The Burden of Proof

1

THEY HAD BEEN MARRIED for thirty-one years, and the following spring, full of resolve and a measure of hope, he would marry again. But that day, on a late afternoon near the end of March, Mr. Alejandro Stern had returned home and, with his attaché case and garment bag still in hand, called out somewhat absently from the front entry for Clara, his wife. He was fifty-six years old, stout and bald, and never particularly good-looking, and he found himself in a mood of intense preoccupation.

For two days he had been in Chicago—that city of rough souls—on behalf of his most difficult client. Dixon Hartnell was callous, self-centered, and generally scornful of his lawyers’ advice; worst of all, representing him was a permanent engagement. Dixon was Stern’s brother-in-law, married to Silvia, his sister, Stern’s sole living immediate relation and the enduring object of his affections. For Dixon, of course, his feelings were hardly as pure. In the early years, when Stern’s practice amounted to little more than the decorous hustling of clients in the hallways of the misdemeanor courts, serving Dixon’s unpredictable needs had paid Stern’s rent. Now it was one of those imponderable duties, darkly rooted in the hard soil of Stern’s own sense of filial and professional obligation.

It was also steady work. The proprietor of a vast commodity-futures trading empire, a brokerage house he had named, in youth, Maison Dixon, and a series of interlocked subsidiaries, all called MD-this and -that, Dixon was routinely in trouble. Exchange officials, federal regulators, the IRS—they’d all had Dixon’s number for years. Stern stood up for him in these scrapes.

But the present order of business was of greater concern. A federal grand jury sitting here in Kindle County had been issuing subpoenas out of town to select MD clients. Word of these subpoenas, served by the usual grim-faced minions of the FBI, had been trailing back to MD for a week now, and Stern, at the conclusion of his most recent trial, had flown at once to Chicago to meet privately with the attorneys representing two of these customers and to review the records the government required from them. The lawyers reported that the Assistant United States Attorney assigned to the matter, a young woman named Klonsky, declined to say precisely who was under suspicion, beyond exonerating the customers themselves. But to a practiced eye, this all had an ominous look. The out-of-town subpoenas reflected a contemplated effort at secrecy. The investigators knew what they were seeking and seemed intent on quietly encircling Dixon, or his companies, or someone close to him.

So Stern stood travel-weary and vexed in the slate foyer of the home where Clara and he had lived for nearly two decades. And yet, what was it that wrested his attention so thoroughly, so suddenly? The silence, he would always say. Not a tap running, a radio mumbling, not one of the household machines in operation. An isolated man, he drew, always, a certain comfort from stillness. But this was not the silence of rest or interruption. He left his bags on the black tiles and stepped smartly through the foyer.

Clara? he called again.

He found her in the garage. When he opened the door, the odor of putrefaction overwhelmed him, a powerful high sour smell which dizzied him with the first breath and drove up sickness like a fist. The car, a black Seville, the current model, had been backed in; the driver’s door was open. The auto’s white dome light remained on, so that in the dark garage she was wanly spotlit. From the doorway he could see her leg extended toward the concrete floor, and the hem of a bright floral shirtwaist dress. He could tell from the glint that she was wearing hosiery.

Slowly, he stepped down. The heat in the garage and the smell which increased revoltingly with each step were overpowering, and in the dark his fear left him weak. When he could see her through the open door of the car, he advanced no farther. She was reclined on the camel-colored leather of the front seat. Her skin, which he noticed first, was burnished with an unnatural peachish glow, and her eyes were closed. It seemed she had meant to appear neat and composed. Her left hand, faultlessly manicured, was placed almost ceremonially across her abdomen, and the flesh had swollen slightly beneath her wedding rings. She had brought nothing with her. No jacket. No purse. And she had not fallen back completely; her other arm was rigidly extended toward the wheel, and her head was pinned against the seat at a hopeless, impossible angle. Her mouth was open, her tongue extruded, her face dead, motionless, absolutely still. In the whitewashed laundry room adjoining the garage he was immediately sick in one of the porcelain basins, and he washed away all traces before calling in quick order 911 and then his son.

You must come straightaway, he said to Peter. He had found him at home. Straightaway. As usual in stress, he heard some faint accentuation of the persistent Hispanic traces in his speech; the accent was always there, an enduring deficit as he thought of it, like a limp.

Something is wrong with Mother, Peter said. Stern had mentioned nothing like that, but his son’s feeling for these things was sure. What happened in Chicago?

When Stern answered that she had not been with him, Peter, true to his first instincts, began to quarrel.

How could she not be with you? I spoke to her the morning you were leaving.

A shot of terrible sympathy for himself tore through Stern. He was lost, the emotional pathways hopelessly tangled. Hours later, toward morning, as he was sitting alone beneath a single light, sipping sherry as he revisited, reparsed every solemn moment of the day, he would take in the full significance of Peter’s remark. But that eluded him now. He felt only, as ever, a deep central impatience with his son, a suffering, suppressed volcanic force, while somewhere else his heart read the first clues in what Peter had told him, and a sickening unspeakable chasm of regret began to open.

