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by her husband. My mother, Lise, perceives this. “Why not ketchup,” she says.
    “We’ll get her all settled,” Duberstein says to my father, “and then we can go to work.”
    “Yuk!”
    “What’s the matter, Dan,” my father says. He is sitting next to me,
    “Ketchup on a club sandwich. Yuk.”
    “Would you like something else? How about ordering something.”
    “No thanks, Dad. I’d still have to sit here and listen to this schmuck talk about my sister.”
    It is just a few volts, but enough to do the job. The thing about the Isaacson family, the thing about everyone in our family, is that we’re not nice people. The issue, however, is real. I love my foster parents, but in this emergency they have chosen Duberstein. Duberstein is their man. God knows where he came from originally, I forget the circumstances, but to me he is just one of the thousands of intruders in my life, in my sister’s life—one of the thousands of guides, commentators, counselors, sympathizers and holders of opinion.
    “Daniel, I hope you are prepared to apologize,” says my mother.
    “What is it about Susan and me that makes anyone feel privileged to say anything at all to us. Why do I have to sit here and listen to this creep. Who needs him?”
    “I called Dr. Duberstein because I think we need him very badly. I think Susan needs him. And I don’t think you’re handling yourself very well.”
    “Dad—”
    “I would expect better of you.”
    “Dad, can you tell me—”
    “Keep your voice down, please. You speak of privilege, but I’d like to know what gives you the privilege to be a foulmouth?”
    For the Lewins, civility is the essence of being human. It is what makes communication possible. The absence of civility disturbs them because it can mean anything from rudeness at a table to suicide. Or genocide. I won’t go into this now in any detail but it is bound up with Robert Lewin’s love of the law. He knows the law is vulnerable to the mentality of the people who live by it, but he is concerned to see it evolve toward perfection. He is concerned to be moral. My mother too: she is a refugee, hunted by the Nazis all across Europe as a kid. Who am I to claim privilege by my suffering? After all they’ve done, and never once holding it up to me, why am I so quick to shame them?
    “He can’t even get her out of there!” I tell them. “He can’t get her out of a public asylum for wards of the state and bums they pick up off the street.”
    “Another twenty-four hours in what happens to be one of the best facilities in the East is not going to hurt your sister,” Duberstein says coolly. “I had a long talk with one of the staff people who, as it happens, took his residency at Jacobi when I was there. It’s a mistake that they admitted her. But the situation is under control.”
    “He makes it sound like a personal triumph,”
    “Danny.” My mother takes a handkerchief out of her pocketbook. “We’re all under a strain. Please, Danny.”
    Duberstein says: “Why do you resent anyone who tries to help Susan?” He looks keenly at me as befits his question.
    “Screw off, Doc. Go find your golf clubs and play a round with Dwight David Eisenhower.” It is a witless, anachronistic retort that astonishes even me. I must be on the edge. Everyone is pale. Even the baby has felt the current. He’s begun to cry. I leave the table.
    Daniel leaving the Howard Johnson’s dining room perceived walking ahead of him, toward the crowd of people waiting for a table, the draped aqua ass of the hostess. And a regal ass it was, well girdled, and set on a pair of still-young legs. Her golden beehive bobbed on her neck and wisps of untucked hair at its base intimated dirty times for the lucky dong who happened to be there when all that hair came down. Her arm was raised, and for a moment Daniel thought she made the peace sign with her fingers. But it was a table for two.
    Daniel made his way through the hungry families