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leading the conversation from the head of the table, and my presence had rendered him silent above his plate of sliced turkey and his glass of scotch, everyone had to stay quiet. He was a very stubborn man, and even though I believe he grew to like me, it would be nearly a year before he spoke directly to me.
    However, there was a wordless current that traveled above and below the table. I was aware of Kelly’s legs swinging, kicking at Johnny, who was on her right. There was a shuffling of feet over by Meggy, too, and at one point somebody took a shot that brushed the hem of my pants. Meggy was making eyes at me, her aim more to annoy Kelly than to flirt with me, as far as I could tell. I didn’t know who to look at, or whether it was more appropriate to smile or appear expressionless. I felt like I had walked in on a high-level card game for which no one had told me the rules. In many ways, I was to realize as the years went by, I had been right. The McLaughlin family has their own means of communication, secret ways of attack, and fierce allegiances that are unreadable to outsiders. And I have always remained an outsider.
    What I did not realize then was that by that point it was fairly rare for all of the McLaughlins to be under one roof at one time. It was school break time—Johnny was only a few weeks from dropping out of high school to enlist in the army, Meggy was home from her Catholic boarding school, and Pat from graduate school. Kelly, Theresa, and Ryan still lived in the stately house in Ridgewood. When the McLaughlins were all together, Catharine was on guard, her eyes moving from her husband to her children’s faces and back again. The children, Kelly included, were a bundle of nervous energy, crackling from time to time in a sharp comment, a kick under the table, a pass at a visiting boyfriend. Ryan laughed hopefully at anything even resembling a joke. Theresa pet the small dog under her chair. She had just found the mutt on the street, and it would be promptly evicted by Patrick after lunch. Kelly held on to my hand as if she were a kite in danger of taking off and I was the sturdy post she happened to grab hold of at the last minute.
    My own family rarely ate together. My father, who was going to die of a swift, severe attack of pneumonia in two months’ time, always ate at his office. My mother, a flighty woman who a few years after my father’s death descended into the murky grasp of Alzheimer’s disease, served me dinner each night and hovered while I ate, asking if I needed any extra salt, pepper, or ketchup. It didn’t matter what I was eating— she always eagerly offered those same condiments. I never saw her sit down and eat a proper meal. She liked to pick at food, she said, and she picked all day long in the kitchen.
    In any case, due to my unfamiliarity with the experience of a family meal—much less with a family this big and uneasy—and my unpopular aspiration to take Kelly away from this family to live a different, happier life at my side, I was relieved when Patrick pushed back his chair and the meal officially ended. I stayed at the table with Johnny, Pat, and Ryan while the women cleared the dishes. We fiddled with the silverware until it was taken away, and awkwardly chatted about Jack Kennedy and the Dodgers. Then Catharine called me into the kitchen.
    This summons seemed fortuitous, since I had been hoping to have a private word with her. The first thing that struck me as I walked through the swinging door was how clean the kitchen was. We had finished eating a big meal no more than ten minutes earlier, and the counters, the floor, the stove, everything was spotless. All the McLaughlin girls had disappeared.
    “Thank you for the delicious meal, Mrs. McLaughlin,” I said. “I really enjoyed it.”
    Catharine held up her hand. “I realize that you have serious intentions toward my daughter, Mr. Leary. I know about your engineering degree, and your position with the