I went to the mirror hanging above our oak buffet and turned my head from one side to the other. Layers of glitter trapped in the hard resin shimmered.

"We made them together, Daddy and Ca.s.sandra and me." Ruby ran a small hand down my arm, then grabbed my hand and kissed it. "Because we love you. We'll always take care of you."

I covered Ruby with her pink and white fairy princess comforter, kissing her in the pattern she'd long ago established: right cheek, left cheek, and chin. When I got to Ca.s.sandra's room, she'd already coc.o.o.ned herself in her patchwork quilt. After one more gla.s.s of water for Ruby, one more kiss for Ca.s.sandra, I slipped out and into the kitchen, where I leaned over the sink and took deep breaths, letting my anger beat back before joining Drew and Merry in the living room.

I tried to imagine what it had been like for Merry, seeing Aunt Cilla. My sharpest memory of her would always be the hours following Mimi Rubee's funeral, when everyone went back to Aunt Cilla's house after leaving the cemetery. I'd been what, eleven?

I won't have Joey's girls living here. Not in my house. They're black marks on my sister's memory, a dark shadow on my mother's name. Having them here is ripping out my kishkes.

I'd swallowed Aunt Cilla's words in silence, nodding, as though agreeing with my aunt that, yes, Merry and I were exactly what she said: dark shadows, black marks, kishke rippers.

I went to find my sister.

"What in the name of G.o.d were you thinking, Merry?" I sat close to Drew on the couch, seeking his body heat. Drew preferred the air-conditioning at a cool sixty-seven degrees. Even in July, I pulled on cotton cardigans.

"I worked my behind off to get the box for you," Merry said. "For one thing, I actually saw Aunt Cilla."

Itchy curiosity about Aunt Cilla's fate fought with my need to scream no. No boxes from the past. No Aunt Cilla. No bringing any of it into my house.

No more pa.s.sing information about me to our father.

My present glowed poison green from the table. Sticky tentacles crept at me from the onyx box. I scratched X after X on my arm.

"I don't want it." I crossed my arms against my chest. "I don't want anything from that time in my house."

Merry came forward in the bentwood rocker and pointed at me. "You need something from back then or you'll never deal with it."

"News flash: I don't plan to deal with it. Is that what you're doing during those visits to prison? Dealing with it? Hah!"

"Are you planning to let the kids think their grandparents died in a car accident forever?"

"Just what do you suggest?" I couldn't admit that I kept hoping our father would die before I had to face some ultimate decision. I brought my knees close to my chest, protecting myself from the box's vibes. "Should I let you take them to prison with you next time you visit him?"

"It would be better than trying to hide him forever. Doesn't anyone but you get a vote?" Merry turned to Drew. "Aren't you concerned about this giant lie you're feeding the girls?"

"Don't ask him, ask me!" I almost yelled, holding back only because of the girls.

"Watch it," Drew said. "I'm not a lamp, for Christ's sake."

I slid away from Drew and picked up Merry's wine, taking a giant gulp, knowing it drove him crazy. Put together a woman drinking and a woman getting emotional and you'd see my husband harden like concrete.

"Great idea, Lulu. Add fuel to the fire," Drew said.

"It's my fire," I said. "And you, Merry, don't bring me any more remembrances."

"You know it's just going to blow up in the girls' faces, don't you? You can't live in denial forever." Merry never gave up.

"At least I'm not rolling around in it every day," I said. "Unlike you, I don't need to have criminals be my entire life."

"Screw you," Merry said. "Being a probation officer isn't because of Dad. Here's something for you to consider-I thought you'd like the box!"

Drew untangled himself from me and took away my winegla.s.s. "Time to go home. Time to go to sleep. This is over."

Merry ignored Drew and came over to the couch. She lay down, placing her head in my lap. I rubbed her back, feeling her tears stain my pants. After a time, she rolled over and gave me a toothy, wet-eyed smile. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just wanted to make you happy."

"I know." Merry had an expensive smile, with expensive teeth, teeth that had rotted courtesy of the New York City orphanage system and the terrible genes she'd inherited from who knows which side of the family. I had helped her fix those teeth by spending thousands of dollars ten years before. My marriage, which came with Drew's good-size nest egg, had enabled me to pay for this. Thank G.o.d I didn't know how good size it was when we dated, tempted as I might have been to marry him solely for the money. However, I married for love, for Drew's ease in the world, for his caretaking, for accepting Merry as part of our bargain.

For asking less of me than others had.

For keeping watch over us.

For his willingness to join me in ignoring my father's existence.

I could afford to forgive his need to shut us down when we boiled over, and his chafing under the bubbling quicksand Merry and I kept at the edge of our lives.

"I love you, Drew," I said from where I sat with Merry.

