The Lake and the Lost Girl

by Jacquelyn Vincenta

Mary squeezed her eyes shut, then opened her gaze to the kitchen boards and shelves he had painted dark pink for her before she moved in. He pinched her nipples, his breath warm and wet on her collarbone. Rage flashed through her body and into her brain. She whipped around, grabbed his face and thrust her mouth onto his, kissing and biting, hands locked around his neck as he tried to back away. He finally caught her wrists and stood up straight.

  “Goddamn it!” His eyes seemed even bluer when he was angry, and he was as handsome when he scowled as when he smiled. “What gets into you?”

  She pretended innocence, lowered her eyes, and ran her finger along the top of his jeans.

  “I thought men liked to play rough, Bernard. I only want to please you. You know that.”

  He drew the back of his hand away from his mouth, checked the skin for blood, and flashed his eyes toward her, nodding.

  “Uh-huh, yeah. Everyone in town knows that. Ethel Van Zant, for instance.”

  Mary swallowed with difficulty. The old woman was an herbalist, and Mary had gone to her for help with her mental states. But the woman was discreet; surely she wouldn’t have told anyone. Perhaps someone had spotted her coming or going.

  “Ethel Van Zant knows I want to please my husband?”

  “I mean the opposite. Why would you go see a witch except to do something you shouldn’t?”

  “A witch?” Mary gave a sharp laugh.

  “Does she cure you of children? Is that what you go to her for?”

  Mary’s eyes roved his face for some sign that he was making a cruel joke, but his eyes were genuinely asking. Her heart shrank against him in these moments when he seemed so hopelessly stupid.

  “She isn’t a witch, for God’s sake, Bernard. And furthermore, why do you assume I would do something like that?”

  “You don’t want children! You want to read and write and follow your thoughts around, like…like a child chasing butterflies! You don’t want children, Mary! And that is one of the things you lied to me about.”

  It stung worse for the shards of truth in it. “Like a child chasing butterflies? That’s how you’re describing my work?”

  “Yes! Wandering aimlessly, hoping for words to float by that strike your fancy and fit together just so. You told me in the beginning that you wanted to really work. Teach. Raise a family.” Bernard glared at her.

  “What would I have to teach if I don’t learn? Do you want your children to have an educated, accomplished mother or not? And how can I mother them if I am not my true self, writing the poetry God intended me to write? That is my work!”

  He gave a laugh and shook his head. “I know better than to believe that’s what’s going on here.”

  “You don’t know that at all.”

  “Well, look what’s happened so far in almost three years of sharing this house. I’d say you’ve spent a lot of time with your books and paper. But”—he feigned a searching look around the room—“you’ve kept my children away pretty good.”

  “So what are you saying?” The shaking began in her knees. It climbed into her chest and face, and she instantly felt that Bernard was growing farther away, the pink walls even darker.

  He crossed his arms. “It’s obvious.”

  “No, it isn’t! What exactly are you saying? What, Bernard?” When he only stood silently, glaring, she lunged at him, flung her fists onto his chest, then stood back and stared into his eyes. “What do you mean? Do you imagine I can conjure up a child like I write a poem, just think it up and hand it to you? Maybe you are the problem, Bernard. Maybe your bag of tricks won’t make children.”

  He raised his eyebrows and balled his right fist as if to strike her, but she didn’t flinch. He sneered. “Such a common girl you are, really. College couldn’t learn that out of you.”

  Mary reached up to slap him, and he grabbed one of her wrists, then the other, and held them both in one hand, while he twisted her around and bent her over before him. She kicked a leg back into his shin, and he winced as he shoved her skirt up and jerked her underwear down until the coarse denim covering his pelvis pressed against her bare skin.

  “Now just give me a minute.” His voice was husky, angry, lusty, as he bound her arms and torso with his right arm and ran his left hand up between her thighs before unzipping his pants. “Mmm. Yeah. Got to keep trying…” Mary stopped struggling and stared down between her legs at Bernard’s boots. Her hair hung toward the ground. “Keep…trying.”

