I don't know how long I sat at my desk looking out of the window. A crescent moon and lots of stars shone in the sky, while fireflies were lighting up and turning off everywhere. The cool air carried a faint whiff of honeysuckle together with the music of a million insects. Finally, I found the courage to tear the envelop open.

"Dearest Trav,

"That's what you will always be for me. How long has it been since we were together? Sometimes, it seems like a few minutes ago and sometimes, like many months. I miss you, it hurts more than any pain I have ever felt and it always will. 'Always' is harder than anything I have ever had to say, but hadn't I better say it and get it over with? The Lord answered my prayers, but he didn't give me the answer I was hoping for. I know what I have to do now, but it will take all the courage I have, maybe even more. I have taken a job so far away that you should remember me as if I were a dream you once had. What a magnificent dream it was! If I gave you my address or telephone number, it would amount to an invitation and we must never see each other again. 'Never.' I must have said it out loud because Chris is looking at me. If you and I saw each other again, I would just be another number in your fingers and I couldn't stand that. I think I would kill myself. I was really looking forward to our marriage, it was going to be the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me and I will always regret it, but wouldn't it have been blasphemy? Even if we had fooled ourselves, even if we had fooled Joe, we couldn't have fooled the Lord. Remember how badly we wanted to have children? Think what would have become of them. It's been over a year since Dogwood Bloom. What a dream we have had! Let's not spoil it, Trav. Please don't try to reach me. If I heard your voice, if I saw you, if I had my arms around you... I could write so much more!

"Forever,

The dean of the law school knew all of us. "Get some sleep, Trav!" he told me when he gave me my diploma and shook my hand. I hadn't realized how badly I looked. How far had I sunk? The phone was ringing as I returned to my room and, although I knew Joe would call to congratulate 

me, I hoped it was Peg. I tried hard to keep him from hearing my disappointment. Since his commencement had taken place the same morning, I congratulated him too. Peg had called, he said, and explained everything. He had tried to dissuade her or, at least, to get her new address and telephone number, but in vain. He was praying for both of us. I was taking some of my baggage to the car when I saw a small envelope in my pigeonhole: "Congratulations. I love you. Adieu." "Adieu?" I shouted. People turned around. A recorded message told me that Peg's phone was disconnected without giving another number at which she could be reached. I jumped in my car and drove to Mountain Ridge, avoiding an accident and the police by the grace of God. She had moved out of her apartment. Neither her neighbors nor the director of the seeing-eye school, whom I reached at home, could tell me more than the fact that she had left no forwarding address or telephone number.

Her father came to the door looking over glasses which clung to the end of his nose. I had the same effect on him as on the dean.

"Come in, Trav."

"We don't know where she went either."

"She didn't want us to know so we could tell you we didn't."

took that one myself," I said. Once we had seen them all, Mrs. Acob invited me to supper and Mr. Acob insisted that she would be very disappointed if I declined. They sounded like Peg inviting me to supper after our return from Dogwood Bloom. My parents might be wondering what had happened to me.

"I know just how they feel," said Mrs. Acob.

"Don't let your fingers do the walking!"

Soon they were urging me to spend the night and refusing to take "no" for an answer. I could use Peg's room, which they showed me. How could I refuse? Her Paddington bear was sitting on her bed with his back against the pillow. A passion for dogs had decorated this bedroom just as it had the one in Mountain Ridge, except for the difference between a girl's enthusiasm and a young woman's vocation. This difference moved me more than I cared to say: what right did I have to see the bedroom in Mountain Ridge? "It's just like her," I ventured.

Mr. Acob agreed: "Her favorite colors."

"Light blue and beige," confirmed Mrs. Acob.

"That was Gwendolyn."

"She wouldn't let us call her 'Winnie.'"

"Peg?"

"Ten." 

One bookcase contained every book she had used from kindergarten to her senior year in high school. No creased or torn pages, no marks, nothing except her name and address, yet I knew she had done her homework. Another bookcase contained all the books she had bought herself or received as gifts.

"She read all of them, every page."

