That Old Cape Magic

Brownings a hundred yards down the beach to the left. “Go right, go right, go right,” his father said, nudging him forcefully in the other direction and pretending not to notice the entire family standing up and waving. “They teach
junior high,”
his mother explained when Griffin asked why they weren’t being more friendly. “Do you know what that means?” He didn’t, but understood he was supposed to. Was it that people who taught, say, kindergarten didn’t associate with people who taught seventh grade, who didn’t socialize with people who taught high school, who didn’t mix with college professors? It had to be something like that, he decided.
    Fortunately, though he had no idea why, his parents changed their minds about the Brownings wanting something, and the next day he was allowed, indeed encouraged, to go with them while his parents finished breakfast with Al. They never budged until after lunch (they hated eating on the beach, and his father’s pale skin was susceptible to sunburn), by which time most families with bratty kids were packing up, and they’d have a long stretch of sand to themselves. Without Griffin to nag them, they usually emerged from among the dunes midafternoon with their towels and books and a couple folding beach chairs and not much else. The Brownings typically set up camp to the left, which meant that his parents headed to the right. That embarrassed him, especially the day the Brownings (intentionally?) changed things up by making their camp right where his parents usually sat, so when they arrived at their usual time they took a couple of steps toward them before noticing, then quickly reversed course. Griffin saw the look that passed between Peter’s parents and felt himself glow hot with shame.
    “Aren’t they tired of you yet?” his mother asked over breakfast one morning near the end of their first week, as if to suggest that she couldn’t imagine what was taking them so long.
    If the Brownings were tired of Griffin, they gave no sign. Mrs.Browning always had enough sandwiches and Cokes in the cooler for everyone when they went to the beach. Of Italian descent, she introduced him to exotic new foods: fatty, spiced ham and hard salami, marinated mushrooms and artichokes, blistering hot cherry peppers, and a mouthwatering macaroni salad that tasted like nothing that came from the supermarket deli where his mother shopped. And in the evening, back at the cottages, there were always extra hot dogs and hamburgers and chicken on the grill. (Griffin’s father never grilled outdoors, not even on vacation, not since the year the flame from the smoking briquettes climbed up the stream of lighter fluid and torched his eyebrows.) Nor did the Brownings seem to mind that his parents took advantage of the free babysitting, driving into town most nights for dinner, just the two of them. “You should let us return the favor some night,” Griffin’s mother suggested, her insincerity clear even to him. “Give you and your husband a vacation from the kids.”
    “We think of it as vacation
with
the kids,” Mrs. Browning said, and he saw the remark land, but it was only a glancing blow.
    “If you pass someplace that sells ice on your way back, you could pick up a bag or two for the cooler,” Mr. Browning told Griffin’s father. “Save me a trip in the morning.” But they must not have passed anyplace that did, and the Brownings didn’t ask any other favors.
    Griffin had had friends before, but never one all to himself, and never one he liked as much. Peter was good at things. He knew how to bodysurf, something Griffin had long wanted to do but was too afraid to try. His father, who was prone to minor injury, was so afraid of riptides that he refused to even go into the water. His mother liked to swim, but she’d sidle gracefully through the waves until she was out beyond where they broke so she could do her languid crawl. Peter, a wave aficionado, showed Griffin how to get the maximum ride out of the smaller waves and later, when he grewbolder, how to keep the larger ones from bouncing him on his head. Despite being several inches shorter, the boy was a natural athlete and could beat Griffin at anything that involved hand-to-eye coordination, though he generously explained his victories as owing to genetics. “My dad’s good at sports”—he shrugged, as if that didn’t really amount to much—“so I am, too.” The heredity angle, of course, contained a veiled