"I know."

"And I apologize," I said.

"Right." He gathered up the birthday garbage from around the room, avoiding my gaze.

"And I love you, Merry," I said.

"I know, too," she answered. "But someday you're going to have to tell them."

Not necessarily, I thought, but I let it go, imagining our father having a heart attack, being stabbed in a prison argument, too tired to argue.

Merry and I stayed on the couch, wrapped together in our wine-rendered love-hate until Drew pulled us apart. He walked Merry out the door. I heard the key turn in her lock, heard her door open. I listened as she entered her apartment, heard the sound of her footsteps over my head as she walked across her wooden floor.

The past trapped us. Even now, at forty-one and thirty-six, we remained prisoners of our parents' long-ended war, still ensnared in a prison of bad memories, exchanging furtive glances, secrets known and secrets buried flashing between us.

"Coming to bed, Lulu?" Drew stood in the doorway of the living room. His expression of sympathy seemed curdled by my and Merry's tired repet.i.tion.

"Soon," I said. "I'll get there soon."

21.

Merry I hugged my rigid brother-in-law good night and walked into my apartment, snapping on lights as I headed to the bedroom. I ripped off my clothes, threw on an old basketball T-shirt I'd once plucked from Drew's Goodwill pile, and turned on the TV as I went past the set.

Despite the effects of alcohol buzzing through my head, I forced myself into the bathroom, where I smeared on an expensive cream guaranteeing me an eternal wrinkle-free, moisture-rich existence. Even in death, I'd be pretty.

Creamed, I collapsed on my unmade bed, falling back on my pile of pillows. Crimes in the hood topped the TV news. I listened closely, tuned for which of my probationers had been arrested on some new charge of rape or murder. Please G.o.d, if it was one of my clients, let it be for a simple a.s.sault. Being a probation officer, I was accountable for hundreds of thugs and g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers, and each time one of them committed another crime, I felt responsible for some family's pain.

In Dorchester tonight, police are looking for the a.s.sailant of- I listened for the name of the murdered and the murderer.

Julius Trager, who was gunned down leaving his Rutherford Street home. The Roxbury Community College graduate recently began training as a veterinary a.s.sistant.

I couldn't think of any of my probationers who dreamed of working with animals. Having such a client might be nice, although if he were in a vet program, it would probably be so he could stage matches of dogs fighting to the death.

Vague jealousy gnawed at me as the smugly pregnant anchorwoman commented on Boston's ever-rising homicide rate, she picture-perfect, even pregnant; I absently tracing my scar and wearing my brother-in-law's castoff. Running my fingers along the raised line I knew so well had become so automatic, I couldn't imagine breaking the habit. Touching it only when alone, that was my victory.

I tapped the middle of my chest, away from the scar, three times. What had the ma.s.sage therapist said, the one my friend Valerie sent me to last Christmas? That it would clear my chi? Release my chi? Cook my chi?

Was it realistic to expect a chi change when I couldn't even remember its place or function? Valerie was always trying to right my life, from finding me a man to changing how I related to clients. She was a juvenile probation officer-we worked in the same court but different areas. Her life was as messy as mine, filled with bars and bad boyfriends, but because she didn't worry aloud, she mythologized hers as being superior.

Perhaps I'd made a mistake getting the box, forcing the past down my sister's throat. Still, someday Ruby and Ca.s.sandra would most likely find out they had an actual, living grandfather rotting in jail. How can you not worry about Judgment Day? I wanted to scream at Lulu.

Poor Drew; I knew why he'd seethed. Drew had been in on Operation Box. Lulu's rejection hurt him. Drew lived for appreciation, recognition-everything he'd never gotten from his mother or father. Unappreciated or ignored, Drew turned a bit mean.

In truth, my own throat ached from not shouting my deepest truth. Stop leaving me alone with him. My dim-witted hope of someday sharing the burden with Lulu never left, no matter how many times I trudged off by myself to Richmond Prison.

Visiting the evil Aunt Cilla the previous weekend had provided a relief simply for the pleasure of not having to lie about my past for one moment in time. Not that my aunt had asked squat regarding my father; Aunt Cilla hadn't even whispered his name during the two hours she'd allotted me.

I'd knocked, and then waited on the hot enclosed porch until Aunt Cilla opened the door a crack. Aunt Cilla, seven years my mother's senior, at sixty-five, looked like a fun-house mirror of how I imagined Mama would appear if a computer morphing program aged her photo image. My washed-out aunt was never pretty like Mama, but she resembled Mama-the cheekbones, the lush mouth-enough to give me the chills.

