Woke Up Lonely A Novel

Ned Hammerstein: In my heart, I knew it was true.

DOB 1.18.72 SS# 615-47-2165

Esme couldn’t get her clothes off alone, so she used scissors. She cut through the foam tubed around her arms as well. Probably Martin had doubles in the basement. Doubles and triples. Same for her face—he had all the molds—so she pulled it off in haste. She never went to the basement, but it was like an almanac of all the lives she’d taken on as a means of escaping her own. And Martin was her curator. In this way, her only friend. He knew her better than anyone. He’d lifecast her body a hundred times. He had, over the years, captured its bow to time. He could even tame the outpouring of her moods—acne, sweat, tears. They’d had their glory days, though none so glorious as their stint in North Korea. Even Esme was shocked by what they’d managed to pull off there. Shocked and elated and dismantled in ways she hadn’t thought possible for anyone, certainly not herself.

She put on a nightie and sleep socks, which came up well above her knees. She looked at her console of TVs. At her daughter’s room, where a stuffed platypus was bedfellowed among several sheep and a brindled whale, while Ida kept quarters under the box frame. On a scalloped foam pad. Why choose the underbed instead of the bed itself? Esme couldn’t say, but she imagined it was because down there, Ida felt both denied and protected—safe under the crossbeams but also in self-sacrifice, as if martyring her comfort would keep her mother home.

It was too early for Esme to sleep, and so, instead: surveillance, what she did best. She could do this all night; it would be company enough. Ned, Anne-Janet, one feed per channel. She’d had their places bugged and wired. She took out a pen and paper and sat back to record what she saw.

Ned Hammerstein, 2221 hrs: At his desk, typing. Wearing a Star Wars X-wing pilot’s costume procured via new friends in the 501st Legion’s Old Line Garrison. The 501st was mostly a Stormtrooper outfit, but it had connections. Compassion, too. When a man discovered he had a secret twin, and his response was to brandish affinity with the ur-twin, the 501st understood. The costume was pumpkin romper, chest box, black utility belt, leg straps, and, on the floor, a Rotocast vinyl helmet, which Ned would don for video conferencing. For now, though, he was just in a chat room.

Girlfriend in a dumpster: But if Luke & Leia were supposed to be twins in Lucas’s grand scheme, why were the actors so dissimilar in appearance, and why all the flirting?

Curious Yellow: Yeah, I still remember my reaction when I heard, “Leia. Leia is my sister!” I was like, huh? Totally UNLIKE my reaction to, “Luke. I am your father.” In my heart, I knew it was true!

Thomas Merton: You know, I’m just going to say it. Incest is a taboo because it produces defective children. But if the twins live in a galaxy-spanning Empire, surely they can get gene therapy, or produce their children in a lab so there’ll be no defects. And if that’s the case, there’s NO REASON for them not to get together if they want to.

Girlfriend in a dumpster: But if Luke & Leia were supposed to be twins in Lucas’s grand scheme, why were the actors so dissimilar in appearance, and why all the flirting?

Curious Yellow: Yeah, I still remember my reaction when I heard, “Leia. Leia is my sister!” I was like, huh? Totally UNLIKE my reaction to, “Luke. I am your father.” In my heart, I knew it was true!

Thomas Merton: You know, I’m just going to say it. Incest is a taboo because it produces defective children. But if the twins live in a galaxy-spanning Empire, surely they can get gene therapy, or produce their children in a lab so there’ll be no defects. And if that’s the case, there’s NO REASON for them not to get together if they want to.

Ned leaned back in his chair. He liked where this chat was going. He wondered what his sister’s name was. And whether she knew about him. His father’s company had a PI on retainer, whose job now was to find her. So far, he’d found nothing. But give it time.

