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PLEASED that Albert would look after the house. On the telephone, Marshall assured her that her mother’s things would remain undisturbed and that she could have whatever she wanted.
    “Where are you going to stay over there?” Mary asked.
    “I’ll stay in a hotel until I can find a place. I’ll let you know.”
    Mary was silent. He heard her sigh then. “When are you going?”
    “You know me. My bag is always packed.”
    She was silent again, but then she said, in a small voice, a child’s, “When will I see you again, Dad?”
    THE ODD-JOB GUYS had been working on the house—caulking, repairing windows and the roof. As Marshall mowed the yard with the gas-powered push mower, he realized that Loretta’s rosebushes and all the shrubs and flowers needed attention. He didn’t expect Albert to care any more about the yard than Marshall ever had.
    The Garden Angels descended upon the place one day, working fast and chattering over loud music on a portable radio.
    “It looks good,” he told them at the end of an hour.
    He arranged for them to come every week and keep the yard in shape.
    “I’m the man,” said the chief Angel, a young bronzed guy in a sun hat with a sort of halo wobbling on a spring.
    When Marshall picked up his dry cleaning, Mr. Santelli said, “How’s the wife? I don’t see her anymore.”
    Marshall said, “Oh, she’s getting along.”
    Farewell.
    The gas station. The insolent pump jockey in a T-shirt worn outside his jeans, no belt. Kids in France didn’t dress so disrespectfully, Marshall thought. Probably not, anyway.
    AS HE WAS reorganizing his file folders from the war, his eyes fell on two photos of the Albert family. He remembered now that the Alberts had sent these pictures. They had been placed in the wrong folder. Here they were: Pierre and Gisèle, a romantic portrait of them, posed lovingly. It wasn’t a wedding picture. They were older, but still in love.
    The other photo was a snapshot of the young boy, Nicolas, in long stockings and short pants that ballooned at the knee. He and two other children posed with a goat tied to a cart. Marshall studied the shaggy yard—a tangle of vines, the outbuildings, the fence, long tufts of grass that hid the children’s shoes. He had spent hours in that yard, mostly after sunset. He would recognize the place instantly.

9.
    T HE NIGHT BEFORE HE LEFT FOR PARIS, MARSHALL DREAMED he couldn’t pass a check ride. He made goof after goof. He stupidly called out that the reciprocal for due east was 230 degrees. He woke up, kicking off the covers.
    Dreams like this were common for many pilots. Marshall would dream he was being tested for his pilot’s license, or his captain’s certification, and everything would go wrong. Numbers etched on his brain did cartwheels. As he lay in bed, he thought about Neil Armstrong, who had commanded the first orbital docking mission. His Gemini capsule had spun out of control. He and his crewmate were spinning so fast they were about to black out, but Armstrong figured out that a thruster must have stuck and made an instant, intuitive move that stopped the spinning. He had to make an unscheduled splashdown in the Pacific, but he prevented a catastrophe and became a national hero.
    Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, Marshall wondered what his own first words on the moon might have been.
    “Sorry, folks. I hate to say this but the moon is plug-ugly! We spent twenty billion dollars to come here?
    “And where are the moon pies?”
    He showered, shaved, ate a bowl of Total, and drank the last of the orange juice. He knocked off the Times crossword in fifteen minutes. Then he washed his bowl and tried to think of what he had forgotten. He had half a day to kill. He repacked his two large bags to make room for his portable typewriter, and he stuffed his brain bag with his French books and some of the letters and photos from the war. Reciprocals kept going through his mind.

    MARSHALL, ALWAYS DIGNIFIED on an