I opened the door and stepped out into the rectangle of light it made. Stars were visible even through the brightness of the condominium complex. The back yard wasn't much. Just a plot of spongy gra.s.s with a flower bed and two lawn chairs, surrounded by an adobe-like wall. Alice stood in the middle of the gra.s.s, facing away from the house. She held her hair with both hands, and rocked from side to side. As I started toward her she let out what began as a moan but collapsed into itself and became a sigh, a long slow hissing exhalation. With one hand she took hold of and tore a piece of hair from her head. I could hear the sound it made, ripping out.

"Alice?" I said.

She turned, holding the hair in her fist. It hung down almost a foot, kinky strands in the electric light. "You shouldn't see this," she said. "This isn't your life. You should go back in the house."

"Can I do anything for you?" I asked.

She laughed. "Yes, dear," she said. "Run down to the K mart for a new plate. And a new husband."

We stood facing one another. I believed she was waiting for me to go back into the house, offended. I didn't go back into the house. Maybe because I was was offended, and refused to give her the satisfaction. offended, and refused to give her the satisfaction.

After a minute she looked down at the handful of hair. "This is all I have," she said.

I didn't say anything. I didn't move.

"I don't want the boys to see me this way," she said. "I don't want Jonathan to. I don't think he could stand it, seeing me like this."

"Don't worry about that," I said.

"I do, though. I suppose you can see me this way. You've never really known me any other. Yes, you can see me like this. It's all right, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes, it's all right."

She reached up with her free hand and grabbed at her hair. I took hold of her wrist. "Don't," I said. "You don't have to."

I hadn't expected to touch her.

"Don't I?" she asked. "Don't I have to do something?"

"No," I said. "No, nothing."

She sighed. I kept hold of her wrist. I held on tight. A part of me waited to see what Alice would do next and a part of me thought of my own child, grown up, bound to me by an endless snarl of love and hatred. I could hear the children in the commercial, singing their song to c.o.ke. All those voices. It was like having a loudspeaker in my head.

"You see, I'm more than this," she said. "We all are. No, I don't really mean that. I'm just feeling sorry for myself right now, not for the whole d.a.m.n race. Not even for Ned. I'm more than this. And what am I going to do with poor Ned? How are we not going to be a joke?"

"You're not a joke," I said.

"Don't patronize me. Do you want to know a secret?"

I kept my mouth shut. I held Alice's thin wrist.

"I was going to leave Ned," she said. "I'd made up my mind. I was thinking about how to tell him, and then he dropped over dead on his way to the mailbox."

"Oh, honey," I said. It was all I could think of to say.

"The funny thing is, I'd been planning on leaving for most of the last thirty years. But I couldn't think of where to go, or what to do. I seemed to have lost track of what it was possible for a woman to do on her own. And our house, the old one in Cleveland, just seemed so permanent."

"You could have kicked him out," I said.

"Oh, but I didn't want to stay in Cleveland on my own. It was a dreadful place. And I kept thinking, 'If I leave, this won't be my kitchen anymore. I won't have my plates stacked in this corner cupboard, or light coming in at just this angle.' I could imagine the larger parts. The lonely nights and working a job. What I couldn't seem to relinquish was those little daily things. And then it would be time to make dinner, and another day would go by."

"Well, I actually admire you for staying," I said. "My father left, and I don't know if I've ever quite gotten over it."

"Really, I think staying is the cowardly thing," she said. "I pressured Jonathan to keep me company, and when I saw that he was falling in love with Bobby, I drove a wedge between them. I packed Ned off to his theater because, well, as you might imagine, nothing much went on between us in bed. And he wasn't the type for affairs. He just got lost in the movies. Now I'm an old woman, and Ned's gone, and poor Jonathan doesn't know what to do with himself."

I noticed a plane flying silently overhead. "I don't know what to say," I said finally.

"There's nothing to say. You could loosen up on my wrist a little. You're cutting off the blood."

"Oh. Sorry." I let go and was surprised when Alice took my hand.

"We're not friends," she said. "We don't even like each other all that much. Maybe it's lucky for me, to have someone here who isn't a friend. I couldn't tell this to anyone but a stranger. Thank you for not running away."

"Keep quiet," I said. I hadn't expected to hear that much vehemence in my own voice. "If you start getting grateful, we won't be able to look at each other after this. I'm not doing anything for you that anybody wouldn't do."

"But you're here," she said. "You came two thousand miles to stand out here with me. That's all I'm grateful for."

"It's d.a.m.n little," I said.

"It's a great deal," she answered.

"Well," I said, and the two of us stood in silence, holding hands like shy kids on a date.

After a minute Alice said, "I wonder if you could do something for me. It's going to sound very strange."

"What?"

"I wonder if you'd take hold of me and squeeze me, hard. I mean hard."

