by Mandi Lynn
“Marly!”
I’m pulled away from the view when I hear Gran coming up from behind me.
“Hey, Gran,” I say, reaching out for a hug. She’s a couple inches shorter than me, and when she hugs me all I can smell is fresh cotton, which brings the sense of déjà vu back.
“It’s so good to see you again!” she says, pulling back to look at me. She holds my gaze for a beat, scanning my face, and for a moment, I think she’s going to cry. Twice she opens her mouth to say something, but then stops. Finally, her eyes turn soft, and she says, “I’m glad you’re here.” A small smile spreads across her face.
I’m acutely aware of how much I look like my mom, and the resemblance has only grown over the years. When Gran looks at me, it feels like she’s searching for my mom.
“Hey, Marly, we’re so glad you could come.” It’s my grandfather who’s coming up from behind. He’s almost a foot taller than me, and he greets me with a small, timid smile as he approaches. He places a hand on my shoulder before letting it drop. It’s a small gesture, but there’s a spark of happiness in his eyes when I look over.
I’m greeted by countless family members, most of whom I’m not very familiar with. My mom has a large extended family: one younger brother, Ethan, and an older sister, Olive, who’s married with three kids. Then there are the cousins that I’ve only met a handful of times, the most recent being at my mom’s funeral. My mom has four cousins: Rick, Madison, Will, and Quinn. And each of my mom’s cousins are married with at least two kids ranging in age from five to sixteen—all this makes for a very crowded lake house.
“What’re you up to these days? You still doing photography? Your mom loved sending us pictures,” Aunt Olive says, coming up with a tray of cookies.
“It’s been busy,” I say quickly, despite the fact that I haven’t taken a photo in months.
Olive smiles anyway and looks like she’s about to say something else when Madison comes up from behind her. “Hey, Jessie and the kids are about to go kayaking if you want to go with them,” she says.
I look over to the dock and see five of my cousins pulling kayaks into the water and struggling to push themselves out past the sand.
It’s not that I don’t know my cousins, because I do, but at most, I see them maybe twice a year. All the other cousins see each other every weekend or so. It’s the equivalent of being transferred to a new high school senior year when friendship groups have long been made, making the new kid the odd one out.
“I’m a little jet-lagged, so maybe tomorrow,” I say.
“Yeah, of course. There’re some snacks inside that you can help yourself to. Other than that, we’re just going to have a campfire tonight,” Madison says, smile still on her face as she turns away to help my cousins get one of the kayaks out of the shed. I feel a breath of relief when I know I avoided at least her round of questions for now.
A few other relatives come and say hello. They don’t ask questions, but I can tell they’re waiting to see if I’ll offer up conversation about what I’ve been up to. Everyone knows I dropped out of college, and the unspoken question of when I’ll re-enroll hangs in the air without anyone daring to ask. The first two hours, I mingle with everyone, saying hello and asking about how they’ve been, being careful to turn the conversation away from myself as much as possible.
“What type of projects do you work on?” I ask Will when I hear him mention working fifty hours last week. From there, he and Rick go into a long conversation of statistics and data about their jobs that I don’t understand. I stand to the side of the conversation, present, but not listening. It’s around that moment that I realize I’m here alone.
It’s silly, to think I’d been at my grandparents’ house for two hours before realizing that if my parents were here, I’d be standing next to them, or maybe trying to convince my dad to come kayaking with me. It’s while Will’s voice drones on about his work that, for the first time since arriving, I’m left to realize my parents aren’t coming to this family reunion. All at once, it’s like a weight has been dropped on my chest.
I draw in a breath, glancing up at Rick and Will, and when they aren’t looking, I slip away. It’s my Gran who sees me walk off and takes my hand.
“All right, let’s get to playing.” She winks at me as she waves Ethan over to help her set up corn hole. She claps to get everyone’s attention. “This is going to be practice for the corn hole championship tomorrow. Form your teams and let’s get to it.”
