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Abby said, “What?”
“Substitute teaching. Well, this past spring I was.”
“Don’t you need a college degree for that?”
“No, as a matter of fact. Although I have one.”
Everyone looked at Abby, waiting for her next question. It didn’t come. She sat staring across at the Nelsons’ house with something tense and set about her mouth. Finally, Jea
“Yes,” De
“How did you do that?”
“Same way anyone does it, I guess.”
They looked again at Abby. She stayed silent.
“Well, you never did much like building things,” Stem said after a moment. “I remember from back when you were working with Dad in the summers.”
“I’ve got nothing against building things; I just couldn’t stand the customers,” De
“Wine cellars! Ha!” Stem said. “And dog-washing stations in their garages.”
“Dog-washing stations?”
“Lady up in Ruxton.”
De
“Mother Whitshank?” Nora asked. “Can I get you anything? A little more iced tea?”
“No, thanks,” Abby said shortly.
The grandchildren were migrating now from the backyard to the front, and Sammy even invaded the porch, climbing the steps to throw himself in his mother’s lap and complain about his brothers. “Somebody needs his nap,” Nora told him, but she sat on limply, gazing out over Sammy’s head to where the other children were debating the rules of their game. “The bushes by the house are safe, but not the ones in the side yard,” one was saying.
“But the ones in the side yard are the best places! You can hide underneath them.”
“So why would we use them as safes?”
“Oh.”
Jea
“Can somebody please call Heidi?” Alexander asked the grown-ups. “She keeps getting in my way.”
Heidi was nowhere near him — she was racing around the perimeter with her usual exuberance — but Stem whistled and she came bounding up the porch steps. “Down, girl,” he said. He tousled her mane affectionately, and she gave a resigned whimper and curled herself at his feet.
“Brenda must be getting old,” De
Jea
“Easily,” De
“Oh, De
“What? They scratch the woodwork, they scuff the floors …”
Amanda made a tch-ing sound of amusement.
“What’s so fu
“Listen to you! You sound like Dad. You’re the only one of us who doesn’t have a dog, and Dad claims he wouldn’t have one, either, if it were up to him.”
“Oh, that’s just talk,” Abby told them. “Your dad loves Clarence as much as we do.”
Her four children exchanged glances.
In the hammock, Red groaned and sat up. “What are you saying?” he asked, rummaging through his hair.
“Just talking about how you love dogs, Dad,” Jea
“I do?”
Amanda tapped De
“Well, she can’t visit till we’ve got a room free to put her up in,” De
Till Stem and his family moved out, was his implication, but Amanda sidestepped that by saying, “She could always share the bunk room with the little boys. Would she mind?”
“Or wait for the beach trip,” Jea
De
“Think I’m going to have to call the Petronelli brothers and have them repair the front walk again,” Red said, ambling down the porch to join them. On his way, he grabbed a rocker by one of its ears. He set it next to Abby.
“Every time I come here, you’re doing something to that walk,” De
“The trouble goes back to your grandfather’s time. He wasn’t happy with how it was laid.”
“It did seem he was always fiddling with it,” Abby said.
“One of my first memories after we moved in was, he had all the mortar ripped out and the stones reset. But still he wasn’t satisfied. He claimed it was graded wrong.”
“What’s that got to do with now, though?” Stem asked. “It’s been graded several times over, since then. In order to fix that walk once and for all, you’d have to cut down all the poplars with their roots that burrow beneath it, and I don’t see you doing that.”
“Oh, you men, stop talking shop!” Abby said. “It’s too nice a day for that. Isn’t it, Lois?”
“Goodness, yes,” Mrs. Angell said. “It’s a lovely day. I believe I feel a bit of a breeze starting up.”
It was true that the leaves had begun rustling overhead, and Heidi’s petticoats of fur were stirring on her haunches.
“Weather like this always takes me back to the day I fell in love with Red,” Abby said dreamily.
The others smiled. They knew the story well; even Mrs. Angell knew it.
Sammy was sound asleep against his mother’s breast. Elise was spi
“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon …” Abby began. Which was the way she always began, exactly the same words, every single time. On the porch, everybody relaxed. Their faces grew smooth, and their hands loosened in their laps. It was so restful to be sitting here with family, with the birds talking in the trees and the crosscut-sawing of the crickets and the dog snoring at their feet and the children calling, “Safe! I’m safe!”
5
ON MONDAY, De
He shrugged and took a box of cereal from the cupboard. “One thirty?” he said. “Two?”
“Oh, no wonder, then.”
“If I stay up late enough, I have some hope of sleeping through,” he said. “All those middle-of-the-night thoughts swarming in on me; I hate that.”
“Your dad gets up and reads when that happens,” Abby told him.
De
After breakfast, as if to make up for lost time, he became a whirlwind of activity. He vacuumed the whole downstairs, oiled the hinges on the backyard gate, and trimmed the backyard hedge. He skipped lunch to scrub the charcoal grill, and then he borrowed Abby’s car and drove to Eddie’s to buy steaks to barbecue for supper. Abby told him to charge the steaks to her account, and he didn’t argue.
The house seemed invisibly partitioned between Nora and Abby — Nora busying herself in the kitchen or tending her children, Abby up in her bedroom or reading in the living room. They were courteous to each other but wary, clearly trying not to get in each other’s way. The only time all day that they engaged in a real conversation was when De
“No, thank you, dear,” Abby said. “I just thought while De