  She waited, and as soon as pleasure began to seize his body and he shifted his right hand, she twisted loose at the waist and bit his wrist. He yelled and grabbed her by the hair as she sent out fierce laughter. He dragged her over a few feet, then shoved her, chest down, on the table beside his dinner plate. Her body rocked with his thrusts, and when he groaned with climactic release, she cut her fingernails into her palms, angry tears wetting the wood beneath her cheek.

  14

  White Hill, Michigan—April 1999

  Egos crying out of unkempt deeps

  And waving their dreams like flags—

  Multi-colored dreams,

  Winged and glorious…

  ~ Lola Ridge (1873–1941), “The Ghetto”

  “I’m going to Portman,” Frank said the next morning, pushing open the door to Lydia’s study.

  She spun around toward him.

  “To get the check back.”

  She glanced at the clock. “What about your class?”

  “I called in, said I seem to have a recurrence of that flu.”

  “Why not just wait until after you teach?” Frank’s inconsistent dedication to his teaching was a perennial source of concern to her. His expression began to sour. “I mean, I’m glad you’re getting right on it. But—”

  “I’ll manage my own life, Lydia. See you later.”

  She listened to him quickly descend the stairs, his step light. She heard the back door close and considered how her mistrust of Frank had come to affect all of their interactions in recent months. She reminded herself that she’d gone with him to an auction and had some fun, and they seemed to be on the same page about not spending. She should just take things one day at a time.

  Turning back to her computer, she composed a note she would send with Nicholas to Jack Kenilworth. Something about the idea of corresponding with him seemed risky to her, but she chalked it up to the clumsiness of their drugstore conversation. The fact that Frank’s account of his interactions with Jack differed from Jack’s did not necessarily mean anyone was being dishonest or that some problem existed. She would find out what she could about it if she could do so without alienating Jack. Right now, he was the best thing in Nicholas’s life, and she would not risk jeopardizing that relationship.

  Dear Jack,

  When we ran into each other at the drugstore, I wasn’t quite myself and I’m afraid I neglected to thank you for your mentorship of my son. Could you spare a few minutes sometime to speak with me briefly one-on-one about his work with you? I also have another question I’d like your opinion about, so if you’re willing to chat a bit, I’ll stop by your business whenever it is convenient.

  ~ Lydia Milliken Carroll

  “Oh, I don’t know about this,” Lydia murmured.

  If Jack Kenilworth was as reserved and self-protective as Lydia had always gotten the impression he was, a request for his opinion about anything might ensure that he never spoke to her again. She leaned back and tried to imagine him openly talking to her about Nicholas, or about the best people to interview regarding White Hill history who might either shed light on Mary Walker’s fate or be useful for a new fiction project. These weren’t difficult subjects, Lydia reasoned, not provocative. It should be fine. He didn’t have to say much if he didn’t want to. And if he seemed open and talkative, she could bring up the question of what he had tried to share with Frank.

  She pushed
the subject off to the side of her mind and turned to the printed pages of her romance manuscript. Her heroine, Jodi, had reenlisted in the marines but now found herself in love with a war protestor and reluctant to fulfill her military duty. Both Lydia’s agent and her editor thought the premise gave her all kinds of room for meaningful drama and interesting dialogue, and they both found the war protestor hero appealing. But to Lydia, it was the same thing she had written twenty-five times already, and she was particularly sick of the hero, a self-centered, charismatic do-nothing with all the right words who, Lydia had realized recently, was modeled closely after her own husband.

  She had been horrified. How could she have missed this likeness between Frank and her romance heroes over the course of fifteen years, twenty-five romance novels, and at least fourteen male love interests that acted just like him? It was suddenly a relief that Frank had never deigned to read one of her books, where he might have discovered Lydia’s subconsciously generated parody of his strengths and weaknesses. But then again, the man was unlikely to recognize an honest portrait of himself in any form.

