On the morning of the party, Papa and Merle and Dee’s sons left early to pick up the booze and wine and food, taking Edmund along. Jane and her aunts argued in the kitchen. Upstairs, Polly heard Maude’s voice in Dee’s room.

“Time to get out of bed, Mom.”

Polly walked down the hall. “She needs her coffee,” she said.

“Well, get it then, please,” said Maude.

Polly made sure the tray was perfect. She found a vase for nasturtiums from the pot on the porch while Maude told everyone else in the kitchen that they were crazy to be doing their own cooking, that everyone in the family had always been insane. She let Polly carry the tray as they headed upstairs and down the long hall. Nothing moved in Rita’s ocean that morning, and the only thing moving in Dee’s bed was her face, a smile and her eyes looking at the flower and the steaming coffee.

“Out of bed, Mom,” said Maude, gentle now. “I’ll brush your hair. One more party.”

“One last party,” said Dee.

Papa would not wear his suit. He wore what he always wore—gray trousers, a white shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up. On days at home, his clothes were older or mended. A suit was saved for teaching, for dinner out with Dee, for friends’ funerals, and normally for something like this. But not for something on the beach, he said to Dee.

They took a first load of food down in the midafternoon and brought Lemon. The wine and Champagne and beer were on ice and the tables were set up, tablecloths bunching in the wind. The children and the aunts and uncles all walked down to the water—it was hot and wavier than usual, almost like an ocean-side beach. Polly and Edmund tagged along with Odile and Inge as they waded in and sat back in the sand, looking at the old ladies’ oddly identical horned feet, brown-gray and white-gray, the crippled hands with matching opal rings.

“We are both October babies,” said Odile, piling sand on her toes. “So we gave these to each other.”

They all waved to Arnold and Maude, out on Papa’s boat. Arnold had rowed down from the house in case anyone wanted a ride during the party. Now, at low tide, they all helped him drag it up on the beach.

What had Polly imagined, what had she seen that day with her sharp new eyes, her tortoiseshell glasses? A hundred people, dressed for summer but in all the variety of the period. In a photo from that day, Maude wore a low-cut linen shirt and cigarette pants. She looked like the cover of a John D. MacDonald paperback. Jane wore something turquoise blue, short and sleeveless, and Polly watched her paint her toenails a deep blood-red.