Study in Perfect (9 page)

I say hello to the house and then I'm ready for a swim, one of many this August, with its record heat. The water level rises and falls, depending on snowfall and conditions north in Lake Superior. We've seen the rocky beach grow by a hundred feet or, worse, waves lap at the solarium windows. There was talk then of moving the house back, but my grandmother, with her second sight, was adamant—wait, she said, it
will
recede. Now we slip and stumble over the rocks to reach deep water, that creamy green-black essence like liquid malachite.

I wonder if the experience of time varies, like metabolism, in relation to a creature's size. A second may be long in the life of the horsefly, buzzing around my head, affecting everything
from the rate of a vibration to holding that exact angle as it approaches my naked stretch of blood-delicious skin. For humans there is infinite variability: dashing-dream-and-movie time, suffering-pain-bored-ugly-chore time, when we are aware of every second ticking. Long ago, the Chinese maintained two separate official calendars, one for the peasant, which followed the seasons, and one for the scribe, a pure number system. At home we are scribes, rousing in the dark to the numeral 6 and a sound like a security breach. But here we are peasants relishing food, water, and blankets under the skies. We have unplugged the digital clocks. The tarnished mantel clock chimes capriciously. Time to rise when the sun reaches the Swedish painted bed. Time to swim when it soaks the glassed-in porch and the breezeway is thick and still. Time for dinner when “counter-twilight,” a reflection of the sunset in rust and purple, appears in the east. We sit happily in one minute, two, three, as the earth rotates and colors drain from the sky.

I think of my vacation as a miniature lifespan. During the first wide-eyed days, like the first weeks of a newborn, time is sluggish, even static. The nurturing first breakfast—oatmeal and cream, or pancakes with fresh-picked raspberries—stretches on forever. We wrap our arms around the kids, around each other. There are long, luxurious hours till lunch. We can bike to the park
and
run to town for batteries. A nap feels like a full night's sleep. So lapses Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. The girls have occupied the roof with cushions and towels, their tanning salon. I nibble at my novel.

I've brought with me two—one is a classic (family requirement), Fitzgerald's
Tender Is the Night
. The other's contemporary, Paula Fox's
Poor George
.
George
is tough going for its creepy claustrophobia. Still, I dawdle and sigh over Fox's taut
observations: “Her feet swelled like muffins through the open spaces of her suede sandals.” Fitzgerald brings the sea into every line: “Simultaneously, the whole party moved toward the water, super-ready from the long, forced inaction, passing from the heat to the cool with the gourmandise of a tingling curry eaten with chilled white wine.” Fox seems brown, clotted, and thick. Fitzgerald is turquoise and swift, but perhaps that's because he comes second, later in the trip.

It is a known phenomenon that long periods of time appear to pass more rapidly as people grow older. There's a logical explanation: one day to an eleven-year-old is roughly 1/4,000 of her life, while the same twenty-four hours to a fifty-five-year-old is approximately 1/20,000 of her life. The measure of time itself remains constant. But here, even a preteen notices the hours are striding along at a conspicuous clip. By midvacation, the morning seems not so sumptuous or full. We say it's because we slept in later. We say the book reads quickly because we are more relaxed, more able to concentrate. But the girls know better, and they are itchy.

So we get serious, determined to cover all the bases, to squeeze in as much fun as possible. Two trips to the drive-in, one on Thursday, and one Monday, to catch both movies but avoid the crowds. Cancel the Farm because the drive's too long and, really, aren't we too old to be cradling kittens and baby goats? Climb Eagle Tower on the way to Little Sister Beach and pay only one parking fee. And malts, Wilson's incredible vanilla malts every night, brought down to the dock to watch the bay swallow the sun, inch by inch.

The Koine Greek word for “beautiful” derives from the word
,
hōra
, meaning “hour.” Beauty was thus associated with
“being of one's hour,” as in a perfectly ripe cantaloupe, or a sunset at its absolute peak. Can you imagine freezing this moment, or having it all at once—a lifetime of sunsets, each slightly unique, layered one on the other, compounded till their beauty, and our experience of it, breaks down? Thank goodness the earth withholds, gives us twenty-four hours to forget, so we return each evening with a relatively fresh pair of eyes. Thank goodness for the gift of finitude, just right for this particular instant.

Alas, the second set of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday seems like an abridged version of the first. One trip to the grocery store for grape juice and the entire afternoon seems to evaporate. Kristin and Bonnie have finished their required reading assignments, and Bonnie is satisfied with her tan. She pulls me into the bathroom to show me, and at first I think she's wearing a white bikini. Sadness and anxiety begin to creep in; we find ourselves less in the present, making arrangements for our departure, jealous of the next family that, like clockwork, will drive down the driveway on Thursday morning to displace us.

Yes, there were summers we drummed our fingers, anxious for the arrival of Family B with their horns tooting, kayaks roped to the car roof. Two weeks of rain and a pair of miserable phlegmy toddlers were an endurance test; only six hundred miles and we could drop them off at their grandparents'! Another year, my husband made the decision to quit smoking where it was beautiful and stress-free…. And later, that night-owl couple we invited along in '88. I've never been so exhausted. But these were exceptions; mostly we looked for ways to extend the pleasure.

I had the idea that if I chose the right object, I could bring my vacation home. Oh, I know, fortunes have been made on souvenirs that in the French allow one “to recall” places and in the Latin “to come to mind.” But, I reasoned, the tchotchkes sold in gift shops all over Door Peninsula were impersonal and expensive—painted ducks, quilted hot pads, the shrink-wrapped dried cherries for four dollars an ounce. Nothing like our own tasteful, hand-worn, sponge-glazed mugs that had traveled through four generations of mothers, aunts, nieces, sons, their hot cocoa stains old enough to withstand the strongest bleach. Here was our history, Gray Logs itself, compact enough to slip into a pocket.

