His mother spoke of people he had not seen or heard of for years and hardly remembered ever existed. Yet they were still a current part of her life, had a place in her existence, and with a sense of shame he would pretend: Yes, of course he remembered Mrs. Kirshner with the lame daughter; Mrs. O'Donnell with the redheaded husband; Mrs. Gallenberg with the funny way of talking.

It struck him sometimes that other sons must listen to other old mothers ramble on, and included in their reflections, his mother's name must evoke a similar reaction.

"Do you remember David Fineman?" He leaned forward and helped her with the tea tray. "Well, I saw Mrs. Farragher, you know, the butcher's wife, and she told me that David Fineman is a very famous plastic surgeon." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully for a moment, head to one side. "Plastic surgeon was it now? That's the one does all the tricks to the movie stars' faces? Yes, that was it, a plastic surgeon."

Brian carefully tested the tea, which was scalding. "Now how would Mrs. Farragher know that? The Finemans moved away from here years ago."

"Well, she saw it in one of the magazines. There was an article about all those plastic surgeons and the things they do to make people look younger, for heaven's sake. And there was this picture of him, Mrs. Farragher said, Dr. David Fineman. She said she recognized him right off the bat. A bit stout, Mrs. Farragher said. Oh, Brian, they've four families living in Dr. Fineman's old house. Isn't that a shame, that house all crammed full up that way? What's wrong? What? You get a scrap of shell in your tooth, dear?"

He dug out the sharp, jagged edge of walnut shell.

She leaned forward anxiously. "Oh, you didn't break a tooth, did you?"

He felt a wave of guilt for her concern. "It's okay, Mom. No harm done, really. Listen, are you sure you don't want me to drop the TV set off at the parish house for you?"

"No, no, it's fine here, Brian, and thanks for donating it. The fair's not for a week yet and in the meantime I'll let the boys have it in their room for the fun of it."

He felt a curious, senseless but painful resentment toward them, those boys, whispering to each other in Spanish, in his old bedroom, laughing and poking and jostling and having their ears and nails checked every day by his mother.

"How will you get it to the parish house then?"

"Oh, there's ways. Now don't you be quizzing me like that," she said sharply.

It occurred to him that she had managed so many things in her life without his assistance. He watched her worn, tired face as she bent over her darning. It was an open, honest, innocent face, her eyes clear and bright beneath her glasses, narrowed a bit as she threaded her needle. Her hands were rough and red and sinewy and callused; her fingers were scarred with innumerable old burn marks and line-thin white marks of knife cuts where blade had gone through bread and flesh when, for an instant, she had turned her head toward a child's cry or a ringing bell.

She was his strongest connection to his beginnings; being her son made him forever her child, for as long as she lived. In no other presence could he feel precisely as he felt when he was with her.

She looked up at him quizzically, her head to one side as though she'd missed something he'd said. "Yes, dear?"

He smiled, rose, glanced at his wristwatch, though he didn't have to do that. She never detained him.

"Well, good-by, dear," she said and then, as always, she added, "My love to Mary Ellen and have you heard from Kevin lately? Why don't you give him a call? And try to drop a note at least to California. Roseanne would be so surprised. Give my love to Maureen and Patrick and..." She named them all, recited her litany, reminded him of their remaining connections to each other, made her necessary attempt to hold something of all of them together.

He kissed her cheek and squeezed her hand. His mother never questioned who she was, who she was supposed to be, what life was supposed to mean, what it was all about.

She just lived and that in itself seemed enough for her.

THIRTY-FIVE.

IT WAS A FAST trip from the neat brick one-family attached house in Woodside where Eileen O'Flaherty lived with her parents and two brothers to the large apartment building in Forest Hills where Eileen shared a four-room apartment, on a rotating basis, with six of her stewardess friends. The small red sports car which she drove was owned jointly by Eileen and two other girls.

"It all works out somehow," she explained to Patrick. "I have a share in apartments in L.A., London, Saigon and I used to have a share in this really dreamy villa in Saint Thomas but I don't do that flight anymore. For the last fifteen months, it's been almost straight back and forth with you boys."

The apartment, on the eighteenth floor, was huge and modern and filled with a curiously impersonal collection of furniture and accessories that clearly defined it as a stopping-off point for transients. It didn't have the cared-for, pulled-together look of a home, though most of the furnishings-sectionals, chairs, tables, lamps, wall arrangements, draperies, carpets-were expensive and in bland good taste. The well-stocked bar and tremendous number of glasses of all sizes indicated that large numbers of people were entertained on a regular basis.

