“We can go into town after dinner and find some people,” I said. “We can go over to Charles William’s house and you can meet him. You want to do that?”

“That would be wonderful,” Patricia said. “Oh, Clay, you should do that. Rhoda can introduce you to people.”

“We can go to the pool if it doesn’t rain,” I added. “We go out there a lot at night. Do you like to swim at night?”

“Of course he does.” This from Dr. Morgan. “Who wouldn’t go swimming at night with a pretty girl?”

Clay had gotten up and was taking the plates and salad plates to the kitchen. He was waiting on the table. A boy who made bread and waited on the table. I had never seen such a thing. I jumped up and began to help him.

“There’s peach cobbler,” Patricia began. “Rhoda, you can help Clay serve it. The ice cream’s in the freezer on the porch.”

“I’d love to help him.” I met his eyes. We smiled together. Then we moved the rest of the plates and serving dishes and served the dessert and dessert wine and coffee and brandy. We were a family. Max and Patricia and Clay and I. We were a family in a dream. A family waiting on each other. I drank the sweet white wine and Dr. Morgan got up and filled my glass. Then I drank my brandy and he refilled that.

“Tell me how they do it,” I asked. “Tell me how they make carpet out of oil.”

“It’s all sun,” he began. “It all begins as hydrogen.”

Later, when we had done the dishes and talked on the porch awhile, I called Charles William and told him we were coming over. Then Clay and I got into my mother’s car and I began to drive down the two-lane asphalt road leading into Dunleith. There were no seat belts in cars back then. We had never even thought of having them. “Your parents are the nicest people I’ve ever met,” I began. “Where did they go to school? Where do you go to learn things like that?”

“She went to Vassar.” He was sitting beside me in the dark front seat. I was driving sixty miles an hour, then sixty-five, as fast as I could drive and make the curves. “And he went to the University of Chicago. My brother was going there before he died. But I go to Brown. Do you know where that is? Maybe you should turn on the windshield wipers, Rhoda. It’s starting to rain.”