  Focus, focus. There was work to be done. With a combination of dread and hope, Lydia took a deep breath and started at page one, reading, with fresh eyes, The Few, the Proud, and the Hungry. Her eyes roved the lines fast, then faster, impatient for something to believe in, and the modest stack of eighty-eight double-spaced pages was quickly over. Slowly, she set them down on her desk and stared blankly ahead. The writing was awful.

  She turned her gaze toward the window at the faint sound of Canada geese passing overhead, their timeless voices calling. And suddenly, like a full moon, a new idea rose so clearly and completely in her mind that it felt like a vision. Here she was, living daily with questions about Mary Walker and now gathering information from the world beyond the poet’s written words. This subject was alive for her. Why not develop it into her next novel? It was just what Lincoln Babcock had been afraid she might do, and he’d virtually warned her not to, but that seemed another persuasive reason to take it on. There was vitality in it.

  Yes, it would be as alive as anything Lydia could imagine and would come together easily, because the words and ideas about Mary Walker had been with her since childhood. This was brilliant.

  And there was an added attraction: by using her own imagination, she could end this endless story that threatened her marriage. Frank might object to her fictionalizing Mary Walker’s life at first—yes, of course he would. But Mary Stone Walker was not his poet, his sacred property; he’d just convinced himself that she was.

  Yes, Lydia’s spirits rose. She could drop The Few, the Proud, and the Hungry and dig right into this story. There certainly was a rich novel here, and she had a right to it. And how hard could it be to bend a story about a beautiful, vanished poet toward the interest of her romance audience?

  She would do as much research as possible into the real people and places that were part of the poet’s life and then draw the girl, the woman, without romanticizing her life. And in her novel, Lydia would give the poet’s life a conclusive ending. Within the raw texture of an actual, troubled existence in the nineteen thirties, Lydia could illustrate how the woman might have been driven by horrible circumstances to leave her home and maybe even her life, only to have that decision twisted into a pleasing myth decades later by the likes of Frank. Lydia took a spiral notebook from a stack of them on her shelf and eagerly began a list of details and questions about Mary that intrigued her as potential elements of a novel.

  When Nicholas arrived home at three fifteen, he tiptoed up the stairs and knocked lightly at her door.

  “Where’s Dad?” were his first words when he entered.

  Lydia set down her pen and looked at the clock. Frank had been gone for over four hours. He must have gone from Portman straight to campus.

  “Running an errand,” she said. “Why?”

  “You guys were gone all day yesterday, so I didn’t know if something was—you know—going on.” She felt his eyes trying to read her thoughts.

  “No, everything’s okay as far as I know. Are you working at Jack’s today?”

  “Yeah, I told him I would,” Nicholas said. “But I can stay home if you need me. If we need to look for Dad or something…”

  She focused closely on him. “No, Nicholas. Honestly, it’s okay. He really is just running an errand, and probably went from there to his office. But it’s nice of you to offer.” She went back to the file with the letter she’d written to Jack and printed it out, folded it into an envelope, and sealed it. “Give this to Jack, would you? I’m going out, so I can drive you over there.”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind,” Nicholas said. “What’s the note about?”

  “Ah, I want his opinion about something,” she said. “Just some facts I might use in my next novel.”

  “You mean about building boats?”

  “Not exactly.” Lydia gazed uneasily at her son. “More general. I’m thinking about setting a novel in White Hill, and his family has been here a long time. He might be able to point me toward good people to interview about what life was like here in the past.”

  “Hmm. Maybe,” Nicholas said. “But it doesn’t seem like he ever leaves the woods and the lake.”

  Lydia chuckled. “Well, then it might be a very short conversation.”

  It was a quiet ten minutes as they drove to Jack’s place. Lydia found her mind toying with the ideas she had been working on in her study, while Nicholas gazed out the window with something that seemed like sadness. But Lydia wasn’t sure how to ask him about his mood without making him feel scrutinized.

  “Do you want me to pick you up later?” she asked as he got out of the Jeep. “It’s pretty chilly out.”

