Harmony (3 page)

We don't unpack right away, just drop our suitcases in the right rooms. We all sort of separate for a while, now that we're not stuck together in the car. Mom's doing something in the kitchen, making lots of busy noises, and across the room, Dad's lying down on the couch with his eyes closed, though I don't know if he's really asleep. Tilly is walking around, telling herself a story about giant statues coming to life; I can hear her whispering “Spring Temple Buddha,” which is a really tall statue in China or someplace. And I'm sitting on my bed, wishing I was anywhere else in the whole world.

I'm in our new bedroom, mine and Tilly's, which I hate. The walls are brown wood, tall up-and-down planks with knotholes in them, and there's a thin blue rug that I'm not ever going to walk on barefoot. Our beds are probably the same size as our beds at home—all twin beds are the same, right, so you know the sheets will fit?—but they look skinny and lumpy and just kind of sad. The bedspreads are dirty white with little flowers on them, and the pillows are so thin they barely even puff up the covers. I can't believe that I'm going to sleep in here, not just tonight, but . . . and now I
almost start crying again, because I don't know how long we're going to have to stay.

“Hey,” says Tilly. “How tall do you think the Aluthgama Buddha would be if he stood up?”

“I have no idea,” I say, as sarcastic and annoyed-sounding as I can. But she doesn't even notice.

I get up and walk to the window, which is between the two beds; I stare out until I can make my face stop crumpling up. I could probably go outside and walk around—that's part of why we're here, right, because we don't want to live in a place where you can't let your kids play outside by themselves? But I don't want to; I'm almost scared, like I might get lost in the trees. All the green that goes on forever like an ocean.

 • • • 

Around five, Mom calls out that she's going to go over to Scott's and see what he's got planned for dinner. “Anyone want to come with me?” she asks. Tilly and I both stare at her, like we're scared she's going to make us. Dad's finally awake, sitting up, rubbing his eyes.

“I'll stay here,” he says, though I'm not sure Mom was really inviting him to go with her. Someone has to be with the kids. Or maybe not—maybe it's so safe here that none of the rules apply.

Mom sighs. “Okay,” she says. “I'll be back in a few minutes. Just so you know, you're all probably going to need to pitch in to help with dinner.”

I don't complain, because I know that's what she's expecting. Once she's out the door, the mood seems to change a little bit in the cabin, like we've all been holding our breath.

I go over to the couch and sit down next to Dad. “So,” I say. “Why are we doing this, again?” I'm trying to make a lame joke, kind of.

Dad looks at me very seriously and says, “Because we don't like video games.”

I crack up, so glad to have a reason to laugh, and Tilly comes over to join in. “That's right, Daddy,” she says. “We don't like video games; we
love
them. We
adore
them. We
cherish
them.”

“Hmm.” Dad looks thoughtful. “So that can't be it. Is it because we hate TV? And delicious snack food? And using the computer?”

Tilly and I are both giggling. I'm leaning against his shoulder, and Tilly is climbing up on the arms of the couch to try to sit on his neck, like for a piggyback ride, even though she's way too big. “No, Dad,” I say. “We love that stuff, remember?”

“That's right, we do.” He turns to Tilly, who's practically climbing on top of him, like she'd stand right on his shoulders if she could. “Come on down, sweetie, okay?”

She does, and he hugs us both close to him, one on each side. “I don't know, then,” he says. “Why
are
we doing this?”

He's going to make us say it.

“Because you only get one chance to raise us?” says Tilly.

“And you think this is going to be a better place for our family than Washington was?” I add.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, like he's remembering something important. “That's right. Thanks for reminding me.” He kisses each of us on the tops of our heads. I love my dad.

“You're welcome,” says Tilly. She pats his head like he's a dog and adds, “We're always happy to help.”

 • • • 

When my mom comes back, she's got Scott with her. He has to duck his head to get his shiny hair through the door.

“Get your shoes on,” Mom says. “Let's go see the big kitchen.”

“Or come barefoot,” says Scott. “It's summertime. Gotta toughen up those feet.”

Tilly goes barefoot, but I put my flip-flops on. Scott leads us out of the cabin and back down the path toward where we parked. He's
a fast walker, and he keeps having to slow himself down so he doesn't get too far ahead of the rest of us. He's wearing a light blue “Camp Harmony” T-shirt, and I see now that it says on the back, “Be Who You Are.” I wonder if he's still taking suggestions on slogans, because that one is so vague it barely means anything at all.

