artists should have phones in their cabins. We’ll have to wait till dinner for food, and I’m famished myself and could also use a thermos of strong black coffee. Or maybe I missed something in the basket. Do you hear me, Gwen? I think I might’ve missed some food in the basket and am going outside to check.” She doesn’t say anything. “Boy, when you’re mad, you really stay mad. How long you going to hold that grudge?” No answer. “Okay, I get the message,” and he goes outside and looks in the basket. There are two jars of jam and a knife to spread it with, and underneath a cloth napkin, two warm rolls. The puppy, though, he thinks…where’d it go? He looks around sees it standing waist-deep in the water. It leans its head back, holds a large thrashing fish above its mouth and then drops it in and swallows it whole. …They’re in their van traveling north. He’s driving, Gwen’s in the seat beside him, and Rosalind’s sitting behind them. “Did you know,” Rosalind says, “—Daddy, are you listening to me?” and he says yes. “Mommy, can you hear me?” and he says “Shh, she’s asleep; don’t wake her.” “Then did you know, Daddy, that the very road we’re on, the Merritt Parkway, was originally built — I believe, more than eighty years ago, and this was a new concept in road-building — so people in the city could take leisurely weekend drives in the country and admire the scenery on the road? In other words — and I learned all this, strangely enough, in a college lit course — the road was not just to be used utilitarianly to get from one place to another in the most direct route possible and in the shortest period of time, but to—” “What’s that?” he says, and she says “I was saying—” and he says “No, that loud cracking sound outside. What is it? Grief, I bet I ran over something that’s going to mess up the car’s undercarriage, or something important’s fallen off the car. I just know the goddamn trip’s now ruined,” and he looks back through the rear window and sees a tree coming down on a car about fifty feet behind him. “Oh, my gosh,” he yells, and Rosalind says “I know; I saw. It missed us by a second and a half.” “Three to five seconds, I’d say, but what luck. ‘Luck’ that it didn’t fall on us and we weren’t killed. The poor people in the car, though.” And he sees in the rearview mirror the tree on top of the car’s squashed roof. “Gwen,” he says, “Gwen,” and shakes her arm. “Wake up, wake up. You’re not going to believe this close call we just had.” “Shouldn’t we stop?’ Rosalind says, and he says “Stop for what? What could we possibly do?” “Help them. I mean, there’s nobody on the road behind us; we could simply turn around.” “You want to actually look in that car?” “What are you guys talking about?” Gwen says, and he says “Look behind you; you can still see it. A tree. We were the last to get through. First I heard the cracking sound of it splitting in two, I assume, and then falling. Or just splitting off from its base; I didn’t hear it fall. No whoosh sound; anything like that. Not even a crash. Maybe all the brush on the tree softened the sound of it hitting the ground. But I knew something was wrong. I thought it was our car, the underside of it, but the tree landed on the one right behind us. Rosalind says we missed getting hit by a second and a half. It was so tall, it fell across the entire road. The cars behind it will be stuck there for two hours at least till the car’s pulled out of the way and tree’s cut up and removed. That’s because — well, you can see for yourself — the barriers in the median strip, so they can’t turn around and go back. It’s just going to fill and fill with cars till the last exit we passed. I can’t believe we were so lucky, not only not getting hit but not getting stuck. I can’t believe it. It’s just so hard to believe.” “I think we should call 911,” Gwen says, and he says “Do we have a cell phone?” “You know we don’t, but we could get off this road and call from the nearest service station.” “By that time — by even now, probably — a few hundred people in cars backed up behind the tree, and others going the opposite way who drove past it, have called from their cell phones. Really, let’s just go on and pretend it never happened. Or not pretend, so much, but not constantly talk about it. I’m upset, and talking about it is upsetting me more.” “Me too, in a way,” Rosalind says. “It’s only now sinking in.” “I suppose it’s a good thing I was asleep,” Gwen says. She puts her hand over his on the steering wheel. “Don’t let it upset you so much that it affects your driving.” “I’ll try not to,” he says, “but I think the damage has been done. I’ll just stay in the right lane for the time being and drive slow.” …He pulls into their driveway. Several cars are parked on it and the kitchen door’s wide open and the storm door’s been taken off and set to the side. Something’s wrong, he thinks. Gwen. But no ambulance or cop car or anything like that, so he’s probably mistaken. Or the kids. Something could have happened to one of them, or even both, in the city they live in together, and the people in the house are consoling Gwen. But the storm door. Another bad sign? Taken off to get a gurney through, so it was Gwen. He gets out of the car and rushes into the house. Their daughters and Gwen’s father and her best friend from New York are in the kitchen along with some older women he doesn’t remember ever seeing. “It’s Gwen,” her friend says, taking his hand and rubbing the knuckles. “Be brave, Martin. Be strong.