“There,” said Leo, kicking Dmitri’s old pants underneath the rack of clothing. “Now let’s go.”
“Oh,” Holly said as they approached the car. “Look how smart.”
Dmitri couldn’t remember if his father had paid the woman, and wondered if his father didn’t have to pay for things in San Garcia. But more than anything, he felt relieved that his father had not noticed that he’d peed.
“I’ll drive,” said his father, and then they were peeling out of the parking lot.
It seemed to Dmitri that they drove for a long, long time. The landscape looked like desert. The car was hot, hotter still from his father’s cigarette smoke. The big white tent appeared suddenly. Dmitri watched it grow larger and larger as they drove toward it. The road was crowded with traffic.
“You know Holly’s going to become my wife today, don’t you, Dmitri,” his father asked.
Dmitri nodded, though he wasn’t sure he did know this.
“That means she’s your stepmother.”
Holly turned to look at him as Leo spoke.
“You’ll treat her with respect.”
“I will, Daddy.”
“That’s my boy.”
Holly continued to look at him. He was frightened of her, though he could not say for certain why.
What was it that stopped him from being able to ask why they were in a rush or where they were going? It seemed other children didn’t have trouble asking their parents questions. It seemed other children didn’t have the sorts of problems he had. Something had happened to his family. Too much silence in the house. He sensed he shouldn’t talk to his mother or Jesse very much. He sensed he shouldn’t talk much at all. He didn’t like living so close to the ocean. It was too windy, inside and out.
Something bad had happened, that was all he knew. Something bad had happened between his father and Jesse. It was because of that game Jesse had played at the lake. He wondered when his father would forgive Jesse. It was a mean game, yes, but his father couldn’t stay mad forever.
Dmitri looked at his father’s hands tensing on the steering wheel. There was traffic. His father hated traffic.
His father took a deep breath and patted Holly’s thigh. “It’s all right. We knew there’d be traffic. We knew it.”
“We did.”
“I said there would be traffic, right?”
“You did.”
“And here it is. Okay back there?” His father threw a glance at Dmitri.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t got anything to say?”
“Leo.” Holly put her hand on the back of his father’s seat. It was his old father—the old version. He was back.
“I am losing my fucking mind,” his father said, throwing punches at the steering wheel in order to honk the horn. “Get the fuck out of my way, you fucks.”
The white tent rose up before them. His father parked the car and then they were all standing in front of the tent, waiting in a long line, his father pacing nervously, slapping his wallet against his thigh.
“One family,” said his father, and handed over a stack of limp bills to a man at the tent’s entrance. Dmitri strained to see inside but he was eye level with a man’s butt. There seemed to be no way of seeing around the thing. He followed the giant butt inside. Holly took his hand and he clenched it, afraid that the inside of the tent would be hotter than the car, and smokier, and more terrifying.
They were seated in flimsy blue plastic chairs arranged around a ring. The lights went down and Dmitri closed his eyes and listened to his breath, to his heart. He heard the sound of people shifting in their seats, people coughing, and then the bright click as a spotlight shone down in the middle of the ring, revealing the skinniest man Dmitri had ever seen. The man was naked except for some ratty-looking underpants. A faint drumbeat began, and the skinny man bent over and placed his hands on the floor. He raised himself into a handstand, and the audience applauded. Dmitri looked up at his father and Holly. They were holding hands, Holly’s head on his father’s shoulder. A circus! His father had brought him to the circus! Would they get married on top of elephants? Would they swing from a trapeze?
The man sat cross-legged in a circle of light.
“Watch,” whispered Leo into Dmitri’s ear, and the man began to chant.
There was an awful lot of chanting, and the man was doing nothing but sitting there.
“This is just the beginning,” his father said. “Keep focused.”
Two men came onstage, holding poles. They fastened the poles to the floor around the chanting man, then walked behind him and lifted him into the air. And then they let go. They left the stage. The chanting man was flying! He was flying in the air! Dmitri closed his eyes, thinking he was dreaming, but when he opened them he was still in the tent, and the man was still hovering in the air.
“Ah,” said his father. “Ah.”
But Dmitri wanted to scream. He wanted to stand up and shout. “He is flying! He is flying, Daddy!” he said, but his father clamped his hand over his mouth.
“Hush,” his father said. “Watch.”
“But how is he flying, Daddy?”
“Stop talking. Just watch.”
“But—”
“Around every circle, draw a bigger circle,” his father said, his voice calmer. “Around every question, there is a bigger question.”
At this, a woman in front of them turned around and nodded at him. “I think it’s wonderful that your parents brought you here,” she whispered. Dmitri wanted to correct her, to tell her that his mother wouldn’t attend something like this. He could hear the voice of his mother in his head. This is not real. Magic is an illusion. Look, see, the coin was always in my hand. But he couldn’t see anything behind or underneath the flying man. The man was still chanting. The crowd rose to their feet, joined hands, and Leo told Dmitri to close his eyes. Leo began chanting, and Dmitri looked up at him, scared of being caught with his eyes open. The chanting sounded like eee-ya-ya, so Dmitri joined in, saying eee-ya-ya with the crowd. He felt a buzzing throughout his body, a ticklish feeling, a fullness in his heart. He was surprised when he felt tears on his face. What was happening? What kind of circus was this? Could he be a flying man one day?
