We seem happy

I have not arrived in Lake George before I, in my role as vacation orb holder, am told by my parents that they are deeply impressed by my selection. From my parents' room, they can see the lake across the road. The last time we vacationed here, the driveway was a rocky, thin path to a house that was, I'll grant, lovely. However, it was five miles away from Lake George. We could not have seen it with a telescope.

My parents were generously going to give Amber and me the only private room, though more for our COVID concerns than any kindness. Once they settled in, they found three private bedrooms and a wing for Dan's family; I am good at what I do, and they were wise to give me this orb.

Before I unpack, my mother pulls me aside to show me an amethyst orb with a small glass stand. My parents take their orbs seriously. "We are giving Bryan one on this vacation," she says, sounding choked up or maybe only congested. "I need you to help us name it."

I take it lightly in my palm, considering its heft. It is too occluded to guess a future through it. This is not the Easter Orb, over which Dan will abdicate all responsibility once he moves to Texas (though he badly pretends Dan forgot his stone and duty; he does not take Orb Holding seriously).

"This is because he" -- it is not congestion -- "is going to take care of us as we get old."

Bit of a downer to start the vacation, though likely more so for them to be granting the obligation.

I soon text that it should be The Golden Years Orb. My parents thank me, agree, and at once revise that it is The Twilight Years Orb. I like this less -- too final -- but it is not my orb to give.

Over dinner, I state that mine is better because it lets me think of David Bowie.

I feel a decade or so shaved off in a house full of people about whom I care and to whom I am maybe mildly pesky. I don't care to think of where I will be in a month and find it easy to lose myself in these moments with my family.

These times are precious. My parents' talk of orbs makes them both more and less so. More, because it underlines that they are finite. Less, because it draws attention away from what is before us. I do not want to consider my parents entering this stage of life, though my father has already retired, and my mother will this year.

My parents independently express frustration with one another, with the possibility of a retirement of gradual (or less gradual) decline. Still, they have their well-worn verbal routine. Whatever else they are, they have been family and (usually) friends too long for their complaints not to sound like concern. All I can do is espouse the importance of hobbies and, failing that, various otherwise pointless daily goals like my eleven thousand daily steps on my Fitbit. What I do I know but what I've read and assume?

Vacations are also a prime time to be in love with my partner. At no other time of the year do we have one another unadulterated and uninterrupted. Within an hour of postprandial walking, Amber highlights an aspect of our relationship I had misunderstood. Scheduling intimacy seemed cold to me. What I took as her begrudgingly acceding to romantic obligation was instead her being weekly excited and expectant for more profound affection. It was all but unprompted, but adoration glittered over me, realizing her perspective for the first time.

Amber brought an unmentioned guest: our rat Arthur. He has been sick for half a year, his hair falling out, his eyes growing more pronounced and wetter. Amber thought at first that it was allergies, removing wheat from his diet and adding rice and scrambled eggs, as Arthur will usually eat these. Our other rat, Little Chef, passed a month or so ago. Before he did, Amber said that she considered euthanizing the surviving rat when one died since neither were healthy nor inclined to recover. Because of my quiet horror that we would do this (even though it made practical sense), she did not mention it again.

Not his cutest picture

Arthur came up in a cat carrier, well-appointed with rat accouterment. Once we arrived, Amber set up a large cage in our room, one that more than approximated in quarter size his one at home. He would use only its floor anyway, and of that space mostly his purple plastic house.

The first night, he is sullen and hiding, but he eats his rice and some egg.

Walking from the house in the morning for a day at the beach, say to Amber, "If one were in need of moving, one could do worse than Lake George. You have mountains. You have the lake."

"Yeah," Amber says, "and you have the same pointless shops, so maybe not that good."

There would have been a time when I would have been nearly out of my skin to go into town to walk past the shops -- most of which are owned by the same family selling the same obnoxious t-shirts. I wouldn't have a reason to go there, only a compulsion. I am more realistic now. These shops are a component of my Lake George experience, but they do not represent it.

We return to our room to get sunglasses for Amber, but she goes at once to Arthur's cage, less instinct as practice. He is ailing, doing worse than he has. Amber is controlled at first, cracking the already prepared heat pad and directing me to retrieve his painkillers from the box of her root beers. All I can do here is obey and wait. My attachment to this beach day was not strong. If we must spend it with Amber nursing Arthur through rodent hospice, so be it.

On the stairs, my mother, audibly upset, asks if Arthur will die and what will become of him after. This is a practical, not existential, question.

