«Um. Why don't you? I'm still pretty confused.»

«All right.» The dog was so tall that both Pepsi and I had to bend our heads way back to see his face.

«Pepsi, inside here are all the toys your mother owned when she was a girl on the other side. If you'd like, you may have two of them to take along with you on our trip. They have none of the magic of the Bones, but because they were your mother's when she was your age, they may comfort you if you are frightened sometime. Would you like to see them?»

«Oh yeah! What kind of toys?» Pepsi reached for the large door but couldn't pull it, so Felina the Wolf took the clasp carefully in her mouth and did it for him.

There were no windows or electric lights inside, but somehow it was bright as day in there. It took several seconds for the sight to register on me, but when it did, all I could say was, «Oh, my God!»

On a wooden table in the middle of the hangar were hundreds of toys of all sizes. Immediately I saw the tan stuffed dog with the black nose I had slept with for years when I was a little girl. Every night I would put my arms around it, kiss its nose that squeaked, and say, «Good night, Farfel.»

«_Farfel_! Where did you get him?»

«We have all of your toys here, Cullen.»

It chilled and excited me – they were a treasured, lost picture album or time capsule. I walked to the table and slowly touched the things I had loved and lost and forgotten; things that had meant the world to me once and now, with a heart-pulling jolt, reminded me of that world. The ballerina I had left in a hotel room in Washington DC, the green sea monster whose yellow tongue popped out when you squeezed him. A «Winky-Dink» draw-on-your-television-screen kit, a cerise clay statue I had made of my father holding me in his arms: both of us were bald and round and had toothpick holes for eyes, noses and mouths.

Pepsi chose two things I didn't remember at all – a white «Sky King» cowboy hat and a rubber Popeye doll. It intrigued me to know why _those_ two things, but when I asked he shrugged. He wanted to know who Popeye was; he liked the sailor's funny arms.

«He's a guy in cartoons. He eats spinach.»

«What's a cartoon?»

What kid didn't know about cartoons?

On the other hand, what kid was named Pepsi?

I asked Mr. Tracy if I could take one of the toys. For some reason, of all the things there, I most wanted to have the small baseball glove I'd used daily one summer when I was six and very much the tomboy. To my surprise, the big dog said a very firm «No.»

Outside the hangar the sun had just gone down and the sky was the color of peaches and plums. The wolf and the camel sat waiting for us with two leather knapsacks at their enormous feet. The air smelled of dust and dying heat. The only sounds were those we made.

Pepsi slid on his cowboy hat and carefully adjusted it. We picked up the heavy sacks and started walking north. I _think_.

One night not long after I had this dream, a six-foot nine-inch jerk named DeFazio came down full force on top of Danny in a game and turned his knee into mush. I wasn't there but they told me that, true to form, Danny immediately forgave DeFazio for maiming him.

What followed was the Italian version of a hospital emergency room – _Pronto Soccorso_ – where the only pronto thing was complete confusion about what to do about my poor husband's leg.

No one called me, so the first I knew of the disaster was Danny hobbling through our apartment door on a pair of aluminum crutches, his knee taped and bundled . . . and ruined.

I didn't know whether to yell or cry, but I kept my mouth shut because I was afraid either reaction would make Danny feel even worse.

We went through the next fewr days very carefully, each of us trying to be as kind as possible to the other and not letting them see how very scared we were. I had felt all along that the greatness of the last few months couldn't go on forever of course, but who is ever prepared for disaster? Life is full of villains and villainous moments, but who wants to think about that? Anyway, what kind of life is it when you are afraid of every knock on the door or every letter in the mailbox?

Danny pretended to take it in his stride, but his worry about what we were going to do next was palpable: his wife was pregnant and his successful career as an athlete was completely _finito_. Life had hit him right in the head with the ball and even sane, calm Danny hadn't a clue about what to do next.

His team paid for the two necessary operations, but then it was, «Here's your last check, pal. See you around.» Their quick, albeit understandable indifference made me livid and made a lot of the days that followed pretty damned dark.

Luckily, by then the season was almost over and we had been planning to visit America anyway. But sitting down one night over the kitchen table, we reviewed everything and decided we would be better off moving back there for good.

We packed everything in a week and said good-bye to a life both of us had grown to like very much. If I had been by myself I would have been in bad shape, but I had Danny James and our baby and I was sorry things had gone wrong, but big deal!

Danny was tremendously cheered by the fact that after making exactly two overseas calls, he landed a job. It was a lovely thing with the New York Parks and Recreational Department, organizing programs like summer basketball clinics for ghetto kids.

«_Two_ phone calls! Danny, if I made two phone calls, one of them would be a wrong number! How on earth did you do it?»

He took a coin out of his pocket and «disappeared» it for me. «It just happens you're married to a very nice magician, honeybun.»

With the help of my parents, we found our apartment in «The Axe Boy Arms,» as I began calling it after our illustrious downstairs neighbor made his debut. It was on 90th Street near Third Avenue and was a good, sunny place with room enough for both for us as well as the baby when it arrived.

Danny was able to walk normally again by the time we'd moved back and had completely settled into the apartment. But in that time something big had changed in my man. Perhaps it was realizing he too was human – complete with breakable bones, twistable knees, etcetera. He was quieter during those first days back in America and sometimes it was obvious he was brooding, which wasn't like Danny at all. That's not to say he became mean or philosophical or . . . weird. Just a little quieter and more . . . self-contained. Whenever I was able to make him smile or laugh about something, it was one of the day's victories.

The good thing was he liked his job from the start and looked forward to going to work every morning.

We began spending weekends with my parents at their house on the Long Island shore. As expected, they loved Danny from the moment they met and the four of us spent good days together, feeling comfortable and eating summer fruit and doing little else besides sitting in the sun and being glad we were all together.

One of the many discoveries I made that summer was realizing I would never again swim in the sea with my father. He was seventy that year and afraid for his heart; a recent operation had left him tired and frightened.

Every year when I was a girl, we spent the entire month of July at my parents' house on the Island. It seemed all we ever did then was swim in the ocean. We had inner tubes, water wings, rafts; a flotilla of things to keep us buoyed up after we'd grown exhausted from doing it with our own limbs.

In my memory, all that remained of those lemony-bright days at the shore were picnic baskets full of beach food – cold fried chicken, lukewarm ginger ale, «Hostess Snowballs» – and my father's hair plastered down to his head, gleaming, as he swam alongside me in the surf. It was as if he owned the ocean.