Everyone starts to scatter, forming their teams and debating who should go first.
“Marly, you’re with me. I’ll face Rick, and you can face Will,” Ethan says.
Rick throws first, getting one on the board, and then I throw my own and land on the board as well, canceling his out. Another throw and Rick’s on the board again, and this time when I throw, instead of landing on the board, the bean bag slides across to push Rick’s off the edge, leaving mine hanging off the side—but it’s still on. Rick throws again; this time, he misses. I throw and get the bean bag in the hole, and when it lands, I can hear Rick swear under his breath with a few chuckles from others who are watching behind us. It feels good to play the game and be able to focus on something, anything, besides the people who are missing from this reunion.
“I would accuse you of hustling if we weren’t just practicing,” Rick says, throwing his bean bag again. When it lands, my second bag finally falls off the board. I throw my last bean bag, and it lands on the board again, canceling out Rick’s last throw. The round ends with Ethan and me getting three points and Rick and Will zero.
“Seems like Marly can skip straight to the championship,” Ethan says as he picks up the blue bean bags.
The game goes on, but I discover pretty quickly that Ethan isn’t all that great at corn hole, and he misses most of his shots. He most likely chose me as his team member thinking we both might be awful, but corn hole was the go-to yard game when we got together with my dad’s family. Ethan and I still win, but it’s a close margin.
A few others play a couple more rounds, and by the time my cousins are back from kayaking, the sun is going down and my grandpa already has the fire going with chairs pulled up.
“Marly, I want to show you how to set up your bed,” Ethan says, calling me over.
I follow and find the bus backed up into a spot along the side of the house. “You’ll thank me for this later. Just open your curtains during sunrise. It’ll be a great view,” he says with a wink.
Ethan pulls the side door open and steps in. “The bus has a pop-out to give you a little more headroom. Push up and then lock it in place with these bars here.” He points to everything as he does it. The walls of the pop-out are a thick canvas with windows that you can zip open or closed. “If you get cold, put the pop-out down. You’ll trap the heat in better that way. If you get hot, unzip the windows and you can let a little more air in. When the pop-out is open, you’re able to stand up without crouching. There’s storage in the space between the top of the roof and pop-out, so feel free to put whatever you want there. Just remember where it is, or you’ll never find it again.”
Ethan moves on to the counter, lifting what looks like a cutting board flush with the counter to reveal a tiny sink. “There’s a sink, but the water tank is small, so use it sparingly. There’s also a couple of outlets to charge things. The battery, which is in one of the cabinets, is hooked up to the solar panel on the roof. To set up the bed, you’ll need to take down the table first.” He pulls up until the wood detaches from the table. Then there’s a metal rod with a clip that Ethan pushes in until he can pull the rod out. “Once the table detaches, you can store it against the wall between the wall and the passenger seat.” He slides the table and pod into place so it’s out of the way.
“Then you just have to grab onto the bottom of the lounge seat, and pull up and out until it falls into place.” Ethan doe
s the action as he speaks, and the couch folds down, revealing the other half of the bed that had been behind the couch the entire time, which already has a pile of blankets on it. “Unroll the blankets like so…” Ethan tucks the sheets back into place. “And you’re done! All the windows have curtains. Oh! And these are fresh sheets! I just premade the bed to show you the trick of rolling all the blankets up every morning, so you don’t have to completely remake your bed every night.”
“Wow,” I say, settling into the bus as Ethan steps out to let me explore.
“I know it’s not big, and it can be a bit of a pain to set everything up, but I tried to pack in as much space as I could for you,” he says.
“I’ve slept on the ground after lugging a backpack all day up a mountain.” I push on the mattress, which has a little too much give to be comfortable. “My dad considers me gifted in the art of being able to fall asleep anywhere. He always gets mad when he hears me snoring only a couple of minutes into the night on backpacking trips.” My heart stops almost as soon as the words are out of my mouth, mostly because I caught myself talking in the present tense. Ethan catches the error and doesn’t say anything for a few moments.
