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had tried to enlist, too, but had been declared 4Fvolatile blood pressure even then. In Bella's mind Mel held the title of family hero while Harry was the family mensch. That meant Harry bought ambulances for Israel while Mel invested in the Redskins and socialized with goyim, knocking back martinis and who knows what other poison. Mel was shrewd, Bella always said, while Harry Harry had a heart as big as his body . He'd always been fat. He loved food. He was married to a fat woman and his son, Maury, was even fatter. Harry couldn't recall a single movie or book that showed what fat people were really like. They never got to rescue anything but leftovers.
Harry always pretended to be on a diet when he visited his mother. Now he arranged his cottage cheese in a neat mound and rehearsed what he and Mel had agreed on. Ma, it's time to give up the apartment. Even with the maid you work too hard. You need people around you . But Bella didn't just live in her apartment like other people, Harry realized, looking at the mirrors from Czechoslovakia, the Persian rugs. She was a curator, for Christ's sake, and the apartment was a museum of Velvel's success and her own good taste. You couldn't fit a museum into the one-bedroom units of the Potomac Retirement Village. Still, Bella was eighty-two years old. She'd fallen twice in the two years since Velvel died. Once she'd fractured an ankle and the other time suffered a mild concussion. Both times she'd been waxing the floor. When Velvel was alive, if he caught her climbing a stepladder to vacuum drapes, he'd yell something in Russian, and she'd giggle and stop. Now there was no one to make her giggle or stop.
Bella put their plates in the sink, then walked slowly to the bedroom and returned with an ornate hat in a plastic bag. "I want Florence to have this. I wore it for your thirtieth anniversary."

 

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Harry thanked her, though he knew that Florence would give it to the maid. The day he'd won the low-income housing contracthis biggest deal everhe'd been relaxing in the den, feeling kingly in his household, the master of a notable destiny, when Jolie Mae walked by, dragging the Hoover and wearing Bella's mink-collared sweater over her uniform. Now he frowned as he imagined the old black woman in the fancy beanie.
Bella moved carefully toward the TV and flipped on an afternoon soap. "Mama," Harry began, "I've been thinking"
"Not now," Bella said. "I want to see if that stupid Ann keeps her baby. You'll think later." She angled her cheek toward his face, prompting him to lean down and kiss her goodbye. He felt the blood rush to his head. Then something sputtered right under his breast bone, like a failing car starter. Something scurried there, threatening to run away.
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Harry sat staring through the french doors at the patio where a small wind-devil of autumn leaves sucked at the flagstones. Soon it would be his busy season. The nation's capital would be limping through another winter. Pipes would be freezing and bursting all over town.
He let a Hershey's Kiss dissolve in his mouth and thought with pride of his fleet of four white panel vans. Goldring's Plumbing the "o" a gold ring set with a huge diamond solitaire. Under it, his slogan: Service is an engagement we take seriously . There were worse ways to make a living. He didn't expect his customers to remember him when they were taking a nice steamy shower. But when the tap ran cold, when the toilet backed up or the garbage disposal choked on steak bones, then, then they were calling his name.
The phone rang. His son, Maury, was having a problem. His wife needed breast reduction surgery, and their insurance company wouldn't pay. The plastic surgeon had sent two letters explaining that her heavy breasts were straining the thoracic vertebrae. "'Purely cosmetic,'" Maury read to Harry from the insurance company's letter. "These guys have no compassion. Can you imagine? All her life, she thinks she's lucky to