Aunt Cilla still lived in Brooklyn, though in a house I'd never visited. Times had been good to her and Uncle Hal, disproving any moral theorists claiming the meek shall inherit the earth. Aunt Cilla's s.p.a.cious home, when she grudgingly let me in, shone from the ministrations and shopping habits of a house-proud woman.

She showed me into the living room, her lips tightly sealed. I saw Uncle Hal and Cousin Arnie framed in gleaming silver, pictures of all the family events no one invited me to-my cousin's bar mitzvah, the wedding of a couple I'd never known. My cousin had kept his frail appearance. My aunt still had her mean spirit.

"Here," she'd said. "It's wrapped. Do you want to check it?"

"For what?" I'd asked, confused.

She'd shrugged. "I thought maybe you'd want to make sure I didn't cheat you."

Cheat me how? By pa.s.sing off Corning Ware as onyx?

"That's okay," I'd answered.

"I a.s.sure you, I'm completely trustworthy."

"Aren't you curious how I am? How Lulu is? Your great-nieces?"

"Why? No one keeps in touch with me. The first time you call, it's because you want something." She'd folded her arms across her chest. "Did you ever think I might wonder how you were?"

"Why didn't you . . ." I'd paused, trying to imagine what to say.

"I had no idea where you were. You disappeared, your sister and you." She'd put a hand on top of the box. "I had to go digging in the attic for this. Who knew I still had it? I would have wrapped them all for you, but you only asked for one."

"I'd like anything you have of my mother's. I mean, anything you're not using," I'd added, seeing her clutch at the neck of her white blouse.

"The few things your mother left are all the memories I have."

"We don't have anything, Aunt Cilla. Just the few pictures Grandma Zelda had."

"Zelda. Ptoi." Aunt Cilla had made a spitting sound.

I'd pulled back as though she'd smacked me. "That's my grandmother."

"She raised a monster."

Scabs had flown off my festering hate of Aunt Cilla. "She loved us. You abandoned us. Who's the monster?"

The visit hadn't gone very well.

The pregnant anchorwoman said good night, and I snapped off the television, grateful for another night without seeing a single one of my probationers starring on TV. By way of a lullaby, I scrunched my pillows into shape and previewed the upcoming day.

Tomorrow morning I'd meet with the newly formed Community for Peace group. Colin, my muscle-gone-fat, ideals-gone-political boss, the chief probation officer, had gotten into the habit of appointing me liaison to any groups he considered soft ones. His expression, the soft ones, always said in a scoffing tone. Colin deemed soft anything with the word strategy: strategies for peace, for less murder, for more jobs, for less police brutality, for more child care in court, what Colin called we-are-the-world groups. When only white people were around, he called them diversity groups, a sneer encasing his words.

I wrapped the comforter tighter and listed the next afternoon's clients. Jesse Turner, near murderer. Shaundra Ellis, pickpocket. Victor Dennehy, c.o.ke dealer and batterer. Oliver Peterson, rapist. In order, they were depressed, easy, a.s.shole, and suck-up sc.u.m. Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, and Sleazy.

After work, I had yet another blind date courtesy of Drew. Trying to get me married off seemed to be his hobby. The guy was a doctor who worked in the same place as Lulu but played handball with Drew, and I think was also in his poker group. He was a specialist with an o. Orthopedist? Ophthalmologist? Ornithologist?

The next morning I returned from the community meeting energized from being with people whose pants weren't hanging off their a.s.ses and who didn't have packs of Marlboros tucked in their T-shirt sleeves.

"How was the meeting?" Colin yelled from his office as I walked by.

I turned and went to his doorway. "Do you really care?"

He swung his squatty legs up on his desk. "Nah. Community for Peace." He snorted. "Why not just call it what it is: White Liberals of Dorchester Loving the Sounds of Their Own Voices." Colin laughed; he cracked himself up on a regular basis. His eyes were puffy, as though he never slept, or always drank.

"Surprise, Colin, it was mainly African-American women."

He swatted a hand toward me. "Big deal. Same bulls.h.i.t."

"Right, the bulls.h.i.t of women not wanting their sons shooting or being shot. I see your point."

"Don't give me that c.r.a.p. What do these saints plan to do besides complain to us as though it's our fault?" Colin tapped a pencil against his knee. "Maybe they'd do better giving their sons a swat on their a.s.ses."

I sat in the guest chair across from Colin's desk. "Don't you get tired of being you?"

Colin smiled wide and generous. "Even Bill Cosby agrees with me."

"Screw you, and screw Bill Cosby," I said. "You love using him as a convenient place to hang your racism."

"I'm a racist for thinking parents should control their kids?"

I lifted myself out of the chair, not bothering to answer his tired question. "The women want to meet once a month, and they need someplace safe. I told them they could meet here. Get me money for coffee and donuts."