Her superiors were quick to identify Lindsay's intellect, and after taking the veil, she enrolled in Catholic University. In a rigorous accelerated program, she completed her work for her doctorate in English literature and already began writing her dissertation on Ulysses Ulysses. On her first reading, she had discovered that the novel's action all took place on a single day, June 16, 1904. Because it was the same day that Jasper had driven her to the convent to begin her life in the sisterhood, the date acquired a magical significance to Lindsay. Often, she would think about Jasper. She knew from her parents that he was part of the war in Europe, and she prayed for his safe return as she took Communion every morning. When she received word from Sister Michele that Jasper had survived the war, it convinced her further that the power of prayer was a natural, unimpeachable force for good in the universe. In her heart, she believed it was her prayers and entreaties that had brought Jasper safely home from Europe.

He returned to Charleston, got a job teaching science at Bishop Ireland High School, and moved into his old room at his parents' house on Rutledge Avenue. He limited his social life to an occasional date with a new teacher at Bishop Ireland, or with the sisters of his classmates at The Citadel. He made an affable and at least acceptably attractive partner, and several women let him know that they were ready for a serious commitment if he had finally been cured of his famous case of puppy love. Whenever the subject came up, he made fun of himself for his constant infatuation with a woman who had made herself unavailable to any man. But he had promised himself he would never marry a woman unless he felt exactly like he had when he floated, fully clothed, on an inner tube caught in the tidal currents of Charleston Harbor when he was seventeen years old. He knew exactly what love was and how it was supposed to feel.

In the summer of 1949, he bought a two-acre lot on the saltwater lake along the Ashley River that was separated from the river by Lockwood Boulevard. With the help of friends, he built a two-story brick home that added little to the architectural significance of his city. The house was as functional and as homely as a Catholic church built in the Charleston suburbs of that era. He built a working science lab in an upstairs room in the back of the house, and even his mother teased him for building a five-bedroom house for what was likely to remain a bachelor pad. But Jasper had developed a long-range plan that he thought would take some of the sting out of bachelorhood and help with the mortgage payments: he invited other young bachelors teaching at the high school to rent rooms from him, and he always had at least three male teachers living there. He remembered it as a happy time because there was a house party almost every weekend, and the laughter of young men and women dancing together was a kind of music that the house needed badly.

Several of these young men became some of the best friends Jasper made in a lifetime rich in friendships. Even Father Maxwell Sadler spent six months in an upstairs bedroom after an electrical fire damaged his rectory. Jasper did not charge the priest for rent, and he was sorry when Father Max moved back to the rectory when the repairs were finished. Few of his other housemates knew of his deep love of Lindsay, and he felt free to talk of his unquenchable love for her with Father Max. With infinite patience, Father Max never tried to talk Jasper out of his constancy toward Lindsay; instead, he introduced him to other pretty young Catholic girls whom he met in his work.

Because of Jasper's bachelorhood, false rumors of homosexuality made their way along the corridors of Bishop Ireland, which Jasper did little to eliminate as he resigned himself to a single life. After his first years back in the city, there were fewer and fewer sightings of Jasper at cotillion balls or dinners with eligible young women in downtown restaurants or in the back rows of the Dock Street Theatre. A fellow English teacher asked Jasper to cruise a gay bar with him one weekend, and Jasper never spoke a civil word to that colleague again. Instead, he grew more inward with the passage of each year, more judgmental and pietistic and rigid, and young teachers stopped being comfortable renting rooms in his house.

Living alone did not prove beneficial to Jasper, and his habits began to turn slowly into noticeable eccentricities. He took the effects of loneliness to heart, but failed to note the corrosion of his sunny personality. The silences of his house caused him to reflect and despair of a life that might have been perfect. Still, he wrote to his beloved nun once a week, and sent the letters to the convent in care of Sister Michele. He would sometimes tell himself it was high time that he met and fell in love with another woman, but the falseness of the words tortured him. Writing his former girlfriend, he invented stories of beach parties, sailing trips to Bermuda, art openings, a planned summer trip to Europe, the purchase of a golden retriever, a fishing trip to the Gulf of Mexico, a spiritual retreat to Mepkin Abbey, and a hundred other remarkable events that never happened. His letters were pure fiction. My father may have been the first man in history who lived in fear of boring a nun.

