The phone rang downstairs.
“I’ve got it!” shouted my father.
“Why don’t you come with us?” I asked.
She plumped up the pillows on my bed. “Me, sleeping on that mildewed mattress? All those bugs? Rats running around in the eaves at night and God knows what else?”
Lapis Lake was no Lake Winnipesaukee. It was a dozen or so uninsulated fishing cabins clustered around a small lake. It was at the base of Mount Fort, a tiny mountain, more of a hill, really. My grandfather Harry, who worked as a pulper at the paper mill in Rumford, Maine (until he died of lung cancer at forty-eight), had made the exodus to the lake every summer, as had a group of other mill families. When my grandfather’s generation passed, the cabins had been handed down to my father’s generation, who in turn brought their sons and daughters every August. Or daughter, in my case.
My mother had gone with my father to Lapis Lake a few times, but after I was born she’d stopped. She wasn’t a snob (she sent Christmas cards to all the other lake families every year), she just wasn’t outdoorsy. She much preferred to stay home in Newport. When Dad and I were gone, she met her friends for drinks and dinner. She waded through thick books, ate at odd hours, and went to the movies. She had no problem keeping herself busy.
“I’ve never seen a rat,” I said. There were, however, plenty of mice.
There was a loud thud from the kitchen and my father yelled, “Jesus!”
We ran down the stairs and found him in his jeans and undershirt, barefoot, coffee and broken pieces of mug all over the floor.
My father’s left leg was almost two inches shorter than his right; he usually wore his lift from the moment he got out of bed to the moment he climbed back in at night. This structural defect (he referred to it that way, as if he were a building) had prevented him from participating in any kind of athletics when he was a boy, and when he was a man it had kept him out of the war. It hadn’t barred him from academia, though. He’d gotten his undergraduate degree in English at the University of Maine and his graduate degree in public policy at URI. Education was everything to him. It was the only path up and out.
Now thirty-nine (with lifts for every kind of footwear imaginable, including his slippers), my father was confident and handsome, his dark hair Brylcreemed, his face smelling of Pinaud-Clubman aftershave. He didn’t have a belly like lots of the other fathers. He boxed at McGillicutty’s gym in Middletown three times a week to stay in shape.
“What a mess,” my father said.
“I’ll get it.” I grabbed a dish towel and wiped up the spill.
“Who was that on the phone?” asked my mother.
“Manny. He’ll be here to cut the grass on Thursday.”
“You already told me that,” said my mother.
“Did I?”
My father smoothed the hair back from my mother’s face, tipped up her chin with his finger, and looked into her eyes. When my father turned the spotlight of his gaze on you, it was like you were the only person alive.
—
It was a quiet ride north. My father and I often didn’t speak when driving to the camp; it was a transitional time and we honored it. But this silence felt oppressively heavy. Had my mother told him I wanted to come late?
“Are you okay?” I asked when we rolled through the New Hampshire tolls.
He shook a cigarette out of its pack. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
“Looking forward to getting to the lake?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He punched the cigarette lighter in.
An hour later we turned onto Rural Road 125. The woods were lush and green.
“Smell that?” said my father, inhaling deeply. “That is the smell of freedom.”
And dead mice, I thought as we walked into the cabin.
“Christ,” said my father. He put down his suitcase and immediately began opening windows and shutters. “Get me a bag.”
I got a paper bag from under the sink and he went around the house retrieving mousetraps. I got one look at a desiccated ball of gray fur and covered my eyes.
“Next year this is your job,” he said.
I took the dust covers off the furniture and swept the floor free of mouse droppings. I grabbed sheets and, on my way to make the bed, reread the framed newspaper clippings that hung on the wall. My parents’ wedding announcement. An interview with my father on the seventy-fifth anniversary of St. Paul’s School.
It wasn’t a fancy cabin, but it was ours. One tiny bedroom and an open kitchen with a pullout couch. We had electricity and running water, but no heat besides the woodstove. No toilet, either, just an outhouse in the backyard.
