The only modern appliance in the cabin (the refrigerator and stove have to be older than both Andrew and Eric), the television is tethered to a satellite dish, a lonely lump of plastic stationed on the roof. On the wall to their right and directly across from the front door are a window and a flat-screen television. A dusty and cobweb-tinseled wagon wheel turned folksy chandelier hangs from the vaulted ceiling and between two wooden beams wide enough to be footbridges. To the left of the love seat and almost in the small kitchen is a rectangular table, an abandoned game of solitaire spread out on its top. A small lamp with a bright yellow lampshade rests on the end table like a toadstool. Offset to its left is the puffy blue love seat paired with a spindly-legged end table ready to topple at the slightest nudge.
A long, army-green couch, the upholstery as prickly as a cactus, cuts a diagonal claim through the common area. Squatting on the hearth is a wood burning stove, a small stack of firewood, and a rack of black pewter stove tools: mini shovel, brush, tongs, and a poker. Next to that and up against the back wall are a stone-and-mortar fireplace and chimney. She pushes her dads out of the kitchen and toward the locked front door. A short, thigh-high wrought-iron fence rings the perimeter of the stairwell landing. To the right of the two bedrooms is the open mouth of a stairwell that spirals down into the basement. Wen has slept in both beds already and has decided she prefers the bottom bunk. Wen’s room has bunk beds, the frame built into the walls. Across from the back slider and to the right of the front door are the two rectangular bedrooms. The showerhead leaks water more than it actually showers. A small sliver of a bathroom with the world’s skinniest shower stall is to the kitchen’s left. A map of the lake and forest, a framed mountain landscape at dusk, and a plaque with hand-carved loons hang haphazardly on the walls along with what look to be antique skis and poles and old baking soda and Moxie advertisements stamped onto sheets of tin, the kind of kitsch one can find at any general store in New Hampshire. Wen has already walked around most of the room, knocking and testing for loose ones. The walls are made of unstained wooden planks. The common area, which is a living room space and kitchen, takes up almost the entirety of the cabin’s interior.
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