Go Home Lake by Megs Beach

Author:Megs Beach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Second Story Press
Published: 2015-08-20T18:12:13+00:00

Eleven

Lines in the Sand and Snow

Dad must have returned at some point to collect us at the end of the summer. We went back to the city and went to school and weekly lessons and visited friends. We did all those incidental things that constituted a reasonable facsimile of life between summers. The Perfect Suburban Life.

James played hockey, participating fully in all the practices, games, playoffs, and fights. Kieffer menaced everyone on the block with his uncanny impressions of the Three Stooges, never quite getting the point that slapstick didn’t mean you actually slapped someone with a stick. Buck continued with various projects, delayed only by the most mild of challenges, which sent him spinning into a tight downward spiral of rage and fury, necessitating the frequent replacement of anything breakable within his reach.

Me, I continued to study meditation, wishing myself into distant imaginary lakes and cornfields, until I reached that transcendental state where I could effectively separate myself from everything around me. I could lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling indefinitely and not even blink.

At night I went to bed and lulled myself to sleep with fantasy stories. No longer did I prime my dreams with images of pink-saddled unicorn ponies and herds of mauve and sunny-yellow cows to round up with the aid of cotton-candy-colored collie dogs. I took to imagining my family in ways they never would or could be: going on picnics complete with red-checkered tablecloth and a mammoth willow basket. We rode on matching bicycles, and everyone had a Fudgsicle after lunch. We took turns skipping stones in a babbling brook, and mine skipped the most, and my brothers cheered for me. At night we rode home, and everyone was so tired. My dad had to lift me in his arms and carry me to bed, where my mom dressed me in a white nightie with eyelet lace trim. Together they carefully tucked me in under the patchwork quilt, the one with the pink ruffles on it. Then they drew back to smile at me and sigh and murmur, “So beautiful. So perfect. So slim. And such splendid blue eyes.”

In my dreams, I was a nice girl.

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