"Really?"

"Yes," she answered. "Please."

I put my arms awkwardly around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. I didn't know her well enough to refuse. I inhaled the crisp odor of her hair.

"Harder, please," she said. "Please don't be careful with me. I want to be held one last time by someone who isn't treating me delicately."

I breathed deeply and pressed Alice to my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I could feel her smaller b.r.e.a.s.t.s in their bra.s.siere, and her ribs and spine. I could tell she had a skeleton.

"Good," she said. "Even harder."

I held one of my own wrists with the opposite hand, like a wrestler, and squeezed until I heard her gasp for breath. I realized she had taken hold of me, too.

"Oh Lord," she whispered. "Hold me tighter. Don't let go."

I was still holding her when a car pulled up in front. "Bobby and Jonathan are back," I said, relaxing my grip.

"Oh no," she said. "I need a little longer without them."

The car door slammed. "Now, now. It'll be all right," I said helplessly.

"I'm not ready," she said. "I need a little longer."

The front door opened. There was no place to go. The wall ran all around the yard, chest high, and on the other side were more buildings exactly like this one. "Come on," I said. I led her by the hand to the farthest corner of the yard, where the brightness was less intense.

"Just stand here," I said, setting her in the curve of the wall. I could hear Jonathan calling for his mother. A window blazed with light.

"I'm not crying," she said. "Am I?"

"No. Stand right here," I said. I placed myself in front of her, with my back to the house, blocking the light.

Soon Bobby opened the back door and stood in the doorway, a dark shape cut out of the light. "Clare?" he called. "Alice?"

"We're all right, Bobby," I said. "Go back in. We'll be there in a minute."

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Is something the matter?"

"Oh, don't let him come out here," Alice said.

"Nothing, darling," I called. "We're fine. Just go back in, please."

"What's wrong?" He walked out onto the gra.s.s and stood several paces away. He planted his fists on his hips, like an angry father. I felt the strongest twist of dislike I'd ever felt for him.

"What?" he said.

Alice had by that time begun to cry, from humiliation as much as grief, long dry sobs that caught in her throat and made a tearing sound. "Is that Alice?" Bobby said.

"Of course it's Alice," I said. "Go inside."

He came and stood next to me. "Alice?" he said, as if he didn't recognize her.

I put my hands on her shoulders. I didn't try to embrace her. I just held on to her, so she wouldn't feel like she was dropping away from everything.

"Oh, Alice, I'm sorry," he said. "Oh G.o.d, I'm so, so sorry."

"You didn't do-" was all Alice could get out.

Bobby drew a noisy breath and started to cry, too. I wanted to punch him. How dare he be anything but strong at a moment like this? I actually lifted one hand to do it, to slap him out of himself. I had always wanted to make a gesture like that. But my hand stopped halfway and, following the line of least resistance, settled comfortingly on his back instead. What else could I do with my hand? I wasn't the heroic type. I had no plan of action. Bobby trembled, and as I touched him his trembling went through me like an electric shock. My father popped into my mind. Suddenly he was there, solid as a photograph, handsome and arrogant in his winter coat. I kept one hand on Alice and one on Bobby. I could see my father so clearly, and my mother: outraged, efficient, aging in a square-shouldered red jacket. I saw Ned distinctly as if I had known him, turned away by his discontented wife, watching movies among his dwindling audience, dreaming of Faye Dunaway or Elizabeth Taylor.

I held on to Bobby and Alice. Obeying no one but myself I put my head back and laughed. Not that anything was funny. But I laughed anyway. I knew I ought to feel embarra.s.sed, for laughing at a time like that, but things had gone too far. I decided not to be embarra.s.sed, and wasn't. I kept laughing. The fact that nothing was funny only seemed to make me laugh harder.

Soon a light, questioning touch landed on my shoulder. It was Jonathan, looking timid and hungry, asking by his touch to be let into the circle. I made room for him between myself and Bobby, and laid my arm across his shoulders so I could keep my hold on Bobby, too. I let myself go on laughing. I felt a weight beginning to rise inside me, something big and sodden, like a lump of dough I'd swallowed so long ago I'd forgotten it was lodged in my gut. I laughed on. I laughed at my father, a drunken boy tortured by his own devotion to sleaze and disorder, and at my tough, vengeful mother. I laughed at Ned, a dreamer reduced to ash and bone; at wimpy Jonathan; at Bobby and at myself, knocked up three months after my fortieth birthday by a man I wasn't sure I liked. I laughed at Alice, stuck in a fake house in the desert because she couldn't imagine a life without a corner cupboard. At every lousy little thing.

JONATHAN.

