Father loaded the boat with his tackle box, a bucket, a thermos, and the poles. Then he helped me in and started the motor, heading the boat out into the lake. We didn’t go very fast, but the air teased my hair and face. It smelled wet and musky with leftover night. Since Lilith and I had swum to the pontoon, I hadn’t ventured into the lake beyond where my feet could touch the bottom. Now, as we forded the dark water, I thought about how it had lured me down, and for a moment I imagined myself jumping in, clothes and all. I tightened my hands on the metal side of the boat.
Just inside the eastern point, where the land curved to form our bay, was a marshy area thick with grasses and lily pads. Here Father cut the motor. It was as if I’d gone deaf, so sudden and absolute was the quiet. Then, as my ears adjusted, I caught the small sounds of morning: a whippoorwill call, the peeps of frogs in the grass, the first buzz of insects. The mouth of the creek was nearby, and its water trilled over rocks to meet the lake.
Father patted the metal bench beside him. Wary of the pitching boat, I climbed over and sat. He was patient as he explained how it was done. He showed me how to put the worm on the hook, winding its body three times through the barbed tip, leaving enough at each end to wriggle in the water. I stifled my revulsion as I picked up a worm and fed it to the hook, clumsy, Father’s hand guiding me. He turned me sideways so I straddled the bench, and he sat behind me the same way, his chin brushing my hair as he reached his arm around me to drop the line in the water. The red and white bobbin slapped the surface, then floated.
“Now we have to be quiet,” he said, “and wait for the fish to come.” I nodded, relieved. Whenever I’d dreamed about being alone with Father I’d been unable to imagine what we might talk about. But being quiet—that was something I was very good at.
The fishing line lay as light as a spider’s thread on the perfect stillness of the water. Far away I heard a motor start; one of the other fishermen was moving to a new spot. The other boats were past the points, in the deeper water beyond our sight. I was glad we were inside the bay, here by the reeds, where the lake’s surface lay like a glossy membrane over the silty, caramel-colored bottom a mere dozen feet below.
After a while my eyes grew heavy. Father was warm and close, sheltering me from the cool air. We breathed together, in and out, and he stroked my arm, his fingers lightly tracing my skin, as they often traced Emily’s when she sat on his lap. Love was in his touch, but reverence, too, a worshipfulness that felt as though he were drawing a great calmness from my body. Happiness, thick and liquid, flooded even my smallest veins and settled below my stomach. The newly risen sun was warm on my head.
“You’re not one to be noticed, are you, Lucy?” Father said quietly. “You’re like the church mouse that no one sees but who hears the entire liturgy.”
His words shivered in my spine. I didn’t know what to say, or if I should speak at all. Should the church mouse speak when it was noticed? Thankfully the fishing pole bowed in my hands.
“You have a fish,” Father said. He put his hands behind mine on the pole, his arms on either side of me. The bobbin was nowhere to be seen; the tip of the pole was bent almost to the water. With his right hand Father worked the reel, winding it up then spinning it out. “We’re letting the fish get tired,” he said, “so it won’t fight so much when we pull it in.” The reel whizzed and clacked, the line whipping up and bowing again. I held on to the rod, though Father’s were the hands working it, his long, thin fingers nimble and strong. “Good job, Lucy,” he said, “you’re doing great. Now we’ll bring it in.”
He began to wind and wind the reel, stopping when the rod bowed too much, then starting again. I looked over the side, eager to see the fish. When it rose through the water, glimmering and struggling, I gasped, and Father laughed. “It’s a big one,” he said. “A fine, big fish for your first catch.” He stood as he wound in the last of the line, rocking the boat, hauling the brown-speckled fish from the lake. It was as long as my arm, a walleye, and it twisted in the sun, its mouth gaping for air and its scales glinting with gold.
Father took the line just above the fish’s mouth and pulled it into the boat. It flopped on the bottom, its thrashing tail loud against the metal. I lifted my feet, startled. Its eye was as big as a dime, dumb with mindless terror, looking up at the sky, which must have seemed a new and terrible thing. Its mouth opened wide then closed again, and again, and again, and the hook through its jaw and gill dripped bright red blood. Father watched it, his head tilted. Its spasms slowed, then renewed with an even greater frenzy. I covered my face with my hands. “How long until it dies?”
