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they’d never passed them before and would never return. Mr. Fife pulled into the breakdown lane when he spotted a car with its hood up. He jogged over to interview the unhappy driver, and jogged back to us, satisfied. “Radiator overheated,” he said, “but he’s carrying water. He’s just going to let it cool down a bit.” After a few minutes of driving in uncharacteristic silence, Mr. Fife expressed disappointment in himself:
He
didn’t carry water, but from this dayforth certainly would, especially on long trips, especially at these elevations.
    As soon as we turned onto the dirt road that led to the Inn, everyone but me started counting down from sixty in another happy chorus. Mrs. Fife turned around to explain: They had figured out the previous summer that the drive from the main road to the parking lot took exactly one minute! I joined in at thirty-five, less enthusiastically, but smiling like a good guest. We would do it after every outing, every errand, over the next week. And hitting “One!” as we crossed the first inch of asphalt never failed to delight my host family.
    B efore I went, my parents and I had discussed whether or not I should announce myself as the daughter of the couple who had stopped by the previous summer to admire the property. We decided against full disclosure. We had posed as the Martins, and I was arriving as Natalie Marx. We’d look like liars. Besides, my mother assured me, adults like Mrs. Berry don’t notice children. If you look familiar, she’ll think she saw you once in a department store.
    Mrs. Berry, with her gray-blond hair shortened to a Jackie Kennedy bouffant, greeted the Fifes the way paying guests would hope to be received on their fourteenth visit—warmly and on a first-name basis. And because I was there under the Fife banner, Mrs. Berry shook my hand and welcomed me with a short, cloying speech about how lucky I was to be there with the Inn’s absolute favorite family.… What was my name?
    “Natalie Marx.”
    “Marx,” she repeated.
    “Like Groucho.”
    Mrs. Berry laughed politely. The Fifes chuckled wholeheartedly.
    “I love his show,” said Mrs. Berry. “He can be so … irreverent.”
    “Did you get a television?” asked Robin.
    Mrs. Berry wagged her finger in the manner of a school principal who had no rapport with children. “With all there is to do here, young lady, would you want to stay in your room and watch television?” Ugh, I thought; she’s horrible on all counts. She looked to the Fifes for ratification; they continued to smile proudly and vacantly.
    “The boys beat you to it,” Mrs. Berry announced to the adults.
    Mr. and Mrs. Fife exchanged more looks of pride and disbelief. “When did they get here?” Mr. Fife asked.
    Mrs. Berry said, “Close to an hour ago, before check-in time. They changed into their suits and flew down to the water.”
    “They must have
flown
up the interstate,” chuckled Mr. Fife, the slowest male driver Connecticut had ever licensed.
    “Let’s get into our suits, too,” said Robin.
    I said, Great, I couldn’t wait to jump in.
    “Girls, girls,” said her father with mock sternness. “Luggage! We’re old enough to carry our own bags. Robin?” He led us back down the white-pebbled path to the car, where he ceremoniously handed Robin an undersize piece of luggage and me a canvas beach tote. There was something deliberately good-fatherish and annoying about the way he did it: two hands on each bag, estimating its heft with a thoughtful frown before passing it on. I could see what was ahead: a week of Mr. Fife’s scientific teaching and fathering methods, ratcheted up a few notches for me.
    I soon figured out that the brothers, Jeff and Donald Junior/Chip, were the reason Mr. and Mrs. Fife took such pains to be Perfect Public Parents. Their sons were a walking cockfight. They were horrible together and dullards apart, partners in a kind of boy play I hadn’t seen in my all-girl life on Irving