to keep abreast. He saw a girl sit waiting on the curb for someone who never arrived. He saw an orange-striped cat catch a thrush, saw how the nervous life went out of the bird quick as a burst balloon. He heard conversations and music and once he believed he heard the cries of two people making love. He drove home in a state of arching, rarefied hope that was almost painful in its intensity. For his family he had built a substantial new house on a full acre. He had given them two working fireplaces and thirty-eight windows and a front door flanked by carved wooden columns white and fluted as wedding cakes. As he punched the remote-control button to open his garage door he was aware of the constellations—the Hunter, the Ram, the Sisters—and of the interstate highway system along which nails and produce and shoes and tractors were even now being conveyed to their rightful homes. He was aware of the network of underground pipes that conducted water through a world of burrowing animals and the roots of trees. As the garage door opened on its pulleys and oiled chains he took leave of his ordinary, restless thoughts and entered a realm of joy. He couldn't explain the feeling. It was a sense of imminence, of titanic plates shifting in the night sky, rearranging themselves according to a plan too simple for human comprehension. Full of happiness, he steered his car into the garage. There were his tools hanging in perfect order on their white pegboard. There was his mower, his vise, his screws and brads in labeled jars. He allowed himself to sit for an extra minute in the cool silence of his car. Then he went through the side door into the kitchen, where Mary had kept his dinner waiting for him. On the refrigerator, old drawings of Billy's and Zoe's were held with magnets shaped like fruits. A plastic apple, an orange, a banana.
“Hi,” Mary called. She was making a list. She wore red slacks and a gray sweatshirt.
“Hi,” he said. And just that quickly, with the utterance of a single mild syllable, the joy evaporated. Something was wrong here. Something diminished him, even as he earned good money and honored his marriage vows and fed and clothed his children.
“How'd the day go?” Mary asked. She continued with her list. When she wedded herself to a job, she was lost. She wore her dark hair pulled back tight.
“Fine,” he said. “Smells good in here.”
“Pork chops,” she said. “And mashed potatoes. Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. I'm starved. What's that you're doing there?”
“Oh, just a list of all I've got to get for Zoe's birthday party. I can't believe I've invited eight little girls to spend the night here.”
He nodded, and almost recaptured the clear, vaulting happiness of the garage. A pretty wife, oak cabinets, pork and potatoes waiting warm in the oven. He wanted to be happy in a solid, sustained way, hour to hour, not in turbulent little fits that gripped him at odd moments, usually when he was alone. He'd worked so hard. Sometimes he suspected that if he acted happy, if he said what a happy man would say, he could catch it again. He could grab it by its invisible wings and hold it, tightly, to his chest.
“Where are the kids?” he asked cheerfully.
“Susan's at ballet. Billy and Zoe are upstairs, supposedly doing their homework. You're real late tonight.”
“Yeah. There's a hell of a lot to do.”
“I know. There's a lot to do here, too.”
He coughed, and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I don't hear you complain about the money,” he said.
“You're in a pretty mood,” she said. She kept on with her list. She held the pencil with a furious primness, and Constantine was afraid of her. She was angry and righteous. She was writing a list to be carved into the granite of his headstone.
“I'm just a working stiff,” he said. “I just hope for a little appreciation every now and then, that's all.”
She added something to the list. Her pencil scratched across the paper. “I work, too,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I'm working right now.”
The kitchen seemed to grow. He felt himself shrinking inside it, a small man standing hungrily on yellow linoleum. He turned on the oven light, looked through the tinted window at the casserole dishes within.
“So, how about dinner?” he asked. His voice was cheerful again. The voice of