticed
Ella's nails were painted with pink glittery polish, a good reason not
to bite them.  Ella preened.  She did things so that her sparkly nails
would show--picked things up ostentatiously with her forefinger, and
washed her face with her palms so the beautiful nails might fan out,
like someone with a new engagement ring.

Mattie called Lee the next day to thank her, and they actually fell
into a comfortable talk.  Lee was having a difficult pregnancy, with
cramps and spotting and fear.  Mattie heard herself say she would pray
for Lee and the baby.  Then she went off to Eongs, and returned with
five bottles of nail polish in shades from light pink to scarlet.

Isa had tried putting something that tasted like poison on Mattie's
bleeding nails to keep her from biting them when she was little, but
that had never helped.  Maybe beautiful polish could do what aversion
never had done.  Ella actually gasped when she saw all those bottles of
polish.  Mattie bought polish remover too, a soft file, and cotton
balls, and Ella immediately wanted her to apply a new color.  Mattie
buffed the nails, and smoothed thick cream into the ruined cuticles.
They both blew on Ella's fingers, and she held them up to the sun until
the cream had been absorbed.  Then, wearing her reading glasses, Mattie
applied a coat of rose pink.  The smell was intoxicating.  Ella waved
her fingers, flapping them to let the polish dry, and because she could
not contain herself.  She resembled a baby canary trying for liftoff.
But by breakfast two mornings later, she had picked at her nails,
peeled the polish away in flakes.  Mattie touched Ella's hands, and
Ella wrung them like a widow.  Later Mattie found her picking off
polish while she talked to her dollies.

"Oops!"  Mattie said.  Ella looked down at her hands.  "It's okay,"
Mattie told her.  "Let's take off the old polish and try again, okay?"
The polish remover smelled, and burned the nicks around Ella's
cuticles.  She cried out, so Mattie bathed her fingers in water and
blew on them.

Ella wanted scarlet next.  "I love these little fingernails," she said,
studying the bright red.  But they looked terrible.

As hard as they tried to settle into summer, new stresses sprang up:
Harry punched Ella in the arm over some minor disagreement, or a trip
to the swimming pool had to be postponed.  The oldest cat was feebler
every day, walking into walls and into the other cats.  Ella's nails
always found their way back to her mouth, and she'd scrape the polish
off with her teeth and pick at the flecks.

One weekend Harry was to go camping with Stefan and his mother in the
Sierra foothills, and Ella would have Lee and Nicky and Alexander to
herself for the two days.  Mattie helped her choose her prettiest
clothes, and packed her swimsuit and her dolls and all her bottles of
polish.  Ella left hand in hand with Lee, looking back to smile at
Mattie.  When Nicky brought her home on Sunday, the polish on Ella's
fingernails was so badly chipped that it looked as if they were
bleeding from the nail bed, like silt rising to the surface in tiny
ponds.

Mattie spent that whole weekend with William--one night at her house,
one night at his.  She had worried about Harry, afraid that harm would
come to him, that he would drown or be bitten by a rattlesnake, or that
he'd get homesick and want to come back early.  William couldn't figure
out where her mind was.  She took advantage of this: it helped keep him
on his toes.  He seemed to appreciate her more when she grew
inattentive.  It was like having a boyfriend on easy credit terms.

Harry returned from the trip swollen with poison oak.  Ella



caught it, and it ringed her eyes.  Lewis's son in Georgia had kidney
stones, and Lewis had to fly down to care for him.  Left to her own
devices, Isa subsisted on broccoli, spinach--anything rich in vitamin
K. There was no overt bad reaction, but slow deterioration followed.
The children scratched their welts and sores.  Mattie thought that
locusts could not be far away.

The first time Mattie worked at the superette after telling William
about Noah, Ned pretended not to know.  He was shooing dogs out of the
store when she arrived.  They were not allowed in officially, but they
sneaked through the gap in the warped frame of the screen door.  Ned
was always shouting at them.  "Out, out," he was saying when Mattie
stepped around him to go inside.  She knew that later Ned would give
the dogs' owners bones from the butcher counter; and the dogs would be
back the next day.

Ned hugged her, and she stood toeing the linoleum.  She put on her
apron, saying to the floor, "William must have told you about my father
and Abby, right?  She did not look up.

After a moment, Ned admitted, "Yes, he did.  What a shock.  I knew Neil
and Yvonne--and your folks, in passing.  And Abby.  I always felt like
I had to love Abby, because I didn't know if anyone else did."

Mattie nodded.

"Listen, honey," he said.  "I don't know if this matters to you.  But
someone saw Abby yesterday."  His face was going in and out of focus.
"A couple at the bar last night said they'd seen her in the window of
one of those huts next to Nick's Cove."  Mattie took her apron off. "It
was the smallest hut," he continued.  "The one in the middle."

The pier next to the clapboard cabins looked like an abandoned train
trestle disappearing into the pinprick of perspective.  There was no
handrail, no pilings dribbled with pitch, no nothing on which to get
your balance, just decomposing salt-rotted wood.  It was all turning to
dust.  The deserted shacks sat on stilts a hundred feet away.  Abby had
been seen in the window of the smallest one, Ned had told her.  Mattie
shivered, trundled back to work, and returned a few days later with
Daniel.

There were hundreds of sea gulls and sandpipers when the tide was out,
cormorants, mud hens and mallards diving all at once so you might see
three or four duck butts sticking into the air.  The middle cabin,
built like a boat, with a brave little prow to fend off the waves, was
wedged between bigger cabins on either side, also ghostly and
abandoned.

"I guess even ghosts need summer homes," Daniel said.

"There's something so sad about these cabins," said Mattie.

"All beach houses are sad when there are no kids digging in the sand
outside," Daniel said.  "You know what they remind me of?  Ice-fishing
huts in the Midwest, the ones they drag out on the ice.  They cut holes
in the ice and pull out tough, whiskery, inedible fish."

"Pike-ish things."

Neither spoke for a while.  Mattie looked up into a dark, empty window
of the smallest hut.  "I love this," she said.  "I could live here.
Could you?"

"I could live anywhere there's light."

Mattie felt an intoxication, of sea air and beer.  "I could live
wherever you were."

"I could live wherever you were," he said right back, and they looked
into the darkness underneath the deserted restaurant to the left,
Nick's Cove.  "Living here must be like taking a journey twice a day,"
Daniel said.  "Only it would be the water that journeyed.  You would
just sit inside, and the water would flow up to you, surround

you.  And hours later, the water would rush past you again, flowing
back out to sea."

Mattie was in love with Daniel, of course; this was the X within the
circle on her map: I love Daniel.  It was wrong, he was married.  But
it was true.  His friendship was an amulet.  When she told him things
she was thinking, about Harry or Ella, Alfred and Abby, rage against
Isa and Lee, he said it back to her in language that showed he
understood what she'd said.  He had the time to hear, like a person who
believed there was someone alive beneath the rubble of herself, who
heard the soft sounds she could still make from the broken parts that
had waited decades to be missed.

Mattie called Isa every morning and saw her often, and she tried, God
knows she tried, to bring love and patience to those visits.  She
thought of the words of Teresa of Avila, who said, "The Lord doesn't so
much look at the greatness of our works, as at the love with which they
are done," and this sounded fine except when it came to Isa.  There was
so much stuff marbled in, all the memories of their lives together:
years of anger and revulsion.  Mattie had heard someone say once that
we have everything inside us that Jesus has, only He doesn't have all
the other stuff too.  So she asked herself, If you're as loving as
possible when you're with your mother, does it still count if there are
other parts too--hands, for instance, trembling with rage?

Isa had lost ground but was holding her own in her compromised way when
July began.  One afternoon when Mattie was on her way to Safeway, it
occurred to her that Isa might like to go shopping too, so on the spur
of the moment, she called.  Isa was instantly excited; she did need two
things, she said, cat food and toilet paper.

Mattie drove by to pick her up.  She let Isa putter and find her

own pace and did not nudge and manipulate her into hurrying.  Isa
wanted to show Mattie things in her apartment that she was proud of,
even though Mattie had seen them a thousand times: the view of Mount
Tamalpais from her living room window; her huge, sulky longhaired cat.
Mattie was watching her mother attentively.  She had morphed into a new
creation, no longer the ageless athletic activist but now a tentative
old woman.  There was something oddly birdlike about her, but also
something more relaxed.  She often had an air of radiance about her,
the radiance of silver hair.

From time to time, Isa tipped over into full dither, though, just like
that, her mind popping to the surface like a seal, goggle-eyed, "Here I
am!"  then disappearing into the waves, "Oops--good-bye."

Mattie felt happy to be with Isa and also pleased with her own patient
helpful self.  But when she said, "We really have to go now, Mom," she
caught a look in her mother's eyes that made her wary.  It was the
craftiness she had been used to seeing in Harry's face when his toddler
gremlins had risen to the surface.  It was the look of somebody lying
in wait, ready to pounce.  Isa said, "Honey-" in this way she had.

"Yes?"  Mattie asked rather squeakily.

"Why dontcha go get my coupons?"

Mattie thought this over.  "No," she decided.  "Not the coupons.  We
don't have time.  You just need a couple of things."

"Oh, honey, for God's sake," Isa said.  "Go get the coupons!"

"I'm not going to.  Once we get the coupons, forget about it.  It'll
turn into a shopathon."

So, with a look of exasperation, Isa went off to get her own coupons.
Mattie started to laugh.  How bad could things get?  Isa reappeared,
beaming, innocent, adorable.  She was Coyote Trickster: like a lot of
old people on fixed incomes, she lived on the margins now, made do with
very little, sneaked past her children's comfort zones, wreaked havoc
with their need to control.  She'd use her coupons, suck up her
daughter's precious time, but she'd save a few



pennies.  Mattie did her Lamaze, pitiful shallow breaths as if she were
giving birth to her own mother, or trying to crawl back inside her.

By the time they got to Safeway, Mattie saw she had barely half an hour
before she'd have to pick up the children.

"Let me run in and get whatever you need," Mattie said.

"Oh, no."  Isa shook her head.  "I need to go in myself."

"Why?  What do you need?  Toilet paper and cat food, right?"

"I want to go in myself," Isa insisted.  "I only like certain brands.
Besides, I'm not an invalid."

A siren went off in Mattie's head: She's armed, Mattie thought.  She's
got the coupons in her purse, and she's just crazy enough to use them.
Do not let her get out of the car.

"I'm pressed for time.  Please let me run in," Mattie begged.

Mattie's pastor often said that we are Jesus' presence here on earth
and so we need to act like Him.  Mattie thought about this, and
squirmed.  Would Jesus have let his mother get out of the car to buy
toilet paper and cat food?  Would he have been in a swivet because Mary
had coupons in her purse?  No.  So they parked and Mattie helped Isa
out of the car.  They took baby steps to the line of shopping carts.
When had her mother stopped being able to walk?  The carts were jammed
into one another.  "Mom," Mattie said, "we don't need a shopping cart.
Don't you just need toilet paper and cat food?"

Her mother turned to her, wild-eyed, her lips pulled into a tight
smile.  Mattie drew back, crying out silently, Where's my mother?  What
have you done with my mother?

Isa reached out to pat her arm.  Mattie tugged at a cart, pushing the
others back with one foot like a grumpy mime, until it finally came
free.  Sometimes having an elderly mother was like having a toddler,
only you felt like attacking her more often.  Breathe, Mattie
whispered, there's still time.  She fell in behind Isa.

Since she had a few things to pick up herself, Mattie told her

mother where the cat food and toilet paper were.  "Okay?"  Isa gazed
back at Mattie blankly.

Mattie got what she needed and went looking for Isa.  She checked in
the cat food aisle and the toilet paper aisle, and Isa was in neither.
Mattie went to wait in the express line; now she had ten minutes
left.

She noticed Isa in the deli section.  "Mom," Mattie called to her
impatiently.  "Come on."

"Okay, honey," Isa said, and waved.  Then she headed in the opposite
direction.  "Mom, come here!"  Mattie called.  She did not want to lose
her place in line--now there were people behind her.

"I still need toilet paper."  Isa's voice faded into Doppler effect.

Mattie looked at her watch.  Then she looked as far away as she could,
into the Siberia of the produce department.  Isa was out there now,
with her cart, next to two store employees.  She appeared to be dealing
cards to them.  They took what she had dealt them and dispersed
throughout the store, and Mattie realized that her mother was
dispensing coupons.

She imagined a quick trip to the housewares department to buy a hammer.
One blow should do it.  She stood there quietly instead, refusing to
lose her place in line with six people behind her.  Also, if she bought
one more item, she would no longer qualify for the express line.

"Mom," Mattie called as nicely as she could, as if admonishing a
mischievous child, "come here."  Isa tottered toward her with her cart,
scanning for any clerks who might be returning to her with items from
their scavenger hunt.  She waved to Mattie again.

Mattie, now at the head of the line, let a woman go before her.  Only
if Isa came right then and still qualified for the express line herself
would Mattie be on time to pick up the kids.  There was nothing else
she could do, so she prayed.

She prayed to see Isa through God's eyes, from the inside out.  Nothing
happened, that was too much of a stretch.  So she prayed to

see her through the eyes of a friend, the eyes of someone besides her
overly critical daughter.  Eventually she began to see her mother
differently.  She saw this gawky, tremulous woman with a badly pleated
memory, working hard to keep living independently.  She saw an elderly
woman cadging coupons so she could pay her own way and not have to ask
her skittish children for help.  So Mattie stood in line as patiently
as she could.  She let six people go ahead of her.  And by the time her
mother popped back out of the waves to stand beside her in line,
goggle-eyed and blinky, Mattie's heart was soft toward her again.
Mattie knew this was not clinically a miracle, but it felt like one; or
maybe not a miracle, but grace, if grace meant you went from small and
hassled and full of hate, tapping your foot with impatience, to holding
your mother's warm hand.

"Mom!"  Mattie said, but Isa could hear in her daughter's voice that
she was not mad.  She turned to the man behind them and said, with her
nose in the air and her eyes squinched shut, "This is my daughter," as
if introducing him to the queen.

Mattie and Daniel picked up the broken glass scattered across the
living room floor.  She and Harry had been playing catch in the front
yard when Ella, furious at being left out, had cried that she could
play too; she grabbed the softball from her mother and pitched it
through the window.  Falling glass pierced the cover of Otis's cage,
missing the iguana by inches.

Mattie wanted to charge a replacement window at Yardbirds right away,
but Daniel argued for some time.  He wanted to see if they could make
the window larger.  Daniel said God would provide the glass if they
were patient.  He had a feeling."  ""Your young will have visions,"" he
said, quoting the prophet Joel, "'and your old will dream dreams," and
your middle-aged will have occasional hunches.  There's so much money
in this county right now.  Someone is preparing

to remove a large pane of glass from their home.  And we will put it
in yours.  In the meantime, let's staple up some Visqueen."

They stapled it to the outside frame.  Harry manned the staple gun
until Stefan came home.  Then he took off to play.  Mattie slipped him
a dollar to let Ella tag along.

Mattie and Daniel took a break in the shade of the pear tree.  She
brought a Dos Equis for each of them and some fresh guacamole she had
made.  It was creamy and chunky, with lots of lime and salt.

She had spent twenty minutes at the health food store that morning
picking out perfect avocados, holding each in her hand as if it were
part of Daniel.  She closed her eyes at the store and daydreamed about
a look she wished he'd give her.  She remembered the weight of his hand
on her shoulder.  She felt the spot at the end of the fruit where it
had been attached to the tree, and traced it with her finger.  This
aroused her, and she thought she must be going mad.

She felt stranger than ever these days.  She sometimes found herself
wanting to lean forward and smell Ned's neck, to sink her nose into his
throat like a vampire.  She knew Ned was a stand-in for her father, and
it was unsettling for desire to come in on the same wind as disgust.
She thought endlessly of Abby and Alfred together.  She felt both weak
and dithery, a little like Isa, and voracious and neglectful too, as
Isa used to be.  Mattie wanted to devour her children when she wasn't
with them, but she could hardly tolerate their neediness when they were
about.  Ella clung to her like a starfish, and Mattie saw herself peel
away her fingers as she and Al used to peel the arms of starfish off
the boulders at Pelican Rock.

At Nicky's, only good things were happening.  With his new salary
increase, they were adding a room to the house.  Mattie and Nicky had
raised their two babies in the one room; but Nicky's kids were each
going to have their own.  Lee's cramping had passed, and now

she was glowing again like a night-light--the best of being womanly
and young.  Their big boy was heartbreakingly beautiful.  Nicky got a
Saab.  They had their porch enclosed to keep the bugs off their perfect
skin and lives.  They hired a sixteen-year-old named Katie to come in
the afternoons to take care of Alexander.  On some Sundays she dropped
Harry and Ella off at Mattie's, where, after the English garden and
swing set at Micky's, Mattie's family must have looked to her like
trolls living under a bridge.

Nicky's house had Persian cats lolling about on Persian rugs.

Mattie had Otis.

He continued to stare off into eternity in his glass cage by the living
room window, shedding and having his terrible episodes.  The first time
Katie came in with the kids and peered into the glass, Otis had a
prolonged shit-spewing episode.  She had said, "Oh, God!"  with such
disgust that Mattie felt a roar of corresponding shame.

But Harry redeemed the moment: "That's my boy," he enthused.

Isa was often at Mattie's these days, because Lewis was still at his
son's in Georgia and she got lonely.  She was antler-thin, and clearly
not all there.  Left on her own, she rarely put dinner together,
although when she did, no matter how many times Mattie reminded her,
she always included foods rich in vitamin K. She'd call Mattie to tell
her.  "Aren't I a good girl?"

"Mom," Mattie would sigh.  "The Coumadin doesn't work if you eat foods
with vitamin K."

"And you got your medical degree where?"

These pressures would have seemed more or less bearable.  But then
Mattie and Al had a terrible fight.  They'd been getting along well,
sharing in the help Isa needed, rattling along in basic agreement that
for the time being neither would do anything rash concerning Noah and
Abby.  They agreed to let the shock of Noah's

existence settle in, and wait until they figured out their next move.
But one night Mattie told Al what Ned had said, that Abby had been seen
briefly.  Al surprised her by blowing up.

"Oh, shit, Mattie!  You told Ned?  Ned will've told everyone.  Now
everyone is going to say our father ruined Abby's life."

Mattie grimaced.  She had somehow forgotten it was such a secret,
because she'd so easily given it up to William.  But she couldn't
really explain the calculus of trading the secret for William's
kindness.  She was mad too that Al would question her judgment.  "Ned
won't tell anyone," she said haltingly.  "And Daddy didn't ruin her
life.  He gave her Noah--which was the best thing that ever happened to
her."

Al flushed.  "You weren't going to tell anyone but Daniel and Angela.
Now everyone knows but Noah.  He'll know soon enough, and then he'll
understand why we've been skulking around town like pedophiles."

"We aren't the pedophiles, Al.  Daddy was."

Al sucked in his breath as if she'd punched him.  Mattie knew the
ground kept shifting under them both--first she insisted that Noah was
a gift her father had given Abby, and in the next instant that Alfred
was disgusting.  But there wasn't time to sort it out.  She looked for
traction, to defend herself against the most unlikely enemy of all,
Al.

"Oh, for Chrissakes, Mattie.  It was the sixties," Al said, turning
away from her.

"So it was okay to be a sexual predator in the sixties?"

"Listen to you.  We don't even know what happened.  What if she seduced
Daddy?"  he asked, glaring.

Mattie whistled, slow and accusing.  "She was my age."

"That's not the point.  The point is... Shit, the point is, the point
is..."  His cheeks were pink with emotion.  He folded a bank receipt
into a fan and did not look up.  "The point is we had a deal.  I only

 told Katherine, like we agreed, and you were supposed to only tell
Daniel and Angela.  We had an agreement.  A plan.  Now you're plowing
straight ahead, all by yourself."

"So my boyfriend told his father.  What is the big deal?"

"The big deal is that we had an agreement to do it together," Al said.
"This is how it always ends up in our family, everyone just going off
alone--doing whatever they feel like, and not honoring promises."

"I thought you wanted to welcome Noah into the fold."

"You said you wouldn't tell, and then you did."

"God, you sound like Harry," Mattie said.  "What, are you going to go
tell Mom on me now?"

"You're in the wrong, Mattie.  Just admit it."

""It was the sixties,"" she sneered.  Al got up and stalked toward the
door.  Before he slammed it, he looked back at her with Harry's fury,
Ella's desolation.  Then he was gone.

Everything's just awful," Mattie told Daniel days later as they drove
to church.  He had agreed to drive Mattie's car, because she felt too
shaky.  "Al and I haven't spoken since the fight.  Isa's barely
functional.  My car is falling apart, and I have no windows in the
living room.  It's Cry Row at my house.  Nicky has cats that cost more
than we spend on groceries in a month."

Daniel listened.  He stopped at a light and turned to her.  "But
Mattie," he said, "we have Otis!"

In church he put his arm around her.  The pastor read from Psalm 42:
"My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the
land of the Jordan.... I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten
me?"" Mattie wiped at her eyes.

The pastor started the sermon by singing "I Need Thee Every Hour," and
the pianist followed with the sweetest descant before the congregation
joined in.

Mattie tried to listen to the sermon but had trouble concentrating.
What should she do about everything?  Or anything?  About one single
thing?  Then the pastor, as if reading her mind, said that it took time
to know God's will; that even Jesus didn't arrive at "Thy will be done"
quickly, or He wouldn't have spent so much time in the garden.

After the service, Daniel opened the passenger door for her.  She
picked up the Bible he always brought to church and turned to the psalm
again.  '"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for
You, O God.""

"That was so beautiful," Daniel said as they drove.  ""As the deer
pants for streams of water."" He pulled into the drive-through window
at Blondie's, where he ordered three strawberry milk shakes.

They were late getting to Daniel's because they stopped by the side of
the road to drink their shakes.  Pauline was at the bedroom window when
they pulled into the driveway.  They got out of the car, and Daniel
held up the third milk shake toward the window, as if raising a toast
to Pauline.  She disappeared from sight.

"Come in and say hi," Daniel insisted to Mattie.  Pauline threw open
the front door, gorgeous in a shift of coral gauze, an ivory moon and
star hanging from a soft white cord around her neck.  She held her arms
out to Mattie.  Stepping up for a hug, Mattie felt vaguely threatened.
Pauline gave Daniel a warm kiss and ushered them into the kitchen,
where bread was baking.  By then Mattie was nearly asthmatic with
terror.  Pauline put her shake in the refrigerator while Daniel and
Mattie sat at the table.  Pauline put water on for tea.

"Have you and Al made up?  I heard about the fight," she said.  Mattie
suspected this was meant to show that Daniel shared everything with
her.

Mattie shook her head no, whispered, "Not yet."

"Well, everything's going to be fine," Pauline replied.  Mattie nodded
miserably, and then felt Daniel's foot nudge hers.  It was not exactly
footsie, but it seemed a steadying connection just the same, like her
father might have made during conferences with her unhappy teachers. 
Mattie smiled into her lap.

"Have you read the latest Doctorow?"  Pauline asked.  Mattie shook her
head.  "It's fantastic.  I can lend it to you if you want."  Mattie
felt a prick of suspicion.

"That's sweet of you.  Thanks."

"It's by my bed," Pauline said.  "Why don't you go get it:"

Mattie trudged up the carpeted steps as if an angry parent were waiting
for her upstairs.  Daniel had offered to retrieve the book, but Pauline
had needed him to open a jar of jam.  The bedroom looked so beautiful,
so simple.  Daniel had done the carpentry himself, and Pauline had
chosen and found the furniture and fabrics at secondhand stores.  He
had built window seats, and she had covered them with buttery-hued
damask cushions and ivory throw pillows.  You couldn't have such light
colors with kids around, Mattie thought.  You needed patterns, jungle
fatigues.  You couldn't have anything nice.  Sunlight streamed through
the windows.  Mattie turned toward the sleigh bed.  On it was a tray
with two coffee cups on saucers, a blue Chinese bowl holding one
strawberry and a lacy pile of strawberry leaves.  The book was on a
bedside table, beneath a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.

