It wasn’t her fault. Everyone said so. Liz and Shannon both thought he was being a jerk. She thought of him at camp, teaching little kids how to do archery. The way they left it, Sarah was sure he would feel justified meeting someone new. She could see her, some blonde with a ponytail and field-hockey legs. Tiffany, her name would be, or Ashley. Something dumb.
Her mother lit a cigarette and opened the window a crack, switched the radio on, veering across the dotted line as she tried to find a station, then correcting. She finally settled on dinosaur rock, keeping it low. She tapped the wheel along with the song, her ashes falling on the carpet. The next rest area was in fifty-three miles. Sarah leaned back in her seat, hoping to go to sleep herself.
The station played too many commercials. Voices caught her short of falling, and she tried to relax her eyes, forget their muscles, see nothing. Her father listened to jazz on trips, long honking solos floating them cross-country. He taught them the names of the greats so they could guess who was playing. John Coltrane, Charlie Parker. There was even one guy who played the flute like her, she could never remember his name. She’d brought hers to practice this week, and to play for Grandma and Aunt Arlene. Next year in school Justin was going to take tenor saxophone so the two of them could play duets. Her father would come and listen to them, maybe tape them so he could listen to them when he was driving to work, or to Grammy’s place in the U.P., the long haul through the pines. Thelonious Monk made him smile and play the dashboard like a piano.
He was probably in his apartment right now, watching TV. The one time he’d had her and Justin over for dinner they watched Austin Powers. It wasn’t as funny as it should have been, probably because the place was strange—the plates she’d never seen, the glasses with the flowers on them, the green couch. But Justin laughed. “Oh, behave!” he said all the next week, and every time she thought of the cramped bathroom, the grocery bag her father was using for a trash can beneath the sink. There was a clump of blond hair in it, and the strip from a maxipad. She hadn’t told anyone, as if he had asked her to keep his secret. It made her feel strange and powerful, but just privately, like she was in her own little world away from everybody, a place no one could go.
Maybe he was asleep.
Maybe they’d gone out to a movie or to a nice restaurant, dressed up, and for a minute Sarah saw the blonde woman as beautiful and tall, her hair done like someone on TV, and she wanted to be with them instead of here, in the van smelling like old Taco Bell. “This is my daughter Sarah,” her father would say, and the woman would like her because she knew how much Sarah meant to her father. The three of them would be a new, glamorous family. Justin would be stuck with their mother. He’d visit them in the summer for a week and beg to stay.
He was asleep now, his head bent forward on his neck. Sarah wedged Tigger under his chin but it didn’t help. She took the sleeping bag between them and pushed it against the far door, then pulled his knees sideways towards her so he leaned back. He smacked his lips and mumbled something, that was all.
“Thank you,” her mother said, “that was nice,” as if her being nice to him was something unusual.
“You’ve been pretty quiet,” her mother said.
This was how it started. She would want to talk about Mark, and next year.
“I’m tired of being in the car.”
“I thought you might be missing Daddy.”
It was a tricky question, one her mother had been asking her all summer. Her usual answer was “a little,” but that wouldn’t work here.
“I do,” her mother said, encouraging her. “I’m not used to driving the whole way by myself.”
Sarah didn’t know what to say. It’s not your fault. That’s what her mother wanted.
“It’s worse because this is when he’s with us the most, in the summer,” her mother tried. “I think when school starts it’ll be easier.”
She could agree to this and then pretend to go to sleep, it would be so easy. But all she could say was “Maybe.” Even that was more than she’d wanted to say. She hated when her mother made her give away her feelings. It felt like they weren’t hers anymore, or fake, just what her mother needed.
“I’m going to need your help even more then, with Justin and the house. Will you do that for me?”
This she could promise honestly.
“Thank you,” her mother said, way too grateful, like Sarah had done her the biggest favor. “I know I can count on you.”
Inside Sarah’s head, a buzzer went off, like on one of those game shows. Wrong, she thought, but just sat there in the dark—as if no one could see her ugly, secret little heart.
4
“I’m afraid if I sit here any longer I’ll fall asleep,” Emily said. “I hope no one minds.”
Why did she have to be so dramatic? Lise thought. Of course no one minded.
“You’re sure?” Emily asked.
“No, go ahead,” said Ken. “I’ll wait up for her.”
Lise expected this, but to hear him say it so plainly, in front of everyone—it was not that he’d chosen Meg over her, or that she was jealous. It was the fact that he hadn’t bothered to discuss it with her, left it unsaid and therefore understood between them. Of course he would want to talk with Meg alone, especially now. And yet she suddenly wanted to stay up with them.
It was greedy, wanting to be part of everything he did, everything that meant anything to him. In the same way she wasn’t really jealous of his work, she just wanted to be included. It was exactly what her parents warned against, the curse of the only child. She would hear it all from Ken anyway, tomorrow morning in bed, and that conversation would be richer, being theirs.
Besides, she was tired from the drive, and she wanted to read her book. It had been a long day. She felt like she was still in the car, still moving. She wished she hadn’t had that piece of pie. The news was on in ten minutes, but she really didn’t care. She was on vacation. Let the rest of the world go on without her.
