But Mary wasn't to be outsmarted. She held tight to the pole through the step and then thanked the driver on the way out, which was something else the nuns had taught her. Turn the other cheek, even when people shit on you for no reason. Mary had had to overcome that thinking to be a lawyer; parochial school hadn't prepared her for anything except sainthood.

And the job openings were so few.

The rooms on the first floor of her parents' rowhouse were strung like beads on a rosary: living room, dining room, and kitchen. The tiny kitchen was the only room in which the DiNunzios spent time. It contained a square Formica table with padded chairs and was ringed with refaced white cabinets and a white counter with water cracks in each corner. Mass cards and Easter palm aged behind bumpy black switch plates, though the faded Pope John photo had fallen off the wall last year and cracked its frame on the thin linoleum. Mary's mother had taken it as a bad sign and made a week of novenas. Mary had declined to remind her that Jesus Christ didn't believe in the evil eye.

'Is it too late to stop by, Dad?' Mary asked, her face brushing against the worn plaid cotton of her father's bathrobe. He was giving Mary a hug in the warm kitchen, and when he pulled away, his eyes looked hurt at the question.

'Whadda you mean, baby?' her father said softly. 'Sure, you can always come home, no matter how late. You know I'm up, watchin' TV.'

A short, soft man, Mariano DiNunzio was almost seventy-five, with pudgy cheeks in a barely lined face, and full lips with deep laugh lines. Bifocals with dark frames slipped down a bulbous nose and he wore a white sleeveless T-shirt and pajama pants under his bathrobe. Though he had gained weight, he had the build of the tile setter he had been before his back had given out; his body was shaped like a city fireplug and twice as solid. The DiNunzios specialized in low centers of gravity.

Thanks, Pop,' Mary answered. She knew it was exactly what he'd say, and the sound of it comforted her. She had always been her father's favorite and remained close to him as an adult, when she became aware that their conversations included complete paragraphs of call-and-response, like a priest to his congregation. Et cum spiritu tuo.

I'll make the coffee,' he said. 'You wanna set the table?'

'Sure.' Mary smiled, knowing that the question was part of the same Mass, celebrating the making of late-night coffee. While she went to the cabinets to retrieve cups and saucers, her father shuffled to the sink to fill the stainless steel coffeepot with water. The DiNunzios still used a percolator to make coffee, its bottom dent the only signs of wear in thirty-odd years. Progress was something that came to other households. Thank God.

'You should stop by more often, Mare,' her father said, as water plunked into the coffeepot. He turned off the water, set the pot on the counter, and pried the plastic lid from the can of Maxwell House, releasing only the faintest aroma. He scooped dry grounds into the pot's basket, and the sound reverberated in the quiet kitchen, as familiar to Mary from her childhood as a toy shovel through wet, dark sand down at the Jersey shore. Scoop, scoop, scoop. And though it was only the two of them, her father would make eight cups of coffee. A veritable sandcastle of caffeine.

'Come more often? Dad, I'm here every Sunday, practically, for dinner.' Mary snared two cups by their chipped handles and grabbed two saucers in a fake English pattern they had bought at Wanamaker's a store that didn't exist anymore. They were just perfect, but she couldn't resist teasing. Think we'll ever get mugs, Pop?'

'Mugs?'

'Coffee mugs. They have them now, with sayings on them. It's a new thing.'

'Wise guy,' her father scoffed, blinking behind his bifocals. They were thick, but not as thick as her mother's. Her mother could barely see, from a lifetime of piecework sewing in the basement of the house. Her father had good eyes but could barely hear, the result of living with Mary, her twin, and her mother. Mary had bought him two hearing aids before he consented to wear the one he had now. It sat curled in his ear like a brown snail.

'No, really. I could get you a mug that says World's Greatest Father.'

'Nah. Mugs, they're not so nice. Not as nice as cups and saucers.'

'People use them all the time.'

'I see that. I know things. I get out.' He smiled, and so did Mary. It was a game they were both playing.

'And computers, they use, too.'

'Computers?' Her father cackled. 'I see that, on the TV. All the time, computers. You know, Tony. Tony-from-down-the-block. He got on the Internet.' Her father wagged the blue scoop at her. 'Writes to some lady in Tampa, Florida. How about that?'

There you go. You could have girlfriends in Tampa, too.'

'Nah, I'm more interested in my daughter and why she don't go to church with us on Sunday.'

'Oh, Pop.' Mary went to the silverware drawer for teaspoons. 'You gotta start on me?'

'Your mother would like that, if you went with us on Sunday. She was sayin' that to me just tonight, before she went to bed. "Wouldn't it be nice if Mary came to church with the family?" Angle goes with us now.'

'Angie has to. She was a nun.' Mary's voice sounded more bitter than she intended, and her father's soft shoulders slumped. She felt a twinge at disappointing him, and guilt gathered like a puffy grey cloud over her head, ready to storm on her and only her. 'Okay, you win. Maybe I will go with you, sometime. How about that. Pop?'

'Good.' Her father nodded, one shake of his bald head, with a wispy fringe of matte grey hair. He set the coffeepot on the stove, twisted on the gas, and turned around as it lit with an audible floom. The pilot light on the ancient stove was too high again. This Sunday, you'll come?'

'This Sunday?' Mary plucked two napkins from the plastic holder in the center of the table, where they had slipped to the bottom. 'You drive a hard bargain.'

'I bid construction, remember?'

She laughed. 'Okay, this Sunday.' She eased into her chair at the table. It was the one on the far side. 'If I don't have to work.'

Her father turned to the stove, the better to watch the pot, and Mary noticed his heavy hand touch his lower back. In recent years, back pain kept him up at nights, but he pretended he liked to watch TV until two in the morning, and she had always cooperated in this fiction. To do otherwise seemed cruel, but now she wondered about it. 'Dad, how's your back?' she asked.

'No complaints,' he said, which was what he always said. Et cum spiritu tuo.

'I know you don't want to complain, but tell me. How is your back?'

'It's fine.' Her father opened the bread drawer and pulled out a plastic bag with an Italian roll it. He would have bought it at the corner bakery that morning, coming home every day with exactly three rolls; one for him, one for Mary's mother, and one for extra. The rolls would be buttered and dunked in the coffee, leaving veins of melted butter swirling slick on its surface and enriching its flavor. He took the roll out and set it on the counter, then folded

the plastic bag in two, then four, and returned it to the drawer, to be reused for tomorrow's rolls. It wasn't about recycling.

'Are you taking your pills, for the pain?'

'Nah, they make me too sleepy.' He put the roll on a plate and set it down on the table, near the butter, and Mary knew they would fight over it, each trying to give it to the other.

'Do you do your exercises?'

'I go for the newspaper in the morning, at the corner. In the afternoon, I buy my cigar with Tony-from-down-the-block.'

'But your back hurts. How do you sleep with it?'

'With my eyes closed.' Her father smiled, but Mary didn't.

'You stay downstairs at night and watch TV. It's not because you like TV, it's because you can't sleep. Isn't that right?'