"Done," my mother says, and I don't know if she means her slice of pie or the conversation or our old house. She taps the edge of my plate insistently and goes inside. I slide my pie onto the floor, and Ginger makes it disappear in an instant.
My mother calls from the kitchen. "Let's arrange furniture," she says.
The parents are asked to stand at the base of the hill to wait for the campers to bring their duffel bags down. "I hate this part," one of the mothers says, folding and refolding her arms across her chest. I always felt that it was a good way to avoid the crazed parental scrum, but today I'm wild to run up the long drive to cabin 14, where my junior-counselor son has been sleeping amid a dozen little boys. "He'll never want to have kids after this," a voice trills sarcastically in the back of my mind, and I realize it's Ruby's. I want to talk back to her, but there are so many people around. A tall man with colorless hair combed over an evaporating hairline shoulders his way toward me. "Alex's mom?" he says. "Colin's dad. It's good to meet you in person. I think I met your husband two summers ago." He looks up the hill. "Any sign of them?"
A trickle of small boys begins to appear. Behind them comes a pickup piled high with duffels. "Brendan! Brendan!" calls one of the mothers. A faint aurora of camera flashes lights the line of descending campers. One of the boys falls, and a man darts forward. "You're okay," he says in an insistent voice. "You're okay." Colin's dad and I drift to the back of the crowd, trading forgotten first names. His is Jack. We agree that it seems unlikely that our boys were ever this small. Alex told me Colin wears a size 14 shoe. I look down at Jack's moccasins. Heredity.
"Were we this crazy?" I whisper, watching the parents of the younger boys.
"I wasn't. My wife was."
I look around. "Where is she?"
Jack shrugs. Perhaps it's a family trait, like shoe size. "She's at home. She wasn't feeling well."
"Oh, no," I say, and I suddenly, almost explosively find myself fighting tears. This happens to me from time to time now, usually because of someone else's misfortune. The morning I came upon a fawn with its legs smashed on the shoulder of the road--that had begun a crying jag that lasted for a long time.
"Justin!" a mother calls as the line of campers grows into a jostling crowd.
"Look," Colin's dad says, and at the top of the hill I see Alex. As he walks, a small boy runs up behind him and grabs his hand, and Alex grins, turns back to call something. "There's Colin," his father says warmly, and a giant of a boy runs to Alex's other side.
"How tall is he?"
"Six-three," Jack says. "We hope he's almost done."
"Wow!" I say.
"That's my counselor, Mommy," I hear one of the little boys cry in that high, birdlike little-boy voice. Chirping, we used to call it when Max told a story. Alex had a lower voice. "Hey, lady," he calls as he draws near. When he squeezes me, he feels like a grown-up in my arms, long-boned and strong. Every summer I'm sure he has changed, but this summer I'm certain of it.
"Where's Mom?" Colin asks sharply.
"Waiting at home," says his father. "Making you dinner." Subtext, subtext. If I had been able to do this a year ago, to hear the words that were not being spoken, would everything have been different?
My eyes fill again. "I missed you so much," I say, my mouth against Alex's shoulder.
The little boy is still stuck close to his side. "Hey, Charlie," Alex says, "this is my mom." Charlie waves. His thumb creeps toward his mouth, then goes into his pocket like a temptation placed well out of sight. Alex walks with him to the office. When he emerges, he looks grim. He and Colin give each other handshakes that turn into back slaps that turn into hard hugs. "I am definitely coming to visit, man," Colin says.
"Yeah, that's dubious, dude. You say that every year."
On the car ride home I tell Alex about the storm, how the rain had blinded me, how I careened into the house we're now renting. I explain that his grandmother came to help me, and his grandfather inspected the roof, but that I had done the painting and the floors myself, and that I suspected it had done me more good than weight lifting or jogging. "That's dubious," he says.
"So 'dubious' was this year's camp word?" I finally ask.
"I guess," he says, and then he falls asleep, slumped to one side. When he wakes up at a truck stop he says, "You know that kid Charlie? His parents sent him to camp from England. I had to sleep in his bunk the first week because he cried every night. Now he has to fly back all by himself, with some sign around his neck with, like, his name and phone number and stuff. His parents must be total assholes."