I discovered a beautiful lace doily in a deep drawer under placemats and tablecloths, work that simply isn't done anymore. My grandmother must have kept a dozen of these in her city house. No one will miss it, I thought. Sheepishly, I folded it into quarters and tucked it into my suitcase. But at home, the doily rested uneasily on dresser top, desk, dining room table, till finally I stuffed it back in my drawer for its safe return back to Wisconsin.

Wittgenstein noticed that when the human eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. Elaine Scarry begins her ingenious study
On Beauty and Being Just
with this idea. She describes a “forward momentum,” how beauty incites the desire to bring new things into the world: babies, drawings, photographs, poems, and so on.

With a similar noble intention, I inaugurated the obligatory-or-not Guest Book—record of bliss, something to touch and savor, which could be revisited again and again. It would double as a conversation between families, across time slots! August in
Ephraim, June in Ephraim. Family B and their enormous clan; Family A, who preferred to be alone; Family C, who politely tolerated Family A. The little green book would stitch all of us back together again.

In practice though, the entries were awkward. Long lists of activities—identical activities from year to year, family to family—miniature golf at the Red Putter, rowing to Anderson's dock, biking, ferries to Washington Island. Budding young writers contributed purple accounts of water and sailboats. There were tributes to the generosity of our matriarch and patriarch. Once in a while, something unusual happened. An exploding wasp nest, a muzzle full of porcupine quills—these stories scratched in ten-year-old scrawl. But five or six years went by and the entries fizzled out. It was a chore to chronicle a perfect swim under Eagle Bluff, when after all, the reader could just go there and swim herself.

On the last evening of our vacation, a front moves through, bringing a Canadian chill and raucous wind. All night the curtains suck and swell. The big gray-planked doors with their wrought-iron hardware unhitch and slam. In a few hours, the temperature drops twenty degrees. Family B and their guests are the lucky ones now; they'll get that “air-conditioned county” thrill. Our backpacks are lined up in the hall, bike rack strapped on the car, and the cooler ready to go. I'm hardly here anymore, projecting myself South, two hundred miles down Route 42, 43, 90, 65 toward home and the mail at work.

My good-byes are not so sensual as my hellos. I narrow them down to three stations—the pier, kitchen, surrounding spruces, hemlocks, and white pines. All get a brisk “See you next year.” Then I turn my back on the thousands of beloved details: the
blue enamel mugs, the cast-iron dachshund by the front door, the rowboat, seatless, splintery, battered by cousins and uncles and severe Wisconsin cold. I turn my back on my grandparents too, whose death feels a little too close right now.

It's small compensation, but our subconscious lags a few days behind real time. This means that the benefits of vacation do linger, more than just physically. Sure, we'll be more relaxed, able to bear that crisis at work or school with greater flexibility and confidence. Better yet, we'll have a cache of dreams that plays out deliciously, of cherry pie and inner tubes, the stony beach, and wide open skies and water. For a while, we'll feel like we're still breathing pure northern air, our ancestors close by, and sleep is a serene cove we gladly swim into.

A toddler's pink-and-white-striped dress, with gauzy apron, and purple-ribbon tiebacks. Hand-me-down from her cousin, already well worn, nevertheless worn every day whether or not her mother would allow it. The dress had a name—”Pollo,” like “Paulo,” a close derivative of “pillow,” for she slept inside the dress, not needing a pillow. On the yoke, two oval strawberry stains and one long drip of indeterminate origin. Apron semi-detached in places, where she stepped on it while attempting to rise from a sitting position.

It was a slip of mother, like her mother's slip, a second skin without the hurting patches. She lifted the dress over her face and her stomach calmed. She lowered it and knew what to do next. Could you wear a pillow, a glowworm, a blanket? The dress was her forest place without the scary journey.

She listened to the dress and, in time, refused to wear anything else. In her parents' world, this was impossible. What would people think—that she was poor, unbeloved? They cajoled, distracted her with party shoes, firmly enforced timeouts when the battle grew intense, and still the child would not take off the dress.

What is the perfect solution but a pair of disappointments, two less-than-perfects, a middle-making. Not throwing the dress away, not wearing it forever. What, said her father, if Pollo were a pet, like parakeet or fish? Would you crush it in your sleep? Wouldn't you want to pat, preserve, and keep it happy?

She could have her dress, but only if she carried it in a brown paper bag. And so she did for five years, and then some.

A Drinker's Guide to
The Cat in the Hat

 

He taught at a community college in rural Maryland, an evening class in introductory literature that ended at ten p.m. The commute home was an hour over single-lane highways to another small town in nearby Delaware. But first … a package store for a six-pack and a pint of Seagram's. The drive home was cool and black and empty of traffic. Blinking yellow lights at most intersections, a few lit farmhouses, and once in a while a long low chicken barn, set back discreetly from the road, so the smell wouldn't overwhelm. He sipped Seagram's from the bottle, washing it down with beer.

His edges wore down slowly. The mechanics of clutch, accelerator, and brake were liquid, headlights spanning into ditches and deep pasture. Even Christian rock was sweet at this speed. On his way to distinct inebriation, he savored the leather grip, the steering wheel swaying along with the music, eyes drifting rather than darting from field to road, stoplight to dashboard.

Remember the story about a girl who crashed when she leaned forward to adjust the radio dial? Fiddling with a rearview mirror was just as dangerous:
Eyes on the road, driver
. Thinking himself vigilant, he slowed way too early for an intersection many yards away. Brake lights ahead were doubled, though the left-hand set rarely stayed still, stretching, retracting. Like Turkish taffy, he observed.