Lake Life

by David James Poissant

  Jake joins him at the guardrail. Below, trees sprout between boulders, weeds between stones. The guardrail’s only waist-high. How easy it would be, for anyone who wanted to scramble over it, to take one step, then a second.

  At a distance, a clump of mistletoe strangles the limbs of a small tree grown sideways from the cliff. The parasite’s leaves are dewed in moonlight, fruit a blossoming of pink-white pearls.

  “Honey, what are we doing?” Jake’s voice is tender, feathered with what’s gone unspoken for too long.

  Thad follows the guardrail to a cycloptic pool of light spilled from one worn and leaning light pole, and Jake follows him.

  “I noticed you deleted all my porn,” Jake says. “You have trouble with that too, now? Not just men, but movies?”

  A truck crosses the bridge, brights on.

  “I can’t give you what you want,” Jake says. “But you knew that going in.” He bends and plucks a rock from a patch of pavement crumbling into cliff. “You act like I owe you something, but I don’t. I’m not wrong for wanting what I want.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “And I’m not a bad person.”

  “You’re not a bad person.”

  “Because sometimes you make me feel like a bad person.”

  Thad grips the guardrail. It’s sharp, and he tightens his grip. “I’ve never said—”

  “You don’t have to say it. It’s in every look you’ve ever given me. You judge me for the sex I have, for how often I have it, and with whom. I can’t be with someone who owns my body. Heart, fine. Soul, sure, if such a thing exists. But not my body.”

  Thad lets go of the rail. Pink indentions mark his palms.

  “Sex with other people makes me uncomfortable, yes,” Thad says. “It always has. I knew the first time we tried it that this arrangement’s not for me. I should have said so. But I shouldn’t have had to. You knew I was uncomfortable. You knew and didn’t care. You asked me to change, and I tried. I’m trying. But I’m not an open kind of guy. I’m sorry if that makes me some kind of anomaly in your eyes, but I want monogamy.”

  “And that’s the one thing I can’t give you.” Jake draws back his fist and launches the rock in his hand toward the mistletoe. The rock flies past the plant, and Jake bends to select another crumbling pavement chunk.

  “But it’s not just other people,” Thad says. “You cheated on me. Always. Only. If. Always together. Only if we’re comfortable. Never if it’s an ex. Those were the rules. Those were your rules, and you broke them. You humiliated yourself, and you humiliated me.”

  Thad bends and finds a rock of his own. He pitches, hard, and misses by a lot.

  “It was just sex,” Jake says.

  “It wasn’t. You were sizing me up. Your past and present, side by side. Respect me enough to admit at least that much.”

  Jake chucks his rock, and the mistletoe explodes, berries raining pearlescent onto the rocks below.

  Thad’s handling this badly. Or else he’s being honest for the first time in two years. He wants Jake back, the way it was between them that first month, before this talk of openness began. He wants the boy in the black velvet jacket back.

  A few more berries cling to the mistletoe. Thad throws more rocks, but his aim is off. He isn’t even close. He picks up one last rock. If this one misses the mark, then he’ll give up.

  “I can’t give you what you want,” Jake says, “but I can give you some assurance I’m not going anywhere. Let me buy the house.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what this weekend’s all about, right? You’re sad. Michael’s pissed. You want the house. The house would cost me, what, four or five paintings? Let me buy it for you and Michael. Or just for you. It won’t even be in my name.”

  “Jake,” Thad says.

  “Everybody wins. Your parents get the money. You keep the house. I stick around.”

  “Jake, you can’t just buy my love.”

  “Then marry me.”

  Thad’s rock drops. Cicada chant and frog chirp coalesce into a syncopated roar.

  “Do you even want to be married?” Thad asks.

  “You want assurance. I want to assure you. Marry me.”

  “That’s not fair,” Thad says. “You’re still making the rules. You’re still making the money. I’d still have to sleep with other guys, or let you sleep with them. You aren’t offering me a marriage, Jake. You’re offering to make me a kept man.”

