June first will be Regina’s birthday, but since it’s my birthday as well, we will get through the day without mentioning her. We get through weeks at a time without mentioning her, and then one Friday night Frank will stay on at the bar drinking boilermakers and come home to talk about her. I sit and listen and nod and wait for his soft reminiscence to become self-recrimination as he slides into his “if only”s, past and future: “If only we had moved far away years ago, while Regina was still a child”; “If only Regina would contact us just to tell us about the baby.” The first few times he did this, I felt myself being pulled along to share in the recriminations. But now I can refuse because I have my protection: all I have to do is picture that thin, lightning-like scar in Brian’s hair, just above his right ear, the scar he still carries from Regina. And with the rhythm of a reprise, I tell myself responsibility has to stop somewhere, that what a child is taught and what it learns are not necessarily the same thing. The thought has never accomplished a full exoneration, but it keeps Regina at the distance I need in order to go on functioning.

The mornings after the boilermaker nights, Frank hurls himself into the present. He ferrets out the weeds in the garden or washes the windows or rearranges the furniture in the living room and then takes me to dinner. Regina is not mentioned again until the next boilermaker night.

Of course, she’s always here, huddling between our thoughts, defining our opposite hopes for the future. Last Saturday, Brian came down and took us to Laguna to look at pottery and antiques. He brought us back and left at dusk, and Frank and I took up our customary positions on the front porch. A few minutes after the streetlamps came on, Frank leaned forward, gripping the arms of the chair, and squinted through his glasses. Coming slowly down the street from the direction of the highway was a green Chevrolet exactly like Virgil’s. My heart backed into my lungs and stayed there until the car passed, revealing an old woman as its driver. I will never forget that momentary look on Frank’s face, as if a prayer were about to be answered. When the car disappeared around the corner, it was my prayer that was answered.