An expectant quiet cleared the frowsy din. During the time before conversation, to remain polite would have had to restart, the prevalent surmise was that Don had seen—may have even had a copy in the house in which they were sitting—the report his wife had been reduced to making calls about, and not told her. What had been a lolling dénouement, an evening tending to a reclining, sat up. Some had always thought little of Mabel for her lack of what everyone called sources, even though they knew sources were just and only people. (Sources, even so, had dominion; a person had a job.) Some had thought Mabel a wisp-weight. But now even they wondered why Don had to expose his wife at dinner in their home. Don looked innocent; yet maybe not entirely.

If she could just put her toes down, she would get solid again. The tree that had Mary was large, a branch as wide as her waist was near her backward foot. A rumpus and a fall—the lines of her chute settled, depositing her … where? She blinked the Watergate’s lit curve into focus around the river. Farther, the columns were straight and white. They always saw her as the goody-goody. With a name like Mary, with a last name like Goodwin—what could she be but Girl Scout and dear daughter and no trouble at all? She had a baby face. Or did have, before flight school. Sixteen and not quite kissed. And that photograph in the yearbook, somehow they’d shot it with a halo. Way before that, playground boys tried to find a way to snap her bra against her back. They just couldn’t. She wore what they wore—T-shirt, Fruit of the Loom, they thought. She had an appliqué rose on the scoop neck they couldn’t see. One ninth-grader thumped her sternum, said, “You don’t have what I want.”

There. Her swaying had slowed. She could almost hold on to a branch.

The writer looked impassive. It was important to be unimpressed with Don’s coup on the report. He also made sure he was not searching the faces of the others for their reaction. Not so the young pretty with mascara eyes, a type who came to Mabel’s parties over the years, usually not more than once, and then disappeared into the private agony of discovering whom to marry. The pretty was looking at faces; she was also wondering why a balding man with a long chin and high cheeks like radishes looked so happy.