"I wanted to bring a few other treats, just little things," Aurelia continues with a wistful pang, groping for a benign connection. "But I didn't have any more room. The suitcase was getting too full of chocolate chips and molasses and fluoride toothpaste. I can't imagine why they don't sell molasses in England, or fluoride toothpaste. So peculiar --" She glances at Sylvia for a nod, any signal, of friendly commiseration. Sylvia keeps her eyes on the road. Aurelia moves on. "-- But my true preoccupation was that box of dishes. I never took my eyes off it from the time I left Wellesley until you picked me up from the train station. I was afraid one of the stewardesses on the plane or one of the porters would kick it, though I labeled it 'fragile' on every side."

"Mother," Sylvia replies, trying to let her genuine gratitude for her mother's gifts soften the annoyance she feels at yet again having to express her gratitude, "I really do appreciate all that you brought for us. I love the dishes especially. You know I always wanted them."

"You always liked that forest green border," Aurelia notes with satisfaction. "It's hand painted, you know. I think the color caught your artist's eye."

"I think you're right."

"And they're quite valuable now, also. They're nearly antique. I doubt you could buy a set like that at all, even if you'd kept your job at Smith."

"I'm sure they're irreplaceable, Mother." Just ignore it, she tells herself.

"I would have given anything for a job like that," her mother sighs.

Sylvia doesn't respond, gripping the wheel.

"And I was looking at your garden. There's a nice sunny spot to plant the corn right by your trellis of broad beans," Aurelia says.

"Mother, it's July. It's too late to plant corn."

"Oh," Aurelia says, her voice pinched with disappointment. "Well then, you can save the seeds and get an earlier start next year."

"Right," Sylvia replies automatically, watching the road. Always -- something she could do better. Some way that she's let her mother down. They are driving alongside the Roman walls of old Exeter and out toward the banks of the river, which they will follow north and west for much of the trip home, along the same route across Devon that Vespasian's legionnaires had followed. Hundreds, no thousands, of years on this road. She feels its pull under her, fundamental, innate. An ancient path; they'd been following it all her life. Whatever she did, whatever pearl she dropped at her mother's feet, it would never be enough.

"Well, it will be so soothing to get back to Court Green after the morning bustle of Exeter," Aurelia blathers, bridging the stiff little gap in the conversation. "Though I'm sure you really don't have to worry about Ted or the children," she offers reassuringly. "I'm sure they're just fine without you."

"What do you mean?" Sylvia asks, braking at the next stoplight. "I never leave them. I never leave Nick." Her voice goes suddenly tremulous; she flashes a tiny fearful look at her mother.

"Sylvia, I didn't mean anything," her mother replies blandly. "I just meant that Ted has been gone so much this week -- "

"What do you mean by that?" Sylvia asks, defensive, gathering herself up on the seat. "Don't criticize Ted. He's got to go to the dentist for his teeth. He has things he must do whether you're here or not. I'm not going anywhere."

"Sylvia, of course I'm not criticizing Ted," Aurelia answers, puzzled, quick to explain herself. " I only meant that I'm sure he doesn't mind keeping the children alone for a day. I just meant that I don't think you need to worry about them."

"I worry about them all the time, Mother," Sylvia says, her voice welling despite herself. "All I do is worry about them." She is gripping the steering wheel, staring ahead now at the lozenge of Exeter trapped in the windshield, one foot on the brake, the other poised over the gas.

"Darling, of course you do, I'm sorry," Aurelia says, scrabbling for balance. "I don't mean you don't worry about them at all. I just meant that you could take a day for yourself and they would be fine. Ted said it would be fine." Uneasy, she watches the side of Sylvia's face, which has receded into impenetrable shadow. Sylvia stares at the traffic signal, which urges her mindlessly to caution.

They'd been gone all morning. She maneuvered her mother first through the shops along the flower-potted sidewalks of the Princesshay markets, then to an early cream tea on the quay. Aurelia, who had been appalled when Sylvia and Ted quit their teaching jobs to move back to England and live, they hoped, solely by their writing, insisted on picking up the check: her thin bony fingers feeling around the inside of her little coin purse, her eyes sliding around with anxiety. St. Peter's Cathedral, thank god, was free. It reposed dramatically in fawn-colored stone beyond its copse of protective trees, humbler buildings crowding in on all sides of the grounds. They crossed the sunbeaten green to the Gothic western entrance, as tall as Court Green's trio of elms. The carved saints were stacked up to the windows, standing on each other's shoulders with their faces ground away by the centuries, shimmering grittily in the heat.

Inside, the cathedral was brilliant with uncharacteristically hot July sun, a kaleidoscope of golden light ratcheting through the stained glass windows on either end of the vault, as if honey were pouring, liquid, through the glass. The immense stone room was blinding in the light, a world of amber-toned compartments magnified and mathematical under the ribs of the flying buttresses. The whole glowing interior seemed to be respirating in the heat. A sweet waxy musk of incense seeped out from deep in the pores of the stone. It was like being inside a hive: the capped windows in their gilded hexagonal fittings, the marble-skinned martyrs writhing like pupas up the walls.

"Watch." Her father stood in sepia light by the fence of their house in Winthrop, across the bay from Boston. The coarse-textured sand inched right up into the yard, blowing in little eddies between the salt-bleached pickets, drifting over the shells that bordered the grass. It was 1937; she was four years old, almost five. He would be dead in three years, and they'd move away from the ocean. The door of her childhood would close.

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