"Sure."

"You know how you're supposed to be blind and everything? Well, where we go in Bermuda there's this man who runs a hotel. And he's blind. And the thing about him is, it's like his ears are his eyes. Like if someone comes into the room, he turns one ear that way. The way you you do it-" She stopped suddenly and seized my hand. "You're not getting mad at me, are you?" do it-" She stopped suddenly and seized my hand. "You're not getting mad at me, are you?"

"No."

"You've got the worst expression on your face, Callie!"

"I do?"

She had my hand. She wasn't letting go. "You sure you're not mad?"

"I'm not mad."

"Well, the way you pretend to be blind is you just, sort of, stumble around a lot. But the thing is, this blind man down in Bermuda, he never stumbles. He stands up really straight and he knows where everything is. And his ears are always focusing in on stuff."

I turned my face away.

"See, you're mad!"

"I'm not."

"You are are."

"I'm being blind," I said. "I'm looking at you with my ear."

"Oh. That's good. Yeah, like that. That's really good."

Without letting go of my hand, she leaned closer and I heard, felt, very softly, her hot breath in my ear. "Hi, Tiresias," she said, giggling. "It's me. Antigone."

The day of the play arrived ("opening night" we called it, though there would be no others). In an improvised "dressing room" behind the stage we lead actors sat on folding chairs. The rest of the eighth graders were already onstage, standing in a big semicircle. The play was set to begin at seven o'clock and finish before sunset. It was 6:55. Beyond the flats we could hear the hockey field filling up. The low rumble got steadily louder-voices, footsteps, the creaking of bleachers, and the slamming of car doors up in the parking lot. We were each dressed in a floor-length robe, tie-dyed black, gray, and white. The Obscure Object, however, was wearing a white robe. Mr. da Silva's concept was minimal: no makeup, no masks.

"How many people are out there?" Tina Kubek asked.

Maxine Grossinger peeked out. "Tons."

"You must be used to this, Maxine," I said. "From all your recitals."

"I don't get nervous when I'm playing the violin. This is way worse."

"I am sooo nervous," the Object said.

In her lap she had a jar of Rolaids, which she was eating like candy. I understood now why she had pounded her chest the first day of class. The Obscure Object suffered from a more or less constant case of heartburn. It was worse during times of stress. A few minutes earlier, she had wandered off to smoke her last cigarette before showtime. Now she was chewing on the antacid tablets. Part of coming from old money, apparently, was having old-person habits, those gross, adult needs and desperate palliatives. The Object was still too young for the effects to tell on her. She didn't have eye bags yet or stained fingernails. But the appetite for sophisticated ruin was already there. She smelled like smoke, if you got close. Her stomach was a mess. But her face continued to give off its autumnal display. The cat eyes above the snub nose were alert, blinking and resetting their attention to the growing noise beyond the flats.

"There's my mom and dad!" Maxine Grossinger shouted. She turned back to us and broke into a big smile. I'd never seen Maxine smile before. Her teeth were jagged and gappy, like those of a Sendak creature. She had braces, too. Her unconcealed joy made me understand her. She had a whole other life apart from school. Maxine was happy in her house behind the cypresses. Meanwhile, curly hair gushed from her fragile, musical head.

"Oh, Jesus." Maxine was peeking out again. "They're sitting right in the front row. They're going to be staring right at me."

We all peeked out, each in our turn. Only the Obscure Object remained seated. I saw my parents arrive. Milton stopped at the crest of the slope to look down at the hockey field. His expression suggested that the spectacle before him, the emerald grass, the white wooden bleachers, the school in the distance with its blue slate roof and ivy, pleased him. In America, England is where you go to wash yourself of ethnicity. Milton had on a blue blazer and cream-colored trousers. He looked like the captain of a cruise ship. With one arm on her back, he was gently leading Tessie down the steps to get a good seat.

We heard the audience grow quiet. Then a pan flute was heard-Mr. da Silva playing his recorder.

I went over to the Object and said, "Don't worry. You'll be fine."

She had been repeating her lines silently to herself but now stopped.

"You're a really good actress," I continued.

She turned away and lowered her head, moving her lips again.

