The thing about those souvenirs, though: the glitter falls fast.

A reminder taped to our refrigerator brought me back to reality: "Dr. Bauer, July 22, 2P.M."

I was filled with dread. Dread of the perverted gynecologist and his inquisitorial instruments. Dread of the metal things that would spread my legs and of the doohickey that would spread something else. And dread of what all this spreading might reveal.

It was in this state, this emotional foxhole, that I started going to church again. One Sunday in early July my mother and I dressed up (Tessie in heels, me not) and drove down to Assumption. Tessie was suffering, too. It had been six months since Chapter Eleven had sped away from Middlesex on his motorcycle, and since that time he hadn't been back. Worse, in April he had broken the news that he was dropping out of college. He was planning to move to the Upper Peninsula with some friends and, as he put it, live off the land. "You don't think he'd do something crazy like run off and marry that Meg, do you?" Tessie asked Milton. "Let's hope not," he answered. Tessie worried that Chapter Eleven wasn't taking care of himself, either. He wasn't going to the dentist regularly. His vegetarianism made him pale. And he was losing his hair. At the age of twenty. This made Tessie feel suddenly old.

United in anxiety, seeking solace for differing complaints (Tessie wanting to get rid of her pains while I wanted mine to begin), we entered the church. As far as I could tell, what happened every Sunday at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church was that the priests got together and read the Bible out loud. They started with Genesis and kept going straight through Numbers and Deuteronomy. Then on through Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all the way up to the New Testament. Then they read that. Given the length of our services, I saw no other possibility.

They chanted as the church slowly filled up. Finally the central chandelier flicked on and Father Mike, like a life-size puppet, sprang through the icon screen. The transformation my uncle went through every Sunday always amazed me. At church Father Mike appeared and disappeared with the capriciousness of a divinity. One minute he was up on the balcony, singing in his tender, tone-deaf voice. The next minute he was back on ground level, swinging his censer. Glittering, bejeweled, as overdone in his vestments as a Faberge egg, he promenaded around the church, giving us God's blessing. Sometimes his censer produced so much smoke it seemed that Father Mike had the ability to cloak himself in a mist. When the mist dispersed, however, later that afternoon in our living room, he was once again a short, shy man, in black, polyester-blend clothes and a plastic collar.

Aunt Zoe's authority went in the opposite direction. At church she was meek. The round gray hat she wore looked like the head of a screw fastening her to her pew. She was constantly pinching her sons to keep them awake. I could barely connect the anxious person hunched down every week in front of us to the funny woman who, under the inspiration of wine, launched into comedy routines in our kitchen. "You men stay out!" she'd shout, dancing with my mother. "We've got knives in here."

So startling was the contrast between churchgoing Zoe and wine-drinking Zoe that I always made a point of watching her closely during the liturgy. On most Sundays, when my mother tapped her on the shoulder in greeting, Aunt Zo responded only with a weak smile. Her large nose looked swollen with grief. Then she turned back, crossed herself, and settled in for the duration.

And so: Assumption Church that July morning. Incense rising with the pungency of irrational hope. Closer in (it had been drizzling out), the smell of wet wool. The dripping of umbrellas stashed under pews. The rivulets from these umbrellas flowing down the uneven floor of our poorly built church, pooling in spots. The smell of hairspray and perfume, of cheap cigars, and the slow ticking of watches. The grumbling of more and more stomachs. And the yawning. The nodding off and the snoring and the being elbowed awake.

Our liturgy, endless; my own body immune to the laws of time. And right in front of me, Zoe Antoniou, on whom time had also been doing a number.

The life of a priest's wife had been even worse than Aunt Zo had expected. She had hated her years in the Peloponnese. They had lived in a small, unheated stone house. Outside, the village women spread blankets under olive trees, beating the branches until the olives fell. "Can't they stop that damn racket!" Zoe had complained. In five years, to the incessant sound of trees being clubbed to death, she bore four children. She sent letters to my mother detailing her hardships: no washing machine, no car, no television, a backyard full of boulders and goats. She signed her letters, "St. Zoe, Church martyr."

Father Mike had liked Greece better. His years there represented the best period of his priesthood. In that tiny Peloponnesian village the old superstitions survived. People still believed in the evil eye. Nobody pitied him for being a priest, whereas later on in America his parishioners always treated him with a slight but unmistakable condescension, like a crazy person whose delusions had to be humored. The humiliation of being a priest in a market economy didn't plague Father Mike while he was in Greece. In Greece he could forget about my mother, who had jilted him, and he could escape comparison with my father, who made so much more money. His wife's nagging complaints hadn't begun to make Father Mike think about leaving the priesthood yet, and hadn't led him to his desperate act...

In 1956 Father Mike was reappointed stateside to a church in Cleveland. In 1958 he became a priest at Assumption. Zoe was happy to be back home, but she never got used to her position as presvytera presvytera. She didn't like being a role model. She found it difficult to keep her children looking neat and well dressed. "On what money?" she shouted at her husband. "Maybe if they paid you halfway decent the kids would look better." My cousins-Aristotle, Socrates, Cleopatra, and Plato-had the thwarted, overbrushed look of ministers' children. The boys wore cheap, garishly colored double-breasted suits. They had Afros. Cleo, who was as beautiful and almond-eyed as her namesake, made do with dresses from Montgomery Ward. She rarely spoke, and played cat's cradle with Plato during the service.