  He won’t share Jake, not now, and certainly not in marriage. Call him old-fashioned. Call him uncompromising. Call him whatever name Jake wants. He cannot budge on this. It hurts too much.

  “Are you on your meds?” Jake asks.

  “This has nothing to do with my meds.”

  “But you’re on them?”

  “I’m always on my meds. But meds aren’t magic. They make the bad days bearable. When they don’t, pot makes them tolerable. But neither makes the pain evaporate.”

  Jake drops to the pavement, his back to the guardrail. “I’m trapped. You’ve trapped me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If I stay,” Jake says, “it’s on your terms. If I leave, you kill yourself.”

  Then Thad is on his knees beside the man he loves. “I’m not going to kill myself.”

  “I walk away right now, you’re telling me you won’t consider it?”

  “I’m always considering it,” Thad says. He knows how sad that sounds, but he doesn’t want to lie. No more lying between them anymore. “I’m sick. I always will be. That’s what you get with me. That’s the deal. I won’t apologize for how I’m wired.”

  “I’m not asking for an apology,” Jake says.

  “When I get back”—when we get back, he wants to say—he hopes it’s we—“I’ll see Steve, then I’ll see my doctor, and we’ll balance out my meds or try new ones. An adjustment’s overdue. But that’s not a good reason to stay with me if you want out. I give you my word, this won’t be the thing that ends me. I promise. I love you. I promise you’re not trapped.”

  Jake’s head is in his hands. He’s so small. Without his coat or product in his hair, he has no armor on at all. His hands worry the hem of his shirt, and Thad moves from Jake’s side to face him, kneeling on the ground.

  “You talk about the way you’re wired,” Jake says, “but what about the way I’m wired?”

  “I’m not asking you to change. I’m just saying I no longer will.”

  “But if I want to stay with you, I have to change.”

  “If you want to stay with me, you have to choose.”

  Whatever happens, Thad must stay calm. He doesn’t want to provoke another panic attack, but they must get through this. This is the talk they should have had two years ago.

  “I’m sorry about Marco,” Jake says. “I fucked up. No more surprises. No more exes. From now on, we agree to everybody in advance.”

  “Honey,” Thad says. “You have to choose.”

  “I can’t be with someone who needs that much of me.”

  “And I can’t be with someone for whom I’m not enough.”

  Jake’s head drops, and they sit that way a while, Thad’s hands fitted to Jake’s knees. When Jake’s face lifts, at last, his bangs hang but don’t quite hide his eyes. He smiles, and he’s the most beautiful man Thad’s ever seen.

  “We’ve done it my way for two years,” Jake says. “I guess it’s only fair we give your way a try.”

  Gratefulness isn’t the word for what Thad feels. This feeling transcends that. He’s been afraid to hope for even this. In their lives together, there hasn’t been much sacrifice on Jake’s part. That Jake’s capable of putting Thad’s needs, for once, before his own, well, it isn’t everything, but a try is more than Thad had a minute ago.

  Thad kisses Jake’s cheek, his neck.

  “It won’t be perfect,” Jake says. “I’m warning you, I’m going to mess up. But if you’re willing to be patient, I’m willing to try.”
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  And there’s nothing more to say, nothing left but for Thad to open his arms and embrace the man he loves.

  39.

  Michael joins Thad and his parents at the kitchen table while, outside, Diane joins Jake on the dock. It’s late, near midnight, but no one’s tired, no one’s ready for bed.

  “I just thought the four of us should talk,” Michael’s mother says. “First, though,” she says to Thad, “I have something for you.”

  She disappears into her bedroom, then returns dragging a long white box. She settles the box beside Thad’s chair, and Thad lifts the lid. Michael stands to see. Hundreds of comic books in plastic sleeves fill the box like files shining in a filing cabinet drawer. Thad pulls one out. The comic is bagged, and Thad peels the tape from the bag and removes the comic book. He’s careful with it, turning each page slowly, cradling the comic. Michael sits.

