I woke in my old bed, in my old room. Little had changed: my books on the shelves, my doll collection in its case, my circus posters on the wall. Only the years had disappeared.

The birds were calling each other. I pulled a chair to the window and sat, to look at the familiar riot of green. My mother's white cotton curtains billowed in and out, brushing my knees. I watched a nest of robins, the adults coming and going, feeding their children. The nestlings cried and struggled, their beaks agape, creatures both helpless and selfish.

As inside, so outside: little had changed. The hedge was dense as ever. The swing hung from the same branch on the big oak. My mother's flower garden was slightly smaller, in the same place, though she had more perennials, and fewer annuals, than I remembered. I heard, as always, the customers at the garden center across the street, departing, arriving, slamming car doors and greeting friends. My mother only had to cross the street for her supplies and plants. She had been friends with the owners and staff from my earliest memory. t

My mind settled and my memories unrolled, paper-flat and glass-transparent, one after another, and I sat and visited with each in succession. I remembered growing up in this house, and I thought of Berkeley now, and I remembered my family then, and thought with affection of my husband. The past and present succeeded each other, yielding to each other without strain. I felt content, but I know this only in memory. At that moment, I was rapt and forgetful of myself.

How long I sat I can't say. Maybe an hour. Then Melody came in the room without knocking (she often neglected to knock), and I heard her near me, and I started.

"I'm going to make breakfast," she said. "Do you want some?"

I dressed and joined her, sitting at the table and watching her cook.

She insisted that I not help: "You're the visitor. Besides, I usually don't have time to cook. Let me enjoy it."

The huge kitchen was more cluttered than I remembered, but the hand-hewn beams in the ceiling, and the pegged floorboards, the same. This grand, eccentric, ancient house in which I'd been raised, and which I could never outgrow, even had I wanted to. I could appreciate its beauty and homeliness better, now that it was no longer my daily home.

I watched my sister. The radio was on, and she danced as she cooked, gyrating in every plane. My sister, the definition of "degrees of freedom". She'd been born dancing, and she'd steadily gotten better. She wore a skimpy tube top that barely covered her breasts, and cutoff jeans that exposed crescents of her rear end. She was barefoot, and one ankle had a tattoo of a porpoise; it was new; she hadn't had it at Christmas. She'd gained a few pounds. She sang along with the radio, off-key. Our father had tried to improve her singing, without success. And yet, her voice was sweet and appealing, however erratic.

She cooked omelettes, and fried potatoes, and toasted bread, and brewed coffee. She squeezed orange juice. She cooked bacon. She cut up a melon. She made too much food, as always. The abundance annoyed me: it was inefficient.

I asked her to turn off the radio, and she obliged. She usually wanted a CD, or her favorite station, but I preferred silence just now. Her voice was thin and high, and I wanted to hear her.

"This is too much," I said. "We can't eat it all."

"That's what refrigerators are for." She picked up her fork.

"Where's Zack?" I picked up my fork and knife.

"Probably in bed. We were up late, playing games. Now that finals are over I have more time to play with him."

"He's getting big."

"Yes. He thinks he knows everything."

"How do you handle that?"

"Laugh it off. He'll learn. Sometimes I ask a question, so he'll think about what he said and figure out for himself what he doesn't understand."

We ate silently.

"Where's Mama?" I asked.

"At school, finishing up paperwork. Cleaning out her desk. Writing about her students. She still sends every one that individual letter, that they're not supposed to open until they start high school. She remembers all her kids. Sometimes they come and visit."

After the meal Melody made a Long Island iced tea and split it between two glasses.

"Isn't it early for that?" I asked.

"If we want to drink, why can't we? I have news."

I accepted the glass.

"I'm getting married," she said. "Remember Tim? Chick's son?"

"Yes."

"He proposed."

"I'm glad. When's the date?"

"Next summer sometime." She pointed to her ankle. "We got matching tattoos instead of rings."

"Does Mama know?"

"She wants us to live here. She says we'll save money. Really, you know? She'll miss Zack."

"And you."

"Yeah. I guess so."

I wondered how to ask my next question, but she answered before I put it into words.

"Tim's going to adopt Zack. He likes him. We'll probably have another kid when I finish school. I can't believe it. It's like, my dream is finally coming true. All I ever wanted was a family, a husband and kids, and Tim's so sweet, and he's always been in love with me."