You must come now, Peter. I have no idea precisely what has occurred. I believe, Peter, that your mother is dead.

His son, a man of thirty, let forth a brief high sound, a cry full of desolation. "You believe it?"

Please, Peter. I require your assistance. This is a terrible moment. Come ahead. You may interrogate me later.

For Chrissake, what in the hell is happening there? What in the hell is this? Where are you?

I am home, Peter. I cannot answer your questions now. Please do as I ask. I cannot attend to this alone. He hung up the phone abruptly. His hands were trembling and he leaned once more against the laundry basin. He had seemed so coldly composed only an instant before. Now some terrible sore element in him was on the rise. He presumed he was about to faint. He removed his tie first, then his jacket. He returned for an instant to the garage door; but he could not push it open. If he waited, just a moment, it seemed he would understand.

*   *   *

The house was soon full of people he did not know. The police came first, in pairs, parking their cars at haphazard angles in the drive, then the paramedics and the ambulance. Through the windows Stern saw a gaggle of his neighbors gathering on the lawn across the way. They leaned toward the house with the arrival of each vehicle and spoke among themselves, held behind the line of squad cars with their revolving beacons. Within the house, policemen roamed about with their usual regrettable arrogance. Their walkie-talkies blared with occasional eruptions of harsh static. They went in and out of the garage to gawk at the body and talked about events as if he were not there. They studied the Sterns’ rich possessions with an envy that was disconcertingly apparent.

The first cop into the garage had lifted his radio to summon the lieutenant as soon as he emerged.

She’s cooked, the officer told the dispatcher. Tell him he better come with masks and gloves. Only then did he notice Stern lurking in a fashion in the dark hall outside the laundry room. Abashed, the policeman began at once to explain. Looks like that car run all day. It’s on empty now. Catalytic converter gets hotter than a barbecue—six, seven hundred degrees. You run that engine twelve hours in a closed space, you’re generating real heat. That didn’t do her any good. You the husband?

He was, said Stern.

Condolences, said the cop. Terrible thing.

They waited.

Do you have any idea, Officer, what occurred? He did not know what he thought just now, except that it would be a kind of treachery to believe the worst too soon. The cop considered Stern in silence. He was ruddy and thick, and his weight probably made him look older than he was.

Keys in the ignition. On position. Garage door’s closed.

Stern nodded.

It didn’t look like any accident to me, the cop said finally. "You can’t be sure till the autopsy. You know, could be she had a heart attack or somethin right when she turned the key.

Maybe it’s one of them freak things, too, the cop said. Turns the car on and she’s thinkin about somethin else, you know, fixin her hair and makeup, whatever. Sometimes you never know. Didn’t find a note, right?

A note. Stern had spent the moments awaiting the various authorities here in this hallway, keeping his stupefied watch beside the door. The thought of a note, some communication, provided, against all reason, a surge of hope.

You’d just as well stay out of there, the policeman said, gesturing vaguely behind him.

Stern nodded with the instruction, but after an instant he took a single step forward.

Once more, he said.

The policeman waited only a moment before opening the door.

*   *   *

He was known as Sandy, a name he had adopted shortly after his mother and sister and he had arrived here in 1947, driven from Argentina by unending calamities—the death of his older brother, and then his father; the rise of Perón. It was his mother who had urged him to use this nickname, but he was never wholly at ease with it. There was a jaunty, comic air to the name; it fit him poorly, like someone else’s clothing, and, therefore, seemed to betray all that helpless immigrant yearning for acceptance which he so ardently sought to conceal, and which had been in truth perhaps his most incorrigible passion.

To be an American. Having come of age here in the 1950s, he would always hear the whisper of special obligations in the word. He had never bought a foreign car; and he had forsaken Spanish years ago. Occasionally, in surprise, a few words, a favored expression might escape him, but he had arrived here determined to master the American tongue. In his parents’ home there was no single language—his mother addressed them in Yiddish; with each other, the children used Spanish; his father talked principally to himself in windy high-flown German, which sounded to Stern as a child like some rumbling machine. In Argentina, with its deep Anglophile traditions, he had learned to speak the English of an Eton schoolboy. But here the idioms of everyday life flashed in his mind like coins, the currency of real Americans. From the first, he could not bear to use them. Pride and shame, fire and ice, burned away at him always; he could not endure the sniggering that seemed to follow even the slightest accented misuse. But in his dreams he spoke a rich American argot, savory as any jazzman’s.

American optimism, on the other hand, he had never absorbed. He could not leave aside the gloomy lessons of foreign experience, of his parents’ lives—emigrants, exiles, souls fleeing despots, never at rest. Certain simple propositions he took as articles of faith: things would often turn out badly. Seated in the living room in an overstuffed chair, amid Clara’s raiku vases and Chinese tapestries, he accepted this like the coming true of an evil spell. He had the inkling of various tasks that were somehow imperative, but for the time being he had no thought to move; his limbs were weak from shock, and his heart seemed to labor.

