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The old man sat carving a pumpkin. He could see himself that way, with his white hair shifting into his eyes and getting blown into his ears by the breeze from the living room window.

He was going to put the pumpkin on the porch and see if anyone tried to smash it or walked up to look at it. He was putting a candle into it - a Wilderness Watcher - that would illuminate everything within a ten-foot radius and burn for fifty hours.

In the living room, his wife gasped. David walked over to the couch and saw that she was still asleep. She had fallen asleep sitting upright, her head to the side and her feet on the floor, like someone on a train.

He tried to pick up her feet - half-heartedly, because this hardly ever worked. It had always seemed to him that her center of gravity was in her feet. When she walked on the floor above him, the house echoed.

She smelled like herself but also unwashed. The smell came out of the crook of her arm and the place where her neck bent.

"Susan?" he said. His breath bounced back to him. "Do you want the blanket?" He went and got it and tucked it around her, but it kept falling off her left shoulder. He folded it in half and put it on her lap. She opened her eyes for a moment, glared at him, and pushed the blanket onto the floor.

David had read once, in a novel but it sounded true, that when a person died, the tunnel of light he saw was his own brain cells dying. He wondered if that happened to Susan when she went to sleep. She seemed to remember less each time she woke up. Social graces: that was the part of her life that she'd valued the least, so it made sense that it was the first to go. When they first met, at Hunter College High School, Susan was known to ignore all questions that she deemed insincere. This gave her a sort of power over the boys, and made most of the girls stop speaking to her.

He had seen her walking home from school, through the park, her bun uncoiling. He walked faster until he caught up, and said, "Is it hot enough for you?" He was out of breath, which made his voice creaky, but all in all, he felt it was an adult kind of line - about the weather, which was regular conversation, sure, but also with a sort of erotic undercurrent - "hot enough for you?" "hot enough for you?" She glanced at him, spun around, and started walking in the opposite direction, swinging her lunch pail from hand to hand like a metronome.

A few days later, he went up to her again in the park, and choked out, "Do you believe in God?" To himself, he sounded like some movie vampire right before he killed the girl and ate her eyeballs. But she just pulled a bag of unshelled sunflower seeds from her pocket, bit into one, and said, "After a manner."

Then there was no stopping him. "Are you monotheistic or polytheistic?" "Is Hell a physical place, or metaphysical?" And his favorite, the question that seemed to make most people relaxed, secure in the knowledge that they'd thought this through and had an answer ready: "How do you explain both the omniscience and the omnipotence of God when there's so much evil and Hitler?"

He picked the blanket off the floor and put it back on her lap. "I should probably call Deborah," he said, though Susan had fallen asleep and couldn't hear him. Deborah was their daughter, a social worker who counseled pregnant teens at a clinic. She had promised to talk to one of the nurses about Susan's medication.

David walked into the kitchen, which was shiny and bright. Guests said that you wouldn't expect a kitchen like that in a house like theirs. He wished that one of the guests was there now, so he would perch on the counter, legs coyly crossed, and say, "I can see my face in this tile." Among their friends, he was the Alan King.

He picked up the phone. It smelled like the imitation-orange cleaning fluid he'd used on the mold that he found growing through the holes of the receiver. The phone was slippery, as if he'd rubbed a rotten orange on it, and the bits of mold, or whatever they were, seemed to have grown back. He dialed his daughter's house, keeping the phone an inch away from his face. His grandson Nicholas answered.

"Hi, there, Nicholas Nickleby," David said.

"What?"

David moved the phone closer to his mouth. "It's your grandfather! Remember me?"

Nicholas breathed wetly into the phone.

"I haven't seen you for so long, what are you, twelve already?"

"No."

"I knew that, I knew that, I was just kidding." Feeling another silence coming on, he said, "So, what's the big Halloween costume this year?"

"Nothing."

"What, you're too old for it now? All of eleven? What are you, playing poker that night?" Nicholas was quiet.

"Now look here, Nicholas," David said. "This isn't how you have a conversation. You have to follow the, the social graces in this world." His throat was beginning to hurt.

"Okay," Nicholas said.

"Why don't you ask me a question - 'Grandpa, what are you doing for Halloween?"

"Grandpa, what are you doing for Halloween," Nicholas said. Was he mimicking David's inflections?

"Well, Nicholas, I am carving a pumpkin, and it's going very interestingly. I never carved a pumpkin before. That was always your grandmother's job. I had to get a book out of the library to learn how to do this one, and even so I broke two pumpkins. See? The social graces isn't so hard. Do you see what I mean? It's not just forks, it's answering questions that may not be the most interesting ones ever and asking questions that you might not care what the other person says."

