“I tried to get the children to bed, but they never pay any attention to me,” she sighed. She nodded in the direction of my suitcase. “Hayward will take that upstairs for you. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Hayward was the Emersons’ son—a bratty little boy I’d never paid much attention to before. I’d figured he was probably nine or ten by now, but the first thing he did as he emerged from the TV room was tell me he was twelve—uncomfortably close to my own age. In the year since I’d seen him last, he’d grown to the point that he was now the same height as me, possibly taller. Nobody would have called him fat, but there was a softness to his body that spoke to a life spent on the couch, watching TV shows and playing video games, drinking sodas and eating Cheez Doodles.
In my hazy memory of him from past summers, I remembered Hayward playing with He-Man figures and watching cartoons. The person who stood in the doorway now had the hint of a mustache on his upper lip. Just the finest hair, but this was disconcerting. I was supposed to function as this boy’s babysitter for the next three months, and here he was, beating me at puberty.
“Hey.” He seemed to be staring at my chest. His voice cracked in the way a boy’s voice does when he’s on the brink, and you never quite know any more than he does what octave the sounds will be that come out.
“We gotLegend of Zelda,” he said. (Low octave to start, then back to high.) “We could play if you want.”
“Frances must be exhausted,” Regina pointed out, though she was the one who sounded that way. “She probably wants to see her room.”
I followed Hayward to the stairs. Even from behind, without catching a glimpse of his face, there was something about the way he strode down the hall that made me uneasy.
4
Every Day a Special Occasion
The staircase at Wonderland was the kind you’d see in a movie, with some beautiful woman descending in a gorgeous evening gown. At the top was a long, wide hallway that led to the rooms that housed each of the children—also (strangely, to me) separate bedrooms for Forrest and Regina.
Photographs of the Emersons lined the hallway—the children mostly. In one of the few pictures featuring the parents, Forrest looked handsome and happy—not so different, in fact, from how he looked still. The surprise was Regina. You couldn’t have called her expression joyful, but it conveyed something that was missing in Regina as I saw her now: hopefulness. In the picture she was looking up at Forrest with an adoring expression. I might not have recognized her as the same person who spent her days on the chaise, letting hours go by without speaking, her knitting needles always clicking, staring out at the lake.
On past visits, my parents and I had stayed in a guest suite at the end of the hall, but at the moment, these were unavailable, Hayward explained to me. “My dad started this company where he was going to South America all the time, buying baskets to sell to department stores to put things like chocolate and fancy pears inside for Christmas presents,” he said. “But it turned out nobody wanted to buy them, sowe ended up with all this junk.” He waved his arm in the direction of the bed I’d slept in the previous summer, piled high with unsold merchandise. “Typical,” he said. That grin again.
At the far end of the hall stood another door, one I’d failed to notice in the past. I figured this must lead to the room where I’d be staying and reached for the doorknob. Hayward flung out his arm, blocking me. His voice took on a force absent until now. Anger or fear, hard to tell.
“Don’t even think about going in there,” he hissed.
“You keep poisonous snakes or something?” I asked him. I thought I’d make a joke.
“It’s my mom’s stuff,” he said. He pointed to a narrow set of stairs leading to the third floor. “Your room’s up there.”
He set my bag down just outside the door. “Word of advice,” he told me. “Don’t ask my mom about that other room, the one with the lock. It makes her act weird.” He paused for a moment. “Like she isn’t already, right?”
The bedroom they’d prepared for me was probably the smallest in the house, not that I minded. I liked that the ceiling sloped down over the wooden daybed, with a skylight overhead. A second window looked out toward the lake and the boathouse. With the window open, as it was even now, late in the evening, I could hear the sound of the water lapping against the shore, the hum of a single motorboat.
A small chest of drawers sat alongside one wall. As few things as I’d brought with me—my bathing suit, naturally, three pairs of shorts, two sleeveless cotton shifts, underwear, and some other basics—I wouldn’t need more than a couple of drawers.
My clothes were all wrong. But what mattered was just being here. Everything about the room where I’d spend the summer felt like a dream—the bedspread with its matching bolsters and cushions, milkmaids and cows marching across the wallpaper. In the corner was a desk painted robin’s-egg blue. I pictured myself writing stories there, andletters to my friend Martha back home, though only if I had time. I might be too busy having fun. A person could do anything she wanted in a room like this. In her mind, anyway.
It was all so beautiful. Outside now, a pair of loons called out to each other. Lace curtains fluttered at the window, moonlight glittering. From the other side of the lake, someone was setting off fireworks for no particular reason except that at Lake Catherine every day felt like a special occasion.
5
“You’re Going to Be a Beauty Someday”
Forrest was already up, standing at the stove with an apron over his tennis shorts, when I came downstairs the next morning.
“I hope you like pancakes,” he said. “Prudence does a great job of feeding us here, but nobody knows how to make flapjacks like I do.”
Prudence was the housekeeper, who showed up most mornings a little before lunch and stayed until dinnertime. I knew her from past summers—a quiet woman who seemed to take in everything and said almost nothing about any of it. I gathered she’d been working for Regina’s family long before Forrest came on the scene—since Regina was a child, probably—alongside Billy, the handyman, and a couple of gardeners who showed up several times a week to mow the lawns and tend to the hydrangeas.
Nobody else seemed to be up yet, so it was just Forrest and me sharing our breakfast at the counter.
“This is my favorite time of day,” he said. “Before all the action gets underway.” He set a plate in front of me with a tall stack of pancakes on it and passed me a pitcher of maple syrup.
As part of the self-improvement project I’d planned for that summer, I’d told myself I’d stay away from high calorie foods, but I made an exception that first morning. Being around Forrest did this to a person.He never seemed to feel the obligation to deny himself pleasure, not that this seemed to have had any ill effect on his body. Now I poured a thick river of syrup over my pancakes.
“Glad to see someone around here has a healthy appetite,” Forrest said, as I reached for the butter. No need to explain he was referring to Regina. As for me, nobody would have called me overweight, but I hated the little roll of baby fat on my belly. Nights in my bed, I ran my hand over the spot, searching for my ribs.
