Lac au Mirage

A Story

On August 23, 1958, my sister, Lilly, turned twelve years old. The sky was milky blue, forecasting not the slightest hint of the funnel cloud that would drop out of the sky and upend our lives. In a corner of our backyard, walled by hydrangea bushes with gigantic lavender blossoms, twelve round tables stood in the noon shade of rustling elms. White tablecloths, flowers in tall vases, and candles flickering in translucent globes decorated each table. Gardens my mother had planted, working on her knees since the ground thawed in May, bloomed with pastel shades of pink, yellow, and orange. Their fragrance perfumed the yard.

Sitting on the patio, my father smoked a cigar and surveyed the decorations. He wore plaid Bermuda shorts, a bright green shirt, and leather sandals, a getup my mother had bought him for the party. His face and arms were tanned, but his legs were white as ivory. He crossed his legs, first one way and then the other. It was easy to see that he was angry about a getup counter to his nature, as he glared through his eyeglasses past the tables, through the hydrangea bushes, across town, and sixty miles west to our lodge along the Two Lady River, on Lac au Mirage, where brook trout fat as the blade of a canoe paddle finned the sluices and eddies.