"Yes." Everyone but Mama knew that Melody and Tim started having sex in eighth grade. "Where are you going to live?"

"He has a little house in old Eudora." She chattered on, saying that they'd probably sell the place and buy something bigger in a few years.

Zack came in the room and made a squeezing motion with his hands.

"Okay," Melody said.

He climbed onto her lap and she pulled down the tube top and those enormous breasts of hers popped out. They didn't stand up the way they had in her teens. I thought, for the first time, that I'd been wrong to envy her endowments. I was lucky to be almost flat-chested. Mine hadn't sagged.

Her son chose a nipple and started to nurse.

"Excuse me," I said, and left the room.

I gave him plenty of time, but he hadn't finished when I returned. He still had his mouth on the nipple, though he wasn't sucking. He looked at me from the corner of his eye, and got down from his mother's lap.

"Give me a kiss," she said. He did, and ran out of the room.

Melody lifted her top and shoved her breasts back in. "Did that bother you?" she asked.

"Yes! He's almost two years old, for God's sake. He's too big for that."

"Why? It keeps him close to me. It feels good. It's good birth control."

"You are too, too weird."

"Clover." She reached across and gripped my wrist. I tried to pull away, but she wouldn't let go. "Bodies aren't nasty."

"Thanks for the news."

"You're welcome."

"Next thing, you'll be offering to nurse me."

She laughed. "No. That's too much, even for me." She let go of my wrist. "Sister, honey, I love you, but you have got to loosen up. When you're on your deathbed you don't want your pussy all shrivelled up. Use it. I know what I'm talking about."

"You condescending bitch."

"That won't work," she said. "I'm in too good a mood to fight. I'm not going to argue, even about my slutty past you're always throwing in my face." She raised her drink and said, "A toast to bodies. How wonderful they are."

I couldn't not drink. It would have been too ungracious, after the ease with which she had deflected me. I lifted the glass, held it toward her for a moment, and took a sip.

"Have you heard from Samuel?" she asked.

"Not since the divorce."

"I never could figure out what you saw in him. He was a cold fish."

"You only met him twice."

"Once too many."

"You're right. It took me a long time to figure him out. There's no explaining why you love somebody. You do, or you don't. I did. I still don't know why."

"You'll get over it."

I thought the time was right to ask again what I'd asked before. She was in an open mood. "Why wouldn't you ever tell me what happened in the City?"

She was silent. That was unusual.

"Tell me what happened."

"You couldn't handle it."

"Try me."

She was silent again.

"Are you HIV-positive?"

"No," she said. "I had myself tested."

"Were you worried?"

She didn't answer.

I went to the counter and got two coasters and a dish towel. I wiped the rings off the table and put the coasters under our glasses. "Maybe you don't worry, but I do," I said. "I worry you'll ruin yourself."

"That was then. Now I'm in school, I have a perfect child, I'm getting married. I'm never going back to that other way."

She was leaning toward me. I leaned back.

"Mom was right. Life is work, and school is the preparation. School is harder for me, I'm the only one who can't get the hang of it. But I have to do it. Thank God for Mom. Thank God for Dad's money. I'm lucky. Some of my friends didn't have anyone to go back to. Some of them died." She sniffed.

I set the box of Kleenex in front of her.

"Are you sure you want to hear this?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter how I feel. You need to say it, don't you?"

She blew her nose. "That was good. I didn't expect you -- " She blew her nose again. She said, "I don't like remembering this. I mean, some of it's bad, some of it isn't, but it's all tangled up, and I can't separate the parts."

She'd had enough money to live on while she looked for a job, but she wasn't eighteen, and she hadn't graduated high school. She couldn't even get work picking grapes and strawberries, because the farmers said Anglos couldn't handle the work. The money dribbled away and she was on the street, with nothing but her backpack.

"I was living in alleys, under bridges, on sidewalks, sleeping in abandoned buildings and cars. Scavenging food from grocery store and restaurant dumpsters. Some men attacked us with pipes when we were sleeping. I got away, but one of my friends didn't. She was in the hospital for a month. She could never talk right after that. She slurred her words, and her face was lopsided."

"Did you have to sell yourself?"

