to browse some of the travel sites Gussy mentioned. Check out the airfare specials. Now that summer is over, I imagine I could probably get a deal. If I change my mind and decide to go. It amazes me how simple it is to make such an enormous decision; a couple clicks of the mouse, a credit card number, and suddenly I could be going home.
I try to imagine leaving, returning to Vermont if even only for a couple of weeks. The possible disruption in my routine worries me a little; I tick through a checklist of all those people who might notice my absence during those two weeks, the people I would have to let know I’d be gone. I tell myself that if I were to leave, if I were to actually take Gussy up on her invitation, I would be missed.
I look up at Robert, who is impersonating a bear, his face and body and voice transformed by the story, and see that Linda is standing in the doorway watching. She smiles as she watches him, and catches my eye. “Thank you,” she mouths, and I nod.
I worry that without me here Linda might fall apart. I have heard her crying in the bathroom. I have seen her sit in her car eating her lunch, her eyes wet with tears. What would she do if I were to leave?
I stare at the computer screen, and I feel short of breath, a heat spreading through my body. And so I stop. And I think about what Lou would say, if Lou ( logical Lou ) were still here to help me keep the past in the past.
I’ve made a life here. Why would I want to revisit this? It’s not as though Eva is still alive. When I speak of Eva now, I distill things, reducing her and everything that happened into a single, aching anecdote, offering only a shadow to prove there was a sun. I’m sorry, was all that Lou had said when I explained what happened, as I uttered their names like sharp slivers: Eva, Donna, Sally, Johnny .
Johnny . His name feels like a sharp knife in my chest. I try to picture what he might look like now, what sort of man that little boy became. But every time I try to assemble the details of his face, I see only his boyish cheeks flushed pink, a coonskin cap cocked crookedly on his head, his tiny hands pulling the trigger of his Daisy rifle. Pop, pop, pop. What does he want with me? Why can’t he let me be?
T he girls and I were scheduled to leave for Vermont at the end of July. Usually, it was my favorite moment of the whole summer; climbing the steps onto the Boston & Maine as the sun rose meant that by the end of the day we’d be pulling into the station in Two Rivers, and that Gussy and Frank would be waiting to pick us up and drive us north to Lake Gormlaith. Even though I’d fled Vermont years ago, it was a place I still longed for. Ached for. Gussy and Frank’s camp offered everything I loved about Vermont, but at a safe distance from my mother and father. I’d take the girls, of course, on an obligatory visit or two to see them at the farm, but they never came to the lake, and that was just fine with me. It also meant a vacation from the domestic drudgery that was my life. And a furlough from Frankie.
But this year, I wasn’t just leaving Frankie behind. I was also leaving Eva. My new best friend. My first best friend. Since the Wilsons came over for the barbeque, Eva and I had spent nearly every afternoon together chatting and avoiding the various household obligations that awaited us inside our respective homes.
“What’s it like there?” Eva asked a couple of days before our departure. It was so hot, we’d taken to sitting in my backyard with our feet in a baby pool of cool water while the kids ran around, somehow immune (or at least oblivious) to the heat. “I only know the song. You know, ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ . . .”
I laughed and thought of the moon, of its bright light reflected on the still surface of the lake. The view from the window in the loft where I slept. I thought about the sound of the loons, that strange avian lullaby.
“It’s peaceful.” I sighed as Mouse ran past me
I try to imagine leaving, returning to Vermont if even only for a couple of weeks. The possible disruption in my routine worries me a little; I tick through a checklist of all those people who might notice my absence during those two weeks, the people I would have to let know I’d be gone. I tell myself that if I were to leave, if I were to actually take Gussy up on her invitation, I would be missed.
I look up at Robert, who is impersonating a bear, his face and body and voice transformed by the story, and see that Linda is standing in the doorway watching. She smiles as she watches him, and catches my eye. “Thank you,” she mouths, and I nod.
I worry that without me here Linda might fall apart. I have heard her crying in the bathroom. I have seen her sit in her car eating her lunch, her eyes wet with tears. What would she do if I were to leave?
I stare at the computer screen, and I feel short of breath, a heat spreading through my body. And so I stop. And I think about what Lou would say, if Lou ( logical Lou ) were still here to help me keep the past in the past.
I’ve made a life here. Why would I want to revisit this? It’s not as though Eva is still alive. When I speak of Eva now, I distill things, reducing her and everything that happened into a single, aching anecdote, offering only a shadow to prove there was a sun. I’m sorry, was all that Lou had said when I explained what happened, as I uttered their names like sharp slivers: Eva, Donna, Sally, Johnny .
Johnny . His name feels like a sharp knife in my chest. I try to picture what he might look like now, what sort of man that little boy became. But every time I try to assemble the details of his face, I see only his boyish cheeks flushed pink, a coonskin cap cocked crookedly on his head, his tiny hands pulling the trigger of his Daisy rifle. Pop, pop, pop. What does he want with me? Why can’t he let me be?
T he girls and I were scheduled to leave for Vermont at the end of July. Usually, it was my favorite moment of the whole summer; climbing the steps onto the Boston & Maine as the sun rose meant that by the end of the day we’d be pulling into the station in Two Rivers, and that Gussy and Frank would be waiting to pick us up and drive us north to Lake Gormlaith. Even though I’d fled Vermont years ago, it was a place I still longed for. Ached for. Gussy and Frank’s camp offered everything I loved about Vermont, but at a safe distance from my mother and father. I’d take the girls, of course, on an obligatory visit or two to see them at the farm, but they never came to the lake, and that was just fine with me. It also meant a vacation from the domestic drudgery that was my life. And a furlough from Frankie.
But this year, I wasn’t just leaving Frankie behind. I was also leaving Eva. My new best friend. My first best friend. Since the Wilsons came over for the barbeque, Eva and I had spent nearly every afternoon together chatting and avoiding the various household obligations that awaited us inside our respective homes.
“What’s it like there?” Eva asked a couple of days before our departure. It was so hot, we’d taken to sitting in my backyard with our feet in a baby pool of cool water while the kids ran around, somehow immune (or at least oblivious) to the heat. “I only know the song. You know, ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ . . .”
I laughed and thought of the moon, of its bright light reflected on the still surface of the lake. The view from the window in the loft where I slept. I thought about the sound of the loons, that strange avian lullaby.
“It’s peaceful.” I sighed as Mouse ran past me
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