Among the checkpoints of Middle Falls had been the beach of imported sand at Heron Pond. Here in summers the young mothers of Owen’s acquaintance, nearing the midpoint of their three score and ten but still lovely in his eyes, took their children for an hour’s easy entertainment in the middle of the day, a quick lunch, and then home for a nap, sometimes reappearing in the shadowy afternoon, the slow time sloping toward the children’s dinner after five. Gregory, at twelve, and Iris, at ten and a half, had outgrown the tepid brown water, the tetherball on its rickety pole in the center of a circle of dust, the jackknife-initialled picnic benches and tables, the oil drums painted green and labelled TRASH, the corroded aluminum water-slide close to shore, the lifeguard chair still occupied by the principal’s straight-haired mahogany daughter, no longer a teen-ager. Her plumpness had become denser, even menacing, with a hint of mustache above the lips white with zinc oxide, and her thick legs conspicuously hairy—a statement presumably political. Among the young, hair had become an emblem; armpits flourished, boys’ ears vanished. Gregory became a mophead, a miniature Beatle, protesting haircuts as if they were a form of assault, a vaccination that would hurt. Little Floyd, a second grader, and Eve were still docile visitors to the pond; when Owen would run over there at lunch in the red Corvette Stingray he had decided, as of 1968, that he owed himself, he would come upon them and their mother as if in fresh discovery. He liked seeing his wife in a bathing suit—a white bikini that set off her pale, pinkish tan. So close to nude yet still stately, she seemed the Phyllis he had hoped for, and the whole sleepy, scruffy beach by the pond recalled a lost paradise, with its brown-legged tomboys. The mothers spread blankets on the grass and picnicked with their children, Alissa Morrissey making her usual jokes about the caloric dangers of Marshmallow Fluff. She was short enough that any extra pound showed; but something anxious, nervous, and double-edged about her whittled away and kept her plumpness in check. Her husband, Ian, was getting to be difficult, it was said. Against the trend of the times for long ironed hair, she had hers, snuff-brown with induced highlights, cut short and brushed back as if she were speeding by on a motorcycle. She wore glasses rimmed in flesh-colored plastic, even when lazing at the pond; her eyes—dull blue, abraded like much-washed denim—shifted his way, Owen thought, more than his strict share. Men were a rare sight at Heron Pond. When Alissa smiled at something he said, her smile curved to enclose him; it was as if she read his mind and knew about the murky incident with Stacey, and the clear resolution that had followed. He was available.