I heard Father pick it up and strike it against something. “It’s dead now.”
And it was. Its jaws were still and its eye was blank. Father yanked the hook out and threw the fish in the bucket, which was filled halfway with water, and it floated there with its white belly up. The water in the bucket turned pink. I felt dizzy. I held on to the side of the still-rocking boat, hoping Father wouldn’t see.
“This is a good spot,” he said. “Let’s cast the line again.”
Over the next half hour we caught three more walleyes, all smaller than the first, all dying for too long on the bottom of the boat until Father picked them up and crushed their heads against the metal bench and threw them in the bucket. I didn’t doze anymore. I watched the bobbin with dread, hoping it would stay on the surface, my heart lurching each time it twitched and sank. When at last we turned for home I sat in the bow, facing away from the pale bodies that swayed in the bucket. I leaned into the wind, feeling the air cool my face as it blew my hair back.
In the kitchen Mother was making breakfast. When she saw me with Father she stopped mixing the pancake batter. “You took her fishing?”
“She caught four fish.” He laid them on the counter.
Mother wrapped them in paper and put them in the refrigerator. “We’ll fry them for supper,” she said, smiling a tight smile at me.
At the table I surprised myself by how hungry I was, reaching for more than my usual share of pancakes, eggs, and biscuits. Father laughed, saying I was a fisherman and deserved a fisherman’s breakfast, and when he smiled at me I felt something shimmer between us like a ribbon. But I also remembered the fish flailing on the bottom of the boat and the pink water in the bucket, and the eggs tasted like dough in my mouth and I had to turn away.
Lilith hadn’t asked where I’d been, and she’d hardly looked at me since I’d returned. She was awake, I think, when I got dressed, and as I pictured her watching through the window at our boat trailing black chevrons across the water I felt a wretched mixture of spite and regret. I hoped she was envious that Father had chosen me, the quiet church mouse, to take fishing. I hoped she’d felt left out, the way I did when she was with Jeannette and Betty. I also wished she’d been in the boat with me, because she would have understood about the fish, and about Father’s hand on my arm, and I didn’t know how to explain any of it to her.
Now she set down her fork with an air of announcement. “Guess what? We’re going to put on a cabaret.”
“A what?” Father said.
“It’s like a talent show,” she explained. “With singing and dancing and magic tricks. We’re going to do it on the last night of summer, for all the families. We’ve been practicing.”
She hadn’t told me about this. Not once, in all the nights I’d stayed up until she got home just so I could listen to her gossip, had she said anything about putting on a show. I’d been keeping my own secret, of course—she didn’t know about my friendship with Matthew. I was afraid she would ruin it; that she’d make fun of how we still played like children or tell me what a little boy Matthew was compared to Charlie and the others. I could think of no reason for her not to tell me about the cabaret other than that she simply hadn’t cared to tell me or, worse, hadn’t even thought about it.
“Who’s we?” Father asked. I could sense Mother stiffen, and I realized Father might not approve of this at all,
and might forbid it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to do. Lilith, though, seemed unconcerned as she began ticking off her fingers. Jeannette and Betty. Ben. Harry and Mickey Jones. Felicity and Sincerity. Opal would play the piano. Opal was the Williamses’ daughter, shy and immature at seventeen, and Father had been fond of her since she was a little girl. Everyone else Lilith named was the teenaged son or daughter of a lake family, and she hadn’t mentioned Charlie.
“What kind of music?” Father said.
“Songs from the movies, and from musicals. Like ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ and ‘Blue Moon.’ I’m going to sing ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop.’”
Shirley Temple’s films were the only live-action movies we were allowed to see when they came to the Williamsburg theater. I hadn’t heard of any of the other songs. Father nodded. “When I was a boy, we put on a puppet show one summer,” he said, his face soft with nostalgia. Mother turned back to the dishes.
