The winter I turned 13, I helped my mother run a silent auction, the proceeds of which went to a private school for students with special needs—my little sister’s school. I, with my more ordinary needs, went to a public middle school, but on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I helped my mom in a tiny room off the special headmistress’s office. It was winter and the school was chilly, but the copier was warm. We collated lists of decorative objects, professional services, midweek stays at beach houses and ski chalets. We also watched through the window as students got picked up by their parents and nannies. My mother sighed at the kids who were clearly worse off than Charlotte, the ones who needed assistance getting into vans. She also noticed the kids who seemed to be better off, the ones who were babbling away and were known to have friends.

Charlotte, who was 9, was in another part of the building, getting afterschool tutoring in social skills.

When too many kids in a row fell into the better-than-Charlotte category, I would remind my mom that Charlotte was prettier than any of them. My reminding her of Charlotte’s fair hair and slender build made my mother feel a little better—even if she wouldn’t admit it to me. I had a very different look. Imagine Monica Lewinsky’s younger sister. Ms. Lewinsky had yet to be publicly betrayed, but it wouldn’t be long before I would rue our resemblance.

I had another reason for helping out. Week after week, I discreetly watched Eli Beyer through the window, karate chopping the winter air. His strikes were crisp. He seemed to have a black belt awareness of his body in space. I envied his lack of self-consciousness, how he radiated anger and control and a sense of not caring what anyone thought. But I hid my admiration of Eli from my mother. I didn’t want to spoil the coziness between us. We must have both sensed that our joy in one another’s company had passed its expiration date.

One afternoon she told me that Eli’s parents were in a position to bid high at the auction. “Very high,” she said. “They could certainly afford to get him some decent mittens,” she added. Then she knocked on the window and gestured for Eli to come inside. We went down the hallway to greet him. Up close, he was lean and sweaty and sure of himself, and he made me almost fall over with lust. He followed us to the office, where the headmistress’s secretary didn’t know what to do with him. “His parents aren’t answering their phones,” she said, with distain.

Eli volunteered: “The nanny took off. I’m too much of a pain in the ass.”

Then my mom asked , as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “Would you like to come home with us?” He shrugged, looking at the floor.

The imposing headmistress was summoned. “Mrs. Segal, you do not have written authority to drive this child anywhere.” She had dreadlocks and a dignified contralto.

Changing the subject entirely, my mother chimed back, “He plays chess with Charlotte. Don’t you, Eli?” Eli shrugged.

“It’s cool. Mrs. Segal is cool,” said the janitor, who had appeared from somewhere. He sounded like Morgan Freeman playing God.

Eli said, respectfully, “Charlotte is the only chess player here who ever beats me.”

The headmistress sighed and told my mother, “Okay, sure. Go on. Take the poor kid.”

Seat-belted into our Subaru, Eli said to the back of my mother’s head: “There’s supposedly no such thing as angels, but that’s wrong, Mrs. Segal. You’re proof that that’s wrong.”

Charlotte proclaimed, robotically, “Rainbow Brites are pretend, and they cannot really fly.”

At least this is the version of events my mother told my father that night at dinner.

My dad said, “Julie Segal, my Jewish angel,” and smiled. He loved that she looked so gentle and elegant, almost ethereal. My dad was a pathologist: he was a tall and lumbering guy, and awkward-looking at a distance, but close up he had a certain intellectual grace.

As we ate, Charlotte and Eli were watching cartoons and playing chess in the basement. My mother had already given them noodles and string beans: kid food. For my father she’d made her special risotto, and she’d put on a shimmery sweater that made her even more radiant than usual. She wanted him to be in a good mood because my father didn’t like change.

And change was in the offing: Eli would be staying with us for a month. My mother had already spoken with Eli’s father, Noah Beyer. She asked my dad, “Isn’t Evelyn related to Noah?”

“Some kind of cousin. He was at the wedding.”

Evelyn was my father’s first wife. She’d left him to find herself; that was what I was told at the time, but now that I think about it, I don’t actually believe it. I think she must have had something hot and heavy going on that she didn’t want to make public. Anyway, they were divorced before he met my mother, which my mother had made sure I understood. “You’re old enough to wonder if I was a homewrecker,” she said.

