Safe Passage by Ellyn Bache Page A

and over again.
         "I called Izzy ," he announced. "He's picking up the twins and bringing them home." Darren and Merle were freshmen at the University of Maryland; they lived in a dorm and did not have a car. As a graduate student there, Izzy had his own apartment in College Park and a car that had been in the family for years. "I thought we'd wait a little to call Gideon. It's two hours earlier in Utah. We might as well wait till he gets up.
         His mother was not listening to him. She focused on the TV set. "Ironically," the announcer was saying, "casualties may be higher because on Sunday morning many of the men were asleep. Sunday is the one day most of them did not have to report for duty."
         "I can't listen to this anymore," Mag said. She rose and went into the living room. Her shoes were so wet that they made a sucking sound as she walked across the carpet. They could hear her flip through her record case. A moment later she turned the stereo on, loud enough to drown out the news on the family room TV…and also, Alfred suspected, the thoughts that must be racing through her mind.
         His father shifted on the couch.
         "You want me to say something to her?" Alfred asked.
         "No. Give her a few minutes."
         "Christ," Simon said.
         "This would be a good opportunity to shower," Alfred told him.
         "Not yet," Simon said.
         The walls of the family room vibrated with the crashing music from the stereo. Simon watched the TV, though the sound was inaudible over the music. Patrick lay still on the couch and seemed to be asleep. Alfred didn't think he really was. It was unlike his father to abdicate in times of stress. After five minutes of the music playing at full volume, Alfred trailed his mother into the living room. She was curled into the corner of the sofa, knees up, chin resting on them, arms wrapped around her leg—a fetal position, catatonic, staring into the music. The position struck him as even more unbalanced than her wet clothes. He turned the stereo down so he could talk to her.
         "Mother, don't," he said. "Everyone will be coming home soon."
         "Every time the doorbell rings," she said, "we'll think it's bad news."
         "It won't be. It'll be Izzy and them. And then the neighbors. As soon as they hear, you know they'll start coming over."
         "A social event."
         "They'll bring things to eat. It will be out of kindness."
         His mother rose from the sofa and turned up the music again. It was Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition . He knew the piece well. It had been one of his favorites when he was a child—full of horns and cymbals, not too violiny . But his mother only played it when she was upset. Her music always reflected her moods: opera when she felt sentimental— Madama Butterfly or Aida , always Puccini or Verdi; sweet ballet music when she felt nostalgic— Swan Lake in warm weather, The Nutcracker in cold; Chopin polonaises when she was restless. When he was in grade school she'd always played Gaiete Parisienne on the nights his father stayed out late—wild, untamed-sounding stuff—and now that he was living with Cynthia, he felt he understood. But Pictures at an Exhibition she saved for when she was upset about the children.
         The last section of the piece was playing—"The Great Gate at Kiev." He was six or seven when she'd told him about it. Each part of Pictures represented a picture at an actual exhibition, she'd said. One painting was of the city of Kiev, of the gate. The music was about the painting. "Try to imagine it. It makes it more fun."
         So he'd tried. "Kiev is in Russia," she'd announced, setting the Q-R volume of the encyclopedia before him, opened to the section on Russia. He was too young to make out most of the words, but he'd looked at the photograph of the domed Russian church in Red Square. Afterward, listening to the music, he'd imagined tall