“Expression?” I said stiffly. There wasn’t any end to it. All the slings, the whole damn quiver of arrows: I was getting them. “What expression did you and Michael expect to see?”

“Oh, Asher. I’m so sorry. I feel just awful.”

“What expression did you and Michael expect to see?”

“Oh, God. You know. I’d come to you. And I’d say: Asher, I’m knocked up. I need help. And then you’d get that expression.”

“I see. I’d get it. Did Michael tell you exactly what that fascinating expression I’d get was going to look like?”

“Well. You know. Sympathetic.”

“Oh?”

“You do get it, Asher. You look so wounded. So hurt. You get moist.”

“Do I?”

“This close to tears.”

“And, of course, there wasn’t any trip to Jersey, via a tube fallopian or otherwise, was there?”

“No.”

“And the nightgown? The huddling in bed?”

“Well: you said you were coming tonight. And I was supposed to have been to Jersey.”

“The Lithuanian was pretty graphic.”

“Oh. There was a Lithuanian. But not this trip.”

“I see. We’ve been that route, is that it?”

“Once.”

“And it happened at a party?”

“Well: it was a kind of party.”

“So you just exercised a tenacious memory, is that it, darling?”

“Yes.”

I nodded. I was very calm now. I wasn’t even angry. It belonged: with the window, with the jobs that were gone. The wind blew and the snow ridged on the skylight.

“So,” I said. “No tumor. No school bill. No bun in the oven. No Lithuanian. That was quite a performance.”

“Oh, Asher. Please. I’m just sick about it.”

“And Michael wasn’t going to touch the money?”

“No.”

“What did you intend to do with it: give it away to an institution for retarded adults?”

“Michael swore he’d return it.”

“But he didn’t, did he? He likes kimonos. Silk ones. And just like mine.”

“It was all just supposed to be a crazy joke, Asher.” She sounded a little desperate, but now I wasn’t sure. The fake had its own authenticity: hadn’t that been Michael’s point?

I said: “I seem to be the center of a lot of crazy jokes lately.”

“Oh, Asher.”

“Yours isn’t less funny than the others. It’s just I can’t seem to laugh. Not spontaneously.”

“Oh, Asher.”

“The one thing I don’t really understand yet is why. Why, Aurora?”