For years I’d been told that I had an old soul. My music teacher said I played the saxophone like a 40-year-old who’d done some serious living. I used to put on an enormous black T-shirt with a blue etching of Bill Clinton playing his horn and blow my heart out. Until Eli moved in, that is.

Eli made me too nervous to settle into my own music. He was supposed to be Charlotte’s friend, but he was my age, not hers, and we spent a lot of unsupervised time together. I suppose because he was a few inches shorter than me, my parents didn’t think about hormones being in play. They were oblivious to his creepy, sexy edge. Eli carried a knife in one of the pockets of his cargo pants, and he left discreet carvings throughout our kitchen. He’d drop something, a fork or a chess piece, and pretend to look for it, while scratching out a tiny O.J. under the tabletop. Or he’d reach for something on a countertop and carve a tiny O.J. into the corner of the splashboard. O.J. had been in the news for months.

My mother didn’t allow herself to watch trial coverage during the day. But she and I stayed up late, night after night, watching the wrap-up and analysis. We critiqued the female lawyers’ suits and style, we lamented the fate of Ronald Goldman—the waiter/friend who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We drank Sleepytime Tea but remained alert, because both Eli and my sister were prone to bad dreams. If Charlotte called out, my mother would hear her before I did, but I was always the first to hear Eli. Then my mother would sit beside whichever child needed her, whispering, and I would watch from the doorway, letting in just the right amount of light. Sometimes I wanted to be the whisperer, the angel.

One afternoon Eli asked me to admire his pretty little switchblade. It made me nervous but I didn’t want him to know that. I told him I liked its mother of pearl handle. We were behind the house, feeding the fish that were swimming in the fishpond. No one was around. He reached for my hand and held it down. Then the blade snapped out, and I grabbed away my hand and started babbling: “Charlotte fell in love with koi on a field trip to the Baltimore Aquarium. So my mom told the lawnmower guy to dig a pond. Then the fish came. But Charlotte just wanted to play with her Gameboy. But at least the fish have nice tiles to look at. They’re from Italy, I think. The tiles.”

Eli said, “My father promised he’d get me any kind of stone I want to carve into chess pieces.” Eli touched my hand again, testing, then added, “I think I’m going to ask him for the marble your mom used in the kitchen for the countertops. To remind me of her.” Of her.

Then he said, “Do you know what MILF stands for? It stands for Mother I’d Like to Fuck.”

Or whose husband you’d like to stab, I thought. I blurted: “Ronald Goldman was a tennis instructor. In high school.”

“Who cares about Ronald Goldman?”

“I do.” He was the most interesting character in the O.J. story as far as I was concerned: cute/half-Jewish/not old.

Changing the subject, Eli whispered, “I have scars on my back.”

“Why? From what?”

“Beatings. My father. Two times. He beat me with a belt. But the second time we both cried, so I think he’s done. Want to see the lines?”

“Okay.”

“Forget it. You don’t get to see them.”

“I do! Show me.”

“That’s sick. You’re sick. You’re a pervert.”

“Look who’s talking. I’m the one who goes to a normal school.”

He looked stricken, as if I’d stabbed him in the heart. He muttered, “Let’s feel what’s under your shirt.”

Then, with images of scars and belts and Ronald Goldman’s bloodied cuteness behind my eyelids, I let Eli feel me up, and I liked it. A lot. Too much. He whispered, “You’re zaftig. That’s Yiddish for nice tits-and-ass.”

When he moved his hands lower, I pushed him away and ran back to the house and into my room, picked up my saxophone and wailed.

That evening my parents talked about Eli’s parents. How they had all kinds of money, how they rarely checked in on their son. How Eli’s mother had gotten pregnant while Noah Beyer was married to someone else. How Eli was barely legitimate. They actually used that word, legitimate. Then my mother said, “He’s going home next Friday.”

My father grunted, “Good.”

My brain wanted the rest of me to agree with him, but I didn’t.

My mother said, “I’ve invited his father here for dinner before he takes Eli. He’s bringing his checkbook.”

“He should spring for a couple of hundred dollars at least, to cover the kid’s food bill,” my father said.

“Henry, Charlotte’s school wants to hire a speech therapist who specializes in students with social skills issues. I’ve agreed to head the fundraising committee.”

My father’s groan turned into a sigh as my mother placed the creamy risotto—shrimp and mussels and sausage—on the table.

Then she smiled serenely.

