That afternoon, while Papa watched the news—riots, more people being shot—Dee distracted them with treasures from the apartment’s small safe. They played poker with animal teeth and gold and silver coins and old cards. When Dee phoned and heard Rita was still hysterical, and still in the house, she and Papa decided to stay a second night. Hiding out, said Papa. It would be their anniversary in a few days, said Dee, and they needed to celebrate anyway. She took the children up to Altman’s for pajamas, new shoes, pants and shirt for Edmund, a new dress for Polly. At dinnertime, Papa hailed a cab. Dee wore a dress and a necklace and a fur coat, things she kept in the city, for fancy nights. At the restaurant, Polly and Edmund stared at the indoor trees and a pool and the people while Papa and Dee each ate a dozen oysters and gave them sips of Champagne. Scallops and crab, veal and potatoes shaped like roses, asparagus spears tied with orange peel, a baked Alaska. Dee said that the first time she’d met Papa it had been over a fancy meal on Fifth Avenue, but that when they’d married twenty years later, they’d done it in a courthouse, and eaten sausage and apples on a dusty sidewalk afterward. The world was filled with all kinds of good food.

After Rita stabbed her hand, she told the doctor that it was an accident. She lied well. But while Polly and Edmund were in the city, she slashed at her wrists with nail scissors, and the hospital didn’t argue about keeping her. Jane and Merle took hours cleaning up the bathroom, trying to figure out what to do next.

Nevertheless, Rita was back in a week, sunny, calm, with bandaged arms, and the household stayed quiet through the spring. Rita set up her easel, but no one left her alone in the greenhouse. They all came up with things to do. Jane washed the glass panes and planted tomato seeds, Papa sorted his finds, Merle fixed the pavers, Dee ordered fresh clay and went back to making pots, keeping Rita company. Even if it kills me, she said.

In late May, Dee celebrated her eighty-eighth birthday, her beiju, which she said was a special year, especially if you were Japanese. Or a Cornish potter, said Papa, who made Merle grill steaks. Steaks were Merle’s one culinary glory.

“What happened in Papa’s special year?” asked Polly. Dee’s birthday began every summer and his, at the end of August, ended it.

“You moved in, sweetheart.”