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son.
    In the silent language of their marriage, Parnell began to read her guilt at Robert’s preference. But his sense that part of her was absent persisted when he touched her. Without clear reason to be jealous, he felt her waiting for some nameless lover. And as she dressed in the window above their courtyard, he realized with an anguish which bordered on self-loathing how much he feared that someone else might see or have her.
    He struggled not to punish her for this. It helped that John Joseph’s sudden death had freed him to run the paper, and that it seemed to prosper from his air of calm and sense of whom to trust. He was not a founder, Parnell reasoned, but a preserver. Few events of substance in the city occurred without his knowledge; he and Alexis led a pleasant public-private life in a circle where they both were liked—all this distracted him from doubts about her happiness, and the unseen something he felt between himself and Robert.
    As Robert moved into his teens, their relationship assumed the classic forms of parent-child conflict, in a way Parnell distrusted. With Alexis, Robert would take pleasure in the staging of an opera or ballet, but the boy scorned his father’s world or any plans he made for him. Though Parnell selected the finest schools in San Francisco, Robert’s grades were poor. Even his schoolboy talent for acting suffered from eccentricity of interpretation and a penchant for inventing his own lines, and though such marked singularity seemed to fascinate his peers, he had no real friends. Tall and rangy, Robert took on a posture of masculine protectiveness toward the smaller Alexis; in his son’s gaze, Parnell felt a first hint of violence. His son would not talk to a psychiatrist; he wished only to hear his mother play piano. The maid found marijuana in his dresser.
    Parnell resolved to send his son to a boarding school in Maine.
    The idea seemed to frighten Alexis. “He’s just fifteen—it’s obvious that Robert needs us.”
    â€œAt his age, my father shipped me off to Groton. We have to face that there’s something wrong here—at least wrong for him. It’s selfish to go on saying ‘one more year’ when every day now he gets stranger.”
    She turned on him. “You want him gone. That’s what this is.”
    For once he did not look away. “I don’t love Robert the way you do,” Parnell said softly. “And I never will.”
    Her face contorted. “You’re blaming me.”
    â€œNo, Alexis. I’m just not blaming lack of love.”
    At dinner, Parnell told Robert of his decision.
    Standing, Robert leaned across the table toward his father, face distorted.
    Parnell stood. “Robert!” Alexis cried out.
    Her eyes were wet. Robert turned to his mother and, quite softly, said, “You bitch.”
    Tears ran down her face. Slowly Robert walked to his mother, resting his forehead against hers.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she whispered.
    In the candlelight, Parnell saw his son’s throat working. He closed his eyes.
    A week later Robert left for Maine.
    But things went no better there or at the next three schools. Robert started fights and would not stop until he’d broken someone’s nose or teeth. He was a loner who found drugs and lived at the edge of rules. There was to him, one poetic headmaster wrote Parnell, bright anger and a ruined sensitivity. At seventeen, the last expulsion brought him home.
    His rhythms changed abruptly. Robert showed no inclination to bait his father or do anything but watch him. Though his mother saw this as a sign of progress, Parnell felt his son taking stock of him: recalling that Robert’s bedroom window had an angle on their own, he began to draw their curtains. He sent Robert to a psychiatrist. Returning, Robert would closet himself with a film projector, studying old John Garfield movies as if his life depended on it. He made calls