That Old Cape Magic (25 page)

Sunny nodded seriously.
“Otherwise they aren’t bad fellows,” Griffin said. “They’d be good to have on your side in a fight. Of course”—he pointed to his eye—“if you’re with them there’s a much better chance there’ll
be
a fight.”
“I made the mistake of telling them I don’t have to be back in Washington until Monday. They want me to go with them to Bar Harbor tomorrow. Do you think I shouldn’t?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. Just remember they act first, think later, and then neither clearly nor deeply. Have you ever thought of getting a tattoo, Sunny?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I ask because if you go drinking with them, you could wake up with one.” And it would
say Laura
.
Sunny must have been thinking along these same lines, because after a moment, he said, “I’m getting married myself later this year.”
“No kidding? Congratulations.” They clumsily clinked glasses. “You want to tell me about her?”
“Yes.” But then, for a long moment, he didn’t. “She’s Korean,” he finally said. “From a fine family. She’s been very patient waiting for me to ask for her hand.”
“Will the wedding be here?”
“No, in Seoul. I’ve invited Laura and … Andrew, but of course I’ll understand if they can’t come. It’s a long trip and very expensive. I’m hoping we’ll get together later. Andrew’s never been to Washington.”
“You’ll live in the U.S., then?”
“Yes, of course. My mother’s here, my brothers, and my work’s important, too.”
“Yes, it is.”
He seemed pleased to be given this vote of confidence, but troubled, too. “Why does a rich country like ours blame people who have nothing for its problems?”
“Good question. It’s a problem that predates Lou Dobbs, and it’s probably not just us in the States.”
“No, but we’re not responsible for other countries.”
“Are we responsible for this one, as individuals? Isn’t that a lot to ask?”
“Yes. But I do believe we are responsible.”
Griffin nodded, surprised to discover that despite raising the question he agreed with Sunny’s response. Also that he’d finished his scotch.
“She’s very happy,” Sunny said, as if this leap from political and philosophical discussion to deeply personal were perfectly natural.
Love
, Griffin thought, smiling. Only love made such a leap possible. Only love related one thing to all other things, putting all your eggs into a single basket—that dumbest yet most courageous and thrilling of economic and emotional strategies. “I think she is,” he said, almost apologetically. His daughter was happy and deserved to be. Yet, sitting here in the dark, quiet bar with Sunny Kim, Griffin couldn’t help wondering if the worm might already be in the apple. A decade from now, or a decade after that, would Laura suddenly see Sunny differently? Griffin knew no finer, truer heart than Laura’s, but even the best hearts, as her mother could testify, were notoriously unruly. Would some good, unexpected thing happen in his daughter’s life, something that caused her very soul to swell with pride and joy, whereupon she’d realize that the man she wanted to tell first and most wasn’t who she’d married today but the one who’d loved her since they were kids and who once, in the middle of the night, had trusted her enough to share his family’s shame? Would she understand that such trust and intimacy do not—indeed cannot—exist apart from consequence and obligation? Would she understand then what she didn’t yet suspect, that remembering Sunny Kim at the moment of her own great happiness at Kelsey’s wedding last year had been kind and generous, yes, of course, but also an unwitting acknowledgment of something yet hidden from her?
And what of Andy? Would he one day come upon his wife unawares, her good heart broken, and just
know
, as Griffin had, even though he’d tried not to, that there was someone else? Sensing the power of jealousy to wound deeply and maybe even destroy, would Andy bury that knowledge, as Griffin had, even before he knew for sure what it was? And later, after Laura at great cost had done all any woman could do to rule what was by nature unrulable, would her husband then resent her because the wound to his own heart, neither acknowledged nor treated, hadn’t healed?
Griffin did not want to believe that any of this would come to pass. In fact, he refused to.
“Thank you,” Sunny said, finishing his own scotch.
“What for?”
“For the honest conversation. A rare thing.”
“And thank you, for the drink. A rare scotch.”
“It’s not my business,” Sunny said, “but will you and Mrs. Griffin try again?”
