"You are leaving work, your suit still damp from the morning's downpour, the skin on your palms peeling. You are clutching two supermarket bags, tins of cream soup and tuna knocking against one another. The rain is hard and your anorak is cheap. You are on your way to Stockbridge, to your parents' house, which only your father inhabits now that your mother is gone."
"There you will find, no doubt, a cold potato salad gifted by a kind neighbor, the lingering smell of pipe smoke in the hall, and a delighted expression on the dog's face when your father opens the front door. You walk slowly, looking down at your sodden loafers, and so it is her toes you see first, bare against the gray slabs of the Edinburgh street, each nail painted orange. She is wearing an orange skirt, and an orange jumper, too."
"The barefoot one darts forward and drops a wet leaflet into one of your shopping bags. She is around your age, the youngest of them. Despite the rain, her neck is grimy. You imagine getting a soapy rag and scrubbing at her. "Nice mustache," she says. And then, "Anything good in there?" She is pointing at your shopping bags. Cream cheese. Wine. A bunch of excessively perky daffodils you bought for your father."
On a rainy midweek day in February 1982, a man leaves work carrying supermarket bags toward his father's house in Stockbridge. His suit is damp, his palms peeling, and he anticipates a modest family scene with cold potato salad, pipe smoke, and a pleased dog. Walking slowly, he notices a barefoot young woman dressed entirely in orange and four companions similarly garbed. The woman drops a wet leaflet into his bag, comments on his mustache, and asks about his groceries. The group includes a bearded man with hunter's eyes, a gray-haired woman in her fifties, a whispering shaved-headed young man, and a tanned ageless figure.
Read at The New Yorker
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