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“What the hell do you want?” demanded an angry male voice. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Yes, ten o’clock. And I’m very sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering ...” It was without question Sir Andrew—Theo instantly recognized his upper-class English accent, so bizarrely out of place in this dingy building.

“What?” interrupted the first voice, angrier now.

“I was wondering if you might know of a Mrs. Sterling who may be living in this building. She has a son, Theodore. They speak Spanish.”

“No one speaks Spanish here. This is the Lower East, not Mexico City, you dummy! Now get the hell out.”

The door slammed, and Theo heard Sir Andrew sigh. And then, down below in the hallway, there was someone moving and Theo ducked away into the corridor, just in time before a powerful flashlight shone up the stairwell.

“Hey, you. What are you doing up there?” The light and the hard, accusing voice meant it had to be a cop, and Theo flattened himself against the wall.

“I’m sorry, Officer. I was looking for a friend of mine. That’s all.” Theo could hear Sir Andrew going past him, descending the stairs.

“All right, keep your hands out of your pockets where I can see them and get outside. I hope you’ve got some papers to go with that funny accent of yours.”

“Yes, of course, Officer.”

The door below shut, and Theo was left alone. His heart was hammering and he couldn’t keep pace with the thoughts that were rushing through his head. He’d been scared of being found by the officer and accused of being a burglar, and he was worried now that one of the residents would come out and find him and call the cops again. But then he wasn’t thinking about that anymore, just about Sir Andrew. Why was he looking for them? What did he want? Only Sir Andrew could answer these questions, but Theo didn’t want him to find them. Sir Andrew would try to interfere and change everything, just when their lives had gotten better and they’d found a little happiness.

But if he didn’t go after Sir Andrew, Theo would never know what he was doing here, banging on doors, searching for them in the dark. And what were the chances of finding him like this? Didn’t that have to mean something?

Theo went down into the hallway and opened the door a fraction, peeping out. There was no one in sight. Sir Andrew had gone and he’d missed him, just the same as with his grandparents and Coach Eames. Gates had closed one after the other into houses he might have entered ... The narrowing and constriction of life suddenly felt intolerable to Theo. He pulled open the door and ran down the steps.

Up at the end of the street, he saw a tall figure about to turn the corner and he took off after him, running like he used to run, as if his life depended on it.

“Stop!” he shouted. “It’s me, Theo. Wait.”

He swung into Orchard Street without slowing and crashed into Sir Andrew, who had stopped, hearing the shouting behind him. The force of the collision knocked them both off their feet.

Theo was momentarily stunned, and when he looked up, trying to stop everything spinning, he found himself staring into the round black barrel of a revolver, pointed between his eyes.

“Theo!” The gun wavered and dropped, and a strong hand reached down and pulled Theo up to a sitting position.

“I must say I’ve had quite a few surprises in my time,” said Sir Andrew, squatting down on the sidewalk beside him. “But I think that just about takes the biscuit!”

Takes the biscuit! Theo started to laugh at the strange phrase, and then the laughter made him cough and he clutched the side of his chest, feeling the hurt where he’d hit the ground.

“Why are you looking for us?” he asked once he’d gotten his breath back.

“Because I want to marry your mother if she’ll have me. And take care of her, and you too. I’ve been looking for you ever since I heard—” He stopped, putting his hand on Theo’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your father, Theo. That was a terrible thing.”

“Not for you it wasn’t,” said Theo furiously, pushing Sir Andrew’s hand away as he tried and failed to stand up. He had to have hurt himself more than he realized when he hit the pavement.

“Try not to be so angry,” said Sir Andrew. “It makes you say things that are unjust, like you did at the church the last time I saw you. You shamed your mother then when she had done nothing wrong, and I stayed away after that because I didn’t want to make it worse for her.”

“How honorable of you!” Theo sneered.

“So I had no idea what had happened until a few days ago, when I met Father Juan and he told me,” Sir Andrew went on, ignoring Theo’s insult. “But all he knew was that you had gone to the Lower East. If I had known before, I could have saved you from all this. It must have been terrible,” he said, waving his hand at the crumbling tenements rearing up on all sides in the moonlight.

“No, it isn’t ...” Theo began, but then he stopped, remembering the winter and how his mother had almost died.

“I’ve been knocking on doors, but no one has heard of you, and tonight, I have to confess I was close to giving up when you jumped on me,” said Sir Andrew. “Why did you do that, Theo? If everything is good, then why did you come after me?”

