“I can’t believe she likes you,” Sam teases Justin in bed.
“Why? I’m not so bad.”
“You’re old.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot.”
“She thinks I’m living with you.”
“Well.” He is tracing her body with his hands. “She seemed okay with it.”
“Yeah.” She is warm. “You should…” She can’t even talk.
“Always bring dahlias.”
She is laughing, and at the same time she’s sad, because she can’t remember anyone bringing flowers to her mom. “I wish.”
“What?”
“It was easier for her.”
“I think she’s glad her kids are older.”
“Maybe.” Sam slips on top of him. “I’m not sure.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
Sam doesn’t answer; it’s too sweet. Only later, words return. “Because she is alone.”
She wants to tell him about her mom and Jack, and even Adam. She wants to tell about the times that she was little, and all about her dad. For a second, she feels the wanting like that pressure behind your eyes when you’re afraid you might burst into tears—but she does not tell him, and she does not cry.
In the morning, Sam finds Ann sitting at the kitchen table with a little flat cardboard box. It belonged to her grandson Eddy and it looks nibbled at the corners. Inside is a mineral collection of twenty specimens glued onto labeled squares. There is a flaky piece of mica and a piece of quartz and there is fluorite and turquoise and a tiny piece of copper and there is pyrite—fool’s gold. “Will you look at that,” says Ann, because she is a fan of minerals. “I knew I had this somewhere and you know where it was? The broom closet.”
Another time, Ann gives Sam a book published by the Government Printing Office in 1894. The title is Geology of the Green Mountains of Massachusetts. The cover is rough brown, the pages smooth inside.
“I think this came from the library,” says Ann. “Years ago, when they were selling the old books. Look. I got it for a quarter.” She is someone who never has to buy a present.
The book includes line drawings of mountains and their composition. Then there are photos taken under a microscope so you can see the crystal structures. Just opening at random, Sam finds a section called AMPHIBOLITES. “Last to be described are heavy dark rocks, generally fine-grained, in which the eye recognizes dark crystalloids of hornblende and irregular patches of feldspar and cubes of pyrite.” The whole book goes on like this.
“It’s very long,” says Ann.
Sam says, “And this is just volume twenty-three.”
“Yes, I wonder where all the other volumes went. Look at these maps.”
“How did they figure all this out?” Sam is thinking about the authors—Pumpelly, Wolff, and Dale.
Ann says, “They must have camped up there.”
“I know, but how did they—see everything?” Sam can imagine those three geologists camping and smoking outside their tent and telling stories, but how did they gather evidence? Did they chip off little bits of rock? Were they carrying huge cameras?
Now Sam has her own drawer in Justin’s room, and on the floor next to the mattress, she’s got the rock collection and Geology of the Green Mountains. She has her own mug in the kitchen, and she knows exactly how Ann likes her coffee.
She feels unfaithful to accounting, and to her family. Sometimes she feels like she has traded in her mom and brother. When she turns nineteen, she eats cake with them, but then she drives home to Justin. She goes to bed and she wakes up with him. When she opens her eyes, he kisses her bare shoulder.
Downstairs Ann says, “Good morning.” She is never in a rush.
In the evenings they play Scrabble and listen to old records. Ann has all the songs from Freeda’s but on vinyl, so they get stuck and you have to lift the needle and set it down again. They cook for Ann, and her favorite dinner is spaghetti. Sam chops the onions. Justin boils the pasta, because Ann can’t lift the pot of boiling water.
On Friday night, they eat together, and Ann tells Justin, “Look at your hands!” He says he was clearing out the blackberry canes and she says, “What about the gloves I gave you?”
“I can only find one,” he tells her.
“And you didn’t wear it, did you?”
He says, “Wearing one is weird.”
Ann laughs out loud and says, “Who will see you?” When he doesn’t answer, she says, “You’re a funny kid.” Age means nothing to her. Nineteen. Twenty-four. What’s the difference? Even Ann’s children are in their seventies. One of them has passed away. Eight years ago, her son, John, died of cancer. He was Justin’s grandfather. Ann’s daughters live down in Florida, in Boynton Beach, and one is now a widow. So Ann’s children are old, and even her grandchildren are middle-aged. Justin and Sam are babies. She asks Sam, “What did you learn in school today?”
Sam says, “Your gross profit is net sales minus the cost of goods sold.”
Ann looks amused. “It’s really common sense, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but we get tested.”
After dinner, Sam clears, and Justin washes dishes and they talk about pumpkins, which Justin harvested from the garden. He says, “But nobody ate them.”
“I wish I liked them more,” Ann says.
“I thought you wanted them!”
“I like the way they look, but they don’t taste like anything.”
“You like the seeds,” Justin reminds her.
She brightens. “Yes, that’s true. My grandfather used to toast them.”
This grandfather of Ann’s was born in the nineteenth century, which is strange to think about. Ann has a whole stack of photographs. His name was Edward and his wife was Ann. In the pictures, Ann’s grandmother Ann is wearing a black dress and a white collar and her hair up. She is frowning and her eyes are very pale. “She looks like you,” Justin tells Ann.
“They look strict,” murmurs Sam. Ann’s grandparents seem so stern and straight, but no. They were both radicals. They lived in a utopian community. It was a beautiful piece of land near Beverly. Now it’s a horse farm, Windy Hill.
“Oh, I’ve been there,” Sam says.
“To go riding?”
“To see my dad.”
As soon as Sam speaks, she is embarrassed—and ashamed for feeling that way. She is afraid Ann will say, And what was he doing there? Or one of her cheerful questions—Was he recovering from something? But all Ann says is they are good people there.
“Here are my grandparents with their children.” Ann hands Sam a big black-and-white photograph. “Here’s Edward and here’s Ann.” She explains how they were dedicated to living a good life, growing all their own food, building their own dwellings. “Do you see that little girl?” Ann points to a chubby toddler dressed in white. “She was my mother, Edith.”
Justin pours the scotch, and Sam serves out ice cream and gingersnaps. She should be studying for her next quiz, but it’s hard to worry about any of that stuff now. Ice cream is luscious, and scotch is even smoother. Sam thinks this is a utopia, isn’t it? She is in love with Justin, and also his house, and also Ann.
“But it did not work out,” says Ann.
“What happened?”
“Naturally, the people didn’t get along.”
“Why naturally?” says Justin.
“Well, as a whole we are a selfish and self-serving bunch.”
“Not always!” Justin defends humanity.
Ann smiles at him, but she says, “I disagree.”
Ann says there used to be a lot of utopias around New England. There was Fruitlands, where the people nearly starved, not to mention, they tried to wear linen all winter. Then there were the Shakers, but they died out, because they believed in celibacy. “I think they were pretty frustrated,” Ann says. “Look at their baskets.”
“What’s that?” Justin says. They hear a thumping, scuffling sound.
“Something’s on the porch,” says Sam.
For a second, they all think it’s an animal, because who else would scuffle on the porch? Then they hear a key in the lock, footsteps in the hall, and a big rolling suitcase. A woman steps inside the kitchen and Ann says, “My goodness. Back so soon?”
Justin says, “Hi, Mom.”