Richard Russo - That Old CapeMagic

Lord, it was raining hard, he thought. Would it let up by the time they got to the Cape or would the deluge intensify, preventing the ash-scattering yet again? Was that what he was hoping for, another excuse? What did it mean that he had so little access to something as straightforward as what he really wanted? He considered turning the key in the ignition so he could at least use the wipers and the defroster, then decided to just sit there in his watery cave, rain streaming down the windows in solid sheets. When his cell phone rang and he saw HEDGES on the screen, he felt his heart leap, thinking it must be Joy calling to suggest he stop by for a quick debriefing, a well-by-golly-we-did-it-despite-difficult-circumstances moment, just the two of them, Ringo and Marguerite off someplace. They were owed that much, right?

Apparently not. It was only the manager calling to express his fond hope that the wedding had met or (yes!) even exceeded Mr. Griffin’s expectations. The resort had incurred a few additional expenses above and beyond the charges covered by the checks he’d already written (the mutilated yew?) but he didn’t feel it was right to pass these on. No, they were pleased to absorb any additional costs. He personally felt terrible about the collapse of the wheelchair ramp and the injuries it had caused. He hoped Mr. Griffin understood that such structures weren’t designed to accommodate so many people at once, all of them moving in the same direction, but still, he couldn’t help but feel responsible, if not in the legal sense, then in some other. “Moral?” Griffin helpfully suggested. Well, yes, something like that. Griffin told him that of course he couldn’t speak for the other guests, but he knew most of the people involved and doubted there’d be any litigation.

He hung up, and a moment later Marguerite thudded into the passenger seat beside him, soaked to the skin but otherwise as happy as a schoolgirl.

“What took so long?”

“I was saying goodbye to Sunny. He’s in the breakfast room. Do you want to go in? I think you should. It’ll only take a minute.”

“We said our goodbyes last night,” Griffin said. He liked Sunny a lot but had no desire to see him this morning, to yet again come face-to-face with his courage and optimism. He started the car, put the heater on defrost and waited for the windshield to clear, feeling Marguerite’s eyes on him. But when he finally turned to look at her, she was peering out the small patch of windshield that had defogged. “ I think it’s going to clear,” she said.

Ambiguous pronoun reference , his mother piped up from the back, her first critical observation of the new day. Is she talking about the weather or the windshield?

“That’s not what the Weather Channel’s calling for,” Griffin said.

Marguerite leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’s what I’m calling for.”

Oh, honestly , his mother said.

Griffin turned on the radio, which sometimes silenced her, just as a car careened into the drive and rocked to a halt in front of the B and B. Jared and Jason, oblivious to the downpour, leapt out and began chanting up at the second-floor windows, “Suh- nee , Suh- nee , Suh- nee !”

Griffin put the car in gear before they were noticed.

“Can you see?” Marguerite said.

“Well enough,” he told her.

Go! his mother urged him, as if they’d just robbed a bank and he was driving the getaway car. Go, go, go!

He turned up the radio.

His mother chattered to the rhythm of the wipers all the way to New Hampshire, where the rain stopped as abruptly as if a spigot had just been turned off. Twenty minutes later, when they crossed into Massachusetts, the skies cleared. “Voilà,” said Marguerite, as if she’d just performed a nifty parlor trick.

Oh, my , Griffin ’s mother said, she’s bilingual .

Having fled the twins earlier, he now almost wished they were around. Maybe he could get one of them to punch him in the head again and knock his mother out. And if he had to be knocked out himself, so be it.

Marguerite switched off the radio. “Okay,” she said, “tell me about your mother,” as if she’d also been listening to her running commentary all the way down the coast and decided it was high time to acknowledge the bitch. “I want to know all about your father, too.”

What she had in mind was to create personality profiles for each of them, so she’d know the right spot on the Cape when she saw it-a silly idea, Griffin thought, but he indulged her. After all, it wasn’t like he was wedded to a plan of his own. Moreover, when she’d proposed the idea the trunk fell silent, as if his mother (maybe his father, too?) was curious what he’d have to say about them. So, Marguerite began. What was her favorite color? Green. His? Blue. Where were they born? Buffalo (Dad). Rochester (Mom). And their favorite foods? Him, king crab legs; her, double-cut broiled lamb chops. Any hobbies? He collected P. G. Wodehouse first editions, vintage campaign buttons and Victorian pornography; she, after retiring from teaching, did thousand-piece monochromatic jigsaw puzzles and swore colorfully at the television whenever George W Bush appeared.

Marguerite’s curiosity was so benign and well meaning that Griffin gradually became more expansive. What were their favorite times of the day? Well, his father had been a morning person, he told her, up hours before he and his mother, especially on their vacations. He liked to go out for pastries and the newspaper. “You missed a great sunrise,” he’d inform his wife when she finally shuffled out onto the deck, midmorning, for a breakfast with Al Fresco. (“Al Fresco? Who was he?”) “Like hell I did,” she always replied. His mother’s favorite time of day was cocktail hour. She loved the sound of ice cubes in glasses, of jazz and gin-induced laughter, of lots of people talking all at once. So much better, to her way of thinking, than eavesdropping on smaller conversations where you could actually hear whatever stupid opinions people held. He told Marguerite about his father’s propensity for sudden, violent, rear-end collisions in parking lots, about his mother’s speech at her retirement dinner, even a little about the Morphine Narrative. And when she asked him, apropos of nothing, for a Christmas memory, he told her about their search, each December, for the perfect tree.

Though they professed to hate the season for its hypocrisy, for all that trumped-up seasonal “goodwill toward men” crap, his parents demanded big, full Christmas trees. Finding one that passed muster took days, sometimes weeks. They had to visit every lot within a ten-mile radius and carefully examine all trees over seven feet. The lot attendants went from smiling and helpful to frowning and exasperated and homicidal. Other tree shoppers queued up and then gave up while every tall tree on the lot was hauled out, stood up, vigorously shaken and twirled for a full inspection. Sometimes, just as it seemed a sale was imminent, Griffin ’s mother would sigh and say, “No, there’s a hole,” and his father would ask where, and she’d point and he’d cock his head and say, “Oh, right.” Most attendants, not knowing his parents, would sensibly suggest that the “hole” she saw might face in toward the wall, whereupon she’d sigh again and say, “Let’s keep looking.” Griffin remembered one old guy who said, after his parents had rejected a dozen trees, “Lady, maybe there’s something you don’t understand. Those holes you keep seeing’s the space between the goddamn branches. Wasn’t for the spaces, the tree would be solid fuckin’ wood.” He made a sweeping gesture that included the entire lot. “Every one of these trees got holes. It’s the holes that makes ’ em trees. Now, you want one or not?”