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“You going out for a sail, Dad?” Rob asked his father this.

“I was. But I’d much rather visit with you.” Artie placed his rubber boots back on the garage floor. He knew that Francesca was in Florence, but he asked about her anyway.

“In Florence,” Rob said. “Doing great.” Then Rob said, “Go, Dad. Seriously. Good day for a sail. Go. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Artie shook his head. “Not every day my son comes for a visit.”

Rob gave his father’s arm a gentle shove. “Dad, go. I mean it.”

—

Once on the water—he had taken the dinghy and gotten into his sailboat and tied the dinghy to the mooring—Artie thought: This is a beautiful world. Because it was. The wind flowed gently against the sails, and the water lapped gently against the sides of the boat, and the islands nearby were hit by the late morning light, their rocky ledges brightened by it, sort of quietly magnificent. Artie did see all this.

But it left him unmoved.

He kept thinking: Look at this, Damn-dam, look at this! But he thought: I have seen it all before, and whatever exaltation was available to my heart is available no more.

He turned the boat around and headed home.

As he rowed the dinghy back to the wharf, the sun sparkling on the water, it came into his mind unbidden: a memory of his wedding day.

It was Evie’s parents who had suggested that they go ahead and elope. “It will just save you so much fuss,” Evie’s mother had said, and Evie’s father had sat there in the living room wearing his buttoned-up cardigan, and his perfect slacks, on his feet were brown leather shoes, and his glinting eyes were on Artie. Only years later did Artie understand that they had already told Evie to do this, and that she had already agreed. And so when Evie looked at him that day and said, “Let’s do that, Artie!,” Artie had said okay. Although he did say—in that same conversation—that it might hurt his parents for them to do so.

But in that way, it had been decided: a quick civil ceremony at the courthouse with both sets of parents and both sisters. Evie’s father took the small party to lunch afterward at an Italian restaurant in Boston, and even then, Artie understood that his parents had been very uncomfortable; his father smiled continually in a fixed way, his mother seemed faintly stunned. And poor Maria was awkward as well. But through the haze of his happiness, Artie did not fully get it—except that he sort of did. He understood instinctively (Why? What did Artie know at that point about such things?) that the suit his father had bought especially for the wedding ceremony—the first suit he had ever owned—was a powder blue color, and that his mother’s dress, also bought for the wedding, was not expensive at all and this showed in the way it fit her thickened waist, and Artie did remember seeing his mother’s shoes, glancing down at the sidewalk as they walked to the restaurant and seeing his mother’s scuffed white patent leather shoes, low-heeled, and her ankles very swollen.

So there was that. A humiliation that Artie to this day did not feel, and this is because he had loved his parents and believed in their goodness, in spite of his mother’s problems, or maybe because of them; they were good people, and he did not ever feel ashamed of them. If anything, what began that day was a tiny, tiny little thought: His in-laws were vulgar.

But they were not. They were just very different, and when Evie’s sister was married a few years later in a lavish wedding to a young man of her own station, Artie only said to Evie, “Boy, I’m glad we didn’t have to go through all that,” and Evie said, “Right? Me too.”

(Evie’s sister was divorced ten years later, with three small children, but she was already living in Colorado then, and she and Evie had drifted apart.)

—

And now as Artie climbed from the dinghy to the wharf, the oars clanking as he pushed them back into the dinghy, he thought again about free will. When had he started thinking about this so much? With the upcoming presidential election? He could not say, but it would fly through his mind as it did now, wondering if it were all preordained somehow, including his marriage to Evie. Also, because he had studied history, he was aware that in all of human existence there had never been a time when people were not killing one another, and why he had not been affected by this as strongly throughout his life as he was these days he could not understand.

Walking back across the wide expanse of his green lawn, he waved to Endicott Peabody, who lived with his wife on their private road as well. Endicott was retired now, and he was picking up a bag of golf clubs next to his house as he waved to Artie. Artie could not stand the man, he had never been able to stand him; the Peabody children had all gone to private boarding school; at a dinner party one night, years earlier, Artie had heard Endicott say, “They certainly aren’t going to go to our public school,” which had really bothered Artie.

But Artie did not give Endicott another thought now; he was thinking: Just get the job done. Who would think that dying would be so hard?

—

It was an accretion of loneliness; he understood this as he took off his rubber boots back in the garage. It was not the dread of the upcoming presidential election, which did, in fact, make him feel as if a noose was tightening each day around his neck—no, it was not the election. It was loneliness. He thought it had started after Flossie had left town. He never would have thought that poor Flossie had meant that much to him. She hardly ever called him from Ohio, and when she did it was often late at night and Evie would be there with him. Flossie would mention the upcoming election sometimes—they had agreed about politics, it was a bond. But often Flossie had been drinking and she would say, “Reginald wasn’t the only asshole in my family. My daughter is too.”

And Artie was not able to laugh with her; in fact, she was never laughing when she told him this.

Rob and Evie were sitting at the kitchen table; Evie must have made some lunch, because there was a slice of bread on the table and the mayonnaise jar and a knife, and they were talking quietly when Artie came in. It seemed to him that they were both surprised to see him.

“You’re back.” Evie stood up.

“How was it, Dad?” Rob asked, running a hand over his shaved head.

“Perfect.” Artie pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked between his wife and son and said, “What’s going on?” Behind Rob a sheet of sunlight came through the large kitchen window. Artie turned his chair slightly to get out of the glare.

“Nothing,” said Evie, sitting back down at the very same time that Rob said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“What is it?” Artie leaned his thick arms forward on the table and gazed at his son’s face. He thought that the kid looked clear-eyed.

“Okay, well, first: Francesca and I are through.”