"You know what I mean. He's stuck in a house that's depreciating faster and faster every day that goes by."

"But that's where he wants to live, Dennis, so isn't that the most important thing?"

"When you're living on Clover Street, the most important thing's not getting killed," Dennis called after her as she went inside to get the children. He turned off the grill and didn't say anything.

"We gather here together to thank you, Lord," Lisa said softly, bowing her head as they all joined hands around the table.

"For these thy gifts," Annie said.

"Which we are about to receive," Jimmy said.

"From thy bounty through Jesus Christ, our Lord," Dennis said with a sigh.

Lisa's eyes remained closed, but the children and Dennis looked at Gordon, waiting.

Annie squeezed his fingers. "It's your turn."

"Uh, thank you . . . thank you, Lord, for-"

"No!" Jimmy said.

"Just say 'Amen,' that's all," Dennis said.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I guess I forgot how it ends," Gordon told the children.

"Well, say it, then," Annie said, delighted that someone so big could mess up something so simple.

"Amen," he said softly. Mindful of the little grunts Dennis had criticized him for at lunch last week, Gordon tried to eat slowly. He was used to wolfing down his food. So accustomed was he to eating in a daze and not speaking to anyone that he wasn't sure where to look, at his plate or his dining companions. In an effort to do both, he kept dropping food onto the table, into his lap.

Jimmy was watching him. "Did anybody else ever try and break out of your jail?"

There was a clink clink clink clink as both parents put down their forks. as both parents put down their forks.

"No." Gordon shook his head. The children knew their uncle had gone to prison because someone had died. If they asked, he should just answer their question, Dennis had advised on the ride home. Tell them as much as they need to know. No details about the incident, of course. As if he ever would, Gordon had thought, amazed.

"You must've wanted to, though, huh?" Jimmy asked hopefully.

"Your uncle always did what he was supposed to do," Lisa said. "We may not always like our situation in life, but we do our best. Uncle Gordon was very brave."

The boy's eyes lit up. "How were you brave?"

Gordon had no idea. He hadn't been brave. He had only been been. "I guess I just obeyed the rules, that's all. I did what I was told."

Dennis's hands were clenched. "So, Jimmy, tell us how swimming went today," he said, but the boy had already launched into his next question.

"Did any prisoners ever try and stab you or anything?"

"No." Gordon smiled as if that were a very far-fetched possibility. He caught himself. He had been about to say he had seen a few men stabbed and knew of many others who had been.

"My friend Jack said you killed a lady." Jimmy watched him closely.

Gordon nodded.

"That's enough now, Jimmy," Dennis said, and Lisa began to talk about Jimmy's swim meet next week. It was for the country club junior championship. Jimmy reminded her that she'd said he didn't have to be in it if he didn't want to. Lisa patted his hand and said they'd talk some more and then decide. Decide what? Dennis asked, staring at Lisa. Jimmy was on the team and he would be swimming in the meet, and it was as simple as that.

Gordon felt as if his mother had just spoken. He pushed vegetables onto his fork with his finger, then licked bits of squash from his thumb.

"Here." Dennis held out the basket of rolls.

"No, thank you," he said. He'd already had four, and there were only two left. He pushed more squash onto his fork and licked his finger.

"Please." Dennis set the basket in front of him. "Use a roll, will you?"

"I'm sorry," Gordon said.

"Dennis," Lisa chided in a low voice.

"Like this." Annie demonstrated, breaking a roll. "You just push it-"

"Thank you, Annie. I'm sure Uncle Gordon knows how to do it." Lisa looked at Dennis.

"So what happened to Delores?" Dennis asked. "You said you were going to bring her."

"No." Gordon wiped his mouth with the corner of his napkin. "I said I'd call her."

"And did you?"

"No, because she came over. She just came," he added, though his brother clearly didn't regard this as the intrusion it had been.

"Well, you dropped the ball, then, Gordon. I mean, after all she's done for you through the years. So now you're home and you don't even call her?"

