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heaping his plate. What was that guy’s last name? Marshall remembered him so well. Robert was good at cards, had a high-pitched laugh but little English. Marshall remembered hearing his bicycle in the vestibule, the two-toot signal of his arrival.
    The girl was called Annette. He remembered her laughing. She was standing by the window, half hidden by the lace curtain, with springy spools of brown hair dangling beside her cheeks. She said, “Don’t look, but there are two German officers down there. Their uniforms are so silly! They look like ballerinas in those big pleated coats. Oh, I can’t say this, it’s too embarrassing, but they were walking where the neighbor’s dog was walking and one of them—oh, his boots!” She laughed. “They deserve that!”
    At the time he had felt faintly humiliated to be guided through Paris by a girl. Marshall, an American bomber pilot, Scourge of the Sky. But now what she had done for him struck him differently. She was only a young girl, but she had bravely battled the Nazis, to aid high-and-mighty, grounded, hapless Americans like him.
    He didn’t know if she was still alive.

8.
    T HE FAMILY PICTURES ON THE WALLS DISTURBED HIM. HE WAS startled to see Loretta staring at him, or to see the young children smiling, frozen in time. On impulse, he began taking down the pictures.
    At a loss for storage space, he decided to stack them in the master bedroom. He had avoided that room for months, but now he forced himself to peek in. The bed was made, and nothing was loose—books, shoes. He had forgotten that on the bedstand on her side of the bed, Loretta had kept a framed photo of him in uniform, taken the year he was promoted to captain. He turned the picture facedown, then noticed the photograph on the wall near the dresser, a publicity shot taken for the airline during the heyday of the Connie. There he was, the co-pilot, with the pilot and the flight engineer, followed by three stews in gray suits and pert little caps. They were crossing the tarmac, and the magnificent Lockheed Constellation was shining in the background. They were a team, the essence of aviation’s glamour. That was what they were selling, and he had been proud to be in the picture.
    On the dresser was an earlier photograph: Marshall in his Air Corps uniform and Loretta in a snazzy broad-shouldered suit and an upswept hairdo. She was clutching a purse, and her toes peeked out of sassy pumps. He was her handsome hero; she was his glamour girl, his Loretta Young, his young Loretta.
    ALBERT CALLED, TOUCHING BASE about the house. June was approaching.
    “Have you figured out how long you’ll be gone?” he asked.
    “No idea. I’m just going to go with the flow—isn’t that what you’re always saying?”
    Albert was quiet. Then, in a disturbed tone, he said, “Well, I guess you know what you’re doing.” He paused again. “Is there something special waiting for you there?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “You might as well tell me, do I have any other brothers or sisters?”
    “What in the world? Good grief.” Marshall’s anger flashed through his normally rigid reserve.
    “It’s O.K. if you do,” said Albert. “I don’t mind.”
    Marshall, uncomfortable, stifled the impulse to hang up. He had always avoided contention by leaving.
Dear Albert ,
I know we’ve had our differences. I know I wasn’t always around. That was my job—to go away. I don’t know what to do about it. I’m sorry your mom had to shoulder most of the burden of raising you. The schedule was brutal, but I wasn’t living a double life. I was flying. Now I can’t fly. So I’m going to try something else .
Love, Dad
    He thought this letter but didn’t write it.
    An unspoken dab of doggerel, a message to Albert, kept going around in his head:
You owe your existence
To the French Resistance .
    Le petit Albert . That phrase shot through his mind from time to time, but he couldn’t explain it to his son.
    MARY WAS