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mowing the lawn I might put ’em on so I can hear.”
    “Up to you entirely,” I said. “Catch you later.” And I went back to the garage, feeling satisfied with my son, despite everything.
    I hefted the gasoline can: that plus what was already in the mower ought to be plenty. But if I went now and filled the can up again, I’d be all set the next time I had to cut the grass. Nothing like being all set. So I took the funnel off its nail, topped off the lawnmower’s tank, then carried the can out to the driveway. I set it on the blacktop next to the Datsun and went in for my keys, worrying about an explosion. This is how it would happen: black retains heat, therefore heat from the blacktop would touch off what gas remained in the can, which would touch off the gas tank of the Datsun. “Hey Danny?” I called from the kitchen. “I’m going over to Hamilton Ave, to get some gas. Need anything?” But he must have had his earphones on.
    At the Gulf station, I stood uselessly watching as the guy filled the gas can—here in the Garden State they actually don’t allow you to be a man and pump your own; some union bullshit—and the digital display raced from cent to cent to cent. And I started thinking about the time I was over at Philip Adler’s with my father and asking, little Irish boy that I was, why he had a candle burning in a jelly glass. Philip Adler said it was the day his grandmother had died. I was confused about whether his grandmother had died that very day, and if so, why things seemed so normal, but I was cagey enough to wait until we left before asking my father.
    So after all, I couldn’t just let this day go by.
    So I stopped at the mall and found a Hallmark Cards, and sure enough: Yahrzeit lamps with bar-coded labels. Back home, I got out matches and a saucer to set the thing on. I considered calling Danny out to light it with me, but then I thought No, let him be. Out of fear, I imagine. (What fear? Fear that he would finally snap and Iwouldn’t know what to do. Fear that he would, finally, accuse me.) So I took the whole setup into the bedroom, shut the door, lit the wick and said a prayer while staring at the flame: Dear God, please bless Judith wherever she is, or whatever she is. All very theological. And in such terrific taste, too, standing there God-blessing a wife who might still be alive if you had, or hadn’t, done this, that or the other thing. And all the time my father probably looking on from the spirit world with amused contempt, though at least it wasn’t a Catholic candle. This one would keep going for twenty-four hours, and probably then some. Less dazzling than starbursts over a lake, but more lasting. Three or four seconds of starburst compared to twenty-four hours of candlelight, I thought, made a good, graspable analogy to the soul’s short residence in the body as against its duration in eternity.

    Let a = the starburst, let b = the candlelight, let c = the thirty-five years of Judith’s life. Though isn’t it true that once you’ve put infinity on one side of your equation you’ve got an equation that no longer makes any sense? I stood looking at the flame, thinking how ignorant I was of mathematics. Then I went out and got busy on that lawn.
    It really didn’t need mowing out back by the pool, but since I was doing the front anyway I thought I’d keep it all the same length. It was an easy lawn to mow: none of this shit where you had to go up on two wheels to trim around rocks or what have you. It all broke down into squares and rectangles; I marched around and around, diminishing them. It was a chance to think, that’s what I didn’t like about it. But it was repetitive, which tended after a while to soothe. So, six of one. By the time I’d finished, I didn’t feel any worse.
    I put the lawnmower away and headed through the breezeway for the kitchen, forcing myself to stop once and smell the newly cut grass for a second through the screening. On the theory