Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

“It must be their day out,” Lise muttered, hoping none of them could hear. She was no judge of age, but they had to be in their late seventies, maybe their eighties. Emily was in her early seventies, not so far from them. In ten years Lise would be fifty, an age that seemed impossible.

  It was not a subject to dwell on, not on a day like today, and she looked hopefully to the hostess’s empty lectern. The walls were done up with nets and oars and lobster pots, a codified lack of imagination. Every time someone opened the doors, a wet gust rushed in.

  “Do you want to try someplace else?” Meg asked.

  “No, we’re here. I’m just getting creeped out thinking how old we are.”

  “We’re not old.”

  “I feel old,” Lise said. “In two weeks Ella’s going into high school.”

  “So’s Sarah, but I don’t feel old. I feel a lot of things, but not old.”

  Lise wanted to ask Meg what she meant by this, but felt she didn’t have the right. As if to trade a confession of her own, she said, “I feel like I could have done more.”

  “Everyone feels like that,” Meg said, but so offhand that Lise saw she would not be drawn into a discussion, not here in the lobby.

  The hostess moved the old people as a group, then, without the merest attempt at sincerity, thanked Lise and Meg for being so patient and hurried them to a booth, the table still bearing the beaded trail of a washcloth. Once she’d gone, Lise swabbed the surface with her paper napkin and left it by the edge for the waitress to take. The old people were seated far across the room, and most of the booths around them were empty.

  “So why did we have to wait?” she asked.

  It didn’t matter. The idea was to kill time, to pass the afternoon away from Emily and Ken and the kids, and it was working. They talked about nothing, about movies and dry cleaning, about politics and carpeting. Lise felt like ordering a margarita but out of consideration for Meg had a Diet Pepsi. The menu was vast and bland, as if designed by a child. Everything came with fries and coleslaw.

  “Oh God,” Meg said. “Coleslaw.”

  Lise knew most if not all of the fish would be frozen and that the crab would be fake, the rubbery stuff made in Japan. She wondered if Meg ever got good seafood, living in the middle of the country. If Lise needed a reason to be proud of New England, it was places like this.

  The chowder was paste, but that didn’t matter either. She didn’t care about the food—or the air-conditioning, the room chilly as a morgue. None of it mattered, yet she could feel herself turning hypercritical, destroying anything set before her, the littlest stupidities turning corrosive. She couldn’t figure out why and, worse, couldn’t stop herself from doing it.

  “Sometimes I feel,” she said, “like I’m sick of everything. Now you can’t tell me everyone feels that way.”

  “Of course they do. Why do you think we have all those shooting sprees? What do you think road rage is?”

  “That’s hardly a majority of the country.”

  “Those are the worst cases, but think of all the domestic violence. Those are people who are sick of everything and take it out on the people closest to them.”

  Lise wanted to read meaning into it at the same time she refuted her argument. “But the majority of people, I think you’d agree, are happy with their lives. Otherwise they’d change them.”

  “How? How would you change your life?”

  Lise thought first of Ella, and then Sam. She wouldn’t change Ken, she just wanted him to be closer to her again. But herself, the way she lived her own life, she had no idea.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Because you can’t,” Meg said. “You can’t just wake up one morning and decide you’re not going to live your old life. You can pretend to, but it doesn’t work. You’re always going to come back to who you are. Some people don’t like that, but that’s the way it is.”

  Lise recognized the rehab platitudes in her speech, and wondered how they applied to Jeff leaving.

  “I guess I don’t want to change my life, I just want to make it better.”

  “That’s possible,” Meg allowed. “All you have to do is figure out what you want, then work like hell to get it.”

  “Sounds easy.”

  “It’s easier than trying to fix what you’ve already ruined. Or so my therapist tells me.”

  The waitress came with their entrees and took Lise’s unfinished cup. When she’d cleared off, Meg said, “Right now I’m probably going through the worst time of my life, and you know what the biggest thing I’m worried about is?”

  “What?”

  “Money. Isn’t that terrible? I have all this other stuff to deal with, but before I can even start thinking about it, I’ve got to take care of the money.”

  Lise could counter with their own money troubles but thought it was not the same. This was Ken’s worst fear, the impossible job of paying bills suddenly far too large and having no one to turn to, the numbers accumulating month after month, their savings dwindling to nothing and then sinking into the negative, the bank sending threatening letters.

  She tried to pinpoint the worst time in her own life and couldn’t. Her life had been easy—not perfect, but free from any deep loss. Her parents were still alive, her children were healthy, Ken loved her in his own distracted way. To ask for more than that would be greedy.

  Even her unhappiness was unearned, and she thought this was more proof that there was nothing wrong with her life but something wrong with her.

  Meg was going on about how they might lose the house, and while Lise sympathized with how awful that was, and honestly felt for her, she did not want to hear any more about her tragedies. She knew them anyway. She wanted Meg to be distant again, a mystery. She wanted them to be like the rest of the couples spread around them, chatting meaninglessly, laughing over their heaping plates, happy to be out on the town.

