Mother had always wanted to live in New York, to haunt the galleries and the public library, ride the subways, smoke in the park while reading a book, listen to jazz in dark, shabby clubs. She wanted to be free for a while, enjoy the company of young men, dance and fall in love. Instead she had us before she even made it out of Brockton. New York didn’t seem like such a good idea then, but when an opportunity arose she jumped at it, moving us to Hyannis, where she lived it up for a while, kids or no kids. Then it started to wear on her, always buying clothes and shoes and notebooks for us and sleeping with guys with nothing on their minds but feeding and clothing their own kids and despising their ex-wives. Who needed it?

She thought the boys – that being us – could make it on their own except maybe for Gus, who didn’t have a lot of sense. Jake was so silent and self-contained she didn’t know if he had any sense, either, but it didn’t matter. He practically lived on the East Chop from the first moment he got the ferry job and then he left for good. Now Gus was leaving and although she couldn’t be sure what would become of him, it was his beginning, not for her to interfere with.

She could do whatever she wanted, now. She could move to the city. But what would she do there? She could drink and smoke in Hyannis with a lot less trouble. And she had her own little city she was building. It wasn’t for anybody but herself. Not for her customers, not for Jake, not for Gus, just for her. It wasn’t fun, exactly. But it passed the time and gave her something to plan and carry out. It was a life of a sort. It worked for her to have dreams no bigger than what could fit on the kitchen table. How could it help her to walk down to the beach and have ocean-sized dreams? There was nothing in it for her, no ship to take her over the horizon. Only her long-trained memory for orders of eggs and bacon, waffles and whipped cream, coffee regular, black, or with extra sugar, honey, just the way you like it. The usual.