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craved the water the way a boozer craves drink. Out of it, her large bony limbs were all edges and jerky movements. Under it, her arms made graceful arcs and her long legs rippled. For seven dollars a year, she got to swim in a small, crowded pool at the Bronx YMCA every day after school. Delores would make up stories in the water and act them out. Mostly they had to do with her being a beautiful princess who lived in a castle. She’d turn somersaults and invent little dances to show off to the fish and turtles who lived down there with her. One time, Henry, the cute older guy who taught swimming, even shouted: “Go, tiger!” after watching her wallop across the pool doing the butterfly stroke. He couldn’t have known that, the whole time, she’d been pretending to ride on the back of a dolphin.
    The lady from Baltimore had sent the Walkers two pictures of Roy holding Delores over his head in front of the obelisk, as she had promised. The pictures were folded into a note-card with a painting of a sunflower on the front of it. In a generous scrawl, the woman had written:
Splendid memories of your time in the sun. You make a beautiful mermaid.
    When Delores had shown the photograph to her friend Ellen, theynoticed how her father was staring into the camera with his lopsided gap-toothed grin. “He looks like Alfred E. Neuman,” Delores said, and laughed.
MAD
was her father’s favorite. He kept back copies of it in the bathroom. In fact,
MAD
magazine was the only magazine she’d ever seen in the house. “God, he
does
look like Alfred E. Neuman,” said Ellen. “I wonder if he knows it?”
    â€œHe must,” said Delores.
    Her mother had seemed to accept her father’s disappearance as another of life’s inevitable disappointments. For the first few weeks after he’d left, she’d say to Delores, “He’ll be back. He always comes back,” as if she were talking about a runaway cat. Sometimes, she’d stare at the phone, willing it to ring; it never rang. “There’s probably someone I should call,” she said one night, “but I’ll be darned if I know who that is.” As the weeks went by, her husband’s absence seemed to inhabit her. Dark circles, like pits, formed under her eyes. She developed a nervous cough. Some days she didn’t even bother to put a comb through her matted hair. She’d forget to buy food for dinner. If Delores didn’t bathe Westie, he’d go to bed unwashed. Then late one afternoon, about six weeks after her father took off, her mother began to settle into an unsteady peace. “The son of a bitch is really gone,” she said to Delores. “But the real pisser is, he took the car.”
    West didn’t seem to notice his father’s absence. The house was quieter, that was for sure. His mom was distracted, but Delores played with him, fed him, and kept him clean. Delores had assumed that her father would send for her and West as soon as he got to wherever he was going. She felt a little guilty for imagining that life might be easier with him, that away from her mom he’d be more relaxed and kind of fun. She imagined he’d driven the old Pontiac somewhere out west. He’d settle down in a private house. The house would have a screened-in porch and a swing in the backyard. Hewould be tanned and happy, no more bad temper. He’d lose weight and grow honey-colored sideburns, and he’d still wear his Yankees cap everywhere. Behind the house would be a pool. Nothing fancy, just big enough for her to swim laps. There would be a barbecue in the backyard. He’d cook steak and baked potatoes. It would be sunny all the time.
    To make ends meet, her mother took on a second job at night. During the day she worked at the checkout counter of a nearby Gristedes. After that, she’d go to her job cleaning fancy offices in a steel and glass office building on the west side