I knew what she wanted, why. I slid the belt out but said, "I'll do it, Lily. Get backit can still bite.

It's crazy."

When the dog turned away again, I whipped the belt around its neck and choked it with all my might. What little life was left, it took only seconds. The noises were soft and very short.

"Hard, Max. Hard as you can! Kill it fast. Please kill it now."

Besides the grimness of the scene, what I found remarkable about it, and what kept coming back to me long after it was over, was how she reacted to what had happened. I remembered how she had run to help the pregnant woman in the parking lot the first day we met. She was unquestionably one of those rare good people whose first impulse is to help whenever it's needed, but this was different.

Helping is one thing, putting a crazed, dangerous animal out of its misery is another. Pragmatic yet moral, selfsacrificing, a firm good mother, funny, and a flame in bed... This was it. Lily Aaron was G.o.d's gift to me. I knew I must do everything in my power to win her.

There was another scene that happened in France, though the other is a story rather than a scene.

A story I told her at the beginning of our flight back to Los Angeles. But on second thought, I will not tell it till later. Let this part end with death and hope. The real possibility of joy. See us looking out a small round airplane window together at the world below. A world that would have been ours, if not for the child.

PART TWO. CROWS WITH BLUE EYES.

"Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour?"

Emerson.

"Mary told me about a couple that went to Thailand for a vacation. They were walking down the street in some town and saw a baby puppy just lying there. It was adorable but had been abandoned and they knew if they didn't save it, it would die. So they took it and somehow snuck it back home with them. Back to America."It grew up and was a real cutieaffectionate and sweet. It liked to sit on their laps when they were watching TV. But they also had a cat that the dog hated and was always after. One day the cat disappeared and next thing they knew the man found little bones or something near the dog's bed."

"Get out! The dog ate the cat? Fur and all?"

"Wait, it gets better. The dog ate the cat, fur and all, which made the owners a wee bit suspect. So they took the dog to the vet 'cause they were afraid it might start eating other things in the neighborhood.

The vet took one look at it and said, 'This isn't a dog. I don't know what it is, but it is definitely not a dog.'"

"What was it? What'd they do?"

"Took it to a zoo. Know what it was? A rat . It was called something like a Giant Siamese Rat."

"THEY KEPT A RAT IN THE HOUSE?".

"A Giant Siamese Rat."

"What'd they do with it?"

"Put it to sleep."

Lincoln turned to his mother and asked, "That means they killed it?"

"Yes, sweetie. Hey, Max, is that story true?"

"According to Mary it is."

It was a winter Sunday. The three of us were sitting around the kitchen table still in our pajamas, each with his different section of the newspaper.

Two months after returning from France we moved in together. It was a difficult change for all of us, but Lincoln had it hardest. Lily and I chose to do this because of our hope and new love. There would be difficulties, but there was also the elation that accompanies the possibility of real and longlasting satisfaction. So, like diplomats negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty, we felt the boy out as delicately as we could and then worked our behavior and our words in such a way that he felt he was involved in our decision.

Lincoln was used to having his mother to himself. I learned he was not a terribly egotistical kid but, like anyone, enjoyed being the center of another's universe. They had lived alone together ten years. He was her history, while she was his rock and his truth. She had had boyfriends over the years, two of them quite serious, but nothing ever serious enough to threaten the straight distance between their two points.

Lincoln's father, Rick Aaron, was a rumor and a ghost to the boy. He seemed larger than life, ten feet tall, an adventurer, Zorro, et cetera, but he was more of an event to his son than a real human being.

Lily and Rick met at Kenyon College. He was a handsome math whiz with a sleek ponytail of long hair, a blue Jeep, and a notebook of poetry he'd written two hundred pages long. He did photography, calligraphy, he knew a world about ornithology. Lily was enthralled and disturbed by him in equal measures. Why was this Mega Man interested in Lily Margolin, language major? She was goodlooking, had enough selfconfidence to hold her own in conversation, and liked s.e.x more than most of her friends.

b.u.t.ttt Rick Aaron was one of those rare people who part the waters wherever they go. Men disliked him, yet they wanted to be his friend. Women looked too long at him, sometimes their mouths hung open a bit. He had a reputation, but from what Lily could gather, his old girlfriends were proud of their time with him and few of them said bad things. What bad was said was good: he was too intense, too hungry, too selfabsorbed. She liked those qualities. Besides, with everything he had going for him, didn't he have a right to be selfabsorbed? It made Rick all the more compelling when he shone his thousandcandlepower attention her way. One night she even dreamed he was a lighthouse. A human lighthouse with enough brilliance and power to illumine every part of the night. The only odd thing about this dream, which naturally she took as a crucial sign from her deepest heart, was that Rick's head swiveled completely around on his neck. But at the time, she took that as further proof of him as a true lighthouse. To include everything one must cover all directions, swivel or not.

