This year it’s Maine, a ten-hour drive and a rented cottage on a bluff overlooking the sea. Little for me to do but toss rocks into the ocean and poke yellow-green seaweed with dead sticks. I wish we can visit somewhere exciting, like Disney World or the Grand Canyon. Or even Lake George, where the neighbors go every year, coming home with T-shirts and taffy and sunburns, and already-broken prizes from the boardwalk arcade. The water is too cold to swim. I wear my suit anyway, sand creeping into it while I make castles; eventually I run home to bathe and change because it’s like wriggling on sandpaper. I wash and find my parents on the deck, sitting close, chairs touching, arms touching, maybe silent for hours, maybe silent only now that I’ve come. They soak one another in. I feel like an outsider, trapped in the intensity radiating from them, until my father makes room for me on his lap. He props his legs on the splintery gray railing. I rest my feet on his, curling my toes over his own, his nails scratching my skin.
