The Summer We Lost Her

by Tish Cohen

  “The woman you’re seeing? We live together. ‘The woman I’m seeing’ is what you say on the third or fourth date. We blew past ‘the woman I’m seeing’ ages ago.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Harriet knows we live together.”

  Elise was quiet. She put her fork down and set her hands in her lap.

  “Elise, come on. Don’t overanalyze this. It meant nothing.”

  “It doesn’t mean nothing. It shows you’re not all that committed. It’s like the name thing.”

  “What name thing?”

  “You don’t want me to take your last name if we get married.”

  “We’re not even engaged yet.”

  “Still!”

  “Why take a longer name than you already have? And what about for riding? You have a name that’s already established.”

  “But you should want me to take your name. See? Then I make the choice. All these mixed messages add up. They make me feel like . . . where did the floor go? It doesn’t feel solid.”

  “Babe. You and I both know this isn’t about me.”

  She looked at him, feeling her cheeks flush. “Don’t start with my father.”

  “Okay.” Matt stood. Walked around the table, got down on one knee, and took her hand. “Elise Bleeker, light of my life. Fire of my loins. Will you . . . take my name one day when I ask you to marry me?”

  She swatted him away, softening. “Jerk.”

  “If you loved me, you’d call me ‘stupid jerk.’ I find ‘jerk’ impersonal and, thusly, offensive.”

  They were engaged five weeks later. Married the following September. He’d been right. She’d overreacted.

  * * *

  “BOO!”

  Elise spun around now to see her beautiful daughter in the doorway. She set down the glass and opened her arms to hug the child, still in her hippopotamus pajamas. “Look who’s up! Come here. I need my Gracie fix.”

  “Watch this.” Gracie wriggled out of reach. She planted her crutches two feet ahead and propelled herself into the sofa cushions in a yellow ball of triumph, her grin revealing her missing tooth.

  Elise clapped. “Spectacular. Perfect ten.”

  “Is that an Olympic sport?”

  “Long jumping is an Olympic sport,” said Elise. “You’ll have to start practicing without crutches.” She placed more sopping bread in the pan. “And I still haven’t gotten my hug.”

  “But I can go farther with crutches.”

  “You could start practicing smaller jumps first. Teensy ones in a safe spot.” Gracie needed to build and strengthen her leg muscles. Nate had insisted that she would learn to walk unassisted in her own time, though, so Matt’s mind was set. His esteemed grandfather’s word trumped the advice of any medical doctor. It was up to Gracie to decide when to let go of her crutches. No nudging.

  “Dad says I can get a wheelchair on his insurance. It would be free.”

  “What?”

  “It would be fun. I could pretend I’m paralyzed.”

  What was Matt thinking? “You should not be thinking about wheelchairs, sweetness.”

  Gracie kneeled on a kitchen chair and reached into her mother’s big red vintage handbag, pulling out a sunglasses case.

  “Honey, you know how I am about my purse.”

  Her daughter sat back on her knees. “Crazy?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Can I go see River today? He’s going to feed a mouse to his snake.”

  “Where does he live?”

  Her daughter pointed next door. Interesting. Elise made her tone deliberately casual. “Did you meet River’s family last night?”

  “We went there. His family is Cass. Her picture was on the cover of a magazine.”

  So this was the Woodstock Girl—Matt’s first girlfriend. There were photos around the cabin of her. “I thought she didn’t live there anymore. She moved back?”

  Gracie groaned and rolled her eyes. “I’m eight years old.” She slumped over the table as if she’d been beheaded. “How am I supposed to know?”

  Great. Elise would go home Wednesday to train while her husband and daughter hung for another ten days with the goddess on the dock, with whom Matt shared memories bathed in the golden light of childhood nostalgia, his actual girl next door, and her son—who has snakes. How could that possibly mess with Elise’s focus?

  “Come over here. I’m going to teach you how to make French toast.”

  Gracie made her way across the kitchen and let her mother lift her up onto the counter. Elise put the spatula in her daughter’s hand. “So, you slither this under the bread. Detach it from the frying pan, then, with a quick twist of the wrist, you flip it over.”

  They flipped it together and the bread sizzled and crackled in the hot pan.

  “Very impressive,” said Elise.

