The Love Children Read Free

and side, nine bedrooms, and two parlors.
    What was nice about our house was the backyard, which sprawled into a stand of trees. It had a garage that my father had put a second story on and made into his studio. It had huge windows to the south and east, and a beautiful wooden floor. Back when life was happier around there, he worked in his studio and slept with Mom in the double bed in the big bedroom. I wasn’t sure when or why that changed; it happened in whispers behind my back. I was thirteen when Dad announced one night at dinner that he couldn’t paint here; Cambridge drove him crazy, Harvard drove him crazy, the Harvard art department drove him crazy, and he was going to move to Vermont, to the cabin up there that we used for summer vacations. It was a shack, really; it didn’t have indoor plumbing, and it was isolated out in the woods.
    â€œI just got my PhD, Pat!” My mother cried. “What am I supposed to do with it up there? There’s nothing there! I just signed a contract with Harvard!”
    â€œThat’s nothing!” he countered. “Just tear it up!”
    Mom sat back. “I don’t want to.”
    â€œWe’ll rough it,” he urged. “It’ll be fun!”
    â€œFun for who?” my mother challenged.
    â€œTsk, tsk, your grammar.” Dad laughed. “And you with a PhD!”
    She ignored that. “ I’ll be the one roughing it. You’ll be in your studio painting, as always. Whereas I will have to do the laundry on a washboard, hang the clothes on a line, empty the chamber-pots, wash the dishes by hand, and be a general dogsbody! I won’t become a slave!”

    â€œSlave? Slave! It’s called being a wife! It’s what a wife is supposed to do.”
    â€œAccording to your family.” Mom’s face changed. “Let’s not fight in front of Jess,” she said. He shut up then, but both their mouths looked zipped.
    After dinner I went to my room to do homework. After I finished, I crept out and sat on the top step, listening. They argued in low, urgent voices. A few days later, as Dad packed his stuff into his car, Mom watched him in silence. When he left, he kissed me good-bye and told me he’d see me pretty soon. It would be months.
    I loved my dad and I knew he loved me. Sometimes, when he thought I was being fresh, he’d snarl at me like a dog; but other times he’d chuckle, as if he thought I was cute. Sometimes he looked at me with kind eyes, and he hugged me once in a while. When he was gone the house was quieter. After that, every once in a while he’d descend on us from Vermont. He never called ahead, he just came, annoying Mom. Her reaction bothered me. It was as if he didn’t have the right to come to his own house. I loved Mom, but I wished she was nicer to Dad. The main reason she was annoyed was that she hadn’t bought enough food for his dinner. But also she knew he was trying to catch her at something.
    The Vermont cabin was tiny, with a main room and a narrow bedroom and bath on one side and a loft over them, where I slept. The bathroom had a sink and a wonderful huge old claw-foot tub, but no toilet. Dad absolutely refused to put one in—we had to use the outhouse. The whole place was heated by a wood stove. I loved the cabin; it was beautiful. It was in deep woods, facing a lake, and had no neighbors. There was a canoe Dad’s father had built, and a rowboat and a sailboat and an outboard motor. Wood for the stove was stacked in a shed attached to the house, and wildflowers grew all around. I loved to go out at night and lie on the grass, looking at the sky. It was so dark, the stars were like
diamonds, hovering over the lake. For me it had a mysterious resonance with the Little House books I had read, with a dream of an America built by good, hardworking, disciplined people living in a nature that was gorgeous, if harsh.
    One day, Dad called from the cabin. I was in