Our house the site of a wordless, internalized diaspora over a landscape riven with fault lines. Emma in her room and Grace in her studio and me in my study. Silence.

Take away the ritual of meals from a family and what you have left is a way station; human contact is not guaranteed, even by love. It must be fought for, earned, desired, fed. Hope and courage are required. The last time we'd all eaten together had been at the concert, the four of us gathered on the blanket, sublime music in the air. Josh sat Indian-style and ate the only food he ever truly enjoyed eating, which was bologna-and-cucumber sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off, no mayonnaise, no mustard, and a pint of Hershey's chocolate milk and cookies. A bubble of self-containment around him, of private serene concentration, like a child mystic, oblivious to his father's probing gaze, the old man's hungry, thwarted desire to know his son's innermost thoughts, intent upon just this: the long thin fingers pulling the carton open into a wide square brown mouth, dunking the cookies one by one into the milk, until they were perfect.

I was in my study now.

Seeing his hands, which were beautiful.

Remembering his hands, seeing his hands holding a rope swing when he was nine.

Remembering the rope hanging from a tall elm by the Connecticut River, and his hands holding on to it, and the sunshine filtering through the leaves.

He is afraid. He does not want to. He stands on a low wooden platform that looks down the sloping field to the gray-green river. I stand with him. I tell him to place his feet on the knot at the bottom of the swing, to squeeze the rope between his knees. I take his hands and place them around the rope, which is rough-hewn and three inches thick; and I tell him to hold on tight, he will be fine, it will be fun; and I say "Ready, set, go"; and I give him a hard fatherly shove that sends him sailing out over the platform into free space, over the ground sloping away, and the rope with his hands locked around it rising into the sky; and I watch his body rise and soar, and he is soundless. And then, at the apex of the rope's flight, I watch him fall like a stone. He just seems to let go. It is about twelve feel to the ground. He lands in a brittle little heap. And I run to him.

He is unhurt. It is a miracle. He picks himself off the ground, dirt on his knees, and walks past me without a word. Because I have lied to him.