I always liked Aunt Zo. I liked her big, grandstanding voice. I liked her sense of humor. She was louder than most men; she could make my mother laugh like nobody else.

That Sunday, for instance, during one of the many lulls, Aunt Zo turned around and dared to joke. "I have have to be here, Tessie. What's your excuse?" to be here, Tessie. What's your excuse?"

"Callie and I just felt like coming to church," my mother answered.

Plato, who was small like his father, sang out with mock censure, "Shame on you, Callie. What did you do?" He rubbed his right index finger repeatedly over his left.

"Nothing," I said.

"Hey, Soc," Plato whispered to his brother. "Is cousin Callie blushing?"

"She must have done something she doesn't want to tell us."

"Shush up now, you," said Aunt Zo. For Father Mike was approaching with the censer. My cousins turned around. My mother bowed her head to pray. I did, too. Tessie prayed for Chapter Eleven to come to his senses. And me? That's easy. I prayed for my period to come. I prayed to receive the womanly stigmata.

Summer sped on. Milton brought our suitcases up from the basement and told my mother and me to start packing. I tanned with the Object at the Little Club. Dr. Bauer haunted my mind, judging the proportions of my legs. The appointment was a week away, then half a week, then two days...

And so we come to the preceding Saturday night, July 20, 1974. A night full of departures and secret plans. In the early hours of Sunday morning (which was still Saturday night back in Michigan), Turkish jets took off from bases on the mainland. They headed southeast over the Mediterranean Sea toward the island of Cyprus. In the ancient myths, gods favoring mortals often hid them away. Aphrodite blotted out Paris once, saving him from certain death at the hands of Menelaus. She wrapped Aeneas in a coat to sneak him off the battlefield. Likewise, as the Turkish jets roared over the sea, they were also hidden. That night, Cypriot military personnel reported a mysterious malfunctioning of their radar screens. The screens filled with thousands of white blips: an electromagnetic cloud. Invisible inside this, the Turkish jets reached the island and began dropping their bombs.

Meanwhile, back in Grosse Pointe, Fred and Phyllis Mooney were also leaving home base, heading to Chicago. On the front porch, waving goodbye, stood their children, Woody and Jane, who had secret plans of their own. Flying toward the Mooneys' house at that moment were the silver bombers of beer kegs and the tight formations of six-packs. Cars full of teenagers were on their way. And so were the Object and I. Powdered and glossed, our hair hot-combed into wings, we had set off for the party ourselves. In thin corduroy skirts and clogs we came up the front lawn. But the Object stopped me on the porch before we went in. She was biting her lip.

"You're my best friend, right?"

"Right."

"Okay. Sometimes I think I have bad breath." She stopped. "The thing is, you can never tell if you have have bad breath or not. So the thing is"-she paused-"I want you to check it for me." bad breath or not. So the thing is"-she paused-"I want you to check it for me."

I didn't know what to say and so said nothing.

"Is that too disgusting?"

"No," I said, finally.

"Okay, here goes." She leaned toward me and huffed a single breath into my face.

"It's okay," I said.

"Good. Now you."

I leaned down and exhaled in her face.

"It's fine," she said, decisively. "Okay. Now we can go to the party."

I'd never been to a party before. I felt for the parents. As we squeezed by the throngs in the throbbing house, I cringed at the destruction under way. Cigarette ashes were dropping on Pierre Deux upholstery. Beer cans were spilling onto heirloom carpets. In the den I saw two laughing boys urinating into a tennis trophy. It was mostly older kids. A few couples climbed the stairs, disappearing into bedrooms.

The Object was trying to act older herself. She was copying the superior, bored expressions of the high school girls. She crossed to the back porch ahead of me and got in the line for the keg.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm getting a beer. What do you think?"

It was fairly dark outside. As in most social situations, I let my hair fall into my face. I was standing behind the Object, looking like Cousin It, when someone put his hands over my eyes.

"Guess who?"

"Jerome."

I pulled his hands off my face and turned around.

"How did you know it was me?"

"The curious smell."

"Ouch," said a voice behind Jerome. I looked over and received a shock. Standing with Jerome was Rex Reese, the guy who had driven Carol Henkel to her watery death. Rex Reese, our local Teddy Kennedy. He didn't look particularly sober now, either. His dark hair covered his ears and he wore a piece of blue coral on a leather thong around his throat. I searched his face for signs of remorse or repentance. Rex wasn't searching my face, however. He was eyeing the Object, his hair falling into his eyes above the curl of a smile.

Deftly, the two boys moved in between us, turning their backs to each other. I had a final glimpse of the Obscure Object. She had her hands in the back pockets of her corduroy skirt. This looked casual but had the effect of pushing out her chest. She was looking up at Rex and smiling.

