Noah's Compass

In fact she disliked all formal occasions, not only recitals but plays, lectures, symphony concerts, and dining in upscale restaurants. Given a choice, she preferred to stay in, and if they ate out she opted for the humblest café or hamburger joint.

She cared little about food in general-made not so much as a gesture toward cooking, and never seemed to notice what he gave her to eat.

She wasn’t used to alcohol and grew charmingly silly after a single glass of wine.

She never wore dresses; just those peasant skirts or balloony slacks.

Nor did she use cosmetics.

She’d had only three serious boyfriends in her entire life-not a one of them, she claimed, worth discussing in any depth.

But her girlfriends, as she called them, numbered in the dozens, reaching all the way back to nursery school, and she was forever rushing off to bachelorette parties or girls’ nights out.

She hated spending money, on principle. She drove illogical distances for the cheapest gasoline and she insisted on taking her leftovers home even from McDonald’s.

She had a cell-phone plan that gave her one thousand free minutes a month, but the only time she answered it was when it played Mr. Cope’s special ring-the “Hallelujah Chorus.” The rest of the time, she ignored it.

She was addicted to bad TV-to reality shows and game shows and spill-your-guts talk shows-and confessed to falling asleep every night to the all-night shopping cha

She made a habit of leaving love notes for him to find after she left, always signed with a smiley face topped by a curl and a hairbow.

She was refreshingly indifferent to domestic matters. She didn’t try to rearrange his furniture, or spruce up his wardrobe, or balance his diet. She thought his tightly made bed was comical. She demonstrated (standing discreetly outside the threshold of his bedroom) the shimmying motion that she imagined he must have to use in order to worm his way between the sheets every night. Liam had to laugh at that.

He laughed a lot, these days.

He knew that many of her traits (her lateness, her over-cuteness with the smiley faces and the little dogs) would ordinarily have called forth his most scathing sarcasm, but instead he found himself laughing. And felt, therefore, a bashful sense of pride. He was a better man than he’d realized.

She routinely left stray belongings behind at the end of the evening, sprinkled about like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs-an umbrella and a stack of bracelets and her glasses case and once, even, her purse. A homely black cardigan of hers stayed draped over a chair back for days, and whenever he passed it he found an excuse to straighten a sleeve or smooth the fabric before he moved on.

Barbara phoned to ask how things were going with Kitty. It was a good three weeks, by then, since Kitty had moved in. “Very well,” Liam said. “No problems whatsoever.”

“Is she keeping to her curfew?”

“Of course.”

“And you’re not leaving her and Damian unchaperoned.”

“Certainly not,” he said.

Or not any more than he could help, he added privately. He failed to see how anyone could be chaperoned every everlasting minute.

“How about you?” he asked. “Everything going okay?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I guess it feels odd to be living on your own,” he said. For the first time, it occurred to him that on her own, she could see more of Howie the Hound Dog. He gave a light cough. “Are you managing to keep busy?”

“Oh, yes,” she said again.

She was a fine one to complain about other people’s unforthcomingness.

It was difficult to tell, from her tone, whether she knew about Eunice. Had Kitty happened to mention her? But he wasn’t sure that Kitty and Barbara even kept in touch these days. Of course, Louise could have said something. He definitely sensed that Louise had her suspicions.

One evening toward the end of July, Louise and Jonah dropped in una

When Louise rang the doorbell, Liam assumed it was their food. Then while Jonah was struggling to demonstrate his roller skates on the carpet, the doorbell rang again and it was their food, and Liam had to spend several minutes dealing with it. By the time he had spread an array of curry-smelling foil containers across the table, Louise was deep in her interrogations. “You don’t like to cook?” she was asking Eunice.

Very clever: the question implied that Eunice played a regular role in this household, which she would have to either confirm or deny. But Eunice was too cagey for that-or maybe just oblivious. “Cook?” she said, looking bewildered. “Who, me?”

“I don’t feel Dad gets enough vegetables,” Louise told her.

Although, in fact, Louise was never around during Liam’s meals and had no inkling what he ate.

Liam said, “There are plenty of vegetables in Indian food, might I point out.”

“Listen to this,” Eunice said, raising her newspaper. “Wanted: Driver for my 90-year-old mother. Days only; flexible hours. Must be sober, reliable, punctual and HAVE NO PERSONAL PROBLEMS! OR IF YOU DO, DON’T DISCUSS THEM WITH HER!”

Liam laughed, but Louise didn’t seem to see the humor.

“You could do that,” Eunice told him.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.

Jonah had decided to try his skates on the kitchen linoleum. He was holding on to the sink while his feet slid away from him in opposite directions. “Help!” he called. By now Kitty had emerged from the den, although Damian was still in hiding, and she rescued Jonah by one elbow. “Hey, Louise,” she said.

“Hi.”

The doorbell rang a third time. Jonah said, “Maybe that will be some better kind of food.”

But already the door was opening (a sure sign it was one of Liam’s daughters; they never waited to be admitted), and in walked Xanthe. She still had on her social-worker clothes, matronly and staid. “Good grief,” she said. “What have you got going here, Dad, some kind of salon?” She gave him a peck on the cheek and then stepped back to study him. “That’s healed up nicely,” she told him.

For a second, he couldn’t think what she was talking about. Oh, yes: the last time she had seen him, he was still in bandages. “What brings you here?” he asked her.

“I came because I’ve been phoning for days and the line is always busy. I thought you might be dead.”

She didn’t seem to have lost any sleep over it. She trilled her fingers at her sisters. Then she turned to Eunice, who had lowered her paper.

“Xanthe, meet Eunice,” Liam said.

Xanthe cocked her head. “A neighbor?” she asked Eunice.

Eunice said, “Sort of,” which was not just cagey, it was an outright lie. (She lived in Roland Park.) She smiled at Xanthe blandly. From where Liam stood, it seemed her glasses were doing that opaque thing they did with reflected light.

Xanthe turned back to Liam and said, “I called several times last night, and then I called twice this evening. Is something wrong with your phone?”

“It’s the Internet,” Kitty told her.