“No dawdling,” says Annie crisply. “I haven’t got all day. In the car, please.”
Annie’s car is a midnight-blue Mercedes with cream-colored leather seats. Annie drives a car for two years and then gives it back in exchange for a new car—this is called a lease, and Matty’s father has told him that it’s a fiscally irresponsible way to approach car ownership because you are never accruing value in something that you can sell later.
Matty breathes in and smells—nothing. The absence of odor is glorious. Their minivan smells like old potato chips, like Abigail’s experiments with body spray, like feet. You could make a meal from all of the crumbs hiding between the seats and the door. All the parts of Annie’s car—the dashboard, the gearshift, even the soft carpet under his feet—are immaculate. When their minivan moves, it sounds like an old man in an influenza ward. This car sounds like a very gentle cat purring.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“You’ll see.” Annie has a secret smile playing at her lips. Her spine is perfectly straight. She’s wearing sunglasses and a dress, even though it’s just a regular weekday. Matty is not sure he’s ever seen his grandmother in a pair of pants—anddefinitelynever, ever in shorts. Or a bathing suit. Imagine living so near the water and never putting on a bathing suit.
At the end of North Shore Drive Annie turns toward town. Maybe they are going out to lunch!
“This may not be the most exciting errand in the world, Matthew,” she says. “But I believe it is important.”
Matty’s heart sinks. An important, not-exciting errand does not sound like lunch. The water sparkles off to the right. He can see boats in the harbor. They pass a runner. As they get closer to townthe houses are closer together. Here is the turnoff to Archer’s, where they ate lunch earlier in the summer. Here is the Time Out Pub, where he heard somebody once died by falling backward from the upper deck. He shivers.
They keep going. Is Annie taking him to the Farnsworth? He hopes not. He hates museums. They pass the Farnsworth and continue on.
“I see you’ve become quite friendly with the Pelletiers’ granddaughter, young Hazel,” says Granny.
“Uh,” says Matty. Is this a test?
She glances over again. “Don’t sayuh,Matthew. It makes you sound less intelligent than you are.”
“Sorry,” says Matty. “I mean, yes, a little bit. A little bit friendly. She’s—” Here, words fail him.She’s perfectis what he wants to say.She’s a goddess.He finishes, lamely, with, “She’s really nice.” Then, because he thinks his grandmother will understand this next sentiment, he says, “It’s good to have someone close to my age around. With Abigail and Claire being so much younger.”
“That’s fine. Just keep your wits about you, won’t you?”
“Okay,” says Matty. What doesthatmean? He doesn’t want to ask, but he does want to know.
“Hazel’s mother and your mother used to be friends long ago, did your mother tell you that?”
“No.”
“Well! It ended badly. A skirmish over a summer boy when they were teenagers. If I recall correctly your mother was the victor and Hazel’s mother—Nicole—never got over it.” Matty casts a sidelong glance at Annie. “Nicole was always after a different kind of life anyway. First chance she got she was off to Nashville. I think she had it in her head that she had some sort of future singing country music.” The noise Annie makes after that leaves no doubt as to whatshethinks about country music. Hazel has mentioned nothing about her mother being a country singer. She hasn’t said much about her mother at all, in fact.
“Anyway I think she got what she was looking for—money!—when she married her record executive. And I’d say that poor child has borne the brunt of that chaotic marriage.” Annie shakes her head. “It never ceases to amaze me, what lengths people will go to when tearing up their families, instead of leaving well enough alone. It’s good she’s here with her grandparents—they’ve got their heads on straight, always have.”
Matty thinks about his frazzled mother, her hair in a messy bun, bleary-eyed at the kitchen table over a stack of undergraduate papers. He supposes he’s always known, sort of, that his parents had lives before they met each other, before they began their family and became the five McLeans. He knows that his father once had a very rich girlfriend named Aggie Baumfeld. There are photos all over Ships View of his mother as a young girl, and an awkward preteen with braces and glasses, and a high school graduate with a robe and a diploma. But Matty hasn’treallycontemplated her early existence. They pass the ferry terminal, and the Home Kitchen Cafe, and they keep going. His heart sinks again: they are heading toward Hannaford. Is Annie taking himgrocery shopping?He looks again at his shorts. Maybe he can wait in the car. There isno wayhe is walking around Hannaford in these shorts.
No. She doesn’t take the turn toward the shopping center.
They drive north on Route 1, as though they are going to the Samoset. Or maybe they are going to walk the breakwater? That would be okay, although Matty isn’t sure if it qualifies as an Important Errand. And Annie’s shoes don’t look appropriate.
Annie doesn’t turn off at the breakwaterorthe Samoset. Instead she keeps driving and then pulls down a small gravel path, where she stops. They are surrounded by graves. It’s acemetery.The important errand is to acemetery.Annie turns off the car—mostcars grumble when they turn off but the Mercedes merely sighs blissfully—and reaches around to the backseat, where Matty sees there are two red roses lying on a towel. Annie hands one to him and holds the other herself.
“We’re going to visit my parents,” she says. “Follow me.”
Thisis the errand? To visit Annie’s dead parents?
Matty trails his grandmother through the cemetery. She walks fast, her pocketbook hanging from the crook of her arm, her low heels sinking into the soft ground. He doesn’t like to think of all of the bodies buried underneath where they’re walking. The headstones look old; some of them are tipped forward or back, like crooked teeth. Isn’t it true that hair and fingernails continue to grow after a body has died?
After a time—way too long of a time, if you ask Matty—Annie stops at a site where two headstones sit close together. “Here we are,” she says. “I always worry that I won’t find them, but then I always do.” One of the headstones saysWalter Lowelland the other saysJean Lowell.
Annie lays a rose on Walter’s grave and looks significantly at Matty, so Matty lays his rose on Jean’s grave and backs away. He waits to see just how much more uncomfortable this moment can get. Annie reaches into her pocketbook and pulls out a small package of tissues, the kind Matty’s mother carries in her own giant bag. Annie extracts one and dabs at her eyes. Matty is shocked by this. Annie isold!Her parents have surely been deadforever!Is she still sad about them? Then he imagines his own parents dead. Will he still miss his parents when he is as old as Annie is now? Most likely he will.
He notices something about the headstones. They have different birth dates, but the date of death is the same: July 18, 1995.
“They died on the same date?” he asks. His question comes out in a whisper. (Are you supposed to whisper in a cemetery as though you are in a library?)
