"There it is, Tony. It's the Rock." I don't say it with the same sense of wonder I did three years ago. We know its secret now, that it was me. It was us.

"Yeah. I think it was easier to find this time. Since it didn't take us as long to return."

"Well, that and we didn't come completely on foot."

"Angela, are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Yes, Tony. We agreed. We have to honor our, I mean their, twenty-fifth anniversary."

Of course, we made that agreement before I admitted to myself that I love Tony. And before I called his name in my sleep, for the whole family to hear!

I came so close to telling him, consciously, deliberately, this past year. But I just couldn't. I just can't. Even though I almost lost him.

He was with Frankie a much shorter time than I was with Geoffrey, just one weekend. But they go way back, almost as far as Anthony and Ingrid. And she felt she knew him well enough to propose marriage.

He said no. Because he didn't love her. "And love is important."

How could I have imagined, even for a moment, marrying Geoffrey? It seems insane in retrospect, and not the good kind of insanity, like Anthony & Ingrid.

Does Ingrid love Anthony? Oh, not like I love Tony. How could she? But she's grown very fond of him. They're not supposed to love each other, right?

Are Tony and I supposed to? He truly has become my not-quite-platonic husband, buying "flowers for the house," worrying if I don't call when I have to work late. I realized that when we matchmade my cousin Christy, who got married on the second or third date. Why is it so easy for other people?

Would it have been easier if we hadn't separated out Ingrid & Anthony? Well, he would still be my housekeeper. We would still fear losing each other as friends. We would still worry about breaking up the family if we broke up.

I would still fear giving myself completely to someone again, body and soul, heart and mind. So I do my best to contain my feelings about Tony, try my damnedest to only be sexual with him when we're having an anniversary tryst.

But what about my heart? I can love Tony as long as it's silently. But then one night, all right, two nights, right before my last birthday, I dreamed of our next anniversary, being with him. And it wasn't Anthony's name I cried for the entire household to hear.

I was so humiliated! But Tony was very sweet about it. He's my best friend, he really is. We talked about it without quite talking about it. He admitted that he remembered saying he loved me, two years ago, when he had his appendix out.

And then a month later, a month ago from today, he said, "So, uh, Angela, you've got that conference coming up next month, right?"
"Conference? Oh, right, the conference! In, uh, Dubuque."

He smiled. "Yeah. How long you gonna be gone for?"

"Oh, just over the weekend."

"OK. Maybe I'll head to the old neighborhood that weekend. If Mona doesn't mind keeping an eye on Sam."

"I'm sure it'll be fine." We were alone but obviously we were self-conscious about being overheard. We couldn't talk openly till our anniversary, and maybe not even then.

"Or you know, I was thinkin' of goin' campin' with a buddy."
"A buddy?"

"Yeah, a good friend. Well, it'd have to be a good friend, since I've just got that two-man tent."

The tent that blew away when he camped on the billboard to raise money for the schools. He found it after we climbed back down. Yes, I spent the night up there, despite my fear of heights. And, no, we didn't fool around. We just huddled for warmth in a two-man sleeping bag, my head on his shoulder. We were fully dressed and it just wasn't Anthony & Ingrid time, particularly not with all the media coverage he'd had for the publicity stunt.

I almost lost him that day, too, to Washington, DC, rather than to a beautiful Italian lawyer who drinks beer out of the bottle. But he decided to stay. And even when he heard me cry, "Tony, I love you!" a few months later, he didn't leave me. But I still worry that someday he will. Maybe because I'll never have told him I love him. Or maybe because I will have.

"Where are you thinking of camping? With your buddy?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe near my old Y camp. It's real pretty up there. With the trees and the lake and everything."

"Yes, it's nice up there."

"Oh, that's right. You went to camp nearby, didn't you?"

"Yes, in the general area."

"Well, maybe I'll send you a postcard."

"I'd like that. Maybe I'll send you one from Dubuque."

And we grinned at each other.

But then Sam came downstairs to the living room and asked for privacy to call Jesse. Sometimes I wonder why it's so easy for Sam. She "falls in love" with one boyfriend after another, although this thing with Jesse seems more serious than the other boys.

Ingrid never got to go steady. The boy she liked best didn't live in her neighborhood, didn't even live in the same world.

And yet, their paths keep crossing. Even if they haven't observed every anniversary, it is still their twenty-fifth this year.

Tony and I went in the kitchen, which was luckily empty.

"So what are you going to eat on your camping trip? It sounds like you won't even have a stove or a sink."

"Yeah, it'll be roughing it. But we'll get a fire going. I can roast things on sticks."

"Sounds nice." I wasn't being sarcastic.

"Yeah. Any nice restaurants in Dubuque?"
"I don't know. I've never been to Idaho—I mean Iowa before."