Yes, he is going to die. I don't know that it will be on this trip, but I am impressed by his longevity so far.

"Are we going to put him in a Ziploc? In the freezer?" my mother asks, her voice thick with the tragedy of this.

"I assume."

"Do we have something pretty to wrap around him?"

I state that I am sure we do.

I return to Amber, weeping as she tries to give Arthur pain meds through a syringe. He likes no part of this, not Amber's therapeutic grip, the syringe in his mouth, the flavor of its contents, or being outside his cage. She has me refill the syringe with warm water to try to get him some fluids. She said that he was skinnier -- and with his lack of fur, this is easy to see. Amber brought him some bacon from the sandwiches I made us this morning. I got him a segment from a clementine. As I watch over Amber caring for him, I see the latter among discarded rice and attach irrational importance to it. If only he had eaten some of the fruit, maybe he would feel better. But, if he felt better, he would have devoured the fruit.

It would not be the freezer. Amber says at first that she would immediately drive his small body to her animal hospital to process, a trip of nearly four hours. On our walk to check out a different beach, she revises that she could bring it to a nearby animal hospital. She might want a complete necropsy so she could know what had been wrong with him. It would only be for her knowledge. An official conclusion would not help his already deceased cage mates. She would want paw prints, though, and is bothered that they might not be the matching silver polymer clay of the predeceased if his remains were presented to any other hospital.

On the boat

After the walk, we go for our annual tour of the lake. It occurs to me that, in years before, I would have been trying to savor the experience. Of course, the awareness spoils the moment. Instead, I'm not thinking hard about anything. If I had told myself ten years ago that the secret to enjoying a summer day is not thinking, I doubt I would have grasped the idea.

I don't have a set schedule. I'm less burdened by what is supposed to happen. As this vacation shows, there is no "supposed to." It is only what does happen. Amber and I did not go to the beach with Dan and his family. We found another beach and discussed the arrangements for Arthur because it was impossible to ignore that he could not make a miraculous recovery. Was this what I would have expected for vacation? No. It is, however, what happened. I radically accept. I do not mourn what has passed. I have better things planned for tomorrow.

When we return to the house, Amber rushes to our room. Arthur is stiff. Though she has seen many dead animals in her career, he looks the deadest. I, who have seen far fewer, must concur. I look only briefly at his teeth extended beneath receded lips, his bulging, rheumy black eyes now sightless, before deciding that I ought to preserve my fuzzier memories of him by not imprinting further details.

Amber blames herself. Bringing him here was stressful, but Arthur was going to die. He could have done it boarded at Amber's animal hospital or alone at home between visits from Kristina, but he was going to die. This way, he died with the people who loved him rather than scared or alone. He was fussed over. Amber acknowledged that he just wanted to be left alone in the cage. I assure her that she prolonged his life well past where most people have. It is only through her dedication that he lived the life he did. She says that the only other option was euthanasia before we left, which was a different sort of sadness. He lived as long as he could, and we didn't decide that for him. Though I have made this decision before, Amber had hope for Arthur. He was an unlovely thing so long that it became an aspect of his personality. Only a week ago, he crawled over my hand and arms, licking me lightly (a rat version of kisses).

Amber is incapable of understanding how compassionate she truly is. She sees only what she did wrong. But Amber can't chide away the mortality of an animal that lives an average of two years. She did more than most people would be capable of doing. Arthur is lucky that he ended up with us rather than someone who would feed this loving, cuddly rodent to a snake. Amber will beat herself up over this and possibly try to find a way to subtly punish herself. But she did, in this as an all things, the best one could do. How many people would bring an ailing rat on vacation to ensure that he was cared for in his time of need?

This pall of finality hangs over this vacation, which Arthur's death is too conspicuous a symbol. This will be the last time that Dan and his family are here as New Yorkers -- or possibly here at all. He has assured my parents that he intends to have the kids up here every Christmas and over the summer, but I am not sure who believes this. I would like to, but it doesn't seem realistic, no matter what money his job might throw at him.

Of course, I like being around my family (though perhaps not "of course;" many are not so fond and might consider several days in one another's company more than a little onerous). We get together around once a month, though never with this concentration. It could be rougher, but we are all given to our pursuits outside of group activities. Amber would be happy to just read her book. Her desire for relaxation is simple: reading something that is not required to build a skill or ace a class.

