"She was a whore!" I said.

"Mebbe so," he agreed, startling me. "We've all done some terrible things since this whole bad business began." He pulled off a glove and ran his hand roughly through his wavy hair, as if he was puzzling out the best way to say what he thought. "But there's still a difference between doin' terrible things and bein' a terrible person. Your mum was a fine lady, but she was lonely for your dad, and if she took her comfort where she could find it, who're yeh to sit in holy judgment? Your mum had a lot of love for these children here, and she did a lot of good things for them, and I don't much like listenin' to you spittin' on her good name."

"You think she was good? I can tell you stories-"

"Sure, and so can I. For every bad story yeh tell me, I could probably tell yeh six good ones to counter it."

"You know why she had so much love to give these kids?" I could feel the blood rushing to my face. "Because she sure as hell didn't waste any of it on her own. I'll tell you how much love she had! My sister moved off to Australia, she couldn't stand my mother's silence. And I was so pissed off at finding a different man in her bed every time I saw her, I finally stopped going to see her. You know she divorced me."

"You divorced her. She needed you, lad."

"That's what she said, too. She needed. Didn't you ever notice that everything was always about her and her loss, and what she needed now. She needed us to take care of her now. That's what she said. But who was going to take care of us? She wouldn't. All she did was demand. She screamed at me, every day-it was all my fault that nothing worked anymore, why couldn't I be a better son? She wouldn't leave me alone. She was driving me crazy. Why do you think I went into the army? I could have pleaded exemption, but it was the fastest way I could think of to get away from her."

"She was grievin', lad-"

"So was I! And she wasn't there for me, so why should I have been there for her!"

"It's not the same, lad. You lost your dad, and that's a hard one to handle for anybody. But what she lost is so much greater than what you lost that there's no comparison. She lost her lover, her mate, her friend, her companion, her partner. You lost your dad, but she lost her whole reason for living. Everything she ever did, she did for your Dad. She was so alone without him-yeh never noticed that, did yeh? The poor woman was in such pain."

"How do you know all this?" I demanded. I was holding one of the spikes like a club.

"She told me, she did," Jack said. "And no, I never did sleep with her. I could have. Lots of men did. She was a lovely lady-and a lady in every sense of the word-but they'd get up in the morning and they'd leave her. And she'd be alone again. Nah, it wasn't good. But they never sat with her and listened to her, never let her say all that she had to say. She reached out for yeh, Jim. Yeh and your sister. But Maggie was mourning the loss of her children and yeh were so wrapped up in yourself that neither of yeh were hearing. She needed yeh, that's why she plucked and pulled so hard. She was goin' down without a life jacket. And then, when she needed yeh the most, yeh ran away from her. What was she to do? She started grabbing for any man who would hold her, if even for a little while. The same way any drownin' person grabs for any piece of flotsam. Yeh only saw the grabbing. Yeh never saw the person drownin'." He snorted. "Probably, because it would have meant yeh would have had to stop worryin' about your own drownin' for a while."

"You son of a bitch," I said coldly. "You don't know what I've been through."

"You're right. And I don't rightly care to know, either. I think you're a selfish spoiled brat and I don't care to spend much time with yeh. I'm puttin' up these fences because Betty-John asked me to help yeh; that's the only reason." And then he added, "And mebbe a little out of respect for your mum. Now, are yeh going to hit me with that spike in your hand, or are yeh going to put it in the ground and get on with the job?"

I threw it down at his feet. That was stupid.

Jack just looked at me.

So I picked it up again and jammed it into the ground, anchoring a loop of razor-ribbon. I drove the spike in hard with the gas-hammer. And the next six too.

Jason was right. Getting a person angry was very enlightening. And then I stopped in frustration.

"What's the matter, son?" Jack asked abruptly.

"Nothing," I snapped back at him. "Everything. Dammit, I hate being wrong." I stood there with the gas-hammer poised over the seventh spike and I didn't have the strength to squeeze the trigger. I felt suddenly exhausted and sank to my knees. "I keep trying to do my best and it's never good enough for anybody."

I stopped myself from saying more. My throat hurt. My eyes hurt.

I looked out across the bay, waiting for the frustration to pass. The water was dark and gray and dirty looking. Red sludge? Probably. I looked over at Jack; he was waiting for me to say something. It was hard for me to speak. "Okay, I never had the chance to say good-bye to her. At least, my dad and I . . . well, that was complete. But . . .

"I was right. Yeh haven't done your cryin', have yeh?"

I glowered up at him. "Go fuck yourself. Leave me alone."

I levered myself back to my feet and strode off away, just to be alone for a while. Just to cool off for a minute.

Dove came pushing through the dry brush and made ticktocking noises at me.

"I don't understand that talk, Dove. Why can't you speak in English?"

Dove looked hurt and retreated quickly, and I felt like an even bigger asshole than I already was. That's right. Take it out on the kid.

Except-everything Jack Balaban had said was right. I had abandoned her when she needed me the most, the same way I'd abandoned everybody else when they needed me. That was the pattern of my life. Get close, get close enough to hurt-and then betray.

But always make sure that you have a good reason first. A good reason always lets you off the hook.

The funny thing was that I couldn't cry.

I couldn't cry because I couldn't remember her. I couldn't remember her face.

What I kept seeing was the enigmatic smile of that Japanese fellow at dinner that night. I kept seeing the smarmy greediness of the man she was sleeping with, Alan Wise, or whatever his name had been. I remember wondering about worms in Santa Cruz. I remembered everything except why I should care.

All I could remember were all the things I resented: the time she did this to me, the time she did that. I was glad to be free of her. No. Jack Balaban was a stupid old Welshman, who made noises to children. How could I be mourning someone I was so angry with?

Damn.

I pushed through the brush, in the direction Dove had come from.

I'd called Dr. Davidson in Atlanta once. He'd actually answered his own phone. I'd wanted to ask him a question. "Is it possible to grieve for a whole planet?"

He hadn't said yes, he hadn't said no. What he'd said was, "You don't think it's possible, that's why you're asking." And I'd had to admit that was the truth.

"Jim," he'd said. "The Earth is a part of you; the cool green hills of Earth are a part of all of us, and they always will be. We haven't lost them. We just have to look for them in our hearts for a while, and hold them there as a vision of what once was."

"And will someday be again," I added. Dr. Davidson didn't respond to that. "You don't agree?"

"I don't know." There was something about the way he said it. Flat. Unemotionally. He really didn't know. It was chilling. The voice I depended on for answers didn't have all the answers.

"If we can't grieve for a whole planet," I said, "how do we do our grieving?"

"A piece at a time," said Dr. Davidson. "You can't do everything at once. Do it one part at a time. Grieve for the great elephants. Grieve for the verdant grass. Grieve for the shining dolphins and the laughing otters and the dusty grasshoppers. Cry for the golden butterflies and the fat wrinkled walruses and the silly-looking duck-billed platypuses. Weep for the red roses and the tall ficus and the sprawling green ivy. Sorrow for the highflying eagles. Even the scuttling scorpions and the ugly-tough crabgrass and all the tiny diatoms. Grieve for the purple mountains and the silent icebergs and the deep blue rivers. Grieve for them all, one piece at a time, one day at a time. And in your grief, let them live in your heart.