The day Ned got back from L.A. with his adoption papers, he changed his voice mail greeting. It still had all the perfunctories—You’ve reached Ned—but with a new variation: No matter who you are, please leave a message. So far, the upshot had been to encourage his mother to leave several messages when she might otherwise have been cowed, the scene in L.A. still fresh in her mind. Ned answered one call for her every six. She was so sorry. She had never meant for it to come out like this; it was just that his father’s antics had her crazy. Neddy, say something. Say something or I will turn on the car in the garage and close all the doors.

Monday was only two days away. What a horror. Was it too soon to call Anne-Janet? He could always find her at work, which might make it that much less of a horror. But it would do nothing for him now.

The phone was ringing. Caller ID said it was his mom. His fake mom. He did not want to answer, but one day she would be dead, and then wouldn’t he be sorry.

As it turned out, she was calling not to apologize but to ask about a rumor she’d just heard at a buffet cocktail fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“What rumor, Mom?” He said this with a groan.

“Well,” she said.

He walked to the fridge, in which was a yogurt and a jar of peanut butter. The choice was obvious. He grabbed a plastic spoon and a paper towel and forked a clump of peanut butter into his mouth. He would not be able to talk for three minutes.

“Am I on speakerphone?” she said. “I hate speakerphone. Oh, go on, don’t talk with your mouth full. Okay, so this rumor. Wait, you need some background. Ned, honestly, do not talk with your mouth full.”

He spun in his chair. Nicest thing in the apartment by far. It had wheels and adjustable features like height and angle of recline. He loved this chair, even as it did not love him. He had not been able to wrest it from its current posture in three years.

“So,” she said. “You know there are a lot of bigwigs at these functions. People who put a lot of money into politics and expect to be kept in the loop. I was at the oyster bar and looking at your father because he was just sitting by himself. I understand we are having a situation at home—”

“You know, Mom, this sounds like girl talk, and you know who likes girl talk? Girls. Daughters. Hey, I heard you had a daughter once. Good thing she’s not here for you now.” He sounded angry, but really he was depressed. His sister! Maybe she had twists of hair that pecked her neck and shoulders as she walked. Maybe the naves of her eyes were where you went to pray for happiness and got it.

Larissa’s voice went dead. “Do you want to hear the rumor or not?”

He posted to the forum. The thing about Luke is that he’s able to do what no other Jedi has so far: he can feel love without turning evil.

“What, Mom, what? What is your rumor?”

“That the Helix is weaponized and that the FBI or CIA or whatever is about to launch some sort of campaign to stop it.”

Ned snorted. “I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am, I just till the land. Department of the Interior, yeehaw.” Like he was going to tell his mother about his speed dates, the RYLS, or anything suckered to the baileys of his heart and climbing over.

“Neddy, I get that you are upset, and that I’m supposed to be patient with whatever you say to me, but at some point, my patience will run out.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and then he stopped to consider whether this was true. He tended to apologize by default and figure it out later. But yes, he was sorry. He didn’t want to be an a*shole, no matter that his whole life was a lie and it was this woman’s fault. He yanked at the crotch of his suit; it had been riding up his legs. Maybe this was what he should tell his mother, that he was dressed like Luke Skywalker and, let’s face it, would take his privates in hand the moment they hung up. He stared at the strap mullioned down his chest and between his legs.

“Nice rumor,” he said.

“Do you think it’s crazy?”

“Probably. The Helix is dangerous? Far as I know, they’re just trying to help.”

Then again, it was possible. Anything was possible now that so many people had thrown in their lot with a weirdo cult whose galvanizing and inexhaustible resource was loneliness in America.

There was a pause on the line. He could hear her thinking. She was worried; he’d have liked her to worry more. Finally, she came out with it. “Do you need help, Neddy? Because I know some people in D.C., and if your insurance won’t cover it, your father and I have, you know, the funds for it.”

He laughed. “You want to palm me off on a shrink?” He laughed again until he noticed a slick of peanut oil on his X-wing fighter jumpsuit.

“No,” she said wearily. “I think it’d be better if you just kept it all inside.”

