The Secret Corner

            The first time I went to our Summer house in Maine was the last time so many members of the family were together all at once.  It was the Summer of 1992.  From youngest to oldest, almost everyone was there: the three Dechtiar kids visiting from Brazil, Debora, Leonora and I;  the Vermont Shaplins - Oriana, Maria and Adriano - including their second cousin Marianne;  the St. Louis Shaplins - Ben, Chris and Jud; their dad Uncle Alfred, his brother Uncle John, John’s wife Joan; my parents Jairo and Helen and her mom:  Grandma Pippa.  Her cat at the time was Caddy - supposedly the coolest of all the orange cats she’s ever had.  He came along as well.
            Grandfather Pa built the house way back in the 50’s so that the family had a quiet retreat next to Sand Pond in the small town of Denmark, about fifteen minutes into the woods.  Grandma Pippa was always intent in keeping the house free of any technology, so we had no TV or radio.  Even so, late at night the cousins would pull out the diskmen that they had snuck in with their luggage, and I remember them letting me listen to a little bit of Michael Jackson on the headphones.  The main form of entertainment, however, was Scrabble.  Mostly it was just Grandma and Uncle Alfred showing off their knowledge, and the kids trying their best to impress them.  Maria was the only one who ever beat Grandma, I think.  She was also the one to catch the biggest fish of all when we went fishing in the dark.  I didn’t catch any fish.  I swung the bait too far back and it got caught on a branch.
            One morning we went blueberry picking.  We spread into the woods in order to find them.  “Don’t pick the ones in that corner,” I remember Aunt Joan saying, “that’s where the boys go pee.”  That explained why some of my blueberries were weird and sticky.  Once we were done, Grandma started on the pie while the rest of us went into town.  She insisted that none of us try and help.  “Everyone always puts the ingredients back in the wrong places, I have to do it all myself!”  I wasn’t sure if she was proud or resentful.  In either case, she loved doing it anyway.
            So we all decided to go to the movies.  The older kids wanted to see some movie about Madonna, except Adriano.  He went with my sisters and I to “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid!”  I always thought Adriano was really cool.  So did the other cousins.  We would watch in marvel as he pocked a sharp needle into his arm and out the other side.  We knew the blood was fake but it was almost impossible to tell.  His magic tricks were the best.  I wanted to be like him, so I practiced my own magic tricks out of a book.  One time, after I finished performing for Aunt Joan and my mom, Adriano put an arm over my shoulder and said: “You wanna know what’s wrong with this trick?”  I nodded and listened attentively.  “First, it’s obviously mathematical, so it feels like you’re tricking your audience,” he whispered as he pulled me into the other room, “second, there’s nothing to hold the attention of your audience while your setting up the cards.”  Our moms looked at each other and smiled.
            Ben, on the other hand, wasn’t as nice to me back then.  “Nobody cares about your magic tricks,” he said.  That would be my only memory of Ben for the following eight years.  I was upset about it for a while, and I didn’t feel like playing when everybody was in the beach later that afternoon.  I just slpashed some water around at my sisters and went to the “secret” corner that Adriano had shown me, where I sat on a large rock next to the water and tossed some stones around.  A little while later I heard my sisters go back into the house and my mom saying: “why are your clothes all wet?!”  Her voice carried through the woods, bounced off the water and into my little hideout.  My sisters whined something or other, then I heard Jud speaking.  “Luis...” is the only word I could make out.  My mom yelled my name and went looking for me.
            I don’t remember getting my sisters all wet.  I thought I had just taunted them a little as usual, but it felt like everyone was blaming me for some reason.  “Why would an eighteen-year-old young man lie to me?” my mom said when she found me in the secret corner, “If Jud says he saw you getting your sister’s clothes all wet, I believe him.”  I insisted that maybe Jud was confused, and that the girls had gotten their clothes wet on their own and were afraid to admit it, but it really didn’t matter.  I don’t even remember what I had done, I was just hurt by Ben’s remark and wanted people to feel bad for me.  So I stayed in the secret corner for a few hours and missed dinner.
            However, that day passed and probably no one even remembers it.  All in all, it was a wonderful vacation.  I was glad to have met my cousins for the first time, and when it was time to leave I couldn’t wait to come again to our house in Maine.  “Don’t forget to sign the wall!” Grandma called to everyone, pointing to the spot where every year they’d traditionally scribble  names and dates.  Each of us took turns in standing against the wall, figuring out how high we were and making a mark there with our signature.  It was me and my sisters’ first time signing the wall, but everyone else had done it before.  I watched my cousins scrambled for their turn to see how much they’d grown.  I smiled.  It was my turn.  I wrote my name on the wall and made the mark an inch or two above my actual height.

 

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