"A lot of others from the library too."

Sleeping with Peg in Mountain Ridge, I hadn't paid much attention to her room. Now that I was going to sleep in her bed without her, I felt both sad and excited. Curiosity drew me from a bottle of Ma Griffe that she had never opened to a pair of opera glasses that she must have inherited from a grandmother or an aunt, from a swimming trophy to a cactus with arms stretched out and turned upwards. I couldn't resist touching the points of the spines with my finger tips. Looking over his shoulder, a fox ran around a trash basket, followed by a pack of bellowing hounds with floppy ears and white-tipped tails, followed in turn by red-coated horsemen with wild, ruddy faces whipping their galloping horses. Inside, it looked as if no trash had ever soiled it. As I removed and folded the bedspread, which must have taken months to crochet, it felt heavy in my arms. I found a pair of light blue slippers in the closet, put them on the rya rug beside the bed, sat down and contemplated them. Peg's feet were long and narrow for a woman. The blue aurora of the rug began to blur: I was crying like a little boy who had lost his girlfriend. Carefully ironed, the cotton sheets had a lavendar scent I had noticed in Mountain Ridge. The pillow under my head and the mattress under my body inspired endless memories and regrets entangling themselves in each other. Three times I got up, roamed the room and lay down again before I went to sleep. I don't know whether I was dreaming early in the morning when I reached for Peg and, not finding her, I sat up looking for her, expecting her to return. How bitter the disappointment was!

I tried to tell the Acobs how grateful I felt. She threw her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. He shook my hand:

"Give it a year, Trav. If you haven't heard from her by then..."

With tears in her eyes: "If you don't, maybe someone else..."

December, went to Schwartzmann's and, after a half hour of hesitation, chose a ring with a pale blue stone. The saleslady, who didn't owe her job to chance, convinced me by displaying it on her finger. She asked me if I would like to have something engraved on the underside. It took me another fifteen minutes to decide, since I had to consider the long term as well as the short. Finally I wrote "Christmas 1958", but, as soon as I had handed it to the saleslady, I took it back and scratched the date out. She gave me a discreet smile suggesting both esteem and sympathy. I wanted Peg to wear it, even if she met somebody else. Maybe her granddaughter or niece would inherit it. But she would never forget which Christmas and who missed her. And I still hoped she would change her mind. Calling on the Acobs, I told them about my gift, explained that Schartzmann's would deliver it to them and asked them to see that Peg received it. I encouraged them to open the package and see for themselves. They offered no news of Peg.

The law firm in Mapleton had relieved me of my obligation to join it. Instead, I got a job in Nevers with Fred Robbles, "the worst robblerouser in town" if you could believe him (nobody did). I had clerked for him during both of my summer vacations from law school and he had invited me to become his junior partner when I got my degree. He was shuffling along, he said, and his kids didn't give a damn for the laww. "Once I'm through with you," he promised me, "you will be as fat and funny and crooked as I am so help you God. Then you can take your turn goosing the ladies around here."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Fred Robbles!" cried Fanny Acres from her desk on the other side of a cluttered office.

"You know what your smoke smells like, Fred?"

"It smells like those islands covered with birds."

"They do something else that smells just as bad." 

"Fanny! I'm surprized at you."

"Somebody has to tell you since you smoked poor Sarah to death."

"Smoke weakens the heart. I hear it every morning on the radio."

"Maybe you would have to stop smoking."

"Shut up, Fred," snapped Fanny. "He might do what you say."

"Don't worry, Fanny," I arbitrated. "The only two I wanted to marry wouldn't have me."

"What's wrong with you?"

"It's me. I'm no good."

I laughed.

"He didn't used to be!"

Fred hated divorce cases, but they fascinated me and there were always lots of them. Fanny had told me to set a rule and stick to it: give each spouse an hour to vent his spleen and say the worst he could about the other, then double the rate.

"They stop fussing when they see it costs them fifty dollars an hour instead of twenty-five."