“I’m going to water Rufus before I hit the hay,” Arlene said, taking a cigarette and her lighter from the mantel. She was good about not smoking inside, she just disappeared from time to time. “Unless either of you want to do it.”
“That’s all right,” Ken said.
“Come on, lazybones,” Arlene called, and Rufus lifted himself in stages, his front half first, his back end dragging, stiff-legged. She held the door for him, and the screen, then gently closed it behind her. The lawn was dark, and Lise watched as Arlene put her hands out to her sides, afraid of tripping over the croquet wickets. The porch light followed her only so far. The night swallowed all but her ankles and tennis shoes, and then there was just the glow of her cigarette, headed for the dock.
Lise turned from the window back to the bright room. For the first time today, she and Ken were completely alone, but he was reading the paper and didn’t seem to notice. With his family around, he was on vacation from her. Maybe it would be good, a break for both of them.
“I think I’m going to head up,” she said, closing her book. She wished, ridiculously, in this pause, that he would stop her, take her hand and pull her down to the couch. He was reading opinions, letters to the editor. She turned and made for the stair door.
“I’ll be up as soon as they get here. Are there pillows for Sarah and Justin?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for putting the beds together.”
“You and Sam did ours,” she said, her hand on the knob, because it was like him, overpraising her, as if she needed encouragement. She wanted to tell him not to stay up too late but worried that he’d misread her. Instead, she asked what their plans were for tomorrow.
“The kids’ll probably want to go out on the boat. Is there anything special you want to do?”
“I was thinking the flea market. We won’t be able to next weekend.”
“Good idea.”
“As long as you don’t bring your camera,” she said, then could see he thought sh
e was serious. “I’m just kidding, I don’t care if you bring it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Well, you can if you want. You shouldn’t listen to me.”
He completely ignored this, went off into logistics, how many life jackets they had, and that was what drove her mad, how he chose not to acknowledge her apologies. And she wanted romance? He probably hadn’t thought of it at all, with Arlene on the dock and the kids in the same room with them, but there was a lake, a moon, the lawn. Once they’d made love on the tennis courts, the asphalt warm on her back, but that was years ago, before Sam. She couldn’t remember the last time they did it outside.
It didn’t matter. She had her book.
“So after the flea market we come back and have lunch and then do the boat. I think that’s pretty ambitious for our first day.”
“Your mom has those chickens for dinner up at the Lighthouse.”
“Whoever picks them up should get another milk.”
“She’s already got a list on the fridge.” It was a private joke, how rigid Emily relied on lists, and so a good note to end on, the bond reestablished between them. So often marriage felt like work, and then with no warning they were back in that easy familiarity, the intimacy of things long agreed upon.
“I hope they’re okay,” Ken said.
“I’m sure they are. She’s probably just being Meg.”
“Probably.” He looked thoughtful. He still had the paper open, and she could see he wanted to get back to it.
“I’m going to read for a little.” She waved her book.
“Okay,” he said, and let her go.
She opened the door and stepped up into the musty dark of the boxed-in stairs. She tried to be quiet climbing them, a hand on the wall. It was warmer with every step, even with the fan bombing away. They’d left the bathroom light on, and Sam and Ella were sprawled out on the floor in its dim reflection, Sam with his pillow half underneath him, his nightshirt twisted and his belly poking out, Ella with her mouth open and her knees making a tent of her sleeping bag. Sometimes when she watched them sleeping they seemed darling and full of promise, but more often she thought them graceless and ungainly (Sam’s hair an explosion, Ella’s fingers clenched), and felt all the more tender toward them, as if they needed protection from her own judgments. Here was a picture for Ken, flawed and breathing, not those cold arrangements his professor called art.
She didn’t dare say that to him, not the way he’d been lately. Seeing him so desperate worried her. He’d taken what he loved and turned it into work. She believed in him, he knew that, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted everyone to say he was wonderful, and that, she thought, would probably never happen.
She took her book into the bathroom with her, laying it on the red crescent mat in front of the toilet, then sat there distracted, scratching at her lifeline, examining the withered grain of her thumb, thinking of the dishes she’d washed, phones answered, lovers touched, her entire life there in her skin. Like anyone. The world turned cosmic when you’d gone too long without sleep. She rubbed her eyes, ground her eyebrows under her fingertips. What was he going to do—what were they going to do? The book lay there on the mat between her feet, but suddenly she didn’t care about Harry Potter; she was only reading it to see what the kids found in it. Escape. She could use some right now.
The water smelled, a fact she conveniently forgot from year to year. For cooking they used bottled water, long plastic jugs they kept on the counter by the microwave, but for brushing her teeth she was stuck with the tap. The basin was stained. Fartwater, Sam called it, and she swished and spat fast, then covered the taste with a slug of Listerine.
“Uck,” she said, and found herself in the mirror. On her chin was the beginning of an Emily-induced zit.
“Isn’t that nice.”
