The door to Mr. and Mrs. Darwin’s room had remained open. Old bearded men walked by, thumbs linked behind their backs, all alike, the leftover army of the Lord.

They had stuffed the morning papers under their mattresses, and because of the sorrowful current events they hurried up to the temple of Judea on the sixth floor, from which they could more easily communicate with God. Ladies leaned on sticks stiffly, their articulations jammed with calcium. They knocked on the open door and said, “Oi, busy …” or “Mrs. Hegel-Shtein, don’t you ever stop?” No one said much to faith’s mother, the vice-president of the Grandmother’s Wool Socks Association.

Hope had warned her: “Mother, you are only sixty-five years old. You look fifty-five.” “Youth is in the heart, Hopey. I feel older than Grandma. It’s the way I’m constituted. Anyway, Papa is practically seventy, he deserves a rest. We have some advantage that we’re young enough to make a good adjustment. By the time we’re old and miserable, it’ll be like home here.”