Fred gave me another valuable piece of advice: "When there are kids -- and there usually are -- make an interview alone with them a part of the package. Let Fanny do it."

Fanny was fussing around her desk: "You would think I was a nursemaid or something." 

She sang in the tabernacle choir, taught Sunday school, sat on every committee involving children. Hadn't she tamed the wildest animals in the zoo? Fred continued: "Let her read the transcripts of the interviews to each spouse and answer his questions about them. Otherwise, of course, you will keep them confidential. And warn your clients that, if they leak anything to the press or anybody else, you will withdraw from the case. All of this should figure in a standard contract. Draw one up and show it to me."

"Me too," said Fanny.

"... OK... But what if only one of the spouses wants me to represent him?"

"Fred!"

"Fred! You are disgusting!"

She was so angry she stormed out of the office and down the hall to the ladies room, to which she tried to slam the door but it wouldn't.

"She slapped me so hard I can still feel it," he said grinning as if it felt good. "I never pinched her again. Never pinch your secretary, Trav. They forget where they keep things."

I had worked there long enough to know that you couldn't get anything done until Fanny found the papers for you.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question before she comes back?"

"Did she have a fanny then?"

We were still chuckling when Fanny returned: she gave us a withering look. 

I drowned my emotions in work so I could push Peg to the back of my mind, where she nonetheless continued to haunt me. Right from the start, friends and acquaintances confided in me about their unhappy marriages, because they were ashamed to tell their parents and especially parents who had doubted the wisdom of their choice. With a few exceptions, as Fred had predicted, couples either came to me together or I could persuade the other spouse to cooperate. The diversity of the couples and the complexity of the relations between the spouses daunted me. Yet I knew I had to understand the motives that had united them as well as those that were threatening to separate them. Most of the latter had usually derived in some way from the former. A tender mistress could become a clinging wife and a kind lover, a patronizing husband, but these themes resulted in endless variations. The equation between love and hatred usually dominated my clients' anxiety. They had loved their spouse "then" as much as they hated him "now" and they hated him now because he wasn't the same, because he had changed, because he had disappointed them. Hatred now was equivalent to love then and love then, convertible to hatred now. I wonder if the intensity of the passion didn't remain the same. Oh there were exceptions, of course, deceivors in particular who had married in order to exploit their spouse in one way or another. They usually hired a bastard and Fred taught me how to fight that kind of war. Bastards used their client and his children to pressure the other spouse so that will succumbed to passion. I felt like a coach reminding my athlete that it didn't matter if our competitor was ahead or how much as long as we won. We usually did although the bastard made more money than I did.

Curiously, most of my clients didn't even realize that love-hate was wrecking their marriage, preoccupied as they were with tributary quarrels over sex, money and the allegiance of their children. My former reputation may have emboldened them to confide in me about problems with sex that they didn't even discuss with each other. They complained more loudly, though no more bitterly, because their spouse was spending too much on himself, trying to impose frugality on them, shirking his duty to contribute to the budget or other such accusations which he angrily denied. Even louder, protests over the spouse's attempts to alienate the children's affection often resulted in feminine hysteria or masculine rage that boiled over into double time despite my warnings. As I had told them, however, once their lawyer had heard them out, he would have to serve as their judge if they wanted to 

stay out of hell. A few illustrations were usually enough to overcome protests against my decisions. I convinced them that quarrels over sex, money, children, etc. had resulted from the deterioration of love into hatred. If I succeeded in this, I usually found them willing to accept that such quarrels have little impact on genuine love. This success enabled me to arbitrate the negotiation of an agreement between them that would regulate relations between them and sharing the children, and establish a procedure for making changes in it as needed. If I failed, however, as I did in one fourth of my cases, reaching this agreement came at a much higher cost, in money for them, but in anxiety for all of us. I had committed myself to this work so completely that I had little time to think of Peg, but I missed her whenever I put it aside and found myself alone. My clients' misery compounded my own at such times.

