Empire Falls

few days he’d learned to enjoy her alarm when a particularly demonstrative wave would crash over him and wash him up on the beach. In fact, since arriving on the island, she’d been a ready audience for all his foolishness, but at the moment she had her back to him, shading her eyes against the sun, and when he followed her gaze he saw a solitary figure up on the bluff, backlit by the late-afternoon sun, staring down at the beach. Almost everyone else had already packed up their things and headed up the twisting, sandy footpath, and when the man on the bluff appeared to wave, Miles looked around and found no one else he might be waving to. He looked back at his mother just as she dropped the hand that had been shading her eyes. Had she waved back at the man? Probably not, he decided, when she turned away from the bluff and called again for Miles to come in .
    “Who was that?” he asked when his mother began toweling him off .
    “Who was who?”
    Back at the cottage, she insisted that he shower before they went out to dinner, and when he emerged, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, Grace told him to go back and put on a nicer shirt and a pair of long pants and real shoes, not sneakers. Tonight they were going to eat in Summer House’s main dining room. She herself was going to wear the new white dress she’d bought in the village .
    M ILES LOOKED IN VAIN for steamer clams on the menu at the Surf Club. In fact there was nothing he recognized, including the language many selections were written in, which his mother informed him was French. To Miles, none of this boded well. There was no advantage that he could see to dressing up in long pants and a stiff shirt and shoes to eat indoors on a white tablecloth, when they might’ve been dressed comfortably and seated under one of the colorful umbrellas outside the Thirsty Whale and eating steamer clams in English. He especially resented the long pants, because he was itchy on his calves and thighs. The day before, on the way up the footpath from the beach, he’d tossed himself a pop fly and had to chase it into the thicket, and this afternoon in the shower he’d noticed patches of rough red skin. When he got out, he rubbed them with one of the rough white towels that were delivered to the cottage each day, rubbed the dry skin past the point of ecstasy to where it began to glow and hurt. Now these same patches were itching again, and he couldn’t get at them. Even worse, his mother had given him a long list of dos and don’ts, saying this was an adult dinner. It was going to last a long time, which was a good thing. He wasn’t to fidget or scratch. He hadn’t even been allowed to bring his mitt along .
    Miles had to admit that he’d never seen his mother look more beautiful than she did tonight. Her skin had darkened during their week on the beach, but she’d been careful not to burn, and her new white dress made a fine contrast of fabric and skin, and the fact that she was wearing perfume made him wonder if maybe his father would be joining them after all, though that didn’t make sense, not with only one more day on the island .
    The dining room was nearly full, yet strangely quiet. Miles couldn’t remember ever seeing so many people in one room making so little noise. Piano music was coming from somewhere, barely audible, and over it you could hear the noise of cutlery. When Miles examined the menu and observed that there were no steamer clams, Grace leaned forward and whispered that he would have to keep his voice down. At the next table was seated a man with white hair and sad eyes, sipping a cocktail and looking at his own menu. Like half the men in the dining room, he wore a navy blue blazer with gold buttons, and he had smiled at Miles and his mother when they sat down. In fact, every man in the room had managed to turn and look at Grace, though most immediately pretended it was something else that had caught their attention. When the white-haired man heard Miles remark on the absence of steamer clams, he lowered his menu and leaned toward them. “I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion,” he said, “but I suspect your charming companion might like the Clams Casino. They’re excellent here.”
    Miles studied the man as he spoke, trying to judge his age. Because of his fine white hair, Miles at first thought he must be old, but his face was smooth, and the longer Miles looked at him the younger he seemed. He was older than Grace, of course, though