“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?” he asked, pacing around the room. “Lucy would be very angry. You won’t tell her that I messed up, are you?” To stop constant water running off the toilet tank, he had yanked the chain off the valve. While I was working on the flush valve, he was standing over my head. All along, he was playing with the Jewish Star pendant around his neck. Lucy had mentioned that David’s mother was Ashkenazi. She died when he was very young, leaving three children to rear for her husband, a High School teacher in St. Paul.
From the corner of my eye, I caught him chewing down on a pencil. Projecting an image of a college fraternity preppie hiding secrets, his eyes revealed that he was much smarter than his illness would prejudice anyone to conclude. Shortly after he arri