Peter arrived not long after the paramedics. They had already rolled their white-sheeted cart into the garage to remove the body. Wiry and always intense, Peter had burst into the house, disregarding the policemen at the front door. Why was it, Stern wondered, that he was so appalled by his son’s hysteria, this hyperthyroid look of uncontrollable panic? Peter was immaculately kempt, a bone-thin young man with a highly fashionable hairdo. He wore a blousy French shirt with broad turquoise stripes; his pants were olive, but of a style never worn in any army, ballooning widely near the knee. Stern, even now, could not restrict a critical impulse. It was remarkable, really, that this man whose face was rigid with distress had taken the time to dress.

Rising finally, he encountered his son in the hallway leading from the foyer to the kitchen.

I just can’t believe this. Peter, like Stern, seemed to have no idea how to behave; he moved a single step toward his father, but neither man reached out. My God, he said, look at it. It’s a carnival outside. Half the neighborhood’s there.

Do they know what happened?

I told Fiona Cawley. The Cawleys had lived next door to the Sterns for nineteen years. She more or less demanded it. You know how she is.

Ah, Stern said. He battled himself, but he found that a selfish shame, juvenile in its intensity, struck at him. This terrible fact was out now, news now, known. Stern could see the canny deliberations taking place behind Fiona Cawley’s deadly yellow eyes.

Where is she? Peter demanded. Is she still here?

As soon as Peter had gone off to the garage, Stern recalled that he had meant to speak with him about calling his sisters.

Mr. Stern? The policeman who had gone into the garage was standing there. Couple of the fellas wanted a word, if you don’t mind.

They were in Stern’s first-floor den, a tiny room that he kept largely to himself. Clara had painted the walls hunter green and the room was crowded with furniture, including a large desk on which certain household papers were carefully laid. It disturbed Stern to see the police stationing themselves in this room which had always been his most private place. Two policemen in uniform, a man and a woman, stood, while a plainclothes officer occupied the sofa. This third one, a detective apparently, rose desultorily to offer his hand.

Nogalski, he said. He gripped Stern’s hand tepidly and did not bother to look at him. He was a thick man, wearing a tweed sport coat. A hard type. They all were. The detective motioned to a facing easy chair. Behind Stern, the female officer mumbled something into her radio: We’re talkin’ to him now.

You up to a few questions, Sandy?

Of what nature?

The usual. You know. We got a report to make. Lieutenant’s on the way. Gotta fill him in. This come as a big surprise to you? the cop asked.

Stern waited.

Very much, he said.

She the type to get all depressed and unhappy, the missus?

This survey of Clara’s character, to be attempted in a few sentences, was for the moment well beyond him.

She was a serious person, Detective. You would not describe her as a blithe personality.

But was she seeing shrinks, you know, anything like that?

Not to my knowledge. My wife was not of a complaining nature, Detective. She was very private.

She wasn’t threatening to do this?

No.

The detective, mostly bald, looked directly at Stern for the first time. It was evident he did not believe him.

We haven’t found a note yet, you know.

Stern stirred a hand weakly. He could not explain.

And where have you been? one of the cops behind Stern asked.

Chicago.

For?

Legal business. I met with a number of lawyers. The fact that Dixon might be in very serious difficulties, so sorely troubling only an hour ago, recurred to Stern now with a disconcerting novelty. The urgency of that situation waved to him like a hand disappearing in the deep, out of reach for the time being.

How long you gone? Nogalski asked.

I left very early yesterday.

You talk to her?

I tried last night, but there was no answer. We have a symphony series. I assumed she had gone for coffee afterwards with friends.

Who spoke to her last, so far as you know?

Stern deliberated. Peter’s shrill manner would quickly antagonize the police.

My son might have.

He out there?

He is quite emotional at the moment.

Nogalski, for whatever reason, allowed himself a brief, disparaging smile.

You do that often? one of the cops behind him asked.

What is that, Officer?

Travel. Out of town?

Occasionally it is necessary.

Where’d you stay? the woman asked. Stern tried not to react to the drift of the questions. The officers, of course, knew by now who he was and reacted accordingly—they despised most criminal defense lawyers, who hindered the police at every turn and were often richly rewarded for their efforts. To the police, this was a natural opportunity—a chance to pester an adversary and to indulge their customary nasty fancies about foul play and motives. Maybe the spick was humping his girlfriend in Chi while somebody for hire set this up. You never know unless you ask.

On this occasion, I was at the Ritz. Stern stood. May I go? My son and I have yet to speak with his sisters.

Nogalski was watching him.

This doesn’t make much sense, said the detective.

It made no sense, the man said. This was his professional opinion. Stern looked intently at Nogalski. It was one of the hazards of Stern’s calling that he seldom felt grateful to the police.

