and Pep spoke Irish in quick chirpy bursts like birds fighting over the same feeder. I could’ve sat in their mouths and still not understood what they said. Mem and Pep wouldn’t teach me Irish, asking what half-sane parent would give up a secret language? And I’ve never found a library or a bookstore with Irish language tapes. So their language stays a secret, just like their past.
When I ask to hear about her Irish childhood, Mem says, “Weren’t nothing in my childhood but a bunch of swimming and we all know how you love to hear about swimming.” She’ll bug out her eyes and blow out her cheeks to make a fish face. And I laugh. But I still want to know. Did she have brothers and sisters? Live in a little town with cobblestone streets and wandering sheep like you see in the movies?
Once, I asked if they had childhood pictures I could see and Pep said, “Do you like feet? How about sky? Lots of sky? Or maybe you favor bits of mashed up colors? Those are the kinds of pictures my family took. You’d think they’d never touched a camera in their lives.”
Mem sputtered out a laugh, saying, “Our family pictures got dropped in a pond.”
And when I tried to ask who dropped them or who took those sky-feet pictures, Mem and Pep would change the subject like they always did. Just like that day at the lake house, we went from me wondering who they loved better, me or the water, to plans for a trip to the farmer’s market in town.
Mem and Pep did their quick change act, then showed up in shorts and sun hats. “Ready for a trip into town?” Mem asked, setting her hat straight.
A trip to town might not be bad. I could see if they had a good camera store. Might find a new camera bag fit for hiking in the mountains. “How far’s this town from the lake then?”
“Oh, a good few feet.” Pep squinted in thought.
“Even the town’s on the lake?”
“It’s a big lake.”
Mem added, “Governor of Vermont tried to get it declared a Great Lake,” as she herded me out the door.
“Can’t we go to the mountains for the day? A good hike to give our lungs a stretch?”
“After you learn the backstroke.”
I skidded to a stop in the gravel drive. “Never!”
“Just remember, that’s what they said about people learning to fly,” Pep said as he opened the car door.
Why did I always get the feeling my parents had learned a thing or two from the Pied Piper about luring children into doing things they didn’t want to do?
Not only was Plattsburgh on the lake, but Pep said the farmer’s market was only feet from the shore. I waited on the hood of the car and shouted my orders in. “Buy some watermelon! And cherries. Do they have cherries?” Everyone stared at me. But not Mem and Pep. No, they just kept shopping, picking up melons and smelling them like the out-of-towners they were. Who smells fruit?
But I had to admit that the way the lake played with the sun and sent raindrops of light onto the fruit made me wish I could sneak a little closer and take a picture. The drops of light, the bright fruity colors of green, yellow, and red—it’d make a great picture for the fair. Why didn’t they get me a zoom lens for Christmas like I’d asked?
“What, and have you tip over?” Pep had teased. “Those things weigh half as much as you do.”
Pep had what I called the diversion tactic approach to parenting. First he tried to distract me with his sense of humor. Making me laugh so I didn’t realize I’d gotten a knitted jumper (that’s Irish for sweater) for Christmas, again. Then he’d try tricky little trades to make me take another water step. If I’d actually washed my hair in the shower by the first of December, he’d have bought me that zoom lens I asked for.
He was a real trickster all right. But he wouldn’t trick me into liking that stupid lake. But that didn’t keep him from trying. He turned to me with bananas for ears, but I didn’t laugh. I wouldn’t laugh no matter what kind of fruit he put on his head.
“Taking pictures of the shoppers?” some kid asked me, his hair looking like he used a clam shell to comb it.
“No.”
He looked to the market, then to me. “Then why are you sitting over here?”
Thinking of Pep and his feet-sky pictures, I took a snap of the sky. “Better view of the clouds over here.”
The kid pulled himself up on the hood of the car like it was nothing more than a neighborhood fence, then said, “The townies treat me like I’ve got cooties.” He hung his head, then sat up real quick, shouting,
“But I don’t!”
Hey, he didn’t have to tell me about feeling like an outsider. The kids in my class think I’m a total camera geek. Not to mention my whole water problem.
He nodded to the camera and pulled me out of my little self-pity party. “You pretty good with that thing?”
“Good enough.” I shrugged. Call me kooky, but I get all nervous around other kids in the summer. They always want to go swimming and stuff. If they ask me to go, then they find out I’m nothing but a big sissy. It’s like being the only kid at a slumber party who’s still afraid of the monsters under the bed.
“Can you take pictures at night with it?” He leaned in to have a look, like he could see if the camera might be able to do such a thing.
“Maybe. But it takes special film.” I didn’t like the can-I-borrow-that? look on his face. Nobody used my camera. It’s as important to me as swimming is to Mem and Pep. Like breathing.
I pulled my camera away, but he just leaned back on the hood and changed the subject. “Yeah, I was all excited about having a lake house until I got a load of the beaches here—more rocks than sand. Going barefoot’s out. You’ve got to wear boat shoes. Or should I say, ‘rock shoes’?”
He smiled at me to wait for a laugh. When none came, he said, “Was it a long drive for you? We live near Pittsburgh, so it takes a day to get here.”
He had that fishing-for-a-friend kind of stubbornness. Maybe if he didn’t like the beaches, he wouldn’t ask me to go swimming. I decided to see what he had in mind. “We live in a small town called Perryville, near Scranton.”
“My grandparents live here. Our lake house is on their land.”
I imagined that the boy and his family lived in a cozy cabin by the water and his grandparents lived in a nice big place on the hill among the trees, where they just had to look at the water. They’d have warm log walls and a big fireplace. They’d cuddle together on the couches at night with afghans the grandmother knitted and they’d tell stories by the fire. I’d like to do that myself if we could leave out anything that can fly, guide ships, or grant wishes.
“Can I meet your grandparents?”
“Sure.” The boy nodded, his cowlick waving at me. “They’re over there picking out veggies for a stew.” He pointed to the other end of the market, just feet from the water.
Just the idea of being that close to the lake chilled