“I’m going to head out to the fire,” he says, after a few seconds of silence. “You can stay here and call it a night if you want. But I hear we’re making s’mores tonight if you want to join us. Either way, your suitcase is in the front seat.”
“Thanks,” I say, leaning forward to grab it.
Ethan gives me a small wave before walking away to head back to the campfire, where I can see a faint glow in the distance as the sky slowly grows darker and darker.
I’m grateful for the quiet, and honestly, the bus is a sanctuary. It’s already 9 p.m., so it wouldn’t be unheard of to stay hunkered down in the bus for the rest of the night. There will be other nights for family campfires after all.
I send Lori a text, as promised.
Made it here alive. No mental breakdown yet.
§
I set an alarm on my phone to wake up at sunrise. When the alarm goes off, I lean forward to open the curtain facing the lake. I stay curled up in my blankets, keeping the warm sheets tucked around me, while the morning air starts to glow orange across the horizon.
Ethan isn’t wrong about the view. The mountains are a dark silhouette off in the distance, and the sun is just a small slice of orange peeking out from between the peaks. The sky surrounding the sun is shades of pink and orange, but as the sun lifts, the colors get more dramatic.
I’ve always dreamed of catching the sunrise out in some place beautiful, but despite all the backpacking and camping trips I’d done, I’d never found reason to get out of my sleeping bag before the sun was already high in the sky. There’s a certain level of peace when you’re camping. There are hikers that catch the sunrise. Those hikers wake up around 3 a.m. to hike in the dark for a couple hours to be there just as the sun makes its first appearance across the horizon. Then there are hikers like me, who enjoy the journey more than the destination. Even when we were backpacking and it’s easy to catch the sunrise, I always enjoyed letting my body wake up naturally when the sun rose through the trees. The birds awake and chirping. Chipmunks and squirrels rustling through the leaves, running around like you belong to the forest.
Catching the sunrise in the bus is a little different because all I have to do is open my eyes, reach out, and open the window in front of me. As the cool morning air slips in, so do the sounds of nature waking up before the rest of the world. Leaves rustle in the trees, the water laps at the edges of the dock, but most of all, the birds chirp and sing the world awake.
That’s when I understand why people feel the need to peel themselves out from under their sleeping bags and hike to the mountaintop in the dark. I find myself pushing the blankets away and crawling out of bed to fish for my suitcase. I pull my camera out, a Canon EOS 6D, my camera of choice. I used it almost every day my senior year of high school when I made a side-gig taking senior portraits for classmates. I’m mostly self-taught and intended to learn more in college, but life had other plans.
I rush to put on a jacket and push open the door. The world is a different place in the morning. If it were possible, I’d say the air is somehow cleaner when the sun is just beginning to rise, and it acts as a natural caffeine for my body, breathing energy into each cell of my being.
I run across the yard to the water’s edge and stand at the edge of the dock, adjusting the settings on my camera to capture the sunrise and give it justice. I can’t remember the last time I used my camera, but picking it up again feels effortless, like no time has passed at all. The sky is a mix of pinks and purples, turning blue at the edges where the sun isn’t hitting. Clouds are sprinkled in as if Mother Nature had placed them purposefully to perfect a painting of color. The clouds are darker shades of purple, floating in the sky to say good morning. My camera shutter is a quiet echo of sound over the lake.
I watch as the sun begins the morning, racing across the sky, slowly inching upward until it’s exposed and completely above the mountains. I take too many photos, of course, terrified to lose this moment.
At some point, I turn around and see Gran standing on her porch, wrapped up in her fuzzy pink bathrobe. When she sees me, she lifts her hand in a small wave. She smiles in a way that makes me feel like I’ve finally come home.