My youngest niece, Addie, does not keep sensible hours outside of vacation, often sending me video messages at 3 am. I hear her even when I wake after hours of sleep to use the bathroom. I do not see her for breakfast until I am making my lunch. She is resentful that she has been roused so early, before noon.

Addie, all of seven, is fixed to her phone whenever possible. She shows me some game that she swears will pay her actual money to click shapes. Whenever she is given a few minutes to relax, she will turn it to its highest volume and watch purposely grating men do playthroughs of games she does not own. I am positive that, at her age, I had similarly annoying interests to the adults around me, but I admit to not remembering which.

This is not to absolve me of any attachment to my phone. My mother comments over breakfast that I seem quiet. I assure her that I could be plenty chatty, but I was completing my morning tasks on Pokemon GO.

Despite her admonishment and the others in the house ostensibly sleeping, the house is far from quiet. A chorus of grunts and groans issues irregularly from both floors as other Quackenbushes try to rouse themselves. Given the length of their moans, it must be said that it doesn't seem to be successful.

I am unused to all their morning sounds that I suspect no amount of conversation could mask.

Relaxed

Amber suggests a light to moderate hike on Wednesday morning. I don't want to go hiking. I enjoy hiking and revel in having hiked, but the going rouses objection. The hike is to a gazebo with a view and, if one is adventurous, a waterfall. Amber has done all the research, so I trust her, at least to the extent that I know the website lies to her, and this will be tougher than we imagine. I welcome it.

Amber asks me when I would have off so we could take a trip after the summer was over. I am awash in time off right now, nothing but free days. The only appreciable span after this is not until Thanksgiving and then Christmas. By then, it's difficult to know whether the country will be shut down again owing to a new wave of COVID.

I miss more time with Amber. Even when she is with me outside of vacation, she is somewhere else, tomorrow's shift or the one after, thinking Tuesday of Sunday's laundry. Such a schedule appeals to her possibly autistic mind. I believe that her prior spontaneity was, in her words, masking. I find it lonely. Even her leisure is more like shutting down for a little to recover from her labors, but not to enjoy herself. At least not enjoyment as I would see it, visiting with friends and going to events now that they are being held again -- though possibly not for long.

We climb a few hundred stone steps separated by forested inclines. It is not a light hike, but we knew not to expect it. The gazebo view is as advertised, but Amber will tell an elderly hiker on the way down, perhaps not worth the hike itself. We have time before a big lunch with my family, so we soldier on to the waterfall. Amber is enchanted by the tiny frogs that leap out of the way of us, the plodding giants, and makes it her task to get one photo of each variation.

She is in bright spirits. I wish to trust it. I held her last night as she wept over Arthur and her guilt over his death. She could not control his dying (or not enough), but she could seize control now by blaming herself. I don't want to ask her what will happen now to his body, in a nebulizer box, wrapped in cloth from his cage, slipped into a freezer bag in the refrigerator. I don't want her to tell me that, in penance, she is going to carry his body home. It may be something less severe but penance all the same.

But she is light here, showing off that her hiking pants resist the dirt of her crouching to get better frog shots.

Dirty and glittering with perspiration, her hair already frizzing to escape the unpracticed braid into which I had put it, she is stunning in a way that it feels I had somehow forgotten after seeing her every day. It is only days from our ordinary responsibilities. It feels as though it is all remembering and infatuation on my part.

We find the waterfall, which is less majestic than one might hope, but I am charmed to watch my wife take selfies in front of it to augment those she had taken of frogs.

On the way back, she says that she can wait to take Arthur's body until we return home Friday, which is a relief for me. Later at the restaurant, her work calls and affirms that it makes more sense to wait. He will spoil no more in the refrigerator.

By Wednesday evening, it occurs to me that, though we have been within a foot of the lake, no part of it has touched our skin. I wander out in the gloaming light, watching the lake turn to wine in the sunset, and let it go up to my ankles.

A habit my family has fallen into, if just to keep the conversation flowing, is explaining exactly what was wrong with every restaurant where we have eaten. Given our tenure in Lake George, this critique can number in the dozens of restaurants over the years. We start with the meals that have entered our digestive systems in the last forty-eight hours, but it spins out to places where we ate in 1997. Our first restaurant of the vacation had more batter than fish in our fish and chips. The one nearest our house was a bar where the waitress had such a disdain for our family that she spat when asked about the desserts this evening, "It's just a plain vanilla cheesecake, okay?" These antecedents remind us of the time a shabby restaurant during a visit last decade still deserves our appreciation because they fed us during the Blackout of 2003. Our trips washed on top of one another until it was as much sedimentary mush as the lake itself.

