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but to move back home with his parents? So he had stuffed his pouch with letters and gone up and down the sidewalks of Bixley, for six days out of every week, bringing people good news, bringing them bad news, bringing them Ed McMahon and the chance at millions in the Publishers Clearing House contest, bringing them foreclosures from the Bixley bank, bringing them the world right at their fingertips, whether they wanted the world or not. For seven full, agonizing months he had done this, wishing every day, every step he took up a customer’s brick walk, that Katherine Grigsby would burn in hell’s most horrible inferno. But she hadn’t burned, or rotted, or even smoldered anywhere, at least not yet. Instead, she was now living with Ricky Santino, who had coached basketball at the same high school where Larry taught history. Nice and messy. Leave it to Katherine, who never forgave him for getting her pregnant and forcing her to choose between ballet and motherhood. He hadn’t even realized until Katherine left him that those ballet lessons she’d been taking were so important to her. Larry always thought it was her way of getting exercise and attention at the same time. That fluffy pink tutu, those silky shoes the size of rose petals. She had always reminded him of Tinker Bell, pirouetting through the house as if it were some stage. “She’s too young for you, Larry” was all his mother had said when she met Katherine for the first time. Larry hadn’t seen it that way. What was ten years, after all? He had always wondered if the frequent pirouetting was what caused Katherine to miscarry that first baby, and then a second baby two years later. Jonathan, coming late as he did, had been such a precious gift, at least for Larry.
    The truth was that Katherine Grigsby had as much chance back in her early years to become a professional ballet dancer as had Zelda Fitzgerald. And Larry had told her that, the day he came home from giving his quarterly exam on the Roman Empire to find her packed and waiting for him by the door, Ricky Santino’s new green Jeep idling at the curb. This was shortly after the Big Italian Renaissance Fight, at least that’s what Larry had come to call it. He should’ve killed the fucking little WOP while he had him pinned to the radiator. That was the day that Larry Munroe’s marriage fell down faster than Rome. The worst thing about it, the worst fucking thing that could happen to a high school history teacher in a small town, whose ancestral family he had already failed for refusing to pick up a century-old mail pouch that smelled of sweat and grime, a man whose stomach was beginning to resemble the spare tire clamped on the back of Ricky’s idling Jeep, the worst fucking thing that Katherine had done was that she had taken Jonathan, their son. His son.
    Jonathan. This was a name Larry had wanted for himself as a child, a chance to be different, a prayer to be unique. But they had called him Lawrence. As a boy he would stand in front of his bedroom dresser, look into the mirror with a grave dignity, and say, “Hello, I’m Jonathan Munroe. Good day, Jonathan Munroe here, Jonathan Munroe calling, Jonathan, Jonathan Munroe.” He had envied Henry for possessing his own independent name, this was true. Envious because Henry had not been promised the silver letter-opening knife with LSM inscribed on the handle. And maybe that’s why Henry had so willingly taken up the family profession. He had the freedom to choose. But that’s why Larry had given his only child, a sweet boy, the very name he’d wanted for himself, Jonathan , a name signifying freedom. Larry had given it to his son without consideration of his ancestors because he saw the future every time he looked at Jonathan. He saw the future and not the past. Lawrence Munroe IV had named his own son Jonathan, and he had kept him from letters and postal cards and fliers and Current