"I . . ." He felt oddly winded. "I just didn't get to it." He took a deep breath. Then another.

"Dennis." Lisa sighed.

"She'd be someone to do things with, that's all! Get out of that depressing house and meet people!" Dennis said, not to Gordon but to Lisa, who glared at him.

"I get out. I meet people. Every day I meet interesting people."

"Where?" Dennis smirked. "At the Nash Street Market? Come on, will ya, Gordon! What kind of a life is that?"

"I-"

"I can't believe you're doing this!" Lisa's voice trembled with anger.

"Don't you see?" Dennis asked, looking at him now. "It's the same old thing, isn't it. Just like coming back here. Instead of taking a chance somewhere else, you'll just keep on settling for less, won't you?"

"No!" Gordon spoke quietly but firmly. "I'm just trying to ease into things, that's all. I don't want much. I don't need anything. I'm fine."

"But you've got to want things! You've got to be ambitious! Otherwise you might as well be back in there trying to hold up your pants with your elbows all the G.o.dd.a.m.n time!"

Lisa gripped the table edge with both hands. "How can you talk to your brother like that? Who do you think you are?"

Gordon was shocked. He had seen them bicker occasionally on their visits, but nothing like this. It pained him to be causing this deep anger between them, yet he understood. Dennis loved the idea, the concept, of having his brother back. It was the sweating, grunting, blundering reality of Gordon he couldn't tolerate. He stood up and said it was getting late; he probably should be going now.

"No. Please, don't," Lisa said.

Dennis apologized and asked him not to leave. Gordon continued to stand while on either side the children stared up in wide-eyed intrigue. Even for their sake he couldn't manage a smile. "Actually, I'm really tired. I think that little bit of beer did me in," he said, stooping to kiss the top of Lisa's head.

"I'm just trying to help, that's all," Dennis said, hand raised suppliantly.

"No, I know," he said as Lisa reached back for his arm. "I just hate causing you two any more trouble, that's all."

"Believe me, it's not you." Lisa squeezed his arm hard.

"She means me," Dennis said with a rueful smile, then told him again that he was sorry.

He let Dennis take him only as far as the bus stop. He found himself enjoying the rackety bus ride home. The driver, a woman with an orangy buzz cut, kept smiling at him through the mirror. A white-haired woman in soiled turquoise pants was the only other pa.s.senger. Clamped between her legs were three bulging shopping bags filled with smaller plastic bags. When he had gotten on the bus, she'd stared angrily out the window.

He knew how she felt. The hardest part of prison life had been not the lack of freedom, but being surrounded constantly by people. He'd always thought he would have been one of the few who could have endured solitary confinement without going off the deep end. But then of course he'd never done anything wrong or broken the rules. That was not to say he'd been a model prisoner. Not like Jackie McBride, who worked at improving not only himself, but everyone around him. The old man thrived on the ruthless complexities of prison society. In another time and place, Jackie might have been an inspiring general or congressman instead of a steel-nerved Mob underling. It had taken Jackie a long time to break through Gordon's reserve. He had admired Gordon's pursuit of a college education. While other inmates openly derided Gordon as the "spook," Jackie considered his aloofness a sign of intellectual superiority. The old man had died two weeks before Gordon got out.

Prison life already seemed so distant that even when he tried to recall them, most details evaded him. The experience had often been so vile that little had seemed real or, in the end, just. What price had he paid? Two lives were lost, yet he still had his. The emptiness and the lost years could not have been the true punishment. Unless it was this constant dread like static in his soul. No.There's more, more to come, No.There's more, more to come, he thought as the bus rattled under the overpa.s.s into Collerton. he thought as the bus rattled under the overpa.s.s into Collerton.