Mattie walked slowly to get the book she no longer wanted.  As she got
close to the bed, she could smell the residue of sex.  It smelled as if
someone had just returned with a good catch, a hold full of bass on
ice--bleachy, sweaty love.  God, she thought, shaking her head and
picturing Pauline: You got me.  The comforter was sheathed in the
palest blue.  Mattie reached for the book; she felt Pauline rubbing her
nose in the comforter: Mine.  We are the ones, Pauline was telling her,
we are the ones who make love.

Mattie limped downstairs to the kitchen with the book.  She stared off
in the distance like Otis as she walked.  Something inside her shifted;
the veil parted for a second, long enough for her to realize something
new.  Pauline had sent Mattie to her room to put her in her place, but
not because she was simply sadistic.  She'd been afraid.  Mattie
wouldn't need to be put back in her place if she hadn't fallen out of
it.  Pauline was afraid that she was losing Daniel.  She wanted him
back.  And she wouldn't need him back if Mattie didn't have him.

Mattie could not look at Pauline or Daniel when she stepped into the
room.

They all made too much conversation while they had tea.

Mattie gave Daniel the blue shoe a few days later.  They were in the
middle of a heat wave, an Iowa July, deep watermelon days.  She'd run
into him at the garden store, where he was buying topsoil.  It was
sweltering.  "What's this for:" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.  "I just thought you might like it for a
while."

Mattie and Al hadn't spoken in a few weeks.  Lewis hadn't returned. 
Isa wept for him when she called Mattie, afraid his son would force him
to stay in Georgia.  What could Mattie say?  Just that he'd return. 
"Come out to the pool with us.  Mom."

"I can't wear a swimsuit anymore," Isa said stiffly.

Mattie laughed.  "Yes, you could," she said.  "You still have great
legs.  But wear a light shift, if you'll feel more comfortable.  I'll
pack a lunch and pick you up at noon."

She took her mother, Ella, Harry, and Stefan to the high school pool.
They made a nest of towels under an umbrella for Isa.  Mattie

offered her a frosty can of apple juice before jumping into the water
with Ella.  From the pool her mother looked like an old sock monkey.
Harry and Stefan disappeared into the shouting, splashing chaos of the
deep end, while Mattie and Ella stayed where it was shallow.  They had
tea parties on the pool floor, the web of sun their tablecloth, holding
their breath and imaginary teacups, pinkies extended, in the shimmering
net of light.

Same Friday afternoon when Mattie arrived at the superette to work, Ned
whispered with an odd urgency that he and William had just spotted
Abby.  They'd been driving past the shacks early that morning, when
they'd seen her sitting in the ice plant that grew near the huts,
drinking from a brown paper bag.

"You won't tell anyone, will you?"  Mattie implored, thinking of Al.

"Excuse me, Ned."  A woman was taking him by the arm.  Mattie turned to
look at the Blondie's manager, Suzanne.  "I need thirty pounds of
ground beef.  You got that much in the freezer?"

"I think so," said Ned.  "Don't worry," he told Mattie.  "I'm not going
to tell anyone."  He walked off with Suzanne.

Suz linked her arm in his.  "Tell anyone what?"

Angela listened to the whole story over the phone.  "An electrical
storm is building."

"Secrets get out, don't they?"  Mattie said.

"I guess so.  The truth seems to want to establish itself.  It always
eventually floats to the surface, like a dead body.  Look at J. Edgar
Hoover.  The dresses--and Clyde--didn't come out till he'd been dead
awhile."

Mattie laughed for the first time all day.

On a horrid hot evening in late July, Isa got on a bus one night, for
no reason anyone later could discern, least of all Isa, and fell
getting out.  She ended up in the medical center at The Sequoias with a
sprained ankle, badly bruised and deeply disoriented.

After she hung up with the nurse, Mattie called Al.  He arrived with
Katherine ten minutes later.  It was a relief to see him.  Katherine
threw her arms around Mattie and held her.  She wore a green knit cap.
Her bangs were growing out in front of her eyes.  She brought the
children chocolate milk to distract them while Mattie and Al headed
out.  Isa was asleep in bed.  Through a curtain that separated the two
patients, Mattie and Al caught a glimpse of an old black woman in the
next bed.  A chubby young Filipino nurse came in.  Her name tag said
"Esmerelda."

"Mommy's going to be okay," Esmerelda promised.

"How long do you think she needs to stay here?"  Mattie asked.

"Mommy needs full-time care until she can walk again.  If you can get a
nurse, she could go home in a few days."

Isa woke up groggily but snapped to with a look of intense
concentration.  Then she took in the strange surroundings and burst
into tears.

"Why am I here."  Get me out!  I'm perfectly fine.  Oh, Mattie, please
get me out!"  But she wasn't going anywhere.

Mattie stopped by the medical center with Daniel the next afternoon.
Isa was terribly agitated.  "Jesus Christ, she and her family're
driving me crazy," she whispered, indicating her roommate.  "All these
black yahoos."  Mattie shushed her mother, horrified.

The roommate's family showed up at that moment.  They greeted Mattie
and Daniel like long-lost family and introduced themselves as the
woman's daughters and grandson, and smiled with nervous good mrs at
Isa.  She glowered at everyone.

Mattie was telling Isa how the kids were spending their summer, when
the other woman's daughters began softly singing "Leaning on the
Everlasting Arms."  It was beautiful at first, the daughters and the
grandson singing, and Mattie closed her eyes to listen better.  Then a
harmonica started--it must have been the grandson.  The sound was harsh
and tinny, as if someone had started accompanying them on dental
drill.

"Jesus Christ!"  Isa exclaimed.  "I told you--didn't I tell you?"
Mattie glanced inside the curtain in time to see the sleeping woman
reach out a crablike claw and grip her grandson's wrist.  Her daughters
sang to her, and her grandson started playing harmonica again, and Isa
cried out in pain, her fingers stuck in her ears, reminding Mattie of
Ella.  A look crossed the other woman's face too, but you couldn't tell
whether it was recognition--whether this tinny accompaniment was
getting through the sponge of her coma-or whether it was just terror at
the calamitous noise: The drill!  The drill!

When Nicky came by with the children that evening, Harry ran into the
living room to play with his pet.  He wailed in surprise.  Otis was
gone.  He'd made a break for freedom.  Mattie did what they do in the
movies--she secured the area and called in a search party, Al and
Daniel, who combed the house.  Harry proposed holding an article of
Otis's clothes for Stefan's retriever to smell.  But Mattie pointed out
that Otis had no clothes.

"Otis has no clothes?"  Harry asked sarcastically, and she felt she'd
been trapped in an episode of Perry Mason, with Raymond Burr about to
produce one of Otis's bathrobes or brassieres.  Harry whipped out
Otis's leash, with its tiny name tag.  Stefan's dog sniffed it, and
with Harry exhorting him, raced around for a while.

"Get that fucking dog out of here before he eats Otis," said Al.

"Don't swear at the children, Al," said Mattie.

When the excitement of the search was over, the real sorrow began.
Part of Mattie was exasperated--this was an iguana.  But loss was loss,
and the children were inconsolable.  They cried for Otis and all the
other sad things in the world.

Harry locked himself in the bathroom.  When he finally let Mattie in,
his eyes were red and swollen.  "Mommy?"  he said.  "God has stopped
loving this family."

Mattie told him not to give up, that there was still hope, but that if
Otis didn't return, maybe it was God wanting to give Otis his
freedom.

"Otis will die outside, though," Harry said.  "He's cold-blooded."

Mattie's heart may have been cold toward Otis, but it was so warm
toward Harry.  She promised they would find him.

"He's just a big heartbreaker," Harry cried.

Oh, Harry, Mattie thought, but secretly she hoped Otis would not come
back.  She fantasized about how much bigger the living room would seem
once cleared of Otis's cage.  She thought with a kind of moral
righteousness about mothers in other countries who did not have the
luxury of worrying about their kids' pets.  Otis, with his hot rock and
his lettuce leaves, was living more luxuriously than half of the
world's children.  And then she thought, What about dealing with this
one boy's broken heart?

She imagined Otis staying outside all night, hugging his shoulders to
his little chest, shivering.  That got her down on her hands and knees
to begin another search.  She even went through Ella's Beanie Baby
collection--maybe Otis was pulling a Hannibal Lecter, had hollowed out
the chimpanzee and was hiding inside.  She looked in Harry's closet and
then, almost as an afterthought, went through his GI Joe trashcan. Otis
was at the bottom.

Mattie called for Harry.  He raced in joyfully, reached into the
trashcan, and picked Otis up.  Ella came in, clutching her chest like a
verklemmt old auntie.  Harry put Otis in his cage in the living room,
and the three of them stood looking at him.  He didn't move, didn't

blink, just stared.  Harry went to the kitchen for some lettuce, and
stood over the cage holding a leaf like a bottle of milk for an
orphaned newborn calf.  Otis didn't move toward it.  Harry refused to
go to bed until Mattie promised to stay awake with Otis for a while.
Otis did not move at all.  She sat there holding a lettuce leaf, the
two of them looking off in the same direction.

As she was staring into space, a feeling stirred in her.  Her eyes had
glanced off something that she should have paid attention to.  The
feeling was so strong that after she was sure Harry was asleep, she
retrieved the GI Joe trashcan.  But there was nothing special
inside-wadded pieces of paper covered with Harry's precise and spidery
figures, a red plastic car, food wrappers, dirty twine, punched-paper
dots.  Mattie looked at Otis again.  He was looking at her.  "Do you
know what I'm supposed to notice here?"  she asked out loud.

She clapped her hands to her mouth.  Isa knew.  Isa had known all
along, not only that Alfred had girlfriends: Isa had known all along
about Abby and Noah, and knew still, somewhere deep in the Otis part of
her brain.

Mattie sat rocking, her head in her hands.

Everyone had known.  The game had been to keep from knowing what you
knew--and certainly never to say what might be true.  If you let even a
trickle in, it might wash you away.  The game was to hope that everyone
else would agree not to know what they knew too.

Mattie and Al used to go to the pier with their parents, when Nick's
Cove was still a thriving restaurant.  Now the pier and restaurant were
in near-ruins, but thirty years before, this had been a working pier.
Commercial fishermen brought in their catch every morning, men would
unload the rope-handled boxes full of fish from the boats, and someone
from the restaurant would come by with a wheelbarrow to cart them
off.

Mattie sat on the wet sand across from fog-shrouded hills rolling down
to the bay, several hundred feet from the shacks, which balanced on
spindly stilts like long-legged birds.  Beneath them, on the beach at
low tide, she could see the flotsam and jetsam that had flotted and
jetted onto the sand--a mud-encrusted shopping cart, shredded styrofoam
buoys, a yellow rubber glove.

Mattie kept her eye on the smallest cabin, the one in the middle, with
the prow.  The only sounds were the cries of gulls, the surf, an
occasional car on the road up past the beach.  Finally she noticed
motion through the window, the flash of what looked like a ghostly old
man, some kind of ancient mr.  He disappeared, and there was no more
movement.

The smells of the low tide were very strong, swamp smells, and the
water was deep baby blue.  Patches of darkening sky broke through the
fog.  Mattie watched and waited and thought about the blue on the
paint-can key.  She wondered if Isa knew where that room was, the one
Alfred had painted.  Then Mattie saw the face again, small and
obscure.

The face appeared ruddy and wrinkled.  Mattie turned to see what the
eyes would be seeing, a reflection of trees floating on the blue
sparkling water.  When she looked back to the shack's window, the face
was gone.  Then the window opened slowly, and the person inside tossed
something out, something red, a bowl of reddish-gold paint, or a soup
of tomatoes and saffron.  The strands fluttered ballet ically in the
air like prayer flags: long, thick reddish-gold hair.  Abby, newly
shorn, stood holding her face toward the sky.

Mattie leapt to her feet and ran as fast as she could to the cabin. 
She looked in the window but saw no one inside.  She jiggled the door;
it was locked.  "Abby!"  she cried.  She knocked, pounded, looked again
through the window, half expecting to find Abby surrounded by baby-blue
walls.  The weathered and battered walls were instead a dingy,
uninspired white.

nine.

On a cold morning in September, Mattie returned to the shack.  She
wanted to do right by Al, and give him time to let Abby's presence in
town sink in, and then go out with him some afternoon.  But school had
started, and he could go only on weekends.  When she asked if he wanted
her to wait for him to go, Al said no, his presence might scare Abby
away.  Mattie thought he might be a little afraid of seeing her.  She
went by herself.

A storm was gathering.  The gulls sounded like chimps, and over the
roar of the wind and the surf, she could hear chimes.  Standing on
tiptoe and craning her neck, she could see through one of the windows.
She could see a screened-in cold cupboard, where a buckled pack of
tortillas perched between a brick of orange cheese and a pint of milk.
Cut into one wall was a rectangle where a Murphy bed must have been
hidden away.  "Hello?"  she called feebly, but all she heard

was the wind and the waves, the gulls, the chimes, the bass beat of
her heart.

She pouted and tried to think straight.  Somehow, impossibly, Abby must
be in here; maybe she was folded up inside the Murphy bed.  Maybe she
was hiding, feeling the way Otis might feel when the three cats sat
beside his glass cage and watched his every move, scheming and dreaming
of lizard for lunch.  Mattie turned and walked back down to the
beach.

Gulls lined the pier, crabby and nasal, like Angela's uncle Irving.
Mattie listened to them kvetch: "Oh, can it, Phil."  "Jeez, my knee's
killing me."  The pilings supporting the pier were splayed drunkenly,
dropping off entirely as the pier extended out to sea.  Daniel once
said it looked as if the pier had tried to take a long walk down its
own short self.  Should she call him from the pay phone?  He could be
out here in an hour.  Meanwhile, she could keep Abby treed inside the
cabin, like a possum.

But Mattie didn't call.  She knew Daniel was preparing for a long
vacation with Pauline.  They would drive halfway across the country, to
Michigan, where Pauline had grown up, staying in motels along the way.
Mattie and Pauline were barely speaking, and when they did talk, the
air was charged with tension.  Mattie usually waited for Daniel to
call.  She'd had to phone the other day, though, and she prayed as she
dialed that Daniel or the machine would pick up.  "Hey," Pauline said
lazily after Mattie said hello.  "How you doing?"

"Good.  Lots going on."  She told Pauline briefly about Isa, and
Pauline made clucking sounds of warmth and commiseration.

"How's that cute William?"  she asked.

Want his number?  Mattie wanted to respond.  "He's good."  Please, she
wanted to cry, I'll give you twenty bucks if you'll put Daniel on.
"He's terrific."

"You don't want to let that one get away," Pauline said.

Mattie laughed and rubbed her eyes with her free hand.  "Is Daniel
there by any chance?"

 "Yeah, he's taking a nap.  Let me have him call you back.

"Great," Mattie said.

"How'd you like that book I lent you?"  Pauline asked.

Mattie looked back up at the shack, at the little ark.  It was an
embracing shape, the color of depression and old age, bleached out and
neutral.  It was the color of exhaustion, the color of old people who
do not get out much anymore.  Mattie turned away, toward the low hills
across the bay.  If only she could see that face again--Abby's face in
the window, ghostly, distant.  Mattie smelled seaweed, oyster shells,
gulls.

All she could do was turn like a ballerina on top of a jewelry box,
seeing now the tawny fog snuggling down into the dips of the hills, now
the crossbeams under the deserted restaurant, now the pilings, peg
legged and clubfooted, the gulls sitting sentry.  The sloshing and
lapping of the waves was so comforting, like someone helping a child
fall asleep, shhhh shhhh shhhhh, and she could think only to keep
turning slowly in the sand.

At the window where Abby had been, there was no movement, no shadow.
Across the water, plumes of fog in several shades of gray, low and
rounded like recumbent bodies, like the photos of nudes that resembled
sand dunes.  She could no longer remember, if she had indeed ever
known, what Abby had to offer, but she knew only that when she herself
was a teenager, gawky and always scared, sure that no one liked her,
pining for her glamorous father, missing him desperately and calming
herself with images of him out there saving the world, Abby had gotten
his attention instead.  And on one of those weekends when Mattie had
been missing her father, imagining him in Washington, he'd been only
miles from home, at some nearby hospital--maybe the one in Tomales
where the ranchers' wives gave birth.  Maybe there he watched his
infant son emerge

from a girl as young as his children, his soul-sick daughter, his
alcoholic son.

Mattie imagined her mother back then, spinning slowly as she herself
spun now in the sand--looking for her husband, for what they had had,
for their future together, while he tiptoed away to Abby Grann.  Maybe
Abby was a green shoot that broke through the pavement of a marriage
that was killing him.  Mattie looked back up to the rotted pane where
she had seen Abby, the window old and clouded as beach glass.

The door of the shack creaked when Mattie opened it.  No one was there,
but the window was open, the window through which the red hair had been
strewn.  "Abby?"  Mattie said softly.  There were old moldy dog smells,
and some milk going bad in the cold cupboard, Coke bottles on a counter
with an inch of soda left, cigarette butts at the bottom.  "Abby?"  You
could reach up and touch the ceiling.  This was a home you could put
on, pull down over your head like a scrape, carry off with you.  Mattie
walked a few steps to the window, glanced down at the piling on one
side of the shack, where dusty ivy reached from the earthy banks of the
beach, flowing and twining into heaps of watery seaweed.  The shack
felt like a jail cell.  In the middle of the back wall, on the shore
side, was an incongruous little door that seemed to lead directly
outside, ten feet above the beach.  It had a rusty latch to keep it
from banging in the wind.  Mattie supposed there must be a closet, with
a window, inside.  Two posts, three feet apart, held up the ceiling in
the middle of the room.  Maybe there had been a door here once, and two
rooms, but now you could walk through the door frame to nowhere and
back.

Mattie crossed to the cold cupboard.  If you looked through its screen,
you could see crescents of beach.  Beside the sink were a kettle on a
hot plate, an empty box of Lipton's tea bags, and the last bag,

drowned and tangled in its own string on its paper envelope.  Mattie
turned back and gave a tug to the small door, but it wouldn't open. 
She stood with her back against the door, rubbing her eyes.  Maybe she
had only imagined Abby.  The face had looked so distant and dreamy at
the window, as it she weren't really inside, as if she'd been
superimposed on the glass.  Mattie tugged again.  There was some give,
but the door opened only slightly.  The gap closed suddenly, the door
pulled snugly again, as it by a spring inside.  Mattie tilted her head.
She heard the weather-noisy sea, the wind, the gulls, the chimes--and
she heard someone breathing.

She took hold of the latch and pulled it as hard as she could.  The
door groaned and opened.  Sitting there, on her haunches, on top of a
toilet seat in a most cramped space, clutching her knees to her chest,
hiding her face behind a curtain of bangs, was Abby Grann.

Abby's hair, cut just below her ears, was dirty and matted.  She wore
the clothes of a beggar in a fairy tale--a long faded red cotton
peasant dress, the hemline ragged and muddy above socks pierced by fox
tails  Over the dress hung a shapeless Irish fisherman's sweater,
sagging to her ankles, full of holes like a fishing net.  Mattie
thought of the Fisher King's queen in her raggedy guise, gathering
herbs to take away the pain of his wounds that would not heal.

Mattie gasped and drew back, her nostrils flaring with all the smells
that assailed her--urine and rust, and unclean breath, and cigarettes,
and underarms, and dirty feet.  Abby had covered her face with her huge
hands, and had begun humming a tuneless song, like a child who believes
that not seeing the parent means the parent cannot see the child.

After a long moment Mattie reached out and touched Abby's red cracked
knuckles.  Behind her was a tiny window, and a view of bay and hills,
blue water, green hills, swaying trees, rolling fog.

"Abby, I'm Mattie," she whispered.

Nothing--no movement, no motion, no sound but the tuneless song.

Then Abby lowered her hands, and her face shone with an expression of
ruined beauty.  Her skin was fair, with roses in the hollows of her
cheeks and red plaid blotches near her eyes.  These were Neil's eyes,
hazel, almost green, wreathed in black lashes, deep and bloodshot.  Her
mouth was Neil's too, long and full.

Eyes closed, Abby hummed.  Mattie's heart hammered in her chest.

"I've been wanting to talk to you so long," said Mattie.  Abby looked
over her shoulder through the window with a direct view to the bay, to
water no longer so rough.  The wind had quieted and the waves were
nearly smooth.  The tide was rising; it would soon cover the pilings of
the house.

"I want to talk to you about my father."  Nothing, no sound from Abby
but the tuneless song, and eyes that looked around without expression,
landing on Mattie's gaze but not stopping, as if Mattie's eyes were
windows she didn't have time to look through just now.

Abby was like an ostrich; if she just sat there long enough, maybe
Mattie would go away.  Mattie felt desperate.  "I have a son too," she
said in a rush, "a little boy named Harry, who looks like Noah.  but
he's only nine."  Mattie sank toward the plywood floor, holding the
door open with her knee.

Talking to Abby was like trying to lasso a fish, throwing out a lariat
here and there: each time, fwap, it landed dead on the floor.  Abby
looked at her, her face tilted slightly like the man in the moon, and
then stood.  When she rose, Mattie stepped back.  Abby slipped past
her.

What was Mattie supposed to do, rush her, wrestle her to the floor,
handcuff her?  She felt her stomach drop.  She'd expected that finding
Abby would change everything, or at least change something.  She
watched as Abby shuffled out the door, down the dirt road toward the
deserted restaurant.  Mattie's vision began to blur with fatigue, the
lack of sleep the night before, but also with exhaustion born of
hopelessness. She shook her head to clear it, but words

and thoughts flapped around her head.  She let her head drop, and
leaned over and slid down onto the plywood floor, made a pillow of her
hands, and closed her eyes.

Mattie drove to the superette.  When she arrived, Ned was closing for
the night, ringing up his last two customers at the register.  He
unlocked the door to let her in.

"There you are.  William says he hasn't heard from you in a few days.
You coming tomorrow?"  Mattie nodded unconvincingly.

She stood by awkwardly while the two customers paid, and focused on the
rolls of fly strips festooning the superette.  Ned locked the door
behind the last customer, turned the "Open" sign to "Closed."  "What's
going on?"

"I just saw Abby Grann," she said.

"Oh, God.  Well, let's go to my office."  Ned turned off the lights and
led the way.  His thick rubber soles squeaked with each step.

The back room was crammed with produce boxes, some stacked and full,
some flattened, some wedged between a desk and a chair.  Ned pulled the
chair toward her.  He retrieved a pint of Johnnie Walker from the desk
drawer, and poured them each a couple of inches.

Mattie told him everything about her encounter, and Ned listened.  When
Mattie was finished, he fished a pack of Lucky Strikes out of another
drawer.  He lit one and offered it to her.  She shook her head.  He
closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, looking as if he was trying to
recall someone's name.  He rubbed his eyes.  The smoke from his
cigarette wafted toward the ceiling like a ballet dancer.  She
remembered an obscure line of Meister Eckhart's--about how, if the soul
could have known God without the world, God would never have created
the world.  She thought now that if God could have given her Ned
without her having to date William, she would not have had to date
William.  Her mouth opened slowly with an insight:

It was wrong, she now realized, to go out with someone who simply
filled a space meant for Daniel.

The children were asleep when Mattie got home.  She related her
adventures to Al and Catherine, who had come by to care for them.
Katherine took Mattie's hand in hers.  Her fingers were as long and
elegant as a pianist's.  Al barely spoke.

"What are you thinking?"  Mattie asked him.