  “Yeah, if you can.” He looked at his watch. “Three hours from now?”

  “I’ll be here. I’ll come in for you so that you don’t have to watch the clock. Okay?”

  “Right.”

  “Hey, be sure to give Jack that note, Nick.”

  “Yep. See ya, Mom.”

  Lydia watched him disappear around the barn, then drove slowly away. She couldn’t have him getting into worried states like this all the time. These were not his issues he was suffering over. The Jeep bumped down the narrow, rutted dirt drive as she thought about the pervasive tension in their home. Nicholas had been aware enough for quite some time to see the mechanics of it—even when they were subtle, without loud drama.

  Where Jack’s drive met the road, Lydia stopped and opened the window a crack. She could hear the surf faintly from far below. It was impossible to imagine that Frank had ever driven out here to speak with Jack Kenilworth. As avid as Frank’s interest in Mary Stone Walker was, Lydia had never known him to investigate the woman’s life beyond reading, conversations with other academics and librarians, and of course the damned antique searches. He claimed that he didn’t trust “the locals,” but Lydia had grown increasingly suspicious of this excuse.

  On the road toward home, she felt reluctant to return to her house full of conflict. Instead, she shopped for a frame for the photograph of Mary’s attic that she imagined as the cover for Frank’s book, she walked the town with thoughts of how she might incorporate the details of downtown White Hill into a new plot, and she browsed local history documents at the library. After two and a half hours, she headed back out toward the lake. At Jack’s place, she parked the Jeep and walked around the barn as she had seen Nicholas do, then headed cautiously toward a closed door. As she stared at it, planning her words of greeting, she heard the storm door on the house behind her slam and she turned. She and Jack exchanged startled looks.

  “Hi!” Lydia chirped. The sun cut into long clouds at the horizon, and the light over the lake behind Jack was lavender. “I’m taking you up on the offer to see what Nick’s doing.”

  “Great! Come on in,” Jack said, opening the door.

>   The barn was well lit and smelled faintly of a kerosene heater she could hear hissing somewhere at the edge of the vast room. Nicholas didn’t notice her as she stood several steps inside the entrance and watched him. He was sprawled on the floor with his right arm extended, a thick pencil gripped in his hand. Jack walked over to Nicholas and leaned above the drawing, gazing back and forth across the lines the boy was drawing on the floor, then turned his face to Lydia and gestured for her to come closer.

  “Got a visitor,” he said to Nicholas, and the boy turned toward him. Jack nodded in Lydia’s direction, and Nicholas sat up.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said with an embarrassed glance at Jack.

  “Say, Nick, that’s magnificent, what you’re doing there.” Lydia peered around at the lines that resembled those she’d seen tacked to Nicholas’s bedroom wall. “Wow.”

  “This is a twenty-two-foot sloop Jack’s going to start on soon.”

  “Made out of what?” Lydia asked.

  “Mahogany,” Jack said. “It’s a replica of an early-twentieth-century boat for a client in Chicago. Don’t forget that color code we talked about, Nicholas.” Jack bent down briefly to tap a chart at Nicholas’s side.

  “Oh, right.” Nicholas held a flat orange pencil, but checked the chart and exchanged it for a blue one.

  After a few minutes watching Nicholas, Lydia mustered a cheerful voice to ask, “Did Nicholas give you my note?”

  Jack stared at her blankly, opened his mouth, then looked confused. “I’m sorry?”

  Lydia lightly kicked Nicholas’s foot. “Did you give Jack the note, Nick?”

  Nicholas also stared uncomprehendingly at her.

  “The note I printed out at home and handed to you? In the envelope?” Lydia felt herself flush. “Nicholas!”

  “Oh yeah. Sorry, I forgot, Mom. When I got here, Jack need help carrying stuff. I forgot.”

  As he stood up to go for his backpack, a woman entered the barn with a thermos and two mugs. She gave Lydia a friendly nod and set the things down on Jack’s worktable, unscrewing the thermos as Nicholas produced the bent envelope.