Life with the Day family acquired a reassuring pattern. My father would leave for work before any of us stirred from our sleep, and that golden waking hour between his departure and my march to school was a -fort. My mother at the stove, stirring oatmeal breakfast in a pan; the twins expl the kit on unsteady feet. The picture windows framed a away the outside world. The Days home had long ago been a work-ing farm, and though agriculture had been abandoned, vestiges remained. An old barn, red paint s to a dark mauve, now served as a garage. The split-rail fehat frohe property was falling apart stick by stick. The field, an acre or so that had flushed green with , lay fallow, a tangle of brambles that Dad only bothered to mow once each October. The Days were the first to abandon farming in the area, and their distant neighbors joihem over the years, selling off homesteads and acreage to developers. But when I was a child, it was still a quiet, lonesome place.
The trick of growing up is to remember to grow. The mental part of being Henry Day demanded full attention to every detail of his life, but no amount of preparation for the ging at for the swath of the subjects family history—memories of bygone birthday parties and other intimacies—that one must pretend to remember. History is easy enough to fake; stick around anyone long enough and one catch up to any plot. But other acts and flaws expose the risks of assuming anothers identity. For-tunately we seldom had pany, for the old house was isolated on a small bit of farmland out in the try.
Near my first Christmas, while my mother atteo the g twins upstairs and I idled by the fireplace, a knock came at the front door. On the porch stood a man with his fedora in hand, the smell of a ret cigar mixing with the faintly medial aroma of hair oil. He grinned as if he reized me at once, although I had not seen him before.
"Henry Day," he said. "As I live and breathe."
I stood fixed to the threshold, searg my memory for an errant clue as to who this man might be. He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly at the waist, then strode past me into the flang furtively up the stairs. "Is your mother in? Is she det?"
Hardly anyone came to visit in the middle of the day, except occasion-ally the farmers wives nearby or mothers of my sates, driving out from town with a fresh cake and new gossip. When ied on Henry, there was no man other than his father or the milkman who came to the house.
He tossed his hat on the sideboard and turo face me again. "How longs it been, Henry? Your mamas birthday, maybe? You dont look like youve grown a whisker. Your daddy not feeding you?"
I stared at the stranger and did not know what to say.
"Run up the stairs and tell your mama Im here for a visit. Go on now, son."
"Who shall I say is calling?"
"Why, your Uncle Charlie, a-course."
"But I dont have any uncles."
The man laughed; then his brow furrowed and his mouth became a se-vere line. "Are you okay, Henry boy?" He bent down to look me in the eye. "Now, Im not actually your uncle, son, but your mamas oldest friend. A friend of the family, you might say."
My mother saved me by ing dowairway unbidden, and the moment she saw the stranger, she threw her arms into the air and rushed to embrace him. I took advantage of their reunion to slip away.
A close call, but not as bad as the scare a few weeks later. In those first few years, I