“So, where have you been lately?” his mother asked in the first silence, so that everyone could hear him list off places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, where there were gambling and prostitutes and roving bands of loose women, all of whom had been summoned there for Adam's use.

“Oh, here and there,” Adam said vaguely. He knew the drill. It was tough to avoid the potholes and pitfalls, but he usually gave it a good try. “I was in Italy and France in August,” he reminded her, he had spoken to her since.

There was no point telling her he'd been in Atlantic City the week before, dealing with another crisis. Mercifully, she had no idea where he'd been on Rosh Hashanah and didn't expect him to come home. He only made the effort on Yom Kippur. He glanced at his sister then, and she smiled at him. For an instant, in a momentary hallucination, he saw her hair get tall with white streaks in it, and fangs come out. He always thought of her as the Bride of Frankenstein. She had two kids, whom he rarely saw, who were just like Gideon and her. He went to everyone's bar and bat mitzvahs, but other than that, he never saw them. His nephews and nieces were all strangers to him, and he admitted to Charlie and Gray that he preferred it that way. He insisted that everyone in his family were freaks, which was precisely what they thought of him.

“How was Lake Mohonk?” he asked his mother. He had no idea why she still went there. His father had made a fortune in the stock market forty years before, and they could have afforded to go anywhere in the world. His mother liked to pretend they were still poor. And she hated planes, so they never ventured far.

“It was very nice,” she said, foraging for something else to spear him with. She usually used whatever he told her to clobber him. The trick was not to give her any information, other than what she read in the tabloids, which she purchased religiously, or what she saw on TV. Generally, she sent him clippings of the ugliest pictures of him, standing behind one of his clients being handcuffed and taken to jail. She always wrote little notes on what she sent, “In case you missed this …” When they were particularly bad, she sent them in triplicate, mailed separately, with little notes on them that began, “Did I forget to send you …”

“How're you feeling, Dad?” was usually Adam's next attempt at conversation, which always had the same response. He had been convinced as a boy that his father had been replaced by a robot left there by creatures from outer space. The robot they had left had a piece of defective machinery that made it difficult for it to speak. It was capable of it, but you had to kick the robot into action first, and then you realized the battery was dead. His father's standard answer to the question eventually was “pretty good,” as he stared into his plate, never looked at you, and continued to eat. Removing himself mentally entirely, and refusing to enter into the conversation, had been the only way his father had survived fifty-seven years of marriage to his mother. Adam's brother Ben was turning fifty-five that winter, Sharon had just turned fifty, and Adam had been an accident nine years later, apparently one that was neither worth discussing, nor addressing, except when he did something wrong.

He couldn't remember his mother ever telling him she loved him, or wasting a kind word on him since he was born. He was, and had been even as a child, an embarrassment and an annoyance. The kindest thing they had ever done for him was ignore him. The worst was scold him, shun him, berate him, and spank him, all of which had been his mother's job when he was growing up, and she was still doing it now that he was in his forties. All she had eliminated over the years was the spankings.

“So who are you dating now, Adam?” his mother asked as Mae brought in the salad. He assumed that because he hadn't gone to synagogue, and had to be punished for it, she had brought the big guns out early this time. As a rule, she waited to level that one at him till after dessert, with coffee. He had learned long since that there was no correct answer. Telling her the truth, on that or any subject, would have brought the house down.

“No one. I've been busy,” he said vaguely.

“Apparently,” his mother said, as she walked swift and erect to the sideboard. She was slim and spare and in remarkably good shape although she was seventy-nine years old. His father was eighty, but going strong, physically at least.

She took a copy of the Enquirer out of the sideboard then, and passed it down the table, so everyone could see it. She hadn't sent him the clippings of that one yet. She'd apparently been saving it for the high holidays, so everyone could enjoy it, not just Adam. He saw that it was a photograph taken of him at Vana's concert. There was a girl standing next to him with her mouth wide open and her eyes closed, in a leather jacket, and her breasts exploding out of a black blouse. Her skirt was so short it looked like she had none on. “Who is that?” his mother asked in a tone that suggested he was holding out on them. He stared at it for a minute, and had absolutely no recollection, and then he remembered. Maggie. The girl he'd gotten a seat on the stage for, and whom he had taken home to the tenement she lived in. He was tempted to tell his mother not to worry about it, since he hadn't slept with her, so obviously she didn't count.

