“An appropriate plan for restoration will be determined,” he drones, “with an architect approved by the commission. All critical structural problems will be addressed in addition to repairing the roof, including repointing the foundation and replacing aged timber sill plates. The full cost, naturally, will be borne by the property owners, to bring the house in line with the standards of the commission. With our guidance, the Ezekiel Slater house will be returned to its former grandeur.”
Cheryl is grateful that her children are home for one more night, that she can declare this final triumph in person. They sit at the table, their faces in candlelight, as she repeats Edward Drayton’s words. Cheryl wants to capture this moment, their features gilded in this way, their eyes mirroring twin flames. She would like to visit this image in her mind for years to come, on those winter nights when her children are far away, doing things she will never know with people she has never met. She finishes speaking and smiles in anticipation. Her children do not reply at once. After a moment, Amos mutters, “Congratulations,” to a focal point near Cheryl’s ear, then excuses himself and goes upstairs. Rebekah blinks her eyes, smiles in her supercilious new way, and returns to her plate of leftover bread pudding.
The next morning, Cheryl and Roger drive them to the airport. They embrace at the security gate. Both parents resist the itch to remind and advise, to command their son to complete the semester, to tell their daughter to skip Afrikaans. Instead, they let their children pull out of their arms and join the security line. They watch them remove their shoes and put their backpacks on the conveyor belt. They see Amos place his pocket watch into a plastic bucket and send it through the X-ray machine. They watch their children pass through the metal detector’s trellis and, on the other side, give a brief wave and disappear around a corner. They will sit together for the six-hour flight, then part ways in San Francisco, one aimed south, the other east. By the time the sun sets in New England, they will be speeding over freeways their parents have never driven, along the lurid blue coastline at the edge of America. They will charge through dark belts of sequoias, close and brooding, toward the brightening valleys and swells of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Sierra Nevada.
Cheryl and Roger drive home in silence. There will be plenty to do these next few months. The springtime circuit is on the horizon: Fort Frederick in April, Ticonderoga in June. There will be another tavern dance, and several Ordinary Evenings with games and ale. Cheryl will have twilights at her virginals. And, of course, there are buttons to be sewn. As many as she can manage.
FLOORTIME
SUZANNE IS supposed to be playing with Elliot. He sits on the rug with a stacking toy, donut-shaped rings on a rod. When finished, the tower should represent the colors of the rainbow in sequence, but Suzanne is happy if he can just fit a ring on the pole. When he fails, when a ring tumbles to the floor, she can’t resist the urge to pick it up and slide it on for him. She is not supposed to do this, she knows. It is important to observe and encourage without assisting. It is important to make frequent eye contact, to use an upbeat and affectionate tone of voice. If he will not look at her when she speaks, she is supposed to tilt his chin with her fingers, to insist that their eyes meet. She has never actually done this.
It is Saturday, the first true spring day. Carlota is off, and Brian is on the boat. She had not dissuaded him from going, had not played the guilt card. There is no need for both of them to stay home today. If she is bad at playing with their son, Brian is worse.
Elliot drops a red ring, and it rolls under the coffee table. Suzanne lets it go, places a larger yellow ring into his blunt little hands. She looks at the time: only 11:45. Her watch strikes her at this moment as ludicrously fine—an anniversary gift marking five years of marriage—the Ebel she’d been hinting for, with a gray satin dial ringed with diamonds. It is expertly engineered, exquisitely beautiful, splintering the overhead lights into a thousand blazing fragments.
It has been three weeks since Elliot’s diagnosis. For months, Suzanne had been lying at pediatrician appointments. When the doctor had asked about Elliot’s physical and verbal development, she forced a smile and said that, yes, he was running and jumping; yes, he had at least ten words. The truth was that she had never heard him speak. He had never muttered “Mama” or “Dada.” He was just a late bloomer, she’d assumed. He was an introverted, thoughtful child with quiet considerations of his own. It was true that she rarely spent time with other children Elliot’s age, and had little basis for comparison. Only once had she observed him alongside a boy of the same size, at a restaurant. That child had pointed at Suzanne’s hoop earrings and said a word that sounded like “bubble.” Suzanne had smiled in surprise and studied the boy’s face for a discreet moment—his eyes blue and keen, blinking with attention—before looking to his mother, a woman younger than herself and not remarkable in any way, and asking, “Did you hear that?”