Len Fishman, errant son, aimless wanderer and, perhaps, father of one, is home in claustrophobic Nectar after twenty-five years. Why did he leave? What brought him back? Ostensibly, his father, the amateur philosopher and, perhaps, closet philanderer Saul Fishman, now an Alzheimer's patient at the Albert Einstein Hospital Geriatric Center. But why does Len stay, nursing a father who doesn't recognize him and wouldn't notice his absence? To recover an innocent past via the girl he loved for a week in grade five? To resume his discipleship to his former high school English teacher, now a rising star on the municipal council? To grasp the truth, when all the evidence suggests there is no such thing? Enigma deepens, solutions whither. Is the Einstein an isolation ward, alien and remote? Or is it where we're all heading?

MICHAEL HOFFMAN was born in Montreal, Canada, and has lived in Japan since 1982. He is the author of The Empty Cafe, a critically acclaimed short story collection, and co-author of Tokyo Confidential, a collection of short pieces on life in Japan. His short fiction has appeared in various North American and Japanese magazines. As a freelance journalist, he is a regular contributor of essays, book reviews and translations to Japan's English-language media. Withdrawal is his first novel.

There was a park across the street from the hospital, called Centennial Park - what centennial it commemorated I had no idea; it had not been there in my childhood - and there we headed. The lilacs had fallen, but the crab apples were in majestic bloom - to me they looked like Japanese plum blossoms, but Joan assured me they were crab apples - as were the azaleas and forsythia, which identification is also courtesy of Joan. As we entered the park I was startled by a loud crack, followed by a shout. Turning, I saw a rink for roller-blade hockey; somebody had fired the puck into the boards.

"Well, dad, wasn't I right?" said Joan. "Isn't it too hot for a jacket?"

"It is not. On the contrary," pronounced my father triumphantly, "it's damn cold!" And he raised the zipper even higher, all the way to the throat.

"Adam doesn't have a fever," she said to me in a low voice, taking my arm and leading me just a little ways apart. "He said he's not coming any more. He can't take it, it's doing bad things to his head."

"What's doing bad things to his head?"

"This place - I mean that place, the hospital. It's getting to him."

"Well it's understandable. Whyn't you guys take a trip or something?"

"And who's gonna do my work?"

"Other people take vacations. Why can't you? Wasn't that the point of my coming back? There was all this going on at home, Adam said, and it was all falling on his shoulders, and yours - and what was I doing on the other side of the world that was so important I couldn't get my ass back and do my share? I had to admit he had a point, and so I came. I don't suppose I'm doing any real good, but I do think I'm doing my share, if the measurement is time spent here. So go, take off, get away from it all for a while. Who's stopping you?"

"I have orders to fill; I couldn't possibly leave before September."

"So send him off to the country for a week without you."

"He wouldn't go without me."

"No? He's that attached to you?"

"No, I think it's more that he can't bear his own company."

"Well what do you want me to do, exactly?"

"You don't like me, do you?"

She said this so matter-of-factly, so casually, that it was a moment before its significance reached me. And as soon as it did I understood something I hadn't understood until that instant. No, I didn't like her. Why not? I didn't know. From the moment I'd been introduced to her, I realized now, there had been in me an instinctive recoil from her, an unconscious - now suddenly conscious - aversion. No, "aversion" is too strong a word. She rubbed me the wrong way. That was it. She was friendly, intelligent, kind, caring... there wasn't a fault to be found with her. No, the fault was in me. Lots of people rubbed me the wrong way, people whose proximity might have done me good, if I had let them get close enough.

Busy with this new train of thought, I neglected, I suddenly realized with a blush, to contradict her, as common decency required I do, and so the statement stood. "Look, dad, ducks!" I heard her say. Following her outstretched finger, I saw a family of ducks - mom, dad and a brood of babies - making their way across a pond.

"Those aren't ducks," my father said. How interesting, I thought. He seemed to contradict everything Joan said. Did he feel about her as I did?

"No?" said Joan. "What are they, then?"

"I don't know."

"They're ducks! Ducks!"

"Joan," I said gently, taking her arm. "Take it easy."