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a serious kind that would account for this delay!” he said, comforting himself by terrifying himself. Another week, then the Second Telephone Call, again with the information that he would arrive in two days. Then four days passed, and there he was, standing in the back porch, a thin man in a brown suit, tapping his hat against his pant leg as if he could not make up his mind whether to knock on the glass or turn the knob or simply to leave again. He was watching her, as if suddenly reminded of an irritant or an obstacle, watching her with the kind of directness that forgets to conceal itself. She was a problem he had not taken into account. He did not expect to find me here, she thought. He is not happy to see me.
    She opened the door. “Jack,” she said, “I was about to give up on you. Come in.” She wondered if she would have recognized him if she had passed him on the street. He was pale and unshaven, and there was a nick of scar under his eye.
    “Well, here I am.” He shrugged. “Should I come in?” He seemed to be asking her advice as well as her permission.
    “Yes, of course. You can’t imagine how much he has worried.”
    “Is he here?”
    Where else would he be? “He’s here. He’s sleeping.”
    “I’m sorry I’m late. I tried to make a phone call and the bus left without me.”
    “You should have called Papa.”
    He looked at her. “The phone was in a bar,” he said. He was quiet, matter-of-fact. “I would have cleaned up a little, but I lost the bag that had my razor in it.” He touched the stubble on his jaw with a kind of concern, as if it were an abrasion. He had always been fastidious about such things.
    “No matter. You can use Papa’s razor. Sit down. I’ll get you some coffee.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” She didn’t say it was late for him to start worrying aboutthat. He was distant and respectful and tentative. In this, at least, he was so much like the brother of her memory that she knew one hard look from her might send him away, defeating all her prayers, not to mention her father’s prayers, which were unceasing. If he came and left again while her father was sleeping, would she ever tell the old man he had come and gone? Would she tell him it was her anger that had driven him away, this thin, weary, unkempt man who had been reluctant even to step through the door? And he had come to the kitchen door, a custom of the family from their childhood, because their mother was almost always in the warm kitchen, waiting for them. He must have done it unreflectingly, obedient to old habit. Like a ghost, she thought.
    “It’s no trouble,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
    “Thank you. Glory. That’s good to know.”
    He hesitated over her name, maybe because he was not absolutely certain which sister he was dealing with, maybe because he did not wish to seem too familiar. Maybe because familiarity required an effort. She started putting water in the percolator. But he said, “I’m sorry about this—could I lie down for a little while?” He put his hand to his face. That gesture, she thought. “This shouldn’t have happened. I’ve been all right for a long time.”
    “Sure, you go rest. I’ll get the aspirin.” She said, “It seems like old times, sneaking you upstairs with a bottle of aspirin.” She had meant this as a joke of sorts, but he gave her a startled look, and she was sorry she had said it.
    Then they heard bedsprings and their father calling, “Do we have company, Glory! I believe we do! Yes!” And then the slippered feet and the cane.
    Jack stood up and brushed his hair off his brow and shook down his cuffs and waited, and then the old man appeared in the door. “Ah, here you are! I knew you would come, yes!”
    She could see her father’s surprise and regret. His eyes brimmed. Twenty years is a very long time. Jack offered his handand said, “Sir,” and his father said, “Yes, shaking