Meanwhile, the kids were tucked into their dormers at the rear of the house at an early hour. Lissie laid on her back and breathed heavily through her nose. Danny engrossed in a monster truck magazine illuminated by the small screw-top flashlight he kept under his sheets where he would eventually keep a switchblade and later his first gun.
The bungalow’s distinguishing feature was the flag Dan Sr. had erected on a tall metal pole on the front lawn. The girth of the pole intimated the seriousness with which Dan took this project. Erected in a small round bed of concrete around which the grass was mown, the flagpole was treated with the reverence of a monument. Each morning Dan walked out onto the lawn, barefoot and winded, with his eyes lifted toward the sky. Not a man to be rushed, he fixed any fold or snag in the flag’s fabric before raising the stripes to their full altitude where they billowed for the road to revere.
That morning, we’d caught Dan securing the line when we drove by. Recognizing Ray’s truck as it lumbered down the hill, Dan waved, eyeing the hitch and the boat in back with envy. “Good man,” Ray said as we barreled by, saluting the flag through the window. A fellow man of the uniform, Dan came to attention. Ray chuckled. “Crazy bugger,” he said under his breath. “Now there’s a man who knows how to keep his luck around.”
Beyond the Young’s house, down the road a stretch, was the stop sign where Lissie, Danny Jr. and I waited mornings, the little bridge in all its earnestness, and then the beginnings of Ada and Cash’s fields, their gray shingled house, and beside it the farm stand.
The streets skirting the radius of town were decorated by the types of homes with driveways that ran in a horseshoe and were lined in a reception of old town cars. Pillared porches and tall white fences enclosed trellises of wild roses and pots of imported tomatoes. Here decadence shifted in perennial storm. In winter, when the flowers and the tomatoes were under snow, images of horses in gingham blankets speckled the landscape. The lawns of these homes were turned into pastures where horses were kept close to the houses. Occasionally, the animals would run to the front of the yards and cast their necks over the fences, whinnying at the cars as they passed.
In the center of the town was a green with a gazebo where people were married. Around it, pillars of New England gathered in silent communion. The library with its green clock face. The Inn that housed the old tavern. Steeples and bell towers of every denomination. Next to the Congregational church sat a legal office, a tearoom, and a country store. Occasionally, Birdie and I rode our bikes to the store and bought Pop Rocks and Candy Cigarettes with change we collected from the tin under the kitchen phone. Margaret was sitting house for the young, recently widowed lawyer whose office was in the center of town. Margaret said our lawyer was suffering what every man faces after the death of his wife: the prospect of many sleepless nights bookended by two days of solitude. Weekends, for him, were marked by the occasional meal at the pub and the sound of the dog’s footsteps crossing the wooden floor of the kitchen in the morning before begging at the door to be taken out. The lawyer still kept up with his parents whom he often visited. Margaret, his neighbor and sister in solitude, watched his house. Despite the depth of its character, her own studio lacked the yawn and stretch of a true home in which the soul could forget itself between doorways.
As Ray pulled into the drive, Margaret was outside watering the begonias. She’d tied a white scarf around her straw hat to keep it steady as she worked. The brim shielded her face. When she moved her head the shadow muted the sharp cleft of her nose and the harshness of her cheekbones. In one hand she was slung an old watering can. In the other, a metal trowel, which she waved at me as I walked up the drive.
“Have her home by six, Margie,” Ray yelled out the window as he backed into the road.
“Always a doll, Ray,” Margaret boomed back at him. “Save me that bass this time, if you catch one.”
As Ray’s truck disappeared down the road, Margaret turned and started up the walk.
“Let’s put lunch in the fridge and have a swim,” she said. “I like to get all my work out of the way in the mornings when I’m still good for it.”
The kitchen was open and light. The sun streamed in over the large cast iron sink illuminating an island of wood over which hung a collection of cookware.
“I’ll chop,” she said. “You give these a wash.”
The salad was a cobbled together affair. Lettuce chopped into thick wedges, strips of bacon left from breakfast, and a handful of strong smelling cheese. Margaret smoked as she worked, resting her cleaver on the edge of the cutting board every now and again for a drag on her cigarette.
There was a distance to her silence that I appreciated. After the vegetables were chopped, we went for a swim.
The pool was long and in-ground. Strings of buoys were set up in lanes. Margaret removed her hat and her sarong, draping them over the fence post before heading to the deep end where she dipped her toes and then dove. I watched her swim several lengths. The oval of her back moved down the pool at a steady clip. When she reached the end, she curled into a ball and flipped under water. The backs of her heels were the only parts of her which displayed any evidence of exertion. They blushed a slight red as she pushed off the wall.
I put my arms over my head and dove in to the lane next to her. I paddled in a rough breast stroke, an awkward choppy necking which involved a few strong pulls punctuated by the occasional scissor of the legs. I could never stave off the feeling of drowning.
Afterward, we sat in the lawn chairs and dried off. There was a slight breeze. It dried the hairs around my temples. When I ran my fingers through them, I felt a tug where the roots pulled on the skin. Margaret tied her hair back with one of the thick rubber bands from the post office. She kept a stack of these around her wrist.
“Well then,” she said. “Let’s have a nap to revive ourselves before lunch.”
She put her hat over her face as she slept. Every now and again when she let out a low breath, I glimpsed at the chair where she was reclined. Margaret’s body was a solid raft which didn’t slumber out around her. Her breasts were modest. Small canonical hills that rode close to her body. Nothing about her outsized humble geometry.
I grew tired and lay back in my chaise. When the sun hit, my body warmed at even integers. After a while the insides of my lids were lit a bright yellow, which burned when I stared up into them.
I woke to Margaret tapping me on the shoulder.
“I must’ve drifted off,” I said.
“Are you getting enough sleep nights?” she said.
“I’ve never been good at it,” I said.
We lunched on the veranda next to the pool. The meal was punctuated by the occasional passing of the water or the chirp of a chickadee in the distance. Margaret kept a small white mug in her hand on which from time to time she tapped her ring. It was filled with a dark liquid I figured for coffee. She sipped it as we ate.
Afterward we retired to the darkroom, a makeshift studio in the bathroom of the hallway off the mudroom. For Margaret there was nothing secretive in the way images revealed themselves. The beauty of developing lay in the science of the chemicals and the way a body moved in a dark space. I sat on the back of the toilet and manned the wash. “Not such a bad day for an old lady,” Margaret said, holding up a large black and white image of the young lawyer diving into the pool. “What do you think of this one?”
In that moment, I realized Mother had passed countless hours in this space. Here her presence was felt even in absence. It surprised me that Margaret had not mentioned her. A painful awareness was let back into the room. Mother would’ve known just what to say about anything. Here I was holding my tongue.