I could never have achieved the success I did without Fanny and Fred, who lavished help, advice and criticism on me. When I blundered, they scolded me, when I succeeded, they took pride in me and they never tired of telling me a better way. Both served as secret weapons. Fanny's interviews with the children nearly always confounded parents who contradicted each other. The tactics I learned from Fred consternated a few bastards until the word got around that I was working for him and, from then on, my name inspired respect. Treating me as if I were their son, Fanny and Fred began to treat each other as if they were a couple and my affection for them eclipsed the affection I had for my own parents. We became a family away from the family, teasing each other, laughing over the same stupidities, protesting the same outrages and arguing over differences of opinion. We had lunch together nearly every day and each of us took a turn on weekends inviting the others to his place, a restaurant or a picnic. We lent each other articles and books, we saw movies together either on television or in Concordia, where we also attended concerts and even a few lectures. A few times, we even drove up to Mapleton for ballet, an opera, an exhibit, the art gallery. I always gave the Acobs a call and never let Holly know. I saw her only when I was alone in Mapleton, which happened often enough to keep her happy, but I worried about my loss of appetite. Was I aging already? It worried me enough to ask Joe: "On the contrary, you are growing up." The Council had appointed him minister of Pentacost Tabernacle in Concordia, where they knew he would have a strong and beneficial influence on the students, including the unruly ones. He proved 

even more successful than they had expected. I found him eager to help with clients who needed moral or religious help. Joe, Fanny and I worked together to keep such clients out of court and arrange for them to share their children. I cut or waived fees for clients who couldn't afford them, especially when such debts threatened to aggravate the relations between them. There were other cases, of course, where our efforts bore little fruit, indeed everything we tried sometimes made things worse. They gave me more work and much frustration despite my earnings, which embarrassed me, raised my clients' suspicions and incited them to avenge themselves on each other. Yet I was acquiring as good a reputation in Nevers as I had once had a bad one and not only as a lawyer, but also as a citizen. People were beginning to trust me with their wives and daughters.

"Hello?"

"Trav?" The voice seemed familiar. "This is Connie."

"Melford."

"Well, I guess I'm not so good."

She sighed: "Who else could I talk to?"

"Yes, Par... He's the problem."

"I can't leave my little boy."

I hardly recognized her. She looked like a lemon drop wrapped in wax paper twisted at both ends. It had only taken two pregnancies to bloat the slender body that I had once... The thought shamed me. Her face had sagged, pulling down on her eyes and the corners of her mouth. For lack of words, I kissed her on the cheek, but that only brought tears to her eyes because she realized why I had done it. After I took her into the conference room, we sat there without knowing where to look or what to say. The more pity I had for her, the less I could hide it.

Finally she spoke up: "Do I have to tell you, Trav? You must have guessed by now."

Indeed, I had already guessed some of what she told me. Par had gradually lost interest in her, spending less and less time at home. He even made her 

feel unwelcome when he gave the children his attention. Whatever she did for him, he thanked her in a way that suggested that he didn't like such favors. Last week, for instance, she had baked a cake for his birthday and he had blown all twenty-nine candles out with one breath as if he were in a hurry to get it over with. How many times had she tried to tell him how badly she wanted to make him happy again? but it only embarrassed him. He sought excuses to get away from her, like checking the air in his tires or the oil in his engine. Last night, as he lay on the edge of the bed with his back turned to her, he had said: "Maybe we should get a divorce."

I found it much harder to talk to Par, who didn't want to say anything except that he agreed to let me represent them both. Finally he regretted that Connie just wasn't the girl he had fallen in love with anymore. I prodded him into admitting that she couldn't have helped it and he added that he was crazy about the kids. No, there wasn't any other woman. No, he didn't think there was anything she could do. How about him? Well, hadn't he tried? Apparently not, I answered. Bewildered, he shrugged as if unable to defend himself. I could tell that he found guilt intolerable. I reminded him that a divorce would hurt the kids worse than the parents.

"Even worse than our marriage is hurting them right now?"

"It isn't your marriage, Par. It's your attitude towards your wife. You said there was nothing she could do."