And he sure shone his light in her direction! She had had boyfriends. There was even one now at another college, but that guy, any other guys, stood no chance compared with this man. That was part of italthough he was only a soph.o.m.ore, Lily thought of Rick as a man. What was wonderful was that at times he could be as silly and charming as a boy, but his strength and curiosity made him sure, calm,adult . They met in September, and that Christmas, Rick gave her a handtooled leather alb.u.m of poems and photographs he had done especially for her. She'd saved up for months and bought him a special lens for his camera but then felt like a superficial twerp holding that beautiful black leather book, letting pages slip down her thumb. A lens compared with poems?

The more attention he paid her, the more happy and nervous she became. She was waiting for the bomb to drop or at least someone to hand her the bill for what this man and their relationship really cost.

Most people think they deserve better than they've gotten. Trouble is, if we ever happen to get "it" we become terribly suspicious.

The bill arrived shortly after they moved in together and Lily had survived her cuc.u.mber episode with Mr. Aaron. One evening Rick announced he was leaving school for a while. Just like that he was dropping out for a semester and going to San Francisco to see what all the fuss was about there. Like a brain tumor or terminal disease that lies dormant for years in our body until the day it comes to life and begins to eat us away from the inside, Rick suddenly was afflicted with either wanderl.u.s.t or irresponsibility. It depended on how you saw it and on where you stood in relation to him. Always the good boy, good student, good good, he abruptly decided to hit the road and see what he was missing.

Just like that. Unfortunately he left behind (among other things) a young woman hopelessly tied to him and willing to put up with this romantic bulls.h.i.t so she could remain in his life. She even asked if she could go with him. That was an astounding realization to make. Emotions like this really existed! She had actually met a man for whom she'd sacrifice everything. She would desert her old life too if he'd let her.

But he wouldn't. Not that he was thinking of her wellbeing. Borrowing from bad cowboyfilm dialogue, he actually said something along the lines of a man's got to do what a man's got to do and left Lily Margolin on the doorstep in Gambier, Ohio, watching his Jeep buzz off into the sunset.

We do many foolish things at the beginning of a relationship. Later we're apt to forgive ourselves because it was that first deep breath of big love, like high mountain air, that made us dizzy and consequently made us act so wrongly.

Lily waited for him. She should have wept and cursed his name for abandoning her, worn black clothes and looked poetically tragic for a few weeks. She jumped back into the interesting life of a college campus, but she had a streak of the Victorian in her. She once joked she would have been a good sea captain's wifethe idea of waiting long months and writing longer letters that had little chance of ever arriving was very appealing to her sensibilities. Besides, what better experience had ever happened to her? She had grown up comfy middlecla.s.s. A pleasant life, but nothing in it ever shone, no, burned the way her relationship with Rick did. She felt lit by him, wattage she could never have conceived of before knowing this man. Anyway, maybe that was what you were supposed to do with something as magical as thischerish it when it was there, worship it when it was gone. Perhaps Rick was even testing hertesting her longdistance dedication to him. No matter what the reason, she would show both him and herself what kind of stuff she was made of.

She became a hermit. She went to cla.s.s, she went home. She studied too much for tests and took obscure courses that would never do her a bit of good. It pleased her to discover and read authors whose work had not been checked out of the library for years. Wyndham Lewis. James Gould Cozzens.

She was the first because she had love's time on her hands. One book she found and kept renewing, not because it was good (it was incomprehensible), but because of the t.i.tle The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole . What silly things won't we do for love? Others asked her out but she wouldn't go. Her refusal made her more alluring and mysterious. She was neither. She was simply in love with one man who had blown her up like a hotair balloon and then, with no instruction, cut her ropes and sent her drifting off into s.p.a.ce. The view up there was great but when you don't know what to do next it becomes frightening.

What would she do if he didn't come back? Did the pain she had begun to feel ever go away? Was there any way to survive the loss of someone so important? She would willingly float above the world, aimless and lost for a while, but what happened after a while?

She didn't have to worry. Rick reappeared two months later in a tiedyed shirt, an Indian vest, and a beard that didn't look very good on him. But she was so happy, he could have had a third eye implanted and she'd still have been ecstatic. Despite his new look, he was unimpressed with what he'dseen. That didn't mean he was home to stay, however. The son of a b.i.t.c.h said he'd returned to Ohio only to see her, because his next stop was Europe. He was home! He was leaving! But he'd come only to see her! She said his visit was like going through a whole amus.e.m.e.nt park of emotions. What could she do but love him and give her all in the little time they had together?

