It is a crystal moment. I have exactly two choices: move to Seattle and take a great job, or stay put for another three years and wait for another golden opportunity to break out of the shit-job rail that I am riding. I’m thirty-six, and I feel as if life is beginning to run dry on good opportunities for me. Greg offers the best yet. Besides, Seattle is a great place, filled with opportunities for a young man—good schools, new friends, the music scene.

I know that Tony has good friends here, a world of difference from his L.A. friends; he’s even joined the baseball team. He hasn’t been in one fight, has even made the honor roll. But I need something, too. I need a better job than managing a flophouse of a motel.

Tony will just have to suck it up.

“We’re moving.”

“How can you not understand what I’m saying?”

“I do. You don’t want to move again. I understand that. But we have to take chances.”

“Three more years, Mom, that’s all I’m asking.”

“I don’t have three more years.”

“Then you don’t have me.”

*   *   *

I finish off another big bite of the casserole and cover it up. Time to go.

*   *   *

Paul lives in Fairhaven, over the Acushnet River from New Bedford and off of route 240. He’s managed, on an accountant’s salary, to buy a house with a water view. It’s a tiny house, to be sure, someone’s summer cottage tarted up, but from his back deck, you catch a glimpse of the Acushnet and the New Bedford waterfront on the opposite shore. Once inside, I can’t imagine how he raised his two huge children in this space. His wife, Melanie, greets me with great sympathy, assuming that I am devastated. She, too, has grown large since the last time I saw her—at their wedding. But her largeness suits her, and she wears it with pride. She keeps hold of my hand as she pilots me through the living room and into the dining room, where she finds space for the deflowered casserole among the massive collection of platters and dishes, remnants of pies, and salads.

“Adele’s resting now. If you want to go look in on her…” Melanie says this without irony.

“That’s okay. Let her rest. Where’s Paul?”

“Outside. Eat something!”