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For the rest of the morning, Michael was listless and kept wandering out of the office and coming back in again, as if forgetting why he had left. On several occasions Theo saw him outside on the sidewalk, gazing up at the windows of the factory, where work seemed to have resumed, but he made no move to cross the street. All the time, he kept stroking his cheek and jaw, backward and forward where Easey had hit him, as if he was trying to understand something that made no sense and failing in the attempt.

Theo felt jittery. “Are you okay, Dad?” he asked when his father had come back into the office for what seemed like the tenth time.

“Yes, yes. I’ve got a lot on my mind. That’s all. Get on with what you were doing. I’ll be all right.”

“But you said we wouldn’t be. You said the business would fail. You said—”

“I said a lot of things,” Michael interrupted testily. “But that doesn’t mean they’re going to happen. You just need to give me some room to think. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? It’ll do you good to get some air—maybe you can run a bit, like you used to? It’s not raining.”

“How can you say that?” Theo burst out.

“Say what?” asked Michael, not understanding.

“About my running, when you’re the one who stopped me. You took me out of school and ruined everything. Or have you forgotten all that?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten!” Michael shouted, angry now too. “It’s you who are forgetting, Theo. Your manners, the respect you owe me. I’m your father, goddammit!” He thumped his fist on his desk and stopped, breathing hard and struggling to collect himself before he went on in a firm, controlled voice: “I’m sorry, son, but you need to do as I say. Marty’s coming and Frank, too, and I need the office to myself. Go home now and I’ll see you this evening.”

Theo got up, gathered his things, and put on his coat. His pride was like a chain holding him in check as he moved slowly toward the door, hoping that his father would call him back.

He turned as he went out and his father was staring at him, or rather through him, as if he was seeing something or someone in the empty showroom beyond.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Theo asked.

“Yes, of course,” said Michael, snapping out of his trance with a shake of his head. “Tell your mother ...” he began, but then stopped. “No, it’s better it’s me who talks to her,” he went on. “I’ll see you both this evening. We can talk then. Close the door.”

And those were the last words that Theo ever heard his father say.

There was no sign of Michael in the evening, but this didn’t much surprise Theo, notwithstanding his father’s promise to come home and talk. He assumed his father was still busy trying to find a way out of his troubles.

Elena was as lacking in curiosity as ever about her husband’s business. She had continued to accept his optimism at face value, and in the last few days he had told her nothing of the bank’s failure or the workers’ strike, and had passed off the bruising to his face as an accidental injury he’d suffered from falling over in the factory.

Theo might have spoken to her himself, but the breach between them that had fissured at the church when he’d accused her of flirting with Sir Andrew was still there. Neither she nor Theo had suggested that he should resume accompanying her to Mass.

And so Theo was surprised when his mother knocked hard on his bedroom door in the morning, calling him to come out. He was dressing to go to the factory but ran out to her in his underwear because of the urgency in her voice.

“Your father’s not been here all night. His bed’s not been slept in. Do you know where he is?” Elena had taken tight hold of Theo’s arm, and she spoke breathlessly in short, staccato Spanish sentences as she looked up at him.

Theo shook his head, but inwardly he trembled. He felt her fear spreading through him like a deadly contagion.

“I’ll call the office,” he said. “Maybe he’s still there. There’s been trouble at the factory.”

“What kind of trouble? What are you talking about? Why didn’t he tell me? Or you? You could have told me; you would have known too.”

Ignoring his mother, who was becoming more hysterical with each question she threw out, Theo went to the telephone in the hallway, but it rang just as he was about to dial. He froze with one hand on the earpiece and the other on the stand, seized with a premonition that something awful awaited him if he took the call. He felt, illogically, that he could prevent it from happening if he remained utterly motionless. Not even breathing.

But the telephone went on ringing, and when Elena saw that he wasn’t going to answer, she walked over and grabbed it out of his hands.

He watched her listening to the voice on the other end of the line—it sounded like Frank’s—and watched her hand holding the earpiece drop limply to her side. She was saying something, but he couldn’t make it out. And then she said it again: “Your father’s dead. He’s killed himself.”

Theo heard it but he didn’t believe it. “No, he can’t be. He was fine when I left him yesterday. There’s some mistake. I know there is. I’m going over there,” he told his mother, running back to his room to put on the rest of his clothes.

