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other as if they’d been welded together. Walter was sure that he could draw from memory the pattern of the veins on Mitch’s feet, the curves the artery took as it went up his calf, the distance, bone to bone, on his hairless chest. It was hard to say which feature was the most arresting, if it was Mitch’s height that commanded attention or the pinkness of his lips, the blush along his jaw, or the blue eyes, with the excessive lashes, and thegently drooping lids. The first time she’d met Mitch, Sue Rawson had said, “Now that’s the sort of boy who will catch fish without a worm on his hook.”
    “Does it sometimes surprise you that Mitch has stuck with the ballet this long?” Sue Rawson was speaking to Walter but she was looking out to the lake.
    It had never occurred to Walter that Mitch might quit. “What?” he said. “No, no, not at all. He’s a natural. He loves the music, the way Susan and I do, and he always gets encouragement. And his mother makes him go to class, besides. She broke her foot the day she was supposed to dance for Sir Frederick Ashton, in London, so the story goes. It was the end of her future.”
    “Ashton is a simpleton,” Sue Rawson said, as if all along they’d been talking about the British choreographer and not about Mitch. She pointed to the swimmers. “Do those two youngsters think they’re in love?”
    “Uhh,” Walter said, involuntarily, as if he’d been punched.
    “It’s all right.” She seemed about to pat him on the leg, but she must have thought better of it. Instead she reached for her binoculars and looked through, to see, up close, Mitch wrestle Susan to the prickly turf of the raft. “Don’t worry,” Sue Rawson said in her dry, knowing way. Susan let out a bloodcurdling scream as she fell backward into the lake. “They’ll get sick to death of each other soon enough.”

    When they went up to the house the band was playing on the porch. Walter stood outside on the walk in his wet trunks, drinking champagne out of a paper cup, watching the guests dance to “We’ve Only Just Begun.” He saw his mother at the far end of the porch, winding her way through the couples, walking toward him. For many years to come he could not account for what happened next, shortly after she appeared, drifting in and out of his vision. It was as if the lights went out on the sunny afternoon, as if for a few seconds everyone was tripping around blind in the night, panicking, stumbling over their own shoes. There was a noise, like a sudden clap of thunder overhead, andfor an instant the sensation of darkness, the floor giving way. Walter felt the bang once in his heart, and then it echoed out of him, into the silence. The guests stood still, their hands clapped to their chests or their ringing ears. A large woman in a floral muumuu whispered, “Lord a mercy.”
    The air cleared, became bright again. All at once everyone could see the disaster. The Peg-Board, with the family pictures, had fallen to the floor. What a noise it had made! Joyce, who may have been the only one not stopped by the commotion, continued her walk between the men and the women, the dancers who had burst from one another’s arms. She went out the door. She did not acknowledge Walter standing on the grass. She walked across the lawn and onto the footpath that led to the woods.
    Aunt Jeannie was too horror-struck to weep or take action. She could only whimper, “How did this happen? How did it happen?” Uncle Ted, useful at last, ordered his brother and his nephews to lift up the board and set it against the porch wall. The glass of every single frame was smashed and the shards lay as they had been broken. The pictures that remained on the board were crooked, or their matting had fallen and dangled below the frames. “Go get the broom, please, Brian,” Uncle Ted said. “Charley, mops in the woodshed—watch your step, Mrs. Gardener, watch out there for the glass.” Nothing more dramatic than a broken