Ostensibly, Peter called because he was seeking his stuff. That was a transparent device; the only items he’d left at Lilah’s were some ratty old exercise clothes. Peter is inattentive to apparel. He is accustomed to leaving bits of himself behind as he blunders forward. Lilah knew he didn’t want his coffee-marked sweatpants or tank top.

They saw each other and it wasn’t unpleasant, so they did it a second time, and then each considered the relationship differently. Peter wanted to deem them a couple again; to the extent that she acted like they weren’t, he compromised and adjusted to permit her actions. He shrugged a lot. He wished she would support his deepening commitment to the Portals program.

Lilah was careful to allow him no physical intimacy. That hadn’t been a particularly satisfying part of their former relationship as far as she was concerned (pleasant and not malodorous was the best she would say) – she didn’t want it back. She never invited him to spend the night. She tried to keep him downstairs even though the best place to watch TV was from her bed, away from kids in the living room. Her friends asked her why she continued to see him – she asked the same thing herself – and she said she thought she still enjoyed their talks and walks; she said she was interested in the welfare of his sons. Lilah was an indulgent parent but selfish enough to set limits. Peter was a rabid believer in aggressive expressive love, and his delight in his kids’ actions was so thorough that it was interpreted as unconditional approval no matter what they did. Saul and Warren were masters of their own destinies, with regard to sleep and all behavior. Each was small for his age, delicate of feature, often dirty and always tired. Peter was their fountain of love and approval – or like a perpetual big brother, a willing conspirator in all play.

Saul now lived full-time with Peter. Seven year-old Warren continued to stay mostly with his mother (except for every other weekend), but Saul had moved from Judith’s to Peter’s less than a month after Lilah stopped seeing him. Judith’s feelings were so hurt about this that she rarely spoke to Saul. Mother and son were civil to each other, but neither sought the other’s company.

Saul wasn’t going to school much. He was supposed to be attending eighth grade at a middle school in Albany, but he wasn’t there more often than he was. He and Peter had already met once with the principal and the school counselor, and Saul had entered into and immediately violated the behavior contract that always arises from such a meeting. Peter has an anti-school bias he has never concealed from his children. School was not good for him. Lilah suspected he supported Saul in insolence. She was sure that Judith acted more parental; after all Saul was only 13. School attendance was probably one of the issues that made him want to move in with his dad.

Lilah didn’t get these items in any narrative form. Peter wasn’t ever likely to narrate; his conversation was more like talking to himself out loud. He tended to interrupt a silence with the phrase “Oh, yeah…” as if he were continuing some dialogue, and then launch into a nonsequitur, any nonsequitur (there are an infinite number of nonsequiturs). This irritated Lilah but she tried to view it as a disability she should accommodate and she mostly succeeded at that, except when it seemed to be the sort of baiting that Peter, a bright middle child, would have perfected while growing up. He was so informed and organized about astronomy, geology, anthropology – so retentive with those stories – that his incoherence about people sometimes seemed to be an act. That winter Peter told her bits and pieces, mainly when Saul’s behavior was so bad that he couldn’t avoid talking about it, and so Lilah’s concern grew with her amazement.

Saul went to the Saturday midnight movie every week by then, and sometimes he didn’t come home at all. Lilah learned that he had refused to go with his mother one Saturday night when she came to pick him up outside the theater. Judith had then called Peter for help, which is something she would only do in desperation, and Peter told her he’d take care of Saul. He sent her home to Warren. But Saul wouldn’t go with Peter either. Peter ended up leaving Saul at the theater and didn’t see the boy again until Sunday afternoon.

“What could I do?” Peter asked Lilah when he told her about that night. “Force him into my truck?”

“Yes!” Lilah was emphatic. “I’m not advocating abuse. You just grab him, hug him firmly, and sit on him, if necessary, until he gets some sense.”

There was no point to Lilah’s emphasis. By the time Peter gave her the story the events had occurred months before. In fact, he only told because Saul was then missing again, and longer, and he was filling her in on precedents.