"It's just so sad, is what I'm thinking.  I'm thinking about Mom, and
what she's been through.  What it would be like to have a husband who'd
fucked a teenage girl.  I'm thinking I wish I could save her."  He
gripped the hair above his forehead, and pulled it backward, as if he
were trying to scalp himself.  Katherine touched his arm.  He turned to
her.  "You cannot imagine what it took for her to get that shrink in
place for me.  It meant crossing my father, going against his will.  It
meant spending money we didn't have.  It meant giving up what little
free time she had, to work as an office temp-filing, typing memos!  And
then driving me to the therapist, and waiting till my hour was up.  And
I'm thinking, What do I have to give her now?"

"You're so loyal to her," said Mattie.

"But I'm annoyed with her half the time too."

"Yeah, well, she's annoying.  But you're loyal anyway."

After Al and Katherine left, Mattie went to the kids' rooms to tuck
them in.  Harry, as always, slept with one leg on top of his blanket.
Ella was on the floor beside her bed, where she had nestled her dolls.
The bottles of nail polish were lined up on her bedside table.

The next morning, Mattie sat at the kitchen table with Daniel, drinking
coffee, with Ella asleep in her lap.  She and Daniel were saying
goodbye.

"Oh, I don't really want to leave, Mattie.  Too much is happening."
"Then why are you going?"  she asked.

"I don't know how to get out of it.  I have to do it, to save my
marriage."

"You don't, really."

"Don't have to go, or don't have to try and save my marriage?"  She
shrugged.  Daniel began to do origami with his shirttail.

"I hate to leave when you have so much going on," he said.  He reached
into his pants pocket and pulled out the blue shoe, held it out to her
on his palm the way you offer a sugar cube to a horse.  Mattie pushed
his fingers closed around the shoe, her hand covering his, cupping it
so the blue shoe wouldn't run away.

She called William and told him she needed to see him.  He said stiffly
that he was sorry but he'd kind of figured things out for himself. 
He'd decided to save himself the trip.  Mattie felt more hurt than
she'd expected.  She said, "Okay, then.  Well, I guess I'll see you at
the store," and he said, "Okay, then.  Good.  See you soon."

"He's in a rage because you initiated it," Angela told her later on the
phone.  "I'd push all the furniture up against the door if I were
you."

"It's weird.  The needle's not moving to the left or the right."

"The needles are moving all over the place, just not on the one dial
you're staring at.  There is serious movement going on inside you, with
Isa... Abby..  Daniel.  How's Isa, anyway'"

"She's Otis part of the time, and George Wallace the rest," Mattie
said.

Isa was so foggy and tired these days that Mattie and Al had had to
hire aides for fourteen hours a day.  Mattie had gotten a small line of
equity loan on the house to pay for the extra help--an aide to be there
at seven when Isa woke up, and stay all day, while trying to remain out
of sight, because otherwise Isa would be unpleasant.  Mattie had seen
one afternoon how awful it could be.  Isa was staring

contemptuously at the aide, who'd been begging her to take a shower.

"Why don't you get out one of your voodoo dolls, and shower it
instead?"  Isa asked.  She'd widened her eyes until they were nearly
all white, like a demented voodoo queen.  Isa was scared to death
herself, Mattie saw, and getting meaner every day.  She wouldn't
shower, even with someone right outside the bathroom to help her if she
fell.  There was a rail, and a shower chair, but even those were not
enough; she needed someone to hold her, hand her soap, help her rinse,
yet she would not allow this.  "Why don't you button your lip," she
told the woman.

"Yes, ma'am," the aide replied.

Another aide, Lorraine, a heavyset African-American woman, had cooked
Isa pumpkin soup and corn muffins, which she was finishing up one
afternoon when Mattie arrived.  "That looks so good," Mattie had told
Lorraine, at which point Isa pinched her nostrils shut and held her
nose in the air to show that she thought the food stank.  Mattie's
heart sank again.  It was hot and humid, and a heavy smell of urine
filled the place, because no matter how clean the aides kept things,
there was urine in the sofa and the mattress.  Mattie noticed pajamas
in a bucket in the shower, and in another Isa's good looking tailored
trousers with three pairs of soaked underpants and Depends inside
them.

The aides did the wash every day.  Mattie brought rolls of quarters for
them to use at the machines, and sat with her mother while they did the
laundry.  These were women Isa would have scrambled to support in her
organizing years, women she would convince lawyer friends to represent
pro bono, women whose children she would have clothed with shirts and
pants her own kids still wore.  Now she had turned into a caricature of
the racists she had hated.

Mattie continued to pray for a miracle.  Al had started tutoring a
student two nights a week to help pay for the aides, Mattie had

increased her hours at the store.  The last time she had taken Isa in
f or a checkup, Dr.  Brodkey found a bedsore on Isa's bottom, caused by
her lying too long in her own urine.  The doctor insisted that Mattie
take a brochure to look at with Al, from a nearby nursing home, The
Willows, that took MediCal.

They read the brochure that night, miserable as could be.  On the cover
was the picture of an old man sitting on a bench beside his handsome,
caring son.  The man seemed to be shuffling even though he was sitting
down, a look of wooden dignity on his face, his vacant eyes glittery.
The hands in his lap at first seemed to be in repose, but were
undoubtedly gripped with fear like Isa's.

"I can't do this," said Al.  "I'm sorry.  I just can't."

"You can't look at a brochure with me?"

"I can't put our mother in a nursing home."

Mattie prayed even harder for a miracle.

Toward the end of September, Lewis came home.  He was stunned by how
much ground Isa had lost.  He sat with her as much as he could, and
called Mattie every few hours.  The Isa who had come home from the
medical center was simply not the same Isa who had gone in.

Harry was in fourth grade now, and there was at least an hour of
homework every night, real homework.  No matter how hard she tried,
Mattie could not get him to sit down, do the work, put it away, dust
off his hands, and reclaim any of the night.  It was hopeless, she
thought.  He had no future.  He would have to work at 7Eleven when he
grew up, helping people find the longer straws for Slurpees.

His backpack looked as if he'd stolen it from a wino.  At bedtime on
Sunday nights, he would announce, "I've got homework."

"Oh, Harry, why didn't you mention this before?"  Mattie would say.

"God.  It's not a big deal," he'd reply disdainfully.  "Where do we
keep our dowels, and cheesecloth?"

One evening, during a heat wave, Mattie drove out to Abby's shack.  The
day had been fierce and red.  Mattie had been sitting at the kitchen
table when she happened to look up and see the silhouette of a squirrel
behind the curtain, racing across the sill, hunched and hurried as a
spy.  The next thing she knew, she had risen and gone to find her
purse.

This time when Mattie walked up to the window of the shack, she saw
motion inside.  She stood at the door for a while, and finally knocked.
Time passed.  She did not knock again.  Then Abby opened the door. She
looked over Mattie's shoulder, but stepped back so Mattie could come
in.

There was a chair now in the middle of the room, to the side of the
doorposts.  Mattie sat down.  She knew not to look straight at Abby--so
she glanced out to sea instead.  Abby meanwhile circled the perimeter
of the shack like a shark, as if spreading her scent to mark the place,
while taking in what could be seen.  She stopped in shadows with her
back to Mattie.  She was pale, a ghost in the house.

The teakettle whistled.  Abby took two cracked thick coffee cups, ivory
with a dark green band, and poured boiling water into each.  She picked
up a used tea bag, dunked it into one cup, then the other, and wrung it
out before putting it on its wrapper.

Mattie got to her feet.  It was seven-thirty.  The days were still so
long in September.  She usually loved this, the length of the light,
because the big dark always came after.  But she was scared to death
this evening, to be inside Abby's timeless zone.  She stood at the
window nearest the sink.  Abby did not seem to be intentionally
ignoring her; she didn't even seem to see her.  She was just making
tea, adding sugar, and the last drops of milk from the carton in the
cold

cupboard.  The sun was still out but not shining on them any longer.
Abby handed Mattie a cup of tea.  Her neck seemed nearly as wrinkled as
Isa's.  She sat with her back against the door to the tiny bathroom and
lit a cigarette.  They held their cups of sweet milky tea.

Abby had an awful voice, from the other side of the grave, like Otis
played on the wrong speed.  "I can't talk to you today," she said.

Mattie sipped her tea.  "Okay.  Then when?  And how will I know?"

"I'll get in touch with you," Abby said.

"How?"

Abby thought for a long time.  She blew out smoke as if cooling a burn.
"Through Ned."

Harry had a night soccer game at school, and Al ended up coming along.
Ella sat with Mattie and him in the bleachers, then squirmed away to
play on nearby swings.

"Stay where I can see you," Mattie called.  They watched Harry out on
the field, strong and graceful, a natural leader, leading the charge,
calling out encouragement, giving his all with every length, every
kick.  "All right, Harry," Al shouted, making a megaphone of his
hands.

"How come you never had children" Mattie asked rather abruptly.

Al reared back as if she'd stung him.  "I didn't want them."

"How come?"  Mattie asked.

"I don't like little kids.  I love yours--but that's about it."

Mattie looked around for Ella, who was not far away, prowling the
border of the playing field, walking in her own world along a
chain-link fence lined with weeds.  She was singing to herself, and
when she looked up at Mattie, checking in, she had a glint in her eye.
They waved to each other, and Ella turned away.  "I never knew that,
Al."

"There are people who glisten when children are around, but not me.  I
love Harry and Ella, but it's partly because I always get to leave. I'd
last four minutes if I couldn't."

"Yeah?"

"I would raise reptiles more easily than kids."

Mattie smiled.  She watched her son run down the field with gangly
grace, like a gazelle.  Ella was still walking along the fence, singing
her song, picking tiny daisies, lost in her world, right where she
wanted to be, on the edge and at the same time so safe.

Isa got much better after Lewis returned.  He was often at her
apartment when Mattie stopped by; she took him to church every
Sunday.

But one day he called from the medical center.  Isa had done what
everyone kept nagging her to do.  She'd tried to take a shower--but
she'd fallen, and hit her head so hard on the bathtub that she'd be in
the medical center for at least a week.  Dr.  Brodkey urged Mattie and
Al to consider admitting Isa to the convalescent hospital until she got
stronger.

"Neither of you can take care of her full-time, right?"  the doctor
asked them pointedly when they came to visit Isa.

Al and Mattie both shook their heads slowly, but while driving home he
told her, "This kills me.  I don't think I can do it."

"I understand."

"I know you do, but Mom gave up everything to get me help.  So how can
I even think of putting her away?"

"She gave up me, to help you."  Neither could think of anything else to
say.  They drove along.  Finally Mattie spoke: "Anyway, it's just until
she's stronger."

"But what if she's never stronger?"

"We have to figure this out as we go.  And I know this is the next
right thing."

several days later, Mattie was at the airport to pick up Angela.
Although Mattie had said, "Oh no, that's too much trouble," Angela had
insisted on accompanying her and Al on a safari to The Willows.  Now
Mattie stood at the gate with Ella, watching as passengers filed off
the plane.  A vision in white appeared, in drawstring linen trousers
and a flowing embroidered blouse.  Above it all was Angela's face,
rounder than Mattie remembered, beaming.  Mattie felt as if the medics
had arrived.

Harry had gone off to a sleepover, and the women had the house to
themselves for once.  Angela painted Ella's nails while Mattie cooked
spaghetti, and then Ella did Angela's toenails.  After dinner, Ella
took Angela to each of her shrines, like the Stations of the Cross--the
villages she had built in the dirt, a flower bed she and Daniel had
planted, Marjorie's burial ground, and inside the house, the laundry
room, which Mattie and Daniel had painted a soft, buttery yellow.
Angela and Ella unfolded the futon there.  They stretched out on it and
lay gazing at the ceiling like people waiting for an eclipse.  The
three cats appeared.  They stepped gingerly onto the futon, walked
around for a while, then jockeyed for position on the soft throne of
Angela's stomach.  Later Ella snuggled between Mattie and Angela on
Mattie's bed until she fell asleep, and Mattie carried her to bed.  The
women lay on their sides facing each other and talked all night, like
homesick beings from another planet who had been living among
earthlings far too long.

The director of The Willows was warm and sympathetic and hearty.  He
gave them a sales pitch and then left them in the waiting room.
Big-band music played softly, and framed photos of 1940s movie stars
covered the walls.  Mattie imagined the chandelier descending

from the ceiling, and the antique table rising, and the walls moving
closer together, until she was squished like a gigantic breast in a
mammogram.

"It's like he's trying to sell us a car," Al whispered.

"Boy, I tell you," Angela said.  "No matter how nice it looks, it's all
about urine.  I can smell it from here."  The odor was strong and
sharp.

"You're so wonderful to come with us," Mattie told her.  The big band
music played on.  The director returned to show them around.

Mattie's heart sank lower with every step.  This was an impossible
place to put her mother--and it was as good as convalescent care got.
It was a place inhabited by vacancy, she thought.  You could hear the
sound of vacant minds.  The first woman they met was tall and elegant,
and seemed still with it, until she started popping and peeping, as if
answering the mating song of a whooping crane: Pop pop peep.  Maybe
this was what language sounded like to her, all pops and peeps. Several
people were parked in wheelchairs in the hallway, staring. There were a
couple of snappy, well-dressed women on a bench in one sunlit corner,
and the director stopped to fawn over them, but Mattie couldn't help
feeling that they were shills, that when the tour was over he would
start talking abusively to them, or hustle them back to their main jobs
in the kitchen or laundry room.

"Here we go," said the director, holding the door to a room marked
"Activities," where four vacant people sat slumped over.

"Hello," the director called cheerfully, and two of the four looked
up.

"Excuse me," Angela asked.  "What would you call this activity?"

Mattie knew the answer; it was called sitting.  And sitting was
different from lying down near death.  Sitting in community, in the
sun, was different from lying down and staring at your own walls, which
is what most people seemed to be doing here--except for the shills, and
the popping-peeping woman, and the people in the activity room,
actively sitting.

On the way out, they saw the old man pictured on the brochure.  When
they passed.  Angela clutched at her heart and fanned herself.  "It was
him," she whispered, as if they'd come upon Paul McCartney.

Al and Mattie put their mother in The Willows a few days afterward,
against her desperate will and their own.  She sobbed.  "It's just for
a week," Al told her, "till you're strong again.  I promise."  Lewis
drove with them and held Isa's hand all day, gently telling her again
and again that she needed to be here just for a while.  She held her
nose.  The Willows stank of people's urine, and it smelled of bad food
going worse, left on trays, on nightclothes, in the hallway.  Isa
cried, she smoldered, she shrugged and flung hands off herself when
anyone tried to console her.  She looked over at a roommate who
appeared to be dead.

"Why can't I come to your house, Mattie?"  When Mattie couldn't answer,
Isa wept.

Mattie cried too: "I can't take care of you properly.  You need more
than I can give you.  You need to get strong, and then you can go
home."

Isa sat in her wheelchair and wept some more.  Mattie and Al exchanged
anguished looks.  Mattie felt she might faint suddenly, and had to sit
down in the room's only chair.  She could hear Al consoling Isa,
promising that he would get her out soon, but Mattie wished he would
shut up.  Would Isa ever get her freedom back?  Her mother stopped
crying, and a puzzled look appeared on her face, as if someone was
calling her from far away.

Mattie tried to visit Isa at The Willows every day.  Al sat by her bed
for an hour every evening while she ate.  Both of them kept up a stream
of light conversation, pushing stories that might cheer her, mostly
about Ella and Harry.  But Isa slept much of the time and

then woke crying.  Sometimes she seemed not to mind being at The
Willows, and she reigned bossily from her bed, complaining about what
she called the room service.  Other times she wailed for her old life.
The nurses and orderlies were kind yet firm with her, and she grew fond
of one in particular, a heavy young woman in her twenties with huge
Scrabble-tile teeth named Adri, who called Isa "Missus" and watched
tennis with her on TV.

In October, Adri announced that if the family could provide nursing
care, Isa was ready to leave The Willows.  Now new troubles arose. They
had no plan B. Where would Isa live?  Personal Care, the
assisted-living program at The Sequoias, wasn't covered by Medi-Cal;
board and care facilities were several thousand dollars a month that
they didn't have.  Nursing homes like The Willows would be paid for by
Medi-Cal, and her apartment was subsidized by an HUD grant--so these
were the two places she could afford to be.  But while she couldn't
live alone any longer, she wasn't ready for convalescent care.

Mattie wrote a note to God--"Help!"--and put it in a shoe box.  The
heat came again, bright, rigorous overhead light.  One Saturday, while
they were on their way to the swimming pool, Mattie brought the
children to visit Isa.  The first two times they'd visited, Harry had
cried about having to go.  Mattie remembered when they'd all been able
to go to the pool together.  "Please, Harry," she told him, "seeing you
will help her."  She brought colored pencils and paper for them, but
Harry was sullen and Ella equally wary.

They had to make their way past the old people who sat in the hallway
like deserted rusty appliances.  One woman did endless tongue-thrusts
from her wheelchair.  The children's eyes were wide open, huge, like
shields.  They were scared of the witchy old women in the hall who
might clutch at them without warning.  Harry pulled his arms in and
took baby steps to keep himself safe.  He did not leave anything out
that might be grabbed or bitten or kicked by those bony, unearthly
legs.  In Isa's room, Harry and Ella leaned

into each other, became one big squat body, so that the scary people
could not break through and get in.  They were Siamese twins, united
for once, joined at their sides.  But after fifteen minutes or so, Ella
softened and went to sit beside Isa in bed and draw.  Isa was at her
best, happy and patient.  Harry glowered and fidgeted and turned in the
swivel chair while his untied shoes wobbled, threatening to fall off
his feet.

They went to Isa's at breakfast time a few days later.  She was in bed,
eating, but she shouted in joy to see the children.  She seemed better,
stronger, more her old self.  She let Harry work the controls of her
bed.  Both kids crawled in bed with her, one on each side.  Ella played
with the familiar flesh of her grandmother's upper arm.  Then Adri came
in and clapped her hands, chop-chop; time to get Isa out of bed.  So
Mattie and the children wandered the halls and worriedly watched the
old people do things nice old people were not supposed to do--play with
food, moan, gape at things that weren't there.  Grandparents were
supposed to have looks of tender appreciation on their faces when they
saw children; these people wore rubber Halloween masks of insanity and
vacancy, their eyes rolling and weepy, their tongues thrusting, their
fingers of bone.

Daniel called from a gas station in Idaho late one night.  He and
Pauline had been fighting--about nothing, he said, fighting about
fighting.  Pauline wanted him to go out and let her be in the motel
room alone, but he couldn't stand the banishment.

"It's bad this time.  Everything's gotten out of the burlap sack."

"Oh, Daniel."

"I'm so depressed, Mattie.  But if I leave her, I feel like I'll go
nuts."

Mattie was gladdened by the news, even as she listened to his pain.

"What would you do if you were me?"  he asked.

She didn't answer immediately, because she could hardly draw a

breath.  It was the point of no return, and it was time.  "I would
come stay in our laundry room for a while, until I could figure things
out," she said.  "And I'd trust God.  He will either calm the waters,
or He will calm you."

Daniel was silent for a moment.  "I feel like my mind is breaking up.
I'll call again tomorrow."

And he did.  He asked if the offer still stood.

"Yep," said Mattie.  "We'll get the laundry room ready."

"Okay.  But Mattie?  I snore."  He sounded congested.

"I won't be able to hear you from my room."

"What will you tell the children?"

"That you're going to stay with us for a while."

Again Daniel said he'd call back, and when he did, it was to say that
Pauline had hit the ceiling.  She'd told him that if he left now, it
was all over.  He hated himself for seeming weak, but he needed more
time to think.

Mattie felt both crushed and a little relieved.  Boy, that was close,
she thought.  There would have been no going back to what they had now.
Still, she got in bed at noon and wept.

Later in the day, she called The Sequoias and asked about Personal
Care.  There were studio apartments with no doors or stoves or
refrigerators, and people around during the day to help you dress, eat,
take your medication.  It was way beyond Mattie and Al's reach
financially, unless they sold Isa's house.  But then where would Mattie
and the children live?  Isa's Social Security check was twelve hundred
dollars, Mattie and Al had each kicked in nearly five hundred for the
aides already.  But Mattie had to get Isa out of The Willows.

Every time she drove to the superette, Mattie hoped that Ned would take
her aside to say that Abby had called.  She kept thinking in a cracked
way that the paint-can key came from a blue room somewhere, with money
hidden away on which Isa could live.  She expected Daddy still to have
all the important answers.  Al said, "Oh, honey," when she told him.

Lee had been ordered Co bed for the last month of her pregnancy, so
Nicky came by to take Harry and Ella out to dinner a couple of nights a
week instead of keeping them on the weekend.  Otherwise they were with
Mattie all the time.  Harry was withdrawn and angry about everything.
He put choke holds on Ella's dolls to upset her, and slammed them on
the floor.  He had a perpetual sneer now, usually regarding Mattie with
mild contempt.

"Harry," she asked one day, "could you take the garbage out?"

"Doesn't look like it," he said.

Ella seemed more and more to be unfurling.  Her fair hair always
escaped the barrettes and scrunchies intended to contain it.  She chose
clothes that no longer fit, or that wouldn't for a year, and trailed
loose threads and bits of yarn, as though she'd unknit completely if
you tugged at a thread to remove it.

One day when the phone rang, Mattie leapt to answer it, hoping it was
Ned.  It was Daniel, still in Idaho.  "Okay," he said.  "I'm driving
home.  Could I still stay with you a couple of nights?"

"Yes," she said.

Mattie started getting the laundry room ready for Daniel, and the kids
agreed to help.  She opened the window, made up the futon with her best
sheets and comforter, put a low table beside it, with towels folded in
a way that Harry said made them look fancier.  Ella brought in flowers
from the garden, and also taped some of her drawings to the wall. Harry
organized pencils and a sketch pad on the table, a fresh package of
dental floss, some moist towelettes, a glass for water.  The cats
arrived and plopped on the sunbeam that stretched across the futon.

Harry and Ella even went willingly with Mattie to The Willows that
afternoon.  Al was already there.  He and the kids found a stray
wheelchair to push one another around in.  Mattie and Isa listened to
the children's happy voices in the hall until Isa fell asleep.  Mattie
sat looking at a bottle of expensive lotion from Paris, a brand her
mother had always worn, which Alfred used to give her.  She

breathed in the smells, urine and decay, flowers and feet, toast and
tea, breathed in the warm, eternal almond scent of her mother's skin.

Daniel called from Elko and again from Sparks.  Each time she heard his
voice, she figured he was calling to say he'd come to his senses, he
had to drive back to Pauline.  But he was still coming.  "I'm going
slow," he said.  "I've been stopping to fish.  I'm so depressed."

Mattie told him what her therapist had said once, that you should go
only as fast as the slowest part of you could go.  "Have you talked to
Pauline?"

"No.  She's said some things that are pretty hard to forget."  That was
all he wanted to say.  When she put the phone down, it rang again.  She
picked it up, sure that it was Daniel.  But this time it was Ned.

The snap of a match, the smell of sulfur and then tobacco.  Outside the
shack window a burst of evening sun was burning through the fog.  The
leaves of the trees on the road tossed furiously.  Mattie and Abby were
drinking weak milky tea.  The Murphy bed was unfolded, made up with
white sheets and Mexican blankets.

"I really miss my dad," Mattie said.  Abby had color in her cheeks now,
perhaps from walking on the beach.  But there was no light on in her
eyes.

"I remember your father's feet," Mattie said.  What an odd thing to
say, but it was one true thing.  "He had long, bony feet.  Like
flippers."

Abby looked at her as if she were speaking backward.

"Isn't that funny?"  Mattie asked.  "I can't always remember to turn my
engine off when I get out of the car, but I remember that your father's
second toes were longer than his big toes.  And he had a five-o'clock
shadow, like Nixon.  He must have hated that."

Abby's face became cool and mean, her chin jutting with disdain.  "He
was such an asshole," she said.

"Who?"

Abby didn't seem to be about to answer.  "My father."

"I thought you meant mine," Mattie said.  Abby shook her head.

