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bathing suit, then called for VJ. VJ appeared and came down the hall toward his father. Victor noted with pride that his son was well built for a ten-year-old. For the first time Victor thought that VJ could be an athlete if he were so inclined.
         The pool had that typical humid chlorine smell. The glass that comprised the ceiling and walls of its enclosure reflected back the image of the pool; the wintry scene outside was not in view. Victor tossed his towel over the back of an aluminum deck chair as Marsha appeared at the door to the family room.
         "How about swimming with us?" Victor asked.
         Marsha shook her head. "You boys enjoy yourself. It's too cold for me."
         "We're going to race," Victor said. "How about officiating?"
         "Dad," VJ said plaintively. "I don't want to race."
         "Sure you do," Victor said. "Two laps. The loser has to take out the garbage."
         Marsha came out onto the deck and took VJ's towel, rolling her eyes at the boy in commiseration.
         "You want the inside lane or the outside one?" Victor asked him, hoping to draw him in.
         "It doesn't matter," VJ said as he lined up next to his father, facing down the length of the pool. The surface swirled gently from the circulator.
         "You start us," Victor said to Marsha.
         "On your mark, get set," Marsha said, pausing, watching her husband and her son teeter on the side of the pool. "Go!"
         After backing up to avoid the initial splash, Marsha sat down in one of the deck chairs and watched. Victor was not a good swimmer, but even so she was surprised to see that VJ was leading through the first lap and the turn. Then, on the second lap, VJ seemed to hold back and Victor won by half a length.
         "Good try," Victor said, sputtering and triumphant. "Welcome to the garbage detail!"
         Perplexed at what she thought she had witnessed, Marsha eyed VJ curiously as he hoisted himself from the water. As their eyes met, VJ winked, confusing her even more.
         VJ took his towel and dried himself briskly. He really would have liked to be the sort of son his mother longed for, the kind David had been. But it just wasn't in him. Even times he tried to fake it, he knew he didn't get it quite right. Still, if moments like this one at the pool gave his parents a sense of family happiness, who was he to deny them?
        
         "Mother, it hurts even more," Mark Murray said to Colette. He was in his bedroom on the third floor of the Murray townhouse on Beacon Hill. "Whenever I move I feel pressure behind my eyes and in my sinuses." The precise terms were a startling contrast to the tiny toddler's palms with which the child clutched his head.
         "It's worse than before dinner?" Colette asked, smoothing back his tightly curled blond hair. She was no longer startled by her toddler's exceptional vocabulary. The boy was lying in a standard-size bed, even though he was only two and a half years old. At thirteen months he'd demanded that the crib be put in the basement.
         "It's much worse," Mark said.
         "Let's take your temperature once more," Colette said, slipping a thermometer into his mouth. Colette was becoming progressively alarmed even though she tried to reassure herself it was just the beginning of a cold or flu. It had started about an hour after her husband, Horace, had brought Mark home from the day-care center at Chimera. Mark told her he wasn't hungry, and for Mark that was distinctly abnormal.
         The next symptom was sweating. It started just as they were about to sit down to eat. Although he told his parents that he didn't feel hot, the sweat poured out of him. A few minutes later he vomited. That was when Colette put him to bed.
         As an accountant who'd been too queasy even to take biology in college, Horace was happy to leave the sickroom chores to Colette, not that she had any real experience. She was a lawyer and