That’s my big problem.”

“You have to get centered,” Arlene said in an upbeat voice. “Be within yourself if you can.”

“I feel like I’m catching a cold right now,” Bobby said. “On the day I enter prison I catch cold.”

“Take Contac,” Arlene said. “I’ve got some somewhere.” I heard a chair scrape the floor. She was going to get it for him.

“I already took that,” Bobby said. “I had some at home.”

“You’ll feel better then,” Arlene said. “They’ll have Contac in prison.”

“I put all my faith in women,” Bobby said softly. “I see now that was wrong.”

“I couldn’t say,” Arlene said. And then no one spoke.

I looked out the window at Bobby’s dog. It was still staring across the river at town as if it knew about something there.

The door to the back bedroom opened then, and my daughter Cherry came out wearing her little white nightgown with red valentines on it. be mine was on all the valentines. She was still asleep, though she was up. Bobby’s voice had waked her up.

“Did you feed my fish?” she said and stared at me. She was barefoot and holding a doll, and looked pretty as a doll herself.

“You were asleep already,” I said.

She shook her head and looked at the open living-room door. “Who’s that?” she said.

“Bobby’s here,” I said. “He’s talking to Arlene.”

Cherry came over to the window where I was and looked out at Bobby’s dog. She liked Bobby, but she liked his dog better. “There’s Buck,” she said. Buck was the dog’s name. A tube of sausage was lying on the sink top and I wanted to cook it, for Bobby to eat, and then have him get out. I wanted Cherry to go to school, and for the day to flatten out and hold fewer people in it. Just Arlene and me would be enough.

“You know, Bobby, sweetheart,” Arlene said now in the other room, “in our own lifetime we’ll see the last of the people who were born in the nineteenth century. They’ll all be gone soon. Every one of them.”

“We should’ve stayed together, I think,” Bobby whispered. I was not supposed to hear that, I knew. “I wouldn’t be going to prison if we’d loved each other.”

“I wanted to get divorced, though,” Arlene said.

“That was a stupid idea.”

“Not for me it wasn’t,” Arlene said. I heard her stand up.

“It’s water over the bridge now, I guess, isn’t it?” I heard Bobby’s hands hit his knees three times in a row.

“Let’s watch TV,” Cherry said to me, and went and turned on the little set on the kitchen table. There was a man talking on a news show.

“Not loud,” I said. “Keep it soft.”

“Let’s let Buck in,” she said. “Buck’s lonely.”

“Leave Buck outside,” I said.

Cherry looked at me without any interest.