his books as soon as they appeared and filling the lecture halls and bookstores in which he gave readings. This second published novel of Ben’ was a road novel, and its subject, not surprisingly, was the fate of the draft dodgers; as it opens, the sixteen-year-old narrator is on his way to Vancouver in a Toyota with no reverse gear, intent on finding and moving in with his brother. Backwards was optioned for a film and sat for about six weeks near the bottom of the New York Times best-seller list. Each Sunday I dutifully scissored the list out of the newspaper and pasted it into Nancy’ scrapbook, which was now running out of pages. I would have to buy another one, I realized, preferably covered in the same restrained brown leather—yet I could find nothing even remotely like it anywhere in Wellspring. Or Pasadena. Sifting through the supply of blank scrapbooks at Vroman’ one Saturday, I found myself wondering what had become of the little shop in Verona where Jonah Boyd had bought his notebooks. Was it still in business? Were the notebooks even made anymore? Of course, in trying to envision the shop, I had only his description to go on; even if I did make it to Verona someday, even if the shop still existed, the likelihood of my nosing it out was slim. That Thanksgiving, Ernest had asked Boyd what he would do if his notebooks ever ceased to be manufactured, and Boyd had barely been able to answer (not that this mattered very much, in the end). It seemed to me, that day at Vroman’, that Ernest had been wise to decry such a mystic dependency on things and houses as both Boyd and Nancy were susceptible to, and in silent support of him, I picked out the scrapbook that was the least like Nancy’ I could find—indeed, the one most likely to offend her sensibilities, all hot pink and yellow daisies, with a huge Hello Kitty rising up in the background like some grotesque parade float. In this, I continued the record of her son’ career.
It was now 1997. Ben was no longer living in Milwaukee. He had divorced Molly, and taken a job teaching in the Creative Writing program at the University of Maryland. He had remarried—Amy, also a writer. Another book appeared, not a novel this time, but a memoir of his California childhood, The Eucalyptus, which of course I read with avidity, since it was also, in some sense, the story of my life. I must admit, Ben’ descriptive prowess impressed me. He captured vividly the flavor of that house on Florizona Avenue, devoting particular attention to the Thanksgivings, and interweaving into his story that of Phil, the least noticeable of the strays, who one spring afternoon, his Ph.D. thesis having just been rejected for the fourth time, knocked on the door of Ernest’ office, and when Ernest opened it, shot him in the face. He would have shot Glenn, too, but Glenn happened to be in the bathroom. Ernest died before he could say a word. In the memoir, Ben writes at length of the yellow tape sealing off the crime scene, not to mention the phalanx of news reporters and squad cars that surrounded his parents’ house, and that seemed so out of place on Florizona Avenue. All of this I, too, remembered. I was there, in the office, when Ernest died. I held him as he died. And then afterward, without saying anything of my own grief, I held Nancy while she wept in disbelief at the idea that for so many Thanksgivings she had nursed a viper at her table. And all that time Phil had seemed so benign—so boring, even—that skinny boy with his big appetite! Curiously, this discordance between appearance and reality seemed to preoccupy her much more than the fact that her husband had been murdered. Might there have been warning signs? A picture of Daphne had disappeared one Thanksgiving from the mantel; someone had left some poisoned meat in the backyard that Little Hans had eaten. (He’d survived.) Now she wondered if Jonah Boyd’ notebooks had really been lost, or if perhaps Phil, for mysterious reasons of his own, had stolen them. “If only we’d seen,” Nancy lamented. “If only we’d noticed.”
I tried to remind her that Ernest himself had liked and trusted Phil. Given that he had harbored no suspicions, there was no reason for Nancy to beat herself up now. “I