I’d been going with my father to Lapis Lake since I was four. Over the past ten years, he’d taught me how to fish, how to track deer, and how to read the night sky. We spent our days working around the camp, swimming, canoeing, hiking Mount Fort, and playing board games. Dinners we ate at the clubhouse with all the rest of the lake residents; families took turns cooking and cleaning. But the late evenings after everybody retired to their cabins were the best part. Each summer Dad would pick one novel from “the canon” and we’d sit out on the porch and he’d read aloud to me. He started with Treasure Island. We’d read Moby-Dick and Lord of the Flies. This year he’d chosen The Great Gatsby.
“George, is that you?” somebody shouted from out on the porch. It was Gary Thibodeux, with his seven-year-old daughter, Lily. We went out to greet them.
“Lux, you’ve grown. I’da barely recognized you,” he said, squinting at me.
That was a compliment, right? He meant I looked mature? Pretty?
“Lily’s been waiting for you to get here, haven’t you, Lily?” he said.
Lily chewed nervously on a strand of hair. Last summer I’d spent practically every morning with her in the lake, teaching her how to dive off the raft. I’d known her since she was a baby.
“Remind me what grade you’re going into,” I said.
“Second.”
“I can’t believe it. I thought third or fourth for sure.”
She glowed. There was nothing little kids liked more than to be mistaken for somebody older. Clearly, I still hadn’t outgrown that particular pleasure either.
“Hello, Gary,” said my father, coming down from the porch to shake his hand.
“Well, you’re the last to arrive,” said Gary. “We’re full up now.”
My father grinned. “Let summer begin.”
“Began a few hours ago by my watch,” said Gary, a can of Pabst in his hand.
—
Fish sticks, french fries, baked beans, and salad. Pound cake with strawberries and Cool Whip. Saturday night dinner. Normally I sat with the kids my age, a group of teenagers, including Beth Harris, who, like me, had changed in the last year, though not in a good way (she looked like she’d gained twenty pounds). But the first night back was always sort of awkward. I took a seat next to my father at the adult table for the first time ever.
“Don’t you want to eat with the pack?” he asked.
“Not really.” I was feeling shy.
“You should go eat with them.”
“I want to eat with you.”
He gave me a pinched smile.
I’d known all the adults sitting at the table since I was little. Since I was the only kid, they spent the meal indulgently asking me questions. I hadn’t planned on being the center of attention, but I can’t say I didn’t like it. I could sense all the kids watching us, eavesdropping. I was popular at school, but I was even more popular at Lapis Lake. In their eyes I led an exotic life in ritzy Newport. My father was the dean of a private school. Their fathers all worked at the mill.
How was ballet? Great. I’d just gotten my first pair of toe shoes.
What was the school play this year? A musical, Guys and Dolls. I played Sarah Brown, the lead.
Who was my favorite band? Was it still the Beach Boys? No, it was Ray Charles.
Instead of beaming, being proud of my ex
ploits, my father grew uncomfortable. He tried to change the subject, get them to talk about their children, but somehow the conversation always meandered back to me. Now I understood my father’s reticence at having me sit at the adult table. I’d disrupted the unspoken order; I’d forced myself into the spotlight. I, along with all the other kids, belonged in the corner at the card table with the rusted metal legs, the table that had grown increasingly more silent as the evening went on.
—
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” I said when we got back to the cabin.
The last thing I wanted was to start our vacation off on a sour note. I’d hoped our two weeks together would be an opportunity to reconnect, to recover the old ease we’d had with each other. And just how was I going to accomplish this? My plan was to show off a little. Dazzle him. Remind him of the old Lux. And now, only a few hours into our vacation, it seemed I’d done the opposite: I’d embarrassed him. I’d already blown it.
He was banging around in the kitchen, getting the coffeepot ready for the morning. “If you want to be treated like an adult, you have to act like an adult,” he said.
