Lake Life

by David James Poissant

  “I don’t think it’s silly.”

  Jake steps back from the canvas, squints. He’s gotten more paint on his shirt, paint in his hair.

  “Back home,” he says, “I pick up the brush to paint, and the canvas is a magnet pushing back. The brush just hovers, like my arm’s possessed, like God’s stopping me. My parents wanted me to be a preacher. Dad said God told him I’d have my own flock. I know it’s bullshit. I know that’s just my dad. Still, some part of me can’t help feeling punished. For painting. For loving Thad. It’s like I missed my calling, disobeyed God’s will for my life.”

  The lake shimmers, a drawn bath. The sun has set.

  “Do you believe in God?” Jake asks.

  She doesn’t know, and she admits as much.

  “Where I grew up, God was everywhere,” Jake says. “In the air you breathed. In the songs you sang. We thanked God for the good things that happened to us, and we thanked God for the bad. We thanked God for our food, no matter what that food was. Can you imagine thanking God for waffles? I don’t mean homemade. I mean Eggos. I can’t see God wanting thanks for those.”

  He works the brush back over a few places, but the painting’s done. Any more fussing with it, and she worries he’ll mess it up.

  “Yesterday I let a man I used to love suck my dick,” Jake says. “Today I find out he paints Audubon knockoffs and hates my guts. Life’s so fucking weird.”

  Diane takes a step back. She tries to keep the surprise from showing on her face, but she fails.

  “I’m sorry,” Jake says. “I’m not trying to shock you. It’s just nice having someone to talk to.”

  It is nice. Some days, home from school, she and Michael hardly speak.

  Kick, kick.

  Jake puts down the plate and brush. He steps back from the painting, tilting his head left, then right. “You like Rothko? Big canvases, big color blocks?”

  “I know who Rothko is.” She loves Rothko’s work. She wants Jake to know this, and, wanting this, understands she wants his approval way too much.

  “Rothko killed himself,” Jake says. “Slashed his arms to ribbons. Plus pills. Such a waste.”

  In the distance, a boat enters the bay, and Diane sees it’s The Sea Cow. Richard’s home.

  “In L.A.,” Jake says, “at MOCA, there’s a Rothko room. Last time I was there, whoever curated the exhibit placed a mannequin at the center of the room, some ‘found object’ bullshit. They have eight Rothkos, good ones, and they hide them behind a plastic man. I would have paid ten grand for ten minutes without that thing in the way. Just to fall into those paintings. To take them in all at once.”

  He takes two steps back.

  “All that beauty, and no one could see it for the man in the middle of the room.”

  He spreads his arms.

  “There you go. Motherfucking sunset.”

  The painting is gorgeous. It’s more than a sunset, more than a lake, and Diane sees that her mistake was trying to paint the thing she saw. Jake understands light and design too well to fall for what’s before his eyes. What he’s done is stylized, impressionistic. It’s the very thing Jake said a sunset couldn’t be. It’s interesting. It’s all of the colors from The Scream blended and reassembled and made new. That Jake painted this in fifteen minutes fills Diane with too much admiration to worry about her envy anymore.

  Jake turns, and his face is sweaty. There’s sorrow in his eyes. Joy, too. Joy most of all.

  He loves this.

  She knows, then, that she’ll never be Jake. Not just because she’s not as good. Not just because she’d never pay ten grand to see some Rothkos on a wall. Because art’s not her life. Life is her life—people. Michael, her mother, new students every year. The life that grows inside her even now. Given the choice between people and paint, she’ll choose people every time. She’s not convinced Jake would.

  Jake wipes his face, and his sleeve leaves his forehead marked with paint.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s sign.”

  He dabs the black, and, in the bottom right-hand corner, signs his name. He holds the brush out to Diane.

  “Team effort,” he says. “I couldn’t have done it without your head start.”

  Absolutely not, she wants to say. But why is her instinct to feel condescended to? There’s nothing condescending in Jake’s wild eyes, his paint-smeared face, the way he holds the black-tipped brush.

  “Please,” he says, “I mean it.” And she signs.