Coming back down the hall, Stern could hear Peter’s voice. He was carrying on about something. The same ruddy-faced cop who had shown Stern into the garage was listening impassively. Stern took his son by the elbow to draw him away. This was intolerable. Intolerable! Some tough element of resistance within him was wearing away.

My God, they’re going to do an autopsy—did you know that? asked Peter as soon as they were alone in the corridor. Peter was an M.D. and today apparently he was haunted by his past, the pathological exams he had practiced on the bums turned up in gutters, the gruesome med school humor as six or seven students studied the innards of the deceased. Peter suffered with the thought of his mother as another mound of lifeless anatomy awaiting the coroner’s saw. You’re not going to allow that, are you?

A good deal shorter than his son, Stern observed Peter. Was it only with his father that this craven hysteria occurred? Stern wondered. The climate of their relations did not seem to have changed for years. Always there was this lamenting hortatory quality, too insistent to be passed off as mere whining. Stern had wondered for so long what it was his son expected him to do.

It is routine, Peter. The coroner must determine the cause of death.

‘The cause of death’? Do they think it was an accident? Are they going to do a brain scan and figure out what she was thinking? For God sake, we won’t have a body left to bury. It’s obvious. She killed herself. No one yet had said that aloud. Stern registered Peter’s directness as a kind of discourtesy—too coarse, too blunt. But no part of him riled up in shock.

This was not, he said, the moment to cross swords with the police. They were, as usual, being idiotic, conducting some kind of homicide investigation. They might wish to speak next to him.

Me? About what?

Your last conversations with your mother, I assume. I told them you were too distressed at the moment.

In his great misery, Peter broke forth with a brief, childish smile. Good, he said. Such a remarkably strange man. A peculiar moment passed between Stern and his son, a legion of things not understood. Then he reminded Peter that they needed to call his sisters.

Right, said Peter. A more sober cast came into his eye. Whatever his differences with his father, he was a faithful older brother.

Down the hall, Stern heard someone say, The lieutenant’s here. A large man ducked into the corridor, peering toward them. He was somewhere near Stern’s age, but time seemed to have had a different effect on him. He was large and broad, and like a farmer or someone who worked outdoors, he appeared to have maintained most of the physical strength of youth. He wore a light brown suit, a rumpled, synthetic garment, and a rayon shirt that hung loosely; when he turned around for a second, Stern could see an edge of shirttail trailing out beneath his jacket. He had a large rosy face and very little hair, a few thick gray clumps drawn across his scalp.

He dropped his chin toward Stern in a knowing fashion.

Sandy, he said.

Lieutenant, Stern answered. He had no memory of this man, except having seen him before. Some case. Some time. He was not thinking well at the moment.

When you get a chance, the lieutenant said.

Some confusion rose up between Stern and his son.

You talk to him. I’ll call, said Peter. You know, Marta and Kate. It’s better from me.

With a sudden lucid turn, the kind of epiphanal instant he might have expected at a time of high distress, Stern recognized a traditional family drama taking place. As his children had marched toward adulthood, Peter had assumed a peculiar leadership in the family—he was the one to whom his sisters and mother often turned. He had forged intensive secret bonds with each of them—Stern did not know how, because the same alliances were never formed with him. This terrible duty, Stern realized, should be his, but the paths of weakness were well worn.

Please say I shall speak to them soon.

Sure. A certain reflective light had come over Peter; he leaned against the wall for an instant, absorbing it all, worn out by his own high emotions. Life, he observed, is full of surprises.

In Stern’s den, the lieutenant was receiving a report from his officers. Nogalski had come strolling up as Stern emerged from the hallway. The lieutenant wanted to know what the policemen had been doing. Nogalski spoke. The others knew they had no place to answer.

I was asking a few questions, Lieutenant.

Think you’ve asked enough? Nogalski took a beat on that. They did not get along, the detective and the lieutenant—you could see that. Maybe you could lend a hand outside. There’s a real bunch of gawkers.

When the other officers were gone, the lieutenant gestured for Stern. He knocked at the door with the back of his hand so that it closed part way.

Well, you got a shitpot of troubles here, don’t you, Sandy? I’m sorry to see you again, under the circumstances. The lieutenant’s name was Radczyk, Stern remembered suddenly. Ray, he thought. You holdin’ up? he asked.

For the time being. My son is having some difficulty. The prospect of an autopsy for some reason upsets him.

The cop, shifting around the room, seemed to shrug.

We find a note someplace, we could do without it, I guess. I could probably fix it up with Russell’s office. He was referring to the coroner. They can always measure the C.O. in the blood. The old policeman looked at Stern directly then, aware probably that he was being too graphic. I owe, you know, he said.

Stern nodded. He had no idea what Radczyk was talking about.

The policeman sat down.

The fellas go over all the usual with you?

He nodded again. Whatever that was.

They were very thorough, said Stern.

The lieutenant understood at once.