How wasn’t I acting like an adult? I’d made every attempt to be polite, to answer every question, to have impeccable manners.
“You may think you look grown-up, but you’re not,” he added.
“I—I know that,” I stammered. “You think I don’t know that?”
He dipped his head, flustered, and I realized he was as thrown as I was to find us here, in this new place where neither of us spoke the language.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t offend me,” he said, sitting heavily in a chair.
“Did I offend anybody else? Please tell me. I’d feel terrible if I did.”
“No. No,” he said. “That’s not it. You’re missing the point.”
I sat down at the table with him. “Then tell me the point, please.”
He breathed loudly through his mouth. “People couldn’t talk freely. Not with you there.”
“But that’s not my fault. I didn’t stop them from talking.”
“Why did you insist on sitting with us?”
I longed for his touch. A hand on my shoulder. A squeeze of my arm. I needed him to be my gravity, to pull me back down to earth.
“It was the first night. I hadn’t even had a chance to say hi to anybody. I wanted to sit with you,” I said softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I should have noticed I was the only kid.”
My father sighed.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, my voice breaking.
“I know,” he finally said.
He clasped his hands and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Are you all right, Dad?”
“It’s just—I’ve been looking forward to this all year.”
“Me too,” I said.
My father was a different person at Lapis Lake. The minute we got here, he changed; his power sluiced off him like water. At the lake he was content to be part of the group. I’d always thought this humbleness was a bit of an act, but tonight I saw that it wasn’t. It was actually a relief. Who he allowed himself to be at Lapis Lake was who he really was. He’d grown up with these people; he was at heart one of them. Maybe the dean was the act. This was an astounding realization for me.
He got up from the table and poured himself a glass of water. He always poured himself a glass of water right before bed. Was he going to bed?
“What about Gatsby?” I said, alarmed. “Aren’t we going to start tonight?”
He looked at me wearily. “I’m exhausted, sweetheart. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Adrenaline surged through me—why were all our rituals changing?—but I grabbed onto his “sweetheart” like a life preserver. He hadn’t called me that in a long time.
—
The next morning the phone rang.
“It’s your mother,” my father said from out on the porch. “Will you get it?”
I grabbed the phone. It wasn’t my mother, it was Meg, calling to tell me what a fun party I’d missed.
“Everybody was asking where you were.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them your father was holding you captive in a fishing shack in the middle of the Maine woods.”
“New Hampshire.”
“What’s the difference? Cooper Henderson was there.”
I’d had a crush on Cooper for two years.
“Was he with Candy?”
“No, he was alone. They broke up a few weeks ago.”
They had? I couldn’t believe I’d missed the party. And for what? A moldy, mice-ridden, yes, fishing shack, in the middle of mosquito-infested woods.
My father walked into the room and held his hand out for the phone. I cupped my palm over the mouthpiece. “It’s not Mom, it’s for me.”
He looked at his watch. “Hurry up. We’re clearing brush from the trail this morning.”
We usually spent the mornings on some sort of a work detail with other families. The afternoons were reserved for fun.
“I gotta go,” I said.
“Any cute boys there?” Meg asked.
“If you think pimple-faced mouth breathers in Wranglers are cute, then yes.”
—
We called it lake time. It always took a few days to settle into it. The hours slipped and slid, and when they finally broke free of their constraints, we stopped looking at the clock and began living by the weather and whim.
It happened for my father on the second day. I saw it surface on his face while he was twirling spaghetti on his fork. A sort of peaceful look. Quiet. Inward. He lifted his eyes and smiled at me. I felt jealous—I wasn’t there yet.
I didn’t get there the next day or the day after that either. A week went by.
I started to pay attention and focus on my senses. There were things that reliably brought lake time on. The smell of Coppertone lotion. The billowing smoke of a charcoal grill. The slap of a tetherball against a sweaty hand. A wet bathing suit hanging from a clothesline. Still I couldn’t get there. Something was keeping me out.