  “Did you win at your horse show, Mom?”

  “Actually, by some miracle, I did.”

  “Are you going to the Olympics?”

  “It’s certainly looking better than it did a week ago.”

  Gracie opened and closed the drawer behind her knees, pulled out a spoon that she tried to hang from her nose. “What would happen if a coyote wanted to be an Olympic figure skater?”

  “I’d say he’d have to work really hard. He’d have to listen to his coyote coach and take in every bit of advice.” Elise dunked another slice of bread. “If he does that, maybe he can win a gold medal.”

  “But what if someone leaves the door open where they keep the gold medals?” Gracie giggled. “Then he could just take one.”

  “But his medal won’t mean anything. He’ll have accomplished nothing.”

  Gracie’s freckled nose crinkled. “But he’ll have a really shiny necklace. And—hello!—he’s pretty good at skating.”

  Elise flipped the bread. Even considering Gracie’s limitations, was it enough for her to aspire to being “pretty good” at whatever she chose to pursue?

  When Elise’s fourth-grade public school teacher, Mrs. Ramirez, encouraged her to take part in the winter talent contest, Elise chose to sing “It’s the Hard-Knock Life,” from the musical Annie. Every night, she practiced in the den to her parents’ joy and delight.

  “You are my treasure,” said her mother. “I can see your soul when you sing.”

  “You’re going to be a star. Famous and rich.” Her father’s eyes danced. “Don’t let anyone say you won’t, princess. We make our own opportunities. That’s how life works.”

  No one could ever accuse Rosamunde and Warren of parroting each other.

  Elise was to follow Alexa Batali, a fifth grader with a strawberry birthmark over one eye, who sang “Candle in the Wind” with a voice so clear and strong, Elton himself would have wept.

  Backstage, Elise watched the crowd. Gone was the shifting, the coughing, the whispering that had accompanied Benjie Verlander’s excrutiatingly long mime performance. Alexa’s golden voice had the entire audience—even Elise’s parents—enraptured. Right then, Elise understood excellence. She pushed through the rear door before Alexa’s standing ovation hit its peak. By the time she reached the trampled snow on the playground, tiny clouds of her own breath blurring her vision, she understood. “Pretty good” was an utter waste of time. Anyone could be pretty good at something; not everyone could be excellent. And anything less wasn’t worth striving for.

  Now, Elise turned to her daughter and cupped her chin. “Your job in life is to discover where your greatness lies. Because everyone has the potential to be excellent at something. You need to find your excellence and then go for it.”

  The moment was too serious for Gracie. “That makes me want to quit everything.”

  “Maybe it’s swimming.”

  “Why do you always talk about swimming? It’s so boring.”

  “Swimming is not boring.”

  “You talking about it is.”

  What Elise didn’t say was that, in the water, Gracie would be weightless. Once she learned the basic
s, the different strokes, treading water, floating, she would be fluid and free in a way she wasn’t on land. Yet. Riding specially trained horses was another fabulous sport for anyone less than fully mobile. But Gracie refused this as well. “You’ve got to learn one of these days. Face your fear.”

  Still on the counter, Gracie leaned sideways to flip another piece of egg-soaked bread and sent it sailing to the floor. She squealed with laughter as Elise scooped up the mess.

  “Hon, can you grab a tea towel from the cupboard?” Elise motioned to an upper cupboard next to her daughter and Gracie twisted around.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” Matt appeared from the main room, trotting across the kitchen to scoop Gracie onto his hip, where he bounced her playfully. “We don’t sit on counters. You know that. It isn’t safe.” He leaned over to kiss Elise’s cheek. “Good morning, my lovely.”

  “I was right beside her.”

  “No worries. You’ve been away for a while, is all.”

  Don’t say a word. Elise smiled.

  Still in her dad’s arms, Gracie pulled the cupboard door open, sending tea towels tumbling out onto the counter. There, on the center shelf, was a large pile of feces—worryingly fresh.

  Shrieks. Groans. The patter of running feet. In five seconds, Elise and Gracie were out of the cabin and in the car, with Matt sauntering out to reassure them that those were not bear droppings. Possum, maybe, or raccoon, but definitely not bear.