"Sometimes. I was afraid to. I mean, it was San Francisco. I made them use condoms."

She let herself be picked up. She let men buy her meals. She let them take her home. "It was a good way to get a meal and a shower. Then I'd leave. If I liked him, sometimes I'd give him a hand job and hope he'd let me stay. I only fucked them if I needed money." She used Pilar's hunting knife to threaten the aggressive ones. A man who knew karate took the knife away. "He broke my wrist. Then he raped me. By then I was so far gone it just seemed like -- what could I expect? I mean..." Her chin fluttered, but she wasn't crying. "Sure it hurt, but all my friends had already been raped at least once, some of them five or six times. I guess I was luckier, or the guys knew I was serious with the knife." She had to wear a cast. "I'd hit them with it if they bugged me. My attitude was, 'Fuck you, asshole'. They were users, they just wanted something from me, so I was going to get what I could get from them. Like a game, but for real. I kept the cast so long I was getting a skin infection. It was useful. I missed it."

Then she met Cy. She was sitting on a bench, killing time. He said he'd seen her around. Was she hungry? Did she need a place to stay?

"His condo was fabulous. Russian Hill, views of both bridges, fantastic kitchen, two bedrooms. He let me have the spare."

"Why?"

"He liked young girls, he liked blonds, he liked big tits." She waved a hand at herself.

Cy said she could live there, in exchange for the cooking and cleaning.

"He was strange," she said. "He liked very young girls. I was older than most of his girlfriends. He married some of them when they were still in high school."

He fell in love with her, and she wasn't one to sleep alone, and felt she owed him more than domestic chores. He'd saved her. She shared his room, and his bed, and she shared her body with him.

"He was very gentle, but he was weird. Too passive. He made me call the shots, even initiate the sex. That's not my thing," she said. "I mean, it's a waste of energy, when we could be fucking each other. It should be mutual. Then I found out he didn't just like young girls. He hired them. I found their panties a couple of times, little ones. It made me feel sick."

She got a fake i.d., advancing her birthday by a few months.

"I started dancing at a peep show, the Lusty Lady."

A few weeks later she moved in with one of the other dancers.

"We had a little apartment, and I bought a motor scooter. I had nice clothes, and enough to eat."

Then our mother found that she was in San Francisco and paid a private detective to post flyers all over town with Melody's face. "I was walking down Columbus and I saw a poster on a telephone pole. You know how sometimes you don't recognize something familiar? I didn't see it was me. I thought 'What a pretty girl', and I was sorry for her parents. Then I saw it was Melody. There was a reward, and our phone number," she said. "I was almost eighteen. There wasn't much she could do. I just wanted her to let me have my own life. I had to meet her, I didn't want her finding out what I was doing and reporting me and getting me sent back here. Then I'd have to leave again and start all over. I had to convince her I was all right." She smiled. "That was my masterpiece, talking her into thinking I was okay, talking her into leaving me alone."

After a year she lost her job as a dancer. "A couple of the girls didn't like me. A lot of dancers are lesbians. One of them had a crush on me, and she was pretty agressive. I told her to fuck off. She got mad, and one of her friends helped her. They did petty stuff. Stole from my locker. I stuck if out for a while. Then it didn't seem worth the trouble, so I quit. I had to start stripping and doing lap dances and table dances. At the Lusty Lady I was behind glass. I was safe. The other places, the customers were close enough to touch me. I shouldn't have quit the double ell. I didn't know any better."

She started doing sex shows for bachelor parties as a second job.

"Did you -- "

"No. We never fucked the guys. We'd strip, and sometimes one of us would give the bridegroom a lap dance. We did girl-girl stuff, using toys on each other, sixty-nining. Don't look so shocked, it's no big deal, just a way to make a living. We had a couple of close calls, where the guys started to get out of line, but mostly they were okay. You have to set the rules when you walk in. It's like being a teacher and taking charge of the class." She laughed. "It's like anything. It's a way to make a living. You have to know how. They're poor horny guys, that's all. We help them, and they pay us. We provide a service."

Her friend did tricks on the side. "Not at the parties. I wouldn't let her, it makes trouble. Then she didn't show up one time and I had to scramble and find a different partner. A couple of days later the police came to my apartment. She was dead. One of her johns killed her. They got his DNA from her, but they never found him. I don't think they tried very hard, she was just a whore to them."

