by Sarah Gorham
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.
PERFECT
Solution
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.
By the time he steered his wagon onto Market Street and pulled into our narrow driveway at 1611, he was radiating, blood a low purr. Up the steep stairs, one hand, sometimes two, on the pipe handrail to the second floor apartment, where his wife and two young daughters slept in three tiny bedrooms.
We slid into deeper sleep when his book bag slumped into the captain’s chair. He was home.
Something goes BUMP, the cat hits the door, head or hat misjudging, or perhaps it is only the door itself slamming into the wall.
The children are seated by the window, the weather chill and rainy, not at all conducive to imaginative play. They startle, lifting an inch off their butts. Even the curtains jump, and then the door swings open.
Not a straight line on him. He doesn’t appear to have a skeleton! Hat beating his foot inside the door, it leans that far forward. Did he roll out of bed, tail like a mangled pipe cleaner, forgetting to shed his jammies and put on something more presentable? Why isn’t the cat at work, doing something constructive? On two legs he lurches in, tipping his hat, balancing his drippy umbrella on the end of his thumb. He knows some games; he has saved up a bunch of tricks to make a great day. This cat brings fun; he doesn’t care if mother is out running errands or a meeting, or anything else.
“Come on …” he pleaded, proposing on our honeymoon that we blow several hundred on a meal at Harry’s Bar and then sip a bottle of wine on a gondola ride through Venice’s back canals. Seventy dollars for a half-hour! Under this bridge, duck, quick. Let’s go for more! The curried sole with polenta, the lazy dark, sonic with far-off festivity, and a traffic jam made of boats. But to tell the truth, twenty-five years later that’s what we remember, little more.
Italy seeded a taste for motorcycles too, and though I protested it was groceries we were burning, he bought a bright red Vespa with matching helmets. Scents and temperature brightened unlike anything we’d known in a car. Lilac! Manure! Fried chicken! We dipped into a gully like a glass of ice water, took the full hit of a mown lawn, though I warned him to avoid the shavings, shouting through my face mask and the wind. Conversation was ridiculous, riding was risky, but it was a magnificent thrill.
Happy to play the fool in shrill animal voices the children loved (Wamu the Jamaican rag doll rescued from a burning building by Purpley the stuffed elephant, who stretched out his trunk so she could slide down), he performed mesmerizing dramas without the soggy moral or neat conclusion. Sure his face was a little too red like he was about to pop. Sure there was something disquieting in all that energy. Dads were supposed to be grown-ups. But yes, yes, another game, another game! He gave each girl a full glass of water, filled his mouth, and exploded in a spit-take. Soon they were feeding each other knock-knock jokes, bursting before the punch line was out, soaked and drooling. He bought seven cans of shaving cream on Halloween and they decorated the rhododendrons, gleefully appearing later with sprayed-on beards, scary eyebrows, and beehive hairdos.
According to the company’s literature, over 370 million cases of Seagram’s Seven have been sold since 1934, giving this brand the distinction of being consumed more often than any other brand of whiskey in the history of the United States. The ingredients list is straightforward—corn, rye, rye malt, barley malt, yeast, and water. The corn comes exclusively from fields in Indiana, while the other grains are imported from farms in the Midwest. The name “whiskey” is a Gaelic translation of the Latin phrase aqua vitae, meaning “water of life.” Seagram’s was the favored drink of “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, a heavy-metal guitarist before he was murdered onstage by a fan. Dimebag mixed his Seagram’s with a shot of Crown Royal and a splash of Coke, a drink he called “Black Tooth Grin.”
Dr. Seuss’s feline protagonist may be “a cheerful, exotic and exuberant form of chaos,” as the book’s jacket copy asserts. But look at the children’s faces watching the cat. They are not necessarily smiling. Their eyes resemble tunnels. Oh, oh, oh, they mouth as the cat balances the books and the tray and the cake and the boat and the fish in the bowl and the milk and the cup all on one foot hopping on the ball with its stripe round the middle. Now the rake and the red fan and the wooden toy man. Only the fan seems secured by the cat’s tail, shaped like a cup hook. “But that is not all! / Oh no. / That is not all …,” as the action accelerates. Little wonder Sally’s red hair bow quivers with anxiety as she grabs her brother’s arm and they both plant their feet like croquet wickets.
Down comes the cake, and the frosting slaps over the plate, and the milk spills (but the bottle did not break!), and the rake’s bent, and the boat looks like it’s sailing on a wave of butter and cream. Down come the glass and the fan and the book splayed like a tent, and down comes the fish, oh the fish, tossed out of its fishbowl into a teapot, as a matter of fact, where he frowns, one fin in the air, “‘Now look what you did!’ / Said the fish to the cat. / ‘Now look at this house!’”
Betty, cashier at the Rite Aid, had a steep beak with reading glasses perched at the very tip—classic Woolworth’s fifties—wiry black hair, and veiny hands. Never satisfied with a simple financial transaction, she took mental notes. Whose wallet was stuffed with crisp twenties or pilled singles. Whose child pilfered a Baby Ruth and was he punished adequately? She sold booze to men, women, street people, rich people, and kept count, as if bottles were Weight Watchers points. Not much of a task for her memory the professor who purchased his daily fifth, sometimes missing a day if he sprung for a gallon. Her tongue clicked and slid over her teeth. “Is that all for you?” she asked. No response. “Sir? That’ll be $13.53.”
Years of this, she figured out which lady was the wife—the bru
sque, all-business one who didn’t seem to care for conversation, who checked her change and left without a thank you. “Sweetie, you know I see your husband in here nearly every day getting him a fifth of that whiskey over there.” Caught up short, I sputtered under my breath: “Whatever.” Thinking: Nosey parker. Just do your job, please, and shut up. We’re doing fine. He contemplates the big picture, I do the details. I like details. Flight arrangements, bills, doctors and dentists, chimney sweeping, furnace repair, taxes, ditching the sour milk and moldy bread. All the right moves we made in our lives—the babies, our relocation to the coast where he juggled a part-time teaching job, job search, book project, toddlers so I could have some writing time too, all without family around—those were his ideas. I did the packing. Didn’t mind, couldn’t imagine passing that job over to him. Commotion of glasses mixed with silverware, everyone’s unfolded clothes thrown into the same suitcase or two. Who could live with that?
The science of fermentation is known as zymology. French chemist Louis Pasteur was the first known zymologist, when in 1854 he connected yeast to fermentation. Studying the fermentation of sugar to alcohol by yeast, Pasteur concluded that the fermentation was catalyzed by a vital force, called “ferments,” within the yeast cells. The ferments were thought to function only within living organisms. “Alcoholic fermentation is an act correlated with the life and organization of the yeast cells, not with the death or putrefaction of the cells,” he wrote.