“Does that thing work?” you ask, pointing at the ancient computer.
“Most of the time,” Doff says. “We can’t get DSL or cable out here, so it has to run on dial-up. It’s pretty slow.”
“What’s dial-up?” you say.
Doff blinks. “I wonder where your mom is,” he says, and keeps walking.
“Is this where we’re staying?” I ask.
“In the house? No.”
You look at me and raise your eyebrows. I shrug.
Doff walks us through the kitchen, pointing out the notorious clock on the wall that still reads 10:47. “Remind me to replace the batteries,” he says. The walls are painted sunshine yellow, the cabinets an assortment of other bright colors. The air seems infused with the memory of hundreds of meals’ worth of herbs and spices. Sliding glass doors reveal a large courtyard outside with several picnic tables. Like the living room, the kitchen is giant, with two stoves, two refrigerators, and two large metal sinks flanked by overflowing dish racks. The fridges are covered with the colorful, primitive art of children, the usual primary-color suns and trees and clouds. Instead of nuclear families, many of the drawings include innumerable stick figures attached at the hands like paper dolls.
“There are kids here?” you say.
“Oh yeah, a few. You’ll meet them.”
We look at each other again. You cross your eyes and stick your tongue out and I stifle a laugh.
“Is there anyone our age?” you ask.
“Well, there’s Skyler. She’s twelve. That’s about the closest. Then the next closest I guess is Dylan. Not sure how old he is.”
We see nothing but Doff’s back as he slowly walks us through the house. All of his movements are slow and exaggerated, like he’s moving through water. For a brief moment, I wonder if he’s retarded. Either that or stoned.
“So, do you like living on a commune?” you say.
Doff stops and considers the question. “We prefer the term ‘intentional community.’ ”
“What does that mean?” I hope he cannot hear the subtle teasing in your voice.
“Well, just what it says, really. That everything we do is intentional. We’re here because we want to be. This is the life we choose and the people we choose to live it with. At least for now anyway.”
I think there’s something beautiful about this, something so simple and perfect—for a person to just leave the world they were given to create a new one they hope will be better. But you smirk and roll your eyes, and I know you think that Doff’s a fool.
“Here are the showers,” Doff says, motioning down a dark hall. I can make out three rickety-looking wooden stalls. “They can get pretty busy right around before dinnertime, after everyone comes in from working.”
“Everyone shares these showers?” you ask, your face hinting at horror.
“Yep.” Doff opens a door at the end of the hall and we step out onto a path that leads back to the shaded courtyard off the kitchen.
“Here’s where we eat most of our meals. Except when the weather’s bad. Then we have to stuff ourselves into the living room.”
“Who does the cooking?”
Doff finally turns around, smiles in the confused way I am beginning to understand is his norm. “Well, we do, Sadie. We all do. We take turns doing everything.”
We stand there for a moment, looking out past the courtyard. In our few hours wandering the cornfields, I never would have guessed that something like this could be hidden within the flat, empty expanse of yellow. Rows of cabins, giant tents, and trailers stretch out on either side of the house, creating a horseshoe around a lake flanked by deep green grass and a scattering of huge trees. A tiny dock anchors a rowboat, and a half-deflated inner tube is stuck in a patch of reeds along the left shore. The afternoon sun glimmers on the surface of the lake, a family of ducks making lazy tracks through the water.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. Doff looks at me as if he forgot I was here.
“Can we swim in there?” you ask.
“Oh, sure,” Doff says, his smile big. “We pull out all the algae and gunk from the bottom in the spring and use it for fertilizer. So the water’s nice and clean and warm. And we got plenty of critters to keep the mosquitoes down.”
“What kinds of critters?”
“Oh, we got some mosquitofish in there, and dragonflies and frogs love those cattails. Lots of birds and bats come by to visit.”
“Bats?” You look scared.
