He was nearly eighteen, he reminded himself, and not inexperienced in the vicissitudes of life. He had learned early that life could be sharp and arbitrary. There had been the shock of his grandfather’s death when he was fourteen; then the loss of his great-aunt to the convent; then the wrenching separation from his nurse-protector, Nadine, as he and his mother made the trip into another world, one he had only read about. Of course, he knew English, which his mother had taught him from infancy. But now he had to speak in English day and night. He had had to make a fresh set of friends, and there were new demands at school—it had never occurred to him that the United States had a history, let alone one he would be expected to master. He had learned what every boy learns at puberty, and then there was the special situation at home, he and his mother, with no father. He thought himself entirely adult in important matters, notably in his concern for his mother, which had evolved into a sense of responsibility for her.
