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Boz, though he’d have liked to retaliate with something gross, rose above it. He sat straighter in his chair, while in languid contrast his left hand dipped toward the dish of hot snaps. So much tastier cold.

Milly shook. Four: her cannon landed on theb & O. She paid Shrimp $200, and shook again. Eleven: her token came down on one of her own properties.

The Monopoly set was an heirloom from the O’Meara side of the family. The houses and hotels were wood, the counters lead. Milly, as ever, had the cannon, Shrimp had the little racing car, Boz had the battleship, and January had the flatiron. Milly and Shrimp were winning. Boz and January were losing.
C’est la vie.

“Bulgaria,” Boz said, because it was such a fine thing to say, but also because his duty as a host required him to lead the conversation back to the interrupted guest. “But why?”

Shrimp, who was studying the backs of her property deeds to see how many more houses she could get by mortgaging the odds and ends, explained the exchange system between the two schools.

“Isn’t this what she was being so giddy about last spring?” Milly asked. “I thought another girl got the scholarship then.”

“Celeste diCecca. She was the one in the airplane crash.”

“Oh!” Milly said, as the light dawned. “I didn’t make the connection.”

“You thought Shrimp just likes to keep up with the latest plane crashes?” Boz asked.

“I don’t know what I thought, Trueheart. So now she’s going after all. Talk about luck!”

Shrimp bought three more houses. Then the racing car sped past Park Place, Boardwalk, Go, and Income Tax, to land on Vermont Avenue. It was mortgaged to the bank.

“Talk about luck!” said January. The talk about luck continued for several turns round the board—who had it and who lacked it and whether there was, outside of Monopoly, any such thing. Boz asked if any of them had ever known anyone who’d won on the numbers or in the lottery. January’s brother had won five hundred dollars three years before.

“But of course,” January added conscientiously, “over the long run he’s lost more than that.”

“Certainly for the passengers an airplane crash is only luck,” Milly insisted.

“Did you think about crashes a lot when you were a hostess?” January asked the question with the same leaden disinterest with which she played at the game.

While Milly told her story about the Great Air Disaster of 2021, Boz snuck around behind the screen to revise the orzata and add some ice. Tabbycat was watching tiny ballplayers silently playing ball on the teevee, and Peanut was sleeping peacefully. When he returned with the tray the Air Disaster was concluded and Shrimp was spelling out her philosophy of life:

“It may look like luck on the surface but if you go deeper you’ll see that people usually get what they’ve got coming. If it hadn’t been this scholarship for Amparo, it would have been something else. She’s worked for it.”

“And Mickey?” January asked.

“Poor Mickey,” Milly agreed.

“Mickey got exactly what he deserved.”

For once Boz had to agree with his sister. “People, when they do things like that, are often seeking punishment.”

January’s orzata chose just that moment to spill itself. Milly got the board up in time and only one edge was wet. January had had so little money left in front of her that that was no loss either. Boz was more embarrassed than January, since his last words seemed to imply that she’d overturned her drink deliberately. God knew, she had every reason to want to. Nothing is quite so dull as two solid hours of losing.

Two turns later January’s wish came true. She landed on Boardwalk and was out of the game. Boz, who was being ground into the dust more slowly but just as surely, insisted on conceding at the same time. He went with January out onto the veranda.

“You didn’t have to give up just to keep me company, you know.”

“Oh, they’re happier in there without us. Now they can fight it out between themselves, fang and claw.”

“Do you know, I’ve never won at Monopoly? Never once in my life!” She sighed. Then, so as not to seem an ungrateful guest, “You’ve got a lovely view.”

They appreciated the night view in silence: lights that moved cars and planes; lights that didn’t move, stars, windows, street lamps.

Then, growing uneasy, Boz made his usual quip for a visitor on the veranda: “Yes—I’ve got the sun in the morning and the clouds in the afternoon.”

Possibly January didn’t get it. In any case she intended to be serious. “Boz, maybe you could give me some advice.”

“Me? Fiddle-dee-dee!” Boz loved to give advice. “What about?”

