ou and it can be converted,” and Alex says “Don’t worry, all the material you’ve probably used about me the past thirty years is still valid and not dated, if it was done well,” and he says “Me? — strictly fiction; only non-fict I’ve writ was called Why I Don’t Write It,’ which proved its point by reading unbeingable and where no magazine asked me for one again, but let’s start unraveling the snarl as to where you’ve been so long and why all this time you didn’t clue us in, but darn, here’s Denise — just when I thought I’d get an answer from you — though wish you’d met her previous to her present condition — she had such lively eyes, like the sea,” and she comes downstairs slowly—“Howard?” “I’m here, dear, just a few steps farther,” “How many?” “Seven, not counting the floor”—clutching the rail with both hands, foot edging to the end of each step before going over and dipping to the next one till she nudges it, then, toe poised over a step: “I can’t make it this way — I’m scared I’ll fall,” and he says “Just five more steps not counting the floor — for Alex,” and she starts to cry, Alex says “Go to her,” he says “No no, this’ll help — I want her to learn how to do it or else we’ll have to sell this place at a loss to buy a ranch house,” “You can move her to the first floor,” “I want to be with my wife in our bedroom upstairs — I’m a beast: I need my warmth, her smells, my sex and her breasts,” she gets on her knees and crawls down the steps backwards, holding onto the balusters, stands at the bottom, “Watch when she smiles,” he whispers to Alex, “nobody has one like her — it lights up blown bulbs even when they’re not in the sockets, and if they are, even when the lamp’s unplugged — our whole globe could run for a year on the electricity her smile gives off, our sun is a dark dewdrop in a deep cave at the peak of the Ice Age by comparison, our solar system could spin another min with a single glint of that facial detonation and if she had her old eyes back, for days,” she grabs a cane off the bottom of the banister, “Where are you fellas?” “Over here,” Howard says, “up two, down three and then weave around another staircase,” and she faces them and says “Alex, what a delight finally to meet you and especially when we thought you’d perished, and what a change your being here will have on Howard and in turn on the children and me — you’re the chief reason he sleeps so feistily at night and acts like a caffeine neurotic during most of the day,” and she pokes the cane in front of her hitting a bunch of things and then getting the tip caught under the rug—“I can’t use this rotten stick,” she shouts, holding it above her as if she’s going to throw it, “it’s for cripples, not blinds,” “Oh oh,” Howard says, “now we’ll never see her smile or not much of one — anyone got a match or flashlight?” “Go to her,” Alex says, “stop pitching for laughs,” and he says “No no, believe me I’m doing the right thing — she’s got to learn to walk with it or else she’ll stay in her room under the covers all day be it this place or a ranch house, and then why would I disrupt my life to give up this great place at a big loss to buy an overpriced ugly ranch house besides sticking the kids with new playmates and a different school?” “Because she’s your wife and their mother and you’re supposed to help, support and etcetera her,” “Listen, happy as I am to see you — giddy’s the word, rapt, ecstatic, beside myself, though I don’t entirely show it — and much as I’ve missed you — agonizingly’s how I’d put it, heartstrickenly, sickenly — you can’t come back after thirty years and second or third thing — Olivia, have you been counting? for she’s the math whiz here,” but she doesn’t look up from her book—“tell me how to ruin my life — run it, I mean, ream it, wreck it, rot it, rue it,” “I can advise you when you’re being a little too cruel where it hurts — you always had that streak in you but I thought by this time you’d have muzzled or domesticated most of it,” “And if I always had that then you’ve always had the ability not to clam up or mind your own bizwax,” “That can’t be constituted an ability, even if I were a clam,” “The know-how, know-too-much, know-it-all-how-do-I-tell-my-schmucky-bro-how-to-conduct-his-life, and knack’s the word I meant, skill, trick, touch — but I have to live with her and have lived with her and in her absence do most of the things for the house and kids-shopping, mopping, slopping — nobody ever thinks of that, rarely, let’s face it, unfairly, so why don’t you just wise up or get lost?” “You said it, I didn’t,” and Alex goes over to Denise, takes the cane from her and puts it back on the banister, kisses her hands and leads her to the couch and sits her beside Olivia, squeezes in between them, whispers something into her ear, she slaps her thigh and smiles (she never did both at the same time with me, Howard thinks, or one after the other; thinks again: no, never, far as he can think back), the houselights go on when anyone who could have turned them on is in the living room several feet from the nearest light switch, and even if that person could have reached a light switch it wouldn’t have turned on all the lights on the first floor and in the stairwell and on the porch right outside the front door, Alex whispers something to her again and she smiles and slaps her thigh at the same time: air conditioners, radios and television