"Language," I say. There are usually two or three intensely profane days after camp before the habits of civilization are relearned. As we stand in line for hot dogs I say, "I don't think the camp should have agreed to that. That's inhuman."
"What?"
"Charlie. England."
"Totally dubious, right?"
When we turn onto the road, I begin to talk too fast--about how Ben's house is a short walk through the woods, about how I have left the room next to Alex's empty so he can use it for whatever he wants, about how well I think the chimney will draw. I'm breathless by the time we get down the drive and turn in front of the front porch. I've put rockers along it. I had placed them in a row yesterday, then realized there were five and took one out to the screened porch and put it in a corner. When I open the front door, Ginger leaps out and puts her paws on Alex's chest, licking frantically at his stubbly chin. He takes her paws in his hands and dances with her, then sits down on one of the rockers and rubs behind her ears.
"Do you like it here, good girl? Do you? Is this a good place?" Ginger rolls onto her back and pedals with her paws as he scratches her belly. "Plenty of squirrels, huh?" He looks up and shakes his head. "That's a monster tree," he says.
The phone rings once, twice, three times, but I ignore it as he circles the interior of the house, looks out the windows, opens the refrigerator. When we get to his room, which I've painted a soft gray, he asks, "Is that my bed? From the house?"
"Yeah," I say. "The movers brought it over."
He sits on the edge. There are new sheets, a new quilt. It looks like a new bed. It's nearly new.
"Cool," he says.
I have an enormous casserole in the oven, chicken tetrazzini just the way he likes it, without the mushrooms, and a big plate of brownies. He takes a shower like he does every time he comes home from camp, where, I've been told, the water is too cold, too hard, too much of a trickle, where the towels always smell of mildew and someone is always taking the decent soap. He takes a long, long shower, and I turn the oven on.
"Can Elizabeth come over?" he asks when he comes downstairs smelling of lemons.
"Of course," I say a little too heartily. Elizabeth has never come to the house before. I was formally introduced at graduation. I was happy to see that she was wearing a pretty floral dress, neither too low nor too short.
And suddenly, before I know it, Elizabeth is standing on the screened porch with her best friend, who tells me her name is Allison Holzberg, and three boys from the soccer team, who will be seniors this year, one of them Allison's boyfriend, all of them Alex's teammates. I spread quilts on the back lawn and put the food out on the kitchen counter and make a salad and open some applesauce. And in an instant, just in an instant, with the slamming of screen doors and the crunch of car wheels on gravel and the tintinnabulation of silver on china, our house is that house once more--the house where the kids come, and go, and come again. I feel something strange inside and wish I could catch it somehow and put it in a jar, like fireflies, with holes in the top so it can breathe.
"You really should have Colin come visit," I say as I pour lemonade into paper cups.
"My best friend from camp," he tells the others. "With, you know, Ben. He's dubious, dudes. Totally dubious."
All the casserole and all the brownies are eaten, even though the two girls have eaten very little of either. They help me carry the plastic plates into the kitchen. I'
ve never done a big load of dishes here before, and I let them help me load the dishwasher because this is the first time I've used it and I'm not yet accustomed to some specific way of doing it. "Are you a sophomore, too, Allison?" I ask in my friendly-mother voice, which sounds slightly false from disuse.
"I am, Mrs. Latham," she says. "And I don't know if you remember, but I was at your house last Halloween. Your other house. You know. The old house." Her voice is wavering, and I inject, "Tell me your costume. Then I'll remember. There were so many of you guys there."
"Annie Oakley?" she says, and suddenly I do remember her, her hair in braids, chaps hugging her legs, a huge cowboy hat.
"You were adorable," I say. But I can't bring myself to promise that there will be a party again this year. "Trick or treat," I hear Max say, and I turn back to the sink.
The boys are talking in the yard, and when we're done in the kitchen they scramble to their feet and come inside. For some reason, they take up more room than the size of their bodies would suggest. The girls don't displace much space; I've noticed this before. But with the guys inside the room is suddenly crowded, and I notice how small it is. Alex is as tall as the older ones, although his shoulders and his waist are not as broad.
