Dave had been really busy. Getting married and a new house on the Jersey shore and a new job. We weren’t as close as we had been. Everybody was so wrapped up with work that we hardly ever called each other. We waited too long and then had nothing to say.

I hadn’t been to their house since Christmas, and that was the first time I’d seen it. Dave had met Denise two years earlier, taking golf lessons. Then, in the span of eight months, they got engaged, set a date, joined a church and a health club, got married, bought a house, and now she was pregnant. We hung up, and when I thought about that call I could picture Dave touching her belly.

They live near the water. Some things are automatically picture-perfect. It dawned on me that the weather down there is always mild, and with Labor Day coming it might be a nice idea to visit them. “Uncle Vince”—it clanged like an old, familiar bell. I called him back. I reminded him of the troubles I’d been having with Kiffany, and said that since there was a holiday weekend, I was thinking of getting out of the city.

“You’re saying you want to come down?”

“Maybe. I don’t know—sure.”

“Let me ask Denise,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Fantastic.”

“I’ll call you back.”

“Hey, how far are you guys from the water?” I couldn’t quite remember.

“Not far,” he said.

“Is there gonna be a picnic or anything?”

“A picnic?”

“Like a Labor Day picnic.”

“I don’t know of any picnic.”

“I’ll bet there’s something in your area—a street fair or a sack race. I haven’t been to a picnic in ten years.”

“Let me call you later.”

It would be an opportunity to get away from this scene for a while. To be there at the start of their adorable family—my timing was exquisite. Later, Dave called and said it was O.K. So I put some stuff in the trunk Friday morning. After lunch I got out on the road and turned south.

KIFFANY WAS THE last in a long line of failures. Looking back over the years, I could see a pattern. Pictures came into my head on the road to my brother’s house. Old faces drifted across the road in front of me, things I had done. I looked for a good station on the radio. The drive was about four and a half hours long.