On June 16 of every year, he kept his appointment with Sister Michele in Belmont. One year, Jasper brought fifty pounds of fresh iced-down shrimp that he had collected off a shrimp boat at Shem Creek. Another year, he unloaded a hundred small azalea plants that he had cultivated and grown in a makeshift greenhouse in the back of his house. Always, Jasper brought bushels of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn from a farm on Wadmalaw Island. He brought boiled peanuts and jars of jellies, chutneys, and preserves he had put up himself. The mother superior enjoyed the young man's sense of humor and the romantic hopelessness of the cause he pursued in spite of the fact that she offered him no encouragement and would not allow him to broach the subject of his former girlfriend. Sister Michele never told him that Sister Norberta had not been in residence at the convent since 1940 and was spending that summer teaching literature at the University of Notre Dame. Nor did she once reveal that convent rules forbade her to deliver his letters to his former love. But she did break a convent rule by saving the letters and keeping them boxed in her office, tied with a white ribbon. That she saved his letters bothered her not at all. But that she had read every one of them with avidity and even pleasure, she considered a kind of minor-league sin.

On June 16, 1948, she treated Jasper to lunch at a downtown Charlotte restaurant famous for its steak. During the meal, he asked, "What does the convent need this year, Sister?"

The nun laughed. "You won't believe this, Jasper. But we need hand soap."

"That's what I gave you the first time I met you," he said. "You gals need to bathe more."

When Jasper left her that day, Sister Michele surprised him by kissing him lightly on the cheek and thanked him for all he had done for the convent over the years. The kiss was a strangeness and a kindness, and he had an entire year to interpret its meaning. At the high school, an accidental fire set by an incompetent student shut down his chemistry lab. His mother began showing the first signs of dementia, and his father was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. He moved back home to care for his parents, and he rented his house to four bachelors who taught in various high schools. His house became infamous for hosting the wildest parties in the city. But he was too busy to care, and for the first time he almost forgot his June 16 appointment at the Convent of the Sacred Heart.

Eleven years after Jasper had delivered Lindsay Weaver to the door, a younger nun he had never seen before motioned for him to follow her to the visitors' room after he informed her that he had an appointment with the mother superior. The young nun nodded and moved out of the room, as silent as wood smoke.

Another nun appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the visitors' room. Sunlight poured through a Palladian window and framed the outline of the nun, who moved too gracefully to be Sister Michele.

The sunlight now hit the lenses of Jasper's glasses, blinding him. Squinting, he said to the figure on the stairs, "I was expecting my old friend, Sister Michele."

"Sister Michele died of a stroke over a month ago," the nun said. "I've been selected as the acting superior of the convent. That's why I'm meeting you here today."

"Why didn't anyone get in touch with me?" Jasper asked.

"Her death was very sudden and unexpected."

He said, "I'm so sorry. I'd grown close to Sister Michele." Still blinded by the bright sun, he turned his head, removed his glasses, and began cleaning them with a white handkerchief.

"Even though you can't see me clearly, don't you know my voice, Jasper?" the acting mother superior asked. She moved out of the sun and into the shadow of that funereal room where visitors and family members summoned the nuns of their lives from the mysterious upstairs hideaways. When Jasper saw her face, he fell to his knees and howled like a wounded animal. His shriek brought nuns running from all corners of the convent. Sister Norberta was now in the unenviable position of explaining why this out-of-control man had gotten to his knees in front of her. Sister Michele had been the only one who knew the whole story of this love-struck weeping man.

"Should I call the police?" asked the young nun who had led Jasper to this room.

"No, of course not. This is Jasper King. He makes a large donation to the convent each year. I just told him about the death of our good Sister Michele. They were close friends."

"Then should I call a priest?" asked another nun.