"You ready?" Alex says to Elizabeth.
"Where are you going?"
"To Tony's for ice cream."
"Ice cream?" I say. "Didn't you all have enough to eat?"
"There's never enough to eat," growls one of the boys, who the others call Moose. He's the son of the orthodontist who put in Max's palate expander. We were waiting until this year to see if it would resolve his crowding problem and make braces unnecessary.
"Plus we'll get to see everybody, hang out, whatever. Come on."
Suddenly Alex has moved up into a different teenage gene pool, the one in cars. I wish Glen were here to tell me what to do.
"Who's driving?" I ask.
"God, Mom. Come on."
"Dude, it's cool," says Terrence, who is one of the captains of the team. "It's me, Mrs. Latham. And I'm eighteen, so I've already been driving for two years. No tickets, no accidents. Swear." And suddenly they're all in the car, and I'm waving, and in an instant there is nothing but the dishwasher's hum and the spotty thump of night insects hitting the screens and the silence that presses on me like a low ceiling. I try to hold on to the moment, the feeling, the noise and life in the house, but it is gone, at least for now.
I go back into the kitchen and there is an inch of water on the old linoleum. "Oh, goddamnit!" I yell, scrabbling under the sink for the water valve. Mop, bucket, towels. In the morning, I have to call the plumber.
By eleven, I've cleaned up the mess and done all the dishes by hand. The casserole dish soaks in the sink. I throw Alex's duffel bag down to the basement; I know from past years that there will be nothing in it except clothes so filthy with mud and sweat that some of the shorts and nearly all of the socks will simply have to be pitched. I could start the wash now, but the basement is damp and dimly lit, and there are centipedes that undulate up the stone walls. Suddenly I realize I am exhausted and drained, that my body hurts as though I have been planting, exercising, running. I sit on the porch for a while, looking out at nothing. It is a moonless night, and the tree line has merged into the black night sky. I go inside and turn on the television, pick up a book, pretend to be doing something when what I am doing is listening for the sound of a car on the road, tires grabbing at the loose gravel. Midnight is Alex's curfew. I am sure he will ask to have it extended this year, but I won't agree. Ruby had midnight for the first two years of high school, then 12:30, then finally 1 A.M. senior year. The only exceptions were special occasions: birthday parties, prom. New Year's Eve, of course. Ruby was allowed to come in late on New Year's Eve. Another mistake.
By one o'clock, I've started to do the laundry because I can't sit still and when I read I have no idea what I have just read. It sounds as though the weather is changing; there's the sharp intermittent whistling of a storm wind through the trees. I've called Alex's cell phone twice, but when I empty his duffel onto the concrete floor of the basement I find it amid a welter of T-shirts, its battery dead. I wonder if I should call Elizabeth's parents, but her last name is Jackson and I know there are at least three or four families in town by that name, and I don't know which is hers. I think of calling Olivia to get Terrence's phone number from the team list, then remember that Olivia is in London, on vacation with Ted and the boys. I could call her cell phone--it is morning in England, blessed safe morning--but I don't think she travels with the team list. I check with information and get a number for the sole Holzberg family in the area, which must be Allison's, but then I can't make myself call. I remember how this would occasionally happen, how the mother of one of Ruby's friends would phone and wake us, stammering apologies. No, I would say, Ruby was home, in bed, had been for some time. I wonder if Deborah had ever wanted to call looking for Kiernan, whether she had started to dial the old familiar number and then hung up.
At quarter to two I'm in the basement, putting the first load in the dryer, imagining Alex as the car hits a tree, as the ambulance sirens sound, when I hear a noise from above and Ginger barks. I take the stairs quickly, stumbling on the top one, and go to the door. The SUV is idling, and Alex slides from the backseat, calling something to the guys inside. I stand in the doorway with my arms crossed over my chest. With the overhead light just above me, I must look like an avenging angel.
"Where the hell have you been?" I ask.