We come out of the trees and into the main part of camp. We walk past the cute visitor cabins, and already I feel jealous of the people who are going to get to stay in them. Past the main office and across a circle of green grass. Tilly and I stop for a minute when the lake comes into view, down a sloped hill that changes slowly from grass to beach. There's a pile of kayaks on the shore, and the water is dark, ruffling into gentle little waves. I feel something in me loosen, just for a second. I could like it here, maybe. That would make things easier.

Scott stands between us, puts a hand on each of our shoulders. “What do you think?” he asks softly.

“Nice,” I say. I mean, it's a lake. Unless you're writing a poem or something, there's not a lot to say.

Tilly isn't even looking in the right direction. “Did you know,” she asks nobody in particular, “that the Motherland Calls memorial in Russia is the world's biggest non-religious statue? It's almost five times as big as the guys on Mount Rushmore.”

The grown-ups ignore her. “Pretty, huh?” says my mom, about the lake. I feel like any other time, it would be her standing between me and Tilly with her arms around us. But Scott's in the way. “Tomorrow, girls,” she says. “We'll go swimming. I promise.”

“I think we can fit that in,” Scott says cheerfully. He pats my shoulder and moves away, to walk again with the adults. I hear him say to my mom, “Be careful about promises, though. We're going to be working in a very group-centered way; it may not always be possible for individual people to decide to go off in all directions.”

“Yeah, of course,” says my mom. Her voice is kind of tight; I don't think she likes feeling like she's being scolded.
Now you know how I feel
, Tilly would say, if she were paying any attention.

My dad, like always, breaks the weirdness. “And besides—swimming? I don't think anyone wants to do that. Yuck.” That gets Tilly, and she and I run over to him, happy, yelling that he's wrong. “Who would ever think of going swimming on vacation?” he asks. “You don't go to a lake to swim.”

We're all smiling and laughing now, relieved the tense part is over, but when I look at Scott, I stop. He seems strange to me, not mad but sort of blank. He's staring at the ground, instead of looking at any of us. I listen to the whole thing again in my head, to see if I can figure out what might have upset him, but none of it sounds bad.

Suddenly, he makes his face normal, putting on that same easy expression he usually has, like he's totally relaxed and just taking everything in.

“This way,” he says, starting to walk again. He doesn't sound mad at all. I look at my mom and dad; I'm pretty sure they missed the whole thing. “Or the bears are going to hear our stomachs growling and think we're inviting them to dinner.”

“Is that even a joke?” asks Tilly. “It's not funny at all.”

Scott leads us toward a squat wooden building with a green roof. A sign out front with letters that look like they've been burned into the wood with fire says “Dining Hall.” It reminds me of the signs you can put up in
Minecraft
; Tilly and I were really into that for a while this spring, and one of our jokes was that Tilly would put up signs with swearwords on them, and I'd take them back down. Or we'd build a jail and then do really crazy things, so the other one would put us inside; then we'd put up signs in our jail cell that said things like, “I'm sorry I put carpeting on the roof of your house.” But I don't say anything, because it would probably just make Tilly miss the computer even more.

Scott opens the screen door for us, and we all pass through in a line. My dad is last, and as he goes inside, I hear Scott say, “Josh?” His voice is low and casual, like he's going to tell him he has food in his teeth or something.

“Yeah?” my dad says.

“We're not on vacation.”

“Oh, yeah, I know. I was just . . .”

Scott cuts him off. “It's a small thing, but it's important. What are we always telling them? Words matter.” Scott claps him hard on the back, and gestures us all forward into the darkening room. He raises his voice a little, to show that he's talking to all of us now. “Which is not to say there won't be swimming and sunshine and all kinds of fun. But we're not here for a holiday; we've got more important work to do.”

He leads us through a set of swinging doors into an enormous kitchen. He flips the light switch. “And right now,” he says, smiling at us and taking down a big metal bowl that's hanging on a rack, “that important work includes making spaghetti.”

At an unspecified moment in the future, in imaginary museums all across the country, the world tour of Hammond Family Artifacts is a wild success. Advance tickets are required; there are lines out the door in every city. Timelines are posted throughout the exhibit space, to help visitors place the display objects within the context of major Hammond family events: Josh and Alexandra Hammond meet in 1992, and are married in 1995; Matilda Grace (known as Tilly) arrives in 1999, and her sister Iris Victoria is born in 2001. In 2010, Alexandra makes the acquaintance of Scott Bean, founder of an organization called Harmonious Parenting; in June of 2012, the family leaves their home in Washington, DC, to help Scott Bean establish a “family camp” in Laconia, New Hampshire.