C LARE LARE got sick in seven different states. She was nauseated first at the Grand Canyon, standing wan and erect beside an unused telescope on the South Rim, looking in the direction of the view from behind dark gla.s.ses. As Bobby strained against the railing, exclaiming over the profound distances, Clare touched my elbow and said in a low voice, "Sweetheart, I don't think I can manage it." got sick in seven different states. She was nauseated first at the Grand Canyon, standing wan and erect beside an unused telescope on the South Rim, looking in the direction of the view from behind dark gla.s.ses. As Bobby strained against the railing, exclaiming over the profound distances, Clare touched my elbow and said in a low voice, "Sweetheart, I don't think I can manage it."

"Manage what?" I asked.

"This," she said, waving in the direction of the abyss. "All this grandeur and beauty. A great moment like this. It's too much for me."

I stood close to her. Although the morning was calm, I had some idea of shielding her from whatever winds might be stirred up by the canyon's vastness. The sun had just risen. It threw a hammered, golden light onto the cliff faces, which tumbled down into an unsteady, shimmering lake of translucent purple darkness that appeared to be bottomless. Bobby danced ecstatically at the rim, hugging himself and emitting surprised little groans.

"There's nothing to it," I told Clare. "Just stand here and look, and when we're through looking, we'll go have breakfast."

The word "breakfast" made her retch. She caught the telescope for support. It swung creakily up toward a vivid pink gash of cloud. She crouched, gagging, but did not vomit. A thread of saliva dangled from her mouth, shining in the light.

I held her shoulders. "Honey, you're sick," I said.

"Too G.o.dd.a.m.n beautiful," she said. "Better put me back in that Chevy Nova."

"Wait a minute, I'll go get Bobby."

"Leave him," she said. "Don't interrupt, he's in a trance or something."

She may have been right. Bobby had ceased his hopping, wound-up little dance and was now standing with both hands on the rail, like a captain commanding his ship in a storm. He was more available than Clare or I to outright fits of sentiment-he had no sense of going too far.

I helped Clare into our rented Chevrolet. She and I had agreed, with mingled feelings of irony and plain interest, to drive back to New York from Arizona. This was our first morning-we'd set out at 3 a.m. from my mother's house to make the Grand Canyon by sunrise. In the next five days we would cross the Rockies and the Plains, pay our respects to the Ohio dead, buy Shaker boxes in Pennsylvania. It was Bobby's trip at heart. He would drive most of the time, and insist on stopping in stores that advertised "Homemade Jam" or "Local Handicrafts," which, three times out of four, had been made somewhere in Asia. He would, with my credit card, buy over a hundred dollars' worth of ca.s.sette tapes: the Stones, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen. He would play "Born to Run" over and over, until Clare finally threw it out the window on the road approaching Sandusky.

I settled her into the front seat. The car had an immaculate, rubberized smell and she inhaled deeply, as if the disinfected air could revive her. "Thanks, honey," she said. "Now go. Look at the view."

"No, I'll stay here with you."

"Do you think I want to be the one who made you sit in a subcompact instead of seeing the Grand Canyon? Go. For Christ's sake."

I went. I stood beside Bobby at the railing. At this hour, in the off-season, the observation area was empty. One crushed paper cup sat luminous on the thin lip of red earth beyond the rail. The morning light, brilliant but without warmth, washed our faces and clothes.

"Amazing," I said.

Bobby turned to me. He couldn't speak, and probably wished I wouldn't either. But his politeness never failed him.

"Uh-huh," he said.

"You don't expect this," I said. "I mean, you've seen it so many times on coasters and dish towels and I don't know what-all. I thought maybe it was going to be sort of kitschy."

"Uh-huh."

"It actually knocked Clare out. I had to put her back in the car."

"Hmm." He put his arm over my shoulder, because he loved me and because he ardently wished I would shut up. I slipped my arm around his waist. Here was his smell and his solid, familiar flesh. We watched the sun come up. Bobby was warm and substantial, his brain crawling with thoughts that were at once familiar and utterly strange to me. His wrist still bore the liver-colored mole. Clare waited for us in the car, defeated by the view. I believed, at that moment, that I had never loved anyone but my parents and these two people. Perhaps we don't fully recover from our first loves. Perhaps, in the extravagance of youth, we give away our devotions easily and all but arbitrarily, on the mistaken a.s.sumption that we'll always have more to give.

Clare was sick again the following morning, at Pikes Peak. "Maybe I'm allergic to national monuments," she said. We got her to the women's room in a Sh.e.l.l station, and waited for nearly half an hour. She emerged pallid and straight-backed, with her sungla.s.ses on and dark red lipstick newly applied. She might have been an ancient movie star. Behind her, granite peaks stood dusted with snow.

"Honey," I said, "should we drive straight to Denver and put you on a plane?"

"No," she said. "I think I'm all right. I got over it yesterday, didn't I? It's probably just some little bug."