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I awoke the next day dry-eyed and determined

When he came up to join me in the library that afternoon, I was ready I waited until he’d sat down Then I stood up and said, "Who ahter," he said

I foundhow beautiful his eyelashes were -- as if he wanted me to notice, in order to distract me

I would not be distracted "I want you to tell me how it happened -- how I happened"

He didn’t speak for a minute or so I stood still I couldn’t tell what he was thinking

"Then sit down," he said, finally "No, do It’s a rather long story"

He began this way: "I have no way of knowing how much you’re like me, and how much like your mother" His eyes moved to the , to the shadowbox on the wall, then back to ht you weretold what you need to know to survive

"But I can’t be sure of that" He crossed his arms "Any more than I can be certain that I’ll always be able to protect you I suppose it’s ti"

He warnedstory, one that took time to tell He asked me to be patient, not to interrupt with questions "I want you to understand how things ensued, how one thing caused another," he said "As Nabokov wrote in his memoir, ‘Let me look at my demon objectively’"

"Yes," I said "I want to understand"

And so he toldof this notebook, the story of one night in Savannah The threechess The odd intiate, the river, the shawl And when he’d finished, he tolddetails The raduate students at the University of Virginia, visiting Savannah for the weekend Dennis was one of the three The other was called Malcolentina; he’d never known his father, but had been told his father was German His parents never married His surname, Montero, came from his Brazilian mother, and she’d died soon after his birth

I asked about my mother "You told her you’d seen her before"

"An odd coincidence," he said "Yes, we’d ia I met your mother one suether I was six She was ten I was a child, and she was a child"

I recognized the line from "Annabel Lee"

"To live by the sea, after a childhood living inland in Argentina -- well, it made a deep iave me a sense of peace I hadn’t known before " He looked away froain at the shadowbox, at the three small birds trapped inside

"I spent every day on the beach, building sand castles and hunting for shells One afternoon a girl in a white sundress came up to me and cuppedin Blue Buoy Cottage’

"She had blue eyes and red-brown hair, a small nose, full lips curved into a smile that made me smile I looked into her face as she heldpassed between us"

He stopped talking For a randfather clock

"So, you see, e met in Savannah, it never occurred to me to wonder whether ould fall in love" His voice was low and soft "I’d fallen in love with her twenty years before"

"Love?" I said

"Love," he said, ical cooperation in which the emotions of each are necessary to the fulfillment of the other’s instinctive purposes’ Bertrand Russell wrote that"

My father leaned back in his chair "Why so forlorn, Ari? Russell also called love a source of delight and a source of knowledge Love requires cooperation, and huhest form, love reveals values that otherould never know"

"That’s so abstract," I said "I’d rather hear about what you felt"

"Well, Russell was right on all counts Our love was a source of delight And your ed every ethic I held"

"Why do you always say ‘your mother’?" I asked "Why don’t you use her naers behind his neck, looking across at me with cool appraisal "It hurts to say it," he said "Even after so ht -- you need to knoho your mother was Her name was Sara Sara Stephenson"

"Where is she?" I’d asked this before, long ago, to no avail "What happened to her? Is she still alive?"

"I don’t know the answers to those questions"

"Was she beautiful?"