When Cliff was twelve years old, he’d broken his arm playing baseball. All that summer at the Nantucket house, Cliff had lounged on the wicker sofa on the deck, listening to Eleanor read aloud various tales of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. She read to him because he couldn’t properly hold a book. She could have rigged up a cassette player so he could listen to a professional reader, but somehow she’d started, and it had been such a perfect way to be with her son. He’d loved the stories, and they had been together, sharing a time they’d always remember.
How Eleanor had loved Cliff when he was a little boy. He’d been so sweet, so earnest. But of course he’d changed. When he was a senior in his boarding school, he’d been tall and handsome, like Mortimer, with a kind of easy superiority in the way he carried himself. In the fall of that year, the head of the school asked Eleanor and Mortimer to come in for a talk. It seemed that Cliff had been driving—only seniors were allowed to drive—into Boston, where he bought bottles of expensive vodka and bottles of cheap rotgut liquor. He was so tall, so broad-shouldered, so blasé, that no one asked for his ID. They assumed he was over twenty-one, and he always had cash. Back at the school, Cliff would empty the bottles of Absolut vodka into flasks and jars. He would then pour the cheap vodka into the Absolut bottles and sell shots to underclassmen at vastly inflated prices.
Eleanor was heartbroken about this. Cliff was suspended for a month, but was allowed to finish the semester and graduate with his class. Mortimer had appeared angry and disappointed with his son, but when Eleanor and Mortimer were alone, he told her he actually was quite proud of Cliff’s enterprising adventure and by the summer, Mortimer had turned the episode into a witty tale about his son’s genius in moneymaking. That summer on the island, Cliff took a job on a boat launch and spent his free time with friends and girls. He grew taller than Mortimer and handsomer, too. He condescended to Eleanor, but clearly he had grown away from the sweet little boy and the ethically inspired boy he had once been.
Now Cliff was thirty-nine. He’d been a great comfort when Mortimer died, walking down the aisle after the memorial service with his arm around Eleanor’s waist, supporting her. He had stayed in the bluff house for a week, doing business on his phone and computer, but also coaxing Eleanor out for walks on the beach and dinner at good restaurants. He hadn’t talked about his personal life, and Eleanor was very curious about that, because he was then thirty-six and not married or in a serious relationship. But the week he was with her after her husband’s death, Eleanor was overwhelmed with grief and couldn’t think straight. That week their relationship changed, so that he was taking care of her more than she would ever take care of him again.
He’d been a truly dutiful son after Mortimer’s death. He’d brought her up to Boston to see plays and eat at expensive restaurants at least once a month, but he’d never had a companion with him. And that worried her.
Once, during a phone call several months ago, knowing it was sometimes easier to discuss intimate things at a distance, she’d said, “Cliff, you know I’ll love you no matter what. Just a thought: Are you gay? Because that would be cool.”
She could almost hear him rolling his eyes over the phone. “No, Mom, I’m not gay. I would have told you. I date women, but I’m extremely busy.”
“I worry that you’re lonely,” Eleanor had said, and she knew she was intruding a step too far into his adult life.
“You can be lonely when you’re married,” Cliff had responded, not unkindly.
How odd it was, Eleanor thought, to have grown children who’ve become people you don’t really know. Or maybe it was this way only in her family.
Even so, Eleanor put on a fresh dress and brushed her thick hair into a loose bun. She made curried egg salad sandwiches with fresh strawberries and ice cream for dessert. By noon the summer heat was rising, but the deck was in shadows and the air was fresh and cool, so she put out placemats and cloth napkins in navy blue with white piping, not that Cliff would notice. His