Melody was afraid the killer might come after her. "I mean, why would he? But I wasn't thinking straight."

She went back to Cy. "He was so glad to see me he cried. It made me feel dirty."

"Why?"

"He was so pathetic, and I was taking advantage so I could hide." She stared at the wall and sipped her drink. "He needed me too much. I couldn't breathe. I changed my name and my hair color. I moved in and out. I got a job in an office. I'm a really good typist, did you know that? Good at word processing. Sex work was a dead end. So I got an office job. I got involved with a guy, his name was Terry, we found a place and moved in together. He was the one I really really loved, not Cy," she said. "We went to a party one night, a reunion of his baseball friends -- he used to play in the minor leagues -- and one of his buddies recognized me. He'd bought a lap dance from me. He said I could go out to his car and give him head, or he'd tell my boyfriend. I laughed, and he got mad and told Terry everything. Probably made up a few things that didn't happen. So no more Terry. He moved out. I had the rent to pay and I couldn't find a roommate. I went back to stripping, to make ends meet. Finally the lease ran out and I moved into a shitty little place by myself. The rents are ridiculous."

She quit stripping and worked at desk jobs.

"I was lucky. That was before the work evaporated. There were jobs everywhere. Salaries were going up. I was saving money again. Then you told me Dad died."

"You screamed, on the phone."

"Did I? I don't remember. I woke up on the floor. The phone was beeping and I hung it up."

"I wanted to call you, but you wouldn't give me your number," I said.

She walked to Cy's apartment. "He wasn't there, but I still had a key. I let myself in and watched the bay."

She stayed with him, and had unprotected sex. "I always made him use a condom before that. I don't know why I let him start coming in me. I was just too sick feeling to make it an issue. I thought, if I'd been here, in Lawrence, Daddy would still be alive. I would have saved him somehow."

After a week she woke up and made Cy use condoms again.

"Too late," she said. "I missed my period. I bought one of those home pregnancy kits. It came up positive. I went to a clinic. Same thing."

"Why didn't you get an abortion?"

She stared at me. "I tried. I couldn't. Something kept telling me it was a living thing. I couldn't do it."

"So you came home."

"Yeah. I left Cy a note. Said I was leaving and he shouldn't try to find me. I never told him where I was from. I don't know, I just always had this feeling, you know? That I shouldn't tell him. I'm glad I didn't."

"So he's Zack's father?"

"Yes."

"Shouldn't you let him know?"

"Who? Cy, or Zack?" She waved a hand. "Doesn't matter. I'm not going to tell either one. No end of problems. Cy is too kinky. I don't want him anywhere near Zack." She sighed. "I feel sorry for him. He's sweet, but his head's on crooked. The only thing he's good at is making money. Everything else he touches, goes wrong or breaks. He has a lot of hangups, especially sexual ones. He's never going to be normal. I don't want Zack hearing about that stuff. He wouldn't even have to hear about it, it's just sort of in the air, you pick it up, you know? I want a normal Midwestern kid, not a freak."

"Don't worry. Normal. He is."

"He's the greatest kid I've ever seen. So full of love."

"I wish -- " I stopped. I didn't want to say it.

"I know you love him." She leaned forward. "Thank you. He knows it. He felt it, at Christmas."

"But he avoids me."

"You only got here yesterday. Remember December? How he was sitting on your lap when we were opening the presents? He's a little boy. He's forgotten. Give him a couple of days. He'll warm up."

"How is he with Tim?"

"He worships him. He follows him around and watches everything he does. Then when we he come home he says Tim this and Tim that."

We sat for a long time. Zack walked through the kitchen, and gave Melody another hug before he went out the back door.

"It's a good thing I have a lot of energy," she said. "That boy tires me out. I have a hard time getting my studying done. Mom grades papers and does lesson plans and I do errands and chores and we take turns with Zack. We get him to bed early and then we both sit down and work, but we're tired. We use a lot of take-out and paper plates, so we don't have to do dishes. Mom doesn't like it, she thinks it's wasteful, but there isn't time for more chores."

"You need a maid. Or a nanny."

"A maid and a nanny. You know Mom. It costs a fortune, and it isn't right to hire people to do your work for you."

