Noah walked in with a glass of champagne, which he tried to hide when he saw Delia. “Give me that,” she ordered.

“Aw, Delia.”

She took it from him and set it on a passing tray. “By the way,” she said, “where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“She didn’t come upstairs?”

He shrugged. “I guess she must have had other stuff to do,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and left the room before she could comment-not that she would have been so tactless.

Binky’s sister, the bearer of the tray, tut-tutted. “I saw her walk out directly after the vows,” she said. “Her and her sister both. Doodoo, is that what they call her?”

“Dudi.”

“All this brouhaha about his family’s reaction! How about ours? We could have said plenty, trust me: marrying a man old enough to be her father.”

“Well,” Delia said, “I’m just glad she and Nat found each other.”

“Yes, I suppose,” the sister said, sighing.

Then Nat popped up at Delia’s elbow. “Have you met my sister-in-law?” he asked her. “Bernice, my new sister-in-law. Can you imagine someone my age getting a brand-new sister-in-law?” He was exultant, his voice unsteady, his face so firm-skinned and glowing that he looked like a pretend old man made up for a high-school play. If he’d noticed his daughters’ disappearance, it hadn’t dampened his happiness.

During the drive home, Delia told Noah she thought his mother was very pretty. In fact, this was not strictly true. She had decided Ellie had a garish quality; the high contrast of her coloring went over better on TV than in person. But she wanted an excuse to mention her. All Noah said in response was, “Yeah,” and he drummed his fingers and looked out the side window.

“And you looked mighty handsome up there, too,” she said.

“Oh, sure.”

“You don’t believe me? Just watch,” she teased him. “The next wedding you’re in might very well be your own.”

But he didn’t so much as smile. “Fat chance,” he said.

“What-you’re not getting married?”

“Me and Dad have blown it with women,” he said glumly. “There must be something about them we don’t understand.”

In other circumstances, she might have been amused, but now she felt touched. She glanced at him. He went on staring out the window. Finally she reached over and gave him a pat on the knee, and they rode the rest of the way without speaking.

16

“If x is the age Jenny is now, and y is the age she was when she went to California…,” Delia said.

T. J. Renfro put his head on the kitchen table.

“Now, T.J., this is not so hard! See, we know that she was three years older than the girlfriend she was visiting in California, and we know that when her girlfriend was-”

“This is not going to do me one bit of good in real life,” T.J. informed her in a smothered voice.

He had the kind of haircut that seemed half finished-medium length on top but trailing long black oily strands in back. Both of his upper arms were braceleted with barbed-wire tattoos, and his black leather vest bore more zippers than you’d find in most people’s entire wardrobes. Unlike Delia’s other pupils, who met with her in the counseling room over at the high school, T.J. came to the house. He had been suspended till May 1 and was not allowed to set foot on school property; showed up instead at the Millers’ back door every Thursday afternoon at three o’clock. Delia didn’t want to know what he’d been suspended for.

She told him, “Real life is full of problems like this! Finding the unknown quantity: there’s lots of times you’ll need to do that.”

“Like I’m really going to walk up to some chick and ask how old she is,” T.J. said, raising his head, “and she’s going to say, ‘Well, ten years ago I was twice the age my third cousin was when…’”

“Oh, now, you’re missing the point,” Delia said.

“And how come this Jenny would visit someone three years younger anyway? That don’t make sense.”

The phone rang, and Delia rose to answer it.

“She probably just claimed she was visiting, and then hid out in some motel with her boyfriend,” T.J. said.

Delia lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello!”

Whoever it was hung up. “That’s happened a lot lately,” Delia said, hanging up herself. She returned to her chair.

“It’s electrical backwash,” T.J. told her.

“Backwash?”

“If you don’t use your line awhile, it, like, develops all this pent-up power that spills out in this kind of like overflow and sets your phone to ringing.”

Delia cocked her head.

“Happens at my mom’s house once or twice a week,” T.J. told her.

“Well, here it’s been happening more on the order of once or twice a day,” Delia said.

The phone rang again. She said, “See?”

“Just don’t answer.”

“It kills me not to answer.”

He tipped back in his chair and studied her. The phone gave a third ring, a fourth. Then the outside door burst open and Noah tumbled in, bringing along a gust of fresh air. “Hey, T.J.,” he said. He shed his school knapsack and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

In the pause that followed, T.J. and Delia watched him closely.

“Naw, I don’t guess I can,” Noah said. He turned away from them. “I just can’t, that’s all.” Another pause. “It’s nothing like that, honest! Just I got all this homework and stuff. Well, I better go now. Bye.” He hung up.

“Who was that?” Delia asked.

“Nobody.”

He slung his knapsack over one shoulder and walked off toward his room.

T.J. and Delia looked at each other.

The next afternoon, a cool, sunny Friday, Delia went with Vanessa to a knitwear sale at Young Mister. Spring would be arriving any minute now, and Noah had outgrown all last spring’s clothes. It was an excruciatingly slow trip, because Greggie was in the midst of his terrible twos and refused to ride in his stroller. He had to walk every inch of the way. Delia felt she had never seen Bay Borough in such detail-every plastic cup lid wheeling along the sidewalk, every sparrow pecking tinfoil in the gutter. They didn’t start heading back until nearly three o’clock. “Oh-oh,” Delia said, “look at the time. Noah will be home before I am.”

“Isn’t he going to his mother’s?” Vanessa asked.

“Not this week.”

“I thought he went every Friday.”

“Well, I guess something must have come up.”

They had reached the corner where they separated, and Delia said, “Bye, Greggie. Bye, Vanessa.”

“So long, Dee,” Vanessa said. “Let’s ask Belle if she wants to get together over the weekend.”

“Fine with me.”

Belle was saving all her weekends for Mr. Lamb these days, but Delia had been ordered to keep that a secret.

At the grade school, children were already pouring onto the playground. Delia didn’t try to find Noah, though. She knew he’d want to walk home with his friends. She sidestepped a runaway skateboard, smiled at a little girl collecting scattered papers, and politely ignored a mother and son quarreling next to their car.

But wait. The son was Noah. The mother was Ellie.

Wearing her cream-colored coat from the wedding but looking frazzled and disordered, Ellie was trying to wrestle Noah into the passenger seat. And Noah was pulling away from her, his jacket wrenched halfway off his arms. “Mom,” he kept saying. “Mom. Stop.”

Delia said, “Noah?”

They threw her an identical distracted stare and went on with their tussle. Ellie started mashing Noah’s head down the way policemen did on TV, guiding their handcuffed suspects into squad cars.

“What’s happening here?” Delia asked. She made a grab for Ellie’s wrist. “Let go of him!”

Ellie flung her off so violently that she knocked Delia in the face; her sharp-stoned ring grazed Delia’s forehead. Noah, meanwhile, managed to yank himself free. He stumbled several steps backward and adjusted his jacket. His knapsack was gaping open and spilling papers. (Those were the papers the little girl was collecting!) He wiped his fist across his nose and said, “Gee, Mom.”