Rita kept varying her information or imagination—Tommy was hiding out in Thailand, Tommy had been incinerated by some fiery bomb—but she never told them what the soldiers said. When Edmund tried talking about his dream, about Tommy sleeping on a sandy path, she exploded and slapped him, and after that, everyone kept him away from her room. Merle, maddened by the lack of information, and by the way Rita varied between candy optimism and horrific images, finally called his brother in the navy for help and learned that Tommy left on patrol in the middle of February with two other men to some warren of walled gardens—the Tombs? the Tiger Arena?—and never returned. Merle found a map in the New York Times and showed Edmund the area. Young faces, both of them, looking down in the light of the desk lamp. Papa talked to Edmund about dead heroes in myths and old wars, bad luck and the endlessness of love. They heard him say to Dee that because of Tommy they were all in limbo, and when Polly asked about the etching in his study—an illustration of Purgatorio, showing people whirling in a circle between a kind of ocean below and a sky above, and the title underneath said Limbo—Papa claimed he meant the limbo dance. He held out a cane and made them try, then whacked them gently with it when they fell backward.

Thomas Ward’s family, back in Michigan, needed a funeral, but Rita said no, and the army refused to proceed without a body or a widow. The Wards tried for a memorial, and they insisted Rita and Edmund come. Rita refused.

Everything slowed down. During the long Easter break—true spring, tulips following snowdrops, all sorts of color popping upward in the messy yard—Rita worked on tiny painted shapes as if she were working on a baby’s quilt and she talked about the baby’s growth as if it were the plot of a movie. Dee made dye for eggs and the room smelled of the vinegar she added to help the colors set. Papa put the television on—Martin Luther King had been shot—and he watched riot and war footage sloped back in his chair, stretched out, hands behind his head. Every once in a while, Merle would get up and freshen their drinks. Between the sounds of the news, the spoons Polly and Edmund used to roll the eggs clinked. The tips of their fingers were maroon and yellow and bruised brown-green from the blend of colors.