"Nicholas? Hello?" he said into the phone. It clattered back at him. "Mom?" Nicholas said in the distance.

Again, David saw himself, reflected in the china cabinet this time. His reflection made him look small and slight, some ghost who had come to play with the teacups. He leaned in closer. Now he looked like the grasshopper in the Greek myth, the one who got older and older while his girlfriend the moon stayed the same. He was elfin, except for the red veins around his nose and the oil in his hair. He was aging in ways he couldn't have imagined, so he knew they were true.

"Hi, Dad, how are things?" his daughter said. He could tell that she was smiling her biggest smile into the receiver. It was the smile that stretched out her face, which made some people think it was real. Her laugh was like that too, stretching out more than normal laughs.

"Well, well, I just found out I'm pregnant."

She gave her long laugh.

"How's your job?" he said.

"Work? It's fine. It's hard. But fine." She was always managing some different program, which she referred to in acronyms that David could never wholly remember.

"How's that WE program going?" he risked now. "Or, US. One of the two."

"What? WIA?" she said. "It's good. I'm writing a grant proposal. We'll see when we get the money."

"Yeah," he said, chuckling. "That's when you'll see."

She didn't say anything. "So, how much are you going to get?"

"Fifty or sixty thousand."

"Fifty or sixty? What, you don't know?" he said. "I'd go for the sixty, if I didn't know."

There was a certain vagueness about her, a spaciness that her teachers had often commented on. He tried to tutor her, but she got distracted, telling him stories. When she was in the sixth grade, he told her that he wouldn't listen to any more stories until she learned to concentrate. This worked for a while, but by the seventh grade, she'd stopped wanting to tell him stories.

"How's Mom?" she said.

"How she always is. You know how she treats me."

"Dad. We talked about this. You can't take it personally. She's sick. Okay?"

"She's got this cold aspect now, talking to me. There's a cold, uncaring aspect of her coming out."

"So check the cabinet," his daughter said.

"What?"

"No, no, I was just talking to Nicky."

David said, "Just yesterday, for instance, I got us a pumpkin for Halloween, one of those unripe ones she likes. It was practically green, the one I got. I said, 'Look, I got your favorite pumpkin." She said, and I'm not kidding, she said, 'It's shit.'

"It comes on Halloween," she said, her mouth away from the receiver. "It's not a national holiday."

"Deborah," he said. "Are you focusing? She's saying these horrible things. You'd see for yourself if you came over."

"Dad, I'm sorry, I have to go change the laundry," she said.

"Laundry. That's another thing I never learned how to do. Not that your mother was the laundry champ of the world. What I don't get is the sorting."

"Okay, so if you call me later I'll - "

"Don't worry about it, don't worry about it," David said, "Bye."

David got a paper towel and began to clean the dust that had piled, like snow, in the slats of the kitchen blinds. The blinds always had to be down, because seeing the sun set made Susan furious. She called him by names he hadn't heard since he was a boy, names that should have sounded humorously outdated, but didn't.

"Honey?" he said. He walked through the living room door in time to see her start awake. "Hungry?"

"Obviously, I'm not," his wife said, spreading her knees apart. The bottom button of her dress was about to burst. David reached over and undid it.

"It's all right," she said, and slid backwards on the couch. She wiped at the corners of her mouth with her fingers.

"So you want a sandwich?"

"I most certainly do not." She closed her eyes.

"Honey," he said. "Honey. Honey. Attila the honey." A swollen blue vein pulsed under her left eyelid.

They'd gotten married after high school, the summer before he started City College. For their honeymoon, he took her to a cottage by a lake in Connecticut. The lake was choked with lilypads. The geese seemed to have no trouble getting through, but rowboats did. He would row them out as far as he could, trying to get to the place where the lilypads ended.

Eventually, he'd get tired and slow down. Listening to the water swirl around his oars, he'd sometimes imagine a horror movie scene. A man and his new bride would be rowing in a boat. Well, the man would be rowing, and the bride would be holding her white parasol in one hand and a fan in the other. Having her hands full would cost her in the next few minutes, as the head of a lily popped out of the water and nodded to her mutely, like Harpo Marx, and then more lilies emerged, hovered above her, wound their stems around her body. David would try to fight them off with his oars, but the lilies would grab the oars and knock off his straw hat, and knock him unconscious. Everything would go quiet. The lilies would sink back down, until only their heads were visible. The unconscious couple would be slumped towards each other, heads lolling.