Theo was silent, biting his lip because he realized he had no answer to the question. He already regretted going after Sir Andrew, but at the same time, he thought he’d have done the same if he could turn back the clock. He could make no sense of himself.

Sir Andrew gave Theo his hand and helped him gingerly to his feet. They began to walk, but Theo could take only small steps because of the pain from his fall.

“She won’t have you,” he said.

“We’ll see,” said Sir Andrew placidly. “I’m not such a bad catch, you know.”

Theo felt another surge of fury and would have liked to have punched Sir Andrew for his arrogance, and maybe he would have done if it wouldn’t have hurt him so much to draw back his arm.

Sir Andrew left Theo at the door. “I’ll be back in the morning,” he said. “And I’ll be bringing a doctor.”

Elena was asleep when Theo got back in, and he didn’t wake her. Instead, he lay on his bed, going over in his mind all that had just happened.

He was furious with Sir Andrew. What right did the man have to come barging into their lives, turning them upside down like he and his mother were playthings? He thought of waking his mother up and inventing some story to persuade her that they had to pack their bags and leave, but he couldn’t think of anything even halfway believable, and besides, where could they go? Frank was still paying most of the rent, and the few dollars Theo earned at the bathhouse wouldn’t even cover the cost of the grim apartment upstairs that they’d just managed to escape from. They were prisoners of their poverty, defenseless against Sir Andrew and his money.

And what would his mother say? He’d believed her when she’d told him that she’d been innocent of any impurity toward Sir Andrew, but that had been before her husband died. Now everything was changed. She was free to love again, and the church would bless a marriage with a fellow Catholic, especially an important one like Sir Andrew.

What a fool he’d been! He’d created the whole situation by chasing after Sir Andrew. He hadn’t needed to, so why had he done it? Was he looking for a way out of their poverty himself? No! He rejected the idea out of hand. He was no mercenary.

Theo’s side hurt, and his head ached with all the conflicting questions his mind kept throwing up without providing any satisfactory answers. He couldn’t stay still anymore, and so he got up and began to pace about, and the noise woke his mother, who came out into the kitchen in her nightdress, rubbing her eyes.

He told her the truth, the whole truth. When it came to it, it wasn’t even a choice. She was shocked, sitting down hard in her chair and gripping the edge of the kitchen table as if to try to keep hold of reality.

When he was finished, she was quiet for a while and he started up pacing again, until she asked him to repeat what Sir Andrew had said.

“Which bit?” he asked.

“What he said about me and you,” she said.

“I already told you. He said he wanted to marry you.”

Elena smiled. It was just for a moment, gone in an instant, but Theo was sure about what he had seen, and he erupted in anger.

“It’s his money, isn’t it?” he shouted. “Just like with Dad at the railway station. You’re down on your luck, so you hitch a ride with the first nice car that comes along.”

This time Elena didn’t slap Theo but just went back into her bedroom and closed the door.

In the morning Theo left for work without waiting for Sir Andrew and his doctor. He was damned if he was going to take any favors from the interloper.

All day, he was upset. The bathhouse with its shouts and steam suddenly seemed precious to him, and the whores, too, who teased him at lunch that he had a bug up his ass and wanted to know if he’d like them to remove it. Even the beggars and the peddlers and the pretzel sellers—Theo saw everyone and everything with a new intensity born out of an intuition that they might soon be gone.

At home at the end of the afternoon, Sir Andrew and his mother were waiting for him, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. Sir Andrew looked ridiculously out of place amid their poverty, with his pearl-gray flannel suit, two-tone wing tip shoes, and the panama hat that he held in his hands: a picture of self-possession. His presence made Theo see the apartment through new eyes: yes, it was an improvement over the old one, but it was still cramped and shabby, reeking of the privation that he and his mother had grown accustomed to over the last six months.

“So, have you decided?” Theo demanded, standing in the doorway with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

“No,” Elena said. “I want to know what you think.”

“It’s not up to me,” said Theo.

“No, but it would mean changes for both of us.”

“What kind of changes?”

“We would be living in England—”

“Count me out.”

“Please, Theo. Don’t be like that. There are things that would be good for us. Surely you can see that. You could go back to school—one of the best—and you could start running again. Andrew says that England’s wonderful for athletics, don’t you, Andrew?”

“Yes, indeed. It’s the home of running, but I’m sure Theo knows that,” said Sir Andrew, smiling.

“I don’t want to run,” said Theo flatly. “I’m done with all that.” It infuriated him that his mother was trying to placate him now with the offer of schooling and running, when she had backed his father over destroying all of that the year before.

