Valley of the Moon. Melanie Gideon

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.”