“What are we going to do?” she called to him frantically as he rushed back past her, but he wrenched open the front door of the apartment without responding and started running down the corridor outside. Behind him he could hear his mother’s voice shouting again: “Come back! We need to talk!” But he was hardly listening as he burst out of the building and ran to the bus stop.

He waited for what seemed like hours and then took off down the road, running, dodging between pedestrians. And almost immediately a streetcar came up from behind and passed him, and he could not outrace it to the next stop. He reached out wildly with his flailing, beseeching hands as it pulled back out into Broadway and left him in its wake.

He thought of going down into the subway or running on, but forced himself to wait, knowing that a bus or streetcar would be quicker if he could just stay patient. But that was hard, unbearably hard, because all the time he felt he was in a race against the clock, even though another voice in another repressed part of his brain was whispering to him that this was absurd. His father was dead and everything was changed and there was no going back.

On the bus, he closed his eyes and clenched his fists and tried to stop his knees swinging from side to side as he willed the vehicle forward, past traffic lights and intersections, trying to shut out the babble of indifferent voices all around him, talking about Christmas and the chances of snow and the sale that day at Klein’s. Instead, he listened to scraps of conversations swirling in his head like litter blown up in a wind: “ I’m worried he could break ”—“ The Depression’s killing him ”—“ I’m this close ”—“ I’m tired ”—“ tired ”—“ Close the door ... ”

He got off at Thirty-Sixth Street and ran up the road and into his father’s building on the corner, where he stopped short, narrowly avoiding a collision with Frank, who was standing guard outside the office. The winter sunlight streaming in through the high windows of the vestibule lit up the gold lettering of Michael Sterling’s name stenciled on the closed door behind him.

“Get out of the way! I need to go in,” said Theo angrily. He thought if he could just get inside, then maybe his father would be there and all this would be like a dream from which he could wake up and start over.

“You can’t. The police are here,” said Frank, barring the way.

“I don’t care,” Theo shouted, trying to push past Frank, who held his ground and took hold of Theo’s wrist in an unexpectedly strong grip, forcing him back.

“It’s bad. Really bad,” he said, looking into Theo’s eyes, trying to make him understand. “I won’t let you see it. Maybe I’m wrong, but someone has to look out for you. Someone has to make a decision.”

All at once Theo gave way. He sagged, and Frank had to put out his other hand to hold the boy up.

“Let’s go somewhere and talk,” he said. “I know a place.”

It was quiet. Only two blocks away, and afterward Theo couldn’t remember how they’d got there. Just that he was sitting by the window opposite Frank, with two white coffee mugs and a pitcher of water and a pair of cloudy glasses lined up between them on a small wooden table patterned with innumerable pale overlapping circles made by thousands of previous hot mugs drunk by thousands of previous customers come here to talk about their troubles.

“I saw him at five when I went home,” said Frank in a matter-of-fact tone. “So he did it sometime after that. And he was all right when I left or I wouldn’t have gone, obviously. I told him that everyone was back at work and he seemed happy about that, although both of us knew that we couldn’t pay them. And then today when I came in, he was in his chair and the gun was on the desk, and—”

Frank broke off and looked out of the window, trying to compose himself.

“Are you sure ...” Theo began.

“He was dead?”

Theo nodded. He had hard hold of the underside of the table, as if readying himself for Frank’s response.

“He blew his brains out, Theo. He must have put the damned thing in his mouth.”

Theo gasped. The room turned and he thought he was going to be sick, but then he felt Frank’s hand on his arm and the room righted itself.

Frank poured out a glass of water, and Theo took it with both hands and drank it all.

“I’m sorry,” said Frank. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just I thought you needed to know because I didn’t let you see him. There wasn’t any doubt. None at all.”

“Why?” Theo asked. He meant to say “Why did he do it?” but he found it hard to speak and managed only the first monosyllabic word of his question.

“I can’t tell you exactly. He didn’t leave a note, even though there was paper on the desk, lots of it. I think he just sat there and it got dark and something in him broke. He’d tried and tried to hold everything together, and he couldn’t anymore, for some reason. He’d just reached that point. And he’d got the gun in the drawer, locked up with Marty’s reports. Loaded and ready to use when he needed it.”

“How do you know?”

“I called Marty before you came and he told me. He got the gun for Michael because Michael asked him to, and then he saw him put it away. And when I went in, the drawer was pulled open with the reports still in there, and the key was on the desk. It all added up.”

“Why did he want the gun? So he could do this?”

“No, I don’t think so. Marty said he didn’t tell him what he wanted it for, but my guess is protection. He didn’t feel safe after Easey punched him. He was ...”