“And we wouldn’t have to worry about money,” she went on, warming to her theme. “We can’t carry on relying on Frank. It’s not fair to—”

“That again! Is that all you can think of?” Theo cut in furiously. “You’re not something to be bought like one of his houses.”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that!” said Sir Andrew. His tone was sharp, almost threatening, and Theo wanted to hit back hard because he felt passionately that Sir Andrew had no right to come into his home, the home that he’d built so painstakingly with his mother, and tell him what he could or could not do. But he held his tongue, not because he was intimidated, but because he was ashamed of what he’d said. He thought of the whores on Rivington Street and hated himself for comparing his mother to them.

Elena took a deep breath. “I like Andrew,” she said. “I wouldn’t be talking to you about this if I didn’t.”

“Then that’s settled,” said Theo bitterly. “There’s nothing else to talk about.” He turned to go, but Sir Andrew called him back.

“This isn’t a good place for your mother. Surely you can see that. She told me that she almost died here in March, or have you forgotten that?”

“It’s our home,” said Theo stubbornly. “We made it together.”

“Yes, you did, and I admire you for it. But what’s going to happen next winter when you’ve got no money for coal or proper food?”

Theo said nothing—he had no answer, and Sir Andrew shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” he said, turning to Elena. “It’s your decision, not his. We could be happy. You know that. And Theo will come round in time, once he sees what England has to offer.”

“I’m staying here,” said Theo.

“Living on the streets, throwing your life away. That’s stupid and you know it.”

“Better that than being a piece of baggage brought along because my mother can’t leave me behind. Part of the package—you get her, but you have to take the son too. No, thanks!”

Sir Andrew sighed and got up from the table. “You must decide, Elena. I love you with all my heart, and I hate this. It’s not what you deserve.” He waved his hand, taking in the apartment, the street outside, the Lower East. “When should I come back?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said with a wan smile. “I’ll know by then.”

“Very well,” he said, putting on his hat. “Theo, I hope you will do the right thing,” he added as he went past him and out the door.

Sir Andrew’s parting shot was well aimed. Theo hated what he had said about their life in the Lower East, but that didn’t mean he didn’t agree with it. He didn’t know how his mother would get through another winter, and the prospect terrified him, the more he thought about it. He’d lost one parent and he couldn’t stand to lose the other.

He could also see why his mother would like Sir Andrew. It wasn’t just the money and the security. He shared her faith and her language, and he knew and loved her country. All the things that had been missing with Theo’s father. Theo hated the Englishman for having what his father didn’t have, but he also recognized what that could mean for his mother.

He knew, too, that it would be easy for his mother to leave America. She had never had an investment in the country that his father had believed in so passionately. He vividly remembered her rejection of Walter Chrysler’s brazen materialism on top of the skyscraper. Ever since she left Mexico, she had been looking for echoes of home: in the Spanish church in Gramercy Park and now at the church in Little Italy. New York was where her husband had shamed her with his suicide. She would sail away from it without a backward glance.

But for Theo, it would be a rupture he could hardly contemplate. The city was all he knew. It was his home. It was all he had left of his father. Leaving would mean parting with Frank, who was his only friend and the only person who had really known his father—the only one he could talk to about him. He had lost so much already; how could he bear to lose what he had left?

And yet ... and yet the pain of such a schism attracted him, too, in a way he could not explain. Perhaps it was that same desire to escape numbness and to feel that had taken him to the movies to watch Jimmy Cagney over and over again.

In the end, he kept returning to the fact that he had willed all this to happen by going after Sir Andrew. He could have avoided the whole sorry mess if he had just stayed put outside that tenement and let him disappear around the corner and out of their lives forever. But instead he’d run after him. Why? Was it because he was thirsty for adventure, like the knights in the old book Sir Andrew had given him? Was that it?

He went over to the window and looked out into the street. Everything was defined in the early-evening light—a black cat with white paws sitting on the turn of the fire escape opposite, grooming itself with elaborate precision; two fat men arguing in Yiddish directly underneath the cat but entirely separated from it, gesticulating wildly with their hands but somehow never touching each other; the three brass balls of the pawnshop on the corner swinging gently in the breeze; and a flock of birds above the tenement roofs circling in the pale sky before they flew away. Theo breathed it all in once, twice, three times, and then turned away. He went over to the door of his mother’s room and knocked.

She was praying at the embroidered kneeler, her hands tightly clasped together.

“You can stop that now,” he said. “I’ll go with you if that’s what you want.”

She started to get up, but he closed the door without waiting for her to reply and left the apartment to wander the streets again until long after nightfall.

