Guilt

And their life together – his job, her competence, the boys – had taken every bit of both of them together. How could that continue with only half of them? It wasn't a matter of shaking the thoughts because they weren't really thoughts.

He was resting his weight on his arms and hands, which were planted on either side of the sink, fighting vertigo. The ground felt as though it was going to give way to an echoing abyss.

He raised his head and the strip of morning hadn't grown appreciably wider.

After Mass, after the ashes, Dooher thought he would let Christina come to him, rather than approach her. Waiting on the steps outside, he watched the rain come down.

'Mr Dooher?'

He turned with a practiced look of surprise mingled with curiosity, then took an extra moment to place who she was, exactly. He knew her, but…

'Christina,' she said, reminding him.

'Oh, of course, Christina. Sorry, I'm not quite awake.'

'I know. Getting up this morning was a little…'

'Hey, we're here. That's what counts in the eyes of God.'

'The eyes of God,' she repeated.

'Penance,' he said. 'Lent. Some people need Thanksgiving or Christmas. I need the reminder about dust to dust, ashes to ashes.' He shrugged. 'One of the occupational hazards of lawyers is that we tend to think that what we do on a daily basis is important.'

'It is important, wouldn't you say? I mean, people's lives, solving their problems.'

He tapped the dot of ash on his forehead. 'Eventually, it all turns to this.' An apologetic smile, self-deprecating. 'This happy thought brought to you by Mark Dooher. Sorry.'

She kept looking at him. 'You're an interesting man.'

Glitsky had ten pieces of bread spread out on the counter. Five sandwiches. Two each for the older boys, Isaac and Jacob, one for the baby – no, he reminded himself, not the baby anymore, the ten-year-old – O.J.

'What are you looking at?' His youngest son didn't sleep much either – night terrors. Everybody in the duplex handled it differently. O.J. was wearing a Spiderman suit he'd slept in, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Glitsky had no idea how long he'd been there.

'I'm making lunches.'

'Again?'

'Again.'

'But you made lunch yesterday.'

'I know. It's going to happen a lot. I make lunch, okay. And let's talk quiet. Nobody's up. What do you want?'

'Nothing. I don't eat lunch.'

'O.J., you eat lunch every day. What do you want?'

'Nothing.'

Outside the window, the trees of the Presidio behind their duplex had come into relief. Morning breaking slowly.

He wasn't going to fight his child over lunch. He would just make something and put it in the box, and either O.J. would eat it or he wouldn't. Glitsky was in his mid-forties. He wore green string-pull pajama bottoms and no shirt. Crossing the kitchen, he went down on one knee, pulled his boy onto the other one.

'How'd you sleep?'

'Good.' O.J. had to be coaxed to give anything up.

'No bad dreams?'

'Nope.'

'Good. That's good.'

But the boy's arms came up around his father's neck, the small body contouring to Glitsky's chest. A moment holding him there – not really an embrace. An embrace might drive him off. 'I know you don't want anything for lunch, but if you did want something, what would it be?'

Eye contact. A shrug. 'Peebeejay, I guess.'

It took a minute to process. 'Okay, you get dressed. I'll make it.'

O.J. wasn't ready to do that yet. He stayed on the knee. 'But the way Mom does, okay?'

Glitsky took in a breath. 'Okay. How is that?'

'You don't have to yell at me. It's not that hard.'

'I'm not yelling. I'm whispering, in fact. And I didn't say it was hard. I'm sure it's not hard. I just want to know how you like it so I can make it that way, all right?'

'I said I didn't want one anyway.' The eyes were clouding up, threatening to spill over. 'Just forget it.'

Glitsky didn't let him pull away. 'I don't want to forget it, O.J. I want to get it right.' He had to keep from slipping into his cop voice. This was his son. He loved him. 'Tell me how Mom makes it,' he asked gently. 'Would you please do that for me, buddy?'

'It's easy.'

'I'm sure it is. Just tell me, okay.'

A pause, considering. O.J. stood, off the knee, and Glitsky straightened up. 'Bread, then butter – you never put butter, but Mom always does. You got to put butter first – then peanut butter, over the butter. Then, on the other bread, the jelly.'

'Butter, then peanut butter, then jelly. I got it.'

'On the other piece of bread.'

'I got it. But don't you close the sandwich when you're done, so that the peanut butter and the jelly are stuck together anyway?'

'But that's not how you make it. I could tell yesterday.'

'But yesterday I didn't put on the butter first.'

'Nope.'

'Nope what?'

'Also you put the jelly straight on the peanut butter.'

'I probably did, you're right.'

Glitsky couldn't believe he was having this conversation. His world was coming apart, as was his son's, and here they were discussing a completely undetectable difference in the placement of jelly on a sandwich.

But he had no strength to tell O.J. this was stupid. Maybe it wasn't stupid. Certainly it wasn't anymore stupid than all this talking about it. Perhaps it was O.J.'s cry for order as his universe devolved into chaos – jelly on the bread, not on the peanut butter.

One thing he could control.

He motioned his son closer and brought a hand down around his shoulders, then gave him a pat, sending him back to his room to get dressed. 'On the bread first, I got it.'

But he knew he didn't get it. The peebeejay was one thing, random and irrational, the first word in a whole new language that he had no ear for.

The other eight pieces of bread lay spread out on the counter. He couldn't think what he was supposed to do with them.

The rain continued steady as a metronome. The wind had let up and the drops were falling straight down out of black clouds. Miz Carter's Mudhouse had been serving high-octane Java on California Street for forty years and Dooher and Christina were in a booth by one of the windows. Miz Carter served her coffee in oversized, mostly cracked mugs, the product of some warehouse clearance sale of twenty years before.

'I really did try to become an ex-Catholic for a lot of years,' Dooher was saying. 'Stopped going to church entirely, even though I was starting to get some work for the Archdiocese. Hell, back then, a lot of the priests I was working with had stopped going to church. But it just wasn't me. I guess I need the ritual.'

'I don't think that's it,' she said. 'You don't have to explain it to me. I think you just believed.'

'That's the problem. I do.'

'That's not a problem.'

'Well…' He sipped at his coffee, moved food around on his plate.

'Why is that a problem?' she persisted.

Deciding to answer her, he let out a small sigh. 'Well, as you know, we lawyers get used to defending our positions. It's a bit awkward taking a position that doesn't really have a logical framework. I mean, it's faith. It's there or it's not. But there's really not any reason to have it.'

'Or not have it.'

'But you can't prove a negative.'

'But,' she pointed a finger at him, 'there's no reason to prove it. It's personal.'

'Well, of course, I know. But… it sets me apart, a bit, from my peers. It's old fashioned, fuddy-duddy

'Come on. It is not. Not on you.'

He pointed back at her. 'Says you.'