That Old Cape Magic

time to acknowledge the bitch. “I want to know all about your father, too.”
    What she had in mind was to create personality profiles for each of them, so she’d know the right spot on the Cape when she saw it—a silly idea, Griffin thought, but he indulged her. After all, it wasn’t like he was wedded to a plan of his own. Moreover, when she’d proposed the idea the trunk fell silent, as if his mother (maybe his father, too?) was curious what he’d have to say about them. So, Marguerite began. What was her favorite color? Green. His? Blue. Where were they born? Buffalo (Dad). Rochester (Mom). And their favorite foods? Him, king crab legs; her, double-cut broiled lamb chops. Any hobbies? He collected P. G. Wodehouse first editions, vintage campaign buttons and Victorian pornography; she, after retiring from teaching, did thousand-piece monochromatic jigsaw puzzles and swore colorfully at the television whenever George W Bush appeared.
    Marguerite’s curiosity was so benign and well meaning that Griffin gradually became more expansive. What were their favorite times of the day? Well, his father had been a morning person, he told her, up hours before he and his mother, especially on their vacations. He liked to go out for pastries and the newspaper. “You missed a great sunrise,” he’d inform his wife when she finally shuffled out onto the deck, midmorning, for a breakfast with Al Fresco. (“Al Fresco? Who was he?”) “Like hell I did,” she always replied. His mother’s favorite time of day was cocktail hour. She loved the sound of ice cubes in glasses, of jazz and gin-induced laughter, of lots of people talking all at once. So much better, to her way of thinking, than eavesdropping on smaller conversations where youcould actually hear whatever stupid opinions people held. He told Marguerite about his father’s propensity for sudden, violent, rear-end collisions in parking lots, about his mother’s speech at her retirement dinner, even a little about the Morphine Narrative. And when she asked him, apropos of nothing, for a Christmas memory, he told her about their search, each December, for the perfect tree.
    Though they professed to hate the season for its hypocrisy, for all that trumped-up seasonal “goodwill toward men” crap, his parents demanded big, full Christmas trees. Finding one that passed muster took days, sometimes weeks. They had to visit every lot within a ten-mile radius and carefully examine all trees over seven feet. The lot attendants went from smiling and helpful to frowning and exasperated and homicidal. Other tree shoppers queued up and then gave up while every tall tree on the lot was hauled out, stood up, vigorously shaken and twirled for a full inspection. Sometimes, just as it seemed a sale was imminent, Griffin’s mother would sigh and say, “No, there’s a hole,” and his father would ask where, and she’d point and he’d cock his head and say, “Oh, right.” Most attendants, not knowing his parents, would sensibly suggest that the “hole” she saw might face in toward the wall, whereupon she’d sigh again and say, “Let’s keep looking.” Griffin remembered one old guy who said, after his parents had rejected a dozen trees, “Lady, maybe there’s something you don’t understand. Those holes you keep seeing’s the space between the goddamn branches. Wasn’t for the spaces, the tree would be solid fuckin’ wood.” He made a sweeping gesture that included the entire lot. “Every one of these trees got holes. It’s the holes that
makes
’em trees. Now, you want one or not?”
    Other attendants, equally tired and frustrated, tried reason. “What kinda ceiling we looking at here?” Griffin remembered one asking, hoping at least to narrow the search. Of course his parents had no idea. A high ceiling was one of their requirements every year when they rented a new house or apartment, but as professionalhumanists it wouldn’t have occurred to them to actually
measure
. “Doesn’t matter,” his father would say. “We can cut a little off the top if we need to.” To which the man responded, “Look kind of funny, wouldn’t it?” At which point his mother might take the tip of a branch between her thumb and forefinger, give it a good tug and, if needles came off, complain, “When was this tree cut? Last August?”
    Griffin came to understand that the perfect Christmas tree was a lot like the perfect house on the Cape, first because it didn’t