  Up the hill, a car pulls in. Lisa gets out and waves. She pulls a long white box from the trunk and disappears into the house.

  Kick, kick.

  Something isn’t right. Some kind of cramping or constricting, something, pregnant, you aren’t supposed to feel. She holds her abdomen.

  The Sea Cow nears. Above them, Lisa’s coming down the hill.

  The tightening worsens, and Diane drops to one knee.

  Then Lisa’s on the dock and at her side, asking Diane where it hurts, but Diane is having trouble speaking. The pain is too intense. She holds her stomach tight.

  “Shit,” Jake says. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m pregnant,” Diane says.

  Jake looks sucker-punched, then elated. “Congratulations. Oh my God!”

  “No time,” Lisa says. “Help me help her up.”

  Things happen quickly after that. Lisa and Jake help her up the hill. “What’s happening?” Richard calls from the water, tying off the boat. “Good Lord, what’s going on?” But no one answers. No one is concerned with him. Lisa helps her into the backseat of her car, then joins her. Jake gets behind the wheel and waits for Richard, who’s trudging up the hill. “Hurry,” Jake shouts, and, frowning, Richard walks a little faster until he’s reached the car and climbed in. “What is this?” Richard asks. “Where are we going?” Jake doesn’t answer. He doesn’t wait for Richard to put his seat belt on. He reverses the length of the driveway, then tears down the road. At which point, after taking several deep breaths, Diane pulls her phone from her pocket and dials Michael’s number many, many times.

  34.

  In the passenger seat, Thad’s brother fiddles with the air-conditioning with one hand. The other hand kneads his face. “One of my back teeth is loose.” He rests his head on the window. “I need my car.”

  “Tomorrow,” Thad says. “You’re drunk. I’m high. We’re going home.”

  “My phone’s in the car. At least let me get my phone. It’s on the way.” He flips the visor, looks in the mirror, pokes at his teeth. “Also, if you see a drugstore, I need lice shampoo.”

  Not for the first time, Thad plays the mental game of whose life sucks more, which brother has it worse.

  It’s not a contest. Thad’s father’s voice is in his ear. You’re both disappointments to me. Not that his father would say that, ever, but it’s there, the judgment in the man’s eyes when he asks his son what he’s been up to the past year, and Thad answers, “Writing poetry.”

  “Have you tried therapy?” Thad asks.

  Michael flips the visor up. “Fuck therapy.”

  “But you’re depressed.”

  Michael cracks his window and pokes a finger out. How easy it would be for Thad to push a button, to guillotine the finger in two.

  “I’m not depressed,” Michael says.

  “We’re all depressed,” Thad says. “We’re a family of depressives. I’m just the only one who’s getting help.”

  Michael pulls the finger in and rolls the window up. “Dad’s not depressed.”

  “Of course he is. His generation’s different. Men his age show it less. They just live unhappily.”

  “What about Mom?”

  “I don’t know. Mom might be okay. She’s definitely the healthiest of the four of us.”

  Michael looks out his window. The road dips and turns, and Thad wants to ask him to face forward. He’s cleaned up enough of Michael’s puke for one week.

  “What’s so great about therapy?�
� Michael asks.

  “For starters?” Thad says. “Drugs.”

  “Your therapist does drugs?”

  Thad can’t tell if Michael’s kidding or playing dumb. He’s not stupid. As a teenager, Thad once went through his mother’s filing cabinets. He found report cards confirming that Michael’s grades were lower than his own. Then he came across two envelopes he hadn’t known were there. He had no memory of taking the IQ test. Apparently, he’d done so in fourth grade under the guise of a grad student’s research project. His mother was forever volunteering them for studies at Cornell. Thad opened both envelopes. Both IQs were high, two standard deviations above the mean. Michael’s, though, was higher by four points. Thad’s favorite part of the story, though, is that the envelopes were sealed. How like his mother. Getting the scores, she hadn’t wanted to know. Or, wanting to know, she’d refused to let curiosity get the upper hand. What self-restraint. What bright, unbending love.

  To this day, Thad’s never given Michael the news or the satisfaction of those four points.

