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floor was also shag-carpeted but in red, white and blue, the dresser drawers and brick chimney where it came through painted to match the bicentennial scheme. The walls were an old sort of pressboard, sky blue, soft as cork and flaking along the seams. He could see the ghosts of his father’s hammer blows around the nails. The past was as thick as the air up here—games of spin the bottle and post office, Meg blowing her cigarette smoke out the window, drinking illicit beers while their parents entertained the Lerners and Wisemans on the screenporch. There in front of the mirror on the low wardrobe was the 7UP bottle with the taffy-twisted neck his father won for him at the carnival in Mayville, and there on the cedar chest between the beds, the ashtray he made at camp, beating the square of metal until it took on the shape of the leaf at the bottom of the mold. The TV that hadn’t worked in twenty years, the fire truck he’d had as a boy that Ella cut her chin on when she was three. The room was so full of history he had to fend it off, concentrate on getting the kids settled. There would be time—and light, he hoped. He hadn’t brought his strobes.
    â€œCan you put the fan on?” Lise called from the bathroom, and he found the switch. The fan was built into the wall at the top of the stairs; it did nothing but make noise, even when he opened the two windows at the far end. The air smelled moldy and faintly, sweetly fecal from the generations of bats that had lived in the walls. At night you could hear them bumping and squeaking, and for a long time Sam had refused tosleep up here. He was still scared of them, but there was no graceful way out now without Ella calling him a baby.
    â€œCan we go down to the dock?” Ella asked. Sam stood right beside her, her client.
    â€œAfter you put your clothes away. Neatly.”
    â€œAnd help make the beds,” Lise called.
    â€œThey’re already made,” Ella said.
    â€œWe have to strip off the old sheets and put on new ones.”
    Ella sighed.
    â€œAnd no sighing.”
    â€œYes, Mother,” Ella said, going along with the joke, but a minute later, trying to fit a contour sheet on, she almost burst into tears. “This stupid sheet won’t go on.”
    Lise came out of the bathroom and looked at the problem. “That’s because it’s a double.”
    â€œHow am I supposed to know that?”
    â€œIt’s nothing to cry about, “Lise said. “Here, this one’s queen-size, it should work.”
    Sam was done shoving his clothes into the dresser and stood there watching them.
    â€œKen,” Lise said, “help him with the other one,” and he stopped filling the medicine cabinet with their toiletries.
    When they were done, Lise sent the children off to the dock and took over putting their clothes away.
    â€œI swear, everything’s a crisis with her. And it’s only going to get worse.”
    â€œI don’t think she’s so terrible.”
    â€œJust wait,” she said, but halfheartedly. They both knew they were lucky with Ella. Sam was the tough one, always would be. Boys were supposed to be easy, but that hadn’t been the case with him.
    The room was dim. Outside, the golden hour was starting, the light beginning to sweeten. Lise pulled her book from her beach bag, one of the kids’ Harry Potters. He unpacked his camera bag, the little he had. He would wait till tomorrow, slip out early and see if he could find something plain to start on. She stretched out on the bed and set her bookmark on the cedar chest.
    â€œJust a few pages,” she promised. “It’s getting good.”
    He laid a hand on the small of her back and bent down awkwardly to kiss her. “I’ll be downstairs.”
    His mother and Arlene were on the screenporch, reading the Jamestown paper and watching the lake. The Steelers had crushed the Bills. He hadn’t even known they