Richard Russo - That Old CapeMagic

He was busy revising the story in his head when his cell phone commenced buzzing on the nightstand like a fly on its back. He usually turned the damn thing off before going to bed, but last night he’d apparently forgotten.

“Griff,” said Tommy. “What’s happening today, locusts?”

“No clue,” Griffin said, though sun was leaking through the chintz curtains. “What’re you doing up so early?”

“I’ve been up,” he said. “Anymore, I pee three times a night, at least. Don’t tell me you’re spared this, because I hate you already.”

“Why?”

“Same old reason. The woman you’re married to. All my life I’ve been a good woman shy of true happiness. It’s tragic, really.”

Neither man said anything for an awkward beat. In the next room the shower thunked off.

“Anyway, Sid gets planted later this morning.”

“That’s not wasting any time.”

“As per Jewish custom. We have Jews out here, remember? Also Negroes and Hispanics. You forget, living there in pale New England.”

The bathroom door opened, and Joy came out, toweling her hair dry. Who? she mouthed. Griffin could tell from her smile that she expected it to be Laura.

Tommy , he mouthed back, and she quickly covered up, as if his cell were equipped with a streaming-video camera.

“There’s going to be a big memorial do in a couple of weeks, though,” Tommy was saying, and he rattled off the names of half a dozen stars and directors, all former Sid clients, who’d already committed to attend. “You think you’ll come?”

“I don’t see why not. Once I get my grades turned in, I’m a free man.”

“Why don’t you and Joy come out for a week. Hell, two weeks. We’ll have some laughs.”

Joy was now bent over the small pad of B and B stationery, scribbling something.

“I’m working on this thing right now that’s going nowhere,” Tommy continued. “You can read it and tell me what’s wrong. If you’re nice I might even let you fix it. And Joy will hit it off with this woman I’m seeing. It’ll be like old times.”

Joy tore the page off the tablet and showed it to him: Don’t commit me .

“Sounds like fun,” he said. “Joy’s shaking her head no, but I’ll work on her.”

At which her face clouded over and she returned to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. Just this quickly last night’s magic, the sense of well-being it had engendered, evaporated.

Half an hour later they were in the car, having checked out of the B and B. They’d lolled in bed too long to take advantage of the second B . Even the giant coffee urn had been cruelly removed from the dining room by the time they’d both showered and dressed. The apologetic owner said they could leave one car there, drive the other to Truro, then pick it up on the way back. Joy disliked Griffin ’s roadster, which felt unsafe compared with her SUV, and her hair would be a lost cause by the time they arrived, but she gave in grudgingly when he observed there wasn’t much point in having a convertible if you weren’t going to put the top down on a bright summer day on the Cape.

“That was Route 6,” she remarked when he drove beneath it. The divided highway was the most direct route to the Outer Cape.

“Are we in some kind of hurry?” His plan had been to take two-lane 6A, a much more scenic drive that hugged the shoreline. If they happened on a likely spot, they’d stop and scatter his father’s ashes.

“No,” Joy said, “we’re certainly not.”

The day was warm, but the emotional temperature had plummeted.

“Can I use your phone? I forgot to put mine on the charger last night. It’s running on juice.”

Running on fumes? Because she forgot to juice the phone? Griffin opened his mouth, then closed it again, handing her his phone without comment. After last night’s festivities, it was far too early to call Laura, but he held his tongue about that, too.

“Hi, sweetie,” Joy said, after several rings, “did I wake you? Oh, I’m sorry. I just wanted to tell you again how thrilled we are.”

With the top down, Griffin could hear his daughter’s voice but not what she was saying. Probably going over again what Andy had said last night, how he’d asked, the whole play-by-play. It was the kind of conversation she and her mother delighted in, and Joy, glum a moment before, was smiling now, the world made right again. Griffin told himself not to be bitter.

“We’re on our way to Truro,” she was saying. “No, just for tonight. I need to get back, and now it’s looking like your dad may be going to L.A., so…” A beat, then: “No, he’s fine.” Another pause. “Please be careful driving home.” She hung up and returned his phone to the cup holder.

“If you really need to get back, we don’t have to go to Truro,” Griffin ventured. “It was your idea.”

“I know whose idea it was.”

Griffin couldn’t understand how they’d gotten there so quickly but they were clearly on the cusp of a serious falling-out, like the one that had sent him off to Boston and the Cape by himself. The thing to do, obviously, was to avoid hostilities. The day was drop-dead gorgeous, and with a little patience and forbearance there was no reason they couldn’t reclaim the better emotional place they’d found the night before. In a couple hours they’d be at the inn where they’d honeymooned, and all would be well. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“It’s just that your story has some continuity problems,” he said, deciding that he’d push this far and no further. Because if Joy really wanted to have this out, better to do it now.

“It’s not a story. Or a screenplay. It’s my job. My life.”

“Our lives.”

When she didn’t say anything to this, he continued. Impossible, really, to stop, once you’d started. Still, best to be conciliatory. “All I meant was, if you’re too busy at work to go to L.A., fine. But if you’re really that busy, why are we going to Truro? That’s what I’d like to understand.” Okay, the emphasis maybe wasn’t entirely conciliatory.

“No, that’s what you don’t want to understand.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning what you’re determined not to understand couldn’t be simpler. It makes no sense to go all the way to L.A. unless we stay a week. I can’t afford that much time away right now. Your semester’s over. I’m happy for you. But I’m still flat out. I have two new staff to hire and a new boss to train. The day will come when he can spare me for a week, but not now. Truro is one day. I wouldn’t be working on the weekend anyway. So tomorrow I’ll miss half of one day. Not a whole week. You can pretend that doesn’t make sense, but it does.”

Which it did, as far as it went. “Fine,” he said. “Now I understand.”

“And I really hate it when you do that.”

“When I ask you to explain something? I’m not entitled to understand your thinking?”

“No, I hate it when you talk to me in script metaphors. My ‘story isn’t tracking.’ It has ‘continuity problems.’ Like I’m making things up. Like we’re still in L.A. Like you wish we’d never left. Like you regret the life we have.”

Of course he knew better than to say what came next, though it wasn’t the words themselves. If he’d delivered the line with a good-natured, self-deprecating grin, all would have been well. That’s probably what he was trying for, but he could feel the tight grimace on his features when he said, “Aren’t you going a little ‘over the top’?”

Before Joy could respond, his cell vibrated in the cup holder, and irritation morphed instantly into full-blown rage. “What , Mom?” he said through tightly clenched teeth. “What? What? What?”