But it was peaceful, the way they all sat quietly in the lake. "Do you know what?" he asked her and the lilypads, "In Brazil, they have leaves the size of your whole self." She laughed.

"Your laugh is like bells," he said.

"Don't be gauche," she answered in laugh language.

Before he woke up, or understood it was a doorbell, he had already walked halfway to the door. Whoever was on the other side must have heard him walking, so he had to open it.

It was a Girl Scout. The sun was setting behind her. She was squinting at him, her nose three lumps. "Would you like to buy some delicious Girl Scout cookies?" she said.

"Hi, there," he said. The girl hoisted up some cookie boxes. "What's your name?"

"Heather."

"Heather - that's some kind of flower, right?"

"It's purple. It's in Scotland."

"Oh. Have you ever been to Scotland?"

"No."

"I've never been there. Maybe I'll never see a heather flower." He leaned back against the doorframe. "You know, when I was your age, I wanted to be a famous explorer. It's true."

"Oh," the girl said. "Do you want to buy cookies?"

"I'm not sure. We've bought cookies over the years, my wife bought them, I don't know which kinds, let me see -"

"My, hello," his wife said. She'd forgotten the phrase but remembered the intonation. She came up behind him. Instead of her cane, she had taken the poker from the fireplace. It was too short for her and she was almost doubled over. She lifted up her chin and beamed at the girl and the light coming in from the door.

"I have cookies," the girl said.

"How delightful," Susan said.

"I can show you the kinds."

"You're pretty," his wife said, "Like that Mary Cassatt painting, the girl touching her hair. You have beautiful hair. What a beautiful color."

"Yeah, right," the girl said, straightening the strap of her jumper. David looked from the girl to the blue shutters of the house next door. The girl didn't know what Susan was doing. Maybe not even Susan realized that she was imitating her own grandmother, a relentless complementer. When they were younger and her grandmother was still alive, Susan used to mimic her. "What a lovely tea cake!" she'd exclaim over a half melted candy bar in the road, swarmed over with ants.

"Come, come in," his wife said. She pointed the poker into the house like it was some new land and she was Ponce de Leon.

"I'm not supposed to go in."

"Oh," his wife said. They watched the poker drop down until it was pointing to her feet. A car drove by. "Oh," she said again.

"Oh, come on," David said in a jolly tone. He extended his arm to the girl. "Shall we?" She hung back until he turned to go inside, then stepped in after him.

He reached behind her to close the door, and now it was dark again. The girl dropped one of the cookie boxes. When he picked it up, it was as light as his wife's hand. "I have a badge for crime fighting," the girl said.

His wife sat up straight on the couch, with her shoes on and her legs crossed. She cocked her elbow on the arm of the chair and tilted her head jauntily towards her fingers, as if there was a cigarette there that she expected someone to light.

"I have four kinds," the girl said, lowering the boxes. The box of Peanut Butter Patties fell to the floor. There were three girls on the box, fighting playfully over a volleyball. Heather kicked it to the side.

"Aren't you pretty," his wife said.

The girl put all the boxes on the floor and stepped forward. "How do you do?" she said.

"How old are you, dear?"

"Ten. I'm one of the oldest girl scouts, actually."

"Oh, my," she said flirtatiously.

"Yeah, that's why they said I could go by myself if I wanted. Everyone else has to go in partners. But I do have a partner, Tricia Ross."

"Oh, my."

"She couldn't come, just, today, because she had to go to her father's house."

His wife spread the fingers of her left hand and stared at them, like a police detective about to break a case. Then she banged them into the arm of the couch. It must have hurt - it wasn't padded. She took the fingers back, looked at them, and sighed with accomplishment. She glanced back at the girl. "Who are you here to see?" Susan said, like the college secretary she'd been.

"Susan," he said. "She's selling cookies. Now, what kind of cookies do you want?" He turned to the girl. "Tell her which kinds you have."

"Please do," his wife said, with some sarcasm in her voice.

"Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils, Do-si-dos - "

"That's enough, that's enough choices for now," he said.

"All right," his wife said just as rapidly, "I'll have those, then. Thank you."

"Which ones?" the girl said.

"Of course, I'll just -," Susan said. "I'll just -."

"She wants the Do-si-dos. Right, Susan? You like chocolate, so we'll get you those." He showed her the box.

"You don't choose it for me," she said, elbowing it away. "I don't want those. I want the other ones."