  “Prescription drugs,” Thad says. “Actually, those come from a psychiatrist. My psychotherapist can’t prescribe.”

  “What kinds of drugs?” Michael asks.

  “Me? I worship the trinity: Xanax, Paxil, Seroquel.”

  They approach a switchback, and Thad slows the car. On the lake, you forget you’re in the mountains. In the car, negotiating a turn, it’s impossible to forget.

  “Why three pills?” Michael asks.

  “One for anxiety, one for depression, one for psychosis.”

  “Wait, you’re psychotic?”

  “I’m bipolar. I’m at risk of psychotic episodes, yes.”

  A drizzle works its way out of the clouds, and Thad flips the wipers on.

  “You really think I’m depressed?” Michael asks.

  “I’m not a doctor. I only know what I see, and what I see is a depressive who uses alcohol—which is a depressant, by the way—to cope.”

  “Alcohol is a depressant?”

  Again, Michael’s fucking with him, or he’s not. When he’s been drinking, it can be hard to tell. Rain covers the windshield, and Thad speeds the wipers up.

  “How long have you been on these pills?” Michael asks.

  “This particular cocktail reaches back a ways. I tend to switch it up every five years.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the pills stop working and I want to kill myself.”

  The road is wet. The wipers wipe. The weed’s worn off.

  “Fuck,” Michael says. “I didn’t know that. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was like that. I guess some part of me hoped that maybe you just wanted—”

  “Attention?”

  Thad’s strangling the steering wheel. He wants to reacquaint Michael with his arm, his missing toe. But they’ve never had this talk before, not at any length. He relaxes his grip. Outside, the rain slows.

  “It’s okay,” he says at last. “I’ve come to accept how hard it is to understand for anyone who doesn’t want to die.”

  A sign reads: Highlands 2 Miles. Ahead, another bend in the road, rock face to the right, a double guardrail to the left. Thad slows the car to thirty, twenty-five.

  In therapy, Steve says the best way to encourage vulnerability is to share your own, but Thad can’t imagine what he might say to get Michael to admit he drinks too much.

  “Steve says—”

  “Who’s Steve?” Michael asks.

  “My therapist.”

  “Your therapist’s name is Steve?”

  Twenty miles per hour, fifteen. They head into the turn, and Michael’s laughing.

  Thad doesn’t get what’s so funny. Then, the more he thinks about it, the funnier it gets. His therapist’s name is Steve. Those hairy arms on days he wears shirts with short sleeves. What kind of doctor wears short sleeves?

  Then Thad’s laughing too, and they are young again. They’re brothers filling the car with their delight, laughing right up to the second Thad makes the turn and runs into the deer.

  Thad isn’t the first to hit the deer. The deer is dead, and he doesn’t run into it so much as over it. He brakes, backs up, and crushes the animal again. Its entrails, peeking out before, are fully splayed now, in the road.

  Michael opens his door and throws up. Thad wants to join him. He opens his door but holds his bile back.

  The deer is a doe, a large one, tan and red splatter. The neck is bent. The body bisects the road’s broken white line. Thad’s seen roadkill across North Carolina, upstate New York, too. But deer tend to take out cars more than cars take out deer. Whatever hit this one was big and didn’t stop.

  But it’s not the dead deer that’s caught Thad’s attention. It’s the fawn. White-spotted rump and reedy legs, the deer stands at the guardrail, muzzle bloodied, ears up, eyes on its mother.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Michael says.

  They wait. They sit in their seats and watch through open doors. And as they watch, the fawn moves to the doe’s side. It nuzzles the neck, the face. It noses the entrails like it’s trying to push them back inside.

  “Fuck,” Michael says.

  Thad leaves the car, and the fawn doesn’t flinch. Does it believe its mother will rise? Can animals fathom death?

  “No, no, no,” Michael says. His face is in his hands.

  “It’s okay,” Thad says, speaking to his brother, speaking to the deer.

  “I want to go home,” Michael says.

  Thad crouches beside the open car door, but he doesn’t want to get too close. The smell is strong. Already, flies have arrived. The fawn licks its mother’s face.