The waves crashed on the shore.  The gulls cried.  Mattie couldn't
think of a thing to say.  Finally Abby spoke.  ""Sometimes when I'm
lonely, Don't know why, Keep thinkin' I won't be lonely, By and by.""

"What's that?"

Abby scratched her head.  It sounded like sandpaper.

"From a book of poems Alfred gave me for graduation.  Langston
Hughes."

"Graduation?"

"From eighth grade."

Mattie's stomach bucked, and she held her hands out like a beggar.
"Tell me more.  Please."

"I remember when he came to the carriage house where I was living,
after I ran away from home.  First he didn't believe my baby was his,
but he was the only man I'd gone all the way with until then.  He gave
me money for an abortion and took me to the city to have it, but I got
out of the car and ran away.  He screamed "You stupid bitch' at me in
the streets.  We were on Lombard.  I remember we saw Al that day, right
in the middle of fighting, on Lombard.  Then Yvonne told him he had to
help me, or she would leave."

There were vacuums in Mattie's heart, caffeinated, froggy.  "What? 
What do you mean, she would leave?"

Abby cocked her head.  "And what do you mean?"

"I mean, what are you saying?  You make it sound like Yvonne was
involved with my dad too."

"I don't know what you're saying."  Abby picked tobacco off her tongue
and scratched her head again.  Now it sounded like a rodent trying to
get out of a box.  It sounded like the rats that had been in Mattie's
walls.  "Is this a joke?"  she asked.

"Tell me what you mean!  That my dad and Yvonne were together?"

Abby stubbed her cigarette in an abalone shell ashtray.  "Of course
they were together."

"But I thought she and your dad were the couple."

Abby knitted her brow.  "They were too."

Mattie felt for the pulse in her neck, to see if she was surviving.  It
was a river of heartbeats.  God, she prayed, God God God God.

The shack was almost dark, although the sun was still setting across
the water.  Abby got up and went to the toilet.  She didn't close the
door, and when she didn't come out, Mattie went to investigate.
Red-faced, exhausted, Abby was hunkered down on the seat, the huge
sweater down to her ankles.  She hugged her knees to her chest, and her
cheek rested on one knee.

Mattie had questions to ask her still, but she saw that the
conversation was over for now.  She walked through the ghostly door
frame to the sink, rinsed out her cup, laid it on a paper towel to dry.
She turned back to Abby and said to the half-opened door, "At some
point down the road, I need to talk to Noah."

"No, you don't," Abby said after a long silence.  "Leave the poor baby
alone."

The bathroom door closed slowly.  Mattie stood at the sink and hugged
her own shoulders.  The rising tide swirled and crashed around the
pilings below the shack.  Mattie was perched on the edge of a crevasse.
She could hear the tide rushing past her on both sides of the house.
The sea smelled strong, too strong.  Everything smelled too strong. The
lights of the town across the water glittered gold and distant as
stars, while the sun lay flattened and red between the water and the
star-filled night.

ten.

The October sun shone on Noah's tall, narrow cabin on a rise in the
middle of a field five minutes from the Cove.  Mattie drove past.  She
knew even before she took the paint-can key out of her pocket that the
flecks would match the paint of the house, although the hard sun
glowing in the blue silk sky had faded it over the years.  Oaks and bay
laurels hemmed in the field.  The house itself looked as if it had been
set down in front of a blue studio backdrop, a house-shaped hole in the
sky.  Seeing Noah's truck in the parking lot of the library had
emboldened her to drive out here.  Ned had drawn her a map on a scrap
of brown paper bag.  She'd pushed it deep into her pocket, alongside
the paint-can key and the little blue shoe.  She wanted to tiptoe up to
Noah's house and peek inside.  But she was afraid to get too close. She
rolled down the window and breathed the outside air.  It smelled fresh
and old at once, grandfatherly and green.

She drove closer.  She couldn't imagine what the point was.  This was
ridiculous: he wasn't home, and she was going to be late for work.  B
ut the secret she'd been keeping all these years, without even knowing
what it was, had made her feel like one of those people whose metal
fillings picked up radio stations, tinny music that played inside their
heads.  And now she wanted the bad fillings pulled.  A breeze rustled
the shining limbs of the bay trees.  Leaves fluttered, nervous and
playful, gold, green.  She thought of the limbs as Japanese dancers,
now twining around one another, now giving one another room.

Mattie sat at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee several days
later, tracing her lifeline with the paint-can key, thinking about the
decisions she needed to make.  What should she do about Noah, Isa,
Daniel?  The children were with Nicky.  Daniel, who was staying in the
laundry room, had gone to fix Pauline's car.  He'd be back, and he'd
feel melancholy.  It was not exactly the romantic Hallmark fantasy
Mattie had hoped for, to have a deeply depressed Daniel living with
her, yet she liked having him around.  The children adored him, and
camped out in the laundry room whenever they could.  He'd had a
brainstorm too, persuading Mattie to let Ella get her ears pierced. And
by God, Ella had stopped biting her nails so much.  Now she endlessly
twisted the posts in her ears instead.

Isa was back at The Sequoias.  The aides had stopped giving her foods
containing vitamin K."  so the medicine could kick in, and it did: she
stopped having strokes.  But Mattie and Al played a shell game with the
Sequoias personnel, to keep them from noticing that Isa was too frail
in mind and body to remain where she was, in Independent Living.

Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself.  She was
sick of her worried, hostile mind.  It would have killed her a long
time before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.

She realized with a start that the tables might be turned; she hoped
Noah would not stalk her, or sneak onto her property, or fixate, or spy
on her.  She stared off into the middle distance and let her focus
blur.  Then she closed her eyes and sat as still as she could, waiting.
She prayed, hummed idly.  And something floated into her brain, a
cellophane butterfly of thought, the most radical thought of all.  She
could tell the truth.

Mattie did a double-take, and her lips parted in a half-smile.  What a
concept!  Tell the truth, and let go of the results.  People sometimes
called out to her pastor, "Say it!"  Say what is true: tell Daniel, and
even Pauline, that she was in love with Daniel, and hoped to be with
him someday.  Let Daniel and Pauline figure out what they wanted to do.
Tell Isa that she was no longer strong enough to live alone.  Here were
her choices: The Willows, or Personal Care.  Tell Noah that she was his
sister; he could do what he wanted with that.  She hoped he would want
to be her brother.  She felt she was standing on a snowy slope at Lake
Tahoe, afraid and game at the same time, trying to get her balance and
catch her breath, her lungs seared by the cold.  So that is what I
would do, she told the ceiling, as if it had been standing with its
hands on its hips, waiting for her final answer.

She thought she'd start with Daniel, since he was closest, but when she
went to knock on his door for dinner that night, she heard him on the
phone with Pauline: "That is so crazy.  That is so provocative. 
Because she and I are not sleeping together.  That is not what this is
about." Mattie felt crushed, and confused and angry: We're not sleeping
together yet, she wanted to shout through the door.  Then it will be
what this is about.  But then, maybe he didn't know he was in love.
This was a fly in the ointment.

The next morning the phone rang at dawn.  It was Isa, crying
hysterically about a terrible fire at Mattie's.

"No, no," Mattie tried to reassure her, "maybe you dreamt it."  But

Isa did not believe her.  "I tell you, Mom, I'm right here in my
house, everyone's fine."  Isa hung up on her.

When Daniel came out of his room, she told him what was happening.

"What are you going to do?"

"Yesterday I had an epiphany.  I realized that all I ever have to do is
to tell the truth, and let go of the results.  That was my first
inclination.  But now I'm leaning toward sedation."

"Sounds like a plan."  Their eyes met briefly, and she thought about
telling him that she was in love with him.  But a moment later, unable
to catch her breath, she thought, What were you thinking?  and reached
for the newspaper.

Lewis called later in the morning, asking breathlessly if everyone was
okay.  He had been awakened by a call from Isa.  "Please try to
convince her, Lewis, there is no fire," Mattie told him.  Two hours
later the receptionist from The Sequoias called: Isa was stopping
people in the hall to tell them about the terrible fire at her
daughter's house.  Mattie drove over with some Valium.  She gave them
to Lewis, with instructions to dispense them to Isa whenever the
obsession with the fire started up again.

The fear resurfaced every few hours for a week.  Lewis ran out of
Valium.  Isa grieved for Mattie's lost photo albums and dead animals.
The director of The Sequoias called a number of times, expressing worry
about Isa's state, and Mattie lied and said that her mother was having
trouble adjusting to some new arthritis medicine.  She told the
director she'd call Isa's physician.  After Mattie had left a message
for Dr.  Brodkey, Lewis called her to say that Isa had struck at him in
frustration.  Mattie called Dr.  Brodkey again, this time saying it was
urgent.  She left a message at Al's school, asking him to call the
minute he could.  She cleaned house while waiting.  When neither of
them called back, Mattie got in bed with the phone and a seven ounce
Hershey bar with almonds, and stayed there past noon eating chocolate.
The doctor didn't call until dinnertime.  By then Mattie

 had figured she'd rounded the corner to being a perfect size 14.  At
this rate, she'd be a 16 by Christmas.  Maybe Sears would rehire her.
Dr.  Brodkey said she'd write a prescription for a sedative; she'd run
out of other ideas.

Days passed in a blur.  Mattie usually loved autumn most--the tang in
the air, shorter days that brought with them the sense of deepening and
rest.  She loved the elegant light, the pumpkin and scarlet leaves. And
she didn't even mind Thanksgiving.  Everyone knew just what to do: You
sat, ate too much, got stupefied.  Then you cleaned up and everyone
went home.

They had Thanksgiving dinner at Mattie's house.  Daniel made a table
extension out of plywood, which they covered with one of Isa's old lace
tablecloths.  Mattie roasted a turkey.  Al and Katherine brought side
dishes, Lewis fresh cranberry sauce, tart and lumpy and delicious.
Katherine remembered a can of the jellied kind for the children.  Isa
seemed sedated, not speaking much, her eyes intelligent but her mouth
frozen into a simulation of interest.  It was easy, a series of
conversations about the latest national news, town gossip, the
children's school, Lewis's family.  All talk of fires had been put out.
They sat down, with Mattie and Daniel as heads of the table, and Lewis
said grace.  Everything was going well until Pauline called.

"Hey," she said to Mattie.  "Have you already sat down to eat?"

"Yes, but just barely.  What's up?"

"I need to borrow Daniel's car, to drive into the city.  My starter's
shot."

"Shall I go get him?"

"No, no.  I've got a cab outside.  I'll be over in ten minutes."

Pauline let herself in, flounced into the dining room, and gave
everyone expansive hugs and kisses.  Isa cried out with such joyful
surprise to see Pauline that it might have been Bobby Kennedy

who'd just walked in.  Pauline pulled up a chair between Isa and Al,
beaming at them both.  "Hey, you," she said to Daniel.

She looked wonderful, luminous, her lush hair, now streaked with a few
strands of gray, piled on top of her head, and held in place with black
lacquer chopsticks.  She reached out to touch Daniel's hand when he
said something that pleased her--acting twinkly, coquettish, sarcastic,
wrapped like a package in a deep-lavender pashmina.  Daniel seemed
happy to see her so buoyant, but not as happy as Isa.

"Oh my God, but this is marvelous," Isa exclaimed.  Her face had pinked
up.  "Why haven't we seen you more?"  Pauline shrugged, as if it didn't
make sense to her either.  Isa turned to Mattie.  "Has she ever looked
more beautiful?"  Mattie replied that no, she never had.  "But I mean,
this just makes our day, doesn't it, Mattie?"  Mattie nodded, yes, it
sure did.  She smiled nicely at her mother, wondering if there was any
vitamin K.--rich food on the table with which to induce another
stroke--just a small one, to make her stop talking.

When Pauline accepted a plate from Daniel, with samples of everything,
Mattie's stomach tightened with unhappiness.  and she excused herself
to the bathroom.  She checked herself out in the mirror before
returning: she looked sweaty and dumpy from working in the kitchen. She
splashed cool water on her face, powdered her nose, put on lipstick.

Pauline kept the conversation flowing, and flirted with everyone, Harry
and Ella, Al and Katherine, Lewis and Daniel and Isa, everyone but
Mattie, with whom she was overly cordial.  Catherine was cold toward
Pauline to the point of being rude, for which Mattie adored her.
Pauline described in great detail some driftwood figures that had
appeared overnight at Bolinas Beach, sculptures of beach musicians.
She'd gone back twice to see them.  The kids would love them.  They
made you feel wild and creative.  Mattie sat feeling like Bartleby.

Isa brightened under the sun lamp of Pauline's attention.  She

spoke in complete sentences, in paragraphs even.  She seemed to be
tracking.  She and Pauline held hands.  Mattie imagined her own hands
around Isa's neck, throttling her.

Pauline said her good-byes, and took Daniel aside.  While Mattie turned
to watch, Harry crawled loyally onto her lap.  She nuzzled his head
gratefully.  Daniel looked as if he had a headache, and Pauline looked
sorry, but she retrieved her black wool coat and put it on.  Mattie
rose to join them.

Daniel wiggled the car key off his chain and gave it to her.

"Good-bye," Pauline cried gaily.  "I've got to go right now or I'll be
late!"  Daniel turned slowly toward Mattie, looking like a little boy
who had just seen his only balloon float out of reach and head for the
open sky.

A few days after Thanksgiving, Daniel sat Mattie down at the kitchen
table and told her that he and Pauline had had a really good talk.  "We
spent a lot of Friday on the phone," he said.  "I went and saw her
yesterday."

Mattie's face would not cooperate with her wish to appear cool.  She
could feel her mouth purse like a child's, like Ella's, into teary
disappointment.  Daniel sighed loudly and shook his head.

"Are you going back?"  Mattie's voice broke.

"I don't know what I'm doing, but this arrangement is making her nuts.
It would make me crazy too, if she stayed with a man-even her best
friend."

There was no sound in the kitchen but the hum of the refrigerator, the
song of chickadees in the branches outside.

"I have to go pick up the kids from Nicky's today," she said abruptly.
She left without looking at him.

Mattie stopped by Isa's with the children, and they stayed for dinner
and watched TV with her.  Mattie ordered in pizza and let the aide take
two hours off.  She wanted to go home, but delayed returning so that
Daniel could stew in his own juices and indecision.  By the time she
realized that she was the one in the stew pot, and sped home, he was
gone.

His things were still there, but he didn't call and he hadn't come back
by the children's bedtime.  Harry acted out, anxious and mean, rough
with the cats, flicking their noses and laughing when they mewed.
Mattie sent him to bed, lay down with Ella, and read her Yertle the
Turtle.  They heard Harry crying next door.  Mattie softened.  "Honey,"
she called.  "I'll be right there."

She put down the book and tucked the covers around Ella's neck.  They
said a quick prayer, and Mattie kissed her.  She put Raffi on the tape
player, so Ella could listen as she drifted off.  Then she went to see
Harry.  He was pressed up against the wall in the dark.  She climbed in
bed beside him and rubbed his thin back through his pajamas.

"Do you think he's ever coming back."" Harry asked in a quavering
voice.

"Oh, yeah, I do.  But honey, I don't know if he's really with us."

"Of course he's with us," Harry said.  "He lives here now.  He's
ours."

"Oh, honey.  He's actually still married to Pauline."

"Yeah, but he should be married to you."

"What makes you think so?"

"Duh.  It's so obvious.  She thinks she's so great."  Mattie kissed her
son, smelled the sweet skin.  "Plus, she's got that big fat ass."

"Harry!"  Mattie laughed.  "Stop.  We don't care what her butt looks
like."

"I don't think I've seen such a big jiggly butt in my whole wide
life."



This conversation cheered her up enormously.  She stretched out on the
couch and read until nearly midnight, looking up each time she heard a
car pass, rearranging her face into expressions of sultry kindness. 
But when Daniel didn't come home by midnight, she got in bed and cried,
as quietly as she could.  She tried to cry herself to sleep, yet she
stayed wide awake.

She imagined a murderer sneaking in the front door.  She imagined
Daniel coming home, walking into her arms, taking her teary face in his
hands and bending to kiss her.  She imagined Daniel and Pauline in bed,
the intense sexual relief of making up.  This pleasure might be reason
enough to stay married.  She took a sleeping pill with brandy, but it
didn't help.  It only impaired her, made it hard for her to walk to the
bathroom for a pee.  She looked at the demented woman in the bathroom
mirror, and saw mug-shot numbers across her chest, after her arrest for
stabbing Pauline and cutting off her head with a chain saw.

When had she started letting herself go?  She needed a haircut, and a
facelift.  She needed to start dyeing her hair.  Her wrinkles were
deeper, her eyes exhausted.  Finally she heard Daniel's car pull up,
and his key in the front door.  "Hi, kitties," she heard him say.  He
was thoroughly drunk, talking to the cats, slurring.  She sighed with
relief.

Pauline called the next morning when Daniel was still in bed.  Mattie
had brought him orange juice and aspirin and coffee first thing,
settling into the kitchen herself with the paper.

"Let me ask you something," Pauline said.  "How do you get this to come
out right?"

Mattie thought it over.  "I don't actually need to make it all come out
right for everyone," she said.  "Things sometimes happen, Pauline."

In the weeks that followed, Mattie was tired all the time from working
at the store.  When she got home the children fought, and she shouted
at them and slammed doors; her mother called every few hours, again
crying about the fire, and Mattie repeated tightly that there was no
fire, that everyone was fine.  But no one really was fine, especially
her.  She used to be sweet, able to tolerate so much more.

Now if people cut her off in traffic, she was ready to follow them
home.

One afternoon she found everyone hiding from her in the laundry room.
Daniel was in his beach chair, reading.  Ella was sitting on the futon
with her back in the corner, drawing.  Harry was lying beside her,
facedown, wearing swim trunks imprinted with sharks and an orange plaid
shirt with a collar.  The cats were stacked up on Daniel's bookshelf,
like opium users on doss house beds.  Everyone turned to look at her as
if she were armed.

"Hi, you guys," she said.  "Don't you want some more light?"  She
flicked on the switch, filling the room with overhead o-lare.  Ella
shaded her eyes.  Her nails were bleeding again.  Harry ignored her.
Daniel looked up fretfully.  He had lost ten pounds in two months.  She
walked into the room and turned on the two reading lamps so everyone
could see better, although none of them wanted to.  "Harry," she said
nicely, "you really can't wear sharks with plaid."  Harry turned to
Daniel.

"Mattie?"  said Daniel, and got up to offer her his seat.

"I can't sit down," she said shrilly.  "I've got a whole house to
clean!  While you all laze around like the gentry.  What do you think I
am, the scullery maid?"  She walked toward Ella, who dropped her sketch
pad into her lap and put her bleeding hands in front of her face as if
to fend off blows.  "What are you doing, Ella?"  she yelled.  "Jesus
Christ."

"Mom!"  Harry shouted at her.  She took a step toward him, not knowing
what she might do; there was ringing in her ears and Isa's

fire burned in her head, and she whipped around and hit the wall as
hard as she could.  Her fist went through the Sheetrock.  The children
screamed.

Mattie stood there, her fist hidden, swallowed up by the wall,
surprised by how easy it was to punch a hole in Sheetrock.  The room
was silent except for the footsteps of the cats as they fled.  Ella
started to cry.

Daniel led her to the kitchen, where he made an ice pack for her hand
out of a Ziploc bag.  The children huddled in the doorway, as if she
were dangerous.  They looked like refugees.

"I'm having a hard time," Mattie said.

Daniel suggested he drop the children off with Nicky and Lee, but
Mattie couldn't bear being the kind of mentally ill mother whose
children had to be dropped off at their father's house after her
episodes.

"But you are," Al pointed out when she called him from her bedroom.  He
laughed, and she did too.

Mattie and Daniel and the children hung out, uneasily, through the
afternoon, and then, at sunset, they drove to Bolmas to look at the
driftwood musicians on the beach.  Mattie hated to admit it, but
Pauline had been right.  This was an astonishing creation, musicians
jamming by a crumbling seawall.  The sculptures were six to seven feet
high, jaunty, exuberant, made of wood and whatever else had washed
ashore in storms of the previous winter.  They were elongated like
Giacomettis.  Wild heads and rolling eyes, skeletal ribs and round
tummies, exploding hair, hands and fingers and instruments of hoses and
ropes and twigs, eyes of juice-bottle tops, ratty pirate pennants.

The children shouted and screamed and raced around like dogs.  A horn
player blew a driftwood trombone, a pedal-steel guitarist and a bass
player strummed kelp strings.  All of them had twigs for toes, except
the lucky vibe player, who wore mildewed boots.  A mop-headed Rasta
groupie with a tubular stoned look watched, and a coyote with a kelp
mane howled with his head thrown back.  There was a black marimba
player, maybe singing harmony, with black zori hands and a kerchief of
green fishnet.  The drummer had an Amish broom beard, his chest the old
foot liner from the floor of a truck.  People milled around, pointing
out details, laughing.

Someone eventually built a bonfire.  Mattie and Daniel went to warm
themselves, smiled at the other grown-ups.  It was getting cold.
Bottles of wine and flasks of brandy emerged from purses and pockets,
and were passed around.  Mattie and Daniel took sips of whatever came
their way.  "Where are the kids?"  she asked.

"They're right over there," Daniel said, pointing down the beach.  Her
children were moving across the sand, gathering materials.  Harry had a
tangle of wire or fishing line; seaweed streamed from Ella's hands.

"My father would have loved this," she told Daniel.  He nodded, and
reached for the bottle that someone was holding out to him.  "This is
what it was like when I was a kid, with Al and Abby in Nell's
backyard--meeting up with whoever was there to go take a look at what
had washed ashore."

Food appeared--cheese, bread, apples.  Daniel pulled a bag of M&M's
from his jacket pocket, and people picked them from his cupped palm
like Communion wafers.  The children made a cat near the musicians,
with wire whiskers, seaweed tail, red juice-bottle-cap nose, and green
cap eyes, and Mattie felt restored by what two kids could make from a
bunch of beach junk tacked to driftwood poles.

She had somehow kept neglecting to tell Daniel she loved him. 
Actually, he asked her not to: After Christmas dinner, when everyone
else had left, and the children had gone to sleep, she believed she was
getting the nudge from God; this was the night to tell him.  It took a
while, and a shot of brandy, and it took ignoring something inside her
that seemed to be trying to flag her down.  But sitting by the fire,
with the tree lights on, she took a deep breath and said shyly,

"I'd like to tell you something."  Daniel looked sick.  "Are you
okay?"  she asked.

"I'm afraid you're going to say something that's too interesting for me
to handle right now," he said.  So she shut herself off like a
flashlight.

She asked God and Angela what to do.  Angela came through as usual.
"Can't you give the poor guy a break?  He's clearly not doing very
well.  Can you imagine the laundry room as a hospital room?  You
wouldn't try to get someone to get it together, or get them to date
you, just after they've been admitted.  You'd take them as they are,
and you'd do what you could to help."  So Mattie tried.  Her heart grew
softer, some of the time.  He was really a mess, losing weight, not
sleeping.  There was something egg-wet and spiky about him, like a
newly hatched bird.  She watched him in the garden with Ella, picking
flowers or playing fairies, or persuading Harry and his friends to help
paint cabinets.  His being there, the intimacy of the day-to-day, the
sounds of sleep and the bathroom, his late-night pain on the phone with
Pauline.  It began to extinguish her lust.  She started fantasizing
about making love with Nicky again, or William.

One night she blew up at Daniel after he'd been holed up in his room on
the phone with Pauline.  "I've been waiting to call Angela all night!"
she snapped.  "Now it's too late!"

Daniel looked at the phone in his hand as if he had no idea how it had
gotten there.  He turned to her.  "Do you want me to move out?"  he
asked quietly.  "I think this is too hard on you.  You have so much
going on."