“The Helix is harmless,” he said. “But even if it weren’t, that stuff never goes down well. What are they going to do? Storm the castle?”

“There’s a castle?”

“Compound. Whatever.”

“They have a compound? How do you know?”

“Mom, stop. I don’t know. I’m just saying.”

“It’s amazing,” she said. “The passion is there. Everyone seems so excited about the Helix.”

“Are you seriously wondering why?”

He knew she was staring at the family photos ordered atop the piano—her, Max, Ned, year after year—because when she said, “No, not really,” it was plangent for all the ways those photos betokened what had been lost to them as a family.

“I gotta go, Mom,” he said. And even though she had not said bye, he hung up.

Esme turned off the TV. She was peeling a clementine. The rind was clotted under her nails and tinting them orange. She was not surprised news of ARDOR had gotten out. Security leaks were a D.C. special, ever since that megalomaniac sprung the Pentagon Papers. These days you couldn’t piss on a toilet seat without someone telling the Washington Post. Still, it pained her to imagine the project name on someone else’s lips and contextualized poorly. It wasn’t even her idea, this name, just some guy at the Joint Chiefs tapping the JANAP 299 for a suitable word, the irony being that these words traditionally hewed to projects that did not bear out their meaning (Manhattan Project, anyone?). And yet there it was, ARDOR, which classified Jim Bach’s stint to dismantle the Helix and its guru.

Esme heard a phone ring, but since it was not her phone—cell, inhouse, or the secure line—she looked up at screen two just as Anne-Janet considered the name on her caller ID—Do I answer? Do I have the stamina? Can I alchemize my mood from depressed to effervescent?—and then listened to the dial tone on the machine. Ned had hung up. Damn. Double damn, since now she couldn’t call him back. If she called him back, he’d know she was screening. What sort of a woman screens? A reclusive, awkward woman who doesn’t know how to wear makeup or to feather the underside of a man’s penis with her tongue.

Anne-Janet pressed her feet into Lyndon / Lady Bird slippers. They looked like cots wrapped in the American flag, and at the head of each, on a pillow, a rubber face that couldn’t sleep; the future of the country was on their minds.

She plunked on the couch and flipped on the TV, except that the TV was broken, what the f*ck? She was big on visualization and tried, immediately, to picture herself at the bottom of the ocean among fish and kelp. It was placid there, and all was well. All was well except for the part where her TV was broken, and OH MY GOD, her TV was broken! Maybe the RCA cable had gotten loose. It was not loose. She checked her Internet connection and this, too, was out. So the cable was out in the building. Fixed tomorrow. Or the day after. An inconvenience for some; a fiasco for Anne-Janet. She did not even have a radio. So the question posed by this cable outage was: How will I ever fall asleep tonight and, more alarming, if I cannot sleep, how will I bear the solitude? Anne-Janet could not stand solitude. If left to her own thoughts, she would think of her dad, at which point she’d retreat so far into herself, no one would be able to get her out. And how can you expect to be loved when you can’t even be reached? Five nights out of six she slept on the couch so as to be with the TV. Other nights she listened to podcasts on her computer. The more boring the show, the better. She had taken to listening to a man share negotiating tips—how to haggle a raise—which knocked her out in eight to nine minutes. If the speaker was British, she would not last five. Academic men who touted God were her favorite—three minutes—followed closely by men who tracked wildlife in Africa. The whispering was key: Here we are looking at an African aoudad nursing her young.

Anne-Janet looked for a cassette player, a CD player, an iPod, knowing she did not own these conveniences. She picked up the phone. Maybe she could call a disconnected number and put the response on speakerphone. If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. Would that put her to sleep? She began to panic.

Esme logged the scene. She knew how to condense. 2315 hrs: Anne Janet Tabetha Riggs bursts into tears for fear of silent night.

After, she got in bed and thought it over. Ned would be happy to go to Cincinnati—plenty of cloud cover in the Midwest. And Anne-Janet, she’d be cake, too, Esme’s logic being that people who were dead inside would do most anything. This was true of Esme, and while there was a degree of faulty generalization in her estimate of the world, she’d never been wrong yet.