"You won't forget your lines. We went over them a billion times. You had them down perfect yester-"

"Will you stop bugging me for a minute?" the Object snapped. "I'm trying to get psyched up." She glared at me. Then she turned and walked off.

I stood watching her, crestfallen, hating myself. Cool? I was anything but. I'd already made the Obscure Object sick of me. Feeling as if I might cry, I grabbed one of the black curtains and wrapped myself up in it. I stood in the darkness, wishing I were dead.

I hadn't just been flattering her. She was was good. Onstage, the Object's fidgetiness stilled itself. Her posture improved. And of course there was the sheer physical fact of her, the blood-tinged blade that she was, the riot of color that caught everyone's attention. The pan flute stopped and the hockey field got silent again. People coughed, getting it out of their systems. I peeked out from the curtains and saw the Object waiting to go on. She was standing just inside the middle arch, no more than ten feet from me. I had never seen her so serious before, so concentrated. Talent is a kind of intelligence. As she waited to go on, the Obscure Object was coming into hers. Her lips moved as if she were speaking Sophocles' lines to Sophocles himself, as if, contrary to all intellectual evidence, she understood the literary reasons for their endurance. So the Object stood, waiting to go on. Far away from her cigarettes and her snobbishness, her cliquish friends, her atrocious spelling. This was what she was good at: appearing before people. Stepping out and standing there and speaking. She was just beginning to realize it then. What I was witnessing was a self discovering the self it could be. good. Onstage, the Object's fidgetiness stilled itself. Her posture improved. And of course there was the sheer physical fact of her, the blood-tinged blade that she was, the riot of color that caught everyone's attention. The pan flute stopped and the hockey field got silent again. People coughed, getting it out of their systems. I peeked out from the curtains and saw the Object waiting to go on. She was standing just inside the middle arch, no more than ten feet from me. I had never seen her so serious before, so concentrated. Talent is a kind of intelligence. As she waited to go on, the Obscure Object was coming into hers. Her lips moved as if she were speaking Sophocles' lines to Sophocles himself, as if, contrary to all intellectual evidence, she understood the literary reasons for their endurance. So the Object stood, waiting to go on. Far away from her cigarettes and her snobbishness, her cliquish friends, her atrocious spelling. This was what she was good at: appearing before people. Stepping out and standing there and speaking. She was just beginning to realize it then. What I was witnessing was a self discovering the self it could be.

On cue, our Antigone took a deep breath and walked onstage. Her white robe was cinched around her torso with silver braid. The robe fluttered as she stepped out in the warm breeze.

"Wilt thou aid this hand to lift the dead?"

Maxine-Ismene replied, "Thou wouldst bury him, when 'tis forbidden to Thebes?"

"I will do my part, and thou wilt not, to a brother. False to him will I never be found."

I wasn't on for a while. Tiresias wasn't that big a part. So I closed the curtain around me again and waited. I had a staff in my hand. It was my only prop, a plastic stick painted to look like wood.

It was then I heard a small, choking sound. Again the Object said, "False to him will I never be found." Followed by silence. I peeked out the curtain. Through the central arch I could see them. The Object had her back to me. Farther downstage Maxine Grossinger stood with a blank look on her face. Her mouth was open, though no words were coming out. Beyond, just above the lip of the stage, was Miss Fagles's florid face, whispering Maxine's next line.

It wasn't stage fright. An aneurysm had burst in Maxine Grossinger's brain. At first, the audience took her quick stagger and shocked expression to be part of the play. Titters had begun at the way the girl playing Ismene was hamming it up. But Maxine's mother, knowing exactly what pain looked like on her child's face, shot up out of her seat. "No," she cried. "No!" Twenty feet away, elevated under a setting sun, Maxine Grossinger was still mute. A gurgle escaped from her throat. With the suddenness of a lighting cue her face went blue. Even in the back rows people could see the oxygen leave her blood. Pinkness drained away, down her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. Later, the Obscure Object would swear that Maxine had been looking at her with a kind of appeal, that she had seen the light go out of Maxine's eyes. According to the doctors, however, this was probably not true. Wrapped in her dark robe, still on her feet, Maxine Grossinger was already dead. She toppled forward seconds later.

