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“He meant the world. The state of the world. The state of our country in particular.”

“I still don’t know why that’s funny,” Artie said.

Evie shook her head. “It’s not. What do you want for supper?”

That Sunday, Artie went for a sail; there had been a thick fog in the morning, but by noon it had burned off, and as he steered the tiller, feeling the slap of the water against the sides of the boat, aware of the wide expanse of wind and air about him, the sun coming through scattered clouds and hitting the water with sparkles, hearing the wind billowing in the sails, he passed a few other people in their boats—he waved to them—and rode out of the harbor. He was thinking of his mother.

Her name had been Mary O’Reilly, and she had come from a poor Irish family in South Boston (like Ken Moynihan, only Ken had not been as poor). She and her sister had been put into an orphanage because of their parents’ poverty, but after their father died their mother received a widow’s check from the government and the girls returned home. Not long after this, Mary’s sister was hit by a truck in the street and killed. When Mary was in her early twenties, she met Artie’s father at a dance. In the few photos from that time, she was an attractive woman, her eyes big and blue (like Maria’s would be), and she’d had a shapely figure. Only a little bit was Artie able to recognize his mother from these pictures. Mary O’Reilly and Arthur Dam married and lived for a few years in South Boston. Artie’s father had not cared for being a butcher—as his own father had been—and so he worked as an electrician and a carpenter, and also a repairman, and then the couple moved to Revere when his father—called Art—had been offered the job as a super; this was before Maria and Artie were born.

Artie’s mother hated Revere. She complained a great deal about all the Italians, saying that they were not nice to her, but in fact they were—it was her own personality that caused the troubles; even as a kid, Artie had known this. A family that lived in one of the buildings next to them—the Ferraros—Artie’s mother had especially not liked. “They look like sluts,” she said many times, because as the Ferraro girls became teenagers they would go off to Revere Beach in their two-piece bathing suits with only towels around their waists. The girls wore makeup, bright lipstick, and Artie’s mother disapproved.

And yet: Artie would sometimes come home from school and his mother would be sitting on the back steps talking with Mrs. Ferraro, laughing with her, and when his mother went to the mental institution those two times, Mrs. Ferraro would come and make dinner for him and Maria. Mrs. Ferraro was a woman who had once been very pretty, even back then Artie could see this, but her teeth were bad, and she was heavier than she had most likely been when she was younger. “Artie,” Mrs. Ferraro said to him one time (was Maria there? Artie could not remember), “your mother can’t help the way she is. You know that, right?” He had been embarrassed, but he had said, “Okay.” She put her hand on his head, and when he looked up into her eyes, he saw real kindness there.

Now Artie came about, swinging the sails over; they made clanking sounds. The wind had really picked up, but he knew how to sail, and he felt the confidence of this within him. Artie’s love of the water—he assumed this—had started on Revere Beach, spending his young childhood summer days there with popsicles dripping down and beach umbrellas everywhere, children screaming and running back and forth. His mother had never gone to the beach. She was too fair to be out in the sun, she said, and Maria never went there either, being very fair as well, but mostly because she was Maria, who was such a frightened child, her big blue eyes always watchful. But Artie had had many friends, and he had a bicycle (Maria never learned to ride a bicycle, although Artie remembered their father trying to teach her on an old bike that had been discarded in a dumpster), and on his bike Artie went to school, to the beach, to the basketball court with his friends. He thought now that he had not had an unhappy childhood.

As he steered the sailboat back to his wharf, it came to him how he had once, when he was a kid, said to his father, “I’m going to have a boat one day,” and his father had smiled and said, “No, Artie, you’re not ever going to have a boat.” This did not hurt Artie to remember.

But he thought then of Gretchen, his college girlfriend who came from Jamaica Plain; she had gone to Revere Beach with him a few times. Poor Gretchen, Artie did not like to remember the look on her face when he finally said to her, “This isn’t working out.” Her face, with its freckles, had involuntarily—he would never forget those split seconds—looked as though he had told her that her entire family had just died, the panic, the helplessness, the grief.

