Which was surprising. He hadn’t expected the name to register, and that it did immediately made him curious. “Are we talking about the same people? I must’ve been eleven or twelve and-”
“Twelve. They were in the cottage across the way. There was a horrible muddy playground in the center of things, and they were diagonal. Near Orleans, wasn’t it? Anyway, I wouldn’t put your father there. Think North Shore. Find some calm, brackish water and pour him in. He’d prefer it. Actually, the Canal isn’t such a bad idea-”
“Mom, about the Brownings-”
“You abandoned your father and me the entire two weeks. All we heard about was Steven Browning. Your father thought it meant you were gay.”
“Peter,” he corrected her, annoyed that both Tommy and his father had leapt to the same erroneous conclusion. Was loneliness in a twelve-year-old so difficult to diagnose?
“Don’t you remember how you melted down that last night when we insisted you spend it with us?”
“You insisted?”
“And the tantrum you threw at the restaurant? The Dry Martini? No, that’s not right. The Something Martini, it was called. Anyway, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how I sat up with you all night, trying to console you?”
“You’re making this up, right?”
“And the next morning you refused to get in the car. God, what a little pill you were.”
“There was something wrong with the little Browning girl, wasn’t there? Peter’s sister.”
“Asthma, I believe. Something respiratory. The sea air was supposed to be good for her, but she ended up dying. And then of course Steven in Vietnam.”
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your friend Steven Browning dying in Vietnam.”
“Mom, he’s Peter. And anyway, how in the world would you know what happened to him or his sister? We never went back there. We never saw any of them again.”
“We exchanged addresses before we left, don’t you remember? Steven wanted to keep in touch. He wrote you several letters, but you refused to write back. We got Christmas cards for a couple of years. The mother wrote when the little girl died, and then later about Steven. You were gone by then.”
“Why would you remember all this, Mom?”
“Why shouldn’t I remember things?”
“It’s unlike you. Especially people like the Brownings. You and Dad looked down your noses at them.”
He expected her to deny this accusation, but she didn’t, which meant she either hadn’t really heard it or preferred not to. Maddening, the way she blithely shopped among his conversational offerings, as if she were at a fruit bin looking for an unbruised pear. “Wait till you’re my age and memory is all you have.”
It was on the tip of Griffin ’s tongue to say that, based on this conversation, he wasn’t sure she had even that.
“Happy memories in particular you hold on to.”
“That was a happy memory? That vacation?”
“Well, it wasn’t unhappy The wheels hadn’t come off yet for your father and me. He hadn’t started the cheating yet.”
“Of course he had. You both had.”
“Not the really nasty, vindictive stuff. We were still in love, despite everything.”
“That’s how you remember it?”
“That’s how it was.”
“I need to get back to the wedding, Mom.”
“You haven’t told me what you think.”
“About what?”
“About the North Shore, though I have to admit your Canal idea is growing on me.”
“Why would you care, Mom? Could you answer me that?”
“Because if you put him on the North Shore, you can scatter me on the South.”
“Mom, we’ve had a lot of ridiculous conversations over the years, but this is one for the record books.”
“Remember how I taught you to bodysurf?”
“Peter Browning taught me to bodysurf. Him and his dad.”
“No. They all knew how, and you were embarrassed because you didn’t. You were scared to try. Your father was frightened of the undertow, so it was up to me.”
“Gotta go, Mom.”
“I’d just feel better if the Cape was between us, me on one side and him on the other.”
By the time Griffin returned to the tent he’d missed the bride and groom’s first dance. Kelsey was now dancing with her father, clearly for the first time ever, and her new husband with his mother.
“What now?” Joy said.
He told her about his mother’s insistence about where all the ashes should go. “I think she’s losing her mind. She’s rewriting history. Inventing memories.”
Under the table he felt Joy take his hand, perhaps in sympathy for having to deal with his mother, but more likely because Laura and Andy had joined the others on the makeshift dance floor, where they looked like what they were, two young people who’d waited what had seemed like forever to find each other. Now they clung tightly together in the understanding of how lucky they were, that in another equally plausible scenario they wouldn’t have met, still be alone, still looking. It was hard to take your eyes off them, and for Griffin the pleasure of watching them would have been pure and fully sufficient if Sunny hadn’t also been in his line of sight. He tried not to look at him, at least not directly, tried not to think of him as the boy standing by himself at that long-ago birthday party, pretending not to be alone. But somehow that opened the door to another unpleasant, totally unrelated thought. Was it possible his mother was right, that Peter Browning had been killed in Vietnam? Griffin felt something like panic rise at the possibility, a physical sensation at the back of his throat. But really, it was highly unlikely, he told himself. The son of two teachers, he’d have gone to college and gotten a deferment, as Griffin himself had done. By the time his own deferment ran out, the war was over, and it would have worked out the same way for Peter. His mother had sounded certain on the phone, but then she always did, never more so than when she was dead wrong. If somebody asked her tomorrow what the Browning boy’s name was, she’d answer Steven, and she’d be sure about that, too. Was it really possible that she remembered sitting up all night in that cottage trying to comfort him? When had she ever done anything like that? And they definitely hadn’t gone to the Blue Martini that night. What she was remembering was that that’s where she and his father had planned to go before he screwed things up. But asthma for Peter’s sister sounded right, and he supposed she might have died. But had Peter actually written to him, as his mother claimed? That was how it went with all her recollections. She’d get just enough details right to make you doubt your own memory, but in the end her stories never tracked. They played out like his still-unread student story, the one now with missing pages.
When the DJ segued from the first slow dance into an earsplitting Bon Jovi tune, the lesbians, howling with laughter, as if this were the best joke yet, leapt from their chairs and skipped, their arms windmilling, onto the dance floor. “I hope you don’t imagine you’re going to be allowed to sit here on your hands, mister,” Joy shouted, rising from her chair. Across the table, Marguerite was prodding stolid Harold to his feet as well.
“Okay, but hold on a minute,” Griffin said. Because if Marguerite succeeded in dragging Harold out for a dance, and he and Joy went, too, that would leave Sunny sitting there with the stroke victim, and he couldn’t bear for that to happen.
But then their beautiful daughter appeared and took Sunny by both hands and was pulling him to his feet. He was shaking his head no, saying no, he was fine, but Laura wasn’t about to let go, so he had no choice but to be led onto the dance floor, where they joined Andy and the lesbians and the bride and groom and all the other fits and misfits.
“I know. She’s wonderful,” Joy said, reading his mind, as they, along with Marguerite and Harold, joined everyone in the crowded center of the throbbing tent. “You worry too much, you know that?” she said, nodding at Sunny, who was holding his own with the other young people. A little stiff, maybe, but better than Griffin would have predicted. He’d unbuttoned his suit jacket and lowered his tie enough to unbutton the top button of his shirt. He probably would never do anything with abandon. Dancing was too much like instant messaging, and Sunny would always fear spontaneity. But he felt the music, you could tell, and he even had some moves. Had he anticipated this moment and taken lessons, studying fun much as he’d studied political science and molecular biology at Stanford, practicing, as he’d done as a boy at home, how to tell Griffin they had a lovely home?