Sir Andrew and Elena were married in the Church of the Most Precious Blood with no one present except Theo and Padre Paolo and Frank, whom Elena had insisted on inviting. Afterward, they had lunch at the Waldorf Astoria and Sir Andrew treated Frank with an elaborate courtesy, which pleased Theo even though he wasn’t prepared to admit it.

Frank looked like a fish out of water, which was what he was, having never been in a Catholic church or a hotel like the Waldorf before, but he was happy too. He had become very fond of Elena over the past six months, and he was delighted about the sudden change in her fortunes. He kept referring to her as Lady Campion-Bennett and laughing, and then she laughed, too, as if the humor was infectious.

He was delighted, too, for Theo, telling him how wonderful it was that he was going to be rich and go back to school and have the life that his father had tried to deny him. Theo grinned and bore it until he couldn’t stand it anymore and then lashed out at Frank as soon as they were alone.

“Do you think I want this?” he shouted. “Do you think I want to leave New York?”

“No, I guess not. But whatever you get on the other side of that ocean is going to be a whole lot better than what you’ve got now. You can bet your bottom dollar on that much,” said Frank, standing his ground. “You’re clever—way cleverer than me—and it’s a crime to waste your life working as a shower attendant and living in a slum.”

“It wouldn’t always be that way. I’d find a way out,” said Theo sullenly.

“Like your father? That didn’t pan out so well, did it?” Seeing Theo wince, Frank went on quickly, “No, I’m sorry I said that. It wasn’t fair. But this is a golden opportunity for you, if you’re willing to take it. Sir Andrew seems like a decent man to me. He’ll do his best for you if you give him the chance.”

“He’ll do what he has to do to please my mother. That’s who he cares about. When I get on that ship tomorrow, it’ll be like I have nothing left.”

“It’s scary. I can see that. But it’s still the right thing to do.”

Theo shook his head, as if in disbelief. “Don’t you care that I’m going?” he burst out. “It’s thousands of miles away. We may never see each other again.”

“No, I think we will,” said Frank, unruffled. “One day, a few years from now, I’ll be down there in the harbor, waving my hat, and you’ll be coming down the gangway looking like a million bucks with a beautiful girl on your arm.”

They left from Chelsea Piers the following afternoon, traveling first class on a White Star Line steamship bound for Southampton. It was a vast behemoth the likes of which Theo had never seen, and the first-class staterooms looked like a floating extension of the Waldorf Astoria. He stood on deck as the liner moved slowly out of its moorings and down the Hudson, waving to Frank until he disappeared from view.

Then they were out in the bay and passing Ellis Island, and he could hear his father’s voice in his ear, clear as a bell above the sound of the turbines: “ We had to get through there or be sent back ... Everyone was scared. You could smell the fear—it stank worse than the dirt on our bodies ... ” Theo looked across at the huge redbrick and limestone hall glittering in the sunshine. There was no one there now, and yet in his mind’s eye he could see a crowd of people on the steps with his father and his grandparents in their midst, hurrying up to where the doctors and inspectors were waiting for them with buttonhooks and chalk. Their lives hanging in the balance, dependent on what was about to happen to them inside this palace at the end of the sea.

Farther out, passing the Statue of Liberty, he could hear his father again: “ I looked up at the towers of Manhattan and the stars blinking and I was happy, happier than I have ever been ... ” Theo looked back and there were the same towers—and new ones, too: the Chrysler Building and the Empire State—but they were receding as the steamship picked up speed, and he was losing what his father had come so far to find.

They passed through the Narrows into the Lower Bay, and Manhattan Island was lost to view. Theo crossed to the other side of the deck. Ahead, the blue emptiness of the ocean stretched out to the horizon, but behind the ship, he caught sight of the great Ferris wheel on Coney Island. It was getting toward dusk and the colored lights were on in Luna Park and he could hear his father again, although more faintly now: “ It’s America ... I felt it here ... it’s what I’d crossed the sea to find ... ” Theo glimpsed him, wild-eyed on the horse in Steeplechase Park, his shoulders arched forward and his hair streaming back as he rose and fell with the rails, and he saw the child in the man, too, with all the driving force and energy that had taken him up and up like a magnificent ocean wave until it crashed down upon the empty shore and was gone.

The ship was picking up speed now and Theo felt the sea spray on his cheeks, unable to distinguish it from tears as he wiped it away and turned to face his future, filled with that same tinseled melancholy he’d felt on that day he’d spent with his father on Coney Island a year before.