Nogalski’s okay. He pushes, he’s okay. Rough around the edges. The lieutenant looked out the door. He was the type someone must have called a big oaf when he was younger. Before he had a badge and a gun. It’s a tough thing. I feel terrible for you. Just come home and found her, right?

The lieutenant was doing it all again. He was just much better at it than Nogalski.

She sick? the lieutenant asked.

Her health was excellent. The usual middle-age complaints. One of her knees was quite arthritic. She could not garden as much as she liked. Nothing else. From the study window, Stern could see the neighbors parting to let the ambulance pass. It rolled slowly through the crowd. The beacon, Stern noticed, was not turning. No point to that. He watched until the vehicle carrying Clara had disappeared in the fullness of the apple tree, just coming to leaf, at the far corner of the lot, then he brought himself back to the conversation. The left knee, Stern thought.

You don’t know of any reason?

Lieutenant, it should be evident that I failed to observe something I should have. He expected to get through this, but he did not. His voice quaked and he closed his eyes. The thought of actually breaking down before this policeman revolted him, but something in him was bleeding away. He was going to say that he had much to regret right now. But he was sure he could not muster that with any dignity. He said, I am sorry, I cannot help you.

Radczyk was studying him, trying to decide, in all likelihood, if Stern was telling the truth.

A policeman leaned into the room through the half-open door.

Lieutenant, Nogalski asked me to tell you they found something. Up in the bedroom. He didn’t want to touch it till you seen it.

What is that? asked Stern.

The cop looked at Stern, unsure if he should answer.

The note, the officer said at last.

It was there on Stern’s highboy, jotted on a single sheet of her stationery, laid out beside a pile of handkerchiefs which the housekeeper had ironed. Like the grocery list or a reminder to get the cleaning. Unassuming. Harmless. Stern picked up the sheet, overcome by this evidence of her presence. The lieutenant stood at his shoulder. But there was very little to see. Just one line. No date. No salutation. Only four words.

Can you forgive me?

2

IN THE DARK EARLY MORNING the day of the funeral, a dream seized Stern from sleep. He was wandering in a large house. Clara was there, but she was in a closet and would not come out. She clung shyly to one of the hanging garments, a woman in her fifties whose knees knocked in a pose of childish bashfulness. His mother called him, and his older brother, Jacobo, voices from other rooms. When he moved to answer them, Clara told him they were dead, and his body rushed with panic.

From the bed, he contemplated the illuminated digits on the clock radio. 4:58. He would not sleep again, too frightened by the thronging images of his dream. There had been such a peculiar look on Clara’s face when she told him Jacobo was dead, such a sly, calculating gleam.

About him the house, fully occupied, seemed to have taken on an inert, slumbering weight. His older daughter, Marta—twenty-eight, a Legal Aid lawyer in New York—had flown back the first night and slept now down the hall, in the room which had been hers as a child. His younger daughter, Kate, and her husband, John, who lived in a distant suburb, had also spent the night, rather than fight the unpredictable morning traffic over the river bridges. Silvia, Stern’s sister, was in the guest room, come from her country house to minister to her brother and to organize the house of grief. Only the two men, Peter and, of course, Dixon—forever the lone wolf—were missing.

Last night, the task of mourning in its grimmest ceremonial aspects had begun. The formal period of visitation would follow the funeral, but Stern, always ambivalent about religious formalities, had opened the house to various heartsore friends who seemed to need to comfort him—neighbors, two young lawyers from Stern’s office, his circle from the courthouse and the synagogue; Clara was an only child, but two separate pairs of her cousins had arrived from Cleveland. Stern received them all with as much grace as he could manage. At these times, one responded according to the most deeply trained impulses. To Stern’s mother, gone for decades but still in his dreams, matters of social form had been sacred.

But after the house had emptied and the family had trailed off to sleep, Stern had closed himself up in the bathroom off the bedroom he had shared with Clara, racked for the second time that evening by a wrenching, breathless bout of tears. He sat on the toilet, from which the frilled skirting that Clara had placed there decades before still hung, with a towel forced to his mouth, howling actually, uncontrolled, hoping no one would hear him. ‘What did I do?’ he asked repeatedly in a tiny stillborn voice as a rushing storm of grief blew through him. Oh, Clara, Clara, what did I do?

Now, examining himself in the bathroom mirrors, he found his face puffy, his eyes bloodshot and sore. For the moment he had regained some numbed remoteness, but he knew the limits of his strength. What a terrible day this would become. Terrible. He dressed fully, except for his suit coat, and made himself a single boiled egg, then sat alone, watching the glint of the sunrise enlarge on the glossy surface of the mahogany dining table, until he felt some new incision of grief beginning to knife through him. Desperately—futilely—he tried to calm himself.

How, he thought again, how could he have failed to notice in the bed beside him a woman who in every figurative sense was screaming in pain? How could he be so dull, his inner ear so deafened? The signs were such, Stern knew, that even in his usual state of feverish distraction he could have taken note. Clara was normally a person of intense privacy. For years, she had made a completely personal study of Japan; he knew nothing about it except the titles of the books that occasionally showed up on her desk. At other moments, she would read a musical score; the entire symphony would rage along inside her. Barely perceptible, her chin might drop; but not a bar, a note was so much as whispered aloud.

