Why, Katya, thank you! You have saved my life, honey...She was excited and she was apprehensive and she was cunningly rehearsing what she would say when her mother asked who this Marcus C. Kidder was who'd been such a friend, who'd lent a stranger three hundred dollars. But her mother didn't call, and so didn't thank Katya. And didn't interrogate her about Mr. Kidder. And when Katya called home, there was no answer, not even the familiar recording of Essie Spivak's bemused nasal voice: Sorry, Essie must not be here or she'd take this call so please leave a message at the sound of the beep. Instead the phone rang, rang in what must have been an empty house. When Katya called her sister Lisle, there was at least a recorded message, but Lisle never called Katya back, and so Katya called her other sister, Tracey, whose U.S. Army sergeant husband was stationed in Fort Dix, fifty miles north of Vineland. This older sister had never seemed to care much for Katya, for no reason Katya could guess, and said flatly to her, as soon as she heard Katya's hesitant voice, "If it's Mom you're calling me about, tell her no." Katya asked, No what?