"No, no," she said, instantly mortified.  "I'm sorry I'm being so ugly.
I'm just not myself."  But she was herself, and that was the problem.
She had wanted to move outside the small flower bed of her old sweet
helpful self, and had imagined stepping into a wild, overgrown garden
of jungle flowers and exotic ferns.  Instead it seemed that inside her
was a septic field: it was disgusting.  She was

short with everyone, Isa, the children, Daniel.  There was no end to
the depravity of her thoughts now.  She thought about killing her
children, and the cats.  She wondered how Otis would like to be put
down the garbage disposal.

Mattie told Daniel that she really wanted him to stay, which she did.
The next day he made a cinder-block bookshelf with three pine slats, as
if to prove himself, and he brought some books from home.  Mattie and
the kids came to his room often, alone and together, plopping down on
his bed where slanting afternoon sun lit the walls and the futon.

He bought a fan at the Salvage Shop.  Mattie knocked on the door one
hot day in January and stepped in.  He was sitting on his beach chair
with a book, while Ella slept, boiled and butter flied like a shrimp,
on the futon.  Daniel put his book on the floor.  Mattie nudged Ella
over and stretched out beside her.

"How you doing?"  Mattie asked.

"I'm a cuckoo clock," he said.

"Yeah, you and me both."  His dreadlocks were trimmed to just below his
ears.  He still had the most beautiful lips she'd ever seen, the palest
pink.  He tucked his hands under his thighs as if they had to be
contained, as if they would lash out otherwise, or fly away.

Isa had become strangely quiet.  Where had all that energy gone, all
those memories and opinions, all that talk?  She watched people talk
now, and listened, beaming.  Lewis stopped in to see her several times
a day.  He brought her snacks from the dining room under his coat:
fruit, buns, slices of cheese, anything he could sneak out that didn't
have vitamin K. He let her show him the shrine of Alfred every day, the
photos in frames in the hall, and listened to the tour of their
marriage again and again: Oh, here we are with baby Al.  Here we are at
the St.  Francis Hotel, on our twentieth anniversary, just as

 in love as the day we met!  Here we are at Mattie's graduation; here
we're camping in Yosemite the year before Alfred died.  Lewis sat by
her bed while she slept, and he prayed or read the book of Psalms he
carried with him everywhere.  He made her walk every day down the halls
of The Sequoias.  "Oh for Chrissakes," she would grouse, but would walk
with him for twenty minutes, as far as the Personal Care units--which
she treated like a forbidden zone.  Then she'd turn around and head for
home.

Isa needed to move into Personal Care, that was clear.  She regularly
fell out of bed in the middle of the night.  The aides put pillows on
the floor to cushion her fall.  Mattie called The Sequoias one day to
ask if there were any rooms in Personal Care.  "No," said the director,
"but you can put her on the waiting list."

"And how much does it cost again?"

"Thirty-eight hundred dollars a month, with the special fund kicking in
five hundred."

"That's great," said Mattie.  "Let me get back to you on it."

Where are we gonna get it?"  Mattie asked Al.

"What are we coming up with now, with her Social Security, you, me, and
Lewis?"

"Twenty-five hundred, total."

"That's not so bad.  We're close.  We only need eight hundred more."

"And who's going to tell her she has to move?  You know there are no
cats in Personal Care."

Al looked at her thoughtfully.  "I think you should tell her."

"Maybe we should kill her, in her sleep."

"Okay," he said.

It was Al, not Mattie, who decided it was time to visit Noah.

Al called her one day and said, "I don't want to sound like a Nike

ad, but why don't we just do it?  Get it over with.  Drive out to
Noah's and say hello."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

They practiced their opening lines as they went out to the Cove two
days later.  "Hi, I'm Mattie," she said brightly.

"The tone is all wrong.  You sound like a flight attendant."

Mattie lowered her voice to basso prof undo slow.  III III Mattie."

"Good.  Very Tales from the Crypt."

"What do I say next?"

"What do you want to say?"

"I want to say, "I'm Mattie, and this is Al.  And maybe you know this
already, but our father was Alfred Ryder too.""

Al made a face of surprise, like a grown-up playing peekaboo.

"I'm Mattie, and this is Al," she tried again.  "And the fact is..."

"What's the fact, Mat?"

"The fact is, we're..."

"We're Alfred's older children," Al said.  "We never knew our father
had another son until pretty recently.  And that child turns out to be
you.  So we're Alfred's three children.  We didn't know how to proceed,
or what would be best, so we decided to take a chance and say these
words to you."

"That was perfect," said Mattie, and repeated it.  They drove past the
library, which was closed, past the superette, where Ned's truck was
parked in front.  They Hashed through the downtown area to the old
two-lane highway to Marshall, toward Noah's house.

From the car, Al and Mattie watched Noah sitting on the front porch of
the light-blue house.  He was drinking a beer and reading the paper.
They got out of the car and waved.  He watched as they walked toward
him, but he didn't wave back.  There was a wicker

 basket beside him, and a fan.  His hair was short, buzzed, dark.  He
wore a black T-shirt faded nearly to gray.  When they got closer to the
porch, they saw that the basket contained a grizzled basset hound.

Noah looked up with polite defiance when they walked up the steps.
Mattie saw by the expression on his face that he knew who they were.

The dog opened its wino eyes, took them in, and fell back to sleep.
There were succulents everywhere on the stairs, in cracked and broken
pots, and a branch of a bay tree stretched over the railing onto the
porch.  The dog emitted a windy, comatose growl.

"That sure looks like an old dog," Al said.

Noah ran his hand back over his own bristles as if to push them off his
forehead.  He shook Al's hand.  Mattie wondered whether she should say
something obvious about the dog, so he would like her too.

The dry grass was cut back twenty feet from the house, a lion blond
brush cut, framed by the bay trees.  Noah reached down to scratch the
dog's ears.  Mattie and Al continued up the porch steps, uninvited, and
sat on the broad rail.

"Hi, Noah," said Mattie.  "I'm Mattie.  This is Al."

Noah looked at her skeptically.  "We've met at the library."

Mattie closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead.  All she had to do was
get the first sentence out.  Help!  she prayed.  She found herself
saying calmly to her feet, "We're Alfred's older children.  We never
knew our father had another son until a few months ago...."  When she
was finished there was silence, except for the crickets and birds, the
rustle of leaves and grasses.  Noah was squinting at her as though she
had spoken in broken English.  Then the dog opened its boxy jaws and
bayed operatically, as though hearing grievous news.

Everyone laughed nervously.  Al squatted beside the dog and petted it.
Noah stared into his lap, and squeezed the tip of his forefinger as if
trying to force a splinter to the surface.

"You are a handsome guy," Al told the dog, scratching its rear.  The
dog yawned.

"I don't mean to be rude," Noah said.  "But I have to leave soon.  I
have a gardening job."

"That's okay," said Al.  "We just wanted to say the words out loud.  We
didn't know if you knew already, or if you'd care, but we came anyway."
Mattie felt huge and ungainly, and drunk.  When Noah glanced over, she
threw her hands up in a shrug, as an old Italian might, accepting a
compliment or condolences.  The dog barely moved.  "There's nothing
like a good dog," Al said.  "It's like having God around, isn't it?  Is
yours sick, or is he just old?"

"Both," Noah said.  He squatted beside the basket and scratched the
mottled silkiness of the dog's ears.  Al continued to pet its haunches,
seemingly oblivious to Noah.  After a moment, Noah moved his head
closer to the dog and to Al, and Mattie had to look away from the two
heads bent over the dog.  She saw in them her father at two ages.  She
started weeping, as silently as she could manage.  The smells of hot
golden grass, manure, oil from Noah's truck, and the dirty dog clotted
in her throat.  Noah and Al looked at each other, the silence stretched
tight between them.  Al smiled, tapped his crossed bottom teeth, their
father's teeth.  Noah instinctively touched his too.  "God," he said.

"We have the key our dad used to open the can of paint that he painted
this place with.  Isn't that funny?"  Mattie reached into her pocket,
having meant to bring the key, but there was only the shoe.  She curled
her fingers around it, then took it out of her pocket.  Noah gaped at
it.  "Where'd you get that?"

Al said, "It was in the glove compartment of our dad's old VW."

Noah froze.  Mattie held the shoe in her palm and waited.  Noah reached
for it gingerly, as if it were blown glass rather than rubber.

"We got this from a gum ball machine at a Mobil gas station in
Sebastopol."

"Who did?"  Al asked.

 "Me and my dad," Noah said.  Kabooom--everything buckled inside Ma
trie, like a wood floor during an earthquake.  Al's face went white,
but he listened to Noah with a calm expression.  "My dad," Noah had
called Alfred, and even though this was why she was here, hearing it
was a blow.  He was your dad?  But how could that be--he was our dad.

Al soldiered on.  "Do you remember the day you got that shoe?"

Noah nodded.  He turned it upside down to look at the tread, scraping
grime off with his thumbnail.  "The gas station was near where Yvonne
lived.  I remember the flying horse, the old Coke machine, the coldest
Cokes in the world.  My dad always gave me a quarter for the gum ball
machine."  She shuddered: Kabooom again.  "You could get Ratfink
decals," he said, "or shrunken heads, but one day I got this stupid
shoe.  It came in a hard plastic bubble, which I kept my tiny treasures
in for a while.  My dad used to give me tiny things.  I collected
them--little space dudes, dinosaurs, miniature locks."

"Do you still have them?"  Mattie asked.  He shook his head.  He was
pleasant enough to her, but warmer toward Al.  Of course, Al was not
flinching as if cannonballs were blowing up all around him.  Noah
looked at his watch.  He handed the shoe to Mattie, but she was afraid
that if she took it back, he'd leave.

"My dog died," Mattie blurted out, and horrified at herself, she began
to cry again.  No one spoke.  Al got to his feet and put his arm around
Mattie's shoulders.  She wiped at her eyes.

"God," Noah said, "that's so sad.  What kind of dog was it?"

"A Cavalier King Charles spaniel."

"Oh, that's a great breed," he said.  She nodded miserably.  Leaves
rustled.  "Can I keep the shoe?"  he asked.

"What?"  she said, as if he wanted her car.

"Could I have the blue shoe?"

"You mean, like to keep forever?"

"Jeez.  Never mind."

She looked at the turquoise high-top in his hand, the rubber filigree
shoelace.  "I would need it back someday," she said.

Noah looked dubious.  "Well, that would be okay."  He held it like a
ladybug that had landed in his hand.  Then he thought for a moment.  "I
think I have something for you.  I'll be right back."

Al nodded jovially, but clutched his chest when he and Mattie were
alone.

"He's really warmed up to you," Mattie whispered.

"I'm his brother," Al whispered back.  "He can look into the mirror of
me."

Noah returned with a wooden box, a padlock on the hasp, a key in the
lock.  Mattie's eyes widened, and her mouth opened, like a contestant
on a game show: here were the papers that would make them all rich,
Alfred's stock certificates, or the insurance.  Noah put the box on the
porch near Al's feet and sat on the step nearby.  Noah was close enough
that Mattie could smell the sweat on his skin.  They all stared at the
box, as if what was inside would step out on its own in a moment.  Al
looked over at Mattie, and then turned the key.  The lock popped open.
He handed the key to Noah, wiggled the lock out, set it down, and
lifted the hinge.  Mattie held her breath as he pushed back the lid and
then looked in.

Inside was a rumpled wallet, flat brown, lightly stained, a little
dusty.  Al reached for it, glanced up at Noah, and opened it.  It was
empty, except for a few coins that fell out.

Noah took the wallet from Al and held it up.  "This was my dad's," he
said.  He opened it and shook it, so Al and Mattie could see there was
nothing inside.  He slid his fingers in a hidden compartment, paused
for a moment, and pulled out a black-and-white photo.  He observed it
with reverence.

She knew the photo even before it came fully into focus.  She
remembered the day it was taken.  She could remember the colors of
their clothes.  She remembered sitting on the hi-fi cabinet with Al,
in

new pajamas Isa had bought them at Montgomery Ward.  Mattie's were a
soft red Asian style with black frog clasps.  Al's were flannel, pale
blue with silver circles.  He had a crew cut and his arm was flopped
around her.  They looked very grown-up for the camera, although she was
about three and he about seven, a little younger than her own kids now.
She and Al were somber children smiling for the photographer, urchins
in nice new jammies.

Mattie looked up from the photo to find Noah watching her.  He seemed
so young, as if he were showing his parents a homework paper he'd
gotten an A on.  She raised her eyes to the sky.  The day had grown
humid, pearly gray.  Noah bent to pick his dog up from the basket.  He
knitted his fingers together to hold the dog.  Mattie reached forward
to lift the lid of the box, wondering whether they had somehow missed
something.

"That's all there is, Mattie.  An old wallet of dad's.  A photo.  Some
coins."

She turned to Noah.  "Did you recognize us from the photo?"

"No," he said, "not the first times I saw you alone.  But when you came
into the library together--actually, after you left--I started feeling
very odd, like in the Twilight Zone.  And then I got this feeling, of
knowing, even though I didn't know what I knew.  Until I came home, and
ended up digging out the picture.  Then I could see who you were."

"Your mother never said anything about us?"

"No.  My mother pretty much has her hands full, with herself," Noah
said.  "You can keep the picture."

"I'm going to leave you our telephone numbers," Al said.  "In case you
want to call.  Do you have a pencil?"

"There's one by the phone, right inside the door."  Al went in to get
it.

Noah looked toward the door for Al.  Mattie couldn't think of a thing
to say.  She idly peeled a piece of bark off the bay tree branch.

There were veins of white rot on its underside.  She wanted to show
Noah, as she would show Harry or Ella: Look!  Rot!  It's the beginning
of the divine process.  You know why?  Without rot, things don't get
soft enough for anything to happen.  She held the bark up to the space
on the trunk where it had been, and fitted it back carefully.  More
awkward moments passed.

"How's Abby?"  Mattie asked.

"I haven't seen her lately.  She hasn't been around."

Mattie heard Al call her name.  She got up and went inside.  He was
pointing to a clipping taped to the wall above the phone.  It was a
story from the local paper, dated nearly a year before, recognizing
Yvonne Lang for a large donation she'd made to the library where Noah
worked, which would keep it open another year.  The first paragraph
referred to her as a former Marshall resident.  There was a small photo
of her: the big, beautiful, ageless earth mother had grown old.  She
looked like an ancient Russian nun, all wrinkles and creases, spokes
emanating from around her mouth like sun rays, deep dark eyes hidden by
folds of skin.  Half of her face was in light, the other mostly in
shadow, which created a sense of rest: without the shadow you wouldn't
have seen the shape, the landscape of her face.  The shadow told one
kind of story, and the light, burning through the ravages of age, told
another.

On the porch, Noah stood with the dog in the sling of his arms, fingers
knitted effortlessly, big hands and dirty nails making a cradle for his
dog.  He laid the dog back in the basket with the easy motion of hands
that knew what to do.

Al and Mattie sat at her kitchen table studying the photograph, trying
to remember who the people in it were.  The two children in pajamas had
their best faces forward.  They were sitting so close that the patterns
of their pajamas merged.  His arm was around her

shoulders, and the fingers and thumb of his hand formed a circle as if
he might be about to make a shadow animal, open the circle to make the
coyote bark.

"We should have asked Noah where Yvonne lives," said Mattie.

"We can ask him another time.  We would've sounded like the FBI."  They
both leaned forward over the photograph.

"All that effort to find a box, and all that's inside is us," said
Mattie.

Al kept looking at the picture.  "I never noticed your head was so
large."

"I know, I look like a dwarf.  And you're so handsome.  We look like
we're hoping someone will adopt us, don't we?  We're so clean!  And
eager."

"You are so full of hope here, though," said Al.

"It's not hope.  It's desperation.  Here I am, Daddy!  Daddy, here
lam!"

"Look at our old eyes," said Al.  "You look so tired.  We look like
little kids who've got that disease that turns you into old people."

"I didn't ever sleep."

"Why not?"

"Someone had to stay up on watch.  Or the ship of us might have
sunk."

"You look so calm here."

"You don't get adopted if you look too nervous."

Same drizzly day at the end of January, after she had driven the kids
to school, Mattie felt an unshakable desire to walk along the salt
marsh near The Sequoias.  It was not convenient--there was so much work
to do around the house--but this was her only day off for the week. She
parked near The Sequoias and got out of the car.  There was a sweet
moistness in the air.  Something tugged at her sleeve, just as she
turned toward the marsh.  Let's go visit Personal

Care, it said; it's time.  I have to get home, she replied.  Just come
inside one minute.  No, no, I have to think about this some more, she
implored.  Trust me, it said.  But we don't have the money, she cried,
and there aren't any beds.  There will be, it said.

Maybe she was going crazy.  But she made herself walk to the Personal
Care entrance anyway.  The young receptionist, Mia, wore her hair swept
up into a bun, and a patient smile.  Mattie told her a little about
Isa.  "You need to apply at the front desk," Mia said.  "They have a
waiting list for the rooms, but I could show you the units.  To tell
you the truth, winter is really hard on our residents.  Flu, you know.
People move on fairly frequently to nursing care.  Has your mom seen
the facilities?"  The phone rang.  "Just a minute."  Mia took the call,
then rerouted it to a social worker.

"My mother won't come in and check it out," Mattie said.  "She won't
want to move."  The phone rang again.  Mia patched it through to a
resident's room.

"Sign her up.  There's time to get her used to the idea.  They all hate
it at first, and then they all love it and forget about the old life.
Hold on."  Mia plugged the line from her headset into the phone grid.
"Hi, Yvonne," she said.  "Where are you?"  Mattie watched and listened.
"There's a Whistlestop bus at Safeway at noon.  Can you wait?"

Mattie reeled.  There were hundreds of Yvonnes.  This couldn't be
Yvonne Lang.  Get a grip, she told herself sternly.  When Mia was off
the phone, Mattie told her she'd return for a tour another time.  She
went outside, started her car, and drove to the Miller Avenue Safeway.
She pulled over near the bus shelter in front, where, wreathed in
turquoise necklaces, Yvonne Lang sat, calmly reading on the bench.

Mattie recoiled, as if Yvonne had turned and pointed a bony finger at
her.  She was beautiful, a radiant old woman.  A lavender sweater set
covered her full breasts, and she wore flowing black pants.

Mattie pulled away from the curb so fast her tires squealed.

Hi, Yvonne," she said into the phone that night, several times.  Al
stood beside her in the hall.  "Hi, Yvonne," she practiced.  Daniel had
taken the children out for ice cream.  She and Al looked at each other
like kids making crank calls.  And then Yvonne said, "Hello?"

"Hi, Yvonne," Mattie said.  "It's Mattie Ryder."  There was silence.

"Oh, for God's sakes," Yvonne said, her voice trembling.  "Mattie."

She met Yvonne the next afternoon in the sunroom of The Sequoias.

Yvonne had a pleasing, slightly crooked smile, rose lipstick, and a
big, marvelous nose.  She took Mattie's hand and gazed into her eyes.
Mattie's heart was hard, pounding like an injury.  Yvonne led her down
the hall to her studio, holding on to her hip and limping as she
walked.

They sat and faced each other in purple velvet chairs.  There were no
refrigerators, stoves, or doors in the Personal Care units, just one
big room and a bathroom.  The residents ate their meals communally.
Yvonne had made mint tea with an electric pot, with a switch that would
turn itself off if you forgot.  She poured the tea into chipped antique
cups.  Sunlight shone through the curtains on the windows.  Her dark
furniture gleamed, with doilies on every surface, lace islands of
agates, shells and feathers, keyhole limpets, sand dollars as big as
your hand and as small as a dime, beach glass of all colors in tiny
bowls.

Mattie sighed and tried to figure out a way to break the ice.  "Why are
you in Personal Care?"  she asked finally.  "You seem so fit."

"I've had two heart attacks, and six months ago I had hip replacement
surgery.  A unit opened here while I was convalescing."  Mattie nodded.
Silence descended.

"I take it you know about Noah, then?"  Yvonne asked.  A wave of fear
passed through Mattie's chest.  She nodded.  "Abby, and me too with
your dad, I mean?"  Mattie nodded again.  She couldn't speak.  "You
know everything?"  Mattie shrugged.  Yvonne sighed with relief.  "Thank
God. I think if he'd lived longer, he'd have told you himself."

Mattie stared at Yvonne, desperately wanting her to keep talking.
Instead, she sipped her tea.  A grandmother clock tocked on the
dresser.  Mattie looked at Yvonne.  Her skin was as old and dry as
desert lands whose bones you could see.  "Yvonne, please.  Tell me
everything anyway, all of it."

"All right."  Yvonne set her teacup down with a trembling hand.  It
chattered like teeth on the saucer.  "Your father and I fell in love
the year you were born.  I was living with Neil, but it was your father
and I who always connected, deep down.  Neil was a charming rogue, and
brilliant, but your father was special--the kindest, smartest man I
ever knew."

Mattie reached for her cup, and her hand shook so much that the tea
sloshed into the saucer.

"We did the best we could.  Our feelings were not convenient.  I never
tried to get him to leave your mother, and I don't think he ever would
have."  Yvonne fingered her necklace, the rock of turquoise that lay
nestled in the deep hollow of her throat.  "And Alfred had to share me
with Neil.  But I loved him.  And he loved me."

"Did Neil kill himself?  That's what William Allen thinks."

"Yes."

"How?"

"Pills and alcohol.  He lost us all--me, your father, Abby--all in a
day."

"How did he find out about you and my dad?  And Abby and my dad?"

"Abby told him."

"Why do you think Abby told?"

"Because she hated him.  And she loved your father.  And she was
crocked half the time."

"Was she the friend you found a house for, when you asked Neil

 to tell my dad you'd found a house for your friend?  Rundown, needed
some repairs?"

"Yes.  Abby was six months pregnant, and your father for obvious
reasons didn't have a lot of spare time to help her find a place to
live.  I rented it for Abby, and then the baby when he arrived.  Later
I bought it for a song, with the money Neil left me."

"Are you close to Noah?"

"I've helped out when I could.  I took care of him for a while,
actually.  At first.  I've seen him over the years.  I felt like he had
enough to deal with, as it was."

"Did my dad paint that house?"

Yvonne nodded.  Mattie hugged her stomach, like a pregnant woman.  The
clock tocked, little birds outside sang, her heart pounded.  A look
came over Yvonne's face, as if she were trying to swallow aspirin
without water and, caught in her throat, it was dissolving.  Mattie
reached for her hand as tears, diverted by her wrinkles, began to run
down Yvonne's face.

Mattie began to cry too, and withdrew into herself.  After a while, she
heard a rustle, and felt a Kleenex against her hand.  She took it from
Yvonne and dried her tears.  They sat together, gravely.

"Did he ever really work in Washington?"  Mattie asked.

Yvonne nodded.  "He was a consultant on civil rights before Congress,
during the Kennedy years.  He did some great work.  But he could not
abide LBJ.  Of course, he continued to let your mother think he was
needed in Washington, because it meant he could get away."  She shook
her head.  "He did the best he could, and that involved lies, and other
women, and a girl.  There was no excuse for what he did with Abby.
Still, things might have been different if someone had been there to
protect him early on.  But you know, no one was, and he never
recovered."

"Protect him from what?"

Yvonne looked puzzled.  "You know.  From what happened.  Because hurt
people hurt other people.  That's the way it works."

Mattie could not quite track what Yvonne was saying.  "You mean that
he hurt my mother because he had been hurt somehow?  Or that he hurt
you, when he slept with Abby?"

Yvonne stared back.  "You said you knew everything," she said, her
voice flat, wary.

"I know about you, and Noah, and Abby."

"but not about the garage?"  Yvonne sighed.  When Mattie looked blank,
Yvonne cleared her throat.  A door inside Mattie swung open, creaked. A
roar of water, like a mill, and a ringing, tinnitus, in an ear about to
become diseased by what it had yet to hear.

"There was a man, a neighbor," Yvonne said.  "He must have been forty
when Alfred was ten, when this started.  He was a fireman.  He lived
down the block.  He offered all the neighborhood boys candy bars and
Cokes to come over.  Not just your father."

