The sun is well up, though it hasn’t yet cleared the treetops at the riverbank, and he identifies the high misty glow in the air as sunlight reflected off the water. Since his return home a week ago, it has become his habit to dawdle about wearing his father’s embroidered smoking cap and slippers—he reads the newspapers, naps when he can, sorts through the mail that accumulated in his absence—and he has the distinct impression that the three women of the house, each in her own way, labors to accommodate his new and lurking presence. Now he gazes down at Jane, on hands and knees among the tomatoes; she looks to him paler and thinner than ever, as if, in time, she’ll simply fade away. He places his nearly empty cup on a nearby potting table. “I see the cabbages are coming along,” he says idly. “What kind are they?” Jane pauses, raises her head. “I used to know the name, but I’ve forgot it,” she says, and returns to weeding. He dodges a laundry pole and moves to the shed at the back of the garden, where vines, sagging with scores of young pods and small purple flowers, climb on strings against a wall.