After breakfast I didn’t linger at the house. I wanted, more than anything, to be in the deep forest with Matthew, even though it was Saturday and we didn’t play together on the weekends. So I sat on the fallen log by the shed where we always met. I hoped he’d see me and come down. If he didn’t, I told myself, I’d go to the Hundred Tree alone.
Abe was behind the lodge, tinkering with his motorcycle, a black, catlike machine he kept in fine condition and that, when he rode it up the lane, never failed to bring the younger boys running. My log was thirty feet from him, but he had his back turned, so he didn’t see me. The grass was high here, and tickled my knees. A cloud of gnats swam around my head, and I swatted them away. I wouldn’t wait long.
I heard the familiar squeak of the hinges on our back door and, to my surprise, Lilith came out. I’d assumed she’d gone to join her friends for what I now knew was cabaret practice. She looked around and called my name. I didn’t want to talk to her; my thoughts were too muddled with the fishing and the cabaret she hadn’t invited me to join, so I didn’t answer, and she didn’t see me sitting low on the log. But she did see Abe. She walked toward him through the Williamses’ and the Joneses’ backyards. When she got about ten feet away, she stopped. She put her hands on her hips. “I like your motorcycle.”
Abe looked at her, then lowered his eyes. “Thanks.”
“Would you take me for a ride on it sometime?” Lilith’s mouth curled up on one side in that way I’d come to recognize. She arched her back slightly, pressing the cones of her breasts against her yellow blouse. Abe stared at them. He wiped his greasy hands on his pants. My heart beat an alarm inside my ribs: what was this?
“I can take you now, if you want,” he said.
Without thinking, I stood up. At the same moment Matthew came around the side of the lodge. He stopped when he saw Lilith and Abe, and he frowned. I remembered how he’d fumbled with the change that first day at the lodge, and I felt a stab of jealousy. “Abe, you’re wanted inside,” Matthew said.
Abe jammed his hands in his pockets and walked toward him. As Matthew turned to go, he saw me. He looked at Abe, then at me again, and shook his head. He couldn’t come with me, but he wanted to, and that was enough.
Lilith had seen me, too, and once the brothers were gone she came over. She smoothed her skirt under her and sat on the log. I sat beside her, and we were silent for a while. It was not a comfortable silence. Before this summer, our silences had been of the best sort, thoughtful and communicative. I’d often thought, during them, that we were thinking the same things. I didn’t think that now. Her body hummed with a tension I couldn’t translate.
I said, “Why didn’t you tell me about the show?”
She relaxed. I thought I’d guessed right, and she was relieved I’d brought it up. “I didn’t want you to feel left out.”
I turned this over for a bit. “Why would I feel left out?”
She sighed. “Oh, Lucy, you would never want to be in a cabaret. You could never be on a stage, having people look at you.”
The sun was hot on my knees. I pulled my skirt down to cover them. She was right, of course. I’d never have the nerve to be in a cabaret. That was for her, whom no one could fail to notice, even if she were sitting quietly in a corner. Still, she’d always made me feel that with her by my side I could be more than what my nature would have me be; do more than I would have dared on my own. I would have expected her to encourage me to be in it—just a small part, off to the side, singing in the backup chorus. I know, now, that she had her reasons for excluding me. But at the time I thought it was because she’d never really believed I could leave anything but the faintest of footprints, no matter how much she tried to help me. I wanted Matthew to come back.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. She put one arm around me and rested her head against mine. I sat, feeling the weight of her, until she got up to go. This time, she did head for the Lloyds’.
I sat there for a while longer, despite the droning insects. Then I went to the house. Emily and Mother were in the kitchen. “Emily, do you want to come and play?” I said. Emily gave a small clap, and a quick look at Mother. Mother didn’t want to give her up; I could see it. “Just for a little while,” I added, and she relented, though I could feel her watching us as we walked out. Emily skipped with delight.
“Let’s play in the woods,” I said, because I was the big sister, and I decided the game.
Justine
Justine sat on Melanie’s bed, watching her sleep. Melanie lay on her side with her knees pulled up to her stomach, her eyelashes dark, perfect crescents. She looked achingly young. Justine hadn’t said anything to her about the meeting with Mrs. Sorensen the day before—about the bullying or the drawings. Especially not the drawings. Although she was still confident they weren’t of Patrick, their urgent lines pulsed with an anguish that worried and confused her. She didn’t know what to say to Melanie about them. But she did think she knew what to do.
