“Absolutely not,” said my mother. “It would break your father’s heart. You’re going.” She handed me a jar of Pond’s. “By the way, just because you’ll be swimming every day doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cleanse your face properly every night.”
I tucked the Pond’s into my suitcase. “I’m only talking about going up a couple of days late. This weekend is Meg’s birthday party. Her parents are renting out the entire rec center. We’ll have the pool all to ourselves. After that I can go join Dad at the lake.”
I didn’t tell her the party was co-ed and that Meg had invited a bunch of sophomore boys.
“I can take the bus to Portsmouth on Monday and Dad can meet me there.”
“He needs your help opening up the cabin.”
“He can open it himself.”
My mother sighed.
“Please. It’s only two days. Nobody will miss me.”
“Everybody will miss you. The McKinleys. The Babbitts. They’ll be terribly disappointed if you don’t show up with your dad for Saturday night dinner. And what about that new family that bought the cabin next to the Hineses last year?”
“The Harrises,” I said.
“Yes, don’t they have a girl your age?”
Beth Harris. We’d bonded last summer. We were as opposite from each other as could be, but our differences fell away at Lapis Lake.
My mother folded a blouse. “You’ll have great fun once you get there, you always do.” She eyed my blue jean shorts. “You’re not wearing those today, are you?”
My father and I were leaving for the lake tomorrow, but today the three of us were attending the New Parents’ Reception at St. Paul’s School.
“It’s just a bunch of parents.”
“A bunch of very excited parents who are thrilled and grateful their children will be attending St. Paul’s in September, thanks to your father.” She rifled through my closet and pulled out a blue dress with a white Peter Pan collar. “This will do nicely.”
“No,” I groaned.
“I’m sorry, darling, but you’re going to have to get used to dressing conservatively. If you think you’re under a spotlight now being the dean’s daughter, wait until you’re the headmaster’s daughter.”
The headmaster of St. Paul’s was retiring and my father was the obvious choice to replace him; the board had been considering the appointment for months. He had the seniority and he was deeply committed to his job. He was popular as well. Kids adored him; they always hung out in his office. Grateful mothers sent him plates of cookies; grateful fathers, bottles of scotch at Christmas. He left the house at seven-thirty each morning and often didn’t return until seven o’clock at night. He loved his work.
“Can I bring a book?” I asked.
“That would be rude.”
“If I sit in the very back?”
“What book?”
“House of Mirth,” I lied. I was in the middle of Updike’s Rabbit, Run and couldn’t wait to get back to it.
“Fine,” she capitulated.
There were benefits to being my father’s daughter, and the moment we stepped onto campus they accrued to me. We were like celebrities. Parents called out their hellos. Many times, on our way to the chapel, people stopped us.
“Is this your daughter?”
“Yes, this is Lux,” said my father.
“Oh, she’s just lovely,” they said. “A junior, senior?”
My father looked appalled.
My mother said, “Oh, no, Lux is just entering her freshman year.”
I was breathless, thrilled they thought I was older than fourteen.
I didn’t end up reading Rabbit, Run at the New Parents’ Reception. My father, preaching the gospel of St. Paul’s School from the pulpit of the chapel, was too riveting. Like everybody else in the audience, I was swept away by the force of his charisma. I prayed for his eyes to fall on me, to choose me, to mark me as special. But foolishly I’d chosen to sit in the back row. It was impossible for him to pick me out in the sea of blue dresses.
At least that’s what I told myself; I wasn’t ready to admit the truth—I was afraid my shine had worn off for him. Things had become awkward and forced between us over the past year. Most of my friends already had that distance with their fathers, it was built into their relationships; they’d always been much closer with their mothers. But in my house, it was the opposite. It was my father and I that were inseparable. His darling girl; that’s what he called me. He understood me—his bright, easily bored, passionate, underdog-defending, in-need-of-large-doses-of-physical-activity-and-changes-of-scenery daughter. And more important than understanding me, he liked me. He was most proud when I took the road less traveled by.
It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say I lived for the look of delight and surprise in his eyes when I accomplished something out of the ordinary. Beating him at chess. Reading the unabridged version of Anna Karenina when I was ten. Starting a campfire with nothing but a flint and a knife.
But now it seemed our father and daughter skins were growing too small. I still craved his attention and approval, but he gave it more sparingly. Our long, rambling conversations about everything and anything—the speed of light, the Cuban missile crisis, how many minutes on each side to grill a perfect medium-rare steak—had petered out, replaced with the most quotidian of inquiries: Is Gunsmoke on tonight? Is it supposed to snow tomorrow? When’s the last time the grass was cut?
It was mostly my fault. I’d created the distance. Or puberty had done it for me. Along with my new body (Breasts! Hair! Hips! Pimples!) came disorientation. What was charming behavior when I was a girl wasn’t always so charming at fourteen. Also, my adventurous nature didn’t set me apart anymore. The rest of my friends had finally caught up with me. Not only were they doing the daredevil things I’d always done, but they were doing those things on a grander, if more subversive, scale. They lied, they sneaked around, they hid their real lives away from their parents. They said they were going to the beach; instead they took the bus to Providence. They said they were sleeping over at a friend’s house; instead they spent the night on the beach with a boy. I was a good girl, I still asked permission to do practically everything, but for the first time in my life my father had started to question my judgment. He’d loved my precociousness when I was young. He’d let me roam free my entire life, in fact he’d encouraged it. Now, just when I was on the cusp of truly being able to handle the independence, he wanted to shut me in.
More and more we stood on opposite shores, or, worse than that, he wasn’t on the shore at all. Instead it was my mother who’d taken his place, waving at me from across the sea that separated parent from child, imploring me to wash my face and moisturize every night.
“I’m going to miss you two,” my mother said the next morning, watching me zip up my suitcase.
Jeans. Shorts. Shirts. Bathing suit. Underwear. Sneakers. What was I forgetting?
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.