play with, and often, with the air clear and sun out full, the boy would sit alone on the front stoop, stroking a blanket, shaking quietly and trying to rock himself to sleep at the height of day. "Why do you need a blanket?" Stern would ask, and his son would answer, "I don't know." And Stern, in early morning, jittery and uncertain, an endless pilgrimage in front of him, would kneel at his wife's bed and say, "For Christ's sake, see that he has activities."

"What am I going to do out here?" she would answer, and at night, when Stern had gotten past the dogs, he would find his son standing in the middle of the lawn,[Pg 37] holding his blanket as though he had been there all day, waiting for Stern to come back. So Stern, his stomach bursting with guilt, had made up games. A favorite had been "Butterfly Hand," in which Stern's quiet, fat hand would suddenly begin to flutter and wiggle. "It's turned into a butterfly," Stern would say to his son as it flew about the room. "There'll be no controlling it now." The hand would then go still and Stern would lift his son above his head, the boy's arms extended, for a bout of "Airplane," carrying him with droning sounds about the room and then bringing him in for tabletop landings in "San Diego." Top game of all was "Billy One-Foot," in which the boy would fight an all-out battle with Stern's leg, "Billy One-Foot, the toughest of all fighters."

[Pg 37]

They had endless thumb fights, too, but now Stern could no longer muster spirit to play the games. He would sit cold and heavy in an empty room, and when the boy said, "Let's play Billy One-Foot," Stern would pat him on the head and say, "Billy One-Foot is sick now." Occasionally, he would swing his boy round the room in a circle, clamping his own eyes shut in an effort to black out a vision of himself heaving the boy headfirst against a stone wall, forever ending thoughts of God and blankets and other children.

He had always found it amusing that his wife was lax about managing things. "You think you can get away with carelessness because your behind is beautiful," he would say, and clasp her surging buttocks. But a banister was loose that winter in their bare and windy house. It fell into no special category of repair—neither carpentry nor stairway work—and when his wife was slow to have it attended to, Stern took to shocking her with vivid accounts of what would happen because of her inaction: "Your son will fall, and perhaps when you see him at the[Pg 38] bottom of the stairs with his head open, you'll realize the importance of having it fixed" or "A slight push on top and he'll be at the bottom 

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