“Like a cat on hot bricks,” said Theo, remembering his father’s phrase.

“Yes, that’s it.”

Frank was quiet now, drinking his coffee and looking out through the window at the people passing by on the sidewalk outside, wrapped up in their winter coats.

“It’s Alvah’s fault,” said Theo, leaning forward across the table. “He’s killed my dad with his stupid strike. He knew he couldn’t pay—”

“No. Alvah didn’t help, but the truth is we were going under when the bank failed or even before that maybe,” said Frank, shaking his head. “The business couldn’t cope with the Depression. Michael fought against it as long as he could, but—”

“But what?” interrupted Theo bitterly. “Just because your business fails, it doesn’t mean you have to kill yourself.”

“For Michael it did,” said Frank. “The business was everything to him—his life’s work, his whole identity. You of all people shouldn’t need me to tell you that.”

“Because he forced me out of school to join it, you mean?”

Frank nodded.

“You’re right,” said Theo slowly. “My dad was selfish—selfish through and through. He never thought of anyone except himself. Not once. Just the business, always the business: Sterling and Son—you know, saying those words makes me sick. Because Alvah was right and so was my grandfather. Do you know what he said?”

“Your grandfather?” Theo nodded and Frank shook his head. “I never met him,” he said. “He was before my time.”

But Theo wasn’t listening, borne along now on the rushing torrent of his emotion. “He said my dad preyed on his own people like a wolf in the night. That’s why everyone hated him—you could see it in their eyes when we walked round the factory. That’s why he wouldn’t go near the place without you there. I’m happy it failed. He got what he deserved.”

“No, he didn’t,” said Frank fiercely. “Nobody deserves to die like that. God knows, your father had his faults. But I loved him. And I think you did too.”

Theo’s head dropped and he began to cry. Memories came flooding through the open breach in his defenses: his father standing with his head thrown back in Lexington Avenue, gazing spellbound up at the glory of the Chrysler Building; his father shiny-eyed at Yankee Stadium after Babe Ruth hit the home run and won the game. He was so real and alive, so how could he now be dead?

Frank handed Theo a napkin and he held it hard to his eyes, blotting out the visions, and fought to reassert his self-control. It was an effort of will that felt like an act of violence, stamping down hard on his emotions.

“What are we going to do?” he asked when he could trust himself to speak. He could escape the past but not the future, and he saw it now, opening out in front of him—a desolate plain stretching away into darkness. The prospect filled him with fear and foreboding.

“There’s no point in me sugarcoating it for you. It’s going to be bad,” said Frank. “The business is finished. I sent everyone home, and they won’t be coming back. And once the news is out, the creditors will move in and seize the assets. I doubt there’ll be anything much left, even if the bank pays out, and that could be months away.”

“But what about my mother, the apartment? Are you saying there’s going to be nothing?”

“Pretty much,” said Frank. “I’ve not met your mother. Can she work?”

“No, she wouldn’t know where to start,” said Theo with a hollow laugh. “She left everything to my father. He liked it that way.”

Frank nodded. “I’ll try to help,” he said. “But it’s not going to be easy. I’ve got to find work myself. You mentioned your grandfather. Do you know where he is?”

“Somewhere in the Lower East. I could try and look for him. But it’s a long time ago that I went there. He’s called Joseph Stern. He told me that.”

“All right, I’ll make inquiries. You should go to your mother now. I can deal with what’s left over here.”

Outside the coffee shop, Theo swayed and leaned against the wall. His eyes hurt and his legs felt heavy and he swallowed hard to keep from starting up crying again. He didn’t want Frank to leave, and he didn’t want to go home and face his mother. But he forced himself to put out his hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I know this is hard for you too.”

Frank took Theo’s hand in both of his and looked into his eyes. “Don’t give up,” he said. “Just because he did doesn’t mean you have to. I believe in you. Remember that.”

There was no time for Theo to think, let alone give up, in the topsy-turvy days that followed his father’s death. Everything seemed to fall apart. There was no money even for the funeral, and Michael would have gone to a pauper’s grave in the potter’s field if Frank hadn’t scraped together enough for a cut-price send-off in a crowded Jewish cemetery in Brooklyn, where he still had to pay extra for them to overlook that Michael was a suicide.

