The Lake and the Lost Girl

by Jacquelyn Vincenta

  “My book is not adaptable to a single volume.”

  “Not in the form it’s in, no.” Lydia fought to maintain her composure. Frank had more intelligence than most people she’d met, but when his mind was closed, it felt like his IQ dropped by half. “You would have to reconceive the whole, but I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think you could use most of the prose you’ve written and some of the text from your magazine articles. We would then have to produce and market it. But all of this can be done. And, in fact, done quite quickly. I think it will reinvigorate our lives! If we don’t do it now, Frank…” She took his hand. “Frank, if we don’t do it now, we may never do it.”

  A flicker of something—was it memories?—seemed to alter his gaze. The two of them had dreamed from the start of their relationship about starting their own literary press, as so many literary pioneers had done in the past.

  “What if you lose your contract entirely?” Frank asked, pulling his hand away and crossing his arms. “What if you completely lose your audience? End up with nothing from this venture?”

  “Or what if the administration at Carson Community College sees self-publishing with your romance-writer wife as an unworthy enterprise for a professor? Or your old friends from the University of Michigan?” The words were out before she considered them. Such thoughts had been waiting a long time to be spoken, and she could see the guilty acknowledgment on her husband’s face and how he tried to hide it.

  After a minute, Frank tilted his head and gave a smile she knew he thought was charming. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  Lydia sighed. “I’m not a fool, Frank. This is not an illusion of mine. I know how your colleagues think. I just hoped you might not fall prey to the same weakness.”

  “Nobody else dictates my thoughts,” he said, weighting his voice with disapproval. “I just don’t see how your idea fits our lives right now.”

  She inhaled sharply and closed her notebook, capped her pen and slid it and the notebook into her purse.

  “All right,” she said. “I understand. You have your life and I have mine, so I need to think about doing it by myself. I’ve started putting together ideas from many sources, and I don’t need you to be involved. I just wanted you to be. For you. Your career. And for the good of our relationship. As you know, my publisher is not interested in anything from me but romance novels, so I want to complete and publish a nongenre novel on subjects that I care about, and I’ll do it on my own. Since I know the ins and outs of doing just that, I guess I’ll get started on it. Maybe someday you’ll see things differently.”

  “It’s the same financial risk, Lydia, whether we do it together or you do it alone. It just doesn’t make any sense. Poverty is crippling to creativity. We both vowed we’d never go back to that…place. In fact, I’m not sure what’s behind this.”

  She sank back. “What’s behind this? Take a look at the obvious! I’m burned out. You’re spinning your wheels. Maybe you should hear all of the working details of the plan before you veto it.”

  “Oh, now I don’t listen to you, huh? Well, I don’t want that claim driving your determination, for God’s sake. Okay.” Frank threw up his hands. “Okay, let’s hear it. The whole thing.”

  Lydia lightly lowered her hand to Frank’s. “I need for you to actually listen.”

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them. “Listening will be easier with ambiance. Let’s drive to Jacob’s Tavern. I don’t know if I can eat, but a glass of wine might help burn out this flu.”

  “Jacob’s Tavern, okay,” Lydia said, almost smiling. Frank stood slowly, and she put her arm through his as they left the café.

  • • •

  Back home hours later, Frank picked Lydia up and tossed her, laughing, onto their bed. She bounced back up, dropped her feet to the floor, struck a match, and held it to the wick of a candle. Lying across the bed on his stomach, Frank snatched at her dress and pulled her closer. He slid his hand up between her thighs as she lifted the dress off over her head.

  “Mmm.” He ran a finger slowly up her black-nylon-covered pelvis. “Black nylons. Very nice, Mrs. Carroll. Just what I’m desiring for dessert.”

  Frank still had his coat on, and he laughed as Lydia tried to remove it from his heavy body. He sat up, wrestled it off, and rolled Lydia to her back, gently pinning her shoulders against the bed. Lydia fixed her gaze on Frank’s eyes, but they were half-closed.

