The Last Summer of the Camperdowns Read Free Page A

my father said, inexplicably in thrall to her sleek furies.
    When it came to my father and what he had to say, the bar was always open. He served up endless rounds of proclamation and intimidation, each garnished with a spritz of soda and a wedge of lime. He liked fizz. Try to imagine North Korea: The Musical and you might begin to understand the ruthless carbonated foundation on which Godfrey Camperdown was built.
    “Your father makes Fidel Castro sound like Gilligan,” my mother said with practiced indifference. “I’m going to buy him a lectern for his birthday.”
    She reached for four strips of bacon and, bending down, fed them to the dogs, her beloved basset hounds, Dorothy, Madge, Hilary and Hilary’s three-month-old puppy, Vera.
    Dunhill cigarette in hand, her sixth finger, she straightened up and exhaled in my direction, a plume of silky smoke winding through her yellow hair like a gray ribbon. I breathed in deeply of her sophistication, imprinting forever that angular and archly feminine aesthetic native to her but elusive to me. I still find the malignant trinity of cashmere sweater set, French manicure and cigarette smoke irresistible.
    I’m a good listener. Maybe it comes from being an only child living in a large house with high ceilings and wide baseboards, wandering through rooms as elegant in their quietude as the first hours of morning. Growing up in the exclusive company of my parents, I was attuned to all the things that tend to go unsaid between adults in a relationship of long standing. My mother and father were great talkers, their conversation part of the electrical circuitry of the house, lighting up rooms, propelling forward the machinery of our daily lives.
    Nodding enthusiastically, in thrall to the idea that my father could diminish Castro to the status of little buddy, I scooped up a grape and popped it into my mouth with relish, juice trickling down the back of my tongue. Like my mother, I deplored all that bored me—unlike her, though, I absolved myself of any obligation to be entertaining. I might as well have been born with a pistol in my hand, firing furiously at the floor, ordering life to dance.
    There were four members of the private club that made up my immediate family: my father, my mother, me and World War Two, which I had come to think of as an unfunny uncle with a penchant for fighting and moodiness. My dad had volunteered in 1943 when he was only seventeen years old, lying about his age, and served in Europe in the infantry. For him, the war was a present-tense event against which all other experiences languished in pallid comparison.
    He was hell-bent on making a man out of me. I was his special project, one of several missions he’d undertaken both on and off the field of battle, where his role as a frontline combatant had permanently blurred the lines of distinction between war and peace. Preoccupied with my personal safety, troubled by my inability to defend against the world’s evils, he taught me to conceal a rock in my fist whenever I left the house. You never know when you might need to shatter an unshaven cheekbone or crack open a resistant skull.
    “Castro? Since when do you take your mother’s side against me?” Camp said, glancing in my direction as I grinned over at him. He picked up one of Lou’s freshly baked biscuits and lobbed it at me, hitting me in the cheek.
    “Oh, Lord,” my mother said as he followed up by reaching over and pinching my forearm.
    “Ouch!” I yelped.
    “Don’t tell me you’re going to just sit back and take it,” he said, playful and challenging as I reached for an olive, pinging him in the forehead.
    “Finally! Now, we’re talking.” He stood up, gesturing with both hands, daring me to launch a full-scale reprisal. “Punch me in the stomach. Come on. Hit me as hard as you can. Don’t hold back.”
    “For God’s sake, Camp, she’s twelve years old . . .” my mother said.
    “Almost thirteen,” I