and they were too tired. Had that been it? What were they thinking of? Now it made no sense. It was a blur to her now, a patchwork mosaic, all those years of the children's growing up. There were scattered moments that stood out: coming in to find the entire bathroom soaked, including the towels hanging on the racks, the boys in the tub together, shrieking, bright-eyed, their bodies rosy. The time Jackie fell out of the tree in Central Park and came home holding his poor dangling arm, his face pinched with pain. It seemed as though their childhoods were the same, but they had turned out two such different people, Steven so earnest and responsible, and Jack—well, Jack was not so much. Not so earnest and responsible. What had happened?
Probably Jack had stayed up too late, watched too much television. Too many video games, with their flickering psychotic lights, their vertiginous vistas and violent tasks. His brain had certainly been fried, if that's what video games did. She and Wendell hadn't given him any— one or two, maybe—but in New York you couldn't keep your children from doing whatever it was they wanted to do. As soon as they were safe on the streets they were gone, and so was your authority. Jack had spent hours on video games at his friends' houses.
But Jack was a sweetheart, her heart's darling. His life was unsettled, but whose in their twenties was not? Steven was in flux, too. And if they were looking for blame, what about Wendell leaving his family for that awful nitwit, why mightn't that be the problem? Why wouldn't it be Wendell's fault? In any case, wherever the blame should be assigned, it was not for her father to assign it. Julia would not hear a single word from Edward about Jack.
Her father looked intently at the dark sky, scanning it for movement. He could still see perfectly well, though his feet were clumsy, and his hands—that had once tied off microscopic blood vessels and stitched filament-sized nerves—were now like paws. The thing was to keep going, never admit weakness or defeat. His eyes were still good, and his hearing. He didn't have a hearing aid. Carter Johnson, who was exactly his age, had a flesh-colored plastic snail curled behind each ear. You could hear them, that high insect whine, and he was always fiddling with them, looking troubled, turning them up and down. They didn't seem to help him at all.
All this was partly genetic, but it was also taking care of yourself. He'd never let himself run to flab. He got out every day and walked. He was fit and hale for eighty-eight.
He kept thinking he saw the flicker of a falling star, but as soon as he focused, it was gone. Staring made his sight unreliable, things glimmered mysteriously on the perimeter of his vision. He was vexed at missing Katharine's star, he didn't like missing things. Katharine's vision was good, too—they were both doing well, apart from her hip.
Her hip—but Edward couldn't bring himself to consider Katharine's hip. When he'd first met her it had seemed insignificant. She'd been lithe then, and active. Over the years, though, it had steadily worsened, and he'd been helpless, unable to stop its encroachment, despite the operations and therapy. Katharine never complained. Sometimes, at night, he'd rub her back, and sometimes she wept silently. They both pretended it wasn't happening. If she broke out into sobs she apologized. He knew it was from the pain, and from relief so sharp it felt like pain. He rubbed her shoulders and told her it was all right. He'd been helpless to help her.
There was one, a bright liquid streak in the darkness. He announced it, but by the time he spoke, it was gone. Staring at where it had been, he wondered if he'd really seen it. Was he beginning to imagine things? The thought made him fearful. Dementia: it lay ahead for most of them, humans. He was afraid of failing, his whole physical plant turning decrepit. This was why he walked daily, why he busied himself with Julia's plumbing. He was determined to stay vigorous. He was fighting off decay, resisting the pathetic downward slide into decrepitude. It happened against your will. Tom Lounsdale's children had banded together, like a mutinous crew, and taken away his car keys. Tom could do nothing, and his voice had cracked when he told Edward the story.
Edward would disinherit his children if they tried this. The idea of it set him into a boil. He would not let other people determine his life. (Though his body was turning to dust.)
Katharine looked up into the night sky.
The blanket was too heavy, really, but she did not want to hurt Julia's feelings and sat quietly beneath it. All this was beautiful, the quiet sounds of the water, the hissing of the grasses, the deep velvet of the sky. On Mount Washington, with her brothers, the skies had been open and wild, the constellations close. There were hundreds of falling stars. She'd fallen asleep watching them, then she'd waked in the night and seen them spread out above her. That had been before the accident.
She'd been fortunate, really. She'd had all that in her life, she'd done everything. Hiking, tennis, foot races—in eighth grade she'd won the fifty-yard dash. The coming-out parties, where they'd danced until the midnight breakfast, silver salvers full of steaming scrambled eggs; then they'd danced on again until dawn. Mary Rue's party in Virginia, the big white tent on the lawn, fireflies in the field beyond. The girls in long dresses, the boys in black tie. She'd had a dress with a rose-colored sash, the skirt like petals. She'd had all that. She was sorry for the people who'd been crippled since birth, who'd never known those things. You lost things to age, there were things no one her age could do. But she'd done those things—hopscotch on the sunny flagstone walk at recess, skating on the frozen pond. It was odd that she could call up all these distant things, when so many recent ones were gone.
Even after the accident, things had been all right for a while. Years. Sometimes Edward rubbed her back at night, though this was never mentioned to the children. She knew it would make him feel demeaned, like a servant. She'd tried never to let her pain be known; she knew it made him unhappy. He was used to pain, but during surgery the patient was anesthetized. (He'd used saws, she knew, electric drills, staples. Surgeons were used to it. The pain he inflicted was necessary, a part of the cure.) There was nothing to be done about her pain, and no point in discussing it. She tried never to talk about it.
Now she could see that Edward was beginning to fail. It saddened her. He was stiff now, and ungainly. His feet were heavy. He tired easily, and couldn't carry the groceries in from the car in one trip. He asked the store to use several small bags, so he could carry them one at a time. He didn't tell her, but she'd seen it. Since he'd retired, he'd been doing the marketing, because her limp was worsening.
Katharine's body had been giving out for decades, it was in endless decline. She was used to it, but Edward was not used to being in decline, and it was hard for him. He'd relied on his body all his life, it had always done his bidding. She didn't know what would happen to him, to them, if his body really did give out. She didn't think about the future. Edward had always been the one to do that. Anything might happen, they might both die in their sleep.
They had friends who had gone into those places, “facilities.” Assisted living. The Medways had put their names down five years ago, so when they needed it they'd have a place to go. Eleanor had sounded so smug about it, as though it were laudable to plan for her own destruction. But shouldn't you struggle against it, resist? Wasn't the thing not to give in? Katharine had resisted all her life. She'd never called herself “disabled” or “handicapped,” those words seemed like defeat. She didn't want now to put herself in another category. She didn't want to go into one of those places, nor did Edward. She'd rather die. In fact, she was secretly rather looking forward to dying: it would be another adventure. And a relief. She felt she'd earned it.
She wondered what Julia's thoughts were for the future. If she'd remarry. She'd had other men in her life, after the divorce, Katharine knew, but Julia never talked about them. Katharine hoped she'd remarry, it would be such a waste of beauty and possibility if she didn't. Julia's wide face, the lovely wings of hair, all that emotional vitality. Those long strong legs. Katharine loved her daughters' lean tanned legs, so straight and fine, their steps miraculously solid and even. They were her redemption.
How could Wendell have left Julia? Katharine
