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Abra’s birthday party was in the Stones’ backyard, a restful sweep of green grass with apple and
dogwood trees that were just coming into blossom. At the foot of the yard was a chainlink fence and a
gate secured by a combination padlock. The fence was decidedly unbeautiful, but neither David nor
Lucy cared, because beyond it was the Saco River, which wound its way southeast, through Frazier,
through North Conway, and across the border into Maine. Rivers and small children did not mix, in
the Stones’ opinion, especially in the spring, when this one was wide and turbulent with melting
snows. Each year the local weekly reported at least one drowning.
Today the kids had enough to occupy them on the lawn. The only organized game they could
manage was a brief round of follow-the-leader, but they weren’t too young to run around (and
sometimes roll around) on the grass, to climb like monkeys on Abra’s playset, to crawl through the
Fun Tunnels David and a couple of the other dads had set up, and to bat around the balloons now
drifting everywhere. These were all yellow (Abra’s professed favorite color), and there were at least six
dozen, as John Dalton could attest. He had helped Lucy and her grandmother blow them up. For a
woman in her eighties, Chetta had an awesome set of lungs.
There were nine kids, counting Abra, and because at least one of every parental set had come, there
was plenty of adult supervision. Lawn chairs had been set up on the back deck, and as the party hit
cruising speed, John sat in one of these next to Concetta, who was dolled up in designer jeans and her
WORLD’S BEST GREAT-GRAMMA sweatshirt. She was working her way through a giant slice of
birthday cake. John, who had taken on a few pounds of ballast during the winter, settled for a single
scoop of strawberry ice cream.
“I don’t know where you put it,” he said, nodding at the rapidly disappearing cake on her paper
plate. “There’s nothing to you. You’re a stuffed string.”
“Maybe so, caro, but I’ve got a hollow leg.” She surveyed the roistering children and fetched a deep
sigh. “I wish my daughter could have lived to see this. I don’t have many regrets, but that’s one of
them.”
John decided not to venture out on this conversational limb. Lucy’s mother had died in a car
accident when Lucy was younger than Abra was now. This he knew from the family history the Stones
had filled out jointly.
In any case, Chetta turned the conversation herself. “Do you know what I like about em at this
age?”
“Nope.” John liked them at all ages . . . at least until they turned fourteen. When they turned
fourteen their glands went into hyperdrive, and most of them felt obliged to spend the next five years
being boogersnots.
“Look at them, Johnny. It’s the kiddie version of that Edward Hicks painting, The Peaceable
Kingdom. You’ve got six white ones—of course you do, it’s New Hampshire—but you’ve also got two
black ones and one gorgeous Korean American baby who looks like she should be modeling clothes in
the Hanna Andersson catalogue. You know the Sunday school song that goes ‘Red and yellow, black
and white, they are precious in His sight’? That’s what we have here. Two hours, and not one of them
has raised a fist or given a push in anger.”
John—who had seen plenty of toddlers who kicked, pushed, punched, and bit—gave a smile in
which cynicism and wistfulness were exactly balanced. “I wouldn’t expect anything different. They all
go to L’il Chums. It’s the smart-set daycare in these parts, and they charge smart-set prices. That
means their parents are all at least upper-middle, they’re all college grads, and they all practice the
gospel of Go Along to Get Along. These kids are your basic domesticated social animals.”
John stopped there because she was frowning at him, but he could have gone farther. He could have
said that, until the age of seven or thereabouts—the so-called age of reason—most children were