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  It was true that he hadn’t said much in the past hour, but that was only because he hadn’t wanted to wake the children, and therefore his mind had been wandering, floating around among ancient family matters as he stopped listening to what Amy and Gary were talking about up front, his body lulled by the rumbling of the tires below him, the old blur-in-the-head car sensation as they moved along at sixty miles an hour, but now that Francie had squeezed his hand and he was starting to pay closer attention, he gathered that the issue was politics, above all the assassination, which had happened just two months earlier and was still the subject no one could stop talking about, the obsessive conversations about who and why and how, since it scarcely seemed credible that Oswald had done it alone, and numerous alternative theories had already begun to circulate, Castro, the mob, the C.I.A., and even Johnson himself, the big-nosed Texan who had succeeded the man of the future, still an X factor as far as Amy was concerned, but Gary, who had been quick to make up his mind, called him a slippery character, an old-style backroom politician who wasn’t up to the job, and Amy, though she acknowledged he could have been right, nevertheless countered by bringing up Johnson’s speech from earlier that month, the announcement of the war against poverty, which was the best presidential speech of her lifetime, she said, and he had to admit that no one had ever stood up and said something like that since Roosevelt, not even Kennedy. Ferguson smiled as he heard Gary concede the point, and then his mind drifted away again as he started thinking about Amy, remarkable Amy who was making such a big hit with the Hollanders, who had won them over with the first handshake, the first hello, just as she had won him over at the Labor Day barbecue, and now that they were approaching the Vermont border, he could only pray that everything would work out as planned, that it wouldn’t be long before the two of them were naked under the covers again in a strange room in a strange house in the middle of a New England nowhere.

  The house was as big as advertised, and nowhere was the top of a hill that stood about ten miles from the ski resort. Three stories instead of the customary two, their weekend digs had been built sometime in the early nineteenth century, and every floorboard in that drafty wooden structure creaked. The creaking was a potential problem, since it turned out that Amy’s interpretation of Francie’s Of course had been the correct one, something Ferguson was obliged to admit when the six-person party made its first tour of the house, understanding that their hosts had never considered allowing them to sleep together in the same room, and therefore they would have to go with their backup plan, which Ferguson referred to as the French farce solution, the midnight frolics of doors opening and shutting on rusty hinges, of lovers creeping down darkened, unfamiliar hallways, of bodies crawling into beds they weren’t supposed to be in, and groaning floorboards were not going to aid them in their deceptions. Fortunately, Gary and Francie suggested that the big kids sleep in the two attic bedrooms so the little kids could spend the night on the same floor as their parents, who would be nearby in case of a bad dream (Rosa) or a bed-wetting incident (David). That would help, Ferguson thought. The creaking floorboards would be right on top of the others, of course, resonating throughout the ceilings below, but then again, people sometimes left their beds in the thick of night to stumble off to the bathroom, and in an old house like this one who could prevent the floors from making their horror-movie sound effects? With any luck, they would be able to pull it off. And if they had no luck, what was the worst that could happen to them? Nothing much, Ferguson said to himself, perhaps nothing at all.

  For the first little while, everything went smoothly. They had arranged the tryst for half past eleven, a full ninety minutes after the children had been tucked in and their weary parents had said good night, and at the appointed hour all was still in the house except for an occasional gust of wind pouring through the fissured walls and rattling the weathervane overhead. Planting his bare feet on the floor, Ferguson stood up from the iron cot and began the slow journey toward Amy’s room, tiptoeing cautiously over the loose planks, halting after any and all squeaks emitted by the wood, then counting to five before hazarding the next step. He had left the door ajar to avoid having to turn the knob, which eliminated the risk of creating a sudden, too-loud noise from the latch, and while the hinges were indeed a bit rusty, they proved to be quieter than the wind. Next the hallway, with the fourteen additional steps that phase of the journey required, and then the gentle push against Amy’s door, which had been left ajar as well, and at last he was in.

  The bed was exceedingly narrow, but Amy was naked in that bed, and once he stripped off his jockey shorts and slipped in beside her, Ferguson was naked in that bed, too, and everything felt so good to him, so perfectly in accord with how he imagined it would feel, that for once in his life the real and the imagined were identical, absolutely and as never before one and the same thing, which had to make it the happiest moment of his life so far, he believed, since Ferguson was not someone who subscribed to the notion that desire fulfilled was desire disappointed, at least not in this case, where wanting Amy was no good now without having Amy, no good without having Amy want him, and the miracle was that she did want him, and therefore desire fulfilled was in fact desire fulfilled, the chance to spend a few moments in the ephemeral kingdom of earthly grace.

