We arrive and park between the two cottages, ours and that of the terrible Americans. The car has done all the work for so long now. We are out of touch with our legs, with the impulses that tell our bodies to move. We just sit and stare. Or it might be the overwhelming appearance of the American cottage that has transfixed us.

At one time the cottages must have been identical. The Canadian one is a plain chipboard box with the odd hole of a window. Next door, the Americans have a dozen flags on things, all kinds of stuff on the lawn—a windmill, a little wooden girl bending over to pick flowers, a little wooden boy looking at the little wooden girl’s underwear. Their cottage whirrs. Bits of sparkle twirl in the breeze, bright-coloured pinwheels, all kinds of streaming flappery.

Closest to us at the edge of their territory is a toy black man in a red coat holding a lantern. I think he looks classy. I ask my mother if she thinks our neighbours will be black. She says that only white Americans put those things on their lawns. She says it’s prejudiced.

"Why?" my sister asks.

"It just is," says my mother. "They treat coloured people badly down there."

"Its ‘black,’ Mother," my sister says. "Welcome to the seventies! And besides, they must like them to have them on their lawns."

My mother hisses through her teeth and says, "Let them put that on their lawn in Duluth and see where it gets them."

Duluth. How exotic. I wonder what else she’s heard about the Americans. I wonder why it’s prejudiced to put out a handsome black man in a sporty red jacket kindly holding a lantern to guide you to your driveway. My sister asks if having lawn gnomes means you’re prejudiced against midgets. My father laughs. My mother harrumphs and snaps her elastic.

I give my sister a glare that says it’s not only me who brings about the snaps.

My father claps his hands and leaps from the car. He stretches tall and opens his arms to the lake. "Peace." he says. "Quiet. Unspoiled nature. I can feel my blood pressure deflating."

"For now," my mother says, unfurling herself from the passenger seat, demurely pressing the wrinkles from her skirt, "until the invasion of those tacky Yankees."

She gives her wrist a couple of good ones -- THWACK, THWACK -- and marches off, a propane tank hoisted above her head.