“Colin told me once that his father was a man who gave in on the small issues to keep the peace. He wore a jacket to the table, and Mrs. MacIver has told me that she had to train him to do that. As a child Colin thought that his father didn’t like her. In a dispute his father would ask him to give in to her even though she was wrong—whether she was wrong or not; he said that she was and they had to give in anyway. It was his way of taking the edge off—Colin didn’t realize it until just before his father died.

“Years later, Colin said, it occurred to him that his father had been one of those quiet men for whom people develop an affection simply because they are quiet. Under it, he had been an unpleasant man—Colin said. To Colin, his father either agreed with or was too far gone to dispute his wife’s opinions. In any case, he tried to undermine her with her son. That’s what Colin told me; it’s not saying that I believe it.”

“What do you believe?”

“Probably Colin took one or two incidents and magnified and distorted them out of all proportion. I can’t believe that two people would have endured the double harness he described. There must have been something between them.”

“Can you tell me any more about her?”

“She won’t have a cocktail in a bar. I’ve heard her say that she wouldn’t speak to Negroes or Jews if she could help it. When Colin was a little boy she wouldn’t let him out of the yard, and while he was growing up she objected to his friends. He told me that, but I believe it. After his father died, she tried to stop Colin from playing the rougher sports. She did stop him from playing high school football.”

They reached the intersection. Her analysis of MacIver’s parents’ relationship was already in the wastebasket. Long before Leland had become a policeman and had been brought in on family quarrels, he had heard from Karen of the foster homes in which there had been no love. They had had it in their own home; there was nothing about it that he did not know.

He did not want to check his watch. She opened her purse and got out the parking stub. Leland plucked it from her fingers.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I won’t have her paying my parking fee.”

“Be quiet. I want to be a sport.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I don’t want you doing things for me.”

“Did you offer me a ride?”

“Joe, stop it. You’re feeling sorry for me. I won’t have it.”