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Middleburg or The Plains. In early October he had had another operation on his back and was still in pain. That operation had not been a success any more than the others had been. The surgeons at Walter Reed remarked that he was very fortunate to have such a high tolerance for pain; he thought they would kill him in their heroic efforts to keep him alive. So this was the last operation, permitting him the dubious consolation that he would not have to be cut again; in that one sense the operation reminded him of his marriage. And the boy bravely insisted that he would rather be alone at Echo House with his father than with friends, whose kindly concern he found embarrassing, particularly since no one would mention his mother's name. He was not in the mood for another family's feastly hilarity with its specific rituals like charades or Monopoly. And the table conversation would be politics, everyone expected to contribute, whether they had anything to say or not; and God help you if you got a fact wrong, the number of congressional districts in Iowa or the identity of the governor of Kentucky or the number of Reds in the French National Assembly. So at six in the evening Alec found himself toying with his food, moving the potatoes around the beans and the mushrooms around the dinde, thinking about the long train ride back to school in Massachusetts two days hence. His father had offered to fly up to Boston so that they could have Thanksgiving at Locke-Ober with the Aswells, but the boy had said no thanks to that, too, not wanting to trouble his father. The last operation had left him looking haggard and frail, in no condition for a three-hour journey in an airplane. And it was bitter cold in Boston.
    Candle wax was dripping on the tablecloth, and the boy moved to reposition the candles, which had begun to list. The dining room was warm and the silence oppressive. He thought he might slip out for a movie, since his father would surely retire early. There were war films playing on a double bill downtown, leathernecks assaulting a Pacific island. That would surely take care of the rest of the evening, leaving only Friday and Saturday before departure on the crowded midnight train to Boston. He glanced into the oval mirror over the sideboard and saw his father's face, gaunt in the flickering candlelight. His father looked colorless and insignificant in the vastness of the room. His head was thrown back and his eyes were closed, but he wasn't dozing, because his lips were moving and he was massaging his lower back. Framed in the mirror, Axel Behl's white face had the dour aspect of a seventeenth-century Dutch portrait; and the artist was no friend.
    "Can I get you something?" the boy asked. "More turkey? Mushrooms?"
    His father waited a moment before replying, in a dusty voice, "Pour me a glass of whiskey, please."
    The boy went to the sideboard and poured whiskey from a decanter into a glass, looking again into the mirror, his own face up close and his father's in the background, flickering yellow light all around. He handed the whiskey to his father, who took a sip and set the glass carefully on the table.
    "Pretty awful, isn't it?"
    "It's not so bad," the boy said. "It's a French Thanksgiving."
    "I asked Billie Peralta to tell them what to do and how to do it, but Billie doesn't speak French very well and Jacques wouldn't've listened anyhow. He only listened to your mother. Reluctantly." Axel sighed, leaning forward to massage his back. Little beads of sweat jumped to the surface of his forehead. "I suppose we should have taken Billie up on her offer, gone out to Middleburg for turkey And charades after."
    "This is fine," the boy said.
    "I hate charades," his father said.
    "So do I."
    "She would have been thrilled to have us, though. She likes to take people in. And she never liked Sylvia."
    "I know," the boy said. He ate a mouthful of turkey.
    "She said Sylvia's bite was worse than her bark."
    Alec nodded, not knowing where his