They packed and loaded the car, but when Tommy turned around in the driveway, he backed into a sandy dune, and for the next half hour they dug like dogs, having no shovel, while Tommy and Merle argued and Jane kept Rita from straying, sometimes spinning her in place so that she giggled and forgot where she might have wanted to go. They stopped for fish sandwiches and beer and drove on to Edmund’s grandparents’ huge house in East Lansing. Storm lighting, humid and still, ninety degrees. Rita said the color of the air was viridian and kept saying it until everyone agreed with her. She started on about the color of her hair again, Titian red. When Polly said that this was the color of Nancy Drew’s hair, Rita went on about oxides.

When they piled out of the car onto the smooth black driveway in the midafternoon, the children were sunburnt, the parents drunk, and everyone was crumpled and filthy. Polly braced for hugs—all of her relatives hugged—and found with relief that none of the Wards were interested in touching anyone. There’d been tornado warnings, and Thomas’s mother, angry from the minute she appeared at the front door, was hysterical about the idea they’d driven through death. She made the children go in the basement—the cleanest basement, still, of Polly’s life—until Tommy convinced her that the warning was over, and the children should be outside.

Back upstairs, moving through the chilly immensity of the house, Detroit was burning in rare color on a large television. Everyone paused and watched. Tommy argued with his parents, and when he went outside with his father (who said, Let’s get into it then, sonny) and Merle, who tried to make peace, the children and women fell into a horrible quiet as they watched police and crowds give way to footage of Vietnamese jungles on television.

“Merle is such a steady influence,” said the elder Mrs. Ward, now calm. She had stiff frosted hair and huge diamonds on both hands, and she smoked Pall Malls. “Merle didn’t volunteer for that silly mess. These boys have so many better things to do.”

Merle probably would have served, like his brother, but for the polio arm. Nevertheless, he thought Tommy should have used his university exemption.