"Uh-huh."  Mattie remembered something about a fireman who'd been her
father's friend when he was young.  The man had been a hero, "Jerry?"

"Yes, that's right.  Jerry Howard."

"Jerry Howard," Mattie said, the name returning like a fragment of
dream.

"Yes.  Are you okay?  You're perspiring.  Shall I get you some water?"
Mattie fought back a wave of nausea.

"Okay," she said weakly.  "Yes, please."

Yvonne got up, limped to the bathroom, and returned with a glass of
water.  She watched Mattie sip it.  "Well.  The boys hung out in his
living room talking, while he took them one by one out to the garage
and gave them blow jobs.  Alfred didn't think it was wrong.  All the
other boys did it too.  It felt great.  Then all of them stopped but
Alfred.  He thought it was a good deal, that he was getting as good as
he gave.  He loved the candy bars, the Cokes, Jerry.  And his parents
fought so much that he really hated to go home.  I never got Alfred to
see how harmful it must have been, or really even to talk about it
much."

Mattie saw a confusion of people in her head: Neil and Yvonne; Abby
and Al chasing her around with a hose on hot summer nights at Neil's;
her dad at ten years old, reaching for a chocolate bar in a garage, an
older man bending toward him; Yvonne holding out a candy bar too; all
that fucking turquoise; her mother, with her bright blue eyes, holding
newborn babies, Al and Mattie, Harry and Ella--and Noah.  Mattie felt
herself blanch.  She had the most terrible thought.

"Did my mom ever see Noah?"

"Just once, by accident.  Of course, that was all it took.  She ran
into Abby and Noah up at Kaiser."

"God."  Mattie's chest felt crushed.

"Your dad had been dead for a little while."

"Was it obvious who the father was?"

"A dead woman would have known," Yvonne said.

Mattie closed her eyes.  Currents of grief passed through her, and she
breathed through each one, as if in labor again.  It had been painful
the first times she'd seen Harry's face in Alexander, and that had been
after a divorce.  How had Isa endured?  Mattie had an urge to call her
and see how she was doing, to try by a show of love and kindness to
make up for all the pain Isa had borne--but it hadn't worked when she
was a child, and it wouldn't work now.  She stared out one of Yvonne's
windows, covered with a lace curtain, at a blur of kumquat leaves.
Beyond the tree, in the furry green distance, she could see her mother
in the waiting room at Kaiser, mortally wounded not by the blast of the
nuclear bombs she rallied against, not by a bullet fired by the gun
nuts she marched against, not by the cancer she had feared, but by a
child's beautiful features.  Mattie squinted until she could see the
child, and then her father at ten, no taller than Harry was now,
walking along like Harry on his way to the school bus stop, his eyes
brown and concerned, glancing around as he passed the hero fireman's
garage, kicking at weeds, calling to the neighborhood dogs he knew.

Eleven.

Early morning was gray and fuzzy.  Fog pressed against the windowpanes 
Mattie sat next to Otis's glass cage in the living room. The little
dragon had grown a couple of inches, and his skin was dull and hazy, a
sign that he was about to shed.  Harry, who had looked up iguanas on
the Internet, announced that Otis needed to soak, and be rubbed with a
lubricant too, to help the shedding process.

"That is not going to happen," Mattie told him.

"Jeez!"  he said.  "You'd only have to do it twice a day."

"You could do it, honey."

"You're so mean.  Why can't you be a normal mother?  A mother who wants
her child to be happy?"

Ella sat nearby.  She had done her own hair that morning, and the blond
pigtails sprouted on top of her head like a space girl's antennae.  Her
pinkie dangled over her lip as she read a Dr.  Seuss

book.  Mattie was working long days at the superette, and Nicky was
not around much.  Al usually hung out with the kids after school until
Mattie got home.

Harry seemed caught in a web of fears.  Mattie had taken him and Ella
into town for ice cream one night, and they were eating sundaes at a
table when two policemen who patrolled on bikes came in.  Harry froze,
as if he were about to be busted.  His hands trembled, as though he'd
just realized he was violating the terms of his probation by eating a
caramel sundae.

The policemen, without being asked, stopped by and introduced
themselves, and gave both children police officer trading cards with
their own pictures and biographies.  When Harry took his trading card
home, new fears ignited.  Now he was afraid of wrecking the card.  When
Daniel fished it out of the pocket of Harry's shorts before starting a
load of wash, Harry went white--aware how close a call it had been,
feeling more than ever the menace shimmering beneath the very things
meant to shelter, protect, or clean.

Mattie told Harry she'd help him soak Otis later, but only if he'd be
in charge.  He snuggled up closer to her, gratefully.  "If it was
Jesus, wouldn't you help him soak his shedding skin off?"  She nodded.
He patted her.  "It will make you happy to help Otis feel fresher."

They soaked Otis that night, and the next day his old skin lay beneath
him on the floor of his cage like a bathrobe he'd stepped out of.
Mattie watched him in his noble-lizard mode.  He was no more responsive
to her than to any of the rocks in his cage.  She thought idly about
pouring Drano over him.  "How would you like that?"  she asked.  Otis
didn't move.  He gave her nothing to work with.  If he was nervous, she
would know how to calm him.  If he was lonely, she would move in
closer.  But nothing, ever--only the A side, noble frozen lizard, or
the B side, electric lizard, tearing around his cage, spewing shit.
Sometimes he'd accidentally look at her, but she'd slide right off his
eyes.

A lamp glowed on a corner shelf, a tender light reflected on the

window so it looked like the rising sun.  The real sun had still not
risen.  When the phone rang, Mattie did not get up to answer.  It was
probably Isa.  Mattie half believed that her mother's subconscious was
picking up signals about Yvonne's reappearance in Mattie's life.  She
closed her eyes as the answering machine began playing its recorded
message.  Thinking of Yvonne sent anxiety through Mattie's mind--not
because Yvonne had slept with her father for twenty years, not because
Yvonne had pulled back Alfred's bandages to reveal his sexual wound,
but because Yvonne lived in the Personal Care units at The Sequoias,
where Isa needed to live now too.  Obviously, they couldn't live in the
same place.  Whoever it was hung up without leaving a message.

Mattie continued to sit beside Otis.  She stared in the direction he
was looking, woman and iguana facing southeast.  Her mind spun around
an ice rink, doing figure eights.  Hi, Yvonne, she imagined saying into
the phone.  Shall we get together and talk some more about you and my
dad?  Hi, Abby.  Shall we get together and talk about you and my dad?
Hi, Noah.  Want to get together and talk about you and my dad?  Maybe
we could all get together and lay memories of him out on the floor like
quilting squares.  Then I could have my dad back.

The phone rang again, and the machine took the message.  It was Isa,
crying about a lost red dog.  Mattie got up and answered.  "Mom.  Whose
dog are you talking about?"

"My dog, for Chrissakes.  God, Mattie.  My little red dog.  Have you
lost your mind?"  Mattie stared through the window.  The lamp's light
was reflected outside, oval, flattened, hanging in a homely, straggly
tree.  The tree was bald except for the explosion of needles at the
top, like a skinny person with a cloud of hair, holding in its arms a
lozenge of sunrise.

"Do you mean your cat, Mom?"  Mattie asked.

There was the splutter of indignation.  Isa hung up.  Mattie's stomach
turned to worms.  She sat back down near Otis.

The phone rang again an hour later.  It was Lewis.  "I'm here with
your mother," he said.  "I think perhaps you should come over."

"What's she doing," Mattie asked.

"She's going up and down the hall, accosting people, looking for her
little red dog."

"But she doesn't have a little red dog," Mattie pointed out.

"Mattie, I think you better come on down," Lewis said.  She'd never
heard him sound so hopeless before.  He mentioned that there might be a
studio opening up in Personal Care soon, and they could move her.  He
told Mattie that it would break his heart--Isa's loss of autonomy, of
her cat, and the view of the mountain.  But Mattie worried only about
how Isa could bear to see Yvonne again, daily, relive a lifetime's
humiliation.  It would destroy the marriage Isa liked to pretend she'd
had.  Please let her have a big stroke, Mattie prayed.

She called Dr.  Brodkey.  "Listen," the doctor said.  "One of my older
patients who has some of your mother's symptoms, although he has
Alzheimer's, is responding to Prozac.  I think it's worth a try."

Driving to the drugstore to pick up the prescription, Mattie found
herself wondering: If the right medication could bring Isa back to her
old state, bright, animated, bossy, and incredibly annoying, would
Mattie want her?  Would she want more years of the old Isa-to be talked
to alternately as if she were the queen's eunuch and the Christ?  Part
of her hoped for her mother just to die, suddenly, soon.  Another part
of her hoped there were sweet memories for Isa still to come.  Hope, as
Augustine said, was costly.  Lord, she prayed.  You there?  She saw
Jesus' face, smiling, those kind dark eyes.  She gave him Harry's
ferocious look of defiance: What if, she challenged, what if I give her
a bunch of vitamin K foods?  Broccoli!  Liver!  She paused for dramatic
effect.  Kale.

She had prayed for help, and now a pharmacy clerk was getting Prozac
for Isa.  Maybe it would help her mother perk up and quiet

down.  Maybe they could buy her a couple more seasons; then she could
die in her sleep, in a bed in Personal Care.  Mattie and an aide would
have tucked her into bed the night of her death, called good night at
the door before Isa sailed away.  Mattie closed her eyes and imagined
how sweet it would be to take that kind of care of Isa.  "I think I
want to be like a ship's chaplain," she exclaimed in a whisper.  The
clerk hummed loudly as she rang up the order.  So I'm crazy!  Mattie
agreed.  You could be busy crazy, or you could be crazy like religious
people who worked in soup kitchens.  This is the kind of crazy she
wanted to be--soup-kitchen crazy, ladling out soup to people who felt
like Otis on the inside, frozen, frantic, Alien.  She threw back her
shoulders.  I got it, she called silently to God while the clerk put
the Prozac in a bag.  I'm back!  I'm a ship's chaplain now!  The clerk
gave her the bag, a receipt, and an encouraging smile.  "You just take
this exactly as prescribed," she said.

V When Mattie arrived with the Prozac, Lewis and Isa were sitting side
by side on the couch in the living room, holding hands, looking grim
and red-eyed.  Their walkers were side by side too, like dogs ready for
a nice walk.  Mattie hugged her mother, who clung to her.  Lewis's dark
irises were spotted with old age and cataracts.  The moles on his dark
skin were multiplying, and light skin tabs spread like glitter, as if
his face were a star map, a universe of planets.  Mattie bent to kiss
him, smooth the skin in the hollows of his cheeks.  "Your mother was
worried about a little red dog," he said.  Mattie nodded.  "But not
anymore, right, Isa?"  Isa nodded.

"I have a cat," Isa said, proud but shaky.  The cat hid beneath the
curtains, peering out as if Mattie might toss a grenade its way.  The
apartment smelled of urine--Isa's and the cat's.  Mattie noticed a
long, broad brown smear near the easy chair, like finger paint too big
to be the cat's.  She got a sponge and cleaned the streak on the
carpet.

"How did you manage to spill food under your chair?"  she asked as she
sponged up the shit.  Isa looked amused, and pleased, and shrugged; her
eyes were sunken and inflamed.

"Mom," Mattie said, after throwing away the sponge.  "Mom, your doctor
called."  This was not the literal truth.  "Your bloodwork raised a few
questions."  This was not quite true either; Isa had not had bloodwork.
"She's prescribed a new medication.  And she insists you move into
Personal care for now."

"No!"  Isa cried out.  "No, I will die first."  "Isa," said Lewis.
"Just till you're stronger."  "I'm not going anywhere!  You can both go
to hell!"

"Mom, now, be smart about it," Mattie said.  "You'll still have an
apartment--it's just down there at the other end of the property.  You
and Lewis can see each other every day, just like now.  And someone
will be there to help you get started every morning--help you bathe,
give you your meds.  And make sure you get healthy meals.  Then at
night they'll help you get ready for bed.  They'll be there if you
fall.  I'm going down to Personal Care right now to see where you are
on the waiting list, because we're taking the next bed."  Mattie
sounded more definite than she felt.  She strode toward the door with a
confidence she was not actually experiencing.

Isa had her fingers in her ears and was chanting in secular tongues.
Mattie was desperate to win back her love and trust, but like Ulysses
ignoring the sirens beckoning from the rocks, she walked on toward the
door.

She went to Personal Care to talk to the director.  There was now just
one person ahead of Isa on the waiting list.  Who, Mattie wanted to
ask.  Can I get a name and an apartment number on that?  What was she
going to do, trick the person into going out to the parking lot some
night, and mow her down?  She walked back to her mother's apartment not
knowing what to expect or what to do.  She had told a kind of a truth,
although not one that lined up perfectly with the facts.  Now she was
going to trust God.

Her mother was clutching her cat and crying softly.  Mattie stayed
with her as long as she could before going to pick up Harry and Ella at
school.  "I promise you, Mom, it's going to be okay," she said. "Better
than okay.  Right, Lewis?"

"It's true, darling Isa."  He stroked Isa's hair and brow like a
longtime lover.

As she drove toward Ella's school, Mattie remembered a story the pastor
had recently told, about a girl who was crying in the night.  When her
mother came to comfort her, the girl said she was too afraid of the
dark to sleep.  "But God's with you, comforting and protecting you,"
the mother said.

"But I need someone with skin on," the little girl said.

This is who Mattie wanted to be in the world: God with skin on, someone
who would show up and listen, bring you a glass of water if you were
thirsty.  Al was God with skin on for Mattie.  So were Angela, Daniel,
Lewis, her pastor, her children.  Isa wasn't, though.  Isa was the
scared, autistic parts of Mattie's mind, with skin on, the parts most
needing the love that terrified them most.

Daniel had picked up pad Thai for dinner.  They ate on trays in front
of the TV with the kids, something they rarely did.  Yet they all
seemed to want to be together, and still be left alone.  Mattie tried
to look at Daniel and the kids with ship's-chaplain compassion as long
as she could.  Then she noticed that Harry was eating like someone
shoveling hay onto a flatbed truck, and Daniel was watching TV too
intensely, acting like someone who'd had a lobotomy.  Ella ate fussily,
with her bleeding pinkie in the air, like Quentin Crisp.  Out of
nowhere, Mattie felt a rage, volcanic eruptions of frustration.  She
considered throwing all the trays against the wall.

She closed her eyes.  Help me out of this mess!  she prayed.  She
stared at the TV but saw nothing there, until finally she saw herself

and Al at the table with Isa and Alfred, Isa starving herself down to
a size 8, five-nine and one hundred twenty pounds, Mattie growing fat,
Al stoned on LSD, and only Alfred seeming to enjoy his food, talking in
his teacherly way about minus tides out at the Cove.  Mattie used to
eat the way Harry was eating now, and she saw that she was doing to
Harry and Ella exactly what Alfred and Isa had done to her-pretending
there were no shadows falling across the house like black fabric.
Harry's were in the shapes of shadow puppets--of Lee, whom his parents
had betrayed, whom he then betrayed by accepting her kindness; of
Mattie, whom he blamed for the divorce; of Nicky's new children, who
scampered and cooed while Harry worried and plotted like a hunchback
prince: no wonder he had bad posture.  Ella's shadow looked like
Mattie's had, cast by parents who didn't love each other anymore, who
had loved each other, though, until the daughter came along.  Ella's
father disappeared from her daily life when she was two.  Her shadow
was an echo where her father used to be.

Noah called Al one night, and after clearing his throat, hemming
awhile, asked if Al had some pictures of his dad he could look at.  "I
only have a couple," Noah told Al.  "I'd like one from when he was
little.  And one from when I would have been little.  And maybe one
when he was my age now too."

"Mattie has almost all our pictures," Al said.  "Maybe we can we put
together an album for you, and bring it out."

"I don't need an album," Noah protested.  "Just a few pictures will
do."

"But could we bring them out?"  Al asked.

He told Mattie all this later, under the trees in his garden.

"He said we could come out?"

Alnodded.

"He didn't say, "You can come out, but not your fat weepy sister'?"

"Wait--let me think."  Al thought.  "Nope, I don't think he said
that."

Mattie felt stuck in a rut with Daniel.  "How will I know when it's
time to go to bed with him?"  she asked Angela one night.

"You'll just know," Angela said.  "You'll be afraid, but it will be
like jumping off a low cliff into cold water.  And then it will be
wonderful once you're in."

Mattie fumed a bit; Angela could be so grandly reassuring.  Hoping to
get a rise from her, she asked, "How long did you and Julie go out
before you went to bed?"

"You can't go by that."  Angela laughed.  "This is you, and Daniel, not
even out of his marriage."

"Tell me anyway, Angela," Mattie insisted.

"Oh, I don't even like to think about it," Angela replied.  "You know
the old joke about lesbians: What do lesbians bring on the second date?
A U-Haul.  Let's put it this way: It didn't take as long."

Most nights after dinner, Daniel would put Ella on his shoulders and
they'd stop by Harry's room to see if he wanted to come along for a
walk.  Ella liked to smoke the cold night air like a forties movie
star.

Several nights after Noah called Al, when the moon was full and low in
the sky, glazing the neighborhood with a eucalyptus light, Mattie took
a surreptitious look at Daniel.  He seemed different, more like his old
self--not cheerful yet, but calm.  She wanted to crawl into bed with
him right then, to cry about Isa while he held her, lie naked in the
dark with him and talk about Noah.

After the children had been bathed and put to bed, Mattie knocked on
the door of the laundry room.  "Come in," Daniel said tentatively.  She
stepped inside, closed the door behind her and

leaned against it.  He was sitting on the futon with his back to the
wall.  He put down his book and took off his reading glasses.  She
could hear night birds, the cats galloping down the hall, floorboards
creaking, settling in for the night.  "You okay?"  Daniel asked.  "Want
to sit down?"  She looked at him and shook her head.  "Are you okay.""
he asked again.

"I don't know."  She squinted at him.  He looked away shyly.  "Let me
just say what is true."  She swallowed, and looked off toward the
window as if she had heard something down the street.  "What is true is
that."  She gritted her teeth.  He looked afraid.  "What is true is
that."  She turned and said it to the wall.  "I love you, Daniel."  She
turned again, to face him.  Daniel looked at her with misery sketched
on his face, and she saw that all she could hope was that somehow they
would still be friends in the morning.

"I know how much you love me, as a friend, and that's wonderful, and I
don't know why I had to tell you that I have romantic feelings for
you," Mattie said.  "I know you're slogging through a terrible time in
your life as it is.  And that best friends should never cross certain
lines.  And now I have."  She looked at him apologetically.

He looked at her beseechingly.  "So please, I'm sorry," she said.  He
shook his head.  Glacial water poured through her stomach.

"You don't have to move, Daniel.  I can deal with this.  But I did need
to say it out loud.  That's all.  No problem."  Mattie waved her arms,
sweeping it all away.

Daniel narrowed his eyes, as she had seen him do when he tried to read
without glasses and the print of a book was fuzzy, before he held it
two feet away and waited for focus.  She wanted to step back a few
feet, but she was standing against the wall.

"Mattie," he said, his voice full of sorrow.

She felt woozy, faint.

"Okay," she said.  Her insides were humid and dusty and sick.

He crossed his arms across his chest and hugged himself.  "Mattie,"

he said, and brought his hands forward, clasped like a child's in
prayer.  "Obviously," he began.  "Well, obviously," he said somberly,
"I am madly in love with you too."

Mattie was not sure that she had quite heard him right.  "You are?" She
had to look away before he nodded.  "Wow," she said to the window. She
sank to her haunches, blinking excessively, her mouth feeling the way
it did after too much novocaine.  She usually hoped to look more like
Myrna Loy than an organ grinder's monkey when a man finally proclaimed
his adoration.  Daniel got to his feet.  He stood, looking at her. 
Mattie tried to stand up, but her arms fl ailed out spastically. Daniel
took her into his arms.

She was afraid to take a deep breath for fear she'd suck him right up.
He buried his face in her hair and she could feel him breathing through
his nose.  "I just needed to tell you that," she whispered.

"Good."  He whispered too.

She stepped out of his arms, and for something to do, she picked a bit
of flug off his shirt.  "Do you want to sit down?"  he asked quietly. 
She nodded.  "Do you want to sit on the bed, or on the floor?"

"On the floor."

"Okay."  They sat down, leaning into each other like teenagers.  She
turned slowly to him, and found him poised to kiss her, an almost
sorrowful expression on his face.  The sound of footsteps coming down
the hall made them pull back, but there was no time to put more space
between each other before Harry barreled in.

"Is my mother in there?"  he said.  "What's going on?"  he asked,
drawing back.

"We were talking," Mattie said.  "What's up?  What do you need?" Daniel
dusted off his hands as if they had been sitting in the road, and Harry
gave him a long, gimlet look.  Then he turned to his mother.

"What's up?"  said Mattie.

"I can't sleep.  Could you come and rub my back?"

She came back to Daniel's room after Harry dropped off to sleep.  She
knocked softly, then poked her head in the doorway- Daniel was
stretched out on the futon again, reading.  "I'm going to go upstairs
and go to bed by myself now, okay?"  she said.  "I'd like to take this
really slow."

He sat up and smiled at her.  "How slow?"  he asked.

"I just don't want to botch this."

"So--will you be the project coordinator on this?  Manning the speed
dial?"

"Sort of."  She crossed the room.  They kissed for a long time.  She
opened her eyes.  "I have to go," she said.

It was strangely sweet in the next weeks, like being Mormons, or
Victorians.  Mattie stayed out of the laundry room most of the time, to
avoid temptation.  But they kissed a lot and gazed into each other's
eyes.  When they were with the children, she sneaked glances at the
nape of his neck like an old-fashioned Japanese girl.  She looked down
into her lap and actually blushed sometimes.

"Wait, why are we avoiding temptation?"  Daniel asked one evening.

"We're just taking it slow," she said.  "Isn't this sexy?"  "I guess.
But could we pick up the pace here at all?"  Pauline seemed to know
that something had changed.  Daniel did not always return her messages
the same day she left them, and their late-night phone calls had been
phased out.  She phoned during the day to rage at him.  She wrote
Mattie hate letters.  Mattie read the first one, and tore up most of
the others.  They gave her a sense of superiority, a sense of having
won the guy for once: she was used to being the unsuspecting woman in
the dark, or the daughter of the woman

in the dark, the woman whom the man could not live without, but whom
he didn't pick.

"You've got to tell her, Daniel," Mattie said one day.  "It's cruel and
unusual punishment."

He nodded.  "I'll tell her tomorrow."

He was gone for two hours the next morning.  Mattie's mind raced with
images of Pauline doing her witchy magic with him, breaking the trance
Mattie had cast.  They would end up back in bed, as she and Nicky had
done.  They would end up back in love.  How could he resist Pauline, so
sexy, and so vulnerable?  Mattie would die if he left her.  She had to
lose weight, that was the ticket: when all else f ailed, you could
always diet.  She would start tomorrow; in the meantime, she headed for
the kitchen and opened a bag of Oreos.  She poured herself some milk
and sat down at the table, dunking one cookie after another into the
glass.

Daniel came back shaken and wan.  Mattie was stretched out on the couch
in the living room, feeling like a boa constrictor digesting a small
pig.  Daniel sat at one end of the couch and lifted her feet into his
lap.  "That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he said.  "I
told her that I hated causing her pain.  She looked at me disgusted.
Then she lit up a cigarette.  She's smoking again.  That made me feel
terrible.  I said I wasn't in love with her anymore, and I wanted to be
divorced.  She blew a stream of smoke straight up like she was aiming
for a hole in the ceiling.

"She asked me when you and I had started sleeping together.  I said we
hadn't yet.  She said, "Yet?  Yet?"  and did I expect her to believe
me, and I said no, I didn't, but it was true.

"Then she said, "But you two are in love?"  And I said yes, we were.

"And she doubled over, like I'd kicked her stomach, and she cried."

