Today the L's. In the old address book, the L pages are impossible-phone numbers lined out, zip codes scratched in, whole entries x'd or margined with a question mark. Even the H's are more decipherable. Now, on the dining room table, the new address book is lying open waiting for me to carry on. To mark my place, I stick the ragged post-it that Baxter had affixed to the cover five years ago: "Dearest Char, the rest of this present is my offer to copy and correct all entries in legible

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... ng." The new book, the cover awash with birds, was a Valentine's gift. Baxter never got around to giving me the rest of the present. Baxter was awash in good intentions. Now he is just awashf loating, fighting the f low. Sometimes he is all affection. Sometimes he can hardly look at me. Eighteen years, mostly good. More than a partnership, our tiny family. No parents, no children, but Lauren is coming over this afternoon, after her classes. She comes every week now. I know it's her idea, not Ramona's, though I imagine she reports on me to her mother. If Lauren were my daughter instead of my niece, she'd probably feel she had to be here. Instead she's relaxed, doesn't say much, just plops down on the f loor or on my bed. A gift in a kid who's not even twenty. Ramona drove up once after the surgery. She couldn't sit for more than a minute. She walked back and forth, from Cocky's cage to the window. She kept asking if she could do anything, laundry, vacuuming. I told her we have a housecleaner, but she seemed not to hear. Two, maybe three times this year, she's phoned, but she can't think of anything to say or maybe she can't make herself say what she is thinking. Instead she mails us notes, lots of notes, on f lowered cards, and tells us she is praying for us. Ever since I started college and stopped church, ever since I let loose of that iron rod and the word of God, she has felt threat-99