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I slipped out of bed, tiptoed to the door, pulled it open, and leaned into the hall. It was quiet. I squinted into the light. There was a mark on the far wall where my mother had thrown her philosophy book. The volume lay sprawled on the floor. Suddenly my father turned the corner and hung there, one shoulder against the portal. He was looking at me, trying to focus.

“Myaaah!” he said, and flicked his hand up and down like a puppet with a floppy glove. “Nothing! Nothing! Tsk tsk tsk! Imagínate! She went out sin zapatos!” He pushed himself away, tottered into his bedroom, and flung himself on the bed.

I ran to the living room window and pressed my face up against the pane, searching the street for my mother. I heard her before I saw her. The slap slap slap of bare feet. There she was, launching into the Lima night, disappearing into the white curse with the tail of her nightgown behind her. Missile afterburn.

It was the year of the exit, the out-the-door flounce being crucial: the climax, the pageant, the show. Papi was going for freedom. Mother was dodging despair. Our two anchors were dragging free, dancing along an ocean bottom, headed for opposite shores.

Entrances were more humble. The quiet creak of the door, the shuffling retreat to a back room, the sheepish faces at breakfast. As if nothing had happened. As if the nightmare were over. As if the children didn’t know, hadn’t heard. As if the playwright weren’t a madman with a single formula: Exit stage right, in a rage. Enter stage left, forgetful. Do it again, night after night, though your audience be numb, your critics seething.

Often, the true acting came between shows. The averted eye. The pretense that all was right in our cloven world. We went about school, Papi went about work, Mother went about the house, and our meals together were the essence of sobriety, the soul of civilization, the model of will.

How much power can anyone wield in a marriage? How could either of my parents change the other one’s soul? I have pondered those questions all my life, it seems, even as I grew older and my own marriage faltered, fell in on itself, imploded at last with a hole in its heart. In the best of circumstances—in a good match between people of a single culture—merging two lives is an unruly task. It was hard to know whether Mother and Papi were merely struggling with contexts or were a bad match, period. We pondered their incompatibilities, cringed at their scuffles, wondered who would emerge victorious. I knew sooner or later one would prevail. A winner would force the hand. A loser would submit. It was the way of the world. The natural order of things.

IT WAS AT about this time that I learned something else about power: that try as you might, you didn’t always know what was up for the grabbing, you couldn’t always be sure who your enemies were.

George and I were in our lot one spring afternoon, whacking baseballs with our bat, when we heard Papi’s voice call for us over the retaining wall. He sounded cheerful, excited even. We ran to see why.

Next to him in the front of our walkway stood Juan Díaz, my father’s pongo, the messenger boy from Cartavio. His hair was gummed down, his face splayed in a grin, his bicycle propped by his side.

“Look who rode six hundred kilometers all the way from Cartavio, Georgie!” Papi said with genuine warmth.

George dashed across the street, cut across the grass, and leapt into the laughing man’s arms. “Juan Díaz!” he yelled. “You said you’d come see me someday!”

“Sí, mi amigo,” the man said. “I keep my word.” He was small, wiry. His lips were thin and wide, near purple; his cheekbones angled and ruddy; his eyes tilted high like a puma’s. He set Georgie down and looked at me.

“Hola, Juan Díaz,” I said.

“Marisi.” He nodded at me.

“You rode all the way from Cartavio?” I asked him.

“He said he would!” George crowed.

“Sí. It took me days, but I did it.”

“You are like the chasqui!” Papi told him, planting a whop on his shoulder. “Running messages for the Inca, from