"Well, maybe—"

Sam interrupted us again. "Dad, can I go over to Jesse's to watch a movie?"

"What movie?"

"Dirty Dancing."

"He's showing you porn?" Tony gasped.

I laughed. "Tony, it's a very sweet story about a rich girl who falls in love with a poor boy. Um, at camp."

"No, Angela," Sam corrected me, "it's a resort. I saw it when it came out last summer."

"Oh, right. I didn't see it. I just skimmed the reviews."

"Oh, you would love it! It's got these great oldies on the soundtrack because it's set the summer of '63."

"Oh. That was a great summer. For music I mean."

"Yeah, it was," Tony said dreamily. Then he snapped back into dad-mode again. "What's the rating?"

"Well, Siskel & Ebert gave it one thumb up and one thumb down but—"

"Come on, you know what I mean."
She sighed. "The MPAA listing is PG-13." Sam is 15 now. And she was 14 last year.

"With that title?"

"Well, there's some close dancing."
"Close ain't dirty."

I bit my tongue to keep from saying, "It depends how close it is."

"Besides, you're not much past 13. You still need parental guidance."

"Tony, considering she's already seen it—"

"Yeah, who took you to that, Samantha?"

"Mona did. We couldn't reach you in Brooklyn to see if it was all right."

Tony tried very hard not to look embarrassed.

"Tony, as I was saying, since she's already seen it, where's the harm in her seeing it again?"

"Yeah, Dad," Sam said and gave me a grateful glance.

"Where's the harm? It's one thing to see a romance with Mona and another to see it with her steady boyfriend."
"Well, maybe as a compromise, they could watch it over here."

"Uh, with you guys around?" Sam said.

"We might look in on it," Tony said.

"I don't want to watch that movie with my pare—I mean my dad and my, uh, Angela."

"You watched it with Mona!"

"That's different."

"Either watch it over here or don't watch it at all."

She sighed. "OK, fine, I'll call Jesse back."

And that is how the four of us ended up sitting in the living room, watching Patrick Swayze grind up against Jennifer Grey. It's hard to say who was most embarrassed. But it was Tony who leapt off the couch and hit the eject button on the VCR with lightning speed. I think the rest of us expected him to ground Sam, maybe even forbid her to see Jesse again.

"Sam, you are not going to watch that movie here!"

"Dad, you're being—"

He shoved the videocassette into Jesse's hands. "Here take this movie home—"

"Sir, if you just—"

"And take Sam with you. You two watch it at your place."

Sam beamed. "Thanks, Dad!"

"Great, now we have to watch it with my parents," Jesse grumbled.

"See, Angela, I'm not the only overprotective parent."

"No, Dad, you are."

"You see, I have 'cool' parents."

"I'm cool!" Tony said defensively.

"Yes, you are, Sir. But I mean they're the kind that want to show how open-minded they are. And they'd start talking about the sociohistorical importance of that period, after Elvis and right before the Beatles, when teen sex was being explored in new and—"

"OK, you two watch the movie here and Angela and I will go make popcorn."
"Thanks, Dad," Sam said, sounding more amused now.

I was amused, too, as I followed Tony into the kitchen. As he put the popcorn in the microwave, not exactly a task that requires assistance, I went over and whispered, "Why were you OK with them watching it alone? What happened to parental guidance?"

"An-gel-a. Don't you get it?" he whispered back.

"Get what?"
"Yeah, it was weird and uncomfortable watching that with my daughter and her boyfriend, but that was nothing compared to watching it with you."

"Oh!" I was surprised, amused, and flattered.

"I mean, our summer of '63 was a hell of a lot more innocent than that, since we were a lot younger. But considering recent events, it was, well, I couldn't watch anymore."

"Oh, right, recent events." I didn't know if he meant my sleep-talk or the less recent but still significant events of the past couple summers.

"I mean, if you and I were to go someplace with electricity next month, then yeah, I'd love to watch that movie alone with you. But there is a time and a place for everything."
"True." Then I felt naughty and I started to do a sultry dance.

"An-gel-a! What are you doing?"
"Just dancing. It can't be dirty because I'm not touching you."

"I can't believe you're doing this with the kids in the next room!"

"That's not why it's bothering you."
"You're right. It's bothering me because this is a respectable kitchen and you just invited Ingrid in."

I grinned. "Well, you could invite Anthony."

"Not in the house!"

I took pity on him and stopped dancing. "OK. But I hope the tape player has batteries, because I think you should take lots of oldies for your camping trip with your good buddy."

He looked like he wanted to grab me and become Anthony, but the microwave's beep reminded him of his parental duties.

"I'll get the caramel," I said.

I now say, "It feels right for Anthony and Ingrid to sleep where it all started."

"In that case, you'd better help me pitch the tent."