"No, no, Jasper will be fine. Can someone bring us a glass of iced tea? Do you still like sweet tea, Jasper?"

Several nuns helped Jasper to his feet and into a chair; his body appeared boneless and weightless. When the tea came, it seemed to revive him, and he thanked the nun who brought it. He was disoriented and now extremely mortified over the spectacle he had made. Quietly, the other nuns slipped out of sight.

"Sorry, Lindsay. I mean Sister Norberta," he stammered. "I'd given up all chances of ever seeing you again. You caught me off guard."

"Off guard, Jasper?" She laughed. "I guess I did. I had no idea you had such a theatrical side."

"Neither did I," he said, and they both laughed.

In our small boat, in the tangy, salt-brimmed air, I reeled in a nice-sized bass as my father described his elation at seeing Lindsay Weaver again.

"So you didn't recognize her?" I asked when I realized he was too overwhelmed to continue.

"She was in the light," he said finally. "The light came over her shoulder into my eyes."

"But her voice?"

"I wasn't expecting ever to hear it again. Nothing had prepared me for this encounter, Leo. I'd reconciled myself to never seeing her again. Didn't even know I'd done it. But I had."

"What did Mother say?" I asked. "After you settled down?"

Reeling in his line, my father put another live shrimp on his hook before casting it over toward James Island in a smooth, athletic motion. Then he continued his story.

As they sat in armchairs that faced each other, Jasper studied Sister Norberta's face and found himself dismayed that eleven years of separation from this woman had done nothing to dampen his boyish ardor for her. Lindsay's beauty had deepened with age and with the contemplative life she had chosen.

"I never got over you, Lindsay," he said.

"Please call me Sister Norberta."

"I never got over you, Sister Norberta."

"I know that, Jasper," she said. "Sister Michele told me about your visits. At first, she disapproved of you greatly. But she softened over the years. You got to her, Jasper, by your persistence, your generosity toward the convent, and your kindness. She began to cherish your yearly visits. And she loved your letters."

"Did you ever see any of them?"

"Not when they were written. But last summer, Sister Michele and I were on retreat together. A forest near the retreat house had beautiful pathways, and we'd take long walks. She started talking about you. She told me that she felt I had never really belonged in the convent. That night, she gave me the box containing your letters."

"Did you read them?"

"Yes, Jasper. I read every one of them."

"What did you think?"

"I'll have an answer for you someday. Not today. But soon, I promise."

Already Lindsay had initiated the convoluted and Byzantine process of being released from the vows of sisterhood. Her decision pleased no one, and she had to convince the head of her order in America of her seriousness, who forwarded that request to the order's headquarters in Europe, who passed it along to the world of men and all the way to the offices of the Pope himself. To Lindsay, the pace seemed snail-like and agonizing. But for her time and place in a church locked into the embers of its immovable laws, Lindsay's deliverance from her vows arrived in a timely manner. The See of Rome, exhausted by the travails of World War II, was dealing with the broken Catholic soul of a ruined Europe. It had little energy to waste on a Southern nun who had discovered late that she had other fish to fry. Her letter of manumission was signed by Pope Pius XII himself.

Lindsay Weaver was wearing the same clothes when Jasper King picked her up in the fall of 1949. In a small ceremony, they were married at the main altar of St. John the Baptist and Father Maxwell Sadler performed the ceremony with all the panache for which he had become so famous in the diocese of Charleston. Stephen Dedalus King was born ten months later in 1950, and I was born in 1951. Jasper's patience had earned him, at last, the love of his life.

"The wind is picking up, Leo," Father said. "Let's get back to the marina."

We reeled in our lines. I took care of the gear as my father cranked the boat and we made our way back up the river, the small motor strumming against the tide.

Trailing my hand in the warm saltwater, I tried to think of the strangeness of time when I was not a part of it; how unimaginable a world denied the coiled, itchy presence of Leo King. Yet my father had permitted my entry into a landscape where mothers were cloistered and celibate and fathers were handed back to lives of solitude, even bitterness. A week ago, I would have written out my autobiography and not even come close to approaching its central truth. If the beginning of knowledge is when you discover more gargoyles than realities in your past, then my father and I had spent a long and fruitful night together on the Ashley River.