Mrs. Grossinger scrambled up onstage. She made no sound now. No one did. In silence she reached Maxine and tore open her robe. In silence the mother began to give the daughter mouth-to-mouth. I froze. I let the curtains untwist and I stepped out and gawked. Suddenly a white blur filled the arch. The Obscure Object was fleeing the stage. For a second I had a crazy idea. I thought Mr. da Silva had been holding out on us. He was doing things the traditional way after all. Because the Obscure Object was wearing a mask. The mask for tragedy, her eyes like knife slashes, her mouth a boomerang of woe. With this hideous face she threw herself on me. "Oh my God!" she sobbed. "Oh my God, Callie," and she was shaking and needing me.

Which leads me to a terrible confession. It is this. While Mrs. Grossinger tried to breathe life back into Maxine's body, while the sun set melodramatically over a death that wasn't in the script, I felt a wave of pure happiness surge through my body. Every nerve, every corpuscle, lit up. I had the Obscure Object in my arms.

Tiresias In Love

Imade a doctor's appointment for you."

"I just went to the doctor."

"Not with Dr. Phil. With Dr. Bauer."

"Who's Dr. Bauer?"

"He's... a ladies' doctor."

There was a hot bubbling in my chest. As if my heart were eating Pop Rocks. But I played it cool, looking out at the lake.

"Who says I'm a lady?"

"Very funny."

"I just went went to the doctor, Mom." to the doctor, Mom."

"That was for your physical."

"What's this for?"

"When girls get to be a certain age, Callie, they have to go get checked."

"Why?"

"To make sure everything's okay."

"What do you mean, everything?"

"Just-everything."

We were in the car. The second-best Cadillac. When Milton got a new car he gave Tessie his old one. The Obscure Object had invited me to spend the day at her club and my mother was taking me to her house.

It was summer now, two weeks since Maxine Grossinger had collapsed onstage. School was out. On Middlesex preparations were under way for our trip to Turkey. Determined not to let Chapter Eleven's condemnation of tourism ruin our travel plans, Milton was making airplane reservations and haggling with car rental agencies. Every morning he scanned the newspaper, reporting the weather conditions in Istanbul. "Eighty-one degrees and sunny. How does that sound, Cal?" In response to which I generally twirled an index finger. I wasn't keen on visiting the homeland anymore. I didn't want to waste my summer painting a church. Greece, Asia Minor, Mount Olympus, what did they have to do with me? I'd just discovered a whole new continent only a few miles away.

In the summer of 1974 Turkey and Greece were about to be in the news again. But I didn't pay any mind to the rising tensions. I had troubles of my own. More than that, I was in love. Secretly, shamefully, not entirely consciously, but for all that quite head-over-heels in love.

Our pretty lake was trimmed in filth. The usual June scum of fish flies. There was also a new guardrail, which gave me a somber feeling as we drove past. Maxine Grossinger wasn't the only girl at school who had died that year. Carol Henkel, a junior, had died in a car accident. One Saturday night her drunken boyfriend, a guy named Rex Reese, had plunged his parents' car into the lake. Rex had survived, swimming back to shore. But Carol had been trapped inside the car.

We passed Baker & Inglis, closed for vacation and succumbing to the unreality of schools during summertime. We turned up Kerby Road. The Object lived on Tonnacour, in a gray stone and clapboard house with a weather vane. Parked on the gravel was an unprepossessing Ford sedan. I felt self-conscious in the second-best Cadillac and got out quickly, wishing my mother gone.

When I rang the bell, Beulah answered. She led me to the staircase and pointed up. That was all. I climbed to the second floor. I'd never been upstairs at the Object's house before. It was messier than ours, the carpeting not new. The ceiling hadn't been painted in years. But the furniture was impressively old, heavy, and sent out signals of permanence and settled judgment.

I tried three rooms before I found the Object's. Her shades were drawn. Clothes were scattered all over the shag carpeting and I had to wade through them to reach the bed. But there she was, sleeping, in a Lester Lanin T-shirt. I called her name. I jiggled her. Finally she sat up against her pillows and blinked.

"I must look like shit," she said after a moment.

I didn't say whether she did or not. It strengthened my position to keep her in doubt.

