chapter one ?I don't know if I mentioned that we have a new doctor at the medical group,? Evelyn Rubin said at brunch one Sunday, a meal for which she regularly assembled her three grown daughters. She gazed down the table and addressed her words to her husband, who was methodically spreading cream cheese on a bagel.He paused, sunlight glinting off the knife as he smiled his thin, skeptical smile. ?The one you think would be just right for Alice? You mentioned it once or twice.' ?Oh, William, nonsense!? said Dr. Rubin, but a flush spread across her cheeks. She was an imposing, broadly built woman of sixty-one with a handsome face carefully made up to emphasize the fine dark eyes she had long considered to be her best feature. Her hair, too, had once been fine and dark and still was thick, if more gray now than black.

Alice, slicing strawberries onto her plate, blushed and concentrated on dividing each berry exactly in half and then in half again with her thin, steady fingers. At thirty-eight, the oldest child, she had passed through periods of shame as well as despair at failing to get herself married. Turning thirty single had been mildly painful, thirty-five more so. Lately, however, she had emerged into something like acceptance. She enjoyed her work, her apartment, her friends. She read Latin American literature in the original and Chinese literature in translation. And although she held out some hope that the right man might come along, she no longer went on blind dates or examined the personals column of the City Paper. She had put herself beyond the reach of such humiliations, and her current, mild embarrassment was as much for her mother as for herself.

Looking across the table, she exchanged a glance with her sister Isabel. They had long been used to their mother's plots, well-meaning, certainly, but irritating, especially as they never came to anything. ?He's a very brilliant man,? Dr. Rubin went on. ?A cardiologist, trained at Harvard and Columbia. He's from New Jersey, but he's been out on the West Coast for years. He moved back recently for personal reasons. I think his father's ill.

' ?The dutiful son,? Judge Rubin said, picking up the newspaper and turning to the editorial page. ?I think it's very nice,? Dr. Rubin said. ?Only it's hard starting over in a new place when everyone else is settled. I invited him to the party, and Alice, I did hope you would be nice to him and make sure he doesn't just wander around with nobody to talk to.' ?What about me? Tina asked. ?Why are the brilliant men always for Alice? She was the youngest of the sisters, with a body kept in shape by StairMasters and Lifecycles and revealed through tight silk sweaters, Lycra tank tops, and form-fitting designer jeans. Tina was usually in the middle of a passionate romance with a young Aetna executive, or a handsome MBNA trainee, or the membership director of the Riverside Health Club, but none of these men ever turned out to be the Right Man.

At twenty-nine, Tina had slept with as many men, more or less, as she had lived years on a vexing planet that hid its prizes? where? In the boardrooms of regional banks or the free-form office spaces of new-media start-ups? Tina was still looking. She was still waiting for destiny to open its arms. ?Oh, he's far too old for you, Tina,? Dr. Rubin said. Alice bent her head again over her strawberries so that her expression could not be seen. Tina nibbled half a bagel, held carefully in her strong, square hands with their fingernails painted the same deep mauve as her dress. The last man their mother had wanted Alice to ?take care of? at a party had been a handsome, silver-haired radiologist who had asked almost immediately to be introduced to a woman across the room, who had happened to be Tina. ?Of course,? Dr.

Rubin amended, ?people said the same thing about your father and me when we started dating.' ?That's w.