His father was breathing deeply beside him, taking long embarrassing breaths, then chanting, it seemed to Dmitri, louder than anyone else around them. He wished his father would chant normally. Eee-ya-ya. The lights went off and somehow everyone knew to stop chanting. They stood in darkness and silence, in the heat under the big tent. At once the lights came on again. The flying man had disappeared, and a man in a robe and long white beard stood in front of a microphone. The crowd erupted with feverish applause, so much so that Dmitri felt tears again on his cheeks. It was terrifying to watch people get so worked up. He feared they would start killing one another. He hated the feeling that was welling within him, so powerful, as if at any minute he might break apart. He knew his father couldn’t hear him—the chanting had started up again, and the applause was still deafening—and so he screamed into his shirt. He screamed until he had nothing left inside of him, then he wiped his face with his hands.
The man with the long beard asked them all to be seated. His voice was soft, and high, almost nasal, as though he were a cartoon character. He was a short man. Dmitri felt his father’s body stiffen beside him. His father was nervous. Why?
“We have over thirty couples in the audience today,” said the man with the long beard, “waiting to be blessed.”
At this the crowd began to chant again, and his father looked at Holly and said, “Now, now, this is it,” and took her by the hand. He grabbed Dmitri’s hand as well and they sidestepped out of the aisle and walked toward the stage, where other couples were gathering around the man with the long beard. The chanting was growing unbearably loud and Dmitri felt his heart pounding. The s
tage was brightly lit and the audience had disappeared into blackness. The man with the beard asked the couples to bow their heads but lift their hearts. Dmitri hoped the people in the audience weren’t looking at his father’s bruised face and black eyes.
The man with the long white beard had both of his hands raised. The chanting had stopped and the man was speaking something that did not sound like English, but he was speaking so quietly that Dmitri could not be sure. He was a very old man and it felt to Dmitri that he spoke for a very long time.
He must have fallen asleep during the old man’s long blessing, for when he woke, he was in his father’s arms, and Holly was opening the door to the motel room. His father set him on a little cot in the corner of the room, then slipped him underneath the scratchy white sheet and soft blanket.
The motel had air conditioning and cable—his father had made a big point of it earlier in the hot car. The bed had a flowery coverlet that Leo yanked off and threw on the floor. He and Holly sat on the bed and Leo flipped through the channels. The little cot had the softest blanket Dmitri had ever felt. It was a pale yellow colour, thin, and soft as velvet. He wanted to wrap himself in it and stay there forever. He thought of his bear in his suitcase, waiting for him.
His father came over to him, sat on the edge of his cot.
“Today,” his father said, “Holly and I were blessed by a very important man.”
Dmitri closed his eyes, wanting his father to think he was asleep. He didn’t want to listen to his father talk about the marriage. He didn’t like the idea of it, though he couldn’t say why. He wanted his bear.
He made his body very still so that his father would stop talking. His father wasn’t talking about the marriage, though, he was talking about reincarnation. He told Dmitri that because he had done wrong in a previous life, he had been wronged in this life. But starting tomorrow he would do only good, even if it took him millions of lives to even out the score. Only then would he be free. Only then would he be off the wheel of reincarnation. “I’m going to sell my car,” said his father. “Give the money to the Swami.”
Dmitri could hear Holly calling out to his father from the bed, wanting him to be with her, but his father continued to talk. “Tomorrow, I am going to start over,” his father said. “I am going to do everything right from now on, Dmitri. You’ll see.”
Dmitri clenched the soft blanket in his fists and looked up at his father.
“What I need now,” said his father, “is a blameless life.”
The motel room phone rang and it was his mother. Holly clicked off the television and sat on the bed in her pale blue dress, frowning. Dmitri watched his father watch himself in the mirror, the phone pressed to his ear. He could hear the voice of his mother through the phone.
“They found the woman.”
“Vera Gusev?” his father said.
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“At the reservoir. Yesterday. Some kids found her.”
His father looked at himself in the mirror, brushed his hair back from his scalp.
“You okay?” Dmitri heard his mother say.
“I am.” His father looked at Dmitri through the reflection. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”
* * *
—
The next morning, the city darkened with his father’s mood. His father hoisted Dmitri out of the cot and closed the bathroom door behind them. Holly was a lump in the bed.
His father washed his stubbly face with a washcloth, then his hairy underarms and groin. He told Dmitri to do the same. His father peed and Dmitri watched the thick, impressive stream, the sound echoing off the hard tiles. A paper cup of coffee sat on the edge of the sink and every once in a while his father took a loud sip.
He brought the cup into the car with them, and drove with one hand while sipping the coffee, briefly taking his hand off the wheel to shift gears. The morning air was hot already but there was a breeze. His father seemed to have no difficulty getting them onto the highway; in fact, Dmitri didn’t even notice his father’s lane changes. It seemed as if the car were driving itself.
They exited the highway and drove down a wide four-lane street, warehouses on either side. His father gestured to one of the warehouses. “Get here early. Avoid the traffic.”
