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military shouldn’t recruit on liberal arts campuses—that they were trying to militarize the academy. The speaker had argued back: on the contrary, he said, he was trying to liberalize the military. Conrad had been offended by the challenger. Weren’t you meant to choose for yourself in college? Weren’t you meant to consider everything and then make your own decisions? It was the challenger who had made him think more about the Marines.
    Conrad talked about Homer. War was his great subject, how it shaped history, affected families, changed young men. War was the route to nobility. Before Aeschylus died, he asked for his epitaph to mention only his achievements as a warrior, nothing about his plays. War, not art. As he talked, Conrad ran his hand hard down Murphy’s spine and her tail sprang up with each stroke.
    It was too late for Lydia to say anything, she could see that. Conrad was immersed in this, lost to it, in full spate. He was in love; it was in his voice.
    When he finished, Lydia said tentatively, “So is it done? Final? Have you committed?”
    â€œI’ve signed up for this summer at OCS.” Conrad sealed his lips shut over the words. “It’s done.” He stroked harder. Murphy stood up in a distracted crouch, unsettled, swaying, her coat rippling.
    He was leaving the world Lydia knew. He would enter another, alien to her: the strange, violent life of soldiers, where killing was the right thing to do. This was anathema, the very opposite of everything you brought children up to believe. Don’t you remember, she wanted to say, what we always said about the military?
    Conrad saw her expression. “It’s not dangerous,” he said. “Don’t worry. This is peacetime.”
    â€œIt’s not just that,” she said. “It’s a different world.” It was as though he were declaring his plans to join another family. You can’t do this, she wanted to say; you’re one of us.
    Conrad watched her as he stroked the staggering cat. She could see that he could do as he chose. His life would unroll into the future.
    And in this way, watching her son stroking the twitching cat, Lydia came to understand that the national memory did not work the way she’d thought. She saw that the shapes of ideas changed, slowly, like clouds, within the public mind. First the shift of an outline, the blurring of edges; then, mysteriously, according to some unseen current, the whole form alters. What had certainly been a high-heeled boot becomes unmistakably a swan. The idea of war as unacceptable, the military as unreliable, which seemed to Lydia fixed, immutable, had changed completely. Those concepts—war, and the military itself—were no longer scorned, not even among liberal intellectuals, not even among classics majors at liberal arts colleges. Somehow, while Lydia and Marshall were not looking, those ideas had become plausible, possibly necessary, maybe even laudable. Anyway, acceptable.
    More than that, they had become honorable. It was a mystery to her.
    Later, Jenny and Oliver came down, and Conrad told them. Jenny came slopping in wearing a ripped-neck T-shirt and sweatpants, earbuds in her ears. The whistling slither of the music was audible to everyone, and though it was strictly forbidden to wear these at the table, Jenny made herself toast, brought it back, and sat down without removing them. Lydia was too distracted by Conrad’s news to say anything, but Jenny started eating and then realized that Conrad was talking to her. She took off her earbuds and said, “What?”
    â€œPay attention,” Conrad said. “I’m joining the Marines.”
    Jenny stared at him. “You must be out of your mind.”
    â€œOr just maybe,” Conrad said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œThe white gloves, right?”
    Conrad shook his head. “You have much to learn.”
    When Ollie