With every step toward the exit, Bethany thinks, she is fashioning a permanent memory that will remain with her. She is, in fact, a different person coming out of the festival. Now, walking beside Amos, she catches herself considering the unexpected advantage of having witnessed something he has not. This is such an unscripted moment that anything could be excused. She could grasp his hand right now, and he would have to hold it.
She does not grasp his hand. They continue walking, apart from each other, toward the parking lot. The sneaking light of dawn is gone, replaced by the white slab of morning. There is no special color in the sky. There are no cloud formations or intimations of a higher firmament. It occurs to Bethany that this story will make the news. There will be something about it on television. There will be a spin about the danger of music festivals, and she will have to sit silently while her mother obliviously warns her about it.
Eventually, she will distance herself from the incident, tamp it into a story she tells at parties. She will put herself apart from the man who died. He was fundamentally different, she will rationalize, not from Old Cranbury, unanchored by good parents and constructive surroundings. As they approach the gate Bethany thinks of the town, small and safe, awaiting their return. It is cloistered, oppressively familiar, but maybe—and her mother’s trembling hands return to her—mired with its own dark disturbances. It is its own kind of restive campground, in a way, its properties penciled upon common land, impinging on one another despite the fences meant to hold them apart. Huddled in that encampment are their families, steely cohorts within the greater clan. Even Rufus must have parents of his own, although this seems improbable. He seems parentless, born from nothing, sprung from the thigh of some god.
Far off to the side, before the parking lot, Bethany notices a gathering of people on an open field. This would be the morning yoga session, offered to those able to rise early enough, still interested in breathing. The rows of people move in sync, adopting the same poses, configuring and reconfiguring their limbs like children experimenting with their bodies. Bethany watches as they all bend at once to plant their hands upon the battered field, then arch up in unison, a hundred arms saluting the sun.
MOON ROOF
LORI HATFIELD takes a different route home. She isn’t sure what inspires her, after pulling out of the bakery parking lot, to turn onto a quiet side street connecting Edgeware Drive to Cannonfield Road. Part of it, no doubt, is impatience. It’s rush hour, for what that’s worth in this town, and the red light at Mercy Avenue is notoriously long; she once timed it at two full minutes. Or perhaps, after a long week of car errands, she just wants to pry open a tiny new vein of experience.
The road is called Iron Horse, a name that to Lori evokes the image of a horse cast in a high-kneed pose, mane sculpted in waves. In eleven years as an agent, she’s never driven it. Somehow she hasn’t had the occasion to bring buyers to a listing on this particular road. When returning from town, she always takes Mercy home. This is a more scenic route to be sure, she now sees, as her Lexus climbs a hill lined with loose stone walls. The trees are mature and generously leafed. She feels a lightness of heart as she drives and commends herself for doing something as delightfully simple as taking a new road home.
Too quickly, she reaches the end of Iron Horse. The hill has attained its crest and now slopes to a stop sign. She brakes and comes to a gentle halt at the intersection where, with a faint sense of resignation, she waits to turn left onto Cannonfield. A steady stream of cars approaches from each direction. These are people returning from work, coming home from the small city to the east and the larger town to the west. Lori keeps her foot on the brake and waits for a lull in traffic.
The car smells good. On the dog-haired passenger seat is a box of fresh cookies from Amici Bakery, the most expensive bakery in the area, where she went as much for the embossed sticker as for the quality of the cookies. She’d intended to bake something from scratch for the Christensens’ party tonight, but ultimately aborted the plan, certain that no lemon meringue she achieved would equal the sunburst in August’s Bon Appétit. It’s probably gauche, anyway, to bring food to an event like this. Still, she fears arriving anywhere empty-handed.