A few weeks on Prozac visibly helped Isa.  She was still on the quiet
side, but she came across as calm, not delusional.  She didn't even
need her walker anymore.  On sunny days, she and Lewis would walk along
the path by the salt marsh.  They worked together on jigsaw puzzles.
They ate meals together; Lewis treated her to dinner in the dining
room, or an aide would make them something simple to eat while they
watched the evening news together in Isa's apartment.

One day in April, the director of The Sequoias called Mattie to say
that a unit in Personal Care would be opening soon.  Isa could have it
it she liked.  It might be months before another opened, and you got to
turn down an offer only twice; then you moved back to the bottom of the
waiting list.

Mattie and Al sat on a curb, contemplating this opportunity, in the
parking lot of the high school where he taught.  Al looked tired,
older, his eyes wreathed in crow's-feet.

"What do we do?"  Al said.  "She's definitely better, since the
Prozac."

"We should take the room.  While she can still keep it together enough
to get in.  Once she's in, it'll be hard for them to kick her out."

"I just feel so wasted these days, too wasted to make this decision.
You really think we should take it?"

Mattie nodded.  "She's not okay anymore, Al, just sedated.  She got
shit on the floor."

Al grimaced.  "Yeah, but are you going to put me away the first time I
shit on the floor?"

Mattie bobbed her head.

"Can you tell her?  I know I can't."

That night when Mattie went to say good night to Daniel, she knelt to
kiss him and lingered by his bed.  He leaned in close.  "You smell like
nutmeg," he said.  She moved away, and sat down primly on the beach
chair.

"I can't hold out much longer," Daniel told her.

"I just want to feel a little less crazy when we first go to bed.  I
don't want to be putting my mother in a facility the first time we make
love.  Oh, Daniel!"  she said.  "It's a facility!  When you can no
longer lock people out of your own home, that means you're in a
facility.  I'm about to put my mother in a. facility."

Mattie woke with a start in the middle of the night.  She had felt
someone crawling into bed with her.  For a moment she was scared to
death--and hoped--that it might be Daniel.  But it was Harry.  He shook
her by the shoulder; he had woken from a nightmare and couldn't go back
to sleep.

"You scared me," she admonished.  "My heart is still pounding."

"I dreamt a bad guy got in and was going to kill us," Harry
whimpered.

"Daniel won't let anyone hurt us.  And God is keeping watch over us."

"Don't you get it?"  Harry asked.  "God would never not let a burglar
come in, if the man had picked your house to burgle.  God has to let
lite do its ways."

The next day Mattie knocked on Isa's door, and when no one answered,
she let herself into the apartment with her own key.  Isa was at the
sink, washing dishes with great cheer, all but whistling while she
worked like Snow White.  She wore light pink lipstick, and her cheeks
had a hint of color again.  Her hands were in yellow rubber gloves. 
Hot water poured from the faucet.  Mattie leaned against the stove. 
The house still reeked of urine, from the cat box, from Isa's bed.
Newspapers had piled up everywhere, as had scores of direct mail, from
every imaginable liberal political organization in the country.

"Where's Linda?  Where's Frieda?"  Mattie asked, looking around.

"I fired them all today," Isa said proudly.  "I don't need them
anymore.  I am much better.  I can take care of myself."  She continued
washing dishes, a tight smile on her face, now simultaneously Snow
White and the Wicked Stepmother.  In fact, she only appeared to whistle
while she worked; underneath she was all shadows and schemes.

"Mom," Mattie said gently.  "You're better, true.  But a studio has
opened up in Personal Care, and you need to take it."

Isa twirled around like a gymnast.  "Don't you dare tell me what I need
to do or not do, don't you dare!"  She held out a steaming cup of soapy
water, like a gun, her face red and enraged.  "I will never go to
Personal Care.  You're not in charge of me.  You go to hell."

"Mom!"

Isa continued to hold out the cup, menacing.

"I know I'm not in charge of you.  But the director here is very
concerned.  They don't want you to stay in

After a minute, she heard her mother's footsteps in the hall, and then
a knock on the door.  "Go away," Mattie said.

"I'm a mean mommy," Isa cried.  She kept knocking, and pleading, and
weeping, and eventually Mattie opened the door.  Isa was staring
heavenward, eyes brimming with tears.  She looked at Mattie with
contrition.  "I'm so sorry," she said.

Mattie allowed Isa to tug her into the living room.  Isa sat down on
the couch and patted the spot beside her.  Mattie sat instead on the
floor  For five minutes, Mattie listened coldly to her mother cry.
Finally she scooted closer and brought her mother's bony leg down over
her shoulder, and held her feet, as though she might be carried away if
Mattie let go.

When the unit officially opened up at The Sequoias, Adele, the
director, called Mattie.

"Oh my God," Mattie said.

"I know your mother loves her independence," Adele said sadly.

"She's going to hit the roof."

"She needs to move out of her apartment, whether she takes the studio
or not.  She's no longer consistently well enough to live alone.  The
studio is a lovely little space.  I can't decide for you.  But if it
were my mother, this is what I would do."

"Can we have some time to make a final decision, my brother and I--and
Isa?"

"Yes, of course.  I can give you until tomorrow night."

When Al gently broke the news to her that she would be moving, Isa
sobbed and struck at Mattie.  Mattie caught her by the wrist, and made
noises of understanding and misery, and Isa pulled away and stalked
off, tottering.  Mattie and Al exchanged glances, but neither got up to
follow.  They knew where she was headed--down the hall to Lewis's
apartment.

 Half an hour later the phone rang.  Mattie answered and Lewis told
her they could come get their mother.

She was in Lewis's easy chair, and she would not speak to her children.
She had been crying.  Lewis stared off in Isa's direction with his
hands clasped.  "This is very hard for her," he said.  Mattie and Al,
at the door, nodded.  "This is hard for all of us.  We've been hoping
this day would never come, and now it has.  But Isa understands that
she cannot live alone any longer.  And she agrees to at least go look
at the studio tomorrow.  Right, Isa darling?"  Isa nodded miserably.
Mattie came and knelt at her mother's feet, and put her face in her
lap.  She heard Al's soft footsteps, and she knew he was standing
beside them now.  She turned and looked up at him as he placed his hand
lightly on Isa's shoulder.  Mattie closed her eyes, and after a minute
felt her mother's bony hands reach for her.  Having found Mattie's ear,
Isa began to scratch behind it idly, as if Mattie were a cat in her
lap.

The next day Mattie was walking with Isa hand in hand down the hall.  I
am asking for another miracle, she prayed.  You did something pretty
amazing with us yesterday, and now we need one more favor.

They passed the reception desk, where no one was sitting, and the
dining room--all high rafters and beautiful wood, the sun shining
through windows and skylights--where a few people were having
late-morning tea.  They passed the piano room, and then Mattie heard
someone call her name--a grackle-voiced woman.  She and Isa turned to
the sound, and the elevator in her stomach flip flopped  It was
Yvonne.

She was dressed in yellow linen, with turquoise wrapped around her neck
and forearms.  Isa was recoiling, squinting at Yvonne, visibly
disturbed at this old woman reaching for them.  Things swirled and swam
on the murky surface of Isa's face, and then she gaped, and gasped with
recognition.

"Tillie!"  she cried.

Mattie turned to look at Yvonne.

"Tillie, Tillie," Isa repeated, drifting into Yvonne's arms.  "I never
thought I'd see you again!"  Yvonne held her warmly, looking bemused,
waiting for the joke to be explained.  Isa stepped back to look at her,
throwing her hands into the air.  "I've never forgotten you, Tillie. Oh
my gosh, where are my mrs?  This is my daughter, Mattie," she said.
"Mattie, this is my old friend Tillie.  From-jeez, I can't remember, we
go so far back.  Help me out here, Tillie.  When did we first meet?"
Yvonne tried to remember when she'd ever been Tillie.  She shook her
head.  She couldn't seem to remember either.  "Let me show you around,"
she said.

Every day Mattie and Isa walked to Personal Care to visit Yvonne. 
Isa's studio would not be ready till the weekend.  Isa cried about her
cat, but Lewis would take care of it, and she could visit every day.

It stormed on moving day, wild and fierce, the wind lashing the trees
outside.  Daniel and Al and a couple of their friends carried Isa's
furniture down the long hall, out of Independent Living, and on to the
back, to Personal Care.  They loaded her boxes onto dollies and wheeled
them away.  Isa wrapped the last of her fragile mementos in tissue
paper and boxed them.  When she was done, Mattie and Al walked her to
Lewis's, the cat in her arms.  Mattie had already brought him cat
litter, and the half-dozen bags of kibble that had turned up in various
nooks of Isa's apartment.  Lewis threw open the door for them, and they
flocked inside, all four of them crying.  The cat smelled Lewis's
little dog and dove under the sofa and would not come out.  So Mattie
never had to take the cat out of her mother's arms.

Thanks in part to a crushed Valium that Mattie had put into her
breakfast applesauce at Dr.  Brodkey's suggestion, Isa was remarkably
docile as they came to the Personal Care reception area and checked in.
Mattie had asked the receptionist to refer to Yvonne as Mrs.  Lang, and
so she did when she buzzed Yvonne's room.

Yvonne joined them for the trip to Isa's new room.  Her bed, dresser,
and TV, her couch with its antimacassars, her easy chair, her table and
bookshelf were all there.  So was the pousse-cafe of Isa's life: boxes
of photos and clippings, of figurines and souvenirs, of schoolwork and
art her children and grandchildren had done, of other treasures and
medicine bottles.  The rest of her things would be divided between
Goodwill and Mattie's attic.  The photos of Alfred that had hung in her
hall all these years were stacked on the pine table.

Isa turned to survey her new surroundings.  She looked at Yvonne, who
was staring at Alfred's handsome framed face, and her eyes narrowed.
Mattie held her breath.  Then Isa sank to the couch.  "Tillie," she
wept, "come sit by me."  She batted at Mattie and Al when they came
close, said that they were traitors and that she hated them.  Al looked
at her with despair.

Isa studied Yvonne, beseechingly.  A dark cloud crossed her face, and
then curiosity, a striving to place this person; a moment's grief, and
then blindness, Oedipus blinding himself so that he could go on; and
then pride.  "Tillie!"  She held out her arms.  "Tillie!"  She pointed
to her walls, her photos, her boxes of keepsakes.  "Look at all my
things!"

The next week, Mattie and Daniel took turns doing housework and helping
Harry with his homework, then went to their own beds to read at night.
This had been her salvation with Nicky--books that spirited her away
without her having to leave.  One night, after the kids were asleep,
Mattie heard Daniel on the phone, gently and firmly telling Pauline
that he really wasn't ever going back.

He was sullen and withdrawn at breakfast the next morning.  That
afternoon, Pauline called and told Daniel she had filed for divorce.
Things had been a mess ever since.  Pauline called constantly, and hung
up when Mattie or the children answered, and she called in the middle
of the night.  She told Daniel she was going to move to the city, and
was trying to get the house ready to sell.  He urged her to move out
immediately, so he could make repairs and fix the garden, but she
wouldn't budge.

Mattie's mind spewed out fearful thoughts.  She took extra hours at the
superette, where the work and Ned's companionship calmed her.  She
loved the smells of the store, loved the dust that blew in through the
broken screen door, that came in on dog paws, that you could never
clean off the rough and ancient surfaces.  In Ned, she felt that God
had jiggled a dad out of the universe for her.  She fantasized about
making love with Daniel, but held back.  Sex seemed so scary, now that
she was close to getting what she thought she wanted.  Love made your
stomach ache.  Lett to their own devices, people were dangerous, and
she was too; they were all marred, so scarred and scared.  Her only
hope was that she and Daniel would not be left to their own devices.
Standing beside him singing in church, she imagined she was being held
in someone's soft warm hands.

They spoke the same language.  One night, sitting on Daniel's futon,
near tears, she asked, "Why would a loving God take everything away
from my mother?"

"I don't see that God is taking anything away from her," Daniel said.
"I see Him taking care of her instead: it's her illness that has done
all the taking."

The weather went crazy in late April and May, offering a few seasons in
a few weeks: fog, then rain, and then a heat wave, an eerie autumnal
snap, and then more rain.  What the hell was that, people wondered,
movie trailers for the whole year?

Daniel came to Mattie's room one night when she was already in bed.

"Come in," she said, putting her book down on her stomach.

He sat in her rattan chair.  "Hi.  You're the systems analyst on the
sleeping-together project, right?  The timing consultant?"

"Yes, that's right."

His hands were folded in his lap, as though he were about to ask a
banker for a loan.  She took off her reading glasses, and Daniel came
more clearly into focus.  He was not as thin as he'd been during the
worst of his depression.  He had color in his cheeks from working on a
roofing job for the past three days.  The light in the room was soft
and low.

"What I want to know is," he said slowly, "how much longer do we have
to wait?"

"I don't know," she answered.  "I'm so afraid.  I'm afraid if we're
lovers, we'll ruin it somehow.  And I'll lose you.  So I don't quite
know what to do."

"You could let me love you, which I do.  If you gave me an approximate
date, like say, June twenty-first, the summer solstice, when we could
think about climbing into bed, that would be plenty for me.  I'd mark
off the days on the wall of my room, like a prisoner."

She took a deep breath.  "How about an approximate time?"  she asked.

He leaned forward in the chair.  "Okay," he agreed.

She looked at her watch, pushed the button that illuminated it.  She
followed the second hand as it went all the way around, once.  "All
right, then," she said.  "How about now?"

Daniel stayed in the chair, a little shocked.  After a while he got up
and came to sit beside her on the bed.  She put her book and glasses on
the table, and without taking her eyes off him pulled her nightie over
her head.  He rose slightly to kiss her, really kiss her for the first
time, and without meaning to she crossed her arms in front of her
breasts.  He kept kissing her like in the movies, and then he laid
his

head on the blanket over her lap.  She stroked his ropy hair and felt
his breath light as a wing through the covers, and after a moment she
turned off the lamp in case the children came in.

The children did come in, but not until breakfast time.  Ella ran and
leapt into bed between them, and scuttled into her mother's arms.
Mattie was back in her nightie, Daniel in his T-shirt and boxers.  They
had been snuggled up together.  Harry cried out, "What's going on?"  as
if he were Mattie's father discovering her on the couch with her
teenage boyfriend.  He put his hands on his hips.

Mattie sat up against the pillows.  "Daniel and I love each other, and
are going to be together now," she said.

"But what about Pauline, and what about Daddy?"  Harry demanded.  "And
what about we?"

No amount of talking was going to make much of a difference, and so
Mattie answered questions: No, he won't be your new daddy, Nicky will
always be your dad.  Daniel and Pauline are getting divorced.  No,
we're not going to have a baby.  Yes, he'll move out of the laundry
room.  No, you can't get a puppy.

That night Harry and Ella both dawdled, stalled, whined, made demands,
needed more water, needed still more assurances, needed to get up and
pee, needed Mattie to stay with them until they were sound asleep,
needed more water, needed to poop, needed to call their father.  "No!"
At that Mattie put her foot down.  "You can call him in the morning."

"I need to talk to him now," Ella wailed.

"You can't keep us from calling our dad," Harry sobbed.

A few weeks later, after their nightly walk, after the children were
showered and in bed, Mattie and Daniel sat in the living room reading.
The cats milled around nervously, like armed guards, the

children cried from their beds for favors, water, pees, company. After
fifteen minutes of their pleading, Mattie went to Ella's room and sat
on her bed.  They whispered in the glow of the night-light.  Ella had
her baby finger in her mouth, and Mattie gently removed it.  When she
held it to the night-light, she saw that there were only two bloody
spots, where Ella had groomed hangnails with her teeth.  Even in the
low light, Mattie could see new growth, white crescent moons.

Mattie went to Yvonne's one afternoon, when Al had taken Isa to the
doctor.  She simply wanted to sit with Yvonne in the strangeness of it
all.  Also, now that she had Daniel, she was missing her father with a
new fierceness.  Yvonne came to the door in a black velvet shirt, many
strands of turquoise, and flashy silver earrings that drew attention to
her aged face, as if to announce: Look, I'm a thousand years old and
it's okay.  "Come on in.  I've made some tea.  And one of the men down
the hall brings me pastries," Yvonne said.  "I'm not supposed to eat
them, because of my heart."  The scent of cigarette smoke hung in the
air, although there was no sign of ashtray, matches, or cigarettes.
Sweets, men, smokes.  The sand in her hourglass was running out, and
Yvonne was savoring every last bit.

A few minutes later they sat stiffly with cups of peppermint tea and
lemon bars.  The hollow in Yvonne's throat would have accommodated a
Ping-Pong ball.  Would Mattie have that cave under her chin one day, a
balcony of turkey skin above it?  She should be so lucky.  They drank
tea, ate sweets.

Yvonne stared off through the window, at white roses on scrawny stems
reaching up like giraffes trying to peek inside.  "I miss my
fireplace," she said.  "All crones should have a hearth."

She was so beautiful and full of appetites, and Isa was such a mess.
And Mattie's father was so dead.  "My mother didn't know the first
thing about my dad," Mattie said at last.

Yvonne leaned forward in her chair.  "Sure she did, Mattie.  They were
deeply in love for a long time.  They couldn't think about how it would
turn out when they got married--no one does--and if they had, they
wouldn't have gotten to have you and Al."

Mattie gripped her forehead so that her fingernails dug into flesh. 
She felt Yvonne's hand on her arm, light as a cornhusk.

Mattie had thought that love would save her and make her whole.  But
instead she often felt worse, fragmented, crazier.  She tried to plant
seeds of mutual accommodation, letting Daniel be how he was and feel
however he felt.  She tried to plant what she hoped to sow.  You
couldn't grow tomatoes from apricot seeds.  She'd start out fine, but
then the way he pronounced a certain word might sicken her, or the way
he scraped food back into his mouth with a spoon, like he was feeding
the baby of his own self, would make her want to pull back.  She felt
much less patient with Isa and the children too, and almost incapable
of talking to Nicky or Lee about arrangements.  She snapped more,
spewed.  Maybe she was getting Tourette's.

On bad days, Daniel's love smothered her.  She couldn't breathe, and
she couldn't talk to him about it, because she was afraid he would move
out and she would die.  Yet she couldn't stand his snores in the night,
which woke her, or the way he waited for her to wake up every morning.
One morning when the children were at Nicky's, she cried when Daniel
started to make love to her, and asked him to please not touch her.
Daniel was hurt, and pulled away, and when she wanted to snuggle up
with him, he got out of bed and said, "I'm not an ATM!"

Then they both cried and were kind to each other all day long.

Early one Saturday morning, Mattie dreamt that she and Abby were
swimming in warm ocean water, surrounded by baby kangaroos that floated
and bobbed around them like dolphins, playing.  Abby

was smiling, young and gorgeous again.  When Mattie woke up, she was
laughing too, but by the time she told Daniel the dream, she'd started
to think it was an omen--that Abby was dead.

"How do you get that Abby is dead based on that dream?"  Daniel
asked.

"Because I don't think she'll be happy again this side of the grave.  I
think she might have cancer or something, lung cancer from smoking."

"Call Noah and ask.  Tell him you have photos of your dad for him."

"God, remember when I was just going to tell the truth?  And trust
God?"

"I know.  What happened?"

"Well, it's like that old joke: It was going great, and then I got out
of bed."

She called Al to ask whether he would mind if she visited Noah without
him, and he said, no, not at all.  Just as she was about to dial Noah's
number, the phone rang.  It was Isa.

"Hi, Mom," Mattie said.  "How is everything?"

"You finally got your wish, Mattie, didn't you?  You put me away." With
that she hung up.

Mattie closed her eyes and rubbed them wearily.  It was all
fubar--fucked-up beyond repair.  It was one of her father's
expressions, enlisted-man slang.  She smiled, looked up, whispered: Hi,
Dad.  She called Noah at the library.  "Hey.  It's Mattie," she said.

"Oh, hey."

"Al said you wanted some photographs of Dad."

"Yeah," he said.  The word "Dad" startled the both of them.

"I could drop some by today.  I have to come out for work."

"Today's not a great day for me.  I'm training someone."

"I could drop them off at your house while you're working, then," she
said.

There was a pause.  "You could?"

"Yeah."

"Wow.  That'd be cool.  You can leave them inside the front door."

"Okay.  Is Abby okay?"  Sheepishly she told him about her dream.
"That's like the best dream anyone's ever told me," Noah said. 
"Thanks, huh""

"But I thought maybe it meant your mother was in trouble."  There was
silence at Noah's end.  "So your mother's okay?"  she said weakly.

"A social worker from the county is helping her out now.  It turns out
she has diabetes, but the kind where you can just take pills.  She got
food stamps, and a couple of cats've showed up.  She's basically a
street person, you know, a street person with a home."

"Is there anything she needs that I could drop off while I'm out
there?"

"A couple pairs of thick socks," Noah suggested.  "The diabetes is bad
for your feet, if you don't keep them clean, which she doesn't.  If you
get infections, you could lose a foot.  That would be great.  I mean,
if you got the socks."

Where is my little blue shoe?  Mattie wanted to ask, but she didn't,
and in fact, she found out later when she stopped by Noah's house with
the photos.

It was sitting on the table by the door, at the center of a cairn of
white garden stones, the turquoise bold against the white.  She picked
it up and whispered, "Hello," as if they shouldn't be seen together.
She took the photos of her father out of her purse and made a wreath
around the stones and the little blue shoe, a garland of pictures of
her father, as a baby, as a boy in a long-sleeved striped sailor shirt,
scattering birdseed in Venice, in his Berkeley mortarboard and gown,
and at the beach in Bolinas, sitting in the sand where the driftwood
musicians now jammed, binoculars around his neck.  There was a beer in
the sand beside him, and he was waving to whoever held the camera. This
one had been taken a year before he

died.  She looked at it for a long time before stepping back out into
the bright spring sun.  The light on the green hills was like powdered
sugar on a cake, sifted through a doily.

Mattie worked all day at the superette and her feet ached from
standing, but she drove to Abby's anyway, to deliver the socks and some
food Ned had put together.

Abby opened the door to her shack, peering nervously through the
opening; she was trying to keep a little white kitten inside.  It was
two months old or so, and looked like a cheaply made Siamese.  She
scooped it in and let Mattie step past her.  Abby had dark bags under
her eyes, a basketball of gut bulging out of her T-shirt.  The T-shirt
was tucked into her stretch leggings, like Tweedledum, and she wore an
old blue watch cap; it was all Mattie could do not to offer a fashion
consultation.  Along with the ocean and mildew, the place now smelled
faintly of cat box and urine, as Isa's apartment had.

There was plenty of milk and cheese and eggs in the cold cupboard, and
several bottles of medicine on the counter by the sink, the hot plate
nearby, with the kettle on top, boxes and cans of food on the shelves.
Mattie put her bag of groceries on the counter, then showed Abby the
socks; she told her that Noah had asked her to bring them.

The kitten threw itself at Mattie's ankles, and she got on the floor to
play with it, feeling grains of cat litter under her hands.  She saw
that there were kerosene lamps on the counter, and a wood-burning stove
with its pipe set up.  Abby got on the floor beside Mattie to play with
the kitten.  She looked like an Alien encountering such a creature for
the first time, simultaneously puzzled and charmed.  She held a dirty
dishcloth out for it to charge and whipped it away at the last second.
They played with the kitten for a while.  Abby's bare feet smelled
awful.  They looked horrible, dirty, the nails like a tree sloth's, the
toes crossing one over another.

"Put on the clean socks," Mattie said.  "You've got to keep your feet
clean and warm."  She was so used to bossing her mother that it seemed
only natural to order Abby around too.  When she handed her a pair, she
realized that it wouldn't do any good for Abby to put them on her dirty
feet.  They would only press the filth into her skin.  Could I get a
partial credit.  Lord, for just bringing them out to her?  Mattie
wondered.  Nope, said Jesus, sorry.

