"What did Emily say exactly?" Myron said.

"Nothing specific. She just spewed out a colorful assortment of breathy teasers: urgent, life-and-death, grave matters, etceteras, etceteras."

"I don't want to talk to her."

"I didn't think so. If she calls back, you want me to give her the runaround?"

"Please."

"Mas tarde then."

He hung up as a second image whacked him like a surprise wave at the beach. Senior year at Duke. Emily so composed as she dumped the varsity jacket onto his bed and walked out. Not long after that, she married the man who'd ruin Myron's life.

Deep breaths, he told himself. In and out. That's it.

"Everything okay?" Mom asked.

"Fine."

Mom shook her head again, disappointed.

"I'm not lying," he said.

"Fine, right, sure, you always breathe like an obscene phone call. Listen, if you don't want to tell your mother--"

"I don't want to tell my mother."

"Who raised you and..."

Myron tuned her out, as was his custom. She was digressing again, taking on a past life or something. It was something she did a lot. One minute she was thoroughly modern, an early feminist who marched alongside Gloria Steinem and became proof that--to quote her old T-shirt--A Woman's Place Is in the House... and Senate. But at the sight of her son, her progressive attire slid to the floor and revealed the babushka-clad yenta beneath the burned bra. It made for an interesting childhood.

They headed out the front door. Myron kept his eyes on the For Sale sign as though it might suddenly brandish a gun. His mind flashed onto something he had never actually seen--the sunny day when Mom and Dad had arrived here for the first time, hand in hand, Mom's belly swelling with child, both of them scared and exhilarated realizing that this cookie-cut three-bedroom split-level would be their life vessel, their SS American Dream. Now, like it or not, that journey was coming to an end. Forget that "close one door, open another" crap. That For Sale sign marked the end--the end of youth, of middle age, of a family, the universe of two people who'd started here and fought here and raised kids here and worked and carpooled and lived their lives here.

They walked up the street. Leaves were piled along the curb, the surest sign of suburban autumn, while leaf blowers shattered the still air like helicopters over Saigon. Myron took the inside track so his path would skim the piles' edges. The dead leaves crackled under his sneakers and he liked that. He wasn't sure why.

"Your father spoke to you," Mom said, half-question. "About what happened to him."

Myron felt his stomach tense up. He veered deeper into the leaves, lifting his legs high and crunching louder. "Yes."

"What did he say exactly?" Mom asked.

"That he'd had chest pains while I was in the Caribbean."

The Kaufman house had always been yellow, but the new family had painted it white. It looked wrong with the new color, out of place. Some homes had gone the aluminum-siding route, while others had built on additions, bumping out the kitchens and master bedrooms. The young family who'd moved into the Miller home had gotten rid of the Millers' trademark overflowing flower boxes. The new owners of the Davis place had ripped out those wonderful shrubs Bob Davis had worked on every weekend. It all reminded Myron of an invading army ripping down the flags of the conquered.