At the marina, we tied up our boat and gathered our gear, treated our rods and reels properly, and cleaned the fish we had caught with dispatch and expertise; Father made a fetish out of performing tasks the correct way. There was an efficiency and economy of his motions that I always found a pleasure to watch and a pain to mimic. When we walked across Lockwood Boulevard and returned to the house, I walked to my mother's bedroom and knocked on the door as my father stacked the fish in the freezer. Not unbelievably, she was reading Ulysses Ulysses.

"Did you catch any fish?" she asked, laying the dog-eared book on her bedside table.

"It was a good night," I said, going in and lying down beside her. I am not an affectionate boy by nature, and this was a rare gesture for me.

She put her arm around me and I nestled my face against her shoulder, a rarity for a woman not famous for her affectionate nature, either.

"Thanks for leaving the convent, Mother," I said. "You did a hard thing."

She did not say anything for a moment, then asked, "Why do you say that?"

"Because I know you. I bet you were happy in the convent. You felt safe there."

"I wanted to be a wife. I longed to be a mother. I wanted it all. Or thought I did."

"You didn't know about things like Steve," I said.

"I never wanted to know about things like Steve. We almost lost you because of Steve. Your father and I almost lost each other."

My father came into the room and could not hide his happiness in finding me in my mother's arms. "I'll leave you two alone."

"I was just going to bed," I said, jumping up.

"Good night, Leo," Mother said.

My father grabbed me and kissed me and said, "Good night, sweet pea."

"Night, Father." Smiling, I couldn't help myself: "Good night, Sister Mary Norberta." I escaped the room before the copy of Ulysses Ulysses, flung at my head, hit my parents' door as I ran laughing to my room.

CHAPTER 6.

Dear Old Dad.

I lay in the darkness of the room, going over the events of the past week, amazed at their variety and complexity. The forces I had encountered during the week began to materialize as I set my clock for 4:30 A.M. In the country of dreams, I began my nightly voyage. Steve was there, as he always was. I got to tell him about the orphans, the twins across the street, the black football coach and his sullen son, the lunch at the yacht club, the fishing trip, and our mother's convent days. I woke when I heard screaming and crying and my father at my door, turning on the light. "Get up, Leo. There's trouble across the street." lay in the darkness of the room, going over the events of the past week, amazed at their variety and complexity. The forces I had encountered during the week began to materialize as I set my clock for 4:30 A.M. In the country of dreams, I began my nightly voyage. Steve was there, as he always was. I got to tell him about the orphans, the twins across the street, the black football coach and his sullen son, the lunch at the yacht club, the fishing trip, and our mother's convent days. I woke when I heard screaming and crying and my father at my door, turning on the light. "Get up, Leo. There's trouble across the street."

I put on pants and a T-shirt and Docksiders. I reached for my glasses and rushed out of my room and encountered a sobbing Sheba Poe, her dazed brother, and their half-drunken mother. In the living room, my mother opened a gun cabinet, handed my father his shotgun and then me mine, the one I had inherited from her father. Goofy from the lack of sleep, my father slipped shells into the chamber of his weapon. I caught the box of shells Mother threw my way one-handed and was loading as my father said, "Someone's breaking into the Poes' house."

"We came here because we don't know anybody else," Trevor Poe said, his voice despairing.

"He's found us again, Mama," Sheba screamed at her mother.

"He always finds us," she muttered, half-coherently.

My mother in her nightgown was running for the telephone to call the police as Father and I raced out of the house in darkness. There were times I hated being Southern, other times I reveled in it, and this was one of the latter. Since my parents had wanted me skilled in the ways of the woods and streams, I could work a shotgun the way a majorette handled a baton. My gun was a comfort as I followed my father and we circled the Poes' house, watching for movement and listening for sound. We found no signs of forced entry. We made our way through old growths of azalea and camellia bushes, then came to the front door as sirens bloomed overhead all throughout the city. My mother had not just called the cops, but the chief of police, whose daughters she taught.