Griffin could tell from Sunny’s worried, almost frightened expression that he wasn’t asking out of curiosity, or probably even affection, though of course these, too, were present. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to Griffin that his daughter wasn’t the only one who’d played an important part in Sunny’s life. He and Joy also had. Sure, Sunny’d gone to Stanford and then to Georgetown, but before that he’d crossed Shoreham Drive from his parents’ immigrant neighborhood to where the Griffins and Kelsey and her parents lived. Just a few blocks if you were talking real estate, but much farther in all other respects. Griffin could see him at thirteen, all dressed up for Laura’s party, waiting at the Shoreham Drive intersection for the light to change. And at their “lovely home,” he’d fallen in love (if he wasn’t already) with Laura, yes, but also with her parents, who didn’t unduly burden their child with obligations, who laughed and looked at each other in a way that his own parents never did. Was it Kelsey who’d observed back then that it was clear Laura’s parents still had sex? Sunny would’ve sensed that, too. Hell, he’d have seen it with his own hungry, adolescent eyes. Joy had never been more beautiful than she was then, in her late thirties, and when Sunny compared Laura’s parents with his rigid little mother and chronically ill father, he would’ve felt envy and shame in equal measure. He’d fallen in love with them, Griffin realized, much as Griffin had fallen in love with the Brownings on Cape Cod: thoroughly, uncritically. Had the nation itself been part of his seduction? America, like the Cape, that finer place, with its myriad implicit promises and gifts, chief among them the permission to dream? Who better than Sunny Kim to ask why America blamed its ills on the most recent of its dreamers, whether legal or illegal? By now, Griffin thought, Sunny must be coming to the reluctant understanding that such dreams embodied a paradox, that they, like love itself, were at once real and chimerical.
“I don’t know if we will or not,” he at last said, embarrassed by Sunny’s personal stake in their marriage and by the larger questions that any marriage—a public institution, after all—in fact begged, no matter the circumstances. And even more embarrassed by his own passivity. Having squandered last year’s moment of grace, he’d waited today for another and felt cheated when it didn’t come. “I don’t know if she wants to, or even how to ask her,” he said. “She’s done pretty well this year without me.”
“Do you mind if I ask if this is self-pity?”
“Almost certainly,” Griffin admitted, a little taken aback by Sunny’s forthrightness, though it was impossible to take offense when you were so well understood. “I’m prone to it. Not to mention nostalgia and some other bogus emotions.”
“Allow me to say that things will work out for the best.”
This made Griffin chuckle. “We’ve known each other a long time, Sunny,” he said, rising from his bar stool, “and that’s the first dumb thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Hauling his and Marguerite’s bags out to their rental car and getting soaked in the process, Griffin discovered that yesterday’s inertia, which Sunny had correctly diagnosed as self-pity, had returned, along with a terrible understanding. Part of the reason he’d been so passive at his daughter’s wedding was his profound sense that something was
supposed
to happen there; all he had to do was be patient and recognize the moment when it arrived. Today, though, he knew better. The only things that were supposed to happen were things you
made
happen. The intimate, bittersweet moment he’d shared with Joy at the hospital had seemed to promise more, but he saw now that it was all he was going to get, probably because it was all he deserved. The events that had culminated in his daughter’s wedding and the eventual dissolution of his own marriage were on parallel tracks, both set in motion this time last year, and over the long months they’d gained sufficient momentum to be virtually unstoppable. Even the fiasco of the rehearsal dinner hadn’t derailed the wedding, and he was grateful for that, but apparently the sundering of marriage was subject to the same immutable law of motion. It was like the third act—the final twenty minutes—of a well-constructed screenplay, during which there was no more choosing, no more deciding, just the juggernaut of action and consequence.
Was Joy, too, feeling the same dispiriting sense of inevitability? Was that why she’d kept her distance at the reception? He wished he could ask her. Sliding in behind the wheel, Griffin again noticed the “Summer of the Brownings” magazine on the dashboard. He’d wanted her to see the story because he was proud of it, but also, he now realized, because it constituted evidence of—what? That he’d been trying for a long time to understand and resolve his almost pathological resentment toward his deceased parents? That perhaps he’d made some progress? The facts on the ground suggested rather the opposite. This time last year he was driving around with one parent in the trunk of his car, whereas now he had both. Far from resolving anything, the Browning story probably just explained how he’d come to be the husband and father he was instead of the one he meant to be. It was also possible he wanted to show Joy the story for even more selfish reasons. Tommy, puzzled by the story in its earlier incarnation, had been both surprised and impressed by the new version. “Jesus, Griff,” he said. “This is really … there’s fucking
truth
in here.” Maybe all he wanted from Joy was more praise.