“Don’t worry, Sadie,” Doff says. “They’re just little guys. Not the vampire ones that suck your blood.” Then he erupts in a shocking sound like a donkey honking, and I realize this must be his laugh. You giggle next to me, and then I start, and the day seems to just slide off around us and we start laughing in earnest. The dogs we met earlier come running, their faces stretched into comic grins. One leaps into the air and wraps his paws around your neck. You fall back, the dog on top of you, licking your face maniacally. You’re laughing so hard you’re crying, the way you do when I love you best. You flail on the ground as the dog wiggles on top of you.
“Che!” Doff shouts. “Off!”
“It’s okay.” You laugh, grabbing Che’s muzzle and giving him a big kiss on the lips. “Who’s this one?” you say, scratching the other one under the ear.
“That one’s Biafra,” Doff says. “They’re drawn by laughter. It’s the most peculiar thing. Whenever people laugh, they just come running. My laugh in particular.” He makes the strange sound again and the dogs go ballistic, jumping at him and wagging their tails so fast it looks like they’re going to take off.
“Oh my God,” you pant as you pick yourself off the ground. “This is too much.” I can’t remember the last time I saw you this happy. I don’t think we’ve laughed like this in months. A door inside me unlocks and creaks open, makes room for a little hope to seep in. Maybe this place will really change things. Maybe we can go back to the way it used to be, when we used to laugh all the time.
You wipe the tears from your face and we look out over the lake, at the fields of green rows beyond it. A few ant-sized people are walking in our direction. They wave. We wave back. As they get closer, I can start to make out each smiling, tanned face. I wonder why they have all chosen to live here. I wonder what it feels like to make a decision like that, to really choose a life, to not just do what’s expected.
You step forward. I can feel you not breathing. A figure approaches, starts running, gets bigger and becomes your mother, as beautiful and long-legged as you, gracefully cutting through the air as she wraps her arms around you and you fall into her.
“Oh, my baby,” she says. You bury your face in her long brown hair.
“Hi, Mommy,” your baby voice says, and I can tell there are tears in your throat.
Your mom steps back and holds you by the shoulders, inspecting you. “You look like a flower!” she says, cupping the side of your face in one hand. She looks over at me and smiles. “And you must be Max.”
“Hi,” I say, and give a little wave.
“Oh, Max,” she says, stepping in my direction. Her smile has sunshine in it. “Thank you for being my daughter’s friend.” She puts her arms around me and squeezes for a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a hug like this from anyone besides you, not even my own family. She steps back and looks at us. “My girls for the summer,” she says, and my heart jumps.
I look over at you, and your eyes are wet. We share a crinkly-eyed smile. I want to bottle up the hope and love in your face to show you later.
The others catch up and introduce themselves. I can’t keep track of anyone’s name, but I notice one has a long black beard and another has a faded tattoo of a peacock on his shoulder. I think one small man is either Japanese or Korean, and the woman who appears to be his mate is tall, thick, and Nordic looking. A pretty woman with hair down to her butt gives us both quick hugs and apologizes as she runs off, complaining of leaking breasts. A man I assume is her husband laughs a
t what must be the shock on our faces. “Time to breastfeed the baby,” he explains.
“Oh,” we say in unison.
After the marathon of introductions, everyone but Doff and your mom leaves, off to do whatever it is they do before dinner. Everyone we just met seemed so calm and friendly and warm—maybe they are onto something here; maybe they have found the secret to happiness. Maybe we will find it here too.
I turn to you, ready for you to share my enthusiasm. But before I have a chance to say anything, you scrunch up your face. “Everyone seems so tired,” you whisper. “And dirty.” I look at you, perplexed. “This is going to be awful,” you proclaim clearly.
That is not what I was thinking. That is not what I was thinking at all.
’Άρειος
WAR
The story of Troy was never about the wooden horse. That is only what people want to remember, something tangible and easy to imagine, something children can build with the popsicle sticks in their minds, then shove full of plastic warriors. The story people know goes like this: a gate, opened; the horse thrown inside; an explosion of violence accompanied by a soundtrack of killing, dying, and victory.
