Cost

“Why, thank you,” Katharine said demurely. “I may be a little slow now, but I hope you know I climbed Mount Washington when I was younger.”

“I know that,” Steven said. “Katharine ‘The Goat’Treadwell.” Wasn't that what you were called?”

Katharine laughed with him, confused. The Goat?

He slowed his steps to match hers as they all made their way back through the blowing grass to the house. The sky was now wild, streaming with sunset.

Supper was in the dining room, where the wide floorboards had once been painted deep blue, but were worn in places down to bare wood. Against one wall stood a heavy mahogany sideboard, holding a white ironstone pitcher filled with daisies. Against another wall was an ancient daybed, beneath a faded Currier & Ives print of the celebrated trotter Lucy. In a corner, on a rickety spool-legged table, was the only telephone in the house.

They carried in plates and sat down around the battered drop-leaf table.

“Well, Steven,” said Edward, unfolding his napkin. “Tell us what you've been doing.”

Steven told them about Seattle—the forest, the project, the loggers. When he began to describe the confrontation, Julia put down her fork.

“You chained yourself to a tree, in front of loggers with chain saws?” Julia asked. “You never told me that.”

“No,” said Steven, “I thought it more prudent not to.” He grinned at her. “It wasn't ‘in front of chain saws.’They weren't going to cut us in two.”

“Goodness!” Katharine said. “It sounds pretty dangerous.” She wasn't sure she understood this, why Steven had chained himself to a tree, if that was what he had done, and chained the saw there, too?

“It does sound dangerous,” Julia said sternly.

“It wasn't,” said Steven. “We weren't at risk. These were loggers, not gangsters. Everyone was very rational and calm.”

“And what happened?”

But Steven would not tell them the rest, about the spitting, his pathetic epiphany, his moment of communion with the logger who despised him. The battered work boots, the muddy truck. The saliva, high on his cheek, warm from the logger's mouth. Instead of fading, the memory had actually become worse in retrospect, more disturbing.

“Nothing much,” Steven answered. “The loggers got an injunction against us for trespassing. They came back with the police, and we had to stop. But we achieved something, we established a moral position. The papers wrote it up. We struck a small blow for the environment. The weird thing, though, was the loggers thought we were trying to grow marijuana.”

“Marijuana?” Katharine looked from face to face. “While you were against the trees?” Marijuana wasn't something you could tie yourself to, was it? Things had gotten completely muddled.

“Marijuana,” Steven said to her. “You know what marijuana is, Grandma.” He mimed smoking a joint, sucking in his cheeks, inhaling loudly. She smiled uncertainly. To Julia he said, “They had the idea that that was our real reason for protesting. We wanted to grow pot back in the woods.”

“Completely bizarre,” said Julia. She couldn't, actually, think of this at all—the chain saws, the huge trees, Steven bound and helpless.

Edward shook his head. “Sounds like a damn fool scheme to me,” he announced.

Steven looked at his grandfather. “Not everyone agreed with it as a plan,” he said mildly.

“I'm glad to hear it.” Edward shook his head again. “It sounds pretty silly.”

Steven lifted his glass and drank.

“Daddy, don't jump on Steven,” Julia told him. “There isn't only one solution for a problem. There are different approaches, you know.”

“But not different sensible ones,” Edward said. “Most problems have only one sensible solution.” He leaned back in his chair. “You can tear down the chimney and lower the grand piano through the hole in the roof, but the sensible plan is to carry it in through the front door.” Edward was enjoying himself. He liked helping younger people, having intellectual discussions with them, offering guidance.

“That's not a useful comparison.” Julia could feel her father settling in for an argument.

“All I'm doing is telling the truth,” Edward said. “Steven doesn't mind my telling him the truth. You don't mind, do you, Steve?”

“That's like asking me if I've stopped beating my wife.” Steven smiled good-naturedly at his grandfather. “It sounds like you're asking, ‘Do I mind or not mind your telling me that I'm wrong?’”

“What are you saying?” Edward asked, frowning.

“It's the premise I disagree with—your premise is that I'm wrong. Whether I mind being told it is another matter.”

“Now hold on.” Edward raised his forefinger. “I'm talking about facts. Chaining yourselves to trees that are about to be cut down is a cockamamie scheme: you know that.”