Two recruits down, two to go: Olgo and Bruce. Both men were planked across the ruin of their private lives—how hard could it be to entice them elsewhere?

She called Martin to schedule his magic. First thing tomorrow, 6 a.m.





Olgo Panjabi: Wresting accord from the teeth of hostility.

DOB 2.2.45 SS# 035-33-4932

Sunday! Day of rest for some, for others a carnival at a high school gym, where couples were wrecking and rebuilding each other’s lives with every toss of the bean.

Olgo was by the launch site. “I still wish you’d been there,” he said.

His wife dropped her mallet. She’d launched fifty frogs, though none at the pad of her aiming. “We celebrated before,” she said. “Who needs two birthday parties?”

“The Helix was there, which was interesting, I guess.”

“Really? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You would have come for the Helix and not me?”

“Don’t be silly. Did you see Thurlow Dan?”

He sighed. Scanned the gym for his granddaughter, who was just making her way back to them. Tennessee Panjabi Bach. She could stay at this carnival for hours; Olgo might not last another minute.

“The lunatic? No, I imagine he was at home, voodooing the president.”

She frowned. “Like you’d understand. That man is giving us purpose. Now stand back,” she said. “Here we go.”

She shimmied her rear and made to spit on her palms before gripping the mallet.

Tennessee laughed. Olgo turned away. Thurlow Dan was giving them purpose? He hated talk like that. Talk like that nicked the shared ethos of his marriage, which had been his pride to consolidate every day.

“Where’s my mom?” Tennessee said. “When’s she coming?”

He took her hand. They had been through this nine times. “She’s with your father. She’ll be here soon. Now, watch this.” He asked for a drumroll. Quiet, please. Kay uprose the mallet and whacked. She whacked and missed.

“I wanna try,” said Tennessee.

“In a sec,” Kay said. She hoisted the mallet and whacked. This time the resulting thwump meant contact between the mallet and her shin.

“Crap!” she said, and she covered her mouth.

“I wanna try!”

Kay’s T-shirt was gamy with sweat from the day’s play—bean toss, spill-the-milk, Skee-ball, down-a-clown—but still wearable so long as Tenn let go. And then, “In a sec. One more try for Grandma. One or two. Frog hop is my specialty.”

Whack. Whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack.

Kay dropped the mallet and bent forward, hand to knee, panting. “I’m done,” she said, and she stood upright. Her lips were dry and notably chapped, given the dew that overspread her face. Ventilation here was poor. And the smell of laps and burpies rose up from the floorboards, no matter the Lysol charged to suppress it.

Olgo looked for the exits. As part of the school’s talent for child endangerment, it had blocked one door with a basketball net. The other door was near the bleachers. He tried to take Kay’s hand. In recent weeks, she had been cranky in ways too minor to dwell on but that, in sum, had come to seem alarming, and maybe indicative of bad health. He’d heard people could get testy apropos bad health. Like if her eyesight were shot and she couldn’t see the frog, wouldn’t she pound on it in denial? Or if her ears were wrecked and she couldn’t hear the phone? Last week it had rung twenty times before she picked up, Olgo calling from work to say he missed her—they still did this kind of thing—and Kay saying, “Well, maybe if you bought a better phone I could hear it; this phone is pitched for bats,” followed by a slamming of the phone into its cradle and the cradle into the fridge. Apparently, his wife had something she needed to work out.

Kay gave Tennessee the mallet and leaned against the wall, which was padded in blue mats. “Basta,” she said, “Grandma’s moving on.”

Only the child had other ideas. She ran to where the frog had landed, east of the bull’s-eye, tossed it in the air, and swung. Frog baseball.