She put her hand on Melanie’s leg. Melanie opened her eyes and her face fell into its familiar dour lines. She looked exhausted despite the night’s rest.
“It’s time for school,” Justine said, “but you don’t have to go.”
Melanie studied her suspiciously. “Why?”
“There’s only four days until the break, and we’ll be gone before school starts up again. So you might as well stay home. If you want.”
Melanie continued to frown. Angela raised herself on one elbow, the quilt falling around her pink nightgown. With her mussed curls she looked like a child in an old-fashioned calendar. “I don’t want to stay home,” she said.
“I thought you didn’t like that school, either.”
Angela glanced at Melanie. “I don’t. But we’re having a Christmas party today.”
“We’ll have just as much fun here, I promise. We’ll go to the mall. Hang out with Grandma.” Bake Christmas cookies, she almost added, then remembered the broken oven.
“But I want to go to the party. And I want to sing in the chorus concert. It’s tomorrow night.”
“I didn’t know you were in the chorus.”
“Everybody’s in the chorus,” Melanie said. “They make you.”
Justine had seen the sign outside the school advertising the concert but hadn’t thought anything about it. If Angela hadn’t brought it up, they would have missed it. Which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. She’d never driven the forest road at night. “Do you really want to sing in it?” she asked. Angela nodded. Justine turned to Melanie. “But you don’t, do you?”
Melanie’s eyebrows drew down in a vee. Justine felt a wave of gobsmacked delight: Melanie liked the chorus! Melanie scowled in confusion at her mother’s grin, which made Justine laugh. It couldn’t be that hard to drive the road in the dark.
“Fine. I’ll take you to school, Angela. Melanie can stay home. And we’ll all go to the concert tomorrow. After that, we’ll all stay home. Sound good?” Both girls nodded, and Justine smiled again. It wasn’t often she got things right wit
h her daughters.
When she returned from driving Angela, Melanie was helping Matthew shovel the walk to the lodge’s front porch. Justine slowed as she drove by them. She couldn’t imagine what had prompted Melanie to do that, and she debated telling her to come inside. They hadn’t had much to do with the Millers since the ice skating incident, which was fine with her. She still found them both unsettling.
Then she told herself: stop it. He plows that road for you even though he drives his truck across the lake. Helping him with his walk was the least they could do. Like when Mrs. Mendenhall went to see her daughter and they’d gotten her mail and watered her plants. That was how it worked, being someone’s neighbor. And he was their neighbor, even if only for a little while longer.
In the kitchen Maurie was going over her lists of things to keep and things to sell. Her papers were all over the table and her breakfast dishes sat unwashed on the counter. It had been like this since she’d arrived, and would be like this as long as she stayed. The only housecleaning done in any of their apartments had been done by Justine.
“How long has Melanie been outside?” Justine asked her.
Maurie peered over the top of her red cheaters. “I didn’t know she was.”
Justine sighed and turned to the dishes in the sink. After she’d washed them she poured herself a cup of coffee and went to the living room, where she could keep an eye on the shovelers through the window. Matthew worked with efficient deliberation, heaving great mountains with each slow stroke. Melanie moved more quickly but managed only a snowball’s worth at a time, her shovel hitting the mound askance or slamming into the ice beneath.
It was warm in the living room. Cozy, even. In fact, it was cozy in the entire house, now that Justine had decided she didn’t need to ration the propane anymore. Maurie’s brown bags were still scattered about, and she reminded herself to go through them, to see if she wanted anything. She noticed the candlesticks were back on the table beneath the portrait of Emily. The original candles were gone—Maurie must have thrown them away—and in their place were the candle stubs Justine had pulled from the drawer for Thanksgiving. She glanced toward the kitchen. She hadn’t thought Maurie cared about Emily, but apparently she’d held a little ceremony of her own. That was interesting. She looked at the portrait again. The little girl stared back at her with those inhabited eyes, and Justine turned back to the shovelers.
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