Alex goes right into the kitchen, and I hear the water running. When he comes back into the living room, his eyes are half shadowed by his hair, but I can see that they're red. I step closer and smell beer.
"What the hell are you thinking?" I shout.
"Nobody can even find this place," he says, blinking and slurring. "Like, even at the gas station they didn't know how to get here. They never even heard of it. None of the guys ever even heard of it. Hidden Valley Road? What the hell? I bet the cops never even heard of it."
"It's Hidden Cottage Road, Alex. Hidden Cottage."
"Oh, great. I don't even know the name of my own street. That's great. I don't even know where I live."
"You're grounded," I say.
"I don't even know where my house is." He looks around and does a little two-step because swiveling his head has left him off balance. "Is this my house? I don't know. Where the hell am I?"
"Go to bed, Alex," I say. "We can talk in the morning, when you're sober."
"Where's my bed? Huh? Where's my bed?"
"Go upstairs."
He goes upstairs and shuts the door, and I hear a heavy thump and know he will be asleep atop the new comforter, the new sheets, with his clothes and his shoes on. I'm twitchy with the adrenaline buzz I've always gotten after a fight with my children. One night, after a midnight dispute with Ruby over the smell of pot in her hair, I rearranged the kitchen cabinets. Glen had come down after an hour, watched what I was doing, then gone back to bed. He could yell at the kids and be asleep again in a minute. That was what I had thought would happen on New Year's Eve.
I wish Glen were here. I want to take a pill to sleep, but now I can't, never can again. How can I allow myself to be insensible on nights like this one, insensible to what happens elsewhere? I've already done too much of that. When I packed up our things in the guesthouse, I crawled beneath the bed in which Alex slept to remove the baby monitor, but it was already gone. For months I'd been sleeping with the receiver, thinking I was hearing the sound of peaceful sleep, when I'd been hearing nothing at all.
I lie in bed. There's no light from outside on the ceiling. Once, I start to doze and am awakened by the throaty bark of some animal outside. Ginger is sleeping in Alex's room; I picture her opening her eyes, raising her head, then settling herself again. Later, I wake from a half-sleep to hear retching from the bathroom across the hall. I turn over and look at the digital clock on the floor in a corner of the half-furnished room.
It's just after four, that cursed hour when night has worn itself out but morning is forever away. One of the babies always used to wake then, wanting to be nursed, but I'm not certain which one. I only remember the inexorability of the darkness. I lie still for a few minutes, then sigh and go downstairs to make coffee and nurse it on the porch as the dryer tumbles and the sun struggles to rise again. There is one last load of wash to do, all jeans, and I empty Alex's pockets, hoping I won't find a joint or a condom. It's been a long night.
But, incredibly, all his pockets are empty except for a stray M & M and a key that I don't recognize. Last of all are the jeans he wore home from camp, and in the back pocket I find his wallet. Without qualm, I open it and look inside. Seven dollars. His school ID card. A picture of Elizabeth holding some sort of certificate, smiling and squinting. Glen's college yearbook photograph, black-and-white and blurred in the fashion of the time. I'd wondered where that picture had gone. Behind it is a piece of unlined paper, folded into a small square so that when it's open the folds are furry and thin. It looks as though it may fall apart soon into a handful of tiny rectangles.
Of course I recognize Ruby's pretty, slightly mannered writing, the enormous curving tails of the Ys, the crossing of the Ts extravagant. She always wrote that way when she copied the final draft of a poem, still young enough to believe that you could change your penmanship and thus change yourself. It is the poem she wrote for Alex for Christmas. I don't know where Max's wound up. Maybe it's in his wallet, too, wherever his wallet might be. Maybe someday I will open a box and find it.
Oh, bear,
I see you in your wooly coat
Moving swiftly on your big paws.
I know there is a small voice inside of you,
Asking for honey.
But when you try to speak,
They just hear a growly sound.
Only you know what you are saying.
I read it over and over. The sun rises. The porch grows warm. I fold the last of the laundry, read the poem again, refold it, and put Alex's wallet on the kitchen counter. I want to copy it, but it seems wrong somehow, and that night in bed I realize that I have committed it to memory without even trying.