It was, inevitably, his mother who told him.

Even in his generation of late-marriers, of self-made orphans affiliated with nothing but each other, forgetters of birthday cards and Confirmation gifts who took no delight in cousins and nephews and felt families only as weight, there were certain debts to be paid. One was to his mother and father on their semi-annual visits to New York and the three-and-a-half-room apartment where Ira and his wife bumped cautiously together, the same apartment he had when he was single and in which they maintained for each other the illusion that they still led separate lives.