Part of that all was s.e.x. Lily said she never screwed so much in her life. She used a diaphragm. A month after Rick left for Luxembourg, she realized her diaphragm hadn't worked. She went home to Cleveland to tell her parents she had been living with a man, was pregnant, was going to have the baby.

And oh yes, the man wasn't around anymore. Joe and Frances Margolin were the kind of progressive parents who wore dashikis and gave money to various revolutionary causes. If their daughter wanted to have a child, right on.

But before she'd completed her third month, Lily miscarried. When Rick returned from Europe, she told him for the first time what had happened. He was so touched and astonished that she'd been willing to have their child, even in the face of not knowing whether he would ever return, Mr. Wonderful decided then and there to stay put. They were married and lived happily ever after for two more years until he graduated and headed out for the territories again. This time it began via a job with a fledgling California computer company in the days before Silicon Valley when that whole new industry consisted of only a bunch of brilliant experimenters and enthusiasts flying by the seat of their pants. Rick liked the whole setup. One year short of her degree they moved West to disaster.

Six months. That selfobsessed a.s.shole lasted six months at his good new job before complaining it was restricting and he had to split. That was the word he used. Where was he splitting to this time?

Israel. A kibbutz on the Syrian border. He'd been talking with a guy... She stopped him in midsoliloquy and asked pointblank if he was planning to take her this time. His answer was the beginning of their end: "Lil, you have to decide for yourself about your own s.p.a.ce. It's fine with me if you want to come." When she told me about that conversation, a hardness entered both her voice and her facial expression that was years old and not the slightest softened by time.

"Decide for myself? I was his wife , for Christ's sake! Just the way he said it made me realize where I stood with him even then. He honestly thought it was enough to be Bighearted Jake and let me tag along. But what if I wanted to do something else at that moment in our life? Did he care? NO. Rick the p.r.i.c.k. I think that's when I named him that. Rick the p.r.i.c.k. 'You have to decide for yourself about your own s.p.a.ce.' Can you imagine saying that to your wife?"

As gently as possible I asked, "Then why'd you go?"

"Because I loved him. I couldn't get enough of him."

Her parents, who had been giving liberally for years to Israel, thought it was a great idea and financed their trip. They lived on the kibbutz three months, both of them working in its cardboard factory until Rick had a fistfight with one of the managers and the Aarons were on the road again. They went to France, where Lily caught hepat.i.tis and ended up in the hospital. The last straw was her husband coming to her bedside, aglow with excitement, saying he'd met a man in a cafe who was an editor in London.

This guy read some of Rick's poetry and wanted to publish him. Would Lily mind if he flew up there for a few days and talked to the people?

"I was so excited for him, Max. There I was in a French hospital, feeling two steps from death but telling him to use my parents' money to fly to London. G.o.d, he was gone two weeks!"

Like a rock climber going up a sheer face, Lily's love for her husband had reached the point where there were absolutely no handholds left with which to move further. It was as if the surface she was climbing had gone from craggy granite at the low points to brushed aluminum now way up higher where any slip meant death. Unless you are mad, you look for other ways to get over this. On discovering there are none, you climb down. Lily climbed down. Or rather, the day she left the hospital she used the last of their money and bought a plane ticket home.

No great love ever really ends. We can shoot it with a gun or stick it in the back of the darkest closet of our hearts, but it's clever; it knows how to survive. It can find its way out and shock us by reappearing when we were so d.a.m.n sure it was dead or at least safely hidden beneath piles of other things.Rick reappeared. Shaven, contrite, he reminded her of a man who was entering the priesthood.

Suffice it to say she fell for him again. She had read an interview with an aging actress who said she loved the wrinkles on her face because each one came from a different man in her life. Lily had no lines on her face but well understood what this woman was talking about. She felt scarred by her husband, felt he had caused her spirit to walk with a limp. But he also knew how to wake the dead in her because it had never really diedonly hibernated. It took time but he succeeded. She got pregnant again. She was twentythree.

A year after Lincoln was born, his father walked into a market in Windsor, Connecticut. He bought a pack of cigarettes, but before the cashier had his change, the handsome man with the long hair collapsed and died of heart failure.

When Lincoln grew old enough to understand and began asking questions about his father, Lily told him the story of their relationship. He could not understand how she could love someone so much but end up hating him. Neither could he understand how this wonderful man could treat his even more wonderful mother so badly. She answered as best she could, but like a psychiatrist who rephrases the same question again and again to get to the heart of the matter, the boy never stopped grilling her about the subject.