"It would be easier if you all live here. Three adults would manage better."

"No. I want to start my real life. I don't want to wonder if Mom heard us arguing, or fucking. I like to make noise. I want a relationship with my husband."

Maybe I should have been asking her for marriage advice. She might have stopped me from hooking up with Samuel. She might have some ideas on how to liven up my home life with my humdrum second husband.

"I want to be a grownup now," she said. "It's time. I want a normal life. I want to be like Mom."

I laughed. "I can't imagine that."

"I mean ordinary. I'm through with the weird shit. A house, a husband, kids, especially kids. Why don't you have any?"

"They'd get in the way of my work."

She nodded.

"I need big blocks of time. I can't have distractions."

"Why?"

"I can't explain. It takes time to get zeroed in. Then there's such clarity and ease, why can't my mind work like that all the time? There's a perfection. A domain of absolute purity. No words. No images. Only thought."

She looked at me with her head tilted sideways.

"Like I said, I can't explain."

"You did explain. It sounds beautiful. It sounds like the way Dad felt about music."

"Yes. Something like that. Probably." I smiled. "Besides, it's interesting. And the consulting pays me a phenomenal amount of money. I got into number theory at the right time. All those Silicon Valley firms want me to help them with cryptography."

"Really."

"I'd like to give you help. Financially."

"Why?"

"You need it more than I do. I have more than I can use." Her Volkswagen bug was parked outside, visible through the kitchen window. "Let me buy you a new car. You need one."

"I like it."

"Please."

She shook her head.

"At least consider it."

"No, but it's nice of you." She leaped up. "I'm late. I was supposed to go to Tim's. Can you take care of Zack? I'll only be gone a couple of hours."

She kissed me, and hurried off to get her keys and driver's license. She always put the license and some money in her pocket, and nothing more: a handful of crumpled bills, and a piece of plastic. Her mannish habits hadn't changed. She was a woman who understood men because she was so much like them, and in return, they loved her, as she did them.

We walked to the car. Zack was playing in the sandbox behind the house. Melody knelt to embrace him. "I'll be back in a little while," she said. "Be a good boy for Aunt Clover."

He clung to her neck and whispered in her ear. She rolled her eyes at me. "All right, I promise," she said.

At the door of her car she turned and kissed me again, and held me fiercely. "Sister. Sister. Thank you."

"For what?"

"For coming out of your shell." She winked. "Why did you make me wait so long?"

The only thing holding the car together was its decay. It was three colors: gray, a different shade of gray, and blue, not counting the varicolored rust that fringed the wheel wells and flowered at random on the body. The exhaust sounded like a machine gun. Melody sprayed gravel backing out. I wondered how she managed to, in such a decrepit machine. She waved and was gone. The rattle of the exhaust faded.

I brought a lawn chair from the garage and sat near Zack. I asked him what he was building -- a sand castle? But he looked at me as if I was stupid, and didn't answer. I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, and he didn't answer that, either. I said it was a nice day. He didn't so much as turn his head. I let down the top half of the chair, and lay back to nap. I should have been working, but since I'd arrived I'd felt no desire to do anything but bask in the atmosphere.

The ringing of the phone roused me, and I went inside. It was Tim, asking to speak to Melody.

"She should be there by now," I said.

"Her car probably broke down again. Maybe I should look for her."

"Give her some time. She probably remembered an errand."

Through the window I saw Zack trying to climb into the swing, but he was too short. I said goodbye to Tim, rushed outside, and set the phone in the grass. When I'd put Zack in the swing he said, "Push." Apparently he could talk, when he wanted something.

I wondered whether I should take my mother's car and follow Mel, but I wasn't sure Zack could be talked into going. He seemed to be having fun. A minute later a fire truck roared past on 15th, and a few minutes after that, an ambulance. Zack lifted his arms and I managed to grab him before he fell out of the swing. I let him down, and he ran to the street. I ran with him, to stop him if he went too far. He imitated the sound of the sirens and pointed east. A moment later he turned and pointed at the garden center. I took his hand in mine.

"Look both ways," I said. We crossed Learnard.

Inside the greenhouse he examined the metal reinforcing rod where the concrete tables were chipped. He petted a cat. He admired the doves in their cages. At the checkout counter he stared at small metal paperweights in the shape of ants and bees and flies. He pointed at them, and looked at me.

