That Old Cape Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’re saying. I’m just—”
But she waved him off. “Do you want to hear the best part or not?”
“The blackmail wasn’t the best part? There’s more?”
She arched a sculpted eyebrow. “Get this. The whole time he was in Amherst?”
He waited until it was clear she had no intention of going on without a specific invitation. He had to go on record as wanting to know what she had to tell him, which, unfortunately, he did.
“What, Mom? The whole time in Amherst what?”
“The whole time your father was in Amherst,” she said triumphantly, “he never even made it to the Cape. Not once.”

In retrospect, his mother had been right about at least one thing. She’d given his father’s marriage another year. Not a full year, either, she insisted, an academic year. And that’s exactly how long it had lasted. The following May, Claudia had departed for good, and shortly after that his father had left the university to take a position as acting department chair at a small branch of the state university of Illinois. “He’s in a downward spiral,” his mother had reported. “In fact he’s circling the drain.” From there he’d become the dean of faculty at a small Christian college in Oklahoma, where he served until failing health forced him to retire.
And now, Griffin thought ruefully, he was in the trunk of his car.
    3
The Great Truro Accord
     
     
    By the time Griffin arrived in Provincetown it had warmed up, so he went to a café with an outdoor patio. In the foyer he noticed a stack of real-estate guides, so he grabbed one and leafed through it while he waited for his eggs. The listings, he quickly determined, were either mind-bogglingly expensive or little more than shacks. Can’t Afford It and Wouldn’t Have It As a Gift. The old categories apparently still applied. Which begged a question. If he hadn’t given up screenwriting to move back East and become a college professor, would they have had the money? Hard to say. He’d made a lot more money in L.A., but they’d spent a lot more, too. It had been one of the great mysteries of his parents’ marriage that nothing they did or didn’t do seemed to change their overall economic outlook all that much. Near the back of the guide, looking completely out of place, was a full-page ad for a high-end assisted-living community near Hyannis, which sent a chill up his spine. His mother knew he was on the Cape. Was it possible their conversation had awakened the old dormant passion? He could easily imagine her Googling the assisted-living options here (like hell Google wasn’t research). It was even possible that out in Indiana she was at that very moment looking at the same image that he was studying here in Provincetown. A creepy scenario, and so utterly plausible that when his cell phone rang, he was surprised to see it was Joy and not his mother.
“Where are you?” his wife demanded, sounding almost as annoyed as his mother had been earlier, though to her credit she’d at least said hello before wanting to know just how far he’d strayed from her expectation.
“Provincetown,” he informed her. “I woke up early.”
“If you don’t start sleeping soon, I want you to see somebody.”
There was real concern in her voice now, for which he was grateful. It was true he hadn’t been sleeping well, waking up for no apparent reason in the middle of the night and unable to get back to sleep. The usual end-of-semester pressure, no doubt. He’d already had his standard academic-anxiety dream, the one where he arrived at his classroom only to find a note on the door saying his class was now meeting in another building across campus. When he arrived there, same deal. And no matter how he hurried to catch up, his students were always receding at the end of an impossibly long corridor. All of it would probably disappear when he turned in his grades.
“Guess who I’m having breakfast with?” he said, anxious to change the subject.
“Who?”
“Al Fresco,” he said. It was an old joke, no doubt summoned to the