That Old Cape Magic

us?”
    “You
insisted?”
    “And the tantrum you threw at the restaurant? The Dry Martini? No, that’s not right. The
Something
Martini, it was called. Anyway, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how I sat up with you all night, trying to console you?”
    “You’re making this up, right?”
    “And the next morning you refused to get in the car. God, what a little pill you were.”
    “There was something wrong with the little Browning girl, wasn’t there? Peter’s sister.”
    “Asthma, I believe. Something respiratory. The sea air was supposed to be good for her, but she ended up dying. And then of course Steven in Vietnam.”
    “Mom, what are you talking about?”
    “I’m talking about your friend Steven Browning dying in Vietnam.”
    “Mom, he’s Peter. And anyway, how in the world would you know what happened to him or his sister? We never went back there. We never saw any of them again.”
    “We exchanged addresses before we left, don’t you remember? Steven wanted to keep in touch. He wrote you several letters, but you refused to write back. We got Christmas cards for a couple of years. The mother wrote when the little girl died, and then later about Steven. You were gone by then.”
    “Why would you remember all this, Mom?”
    “Why shouldn’t I remember things?”
    “It’s unlike you. Especially people like the Brownings. You and Dad looked down your noses at them.”
    He expected her to deny this accusation, but she didn’t, which meant she either hadn’t really heard it or preferred not to. Maddening, the way she blithely shopped among his conversational offerings, as if she were at a fruit bin looking for an unbruised pear. “Wait till you’re my age and memory is all you have.”
    It was on the tip of Griffin’s tongue to say that, based on this conversation, he wasn’t sure she had even that.
    “Happy memories in particular you hold on to.”
    “That was a happy memory? That vacation?”
    “Well, it wasn’t
un
happy The wheels hadn’t come off yet for your father and me. He hadn’t started the cheating yet.”
    “Of course he had. You both had.”
    “Not the really nasty, vindictive stuff. We were still in love, despite everything.”
    “That’s how you remember it?”
    “That’s how it
was
.”
    “I need to get back to the wedding, Mom.”
    “You haven’t told me what you think.”
    “About what?”
    “About the North Shore, though I have to admit your Canal idea is growing on me.”
    “Why would you care, Mom? Could you answer me that?”
    “Because if you put him on the North Shore, you can scatter me on the South.”
    “Mom, we’ve had a lot of ridiculous conversations over the years, but this is one for the record books.”
    “Remember how I taught you to bodysurf?”
    “Peter Browning taught me to bodysurf. Him and his dad.”
    “No. They all knew how, and you were embarrassed because you didn’t. You were scared to try. Your father was frightened of the undertow, so it was up to me.”
    “Gotta go, Mom.”
    “I’d just feel better if the Cape was between us, me on one side and him on the other.”
    By the time Griffin returned to the tent he’d missed the bride and groom’s first dance. Kelsey was now dancing with her father, clearly for the first time ever, and her new husband with his mother.
    “What now?” Joy said.
    He told her about his mother’s insistence about where all the ashes should go. “I think she’s losing her mind. She’s rewriting history. Inventing memories.”
    Under the table he felt Joy take his hand, perhaps in sympathy for having to deal with his mother, but more likely because Laura and Andy had joined the others on the makeshift dance floor, where they looked like what they were, two young people who’d waited what had seemed like forever to find each other. Now they clung tightly together in the understanding of how lucky they were, that in another equally plausible scenario they wouldn’t have met, still bealone, still looking. It was hard to take your eyes off them, and for Griffin the pleasure of watching them would have been pure and fully sufficient if Sunny hadn’t also been in his line of sight. He tried not to look at him, at least not directly, tried not to think of him as the boy standing by himself at that long-ago birthday party, pretending not to be alone. But somehow that opened the door to another unpleasant, totally unrelated thought. Was it possible his mother was right, that Peter Browning