I feel like I have a moment to myself. As if there’s a dead zone where nothing is expected of me until the doctor is finished. Once that happens, then I’ll know that this is real: more real than before the goop ball, or the ride in the elevator, or the car ride over here, or the long talk in my living room we had last night, or her mother getting up in my face with that perm.

She’s fine. They’re fine. They’re all good, she said. She pulled a shred of skin from the side of her nail and dropped it on the floor while he rubbed his eyes. The curled piece of skin landed and she fixed her eyes on it.

Marianne could see Mrs. McGettigan getting out of the truck that brought her home from the fish plant. Mrs. McGettigan wore her blue uniform over a couple of sweaters. It was a cold summer. Mrs. McGettigan had on her fish plant headpiece; a white plastic scalloped tiara and hairnet, and she carried two plastic bags.

Henry asks her to drive his car, but she is already too high. They go through the clover field and out of town. Henry said, “You’re never thankful when it’s July, you know.” The short, dying breath pumped through Henry’s chest chasing its own lull. She had asked about his lovers and friends. He still kept their good times in frames throughout the house. Here in a hot tub, golden beach, here in hot embrace. They’re all, just a few, dead now.

Inside, a fluorescent light flickers and he thinks about the eulogy he had written for their father. Jason remembers that it had made Julia cry, made his mother cry, even made himself cry. But he had felt bad about it at the time: he thought of it as just words, empty thoughts, only there to bring out tears. He hardly remembers what he felt that day, but it wasn’t grief.

I guess the first lie was to myself. I never said it out loud. I’d just seethe and watch his new girlfriend dance. She’s always looking at people with this pout when she twists her body into S shapes while we’re listening to Danny’s old vinyls. I look at the floor, wondering if he could see how stupid she looked, but he doesn’t seem to notice, even when she flips the record over, flicking ciggy ash all over the place. I can’t figure out the expression on her face when she does this. Whether she’s dumb or just doesn’t care.