He studied the cover, where his name was listed along with eight or ten other writers, none of them household names, and felt the smallness of his accomplishment. Sure, he could use the story as an excuse to drive back down to the Hedges. Once there, if he screwed up his courage, he could ask Joy if this really was the end, if that’s what she truly wanted, but he already knew the answer, didn’t he? She’d told him at the hospital that Brian Fynch didn’t make her
un
happy, and for her, given the last few years of their marriage, this was probably a step in the right direction. Besides which, he thought, tossing the magazine onto the backseat, he’d have to explain to Marguerite why driving back down the peninsula made more sense than just mailing the issue once they got back to L.A.
But what the hell was taking her so long to check out, he wondered. He supposed he might go find out, but decided instead to stay where it was dry. After all, there wasn’t any hurry. No doubt the vague sense of urgency he was feeling was just residue from the wedding, which was now over. Laura and Andy were already in a limo headed for Boston, where they’d catch their flight to Paris. Had they agreed on that destination for their honeymoon? he wondered. Laura had spent her junior year in France and talked about returning ever since. But had Paris been Andy’s first choice, too, or had he been persuaded, the first tiny burr of resentment under the marriage saddle? Griffin banished the thought. They’d make their own marriage, not repeat his.
Lord, it was raining hard, he thought. Would it let up by the time they got to the Cape or would the deluge intensify, preventing the ash-scattering yet again? Was that what he was hoping for, another excuse? What did it mean that he had so little access to something as straightforward as what he really wanted? He considered turning the key in the ignition so he could at least use the wipers and the defroster, then decided to just sit there in his watery cave, rain streaming down the windows in solid sheets. When his cell phone rang and he saw HEDGES on the screen, he felt his heart leap, thinking it must be Joy calling to suggest he stop by for a quick debriefing, a well-by-golly-we-did-it-despite-difficult-circumstances moment, just the two of them, Ringo and Marguerite off someplace. They were owed that much, right?
Apparently not. It was only the manager calling to express his fond hope that the wedding had met or (yes!) even exceeded Mr. Griffin’s expectations. The resort had incurred a few additional expenses above and beyond the charges covered by the checks he’d already written (the mutilated yew?) but he didn’t feel it was right to pass these on. No, they were pleased to absorb any additional costs. He personally felt terrible about the collapse of the wheelchair ramp and the injuries it had caused. He hoped Mr. Griffin understood that such structures weren’t designed to accommodate so many people at once, all of them moving in the same direction, but still, he couldn’t help but feel responsible, if not in the
legal
sense, then in some other. “Moral?” Griffin helpfully suggested. Well, yes, something like that. Griffin told him that of course he couldn’t speak for the other guests, but he knew most of the people involved and doubted there’d be any litigation.
He hung up, and a moment later Marguerite thudded into the passenger seat beside him, soaked to the skin but otherwise as happy as a schoolgirl.
“What took so long?”
“I was saying goodbye to Sunny. He’s in the breakfast room. Do you want to go in? I think you should. It’ll only take a minute.”
“We said our goodbyes last night,” Griffin said. He liked Sunny a lot but had no desire to see him this morning, to yet again come face-to-face with his courage and optimism. He started the car, put the heater on defrost and waited for the windshield to clear, feeling Marguerite’s eyes on him. But when he finally turned to look at her, she was peering out the small patch of windshield that had defogged. “
I
think it’s going to clear,” she said.
Ambiguous pronoun reference
, his mother piped up from the back, her first critical observation of the new day.
Is she talking about the weather or the windshield?
“That’s not what the Weather Channel’s calling for,” Griffin said.
Marguerite leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’s what I’m calling for.”
Oh, honestly
, his mother said.
Griffin turned on the radio, which sometimes silenced her, just as a car careened into the drive and rocked to a halt in front of the B and B. Jared and Jason, oblivious to the downpour, leapt out and began chanting up at the second-floor windows, “Suh-