Olympia Read Free

and stitched especially for the occasion. I’m wearing my first real suit, a soft grey, complete with tie. Luckily a summer suit of light cotton, the pants shortened to the knee. It’s hot and sticky out. Even the artificial wind through the open windows brings no relief. It feels like I’m wrapped in soggy toilet paper. My mother’s told me I’ll have to pull up my long black socks when we get there. Until then I can wear them bunched up around my ankles.

    Ruby’s wearing a pink knee-length dress with a white sash wrapped around the waist. The new dress is carefully rolled up to her hips so she can feel the breeze on her legs hotter. Her shoes sit beside her feet, shiny and white and stiff. She hasn’t said anything, but from where I’m sitting I can see the brown dot on both of her white Achilles tendons where the new shoes have broken the skin. She doesn’t want to bug our mother. We both know the tension in the air. For now, better just to sit.

    Our parents are dressed the way all adults dress for weddings. They look serious, important, as if they’re going to greet the president of a foreign country, or perhaps a returning Olympic gold medallist. Ruby and I are not used to seeing them like this. Our father never wears a tie, something he says he’s thankful for. He says he’s most comfortable with a pencil stuck behind his ear and dressed in his shop apron, which he wears when he works on the sailboat in the basement. He started it last fall, a small two-man racer which he hopes to finish by next year. It’s taken him longer than he expected because he only has weekends to work on it. The whole house has smelled of fibreglass for six months. This is something I don’t mind, but it troubles my mother. She says he builds boats like boys build model airplanes. Sometimes she says this with admiration, as a comment on his eternal youthfulness. Other times I’m not so sure. This could be something else that’s bothering him: a weekend away from his sailboat, his strips of fibreglass, his moulds, his protective goggles. The clothes he’s wearing smell of bleach and detergent instead of glue.

    We arrive at Bobcaygeon and drive slowly through the little town, observing the 15 m.p.h. speed limit. On the sidewalks people are dressed in short sleeves and cut-off jeans or track shorts. The younger ones wear their sneakers without socks, most of them tanned from top to bottom. You can tell who lives in town. They aren’t many among the paler, better-dressed tourists. The townies wear baseball caps, the laces of their shoes broken or missing, scornful of the summer fashions we bring from the south. There are people carrying two-fours of beer from the Brewers’ Retail to their cars. It’s beer-drinking weather. They know to open their trunks before they buy their beer so they won’t have to struggle with keys while their hands are full. Slowly we drive past the parking lot, looking into the popped-open trunks like dentists examining a line of gaping mouths. There are a few Michigan and New York State licence plates. I imagine these belong to the people with narrow heads and large sagging bodies, their children dressed in striped shirts and khaki shorts with zipper pockets.

    Our father knows where we’re going. We’ve been here before. We drive over the lock with the white-and-red signs on both sides warning us not to fish from this point. Then turn left, corralled by a driftwood fence into the parking lot of the houseboat rental, the marina where we’re to meet between green pine forests and the smooth black waters off the tip of the dock. The parking lot crunches under the weight of our slowing tires.

    Everyone’s already here, including my aunt from California. After the wedding she’s coming to stay with us. She’s been with my grandparents in Kingston since she arrived two days ago. She’s wearing a modest dress,