Just one thing hadn’t changed, and never would change. Even when he was fighting the war and she was marching up and down the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, waving a peace sign, he wrote Essie a letter every week and signed every one of them “Love, Arthur.” And when she took up with that dope-smoking Yankee artist who drew pictures of little bright-colored people with big feet on every flat surface and Arthur got sent home with one hand, every time she came back he would go over there and sit in her daddy’s kitchen and say, “Essie, I love you.” Then there was that wispy boy from New Mexico who called himself a musician, though all he did was a lot of strumming in two chords, long, long songs that didn’t have any subject matter. Arthur knew how he treated Essie, and when she finally left him and came back home to get her bearings, Arthur came over and stood on the bottom step while she looked at him from behind the screen door with her face swollen and sad. Arthur said, “If he hurts you, Essie, I’ll kill him, one hand or no hands. You know I’ll take care of you till the day you die, because I love you.”

But all Essie ever said was “Arthur, Arthur,” and she was gone again and stayed gone this time.

Helen was the one who would talk to him about it, saying over and over, “She’s not the marrying kind, Arthur,” and “She likes change and excitement, Arthur,” and probably the truest thing Helen ever said: “You’re an old friend, Arthur, and Essie likes things to be new.”

The first time Arthur ever heard of a bagel, Helen told him Essie was working in a bagel shop in Spokane, Washington, and when he saw one in a grocery store, he bought it and stood in the parking lot and gnawed and gnawed until he had eaten the whole thing, just so he would know what Essie was doing. Then Helen said she had quit the bagels and was putting harpsichords together in Vermont, then was in the bottom of the Grand Canyon living with Indians. After a long gap of years, finally a letter came from Helen a year ago saying, “Dear Arthur, we are two tired old lady sisters, and we’re moving back home.” And there they were again, just as they’d started, Essie and Helen back in that house, Helen still painting her pictures, and Essie with her gray hair all piled up and deaf in one ear, but Essie still Essie.

Now! thought Arthur, and all year he dug fish ponds and planted daffodils and cleared out brush.