Behind her, against a midsummer backdrop of mature shade trees and genteel East Coast suburbia, Ted parsed the unfamiliar American currency for the taxi driver who had dumped their suitcases and trunk and crates of books onto the curb in front of her mother’s house, a fare of $3.35 from Boston’s South Station to Wellesley in 1957, three dollar bills and some silver change, which Ted held out hesitantly in his open palm for the driver to pick from, as if feeding a squirrel or a wild bird. Sylvia couldn’t wait; she practically skipped up the concrete path past the unpruned junipers flanking the front door, the lank petunias growing toward the light, and let herself in. “We’re here!” she yelped up the stairs, excited, the prodigal daughter returneth with a Cambridge degree and a job offer from her alma mater and a poet husband, brand new—new to America, anyway—the screen door banging on its hinge, Ted struggling up the walk with the crates, and Sylvia turned around to see her mother bent over the dining room table on which she had been arranging and rearranging all of the wedding gifts and cards of congratulations from family and neighbors, Sylvia’s favorite professors at Smith, old classmates from Haven House and Lawrence, when they learned of her marriage in London the previous June. Clocks, linens, crystal, pewter, copper pots banked to the edges of her grandmother’s Austrian tablecloth, sparkling, gleaming, buffed to high luster after a year of proud maternal display and much handling. Confiture, double boiler, fish poacher, demitasse. “We’ve arrived!” she squeaked as her mother straightened, going red in the face, still wearing a stained housecoat over her welcoming dress, a rag in her hand.

*   *   *

The bicarbonate bubbles and foams. Sylvia stands at the kitchen sink, fluorescent with wakefulness, her bony hips against the metal edge of the linoleum counter. It is some time, hours, after midnight. Her sleeves are rolled to her elbows; a dishcloth is tucked into the waistband of her apron. Fresh apple cake sweats on the drain board, warm to the touch. She sprinkles another spoonful of bicarbonate over her tarnished wedding copper, neutralizing the acid of the vinegar bath in which they’ve been soaking all night. The surface foams like the rush of incoming tide and subsides. Sylvia unscrews the cap on the copper polish and dips a remnant of soft flannel into the tub of polish, thick and white as cold cream.