7:15 P.M.
I catch up with the others as they approach the turnoff to Dixon’s. His driveway is actually a section of the Old King’s Highway. Past Dixon’s house, the road dead-ends at a wide field, overgrown with goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. But beyond the far edge of the field, hidden under the shade of the woods, the ancient road reappears. When we were young, this was our secret route into town. We could walk the whole four miles—all the way from Becky’s house to the Penny Candy store—without ever going on the tar road. Sometimes, after a heavy rain, we would find bits of pottery or arrowheads unearthed from the steep banks. One year I found a small medicine bottle, plum purple, sea-glassed by time. I imagined some Pilgrim tossing it from a wagon or saddlebag into the thick woods with a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure no one had seen him littering. The bottle had lain there untouched for two centuries—gone directly from his hand to mine.
The trail comes out of the woods at the Pilgrim cemetery, a long-deserted graveyard. It fascinated us: the rows of small sunken tombstones carved with winged death’s heads, wind-worn and pitted, their epitaphs barely visible, filled with lives, with resignation. Most of the dead were children. Temperance, Thankful, Obediah, Mehetable. Aged 3 wks, aged 14 mo. and 24 d’s, 2 yr 9 months, 5 d’s. All facing east. On Judgment Day, the children would arise to face the dawn, hoping to be placed on God’s right hand, to be judged among the righteous.
The smell of mesquite and hamburger wafts up the driveway. “Yum,” I say, catching up to the kids. “I’m starving.”
“You must be, after that long swim,” Mum says.
“I want three hamburgers,” Finn says. “Can I have three hamburgers, Mom?”
“It’s not up to Mom,” Jack says. “You have to ask Dixon.”
“What about hot dogs?” Finn says.
“What I need is a stiff gin and tonic,” Peter says. “And I’ll shoot Dixon if all he has is that Almaden swill.”
“He uses them for lamps,” my mother says.
Peter looks at her, confused.
“You fill them with sand,” she says.
“Sand.”
“Clearly you missed the seventies.”
“Elle, I think your mother may have incipient dementia.”
She swats him with her hat. “Given the amount we used to drink, we had to use them for something.”
“If you’re not feeling well, Wallace, I’m happy to walk you home.”
“Your husband is intolerable.” She laughs. “It might be time to think about divorce.”
Finn and Maddy look distressed.
“Mum.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m joking. It was a joke,” she says to them. “I adore your father, as he knows perfectly well.”
“Your grandmother has always been a great wit,” Peter says.
I take Finn’s hand, crouch down beside him. “Your grandmother was being silly—you know how silly she can be. Daddy and I love each other. We always will.”
About fifteen people are milling around on the front lawn, the usual Back Woods crowd, chatting, eating Kraft cheddar on Wheat Thins, drinking out of plastic cups. A makeshift bar has been set up on a round picnic table, citronella candles burning.
“Right, then,” Peter says. “Into the fray?”
The first person I see is Dixon’s wife Andrea. Even now, all these years later, every time I see her I think of that Monopoly game and Dixon walking across his living room naked. Dixon and Andrea got back together three years ago after running into each other at a rare-book auction. They were bidding against each other for a signed first edition of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Dixon says he didn’t recognize her at first, she was so changed. Andrea’s mass of curly red hair is now a tidy gray bob. She’s traded in her African tribal earrings for tasteful pearl studs, replaced her Peter Max dove button with a pink ribbon. Her son is an investment banker. He lives in Colorado and trades in clean energy, she says, as if that makes it ecologically acceptable. She still believes in world peace. Andrea is deep in conversation with Martha Currier, a fraying ex-jazz singer from New Orleans who has a modernist house overlooking the beach and is never without her turbaned head scarf. Martha is smoking a Virginia Slim through a long ivory cigarette holder. Andrea waves the smoke away from her face every time Martha exhales, but Martha ignores her and, if anything, seems to exhale more directly into Andrea’s face each time. I have always enjoyed Martha.