That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo Read Free Book Online Page B

Laura, barking and growling and refusing to quit, even after Griffin had picked her up and turned away from him as you would from an actual dog. And Sid, ignoring him, continued barking up at Laura, too much of a Method actor to stand up.
“Why would a grown man do something like that to a child?” she wanted to know, as if it was one of those childhood riddles that growing up hadn’t solved.
“I don’t think he knew any other children,” Griffin told her. “He was probably as scared of you as you were of him.” Which, oddly enough, had been his own parents’ clichéd wisdom to him about real dogs.
Laura, still reliving the experience, wasn’t interested in explanations. “And after we moved here—did I ever tell you this?—he called one night when you and Mom were at a party somewhere, and he just barked into the phone. I’d have been like fifteen, and it still scared the shit out of me.”
She giggled then, confusing Griffin until he realized Andy had joined her on the balcony and was making ruff-ruff noises . “Sounds like this would be a good time to let you go,” he said.
“Why don’t you join us for dinner tonight? We’re all going to this martini-and-tapas bar in Hyannis.”
“What time?”
“Nine.”
“I’ll be in bed by then. Asleep, probably.”
He’d intended this as a joke, half hoping she’d say, “Oh, Daddy,” and talk him into coming along, but she apparently took him seriously, maybe even deciding that being asleep by nine was appropriate for a man his age. “Okay, then,” she said, “but we’ll see you in the morning? You and Mom will be attending the wedding together?” She was joking now, he was pretty sure.
“Unless she meets someone along the way.”
“Goodbye , Daddy.”
Hanging up, he remembered what the Truro thing was all about. By way of apology for the end-of-semester cock-up, Joy had suggested they drive out to the Cape after the wedding and see if the inn where they’d honeymooned still existed, maybe check in for a day or two. It’d be kind of romantic, she said, threading her fingers through his. There’d been a time when that particular gesture would have meant romance right then. Lately, it had come to mean that she might be amenable to the idea in a week or so, under the right circumstances, if he played his cards right, if he didn’t do anything between now and then to fuck things up. Which had made him grumpy enough to go to Boston without her.

The afternoon had grown pleasantly warm and, having slept poorly the night before, Griffin soon nodded off, the first of his student portfolios unread in his lap. A breeze awakened him an hour later, manuscript pages strewn all over the porch. Several had blown up against the railing, one slipping between the slats and impaling itself on a rosebush. After he’d retrieved the scattered pages and put them in order, three were still missing. He found one a block away, stuck to a telephone pole like a flyer for a lost pet. The other two were probably on their way to Nantucket. Jesus, he thought, his resemblance to his father wasn’t just physical. He’d been famous for losing student work, whole stacks of research papers going missing at once. “If you don’t want to read them, don’t assign them,” Griffin remembered his mother always saying when yet another batch disappeared without a trace and his father was forced to ask his students to resubmit their work. “I’d set the whole weekend aside to read them,” he said, feigning (she was certain) disappointment.
Griffin’s mother loathed grading papers, too, of course. Who didn’t? But she was meticulous about correcting errors, offering style and content suggestions in the margins, asking pointed, often insulting, questions (How long did you work on this?) and then answering them herself (Not long, one hopes, given the result) . But such industry was possible, his father always countered, only because her courses were about a third the size of his own. Only the bravest, most ambitious English majors took her