One Golden Summer(6)

“We’ll see,” I tell Heather. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to swing it.”

A perk of heading north for the summer is that I have a good reason to avoid the opening night party.

“Turtle,” Heather says. “You have to come back.”

“Sure,” I say, ushering her to the door. “Love you, Lion.”

“Love you more.”

When she’s gone, I open the photos from the swimwear shoot on my laptop. They’re due tomorrow, and I’ve already edited them. Twice. In one version, the women have been “smoothed” the way Willa wants. In the other, I’ve removed a few pimples and tidied the flyaways, but I haven’t touched the cellulite.

I love photography. I’ve been shooting professionally for more than ten years, and I feel lucky to earn a living this way. But I thought if I proved myself, I’d reach the point where I’d be working to achieve my own vision, not someone else’s. That’s why I took this assignment. Like most magazines, Swish doesn’t have the big budgets that come with ad campaigns—Willa promised they’d make up for it by giving contributors more creative runway.

I think about what Elyse would do. She understands the realities of collaborating with photo editors, but she respects artistic vision. I sigh and shut my laptop. I still have one more day to decide which photos I’m going to send.

My phone vibrates with a text.

    Charlie: Everything’s ready for you, City Girl. Keys are in the outhouse.



City Girl? I may not be prepared to take a stand with my work, but I can do something about that.

    Me: Thank you.

Me: But for the record, my name is Alice Everly.

Charlie: Noted. I look forward to meeting you, Alice Everly.





4


Friday, June 27

First Day at the Lake

It’s the last Friday in June, and Southern Ontario is fleeing to the lakes. Traffic is heavy. It’s going to take us well over four hours to get from Toronto to Barry’s Bay, a blink-and-you-miss-it town on the north end of Kamaniskeg Lake.

Nan has been quiet since I turned off the 401 and began heading north. With the city, suburbs, and exurbs behind us, her attention is fixed on the view outside. First fields and farmland. Now forests and fresh water. We drive over the Burleigh Falls bridge, and she sighs at the sight of the rapids. We’re on a single-lane highway, and traffic is almost at a standstill, so I peel my eyes from the road and take in the cascading white water.

“It’s funny how little has changed,” Nan murmurs.

She’s dressed, as always, in a crisp white collared shirt and trousers, a polite string of pearls adorning her neck, and rose pink Chanel lipstick. Everything about her appears precise, almost stiff, a striking opposition to her playful personality. But my life-loving Nan is still not herself. I get the sense that she’s not here with me but rather lost in past trips to the cottage. It’s been a decade since her last visit.

My timer goes off. I took notes at Nan’s last doctor’s appointment. I’ve also read an entire internet’s worth of postsurgical-care articles. Bed exercises. Short walks. Icing. She isn’t supposed to sit for long stretches, so I’m pulling over every hour so she can move around.

“I need to find a spot where we can stop for a bit. Can you do those calf squeezes the physiotherapist showed you until I do?”

I feel her blue eyes on me. “You’ve got me in these compression socks already. I’m fine, Alice. I’m not going to die of a blood clot in the next ten minutes.”

Not on my watch, she won’t. “Please just do the calf squeezes, Nan.”

She lowers her glasses. “You’re not relaxing.”

“I am. I’m very relaxed.” In truth, I’ve been up since five, checking and rechecking my packing list.

Nan hums and then turns her head, gazing out the window once more.

We’re squarely in cottage country now. Billboards advertise live bait and tackle, campgrounds and cabin rentals, marinas and river rafting. Yellow signs warn drivers of deer and turtle crossings.

We stop at the Kawartha Dairy in Bancroft for ice cream cones. She has orange-pineapple, and I get Bordeaux cherry, and we eat them in the car as we embark on the last leg of the journey. The highway runs through sharp granite rock faces, and rivers and marshes glint under the early summer sun. The farther north we go, the thicker the woods and the lighter the traffic, but we’re at the tail end of vehicles. Some pull boats. Others have kayaks or canoes strapped to the roof. These hours stuck in a car are a rite for cottagers—the pilgrimage from city to lake, a ritual passed from one generation to another, along with a love of fresh air and big skies, and a tolerance for jumping into chilly water.

My family didn’t partake in the custom. The summer Nan brought Luca, Lavinia, and me to the lake sixteen years ago was my first taste of life outside of Toronto. I savored every drop. John and Joyce were traveling that year. Dad was tackling one case or another, and my grandmother wanted to give my parents a break. Heather refused to leave the city, so Nan took the twins and me with her to Barry’s Bay. I remember the town being small—a world away from the dense neighborhood where we lived.

“There it is,” she says as we round the edge of a cliff. “The big end of Kamaniskeg Lake. We’re almost there.”