A daughter answered.
Then the garden was only a garden again, and the family was something else, and the night—this night—was over in the only way it could be over: without a speech, with footsteps, with satin in the grass, with a mother following toward the keys, with a groom following toward the wall, with a father and a friend left near boxwood under wiring that still looked like a celebration.
Celebration was the costume.
The body under it was a hand.
Claire pulled the costume off the night by leaving.
No one clapped.
Clapping had been Grant’s habit.
She did not need it.
She needed the parking circle, the tap water, the postponed word, the plant, the diner, the oranges on the stairs, the bike in the cemetery park, the tomatoes, the child named June, and a husband who asks garden? as if a garden were weather he could wait out with her.
It is weather.
It passes.
It returns in dreams.
It does not get the microphone.
The microphone stays hungry.