  They had learned so much during that tumultuous weekend two months earlier, fumbling at first because they had known next to nothing about almost everything, but gradually achieving a certain knowledge about what they were trying to do, not an advanced knowledge, perhaps, but at least the rudiments of how the other’s body worked, for without that knowledge there could be no true pleasure, especially for Amy, who had to teach the ignorant Ferguson about the various ways in which women differed from men, and now that Ferguson was beginning to get the hang of it, he felt calmer and more confident than he had in New York, which made everything better this time, so much better that after a few minutes in the pitch-black dark of that room in Vermont they had stopped thinking about where they were.

  The bed was an old iron bed with a thin mattress poised on top of two dozen coiled springs, and like the wooden floor that supported the bed, it creaked. It creaked under the weight of one body, but when two bodies began to move around on that mattress together, it thundered. The noise made Ferguson think of a steam locomotive traveling at seventy miles an hour, whereas Amy found the noise similar to the one made by a printing press churning out half a million copies for the morning edition of a tabloid newspaper. Either way, the noise was too loud for the delicate French farce they had written in their heads, and now that they had begun to hear the noise, there was no longer anything in their heads but the noise, the infernal screech of their frantic coupling, and yet how to stop themselves when they were on the brink, tottering on the very precipice of desire fulfilled? They couldn’t, and therefore the two of them went on until they had both fallen off the edge, and when the locomotive stopped moving and they could hear something other than the noise, they heard another noise coming from the floor below, the wail of a startled, frightened child, no doubt the little one, David, who had been jolted from sleep by the ruckus they had made upstairs, and a moment after that they heard the sound of footsteps, no doubt Francie’s, mother Francie going in to comfort her boy as father Gary snored on, at which point the horrified and embarrassed Ferguson leapt out of Amy’s bed and scampered back to his room, and thus the curtain came thudding down on their Grand Boulevard entertainment.

  At seven-thirty the next morning, Ferguson walked into the kitchen and found Rosa and David sitting at the table, banging the surface with knives and forks as they cried out in unison: We want pancakes! We want pancakes! Gary was sitting across from them, quietly drinking a cup of coffee and smoking his first Parliament of the day. Francie, on her feet by the stove, flashed an irritated look at her cousin and then returned to the job of cooking scrambled eggs. Amy was nowhere in sight, which probably meant she was still asleep in her little bed upstairs.

/>   Gary put down his coffee and said: We promised them pancakes yesterday, but then we forgot to pack the stuff to make them with. As you can see, they’re not too happy with the idea of scrambled eggs.

  Red-headed Rosa and blond-haired David continued to attack the table with their knives and forks, timing the blows to the drumbeat of their favorite chant: Wé wánt páncákes!

  There must be a store somewhere around here, Ferguson said.

  Down the hill, then left for three or four miles, Gary answered, blowing out a large puff of smoke that seemed to suggest he had no intention of driving there himself. I’ll go, Francie said, as she transferred the now finished eggs from the frying pan into a large white bowl. Archie and I will go together, won’t we, Archie?

  Anything you say, Ferguson replied, somewhat startled by the vehemence of Francie’s question, which didn’t sound like a question so much as a command. She was angry at him. First the hostile look when he walked into the kitchen and now the aggressive tone in her voice, which could only mean she was still thinking about last night’s attic commotion, the damned locomotive bed that had blasted the little one awake on the second floor, an inexcusable offense he had hoped she would tactfully pretend to have forgotten, and although Ferguson knew he should apologize to her right then and there, he was too embarrassed to say a word. Going out to buy pancake mix and maple syrup had nothing to do with appeasing the children. That was her excuse, but the real motive was to get him alone with her for a little while in order to scold him, to have it out with him.

  Meanwhile, the children were clapping and cheering, celebrating their victory by blowing kisses to their valiant mother, who was about to brave the cold and the snow on their behalf. Gary, who seemed oblivious to what was going on, or at least indifferent to it, put out his cigarette and dug into the scrambled eggs. After one bite, he filled up his fork again and held it out to David, who leaned forward and took it into his mouth. Then a forkful for Rosa, followed by another forkful for himself. Pretty good, he said, don’t you think? Yummy, said Rosa. Yummy in the tummy! said David, who laughed at his own joke and then opened his mouth for another bite. Watching this scene as he laced up his boots and put on his winter jacket, Ferguson thought of two infant birds at feeding time. Worms or scrambled eggs, he said to himself, the hunger was the same hunger, and the open mouths were the same open mouths, stretched open as far as they could go. Pancakes, yes, but first a little something to get the morning off to a good start.

