Susan said, suggestively, “Finish your breakfast, and I’ll give you another gift.”

The hell with breakfast. Well… maybe one more sausage.

She hopped out of bed and said, “You have to keep your hat on.” She explained, “You’re a sailor who’s washed ashore in a storm, and I’m the lonely wife of a seaman whom I haven’t seen in years. And I’m nursing you back to health, and I just came in to take your breakfast tray.”

“Okay.” Don’t take it too far.

She moved to the side of the bed and asked, “Is there anything else I can get for you, sir?”

“Well-”

“Oh, sir, how is that tray rising by itself?”

I smiled. “Well…”

“Let me take that, sir, before it topples.”

She put the tray on the dresser, then came back to the bed and said, “With your permission, sir, I will massage ointment on your injured private parts.”

I tipped my hat and said, “Permission granted.”

So I didn’t get much breakfast, but I don’t have a lot of trouble choosing between sex and food.

Carolyn and Edward came in on the 9:28 train, and Susan picked them up at the station.

They gave me a kiss and hug for Father’s Day, and a nice card that had a picture of a sailboat on it. I thanked them for the real sailboat, and they were beaming with the pure joy of giving.

Edward said, “Welcome home, Dad.”

Carolyn said, “You are our Father’s Day present.”

Susan got weepy, and so did Sophie, and even Carolyn, usually tough as nails, wiped her eyes. Edward and I, real men, just cleared our throats.

I didn’t share with the children my thoughts that their funds to pay for this could soon dry up. Realistically, we’d have the answer to that before anyone wrote out a check, so I wasn’t too concerned. The worst scenario was that they’d be disappointed that they couldn’t follow through with their gift. And they’d know whom to blame for that. On that subject, I did not remind them, “Be very nice to Grandpa and Grandma.” I said, however, “Let’s sail to Hilton Head in August.”

Susan advised me, “Let’s not mention this to my parents today.”

“Right. We’ll surprise them in August.” Susan did not second that. Bottom line here, it was still the Stanhope money that colored what we did and said. Well, hopefully, that would end soon.

Anyway, we got into the Lexus and went out to look at a few boats.

The first two, an Alden forty-seven-footer and a Hinckley forty-three-footer, were in public marinas, and we inspected them from the dock.

The next one, an old forty-one-foot Hinckley, was docked at a private house on Manhasset Bay, and we called ahead, and the owner showed it to us. The fourth boat, a forty-five-foot Morgan 454, was moored at Seawanhaka, and we had a club launch take us out to it, but we didn’t go aboard. The fifth, a 44 C amp;C, was also at Seawanhaka, but the launch pilot said the family had taken it out for the day. He did tell us it was a beautiful boat.

Back at the club, there was a barbecue being set up on the lawn for Father’s Day, and I suggested to Susan, out of earshot of the children, “Why don’t we take your parents here instead of having dinner at home? Then your father and I can take that Morgan out later and see how it handles.”

She reminded me, “We don’t want to mention this to him.”

“I think he and I can have a very productive man-to-man talk in the middle of the Sound.”

She must have misunderstood me, because she said, “John, threatening to drown my father on Father’s Day is not nice.”

“What are you talking about?” I wondered if he was still a good swimmer.

We all sat on the back porch and had Bloody Marys. Susan asked me, “So, did you see anything you liked?”

I replied, “They were all great boats. We need to make some dates to take them out and see how they handle.” I added, “And I want to see that C amp;C that was out.”

Edward said, “I liked the Morgan. It reminds me of the one we had.”

Carolyn agreed, “That would be big enough for Dad and Mom to take to Europe.”

So the Sutters sat there on the porch, sipping Bloody Marys and watching the sunlight sparkle on the bay, and the sailboats at their moorings, their bows pointed at the incoming tide, talking about which yacht we liked best. It really doesn’t get much better than this, which was probably what the passengers on the Titanic were thinking before they hit the iceberg.

Before we went home to get ready for the Stanhopes and my mother, we stopped at Locust Valley Cemetery.

Susan, Edward, and Carolyn had been here for my father’s burial, but maybe not since then, so I checked at the office for the location of the grave of Joseph Sutter, while Susan bought flowers from a vendor who had set up shop near the gate.

We walked on a winding, tree-lined road through the parklike cemetery. The headstones here were no more than a foot high, and not visible among all the plantings, which created the illusion that this was a nature preserve or a botanical garden.

The Stanhope cemetery off in the distance was sectioned off by a hedge and a wrought-iron fence, and the tombstones and mausoleums in there were more grandiose, of course – unless you had been a servant – and there was no mistaking that you were walking among the dead. Here, I felt, you had been returned to nature. This is where I wanted to be – at least five hundred yards from the closest Stanhope. Maybe I could talk Susan into breaking a family tradition – or maybe we’d all be banished to a public cemetery anyway.

There were a number of people in the cemetery on this sunny Father’s Day, and I could see bouquets of flowers on many of the graves, as well as small American flags stuck into the earth beside the headstones of those who’d been veterans.

Susan said, “We need to come back here next week with a flag for your father’s grave.”

I hoped we weren’t back here next week for eternity. But maybe I should stop at the sales office just in case.

We found the grave of Joseph Whitman Sutter. Like most of the others, it was a small white granite slab, about a foot high, and except for the engraved lettering, it looked more like a low bench than a gravestone.

In addition to his name and dates of birth and death, it also said, Husband and Father, along with the words, In Our Hearts, You Live Forever.

To the right of Joseph’s grave was an empty plot, no doubt reserved for Harriet.

There was already a bouquet of flowers resting on my father’s stone, and I assumed that was from my mother, notwithstanding her aversion to cut flowers – though maybe it was from a secret girlfriend. That would be nice. I had to ask Harriet if she’d been here today.

As I looked at my father’s grave, I had mixed memories of this man. He was gentle – too gentle – a loving husband – bordering on uxorious – and a decent, though somewhat distant father. In that respect, he was a product of his generation and his class, so no blame was attached – though I’d have liked him to have been more affectionate toward Emily. As for me, well, we worked together, father and son, and it wasn’t easy for either of us. I would have left Perkins, Perkins, Sutter and Reynolds, but he’d really wanted me to stay and carry on the family name in this old, established practice. If that was meant to be his immortality, then I’m sure he was disappointed when the other partners forced me out. He’d been in semi-retirement by then, but after I left he returned full-time, and died one night in his office.

Anyway, my brief criminal defense career was behind me – unless I gave Carmine Caputo or Jack Weinstein a call – and more to the point, Joseph Sutter’s whole life was behind him. And basically, it had been a good life, partly because he and my mother had had an oddly good marriage. They never should have had children, but they had sex before birth control pills, and things happen when you’ve had one cocktail too many. That was probably how half my generation was born.