“What we’re doing.”

“I thought that was more in the nature of being already done.”

“What?”

“I mean, from the way Shrimp talks, I thought it was a—” But he couldn’t say
“fait accompli,”
so he translated. “An accomplished fact.”

“I suppose it is, as far as our being accepted. They’ve been very nice to us, the others there. It isn’t us that I’m worried about so much as her mother.”

“Mom? Oh, she’ll get along.”

“She seemed very upset last night.”

“She gets upset but she recovers quickly, our Mom does. All the Hansons are great bouncers-back. As you must have noticed.” That wasn’t nice but it seemed to slip past January with most of his other meanings.

“She’ll still have Lottie with her. And Mickey too, when he gets back.”

“That’s right.” But his agreement had an edge of sarcasm. He’d begun to resent January’s clumsy streaks of whitewash. “And anyhow, even if it is as bad as she seems to think, you can’t let that stand in your way. If Mom didn’t have anyone else, that shouldn’t affect your decision.”

“You don’t think so?”

“If I thought so, then I’d have to move back there, wouldn’t I? If it came to the point that she was going to lose the place. Oh, look who’s here!”

It was Tabbycat. Boz picked her up and rubbed her in all her favorite places. January persisted. “But you’ve got your own … family.”

“No, I’ve got my own life. The same as you or Shrimp.”

“So you do think we’re doing the right thing?”

But he wasn’t going to let her have it as easy as that. “Are you doing what you want to? Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s the right thing.” Which judgment pronounced, he turned his attention to Tabbycat. “What’s going on in there, huh, little fella? Are those people still playing their long dull game? Huh? Who’s going to win? Huh?”

January, who didn’t know the cat had been watching television, answered the question straightforwardly. “I think Shrimp will.”

“Oh?” Why had Shrimp ever …? He had never understood.

“Yes. She always wins. It’s incredible. The luck.”

That was why.

He was going to be a ballplayer. Ideally a catcher for the Mets, but lacking that he’d be content so long as he was in the major leagues. If his sister could become a ballerina, there was no reason he couldn’t be an athlete. He had the same basic genetic equipment, quick reflexes, a good mind. He could do it. Dr. Sullivan said he could do it and Greg Lincoln the sports director said he had as good a chance as any other boy, possibly better. It meant endless practice, rigid discipline, an iron will, but with Dr. Sullivan helping him to weed out his bad mental habits there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t meet those demands.

But how could he explain that in half an hour in the visitors’ room? To his mother, who didn’t know Kike Chalmers from Opal Nash? His mother who was the source (he could understand that now) of most of his wrong ways of thinking. So he just told her.

“I don’t want to go back to 334. Not this week, not next week, not …” he pulled up just short of the word “never.”

“Not for a long time.”

Emotions flickered across her face like strobes. Mickey looked away. She said, “Why, Mickey? What did I do?”

“Nothing. That’s not it.”

“Why then? A reason.”

“You talk in your sleep. All night long you talk.”

“That’s not a reason. You can sleep in the living room, like Boz used to, if I keep you up.”

“Then you’re crazy. How’s that? Is that a reason? You’re crazy, all of you are.”

That stopped her, but not for long. Then she was pecking away at him again. “Maybe everyone’s crazy, a little. But this place, Mickey, you can’t want to—I mean, look at it!”

“I like this place. The guys here, as far as they’re concerned, I’m just like them. And that’s what I want. I don’t want to go back and live with you. Ever. If you make me go, I’ll just do the same thing all over again. I swear I will. And this time I’ll use enough fluid and really kill him too, not just pretend.”

“Okay, Mickey, it’s your life.”

“Goddamn right.” These words, and the tears on which they verged, were like a load of cement dumped into the raw foundation of his new life. By tomorrow morning all the wet slop of feeling would be solid as rock and in a year a skyscraper would stand where now there was nothing but a gaping hole.

Reverend Cox had just taken down Bunyan’s Kerygma, which was already a week overdue, and settled down for a nice warm dip into his plodding, solid, reassuring prose, when the bell went Ding-Dong, and before she could unfold her legs, again, Ding-Dong. Someone was upset.