Some of the items on display are fanciful or beautiful, but many of them intrigue just by virtue of their ordinariness: Father's Day card, June 2006: washable Crayola markers on bright white twenty-pound paper. Fourth grade report on one of the thirteen colonies (Delaware) by Matilda Hammond, age ten. Signatures written by each family member with his or her non-dominant hand, autumn
2009. American Girl doll, “Samantha.” (Nail polish on cheeks and lips added post-manufacture by Iris Hammond, age six.) Notes to a new babysitter, Alexandra Hammond, 2005. Reusable grocery bag filled with Tilly's drawings, 2006–2007 academic year. Primitive art, dating back to the dawn of the Hammonds as we know them.

A six-minute film entitled “Early Days: A Disaster in the Making” shows on a continuous loop; it includes footage from Josh and Alexandra's wedding and home movies of the girls singing songs and playing in an inflatable wading pool. Museum guests are invited to peer through the windows of the nonworking 1971 Ford Galaxie that Josh Hammond kept in the garage of the family's Washington, DC, home (and that the girls adopted as an unconventional playroom). They are led single-file through a full-sized re-creation of the cabin the family inhabited after moving to Scott Bean's compound.

When something cataclysmic has happened, an event that decimates an entire way of life, historians find it useful to look at what remains. These people we're trying to understand: How did they celebrate a marriage or the birth of a baby? How did they honor their dead? More prosaically, how did they prepare their meat for cooking? What methods did they use for washing their clothes or sharing news of recent events? What did they hold on to, and what did they throw away? We don't have much: pieces of their weapons, maybe, fragments of their dishes. But they tell us a story we wouldn't otherwise know.

Press a button to light me up like a museum diorama.
Here are her hands
, the plaque on the wall will say.
Here is her beating heart.

I wake up to a clanging sound outside the cabin. It's barely light out, and the bedroom is chilly; I pull myself underneath the thin bedspread, but it doesn't block out the noise. When I finally get up and go to the window, I see Scott Bean walking up and down the dirt path, banging a metal spatula against a soup pot.

Next to me, Tilly moans. “Shut
up
,” she says, sleepily, putting her pillow over her head. She's already got a bunch of her statue pictures and postcards hanging over her bed, including the one I bought yesterday. My favorite is the one of the guy cleaning out Abe Lincoln's gigantic marble ear.

We didn't get to bring much with us from home, but we did each have one suitcase, one backpack, and one medium-sized box. A lot of it got filled up with clothes, obviously, but I found some YouTube videos about how to pack things really small, like by rolling up your T-shirts and stuffing underwear into your shoes and things like that, so I could maximize my space.

I wanted to bring my iPad, but there are no electronic devices allowed, so I gave it to my friend Gabi, because she didn't have one.
I brought a lot of little things, like jewelry and nail polish and lip gloss, and this pretty flower-shaped pillow that I keep on my bed. I have two American Girl dolls that I decided not to bring, because I was kind of getting too old for them (although I feel a little sad when I think about it now). I was only going to bring two stuffed animals, but I ended up bringing four, because I couldn't narrow it down any more than that.

I packed a couple of my favorite books, and I got my mom to pack some board games in the boxes of family stuff, so I wouldn't have to use my own space for them. And I brought three journals: one that I used to write in when I was little (like in second and third grade), my password-protected one that I use now (which I got my mom to agree doesn't count as an electronic device, even though it takes batteries), and one blank one in case I run out of pages in the others.

And that's it; those are all my worldly possessions. The rest of my stuff—all my millions of art kits and birthday presents and Happy Meal prizes—either got thrown away or donated to A Wider Circle. And even though a lot of it was stuff I didn't care about anymore, and my parents talked a lot about how good it feels to “simplify” and “declutter” and whatever, I can't think about it for very long without feeling sad.

I pick up the flower pillow from my bed and hug it to my chest. Scott's still clanging away. Through the window, I see my dad stumble outside in boxers and a T-shirt. He looks annoyed.

“Okay,” he yells over the noise. “We get it. We get it.”

Scott grins and keeps right on clanging. “Just want to make sure we all get a jump on the day.”

“We have an alarm clock,” my dad shouts. “Are alarm clocks damaging our children in some way I'm not aware of?”

“Yes, actually,” Scott says, banging out a steady rhythm. “Alarm clocks train us to rely on external forces instead of our own instincts.”

I can't see my dad's face, but whatever expression he's wearing
makes Scott laugh. “I'm kidding,” he says. “This is just more fun. Be at the dining hall in twenty minutes.”

