Read Cape Cod for Free Online Page B

laughed right back—“ ’cause your breath smells like farts.”
    “Ma- ah !” cried Keith, but Ma was laughing, too.
    Dad said a dog’s mouth was cleaner than a human’s, which made everyone laugh harder, and the laughter rolled from kissing dogs to bad breath to Dad’s dumb theories while their Voyager rolled on to the Sagamore rotary, where three strands of traffic met and snarled under the sunglasses of the Massachusetts State Police. The silver framework of the Sagamore Bridge seemed close enough to touch, but it was still ten minutes away, and the laughter faded again.
    Geoff and Janice had been crossing the bridge when he asked her to marry him. It was 1973, the first warm day of spring, which meant late May on Cape Cod. They had cut classes to sip wine and make love and read Victorian novels in the shelter of some sand dune, and he could still remember the conspiratorial glint in her eye when he asked.
    “If I say no, will you drive through the guardrail?”
    “I’ll have no choice.”
    “Then I’d better say yes.”
    He had reached out his hand to hers, and she had placed it on her thigh, at the cuff of her tennis shorts. His fingers had done the rest.
    She was wearing tennis shorts this morning, and he still found her thighs irresistible. Halfway across the canal that separated the Cape, like a moat, from the rest of the world, he placed his hand on the smooth skin. “This isn’t dumb.”
    She covered his hand with hers. “Not dumb. Daring.”
    “And haven’t we always been daring?”
    “Just ask our families.”

ii.
    At one-fifty-nine, they parked in front of the house in Dennis where Janice had grown up. She glanced at her watch and put her fingers in her ears.
    At two o’clock on the nose, a thunderous explosion rattled the windows of the house, then Dickerson Bigelow bellowed, “The bar is open. Let the glorious Fourth begin!”
    When he saw Janice, Dickerson fired the brass starter’s cannon again. The blast nearly blew Grandma Agnes off her chair. Drinks spilled, Bigelows jumped, and inside the house, a picture fell from the living room wall. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried, “it gives me great pleasure to announce that my favorite Hilyards are here!”
    Uncle Hiram, family attorney, thrust his hand at Geoff and said, for what seemed like the thousandth time, “Welcome, young Montague, to the house of the Capulets.”
    Geoff answered, as always, “ ‘What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ ”
    “A rose by any other name would be my Janice.” Dickerson threw his arms around his daughter.
    She kissed him and tugged at his beard, bringing the usual laughing yelp. A shopworn old greeting, something from Janice’s girlhood, had become a comforting tradition for both of them since her mother’s death.
    Geoff tolerated it. He always tolerated tradition, even if the yelp was just another way that Dickerson attracted attention. And he tolerated Dickerson’s knuckle-squasher handshake, which didn’t squash quite so much since the heart attack. But he could never stand the stage whisper when Dickerson wanted the family to know how good he was to his son-in-law. “Come to my study in ten minutes, Geoff. I have a little proposal.”
    “Hey, Grampa,” said Keith, “see my muscle?”
    Dickerson squeezed the boy’s arm and let out a long, low whistle.
    Geoff looked at Janice, “Proposal?”
    She shrugged and shook her head.
    And the Hilyards greeted the other Bigelows—Grandma Agnes, eighty-nine-year-old matriarch, Cousin Blue and his son, aunts and uncles, Bigelows by birth and Bigelows by marriage… all members of Cape Cod aristocracy.
    Of course, on Cape Cod, aristocracy had little to do with money, achievement, or even education. Millionaires with Harvard degrees and waterfront houses might look down their noses at the natives. But the natives looked at them as little more than tourists. The natives might mow the tourists’ lawns or paint their