After I began to gain his trust, he put me on the hot seat and asked why I thought these things had happened between the two most important people in his life. I was reading every child psychology book I could find, but there were so many different and valid ways to respond to his questions that I was often at a real loss as to what to say. How many times did I come up with the perfect answer to Lincoln's questions, but too late? Too d.a.m.ned many. Also there was the difficulty of not saying what I really felt about Rick in front of his son. I thought the man was a selfish, unconscionable b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I couldn't say that to Lincoln. But I wanted him to trust me. I knew I would never be able to replace his father, but if I could become a trusted friend, that was good enough. I was realizing that to gain a child's trust you must be adept at being both adult and child at the same time. You must show who's boss but make them happy and at ease with that power. Lily did it beautifully. As a result, she'd singlehandedly raised her son to be a secure, selfconfident fellow who was generally fair and willing to listen to reason.

What I found most interesting was how much I enjoyed living with both of them. They were like two new exotic tastes or smells that startle you at first but make you want more a moment later. Lily sang in the bath, read herself to sleep every night, liked s.e.x first thing in the morning followed by a big breakfast. When she argued or got angry she often became unfair and overemotional. She expected me to do things but wouldn't always say what they were until I'd exasperated her and she started to fume. It was hard calming her down. It was easy making her laugh. From the beginning I knew how much I liked and wanted her. It came as a genuine shock how quickly I grew to love her.

Lincoln was different. Actually living with a child for the first time, I was constantly stopped in my tracks by both his presence and his perception. People are forever commenting on the different ways men and women see the world and how astonishing it is that we get along nevertheless. That's certainly true, but even more implausible is how adults and children function together on the same plane. They are more comfortable in life, we are more informed about it. Both see the other's vision as unreal and often ridiculous.

"Max, I have to tell you this terrible dream I had last night. I was being chased down a street by guys with big bags of salt. They caught me and said they were going to put my fingers in it. And then they did!" He sat back, satisfied. Nothing could be worse than your hand in a bag of salt. His expression said anyone in their right mind understood how terrible it was and what an ordeal he'd undergone just making it through the night in one piece. An adult would feel foolish even telling this dream. Lincoln was shaken by it. In sharing, he was giving me the radical gifts of his fear and wonder. Things like this are not small.

They are not cute or sweet or kids say the darndest things. I was expected not only to listen, but to understand. His standards were high. If I was going to live with him, share his mother and his life, I would be tested continually until he reached a conclusion. I had no say in it. There were no inbetweens. Triumph or failure. He would be the only judge.

But having him there was also delightful much of the time. I walked him to school most mornings.

We talked about everything and he knew he was allowed to ask whatever questions he wanted,particularly man's stuff. As a result, I once found myself leaning on a mailbox doing a quick sketch of a v.a.g.i.n.a, which he took but immediately shoved into his back pocket. "Do you mind if I look at it later?

I'm kind of embarra.s.sed." While riding in the car one time he sniffed his armpit, sniffed it again and said, "I'm beginning to smell like a man." He wanted to know about my family, my old girlfriends, what I was like when I was young. He confided he wasn't popular at school because he was too bossy and impatient. I agreed he was bossy, but interesting too, which canceled out the other. Lily said he asked her for a picture of me to carry in his wallet, but not to tell. The three of us went to Disneyland, Marineland, the wrestling matches. There's a photo of Tackhead Frank Cornish holding an ecstatic Lincoln Aaron over his head as if about to throw the kid ten rows out into the audience. In the next shot, blown up to poster size and on the wall of his room, Lincoln's standing with his foot on the downed giant's chest, victorious. We ate hamburgers and played video games way past his bedtime. We shared reading stories with Lily.

One of the unexpected pluses was a constant flow of new ideas for "Paper Clip" from both of them. People often asked where I got ideas for the strip. Usually I'd mumble something brilliant like "They just come to me." But now I could honestly say, "From the people I live with." I used the salt dream in there. I used the way Lily jerked violently awake from sleep, no matter what the circ.u.mstances.

And Lincoln's way of praying at night. My life became more involved and in ways more difficult, but also much fuller and more interesting. Interesting was the word. When you live with others you never really know what's coming next. New noise, movement, life. The door opens after school or the phone rings and there they are with things to tell you that can turn a day upside down or its volume up a thousand wonderful decibels. Their presence alone changes the terrain.

Taken to an extreme that can be maddening, but that wasn't the case for me. Quite the opposite. It was only after we'd lived together some weeks that I realized that before the Aarons my life had become so predictable and dull, I could've driven its flat road blindfolded. Worse, whenever there was a slight b.u.mp or detour on it I became nervous and unhappy. How dare existence be different from yesterday!