Eileen made quick, casual introductions; each girl in turn introduced whoever she had brought to the party. There were more than twenty people drinking, eating, munching from large trays of dips and steaming platters of exotic foods. They were scattered throughout the apartment in clusters, on the floor, at the informally laid dining table, leaning against the bar, lounging on the terrace.

Patrick noted that the girls were all pretty, almost standardly pretty. They all had the neat trim figures required of airline stewardesses. They all knew the proper way to apply make-up; they all had crisp, short, shiny hair. They all looked like girls who never sweated or had bad breath or had to use the bathroom or became angry or had any feelings beneath their well-polished and vaguely pleasing surfaces.

Eileen worked her way expertly through the crowded room and fetched a drink for Patrick. "Now don't even ask what it is because Susan Farrell is just back from a quick hop to Calcutta and she absolutely refuses to give out with the ingredients. She swears a maharaja gave her the recipe." She sipped, grinned over her glass, wrinkled her short nose. "Remind me never to enter a harem. Tastes like perfumed varnish."

"It's not that bad," Patrick said. "Does this go on all the time or just on weekends?"

She surveyed the scene and shrugged. "We all have different weekends. Our Saturday nights really happen whenever anyone's in town. It's just by chance it really is a Saturday tonight." She smiled at him brightly. "Well, I must say, Patrick O'Malley, I was surprised that you finally got around to calling me. I'd about given up on you."

"I had some settling in to do."

"Has it been rougher than you expected?" Even Eileen's frown was pleasant, a brief raising of beautifully shaped eyebrows which caused an unaccustomed line or two across her clear doll-like forehead.

"It's been a little rough. I guess the transition, you know. Everything's exactly the same back here. Like I'd never been away."

She looked relieved and patted the couch beside her, wiggled a bit against a girl who could have been her twin, and made room for Patrick. "That's a very common complaint, Patrick," she confided. "That's the part that takes getting used to. You leave the combat zone, hop a plane, and zap! twenty hours later, another world and everything you left behind in Nam never really existed."

"But the fact is, it did exist. And it still does exist."

"Oh, look," she said comfortably, "believe me, it'll fall into place. I know. The first couple of trips back and forth, I thought I'd lose my marbles. I mean, we ferry boys both ways and I used to look at the cargo. My God, three hundred of you guys at a clip. I'd just practically crack up thinking: That redhead with the freckles; my God, I don't want to look at him. I don't want to remember his face because maybe he's marked; maybe he'll get it." She sipped her drink, made a funny face. "Ugh. India."

"How did it 'fall into place' for you?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, well, I was just so upset at the beginning, the captain noticed and he said, "Now look here, Eileen, you forget the boys we leave over here and you start concentrating on the ones we take on the flight home.' Well, I'll tell you," she said cheerfully, "that's what did the trick. You can feel different on the flight home. I mean, gosh, I can look at a fella and think, Well, he's been the whole route. He might be on his way to Iowa or Kentucky or Chicago or New York or wherever else, but he's not on his way into some stinking V.C. ambush." She sighed and frowned intently. "You know, we had to convert to a hospital plane once and bring the wounded home. I'll tell you, when I saw all those boys with missing arms and legs, I just wanted to drag some of those peacenik nuts on the plane, just have somebody shove them on that plane and force them to look at those poor kids, crippled for life. Huh, and those little bums, living off the fat of the land and causing so much trouble all over the place when here you guys have gone and tried to do the job. I don't know, Patrick, I just don't understand it at all. I'll tell you something, Pat." She leaned closer to him, created an air of confidentiality. "We girls made a vow among ourselves. We date only Viet vets. Here and in our apartment in L.A." She tipped her glass toward him in salute and sipped delicately.

"Sort of like doing your share, huh?"

"Well, that's how we feel about it."

"That's very nice of you girls."

"It's the least we can do." She moved close against him and breathed words into his ear. "And the most we can do, Patrick, is just about anything you'd like. You know."

"No. Tell me."

She poked him in the ribs with her elbow and grinned, a dazzling white smile more comfortable on her face than a frown. "Listen, I'll tell you something, Patrick. A lot of guys have experienced, well, difficulties with girls when they get back. God, no wonder, how can they even begin to communicate with a girl after what they've been through. But see, we've been there too. It does make a difference. It kind of cuts through barriers. Like all the things it's hard to talk about, Nam and the gooks and how you feel coming home into this incredible apathy and outright hostility from so many creeps. Well, all this can interfere with a guy's ability to...to...you know."

"With his ability to fuck you mean?"