The bottoms of Abby's feet were caked with grime, cracked with fissures
in which Mattie could see grains of cat litter.  She started to imagine
herself washing them, and prayed, Please, anything but that.  Yet just
as Abby had peeled away the paper band around the socks, Mattie heard
herself tell her to stop.

"You can't put those nice new socks on dirty feet," she said.  "Let me
heat some water."  And by God, ten minutes later, Mattie was gently
bathing one of Abby's feet in a salad bowl of warm soapy water, wiping
the grime off her ankle and heel and toes with a dish towel and Ivory
soap, working the cat litter out of the cracks in her sole.

On her way home that night Mattie drove to Bolinas Beach.  She wanted
to see the sand where her father had been sitting in the photograph.
She did not really forgive him much, yet.  The sun was setting
golden-red, and the driftwood beach musicians had survived the storms
of winter, all still in place with their instruments, bleached and
raggedy but ready to play.  The pedal-steel guitarist especially seemed
to have been on a hinge.  The musicians all belonged on this
seaweed-tossed beach, Mattie thought.  They were a part of it, as if
someone had watered the dunes with a hose and they had sprung up from
the sand.  But something looked different now.  And then she saw that a
new member had joined the band, a singer, a huge black woman with a
real tambourine, a skirt of tennis netting, and wonderful spatulate
ringers--forks, spoons, and butter knives--radiant in the last of the
sun.

twelve.

It was dark and cold at daybreak.  When she went out to get the paper
at quarter to seven, Mattie saw brilliant stars low in the sky, right
there for the touching.  She felt the bracing chill and snap of autumn
on her skin.  Twenty minutes later, as she poured coffee for Daniel and
shot aerosol whipped cream into cups of cocoa for the children, she
watched the sun rise, dense and thick and deep murky gold.  She looked
over at Daniel, who was working on the crossword puzzle.  Who could
have imagined, four years ago, that the Evergreen rat man standing on
her front step, staring at the ground and unable to kill her rats,
would one day be pushing the sugar bowl across the table to Ella,
without looking up from his paper?  His dreadlocks were even shorter
now, clipped to within an inch of his head.  He had cut them during a
heat wave in July.  Ella was growing out her hair, and it was in an
awkward stage; multiple rubber bands

and barrettes restrained it.  Her nails were short, with chipped black
polish, and she wore new green harlequin frames that Lee had helped her
pick out.  The Junior Miss Junkie Rock Star look was the latest rage in
first grade, which Ella had begun a month before.  Harry's hair was
spiky, styled with mousse every morning, all sticky, stiff fifth-grade
cool.  When the phone rang, Daniel got up to answer it.  Calls this
early were often from Pauline, asking him questions about their house.
They had tried for several months to sell it, but the real estate
market had gone into a downturn, and they had decided to rent for the
time being.  Daniel was always kind to Pauline; she still hung up if
Mattie or the children answered.

"Hello, Isa."  Daniel sounded relieved and surprised.  "What are you
doing up so early?... No, this is Daniel.  Al lives at his house.  But
Mattie's here."

"Hi, Mom," Mattie said.  "What an odd time for you to call.  What's
up?""

Isa's voice often sounded flimsy these days, as if it might tear, like
old rice paper.  But this morning she was bursting with joyful news,
her voice strong, and the problem was just that she could not quite
remember the details.  "Oh, Mattie," she said, stalling, "I've never
been so happy.

"That's wonderful.  But what's the news?"

"Oh, honest to Pete!"  There were clicks and exhalations of frustration
as Isa struggled to remember.  "Tell me about you--what's new,
darling?"

"Mom, call me back when you remember, okay?  I'm getting the kids off
to school right now."

"But this is very important!  Can't you think what it could be
about?"

"Good news from your doctor?"

No.

"Something to do with Lewis?"

No.

"Something to do with my birthday?"

"Oh, is it your birthday soon?"

"Mom, it's coming right up, October twenty-ninth!  Remember?  Angela's
having that big party for me at Stinson Beach."

"Well, that's nice," Isa said, as if Mattie were rambling on.  "But
that's not it."

"Something to do with Tillie?"

"Yes, that's it," Isa said triumphantly.  "Darling, Tillie and I want
to marry!"

Good Lord," said Al, when Mattie reached him on the phone at school
that morning.  "Mom and Yvonne are getting married?"

"I haven't confirmed this with Yvonne.  But Mom thinks it's
happening."

"Is our mom a lesbian?  Will we have two mothers now?"  "I'll have to
consult with Angela and get back to you on that."

Life was so strange, the weather shifting so often.  There were warm,
bright days, and days that were dark and quiet and cool.  Now all Isa
talked about was Tillie.  Lewis was still her steadfast companion, with
her for part of every day, but Tillie was now the object of Isa's
desire.  She continued to call Yvonne Tillie.  No one--least of all
Yvonne--knew who Tillie was, or if there had ever been a Tillie in
Isa's life, yet in Isa's presence, everyone carefully referred to
Yvonne as Tillie.

"What time is Tillie coming over?"  Isa would ask Mattie with heat.
"Shouldn't she be here by now?  Lewis and I went to see her yesterday.
She had lemon bars!  And a new yellow shawl.  Isn't she beautiful:"
Mattie got sick of it.  Maybe she was jealous, that Yvonne, not herself
or Al, would be the object of so much passion from their

mother.  Sometimes when Isa talked about Tillie, she thumped her chest
to show the beating of her heart, and looked deranged with love.

"Mom says that you and she are getting married," Mattie told Yvonne
later that morning, as Yvonne made them cups of tea with her prisoner's
coil.  Mattie had stopped by The Sequoias to see Isa but dropped by
Yvonne's first.

Yvonne shook her head; her necklaces clicked.  Cracked-earth lines
radiated from her mouth and eyes.  "This is the first I've heard of
it," she said.  "But she's certainly latched on to me more lately.
Every time she sees me, she cries out "Tillie!"  as if she'd given me
up for dead."

"I wonder if way deep down she associates you with Alfred," Mattie
mused.  "So she gets Alfred back in the deal.  He didn't love her the
way he loved you.  But now, because he loved you, she gets to
experience all that love she was so hungry for."

Mattie rose to stand beside Yvonne at the window.  "I know your father
would want me to help take care of her, that's all," Yvonne said.  "He
would have tried to do it too, if he were still alive."

Mattie thought of Abby's ruined feet but said nothing.  "So does this
mean you're not going to marry her?"  she asked.  She meant to say it
lightly, but she felt disappointment on Isa's behalf, among a welter of
feelings.  Yvonne shook her head no, and then walked with a hitch to
one of her velvet chairs and sat down.  Mattie followed.

Isa's studio was clean, the windows open to let out the sour air.  An
aide had come earlier to help her get dressed, give her medicine, walk
her to breakfast, and throw the sheets into the wash while she was
gone.  Isa sat in her easy chair watching TV.  When Mattie moved into
her line of sight, Isa's face drooped with disappointment.

"Oh, I thought you were Tillie," she said.

"Won't you see her at lunch?"  Mattie asked, a little defensively.

"Yes!"  Isa thumped her chest like a primate.  "Help me get ready.  I
need some rouge.  Please, for once, do what I ask.  Get me the rouge,
and some lipstick."  Mattie retrieved Isa's makeup from the bathroom,
then stood beside her throne, a bitter lady-in-waiting.

She patted Isa's nose with the powder puff, stroked on blusher, painted
her lips with the lightest pink gloss.  Isa looked as expectant as Ella
in front of the vanity mirror when Mattie daubed on the gloss.  "Will
they let us marry?"  Isa implored.

"Shh, shh," Mattie whispered, handing Isa a tissue to blot her lips.
"I'm not sure, Mom."

When Isa was ready, in black silk and the pearls Alfred had given her
on their twentieth anniversary, Isa focused on waiting for his mistress
to come get her for lunch, so intently that she was unable to talk to
Mattie at all.

What's it all about, Otis?"  Mattie wondered, sitting beside the iguana
late that afternoon.  He stared, frozen, although his skin was made for
the most sinuous movement, armored and flexible at the same time, like
chain mail.  She still felt an undercurrent of edgy fear in his
presence, this glorious fire-breathing dragon shrunken to the
approximate size of a carrot.  He was a little like Isa, she realized,
so quiet, but scary still in his sudden bouts of frenzy.  She smiled.
"Help me, Otis," she pleaded, but he didn't move, didn't blink.  He
might as well have been dead, already stuffed, except for the tiny
pulse she noticed in his throat, flaring out with each breath.  Mattie
went to the kitchen for a lettuce leaf.  When she lowered it into his
cage, Otis darted across the bottom.  She screamed, and Otis dashed
back and forth, thin ribbons of shit spewing everywhere until he was
done.  Then he froze again, the quick and the dead in one convenient
package.

Mattie sat watching him, then looked out the window, where an ice-blue
sky unfolded, veiled with angel-wing clouds.  In the tree

branches she could see yellow, orange, rose, red, in lush, ecstatic
leafiness.  Daniel was off working with a contractor, helping to build
a house in Lagunitas, near the hollowed-out redwood where Mattie and
Daniel had sat together so long before.  There were moments when she
wished they could go back there, to the fresh beginnings.  She had
forgotten, while she'd been praying for a man, how hard it could be to
live with someone--the seesaw of needs, the body's betrayals.  The
horrible way Daniel scraped cottage cheese from the corners of his lips
into his mouth.  That he ate cottage cheese at all.  They so often
needed opposite things.  She wanted to be alone when he wanted to be
affectionate.  She'd coquettishly asked for a cup of coffee with hot
milk in bed one morning, and that night he brought home an espresso
machine they couldn't afford.  She wanted to talk when he needed to be
deeply silent.

But still, he was so endearing.  Sometimes after he got ready for
church he came to find her, and stood with his arms at his sides, like
a little boy in his first suit from Sears.  He taught Ella to hammer
nails with the best of them, taught both kids to sew on buttons, and to
iron.  He taught them to sing "Joe Hill," and to make cheese
omelettes.

He'd also discovered Nicky's porno movies, and that had made her want
to die--or to leave him.  But he'd wanted to watch them with her.  She
threw them out the following day, as leftovers from her life with
Nicky.  She'd found a diary Daniel had kept ever since meeting Pauline.
She read it greedily, then confessed.  He was mad at her for a full day
and part of a second.  He discovered that she didn't keep track of the
checks she wrote.  She found out he didn't floss very often, and hadn't
paid taxes one recent year.  He found her old magazine photograph of
the beaming Indian holy man with the parcel of rocks tied to his penis.
It had been folded up and tucked in the drawer of her bedside table. 
She found him holding it in their bedroom.  "What are you looking for?"
 she demanded.  "You're like a narc."

Daniel kept looking at the picture, covering his crotch with his hand.
"Ouch," he said.  She finally smiled.  "Why do you keep this?"  he
asked.

She sat on the carpet beside him and took the picture of the destitute,
naked, crazy-looking Indian man.  "Because he's doing something
impossible and scary, and living through it," she said.  "Look at the
weight he's bearing--that's gotta be ten pounds of rocks dangling
there.  But he's saying to God, "I'm Yours, and You will sustain me.
Look how well You're doing!""

Daniel kept his eyes on the picture.  "That's how you make me feel
too."  He licked his lips, swallowed.  "But I guess it's too early to
talk about, like, the possibility of marriage, right?"

"Oh, for Chrissakes," she caught herself saying.  "Way too early."  Her
heart raced and chattered like wind-up teeth.

"In the spring, we'll have been together a year," Daniel said.

She felt herself blush and concentrated on breathing in, breathing out.
She covered her face with her hands.  "So tell me exactly what you're
asking," she said, through her fingers.  "I'm asking you if you would
marry me sometime in the spring."

She felt his hand against hers.  The cupped palm of her hand grew slick
with tears.  "I'll wear the rocks to the wedding, if you want me to,"
he whispered.  They sat close together, heads averted.  He nuzzled the
side of her head, and she let herself cry, and then wiped her nose with
the back of her hand.  Daniel lifted his T-shirt to wipe her eyes and
nose.

He was looking at her as if she were his own sleeping child.

"Well?  "he asked.

She closed her eyes, smiling, and nodded.  "I have to get back to you
about the rocks," she said.

There was a crispness to the night.  Daniel got the children to bed
while Mattie sat outside wrapped in a blanket.  She looked up at the
stars and thought about her wedding in the spring.  The smell of the
earth in April would be so rich.  You got the bursting soil and also
what it was bursting with.  And the golden evenings grew longer and the
night did not close in on you.

She and Daniel told the children the news together the next morning
over breakfast.  "We're going to get married in the spring," Mattie
said gently, and Ella clapped her hands to her cheeks.  But Harry gave
Daniel a fatherly sideways look.  This Rasta bum wanted to marry his
mother?

"Whatever," he said, and went to his room.  Mattie followed.  She found
him sitting on his bed, flipping baseball cards into the trash can. She
stretched out on his bed, and eventually he lay down beside her.

"I thought you loved Daniel," she said.

She couldn't see his face, because they were looking in the same
direction, but she rubbed his shoulder blades and listened to his
tickertape of worry.

"I do love Daniel.  But what about Pauline?  It's horrible for her," he
said.  "She used to be our friend.  And then Ella's getting fat, you
know.  A boy at the pool teased her about her stomach.  And Daniel has
dreadlocks, so people stare at him already, and everyone's just looking
at our family.  And what about Daddy?  What if Daddy and Lee break up?
Daddy couldn't come back to us, because then us would also be
Daniel."

This startled Mattie.  She caught herself from reassuring him too
quickly, making short work of his worries.  "I know it's hard in some
ways, because none of us knows what's going to happen," she said.  That
uncertainty now filled her like a cool compound slipping into

her cracks and holes.  "But won't it still be great?  He's so good,
and funny and sweet."

"But he's terrible at sports," Harry said.  "He's not even good at
catch.  And he runs funny--no offense.  I wish we had a regular
family."

When Mattie went to tell Isa, she couldn't find her in her studio.  She
eventually found her at Lewis's, watching tennis on TV and eating
lasagne.  Mattie kissed them both, and pulled up a chair.

"I have some news for you," she began.  "Daniel and I are getting
married in the spring."

Isa recoiled, as though she had been shot.  "What?"  she demanded. 
"Are you out of your mind?"  She glared at Lewis.

"That's wonderful news," said Lewis, taking Mattie's hands in his.
"Will Pastor marry you?  Will you marry at church?"

"Yes, to both, I think.  We haven't discussed many details.  But I'd
like you to walk me down the aisle, Lewis."  He clutched her hands to
his chest.  Mattie looked at Isa.  Her mother had taken out her
dentures and placed them on her plate of lasagne, as if she meant to
expose her valves, to frighten them both back into submission.

"But will they let us marry?  Tillie and me?"  Isa cried.  "Can't you
for even one time in your life think about someone besides yourself?"

Lewis stared at Isa.  Then he turned to Mattie, still clasping her
hands, and bowed his head.  "May I recite the thirteenth chapter of
Corinthians in the service?"  he asked.  She nodded, of course.  It was
the "New York, New York" of the New Testament, but if Lewis wanted to
recite it, that was fine by her.

Angela had gone all-out for Mattie's birthday.  She had borrowed a
house on Stinson Beach from her girlfriend Julie's cousin, rented

umbrellas, tables, and chairs from Big 4, and set them up on the beach
halfway between the house and the water.  Julie had flown up that
morning and picked flowers from the garden, to make bouquets for the
tables.  Shish kebabs were marinating in the kitchen, coals were ready
to be lit under grills in the backyard.  Angela had asked guests to
bring side dishes and drinks.

People came from church, and the same old friends from the didgeridoo
party came as well.  Noah didn't, even though Mattie had left a message
on his machine inviting him.  He'd called back two days later to say he
couldn't be there--and asked if she could drop by for a beer some night
after work.  The next day, when she went to the superette, she found
that Noah had left her a present, wrapped in the Sunday comic pages.
She knew before opening it that it would be the little blue shoe.

Angela had called Ned to invite him, without including William.  Daniel
had invited a few guys from his construction crew, Al some people he
and Mattie had gone to high school with.  He and Katherine arranged to
pick up Isa, Lewis, and Yvonne.

Mattie and Angela shopped for clothes in a vintage store the day before
the party.  Both now wore size 14.  They chose dresses that were
elegant and girlish but not totally frou-frou; they wanted something
that was flowing and, as Angela put it, forgiving: "We're going to eat
a lot, and we don't want our middles constricted," she said.  Mattie
selected a celadon-green silk dress, very simple and 1920s, a koan of a
color, bright and light and muted at the same time-the color of a rice
bowl.  Angela bought a light-purple shift; she would wear a wreath of
flowers in her hair.  She brought an outfit for Ella from Hollywood--a
miniature black velvet evening gown with puffy sleeves and pink
rosettes, and a tiny purse.  Ella filled the purse with Kleenex, a tube
of pink lip gloss, and a medal she'd won in an art contest at school.
Harry wore a gray suit from Mervyn's that Nicky had taken him shopping
for, a clip-on tie, and a lot of styling gel to spike his hair.

Daniel wore his good suit, light khaki, debonair.  He had the blue
shoe in his pocket in the morning, but gave it to Mattie when it grew
cold and windy later.  She was having a bad brain day, worrying about
the darkening weather, what kind of shape Isa would be in, whether
there'd be enough food.  When people began to arrive with food and
presents, it seemed the ultimate miracle, to have good people love you,
freaked-out, self-centered mess that you were.

Mattie greeted everyone, then walked across the sand calling for Harry
and Ella above the roaring surf and the cries of the gulls.  The kids
had wandered far down the beach, and were tossing sticks into the
waves.  Ella's hair had come out of its clips, and her dress was
falling off her shoulders.  She looked like Courtney Love.  Harry had
gotten soot from a campfire all over his shirt.  Mattie wanted to scoop
them both up, hold them and smell their necks.

She had never imagined she could love anyone the way she loved her
children.  Elation and the cold air off the ocean filled her chest.
"Come back to the party soon," she called, as a sudden wave sloshed
over Ella's party shoes.

Mattie covered her eyes.  It was so hopeless.  All she'd asked was for
them to stay presentable for a couple of hours, and here they were, wet
and covered with ashes and bits of seaweed.  Mattie shook her head. She
walked quickly to Ella's side.  "We'll put your socks in the dryer,
darling."  She held her, and looked out at the water.  She thought of
Daniel, and felt she had never been so happy.  So why in the next
moment did she see herself filling her pockets with rocks and walking
into the waves like Virginia Woolf?  She must have a screw loose
somewhere.  Oh, well.  She breathed in her daughter's sweet, salty
smells.

Ella wiggled out of her arms.  "I want to go back to the water," she
cried.

"Okay, sugar pie Mattie said.  Ella ran back to the shore.  Harry waved
to Mattie.  She waved back, watched them for a minute more, and then
turned back to the party.

She was still far from the tables when she saw Isa, Lewis, and Yvonne
step onto the sand.  Someone must have escorted them to the patio. They
were walking on their own toward the tables, two walkers parked on the
deck.

Mattie tried to signal to Daniel, but he was busy talking to Ned.  Isa,
Lewis, and Yvonne, all dressed to the nines, limped and sagged along
slowly.  They were clutching one another, taking huge steps over tiny
mounds of sand, preparing to step over pieces of driftwood.  Please
don't let them fall, Mattie prayed, even as she tried to keep from
laughing.  They looked like marionettes with strings of different
lengths for each limb, or martians just now arriving on these shores,
learning to use human feet for the first time.

Mattie began to move toward her mother, slowly, as when her children
had taken their first steps and she had been across the room, too far
to help before they fell.

But Lewis and Yvonne held Isa up, and Mattie understood with a rush of
admiration that Isa had always kept moving forward, one foot at a time,
no matter how hard it was, no matter how the sand shifted beneath
her.

She looked up and saw Al approaching them from the patio.  They smiled
at each other, both walking as quickly as they could.  Al wore one of
his father's old corduroy jackets with suede elbow patches, and a white
dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck.  They got to Isa and her companions
at the same time.  They steadied Lewis, who steadied Yvonne, who
propped Isa up.

The wind was howling, blowing sand around.  Bright flags snapped in the
breeze.  It was so cold: people's skin would turn purple and they'd
look awful in the photographs.  But once Isa, Lewis, and Yvonne were
safely seated, and a stream of people came to hug Mattie, everyone
seemed suspiciously happy.  Mattie half believed that in spite of
mishaps and confusion and wind, the other stuff, the love, would
overcome.

Catherine, in a white lace dress and flowing rose scarf, had

brought bubbles for the guests, and gave them out, to blow whenever
the spirit moved them.  And Angela had brought plastic leis:

purple, pink, red, white, yellow, wacky and gloriously tasteless, like
paper party hats.  The children returned from the beach, hungry and
dirty and petulant.  Al got Harry to help with the shish kebabs.

Ella, overcome by the noise and windiness, began to cry, and when all
else failed--hugs, and compliments, and chocolate--Mattie took a long,
deep breath and gave her the little blue shoe to hold.  "This helps me
get through everything" she whispered, and Ella's eyes widened as she
beheld the treasure in her hand as if it were a sapphire.  She curled
her fingers around it with determination, and put it in her cocktail
purse along with her other valuables.

"Go sit with Isa now," Mattie told her, and Ella kicked a long,
serpentine path through the sand to the tables.  Isa sat regally at her
table, wearing the elegant silk dress Mattie had helped her pick out.
She had on so much makeup that even from a distance she looked like
embalmed royalty.

The winds blew harder, but minutes before lunch was ready, they parted.
Calm split them down the middle, pushed them apart like a muscle man
When guests reached the tables with their food, they stepped onto a
balmy beach.

Lewis said grace for everyone.  Mattie looked off at the blue-green sea
as he spoke, thinking about her father.  In her mind, he was chagrined,
so far away, alone.  She turned away from him, sick with memories of
Abby at ten in the yard at Xeil's, Abby bloated now in the little house
on stilts.  Actions had consequences, Alfred used to tell his children.
Boy, did they ever.  "Amen," Lewis said.  "Amen," everyone chorused.
And then they all began blowing bubbles at one another.

The cascade of iridescence blew like musical notes of light; everyone
was breathing out good wishes, frivolous and loving, evanescent and
silly.  Mattie and Daniel kissed.  Angela threw herself into Mattie's
arms.  Ella rushed up, her purse hanging open, its contents

Jumped into the sand of the windswept beach, trampled over now by the
guests.

"My little blue shoe," Mattie finally managed to cry in a mottled
voice, just as Ella burst into tears with much louder despair: "My lip
gloss!  My art medal!"  Angela bent down to console her, and they took
offhand in hand to search the beach.  Daniel nudged Mattie with a
questioning look, and Mattie whispered, "She's lost the little blue
shoe."  Daniel turned toward the beach, the sand and dune grass between
here and there, turned back to Mattie and shook his head.  He took her
hand and kissed it.

The weather shifted again.  It was going to rain.  Rain, on her
birthday--all because Ella had lost the little blue shoe!  Help me,
Mattie prayed, I'm cuckoo.  Help me, please, thank you, please, help
me, thank you.  Slanted rays shone through a darkening swirl in the
sky.  rococo castles and feathers and mare's tails in the clouds.
Someone was pulling out all the celestial stops.  It was so beautiful
that Mattie could hardly bear it.  She and Daniel walked past the table
where Al sat with Katherine.  Harry came and tugged on Al's sleeve.
"How soon till you can play?"  he demanded.  Al smiled, and asked him
softly, "Did you bring a ball?"  And when Harry nodded, Al promised to
meet him a little later down the beach.

Anne Lamott is the author of the bestsellers Traveling Mercies,
Operating Instructions, and Bird by Bird, as well as six novels,
including Crooked Little Heart and Rosie.  Her column in Salon magazine
was voted Best of the Web by Newsweek.  A past recipient of a
Guggenheim fellowship, lives in northern California.

Jacket design and imaging by Honi Werner Photograph of the author Scott
Braley

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