They take off their coats and go straight to work. First Dennis takes the goose out and wraps it up with foil to try to preserve what little heat is left. Then he and Dad pull the stove away from the wall, disconnect it, and start examining the bolts that hold the element in place. Definitely burnt out, Dennis says, sounding not one bit dismayed, not an iota, just the opposite.

From the basement he carries up a set of screwdrivers and wrenches, as well as his soldering gear. Before buckling down to work, he pours Dad a tall rye and ginger ale, a heart-starter he calls it, and one for himself. He’s humming away and concentrating hard as he slips his wrench around the first of the bolts.

I pull up the aluminum foil for a peek at my goose. It looks pale and glum with its dead meaty chest cooling down fast. I remember the time Dennis and I went to the British Museum to look at the mummies, how depressed I was to find just how dead you could actually get, but Dennis was all over the room, peering at everything and snapping photographs, though, strictly speaking, this wasn’t allowed.

He’ll have the stove working in less than an hour, he tells me. He doesn’t even stop to think about what he’s going to do. It’s as though he’s got a pocket of his brain filled with little mechanical puzzles that he can undo at will. He’s going to remove the burnt-out unit and move the broiler element temporarily down to the bottom of the oven. An emergency tactic. He’s whistling now. Unlike me, he appreciates the unexpected. Dad is handing him tools in a rhythmic nurse-to-surgeon manner and trying hard, I can tell, to bite his tongue and keep from giving Dennis advice. It’s hard for him not being in full charge. He’s a sweetheart, but pig-headed at times.

Right after Mom died—I’m talking about one month after she went—Dad cut down all the lilac bushes around their house. These lilacs were old, more like trees than bushes. They’d always been there, protecting the house from the wind and the open stare of the road. He claimed he and Mom had often talked about chopping them down so they could get more sunshine into the house. I have my doubts about this—my mother loved those lilacs- but we let the story stand.

He cut the twisted old lilac wood into short lengths and bundled them up for our fireplace. Good for kindling, he said. And he also hauled the roots, sixteen of them, into town. First he shook off as much dirt as he could. Lilac roots are dense, damp, shrubby things, irregular in shape and amazingly large. I think he was surprised himself at the size of them.