As we are relaxing at home after a long day, Bryan pokes his head up. He announces, apropos nothing, that tomorrow will be the last time the sun sets after 8 pm until May 19, 2022. Amber and I both feel that this is unnecessary and unpleasant information to now carry. Though we have exploited them little, we prefer to have our evenings well-lit. A reminder that autumn creeps closer and, with it, responsibilities I do not wish to meet does little to make me cheerful.

Passing the Orb

As we are coincidentally gathered in the living room, my mother goes into her room and reemerges with something in her hands. With a bit of fanfare and a small sphere, she appoints Bryan their caretaker as they grow older, calling it The Golden Years Orb (because that is objectively the superior name). Bryan appears uncomfortable with this designation but says that he assumed he would be their caretaker. Perhaps he did not expect a rock-based idol of this duty, though.

Around us, Dan and Becky make patient but irritated calls. There was a significant storm back home that barely reached Lake George, and trees fell across their driveway. They try to talk Gabe, my niece Yannah's boyfriend who stayed home with her, through starting the generator, though this does not last. Then, Gabe reports that the power company refuses to repair anything without someone removing the trees that have fallen across their driveway. They do not have faith enough in Gabe to ask him to fire up a chainsaw.

It feels as though the world falls apart outside our presence. Amber and I brought our disaster with us, now refrigerated beneath a few bottles of root beer. I take a distant, curious sympathy to my older brother's travails. There is only so much that he can do from here.

By the following morning, there is a large, packaged generator in the living room, a purchase of over a thousand dollars that seems to do little at the moment. What I consider "only so much" does not match what Dan does.

Bryan woke to tell us that he had a bad dream about end-of-life care for my parents, looking miserable. He might simply look this way in the mornings, though. It may not be a reaction to the Orb-related responsibility bestowed upon him.

I sidle over and tell him sincerely that there was no better choice for this, as he is a nurse with more degrees than I know offhand. I don't think he appreciates that I do not couch this as a joke, as is my custom.

My parents were considering moving to North Carolina until they drove down there to look at a house. Since then, they have been looking at houses nearer to Amber and me, even though they wanted to get away from New York, specifically its taxes and politics. Their goals have changed.

My mother wants to dig two of her pets up to reinter at her new home. Their yard is littered with forty years of dead pets, but they will remain there for those who will buy their house. Flowers have grown over decades-old dogs and cats. She needs only one dog (currently living) and one parrot (presently not).

"I bought you as much time as I could," Amber says to wake me the final morning.

I look at my watch, which shows that it is after eight -- late given that we are expected to be out of here by ten. Given that I was up until after midnight playing a board game with most of my niblings and Becky -- and at least half an hour more with insomnia -- I could not be more appreciative. At best, I have a two-hour drive ahead of me, though likely more; I'd rather not be sleep deprived.

Amber has made good progress packing around me while I slept. The whole house is organized chaos as we rush around, packing and cleaning before the door code will change for the next guest.

I get in my car and know at once that I do not want to go home. I picture the empty rat cage, which had been populated for half a decade and, now that Arthur has passed, will be moved downstairs to be used as storage.

We consider the shopping outlets, but the timing doesn't work. I don't want to stay in Lake George. The vacation is a house full of family with activities interspersed, not the physical location. We have all driven away. Our Lake George no longer exists.

Amber says, "Do you think staying in the car will kill the rat?" She then apologizes for her dark humor, though I appreciate it.

We walk around the New York State Museum in Albany to have something novel to do. It is easier to feel better about my problems when looking at giant Herkimer diamonds and unfortunate mastodons.

Going to bed that night, I breakdown. I cannot stop thinking about the cage Amber had started cleaning already and how I will never again feel Arthur's tiny licks on my fingers. Intermixed into my tears is the malaise I have when coming home from a vacation. Amber identifies that this is because I had been excited about Lake George -- subtly focusing on it all summer -- and now it is over.

"You don't have anything to look forward to."

I want to tell her that she is wrong -- I am not so far gone that I am blind to the fact that I am going to bed beside the woman I love, and there are potential sparkles in my calendar that I don't suspect the Delta variant is going to skunk. Instead, I bring up my coming new placement at the highest security facility. "I am -- what's the opposite of looking forward to something? Oh, yes, dreading. I am dreading next month."

Soon in Xenology: A new job.

last watched: Venture Brothers
reading: City Magick