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also lived in town. After they’d divorced, he’d stayed, claiming he’d lost his taste for the city. That night, my father arrived with a bottle of very good cabernet sauvignon and a bouquet of irises.
    I placed the irises in a tall vase while Mandy lit candlesfor the table, which she had set with the good china and silver. This seemed excessively elegant to me for a dinner of deli ravioli and salad, but both of my daughters responded to their grandfather much as Maureen and I had, and there seemed no way that I could change that. Richard Kellerher was a romantic and enigmatic figure, always impeccably dressed, charming, and polite. They were too young for me to tell them that he was a heartbreaker—an untrustworthy and duplicitous person.
    He flattered my daughters as no one else did. He noticed what they wore, when they changed hairstyles. He paid for Mandy to have riding lessons, for Amy to take ballet. Amy was less susceptible to his charms than Mandy, but only because she was more self-absorbed and less susceptible to everything. For this reason, he wooed her even more. “Let me see that arm,” he asked as she set the plates around the table.
    She had been self-conscious when the cast came off. “There was all this old scaly skin at first,” she said. “It looked like a dinosaur arm.”
    â€œAh,” he said, holding it between his hands and examining it. “I can’t believe that. Now it looks like something carved from precious ivory.”
    â€œThat’s silly, Grandpa,” she said, giggling.
    â€œNo. It’s a treasure that has been sealed away and is now revealed.”
    She giggled again and rolled her eyes in my direction.
    â€œIt’s skinnier than the other,” said Mandy. “Amy should lift weights.”
    â€œNot too many weights,” he said shuddering. “Girls shouldn’t look like boys.”
    â€œI’m going to lift weights,” said Mandy, studying him for a reaction. “But just enough.”
    After dinner, I made him come into the kitchen as I loaded the dishwasher. It would never have occurred to him to help clear the table. “I’ve found Mother a place close by,” I said. “So I can keep track of her. I’ll check on her every day.”
    â€œWhy is it that no one checks on me every day?”
    â€œBecause you don’t need it.”
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with her, you know.” He sat on a high stool and crossed his legs almost primly. I’d noticed the same occasional primness in Jack. “She just likes to annoy people. She’s extremely dramatic.”
    â€œShe doesn’t make anyone nearly as unhappy as she makes herself.”
    â€œI know,” he sighed. “Do I have to suffer her? I hope she doesn’t expect to see me. She can’t seem to understand what divorce means.”
    â€œShe doesn’t believe in it. You know that. But I doubt that she’ll turn up at your door and harangue you.”
    â€œI’m seeing other women, you know.”
    â€œWhen haven’t you?”
    He chuckled and looked smug. “Very good. When haven’t I?”
    â€œThe one you brought on Christmas eve?”
    â€œNo. She was too young. Someone nearer to my age.”
    â€œI guess that’s a good thing.” I closed the dishwasher and turned the knob.
    â€œYou women have it made nowadays,” he said as the machine began to hum.
    â€œShe’ll phone you.”
    â€œI have never deserted your mother, despite what she likes to believe,” he said and recrossed his legs. “Never.”
    On Saturday, Bill drove a rented U-Haul down to Oakland where Mr. Boudreau supplied his nephew Calvin to help us load my mother’s things into the truck in order to hasten the departure of his troublesome tenant. Calvin was a surly young man with a shaved head and extremely expensive sneakers who sneered at each box he carried to the