Olgo looked away. Last week, he’d tried to call Kay back. No answer. After that, he’d scanned his office, because you somehow expect the upheaval of your life to attract notice and are often disappointed to find otherwise. He was caboosed with problems he needed to unload. There was anxiety about his new job because he thought the Department of the Interior had hired him to mediate the Indian land claims, except no one had told him anything about them since. There was anxiety about his age—maybe sixty was not the new forty—and a sense that his daughter’s divorce imbroglio would bleed his pension dry. And finally, a growing fear that no one wanted to drink from the fount of wisdom that was, in the town square of his mind, its centerpiece.

He could not discuss these things with Kay—she was his wife, not his therapist—but he thought it best to talk to someone. So he’d cruised his office building, looking to offload. Except just having to walk the hallways, which were girthed for a bus, maybe two, and traverse the floors—caramelized rock, cream and liver diamonds—to pass eyes across the framed photos on every wall (nature is beautiful!) and the pastorals of farmers harvesting the land: this safari through Interior was to trade the humdrum of nine-to-five for a venture in self-pity.

“So were there lots of Helix there?” Kay said.

“I don’t know. I only have eyes for you,” and he kissed her on the cheek.

She swatted him away but smiled.

“And another thing,” he said. “I am doing something at work. I’m setting a big meeting up now. With the Cayuga Nation. We need to bring everyone back to the table, else one of these days there are actually going to be mini sovereign states all over the country. Wouldn’t that be insane? And wouldn’t that mean something if I could help?”

“I guess,” she said. “Though you’ve been saying that about the home front, too.”

“Hey, I offered. I told Erin she didn’t need a lawyer.”

And with this he stood up tall. Lawyers were adversarial by design—they did not know how to compromise—and so what his daughter’s divorce needed was the smooth handling of a man with skill.

“Must be some lawyer, though,” Kay said. “They’re meeting on a Sunday. Maybe Jim’s having an affair with her, too.”

“Kay!” He spit a little by accident. “I hope this mess doesn’t affect Tenn badly. Divorce is awful. Just look at her.” Though he was still looking at Kay, pleased to have fired a killer word of his own—divorce—which no happily married woman could hear without it reaffirming her vows in silence.

They looked. Tennessee was whaling on the frog and attracting other kids to the game.

Kay said, “I wish Erin weren’t coming with Jim. That guy is such a creep. All those Defense Department guys are creeps.”

“He’s not coming to socialize. I guess he has Tennessee for the rest of the weekend.”

“He’s a creep.”

“You liked him when they got married.”

“I liked you when we got married. What’s your point?”

Olgo blinked.

“I’m kidding,” she said. “But don’t look now—here they come.”

He turned. His daughter’s hair was cantaloupe and often gathered in a high ponytail, so that in a crowd you tended to spot it well before she spotted you. This had its benefits—for instance, the chance to wrest Tennessee from the execution of Mr. Parker (she’d given the frog a name because, she explained, every frog has a name) and to present her in fine form, shaped by an hour’s exposure to her grandparents, their bonhomie and warmth.

Erin kissed him on the cheek.

“How did it go?” Kay said.

Olgo surveilled his wife’s face. Was she thinking about the lawyer bills, too? Because they were funding this thing until the judge took from Jim everything he owned.

“It might have gone fine,” Erin said, “if Jim hadn’t shown up with his new sugar-mommy girlfriend. At least, she’d better be a sugar mommy, because otherwise he’s lost it. You ought to see this woman. She’s older than him, and she looks like someone beat her face in from both sides.”

Olgo looked down at his shoe. Female jealousy, awful. Probably Jim’s girlfriend was Brigitte Bardot.

Kay said, “It’s okay, honey. So she’s a troll. You get what you deserve. What did the lawyers say?”

“Standard stuff. They couldn’t agree on anything. We’re going to court.”

“What do you know,” Olgo said.

Erin closed her eyes. “Like you could have done better? I get the bed, he gets the sheets?”

“See,” he said, “that off-the-cuff thing you do, that’s exactly why you need a mediator. A compassionate, trained mediator.”

