That Old Cape Magic

Griffin was bringing a guest to the wedding, and it was this woman he was hoping wouldn’t die on him.
    “Hope you never have to walk into a room and find your wife in a heap on the floor.”
    “Harvey,” Dot said, “you’re going to upset yourself.”
    “Because that’s no fun, let me tell you,” he went on, ignoring her completely. “No replacing a woman like that.”
    Dot sighed and looked off into the middle distance. She’d clearly heard this sentiment expressed many times before.
    “You probably didn’t know, but she was writing a pistolary when she died.”
    Griffin glanced at Dot, who rolled her eyes. “A Western?” Griffin asked.
    “No, a pistolary. You don’t know what that is?”
    He confessed he didn’t.
    “Well, she was writing one of those,” he said. “Your Joy’s a lot like her mother.”
    Ah, Griffin thought, Joy was still his. At least as far as her demented father was concerned.
    “All three girls take after their mother, of course, but Joy’s the most like Jilly Always was.”
    “And Laura’s like her mother,” Griffin added, hoping he might take comfort in further feminine continuity.
    But Harve just blinked at this, clearly unsure who this Laura might be.
    “Laura’s the bride,” Dot informed him under her breath. “We’re here for her wedding.”
    “Well of course we are,” Harve said. “You think I don’t know my own granddaughter?” Then, to Griffin, “She thinks I forget things, but I don’t. Like you. I remember perfectly well you could never keep your damn head down. You still don’t, I bet.”
    “You’re right, Harve, I still look up.”
    Harve nodded sadly, as if to admit that human beings were frail creatures indeed. Impossible to teach most of them the rudiments of anything, much less a complex activity like golf. “You look up,” he said, looking up, his watery blue eyes fixing on Griffin, “all you’ll ever see is a bad shot.”
    Then he looked away again, and Griffin could tell he was following the errant shot’s trajectory in his mind as it sliced off into the dark woods, out of sight, where he could hear it thocking among the trees.
    “I know this really isn’t the time or place,” said Brian Fynch, dean of admissions and Joy’s boss. The rehearsal dinner was over, and people had been encouraged to reconfigure over dessert. Griffin had been seated with Andy’s family, a smaller group, all of whom seemed a bit cowed by the size and sheer decibel level of Joy’s family (Jane and June were both shriekers). For his part, Griffin had been grateful to be seated with them.
    Fynch was a tall man, and his suit was well tailored and expensive looking. He seemed comfortable in it, as men who wear suits every day often are. His haircut was early Beatles, sweeping bangs at the eyebrow line, ridiculous, Griffin couldn’t help thinking, for someone his age, a few years younger than Joy, and Griffin immediately dubbed him “Ringo.” Joy had introduced him as her “friend” (the very word Laura had used on the phone when she told him her mother would also be bringing someone to the wedding). “Jack” was how he himself had been introduced to Fynch, as in
Jack, of whom you’ve often heard me speak and weep and curse
. He chided himself:
But come on, Griffin, get a grip
. Joy had probably said nothing of the sort.
In fact, be grateful
. She’d have been well within her rights to introduce him as her soon-to-be ex, which would have been worse. He didn’t realize he’d been half hoping she’d introduce him as her husband (which he still
was
, after all) until she didn’t.
    At any rate, he and this “friend” had been chatting amiably for the last ten minutes. Ringo claimed they’d actually been introduced last spring (“No reason for you to remember”) when he came on board.
Came on board?
his mother snorted.
What is he, a pirate?
(Silent when he and Laura were in the maze and also during dinner,she was feeling gabby again and seemed to have even less use for Brian Fynch than her son did. Normally her opinion wouldn’t have mattered, but she did know her academics.) Ringo loved the college, he went on, as if someone had been spreading vicious rumors to the contrary, and he hoped it would be the last stop on what he termed his “long academic journey.”
Long and pointless, perhaps, but hardly academic
. It was a wonderful opportunity, really, the kind that came along once in a lifetime. His “team” in admissions was