That Old Cape Magic

meant they each had a key to the other’s apartment, in case she locked herself out or somethingelse happened. This was something else. She’d found Griffin’s mother in bed, still in her nightgown, the curtains drawn and the room dark in the middle of the day. She was staring at nothing and gasping for breath, barely conscious, unresponsive. A heart attack, the emergency people thought. They’d given her oxygen and just minutes ago taken her to the hospital. “She keeps your number on the refrigerator,” Gladys said. “I hope she won’t be upset with me for using her phone to call. I could’ve used my own, I suppose, but I didn’t think.”
    Griffin told her he was sure it would be okay.
    “She hasn’t been feeling good,” Gladys said.
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “She didn’t like to say anything.”
    Since when?
Griffin thought. Were they talking about the same woman?
    “We aren’t really buddies,” Gladys admitted. “That’s just what we call it. The buddy system. When you’re all alone, you need someone close by.” Hearing this, Griffin swallowed hard. “I’m not sure your mother even likes me very much, but I didn’t mind bud-dying with her. She could be very nice when she wanted to.”
    Griffin thanked her and said he’d be on the first flight he could catch, then hung up and just stood there on the balcony until Tommy poked his head out to check on him. “That sucks,” his friend said when Griffin told him what was up, that he had to fly to Indiana.
    Tommy insisted on driving him to LAX. At the curb they parted awkwardly, like a married couple in the middle of a spat.
    “Okay if I call Joy about this?”
    “I’d rather you didn’t.”
    “I might anyway.”
    Griffin saw no reason to argue. “I’ll let you know what’s up once I get the lay of the land.”
    They shook hands.
    “I never told you I found
my
mother.”
    “No kidding.”
    He nodded.
    “And?”
    “And you were right.”
    The Hedges occupied the tip of the peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water. The main building was a grand old structure with a huge porch bordered by eight-foot-tall yew trees that were painstakingly sculpted into a massive hedge. Farther down the sloping lawn, more hedges formed what Griffin guessed was a labyrinth. When he pulled into the gravel lot, he saw Joy’s sister June emerge from an opening in the hedge with a crying child in tow. They were quite a ways off, but it was incredibly quiet, especially after L.A., and he could hear her say, “Poor sweetie pie, did you get lost? Didn’t Grammy tell you that might happen?”
    It was still an hour before the rehearsal dinner was scheduled to begin. Griffin thought it would be good to arrive early, but now he wished he hadn’t. There were a couple dozen cars clustered near to the hotel. The lot was huge, though, big enough to handle a convention, so he parked in a remote spot. Joy’s family probably would regard this, too, as standoffish, but during his year in L.A. he’d had two minor but costly auto mishaps—one on the freeway, not really his fault, the other in a mall parking lot, entirely his fault—and his insurance premiums were again on the rise. (Interesting, he thought, that his late mother yapped at him incessantly, whereas his dead father was content to communicate via crumpled bumpers and detached side-view mirrors.)
    The evening was cool, with a nice breeze off the water, so he decided to just sit in the car for a few minutes and gather himself for what promised to be an ordeal. But Joy must have had an eyeout for him, because right after turning off the ignition he caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror, coming down the porch steps. On the dashboard was the literary magazine that featured “The Summer of the Brownings.” He’d brought a copy along with the idea of giving it to Joy, but he now realized the timing was wrong and left it where it was.
All is vanity
, his mother said, quoting whom? Shakespeare? Thackeray? The Old Testament?
Google it
, she suggested. Lord, Griffin thought. Last year, based on slender evidence, Joy had been convinced that his father was haunting him. What would she make of him losing arguments with his deceased mother? Not that he had any intention of telling her.
    “Joy,” he said, getting out of the car and giving her the best smile he could muster, “you look terrific.”
    Which she did. She’d lost some weight, which showed most flatteringly on her face. Her eyes,