It was my father who saw the odd, grotesque sign painted on the front door-a smiley face painted in a large, scrawling hand, seemingly in blood. It had a single tear coming out of its left eye. My father got out a handkerchief and removed a small drop of it and put it to his nose.

"Fingernail polish," he said. The cop cars hit the yard like landing craft, and officers spread all over the house and yard. Father grabbed my shotgun and whispered, "You're still on probation, son."

"Forgot," I whispered back.

Neighbors began to drift out on their first- and second-story piazzas, sleep-dazed and curious. One police car had parked in front of our house, and I saw a policeman interviewing Trevor and Sheba and their mother. Belle Faircloth walked down the length of the street and reported seeing a stranger in a white car parked near Colonial Lake for two straight nights. The man was a chain-smoker and had blondish hair, but she could provide no other physical description. A basement window had been broken and the Poes' house entered beneath an untrimmed hedge. For more than three hours the police scoured the house for clues or explanations, but they could find nothing moved or disturbed or stolen. Only the grotesque smiley face painted on the front door merited their attention.

When the police left, my father and I returned home exhausted by the emotional night we had shared. Mother poured a shot of bourbon for her and my father, and made a cup of hot chocolate for me. As we sat at the kitchen table whispering about the events of the night, my mother motioned upstairs and said she had put the Poe family to bed in the extra rooms my father had once rented out.

"Something terrible has happened to that family," she said quietly. "Something traumatic. They think someone came to that house to kill them."

"Not likely," my father said. "It might be a random break-in."

"Leo," Mother said, "be nice to these kids. Be as nice as you can, but don't let them into your heart. You don't know how mean the world can be. You're so innocent, you don't know the dangers."

"Were you scared tonight, Leo?" Father asked as I finished my hot chocolate.

"Terrified." I stood up to return to bed.

"You didn't show it," Mother said.

"That's because my father was with me."

It was just after three when I went back to bed and the neighborhood was quiet again. Sleep came easily. I had traveled far into a dream when I felt a girl's lips touch mine, and I saw a naked Sheba Poe move into bed beside me. I had never been on a date or alone with a girl in a car, yet here I found myself naked with the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, her hands moving up and down my body. Slowly, she brought my lips to her breasts, then she took my hand and placed it inside her, and I learned how a woman could smell like earth; that her wetness felt like a place where fire could be born and brought to sublime life. Her tongue went down my throat and my chest and she taught me in minutes all the places a tongue could go, all the places I had ever dreamed a tongue could go. When I entered her I did it with her direction; I had never imagined the pleasure one body could derive from another. On top of me, she rose and pitched like a small well-made boat in a storm-tossed river as her hair came over her shoulders in soft, hot waves. She kept thanking me in a throaty whisper. When she came to me I was dreaming, then she pulled me into a life that was far greater and more sublime than any dream could be. After I came inside her, with her hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming, she slid out of my bed and disappeared into the night. Wordlessly, I lay awake, intoxicated by the life I was starting to live. As the sun rose out of the east, I thought of nothing but Sheba. Later that morning, I thought of her face with every copy of the News and Courier News and Courier I threw onto the porches of Charleston. It would be years before I learned that my mother had witnessed Sheba Poe's withdrawal from my room that night. And my mother was not the only one. I threw onto the porches of Charleston. It would be years before I learned that my mother had witnessed Sheba Poe's withdrawal from my room that night. And my mother was not the only one.