“Just a girl I was standing next to at the concert,” he said vaguely.

“She wasn't your date?” She was torn between relief and disappointment. She'd have to choose another weapon.

“No. I went with Charlie.”

“Who?” She always pretended she didn't remember. To Adam, forgetting the names of his friends was just another form of rejection.

“Charles Harrington.” The one you always pretend you don't remember.

“Oh. That one. He must be gay. He's never been married.” Her point on that one. She was in control now. If you said he wasn't gay, she'd want to know how you knew, which could be incriminating. And if you threw caution to the winds and agreed with her, just to get the hot potato out of your lap, it would inevitably come back to haunt you later. He had tried it with other topics. It was best to say nothing. He smiled at Mae instead as she passed the rolls again, and she winked at him. She was his only ally, and always had been.

He felt like he'd been in hell for several hours by the time they got up from the table after dinner. The knot in his stomach was the size of his fist by then, as he watched them settle into the same chairs where they always sat, and had been sitting before dinner. He looked around the room then, and he realized he just couldn't do it. He went to stand close to his mother, in case she had an urge to hug him. It didn't happen often.

“I'm sorry, Mom. I have an incredible headache. It feels like a migraine. It's a long drive, I think I'd better go.” All he wanted to do was bolt for the door and run for his life.

She looked at him for a long moment with her lips pursed, and nodded. She had punished him adequately for not going to synagogue with them. He was free to go. He had done his duty, as whipping boy and scapegoat. It was a role she had assigned him for his entire life, since he had had the audacity to arrive in her life at a time when she thought she was finished having children. He had been an unexpected and unwelcome assault on her tea parties and bridge games, and had been soundly punished for it. Always. And still was. He had been a major inconvenience to her, and never a source of joy. The others took their cues from her. At fourteen, Ben had been mortified to have his mother pregnant again. At nine, Sharon had been outraged by the intrusion on her life. His father had been playing golf, and unavailable for comment. And as their final revenge, he had been brought up by a nanny, and never saw them. As it turned out, the punishment that had been meted out to him had been a blessing. The woman who had taken care of him until he was ten had been loving and kind and good and the only decent person in his childhood. Until his tenth birthday, when she was summarily fired and not allowed to say good-bye. He still wondered sometimes what had happened to her, but as she hadn't been young then, he assumed that she was dead by now. For years, he had felt guilty for not trying to find her, or at least write her, to thank her for her kindness.

“If you didn't drink so much and go out with such loose women,” his mother pronounced, “you wouldn't get migraines.” He wasn't sure what the loose women had to do with it, but he didn't ask her. He took her word for it, it was simpler.

“Thanks for a great dinner.” He had no idea what he'd eaten. Probably roast beef. He never looked at what he was eating in their house. He just got through it.

“Call me sometime,” she said sternly. He nodded and resisted the urge to ask her why. It was another question no one could have answered. Why would he want to call her? He didn't, but called anyway, out of respect and habit, every week or so, and prayed that she'd be out so he could leave a message, preferably with his father, who barely managed to squeeze three words in between hello and good-bye, which were almost always “I'll tell her.”

Adam said good-bye to each of them, then said good-bye to Mae in the kitchen, let himself out the front door, and slipped into the Ferrari with an enormous sigh.

“Holy fucking shit!” he said out loud. “I hate those people.” After he said it out loud he felt better, and gunned the car. He was on the Long Island Expressway ten minutes later going well over the speed limit, but his stomach already felt better. He tried to call Charlie, just so he could hear the voice of a normal human being, but he was out, and he left an inane message on the machine. And as he drove home, he found himself thinking of Maggie. The picture of her in the Enquirer was awful. He remembered her looking better than that. In her own way, she was a cute girl. He thought about her for a few minutes and wondered if he should call her. Probably not, but he knew he needed to do something that night to restore his battered guts and ego. There were plenty of others he could call, and when he got home, he called them. Everyone was out. It was a Friday night, and all the women he knew would be out on dates with someone. All he needed was a little human touch, someone to smile at, talk to him, and hold him. He didn't even need to have sex with them, he just wanted someone to recognize the fact that he was a human being. Seeing his family took all the air out of him, it was like having his blood sucked out of him by vampires. Now he needed a transfusion.