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Henry sat in the farthest seat from Julia's. He didn't look at her, and a few minutes later he went to his room.

I waited a while for him to come out, and when he didn't I went in after him. "What are you doing?" I asked.

He didn't answer. He was holding his guitar, but just moving his fingers around to make chords he didn't play.

"Julia is out there alone," I said. "With Grandmom."

"She can take care of herself," he said.

I said, "She shouldn't have to take care of herself," and went back to the kitchen.

My grandmother had started doing the dishes. I told her I'd do them, but she just moved over. I rinsed the plates and handed them to her to put in the dishwasher.

She kept handing plates back to me to rerinse. "You're not washing them thoroughly," she said.

"I'm just rinsing them," I said. "The dishwasher is supposed to wash them. That's why it's called a dishwasher."

My father gave me a stern look.

I was ready to abandon my post at the sink, but I stayed where I was for Julia's sake. I was her shield.

I imagined that we were in wartime Paris, and my job was to distract the Nazi hausfrau from Julia, the Jewish woman we were hiding until she could escape; I was her only chance.

It was my parents who escaped, to their room, though it wasn't even ten o'clock.

Julia was just waiting to go into Henry's room to talk. But I knew my grandmother would stay up as long as we did. When I suggested a walk to Julia, my grandmother protested, but we left anyway.

In the driveway, Julia said, "I could use a drink."

I told her I knew somewhere we could go.

"Just a guess," she said, "but I don't think your parents would want me to take you to a bar."

"That's true," I said. "It's not just a bar, though."

I ran back inside and asked Henry for the keys to his convertible. I said, "Julia and I are going out drinking and to meet men."

He just pointed to the keys on his bureau.

It had stopped raining, and Julia put the top down, which made me feel like we were embarking on Julia and Janes Great Adventure, but I looked over at her and saw the grim line her mouth made. She pulled a chiffony scarf out of the glove compartment and wrapped it over her hair and twice around her neck, movie-star style. I wondered how she did it, and I decided I'd ask her to show me sometime when she wasn't upset.

When we got to the restaurant, I took out my pack of cigarettes, and she asked if she could have one. But she looked guilty, like it was her fault that I was smoking in the first place.

After she ordered her glass of wine and was sipping it, I asked her what had happened.

"I wish I knew," she said. "It was a huge party," she said. Everyone was there, her whole family and all of their lifelong friends. "Hank didn't seem to like anyone, though," she said.

She said that maybe it was hard for him to meet her family. "My family isn't like yours," she said; everyone had been divorced at least once, and there were half brothers and half sisters and step-everythings. She said that her parents had gotten divorced and then married each other again, which reminded me of Henry transferring back and forth to Brown.

She said, "They're always on the verge of splitting up or getting back together."

"Was it always like that?"

"The first time my mother left I was younger than you are," she said. "We'd just moved to Connecticut, into this nice house. It had a pool that was painted black, and the lights had been hung in such a way that the trees reflected on the water. When my parents gave parties, I'd watch from my bedroom window. It looked as though the guests were swimming through an underwater forest."

"It sounds beautiful," I said.

"Magic." She looked at my cigarettes, asking if I minded if she took another, and I nodded, Go ahead.

"It was September when Mom left. At night Dad used to go down to the pool and swim laps, even once it got cold. The pool was covered with leaves, but he swam right through them. I'd stand at the edge trying to talk him out of the water. By the time he did get out, there was a cleared path in the middle of the