His father turned into its driveway, then drove around to the back. The parking lot was empty, except for an eighteen-wheeler parked across a bunch of stalls. On the back of the warehouse, SAN GARCIA GUN CLUB was painted in big red letters.
“Thought we’d do something special,” said his father. “Just the two of us.”
Dmitri felt his heart lift. He couldn’t wait to brag to Jesse.
“This world,” his father said, “is a dangerous world. You need to know how to do certain things.”
“Okay,” said Dmitri but his father’s face had changed. He was squinting at something in the distance.
“Oh, god damn it,” his father said. He got out of the car and hurried to the entrance, then tugged at the doors. He spun and came back toward the car, and Dmitri felt the car shake as his father kicked it, again and again. He got back into the car, opened the glove compartment, and took out a little flask.
“Cocksuckers,” his father said, taking a swig and then another. “Pitiful.” The gun club didn’t open until ten, his father said. It wasn’t even nine. “Son of a bitch,” his father said.
“Yeah,” said Dmitri. “Shitheads.”
“Be right back.” His father got out of the car, walked to the entrance, and unzipped his pants. He turned back and winked at Dmitri, then soaked the front door in piss.
This didn’t seem like what his father had meant last night about doing everything right, although it was kind of exciting. And surely it wasn’t that bad, in the grand scheme of things, to pee on a door. In his mind, Dmitri pictured the wheel of reincarnation as a wheel of cheese, covered in orange wax. He hadn’t understood much of what his father had said to him last night, but he’d nodded along, wanting his father to think that he had understood, and that he belonged here—that he belonged in his father’s new, blameless life.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Denny
In the morning, a knock on the door. “Good god,” Denny said. He pulled on his sweatpants and threw on his robe. Scout had peed by the back door—Denny had forgotten to let him out—and was pacing, head low and ashamed.
“Okay, boy. It’s okay.” He let Scout into the yard and threw one of the mouldy dishtowels down over the pee. “Ah, what the hell.”
It was Lewis at his front door, in uniform.
“This was found last night,” said Lewis. He held out his hand and Denny saw one of the rings he had made for his wife. “Not far from where we found Vera.”
“It’s hers,” said Denny.
“It’s yours.” Lewis dropped it into Denny’s hand.
The ring was the alexandrite. He tightened his fist around it until he could feel the gemstone about to break his skin.
“The other ones?” Denny said. “Did you find the other ones?”
“No.”
“She wore two more. One with baguette diamonds. And another with a moonstone. They are—” He stopped himself. “They are extremely valuable, both monetarily and to me personally.”
He could feel Lewis’s eyes on everything. The same eyes that had judged him—and found him to be innocent—were judging the clothes on the floor, the nest he had made.
“What if someone has tried to pawn them?” said Denny. “Could we—”
“We’ll continue to check the pawnshops,” said Lewis. “We have your description of the rings.”
He had to keep going. He couldn’t totally fall apart. There was still life left. He could hear Scout pawing at the back door, wanting to see Lewis.
“Why don’t I come in for a minute,” said Lewis.
Denny nodded and stepped away from the door. He let Scout in as well, and the dog bounded into the living room, leaving a trail of big wet paw prints.
He watched Lewis toss a tennis ball for Scout. The dog’s nails skittered on the hardwood, Vera’s clothing kicked up by his paws.
It was better to have Lewis here than to be alone with all of Vera’s things. Alone with that bathing suit. Should he pack up all her stuff and send it to her parents? Who had more of a right to her things? He did. He knew Vera. He was the one who really knew her.
He felt as if he were about to break open and so he poured himself and Lewis a glass of bourbon—who cared if it was ten in the morning—and they sat together, tossing the ball for the dog. He was surprised but Lewis drank heartily, despite the time of day and the fact that he was in uniform. Maybe Lewis was falling apart, too. Okay. Okay. The alcohol was warming his system.
He put the alexandrite ring on his pinky finger and twisted it. He could make any ring, no matter how intricate, in under five hours, but not this. This was his masterpiece. It had taken him twenty hours. He had cut the alexandrite in what was called a cushion cut—a slightly rounded square—then surrounded it in a double halo of diamonds, and set it in an eighteen-karat rose-gold band. He might wear it for a while, on his pinky finger, or on a chain around his neck. He hated the idea of putting it back in its velvet box, in a drawer somewhere, where it would gather dust and be forgotten. His own wedding ring was a plain rose-gold band, meant to match the alexandrite. Should he take it off and put it in its velvet box, too? What he wanted to do, though he couldn’t articulate why, was swallow them both. He wanted the rings lodged inside him somewhere, visible only via X-ray, extracted only via autopsy. He hoped someone would find the other rings. He wanted to swallow them as well. The little bird’s nest ring with the hidden moonstone was his favourite. It was the first time he had not simply taken a strand of gold wire and bent it to his will—it was the first time he had asked the wire, Where do you want to go? And he had ended up with this sort of bird’s nest, without meaning to, without intending to. He had never told anyone this, not even Vera. He told Vera that he had meant it to look that way, but in truth the ring had made itself.
How a Woman Becomes a Lake Page 12