cap over her head with the handful of other women there who were dressed like that—most of them wives of the so-called soldiers—and that night Fergus had some whiskey and he found himself at the edge of the park—it was a glorious night—and there was Charlene, whose husband had been a soldier until he’d died the year before, and Fergus said, “You’re a pretty thing tonight,” and she had giggled. In fact, Charlene had graying hair and was plump, but that night she seemed to exude something that Fergus wanted. He took her around the waist and then messed around with her a bit while she kept saying, “Fergie, you naughty boy, you!” Laughing as she said it, and then up by the bandstand they had done it; the surprise of this, and the hustling of getting that damned hoop skirt up, had made it seem exciting at the time. But when he woke in his pup tent the next morning he thought, Oh holy Christ, and he found her and whispered an apology to her, and she acted as though nothing had happened, which he thought extremely rude.
* * *
“Listen, you guys,” Lisa said. She had kissed her father, who had stood up to greet her and who was now sitting back down in his lounge chair, and Lisa sat down in a chair across from her mother, next to her mother’s television, but then she got up and moved the chair so that it was directly on the strip of yellow duct tape; she looked back and forth between her parents. She touched the long bangs that fell onto her face, moving them slightly aside. “I stopped and saw Laurie on the way up—”
Fergus said, “We know, Lisa. That was good of you.”
Lisa glanced at him and said, “And I told her something, and she said I had to tell you guys, that if I didn’t she would—so I have to tell you.” The dog sat at Lisa’s feet, and he suddenly whined and wagged his tail, poking at Lisa’s jeaned legs with his nose.
“So tell us,” said Ethel. Ethel took a glimpse at her husband; he was looking at Lisa impassively.
Lisa smoothed her long brown ponytail over her shoulder, and her eyes were very bright. “There’s a documentary that’s been made.” She said this and raised her eyebrows. “And it stars me.” Then she turned to the dog, patting him, and making kissing sounds toward him.
Fergus said, “What do you mean, a documentary?”
“What I said,” Lisa answered.
Fergus sat up straight in his chair. “Now, hold on,” he said. “You’re starring in a documentary? I didn’t know documentaries had stars.”
“Tell your father to hush up,” Ethel said. “And then tell me about this documentary. What do you mean, you’re starring in it? Honey, this is so exciting.”
Lisa nodded. “Well, it is, frankly. Very exciting.”
* * *
A few times during the summer months, after the Highland Games in June, Fergus would put on his kilt—not the one with the MacPherson plaid, but a different one of plain color; he had gained weight and bought the last one at a store for only twenty-one dollars and ninety-nine cents, the price had pleased him—and he walked the streets of Crosby. He enjoyed this; people were pleasant, and he liked the feel of the kilt; he wore it with a gray T-shirt that matched his gray beard, and he wore his brown walking shoes with it as well. People, often summer people, would stop and talk to him, and they spoke of their own Scottish pasts, if they had one, and he was always surprised—and pleased—at how many people were proud of their ancestry this way. Years earlier there had been a pack of boys up near High Street that would call out, “What does a Scottish man wear under his kilt? A wang, a wang,” and they would convulse with laughter. He had felt like throwing stones at them, but of course he did not, and he noticed as the years went by that this sort of thing happened much less frequently and so he had his own private theory that people were becoming more tolerant—about a man wearing a kilt, anyway, if not more tolerant about the mess in the country—and this pleased him.
“About your work?” Ethel was asking Lisa. “Or is this a documentary about someone who comes from a small town and lives in New York City?”
Lisa closed her eyes, and opened them. “About my work,”