For the first month, Ferguson never thought about how happy he was in that place. He was too immersed in what he was doing to stop and reflect on his feelings, too caught up in the now to be able to see past it or behind it, living in the moment, as his counselor Harvey had said about performing well in sports, which was perhaps the real definition of happiness, not knowing you were happy, not caring about anything except being alive in the now, but then parents’ visiting day was suddenly looming, the Sunday that marked the midpoint of the eight-week session, and in the days before that Sunday arrived, Ferguson was startled to discover that he wasn’t looking forward to seeing his parents again, not even his mother, whom he had thought he would miss terribly but hadn’t, had missed only in some intermittent and painful flashes, and especially not his father, who had been erased from his mind for the past month and no longer seemed to count for him. Camp was better than home, he realized. Life among friends was richer and more fulfilling than life with parents, which meant that parents were less important than he had previously supposed, a heretical, even revolutionary idea that gave Ferguson much to think about as he lay in his bed at night, and then visiting day was upon him, and when he saw his mother step out of the car and begin walking in his direction, he unexpectedly found himself fighting back tears. How ridiculous. How perfectly embarrassing to behave like that, he thought, and yet what could he do about it except run into her arms and let her kiss him?
Something was wrong, however. Uncle Don was supposed to have driven up to the camp with Ferguson’s parents, but he wasn’t with them, and when Ferguson asked his mother why Noah’s father wasn’t there, she gave him a tense look and said she would explain later. Later occurred about an hour after that, when his parents drove him across the Massachusetts border for lunch at a Friendly’s restaurant in Great Barrington. As usual, it was his mother who did the talking, but for once his father looked attentive and engaged, following her words as closely as Ferguson did, and given what she had to say, what the circumstances demanded she say, it didn’t surprise Ferguson that his mother looked more rattled than at any time in recent memory, her voice quavering as she spoke, wanting to spare her son the worst of it but at the same time unable to soften the blow without distorting the truth, for the truth was what mattered now, and even if Ferguson was only nine years old, it was imperative that he hear the whole story, with nothing left out.
This is it, Archie, she said, lighting an unfiltered Chesterfield and blowing a bluish-gray cloud of smoke across the Formica table. Don and Mildred have split up. Their marriage is over. I wish I could give you the reason, but Mildred won’t tell me. She’s so ravaged, she hasn’t stopped crying for the past ten days. I don’t know if Don has fallen for someone else or if things just cracked up on their own, but Don is out of the picture now, and there’s no chance they’ll get back together. I’ve talked to him a couple of times, but he won’t tell me anything either. Just that he and Mildred are finished, that he never should have married her in the first place, that everything was wrong from the start. No, he’s not going back to Noah’s mother. What he’s planning to do is move to Paris. He’s already cleared out his stuff from the Perry Street apartment, and he’s set to leave before the end of the month. Which brings me to Noah. Don wants to spend some time with him before he takes off, so his ex-wife, and by that I mean his first ex-wife, his ex-wife Gwendolyn, has come to the camp today to fetch Noah and drive him back to New York. That’s right, Archie, Noah is leaving. I know how close the two of you have become, what good friends you are now, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I called that woman, Gwendolyn Marx, and told her that no matter what’s happened between Don and Mildred, I wanted our boys to stay in touch, that it would be a pity if their friendship suffered because of it, but she’s a hard person that one, Archie, bitter and angry, with a heart made of ice, and she said she wouldn’t consider it. And after his father leaves for Paris, I asked, will Noah be coming back to camp? Out of the question, she said. Well, at least give the boys a chance to say good-bye to each other on Sunday, I said, and she said, get this, she said: What for? I was burning by then, about as angry as I’ve ever been in my life, and I shouted at her: How can you ask that question? And she calmly answered: I need to protect Noah from emotional scenes; his life is hard enough as it is. I don’t know what to tell you, Archie. The woman is out of her mind. And there’s my sister doped up on tranquilizers, weeping her heart out on the bed. And Don has walked out on her, and Noah has been taken from you, and frankly, kid, it’s one hell of a beautiful mess, isn’t it?
The second month at Camp Paradise was the month of the empty bed. The bare mattress on the metal springs to the right of where Ferguson continued to sleep, the bed of the now absent Noah, and every day Ferguson asked himself if they would ever see each other again. Cousins for a year and a half, and now cousins no more. An aunt who had married an uncle, and now married no more, with the uncle living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where he could no longer be with his boy. Everything solid for a time, and then the sun comes up one morning and the world begins to melt.
Ferguson went home to Maplewood at the end of August, said good-bye to his room, said good-bye to the ping-pong table in the backyard, said good-bye to the broken screen door in the kitchen, and the following week he and his parents moved into their new house on the other side of town. The era of life on a grander scale had begun.