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fact, she did not even tell him that she had ever had a brother. She told very few people, not because it especially pained her to talk about Seth, but because such confessions were always responded to with lowered eyes, murmured words and quick, sharp hand squeezes, all of which made Claire feel like a faker. In truth, she did not grieve for Seth. He had been dead for five years, and she could not even picture his face. No one in her family ever talked about him, so it was, she kept telling herself, as if she had made him up.
    After the funeral that August, all of the relatives returned to the house. Someone had pushed back the furniture in the living room and replaced it with a circle of hard-backed bridge chairs. Claire had forgotten those chairs existed; the last time they had been used was when her mother had held a PTA meeting in the house several years before. The family was forced to weep sitting up straight; they were no longer allowed the spineless posturing of grief.
    Claire could not remember what it felt like to mourn. One time when she was home on Long Island for Christmas vacation freshman year, she stopped by the local King Kullen to see an old friend who worked there as a checker. Claire and Joanne had been friends the year Seth died. It was a mindless friendship, really; they passed notes back and forth during Social Studies and spent Friday nights at Burger King, giggling at people in other booths. The one remarkable trait that Joanne possessed was her ability to remember details, no matter how slight. Nothing went past her.
    After Claire left for Swarthmore, she and Joanne saw each other only once or twice a year, and when they did it was only because Claire had some questions she knew Joanne could answer.
    “What can I do for you this time?” Joanne asked her as she packed up an old man’s groceries. Claire watched as each item was hurried into the brown bag: a tin of cat food, a package of luncheon meat, a single can of Diet Sprite—the man lived alone.
    It must be depressing, Claire thought, to work in a supermarket. The foods people selected told a great deal about their lives, about the emptiness of their lives. This probably never occurred to Joanne, though. “It’s just a job,” she said once. “I never think when I’m at the supermarket.” She smiled at all of her customers, and she sometimes hummed as she worked.
    Claire sat down on the edge of the express counter. “I want to know what I wore to my brother’s funeral,” she said, running her hand along the conveyor belt. “I thought you might remember.”
    Joanne thought about this as she rang up a woman’s purchases. “Twelve forty-nine,” she said. “You wore that maroon dress with the little flowers around the edge.” She did not appear to find the question at all odd. She was very proud of her ability to remember things.
    “Did I cry a lot that day?” Claire asked.
    “No,” Joanne said. “You were pretty quiet. You didn’t cry half as much as your parents did. That aunt of yours, I think her name was Maddy, or something with an
M
, whispered to one of your other relatives that you were probably in shock.”
    Claire had hoped that such details would help her recall what it felt like to be in mourning for Seth, but they didn’t. She questioned Joanne for half an hour. When she could think of nothing more to ask, she thanked her, wished her a merry Christmas and walked out through the magically parting doors of the supermarket.
    The only kind of grief Claire could remember feeling was her grief for Lucy Ascher. She had mourned the poet’s death for months; in fact, she had never completely stopped mourning. Every day when Claire woke up, she thought of her. Ascher’s face appeared out of nowhere, mouthing the words to one of her poems. Claire had tried to explain the whole phenomenon to Julian that evening in the stacks of the library. She told him more than she had planned to, and he listened intently. But he could