“Dad, try to think of something besides how useful you are to the world. I’m getting a divorce, remember?”

Kay said, “So where is Prince Charming?”

Erin pointed. Good God. Jim and lady friend were in a clearing of children by feed-the-monkey, the children giving berth to the lady because, while she was only slightly taller than the tallest, she was clearly not of their kind.

“Wow,” said Olgo.

“Wasn’t kidding, was I? Sugar mommy.”

“Let’s be cordial,” said Olgo.

“No way,” Kay said.

“I disagree. We should set an example for Tenn. Divorce is not the end of family.”

He said this and shuddered, while Kay made for Jim and Sugar Mommy.

Olgo regarded his daughter, who looked tired. At work, on his corkboard, among the push pins, list of log-in names and passwords, phone numbers and extensions, was a photo of Erin with Tennessee. And next to it, a JFK quote—Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate—because it was smart and also a tribute to the syntactical conceit known as the polyptoton, a redeploying of the same word in different form, fear as noun and verb. It was JFK’s genius to use the polyptoton as much as possible, and Olgo had tried to use it to rear his child as she grew from adolescent to teenager to woman. They’d be sitting at breakfast over Cheerios. She might have gotten a bad grade in algebra. He’d say: Erin, when you’re upset, it upsets everything you do. And she’d say: What are you talking about? They’d be on the porch swing. She might have broken up with Jake, high school lothario. He’d say: You don’t need to love a love like that. And she’d say: Oh, Dad, enough.

He touched her sleeve. “Are you sure you don’t want to give me a chance?”

“Yes, Dad. This isn’t your fight. Jim’s been cheating on me with that troll. And he’s at work the rest of the time, anyway. Thing is, I know he’s up to no good at the department. I should just use that shit against him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Helix? Earth to Dad? Jim’s up to something. And you know what? Toasters will fly before it’s legal.”

“You shouldn’t get involved.”

“I am involved. God. I gotta say, this head-in-the-sand attitude of yours isn’t doing you any favors.”

“Just because I don’t care about the Helix means I don’t live in the world? Five seconds ago you were railing at me for being too involved.”

“I think you missed the point on that one.”

“I always do, right?”

She snorted. “It’s just so perfect you work for the Department of the Interior.”

“Did you really just make that joke? What has happened to all the women in this family?”

“Just be glad you’re not related to her”—which made Olgo smile despite it all. Jim’s new girlfriend—she could probably pop balloons with that dagger of a face.

Enough. He walked over to Jim. Inroads would be made.

“Jim!” he said. “So nice to see you. Lost a little weight, I see. No one to cook for ya, huh? Har har.”

Jim was in jeans that were cinched below the waist and bunched favorably at the groin; a V-neck cashmere sweater; crisp white T; and leather boots. His affect was self-conscious casual, which typified the way he belittled Erin—the offhand remark hatched in his head hours or years before.

A nod, not hostile but distanced. “This is Lynne,” Jim said, and he motioned to his woman, who produced a hand gloved in tweed. The shake took longer than Olgo intended, and throughout, she gazed on him with an ill will whose aura was unwholesome. Smutty, even. He withdrew his hand.

Jim went off with Kay, which left Olgo alone with Lynne.

“Well then,” he said. “Nice carnival. Have you ever been here before? This is my first time.”

“Of course,” she said. “I have a daughter,” and she retrieved from her purse a dusting cloth, which she passed across the face of her personal digital assistant. Olgo took this as a good sign. She was going to show him pictures of her daughter. In the literature of negotiating theory, this move harked back to the now-famous and seminal gesture of solicitude in which Jimmy Carter personalized photos for Begin’s eight grandkids at Camp David. Meirav, Michal, Avital, Naama, Avina, Avinadav, Jonathan, Ayellet. Whole thing might have collapsed if he hadn’t done that. What a winner.

Olgo waited as she fussed with the device, except when she was done, she just put it away.