The pleated door closed quickly behind him. The tall arc lamps spilled a lavender glow over the dingy streets. Bradley Hill had once been one of the more desirable neighborhoods in the city. Now most of the large Victorian homes had been part.i.tioned into apartments like this one on the corner, its ma.s.sive oak doors flanked by rows of mailboxes and doorbells. Spray-painted on the porch wall was the word Aurora. Aurora. Unmatched colored curtains hung in the windows, some too short, others knotted and wafting in and out over the sills. Leaving gaps like missing teeth, bal.u.s.ters had been wrenched or kicked out of the railing. Where the wide front lawn had once been green with tended gra.s.s and neat hedges, now six cars were parked on paving laid from the sidewalk right up to the granite foundation. The front door opened and a plump, bare-armed woman in baggy jeans came onto the front porch, carrying a bottle of beer by its neck. She sat on the top step and lit a cigarette. She stared down as he walked by. He remembered going to Joan Kruger's seventh-birthday party under the pear tree in the backyard there. Mrs. Kruger had silvery frosted hair, a fur coat, and a cleaning lady who came every week. A cleaning lady, and she didn't even have a job, which to his mother was the epitome of privileged indolence. In the front hall there had been an enormous mahogany hat tree, in its center an etched mirror surrounded by bra.s.s coat hooks, ivory hat holders, and a purple velvet bench flanked by two ornately carved receptacles, one for umbrellas and the other for walking sticks. Unmatched colored curtains hung in the windows, some too short, others knotted and wafting in and out over the sills. Leaving gaps like missing teeth, bal.u.s.ters had been wrenched or kicked out of the railing. Where the wide front lawn had once been green with tended gra.s.s and neat hedges, now six cars were parked on paving laid from the sidewalk right up to the granite foundation. The front door opened and a plump, bare-armed woman in baggy jeans came onto the front porch, carrying a bottle of beer by its neck. She sat on the top step and lit a cigarette. She stared down as he walked by. He remembered going to Joan Kruger's seventh-birthday party under the pear tree in the backyard there. Mrs. Kruger had silvery frosted hair, a fur coat, and a cleaning lady who came every week. A cleaning lady, and she didn't even have a job, which to his mother was the epitome of privileged indolence. In the front hall there had been an enormous mahogany hat tree, in its center an etched mirror surrounded by bra.s.s coat hooks, ivory hat holders, and a purple velvet bench flanked by two ornately carved receptacles, one for umbrellas and the other for walking sticks.

When he was curled up on his bunk with his back to the cell door, such recall of detail had been a vital nightly ritual. Under the constant glare, sleepless with the stink and groans and snoring around him, he would try to visualize each room he had ever been in, the furniture, where doors and windows had been, the color of walls and carpets. The one room he could never recall had been that that room room that that night. It had been too dark, a h.e.l.lish cave of lumpy shapes and shadows in the glowing red numbers on a clock radio by the bed: 9:16, that's what he remembered, that and her damp hair. The hiss of a startled cat. The rug sliding under his braced feet. The pillow feathers flattening until through them he could feel her jaw struggling against his palm. Her fingernails had been painted a bright red, but this he knew from the blown-up photos on the courtroom easel, showing two nails torn to the quick. night. It had been too dark, a h.e.l.lish cave of lumpy shapes and shadows in the glowing red numbers on a clock radio by the bed: 9:16, that's what he remembered, that and her damp hair. The hiss of a startled cat. The rug sliding under his braced feet. The pillow feathers flattening until through them he could feel her jaw struggling against his palm. Her fingernails had been painted a bright red, but this he knew from the blown-up photos on the courtroom easel, showing two nails torn to the quick. The heartbreaking proof of a young woman's desperate fight to live, The heartbreaking proof of a young woman's desperate fight to live, this delivered with the this delivered with the snap, snap, snap snap, snap, snap of the prosecutor's pointer on the glossy paper accentuating each word. of the prosecutor's pointer on the glossy paper accentuating each word.

Gordon turned the corner and then stopped, toes curling in his shoes. The spinning blue light lit up the peaks and angles of the crowded rooftops. A cruiser was parked in front of Mrs. Jukas's house. The old woman's shrill voice cut through the night. "They were selling drugs. Right down there on the sidewalk. Right in front of my house. People kept pulling up and the girl, she'd go over to the cars and give them the drugs right there, bold as bra.s.s, then she'd come back and give the money to the one I told you about."

