The two girls appeared, shouting together. “Can’t we play? Where’s the other paddles?” Seeing that Fay had all four rackets, they struggled to get two of them away from her.

In the end they did play. He and Bonnie took one side, with Fay and Elsie on the other. His arms felt so tired that he could barely lift his racket to swat the shuttle. Finally, in running back to get a long one, his weary legs caught together, became rigid, and he tumbled over backward. The children set up a wail and hurried to him; Fay remained where she was, looking on.

“I’m okay,” he said, getting up. But his racket had snapped in half. He stood holding the pieces and trying to get his breath; his chest hurt and bones seemed to be sticking into his lungs.

“There’s one more racket in the house,” Fay said, from the far side of the net. “Remember, Leslie O’Neill brought it over to play, and left it. It’s in the cupboard in the study.”

He started into the house to get it. After a long rummaging about he found it; starting back out again he felt his head swim and his legs wobble like cheap plastic, the junk they use to make free toys, he thought. Toys they give away in cereal packages or hand out in stores … Then he fell forward. As he fell he reached for the ground; he sank his hands into it and clutched it. He tore it up, stuffed it into him, ate it and drank it and breathed it in; he lost his breath, trying to breathe it in—he could not get it inside him, into his lungs. And, after that, he could not do anything.

Next he knew he lay in a big bed, his face and body shaved. His hands, his fingers on the bedsheets, looked like the pink fingers of a pig. I turned into a pig, he thought. They took my hair away and curled what was left; I’ve been squealing now for a long time.

He tried to squeal but all that came out was a rasp.

At that, a figure appeared. His brother-in-law Jack Isidore peering down at him, wearing a cloth jacket and baggy brown pants, a knapsack on his back. His face had been scrubbed.

“You had an occlusion,” Jack said.

“What’s that?” he said, thinking that someone had hit him.

“You had a heart attack,” Jack said, and then he went into a mass of technical details. Presently he went off. A nurse took his place, and then, at last, a doctor.

“How’m I doing?” Charley said. “Pretty robust for an old man. Lots of life in the old frame left. Right?”

“Yes, you’re in good shape,” the doctor said, and left.

By himself, he lay on his back thinking, waiting for someone to come. The doctor eventually returned.

“Listen,” Charley said. “The reason I’m here is that my wife’s responsible. This was her idea from the start. She wants the house and the plant and the only way she can get it is if I die, so she fixed it up so I’d have this heart attack and drop dead according to plan.”

The doctor bent down to listen.

“And I was going to kill her,” he said. “God damn her.”

The doctor departed.

After a long time, evidently several days—he saw the room get dark, then light, then dark, and they shaved him and washed him with warm water and a sponge, and had him urinate, and fed him—several persons entered the room and stood off together talking. At last, beside his bed, Fay appeared.

His wife had on a blue coat and heavy skirt and leotards and her pointed Italian shoes. Her face was orangish and pale, the way it often was early in the morning. Even her eyes were orange, and her hair. Her neck had wrinkles in it, as if her head had twisted back and forth. She carried her big leather purse under her arm, and as she came to the bed he smelled the leather of the purse.

Seeing her, he began to cry. The warm water from his eyes spilled down his cheeks. Fay got Kleenex from her purse, spilling things out onto the floor, and, crouching down, roughly rubbed his face dry. She scoured his face until it burned.

“I’m sick,” he said to her, wanting to reach up and fondle her.

Fay said, “The girls made you an ashtray and I had it fired down at the kiln.” Her voice sounded like the rasp that was his, as if she had been smoking too much again. She did not try to clear her throat as she usually did. “Can I get you anything? Bring you your toothbrush and pajamas? They didn’t let me until I asked you. I have mail for you.” On his chest, near his right hand, she laid a stack of mail. “Everyone’s writing, even your aunt in Washington, D.C. The dog is all right, the children miss you but they’re not feeling frightened or anything, the horse is all right, one of the sheep got out and we had to get Tom Sibley to get it with his pick-up truck.” She turned her head this way and that to stare at him.

“How’s the plant doing?” he said.

“They all send their regards. It’s doing fine.”

Later on, in the next week or so, he was considered well enough to be allowed to sit up and drink milk through a bent glass tube. Propped up on pillows he took in the sun. They put him in a cart and wheeled him around, raised and lowered him. Different people, his family, men from the plant, friends, Fay and the children, people from the area, came to see him.

One day as he lay out in the solarium, getting sun through the double windows, Nathan Anteil and Gwen Anteil came to see him, bringing a bottle of aftershave. He read the label on the bottle. It came from England.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Anything else we can bring you?” Nat Anteil asked.

“No,” he said. “Maybe the back issues of the Sunday Chronicle.”

“Okay,” Nat said.

“Has the place gone to pot? The house?”

“The weeds need to be roto-tilled,” Nat said. “That’s about all.”

Gwen said, “Nat was going to ask you if you wanted him to do it.”

“Fay can operate the roto-tiller,” he answered. For a time he thought about it, the weeds, the gallon bottle of white gas, how long it had been since the roto-tiller had been started up. “She can’t work the carburetor,” he said. “Maybe you could get it started up for her. It’s hard to get the mix right, when it’s been sitting.”

“The doctors say you’re doing fine,” Gwen said. “You have to stay here a while longer and recuperate, that’s all.”

“Okay,” he said.

“They’re building your strength back up,” Gwen said. “It shouldn’t be long. They’re really good here; they’ve got a really good reputation here at the U.C. Hospital.”

He nodded.

“It’s cold down here in San Francisco,” Nat said. “The fog. But the wind isn’t so much as back up at Point Reyes.”

He said, “How does Fay seem to be holding up under this?”

“She’s been very strong,” Gwen said.

“She’s a very strong woman,” Nat said.

“The drive down here from Point Reyes is pretty bad,” Gwen said. “With the children in the car especially.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s about eighty miles round trip.”

Nat said, “She’s come down every day.”

He nodded.

“Even when she knew she couldn’t see you,” Gwen said, “she still made the drive, with the kids in the back of the car.”

“How about the house?” he said. “Can she manage okay in such a big house?”

Gwen said, “She told me that she’s been a little uneasy alone at night, in such a big house. She had a couple of bad dreams. But she keeps the dog around. She has the kids come into her bedroom and sleep with her. At first she started locking all the doors, but Dr. Andrews said that once she got started on that there’d be no end of it, so she managed to throw off her fears, and now she doesn’t lock any of the doors; she leaves them all unlocked.”

He said, “There’s ten doors leading into that house.”

“Ten,” Gwen said, “Is that so.”

“Three into the living room,” Charley said. “One into the family room. Three into her bedroom. That’s seven right there. Two into the kids’ rooms. That’s nine. So there’s more than ten. Two into the hall, one from each side of the house.”