  * * *

  THE SIGN LOOKED exactly as it had since Matt’s childhood: EAGLE GAS AND VARIETY hand-painted in a loopy, hesitant white script on a piece of faded evergreen plywood. As ever, a bell clanged every time a car drove over the rubber hose at the pumps, and signs on the windows boasted LIVE BAIT! AND FUDGE!

  Elise and Gracie had gone straight inside. Matt made his way around back to the restrooms with a key attached to a greasy stick, still wondering why Elise wasn’t disturbed in the slightest when Gracie, on the way over, said she was trying to think of injuries to inflict on her stuffed animals. His wife’s words were: “Why don’t you research different kinds of accidents? Come up with some really creative misfortunes for them.”

  What the hell? Matt had looked at Elise and, in an effort to get his point of view across without stirring up a fight, said, “Or, here’s a crazy idea. . . . Why don’t you be nice to them? Pretend you’re their teacher and enlighten them about your summer.”

  “Have them spend one night in the cupboard with the bear,” Elise said. “Then all you’ll have left will be dozens of shredded limbs and tiny eyeballs. Maybe we could gather them up to make one really monstrous creature.”

  “Yeah!”

  Matt drove on, stunned. When he next glanced at Elise, she was digging for something in her purse. “How about we ixnay the iolence-vay?”

  His wife glanced up. “Excuse me?”

  “He said ‘nix the violence’ in pig latin, Mom.”

  Elise pulled out her phone to check for messages and slid it back into the bag.

  Now, Matt watched a pair of crisply clean gulls peck at crushed Doritos on the asphalt as he unlocked the restroom door. A great, ugly monster gull swooped down out of nowhere to drive them off in a macho display of flapping and squawking and strutting. The whole scene could’ve taken place thirty-five years ago, he thought as he pushed the door open.

  It was almost like walking into his childhood home, he knew this bathroom so well. The floor had been replaced. It used to be ratty brown linoleum and even though they’d done it up in gray tile now, the grout had already gone black with grime. Hard to tell with the toilet—the enamel bowl was rust-stained back then, when he used to throw up in it, and it was rust-stained now. The walls—cheap white tiles—were covered in crude drawings of overinflated breasts and jaunty penises, as well as unchecked teenage bon mots, from the ill-advised VOTE FOR SATAN! to the far more practical NEVER STOP POOPING. Below the toilet paper dispenser, vital instructions: PULL FOR ARTS DEGREE. And below the condom machine change slot: INSERT BABY HERE FOR FULL REFUND.

  It didn’t seem possible that the place had gotten worse with time.

  His eyes rested on the fake marble counter and he was hit hard by a sudden memory of Cass sneaking in here with him, horny and drunk enough that last summer to make love against the grimy sink.

  * * *

  OPERA MUSIC WAFTED from ceiling speakers at the entry—not what you’d expect from a place that sold deer licks and chocolate-covered raisins branded as “Moose Droppings.” Eagle Gas and Variety housed an eclectic mix of wares meant to cover the needs of moneyed weekenders, practical locals, and tourists looking to bring a bag of chips back to the hotel room so they didn’t have to crack open the minibar. They carried chipotle chicken panini and salted caramel gelato, had a live worm dispensing machine, stocked beach towels depicting black bears sunbathing that read I’M BEARY FOND OF THE ADIRONDACKS. They sold expensive evergreen-scented soaps and the odd relic from simpler times: an antique butter churn, a vintage football helmet. All the nostalgia you could stomach, for the low, low price of—he picked up a Lake Placid snow globe and turned it over—$8.95. Ironic that most of these bits of Americana were, in fact, made in China.

  Tourists loved the painted tin ceiling, the dirty old black and white floor tiles, the long pine counter worn near the cash register from nearly a hundred years of toddlers and purses set down while someone dug for change. On hot days, big fans whirred overhead, fluttering the pages of magazines on racks and community flyers on the bulletin board by the open door.

  Matt found Elise and Gracie in the dry goods aisle, near the buzzing coolers filled with Popsicles and ice cream. Seeing his wife in slippers and his daughter in pajamas made him realize he was still in the T-shirt he’d slept in. Elise was peering around the end aisle at a middle-aged female golfer dressed in white and gold. She nudged Matt. “I swear to god, that woman made a face at me. Bumped into my arm and sneered like it was my fault.”

