The Paper Palace(29)

I pull on my jean shorts and a T-shirt and go in to breakfast. There’s half a grapefruit laid out for me on the table, its pink triangles carefully cut away from the skin, a sprinkling of brown sugar forming a sweet crust. Next to it is a silver spoon on a linen napkin. I kiss my grandmother on her soft duck-fuzz cheek, sit down at the table.

“I thought I would take you and Anna for a swim in the Wesselmans’ pool later.” She kisses the top of my head. “You need to wear a hat, Eleanor. Your hair is so bleached by the sun, it’s almost as white as mine.”

“Hats make my forehead itch.”

“Afterward we can take out some new books at the library. I’m making lamb chops for dinner. And you can help me pick asparagus from the patch.”

“I don’t want Anna to leave,” I say.

“Asparagus isn’t easy to grow, you know. Your grandfather was worried the deer and the rabbits would eat all the shoots this spring.”

“I won’t have anyone to be with.”

“There’s no reason your sister should have her summer ruined simply because your father chose to marry that god-awful woman.” My grandmother hands me a pile of buttered white toast and a mason jar of homemade crabapple jam. “Your father is a good man, but he lacks backbone.” She sits down beside me. “Now you, Eleanor, you have backbone. Anna is tough as a bull’s hide, heaven knows, but you are a stoic.” She pours herself a glass of buttermilk. “I blame myself for your father’s weakness. I pampered him.”

Behind us a floorboard creaks. My father stands there. Above the stove, a wall clock ticks the seconds. I stare down at my toast, mortified for him, wishing I could disappear, save him from his embarrassment.

“Elle and I were just talking about a swim,” my grandmother says to him, as if nothing has happened. “I’ve put in a call to the Wesselmans. Joy tells me their blueberry bushes are positively groaning.”

“I’d like to take the girls for a swim at the quarry today,” my father says.

“I’ve already made a pie crust.” She gets up, opens and closes a few cupboard doors. “I know I put those plastic berry buckets in here somewhere.”

I wait for my father to push back, but he stares out the kitchen window, hands in his pockets. “The black walnut Father and I planted last year has really taken off,” he says.

“Actually, Gran, I’d rather go to the quarry with Dad. We can pick blueberries for you after.”

My father stands up straighter, turns to me, his face smiling so broadly I feel stricken.

“Well, of course, dear,” my grandmother says to me. “If that’s what you would like, then I think it’s a perfect plan.”



* * *



—

The quarry is hidden in the fold of two hills that rise up behind the Straights’ farm. I’ve convinced Anna to come with us. Now that she knows she’s leaving on Friday, her mood has lifted. The three of us climb the slope, towels in hand, following a cow path toward a wide swath of pasture. At the flat top of the hill, black-and-white cows graze, tails flicking flies from their hinds, udders drooping with grassy milk. Everywhere the field is dotted with cow pies—some dry enough to burn, others steaming wet. Across the field, shaded in a copse of trees, is the quarry: a deep, clear watering hole, its granite sides slippery with moss and drip, its roughhewn ledges perfect for leaps into the bracing cold. But first we have to make it past the cow-pies.

My father takes off his loafers and lines them up side by side in military formation. “Race you across,” he says, grinning at us, and starts hopscotching his way expertly across the field. He’s been coming here since he was a kid. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” he shouts over his shoulder. He looks so happy, carefree, and it makes me happy. Anna kicks off her sneakers and races out into the field behind him, competing for the far side. I follow behind her, laughing, wind in my face, towel streaming out behind me like a banner. The cows move and munch around us, their swayed backs gently rocking, oblivious to the young girls rocketing past.

2:00 P.M.

The road to Black Pond is almost invisible, the center strip overgrown with wild grasses so high that as we drive, they brush the underbelly of our car, a sound like wind across a prairie. Ahead of us the road turns, forks, forks again, and again, before dead-ending at a broken split rail fence. Beyond the fence is a faint trail. I climb out of the car and follow behind Peter sharply downhill, dodging piles of coyote scat, gray with rabbit fur and thistle, to a little sand beach. Black Pond is the smallest kettle pond in the woods—a place only “Woods People” know about. Our pond is wide and clear. Its beauty is in its size, its mile-long expanse of pristine blue, the sweep of sky. This pond is older, wiser, wizened, as if it holds too many secrets. A bottomless watering hole surrounded by dense forest, that lives half of its day in shadow.

The beach is undisturbed, thick with pine needles. No one has been here in a while. When I was a child, this was a place to bring picnics. A place for a special outing. And each time we came, we had to remind ourselves which branch of the road to take, which fork. It was easy to get lost on the way. Once when I came here with Anna, there was a naked couple on the beach having sex. The woman was lying on her back, enormous thighs spread wide, the man rutting on top of her. There was something obscene about it. Not the sex, which frightened and fascinated me, but the way her body squished out on the hard ground like uncooked dough, and the way she didn’t seem to care if we saw them. We had backed away, racing for home, giggling in shame and delight.