As the cab pulled up to the curb in front of his parents’ home Jamie realized for the first time how undistinguished the house was. Genteel poverty was the facade for university professors, even those who had inherited old money.

He had hitched a ride in the backseat of a T-18 jet with one of the NASA astronauts who was dashing home to the Bay area for a quick weekend. Now, as he paid the cab driver and got out onto the sidewalk, he felt almost as if he had stepped onto a movie set. Middle-class Americana. A quiet suburban street. Unpretentious little bungalows. Kids on bicycles. Lawn sprinklers cranking back and forth.

He went up the walk, nylon travel bag in one hand, feeling a little unreal. How would Norman Rockwell paint this scene? Hello, Mom, just dropped in for a few hours to tell you that I’m off to Mars.

Before he could reach the front door his mother was there waiting for him, a smile on her lips and the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

Lucille Monroe Waterman was a small woman, pert and beautiful, who had been born to the considerable wealth of an old New England family that dated itself back to the Mayflower. The first time her family had allowed her to venture west of the Hudson River was the summer she had spent on a dude ranch in the mountains of northern New Mexico. There she had met Jerome Waterman, a young Navaho fiercely intent on becoming a teacher of history. "Real history," Jerry Waterman told her. "The actual facts about the Native Americans and what the European invaders did to them."

They fell hopelessly, passionately in love with each other. So much so that Lucille, who had not given much thought to a career, entered the academic life too. So much so that they were married despite her parents’ obvious misgivings.

Jerry Waterman wrote his history of the Native Americans and it was eventually adopted as the definitive text by universities all across the nation. Success, marriage, the comfort of a dependable income, the insulated life of academia — all these mellowed him to the point where Lucille’s family could almost accept him as their daughter’s husband. And Jerry Waterman found that he wanted to be accepted. It was important to Lucille. It became important to him.

Lucille won her doctorate in English literature and then they had a baby: James Fox Waterman, the "Fox" being an ancient family name from Lucille’s mother’s side of the clan. Although he could not know it, Jamie was the grandson that brought about the true reconciliation of the New Englanders and their Navaho son-in-law.

Lucille clung to Jamie, there in the doorway of their Berkeley home, as if she wanted never to let him go. Then his father appeared, smiling calmly from behind his pipe.

No one would recognize Professor Jerome Waterman as the fiery young champion of Native American history. His hair was iron-gray and thinning so much that he combed it forward to cover his high forehead. His face showed what Jamie might be like in thirty years, fleshy, puffy from a sedentary life. Dark-rimmed glasses. Open-necked sports shirt with its manufacturer’s logo embroidered discreetly on the chest. There was no more fire in Jerry Waterman’s dark eyes. It had been a long time since he had been in a fight more strenuous than arguing with a dean over class size. He had won his youthful battles and over the years had become more like his former enemies than he could possibly admit to himself.

"I can only stay overnight" were the first words Jamie actually spoke to his parents.

"On the phone you said they were sending you to Mars?" His mother looked more frightened than proud.

"I think so. It looks that way."

"When will you know for sure?" his father asked.

They walked him into the book-lined library, where the bright sunshine was blocked from the window by a tall azalea bush that threatened to undermine the house’s foundation one day.

"Monday, I guess. I won’t have a chance to get away once they make their final decision."

The house was much as Jamie remembered it: comfortable, disordered, books and journals scattered everywhere, upholstered chairs and chintz-covered sofas that bore the imprint of his mother’s and his father’s bodies. Mama Bear has her chair and Papa Bear has his, Jamie remembered from childhood.

He sat on the edge of the library sofa, tense and nervous. Mama and Papa took their individual chairs, facing him.

"You really want to go?" his mother asked for the thousandth time in the past four years.

Jamie nodded.

"I thought that priest was the one they picked," said his father.

"He came down with a gall bladder attack. Too much wine, I guess."

None of them so much as smiled.

The afternoon and evening inched along. Jamie could see that his mother did not want him to go, that she was desperately trying to think of some argument, some reason that would keep him safely near her. His father seemed bemused by the whole matter; pleased that his son was at last finding some measure of success, but uncertain about the wisdom of the entire effort.

Over dinner his father said, "I’ve never been able to satisfy myself that Mars is worth all the money we’re spending on it."

Jamie felt a wave of relief wash through him. It was easier to debate national policy than to watch his mother struggling to hold back tears.

They went through all the arguments, pro and con, that they had disputed back and forth with his every visit home. Without rancor. Without polemics. Without raising their voices or stirring their blood. Like a classroom exercise. As he discussed the question of Mars in calm debater’s logic Jamie realized that his father had become the compleat academic: nothing really touched him anymore; he saw everything in the abstract; not even the obvious pain of his wife, sitting across the table three feet from him, could shake him out of the comfortable cocoon he had woven around himself.

My god, Jamie thought, Dad’s gotten old. Bloodless and old. Is that the way I’m going to be?

It was not until long after dinner was finished, as he started upstairs toward the bedroom he had slept in since childhood, that his mother asked:

"Must you leave tomorrow? Can’t you stay just a little longer?"

I can’t take another day of this, Jamie knew. As gently as he could he told his mother, "I’ve got to be at the space center first thing Monday morning."

"But you don’t have to leave so soon, do you?"

He hesitated. "I want to see grandfather Al."

"Oh." The one syllable carried a lifetime of grief and distaste.

His father overheard them and came into the hallway. "You’d rather be with your grandfather than with your mother?" he asked sharply.

Jamie was surprised at that; almost glad of it.

"He’s the only grandparent I’ve got left. It doesn’t seem right to go without saying good-bye to him."

Jerome Waterman huffed, but said nothing more.