The Progress of Love

making her way down the bank now to the lake, scrambling past the wooden forms.) Sophie had not wanted cement steps, preferring logs set into the bank, but had given in, finally, to Laurence’s complaints about the logs rotting and the job he had replacing them. Now he called her every day to see the progress he had made.
    “I build for the ages,” he announced, with a grand gesture. He had made a memorial step for each of them: a palm print, initials, the date—July, 1969.
    Sophie slipped from the rocks into the water and swam toward the middle of the lake, into the sunlight. Then she turned onto her back. Though there were cottages all along the shore, most people had been quite decent about not cutting down the trees. She could lie here in the water and look at the high bank of pine and cedar, poplar and soft maple, both white and golden birch. There was no wind, no ripple on the lake except what Sophie had made, yet the birch and poplar leaves turned at their own will, flashed like coins in the sun.
    There was movement, not just in the leaves. Sophie saw figures. They were coming down the bank, coming out of the trees close to the rocks where she had left her bathrobe. She lowered her body, so that she wasn’t floating but treading water, and watched them.
    Two boys and a girl. All three had long hair, waist-length or nearly so, though one of the boys wore his combed back into aponytail. The ponytailed boy had a beard and wore dark glasses, and a suit jacket with no shirt underneath. The other boy wore only jeans. He had some chains or necklaces, perhaps feathers, dangling down on his thin brown chest. The girl was fat and gypsyish, with a long red skirt and a bandanna tied across her forehead. She had tied her skirt into a floppy knot in front, so that she could more easily get down the bank.
    Children—young people—who looked like this were of course no new sight to Sophie. You saw a lot of them around the lake on weekends—the children of cottagers visiting, bringing friends. Sometimes they took over cottages, with no parents present, and held weekend-long parties. The Property Owners’ Newsletter had proposed a ban on long hair and “weird forms of dress,” to be voluntarily administered by each property holder on his or her own property. People had been invited to write letters supporting or opposing this ban, and Sophie had written opposing it. She stated in her letter that this entire side of the lake had once been Vogelsang property, and that Augustus Vogelsang had left the comparative comfort of Bismarck’s Germany to seek the freedom of the New World, in which all individuals might choose how they dressed, spoke, worshipped, and so on.
    But she didn’t think these three belonged to any of the cottages. They were surely trespassers, nomads. Why did she think so? Something furtive about them—but bold, too, disdainful. She didn’t think, however, that any harm would come from them. They were playactors, self-absorbed, not real marauders.
    They had seen her bathrobe. They were looking at her, across the water.
    Sophie waved. She called out, “Good morning,” in a cheerful, hailing tone—to indicate that the greeting was all, that nothing more was expected.
    They didn’t wave or answer. The girl sat down.
    The bare-chested boy picked up Sophie’s bathrobe and put it on. He found the cigarettes and the lighter in her pocket, and threw them to the girl, who took a cigarette out and lit it. The other boy sat down and pulled off his boots and splashed his feet in the water.
    The boy who had put on the bathrobe did a little shimmy.His hair was black, beautifully shining, waving over his shoulders. He was imitating a woman, though it surely couldn’t be said that he was imitating Sophie. (It did occur to her now that they could have been watching, could have seen her take off her bathrobe and go into the water.)
    “Would you please take that off?” called Sophie. “You are welcome to a cigarette, but please put them back in the pocket!”
    The boy did another shimmy, this time turning his back to her. The other boy laughed. The girl smoked, and seemed not to pay much attention.
    “Take off my bathrobe and put back my cigarettes!”
    Sophie started to swim toward the shore, holding her head out of the water. The boy slipped off the bathrobe, picked it up, and tore it in two. The worn material tore easily. He wadded up one half and flung it into the water.
    “You young scum!” cried