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childhood and long days on the beach. She felt far from that childhood sitting in the woody but the distance between her and it seemed suddenly voluptuous and she wondered if it showed and if the person beside her had any idea of the happiness and contentment which had so suddenly and surprisingly taken possession of her.
    The birds were loud in the morning then loud again at night just before evening. A few chirps then silence, then a long trill. She heard a car door slam and hum by below on Emerson Street. A dog barked and was answered by another dog closer. The plumbing ran at the far end of the hall and a heaviness filled her as the pain moved in.
    What are you doing?
    It’s going to storm. I’m closing the windows.
    No, leave them open.
    It will drench the rug, said the nurse, turning back, leaving them up.
    I want the air. Nothing like the air of a storm.
    The suitcase had belonged to her mother, it had a smooth shellacked surface with yellow stitching underneath the glaze. Thelocks snapped and the corners were rounded, hollow and shell-like. Ann Lord could almost taste the surface of it at the back of her throat.
    A warm July wind, the smell of a fish cannery. She stood beside him as the water went by. His shirt collar was bent under, but she didn’t untuck it. His hair was wheat-colored and unruly and shook like cotton tufts in the wind. The engine of the ferry vibrated through the railing and Ann Grant felt it in her hands and chest. Being a doctor he was not a lot outdoors and his face didn’t have the same color as the other passengers’. He told her about the emergency room being busy on full moons, he told her people trusted doctors more than they should.
    Ann felt the excitement of the wedding, of the people traveling, of the suitcases opening and cheeks kissed and the new dresses and the cocktails and dinners and suits needing to be pressed. She’d first visited the Wittenborns’ when she was fifteen after meeting Lila that winter at skating class in Boston and knew well the flowered chairs of the living room and the routine of taking picnics made by Mrs. Babbage to Butter or Fling or Coleman’s Island, traveling in crowded motorboats and landing with care on rocky beaches and while it had been new and different to her at first she now felt a part of it. The man beside her added a new element. She did not know what to expect from him and everything he said surprised her. She imagined he would always surprise her.
    As they came in the channel he asked her about the island and she pointed to the boathouse moving past them on the shore and told him she’d first kissed a boy there. It was not the sort of thing she usually told anyone and immediately tried to cover it up by telling about the parties they’d go to with bonfires and people falling from rafters and the time Buddy drove an outboard over the floats. They came in sight of town and she saw the grey general store with the bulletin board encased in glass and the stone wall where the island boys smoked and the gas pumps on the next dockwith the fishing boats and the ferry landing where people stood now waving.
    She spotted Lila wearing pigtails and little white shorts and Carl beside her, solid in big white shorts. They already looked married the way they stood side by side waving, not needing to look at each other or to touch.
    Ann waved back, Harris Arden didn’t. She glanced at his mouth and from this angle saw a split in his bottom lip which gave her a pleasant rattled feeling which did not go away when the ferry docked and they bumped the pilings and Harris Arden picked up her yellow suitcase along with his bag and was still there when they kissed Lila and Carl hello.
    Gigi Wittenborn came running forward, barefoot, sunburnt, giving off a whiff of alcohol when Ann kissed her. Lila’s sister Gigi was just twenty but taller than Lila.
    They’ve been picnicking with the Holts, Lila whispered. You get the picture.
    Two strapping Holt brothers