We had breakfast in the breakfast nook. Beulah served us without elaboration, bringing and taking plates. She wore an actual maid's uniform, black, with white apron. Her eyeglasses hailed from her other, more stylish life. In gold script her name curled across the left lens.

Mrs. Object arrived, clacking in sensible heels: "Good morning, Beulah. I'm off to the vet's. Sheba's getting a tooth pulled. I'll drop her back here, but then I'm off to lunch. They say she'll be woozy. Oh-and the men are coming for the drapes today. Let them in and give them the check that's on the counter. Hello, girls! I didn't see you. You must be a good influence, Callie. Nine-thirty and this one's up already?" She mussed the Object's hair. "Are you spending the day at the Little Club, dear? Good. Your father and I are going out with the Peterses tonight. Beulah will leave something for you in the fridge. Bye, all!"

All this while, Beulah rinsed glasses. Keeping to her strategy. Giving Grosse Pointe the silent treatment.

The Object spun the lazy Susan. French jams, English marmalades, an unclean butter dish, bottles of ketchup and Lea & Perrins circled past, before what the Object wanted: an economy-size jar of Rolaids. She shook out three tablets.

"What is heartburn, anyway?" I said.

"You've never had heartburn?" asked the Object, amazed.

The Little Club was only a nickname. Officially the club was known as the Grosse Pointe Club. Though the property was on the lake, there were no docks or boats in sight, only a mansion-like clubhouse, two paddle tennis courts, and a swimming pool. It was beside this pool that we lay every day that June and July.

As far as swimwear went, the Obscure Object favored bikinis. She looked good in them but by no means perfect. Like her thighs, her hips were on the large side. She claimed to envy my thin, long legs, but she was only being nice. Calliope appeared poolside, that first day and every day thereafter, in an old-fashioned one-piece with a skirt. It had belonged to Sourmelina during the 1950s. I found it in an old trunk. The stated intent was to look funky, but I was grateful for the full coverage. I also hung a beach towel around my neck or wore an alligator shirt over my suit. The bodice of the bathing suit was a plus, too. The cups were rubberized, pointy, and beneath a towel or a shirt gave me the suggestion of a bust I didn't have.

Beyond us, pelican-bellied ladies in swim caps followed kickboards back and forth across the pool. Their bathing suits were a lot like mine. Little kids waded and splashed in the shallow end. There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan. The Object was in it. As we revolved on our towels that summer, self-basting, the Object's freckles darkened, going from butterscotch to brown. The skin between them darkened, too, knitting her freckles together into a speckled harlequin mask. Only the tip of her nose remained pink. The part in her hair flamed with sunburn.

Club sandwiches, on wave-rimmed plates, sailed out to us. If we were feeling sophisticated, we ordered the French dip. We had milk shakes, too, ice cream, french fries. For everything the Object signed her father's name. She talked about Petoskey, where her family had a summer house. "We're going up in August. Maybe you could come up."

"We're going to Turkey," I said unhappily.

"Oh, right. I forgot." And then: "Why do you have to paint a church?"

"My dad made this promise."

"How come?"

Behind us married couples were playing paddle tennis. Pennants flew from the clubhouse roof. Was this the place to mention St. Christopher? My father's war stories? My grandmother's superstitions?

"You know what I keep thinking?" I said.

"What?"

"I keep thinking about Maxine. I can't believe she's dead."

"I know. It doesn't seem like she's really dead. It's like I dreamed it."

"The only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together."

"That's deep," said the Object.

I smacked her.

"Ow!"

"That's what you get."

Bugs were attracted by our coconut oil. We killed them without mercy. The Object was making a slow, scandalized progress through The Lonely Lady The Lonely Lady by Harold Robbins. Every few pages she shook her head and announced, "This book is sooo dirty." I was reading by Harold Robbins. Every few pages she shook her head and announced, "This book is sooo dirty." I was reading Oliver Twist Oliver Twist, one of the assigned volumes for our summer reading list.

Suddenly the sun went in. A drop of water hit my page. But this was nothing compared to the cascade that was being shaken onto the Obscure Object. An older boy was leaning over sideways, shaking his wet mop of hair.

"Goddamn you," she said, "cut it out!"

"What's the matter? I'm cooling you off."

"Quit it!"