“So,” she said, and nearly yawned. “Jim tells me you work for the Department of the Interior.”

She took three steps for his every one; he had trouble keeping pace. How odd that Jim mentioned him.

“It’s a new appointment for me, but I’m working a few of the Indian land claims. Interesting stuff.”

“Really? Jim made it sound dull as bones.”

Ah, so he mentioned it for the purpose of trashing the appointment. Typical Jim.

“Not all of us get to big-shot around the Defense Department, that is true. But it’s still fascinating work. We’re keeping things together.”

“Together,” Lynne said. “You’re sixty?”

He nodded. “Just the other day, in fact.”

“I see. Happy birthday, Olgo Panjabi.”

“You see what?”

“Nothing. Just—nothing.”

“What?”

“Oh, just that it must be hard, getting to your age and knowing you never quite made it past the first rung. That probably they’ll force you to retire with no fanfare. I guess that’s just the way, though. I mean, what does any federal employee do with his time? Wander around the building looking for someone to talk to? Fight with his wife? Read the Indian Reorganization Act and prod it for holes?”

“Are you always this rude?” he said. “Because I think it’d take some real effort always to be this rude.”

He looked away and tried to compose himself. She had, after all, struck a nerve. Ever since he was a young man, he’d felt like he was hurtling through life without a plan. Other people had talent; what did he have? Ambition. To be great, to be famous, to hallow the immigrant story of his father’s life. Problem was, the pressure of having to succeed had left him without anything he wanted to succeed at. His parents thought he was just dreamy and clung to the idea that their boy was a work in progress whose afflatus would yield something great in time. It never had, though maybe his time was now. The Indian land claims were a mess, but there was real opportunity in this strife to abate solipsism and ill will.

“Maybe we should just join the others,” he said.

“Not yet. I think your wife and Jim have a lot to talk about.”

“I doubt that,” he said.

“No, really. The Helix brings people together. Which should interest you, no? Because of your work?”

“Right, the Helix. My wife’s not a member. Since when is Jim?”

She laughed. “He’s not. No chance of that. And yet just look at them go.”

He watched them by the water fountain. Kay and Jim were, it was true, talking animatedly.

“I gather your wife’s found a new passion.”

He turned Lynne’s way but was stopped by the hatred that seemed to cement in his blood; he suddenly hated this woman beyond reason.

He looked again at his wife. When was the last she had spoken to him with such presence? Weeks? Years? He could probably trawl their history together and come up short.

They would be married for thirty-five years next month. The first thing he’d noticed about her when they started dating was the ferocity of her independence. He had wanted to open doors; she refused. He’d try to walk nearest to the road; she’d balk. She did not want to be taken care of. And yet she’d flirted with him desperately. So forget what she said; she needed him. Or someone. Her mother had left her family without warning—what does that do to a girl? He had an idea. And the idea saved his life. A girl whose mother splits looks for a man whose best accomplishment is loving her.

Lynne said, “Thirty-five years is a long time, Olgo. Way to keep the love alive.”

He stopped their progress to the booth. These barbs Lynne was tossing his way—enough! “Do you have something to say to me?” he said. “I can’t for the life of me understand what your problem is, but I’m willing to have a go at solving it. I don’t know what Jim told you about us, but the way you’re acting, my guess is that it was pretty bad.”

“On the contrary, Jim said you were all very nice. Kind and decent people.”

His eyes popped. He didn’t know how to handle this woman. If he’d met her at the negotiating table, he’d have wept.

Luckily, Kay returned with Jim in tow.

“Nice chat?” Olgo said.

“Very. Look, the line for the pedestal joust is the shortest it’s been all day.”

“You want to do that?”

“What, are you too old for the joust? Come on, Gramps,” and Kay took his sleeve, pulling him through the crowd. The arena was inflated—like a giant kiddie pool—and home to sponge blocks on which the players tried to maintain balance while fighting. He thought she just wanted to squirrel him away for debriefing post-Jim. But no, she actually wanted to joust. They got in line.