  “You always think that when we’re here—that people are against you.”

  “Because it always happens up here.”

  Gracie held up a four-pack of tapioca pudding. “What’s ta-ci-op-a?”

  Matt didn’t hesitate. “Tapioca. It’s the most tragic dessert there is. Your grandpa Nate was a terrible cook. After my parents died, he used to take me to Grocery Mart just before Thanksgiving and Christmas to fill our shopping cart with tapioca pudding and frozen turkey TV dinners so the neighbors would feel sorry for us. Invite us over to their family feasts.”

  “Did it work?” Elise asked.

  “Every time.” He ruffled Gracie’s hair. “I think it’s high time you and tapioca get acquainted, what do you say?”

  A package of red licorice had stolen her attention. “Nah.”

  Matt dropped the pudding pack onto the shelves. You really couldn’t ever go back.

  “Hey, wow. Aren’t you Matthew Sorenson?” Matt looked up to see a youngish man behind the snack counter looking at him with something resembling hero worship. Late twenties, fuzzy beard, gentle, open expression, hair tied back in a man bun. His skin was deep olive, his eyes such a pale green they almost glowed. Matt was willing to bet he had half the town’s females looking for excuses to drop into the store. He was starting to reply when the guy came forward to shake his hand vigorously, face breaking into a huge smile. “I’m Paulie Gupta. I’ve seen you around but always from afar. Your dad helped my folks in a big way.”

  “Gupta.” Matt thought a second. “Your parents are Prasad and . . . ?”

  “Vanya.”

  “Yes, Vanya. It was my grandfather who helped.” Matt remembered the story. The store sat on a forty-five-degree angle to the gas pumps, and it was a tricky intersection, 86 and Grafton. The only direction from which to pull into the station was heading into town, but most folks wanted to fill up on the way out of town, en route to the interstate. Eagle Gas was failing.

  Back then, the variety store wasn’t much more than a place to pick up a pack of s
mokes and a pepperoni stick while you paid for your gas. The only foot traffic was from kids racing in to pull a Fudgsicle out of the freezer. Vanya did what she could to encourage tourists by selling her “Bengali Fudge”—not fudge at all, but small, sugary cubes made from milk turned into a sort of cheese with cardamom—alongside the jugs of windshield washer fluid and packets of scented car fresheners.

  Like so many in Lake Placid back then, after being turned away from the bank, Prasad had come to Nate Sorenson for a loan. Nate pointed out that their problem wasn’t cash flow; it was access. Even if the Guptas were to cut their prices in half, cars were still going to glide on past and pull into the Chevron station across the street, to avoid the hassle of turning around. You need to change the curbs, he said. Prasad explained that he’d asked for approval from the village, but his request had been denied.

  Nate organized a crew to jackhammer all the curbs. Eagle Gas and Variety became the most accessible fill-up spot in the village, swarmed from morning to night.

  One day, Prasad came to Nate in a panic: people from the highway department were coming—the superintendent himself. It had been illegal to remove the curbs. Nate assured Prasad he’d sit in on the meeting, which was arranged for the second Thursday in July. That morning, he instructed Vanya to stop the ceiling fans and jack up the heat. By 3:30 p.m., when the superintendent and his entourage arrived, the temperature in Prasad’s office was an airless 104 degrees, according to an enamel thermometer. Within eleven minutes, the people from the highway department signed off on the curbs.

  Two weeks later, Prasad permanently changed his pricing strategy: one cent per gallon more than the Chevron station across the street, where cars could only pull in from the north. At Eagle Gas and Variety, you could come from Illinois, Florida, Maine, or the southernmost point of Quebec in Canada. And leave with the best Indian dessert in the Adirondacks.

  Paulie was still staring at Matt, grinning. “I’m stoked to finally meet you.”

  The swell Matt felt took him by surprise. Was he that emasculated as a fifty-year-old associate at the firm, a guppy in the pool of successful Manhattan attorneys, that the awe of a kid at a small-town gas station made him feel like a VIP? He’d actually forgotten the last time he felt like someone other than a struggling lawyer, Gracie’s dad, or Mr. Elise Sorenson. “Thanks. That’s, uh . . .”