That Old Cape Magic

in the dark.
    Yes, he told her. Everything was fine.
    “Good,” said Marguerite.

11
Plumb Some
    T he night of his daughter’s wedding Griffin had a particularly vivid (no doubt alcohol-and anxiety-induced) dream in which he was driving over the Sagamore Bridge in a pouring rain that made the surface slick and treacherous. The bridge went on forever, and his was the only vehicle on it. Harve, for some reason, was in the backseat, instructing him.
You’re never too old to learn to drive
, he was saying, in the same tone of voice he used when telling Griffin how to play golf.
You just have to keep both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road
.
    Griffin explained that he already knew how to drive, but Harve paid no attention.
    It’s not complicated
, he went on.
Just the two things to remember: hands on the wheel, eyes on the road. Hell, I taught my three daughters to drive, then both my sons. If those two can learn, so can you
.
    Harve
, Griffin said,
listen to me. I already—
    Car!
his father-in-law shouted, pointing in alarm, and Griffin hit the brake. Immediately the car’s rear end lost traction and came around, which meant, according to the dream’s curious logic, that he was now facing Harve, who was sitting in the backseat and saying,
Both hands on the wheel
. Griffin braced for impact against one of the bridge’s stone buttresses, but when it came, it was surprisingly gentle, like a boat nosing into a dock.
    I just wanted to test your reflexes
, Harve explained.
Without good reflexes you’re just an accident waiting to happen
.
    When Griffin got out to inspect the damage, he saw that the trunk had popped open and both his parents’ urns had ruptured. The trunk was full of their mingled ash, about a hundred urns’ worth, it looked like, and the rain was turning it all to mud.
    Now you’ve done it
, said Harve, who’d materialized at his elbow.
How you going to figure out who’s who?
    Rather than contemplate the problem, Griffin woke up.
    It was raining out, less hard than in his dream but definitely coming down. The soft dream-collision had been occasioned in the real world by Marguerite getting out of bed. Not quite ready to face a new day, he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Marguerite adored weddings and after yesterday’s she would be, he feared, in one of her best and brightest moods, and he wasn’t sure he could confront either it or her just yet. He sensed her standing there, observing him, probably suspicious, but eventually he heard the bathroom door open and close, and when the shower rumbled on moments later he realized he’d been holding his breath.
    “Well,
I
think it was a lovely wedding,” she told him fifteen minutes later, her first words of the day, as if he’d expressed a contrarian view in his sleep. She was toweling off unself-consciously at the foot of the bed. It was amazing, really, how different she was from Joy, how confident and secure she was in her own naked, glistening skin. Even fully dressed, she always managed to convey that she was patiently waiting for someone to suggest a skinny-dip. Maybe her body wasn’t what it once was, but she remained confident there were men around who desired it and probably would be for quite some time. “Are you going to shower,” she said, “or did you havesomething else in mind?” That was the other thing. Marguerite loved sex, as fervently as you loved something you’d been denied when you were young and which you were now making up for.
    “Shower,” he said, because they had a long drive ahead of them and a task at the end of it—the scattering, finally, of his parents’ ashes—that was unpleasant enough to have wormed its way into his dreams. “How about tonight?”
    She was right, though, Griffin thought as he stepped under the burst of hot water. The wedding had been lovely—and, like all events that involved months of intricate planning, over surprisingly quickly. It had gone off without further melodrama, a well-earned blessing, all agreed, after the catastrophic rehearsal. Despite the scratches on her forearms, Laura had been, just as he’d promised her, a heartbreakingly beautiful bride. Drawing on some reserve of optimism that hadn’t been there the night before, she’d given herself over fully to richly deserved joy. Only once, just minutes before the ceremony was to commence, did she allow herself to express any fear. The bridesmaids and groomsmen were lining up at the end of the