But this was something more. Two or three nights recently he had returned home late, preoccupied with the case he was trying—a messy racketeering conspiracy—to find Clara sitting in the dark; there was no book or magazine, not even the TV’s vapid flickering. It was her expression that frightened him most. Not vacant. Absent. Removed. Her mouth a solemn line, her eyes hard as agates. It seemed a contemplation beyond words. There had been such spells before. Between them, they were referred to as moods and allowed to pass. For years, he prided himself on his discretion.

Driven now, he moved restlessly about the house, holding the items she had held, examining them as if for clues. In the powder room, he touched a tortoiseshell comb, a Lalique dish, the dozen cylinders of lipstick that were lined up like shotgun shells beside the sink. My God! He squeezed one of the gold tubes in his hands as if it were an amulet. On a narrow wig stand in the foyer, three days’ mail was piled. Stern fingered the envelopes, neatly stacked. Bills, bills—they were painful to behold. These prosaic acts, visiting the cleaner or department store, humbly bespoke her hopes. On the sixth of March, Clara expected life to continue. What had intervened?

Westlab Medical Center. Stern considered the envelope. It was directed to Clara Stern at their address. Inside, he found an invoice. The services, identified by a computer code, had been rendered six weeks ago and were described simply as Test. Stern was still. Then he moved directly to the kitchen, already counseling himself to reason, exerting his will powerfully to contain the shameful outbreak of grateful feelings. But he was certain, positive, she had made no mention of doctors or of tests. Clara recorded her appointments in a leather book beside the telephone. Luncheons. The inevitable musical occasions. The dinner dates and synagogue and bar affairs of their social life. He had brought the bill and matched its date against the book. 9:45 Test. He paged back and forth. On the thirteenth there was another entry. 3:30 Dr. He searched further. On the twenty-first, the same. Dr. Test. Dr.

Cancer. Was that it? Something advanced. Had she resolved to make her departure without allowing the family to beg her, for their sake as much as hers, to undergo the oncologist’s life-prolonging tortures? That would be like Clara. To declare that zone of ultimate sovereignty. Her mark of dignity, decorum, intense belief was here.

Pacing, he had arrived once more in the dining room, and he heard movement on the second floor, above him. With even an instant’s distraction, he felt suddenly that, for all the blind willingness with which his heart ran to this solution, he had been caught up in fantasy. There was some explanation of these medical events more mundane, less heroic. Somehow he found the suspicion chilling. Last night, blundering about in their bathroom, searching for tissue, he had come across a bottle of hair coloring hidden in the dark corner of a drawer. He had no idea how long she had concealed this harmless vanity. Months. Or years? It made no difference. But mortification shuddered through him. He had the same thought now: so much he had not noticed, did not know about that person, this woman, his wife.

*   *   *

Daddy? Stern’s daughter Kate, his youngest child, was at the foot of the stairs. She was in her nightgown, a tall stalk of a young woman, slender and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Cara, he answered. He had always used this endearment with the girls at times. Stern was still holding the lab bill, and he pressed the envelope into the back pocket of his trousers. This was not a matter to discuss with the children, not today, at any event, when the thought would foment even greater anguish, and certainly not with Kate. Beauty, Stern suspected, had made the world too simple for Kate. She seemed to drift along, buffered by her uncommon good looks and a kindly disposition. Perhaps that apportioned blame unfairly. Much must have happened here, at home. Clara had concentrated so on Peter; Stern in turn shared a natural intensity with his older daughter, Marta. Kate had never been irradiated by the most intense energies of the mysterious family dynamic.

As a youngster, she had displayed the same intellectual talents as her brother and sister; and she had Clara’s musical talent. But all of that had withered. In high school she had met John, a sweet, Gentile lunk, an almost laughable prototype, a football player and a paragon of blond male beauty with his apple-pie face and hapless manner. A year after college, in spite of her parents’ gentle discouragement, she had married him. John started out in his father’s printshop, but it was soon clear the business could not sustain two families, and so Dixon had put him to work at MD, where, after some false starts, John seemed to be making do, one more ex-jock jostling about on the playing field of the markets. Kate herself taught school. She loved her husband with a pitiable tender innocence, but Stern at moments could feel his heart rub itself raw with worry at the prospect of the moment Kate finally learned about the wallops the world could deliver. Now she touched his hand.

Daddy, I want you to know something. We weren’t going to say anything for another month, but everyone is so sad— Kate’s mouth trembled slightly.

Dear God, thought Stern, she is pregnant.

She lifted her face proudly. Kate said, We’re going to have a baby.

Oh my, said Stern. He grasped her hand. My, he said again, smiling bravely and trying to recall exactly how he would be expected to reflect his delight. He kissed her first on the temple, then took her in his arms. He did so only rarely, and here in her thin nightgown he was amazed by the feel of his daughter, her narrowness, the loose movement of her breasts against him. Kate wept with sudden abandon, then drew back.

