years earlier: resigned to the fact that he was no longer calling the shots. Revered as the visionary behind Plimoth Plantation,* the living-history museum he’d founded years earlier and to which he remained passionately devoted, Charles was captivated by various archaeological enthusiasms. His latest obsession was finding the wreck of a long-lost pirate ship called the Whydah Gally. What I admired most about Charles was how fundamentally different he was from my parents—he didn’t swear or lose his temper, and he had no problem conceding a point. Well-mannered, quietly formal, and genial, Charles longed for little more than a good book, preferably history, read anywhere but on the beach. He announced this desire by praying to the rain god every summer morning. “Please, dear rain god,” he would intone over breakfast, “do your thing so I won’t have to sit on that hot, sandy beach.” This always made us all laugh.
“Looks like you’ll have your way today, Charles,” Peter said, and our stepfather smiled, appreciating the ominous sky.
“We could drive up to Wellfleet and see what Barry Clifford is up to,” Charles suggested to no one in particular. Barry Clifford, known locally as Cape Cod’s Indiana Jones, was on the hunt for sunken treasures and, like Charles, had set his sights on finding the Whydah.
No one bit.
Normally, as my mother sipped her tea, she would serve Charles his morning brew: a spoonful of Sanka in a mug, the remains of her boiling water, a single brisk stir. This was his preference, my mother assured us, a habit left over from his bachelor days. But this morning, with Ben and Lily visiting for the weekend, my mother made a pot of coffee with freshly ground beans, and as I watched Charles drink it down with relish, I wondered if he truly did prefer Sanka.
We sat in our usual places along the counter, Charles, Peter, and me, all of us looking into the kitchen, where my mother, peppy now from her tea, glided from stove to island to sink to refrigerator, readying breakfast. She had decided on homemade corn fritters, and she was bullying fresh egg whites into stiff peaks, shaving corn from ears, grating nutmeg. Butter softened on the counter, and maple syrup warmed over a low heat on the stove.
Ben and Lily were the last to appear, freshly showered, hair combed, Lily’s graying locks held in place with a bright yellow headband. She wasn’t the kind of woman to fork over money to a fancy salon. Lily sported Bermuda shorts, a polo shirt, and a pair of reading glasses that rode precariously low on her nose. Under her arm was a weighty tome on the history of Norway; she held it up for my stepfather’s approval, and Charles gave her a nod and smile.
Ben greeted Charles with his energetic “How do!,” then strode into our kitchen, took both my mother’s hands in his, and, in full view of his wife and my stepfather, kissed her right on the mouth.
“Malabar,” he said, his face close enough to hers that he could see her pupils expand, “that might have been the best damn dinner of my entire life!”
“Ben,” Lily said, playfully scolding her husband, “leave that poor woman alone.” Her voice was thin and raspy, the aftereffects of cancer treatments that she’d had in her twenties. Radiation seeds had been planted in her chest, and though the radiation had successfully halted the tumor’s growth, it went on to ravage other parts of her body: her ovaries, her heart, and, now, her vocal cords. Although she was no longer sick, you had only to look at Lily to know that she wasn’t well either. Frail was the word that came to mind.
“Out of the question,” replied Ben, who neither dropped my mother’s hands nor took his eyes off her. “How many women know what to do when you give them a bag of fresh squab?” He shook his head in disbelief at his good fortune. “Marvelous. Just marvelous.”
A happy heat spread over my mother’s face. Was there relief in there too? Had she second-guessed what had happened the night before, tried to convince herself that the kiss was nothing more than a drunken pass to be forgotten in the morning light? If so, now she could be sure that wasn’t the case. Ben Souther had just publicly declared her marvelous, and that act had awakened the dormant marvelousness within her.
My mother wriggled her hands free and grabbed a large fork, the kind used