"I start filming tomorrow," Jerome said.

I looked blank.

"My movie. My vampire movie. You sure you don't want to be in it?"

"We're going on vacation this week."

"That sucks," said Jerome. "It's going to be genius."

We stood silent. After a moment I said, "Real geniuses never think they're geniuses."

"Who says?"

"Me."

"Because why?"

"Because genius is nine-tenths perspiration. Haven't you ever heard that? As soon as you think think you're a genius, you slack off. You think everything you do is so great and everything." you're a genius, you slack off. You think everything you do is so great and everything."

"I just want to make scary movies," Jerome replied. "With occasional nudity."

"Just don't try to be a genius and maybe you'll end up being one by accident," I said.

He was looking at me in a funny way, intense, but also grinning.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Looking at you like what?"

In the dark, Jerome's resemblance to the Obscure Object was even more pronounced. The tawny eyebrows, the butterscotch complexion-here they were again, in permissible form.

"You're a lot smarter than most of my sister's friends."

"You're a lot smarter than most of my friends' brothers."

He leaned toward me. He was taller than I was. That was the big difference between him and his sister. It was enough to wake me from my trance. I turned away. I circled around him back to the Object. She was still staring up bright-faced at Rex.

"Come on," I said. "We've got to go to that thing."

"What thing?"

"You know. That thing."

Finally I managed to pull her away. She left trailing smiles and significant looks. As soon as we got off the porch she was frowning at me.

"Where are you taking me?" she said angrily.

"Away from that creep."

"Can't you leave me alone for a minute?"

"You want me to leave you alone?" I said. "Okay, I'll leave you alone." I didn't move.

"Can't I even talk to a boy at a party?" the Object asked.

"I was taking you away before it was too late."

"What do you mean?"

"You've got bad breath."

This checked the Object. This struck her to her core. She wilted. "I do?" she asked.

"It's just a little oniony," I said.

We were on the back lawn now. Kids were sitting on the stone porch rail, their cigarette tips glowing in the darkness.

"What do you think of Rex?" the Object whispered.

"What? Don't tell me you like him."

"I didn't say I like him."

I scoped her face, seeking the answer. She noticed this and walked farther away over the lawn. I followed. I said earlier that most of my emotions are hybrids. But not all. Some are pure and unadulterated. Jealousy, for instance.

"Rex is okay," I said when I had caught up to her. "If you like manslaughterers."

"That was an accident," said the Object.

The moon was three-quarters full. It silvered the fat leaves of the trees. The grass was wet. We both kicked off our clogs to stand in it. After a moment, sighing, the Object laid her head on my shoulder.

"It's good you're going away," she said.

"Why?"

"Because this is too weird." I looked back to see if anyone could see us. No one could. So I put my arm around her.

For the next few minutes we stood under the moon-blanched trees, listening to the music blaring from the house. The cops would come soon. The cops always came. That was something you could depend on in Grosse Pointe.

The next morning, I went to church with Tessie. As usual, Aunt Zo was down in front, setting an example. Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato were wearing their gangster suits. Cleo was sunk into her black mane, about to doze off.

The rear and sides of the church were dark. Icons gloomed from the porticoes or raised stiff fingers in the glinting chapels. Beneath the dome, light fell in a chalky beam. The air was already thick with incense. Moving back and forth, the priests looked like men at a hammam.

Then it was showtime. One priest flicked a switch. The bottom tier of the enormous chandelier blazed on. From behind the iconostasis Father Mike entered. He was wearing a bright turquoise robe with a red heart embroidered on his back. He crossed the solea and came down among the parishioners. The smoke from his censer rose and curled, fragrant with antiquity. " Kyrie eleison Kyrie eleison," Father Mike sang. " Kyrie eleison Kyrie eleison." And though the words meant nothing to me, or almost nothing, I felt their weight, the deep groove they made in the air of time. Tessie crossed herself, thinking about Chapter Eleven.

First Father Mike did the left side of the church. In blue waves, incense rolled over the gathered heads. It dimmed the circular lights of the chandelier. It aggravated the widows' lung conditions. It subdued the brightness of my cousins' suits. As it wrapped me in its dry-ice blanket, I breathed it in and began to pray myself. Please God let Dr. Bauer not find anything wrong with me. And let me be just friends with the Object. And don't let her forget about me while we're in Turkey. And help my mother not to be so worried about my brother. And make Chapter Eleven go back to college. Please God let Dr. Bauer not find anything wrong with me. And let me be just friends with the Object. And don't let her forget about me while we're in Turkey. And help my mother not to be so worried about my brother. And make Chapter Eleven go back to college.

Incense serves a variety of purposes in the Orthodox church. Symbolically, it's an offering to God. Like the burnt sacrifices in pagan times, the fragrance drifts upward to heaven. Before the days of modern embalming, incense had a practical application. It covered the smell of corpses during funerals. It can also, when inhaled in sufficient amounts, create a lightheadedness that feels like religious reverie. And if you breathe in enough of it, it can make you sick.

"What's the matter?" Tessie's voice in my ear. "You look pale."