  “I found them,” his mother says. “They were in the garage.”

  “I checked the garage,” Thad says.

  “They were at the back.”

  “I checked the back.”

  Their eyes meet, and Michael senses whole conversations freighted in a glance, a sigh. These are not Thad’s comic books, Thad knows that these are not his comic books, his mother is sorry for throwing out his comic books, and Thad forgives her. For her to go to this much trouble, to gather these, means more than if she’d kept them all along. All of this goes unsaid—no harm done, no need to speak the truth. Better to pretend, make peace, move on. Better to live and die by the open secrets every family keeps.

  Michael leaves the table. Too much to hope he can quit drinking in a day, but, say he drinks something else, he might distract himself from alcohol tonight. In the kitchen, he opens a cupboard and pulls down a mug and the instant decaf coffee only his mother drinks. He fills the kettle, stands beside the stove, and soon the kettle’s whistling.

  He offers decaf to the others, his mother accepts, and he retrieves a second mug. He gives the instant jar a shake, and the glass rattles with dehydrated coffee crystals. He’s not sure how much goes in each mug. He pours the water, spoons some coffee in, and rejoins his family at the table.

  He sips, and the coffee is too strong.

  All night he’s thought about what Diane said at the hospital. He doesn’t have to tell his parents, but the more he considers it, the more he wants them to know. Hard enough keeping the pregnancy to himself. He doesn’t like secrets, and he doesn’t have to shoulder this one alone.

  “Mom, Dad,” he says. “I fucked up.”

  He gives them the history of his drinking and sees that his mother is shocked. His father nods at everything he says, and Michael wonders whether he’s suspected all along.

  When he finishes, he’s made his mother cry.

  He goes to the kitchen and returns with the sugar bowl, a pair of spoons, and a gallon jug of milk. Together, he and his mother make their coffees drinkable.

  “If you need to go to one of those drying-out facilities,” his father says, “we’ll pay.”

  “If it comes to it, I might just take you up on that,” Michael says.

  The milk jug sweats on the table, and their spoons rest beside it.

  “Do you think you can stop drinking before the babies come?” his mother asks.

  It’s a fair question. Quitting will be difficult, and Michael knows himself well enough to know he’s never been particularly good at difficult things. But that’s no reason not to try.

  Still, there’s so much left to figure out. How will they pay for two babies and a house that, even before the expense of children, they can’t afford?

  They could scorch the earth: Declare bankruptcy. Sacrifice the house, the cars. Forfeit their phones and all their fancy tech. They could learn to be happy with less—fewer channels on TV, fewer distractions, fewer bills—could learn to live their lives within their means. It isn’t the American way, but fuck the American way.

  Or Michael could find better work, they could stand firm, pay down their debt. Not every problem is one that requires running from.

  But there is time. This problem won’t be solved tonight. And, if the actuary tables are to be believed, he hasn’t even reached his halfway point. In seven years, he could be debt-free. In less than seven months, he could be sober for his children’s birth.

  Children.

  He hates selling shoes, but he could sell shoes for them. And for Diane. He could learn to put a family’s needs before his own. He likes imagining he could be that man.

  “The old bedroom in Ithaca is yours if you need it,” his mother says. “We’ll be there while I finish my last year at the lab. Then, in Florida—”

  “We can’t do that,” Michael says.

  “Of course you can. There’s no shame in it. Pat and Alan, down the street, their daughter got laid off, she moved back in. It’s not your fault. It’s this damn economy.”

  She’s in denial, his mother. “Mom, this one’s not on the economy. It’s me.”

  “A lot of kids your age—”

  “I’m thirty-three.”

  “Your generation—”

  “Mom.” His mother sips her coffee. She won’t look at him. “It’s okay. You can say it. I’m a fuckup.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It’s true. Your sons are fuckups.”

  He looks to his brother, and what his brother does next breaks his heart in ten places. Thad pulls a lighter from his pocket, then a bag of pot. Next come rolling papers, and he spreads the contraband across the kitchen table.