  “Take me home,” Michael says. “Please.”

  They were boys in a bathtub, once, singing, washing each other’s backs. Boys fighting over pajamas—too small for Michael, too big for Thad—the red footies with the purple locomotives, black track circling the waist. They were boys under covers, their mother reading them the story of the spider and the pig.

  Where is Thad’s father in these memories? In his study. At the lab. Working. Reading. But that was Dad. They needed him, but they’d been trained not to begrudge his absence. Absence was the province of fathers, and they let their father go about his work.

  But bedded down, belly warm and hair still wet, brother beside him and mother floating above as he slipped, serene and dreamy, into sleep, Thad was never happier. And never expects to be that happy again. The world was different then, or else the world’s the same and Thad’s too changed. Either way, there’s no going home.

  Then Michael’s out of the car. The fawn looks up. Michael swings his door shut, and the fawn bounds across the road, over the guardrail and out of sight. Thad runs to the rail, but what looks like a cliff face, from the car, turns out to be a pine-pocked incline, one the little deer has no trouble navigating at top speed. The fawn traverses, leaps, a miracle skier slaloming downhill.

  Thad turns, and his brother is a sight, battered, bandaged, lip swollen as a slug ready for the mallet’s flattening. He joins Michael, and together they roll the deer onto the shoulder of the road.

  In the car, Thad wipes his hands on his pants, but the smell has followed them, iron and forest and animal musk. The smell rides with them the last mile to Highlands, and when Thad pulls up behind Michael’s car, the smell is with them still.

  He’ll never eat venison again.

  Neither will he tell the story. Not to Jake. Not to his parents. Not in a poem or at a dinner among friends. A miracle loosens its grip on the miraculous each time it’s told, mutating from fact to myth, from how it was to how it is remembered, until, in time, one wonders if the miracle arrived at all. The thought of being at a Christmas party, of Jake saying, “Thad, tell them about the deer,” is more than Thad can bear.

  The car in park, he turns to Michael. “Are you going to get your phone?”

  “Diane’s pregnant,” Michael says.

  Thad’s sure he’s heard wrong, then sure he h
asn’t. We’re never having kids, Michael’s always said. So much for that. Thad’s going to be an uncle.

  “That’s wonderful,” Thad says. “Who else knows?”

  “Just Mom.”

  “How far along is Diane?”

  “Ten weeks. Eleven, maybe.”

  “The doctors can’t tell?”

  “We haven’t gone.”

  Thad doesn’t know much about pregnancy, but enough friends have had kids that he knows you don’t go that long without getting checked. There’s too much to account for—nutrition, birthing classes, prenatal vitamins—not to start in right away. You find out you’re knocked up, you call your doctor. You go. You change your life.

  “It’s not planned, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Michael says.

  Beyond the windshield, the sun is down, treetops lit like match heads. Soon, the Blue Ridge Mountains will shimmer like an inland sea.

  “But you’re excited?” Thad asks. “You’ve warmed up to the idea?”

  “We’re keeping it,” Michael says, then exits the car to find his phone.

  Thad checks his voice mail. Same two messages. He tries the first again and, this time, not quite so high, no Teddy talking or river rushing in his ear, he can just make out what his brother is saying. And what he hears turns his skin inside out. Michael’s voice is drunken, slurred, but the words are unmistakable: They had a sister. Her name was June. She’s dead.

  Then Michael is beside him in the car. “Found it!” he says, holding up his phone.

  “Is it true?” Thad says, holding up his phone.

  Michael’s face drops. “Shit. I didn’t—I meant to—”

  “Just tell me. Is it true?” But Michael’s silence is all the confirmation he needs.

  He has so many questions. Who was this sister? How long did she live? How long has Michael known, and why was he told when Thad was not?

  No time for questions, though, because Michael’s cursing, staring at his phone.

  “Something’s wrong,” Michael says.

  “What is it?” Then Thad’s phone is ringing. Not the call he’s been waiting for, not Jake, but their mother.

  “Missed calls,” Michael says.

  “How many?”

  Michael holds up the phone, and there, in black script on a white screen, Thad sees it.