“So was Gandhi's plan a cockamamie scheme,” Steven said. “Sometimes unorthodox methods work better than conventional ones. You know it's true in science. Coming up with cockamamie schemes is the way scientists often make discoveries. You did experimental work, didn't you, Grandpa?”

“The experimental work I did was not reckless and haphazard,” Edward said reprovingly. “What I did was based on clinical research.”

“But still, it was experimental, you were taking risks,” Steven said.

“Experiments in medicine are done responsibly, with great care,” Edward said, looking thunderous.

“May I be allowed to speak?” Katharine asked demurely. She looked around with an expectant smile.

Everyone turned to her.

“When I was the president of the Debating Society at Miss Hall's School, we had rules about this.” Her tone was amused and selfdeprecating. “You didn't just argue back and forth. You stated your position, and then your opponent stated theirs. Then you each gave a rebuttal, and then it was over. And I was the president,” she added, cocking her head, mirthful.

“Yes, and I'm sure you were a very good president,” Edward said, “for one so small.”

Delighted, Katharine bunched her napkin and threw it at him; it fluttered to the floor. “Take that,” she said spiritedly.

Julia was silent, refusing to smile at the high jinks. She could feel heat in her face: her father infuriated her. He let nothing go by. He had to correct the world. And why were her parents acting like this? They had never done this while Julia was growing up. They had rarely shown affection; it was considered inappropriate to display it. At school there had been a sort of unofficial rule: No PDA, public display of affection. You kept your feelings to yourself. All this jocular sentimentality was new, and oddly discomfiting. It was embarrassing, watching her elderly parents flirt. Besides, those were the rules the family had lived by, now flouted. Were the years of restraint and discretion now to be dismissed, casually and completely? What other codes were about to be interdicted?

But maybe this was how it was, growing old. They were nearly ninety—maybe discretion had been merely a phase. It wasn't for her to say how her parents should act toward each other. But it was strange to see them like this, as though they'd become unmoored from their own characters, as though they now were drifting, aimlessly, somewhere else.

Julia glanced protectively at Steven, bent over his plate. She hoped he didn't feel attacked by his contentious grandfather, hoped he didn't feel offended or sorry he'd come. When Steven was a teenager he'd been moody, retreating often into silence and distance, resisting his parents, whatever they offered. It had been hard to know what might set him off, what it was they were doing wrong. Everything, it seemed sometimes.

But now Steven seemed unconcerned, and Edward seemed to have forgotten the argument, flirting with his wife. Right now Julia missed Wendell, who had liked her parents, even her outrageous father. Wendell had teased Edward, flirted with Katharine, and made everyone laugh.

Suddenly Julia missed her sister, too. It was odd to miss her here, since Harriet rarely came to Maine. But Julia wished she were here right now, sitting across the table, rolling her eyes at their father's comments and taking Julia's side. She missed their old alliance, the sister of her childhood. Though that was long ago. It had been years since Harriet had taken Julia's side.

Steven glanced up at her, and Julia smiled and shook her head slightly, to show Steven that he shouldn't mind his grandfather. Steven smiled back. He was older now, twenty-four, past the tumultuous stretch of adolescence. He had become calm and reliable. She could trust him now—couldn't she?—not to take offense, to judge his grandparents. Or her. His family were who they were, and he seemed old enough to accept them. It was a relief, this change.

It was she, Julia realized, who was having trouble with her parents: they were starting to seem like strangers. So old and frail. Watching them now, she was struck by the difference between these people and the parents she'd always known, the people who'd been in charge of her life.

On Sunday mornings her father used to get up first and make breakfast for everyone. He walked around in the kitchen in his pajamas and plaid bathrobe, singing from South Pacific in his high, sweet tenor. “Some Enchanted Evening,” he sang, “Bali Ha'i.” Sometimes he made scrambled eggs, sometimes pancakes or waffles, fancy treats. He stood at the stove in his bathrobe and slippers, singing. And her mother, Julia remembered her gardening, kneeling among the flowerbeds, the basket of tools beside her, a pile of weeds on the lawn. Looking up at Julia and smiling with pleasure: “Look at these white iris!”

Those people were gone. Her father was now barely able to walk, her mother was struggling to follow the conversation. Her parents were drifting away, locked in a losing struggle with their bodies, their minds. The tide was going out.

FIVE (#u8815bb42-acb5-5c6a-8775-683c39af4d03)