  “He’s right, Mom,” Thad says. “I’m a pothead. Michael’s a drunk. But it’s not just that. We make bad choices. We had free rides at Cornell—Cornell—and we fucked those up. You gave us every opportunity, you and Dad, and we squandered almost every one.”

  Michael finishes his decaf in a gulp. The coffee hasn’t made him want the moonshine in the freezer any less.

  “Face it, Mom,” he says, “your sons suck.”

  “Please don’t say that,” his mother says. “That hurts.”

  “No,” Thad says. “That’s our point. You were a great mom. You were pretty much the perfect mom. You’re off the hook. How we turned out, that’s on us.”

  “I know I’m a disappointment to you,” Michael says, and it’s as though his mother can’t reach him fast enough. She grabs his face, a cheek in each hand. She holds on to him hard, gives him no choice but to look her in the eye.

  “You are not a disappointment,” she says. “You have never been a disappointment to your father or to me.”

  He wants her to let go of his face. She’s hurting him, and maybe she means to. Maybe she means to hurt him just a bit.

  “You are loved,” she says.

  “Mom, I know.”

  “No,” she says. “You don’t know. You won’t ever know. And that’s okay. It’s not your job to know. It’s your job to be loved.”

  She lets go of his face, then gives the same treatment to Thad. Their father looks away. Too much tenderness here. Too much emotion for one night.

  Michael tips his head back, lets it rest against the wall.

  Above him, Jake’s painting looms huge. He’s never liked it: the girl, the breast, the pomegranate half. It strikes him as pretentious, self-serious, and all wrong for the room. The colors clash, as though applied to be intentionally at odds with every piece of furniture in the house. But the man who made this makes his brother happy, and that will have to be enough.

  Through a window and past the screened porch, Michael can see down the hill to where his wife and Jake stand before another painting on the dock, one they made together this afternoon. He didn’t get the full story. There were more exciting things to talk about on the ride home: twins, parenthood, and what comes next. But he knows this painting made Diane happy. He needs to remember that. That, for her, art is more than a hobby or a job. Art is something she loves. Perhaps, for her, he could learn to love it too.

  He wants to be a bet
ter husband, starting now.

  Still, one thing needs saying, and he says it: “I told Thad.”

  “Son, why?” his father says before catching himself. “Wait, told him what?”

  No, Michael didn’t tell Thad about their dad’s affair. He wouldn’t do that. He wishes his father hadn’t told him. That’s no one’s business but his parents’.

  “I told him about our sister,” Michael says.

  His parents turn, ready to comfort Thad, but Thad’s composed. If he’s upset that he wasn’t told, he doesn’t show it. He slides the marijuana and paraphernalia from the table back into his pockets and folds his arms over his chest.

  “Her name was June,” his mother says. “She’d have been thirty-five next week. She was a month old when she died.”

  “What happened?” Thad asks.

  “That’s the hard part. We’ll never know. It could have been asphyxiation. It could have been SIDS. The coroner wrote ‘death by unknown cause.’ With you and your brother, we kept the bassinet beside our bed. Those first months, I swear I woke every hour to check your breath.”

  She pours more milk into her coffee, stirs it, sips.

  “We should have told you,” she says. “You should have known before Diane. It’s just, that boy, and with June’s birthday coming up, it slipped out.”

  “It’s okay,” Thad says.

  “We wanted to tell you,” his father says.

  His mother finishes her coffee and carries the mugs and spoons to the sink. She puts the milk and the sugar bowl away.

  “Is there a picture?” Thad says, and Michael can’t believe he never thought to ask. He wants to see her, and, at the same time, he’s not ready to meet this girl he’ll never know.

  His mother returns to the table. Her purse is on the floor, and she pulls it to her lap. From her purse, she pulls a wallet, from the wallet a sleeve of photographs. Here, behind plastic windows yellowed by time, are the Starlings: father, mother, sons. From between the pictures of her sons, his mother extracts a wallet-sized photograph of June.