I couldn't have negotiated a successful divorce (a successful failure?) without Fanny, Joe, Holly and the Stevens. Connie's mother and father kept the children, Fanny prepared them for a drastic change in their lives, Holly invited her sister to stay with her in Mapleton and Par accepted Joe's suggestion to transfer to another post office. Holly made a new woman of Connie and taught her how to sell men shoes. Physical exersize, a skillful hairdresser, shopping for clothes and, eventually, a few heads that turned did wonders. Since Holly was managing the store, she could hire and train 

her sister, while Connie learned quickly, took pride in her job and sent her parents money to help support the children. The obligation to pay only half of this expense surprised Par. He and Connie each had to call Fanny to schedule visits with the children when the other was absent. These arrangements had continued for two months when I invited them to meet with me so they could reach a more permanent agreement.

Par had grown a goatee and put on weight, while Connie had lost some and reduced the sag in her face. Shorter, her hair flounced in alluring waves. The wrinkles in Par's shirt needed the iron Connie had used on her blouse and his suit bunched over his articulations, while hers fit her rejuvenated figure perfectly. An intoxicating whiff of scent made him stutter and me stumble. They had moved to opposite sections of Concordia, where they would send the children to school. Par had a job in the post office, while Connie had found one selling shoes in a store near the campus. They wouldn't need Fanny any more to decide who would see the children when and where, but Joe had urged each of them to call him if he needed help. The more Par tried to keep his eyes off of Connie, the more he stared. He looked so bewildered and ashamed that she felt sorry for him. When the time came to shake hands, she kissed him on the cheek and, once he had overcome his surprise, he kissed her back. Par eventually married again and had more children, while Connie remained single. If you didn't know them very well, you would have assumed that they lived happily ever after.

Does anybody ever get over a love affair? Lee had haunted mine with Peg, but Peg preoccupied me increasingly as Christmas approached. I would have kept on working if my parents hadn't expected me and if some old friends hadn't invited me to a party. Although I danced with Holly and Connie, nothing happened between us because each of us had his own preoccupations and none of us wanted to remind Nevers of our drive-arounds. We even disapproved of some younger people who drank too much and behaved more intimately than we thought appropriate. Engagements in Concordia, Mapleton and Mammoth had left Joe free only for Christmas Eve with his parents, but he and I had the afternoon to talk. Since he was acquiring a national reputation and I, a local one, we might have found less and less in common every time we met. On the contrary, we continued to feel at ease with each other and took the same pleasure in endless arguments. Although it was hard for him to see me, he continued to 

make the effort without mentioning it to me. Sometimes he surprized me by his determination to spend time with me that I knew he needed for something else. I don't know how long we talked that afternoon in the BigBite, but we suddenly realized that it was dark outside and past the time our parents expected us. Only this conversation distracted me from anxiety over Peg. Would she spend Christmas with her parents? Would she accept the present I had offered her? Would she even call me and thank me? Or at least send me a letter? Wherever I went, I hovered around the phone and, if it rang, I either grabbed the receiver or, in other people's houses, started to grab it. Although phones did ring, it was never her. I felt more and more depressed, and even declined an invitation to a party on New Year's Eve, which surprised everybody. I was sitting in my apartment staring at the wall when the fireworks started. Stepping outside to watch, I chatted with a neighbor I had never met before. We recalled other New Years Eves that we hadn't spent alone. Just in case, I stayed close to a window I had left open.

I have never known greater despair. Fortunately, so many clients came to me that I had little time to think of Peg. A heap of papers, binders and volumes covered my desk and I was digging into it one afternoon trying to find a document I had held in my hand a few minutes earlier. I hardly noticed some people entering the office, but I heard a young woman speaking to Fanny.

"Try the trashbasket," said Fanny who had approached undetected.

The expression on her face was as close as she came to a smile. "Some people to see you."

"It's urgent."

I took them to the conference room and closed the door, noticing their distress even before they told me what had happened. Semy took her little round glasses off and wiped them on her skirt. "Mom's in the hospital." 

"How bad is it?"

I felt faint. "Your father?"

