Double Happiness by Mary-Beth Hughes

Edith. His little girl. Here she is. Dressed in a darling pink gingham dress and Philip’s brand new three-hundred-dollar UVB-screening sunglasses. No wonder he couldn’t find them. Edith presses into his arms for a hug, her cheek against his chest, and to his credit he never once thinks: Contagious.
    Pure luck squeezes them onto the ferry at the last second before the chain gets dragged across the aft deck. The ferrygroans away from the dock while a string of black and silver and white German-made cars rev along the shoreline. Nothing for them but the stink of fuel in the breeze. Philip was right to buy American. When his partner found that old Porsche— so cheap, such low mileage, no rust!—his partner said, Let’s make it the Official Vehicle. What better way to say form and function?
    He pronounced it
foam auction
. Some lack of emphasis or articulation. This, like so much else, bugged Philip. But by the time Philip was through with him, he’d be
living
in the rust-free collectible. His artist wife will really get into
that
. Philip laughs out loud.
    Lucy turns to see what the hell could be so funny. Edith is doubled over, head between her adorable sunburned knees. Sea-sick? Philip mouths. They’ve barely left the cove.
    Lucy’s eyes looks grave. Here’s Philip enjoying a private joke, and now from the back of the Voyager, Gunner warms up for a croon.
    Gunner, please, I’m begging you, whispers Lucy. And Gunner lifts his muzzle, laps back the yelp.
    Good boy, Lucy sighs, leaning back. Good, good boy.
    Edith folds into Lucy’s lap, her delicate shoulder blades heave convincingly, authentically, under the pink and white checks of her sundress. Lucy strokes the pale tips of Edith’s braids. Philip hopes she won’t vomit on his sunglasses. And instantly hates himself: he’s a horrible person, unworthy of all his goodfortune and talent. Just a total crap of a human being. Fatty always said so, but that was in jest, back when Fatty had a sense of humor. And only after Philip had plied him with too much food and drink. Like at the end of the nice farewell to Sag Harbor dinner.
    You’re a dick, Fatty raised a tumbler of vodka and lime. To the biggest dick of them all. Fatty had crab meat stuck in his teeth.
    But who was Fatty to be casting any big stones? Hadn’t it all been his idea?
Look at the lease
, said Fatty, like an oracle. Just look at the lease! And he had, they both had, and they thought hard about Edith’s unexpected crawl. Straight over the “patio” and into the square of cement they euphemistically called the “lily-pond” but which could readily be reinterpreted as the “pool.”
    What a scene! His darling, barely nine months old, tumbling forward into a miniature, but still
watery
expanse unprotected by a fence. That Lucy pounced on Edith in a heartbeat was beside the point. Fatty negotiated the settlement and the transfer of title. And Philip became a homeowner with his very first summer rental. A fabulous coup just when Philip was considering his options. It was a dry spell for architects; several colleagues were already waiting tables. The house was a bomb, but a lousy house on a desirable block. Where better to turn his talent and attention? Really an astonishing bit of luck.
    But that was before Fatty became a purist. Philip hadn’t been called a dick for a while now. He misses all that. He should callFatty, today, without delay. Because Fatty is depressed and losing focus. And if they’re not careful the rewards of partnership dissolution may slip away. Yes, Fatty is preoccupied. But he does have Philip’s sympathy in what sounds like a big mix-up.
    Tunisian, they are Tunisian. Tunisian-American. Fatty and Philip both born in Jersey City. But when the second roundup happened, something abstract and surprising, something buried deep in the newspaper, Fatty’s own son, Jamal, was stopped by a classmate,