That Old Cape Magic

Wooster Sees It Through
were intended as companion pieces.
    The only thing they both read—indeed, studied as intently as each year’s Modern Language Association job listings—was the real-estate guide. Unwilling to give the other a first look, they always picked up two copies as soon as they arrived and wrote their names on the covers so they’d know which was which and whose fault it was if one got lost. A house here was part of their long-range, two-part plan to escape the Mid-fucking-west. First they would find real jobs back East, where they’d locate a suitable apartment to rent. This would allow them to save money for a house on the Cape, where they’d spend summers and holidays and the occasionallong weekend, until of course they retired—early if they could swing it—and lived on there full-time, reading and writing op-eds and, who knew, maybe even trying their hand at a novel.
    A single day was usually all it took for each of them to plow through the hundreds of listings in the fat real-estate guide and place each into one of two categories—Can’t Afford It or Wouldn’t Have It As a Gift—before tossing the booklet aside in disgust, because everything was more expensive this year than last. But the very next day his father would set Jeeves aside and take another look. “Page twenty-seven,” he’d say, and Griffin’s mother would set down her Ripley and rummage for her copy in the beach bag. “Bear with me, now,” he’d continue. Or, “Some things would have to go right”—meaning a big merit raise or a new university-press book contract—“but …” And then he’d explain why a couple of the listings they’d quickly dismissed the day before just maybe could be made to work. Later in the month, on a rainy day, they’d go so far as to look at a house or two at the low end of the Can’t Afford It category, but the realtors always intuited at a glance that Griffin’s parents were just tire kickers. The house they wanted was located in a future only they could see. For people who dealt largely in dreams, his father was fond of observing, realtors were a surprisingly un-romantic bunch, like card counters in a Vegas casino.
    The drive back to the Mid-fucking-west was always brutal, his parents barely speaking to each other, as if suddenly recalling last year’s infidelities, or maybe contemplating whom they’d settle for this year. Sex, if you went by Griffin’s parents, definitely took a backseat to real estate on the passion gauge.
    What he’d do, Griffin decided, was take Route 6 all the way to Provincetown, have a late breakfast there, then poke back up the Cape on tacky old 28. He wondered if it would still be lined with flea markets, as it had been when he was a kid. His father, an avidcollector of political ephemera and an avowed Democrat, could never pass one without stopping to make sure there wasn’t an old Wendell Willkie campaign button its owner didn’t know the value of lying at the bottom of a cardboard box. Republican artifacts were another of his guilty pleasures. “All your father’s pleasures are guilty,” his mother claimed, “and deserve to be.” Of course Route 28 would take twice as long, but there was no hurry. Joy wouldn’t arrive until evening, probably late, and the sooner he got to the B and B where she’d booked a room for the wedding, the sooner he’d feel compelled to open the trunk of the convertible, which contained, in addition to his travel bag and his bulging satchel, the urn bearing his father’s ashes, which he’d pledged to scatter over the weekend. He wasn’t sure that disposing of cremated midwestern academics in Massachusetts waters was strictly legal, and would have preferred that Joy be there for moral support (and as a lookout). Still, if he happened upon a quiet, serene and deserted spot, he might just do the deed by himself. Hell, maybe he’d dump the portfolios in as well—an idea that made him smile.
    Pilgrim Monument had just appeared on the horizon when his cell phone vibrated in the cup holder, and he pulled over to answer it. In the last nine months, since his father’s death, he’d been in several minor but costly fender benders, so this seemed safer than talking and driving at the same time, though there wasn’t as much room on the shoulder as he would’ve hoped for. A truck roared by, too close for comfort, but no one else was coming. He’d just have to make it quick.
    He assumed the caller, at this