upstairs, washer, dryer, humidifier and probably all the lights downstairs, toaster, dishwasher, food processor, juice squeezer, kitchen radio, stove light and fan, “Stop smiling,” he shouts, “and Alex, stop whispering funny things to her — with so much power on at once we’re bound to blow a fuse,” Eva sits on Alex’s lap and kisses his hand, Olivia kisses his other hand and then puts his arm around her shoulder while she reads, “This is what I was most afraid of if you ever did come back,” Howard says, “not only that you’d outshine me intellectually and perceptively and with general all-around sensibleness but that you’d outdo me as a writer with the work you came back with or were now working on, show me up in front of my kids with your gentleness and equanimity and all the rest of those things, make my wife enjoy herself twice as much in your company than mine — three times, four, five, jack up the utility bill in my house where I couldn’t afford paying it, and start a kissing-hand habit in my family and maybe eventually on our street and in the neighborhood when before my family was doing just fine kissing one another on the cheek and head and lips and as neighbors we were doing fine also with a mere nod or hello-well, go on then, she’s much better off with almost anyone but me, and maybe the kids ditto, and if she stays in the family with you, even better, since I’ll get to see her at functions and such from time to time and also my kids,” and he stamps out of the house, hoping Denise will call him back and the kids will run after him and Alex will say he’s sorry and what does Howard mean and maybe something stupid besides, juvenile, injudicious, senseless, obscene, all the interior and porch lights of the other houses suddenly go on at once when the sun’s straight up or an hour to the side left or right but bright, through the living room window sees his girls, turned around now with their knees probably on the cushions and their elbows on top of the couch’s back — Alex and Denise smiling and talking continuously, one or the other or both at the same time, energetic talk, lots of face gestures, he can’t see it but thinks from the way their arms are positioned that they might even be holding hands — waving at him forlornly, curiously, bewilderedly, for a few seconds Olivia staring him in the face with a look saying you know darn well what you’re doing’s totally wrong and absurd, he waves back and whispers “I’m your daddy, honey, don’t look at me like that, and besides, you know how horrible I feel so don’t make it worse,” says loud enough for them to hear if they can hear him through the closed window and door and with all the appliances in the house going, for he didn’t see anyone get up to turn them off, “I swear I never wanted to leave you two, it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do, in the world, the universe, whatever’s more than that, for you mean everything there is to me and leaving you is like a death that’s quick but pain filled and unforeknown and-foretold — I don’t quite know what I meant by the last part of that but it sounded right and may be — that I’ve always loved your mother from the minute I set eyes on her, second, instant, and that instant to maybe a minute after it across a room filled with partygoers, chatter and tobacco smoke — some day if either of you want I’ll tell you about it and exactly or as close as I can get to it and if my memory by then’s still good, how I felt and what I remember her response to me was when I finally did get up the guts to go over to her to introduce myself — it’s true she and I have had our spats and brawls but we seemed till now to have been able to talk them out, I don’t like her illness any more than you do, condition, affliction, hate it, damn it, would kick its ass in if I could, but occasionally it gets to me in other ways, that she can’t do almost anything she used to like helping with the cooking, cleaning and shopping and your homework and getting you kids to your various activities and schools and just seeing the things around the house that need picking up before someone trips over them and breaks a limb, so all the extra work I have to do, and while I’m at it all those tedious to good books with the horrible readers of them on tape she gets I also if I’m in the house have to listen to, I didn’t want to storm out of here looking and acting like such a fool, I don’t like pretending I know where I’m going now and what I’m going to do, I’m in fact trying to find out why I did what I did before by talking about it and related things here with you,” they wave only their fingers this time and turn around, Olivia putting Alex’s arm around her shoulder and holding it there and with her other hand holding her book close to her face, Eva back on Alex’s lap and kissing his visible hand, Alex and Denise laughing now and jabbering when the laughing stops, they don’t turn to the window once, he doesn’t understand it, if he were Alex he’d look and see what he’s doing out there and then tell her and then for them both to smile and wave to him that it’s all all right and to come back in, he wishes he knew what they were talking so actively about, vigorously, spiritedly, he’s glad his brother’s back, nobody can hear him but if he said that aloud and someone could hear him he’d want that person to know he’s happy as can be to see his brother after thirty years, happy he’s