He turns and walks away, still beating the spatula against the pot. As he passes the middle cabin, two down from us, the door opens, and a woman in a pink terry cloth robe steps out onto the porch. She has red hair, so red that I think it must be dyed that color, and she's barefoot. She leans forward to talk to Scott, and I jerk back and sit down on the edge of Tilly's bed.

“Tilly,” I say, shaking her arm. I feel panicky; I had just enough time to get a little bit used to things, and now it's already changing. “There's someone else here. One of the other families.”

“Really?” she asks, sitting up. She's suddenly wide awake. “Which one?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I just saw the mom in her bathrobe.”

The front door of our cabin opens and closes, and my dad calls out, “Hey, guys, time to get up.”

“One of the other families is here,” Tilly yells back. “Iris saw the mom out the window.”

“I'm sure we'll meet them at breakfast,” says my mom, sticking her head into our bedroom from the hallway. “Five-minute showers, please, and then get dressed.”

“I'm not taking a shower,” says Tilly. Her voice is very matter-of-fact, like she's not challenging my mom or anything, just correcting a misunderstanding.

“Yes, you are,” says Mom. She uses the same voice as Tilly, casual, like this isn't a big deal, like this isn't something they have huge fights about all the time.

“Why?” says Tilly. “We went swimming yesterday morning, remember? In the hotel pool.”

My mom gives her this look that she's been working on lately, kind of calm and amused, but still in charge. “And did you use soap and shampoo in the hotel pool?”

Tilly sort of half-smiles, and I can see her following the idea in her head. “Yeah, we did,” she says. “Remember? The whole pool got filled up with bubbles, and the hotel people were really mad at us, and they said we had to pay nine hundred dollars to fix it, and we could never stay in that hotel again.” She laughs. “Ha, ha. I'm being sarcastic, in case you didn't know.”

“I knew,” says my mom, smiling back at her. “Go get in the shower.”

And amazingly, Tilly does. “No deodorant, though,” she yells from the hallway.

“That's fine,” says my mom. She closes her eyes for a minute and shakes her head, and I'm not sure if it's for me or for both of us, or maybe just for herself.

Once we're all dressed—which takes a while, because even though Tilly never wants to get into the shower, she also never wants to get out—my mom herds us out the front door, toward the path to the dining hall. I know we're not going to run into the new people, because I heard them leaving ten minutes before we did, which makes me nervous in a different way, like now we're late. I know it's not like we're in some kind of contest with the other Camp Harmony families, but it feels like we are, and I'm not sure who's ahead now: us, because we got here first, or the new people, because they got to breakfast on time. I think about the other family that hasn't even arrived yet; whoever they are, their kids still don't have any idea what their bedrooms are like, or how early Scott wakes us up, or how the lake looks as you walk to the dining hall. We're definitely ahead of
them
; even though we just got here yesterday, we're already way more settled in. But then I think about how they're probably listening to CDs in the car and having breakfast at McDonald's, and how it's still just
them
, just their own family, the kids and their parents, a little unit all wrapped up together inside their car, and I have to concentrate on breathing slowly in and out through my mouth so I don't start crying.

My dad holds the swinging screen door open, and we walk into the building. The dining hall is divided into two rooms: in front, there's an area with a bunch of long tables, where you sit and eat, and in the back is a swinging door with a little window that leads to the kitchen. There's also a long counter at the back of the actual dining part, where you put the food out so people can take it. Or at least, that's what we did last night. I always liked buffets and being able to choose which food you want, but I don't know if I'm going to like having one for every meal.

There's no one at the tables yet, but I can hear voices from the kitchen, and I slow down, sticking close to my mom. Tilly jumps right in, announcing herself loudly as soon as she's inside: “Hey, new people,” she calls, making herself heard over the sounds of talking and clanging spoons. She pushes the swinging door open and then stops in the doorway to run her fingers down each side of the doorjamb, before continuing through. “Which family are you?” she asks.

I follow, peering in cautiously to see what we're dealing with. Scott, cooking bacon on the giant stovetop, and the redheaded woman I saw from the window, dressed now and mixing something in a bowl. A big guy wearing a muscle shirt and a baseball cap, lining up glasses next to a pitcher of juice. And three kids—a teenage girl, a boy about my age, and a little girl who might be four or five (she's wearing a tutu, if that tells you anything)—are busy gathering plates and silverware, or at least it seems like that's what they were doing before they stopped to look at Tilly.

I'm not sure what they're going to think of her, partly because I know that we're in a place where every family has at least one kid like Tilly. Or not
like
Tilly, but not like anyone else, either, in the same kind of way. If that makes sense.

