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ANDREA ANTHONY-LUKE'S LATEST STORY...

COMPANY IS COMING

Audrey had enjoyed her summer so far.  Being at the Lake with her kids had been ideal.  On the weekdays.

She had been ignoring the phone messages from acquaintances from the City who dropped broad hints:

“Sure is hot in the City”

“Bet the Lake is really warm by now”

Sadly, however, her husband took the bait and now that family was on their way.

“They’re a nice couple – great kids” her husband assured her.

After doing the laundry in town, grocery shopping and getting water, the next job was to clean out the fridge.  It yielded three missing bowls with mysterious contents.

“That must be the salad from your Aunt’s party.”

“Mom, that was two weeks ago!”

Audrey found a bag of milk wedged in the back.  No wonder the cheese drawer wouldn’t close properly, she thought.  She found a bag of zucchini from someone’s garden that had turned slimy and soup-like.  Like an archaeologist she uncovered three types of cheese wrapped in plastic wrap and identical little green vests.

She hurled the peaches from last week into the bush, made up the beds, vacuumed and she and her children headed down to the Lake for what they called a “dreamboat cruise”.  Three swimmers with swim noodles formed a circle holding each others noodle, propped their feet on the others legs and drifted.  They shut their eyes, listened to the wind meander through the trees and felt the water caressing their hair.  Audrey hoped her children would remember this moment always.

Suddenly they heard the unmistakable jingle of dog tags and a shout from up the hill.  Already? Audrey thought miserably.  Forty eight more hours, she told herself.

“We’re here!”

The family of four had arrived and, judging from the barking at the end of the dock, so had their dog.  Panicked, Audrey tried to remember if her cat was in or out.

“We knew you wouldn’t mind.  It’s so hard to find someone to take care of Buster.”

Trudging upstairs, Audrey wondered from long experience what – if anything – they had brought with them.  They unloaded two packages of hot dogs without buns, a case of beer, overgrown zucchini, a bag of Bugles which the boy commandeered to wear as fingernails, snarling when asked to share.  They brought two sleeping bags and a metal shovel and rake though there was no beach.  The boy dug at rocks and, when Audrey wasn’t looking, the flower beds.

Audrey’s husband pulled in later with his overnight bag and golf clubs, poured a drink and chatted with the couple while Audrey played Snakes and Ladders with the kids.  Her children pleaded exhaustion and went to bed early.  Audrey could see them nudging each other as they went down the hall.  She could almost hear them smirk.

The sunset was spectacular but was ignored in the nightmare of bedtime.  The guest kids didn’t want to go over to the cabin.  They were afraid of the dark, mosquitoes, loon calls, ants, bats, raccoons and bears.  They needed all the flashlights, drinks of water, toothpaste and bug spray.

By 11:30 all was quiet.  Audrey sat in the dark in the screened-in porch, rubbed the cat’s ears and took deep cleansing breaths.  Thirty six more hours she told herself.

By four in the morning she awoke rudely to four flashlight beams and shouting as the guests stumbled over from the cabin

“He was sick.  Do you have clean bedding and a garbage bag?”

Clearly none the worse for the wear, the guest children were back in the main cottage by 7:00 looking for juice, cereal and a TV.

“This is my mom’s sleep in morning” they informed Audrey. 

She heard the decisive click of her children’s bedroom door and the stealthy slide of their window closing.

The men left two greasy frying pans and a counter full of toast crumbs behind as they headed off to their golf game.  An hour later, the guest mother, dressed all in white flopped down into a deck chair, leaned back, pursed her perfectly pink lips and sighed blissfully.

“It’s so nice to just sit here and do nothing.  And YOU get to do it all summer!”

The guest children pleaded to go down to the Lake.  Audrey helped them gather together all the things they would need and, after freeing the smaller one’s head from between the slats in the railing, they headed down to the Lake.

Audrey listened to the dog barking at boats, skiers and the wind.  He jumped into the water every time one of her children did, shook on all the dry towels and rolled in the flower beds to dry off.  The guest children mentioned a dozen times how cold the water was, looking accusingly at Audrey as if she could somehow fix it.

Audrey’s children swam out to the rock while she sorted out fights over whose turn it was to use the swim mask and the flippers.  Her guest glanced up from her book whose cover showed a half-clothed woman and an oily over-muscled man and asked:

“Have you read this one?  It’s really, really good!”

Soon the guests were bored and hungry.  Audrey herded them all upstairs and put on a movie.  Her children departed on a nature walk, still another activity they had devised that the others were too small for.

She hunted up hot dog buns and hamburgers and buns, wishing she had kept that salad from her sister’s party.  Audrey did the breakfast dishes and looked longingly out the window at the hammock, craving the comforting heft of a book in one hand, ignoring the dog poop on the walkway.

The men arrived back from golf, uninterested in the complaints:

“There is nothing to DO here.  It’s not like camp at all!”

They poured a drink and collapsed into deck chairs, poring over the minute details of their game.  The guest mother took a long pull from her gin and tonic and asked:

“So what do you do up here all summer?  I mean, you don’t do crafts or anything.”

Audrey doled out freezies, re-wrapped the hose the boy had unraveled all the way, locked the dog in the cabin and flung the rake and shovel into what she hoped was poison ivy.

She lit the barbeque and slapped her husband on the leg with the greasy flipper to wake him up.  At lunch there were requests for Dijon mustard, shredded cheese and pop, another thing they hadn’t brought with them.

Audrey’s children were sent on a quest for a plunger.  Apparently no one could read the sign in the cabin that prohibited flushing mitts of toilet paper. 

She went to her bathroom and locked the door.  She closed her eyes and thought of Barbie races under the dock, picnics on the island and silent canoe rides on quiet, inscrutable water.

Her husband put down his drink and announced it was time for the big boat ride.  Audrey found life jackets in appropriate sizes:

“How come HE gets the red life jacket and I get stuck with the orange one?”

Her husband took the cover off the boat with the flair of a magician.  They tumbled in and Audrey waved them off enthusiastically.  She tied the dog to a tree with a skipping rope, perhaps tying the knot tighter than it needed to be.  She opened one of their beers (ha!) and lay on the dock, absorbing the heat like a lizard, reveling in the silence.  Twenty four more hours, she thought.

Dinner was the guest’s contribution but they had forgotten a few ingredients – cream, fresh dill, special barbecue sauce and rice.  The children ate Kraft Dinner that Audrey prepared and argued over which bowl they would eat from.

While Audrey stirred dinner, cooked the shrimp and made rice, the guest parents were in the cabin showering while their dog whined at the door.  Audrey smirked, knowing they had no idea that it was Lake water.  Water they would never swim in. 

After dinner, the guest father looked around and commented:

“You’ve probably made a lot of money on this place already.”

Audrey stared into the candlelight and smiled to herself.  A lot of people would never get it.  They couldn’t ever feel the attachment to a place.  They don’t see the faces in the wood paneling or notice the lonely train whistle in the distance.  They don’t get goose bumps every time the loon calls.  They don’t catch their breath in delight when a beaver paddles by or crave the silk of water on cool skin.  All they see is too much travel time, too much work, market value, mosquito bites and the lack of a corner store.

Sixteen more hours, she thought.

Andrea Anthony-Luke   July 2008