The ringing phone began to sound like a mad song before someone mercifully answered. Far down the hall, I was in my dorm room that night with a coed, trying to stay focused on her bare skin. Moments later, a rap on my door, a curious pause, and then the knock intensified to a thundering, which scared the poor girl so that she nearly fell off of me.
　　"What is it? I'm busy. Can't you see the necktie on the doorknob?"
　　"Henry Day?" On the other side of the door, a voice cracked and trembled. "It's your mother on the telephone."
　　"Tell her I'm out."
　　The voice lowered an octave. "I'm really sorry, Henry, but you need to take this call."
　　I pulled on pants and a sweater, opened the door, and brushed past the boy, who was staring at the floor. "Someone better've died."
　　It was my father. My mother mentioned the car, so naturally, in my shock, I assumed there had been an accident. Upon returning home, I learned the real story through a word here, raised eyebrows, and innuendo. He had shot himself in the head, sitting in the car at a stoplight not four blocks away from the college. There was no note, nothing explained. Only my name and dorm room number on the back of a business card tucked in a cigarette pack with one remaining Camel.
　　I spent the days before the funeral trying to make sense of the suicide. Since that awful morning when he saw something in the yard, he drank more heavily, though alcoholics, in my experience, prefer the long and slow pour rather than the quick and irreversible bang. It wasn't the drink that killed him, but something else. While he may have had suspicions, he could not have figured out the truth about me. My deceptions were too careful and clever, yet in my infrequent encounters with the man since leaving for college, he had acted cold, distant, and unyielding. Some private demons plagued him, but I felt no compassion. With one bullet, he had abandoned my mother and sisters, and I could never forgive him. Those few days leading up to the funeral, and the service itself, hardened my opinion that his selfishness had rotted our family to the roots.
　　With good grace, my mother, more confused than distraught, bore the brunt of making arrangements. She convinced the local priest, no doubt abetted by her weekly contributions over many years, to allow my father to be buried in the church's graveyard despite the suicide. There could be no Mass, of course, and for this she bore some resentment, but her anger shielded her from other emotions. The twins, now fourteen, were more prone to tears, and at the funeral home they keened like two banshees over the closed coffin. I would not cry for him. He was not my father, after all, and coming as it did in the spring semester of my sophomore year, his death was supremely ill-timed. I cursed the fair weather of the day we buried him, and a throng of people who came from miles around to pay their respects astonished me.
　　As was the custom in our town, we walked from the mortuary to the church along the length of Main Street. A bright new hearse crawled ahead of us, and a cortege of more than a hundred people trailed behind. My mother and sisters and I led the grim parade.
　　"Who are all these people?" I whispered to my mother.
　　She looked straight ahead and spoke in a loud, clear voice. "Your father had many friends. From the army, from his job, people he helped along the way. You only knew part of the story. There's more to a salmon than the fin."
　　In the shade of new leaves, we put him in the ground and covered him with dirt. Robins and thrushes sang in the bushes. Behind her black veil, my mother did not weep, but stood in the sunshine, stoic as a soldier. Seeing her there, I could not help but hate him for doing this to her, to the girls, to our friends and family, and to me. We did not speak of him as I drove my mother and sisters back to the house to receive condolences.
　　Women from church welcomed us in hushed tones. The house felt more cool and quiet than it did in the dead of night. On the dining room table lay tokens of community spirit—the noodle casseroles, pigs in blankets, cold fried chicken, egg salad, potato salad, Jell-O salad with shaved carrots, and a half-dozen pies. On the sideboard, new mixers and bottles of soda stood next to gin and scotch and rum and a tub of ice. Flowers from the funeral home perfumed the air, and the percolator bubbled madly. My mother chatted with her neighbors, asking about each dish and making gracious compliments to the particular cooks. Mary sat at one end of the sofa, picking at the lint on her skirt, and Elizabeth perched on the opposite end, watching the front door for visitors. An hour after we arrived, the first guests showed up—men who had worked with my father, stiff and formal in their good suits. One by one, they pressed envelopes filled with money into my mother's palm and gave her awkward hugs. My mother's friend Charlie flew in from Philadelphia, but he had missed the interment. He looked askance at me when I took his hat, as if I were a stranger. A couple of old soldiers dropped by, specters from a past that no one else knew. They huddled in the corner, lamenting good ole Billy.
　　I soon tired of them all, for the reception reminded me of those post-recital gatherings, only more somber and pointless. Out on the porch, I took off my black jacket, loosened my necktie, and nursed a rum and Coke. The greened trees rustled in the intermittent breeze, and the sunshine gently warmed the meandering afternoon. From the house, the guests produced a murmur that rose and fell consistent as the ocean, and every so often, a quick peal of laughter rose to remind us that no one is irreplaceable. I lit a Camel and stared at the new grass.
　　She appeared at my side, redolent of jasmine, her scent betraying her stealth. A quick sideways glance and an even briefer smile, then we both resumed our inspection of the lawn and the dark woods beyond. Her black dress was trimmed at the collar and cutis in white, for she followed the smart fashion, twice removed from the haute couture of Mrs. Kennedy. But Tess Wodehouse managed to copy the style without looking foolish. Perhaps it was her quiet poise as we stood at the rail. Any other girl my age would have felt the necessity to speak, but she left it to me to decide the moment for conversation.
　　"It was nice of you to come. I haven't seen you since when? Grade school?"
　　"I'm so sorry, Henry."
　　I flicked my cigarette into the yard and took a sip from my drink.
　　"I heard you once at a recital downtown," she said, "four or five years ago. There was a big to-do afterward with a ranting lady in a red coat. Remember how gently your father treated her? As if she weren't crazy at all, but a person whose memory had come undone. I think my daddy would have told her to buzz off, and my mother probably'd have punched her on the nose. I admired your father that night."
　　While I remembered the woman in red, I had not remembered Tess from that night, had not seen or thought of her in ............