  8

  Beside Ella, Sarah watched with her arms crossed over her stomach like she was trying to stay warm. The reflected light of the movie shone on her throat and lips, a dot on the tip of her nose, a bright wash across her broad forehead. Ella could see her breathing, the stripes of her shirt lifting slightly, the different blues black and white in the dark, and then everything shifted as she reached for her Reese’s cups, and Ella pretended to be fascinated with Drew Barrymore walking down a long hallway with a candelabra.

  Sarah aimed the orange package at her, but Ella waved her off. They rearranged themselves, slouched down against the armrests. Sarah raised the Reese’s cup to her mouth and took a tiny bite, showing her teeth, breaking off a ridged edge of chocolate, and Ella thought all she had to do was lean over and kiss her.

  That would be the end, she thought. Sarah would push her away, spit at her, never talk to her again.

  She could let her hand accidentally fall on Sarah’s. She’d say she just wanted a Reese’s cup, and Sarah would believe her.

  She couldn’t believe Sarah didn’t already know. Since last night, Ella could feel the secret rising to her cheeks in every conversation. This morning they’d dressed together, and at the last second Ella had turned away, not out of decency but the fear she would be overwhelmed by the sight. She had to watch where her eyes landed, and how she held herself when Sarah was in the room. They were alone together all the time, and Ella thought she couldn’t hold on much longer. It would be easier if she could just avoid her, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  She felt doomed, her fate sealed like the queen in her book, waiting for her ordained murderer in her tower room in her castle in the middle of the forest, except she was the murderer too, and the fortune-teller. Sarah was her cousin, and gorgeous, while she was a geek. No one at school secretly wrote her initials on their book covers and then blacked them out, or stole glances at her in science lab. No one even looked at her. And Sarah was in love with Dan or Dave or whatever his name was.

  All great loves were impossible, she thought. There was Guinevere— but she’d been puni
shed.

  It was all wrong, there wasn’t a single thing right with it, but all day and all through the hours she lay awake, it was all she could think of. Every song on the radio was about her, and her book, even this idiotic movie. She couldn’t stop, even if she wanted to.

  She didn’t want Sarah to hate her. That was the thing she was afraid of. If she never confessed, that would never happen. She could be with her all day and all night, sleeping right beside her. She could hear her secrets and be her friend, her geeky cousin. Sometimes she thought that would be enough, but it wasn’t. She wanted Sarah to be in love with her as helplessly as she was with Sarah. She wanted to bite her on the neck like a vampire, leave her teeth marks like a sign. You’re mine, she wanted to say.

  Beside her, Sarah took another tiny bite of her Reese’s cup, her front teeth glinting liquid for an instant. Ella didn’t understand how she could eat it so slowly. She wasn’t nearly as patient. Like most people, she just shoved the whole thing in her mouth.

  9

  The racket coming from the Smiths’ addition reminded Emily of Henry working in the basement, the ring of the table saw reaching her at the cutting board. Each of his machines had its own sound. Standing at the stove, she could locate him beneath her feet by the roar of the belt sander or the buzz of the router, the wobbly shuttle of the lathe. “Dinner’s ready,” she’d shout down the stairs during a lull, and he’d scrub his hands at his sink down there and then come up, smelling of burnt sawdust and Lava soap, blinking like a mole. After dinner he retreated to his burrow, only to pop up at eight o’clock sharp for prime time. He had a radio Kenneth had given him one year for his birthday (still down there, presiding over his spotless workbench, his tools hung like merchandise from the pegboard, filling their prescribed outlines), and while she did the dishes he turned to the station that played Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw, the music they’d fallen in love to, and when she was finished she stood at the top of the stairs and listened as if he were serenading her. Because he was singing down there, his voice a murmur as he moved from one machine to another, trailing off in the middle of a verse, rising for a chorus.

  So be sure that it’s true

  When you say I love you

  It’s a sin to tell a lie

  Those were the heirlooms, the pieces he’d made down there. The stuff up here was junk mostly, ruined by humidity, the veneer peeled off. Still, she’d been so happy to find their old salt and pepper shakers the other day, as if she’d saved some small part of them and how things used to be.

  She didn’t care. At her age she was allowed to be sentimental. She would never become one of those women who loaded every horizontal surface with china knickknacks, but since Henry had died she found herself dusting the things on his dresser more often, and going through their photo albums, trying to find a nice shot of the two of them to set on top of the piano. That was natural, she thought. She needed to look back. And it hadn’t been crippling. It hadn’t stopped her from getting things done. She could count on her mother’s Prussian industriousness to buoy her, keep her even-keeled. Even now, on vacation, she roamed the house, looking for something to put in order—gathering up the coasters, straightening a stack of magazines.

  In the kitchen, putting on water for tea, she chanced to look out at the road, the rain jumping white off the blacktop, and saw that the garbage was still there. She was sure today was the day. Maybe they’d changed their schedule; it had been two years. Maybe they were late because of the rain.

  At that moment, an ancient boat of a station wagon rolled up and stopped beside the mailbox, the car facing the wrong way, and the man in the front seat leaned out and with a practiced motion flipped down the door and slipped the mail in with one hand. She waited until he passed the Lerners’ before sticking an umbrella out the screen door.