Obviously that sameness was neither healthy nor productive. Then came the moment I walked in their door and TOTAL TRANSFORMATION. Living with this woman and child forced me off my old path onto new ground. It was not easier to live, but richer. So much richer.

Lincoln was crazy about baseball. I had been too as a kid, so we had real empathy there. The difference between us was my obsession had centered on the G.o.ds of major league baseballwho played on what team, their batting averageswhereas Lincoln only liked to play. For him, going to an L.A.

Dodgers game was fun, but nothing beat going to the park and having a catch or hitting popups and grounders. He believed deeply in sports. Reputations made in an afternoon, adulation or total failure always near. The great thing about them, especially for kids, is they are immediate black and white: good if you win, bad if you lose.

He played on a little league team and practiced two afternoons a week in a schoolyard a few blocks from our house. What I'd do those days was finish work as quickly as possible, then clip Cobb onto his long leash and the two of us would walk over to watch our friend play. Once there, the dog sat next to me on the lowest bleacher looking like a sphinx with a nose. When he got tired, he'd climb slowly down and lie on his side in the sun. I relish the memory of those afternoons. In retrospect, they were when I felt most like a father to Lincoln. Being there for him, watching him play, walking home together afterward talking about how he'd performed made me feel a bond with him that was solid and true. We had baseball on our minds. Both of us listened and considered carefully what the other said.

Inevitably, one of his sworn enemies played on his team. Inevitably the kid was better than Lincoln.

Andy Schneider. I can still see his small lips curling in utter disdain and dislike when he said Andy's last name, as if it were a rare disease and another name for "fart" all in one word.

When it happened I was thinking about what to cook for dinner. Cobb was stretched out on the ground watching a bee buzz his head. Lincoln was playing shortstop, pounding his glove in antic.i.p.ation of whatever was about to come off the bat of Andy Schneider.

"Strike out, t.u.r.d!"Lincoln's voice? I looked up. If it was, I wasn't happy. He could hate Schneider, but razzing him that way was lowrent behavior and I'd tell him as soon as CRRRRRACK!.

Andy hit the next pitch so hard that the sound of the ball making its second impact came only seconds after it left his bat. The second sound came when it struck Lincoln in the face. He dropped where he stood.

I leapt out of the stands and ran onto the field, empty of any thought other than to reach him. He lay in a heap, one arm covering half his head. Herb Score. The first other thing in my mind. When I was a boy, Herb Score was a famous pitcher for the Cleveland Indians who was. .h.i.t in the face and almost killed by a line drive.

There was no blood. I bent down and gently moved Lincoln's arm so I could see.

"Mother of G.o.d!"

His right temple was already swelling. Apparently he'd been able to turn his head a moment before impact and thus avoid being hit square in the face. But his temple was blowing up so fast that it was already the size of a golf ball and a hideous purple blue. His eyes were closed. He didn't move.

From behind, I heard a boy's voice yelling, "What'd I do? Is he dead? What'd I do?"

The coach squatted down next to me and tried to speak but kept dropping his sentences halfway through.

"We called an ambulance. It's not that far to..."

"Do you know anything about medicine?"

"No, My father was a doctor but... Hey, listen, maybe there's a..."

We spoke to each other but never made eye contact. Both of us watched Lincoln for signs of life.

There were none. I kept bending down and putting my head against his chest. I needed to know his heart was still beating. Somewhere inside that still body, work was on to keep him alive.

"Do you think we should do artificial...? Look at the d.a.m.ned swelling!"

There was no blood. That scared me most. I kept thinking of all the angry exploded blood blocked up inside his small head. If it could only burst out somewhere in one horrid flood he'd be okay. He'd wake up screaming with pain but be okay. But there was no blood. Swelling and swelling, but no blood besides the lethal purple beneath the skin.

"Did I kill him? I didn't do anything! I only hit the ball!"

The worst moments. He is alive but hurt so badly and there's nothing on earth you know to do.

Only watch and pray and clench your fists at how stupid and inept you are. Why didn't you ever go to a firstaid cla.s.s? What if he dies and you did nothing but watch? What will his mother say? What will the rest of life be like? Everything in your head is terror. Everything in your heart is dread.

There was a mobile telephone in the ambulance but I was too busy watching the attendants work on Lincoln. I didn't think to call Lily until we'd already arrived at the hospital and they were wheeling him into the emergency ward. A doctor strode into the room and brusquely told me to leave.

"He's my son, Doctor."

"Good. I'll treat him like he's mine. Now please go. I'll tell you what I can in a few minutes."