A dumpy old woman with a frazzled face, curdled flesh, the left eyelid drooping, the right eye popping out. As soon as the door opened the mismatched eyes went through the familiar motions of surprise, distrust, withdrawal.

“Please come in.” She gestured to the glow from the office at the end of the hall.

“I came to see Father Cox.” She held up one of the form letters the office sent out: If you should ever experience the need …

Charmain offered her hand. “I’m Charmain Cox.”

The woman, remembering her manners, took the hand offered her. “I’m Nor a Hanson. Are you … ?”

“His wife?” She smiled. “No, I’m afraid I’m the priest. Is that better or worse? But do come in out of this dreadful cold. If you think you’d be more comfortable talking with a man. I can phone up my colleague at St. Mark’s, Reverend Gogardin. He’s only around the corner.” She steered her into the office and into the comfy confessional of the brown chair.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been to church. It never occurred to me, from your letter … ”

“Yes, I suppose it’s something of a fraud on my part, using only my initials.” And she went through her disingenuous but useful patter song about the woman who had fainted the man who’d snatched off her pectoral. Then she renewed her offer to phone St. Mark’s, but by now Mrs. Hanson was resigned to a priest of the wrong sex.

Her story was a mosaic of little guilts and indignities, weaknesses and woes, but the picture that emerged was all too recognizably the disintegration of a family. Charmain began to assemble all the arguments why she wouldn’t be able to take an active role in her struggle against the great octopus, Bureaucracy—chief among them that in the nine-to-five portion of her life she was a slave at one of the octopus’s shrines (Department of Temporary Assistance). But then it developed that the Church, and even God, were involved in Mrs. Hanson’s problems. The older daughter and her lover were leaving the sinking family to join the Sodality of St. Clare. In the quarrel that had fumbled the old lady out of her building and into this office the lover had used the poor dear’s own Bible as ammunition. From Mrs. Hanson’s extremely partisan account it took Charmain some time to locate the offending passage, but at last she tracked it down to St. Mark, third chapter, verses thirty-three to thirty-five:

And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?

And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!

For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

“Now I ask you!”

“Of course,” Charmain explained, “Christ isn’t saying there that one has a license to abuse or insult one’s natural parents.”

“Of course he isn’t! ”

“But has it occurred to you that this … is her name January?”

“Yes. It’s a ridiculous name.”

“Has it occurred to you that January and your daughter may be right?”

“How do you mean?”

“Let’s put it this way. What is the will of God?”

Mrs. Hanson shrugged. “You’ve got me.” Then, after the question had settled, “But if you think that Shrimp knows—ha!”

Deciding that St. Mark had done enough harm already, Charmain stumbled through her usual good counsels for disaster situations, but if she had been a shop clerk helping the woman to pick out a hat she couldn’t have felt more futile or ridiculous. Everything Mrs. Hanson tried on made her look grotesque.

“In other words,” Mrs. Hanson summed up, “you think I’m wrong.”

“No. But on the other hand I’m not sure your daughter is. Have you tried, really, to see things from her side? To think why she wants to join a Sodality?”

“Yes. I have. She likes to shit on me and call it cake.”

Charmain laughed without much zest. “Well, perhaps you’re right. I hope we can talk again about this after we’ve both had a chance to think it over.”

“You mean you want me to go.”

“Yes, I guess that’s what I mean. It’s late, I have a job.”

“Okay, I’m going. But I meant to ask: that book on the floor …”

“Kerygma?”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s Greek for message. It’s supposed to be one of the things that the Church does, it brings a message.”

“What message?”

“In a nutshell—Christ is risen. We are saved.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Hanson. But what I believe doesn’t matter—I’m only the messenger.”

“Shall I tell you something?”

“What?”

“I don’t think you’re much of a priest.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hanson. I know that.”

Alone in the apartment, doors locked, mind bolted, Mrs. Hanson watched the teevee with a fierce, wandering attention. People knocked, she ignored them. Even Ab Holt, who should have known better than to be playing their game.