On Friday evening, my mom and I chose a linen tablecloth for the kitchen table. As she took the silver candlesticks from one room to another, she told me, “I just don’t trust having Charlotte in the dining room. This way she’ll have her usual chair and she can be in her comfortable time-out corner.” The comfortable time-out corner was actually another chair that Charlotte stood on when she was too stressed by the gravity in the floor.

“We’re all eating together?” I said.

“Eli’s father will want to be with Eli, after all this time apart. Wouldn’t you think? He’s basically a sweet boy. I’m going to miss watching him dunk his Graham crackers in milk. And, Ava, don’t you think he’s been good for Charlotte?”

“I suppose so.” My sister and Eli were in the basement with my father, watching The Simpsons. “She hasn’t had a freak-out for long time,” I admitted.

The kitchen table was suddenly beautiful. We’d set out china plates and a round challah wrapped in linen. And my mother was beautiful, as always; with straight hair that brushed her shoulders, and the grace of a former figure skater—which she was.

Mr. Beyer, lean and tanned, arrived 45 minutes late, with a bottle of wine and the explanation that he’d needed extra time with his trainer.

“Your trainer?” my father asked, as they shook hands. “You have horses?”

My mother laughed along with Eli’s father, who hardly acknowledged anyone but her. Mr. Beyer reported, “I wasn’t balancing my weight right when coming up from my squats. But tonight we had a breakthrough.” My mother looked as if she found the story interesting, but I knew she would have preferred an apology for keeping us—especially my father—waiting.

Charlotte was standing on her chair in her corner, feverishly doing something on her calculator. My father had eaten all the crackers and one of the cheeses. My mother pointed Mr. Beyer to the bathroom. “We’ll sit down as soon as you’ve had a chance to wash up.”

“I’m it? The only guest?”

My mom gave him her fundraising smile. “Indeed. You’re the guest of honor.”

In response, he planted a completely inappropriate kiss on her cheek. She pushed him away, not amused. My father didn’t see the exchange, but Eli noticed it, and he pinched my arm. I tried to elbow him. Eli’s father winked at him and said, “My mistake.”

Eli replied, “You’re a snake.”

They grinned the same grin.

I wondered if I would bruise where Eli had pinched me.

When we were all finally sitting down, Eli’s father put his hand on my mother’s forearm, which was covered by a sheer turquoise sleeve. He lowered his voice and said, “I’d like to recite a blessing first. If the children would put away the computers?” Charlotte and Eli were engrossed in a game. My sister’s face turned about-to-freak-out red.

My mother said, calmly, but firmly, “They can continue until they’ve finished this round.”

Mr. Beyer shrugged, “I’d argue, but the meat smells too good.”

My father said, “Amen to that.”

Mom stood, kissed my father’s head, took a long match from an enameled box, and lit two candles. Then she said a prayer I’d never heard her say, using the voice she’d perfected for calming down Charlotte. Our guest of honor murmured something and waved his hands over the challah. Then he broke off a bit of bread and handed it to Eli, and Eli, without being prompted, broke off another bit of bread and handed it to me. Something about the way he knew the ritual touched me in a way the flame and the prayer hadn’t. My mother and I followed their lead while my father started serving lamb stew over saffron rice. Then Eli gently squeezed my thigh under the table, as if in apology. I was wearing worn jeans that didn’t provide any resistance.

Mr. Beyer asked him, “So is school keeping up with your runaway brain?”

“School sucks.”

My mother said, in her prayer-voice, “I think it’s a wonderful school. We feel so fortunate to have found it.”

No one argued with her. Pretty much ever.

Then my father reminded Mr. Beyer that they’d met. “I’m your cousin Evelyn’s first husband.”

“The therapist Evelyn? That cousin?”

Eli, gripping my leg, snapped, “What are you guys talking about?”

His father told him, “Dr. Segal-Mandler. You used to talk to her. She recommended your school.”

Eli muttered, “It’s a total freak-show of a school. And that bitch-face shrink.”

“Calm down, Eli,” Mr. Beyer said, and turned to my father, “But the kid has a point: you definitely traded up for the second wife.”

Eli said, “Dad, Mrs. Segal isn’t a car.”

Noah Beyer didn’t miss a beat. “She certainly isn’t.”

Eli turned his potent disgust on my father: “You—you had sex with that therapist. That’s disgusting.”

