Arch’s house, on Glen Eden, was a Colonial Revival with a slate roof, three dormer windows, two brick chimneys, and a white-columned side porch facing out onto a large yard that sloped gently down to the street.

He pulled around the back, in front of a two-car garage. I followed him through the back door into a kitchen with a ten-foot ceiling and a large island with tiled countertops. At the end of the counter sat a woman. She looked up and smiled.

“Charlie,” she said. “What a pleasure to meet you.”

Mrs. Creigh had bobbed silver hair. She wore no makeup. The pink reading glasses at the end of her nose made her seem too old to be Arch’s mother. Her shirt and wrists were faintly soiled; a pair of gardening gloves and a straw hat lay beside her teacup and newspaper.

“There’s some chicken salad and pimento cheese in the fridge,” she said. “Do you like chicken salad, Charlie?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’ll make some sandwiches,” she said.

“Thanks, Mom,” Arch said.

What a thing it would be, I thought, to come home every day to such a house, to find your modestly elegant mother sitting at the kitchen table perusing the newspaper or the latest issue of Southern Living, waiting to ask you about your day and make you a chicken salad sandwich.

I followed Arch through a hallway where the walls were covered with family photos: Arch and his older sisters at every age; his mother holding an infant, his eldest sister’s child; the whole family dressed in matching chinos and white shirts on a beach. The offshore wind blowing their hair just so. Arch’s mother looked more or less the same; his father looked much younger than his wife, with a thick head of golden hair and a smile identical to his son’s. The sisters were striking, in the way people with breeding can be.

The hallway opened up onto a sun-splashed room with a sectional couch and a glass-top coffee table with a bright flower arrangement in a ceramic urn. A pair of bookshelves flanked an enormous television. On the opposite wall by the windows stood a pool table. Arch racked the balls and handed me a cue.

“You want to break?”

“You go ahead,” I said.

He cracked the cue ball and set to work clearing the table. After a few minutes, Mrs. Creigh appeared in the doorway with plates holding sandwiches and little ramekins of fruit salad. She set the plates on the coffee table. Arch leaned his cue against the wall and opened up the cabinet beneath the television set to reveal a hidden bar refrigerator.

“Want a Coke?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Hey,” he said. “You want to go swimming later?”

“Where?” I asked.

“A friend’s house,” he said.

“I don’t have a suit,” I said.

“You can wear one of mine.”

“All right.”