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day different, to bar any return to yesterday afternoon and the particular conditions of atmosphere and light through which those marchers had been marching, the blue northern clarity of light in greater Boston when the earthquake struck. The rain made the morning real, so unshakably present that it was hard to believe there’d even been an earthquake; to believe the accidents had occurred anywhere but on paper.
    Stacked against one wall of the bedroom were his cartons of radio equipment, which he’d faithfully shipped from Evanston to Houston and from Houston to Boston and never unpacked. He worked his fingernail under the duct tape holding the top carton closed. Strength failed him. He staggered to his futon, one foot slipping on the open Globe , crashed heavily and lay face down until long after the arpeggios had stopped.
    Sunday night he had dinner with his family in a fish restaurant on the harbor. He was surprised to hear that his mother and Eileen took it for granted that Rita Kernaghan had fallen to her death less because an earthquake shoved her than because she was blind drunk at the time. Then again, they’d known her and he hadn’t. The word was she’d fallen off a barstool, which sounded like a joke in bad taste but was apparently the literal truth. She was being cremated privately on Wednesday morning, her ashes hurled from a pier in Rockport on the afternoon of same, and her life celebrated the next day at a memorial service that Louis was expected to take time off from work to attend. His mother, obviously impatient with the whole deceased-disposal process, referred to the service as “the thing on Thursday.”
    It wasn’t until shortly before “the thing” that he saw his parents again. He’d done Dan Drexel’s board work until ten in the morning, and then, possibly a little hurt that his mother hadn’t planned any other get-togethers or shown any interest in where he lived and worked (“hurt,” however, maybe not the word for his feelings towards a family in which people rarely had the resources to take or fake a personal interest in anyone’s life but their own, “regret” or “bitterness” or “general sadness” maybe being more like it), drove straight to their hotel, a newish medium-rise by the river in Cambridge, just off Harvard Square. It would later transpire that his mother had made his father spend two afternoons in Widener Library so they could write off his half of the trip. Outside their door, at the end of a hushed hallway, Louis raised his hand but didn’t knock. He lowered it again.
    “Eileen, that’s not the point.”
    “Well, what is the point.”
    “The point is to show some consideration for my feelings and try to understand things from my side. This has been an extremely upsetting—Yes! Yes!—an extremely upsetting week! So you might at least have had the consideration to wait—”
    “You’re happy she’s dead! You’re happy! ”
    “That’s a very muffle muffle muffle to any person, muffle your mother. A very un-Christian thing.”
    “It’s true .”
    “I have to get dressed now.”
    “It’s true. You’re happy! ”
    “I must get dressed. Although I can’t help wondering—well, muffle muffle muffle a young man who would put his casual girlfriend—”
    “His what?! ” Eileen’s high voice went twice as high.
    “His casual girlfriend up to—”
    “His—!? What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with Peter. And for your information—”
    “Oh Eileen.”
    “For your information —”
    Here Louis, with a gesture of disgust, threw his fist against the door a couple times. Eileen let him in. Tears had muddied her eyeliner.
    “Who is it?” their mother said from behind the bathroom door.
    “It’s Louis,” Eileen said grimly.
    “Hi Louis, I’m dressing.”
    Eileen retreated towards the window, which looked out over the river at her business school. She was wearing the same bulky sweater she’d had on the last time Louis saw