(1)

Grace’s arms and legs were stippled with goose bumps. This was particularly annoying because she hated the sight of her bare flesh, and she would have been in all ways more comfortable if she were covered.

“It’s summertime, dammit,” she griped.

“Well honey, we knew we should have taken our jackets,” Owen stated as he raised his left arm around her shoulder. “This is San Francisco in June; we were warned.”

It was true. Their daughter told them. Linda lived in Littleton, Colorado now but she used to live in the Bay Area; she knew like a local that only a tourist went without warm layers in June.

But Grace had been impatient and Owen hadn’t wanted an argument. She saw the sun out the window and didn’t want to be encumbered. Grace was forever in a hurry to get on to the next thing. Back when they were young or even middle-aged, it was always Owen who found fault and started their little fights, but somehow over the last 15 years, especially in the five since his T.I.A., the balance had shifted. Now it was always Grace sniping, fidgeting, picking.

A chill gust caught at them as they turned a corner. “Let’s take a break,” Owen said. They were in North Beach and the terrain had become hilly. Grace’s emphysema was in the early stage but she really couldn’t climb any more. Cafes and bistros seemed more prevalent than churches around them, so they entered a well-lit corner place.

No sooner did their drinks come – double cappuccinos in their attempt to replicate the café cremes of Paris – than Grace started in about leaving. “Let’s get out of here,” she blurted, gulped coffee, and added, “I don’t like the look of this place.”

But Owen needed more time. He liked his coffee cooler; he hated to fuzz his tongue. There wasn’t anything wrong with the café. Grace always had trouble staying still, and she had unwavering confidence in her own snap judgments. In general Owen appreciated her ability to size up most people on first acquaintance. There had been countless times in his career when she’d steered him away from phonies or users. But she also had a tendency to make decisions about a store’s inventory in the doorway, or to doom a movie during the opening credits – those quirks hadn’t seemed cute to him for at least 54 years.

Grace looked at him with dismay. There was no doubt that she loved her husband, and she knew she’d be there for him till the end, but he wasn’t the man she’d married. He wasn’t even the guy she raised the kids with or, and she almost blushed to think the word her daughter had inured her to, the one she used to fuck. Not that she missed that – nooooo – but it was one of life’s little surprises that they just stopped getting around to doing it, apparently, some 10 years ago.

“C’mon, Owen,” she wheedled. “Your coffee’s cool enough now. Let’s find an Internet café and e-mail the kids.”

(2)

“It’s summertime, dammit.”

“Language, Mark,” admonished Linda, as she carried the orange juice to the table. “And attitude. I’ve told you before: save the swear words for when you really need them. And it’s nobody’s fault but your own that you have to go to summer school. You’re no dummy.”

Mark poured corn flakes into his cereal bowl and jiggled his left leg. What Linda could see of his face looked okay. He may even have been smiling. He watched her fill his juice glass and he said, “All right, Mom. I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

He mimicked a manacled prisoner marching to his doom. Linda had to laugh. All in all she found Mark more entertaining as he got older. He was 14 now, and often told her jokes she’d never heard. He was a pleasure compared to his old self, before he evolved as he said (at 12), back when he was fat and unhappy and abused by his dad. But once she’d seen the hitting and stopped it, and after by some sort of luck or blessing Mark had gotten a glimpse of what it could be like to like himself, then he began trying, and got morals, and stopped getting suspended, and also stopped eating junk first and then meat too, and blossomed into this amazing kind funny attractive person, who sat at her kitchen table right now, spooning milky cereal into his mouth and swinging one foot. His last suspension was for bringing weapons to school (that was the box the vice-principal checked to categorize the kitchen matches Mark said he’d found on the playing field); she now remembered the event as sweet.

He’d turned into a class clown, which was good for his social life but not for his grades. His math in particular, that most progressive of disciplines, was in serious trouble; if he didn’t get it soon he’d surely be left behind, and find math insufferable, and therefore not even try to learn it, and so cycle like a silly girl into a downward disesteem. His school required him to take a math class this summer.

“It’s only for a couple of hours, honey,” Linda said as he raised the bowl and drank the sugary milk, “and only for a few weeks.”

“Six.”

“There’s still more than half of every day, and most of the summer clear.”

“Okay.” He gulped some of his juice, grimaced at the taste after the sweet milk, and stood to go. Linda just managed to hug him before he left.

She cleared the table, stretched her lower back, and went to her study. She checked her e-mail before starting to work, and there was a note from her traveling parents.

From: growen@aol.com
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 19:34:50 EDT
Subject: Greetings from SF
To: linda960@mindspring.com
X-Mailer: 8.0 for Windows sub 6011
X-SC-SPAMScan-score: ss

Hi Sweetheart:
We’re freezing here in Frisco. Locals tell us we should have switched our itinerary around and come here in Sept. Guess we’ll have to buy clothes! We hear Jenny’s rash is flaring up again; please check up on her? We’ll call soon.
Love, Mom and Dad

Typical. Linda recognized her mother’s patter at the keyboard. She and her sister-in-law were no longer tight friends, and Colorado wasn’t really any closer to Atlanta than California, electronically or telephonically speaking. Nothing to be gained by checking up on Jenny’s rash. Except not displeasing Grace. Linda would rather ride her bike to the lake to see the newly-arrived geese. But she tabled both activities for the morning and tackled her own work instead. These days, she needed to keep her clients happy if she wanted to keep her clients.