But the horse was only ever just a prop, something to hold the imagination, something simple to focus on instead of what the war, what any war, is really about. The horse was not full of soldiers but hopes and dreams and fears and secrets, all the things tucked inside the hearts of people who are lost. The story started long before that, with the gods and their eternal bickering, their jealousy and revenge and desire and all the other dysfunctions they passed onto their children, cursing man to a life of eternal wandering.
Heroes claim all sorts of things, but their journeys are never all that complicated. They pound their chests and show off their bloody trophies, but no one ever really remembers why they fight. They say it was about a woman, or land, or honor, or God, but in the end it is always about one thing—paradise—losing it and wanting it, finding it and defending it, and yearning, always yearning, for somewhere or something or someone that will make them feel whole.
Home. That is what the hero is always searching for. Sometimes other words are substituted. Love, for instance. Or God. But these are just other ways of saying “home.”
“Let’s show you to your new place, shall we?” your mom says, squeezing my shoulder. The dogs follow Doff toward the kitchen. He’s on cooking duty for tonight’s meal.
“Stay,” Doff commands, but the dogs don’t take him seriously, their tails wagging as they jump after him. “Stay!” he says again, and the dogs just seem to laugh at him by jumping higher.
“Che, Biafra,” your mom says, her voice deep and forceful. “Stay!” And in a split second, the dogs sit down in unison. Doff looks at us with a sheepish grin, shrugs his shoulders, then turns around and continues toward the house.
“Alrighty,” your mom says. “Off we go.”
“Thank you so much,” I say. “For letting me stay here this summer, Mrs . . . . um . . . Mrs.—”
“Oh, please.” She rolls her eyes. “You can’t be serious. Mrs.? Do I look like a Mrs. to you?” She starts leading us down a path away from the house. “My name is Lark,” she says. “Nothing but Lark. Like Madonna, except aging gracefully.”
I trail a few steps behind, giving you and Lark some space to catch up. But I need space too—just a few feet around me to breathe and take in my surreal surroundings. Just last night, I was hugging my dad goodbye and getting on a red-eye flight to Denver, asking him over and over again with rising panic in my voice if he was going to be okay without me, never believing him when he said yes. Is this how most teenagers react to spending a summer away from home? Is it normal to fear the world is going to fall apart without me? Is it normal for a seventeen-year-old girl to think her parents can’t take care of themselves?
Now it’s like I’m on a different planet. We’ve been deposited in this strange place where dogs are named after revolutionaries, where people live in tents, where mothers hug you every chance they can get. We’re surrounded by unremarkable miles of corn, but here, hidden in plain sight, is this magical green place. You are glowing, like being near Lark has lit up some dormant place inside you, and maybe I don’t have to worry about you anymore either. This is what I try to focus on—your happiness, your second chance—not the jealousy jabbing at my heart, not the yearning for my own mother, whose arms used to be as open as Lark’s, whose love used to be that free, but who is now lost to me despite still living in my same house.
You always tell me I make things too complicated, I over-think everything, I am incapable of living in the moment. You told me this summer was going to be all about focusing on the now. It seems like it should be so easy, but I have to remind myself to feel the sun warming my skin, to smell the perfume of lavender in the air, to see my best friend in the whole world happy and calm and momentarily unwracked by the chaos that seems to follow you like a cloud. Yes, in this moment, right here and now, I think I’m happy too.
We make our way down the flower-lined path that leads to the right shore of the lake. It is dotted by a dozen or so dwellings, some sporting roofs of shiny solar panels. I would not call these “houses” necessarily; some are more like cabins, large enough to have one or two rooms; others are like big tents. There are potted plants and little rock paths, quite a few of those rainbow Tibetan prayer flags hanging, a few bicycles leaning here and there, toys strewn across the little front yards. One place has a whole flock of pink flamingos and a battered plastic Santa.
