Mom takes a chance.
“This is silly. It’s our first day of vacation and we’re fighting.”
She gives a pleading look to Karen, who’s sulking in the back of the boat. Dad got the dead raccoon out from where it was rotting under the sink, but the house still needs airing out. So after eating leftover road-trip snacks out on the dock for an hour and not talking to each other, Mom made us all get in the rowboat. It’s cooling down a little, even though the sun is still pretty high in the sky. It’s quiet here and the air smells good. Mom looks at Dad, who’s grunting every time he pulls the oars.
“How about you, muscle man? Don’t you want to enjoy this? The beautiful lake, the clean air . . .” She gets the dreamy voice that’s usually really annoying, and I don’t want her to keep on embarrassing herself, so I say, “Yeah, let’s not fight.”
Mom shoots me this happy look that I can’t help but return.
“Karen? Do you agree? No more fighting.”
“Fine.” Karen gets the word out as quickly as she can.
Mom looks at Dad. “Honey?”
He shrugs, but I see one side of his mouth twitching up.
“I ain’t gonna stop fightin’,” Dad says, with the horrible cowboy twang he used to use to make us laugh when we were little. “I aim to keep on fightin’ till little miss there in the back of the boat tells us she’s done fightin’.”
“I said it!” Karen snaps. “I said I’d stop!”
“No, ma’am, you did not. You said ’Fine.’” He gives a spot-on imitation of Karen and she laughs before she can clamp her mouth shut to keep it in.
“I’ll stop fighting,” she says, trying to get her mad face back on.
Dad shrugs. “Can’t hear ya.”
“I’ll stop fighting,” Karen says louder.
“Speak up, girl. Your old pa can’t hear nothin’ since Cousin Vern set off them firecrackers next to his head.”
“I’ll stop fighting!” Karen half-yells.
“I think I heard somethin’, but it sounded like a mosquiter to me. Ma? You hear anythin’?”
Mom grins and shakes her head.
Karen rolls her eyes, leans back in her seat, and yells, “I’ll stop fighting!”
Her shout echoes back to us off the trees on the shore, and some guy walking his dog on the beach ducks like he’s dodging a bullet and then looks side to side to see if anyone saw. We did, and we rock the boat with our laughter.
Mom says that from the air this lake looks like a gull flying. We row to the tip of each wing. There are houses all along the lake and as we row by, families—having cookouts on their porches or fishing off the docks—wave to us. We row by one old man in a canoe with his dog balanced in front. He calls out to Dad, “That’s some hard work there!”
And Dad hollers back, “Yes, sir!”
The lake houses are mostly small, the size of the one we’re staying in. We pass a small, sandy beach where some kids are having a campfire. Karen makes Dad row farther out into the lake, but she stares at the kids as we go by.
Across the lake from our house is Jake’s, the general store. We row right up to it and tie the boat to the dock, all of us hungry and anxious to buy something to make dinner with back at the house. Jake’s has wide plank floors and leaning shelves made from knobby wood. I can tell Mom loves it as soon as the screen door closes behind us because she gives a little squeal and an enthusiastic “Hello!” to the old man behind the counter.
Karen and I wander up and down the aisles, laughing at how everything is mixed together—lighter fluid next to bread, fishing line next to deodorant. Mom walks by us holding a box of pasta, looking puzzled and asking, “Have you seen any spaghetti sauce?”
The old man hears her and answers from the counter, “It’s by the bug spray.” Mom winks at us and whispers, “Of course it is.”
When Mom and Dad are at the sloping counter paying for the stuff, the old man takes their money and says, “There’s an ice cream stand round back, if you’re interested.” He winks at Karen. “It’s where the young kids go to cause trouble.” Karen forgives the wink and smiles at him.
When we’re back outside, we all agree for once and decide that ice cream before dinner is the only way to go. It’s mostly teenagers in line for ice cream or sitting at the half-dozen picnic tables in the grass. There’s a dirt parking lot with a few parked cars, but it looks like most people get around by riding bikes. The sun is pretty much down now, and people are starting to swat at mosquitoes and put sweatshirts on over their swimsuits. Mom and Dad start talking to the only other adult in the ice cream line, a woman with white hair pulled back in a ponytail and a creaky black Lab lying at her side. Every time she moves up in line, the dog gets up slowly, takes a step, wags his tail once, and pretty much collapses again.
I study the board listing the ice cream flavors in pink and green chalk and feel the eyes of everyone else in line studying me. I plan to look at the chalkboard till it’s our turn, because I’m sure as hell not going to look anyone in the eye.
Karen says, “I’m Karen, this is Donnie.”
Karen’s voice is almost challenging. And she nudges me with her elbow. I look down from the board and see all those eyes looking right at me. I croak out, “Hey.”
A few kids just turn back around and ignore us, but a couple say hi. A few start asking Karen where we’re staying, where we’re from. I let her do all the talking.
We eat our ice cream on the dock so Dad doesn’t have to row the boat with one hand, even though we all agree it’d be kind of funny to watch. The white-haired lady, Maddie, is coming back with us; she thanks us for saving Gustav the walk. She and Mom sit in the back of the boat and talk the whole way home. Karen and I sit up front with Gustav on our feet, dodging the water Dad keeps splashing at us with the oars.