"Which one?" asked the bony-faced, older cop, his flat tone only fueling the old woman's agitation.

"I already told you! The one they call Feaster!"

Gordon had made it halfway up his walk when the cop called out, asking his name. Gordon, he answered. The cop asked if he knew Feaster.

"No, sir. Not-"

"Yes, you do! I saw you talking to him!" Mrs. Jukas shouted with an angry gesture over the railing. "Just last week! I saw you! With my own eyes I saw you!"

He wiped the sweat from his cheeks and explained that Feaster had spoken to him, that was all. He didn't know him.

"You new here?" the cop asked.

"I grew up here," Gordon said, eyes wide, waiting.

"You grew up here and you don't know Feaster?" the cop said.

"I just moved back. A couple weeks ago."

"Right when Feaster started coming around again!" Mrs. Jukas called out angrily. "The same time he he came back." She pointed at Gordon. came back." She pointed at Gordon.

Light flared behind her house. A second cop emerged from her backyard, crisscrossing his flashlight's grainy beacon from the foundation up to the roof. "There's no fire," he told the old woman. "Believe me, I checked everywhere."

"They were just trying to scare you, that's all," the older cop said. "That's what they do."

"Just trying to scare me!" Mrs. Jukas. .h.i.t her breast. "He threatened me, that's what he did! And I want him arrested! You can arrest him for that! I know you can! Threatening a senior citizen's against the law, and I know that for a fact!" Chest heaving, she eased into her bent aluminum porch chair.

Both officers leaned close. Was she all right? Could she hear them? Was she having the chest pains again?

Gordon slipped onto his own narrow, little porch, his grip tight on the doork.n.o.b.

"Mr. Gordon!" the older cop called. "No need to call anyone! She says she's fine."

"Oh," Gordon said, turning.

"Can you come here a minute?" the older cop asked, gesturing.

"Yes, sir." Gordon hurried over. He stood in the shadows, shocked by the debris piled in the corners of her once-immaculate porch-leaves, papers, plastic cups, fast-food bags, empty cigarette packs.

The younger cop looked like an infantryman with his combat pants tucked into his boots. He shook his head in disgust as Mrs. Jukas described coming home last week from the doctor to find Feaster stretched out on a lounge chair in her backyard. He had refused to leave.

"You should have called us."

"I did, but you never came!"

"We told her we'll keep going by all night," the older cop told Gordon in a low voice. "But I think she'll feel better if she knows you'll be keeping an eye on things, too."

Gordon doubted that, but he nodded, then asked what had happened.

Apparently Mrs. Jukas had told Feaster and his driver to stop having that girl sell drugs in front of her house. They said if she didn't shut up and go inside, they'd burn her house down. She told them she was going in all right, but to call the police! Which she did, but when they arrived, no one was here.

"Because it took you twenty-five minutes to get here!" the old woman shouted from her chair. "Twenty-five minutes! Next time I'm taking pictures. And I told them, too. That way I'll have proof!"

The older cop rolled his eyes at Gordon. The younger cop was trying to explain that for her own safety she shouldn't rile these people up. They could be very dangerous. Especially Ronnie Feaster, who lately thought he had free rein in this part of the city.

From now on, she should stay inside and just let the police handle it.

"Handle it! You call this handling it?" she said in a tremulous voice. With her arms crossed and hands clasping her shoulders, she looked frail and drained. "What good are you?" she asked wearily. "The minute you're gone they'll be back."

"Mrs. Jukas!" The older cop sounded almost irritated. "Your neighbor here says he'll keep an eye on things, so it's not like you're going to be alone or anything. Right, Mr. Gordon?"

"Yes, sir, that's right. I will. I'll keep an eye on things," he said.

"His name is Loomis." She stared at the cop.