“Good morning,” says Scott cheerfully; he picks up a pair of tongs and begins to remove slices of bacon from the pan, setting them on paper towels. “Just let me finish this up, and then . . .” He trails off,
and we all stand and watch him until he turns off the burner and wipes his hands on his apron.

“Introductions,” he says. “Hammond family: Josh, Alexandra, Tilly, and Iris”—he points to each of us in order of age—“meet the Gough family: parents Rick and Diane and kids Candy, Ryan, and Charlotte.”

The grown-ups move forward to shake each other's hands; I stick by my mom's side and politely introduce myself after she's done. The other kids all just stand there, staring at each other. Ryan seems like he might be annoying; he's got one of those faux-hawk haircuts, and it looks really stupid. The older girl, Candy, seems like she might be nice, though. She's tall and tomboyish, with chin-length hair and glasses. I like her T-shirt, which shows a cookie jumping off a diving board into a glass of milk.

“I didn't think it was going to be ‘Goff,'” says Tilly. I guess she's talking about the pronunciation of their last name. “I saw it on my mom's list. I thought it was going to be ‘Gow,' or maybe ‘Gowg.'”

“You're pretty stupid if you think anyone's named ‘Gowg,'” says the boy.

“Ryan,” says his mom, warningly.

“That's interesting, isn't it?” says Scott, cutting her off. “How you can see a word in print and imagine that it's pronounced completely differently, and you never know until someone says it out loud. I remember once when I was about ten, I was talking to a bunch of grown-ups, and I used the word ‘horizon,' only I pronounced it ‘hor-i-ZON,' like ‘horizontal.' They all laughed, and I was really embarrassed, but my mom said that it just showed that I liked to read a lot.”

It's a stupid story, more teacher-like than he usually is, and I can tell that Tilly and Ryan aren't paying any attention to him.

“Gowg,” says Tilly. “Hi there, Ryan Gowg.”

“Tilly,” says my mom.

“Shut up!” yells Ryan. “It's ‘Goff'!”

“This is Tilly Hammond,” says Tilly, pretending to speak into a microphone, “reporting live from the kitchen. Some kid named Ryan Gowg is getting really upset, probably because he has such a stupid name.”

The moms are still hovering like nervous birds, chirping quiet little words that get lost under the bigger sounds. When Ryan lunges at Tilly, the dads step in, holding the kids apart, so they can't get to each other.

“Come on, Tilly,” says my dad. “Pull yourself together.”

“Game face,” says Ryan's dad. “Come on, buddy, game face.”

And that's when Scott moves into the middle of everything and sinks down to his knees on the floor.

“Okay, guys,” he says. He puts one hand on Ryan's shoulder and the other on Tilly's. “Let's calm down a little, so we can talk. You can do it. Take a breath.” He demonstrates, sucking in air and then blowing it out.

Tilly resists, like always. “You could change your name to Ryan Fuck,” she says. “That's a nice name.”

The older girl, Candy, starts laughing, and her dad puts his hands on her shoulders and leans down to whisper something in her ear. She covers her mouth and tries to stop, but then I accidentally meet her eyes and smile, and she starts laughing harder and has to turn away for a minute. I look down at the brown tiles on the floor and try not to start laughing, too.

Meanwhile, Ryan lets out this noise, this wordless howl of frustration, and tries to hit Tilly, and my mom says, “Tilly, stop it!” in her extra-firm and on-the-verge-of-being-mad voice, which is usually her last resort before she starts losing her temper herself. But Scott just stays there on the floor, calmly holding the two kids apart. He watches Tilly with a serious expression, staring at her closely. He has these strange eyes, dark gray and really intense, and I can see Tilly's face getting a little less angry as she looks into them.

“You can do it,” he says again. “I know you can.” He breathes in and out, showing them what he wants them to do. Ryan starts following the same rhythm, breathing deeply in this exaggerated way, and then I guess Tilly wants to show that she's as good as he is, so she starts doing it, too. The whole kitchen is silent for what seems like a long time, listening to the three of them breathe together.

“Okay,” Scott says, after a minute. “I want you both to listen to me, because I'm going to tell you something important: no matter how hard you try, you're never going to be able to control how anyone else acts. All you can control is yourself. Tilly, you know you're not stupid, and Ryan, you know the right way to pronounce your name. When someone teases you and you get upset, you're giving power to that person. You're showing them that they have the power to make you mad and unhappy. Ryan, are you going to let Tilly ruin your whole morning?”

He stops and turns to Ryan. “Yes,” says Ryan, though he's not yelling anymore. His face is all red, though, and he's gotten kind of sweaty.

“Really?” asks Scott. “This is up to you. Your first morning here. Are you going to let her ruin it?”