But with Paul it is protocol.

“Ready,” he said. “Who speaks Irish and lives in your back yard?”

“I don’t know.” I give in straight away.

“Paddy O’Furniture.” Paul could not hold back his laughter a second and neither could I. We both held our sides—he in the street, I in my car. We laughed like monkeys loud and long until tears rose in his eyes and mine, and I knew if we did not rein ourselves in, his mother would be out wondering (silently) about my “judgment.” Ethnics, though, are among our favorite joke topics.

“That’s a prize-winner,” I said, wiping a tear from my eye.

“I have another one, too. A better one,” he said, grinning and trying not to grin at the same time.

“I have to drive home now, sonny,” I said. “You’ll have to remember it for me.”

“Aren’t you coming inside?” Paul’s little eyes met mine. “You can sleep on the couch.”

“Not tonight,” I said, joy bounding in my heart for this sweet Uncle Milty. I would’ve accepted his invitation if I could, taken him up and tickled his ribs and put him in his bed. “Rain Czech.” (One of our oldest standbys.)

“Can I tell Mom?” He had sprung past the strange confusion of my not coming inside, and on to the next most important issue: disclosure, the reporting of what had happened. In this he is not at all like his father, but he may come to it in time.

“Say I was driving by, and saw you and we stopped and had a conversation like old-timers.”

“Even though it isn’t true?”

“Even though it isn’t true.”

Paul looked at me curiously. It was not the lie I had instructed him to tell—which he might or might not tell, depending on his own ethical considerations—but something else that had occurred to him.

“How long do you think it’ll take Ole Vassar to find Ralph?” he said very seriously.

“He’s probably almost there now.”

Paul’s face went somber as a churchman’s. “I wouldn’t like it to take forever,” he said. “That’d be too long.”

“Goodnight, son,” I said, suddenly full of anticipation of quite another kind. I started my motor.

“Goodnight, Dad.” He broke a smile for me. “Happy dreams.”

“You have happy dreams your own self.”

He walked back across Cleveland Street to his mother’s house, while I eased away into darkness toward home.

5

The air in Detroit Metro is bright crackling factory air. New cars revolve glitteringly down every concourse. Paul Anka sings tonight at Cobo Hall, a flashing billboard tells us. All the hotels are palaces, all the residents our best friends. Even Negroes look different here—healthy, smiling, prosperous, expensive-suited, going places with briefcases.

Our fellow passengers are all meeting people, it turns out, and are not resident Michiganders at all, though they all have come from here originally, and their relatives are their mirror-image: the women ash-blond, hippy, smiling; the men blow-dried and silent-mouthed, secretive, wearing modern versions of old-time car coats and Tyroleans, earnest beefsteak handshakes extended. This is a car coat place, a place of wintry snuggle-up, a place I’m glad to have landed. If you seek a beautiful peninsula, look around you.

Barb and Sue walk us down the concourse. They have bags-on-wheels, snazzy red blazers and shoulder purses, and they are both in jolly moods. They are looking forward to “fun weekends,” they say, and Sue gives Vicki a big lascivious wink. Barb says that Sue is married to a “major hunk” from Lake Orion who owns a bump shop, and that she may quit flying soon to get the oven warmed up. She and Ron, her own husband, she says, “are still ‘dining out.’”

“Don’t let this old gal fool ya,” Sue sings out with a big grin. “She’s a party doll. The things I could tell you would fill a book. Some of the trips we go on.