She pulled back from him abruptly, eyes intently on his face. "Now, Patrick, don't be crude," she told him firmly. "Oh, I know all about the language gap too but that's one thing I really object to, because you can certainly modify your language. I mean, that's only a matter of, you know, respect."

He amended politely, "Sorry. We're talking about a guy's ability to have sexual intercourse?"

"Well," she said, reverting to a coy tone, "we could say his ability to 'make love.' Doesn't that sound nicer?"

"Okay. We're talking about the effect of a guy's experience in Nam on his ability to 'make love' and how sometimes he finds it difficult and sometimes it's helpful for him to have a girl who fully understands his predicament."

"Right." She pressed her hand on his arm and told him earnestly, "Honestly, Patrick, there isn't anything we haven't heard. We've been there too. We want to help. I want to help."

The stereo bounced music all over the room; someone set a switch and lights flashed in some vague synchronization with sound. Smoke, thick, heavy, pungent, familiar, rose toward the ceiling then drifted lazily back toward the carpet. A group of two girls and three young men lolled against one wall, whispered and laughed and shared first some capsules, then some tablets, all swallowed with liberal amounts of secret-ingredient Indian-maharaja special. A few couples stood up and gyrated to the music: pelvic thrusts, head tosses, bent-knee torso twists, solo orgies.

"Want to turn on?" Eileen asked, eyes hot and bright.

"No. I want to be very clearheaded."

She blinked, touched her lips to his lightly, whispered, "Good. I like that. I really like that. Come on."

She guided him across the body-strewn, furniture-packed room as efficiently as though she were walking down the length of a narrow-aisled troop plane.

The bedroom was dark, shadowed by vague dull slashes of light from under the bathroom door. They heard the flushing of a toilet and running water. For a brief moment the room was illuminated. A couple exited from the bathroom with a friendly wave. The girl grinned, ran a hand over her crisp, neatly cut hair and down over her smooth miniskirted bottom. The man, broad-shouldered, fleshy, swayed slightly as he crossed the bedroom. He rested his hand heavily on the girl's shoulder, got his balance but still leaned on her as they entered the living room.

Eileen touched Patrick's lips with her index finger, lightly, then darted into the bathroom. When she returned, she locked the bedroom door.

"Someone will have a fit if they have to use the bathroom, but that's their problem." She pulled her high boots off, sank down onto her feet, tilted her head back. "You are a tall one, aren't you?"

"All six feet one of me."

"You know, you look like Terry of Terry and the Pirates. Honest."

"That's who I am, actually. If you saw me in my flying gear, you'd have recognized me right away."

"Well, me Dragon Lady, Terry." She reached her arms around his neck and pulled him toward her. "You tell Dragon Lady what you like and she oblige, very chop-chop."

"That's very Oriental of you. Oblige your man, huh?"

"Anything," she said with a new intensity. Her hands quickly unzipped the front of her tiny short pants; she wriggled her hips and let the pants drop to the floor, then stood back a little. "Did you ever wonder what a girl wears under those silly things?" She jutted her pelvis forward to show off her panty hose, which she quickly slid off. She ran a finger down the front of her bright-red tunic and the buttons opened with no further effort. She dropped the tunic to the floor at her feet.

Patrick stared at the garments on the floor. "You see," he whispered, "I killed a lot of people over there."

She led him to the bed, eased him down, caressed him carefully and languidly. "That's all right, Patrick. It's all over now. You have to forget everything. Just think of now. Think about how good this feels. How nice, really nice and exciting."

She moved her hands as expertly as she dispensed trays of food or airsick bags. She opened buttons and zippers; her fingers found the slash in his shorts, entered, sought, found, held.

Patrick saw the slight disappointment and the bright quick blink of resolve: the determined acceptance of a challenge. Her eyes moved to his to see the reflection of her own pleasure.

"Listen, Eileen, I killed thirty-five people."

Her fingers tightened momentarily, then relaxed, then tightened more carefully and deliberately. There was a twitch at the corner of her mouth. Her tongue touched her lip briefly, then she leaned to him and kissed his face, his eyes, the bridge of his nose and then his mouth.

"Eileen," he said softly, "they were all women and children."

She nipped at his earlobe and whispered, "Forget it, Patrick. In a war, people get killed."

"They were all unarmed, helpless civilians."

"Don't think about it, Patrick. You're here with me. You're alive. I want to make you feel alive. Don't let them get in your way. You're alive!"

Her voice had the heavily muffled sound of growing passion. Her body pushed and prodded him. Her hand, in growing desperation, sought to arouse him.

Patrick pushed her aside and sat up. As he spoke, he buttoned his shirt. "I am the Resurrection and the Life saith little Eileen O'Flaherty."

