“Recall.” But James was pleased to note that his mother had inadvertently credited Miranda with a depth of character she usually managed to deny her.

Constance got up from the table, picked up James’s empty dishes, and followed Miranda to the kitchen. She found her daughter-in-law leaning one elbow on top of the refrigerator, waiting for the toast to be done. A set tray stood on the kitchen table.

“May I take the paper for Russell?” Miranda asked.

“Oh of course. I’ll see it later.”

“Oh, not if you’re not finished with it.”

“My dear, I’m sure there’s nothing of interest in it. I can very well wait.” Constance watched Miranda buttering the toast. “Though I must say, Miranda, I don’t think you ought to pander to Russell quite so much.”

Why must you say it, Miranda wondered. “Constance,” she said, carefully putting butter at the corners of the slice, “Russell is very sick.”

Sick, Constance repeated to herself, now thoroughly exasperated. Sick. People seem quite incapable of using straightforward words these days. My son questions, as well he might, the very nature of our existence, and they discuss him as though he had German measles. Sick—that’s the word they use now when people become exercised over the human condition. Sick, indeed. “Do you have any idea, Miranda darling, how all this started?”

Miranda put the toast on the tray and took the coffee off the stove. “It’s a long story,” she said.

When one says that it’s always something fundamental that could be explained in a single sentence, Constance remarked to herself. She pushed the door open for Miranda to pass through.

Turning back into the room, she saw that Miranda had left the newspaper on the table.

When Russell had finished his breakfast he lay in bed with his hands folded under his head and watched Miranda making up her face. He could see that this unnerved her, from the attention with which she handled the succession of little jars.

“Why do you need all of those?”

“Oh, they’re all different, you see.”

“They can’t all be different. It’s ridiculous. An obsession.”

She thought with mild resentment of the equipment he carried on his own person. He was always looking for his lighter, running out of cigarettes, forgetting his glasses. She, who did not smoke or wear glasses, would not have dreamed of complaining of these things. But his irritation, she knew, was not concerned with the jars on her dressing table: directed at herself, it was the antithesis of love.

“Oh—perhaps you’re right. It’s probably silly.”

“I hate the way you keep saying ‘Oh.’” He saw, in the mirror, her eyes deflect. “And the way you keep agreeing.”

“Agreeing?”

“Humoring me. Backed like a weasel. Very like a whale. How true, my lord.”