  “My nymph…” Frank said it caressingly, growing hard against her thigh as he let his fingers skim her camisole. He felt around on the fabric and found tiny buttons that he attempted to undo, but his fingers were thick and clumsy from the wine. Lydia slid both of her hands under his and undid the buttons, then reached around his back to slide her hand beneath his belt and pants, over his skin. Her camisole was open, fallen away, and Frank wrapped his mouth around one nipple, then the other, as his hand roved the slick panty hose.

  He knew her well, knew which touches and how long, how strongly or softly. Lydia unfastened his belt, his pants, and her hands wrapped hotly around his tight skin. Pulling, releasing, gripping. He wrestled with her stockings, and in moments their bodies were free of clothing and he slid inside her. He moaned, and Lydia clung and fiercely squeezed, her mouth against his neck. There was almost nothing that could stop the swell of her desire now. Her eyelids closed, and she opened her mouth onto his. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and pushed hard against her pelvis, pushed again, and again.

  Then, unexpectedly, he was limp. Lydia wrapped her legs tighter around his hips. She gripped him urgently and said his name again and again, biting his neck too hard.

  “Ow!” Frank tried to regain his rhythm, but she could feel him lose consciousness for a second. Lydia’s hands made fists, and she dug her knuckles into his ribs. Then she punched the mattress and let her legs drop beside him. He rolled away.

  “Damn it, Frank,” she muttered. “Whiskey dick.”

  “It’s that flu,” he murmured.

  For a couple of seconds, he rubbed his neck where she’d bitten him. Then his hand slid to the pillow. They both lay still and silent, Frank slipping into sleep.

  Lydia bolted up and walked down the hall to the bathroom. When she returned, Frank was snoring but roused as if startled by a dream.

  “Jesus… I wonder,” he said, looking around as if he wasn’t sure where he was.

  “What?”

  “Your love. Even now, I don’t know.” He paused, and Lydia thought he was falling back to sleep.

  “Me? What are you talking about?”

  “You’re always…” Again his voice faded.

  “What?” Lydia was intoxicated, too. She was fuzzy, but not nearly as confused as Frank was, and this comment about her love had sent a shiver of adrenaline through her.

  “What?” He roused and turned his head toward her, but she knew he’d only been half conscious.

  “I always…what? You said, ‘You always…’”

  “You don’t love me anymore. I can see that, Lydia. I see that now.”

  “Are you serious?” Her mind tried to outpace his, to figure out where his snaking notions might go.

  He rolled his head toward her, his eyelids heavy.

  “The way you loved me once. Excited. Devoted. That’s gone.” He lifted his arm and let it drop heavily onto the mattress between them.

  Her heart rate increased.

  “Of course it isn’t, Frank.” She slapped her hand onto his and squeezed it roughly. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  “It’s just…so obvious. I try to pretend it isn’t true. But it is.”

  Lydia’s mind raced, and the well-being she had felt blossoming through the evening sizzled away like water on hot stone. A minute passed in silence. Her breath came rapidly.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Frank. I didn’t know this was on
your mind.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said with a heavy sigh. “And then you bring up the idea of turning our lives inside out for a press of our own. I’m supposed to abandon my career, I guess, or…what? What, Lydia? Is this the condition I have to meet to keep your love? It frightens me.”

  “What frightens you? Our own publishing company would help advance your career, not force you to abandon it.” She sat up. “What frightens you?”

  “Fulfill my work as you see it…on your terms. What frightens me is that this is what you have come up with—a manipulation of me as a means of changing your future. Because you’re unhappy with your work.”

  “That isn’t it at all.” Her insides began to shake. “That isn’t true.”

  He pushed himself up. “And I can’t do that, Lydia. Not even for you. I have my work. My career. It hurts me deeply that you don’t know something like that is out of the question for me.”

  “Wait a minute. Listen to me.”