Chapter 5
Once the sun is up and everyone is awake, it feels like the type of family camping trips we would do with my dad’s family back home. There’s no rhyme or reason to the day, it’s just mostly everyone milling around to talk, playing yard games, or swimming. The big event of the day is the corn hole championship, which my team ends up winning because Ethan insists I team up with Rick to make the most of our talent. Sometime after lunch, I go kayaking with Jessie, who’s going into her sophomore year of high school.
“I’m trying to switch into a different math class. My friend Erica told me Mrs. Danner is awful, and that homework tends to take a couple of hours every night,” Jessie says.
“There are no other teachers?” I ask. We’re on the edge of the lake, making a circle around the perimeter of the water. The lake is huge, so we won’t make the whole circle, but we’ll ride the water a few more houses down before we turn around.
“There are, but my mom won’t let me switch.” Jessie rows until she’s directly beside me.
“Did she say why?”
“No.” Jessie shrugs. “What about you? What kind of classes are you taking in the fall?”
I still my oar and let myself glide along the water. “I’m not taking any next semester,” I say, trying to make it nonchalant, but Jessie turns red beside me.
“Oh, I just thought—” She stops herself, stumbling over her words. “Sorry,” she says. The conversation ends there, and we both sit in silence until we turn the kayaks around to head back to the house.
Jessie lingers beside me the rest of the way back, and she talks, but she’s hyperaware of my situation and afraid to say something that might upset me. I try to keep the conversation moving, asking about her other classes and teachers, but after a few minutes, we’re rowing in silence again.
When we reach the house, and the sun is finally setting along the horizon, everyone starts to gather by the firepit. Within a couple of minutes, the fire is started, and everyone is assembled in a large circle with chairs.
“Who needs a marshmallow?” my cousin Dale asks as he walks around with the bag, stabbing marshmallows onto sticks as people hold them out. I hold mine out next to Ethan’s, and Dale sticks a marshmallow on for each of us.
The firepit is huge. It’s probably closer to being a bonfire than a campfire, but it makes it so we can all fit our chairs around it.
“Marly, did Grandpa tell you about the firepit?” Aunt Olive asks, sitting a few chairs away.
I shake my head.
“He finished it a few months ago,” Gran says, walking up behind me. “Everyone helped build it. All the grandkids helped lay the bricks. It was a big fuss to make sure it was big enough for everyone to sit around and roast marshmallows at the same time.” Gran laughs, watching all the kids with their sticks out, pointing them into the fire to roast.
I don’t ask aloud, but I’m pretty sure Gran and Grandpa’s place is the go-to hangout spot for everyone on the weekends. It makes me painfully aware of how far away I am from this half of my family. In some ways, they feel more like strangers, but perhaps that’s because the people that link me to them are gone. And then in other ways, visiting Gran and Grandpa is like dipping into memories of my past that make me feel more at home than ever.
“So, how do you like the bus?” Ethan asks. He leans forward to roast his marshmallow directly in the flames. I let mine hover just above the flames, waiting for it to roast to a perfect brown. Within a few seconds, Ethan’s catches fire, and he pulls it out, letting it burn for another second before blowing out the flame. He pops it into his mouth before casting the stick aside.
“Good, and great view too,” I say, pointing my stick toward the mountains, which are getting too dark to see.
“Yeah, your mom bought it back when she was in high school. She was supposed to renovate it to drive cross-country and travel the United States. Then she went to college, married your dad, and, well…you happened.” Ethan elbows me in the side.
“Wait, what?” I say, pulling my marshmallow out of the fire. “She never mentioned anything like that.”
“Oh yeah, she had this big master plan that she was going to travel the world. Not to hike, not like your dad. She was more of a tourist destination type of person. She was an ‘explore the gift shop’ type of person rather than the ‘explore the Alps’ type like your dad. Your Gran insisted she do at least one semester of college and then decide what she would do next. So that’s what she did, and she had full intentions of coming back home and hopping in that bus, but your dad changed her plans. In a good way, of course,” he says with a wink.
