That Old Cape Magic

impossible task, especially of the academic variety, that would’ve been easy if he’d done with his life what she’d intended instead of what he himself had preferred.
    “Just because you can’t find what I ask for doesn’t mean it’s a fool’s errand. You belong to a generation that never learned basic research skills, who can’t even negotiate a card catalog.”
    “They don’t have those anymore,” he said, for the pleasure of hearing her shudder.
    Which she denied him. “You think typing a word into Google and pressing
Go
is research.”
    There was, he had to admit, some truth to this. Back in his screenwriting days, he’d always happily delegated research to Tommy, who was genuinely curious if easily distractible. Confronted with his own ignorance, Griffin preferred to just make something up and move forward, whereas his partner, not unreasonably, preferred making sure their narrative had a sturdy, factual foundation. “You
do
know that when the cameras roll they’re going to be pointing at something in the real world, right?” he’d asked. To which Griffin would reply that the cameras were never going to roll if they kept getting bogged down in background.
    “The things I require are all at Sterling,” his mother continued. “I still have privileges there, you know.”
    It was entirely possible, Griffin knew, this was the real reason she’d called: to remind him of who she was, who she’d been, that she still had privileges at the Yale library. She might not actually need any books.
    “There are some journal articles, too. Those you can just photocopy. The library offered to provide that service, but it would be cheaper for you to do it. I’m not made of money, as you know.”
    As he had excellent reason to. Her TIAA-CREF retirement and university insurance covered a good chunk of her assisted-living facility, but Griffin made up the difference.
    “You can pick them up on your way here. Are we talking June, this impending visit?” she wondered. And clearly they’d better be.
    “I can come for a couple of days near the end of the month, if you need me to.”
    “Not until then?”
    “I haven’t even turned in my final grades yet. The trunk of my car’s full of student portfolios.”
Not to mention Dad’s ashes
, he almost added.
    “You actually read them?”
    “Didn’t you read yours?”
    “We had no
portfolios
, your father and I,” she reminded him. “We had exams. Our students wrote papers with footnotes. We taught real courses with real content.” Their metaphorical cameras had also been pointed, in other words, at something that actually existed. “Assigned readings. Rigor, it was called.”
    A car blew by, its Dopplering horn loud enough to startle him. “Are you sure I’m qualified to do your photocopying? What if I screw up?”
    “So, what were you thinking… about your father and me?”
    For a moment he considered telling her he feared he was becoming his father, that this was what his recent bouts of indecision, not to mention the fender benders, might be about. But of course it would anger his mother, and prolong the conversation, if he suggested he was more like his father than her. “I thought you didn’t want to pry, Mom. Isn’t that what you just said, that my thoughts are my own?”
    “They are, of course. Still, as a personal favor, couldn’t you arrange to think about your father and me separately?”
    “I was remembering how happy you both got on the SagamoreBridge, how you sang ‘That Old Cape Magic’?”
And how miserable you both were in the same spot going the other direction
. “As if happiness were a place.”
    But she wasn’t interested in this particular stroll down memory lane. “Speaking of unhappy places, when you visit, I want you to look at this new one I’m at.” Her third assisted-living facility in as many years. The first was connected to the university and full of the very people she’d been trying to escape. The second was home to mid-fucking-western farmwives who read Agatha Christie and couldn’t understand why she turned up her nose at the Miss Marples they thrust at her, saying, “You’ll like this one. It’s a corker!”
    “I mean
really
look at it,” his mother continued. “It’s certainly not what we imagined.”
    “What did we imagine, Mom?”
    “Nice,” she said. “We imagined it would be nice.”
    Then she was gone, the line dead. The whole conversation had been, he knew from experience, a