May We Be Forgiven

been made—so much for my disguise. “You used to come around years ago; the milk was in a bottle.”
    “I’m not the one you remember,” I say.
    “Must have been your father, then,” she says. The mother is elfin, playful, and very charming. She takes the milk from me with surprisingly strong arms. “Put me down for half a gallon next week, and some of the powdered-sugar doughnuts if you’ve got them.” She looks past me. “Crocuses are coming up,” she says, and I turn around and see that I’ve trod across a good number of them. “Daffodils come soon.”
    “Is that man related to us?” I hear the father ask.
    “No relation to you,” the mother says, closing the door.
    Amanda calls me that afternoon. “All right, then, Mr. Curious, you want to come for dinner?”
    “I think your parents like me,” I offer.
    “They’ve conflated you into a milkman who needs a heart transplant. My mother said she gave you fifty bucks.”
    “She gave me five.”
    “Welcome to my world. She bragged to my father that it was fifty. ‘Any man comes to the door, you give him fifty bucks?’ ‘Just the good-looking ones,’ my mother said.”
    “What time is dinner?”
    “Come at five-thirty.”
    “Can I bring anything?”
    “Drugs?” she suggests.
    “What kind?”
    “Your choice.”
    I bring one of George’s better bottles of wine. “You kids drink the grape juice, I’ll stick to my usual, if you don’t mind,” her father says, making himself a drink and mumbling that soon they’re going to have to let the cleaning lady go because clearly she’s dipping into the spirits and watering it down to cover her tracks.
    The décor throughout is stiff—chintz, toile, and Staffordshire bull terriers on the mantel, a clock that chimes every fifteen minutes. Honestly, I didn’t realize that people lived that way: very non-Jew, very company man and proud of it, a chair with ottoman, and a sofa, all beyond formal and almost painful, with crocheted doilies under the lamps. Amanda brings out a plate of appetizers, Triscuits dotted with Cheez Whiz, sliced green olives with red pimiento centers.
    The table is set with china, crystal, and silver, a small cup of soup at each of our places. “Cream of mushroom,” Amanda announces. I dig in, and then see that no one is eating it. The mother has dipped her spoon in, and the father seems interested only in his drink and the remaining Triscuits. At first I think it’s about grace—they’re waiting for someone to say grace—and then I realize it’s just the way it is.
    Amanda looks at me. I move to help her clear the table, and she shakes her head no. She clears and returns with dinner plates—serving her father and me first, and then her mother and herself. Four fish sticks each for father and me, and two for Amanda and her mother; six Tater Tots for the men, four for the women; three spears of asparagus each; and a broiled half-tomato.
    “So much,” her mother says, “I’ll never be able to eat it all.”
    “Do your best,” her father says.
    “The fish is nice,” her mother says.
    “Mrs. Paul’s,” Amanda mouths to me, as she takes a bite of a fish stick. Later, she tells me that the family’s menus are based on what her elementary-school cafeteria used to serve—fish sticks, spaghetti and meatballs, tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, snickerdoodles. “For some reason my mother saved all the mimeographed menus—she calls it her recipe book.”
    “What’s for dessert?” her mother asks just after the fish is served.
    “Pound cake with whipped cream and berries,” Amanda says.
    The berries prompt the father to talk about eating strawberries and cream at Wimbledon. “Back in the days when tennis was played with racquets.”
    No one says anything; I am assuming he means wooden racquets.
    “Let me tell you a little bit about what I do,” the father says, leaning in. “I’m the guy who would decide what your life is worth if you died right now. I’d evaluate who you were, what you might have become, and what your family counted on you for—a big responsibility. Everyone thinks they’re more special than they are. Sometimes I just pick a person and think, what would we settle that life for?”
    “Like who?” I ask.
    “William F. Buckley,” the father says.
    “He’s dead,” Amanda says.
    “When?”
    “A few years ago.”
    “That’s a shame—he was valuable. Mother Teresa, then,” he suggests.
    “Also dead,” Amanda