"We tried to stop him," Semy added. "He hit us too."

I didn't know what to say.

"It's not in a very nice place," she objected.

"Come on, Lindy," Will How encouraged her. "He's just like a doctor."

She blushed, summoned her courage, stood up, came around the table, turned her back to me and raised her skirt just enough to reveal an enormous bruise on her beautiful thigh.

"He kicked her," shouted Will How. He stood up, pulled his shirttail up and showed me a diagonal welt reaching from the lowest rib on one side to the highest one on the other. "It hurts when I breathe. I don't know whether he cracked my ribs."

Semy showed me her badly bruised upper arm. "He grabbed it and squeezed. The more I cried, the more he squeezed. He liked to a tore my arm off."

My mind was spinning. "The first thing we are going to do," I heard myself saying, "is to pray. Just like we did last time when Joe said the prayer. Remember?"

"Oh Lord, bring Rosy around soon. Help her to heal, body and mind. Heal Lindy's bruise, Will How's ribs and Semy's arm. Help Rosy, Lindy, Will How and Semy to forgive Josh. Help Josh to forgive himself. And you forgive him too, please, Oh Lord. That's what he needs most... Anybody have anything to add?"

"And don't let him hurt hisself," said Lindy.

I heard a faint sniff. When I was sure they had finished, I said: "Amen!"

It was the first time I ever made a prayer up. I guess Joe had taught me. I didn't know I believed in prayer. 

Coming home drunk again, Josh had flown into a rage because Rosy tried to keep the children away from him. He beat her worse than ever before, then came to his senses. Desperate to treat her wounds, he ran from room to room jerking drawers open to look for medical supplies. When he ran upstairs, the children carried Rosy out to the car, put her in the back seat and Lindy drove them to the hospital. The surgeons were operating. Even if she came out of her coma, they feared physical and mental invalidity. Three policemen didn't find Josh in the house, but, as they went around behind it, a shot hit one of them in the shoulder. Firing from a stone hut on a hill a hundred yards away, Josh held them and eight others off for a few hours. Joe drove over from Concordia, picked me up in Nevers and we made the same trip to the U'Pretz's farm as we had years earlier, except that it was in daylight this time. As soon as we arrived, Joe jumped out of the car, ran around behind the house and started up the hill, ignoring the policemen who shouted at him to stay back. I followed him, but I was scared. What if Josh took me for one too many? As we approached, we saw him lurking in the shed with his rifle ready. Despair and defiance disfigured his face. He didn't speak; he shouted and his breath steamed in the air. Continuously, his eyes swept the ground around the hill and his rifle followed them. Several times, he jerked me or Joe away from the door or a window to clear his field of fire. Although I had seen such behavior in films and on television, it seemed entirely different because I was involved. My teeth were chattering.

Joe didn't seem to share any of my emotion or Josh's. "If we ever needed the Lord's help," he told Josh, "we need it now. We can stay out of sight in this corner and they won't know that you aren't covering them for the thirty seconds it will take to say a prayer. To my surprise, Josh backed into the corner. Joe raised his head and we lowered ours. "Oh Lord, help us to resolve this crisis without death or injury. Please bring Rosy out of her coma

Josh gasped.

"Amen!" I repeated.

"Amen," groaned Josh. He had almost forgotten the policemen.