She took her book from the windowsill and navigated the dim room to the head of their bed, then backtracked and found Ella’s flashlight from camp, turned it on and stuck it beneath her pillow. She felt grubby after the car but the shower smelled and she’d never get her hair dry. She dumped her shorts and top on the pile by the dresser and pulled on a T-shirt, then sat on the bed and swung her legs under the humid sheets. She settled in, the flashlight nestled in her shoulder, throwing its bull’s-eye against the page and beyond, the ceiling alive with an eclipse.
She was sure she’d read this sentence before. Harry was taking the train from platform nine and three-quarters to Hogwarts, then meeting the headmaster Dumbledore for the first time, the picture on his business card disappearing when Harry turned it over. No wonder the kids loved this stuff, there was always another marvelous thing popping up. By the end of the section she was deep in that magical world. She actually had to stop herself from going on to the next chapter. She patted her stomach for her bookmark and set the book reverently on the cedar chest, then thumbed off the flashlight.
At the far end of the room, the fan barreled on. Ella stirred and slurped—her braces made her—and Lise wondered what time it was, and if Meg was okay. Their windows overlooked the garage, stark as film noir in the floodlight above the kitchen door, the barbecue grill sitting beneath the tree. There was no wind, just the lake slapping faintly. She would hear if Meg’s van pulled up, the gust of the engine finishing, the croak of the emergency brake.
The pillow smelled of mold, and she wished they’d brought their own. Across from her, the other bed was empty. Meg would be fine, she thought, but couldn’t stop imagining the red-and-blue lights of police cruisers blocking the highway, flares throwing a ruby glow over the crash scene, glass scratching under the firemen’s boots.
Ken’s father’s death was expected, had only deepened his isolation from them, lost further in his work. Meg’s death would be different, a chance for Lise to intervene. She would comfort him, bring him back to the world. Or he might grow even more remote, curled around his disappointment. She couldn’t live with that kind of sadness, that kind of man. His distance already took so much energy to bridge. She could feel it wearing away her spirit, like water cutting into rock.
On the way out they’d passed an auto graveyard, the cars laid out in rows. Ken saw it first (it would be like a playground for him, all those stilled objects, and she almost told him to stop). The damage to some of the cars astonished her. Surely no one could have survived that collision, or that one there, the roof chopped off. Lise was surprised to see a whole row of minivans—sides caved in, windowless, noses smashed flat—each speaking of some family’s terror.
“Actually,” Ken had said, “I’m surprised there aren’t more.”
She expected that from him now, the morose, heartless comment. Logical, flat, at the core a pitiless truth he pretended to accept. No, the sad thing, she thought, was how quickly she agreed with him.
5
Arlene swiped at the bench with her hand, only to find it dry. The air fooled her, cool and filled with water. How bright it was in the dark. Overhead, the moon let in light like an eye, its spectral outline to one side. The stars winked, the field deepening the longer she looked up, but it was hard on her neck. She exhaled, found Rufus with her ankle, inhaled and tapped the ash behind her into the water.
She and Henry used to take the canoe out on nights like this, dipping the paddles in silently, a war party sneaking up on the enemy. When they were far enough from shore so the light from the cottage was just a dot, they stopped and let it drift, the only sound their breathing, the paddles dripping, fish breaking the surface. Henry took out the Pall Malls he’d filched from Uncle Perry’s jacket and, shielding the kitchen match from shore, they lit up and lay back, keeping the brilliant end below the gunwale, taking the smoke in and breathing it out languorously, the way people did in the movies. One each, and even that was a risk. The butts sputtered when they flipped them overboard. If they timed it right, they would be sitting there in absolute black when the clock tower up at the Institute struck twelve, the solemn tolling of the bell clear and sharp as
the moon, seeming to go on far too long and then echoing away to nothing in the hills, the lake still again.
For a while they didn’t speak, and then Henry said, “That was a good one.”
“It was a great one.”
Their voices were tiny in the dark and made everything seem more important. They talked about the war, and what branch Henry should enlist in, and how she would become a nurse and follow him to the South Pacific. They talked about what they were going to do now that the war was over, what college to go to and what kind of jobs they wanted. They talked about Emily, and whether Henry should get married before he finished his degree. But always there was the canoe and the moon and the bell tower chiming midnight.
“I think,” Henry said, “that this is my favorite place in the whole world.”
“Me too.”
If only they could stay here, never get older. But it was already too late.
“Will you come out here with her?” she asked one night, and she knew what it sounded like, but he didn’t laugh.
“No, this is just for us.” And the way he said it, she didn’t have to make him promise.
They’d been out a few times after that, though she knew Emily resented it. Their talks were different, as if she were in the canoe between them.
Tonight Arlene had come out to hear the bells. The canoe was long gone, and their father’s mahogany Chris-Craft (the Lady Belle, after their mother), and the old dock, but she was sure that at some point back then her body had occupied this same space, breezed through it like a ghost—riding in a boat, or diving, fishing the pilings. She had probably filled every square inch of this shore at some time or other, and a hundred feet out into the lake. But this water was all new, the old moved on to God knows where. Downstream. She thought of the diagram she’d taught her third-graders, the rain falling on the mountains, rolling through the fields to the sea only to evaporate and rain down again from the clouds. It was all the same water, cycling over and over, yet it seemed the lake no longer knew her.
Wish You Were Here Page 5