“So what happened?” he said.

“We didn’t really talk about the divorce.”

“Let me guess: The Helix? Thurlow Dan? Kay, am I missing out on something here? I feel like I’m being left out. ”

Kay seemed about to tell him what was on her mind, but then reared as if the wind had blown her back from the edge and she’d never come that close again.

“We’re up,” she said.

A student gave him the required helmet, and when he couldn’t fit it over his head, the student yelled to a classmate behind the arena, “Get the stretch machine, we got a big one.”

“This is humiliating,” Olgo said. “I don’t want to do this. Why is my head so much bigger than yours? Than anyone here’s?”

“Ego,” she said.

He flushed. “Are you mad at me? Did I do something?”

She squeezed his shoulder. “Here, watch. Jim and I will have a go.” She gave him her purse to hold. He was tempted to upturn its contents and discover a clue—a report from the lab: prognosis dire; an arrest warrant; IRS audit—anything to explain this hostility.

Kay and Jim mounted the pedestals. They wore hockey gloves and visors. Kay held her jousting pole like a spear, like she might just hurl it at Jim and hope for the best. Jim stood with pole upright. He was waiting for her to make the first move. She squared the pole and swiped at his bread box.

“What’s this?” Erin said. She had Tennessee in hand.

“I have no idea,” Olgo said. “But, sweetheart?”—and here he took a deep breath. “Have you noticed anything different about your mother? Anything at all?”

He did not look at Erin as he asked. He was almost trembling. You did not invite your child into the travails of your marriage.

“She’s dyeing her hair. I noticed that first thing.”

Olgo looked in Kay’s direction, but she was, of course, wearing a helmet.

“A new color?” he said.

Erin cocked her head. “Maybe it’s you we should be worried about. No, not a new color. Just to strip the gray.”

The joust was over. Neither fighter had lost touch with the pedestal, which left a panel of three kids to decide the bout based on number of swats landed and which adult they liked best.

Kay wrestled with her headgear. Easier to get on than off. She looked like one of those domestic animals caught with its snout in a paper bag. Finally the helmet popped off, and her hair came down in rowdy strips. Bark, cocoa, black cherry—the flaunting of colors was hard to miss, only since Kay wore her hair pinned up, even to bed, how was Olgo to know?

She won the decision. Two to one.

Erin said, “Tough break, Jim.”

Kay drank from a water bottle, letting the excess dribble down her chin. She’d yet to corral her hair and was flush with victory. She lapped the group with arms high, saying: “Kay Denny-Panjabi takes the gold! What an upset! Anything is possible for her now!”

Olgo shook his head. He didn’t need to use the bathroom, but he went anyway. He was so confused. Tears were likely. Lynne, Erin, Kay—it was as though they were teamed up to kill the motor that kept him going. He pushed his way through the crowd, slowing down once he got clear of the others. An arm linked up with his.

“Cheer up, Olgo Panjabi. It’s not so bad.” Lynne smiled up at him. “Tomorrow is a new day. Things could get interesting for you, and maybe that’s just what you need. There’re other fences to mend besides the Indians’.”

“Who the hell are you?” he said. “And what do you want with me?”

“Tomorrow is a new day, Olgo. You heard it here first.”

He kept walking. Stopped at the door to the bathroom, afraid she would follow him in. But she was gone. So was Jim. Erin and Tennessee. He scanned the room for Kay, fearing she had left, too. But no. She was at the zeppole stand, licking powdered sugar from the tip of a finger cleaved to a hand cleaved to an arm, a torso, a body, and finally to a man—a stranger—whose life was not consecrated to Kay’s happiness, her needs and care, but to something else altogether, chiefly to the ruin of her marriage to Olgo Panjabi.

He retreated to the bathroom. Looked at himself in the mirror. Said: “There are other fences to mend. Tomorrow is a new day. I did not see what I just saw.”