You would blend in through all of this commotion, unless something upset you. Then your fire-engine wailing could clear the house. Lucky for us we didn’t have many neighbors out there, so no one called the police.
But there was also a time that the lake house was quiet. The stillness was a kind of reprieve from the human locomotion that was the usual summer mix of friends and family. The days needed no names, because they were all long and sunny, but perhaps it was a Thursday morning, like this one. I’d wake alone in my tree-shadowed room, moved from sleep by the sound of a boat puttering by, the furious chatter of a squirrel in the woods behind the house, or the gentle silence of the house empty of motion. I’d lie in my large hundred-year-old bed, breathing an ancient, pleasant mildew, watching the sunshine dapple the painted wood walls and catch the vibrant colors of the tattered wool Oriental rug. Like everything else left in this house by the previous owners, the hand-painted china, the furniture and art, it had once been grand, but was now worn by time and our rough-playing family of seven. We were living our present among the tattered remnants of someone else’s past.
I’d get up in my bare feet and nightgown in my room at the head of the hallway, the other doors along the hall standing closed. I might hear our father snoring in the master bedroom at the other end. I was so quiet passing your room. I could see you there, not moving, so still. It was a miracle. As soon as you woke up, you were all noise and motion. Running feet, slamming doors, snapping on the stereo, and launching one album after another, all day, until darkness fell and they made you go to bed. Roger Whittaker. Victory at Sea. The Osmonds. Those were the good days.
On the bad days there was your screaming, your inconsolable anger and fear. The house was electric with collective anxiety, and there was nothing I could do. Best to let you sleep as long as possible.
Down the turning staircase, past the French doors on the landing, into the large open room on the first floor. I’d walk out onto the sun-drenched steps; the house, facing northeast, always caught the morning sun. A soft breeze blowing inland in my face. Thursday morning. No boats, no people, no Jet Skis, which came later, no tour ferries. Me, a cat, the breeze, the lake, the birds, and you not here—sleeping in.
We have a picture of you taken in 1974, when you were seven. You had climbed up on a rock-covered barge at the end of the beach and sat high up on the seat of the tractor, your hands tucked into your life jacket. Your hair is a mess, and you’ve picked a scab on your face, so it is bloody. You are looking at the camera but not seeing the person holding it. That picture always made me feel so lonely. I didn’t understand why you wanted to sit over there by yourself on the cold steel seat of the tractor. I didn’t understand what was wrong with you. I’d never known you to be any other way, so I never questioned it. You were a strange child, but you never seemed strange to me. You were just yourself. When our friends came to visit and saw you lying in the middle of the room on your back spinning an orange cushion in the air, it must have looked so bizarre. Spin, spin, spin, and then pop! You’d kick the cushion high, flip it over, and catch it on your slim ankles without missing a beat. You never dropped it. They’d stop and stare. “That’s just Margaret,” I’d say, stepping over you.
What did we do all day, with those gloriously empty summer days? Weekends from April to September, holidays, ten-day stretches all summer long for fifteen years, until the rest of us got jobs and you were left alone with Mom and Dad. But while we had them, there were hundreds of those days. No chores, no school, no lessons, no road, no car. Just books and music and the woods behind the house and the faint trail left by the invisible deer. We sat on the beach, dug in our toes, swam in the cool slippery water. As teenagers we spent hours on the long cedar dock, playing our music, our baby-oil-slathered bodies glistening in the sun. Our mother would call from the porch to ask if we had sunscreen on. Yes, we’d lie.
But where were you? Sometimes with us, hardly ever joining us of your own accord. More often you preferred to be by yourself, playing records. Or Mom would coax you out in the rowboat. In the evenings we played cards, board games, read some more. You listened to your music. We went to bed early. It sounds so uneventful, but even when we were too young to really appreciate it, we cherished that time. I think those hundreds of empty days gave us a space for contemplation and rest that would help us later. Maybe if things had been different, we’d have all been artists and writers and musicians. As it turned out, the quiet at least helped balance out the chaos and the violence in our lives, gave us a well to drop down into when there was too much screaming. Like leaping off the dock and landing at the bottom of the lake, resting easy in the silent, waving seaweed.
I’d like to reclaim one of those days. Just one. Twenty-four hours in total, including not-too-hot languorous daytime hours that stretched long and thin like a blissful cat warming herself on tile steps. I’d like the sun-soaked hours full of onshore breeze, swooping barn swallows, and the smell of pine trees and lilacs. Afternoon twilight, squeaking bats, darkness, and the