"Which ones?" David said.

"I try before I buy. I didn't just come off the boat yesterday."

The girl stared at him.

David pointed to the boxes with a patient foot. "You see," he said to the girl. "You see, she wants to try them first."

"She can't just try them without buying them."

"But she won't buy them without trying them," he said, smiling at the rhyme. "First we'll try, then we'll buy."

"You can't do that, I just said."

"But why?" he said. "We don't lie. Once we try, we always buy."

This girl wasn't reacting to his rhymes. His daughter had loved rhymes when she was her age.

"What if I - just buy - a box now," he finished lamely.

"You can't do that," she said. "You have to order."

His wife stared at the girl, her eyes narrowed. It was the hateful look that she made right before she started crying. She had never understood that that look would not bring sympathy.

"It's this form," the girl said, looking at him and pulling out a list.

"It's okay, it's okay," he said. He went to the kitchen and took the top off of the pumpkin's head. He'd missed doing one of the eyes, he saw.

He was already walking back to the living room with the pumpkin when he saw he'd forgotten the spoon. He scooped out the seeds with his fingers. The seeds were slimy and raw-smelling, but not unhealthy, as far as he knew, and she needed to eat every hour. The disease was supposed to dull her sense of taste anyway.

"Here, I have some pumpkin seeds," he said, "They're like candies." He tilted the bowl towards Susan and a few seeds fell out. He stepped forward, covering them with his foot.

"Here, have some." He took a few between his fingers and offered them to her. She stared at his fingers like someone being hypnotized, but did not open her mouth.

"Here, take them," he said. "Everyone, take some." The seeds were turning warm in his hand, as if they were about to hatch and grow stalks. Susan still wouldn't reach her hand out. "No," she muttered. With two fingers of one hand, he parted her lips. She jerked her head away.

"No," she said, "no-no, no-no, no-no." She lowered her chin and spit on his fingers. Heather jumped back.

"No-no, no-no, no-no," Susan said. She picked up one of the seeds from the floor and cleaned it off with her skirt. "No-no."

Heather picked up the boxes, two under each arm.

"No-no," Susan said. She put her head in her hands as if she was about to cry.

The girl ran out of the room. One box fell but she kept going. "Hey," David called after her. The front door slammed.

His wife lifted her head out of her hands and saw the box. Using her foot, she edged the box towards herself with a sly look.

David went to the door. The girl was walking quickly, hunched over the cookie boxes. "You forgot one," he called out. She flinched and walked faster, her head turned away from him, as if she couldn't risk seeing him even with peripheral vision.

She was too far away for him to shout without the neighbors noticing. Her green jumper blended into the trees like camouflage.

To just disappear, that was what everyone wanted. But some people couldn't. He'd been taking care of Susan long before she was sick, long before. He'd always given her advice - good advice - about work when she needed it. Hadn't she cried to him when her mother died? He'd hit her exactly once during their marriage. And he'd gotten so worried afterward. He had never cheated on her and never shouted.

He walked back to the living room. Susan was tearing at the cardboard on the front of the box with her fingers. She had no nails anymore - he cut them twice a week.

"Here," David said. He unglued the fastenings and opened the box. It was lined with white tissues like a present. He held it out to her. "Hey," he said.

Her dress gaped over her tiger-print slip, which he had bought for her birthday many years ago and which she had never worn until recently. She used to say it made her look cheap.

"Don't you want them?" he said. "After all this?" He reached into the box. She scratched at his hand like a cat. "God," he said.

He backed away. She tore the tissues out of the box until it was empty. There was nothing inside, not even crumbs.

"I guess it was just a display box," he said.

She shredded the tissues and tossed them over her shoulders. She sat covered in white scraps like someone in a ticker tape parade, her shoulders back and her eyes haughty. You'd have thought that she'd just come back from Normandy.

"So there was no point in any of that, I guess," David said.

"You were always too stupid," she said. She started to cry and she wiped her eyes with the tissues from the box. They scratched against her face. He went back into the kitchen.

The pumpkin was heavier than he'd remembered, and still missing an eye. He carried it outside and sat down with it on his lap. He could joke to people that it was winking.

The sun was starting to set. He turned and checked that all the blinds were closed. He'd gotten the best blinds. They were so thick that you couldn't even see a shadow behind them.

He'd forgotten the candle inside, and couldn't remember where the matches were. He moved over, so that the pumpkin caught some light from the street lamp. He would sit for a while, and guard for vandals.