ears. He would not open his eyes, either, and his father had to walk him out of the cemetery. Twice, I heard him say, 'I'M SORRY!'
I heard a few more cracks of the bat before Dan Needham took me to Front Street. At Grandmother's, there was just 'family.' My Aunt Martha led me up to my old room and we sat on my old bed together. She told me that I could come live with her and Uncle Alfred and Noah and Simon and Hester, 'up north,' where I would always be welcome; she hugged me and kissed me and told me to never forget that there was always that option. Then my grandmother came to my room: she shooed Aunt Martha away and she sat beside me. She told me that if I didn't mind living with an old woman, I was certainly welcome to have my room back-that it would always be my room, that no one else would ever have any claim to it. She hugged me and kissed me, too; she said that we both had to be sure that we gave a lot of love and attention to Dan. Dan was next. He sat on my bed, too. He reminded me that he had legally adopted me; that although I was Johnny Wheelwright to everyone in Gravesend, I was as good as a Johnny Needham, to the school, and that meant that I could go to Graveseriti Academy-when the time came, and just as my mother had wanted me to-as a legitimate faculty child, just as if I were Dan's actual son. Dan said he thought of me as his son, anyway, and he would never take a job that took him away from Gravesend Academy until I'd had the chance to graduate. He said he'd understand if I found Front Street more comfortable than his dormitory apartment, but that he liked having me live in his apartment, with him, if I wasn't too bored with the confinement of the place. Maybe I'd prefer to spend some nights every week with him, and some nights at Front Street-any nights I wished, in either place. I said I thought that would be fine, and I asked him to tell Aunt Martha-in a way that wouldn't hurt her feelings-that I really was a Gravesend boy and I didn't want to move 'up north.' Actually, the very thought of living with my cousins exhausted and terrified me, and I was convinced I should be consumed by sinful longing for unnatural acts with Hester if I permitted myself to move in with the Eastmans. (I did not tell Dan that he should tell Aunt Martha that.) When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time-the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes-when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever- there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. The evening after her funeral, I felt she was gone when it was time for Dan to go home to the dorm. I realized that Dan had choices-he could return to his dormitory apartment, alone, or I could offer to go back with him; or he could stay at Front Street, he could even stay in the other twin bed in my room because I'd already told my grandmother that I didn't want Noah or Simon sleeping there that night. But as soon as I realized what Dan's choices were, I also knew they were-
each of them-imperfect in their own way. I realized that the choices available to Dan, regarding where he would sleep, would be imperfect, forever; and that, forever, there would be something unsatisfying about thinking of him alone-and something also incomplete about him being with me.
'Do you want me to come back to the dorm with you?' I asked him.
'Would you like me to stay with you?' he asked me. But what did it matter? I watched him walk down Front Street toward the lights of the academy buildings. It was a warm night, with the frequent banging of screen doors and the sounds of rocking chairs on the screened-in porches. The neighborhood kids were playing some game with a flashlight; fortunately, it was too dark for even the most American of kids to be hitting a baseball. My cousins were uncharacteristically subdued by the tragedy. Noah kept saying 'I can't believe it!' Then he'd put his hand on my shoulder. And Simon rather tactlessly, but innocently, added: 'Who would have thought he could hit a ball hard enough?'
My Aunt Martha curled up on the living-room couch with her head in Uncle Alfred's lap; she lay there not moving, like a little girl with an earache. My grandmother sat in her usual thronelike chair in the same room; she and Alfred would occasionally exchange glances and shake their heads. Once Aunt Martha sat up with her hair a mess and pounded her fist on the coffee table. 'It doesn't make any sense I' she shouted; then she put her head back down in Uncle Alfred's lap, and cried for a while. To this outburst, my grandmother neither shook nor nodded her head; she looked at the ceiling, ambiguously-either seeking restraint or patience there, or seeking some possible sense, which Martha had found to be lacking. Hester had not changed out of her funeral dress; it was black linen, of a simplicity and good fit that my mother might have favored, and Hester looked especially grown-up in it, although it was badly wrinkled. She kept pinning her hair up on top of her head, because of the heat, but wild strands of it would fall down on her face and neck until, exasperated, she would let it all down again. The fine beads of sweat on her upper lip gave her skin the smoothness and the shine of glass.
'Want to take a walk?' she asked me.
'Sure,' I said.
'Want Noah and me to go with you?' Simon asked.
'No,' Hester said. Most of the houses on Front Street still had their downstairs lights on; dogs were still outside, and barking; but the kids who'd been playing the flashlight game had been called inside. The heat off the sidewalk still radiated up at you; on hot summer nights, in Gravesend, the heat hit your crotch first. Hester took my hand as we walked.
'It's only the second time I've seen you in a dress,' I said.
'I know,' she said. It was an especially dark night,
