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.
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“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 noth-
ing 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.”
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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 tel 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 embar-
rassing breaths, then chanting, it seemed to Dmitri, louder than
anyone else around them. He wished his father would chant nor-
mally. 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
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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 stage 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 look-
ing 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 h
e 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
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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 talk-
ing 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.”
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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 high-
way; in fact, Dmitri didn’t even notice his father’s lane changes. It seemed as if the car were driving itself.
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They exited the highway and drove down a wide four-lane street,
warehouses on either side. His father gestured to one of the ware-
houses. “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 hur-
ried 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
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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, want-
ing his father to think that he had understood, and that he belonged
here—that he belonged in his father’s new, blameless life.
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C h a p t e r E i g h t e e n
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 pac-
ing, 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 dropp
ed 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
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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 him-
self 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
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How a Woman Becomes a Lake (ARC) Page 14