Her hands went to his neck and tried to pull him down again. "Come on, Patrick, you're not the first to tell me something like that." There was a bright, fresh, pert quality in her voice. She tilted her head to one side, pulled a mouth at him and said in a scolding tone, "You're just going to have to make an effort, Patrick."

He stood up, felt his hands tremble as he zipped his fly. He felt the lightheaded grayness of nausea, the fullness of saliva in his mouth.

"I am making an effort, Eileen," he said softly. "Oh, Christ, what an effort I'm making."

He pulled at the bedroom door, fumbled the lock, then yanked the door open and plunged through the swarming living room without inhaling. The narrow carpeted hallway was musty and the smell of tobacco and marijuana fumes floated stalely about his head. He stabbed the elevator button repeatedly to hurry it.

He held his face up, mouth opened slightly; breathe rapidly, rapidly, rapidly to dispel the trap-closing, brain-diminishing, floor-spinning nausea. Get oxygen to brain. He inhaled fumes of poisoned air. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the frame of the elevator door. He felt the humming click of machinery as the car pulled upward, toward him. Music filled the square Formica box as he entered the elevator; light, tuneless violins whisked him down to the lobby. He crossed the simulated garden, all heavy greenery and flowing fountains set in polished marble. The doorman caught the huge glass door, pulled it open for him and closed it quietly behind him.

THIRTY-SIX.

BEFORE HIS SERVICE IN Viet Nam, Patrolman Pete Caputo was generally considered a pretty good guy: a little quiet, not too quick on the uptake, definitely not one of the locker-room jokers, but a generally inoffensive guy.

He patrolled his post in the all-white, middle-class, mostly Jewish section of Brooklyn where he was assigned without distinction but without ever drawing a complaint for any dereliction. He issued the required number of summonses for traffic violations; he collared an 1140 or two hanging around a public school; he calmed the mother of a child who had been hit by an automobile, while managing at the same time to recognize that the driver, a trembling elderly man, was on the verge of a heart attack. He recognized the symptoms, as his own father had a cardiac condition. He promptly searched the driver, located the lifesaving tablets, administered the medication, made out the required aided cards on both the child and the driver of the vehicle, assisted the ambulance driver with the necessary information and then called the precinct with details.

The sergeant told him to stay on the scene until a tow truck arrived for the abandoned Buick, and when the Jiff-ee Tow arrived some fifteen minutes later, the overalled driver approached Patrolman Caputo, nodded, winked and reached to shake his hand.

"Ten okay?" the tow driver asked.

"Gee, I don't know," Patrolman Caputo responded. "What do you usually charge?"

The tow driver studied the not-too-bright-looking cop for a moment and scratched the back of his neck. "I mean ten for the call. You know."

Caputo looked at the folded bill which the driver had pressed into his gloved hand and slowly shook his head. He handed the money back to the driver and couldn't quite figure it. He called the sergeant to report that the vehicle involved in the accident had been removed from the scene.

"Yeah," said the sergeant. "How much?"

That was when Caputo finally understood. It was the first time the word went out to him: either stupid or a little slow; definitely in need of wising up.

"Look, Petey," the sergeant told him later, "this here is a real nice precinct, know what I mean? I mean, like we are very clean out here. Nothing runs out here, no pushing, no vice, hardly nothing. So if a tow guy wants to show his appreciation, there is nothing wrong with it at all. He's glad for the business. He writes it off as a business expense. Same thing, see, like at Christmastime. If the neighborhood storekeepers wanna show that they're grateful for the sight of us out there, making sure everything's fine and all and that no one is interfering with their lawful business, what the hell? They want to throw a couple a' bucks to the boys in the house, or a couple a' bottles, nothing wrong with that, is there?"

Caputo shook his head. It seemed like there was nothing wrong. He just wouldn't feel right taking a share. The fact that he felt the way he did really didn't mean he felt there was anything wrong about other guys feeling differently. The sergeant accepted that somewhat cautiously, but finally it was decided that Caputo was all right. Just a little stupid.

Patrolman Peter Caputo took a leave of absence from the New York City Police Department in the spring of 1967 and joined the United States Army for a tour of duty in Viet Nam. The men in his precinct threw a going-away party for him and most of them told him he was a hell of a good guy. They were all as proud as hell of him. His action in volunteering obliterated any ideas any of them had that there was something just a little bit wrong about Pete. Yes, he was one helluva great guy and what the country needed was more like old Pete Caputo and less of the goddamn war-dodging, snot-nosed little punks who were nothing but liberal Commie pinko bastards causing trouble all over this country. They all oughta be shot.