We couldn’t say anything, she explained to her father. It wasn’t safe yet. We’d had some problems. And now I keep thinking, What if Mommy knew? Once more she became uncontrollable. Once more Stern took his dark, beautiful daughter in his arms. But even as he held Kate, he found there was an abrupt adjustment in his own vision of things. Clara had abandoned the children, too. He had viewed this last act of hers as aimed exclusively at him. But the children, grown but troubled, were still not past the point where they required occasional assistance. Would it have made a difference, had Clara known Kate’s secret? Or had she decided that they too’d had the last of what she could stand to give?

Above them there was stirring. Marta was on the stairs, a smaller woman, also dark, with wire-rimmed glasses and a bosky do of untamed black hair. She regarded the scene below with a vulnerable look of her own.

Group cry? she asked.

Stern awaited Kate’s lead. She squared her shoulders and dabbed her eyes. The entire family was to know. As he prepared for her declaration, entirely unexpected, an arrow of joy shot forth from the leaden-like mass of his interior and he was overcome by a startlingly exact recollection of the abrupt ways a baby’s hands and legs would move, random and sudden as life itself.

I just told Daddy. I’m going to have a baby.

Marta’s shriek split the household. A self-serious person, she carried on mindlessly. She embraced her sister, hugged her father. The two young women sat together holding hands. Peter arrived then, coming early to beat the traffic, and was informed. With the commotion John emerged, and everyone rose to hug him. In response to his reticence, they were always excessive. They had labored for years to make John feel accepted in a situation where, for many reasons, he knew he never would be. The group by then had migrated together to the living room. Silvia entered in her housecoat, looking grave; clearly she had taken their hoopla as the noise of one more calamity. Silvia and Dixon had never had a family of their own, much to Silvia’s despair, and the news, so unexpected, brought Silvia, too, to tears. It was barely past seven and the family, overcome by all of this, clung to one another. And there in the living room, Stern, at last, longed for Clara. He had been waiting for it. More than the disorder and the loss, at this moment there was the absence.

When he looked up, Marta was watching. It had savaged Stern with sorrow to see her the night she had arrived. Marta, brave Marta, his boldest child, trod soldier-like up the walk, a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, weeping openly as soon as she climbed from the taxi. Stern embraced her at the door. ‘Daddy, I never thought she was a happy person, but—’ Throttled by emotion, Marta got no further. Stern held her and suffered privately the unequivocal nature of his daughter’s estimate of her mother. She had always held Clara at greater distance than the other two; as a result, perhaps, she had more to regret.

Across the room, his daughter, with her father’s tiny close-set eyes, looked at him sadly now.

I miss her, too, she mouthed.

*   *   *

Stern, a frequent morning chef, cooked for the entire group. He fried eggs and flapjacks, and Marta squeezed grapefruit for juice, a family tradition. By nine, an hour before the mortician’s limousine was to arrive, they were all fed and dressed, quietly gathered once more in the living room.

How about bridge? Marta asked. She prided herself on being unrestrained by convention. In most things, Marta styled herself in the ways of the late sixties. She had been a child then and took it as a time of great romance; she went about in flowing gowns and high-laced boots, with her wind-sprung hair. Mom liked it when we played.

Oh, sure, said Peter. She liked it when we square-danced, too, while we were kids. We can do-si-do to the chapel.

Marta whispered to her brother, Oh fuck off, but smiled. Marta had always tempered her rivalry with Peter, and she granted him special liberties now. Kate’s tears were constant, but Peter, of the three, seemed the hardest hit, morose, pensive, persistently out of balance. He went off by himself at many moments but returned inevitably to the comfort of his sisters. Close-knit, Stern’s children appeared to take strength from each other.

Marta again mentioned bridge. Daddy, would you mind?

Stern lifted his palms, not quite an answer.

Will you play? Kate asked her father.

Silvia motioned Stern forward, encouraging him.

I have a few things to look after for later. She was preparing the household for the crush of callers that would follow the funeral.

I shall help Aunt Silvia. You four play.

I’ll help Aunt Silvia, said John. He was on his feet already, a huge young man, a mountainous blond with a neck thick as a tire rim. He had never mastered the game, like so many other things attached to his in-laws. The Sterns with their quiet intense ways had mystified John for most of a decade.

Come on, Marta called. She was in the sun room, already looking for cards. Stern understood his daughter’s excitement. For an instant, it would be as when she was seventeen and the children were all safe from the world of grownup difficulties. Stern, as ever, found himself chafed and touched by his Marta and her impulses.

