That Old Cape Magic

Griffin himself? If the woman Tommy remembered didn’t exist anymore, then probably he didn’t, either.
    But of course he said none of this. They left it that Tommy would call when he found out details. Griffin hung up, but the phone rang before he could turn the key in the ignition, and Griffin, thinking Tommy must have forgotten to tell him something, picked up.
    “I just want you to know you’re not fooling anybody,” his mother said.
    “What are you talking about, Mom?”
    “You’re going to scatter his ashes there, aren’t you?
That’s
why you were thinking about him.”
    “Mom—”
    “You always were sneaky. Even as a kid.”
    And then she was gone, the line dead.
    God, Griffin thought, it was raining hard. As if all the grief in the world were coming down from the sky.

6
Laura and Sunny
    G riffin was worried that he and Joy would be among the first to arrive, but dozens of people were already milling around, drinking mimosas on the hotel’s back porch. From there a vast expanse of manicured lawn sloped a good hundred and fifty yards to the water’s edge.
    “You made it,” Laura said, then she and her mother went into their customary clinch, hugging as if one of them had been in grave danger and they’d feared they might never see each other again. Actually, Joy’s journey the evening before
had
been harrowing. Unbeknownst to Griffin, cloudbursts of the sort he’d experienced in the parking lot of the Olde Cape Lounge had pummeled the entire region. Three different times she’d been forced to pull off the turnpike, and her car was a lunar landscape of hailstone pock-marks. Farther out the Cape, Laura and her friends had also gotten pounded. First bird shit, then torrential rain and hail. Suddenly Griffins everywhere were coming under attack (as Tommy had put it) from above. What next, frogs? He checked the sky, but it was a cloudless blue.
    “You look—” Joy started to say “great,” Griffin could tell.
    “—like Snow White,” Laura finished.
    Which she did. Her bridesmaid’s dress might have been on loan from the Magic Kingdom. She also looked as happy as Griffin had ever seen her. His daughter had spent a long time between boyfriends, searching for Mr. Right with no interest at all in Mr. Right Now, which had made Joy proud. Griffin supposed he was proud, too, but he’d also been worried. As a girl she’d once flirted with the idea of a religious vocation, and he’d wondered if her willingness to put off intimacy might be a vestige of that romantic and utterly perverse impulse. But more likely it was exactly what Joy thought it was, a brave refusal to settle that was at long last paying off. She’d gone to a lot of her college friends’ weddings, and this was the first where she had someone of her own. She seemed to think she’d soon be engaged, and Griffin couldn’t imagine what he’d do, how he and Joy would console her, if that didn’t happen.
    “Andy actually likes it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Men. No taste and plenty of it.”
    “Speaking of Andy, where is he?” Joy said.
    “Around,” their daughter sighed. “He disappears.”
    Which gave Griffin pause. Was the boy naturally shy, or did he already understand that disappearance would become a necessary survival skill if he married into Laura’s family? He hadn’t met the rest of them yet but had probably heard stories, and of course he’d already overheard scores of half-hour phone conversations between Laura and her mother. If he turned out to be the one, Griffin would have to take him aside and validate his instincts.
    “Tough duty for him,” Joy said, with genuine sympathy, since Andy wouldn’t know anyone at this particular wedding.
    “He’s fine,” Laura said, turning to Griffin now. “Everybody loves him.” The hug she gave him was very different from the one she’d just given her mother. His assumed he was fine, maybe even indestructible, and he was glad if that’s how he seemed to her, though he had to admit that it puzzled him, too. “I’m sorry about Sid, Daddy. Will you go out for the funeral?”
    “Maybe. Tommy’s going to call when he hears—”
    “There’s
the boy,” Laura said, her face suddenly radiant, all thoughts of mortality evaporating. She’d spied her boyfriend halfway down the lawn, talking to one of the groomsmen under the big tent that had been erected for the reception. The wedding ceremony itself would take place by the water under an ornate arch. A