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I remember my dad coming home with a black eye one day. Sondra—she sucker punched him. She had a diamond ring on her finger, too, and he had to get six stitches. But he went back to work the next day and fell right into line. He would never leave. Until two and a half years ago, that is, when he remarried. At the time he was this big,” Rebecca said, holding her fingers close together. “But after moving to Los Angeles—his wife is from there—and cutting off the yoke, he became something of a whole person again.”
    â€œYou don’t visit him, do you?”
    â€œOccasionally. My mother’s in L.A., too.”
    â€œBut you would never live there. Well, why would you? Your whole family’s left. You’ve got the whole city to yourself. So, what’s wrong with this aunt of yours?”
    â€œMy aunt?” Rebecca took a drink of wine, thinking. “Between all her parents’ children, she’s the un-pretty one. She’s not as likeable as her siblings, either. She’s a bully, like her dad.”
    â€œMmm.”
    â€œAnd she has no relationship with her parents. She doesn’t see them more than once a year. I don’t think they talk on the phone very much. And then, her parents have a lot of money. She might think she’s been cut out of the will—for all I know, she has been—and she could be trying to get hers. Gertrude, I want to help my dad.”
    â€œI never had that problem.”
    â€œWell, I’ve been very selfish over the last fifteen years, and that’s had its uses. But I’ve never done anything important for my father. Maybe I can help him win this lawsuit. I can put him in touch with the right people. I can direct him. My grandparents, too.”
    â€œDid they ask for your help?”
    â€œNo. But in their minds, I’m still a child. It would never occur to them.”
    â€œMaybe they don’t want your counsel. I say, sit back. Wait for them to ask. Don’t insert yourself into their problems.”
    â€œSo, you think I should just keep on living my life as if none of this were happening?”
    â€œFor as long as you can,” Gertrude said. “Yes. That’s exactly what you should do.”

III. APRÈS LE DÉLUGE
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    Summer moved along, and Ben did his best to ignore Sondra’s lawsuit. He made his art. He shopped for groceries. He cooked chicken and wandered Chinatown. He thought about refrigeration. He sat at the dining table at the house in Southampton and cut obituaries for his files, dozens and dozens of them, walked on the beach at sunrise on Saturday and Sunday mornings and did his exercises there in the sand, napped in the late morning and again in the afternoon on the deck beside the pool, and sought new ways to open up his mind and give fresh energy to his body. For instance, he bought thousands of books at the Salvation Army in Hoboken—every kind of book, books of poetry and cookbooks and collections of plays and books on childcare and on mental health and encyclopedias and almanacs and dictionaries—and stacked them all over the loft, in his studio and his office and in the living room, having decided it would make him feel stronger to be surrounded by so many books. And at times, he imagined, it was working. However, neither the books, nor the exercise, nor the fresh ocean air was potent enough to combat the devastating physical and mental effects of Sondra and her lawyers, who were finding new reasons to file charges against her father and mother every other week. No, the case wasn’t going away as quickly as the lawyers had originally assured him it would. In fact, Ben wasn’t hearing any details about the lawsuit moving toward a conclusion. Only about new bills. It seemed he’d racked up a hundred-thousand-dollar fee in just a month. Had it been longer? Perhaps a couple of days, a week. But now, by the time July rolled around, the bill was up to