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more than an expression. Even in the midst of a loud, bloody battle, when they should have screamed, Jesus, some bastard tore my leg off, some bastard has just blinded me, some grey-haired captain of industry sent me all this way only to bleed to death, he had heard grown, dying men say only, I’m hurt, I am hurt here.
    â€œShe was doing really well,” Sylvia said. “She worked so hard.”
    â€œWe’ll get her through this,” Bill said.
    Murray had followed the mattress out to the truck too, running along beside the carriers. A few people in the crowd, the old priest foremost among them, were taking the opportunity to mutter quietly that such a thing was bound to happen. As if they’d known there would be an accident, as if they’d been waiting for it. But most people took a different tack. Murray was told repeatedly by men and by some of the women too, “It wasn’t your fault, Murray. Accidents will happen.” And, “Don’t berate yourself, son.”
    He didn’t hear any of it. He was talking faster than he’d ever talked, eager to articulate and receive all of the blame, ready for someone to yank him around by the shoulders and yell, It’s your fault, Murray, you and your big-time ideas. Sometimes ideas are better left alone. You are old enough, you should know that.
    All he wanted from this night and from this whole summer was blame and another chance, to choose an older, stronger girl or to lower the trapeze down closer to the ground or to stand directly under Daphne with his arms braced as she slid and turned and dropped and caught herself and then didn’t.
    *   *   *
    DAPHNE WENT BACK to school that September almost immediately after she came home from the hospital in London. Sylvia had decided that even with the pain, which was sometimes severe, sometimes just plain pain, even though the doctors seemed to like the word discomfort, Daphne would be much better off involved again in some kind of normal life with her friends. In Sylvia’s experience, distraction was more often than not a good thing.
    Daphne’s friends called for her in the morning, sometimes lifting her books off the table to carry them in their own arms, and one of them usually came home with her after school to hang around the house until supper. Sylvia wondered occasionally if all this solicitude could be real. Once or twice she caught herself thinking that these girls were just playing, just impersonating grown-ups, with one of them, Daphne, the pretend-hurt girl, and all of the others the pretend-loving friends. Bill was more than a little unnerved by the unrelenting high-pitched babble that filled his house now, the wild giggling, the running up and down the stairs for no good reason. But he didn’t let anyone hear him complain. He told Sylvia he only hoped it wouldn’t just suddenly evaporate one day, like some fad.
    Sylvia made hearty soups to get the necessary nourishment past the wiring in Daphne’s jaw and she helped her with her teeth, most of which had been left, miraculously, intact. She held Daphne’s pretty lips open to get the toothbrush inside her mouth and after her teeth were clean they moved from the bathroom to Sylvia’s bedroom vanity. She sat Daphne on the upholstered vanity stool and played with her hair, twisted it up in a high bun and then pulled it back into a French roll, which she said was much too old for her now but might be something to think about later on. They experimented and laughed into the three-way mirror as the blood-red bruising down Daphne’s throat turned to brown and mauve and then to a sickly yellow and then was finally gone.
    As bad as Daphne’s jaw looked, and was obviously going to look, both Patrick and Paul were secretly relieved that it wasn’t worse, glad it wasn’t her spine that had been shattered. Although, of course, they didn’t say that out