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overboard. Father taught it to me. I had done it once, and did it again now. Zina at first thought I was sailing away from her. I kept shouting, “It’s okay. I’m coming back.”
    She needed help getting aboard. We didn’t talk much going in. She had been afraid.
    After we moored I asked her if she would have lunch with Mother and me.
    “You better see if your mother would like that.”
    “My mother was peeved with your mother, not with you.”
    Mother said sure, and I fetched Zina from the guesthouse.
    I loved listening to the two of them. They brought out the lady in each other. They talked as if I weren’t there.
    Zina wanted to know what Father did (he was an insurance broker with his own business), where we lived in the winter (in an apartment in town), whether Mother or Father had been married before (no), whether Mother had more women friends than men friends (women), whether Mother had a job or profession (no).
    Zina said she knew she would be a success as a photographer.
    Mother asked how she knew.
    “Because I want it so much.”
    “Do you think things work that way?” Mother said.
    “In my case,” Zina said and smiled, and Mother laughed.
    Zina said she had been born in New York City, which she liked because it was “half European.” She went to college for only one year because she had thought she wanted to be a philosopher, but it turned out that she was more interested in things than ideas. She liked Bone Point because she didn’t have to wear shoes. Her parents had been livingapart for six years but were still married. Mr. Mertz was in import/export and traveled a lot. Zina didn’t plan to marry for a while, if ever, and if she had children she would wait till she was thirty at least. She had more men friends than women friends, which she intended to change, “because there’s more to learn from women; men only teach you about themselves.” She knew she was attractive to men, but that was because she was independent. “Men like independent women. They’re easy to get rid of when the time comes.”
    “I doubt you learned that from experience,” Mother said.
    Zina giggled. “Really my mother said that, I didn’t.”
    I was very pleased that Mother liked her. I wanted everyone I loved to be close. Mother, Father, Zina, Blackheart. And maybe there was room for Mrs. Mertz.
    As she was leaving, Zina said, “I think you have a peach of a kid.”
    “So does your mother,” Mother said.
    “I would like to say … I want you to know … Mother is really harmless. Would you come and have lunch with us?”
    “I’d love to.”
    I admired how quickly Mother said it.
    Zina kissed Mother’s cheek, touched the tip of my nose with her finger, and left.
    We cleared the table silently. I was sure Mother would have something to say, but she didn’t. So finally I said,“Zina’s okay, isn’t she?”
    “Yes, she is,” Mother said, turning away.
    “Do you think she’ll be a success?”
    “If she doesn’t lose her way.”
    “How could she do that?”
    “Get married and have kids and give up a career. Any number of ways.”
    “She said she’ll be a success because she wants it so much.”
    Mother turned around angrily. “She’s wrong. She may be a success, or she may not, but it won’t be because she wants it. Life is not like that. Don’t you understand that?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Michael, Zina may look like a girl to you, but she is a grown woman. She will break your heart if you don’t get this idea out of your head. You do not get in life what you want because you want it, you get what life gives you.”
    She went out to the porch, slamming the door behind her.

7
A Trip to Town
    I WENT TO town the day Mother had lunch with Mrs. Mertz and Zina. Mr. Strangfeld drove me to the station. He was perfectly American as far as I could tell, but he knew I had been born in Germany, and he liked to use German phrases with me,
guten Morgen, guten Tag, wie gehts.
When he picked me up that