Roy was twelve years old when his mother and her third husband, a jazz drummer named Sid “Spanky” Wade, told him that they were
going to move out of Chicago to a suburb north of the city. They had already paid for the beginning of the construction of a new house, and the foundation had been laid. The next day, a Sunday, the four of them—Roy’s mother, her husband, Roy’s one-year-old sister, and Roy—drove out to see it.
