The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller

forth, in and out, with dishes and glasses and silverware and napkins and candles, setting the wooden table on the stone terrace. An old apple tree stretched its gnarled branches above it. Lauren found two citronella candles and lighted them, so there was that to remember later, too--that lemony, camphory smell.
    The sun set slowly and dramatically in the west as they ate. They sat in near silence for half an hour or so when they were finished, watching the clouds change color.
    "Thanks for that, Gracie," Pete said as they pushed their chairs back in the near dark and started to clear the table. "You sure have a way with a sunset."
    Rafe and Pete did the dishes. From the living room came the thin, touching music of the scratchy 78s Grace still owned. Someone had stacked up the enormous old record player, and one by one, heavily, the records dropped and the needle moved across them. When Pete and Rafe came in from the kitchen, Grace was kneeling at the open cabinet doors, selecting new discs, and Lauren and Nat were dancing to Lil Hardin Armstrong.
    When Lauren saw him, she let Nat go and came to him, lifting her arms. They did a two-step, and then jitterbugged to some swing tune by Duke Ellington. Pete and Nat were dancing too. "The Sheik of Araby" came on. They all tangoed. Then came Fred Astaire and Esther Rollins and Lee Weaver.
    Pete and Nat were pooped. They had to go. "You danced us into the ground," Nat said.
    Gracie and Rafe danced a bit more, and then Rafe danced four or five songs with Lauren while Gracie went out to have a smoke. She came back after a bit and sat on the couch, watching them. They were both sweaty, panting and laughing. Finally the record player clicked off, and no one moved to put on any more. It was only about ten-thirty, early by the standards of yore, as Lauren pointed out.
    They all sat and talked for a bit, quietly. Then Gracie said, "I have something I need to tell you." She stopped and made a mischievous face. "And it's not, you'll be relieved to know, that I'm pregnant." It was that she was giving the house up. She was going to join Pete and Nat at the retirement place. The house was already on the market--she would need the money for the entrance fee--but she'd asked them not to put a FOR SALE sign up by the driveway until after Lauren's visit.
    "I feel so awful about this," she said. "I'd always planned to leave it to you, but it's nothing but an albatross at this point. I haven't kept it up worth shit."
    "Oh, Momma," Lauren said. "Don't, don't feel bad. If this is what works for you, this is the right thing."
    "And you know we're stuck in Boston," Rafe said. "There's really no way we could have taken it on, a second home."
    But Grace needed to be penitent about her failures awhile longer. They listened, they reassured her, the women hugged one another, and then they all said good night. Lauren started to put the records away, but Grace turned on the stairs and said, "Don't. Don't bother with that, darling. I like to do that in the morning. It's like having the fun all over again."
    They went to bed, and Lauren wept a little. "My sweet old house," she said. She smelled of Ivory soap, which was the only brand Gracie ever bought.
    In the middle of the night, a complicated, several-stage thud waked him. It was pitch-black, and he couldn't remember where he was for a moment. Then from somewhere below the bed--from the floor--came Lauren's voice. "Did I wake you?" she whispered.
    "Yes," he said. "What's happening?"
    She laughed. "I seem to have misplaced my knees , Rafe."
    That was the real beginning. In the morning, she couldn't walk. He had to carry her downstairs, and after breakfast, he helped her to the car. She was dismissive, for Gracie's sake. She'd pulled something dancing, she said. "You and Pete can apparently pretend to be seventeen with impunity, but not me."
    Each of them hugged Gracie for a moment. They promised to come back soon. Gracie in turn promised she would save everything