Everybody knows that such situations come to a peaceful ending only through persistent and patient negotiations subject to sudden and unpredictable accidents. Well, not this time. Joe had no trouble persuading Josh to give himself up on condition that his rights be respected. I told him I would represent him and do everything I could to reconcile him with his wife and children, although the process would have to begin with separation. It might not be possibile, I warned him, to reunite them again under the same roof. Despite his chagrin, he took this news pretty well, because of Joe's presence perhaps. Joe and I went down to the police, who eagerly accepted the conditions Josh had agreed to, then we went back up and brought him down while Joe carried his rifle. I persuaded the judge to limit his sentence to six months in a detention center noted for its success in rehabilitating criminals susceptible to reform. An agreement signed by him to repay his victims' medical expenses, support the children until they could support themselves and Rosy permanently lightened his sentence. Even before he was released, Joe found him a job in a Concordia nursery whose owner belonged to his assembly and Josh shouldered the burden with a determination that almost kept him away from alcohol. Aware that further binges were inevitable, however, everybody took precautions to keep him under control and away from Nevers, where Rosy and the children were living. He learned horticulture quickly and his employer gave him the wages he deserved, but it took him ten years to repay his debts. The day that happened, Joe and I went to the nursery at closing time, took him to his appartment and told him to dress in his Sunday best. At the tabernacle community center, Rosy, Lindy and Will How with their spouses and children, Semy and Fanny greeted him along with his friends . Everybody was talking and laughing at the same time, even those who had tears in their eyes. Once Josh had hugged his two grandchildren off the floor, everybody else took a turn. It was a Greuze. A few days later, Josh drank himself to death.

It took the surgeons a few years to put Rosy back together again. When they had done their best, she walked with a slight limp, smiled with all but 

the left corner of her mouth and had most of the energy and determination that everybody had always admired her for, except when the humidity tormented her. If we asked her how she felt then, she laughed a laugh almost as cheerful as the one we had cherished in school, although she could feel the steel rod and clamps that held her bones together. Yet she didn't like it one bit when people felt sorry for her and, if they tried to tell her, she abuptly changed the subject. She liked being treated a little roughly as Fred saw the first time he met her. "Here comes that punching bag again!" he would holler as soon as he saw her enter the office and, grinning with all but the left corner of her mouth, she would yelp: "When are yawl going to throw that rusty smokestack out the winder?" Healing her mental injuries kept tongues wagging for a while. The brain surgeon found that the damage should have given her problems she just didn't have. One of the nurses assigned to her ward called her the most accelerated retarded patient she had ever had. I got a lot of advice about which psychologists, counselor, support group, etc. to send her too, but she ignored it. "You guys," by which she meant Joe, me and Fanny, "is all I need." She knew is was wrong, that's why she said it. Hardly had she left the hospital before she found work cleaning and cooking for people, who soon were competing with each other to hire her. When she came out of her coma, she approved of Lindy working for me, but she disapproved of the boy who wanted to marry her. Although Lindy hadn't decided yet, that did it: she married him and had a little boy, whom Rosy spoiled while accusing the parents of doing the same thing. I couldn't help wondering whether Lindy's bruise had healed completely. Don't worry, she treated me like an uncle and I got a kiss on the cheek when I did something right. But I was telling you about Rosy. The day after Josh's death, she failed to call Lindy at six to make sure she had gotten up. Stopping at her house on the way to the office, Lindy heard the car running behind the garage door.

Rosy looked almost beautiful sitting there relaxed with her eyes closed as if in a dream, smiling except for the left corner of her mouth. She left a detailed will with a few spelling mistakes, which I suspect she made on purpose. With the Rev. Carstens' collaboration, Joe organized a funeral for her and Josh at Resurrection Tabernacle, where he gave the eulogy: "Josh and Rosy attended our assembly regularly for most of their lives. They were babies when we first saw them, each in his and her mother's arms, and we watched them grow up. Then, one Sunday, we saw them sitting together 

and, soon, they got married right here in this tabernacle. Before long, they came with babies of their own, who were christened over this font [pointing], and we saw them grow up too. Josh and Rosy dedicated their lives to each other and their children, in whom they rightly took pride. Every week, we looked forward to seeing them again, but, ten years ago already, we began to miss Josh and, now, we miss Rosy too. Now both have left us for good. How painful it is knowing that we will never see them again in this life! All the more painful because they left us even before their time. Yet we will remember them for themselves and what they have accomplished. They enjoyed few advantages, they didn't even have much luck and neither had any unusual ability, but they faced adversity with courage and overcame their handicaps by hard work. How many of you, dear friends, can testify to that?"

This appeal stimulated various kinds of agreement, such as nods, raised hands and murmurs of "I can!"

"No, he can't," etc.

