They arrived on Friday.
I’d spent the morning and early afternoon in the recording studio with a band called The Fixtures. Teenage bands could be a headache, but these kids had talent to match their ambition. We were having a productive session, but by three o’clock I had to call it quits and rush everyone out before the traffic leaving New York would clog all the westbound roads, making the drive back to Newfield unbearable.
Walking to the car, I called Cynthia at the house and learned that Nolan had just arrived from Kansas City.
“Tell him I’m on my way,” I said.
“I’ll tell him,” she said, “but don’t drive like a maniac, okay? We’re fine over here.”
I headed home. Though only a dozen miles from the studio, Newfield was like another world, where you heard more birds than cars and the strongest smell was the cypress mulch that people lovingly laid at the base of their shrubs. Our street was lined with neatly pruned maple trees, and at the end of it stood a brick elementary school. Each morning, small children walked past our front yard, chattering like squirrels and lugging their huge knapsacks.
Our craftsman cottage was the smallest house on the block and only a rental, but buying a home would have meant living someplace cheaper, less desirable, less safe. And safety was key. It was the whole point.
The day before, I’d mowed and edged the lawn. Pulling up to the house now, I admired my work. Those were the kinds of things I noticed then: a freshly cut yard. Daisies in terra-cotta flowerpots lining the walkway.
Across the street, Dr. Ferguson was hosing off his Lexus. Sudsy water streamed down his driveway. He waved. I waved back and went inside. Through the kitchen window, I saw Cynthia and Nolan in the backyard kneeling over our empty garden plot, where in a few weeks we would be planting tomatoes and peppers and summer squash. I went out to greet them.
Seeing me approach, Nolan stood and then helped Cynthia up. She was starting to show. I liked how she stood differently now, shifting her weight to accommodate the changing center of gravity.
“Hands off the wife,” I told him.
“Take it easy, killer,” Nolan said. “She’s only been showing me her dirt.”
Cynthia and I had both grown up in neighborhoods of brick and concrete, where tall buildings blocked out the sun. We couldn’t get enough of our grassy yard. One of our photo albums was full of pictures from our first summer in the house: Cynthia in her cutoffs and Velvet Underground T-shirt, gathering up twigs from the grass. Me mowing the lawn, shirtless and grinning from behind mirrored sunglasses as if our small rectangle of land were a thousand-acre stake.
“It’s good to see you, buddy,” Nolan said. We hadn’t seen each other since our last golf weekend a year earlier. We hugged.
He stood six feet and three inches tall with unlined skin and a full head of black hair—not a speck of gray—that he kept neatly trimmed. At Princeton he’d rowed crew for a year, until it got in the way of his studies, but he still kept himself in shape. When we’d get together, even after a night of drinking, he’d wake up at dawn to run a few miles before breakfast.
“You’re looking good,” I said, though truthfully his eyes looked tired. I’d been receiving his e-newsletter, From the Campaign Trail, since January, when he declared his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives. But I gathered that the trail was weedier and windier than the newsletter was letting on. “You’re also looking like you could use a beer.”
We went inside, where I got two beers out of the refrigerator and a bottle of spring water for Cynthia.
“I’ll take mine for the road,” she said. “I’m going to get caught in traffic as it is.”
“You can stay,” I said. “Honest.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me.
I hadn’t asked her to clear out for the weekend. But she understood that for my friends and me, these annual reunions were an important tradition. And she figured it would be a good chance to visit her sister, who lived in Philadelphia with her boyfriend and three-year-old daughter.
“Not a chance,” she said. “The estrogen is leaving the building. Just do me a favor and don’t get into too much trouble while I’m gone.” As if this were going to be a wild bachelor party instead of old friends catching up. Playing a few rounds of golf. A little poker. “And maybe carry my suitcase for me.”
I brought her bag to her car, asked if the tank was full, if the cell phone was charged. “Call me before you go to bed,” I said. We kissed, and my fingertips brushed the small of her back as she bent down to get in the car. I stood on the front lawn, squinting in the sunlight, as she backed out of the driveway, waved her pretty fingers, and drove away.
Back in the kitchen, Nolan tossed me an Albright-for-Congress baseball cap. I stuck it on my head.
“Wear it everywhere,” he said. “By the way, Cynthia looks hot.”