Live Alone And Like It

摘要

Somehow I wound up leading the same summer life my mother led. With school over, the household was transplanted a hundred miles away, in a place defined by weather: silver sunlight, soaking rains, calamine lotion, citronella candles, fishing tackle, raveling towels. The children were the centerpiece of the enterprise—sticky, grubby, unapprecia- tive of an idyll engineered by others, always faintly sunburned on shoulders or nose despite the best efforts of the adults who dogged them with sunscreen. The fadiers arrived on Friday night bringing the mail, their city clothes incongruous in the thick and buggy air.