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five,” his mother says.
    â€œBut this was how I was able to see all this. Not worried you’d be kidnapped. Just that you might cross the street. You never did. He was a very obedient boy, Howard. But once I found you sitting on the curb—you must have done this a few times because more than a few times a doughnut or roll was missing from a bag—eating one. Then he’d come home. I used to watch you from the street. You know, sneak up from behind car to car so you wouldn’t see me following you. If someone saw me doing this with a boy today they’d think I was trying to kidnap him and I’d be arrested, no questions asked. But everyone around then knew I was your nanny. Then you’d leave your wagon out front and go into the building and apartment—the doors were always unlocked during the day—and ask me or one of your brothers or your mother to help you bring the wagon downstairs.”
    â€œWhat a memory you have.”
    â€œI don’t remember most of that,” he says. “Going into Grossinger’s for sugar and jelly doughnuts I do, but no note or wagon. Sitting on the curb eating a roll or doughnut I’ve no mental picture of, I think, other than for what other people’s accounts of it have put into my head.”
    â€œBelieve me,” Frieda says. “If you did it once, shopping with your wagon, you did it a dozen times. And when you got home, first thing you always asked for was one of those doughnuts or rolls or the end slice of the rye bread if it was rye. With no butter on it—no spread. Just the bread plain.”
    â€œI remember liking the end slice then. The tiny piece—no bigger than my thumb—but which was usually left in the bakery’s bread slicer. In fact, I still have to fight my wife for it. At least for the heel of the bread, since it seems all the bread we get comes unsliced.”
    â€œHow is Denise?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œShe’s wonderful,” his mother says. “As dear to me as any of my children, that’s the way I look at her, terrible as that might be to say.”
    â€œIt isn’t. I’m sure Howard loves to hear it. And your daughter?” she says to him. “Olivia? You really should have brought her.”
    â€œNext time, I swear.”
    His mother asks Frieda about her trip to Germany this summer, her first time back there in about forty-five years. Then she starts talking about the European trip she took with his father more than twenty years ago and especially the overnight boat ride their tour took down the Rhine. It was in this room. His father walked in from there, he ran up to him from there, arms out. From where he’s sitting—different table and chairs but same place, the small kitchen alcove—he sees it happening in front of him as if onstage. Two actors, playing father and son. “Frieda” must still be offstage or never gets on. He’s in the first row, looking up at them, but very close. Or sitting level with them, three to four feet away, for it’s theater-in-the-round. The two actors come from opposite directions—the father from stage left if that’s the direction for Howard’s left, the son from stage right. They stop, the father first, about two feet from each other. He points, with his arms still out, to his face. The young actor playing him does. He’s asking for help, with his pointing and expression. He wants to be picked up or grabbed. The shit doesn’t smell because it’s makeup. The young actor gives the impression he just tasted a little of it. But he’s not going to throw up. Howard didn’t then, far as he can remember, and that’s not what the young actor’s face says, though he does look as if he’s just gagged. The father bursts our laughing. He’s wearing the same clothes his father wore that day. Dark suit, white shirt, tie. Howard doesn’t recognize the son’s