But Sharkey said, “Yes, sir. Sounds good,” because his mother wore her anxious expression, pleading eyes, looking fragile.

How odd and disconcerting it was for him to be at home, to meet the men, to watch them take his mother out, to see her so eager and grateful, calling out as she left, “There’s some chicken salad in the fridge.” The men were uneasy with him; they knew they needed to be respectful, to have his blessing more than his acknowledgment. It was so strange to see them take her by the hand or steer her with her elbow. Strangers touching his mother, taking possession—but more than that he did not want to know—could not bear to imagine. It was important to him that they made her happy, and though he felt she was betraying the Colonel, whose death was such a painful memory to him, her seeing them gave him some peace; it was a relief from the weepy evenings when she was drunk and drawled, “You never listen to me,” or “Say something.”

This dating by his mother, seeing her wooed and catered to, distanced him from her, matured him and made him worldly. His mother became secretive and silly, evasive when he asked where she was going, for how long, who else would be there? They were not his questions; they were the questions the Colonel would have asked. But she didn’t answer, except to say, “I’ll be fine, darling.”

He sat up in his father’s chair, a saddening whiff of long-ago cigarette smoke still clinging to it, waiting for her to come home, and in that time did his homework. When there was a clatter at the door of a certain kind, a fumbling, a clumsiness, he knew she would be drunk, and the red-faced men would be sheepish and ingratiating—“Joe, I’d like to get to know you a whole lot better.”

He remembered Uncle Sunshine, sounding like the Colonel, saying, I’m too old to be you friend. I know more than you. I not you friend.

So Sharkey found himself humoring the men—what did they want?—and regretting that he was not more protective of his mother. At the same time he became more passionate about surfing, to be away from home, to remove himself from his mother’s evasions.

One of the men, another officer, suggested they go out to eat together, the three of them. This was Captain Van Buskirk, who showed up in uniform, to be greeted by Sharkey in shorts and flip-flops and a T-shirt. He could see that the soldier was dismayed, blinking at him with a barely perceptible tightening of his mouth.

“Dickie!” his mother called out when she saw him, and turned to allow him to kiss her cheek. Then: “Joe—you can’t go like that.”

“We don’t have to go to Fort DeRussy,” the captain said. “We can go to the Moana Surfrider.”