  There were real birds outside, a speckled brown sparrow, an olive-green female cardinal with a dull scarlet crest, a red-winged blackbird—sudden splotches of color darting across the white-gray sky, a few bits of breathing life in the austere winter morning—and as Ferguson and his cousin crossed the snow-covered yard and climbed into the blue station wagon, he found it a pity that the weekend was about to be spoiled by a senseless argument. He and Francie had never argued in all the years they had known each other, not one unkind word had ever passed between them, their mutual devotion had been constant and unbending, the one deep friendship he had formed with any relative on that side of his family, the fractured clan of crazy, destructive Fergusons, only he and Francie among all the cousins and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles had been able to avoid those stupid animosities, and it pained him to think she might turn on him now.

  It was a cold morning, but not exceptionally cold for that time of year, four or five notches below freezing, and the engine kicked over with the first turn of the key. As they sat there waiting for the car to warm up, Ferguson asked if she would prefer that he do the driving instead. He wouldn’t have his license until he turned seventeen in another six weeks or so, but he had his learner’s permit, and given that she was a licensed driver who happened to be in the car with him, it was perfectly legal for them to switch places. Ferguson added that he was a good driver, and for many months now his parents had been letting him handle the chauffeuring duties whenever he had to go somewhere with them, either singly or together, and neither his mother nor his father had ever complained about the results. Francie smiled a tight little smile and said she was sure he was an excellent driver, probably a better driver than she was, but she was behind the wheel now, and they were about to get started, and going down the hill could be a bit tricky for someone who had never driven on a dirt road, and so she would do the driving, thank you, and once they got to the store and bought the things they needed to buy, maybe they could switch places for the ride back home.

  As it happened, there was no ride back home. They couldn’t return from Miller’s General Store because they never managed to reach the store, and on that morning, which Ferguson would always think of as the morning of mornings, both cousins paid a price for that interrupted journey in the mountains of Vermont, especially Ferguson, who wound up paying for it long into the future, and while no one held him responsible for the accident (how could he be responsible if he wasn’t driving the car?), he nevertheless blamed himself for causing Francie to turn her eyes from the road, for if she hadn’t glanced over to look at him instead, she never would have skidded on that patch of ice and crashed into the tree.

  The point was that he knew better than to allow himself to be drawn into the argument. Francie had every right to feel annoyed with him, and he decided the best course of action would be to say as little as possible to her, to nod his head and agree with whatever harsh judgment she pronounced on him, to resist the temptation to defend himself. Let her be angry, he thought, but as long as he could prevent that anger from inciting an anger of his own, perhaps the confrontation would be short and small and soon forgotten.

  Or so Ferguson thought. His mistake was to assume that the central issue was the noise, the indiscretion of that noise and the selfishness he had shown by inflicting it on the others, but the noise was only part of it, the least part of it, and once he understood that the attack was far bigger than the one he had prepared himself for, he was caught with his guard down, and when Francie lashed out at him, he lashed back at her.

  She managed to navigate the car down the mile-long hill without any trouble, but when she came to the bottom and paused, she turned right instead of left, and since Gary had said the store was to the left, Ferguson mentioned it to her, but Francie merely strummed her fingers on the steering wheel and said not to worry about it, Gary had no sense of direction, he was always mixing things up, and if he said they should go left, that must have meant they should go right. It was a funny thing to say, Ferguson thought, but the words didn’t sound funny when they came out of Francie’s mouth, they sounded bitter and slightly contemptuous, as if Francie were peeved at Gary about something, or peeved at someone else about some other thing, her brother Jack, for instance, who was rarely in touch with her anymore, or her pain-in-the-neck father, who had just lost another job and was on unemployment again, or perhaps all three men at the same time, which would have made Ferguson the fourth man she was on the outs with that morning, and the fact that she had indeed taken the wrong turn and was driving farther and farther away from the store didn’t help to soften her mood when she discovered her mistake, which meant that the second half of the interrupted journey was spent on a series of twisting back roads in search of a route back to the county highway where they had started, and in the frazzle of bad temper and frustration that descended upon his normally uncombative first cousin, Francie finally got down to the business that had prompted them to leave the house in the first place and let him have it.

  How sad, she said, how sad and disappointing it was to discover that her darling boy had turned into a lying cheat, that he was just another crumb in a long line of crumbs, and how dare he use her in the way he had, dragging his girlfriend up to Vermont in order to fuck her behind everyone’s back, it was disgusting, two horny kids charming everyone on the ride up and then sneaking around in the attic at night, fucking on top of two little children, and how could he do this to her, she who had loved him since the day he was born, she who had ba
thed him and cared for him and watched him grow up, and what was she supposed to say to his mother, who had let him go to Vermont because she knew he would be safe with his cousin, there was trust involved in all this, she said, and how could he break that trust under her very roof, an out-of-control teenager who couldn’t even keep it in his pants for one night, and the truth was she didn’t want him there anymore, she would put him and his slut girlfriend on the bus this afternoon and send them back to New York, and good-bye and good riddance to them both …