He shimmered and then began to darken, to melt and flow in the bright afternoon light. After a moment he was an old man again in blue serge and with liver-spotted wrists. His face was deeply lined, weak, both hurt and angry. He seated himself cautiously. “Get me another drink. But mix it with something this time.”

Barney got him gin and orange juice and stirred it with one of the silver spoons he had inherited from Mother. He went into the living room to check her out. She was still a three-month-old infant, chubby and scowling, with a wet thumb in her mouth and her body on its side in the fetal position. Both her small fists were clenched.

She slept on the black Chesterfield couch; he had pushed two dining chairs against it to keep her from falling off. Above her the huge living room windows looked out on two mansions with dark mansard roofs—older, most likely, than she. He reached down and felt her diaper; it was still dry.

On the terrace Daddy said, “My father was a state senator; he was an old man when I was born. My mother was his third wife and was far beneath him socially. She took in wash when she was a girl.”

“I know.” Barney had heard this before, but never from Daddy.

Daddy flashed a look at him—the same silent look he had always given Barney as a child. “What in hell do you know?” he said.

Barney sighed; his father had never said that before—had only burdened him with the silent weight of his contempt. “Right now,” Barney said levelly, “I know more than you ever did know. More than you ever will. Your life was sheltered, and you hardly lived it.”

His father’s face darkened even more and he clenched a fist. “Don’t threaten me,” Barney said. “I can take her away from you.”

Daddy turned his head away, forced a grim laugh. “Take her,” he said. “You’re what she wanted anyway. A mama’s boy with poetry in his soul. An oversexed crybaby.”

Barney looked at his set face, his lined face, and saw clearly the weakness in it. “You self-serving son of a bitch,” he said.

“You’re a weak sister and you know it, Barney,” his father said. “You never had the guts to make your own way.”

“You used to wet the bed when you took us on trips in the car. You’d get drunk on wine in tourist courts and sleep with your clothes on and wet your pants. You acted tough with me when I was eight but you cringed with every mailman or shoe clerk when you were in the real world…”

Daddy lurched forward and shouted, “You cringed when I came home from work and caught you sitting in the kitchen with her. You’d be drying the silver or telling her about yourself—and she’d be smiling at you like a goddamned vamp. And you’d see me come in and you’d fidget because I caught you in your goddamned gigolo act.” He paused, and then said, “You can have her.”