—
“What’s wrong?” asked my father. “Why are you so antsy?”
I’d rummaged through the fridge three times in the past twenty minutes.
“Go outside,” he said, waving his hand at me, annoyed.
I put shorts and a T-shirt on over my bathing suit and clopped noisily down the porch stairs in my flip-flops. As soon as I left, he turned on the record player. Sam Cooke. “You Send Me.”
I walked the waterfront, past the Meriweathers’ and the Hineses’ place. Beth Harris sat on her porch reading.
“Hiya,” I called out. “What are you reading?”
She showed me the cover.
“Proust,” I said, making sure to pronounce it the correct way.
“You look surprised.”
“Why would I be surprised?” I asked, trying to cover up my surprise. “Are you reading it for school?”
“No, for pleasure,” she said.
I couldn’t tell if she was serious. We’d barely spoken since I’d arrived. I’d caught her staring at me more than a few times. Sometimes I thought it was an admiring look; sometimes she seemed angry and judgmental. Maybe she was mad. After last summer we’d promised to be pen pals, but although we’d written to each other regularly throughout the fall, we soon tapered off. Then she sent me a Valentine’s Day card; I hadn’t sent her one. I was sort of repulsed. Weren’t we too old to be sending each other Valentine’s Day cards?
“Want to go swimming?” I asked.
I could see a group of kids down on the beach.
She shrugged. “Give me a sec. I’ll get my suit on.”
Five minutes later the screen door swung open and she appeared in a Hawaiian print bikini, a towel in her hand. Her thighs were dimpled with cellulite. The top barely contained her breasts. She had rolls of fat on her belly.
“Um
, do you want to get your cover-up?” I asked.
“I don’t have a cover-up.”
At first I’d felt bad for her, but now I felt angry. I’d have to walk with her, looking like that. She was still new to Lapis Lake; they’d only started coming last year. She hadn’t grown up with the other kids. Didn’t she know she was an outsider?
If there was such a thing as karma, I suppose it was then that my karma sat up and took notice. Flush with my lake insider-ness, it never occurred to me that in the future I’d be the one on the outskirts, having made choices that would keep me on the fringes.
“Do you want to borrow my T-shirt?” I asked.
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You know it won’t fit me.”
“Sorry, just thought I’d offer.”
“I’m sweating to death. Let’s go,” she said.
—
I was right. When we got to the beach, the other kids parted like she was Moses and they were the Red Sea. They snickered. Beth’s face grew pink, but she threw her shoulders back.
“Fuck you,” she said under her breath.
At first I thought it was directed at all of us, then I realized it was directed just at me. She’d sent me a Valentine’s Day card and signed it XOXOXOXO Hope You Have a Super Day, and I was about to leave her beached on the shore.
She marched into the water. Nobody joined her; it was as if they thought they’d catch fat cooties if they went in with her. She stayed in a long time. Finally she got out. We couldn’t take our eyes off her. I was part of the group, but it was no longer a group I wanted to be a part of—still, I couldn’t pull myself away.
I heard my father’s voice behind me: “Beth.”
He walked to the water’s edge with her towel. He draped it over her shoulders.
“Thank you, Mr. Lysander,” she said.
“My pleasure,” said my father. He strolled with her up the beach and turned on the charm. Within a few minutes I heard her laughing.
—
My father didn’t mention the Beth incident when I walked in the door. Instead I found him filling his canteen with water, preparing to go on a hike.
“Can I come?” I asked.
I wanted to tell him why I didn’t stand up for Beth, why I’d let the others treat her that way, but I didn’t know what to say. I had no defense other than that I couldn’t afford to align myself with her. I was constantly negotiating the border between in and out, and the gentlest of breezes could push me into either camp. I had to stay alert. I had to stay vigilant. Being fourteen was exhausting.
Valley of the Moon Page 9
