Dr Jew

was supposed to be learning."
    "I am your teacher, but one day you will see that I can teach you nothing. Most people never see that. I am as much a child as you. I hide it better."
    "I don 't think I really knew Uncle Dave. To keep this from me."
    "He was a child too. An answer will not come."
    "I miss her. I really do. But… not like I did when I thought she was alive. Now it's like I've been hungry and can't eat. I don't even have a mouth. What am I saying?"
    "I don 't know."
    "Am I supposed to cry? I think I cried all I could in San Francisco. Am I bad if I don't cry now?"
    "You don 't need to cry. Whatever you feel is okay."
    It was cold. Mississippi winter had begun.
    They had spent Christmas in an airplane, stayed a night in a Memphis hotel – taking a break to see Sergio Simaptico 's Swine Trek – "A delightful film, perhaps his best," said Ueda – and then found the rental car to get them to Swan's mother.
    A light br eeze blew, stroking flowers that rotted on a nearby grave.
    "I forgot flowers," said Swan.
    "The dead don't care about flowers."
    "I haven 't done this a lot. Just him." Swan indicated his father's grave. "And not much."
    "There 's no right or wrong from their side. It's only us who put this formality and etiquette on death."
    They tasted silence a while and Swan was surprised he wasn 't bowled over and didn't feel the overwhelming sadness he had expected. Things rarely happened how he expected. No pain now. Maybe tomorrow, a week, or a year. Or maybe never. Maybe the pain would be in a faraway city again and come when he least expected it, winding in through a rarified corner of presumed goodness that would leech into him and distort into something horrible. That kind of transformation… Vinny… Uncle Dave… he never wanted to know again. At least with his mother she had been constant, permanent and rugged until she was taken away. Young, yes, but only early. His father's departure had taught him it could happen any time and though he had rarely turned his mind that way, Swan knew a day would come (always far in the future) when she would vanish and he would remain.
    "Let 's go, Ueda Sensei."
    "Where?"
    "Home. San Francisco."
    "San Francisco?"
    "It's all I have now. You and Adam. Eve, once we find her. The only family I have left."
    "What about your aunt?"
    "She's not my family. You guys are my family."
    "Alright. That makes sense."
    "It does, doesn 't it?"
    "You a re not worried about the police? Your uncle and Vinny and the robbery you –"
    "Please, let 's not talk about that," said Swan.
    "Alright," said Ueda.

XLV.

    I had to get out. I hadn't even gone to see Swine Trek . But I had to get out. My life is not dictated by fear. I'd been inside a week rereading my Winnie the Pooh volumes and trying to forget the hostility bled out of the world eternal that oft times found its way to my doorstep, and God only knows why, certainly not this one.
    I 'd found an obscure loaf of bread in a crevasse of the kitchen pantry and seizing the silence of New Year's morning I stalked the streets toward Golden Gate Park to con the ducks, geese, and other beggars into believing the stuff edible, oh it was rich, abstract, how ducks drew me away from my worries. I liked to fantasize the birds' problems, challenges, moral discrepancies were somehow inferior to my own, but the situation was more likely the opposite, with every bullying mallard or hyperactive human infant posing more danger to a duck than the most wretched attorney or peddler come to scratch on my doorknob once again.
    I broke off the bread's crust first to see if its rugged structure would turn them away and leave them conflicted when I finally got to the (relatively) soft starchy innards and only the persistent and faithful would remain. The experiment was interrupted when, as I sat serenely on a forest green flecked bench, a man sat next to me and I did not immediately grant him my attention so engrossed in my duckly experiment was I. His voice is what halted me.
    "Hello, Doctor."
    I said man but that was not wholly the case.
    "Oh."
    "You're a hard man to find."
    "I 've been busy, Adam."
    "It 's okay. I'm patient. I knocked, and when no answer came I waited and watched. It's been a while and I'm glad you finally came out."
    "Yes. A man needs air. So you want something?"
    "I do. But before we go on, I think it best to bring in another interested party."
    I always hated parties. He had a cell phone – couldn't imagine where he got that