My mother hissed, “Eli!”

He turned to her with a nicer expression. “Don’t you think it’s gross? Doesn’t it make you want to puke?”

Charlotte said, “Excuse me please. I do not like this conversation.”

Eli announced, “I’m way too smart for that retard school.”

His father said, “Agreed.” He raised his glass. “I’ve found a boarding school for you in Virginia. It’ll toughen you up.”

Eli sat up taller.

My mother said, “No!”

Mr. Beyer turned again to my dad. “Do all of your wives get to weigh in on my son’s education?”

“What happened to your wife?” my mother demanded, making a quick turn away from the flirty bullshit.

Mr. Beyer took it all in stride. “She’s at a fat farm in L.A. Not far from all the O.J. hoopla.”

Eli announced, “Ronald Goldman was a loser.”

My mother snapped, “What did you just say, young man?”

Eli said, “Loser is as loser does.”

“He’s right,” said Mr. Beyer. “Ronald Goldman was wasting his life waiter-ing and sucking up to has-been morons.”

I deepened my voice and said: “Ronald Goldman was helpful and kind. Nicole Simpson’s mother left her glasses at the restaurant and he returned them to Nicole and then got murdered.”

My mother said, “Thank you for standing up for him, Ava.”

Mr. Beyer boomed, “He was a putz, young lady. Probably queer. And we’re only talking about Ronald Goldman because Nicole Simpson was blonde.”

“And she wasn’t fat!” Eli called out.

Later I would remember that what happened next is that I yelled: “Eli has a knife!”

And my mother would remember that Charlotte started whining and shaking and Mr. Beyer stood up too fast and demanded the knife from Eli, who handed it over as his father spilled red wine all over the white tablecloth and screamed at Eli: “You’ll pay for that stain!”

What we would all remember was that then I turned on rich Mr. Beyer and stared into his eyes and shouted, “You’ll pay for it! With a giant contribution to my mother’s committee for the special teacher.”

My mother stared at me, amazed, and turned on her angel glow. “Thank you for the excellent suggestion, Ava. I’m sure Mr. Beyer brought his checkbook. Please write out a donation to the Kelsey School Foundation committee for a master teacher of social skills.”

I said, “Make it least four figures,” surprising everyone, including myself. I knew that my mother would always put stars next to the four-figure auction donations.

Still aglow, she told Mr. Beyer, “You should be grateful. The school bent the rules so that your son would have somewhere to go when you abandoned him.”

Mr. Beyer wrote a check and started to hand it to my mother, but instead he handed it to me—$5,000—and I handed it to her. He said, “Ava Segal, you’re quite a young lady. Gutsy. Zaftig and gutsy. You’d make a good lawyer.”

My father said, “She certainly would.”

I decreed: “I dedicate my powers to Ronald Goldman and to all other victims struck down during random acts of kindness.” Then, remembering to be polite, I added: “Thank you for the donation, Mr. Beyer.”

He winked at me.

I started clearing the table, freaked out by own performance. Eli started moving his hands, striking the air. Over gelato and raspberries, the men discussed my options for prelaw education. Mr. Beyer noted that there were plenty of good non-Ivy League places—not that Harvard wouldn’t be lucky to have me. He winked again. My mom joined the conversation, reporting on where each member of O.J.’s legal team had gotten a degree. Eli seemed to be taking on multiple invisible enemies, a kick here, a chop there. I remembered his hands under my shirt and the scars he wouldn’t show me. “Do not hurt him,” I whispered to his father. Mr. Beyer seemed to nod. At least I saw no smarminess in his face, just lines and age spots and concern, and what I couldn’t then identify as a tough male kind of beauty. He motioned to Eli to get moving. Eli thrust an envelope at my mom. She opened his thank-you note and admired his handwriting.

“What a couple of thugs,” my father grunted, as the front door closed.

Later, when my mother asked if I wanted to go watch the day’s trial analysis, I said I was done with the O.J. circus. I wish I could say I was disgusted by the racism behind all the hype, but I was just being 13, and furious with my mother for hanging Eli’s thank-you note on the refrigerator with a ballerina magnet. So she went upstairs to the TV alone, looking hurt. No herbal tea with an older daughter who was ready to help with nightmare duty. Or to muse on the evidence or the ultimate verdict or what bargains would be available at the end of the silent bidding.