Inland by Kat Rosenfield

A few hours in the air and another two on the road, as our chauffeur cursed his way through six wrong turns and my father cranked the cool air high, and higher. He doesn’t like the heat. All those years spent inland were supposed to be for me, but I understand now that he might have always gone there, given the choice—to those dry, cool desert places, where the winter works with cracking viciousness at the earth and the sidewalks and your bleached, raw skin. He liked that arid harshness. Now, he growls at the air conditioners, twisting their knobs to the limit, making disgusted faces as a V-shaped sweat stain blooms below his shirt collar. He says that the wetness breeds bacteria, that amoebic life is sprouting in all that damp. His greenminded, earth-worshipping, carbon-counting coworkers would be horrified to hear that he showers at the environmentally unconscious rate of half an hour per day, until the bathroom is thick with steam. He tells me not to laugh at him for powdering his armpits.
    I was warned, too, that the humidity might hurt. That my lungs might kick up a fuss, grow thick with mucus, shut down against the alien moisture in the air. The first time, stepping out of the car into the loamy, scented darkness, I choked on the thickness of the night. It was soupy, nearly solid, full of the thick and fetid smell of living, and dying, things. The sweetness of decaying leaves. The wet, warm smell of river water. The strange perfume of joe-pye weed and the low, dank notes of mildew.
    It was too much, and I doubled over in the driveway, until my father hauled me into the wide-windowed house with its artificial climate.
    “You’ll need to stay indoors,” he said. “And watch out near that dock. I don’t have to tell you to be careful and stay away from the water, do I? It’s not safe. I’ll be working late most days. I don’t want to have to worry about what you’re doing here while I’m gone.”
    At the time, I’d simply nodded. And I did stay in at first, wandering through the chilled expanse of the house with its clean white walls and cool countertops, everything smooth and stainless steel, conspicuous in its expensive newness. The private retreat of an oil company executive, rarely used and all for us.
    “It’s the finest property we have available: quiet, private, a perfect haven to come home to at the end of the day,” Mike Foster had crowed, eager and fast-talking, anxious to see my father pleased. “We’ll deliver your car later today, and in the meantime, there’s a great little motorboat down by the dock if you’d like to explore the river. All gassed up and ready to go. Good fishing around here, you know. And there’s a handyman to maintain the property, no need to mow the lawn or trim the trees; that’s all taken care of.
    “And best of all,” he’d simpered, “no city traffic or polluted air to bother your little princess!”
    He stood in the polished kitchen on the morning after our arrival, a thin and fidgety man whose darting eyes and shaky smile were a perfect match for the high, nervous voice on the phone. He was far too fussy and focused on my father to notice or care that the princess in question wasn’t so little, was in fact sitting lumpily at the breakfast bar just past his elbow and wheezing with the effort of pulling herself onto the stool. The house was three times the size of our last beige box, with miles of plush carpeting and too many stairs.
    “Thank you, Mike,” my father said drily. “I’m sure we’ll get used to the fishy smell.”
    Mike’s smile faltered by several degrees; he reapplied it with conscious effort as he pushed a brochure across the countertop.
    “This is Ballard, an excellent school, they’ll be expecting your call . . . er, that is, if you plan to enroll her,” he stuttered. “I understand your daughter has, ah, some spottiness in her academic record . . .”
    “I have a three-point-seven GPA,” I said, and this time, Mike’s