God's creatures make than the gift of their own lives? How many of us love our fellows that much? Josh and Rosy did. God entrusted life to them, as he did to all of us, so that they might use it to serve their fellows. Didn't they use it for that purpose? I think those of us who go to heaven will see them again. What do you think?"

Nods, raised hands and words of agreement, such as "I think so too."

But there were others who shook their heads or kept a sullen silence.

The Rev. Carstens looked forbiddingly stern.

Although Oaky's hostility to Joe's initiative seemed probable to me, I hardly took him seriously. On the other hand, a long conversation between Joe and Carstens after the burial convinced me that he would meet with 

formidable opposition. According to the cleaning women, the thunder in Carstens' office continued for almost two hours before the two ministers emerged and politely took leave of each other. A large minority of the faithful rallied around Carstens in opposition to Joe. It grew almost as fast as news of his eulogy spread to the state, the region and the nation, yet it remained a large minority. The controversy shook the FFA to its foundations, but the church had originated from a controversy between conservatives and liberals, and thrived on others that would have ruined an ordinary church. While the opposition grew spontaneously, support for Joe's initiative depended on his efforts, so he spent months traveling, speaking, discussing and persuading. Although he convinced a majority of every public he addressed, he found that he couldn't rely on others to represent him or even satisfy the curiosity of the press. Thus he shouldered a burden that everybody admired and nobody envied. Despite this commitment, he managed to call me from time to time.

When Fanny brought me my mail one morning, she put something on a far corner of my desk, where an avalanche from the heap threatened it less than elsewhere. Preoccupied as usual, I paid no attention until I realized that she was waiting for me to notice it. It was a small package with a fragile sticker. Picking it up, I saw "M. Acob" in the upper left corner and yelled.

"He must have beat off," said Fred.

"Fred!" screeched Fanny. "You are disgusting."

"If you don't show it to me, you know what that dirty old man will say."

The dirty old man snorted.

"She thinks you ought to spend more of your time on her," said Fanny.

Fred had come over so fast I hadn't even seen him: "Here he's just begun to practice the laww and she's trying to make him punctual."

"It's the most beautiful one I have ever seen."

"Marry her," said Fred. "You will never find a better one."

Fred grabbed my telephone: "What's her number?"

"You better let me call," said Fanny trying to take it away from him.

"Ow!" yelled Fred.

Fanny, astonished: "Why... ?"

"Screwing around!" snorted Fred. "Who doesn't at that age?"

"I didn't!" snapped Fanny. "And he doesn't any more."

"Just tell me everything I need to find her," insisted Fred. "Name, profession, description... all that stuff. I will find her."

"Forever," Fanny read. "But... "

"They used to put girls like that in convents."

of black and I realized that it was my birthday, which I had forgotten. I sobbed like a little boy who had suddenly grown a little older.

Fred and Fanny were making plans to retire. We were sending Lindy to ZU so she could get a BA and train as a legal secretary. Under Fanny's supervision, she assumed more and more responsibility. As the unhappy past faded, she enjoyed her job and enhanced the atmosphere of the office. Fred and I discussed the necessity of hiring a young "person" -- "a godamned feminist?" feared Fred -- to handle his share of the practice. We had to try a few before we found one who suited us and was willing to make a permanent commitment. Few law students dreamed of settling in a place like Nevers, but Percival Youseff fell in love with it. Once he had mastered his share of the practice, Fred and Fanny retired, got married -- a joyful occasion -- and went off to Florida for a honeymoon. After their return, we saw them often, whether they made "nuisances of themselves" in the office, joined us for lunch or did things with us on weekends. The five of us seemed more like a family to me than my own. Percival had such a good humor that he delighted his clients and infuriated his opponents. Nevers forgave him his boyfriends and me, my girlfriends, my favorite being Holly with whom I spent a few days from time to time. Resigned to a single life, I tried to satisfy my need for women by occasional cohabitation and my need for children by Lindy's, who called me "Uncle Trav." I guess I was happy, but, if had heard from Peg...