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enterprises.”
    Janet sighed in frustration. “All this is beside the point,” she said. “What I wanted to hear is what you think about my going to Florida. Sean’s going to be there for two months. All he’ll be doing is research. Here in Boston he’s doing research plus schoolwork. I thought maybe we’d have a better chance to talk and work things out.”
    “What about your job at Memorial?” Evelyn asked.
    “I can take a leave,” Janet said. “And I can certainly work down there. One of the benefits of being a nurse is that I can find employment just about anywhere.”
    “Well, I don’t think it is a good idea,” Evelyn said.
    “Why?”
    “It’s not right to go running after this boy,” Evelyn said.“Particularly since you know how your father and I feel about him. He’s never going to fit into our family. And after what he said to Uncle Albert I wouldn’t even know where to seat him at a dinner party.”
    “Uncle Albert was teasing him about his hair,” Janet said. “He wouldn’t stop.”
    “That’s no excuse for saying what he did to one’s elder.”
    “We all know that Uncle Albert wears a toupee,” Janet said.
    “We may know but we don’t mention it,” Evelyn said. “And calling it a rug in front of everyone was inexcusable.”
    Janet took a sip of her tea and stared out the window. It was true the whole family knew Uncle Albert wore a toupee. It was also true that no one ever commented on it. Janet had grown up in a family where there were many unspoken rules. Individual expression, especially in children, was not encouraged. Manners were considered of paramount importance.
    “Why don’t you date that lovely young man who brought you to the Myopia Hunt Club polo match last year,” Evelyn suggested.
    “He was a jerk,” Janet said.
    “Janet!” her mother warned.
    They drank their tea in silence for a few moments. “If you want to talk to him so much,” Evelyn finally said, “why not do it before he leaves? Go see him tonight?”
    “I can’t,” Janet said. “Friday night is his night with the boys. They all hang out at some bar near where he went to high school.”
    “As your father would say, I rest my case,” Evelyn said with uncamouflaged satisfaction.
    A HOODED sweatshirt under a wool jacket insulated Sean from the freezing mist. The cinch for the hood had been drawn tight and tied beneath his chin. As he jogged along High Street toward Monument Square in Charlestown, he passed a basketball from one hand to the other. He’d just finished playing a pickup game at the Charlestown Boys Club with a groupcalled “The Alumni.” This was a motley assortment of friends and acquaintances from age eighteen to sixty. It had been a good workout, and he was still sweating.
    Skirting Monument Square with its enormous phallic monument commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill, Sean approached his boyhood home. As a plumber his father, Brian Murphy, Sr., had had a decent income, and back before it became fashionable to live in the city, he had purchased a large Victorian town house. At first the Murphys had lived in the ground-floor duplex, but after his father had died at age forty-six from liver cancer the rental from the duplex had been sorely needed. When Sean’s older brother, Brian, Jr., had gone away to school, Sean, his younger brother Charles, and his mother Anne had moved into one of the single-floor apartments. Now she lived there alone.
    As he reached the door, Sean noticed a familiar Mercedes parked just behind his Isuzu 4×4, indicating older brother Brian had made one of his surprise visits. Intuitively, Sean knew he was in for grief about his planned trip to Miami.
    Taking the stairs two at a time, Sean unlocked his mother’s door and stepped inside. Brian’s black leather briefcase rested on a ladder-back chair. A rich smell of pot roast filled the air.
    “Is that you, Sean?” Anne called from the kitchen. She appeared in the doorway just as Sean was hanging