alive, looking well, intelligent, everything intact, glad he’s able to make Denise laugh, glad she’s laughing, that his kids love their uncle, glad everyone there’s happy and having such a good time, though wishes things could be switched around a bit to a lot — brother back, that unchanged, healthy, intact, etcetera, Denise laughing, smiling, animated, both animated but he seated between them holding their hidden hands and Eva on his lap and Olivia on the other side of Alex or Denise with her arm stretched behind whomever she’s sitting beside so her hand’s on his shoulder or neck, patting it, habit she got from him when he used to pick her up to comfort her before she could even walk or when he’d walk her to sleep, or just resting on or stroking it, goes to the dogwood tree in the front yard, only tree there, centered in the small lawn, doesn’t know why he went to it or what he’s going to do there, stare at it? walk past it and then where? snap a branch off and toss it over or into his hedge and then what? all the streetlights on the street and the cross one go on at once though the sun’s still almost straight up and bright, never liked the tree even when it blossomed pink or gave on a hot day enough shade to sit beneath, which he never did, always preferred sitting in the rocker on the covered porch and close enough to the railing to put his feet up, little table by the chair to put down his newspaper or book and drink, its branches are sharp and have scratched his arms when he’s tried to mow close to it and the top of his head once when he bent down under the low branches to get the mower right up to the trunk, is that it with all dogwoods or just pink-blossoming ones or just his: low branches and sharpness? all or most of the house alarms in the neighborhood go off, four or five of them, loud almost simultaneous hum starts up from what seems like all the air conditioners in the neighborhood, though it can’t be fifty degrees out, fifty-five, he wasn’t serious before about her smile and what it could do concerning electricity and giving off energy and moving solar systems and stuff, it was what literary people, even people with just literary pretensions, and of course some nonliterary people who happen to know the word, like to call, well, like to call, exaggeration for want of the fancier literary word he can’t come up with now but which sounds Greek and has some part that sounds like bell or ball in it but always slips his mind when he wants to use it, bill, bull, boll, but he’ll see: usually two days at the most, three, after he can’t recall it he comes across it in a newspaper article or magazine when he hasn’t seen it in one for months, sees an ant crawling up the tree trunk and immediately drops to his knees under the branches, resights the ant and squashes it with his thumb, then thinks why’d he do that? it wasn’t in the house or heading for it and even if it were heading to it, it was just one, he probably wanted to take something out on something, let off steam, thinks of slapping his hand against the trunk for the same reason, beating it, then maybe both hands and then maybe his head, to take it in his hands, which would have to hurt by then, and slam it against the trunk till he gets too dizzy or tired to or collapses or his head splits open, but that would make no sense either unless he wanted Alex or Denise to come out to help his head, which he doesn’t think he does, and though a gash wouldn’t bother him much or the blood — his head got knocked around plenty when he was a kid, though never self-inflicted, with scars dotted along the sides and his continuing baldness revealing a few forgotten creases on top — he wouldn’t stick himself with the pain that goes with those slams, flicks the ant off his thumb, sees several more crawling up the trunk, “You you-yous,” holding his fist over them, crawls out from under the tree and goes into the house, doesn’t know why, maybe to sit between Alex and Denise, put Eva on his lap, Olivia’s hand on his shoulder or back and even patting it for her in case she doesn’t, for one thing to finally find out where he’s been for thirty years and how’d he get here, for another — well, lots of anothers but one’s just to apologize to them all for his behavior before — nobody’s there, shuts off all the appliances and lights, looks out the living room window to the lane of grass between his house and the shrubs that belong to the next, out the kitchen door to the backyard and swing set, shouts for them and then goes upstairs, shuts off Denise’s typewriter and all the appliances and lights, she could be showing Alex his studio and the guest bed in the basement, even making up the bed for him if he’s bushed, for he might have come a long way in a few days, not had much sleep — runs the two flights downstairs, front door knocks, shuts off all the appliances and lights there and the sump pump which continued pumping when there was no water left to dump, upstairs, front door ding-dongs and knocks though doesn’t remember shutting it, looks through the small door window to see if it’s Alex or Denise — window’s too high to see if it’s the kids if they’re standing close to the door — a woman, shuts the porch light, opens the door, strangely familiar, not strangely but queerly, familiarly, family, it’s — she’s — he’s sure what his sister would look like if she’d lived another twenty-four — five — fou