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By Root 2116 0

so grateful to you for making the trip; you have no idea. All Max's relatives are up at the house and I'm feeling outnumbered. Finally I slipped away; told them I had things to see to at the church ahead of time. Did you two eat breakfast?" "Oh, yes," Maggie said. "But I wouldn't mind finding a bathroom." "I'll take you. Ira?" "No, thanks." "We'll be back in a minute, then," Serena said. She hooked her arm through Maggie's and steered her down the aisle. "Max's cousins came from Virginia," she said, "and his brother George, of course, and George's wife and daughter, and Linda's been here since Thursday with the grandchildren. ..." Her breath smelled of peaches, or maybe that was her perfume. Her shoes were sandals with leather straps that wound halfway up her bare brown legs, and her dress (Maggie was not surprised to see) was a vibrant red chiffon with a rhinestone sunburst at the center of the V neckline. "Maybe it's a blessing," she was saying. "All this chaos keeps my mind off things." "Oh, Serena, has it been just terrible?" Maggie asked.

"Well, yes and no," Serena said. She was leading Maggie through a little side door to the left of the en- trance, and then down a flight of narrow stairs. "I mean it went on so long, Maggie; in an awful way it was kind of a relief, at first. He'd been sick since February, you know. Only back then we didn't realize. February is such a sick month anyhow: colds and flu and leaky roofs and the furnace breaking down. So we didn't put two and two together at the time. He was feeling off a little, was all he said. Touch of this, touch of that . . . Then he turned yellow. Then his upper lip disappeared. I mean, nothing you can report to a doctor. You can't exactly phone a doctor and say . . . but I looked at him one morning and I thought, 'My Lord, he's so old! His whole face is different.' And by that time it was April, when normal people feel wonderful." They were crossing an unlit, linoleum-floored basement overhung with pipes and ducts. They picked their way between long metal tables and folding chairs. Maggie felt right at home. How often had she and Serena traded secrets in one or another Sunday-school classroom? She thought she could smell the coated paper that was used for Bible-study leaflets.

"One day I came back from the grocery store," Serena said, "and Max wasn't there. It was a Saturday, and when I'd left he was working in the yard. Well, I didn't think much about it, started putting away the groceries-" She ushered Maggie into a bathroom tiled in white. Her voice took on an echo. "Then all at once I look out the window and there's this totally unknown woman leading him by the hand. She was sort of ... hovering; you could tell she thought he was handicapped or something. I went running out. She said, 'Oh! Is he yours?' " Serena leaned back against a sink, arms folded, while Maggie entered a booth. "Was he mine!" Serena said. "Like when a neighbor comes dragging your dog who's dripping garbage from every whisker and she asks, 'Is he yours?' But I said yes. Turns out this woman found him SS wandering Dunmore Road with a pair of pruning shears, and he didn't seem to know where he was headed. She asked if she could help and all he said was: 'I'm not certain. I'm not certain.' But he recognized me when he saw me. His face lit up and he told her, 'There's Serena.' So I took him inside and sat him down. I asked him what had happened and he said it was the oddest feeling. He said that out of the blue, he just seemed to be walking on Dunmore Road. Then when the woman turned him back toward where he'd come from he said he saw our house, and he knew it was ours, but at the time it was like it had nothing to do with him. He said it was like he had stepped outside his own life for a minute." MARCY + DAVE, read the chalked words above the toilet paper dispenser. SUE HARDY WEARS A PADDED BRA. Maggie tried to adjust to this new version of Max-vague and bewildered and buckling at the knees, no doubt, like one of her patients at the home. But what she came up with was the Max she'd always known,