“That’s Old Glen’s place with the flamingos,” Lark says. “He’s the one who started this place back in the eighties. Used to be a stockbroker on Wall Street. One day, he woke up and decided to just leave it all.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Wow is right. He’s pretty amazing. Everyone here is, in one way or another.”
I nod. You don’t seem to have been listening. “Do any of these places have bathrooms?” you ask.
“There are composting toilets behind every three homes or so,” Lark says. “But none of them has running water. We set up a water jug by each toilet for washing hands and stuff.”
“What about electricity?”
“Oh yeah, everyone’s got electricity.” I’m pretty sure I hear you sigh in relief. “See those solar panels? This whole place is totally off the grid.”
“So people live in these tents?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Lark says. “They’re called yurts. These are some of the nicest homes here. Very roomy.”
“Even in the winter?” you ask in disbelief. This is probably as far as we could get from your dad’s McMansion on the golf course. Or my less glamorous but just as cold house, where the TV’s always on to cover up the silence.
“Honey, people have been living in places like this for thousands of years, through much crazier weather than we get here. Humans are capable of a lot more than they know.” This strikes me as a strange thing to say in a conversation about architecture, but you just nod as if taking notes in your head.
We walk past a large yurt connected to a smaller one by a tentlike hallway. A little porch built off of the flap doorway holds a few chairs that face out toward the lake.
“That one looks like a hobbit house,” you say.
“Who you calling a hobbit?” a man’s low voice says behind us. I turn to see a jolly-looking man and a skeptical girl next to him. He’s tall, with curly, graying shoulder-length hair, and she’s pale and skinny, almost albino. They look nothing like hobbits.
“Marshall and Skyler!” Lark says. “It’s your lucky day. Meet my beautiful girls, Sadie and Max.”
“What an honor,” Marshall says with an exaggerated bow. “Nice to meet you, ladies.”
“You too,” we say.
“This is my daughter, Skyler.”
“Hi,” we say. Skyler looks me quickly up and down and makes it clear with her arched eyebrow that she doesn’t find much of interest. She’s of that almost-pubesc
ent age where her body is only slightly different from a boy’s; her jean shorts and purple T-shirt are still from the kid’s section.
“Skyler’s twelve,” Marshall says.
“Thirteen in three months,” Skyler corrects him, but she’s announcing it directly at you. As she attempts to transform from gawky girl to sassy almost-thirteen-year-old, she shifts her weight to one side, her hand going to her hip. She smiles hopefully and says, “I like your hair.”
“Thanks,” you say. “It’s kind of washing out. It used to be a lot pinker.”
“It’s still really pink,” Skyler says. “I was thinking of dyeing my hair pink too.”
“No, you weren’t,” Marshall says. Lark and I make eye contact, and I catch her stifling a giggle.
“Dad, be quiet,” Skyler says under her breath. “You don’t know everything I think.”
“Okay, Froggie. Whatever you say.”
“Don’t call me Froggie!” Skyler hisses, her freckled face turning red. “I already told you.”
“Oh, pardon me,” Marshall says with a fake British accent.
“Your yard is really pretty,” I say. “I like the flowers.” Skyler looks at me like I’m the twelve-year-old and she’s the almost-senior in high school and I just said something really stupid.
“Thanks,” Marshall says. “My wife’s got a way with plants, for sure. Have you seen the veggies yet? She’s kind of the plant whisperer of the farm.” I shake my head no.
“They’ll get the full tour Tuesday when they start work,” Lark says. “They still haven’t seen their trailer yet.”
“Well, get along then,” Marshall says. “Make yourselves at home. We’ll see you at dinner.”
“Bye, Sadie,” Skyler says, then gives me the stink-eye.
“See ya,” you say, but I can tell your mind is on something else. You must be just as terrified by the word “trailer” as I am.
Lark grins as she leads us. “I think someone’s got a little crush on my daughter.”