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her, that look of wariness and mild embarrassment, as if they were strangers sharing too close quarters, seeing behind the shifts meant to maintain appearances. “I’m about finished,” he said. “I’ll get out of your way.”
    “You aren’t in my way. But if you want to, you can just put your things in the wash. It won’t make any difference to me. I’ll show you how to use the machine, if you like.”
    “Thank you,” he said, and rinsed and wrung out the shirt, careful and practiced. Then he took it outside, shook it out, and pinned it to the clothesline, and sat down on the back porch steps to smoke. Well, let him have his cigarette, out there in his undershirt, blinking in the sunlight, abiding by his boardinghouse notions of privacy. When he came inside he said no thank you to a piece of cake, thank you to a cup of coffee. He took the cup and the newspaper she offered him to his room.
    In the town where she used to live she had sometimes seen a man on the street and thought, No, that isn’t Jack. What is it about him that made me think of Jack? The stir of something like recognition lingered after she had thought, It is only his stride, only the tilt of his head. She had sometimes crossed streets to look into strangers’ faces for the satisfactions of resemblance, and met a cool stare or a guarded glance, not so unlike his, a little amused, like his. She always knew how many years it was since she had last seen him, and she corrected against her memory of him because he was so young then. It was as if she had spent the years preparing herself to know him when she saw him, and here he was, tense and wary, reminding her less of himself than of those nameless strangers.

    S TARTING ALL OVER AGAIN, SHE MADE A DINNER TO WEL come him home. The dining room table was set for three, lace tablecloth, good china, silver candlesticks. The table had in fact been set for days. When she put the vase of flowers in place, she noticed dust on the plates and glasses and wiped them with her apron. Yellow tulips and white lilacs. It was a little past the season for both of them, but they would do. She had the grocery store deliver a beef roast, two pounds of new potatoes, and a quart of ice cream. She made biscuits and brownies. She went out to the garden and picked young spinach, enough to fill the colander, pressed down and flowing over, as her father would say. And Jack slept. And her father slept. And the day passed quietly, with those sweet savors rising.
    When she walked in from the garden, the house had already begun to smell like Sunday. It brought tears to her eyes. That old orderliness, aloof from all disruption. Sabbath and Sabbath and Sabbath. The children restless in their church clothes, the dresses and jackets and shoes that child after child stepped into, out of, put on, took off, as his or her turn came. Too large and then too small, but never ever comfortable. Eight of them, or seven, crowded at that table, three on the piano bench, one on the kitchen stool, practicing their manners—keeping their elbows to themselves, not swinging their legs, for an hour not going on with the teasing and arguing that were endless among them. Waiting for the blessing, waiting for the guests to be served—always ancient men with some ecclesiastical dignity attached to them which entailed special prohibitions against childish behavior. Waiting to speak until they were spoken to, until the meal was finished, out of respect to talk of creeds and synods. Waiting even to begin until their mother lifted her fork, which she would not do until every major sign of impatience among them was suppressed. And Jack so quiet, if he was there at all.
    The dining room was immutable, like the rest of the house. But it was oppressive in ways that could easily have been changed. If she could have taken down the plum-colored drapes that hung over the lace curtains that covered the window shades, she’d have done it in a minute. If she could have