Elena refused to attend or to have anything to do with the arrangements. She told Theo that her husband had betrayed them, lied to them, abandoned them, and murdered himself, listing his crimes one by one on the fingers of her hand. Suicide was a mortal sin against God about which the Catholic Church’s teaching was clear and unambiguous. He could not lie in consecrated ground, and so the manner in which his body was disposed of was an irrelevance. He could be burned on a pyre by the Hindus for all she cared, she said, because it wouldn’t make any difference to his true fate, which was already well underway in the pits of hell, where he was suffering richly deserved eternal torments inflicted by an elite squad of devils.

Theo thought all this was medieval nonsense, only adding to his sense of alienation from the Church, but his mother’s absence from the funeral hurt him hard as he struggled to stay upright in the driving wind and rain, standing graveside between Frank and Mrs. Hirsch. The rabbi was a very old man with a querulous voice, and Theo could hardly hear what he was saying. A task made more difficult not just by the noise of the wind but also by the presence of a professional mourner, who beat his breast and wailed loudly in incomprehensible Hebrew. Frank told Theo afterward that the mourner had not been an optional extra but was part of the package including the cheap pine coffin supplied by the funeral home. But he clearly expected to make most of his fee from tips and pulled importunately at their wrists like a professional beggar afterward as they made their way back to the car.

Theo kept looking around, irrationally hoping to see his grandparents. But, of course, they weren’t there. He was curiously satisfied, however, that his father had been taken back by the Jews at the end, notwithstanding the ramshackle nature of the ceremony and the fact that it had required a bribe to make happen. He remembered his grandfather’s pronouncement: “ He has turned his back on who he is, become something he is not. ” And now perhaps his father had become himself again: Micah Stern, who had worked and loved in a new country and fought against fate until the struggle proved too much for him and he fell.

Theo hoped that maybe one day there might be enough money for a headstone to give his father’s name and dates, but for now there was nothing. Worse than nothing, in fact, because it quickly became apparent in the days following the funeral that Michael owed money on almost everything in the apartment, and this mountain of debt now fell on the heads of Theo and Elena like an avalanche.

They sat on the French armchairs and watched helplessly as heavy men in gray overalls trooped in and out, removing the Kelvinator refrigerator and the Westinghouse electric range, and the next day other similarly dressed men came for the furniture, too, and a city marshal served them with an eviction notice stating that the rent on the apartment hadn’t been paid for three months.

Without Frank, they would soon have been homeless. “I’ve found you somewhere on the Lower East Side,” he said. “It’s not what you’re used to, but you’ll be together, and it’s the most I can afford. Thank God, Weiss has given me work or I couldn’t even do this.”

“Thank you,” said Theo. He felt frustrated at the inadequacy of the words to express his intense gratitude, but then to his surprise his mother came to the rescue.

“You are our Good Samaritan,” she said, walking over to Frank and taking hold of his hand. “I wish Michael had brought you home to meet me. We are lucky to have you as our friend.”

Frank blushed and stammered to find a reply, but it didn’t matter. Theo knew him well enough to know that he was pleased and was grateful to his mother—a feeling at odds with the slow-burning resentment toward her for refusing to mourn his father, which he carried inside him, locked up with the other grudges that had kept them apart for so long.

Frank was right. Their new home bore no relation to anything that they were used to. It was in the same Jewish neighborhood where Theo’s grandparents had lived, but the tenement building was in worse condition and the apartment was far smaller.

They had to climb six flights in the semidarkness to reach it, holding on to each other to avoid tripping on broken stairs or falling over hunks of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling and been left to lie. The only light came from small gas burners in the halls, flickering in the gloom behind their dusty mantles.

On each floor there were four apartments, two at the front and two at the back. Theirs faced the back, where the building was separated from another tall tenement by a narrow lane, so that no sunlight could come in through the small windows, and access to the gray light on offer meant opening up their rooms to the prying eyes of the occupants of the apartments across the way.

A woman and her husband lived directly opposite with their young son, who had bulbous eyes and a shaved head. The man was gone during the day, working somewhere, and came home drunk at night and shouted at his wife in incomprehensible Yiddish. He may have hit her, but Theo and Elena never saw that, and the boy sat and stared out of the window for hours at a time, a picture of misery.

Theo never got used to the woman. She was young but old, and her face was blotchy and yellow, stretched tight across the bones. Sometimes he lay on his bed and watched as she came out onto the fire escape, carrying bundles of wet clothes, and the wind whipped up her heavy skirts, revealing cheap cotton stockings with holes all over, the size of quarters, and red, bony knees.