"I didn't bring any money, Zack."

One of the women behind the counter said, "You're Clover, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I'm Pilar. I was Melody's friend."

"Oh. I didn't recognize you, it's been so long. Are you still living here?"

"A couple of blocks down." She pointed north. "With another girl."

"That's nice. You know Melody moved back. This is her son. His name's Zack."

She looked at him. "Yes," she said. "I know."

"Did Melody tell you she's getting married?"

She flinched. "No. She doesn't confide in me."

"She's very busy," I said. "With school. With Zack."

"Yes. I'm sure."

"I'd better go."

"If he wants one of those we can put it on your mother's account. She's one of our best customers. The only one we keep a tab for."

"Thank you." I turned to Zack. "Pick one."

He pointed to an ant, and I handed it to him. After looking at it and holding it for a moment, he put it back on the counter and reached for a fly instead. I handed it to him.

"Thank you," I said to Pilar. I said to Zack, "Can you say thank you to the lady?"

He stepped closer, almost touching me, but didn't speak. Pilar nodded without looking up. She was updating my mother's account.

Zack and I were crossing the parking lot when the ambulance came screaming by, going the other direction. Zack stared, not imitating the noise. We stood, holding hands, and then crossed the street again.

The phone was under the swing, where I'd left it when I chased after Zack. I punched the talk button and the little red light came on. I didn't know Tim's number. I couldn't even remember his last name.

Their line didn't have caller i.d. I rummaged through the pieces of paper under the refrigerator magnets, but there were no phone numbers. Everyone had them on their fridges, didn't they? Why wasn't Tim's there?

I rifled Mama's desk, but couldn't find her address book. I started to search Melody's room, but it was such a mess there was no point.

"Come on, Zack. We're going for a ride." I took my mother's car keys from the box by the door.

Zack brought his toy fly along. I buckled him into the child seat in the back of my mother's ancient Mercedes. At least the child was cooperating.

I drove east on 15th. Just beyond the cemeteries a police car was parked across the street. The officer leaned down and said, "You'll have to take 23rd, ma'am. There's been an accident. The road's blocked until they clean it up."

Everything left me then. I rested my forehead against the steering wheel.

"Ma'am?" the officer asked.

I pushed myself upright and looked at him. I wanted to see his expression. "Was one of the cars an old Volkswagen?"

His face changed, and I knew.

"Is she still there?" I asked. "I need to see her. I'm her sister."

"They took her to Lawrence Memorial Hospital."

They refused to let me see her body. I was too upset to ague, especially with Zack next to me. They said I'd have to come back later. I drove to the school and threw gravel at Mama's window until she came out. I didn't know how to tell her. I just clutched her and sobbed.

Later I saw the car and read the police report. She was hit head-on by a pickup truck, one of those big ones with an extra pair of wheels on the rear axle. He was taking a chance and passing on the blind hill, coming from the east. The front of her car was flattened all the way to the passenger compartment. The truck was resting on her legs, and they couldn't extricate her. They tipped the truck over by pushing on it. Then they opened the VW like a tin can, to get Melody out, but she bled to death before the ambulance reached the hospital.

Mama visited the other driver. He was in the same hospital. I went along. His forehead was purple and he had a severe concussion, but that was all. Mama told him we didn't blame him. She was wrong, to say "we". I wanted to buy a gun and finish the job this idiot had been too incompetent to do, killing my sister instead of himself. Only the thought of how gentle Mama had been with him stopped me. But I left with a bitterness I'd never felt, and the certainty that the pain would never go away, and that I could never forgive him. He took my sister from me just when she'd reached me.

Melody looked untouched, as lovely as ever in her casket. She'd never liked going to Meeting, but she'd started attending church with Tim. He was a practising Catholic. She wasn't a believer, but she enjoyed the ritual, and going as a couple every Sunday morning. She was taking classes, studying the catechism, getting ready to convert. The funeral was at their parish church, near the campus.

The eulogy made us all weep; the priest liked Melody, and managed to catch her spirit, something none of us in the family had been able to do. But the rest of the service was meaningless. Melody didn't believe in God, or religion, or a better world to come. She believed in life.