certain spot on the track where the grandstand cast a dark shadow across the homestretch. “This morning, he stopped dead and reared up. The lad slid right down over his haunches, and it took ten minutes to catch him.” Margaret described Len and his project. Pete said, “Fellow’s after something.”
“But what could that be?” exclaimed Margaret. “What does Andrew have that anyone wants?”
“Money,” said Pete.
“If that’s his game,” said Margaret, “then he doesn’t know Andrew.”
Pete lifted an eyebrow.
All around them, the summer grasses waved in the breeze—golden but not yet dried out. A few retiring blossoms nestled in the grasses. The ground was dry. Mrs. Kimura said, “Have this bird in Japan. I think is called ‘oo-ban.’ But I never see picture of it.”
One of the adults walked up on the bank, followed by three of the chicks. Suddenly the adult turned and pecked the third chick hard on the top of the head, and then picked it up by the back of the neck and shook it and dropped it. The chick flopped about in confusion, and the adult and the other two chicks headed out into the water to swim. The chick who had been attacked staggered about a bit, as if stunned, then shook its head a couple of times and fluttered its wings.
“That looked like exasperation,” said Pete.
Margaret said, “It’s been a long couple of months.”
Pete laughed.
“You don’t expect animals to be exasperated,” said Naoko.
“I do,” said Mrs. Kimura.
They took a walk around the pond, and Pete pointed out what he thought was the nest, a boatlike structure made of grasses, about a foot long and not quite so wide. Mr. Kimura pointed out small lizards and mice, a feral orange cat, a heron on the branch of a tree. Everything they did was simple, moment by moment. A breeze came up that was fragrant, though cool. The blanket had to be secured with stones. She had forgotten forks. But there was something about this picnic, some fleeting, perfect comfortableness, that impressed Margaret with the notion that it might be the high point of her life. In the instant she thought this, it didn’t seem such a bad thought.
Three days later, Naoko came to the island bearing a small scroll painting, about fourteen inches wide and twelve inches tall. The expanse of the pond stretched across the paper, greenish gold, and the golden hill rose above it. On the surface of the pond, the adult coots were swimming. The larger of them turned toward the viewer, her eye bright and her white beak in the act of grabbing something off the water. Two chicks accompanied her. The other adult was closer to the bank; two chicks were on the bank. To the left, all the way across the water, another chick was larking about, swimming fast enough to make ripples. Perched on a tree branch that leaned over the pond was a crow, its beak pointing toward the coot chicks. It was beautiful and economical. The only bits of real color were the red heads of the chicks, a small butterfly, and the red seal that was Mr. Kimura’s signature. She made Naoko take forty dollars.
It was that night that Margaret dreamed of Pete, of Pete and Dora, embracing, framed in light, but not, she realized when she woke, the light of a hallway or gas lamps, or even a doorway, but, rather, some sort of a forest light, dense tree cover giving way to a path. In the dream, she was happy and excited, but she also had the sense that she was not in the dream, except that Dora was wearing one of her dresses, her favorite gray crêpe de chine with a black belt and a black collar. Even so, in the dream, Dora was weeping as she had that night, the night of the bombing, weeping as though she knew what was coming and that she would not survive. Except that she had survived. It was a strange dream.
SHE had the picture framed. Both Andrew and Len noticed it and complimented it. Len said, “Did you paint this yourself, Mrs. Early?”
“No, I—”
“You know, I must say that Captain Early is a dab hand with a pen. His drawings are exquisite.”
“Yes, he—”
“The layman can really get the sense of what he is going for, as far as his ideas. It’s a rare thing in a physicist.”
“An astronomer.”
“Oh, madam, far more than that now. Far more.”
“How is your book coming, then?”
“Well, of course, it