  “That’s reality from my point of view, Lydia. I have been watching how you’ve been lately. But I don’t think you can see it.” Frank sat at the edge of the bed with his back to her, shaking his head slowly. “No. You can’t see that your little dreams run right over my existence as if I’m…” He raised his hands as if to strangle someone. “I’m nothing.”

  The last word was virtually roared, and Frank stood, turning toward her, his face full of venom. Panic shot through Lydia’s body. She knew this tone, this demeanor, all too well. Frank’s inebriated rage was on an unstoppable course.

  “Frank, I mean it.” She stood and held out her hands. “Listen.”

  “No, my existence is outside of your concerns,” he went on, as if she had said nothing. “You see things you want for yourself. Time off. Some other life, exotic places, different men maybe. How would I know? Some sort of new image… Is that what you’re after? The ‘real Lydia’?”

  He shook his head, gripping his hands together at his chest as if to mock her heart’s longing. Lydia watched helplessly as alcohol, anger, and paranoia fueled his imagination.

  “I don’t know, maybe you want to be a poet again. Reasonable.” He stuck his lower lip out, gave a couple of nods, and his eyes brushed over her face occasionally. “You were once. But now…” He picked up a hand mirror and shoved it in front of Lydia’s face. “Who do you see now? Who’s in there now, Ms. Romance Novelist?”

  Lydia tried to push his arm away, but he held it firm, the glass inches from her face. “Enough, Frank.”

  “Don’t like the person you have made yourself into? Want change? At my expense?” He hurled the mirror across the room where it hit a framed picture on the wall. Both shattered and fell to the floor. “Well, you can forget it. Your little ambitions aren’t worth giving up my work for. So fuck off.”

  Like a threatened animal, Lydia held perfectly still, barely breathing, while her heart hammered in panic. Without another glance toward her or the broken glass across the room, Frank went to the closet, yanked out a robe, wrapped it around himself, and walked heavily down the hall to the bathroom.

  “Just fuck off,” he said again before slamming the bathroom door.

  Lydia slipped away to her study across the hall. Silently, she locked the door and sat on her couch, still frozen, waiting. I have a right to lock the door of my own study.

  “Lydia,” she heard him growl when he returned to their empty bedroom. “Lydia, goddamn it, what game are you playing now?”

  She waited, jaw set, breath shallow. Within minutes, she heard him snoring, heavily asleep.

  12

  White Hill, Michigan—April 1999

  There’s a word unspoken,

  A knot untied.

  Whatever is broken

  The earth may hide.

  ~ Elinor Wylie (1885–1928), “Fire and Sleet and Candlelight”

  When Nicholas had heard his parents enter the house late the night before, laughing and shushing each other as they clambered up the staircase, he had felt a small lift in his heart. When the convivial sounds were replaced some time later by his father’s loud curses and the crash of something breaking, he woke again with a jolt of adrenaline, and he was upset, but not surprised. His muscles tightened with anger as he pulled a pillow over his head to cover his ears, and he wanted to cry, but that almost never happened anymore. In such moments, he felt he hated them both, and while he knew it was love that made it all hurt as much as it did, he fantasized more and more often about earning and saving up money to run away.

  Nicholas had lived with a small, niggling sense of confusion about his father’s Mary Walker quest for several years, the earliest moment of it probably arising on the Christmas Eve when he was in fifth grade, when the house air was spicy with scents of woodsmoke, cider, and a visiting neighbor’s pipe tobacco. Snow drifted from a flannel-gray sky, as it had since morning. Nicholas could still recall the way the nickel-sized flakes had looked from the barn where he watched through the crack at the doors—peaceful but significant, like messages quietly arriving. He studied their slow descent.

  His father was drinking mulled wine from an iron pot full of it on the barn woodstove, and he had urged Nicholas to scoop himself a small mug to keep warm as the two of them examined the steamer trunk Aunt Louise had brought that afternoon as a Christmas present for Frank.

  “This may be it, Nick! This may be the day!”

