Praying for Sleep

was the dam, an old stone-and-cement slab twenty feet high, built around the turn of the century. It was against this wide lip of cement that the white rowboat she’d seen from the house thudded resonantly. Behind the dam was the narrow spillway fed by the overflow; usually dry, tonight it gushed like a Colorado rapid, the water disappearing into the creek that ran beneath the road. The dam was part of the L’Auberget property though it was under the technical control of the state Corps of Engineers, which had been granted an easement to maintain it. Why weren’t they here tonight? she wondered.
    Lis continued a few feet toward the dam, then stopped, uneasy, reluctant to go further, watching the white jet of water shoot into the creek.
    Her hesitation had nothing to do with the safety of the dam or the ragged spume. The only thought on her mind at the moment was the picnic.
    Many, many years before: a rare event—a L’Auberget family outing.
    That June day had been a mixture of sun and shade, hot and cold. The family strolled from the house to this beach, and hadn’t gotten more than ten yards before Father started carping at Portia. “Calm down, quiet down!” The girl was five, even then cheerfully defiant and boisterous. Lis was horrified that because of the girl’s rowdiness Father would call off the picnic and she bluntly shushed her little sister. Portia tried to kick Lis in retaliation and, with a dark glance from her husband, Mother finally swept up the squirming girl and carried her.
    Lis, then eleven, and her father hefted picnic baskets packed by him so efficiently that she nearly tore muscles under the weight. Still, the girl didn’t complain; she’d endured eight months of her father’s absence while he was in Europe on yet another business trip and nothing on earth would stop her from walking at his side. She was thrilled speechless when he complimented her on her strength.
    “How about here?” Father asked, then answered himself. “Yes, I think so.”
    It seemed to Lis that he’d developed a minuscule accent in his recent travels. Portuguese, she supposed. She observed his dark slacks and white dress shirt buttoned at the neck, without tie, and short boots. This was hardly American fashion in the nineteen sixties but he’d have nothing to do with Brooks Brothers or Carnaby Street and remained faithful to the look favored by his Iberian business associates. It wasn’t until after he died that Lis and her mother would laugh that Andrew’s style could best be described as post-immigrant.
    That afternoon he’d watched his wife arranging the meal and gave her strident instructions. The food was cut geometrically, cooked perfectly, sealed in containers airtight as the NASA capsules that so fascinated him. Mother set out expensive stainless-steel utensils and ceramic plates the shade of milky plums.
    A Warre’s port appeared and they each had a glass, Father asking Mother her opinion of it. He said she had an uneducated palate and for that reason was worth more than a dozen French sommeliers. Lis had never heard her mother utter a single negative syllable about any of the wines in her husband’s inventory.
    On the day of Lis’s birth, Andrew L’Auberget was in Portugal, where he happened to drop a bottle of Taylor, Fladgate 1879 because he was so startled by the sharp ringing of his partner’s telephone—on the other end of which happened to be his mother-in-law with the news that he was now a father. The story goes that he laughed about the catastrophe and insisted—there, on the phone—that they name Lis after the city in which she’d destroyed seven hundred dollars’ worth of port. Two things about this incident had always seemed significant to Lis. The first was the generosity with which he treated the loss.
    And second: why wasn’t he with his wife at such a time?>
    That day at the beach, sitting beside the dam, he’d lifted a silver spoon and, against Mother’s protests, poured a scant teaspoon down Lis’s throat.
    “There, Lisbonne, what do you think? That’s a 1953. Not renowned, no, but good. What do you think?”
    “Andrew, she’s eleven! She’s too young.”
    “I like it, Father,” Lis said, repulsed by the wine. By way of compliment she added that it tasted like Vick’s.
    “Cough syrup?” he roared. “Are you mad?”
    “She’s too young. ” Mother sent Lis out of harm’s way and the girls went off to play until lunch was ready.
    While Portia sat in a