Francie had suffered, then, no more or no less than anyone else in the family, perhaps, but each one had suffered in his or her own way, and as far as Ferguson could tell, Francie’s suffering had turned her into a quieter, less ebullient person than she had once been, a duller version of her former self. On the other hand, she was getting older now, already past the point of what Ferguson liked to call a fully grown grown-up, and even if her marriage seemed to be a good one, there was no question that Gary could be pompous and overbearing at times, more and more given to long, blowhard monologues about the decline and fall of Western civilization, especially now that he had been with his father’s firm for the past couple of years and was starting to earn big-man lawyer money, which must have worn her down to some degree, not to mention motherhood, which wore down everyone, even a caring and affectionate mother like Francie, who lived for her children in the same way Aunt Joan had once lived for hers. No, Ferguson said to himself, as the station wagon headed north through the gathering darkness, he mustn’t exaggerate. Even if life had kicked her around a little bit, Francie was still the same old Francie, the same magic cousin of his early boyhood, somewhat hobbled now, he supposed, burdened as she was by the memory of her father’s betrayal, but how happy she had sounded when he accepted her invitation for the weekend, and how generous of her to have included Amy with that surprising Of course!, and now that they were all sitting in the car together, Ferguson in the back with the two sleeping children and Francie up front between Gary and Amy, he could see his cousin’s still beautiful face in the rearview mirror every time the headlights of a passing car shone into it, and one of those times, about halfway through the trip, when she glanced up and saw that he was looking at her, she turned around, stretched out her left arm, and took hold of his hand, which she then gave a long, hard squeeze. Everything okay? she asked. You’re awfully quiet back there.
It was true that he hadn’t said much in the past hour, but that was only because he hadn’t wanted to wake the children, and therefore his mind had been wandering, floating around among ancient family matters as he stopped listening to what Amy and Gary were talking about up front, his body lulled by the rumbling of the tires below him, the old blur-in-the-head car sensation as they moved along at sixty miles an hour, but now that Francie had squeezed his hand and he was starting to pay closer attention, he gathered that the issue was politics, above all the assassination, which had happened just two months earlier and was still the subject no one could stop talking about, the obsessive conversations about who and why and how, since it scarcely seemed credible that Oswald had done it alone, and numerous alternative theories had already begun to circulate, Castro, the mob, the C.I.A., and even Johnson himself, the big-nosed Texan who had succeeded the man of the future, still an X factor as far as Amy was concerned, but Gary, who had been quick to make up his mind, called him a slippery character, an old-style backroom politician who wasn’t up to the job, and Amy, though she acknowledged he could have been right, nevertheless countered by bringing up Johnson’s speech from earlier that month, the announcement of the war against poverty, which was the best presidential speech of her lifetime, she said, and he had to admit that no one had ever stood up and said something like that since Roosevelt, not even Kennedy. Ferguson smiled as he heard Gary concede the point, and then his mind drifted away again as he started thinking about Amy, remarkable Amy who was making such a big hit with the Hollanders, who had won them over with the first handshake, the first hello, just as she had won him over at the Labor Day barbecue, and now that they were approaching the Vermont border, he could only pray that everything would work out as planned, that it wouldn’t be long before the two of them were naked under the covers again in a strange room in a strange house in the middle of a New England nowhere.
The house was as big as advertised, and nowhere was the top of a hill that stood about ten miles from the ski resort. Three stories instead of the customary two, their weekend digs had been built sometime in the early nineteenth century, and every floorboard in that drafty wooden structure creaked. The creaking was a potential problem, since it turned out that Amy’s interpretation of Francie’s Of course had been the correct one, something Ferguson was obliged to admit when the six-person party made its first tour of the house, understanding that their hosts had never considered allowing them to sleep together in the same room, and therefore they would have to go with their backup plan, which Ferguson referred to as the French farce solution, the midnight frolics of doors opening and shutting on rusty hinges, of lovers creeping down darkened, unfamiliar hallways, of bodies crawling into beds they weren’t supposed to be in, and groaning floorboards were not going to aid them in their deceptions. Fortunately, Gary and Francie suggested that the big kids sleep in the two attic bedrooms so the little kids could spend the night on the same floor as their parents, who would be nearby in case of a bad dream (Rosa) or a bed-wetting incident (David). That would help, Ferguson thought. The creaking floorboards would be right on top of the others, of course, resonating throughout the ceilings below, but then again, people sometimes left their beds in the thick of night to stumble off to the bathroom, and in an old house like this one who could prevent the floors from making their horror-movie sound effects? With any luck, they would be able to pull it off. And if they had no luck, what was the worst that could happen to them? Nothing much, Ferguson said to himself, perhaps nothing at all.
For the first little while, everything went smoothly. They had arranged the tryst for half past eleven, a full ninety minutes after the children had been tucked in and their weary parents had said good night, and at the appointed hour all was still in the house except for an occasional gust of wind pouring through the fissured walls and rattling the weathervane overhead. Planting his bare feet on the floor, Ferguson stood up from the iron cot and began the slow journey toward Amy’s room, tiptoeing cautiously over the loose planks, halting after any and all squeaks emitted by the wood, then counting to five before hazarding the next step. He had left the door ajar to avoid having to turn the knob, which eliminated the risk of creating a sudden, too-loud noise from the latch, and while the hinges were indeed a bit rusty, they proved to be quieter than the wind. Next the hallway, with the fourteen additional steps that phase of the journey required, and then the gentle push against Amy’s door, which had been left ajar as well, and at last he was in.