water tumbling down over the churches and the stores, the orderly streets. She could see it. She could see the water engulfing everything, shattering windows, lifting roofs up off their eaves, roiling on as ordinary objects—a cup, a wig, a bar of soap—bobbed to the surface and were caught in the suck. She saw the water churn its way over the rise and stop, finally, halfway up this tree, just below the branch on which she sat. Only she, Zoe, and Billy would escape. Afterward, there would be a brilliant brown silence. There would be a steeple, the top half of a stopped clock, the upper twigs of a few oaks and elms. There would be flocks of ducks and geese, settling down. And gradually, as the water began to subside, there would be rings and necklaces caught among the branches. She would lead Zoe and Billy back down to the wet, empty world and she would bedeck herself as they climbed down, orphans now, serene and grieving, facing a future in which anything could happen. She would arrive at the bottom covered in jewels.
1965/ When Constantine took his night rides he imagined Mary sitting beside him. Not the Mary he lived with now but the Mary who'd been seventeen, a brisk mysterious girl latching a gate behind her. That Mary had managed to combine good sense with a scrubbed, feminine hopefulness. She hadn't yet begun to number his lacks. He was still in love with that Mary and he loved whatever traces of her remained—the self-possession, the devotion to order, the high-shouldered walk. When he went for his drives his companion was the young Mary, who sometimes blended in his mind with Susan. A smart girl who sat safely strapped in the passenger seat, watching the landscape with skepticism and stern admiration.
He showed her the development, row upon row of houses; a whole village done in soft colors and simple, comforting shapes. Sometimes he parked on one of his streets and allowed himself to sit, taking it in, cushioned by the Buick's burgundy plush. He and Kazanzakis had built this entire town. These were their roofs defining the horizon, their windows sending light out into the dusk. On nights like those, he felt truly accomplished.
It was a perfect village, new and orderly. Constantine's houses repeated themselves in series of three. One had a gabled roof; one a small front porch; and the third, his favorite, had a pair of bay windows trim and symmetrical as a young girl's breasts. The houses met the sky with their thrifty rhythms, and he was always surprised to see that they had in fact been called into existence. His days were made of details and arguments. Jerry, I'm telling you, we don't need felt between the roof and the sub-roof Who told you to order any goddamn stone, we can backfill the sewer lines with dirt. Only at night, on his drives, did he fully apprehend the houses that now stood because he had ordered Sheetrock by the boxcar, five thousand rolls of insulation, a whole forest's worth of pine. Sometimes at night he chose a house and watched it, always from a reasonable distance. He lit one cigarette after another and watched the windows light up or darken, watched dogs bark to be let in. Some nights a car stopped and let out a teenager; some nights a man or woman came outside to water the lawn. Once a hardy-looking man in green plaid slacks walked out and stood on his front lawn as the last light was leached from the sky and the stars began. Constantine had watched him until the man went back into his house, a gabled model that had cost, what, maybe one-fifth what Constantine had paid for his own house. Briefly, he'd loved and pitied that guy. That guy could have been his kid brother, or his oldest son. Constantine wasn't sure what he was doing, what he wanted here. He couldn't have said why, once or twice a month, he took himself on these spying excursions after he closed up the office. He always imagined young Mary beside him, or someone like Mary, and he imagined the lives being lived inside the walls. When he started his car again and drove home, he always did so in a chaos of yearning. He didn't permit himself to make these trips often. Once or twice a month, tops. He told himself he liked to check up on things,