The dinner Alex mentioned was three weeks ago at Bourbon Steak. We were splitting a porterhouse when Alex told me that for months he’d been fighting with Julie, the young woman he’d been seeing for two years, an auburn-haired beauty who worked at the State Department and spoke half a dozen languages. Alex said the fights were over nothing and came out of nowhere. I suggested he listen more and argue less; perhaps he’d discover what was really bothering Julie. He said, “Dad, I’m scared. When I imagine losing Julie, I can’t imagine ever getting over her.” Alex had some red in his hair, courtesy of his mother, but the greenish-brown eyes, cleft chin, broad shoulders, and thick chest came from me, and as I looked at him across the table, I felt as if I were watching a dismal rerun of my own life. I comforted my son with a lie. I told him these things worked themselves out, but whatever happened, time took care of every wound. He smiled at me, a sign, I thought, that he believed me. But outside after dinner, before Alex got into his car, he hugged me, holding on longer than usual, and remembering that now, drinking by myself in a hotel room, I was convinced that I’d failed him as a father.

I finished my vodka and glanced at the television, where the newscaster was announcing that two soldiers had died fighting in northern Iraq, killed in an ambush outside the city of Mosul. Sadness and disgust rose up in me, and I shut off the TV and went to take a shower.

Standing under the hot spray, I considered calling Glenna, but odds were her receptionist or answering service would pick up, and I’d have to leave a message, which might not be returned.

Of course, Glenna might not be at her office when I showed up. She could be on vacation with a husband or lover or seeing patients in the hospital.

I dismissed these possibilities for the best and worst of reasons: I didn’t want them to be true, because even though I knew that my reunion plan was ridiculous, I also knew that if I didn’t feel as though my life were splitting at the seams, then I would never have stopped in New York to see her.

Chapter 2

IT WAS DARK when I exited the Hyatt and walked past Grand Central Station. The snow had let up, but the plows were working overtime, and the streetlights sparkled on the ice-crusted peaks that ran along the curb like arctic mountains.

Crossing Madison Avenue, I glanced downtown and saw the office building where my father and Uncle Jerry used to work in public relations for Danzig Pharmaceutical. An ache of loss went through me like the icy snap of the wind, but thinking about my dad and his brother, usually locked in a ferocious debate over something—which way the rivers flow, for instance—always made me smile.

My father, Alex, was seven years older than Uncle Jerr. Their parents died young, and Uncle Jerr was in Eastern District High School and living with my mother while Dad was off fighting with the Fourth Infantry Division in the Hürtgen Forest, where he won the Silver Star. My father kept his medal in his dresser, and I remember coming into his room when I was a kid and seeing him, big and broad-shouldered, standing in his boxer shorts and staring at the ribbon and medal cupped in his hand, his handsome face as hard as stone and his sepia, gold-flecked eyes filled with a grief and rage I didn’t understand. He showed me the Silver Star a few times, and Uncle Jerr told me that he’d won it for taking out three Nazi pillboxes by himself, but my father seldom spoke about his war.