WE used to go to this place called Lake Taluga. It was named after the family who settled here before the surrounding land was measured, incorporated, and sold to a residential developer who turned it into a neighborhood of cul-de-sacs named after his grandkids.

 

There were a few times that our whole family went to Taluga. Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. All their kids. All of us together for summer holidays and birthdays.

Then it was just Mom, and Sidney, and me who would go.

Then mom would just drop us off and sit in the car by herself, documenting past events and conversations, dates and all, longhand in an old notebook, while we swam and jumped off the diving board.

There must have been other people at the lake then, too, but when I look back, it was just us. Not even the lifeguards were there.

 

I would look it up later and learn that there was never a family here called Taluga. It was a name meant to hide something. To make it look like something that wasn’t there.

 

The bottom of the lake was covered in smooth, polished stones that were all roughly the same shape and size. They were dark with metallic flecks that glimmered in the sun in a way that made them look two or three times deeper than they actually were. Like little infinity boxes.

 

Later on, the lake would close. The reason changed every time someone asked. Sometimes it was contamination or overpopulation of fish. Unpaid bills. Broken lease. Poor management. A liability claim. Staffing. We moved across state lines. A legal loophole. It could have been anything.

 

Not boxes. Mirrors.

People record themselves retrofitting old coffee tables with infinity mirrors in the tabletop. I’ve watched the videos. They make it look so easy that anyone could do it.

 

Many years later, an announcement: the lake was being reopened. There was going to be a grand opening, open to the public, with a DJ, games, and food trucks. After that, if you want to come back, you’d have to purchase a membership, just like before.

 

When the day came, I dressed in my bathing suit and drove to the lake. But there was no lake, only a field—the area where the lake used to be had been filled with dirt. The only sign that there had been a body of water here before was the diving board stand coming up out of the ground, the board itself suspended over unkept grass and overgrown weeds.

I checked the announcement again. It had a different address. It wasn’t far away, but took forever to get to, on account of all the cul-de-sacs and there being more streets than grandkids, so there were a lot of duplicates to figure out.

 

The new lake was smaller than the real Lake Taluga. Other than that, everything looked the same down to the diving board and the smooth, shimmering rocks on the lake bed.

I rented a kayak and paddled out to the middle of the lake. I waited for the water to forget I was there, so I could see all the way to the bottom. I could see the sun reflect on the stones. It looked like it went on without end.

 

I paid to be a member. I haven’t been back since the grand opening, but it's still worth it.

It was worth it to know that if I do go back, there’s a version of the past that I can point to. That I can see for myself. That I can show to other people.

 

The dues renew every year, and every year the cost goes up. They send me reminders that I pretend to forget about until it's too late.

I’ll keep paying even when this lake isn’t a lake anymore either. 

 

I’ve seen enough of these videos to know an infinity mirror doesn't really go anywhere.

The trick is that seeing the same thing over and over, smaller and smaller, makes it look like you’re falling or leaving or already far away.

The trick is that if you look at it long enough, you’ll be able to tell which of those is true.