He rang the bell by the front door and was buzzed in without having to explain himself. The hallways were air-conditioned. Sadie had been enchanted by the Schoolhouse when she visited her mother, but Jack knew that no place once devoted to the education of children is enchanted without also being haunted. He could smell, quite suddenly, gym class. Not kindergarten gym class—cinnamon toast, artificial fruit, the squeals of five-year-olds allowed to run at top speed—but sixth grade. Half the girls budding, three or four in full bloody bloom. Boys, too, with wobbly chubby tummies and weak arms. The smell of burning flesh: thighs on climbing ropes, knees on the floor, what Jack would have called Indian burns. Maybe they still called them that. Lunch: square pizza, pickly tuna salad. Smoke from the teachers’ lounge. Turning a school into a residence, thought Jack, was as bad as building your home on top of a cemetery.

Linda’s door was marked PRINCIPAL in black paint on chicken-wired glass. A short, fat man of Linda’s age in a baby blue polo shirt opened it.

“Hey! Come in, Professor. I’m Arturo. Vitale. You’re the son-in-law.”

“Not officially.”

“No kidding? You’re not married? I got the idea you were married.”

They went down a little corridor into the apartment, four long windows letting in four tranches of sunlight, exposed brick, a kitchen in the corner, handsome green-shaded lights hanging from the ceiling, and, in the middle of the floor, Linda Brody, leaning on a wooden chair. She held a cloth to her head. She was surrounded by boxes, though she’d lived here awhile. Was she moving out? Were the boxes permanent? Jack felt as though he were the one who’d been in the accident, hit by a truck and pushed through miles and walls to end up here. In the years he’d known her, she’d aged very little, but now she looked ancient with worry. Her floral dress was hiked up. He could see too much of her legs.

“Not married yet,” Linda said.

“Not yet,” agreed Jack. He knelt down next to her and surreptitiously pulled down her skirt. “Linda,” he said, “what’s going on?”

“Well, I feel stupid,” said Linda. She took the cloth away from her temple and regarded the pink streak left behind. There was a matching streak in her hair. “I’m not sure what’s happened.”

“Took a tumble,” said Arturo, squatting down.

Jack looked at him. “Why isn’t she at a hospital?”

“She said, don’t want to go. Hey, maybe me and Lindy will beat you two to the altar.”

“We’re not getting married,” Linda told Jack.

“You don’t know,” said Arturo. “Who can predict the vicissitudes of life?”