Glancing at the coastline, Artie saw his house becoming larger as he moved in his sailboat toward it. He thought of Ken Moynihan’s two sisters, one becoming a doctor, the other a bookkeeper, and he had a sense of wonder then (which he had had before, yet this time it seemed to come to him full-force) that his life was this. This was his life, this house, his wife, Evie, his son, Rob. How had that happened?

As he rode the boat up beside the buoy, leaning over to reach it with the hook, he understood, as he had always understood, that he was not an especially intelligent man. He was smart enough, he knew that much (his son, though, was bright as hell). He thought then of his junior high social studies teacher Mr. Stepinac—an older man, balding and with a stomach—who had changed Artie’s life by paying close attention to him, giving him extra things to read that Artie gobbled up. It was this man who had once said to Artie, “You have a real future if you want it,” and here, as Artie turned to look at his house, was that very future.

Artie had made it; he understood this. He was, in many ways, the embodiment of the American dream. And with that came a great sense of responsibility, although he probably would have had that anyway, he could not remember ever not feeling responsible for others. (Endicott Peabody waved to him from far away on his lawn, and Artie waved back.) It was why he had fallen in love with Evie, how deeply she had loved those men at that soup kitchen in South Boston when he had first seen her, she had been laughing with one of the fellows, so kind she had been. Warm is what she had been. Before the accident.

It was his students he felt most responsible for now. He thought this as he rowed his dinghy back to the wharf.

So on that Monday he said to the class with Rhonda and Danny in it—because that class was his favorite—“I understand that Mr. LeBlanc is teaching you about current events in your civics class with him, and I know he’s doing a very good job.” The class just watched him. “But I’ve spent my life studying history, and so let’s speak about history, and not only the Civil War.” They still just watched him.

Artie spoke slowly and told them—slowly—that for as long as man had been on Earth, men had somehow found it necessary to be at war with one another. He spoke about World War I, describing the trenches that men had fought from and died in; then he spoke of the Spanish Civil War, discussing Franco and his Nationalist regime, which led him to speak about Mussolini and the rise of fascism in Italy.

Artie turned and wrote the word on the blackboard: FASCISM.

And then he spoke of World War II and Germany and Hitler, and the concentration camps, and Artie saw then that even though the students should have been taught this by now, during their sophomore year by another teacher, some of them did not seem to really know about this, not the details about the yellow stars, the roundups, the tattoos. As Artie told them in detail about Jews being taken on the trains to the death camps, as he spoke quietly to them about the gas chambers, they watched him.

Tamera, with her pale face and long red hair, raised her hand. He nodded at her.

“Okay, but, Mr. Dam, can I just ask you? Why didn’t the Jews revolt? Why didn’t anyone revolt?”

“Right.” Artie walked around to the front of his desk. “Some did. They tried. There was, in some instances, resistance. But the speed and magnitude of the support for the Nazis overwhelmed them.” He told them how he thought it had happened, the effectiveness of the Nazis. “In one month and three weeks and two days, Hitler managed to change the entire government, the entire country.” He told Tamera that her question had been asked by many, and he saw her receive this with a sense of gratitude—an understanding for a moment that she was not stupid.

Artie said to them, “The leader of any country is tremendously important. The leader of a country makes decisions that will affect not just their own country but very often the entire world.”

On Artie talked, moving back and forth in front of the class, and he saw that every single student was listening, none of them were even glancing at their laptops, they were all watching him. As Artie wound down, Rhonda raised her hand, and when he nodded at her, she asked quietly but forthrightly, “Do you think there is any chance for world peace?” Her face was filled with the question. And still the students watched him.

Artie took a deep breath and turned toward his desk. Then he turned back around, and he gave a small smile to the class, and he said, “Yes, I do. Eventually we will get it figured out.”

The bell rang. And still the students sat. “It’s partly up to all of you. You will be in charge very soon, so take that responsibility very, very seriously.”

He turned back to his desk and the students got up and walked out quietly, a few of them stopping to retrieve their cellphones.

Rhonda Lazarre, after taking her phone from the pillowcase, said, “Thank you, Mr. Dam.”

Artie said, bowing slightly to her, “You are entirely welcome.”

“Uhm, can I just say?” She was blushing, looking around. She was the last student left in the room.

“What is it?” He asked her this kindly.