  But after half an hour, Frank’s search for document pockets, panels, or obviously loosened or reglued seams in the trunk became wearisome to ten-year-old Nicholas, who had begun to shiver in the drafty barn. His attention was revived by his father’s occasional demands that he pay attention, but he longed to return to the festivities in the warm house.

  Suddenly, Frank let out a cry of surprise. Nicholas’s gaze flew from the gold house windows full of happy figures to his father’s hopeful face as his hands urged a slip of onionskin from a thin panel of heavy cardboard covering the inside floor of the trunk.

  “Ah!” Frank narrowed his eyes, then pulled off his glasses, wiped them impatiently, and shoved them back on. “Someone’s…name. I see a capital…S, maybe F.” He shifted so close to the floor lamp that his hair touched the shade and the onionskin paper glowed hot with light.

  Instincts already attuned to the subtlest changes in his father’s expressions and voice, Nicholas averted his eyes quickly to the floor, even before Frank knew for sure that what he studied was worthless. It was a familiar, faint slackening in the muscles around his eyes, perhaps, or a shift in the angle of his head as his urgency peaked, just before it began to disintegrate. Something pulled Nicholas’s heart down even before his father’s voice went flat and he tossed the paper into the trunk, shoved the thing away with his foot, and told Nicholas to go back to the party; they’d examine the trunk further later.

  For years, Nicholas’s mind had followed up the disappointing nondiscoveries with detailed imaginings of the moment when, at last, his father’s stubborn dedication would be rewarded with an exquisite, perfect document undeniably written by the beautiful poet after the date of her disappearance. All of these hours, these disappointments and tensions, would be worth it. A person can struggle with a dream for years, even a dream that others don’t understand, while missing out on other life opportunities along the way, because it’s the outcome that matters.

  For instance, Mary Walker’s work was less valuable without a life conclusion, or so Nicholas had come to believe based on his father’s long narratives about the young woman. And each of the poems already collected would possess more meaning once everything she had created was finally found and the collection was larger. Nicholas had spent years believing in his father and coming to understand the notion that the value of a life was determined by the opinions of those left behind.

  Now, however, tension between his mother and father held them in a vice grip of frequent, ugly arg
uments, threatening—Nicholas feared—the family’s ability to survive together. His mother was obviously fed up with his father’s fruitless pursuit and the expense of it, and Nicholas realized that his father had propped just about his whole career on the hope of finding Walker writings and, with outrageous luck, the poet herself. At this point, his father’s activities were looking foolish from the outside. Jack Kenilworth was only the most recent of many to hedge around the subject as if he were discussing a madman’s humiliations.

  Nicholas was just a page or two away from seeing it that way, too.

  • • •

  Thin rays of sunlight found Lydia asleep on the couch in her study the next morning. She opened her eyes to the sound of knocking on her door, and her consciousness flew instantly back to thoughts of Frank’s cruel turn against her in their bedroom just a few hours before.

  “Yes?” She spoke the word without invitation, her heart racing.

  The doorknob rattled a little.

  “Door’s locked.” It was Nicholas.

  Lydia closed her eyes and exhaled with relief. She unlocked it, then flopped back onto her couch. Nicholas slid into view, and she smiled at him. He nudged the door open farther.

  “I’m going to school. Is everything okay?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, wondering how much he had heard the night before from his end of the second-story hallway. “Dad and I were up late discussing business stuff. You know how I am once my mind gets going.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I hope your day is good, Mom.” He looked at her closely for a moment, then pulled the knob and turned it silently to latch the door closed.

  She stared at the light and shadows on the wall as her son’s footsteps tapped down the stairs. The painful scene that had driven her to the privacy of her study filled her mind, and she lay back down and rolled to her side, watching that scene replay in sharp fragments. It had happened before. The fog of alcohol had allowed her to fall for the trick that worked so well on her. Frank would fabricate some sin on her part—she’d had an affair, she’d violated their literary or family values, she did not love him anymore—attacking with such violent drama that she reflexively replaced her own authentic emotions and perceptions with simplistic self-defense.