Katy, I will play with you, Stern announced. He was always a partner with one of the girls, usually Kate. He and Peter squabbled when they played together. Stern had spent much of the little time he had at home playing one game or another with his children. Chutes and Ladders. Monopoly. Word games when they were in the primary grades. The four of them spent hours around a game table in the sun room. Clara seldom participated. Often she would sit in a fifth chair, with hands and ankles primly crossed, watching or, when necessary, assisting Kate. But she was not obtrusive. This, for better or worse—rules, moves, strategies—was Alejandro’s time.

Peter made the cards and handed them to Stern to deal. The sun room—referred to in the old architect’s plans, drawn in the twenties, as ‘the solarium’—was a narrow area, rimmed with windows, floored in slate. From here they looked directly at Clara’s garden. It was the time of year when she would have begun to turn the soil. The stalks of last year’s gladioli, trimmed neatly almost to the soil, rose in rows, survivors of the mild winter.

Stern bid a weak club. He played all conventions. Anything but hand signals, Clara said.

Are you going back to work after the baby? Marta asked her sister.

Kate seemed a bit puzzled. Her future, such as it was, was apparently beyond her. Within, Stern seemed to cringe. This child with a child! By John, no less. Vey iz mir. Kate told Marta that they did not know yet how the money would work out or how she would feel about leaving the baby.

Oh, it’ll be your first, said Peter. You’ll want to give it lots of attention. It will always be special.

The doorbell rang. Through the front panes, Stern saw his brother-in-law. Dixon had returned to town last night. He had been in New York on pressing business and had delayed flying home. Stern had felt slighted—the usual with Dixon—and he was taken aback, therefore, at his relief at seeing Dixon on the threshold with his bags yesterday evening. His brother-in-law, a large, solid man, had thrown his arms about Stern and made a good show of great sorrow. One could seldom be certain how Dixon truly felt. That was part of his genius—he was like a forest, full of many colors. He could greet you at any instant with a salesman’s blather or the gruffest truths.

This morning, however, Dixon’s attention had returned more typically to himself. As Stern took his coat, Dixon lowered his voice discreetly.

When you’re back at the stand, Stern, I’d like to ask you a question or two.

Dixon always addressed him military fashion, last name only. They had met originally in the service, which had led, by turns, to Dixon’s making Silvia’s acquaintance and to his becoming in time her suitor, a development to which Stern was still not fully adjusted, three decades after the fact.

Business questions? he asked Dixon.

That kind of item. I don’t need to trouble you now. I want to hear about your trip to Chicago.

Ah yes, thought Stern, the paths of ego were deep and the living needed to go on.

I understand your concern, Dixon. The situation may be somewhat involved, however. It is best that we discuss it another time.

A shadow passed, predictably, over Dixon. Fifty-five years old, he was tan, trim, and, even with this darkened look, the image of vitality. He was a powerful man; he worked out every day with weight equipment. Dixon worshipped at the same altar as so many others in America: the body and its uses. His dark brass-colored hair had grown paler and more brittle with age, but was cleverly barbered to give him a mannerly business-like look.

You didn’t like what you heard? he asked Stern.

In fact, Stern had learned little of substance. The documents he had examined in Chicago, account statements and trading records of the clients for an eight- or nine-month period, had been unrevealing. There was no telling what offense the government was investigating, or even who had suggested to them the prospect of a crime.

There may be a problem, Dixon. It is too early to become greatly alarmed.

Sure. Dixon drew a cigarette from an inside pocket. He was smoking heavily again, an old bad habit recently grown worse, which Stern took as a sign of concern. Three years ago the IRS set up a full-scale encampment in Dixon’s conference room, with barely a riffle in his breezy style. This time, however, Dixon was on edge. With word of the first subpoena, he had been on the phone to Stern, demanding that the government be stopped. For the present, however, Stern was loath to contact Ms. Klonsky, the Assistant United States Attorney. At the U.S. Attorney’s Office they seldom told you more than they wanted you to know. Moreover, Stern feared that a call from him might somehow focus the government’s attention on Dixon, whose name as yet had gone unmentioned. Perhaps the grand jury was looking at a number of brokerage houses. Perhaps something besides MD connected the customers. For the present it was best to tiptoe about, observing the government from cover. They’re always looking for something, Dixon said bravely now, and went off to find Silvia.

In the sun room, Stern’s children were still speaking about the baby.

Will John help out? Marta asked. Change diapers and stuff?

Kate reared back, astonished.

Of course. He’s in heaven. Why wouldn’t he?

Marta shrugged. At moments like this, it concerned Stern that she seemed so dumbfounded by men. Her father’s daughter, Marta, regrettably, was not a pretty woman. She had Stern’s broad nose and small dark eyes. Worse still, she shared his figure. Stern and his daughter were short, with a tendency to gather weight in their lower parts. Marta submitted herself almost masochistically to the rigors of diet and exercise, but you could never escape what nature had provided. It was not, she was apt to say, the form favored by fashion magazines. Notwithstanding, Marta had always attracted her admirers—but there seemed an inevitable doom in her relations. In her conversation there were, by idle reference, a procession of men who came and went. Older, younger. Things always foundered. Marta, in the meantime, now came to her own