That Old Cape Magic

the B and B Joy was packed and waiting. If she noticed the condition of his clothes, she didn’t say anything, nor did she remark on the fact that, when he popped the trunk and tossed in their bags, his father was still in the wheel well. Her silence alone was an eloquent indictment. He considered telling her that he’d stumbled on the very place where his family had vacationed when he was twelve and as a result he at last knew how to go about revising “The Summer of the Brownings.” But why should she care?
    They took Route 6 as far as Hyannis, then Route 28 to Falmouth, all of it in silence. His cell phone vibrated once, but he saw it was his mother and let it go to voice mail. He was simply too dispirited to talk to her, especially with Joy in the car. Old habits like taking her calls in private were the hardest to break. In Falmouth they transferred Joy’s bag into her SUV, an act disturbing in its symbolism, since both vehicles were bound for the same destination, their home.
    They headed in tandem for the Bourne Bridge, Joy in the lead.What he needed to do was think about the future, to figure out how to get back to the place they’d been the night of Kelsey’s wedding. Hard to believe, but that was just twenty-four hours ago. It felt like a lifetime, as if he and Joy had been traveling, lost, up and down the Cape forever. Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection. According to his mother, he’d pitched a fit, refusing to get into the car when it was time for them to leave the Cape that Browning summer, but that wasn’t how he remembered it at all. As his parents were loading the car, the man they’d rented the cottage from had come by to pick up the keys.
    “What’s this?” his father asked when he was offered a bright red folder.
    “Next year’s rates and availability,” the man told him. “You get first crack and a hundred dollars off because you stayed with us this year.”
    “I don’t think we’re interested.”
    The man glanced at Griffin’s mother, then, to see if husband and wife were on the same page about this, and finally at Griffin himself. “How about you hang on to it, young fella,” he said, perhaps sensing that returning to these same cottages next summer was what Griffin wanted more than anything in the world. “In case they change their mind.”
    No one had spoken a word by the time they got to the Sagamore. Griffin’s mother looked like she meant to say nothing all the way back to the Mid-fucking-west. His father’s thumb had seemed to heal, but the splinter had resurfaced, and he’d chewed on it until the thumb became infected. It was now swollen to twice its normal size, and when the car rumbled onto the bridge, perhaps remembering that this same splinter had elicited sympathy a fortnight earlier, he tried to show it to Griffin’s mother, but she just looked away. He should’ve quit right then, but knowing when to give up wasn’tone of his father’s strong suits. “Am I running a fever?” he said, leaning across the seat so Griffin’s mother could feel his forehead. “I’m burning up, aren’t I?”
    But she just continued to stare out the window.
    “Fine,” his father said, leaning back, his brow untouched. “Just great.”
    “Just great,” Griffin now echoed as the Bourne Bridge appeared in the distance. Feeling feverish himself, he put a hand to his forehead, but of course you really needed someone else for an accurate read. If Joy had been in the seat next to him, and he’d asked, she wouldn’t have refused him. He knew that much. But even though nothing in the world would have made him happier right then than the gift of her cool touch, he also knew he wouldn’t have asked her. Because even if he did have a temperature, it would feel like trying to elicit sympathy he didn’t deserve, his father’s son.
    A hundred yards from the Bourne, his phone vibrated again. Seeing who it was, he pulled onto the shoulder and answered, just as Joy’s SUV climbed up onto the bridge and disappeared from sight.
    “I think I found out what Sid had for you,” Tommy told him. “You remember Ruben Hand? Ruby?”
    The name rang a vague bell, but …
    “We were going to write that film for him back in the day, but the money went south? Anyway, he’s in TV now. He’s got this made-for-cable movie thing, some story about a college professor. Sid apparently pitched