On Sunday evenings, my parents made a domestic tradition of sitting on the screened porch off their bedroom to watch the sun set over Long Lake and the Ashley River. Though they could be steely-edged and ruminant to a fault about the life of the mind, I found them both loopy and unapologetic about their own sappy romanticism when it came to their love for each other. Whenever they put on their Johnny Mathis or Andy Williams albums after dinner on Sunday, it was time for me to skedaddle to the comforting solitude of my room. It caused me a high level of anguish to know that my parents took pleasure in each other's bodies, long before I knew anything of my mother's career path as a nun. After my single night with Sheba, it seemed like an abomination. Because of the Catholic Church, I would always feel paroxysms of guilt at any thought of sex, peckers, vaginas, intercourse, and the whole shebang. The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church would cover my soul like a condom for the rest of my life. Already, I could feel nothing but guilt for luxuriating in the pleasures of Sheba Poe's heaven-sent body, even as I wrestled with a great desire to see her again and tell her honestly, sincerely, and from the very core of my being that I loved her. It was an essential truth that I had been too thunderstruck to tell her that night; one that now shouted to be told. Loving her would square the guilt, ease my conscience, and go a long way in that futile Catholic exercise of Making Things Right.

My guilt seemed to have been contagious, as my parents called me out to the porch that morning soon after they were seated, their faces unusually serious and distressed. Facing me, Mother said, "We're worried about you, Leo. We think the Poe twins are in trouble. Your father and I are concerned about the whole situation."

I turned to my father, who was usually the voice of reason, but even he was thoughtful. "The break-in at their house the other night-it doesn't add up. Except for the broken window, the police found no sign of forced entry," he explained. "There were no footprints around the house except for yours and mine, and the mother has been so drunk they can't get a signed statement. Even the twins are vague. And that smiley face at the door? It was fingernail polish. They found the same shade in both the mother's room and Sheba's."

He paused then, till Mother prodded. "You're not telling him everything, Jasper."

"They found a bottle of the same fingernail polish in Trevor's room," Father added. "It seems he paints his toenails."

I listened with a rising fear and a wholly selfish desire to defend Sheba. "They're nice kids," I argued. "They've had a hard life."

"You don't know what a nice kid is, Leo." The sternness of my mother's voice irritated me. "You've never had a friend."

I stood up and began to pace the porch, like a lawyer at the bar defending a client. "That's not true. I had Steve, and I'll never have a better friend. I've made lots of friends in the past couple of years. Because of the drug thing, none of them are my age. That's my fault, and I'm not blaming anybody but myself. But the people I meet every day, the ones on my paper route, Harrington Canon, my shrink-they all like me. The orphans and the twins don't know about the cocaine, but I can tell they want to be friends with me. So does the coach's son, Ike, now that we're getting to know each other. You're wrong to say that I have no friends. I've spent my whole life lonely, but I've got some friends now. I plan to keep them. My whole life, I plan to keep them, and love them as long as they love me. I'll even love them if they quit loving me."

"That's our point," Mother said. "We're afraid the orphans and the Poe kids will use you."

"They won't," I said. "They need me. They need my help, just like those rich kids who got busted for drugs. Just like Coach Jefferson and Ike. I don't mind being needed. I don't even mind being used," I said, feeling a small strength that I'd picked up from Sheba, an unaccustomed boldness. "I'm sick of being lonely. I never mean to be lonely again."

I turned at that, and bolted off the porch and back into the house, half jogging to my room. Though I was close to tears, I fought them off and became resolute instead. I reached to my bedside table and pulled out a rosary, blessed by the Pope, that Monsignor Max had given me on the day of my First Communion. I tried to pray, but all the words turned to dust for me. Going to my closet, I retrieved my collection of Topps baseball cards. I kept my priceless card of Ted Williams on the top of one of the piles in the box, while Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Mickey Mantle crowned the other three. The box also contained the only photograph I had of my brother, Steve, and me. After his suicide, all photographs of my brother disappeared, as though his extraordinary light had not once illuminated the spirit of our household. As I lifted the photograph out, I noticed how it seemed to grow more fragile with the passing of time. But there I was in the snow-white suit of my First Communion finery with my brother's arm draped around me in a fierce, protective gesture. When my prayers rang truest to me now was when I prayed to Steve. Since his death, I had come to think of him as some fearless, irrepressible angel who watched over me, part Rottweiler, part guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and part seer who would one day unlock the mystery of both our lives. In my worst moments, I could pray to Steve and not to the God who had stolen my brother and left me to face a terrifying world without my greatest ally by my side.