  “Sorry,” she told Rufus, who thought he might get a walk. He turned around and stumped out of the kitchen, grumping.

  It was colder than she thought, fat drops thumping Arlene’s car; twigs brought down by the rain speckled the hood. The grass seemed a brighter green, despite the fact that it was overcast. To her delight she found a toad sitting stone-still in the pebbly grit by the side of the road.

  “Well, look at you,” she said, bending down. He was the color of wet sand, with dark markings and lidded eyes, and she could see his heart beating. “All right, I’ll leave you alone.”

  The road itself was decorated with drowned worms, their white bodies like watery chalk marks. The gardener in Emily pitied the waste.

  She checked for cars, then turned her back to the road and opened the mailbox.

  There was a letter—junk mail, it looked like—and a local free sheet. A small red ant was walking the edge of the letter. Another was running along the metal floor of the box. There were more crawling on the door and a dark concentration on the wall—hundreds of them swarming on one spot, some fleeing the sudden light, streaming for the safety of the far end.

  Emily slapped the door shut and looked up and down the road as if it were a joke, as if someone might be spying on her. It was only on her way back to the kitchen that her mind thawed from the shock of it and turned determined. She’d dealt with her share of aphids and potato bugs and, one summer, a plague of Japanese beetles. Henry had laughed at her ruthlessness, the way she defended her garden like a mother protecting her young.

  She’d forgotten the card for Louise. Completely forgotten it.

  “Damn.”

  She left the umbrella outside rather than navigate the doorway with it. She thought there was a bucket under the sink, but she ended up using the corn pot, blasting hot water into it while she searched for the Bon Ami. The sweet dish soap would just attract more of them.

  She needed both hands for the pot, and had to pause at the corner of the counter and open the door before shouldering through. The water sloshed as she walked. The rain tapped at her, a subtle weight in her hair. There was no one coming so she set the pot down in the road. She saw how she wanted to do this. She would need paper towels, but not until this part was done, and it came to her—too late—that Henry probably had a spray in the garage. God knew how old it would be, and she didn’t trust sprays anyway. This was better.

  She grasped the tab that opened the door, yanked it down and backed away. The ants were more disorganized, scattering, their antennas feeling the air. She bent down and lifted the pot, the cloudy water steaming like soup.

  Her first throw half missed, the water splashing in the grass. What did hit trickled out around the door, which was filled with swimming ants. The mail itself remained inside, a soggy island; she reached in and pinched it out, let it fall to the road with a slap. It was raining harder, she could feel it on her face, dripping down her brow. Her second throw was better and brought a waterfall, and a possible cause—a popsicle stick. Ants caught in the backwash waved their legs as they went over the lip. On the ground, a struggling knot of them dissolved under her shoe. She threw the rest of the water and stomped back and forth, being thorough, scuffing her soles on their bodies.

  There were still some in the box, and now they were escaping, racing along the outside, under the hinged flag and over the red reflector. She had them on the run. She needed more water, and a flashlight to see inside, and paper towels. She felt a strange sense of triumph, as if she’d met a great challenge. But how absurd it seemed to her, how ridiculous she must appear to someone else, battling a bunch of ants. Racing back to the kitchen with the pot, she thought that anyone watching her would think she was a crazy woman. The very idea made her laugh.

  10

  Ken fell asleep in the movie, as he knew he would, so the cold air and the rain—trailing like snow through the high lights—seemed refreshing and necessary. The sky was a blue filter, the world a cheap horror flick, all mist and black trees.

  He saw a boy standing by the ticket booth and wanted to tell him to wait for his parents inside. How easy it would be, one person driving, another to drag him in.
They could pretend the choke hold was just roughhousing.

  It was the girls’ turn to be in the backseat together, and he had to ask Sam to sit up front. The first time, Sam pretended not to hear him, and when he repeated it, an edge crept into his voice that he hadn’t really meant. For a while after they got out of the lot, the car was quiet.

  Behind him, Justin turned on his Game Boy. The girls replayed their favorite scenes, chopping the air and making kung-fu sounds.

  Sam stared out his window, ignoring Ken when he looked over.

  “You’ve got to listen to me, buddy,” Ken said softly, but Sam just sulked, clammed up the way Ken himself did when Lise wanted to fight. He’d come by it honestly, he thought, and pictured his father’s serene face at the dinner table. He was the last one done even though he said almost nothing. He seemed to eat in slow motion, to set his fork down between every bite. Once Ken had tried to outlast him only to have his mother scold him. He knew his father was just being polite, that he’d grown up in a household where it was considered greedy to reach for the food, rude to rush through supper. In his mildness, his father seemed to embody the very idea of manners. Ken had never heard him seriously complain about anything, not Vietnam or Nixon or the IRS or even his health at the end, as if a Zenlike acceptance was proof of his wisdom. But to a child his self-possession could seem an illusion, the usual adult insistence on infallibility. For years he seemed backwards to Ken, out of touch, but later his calm seemed ideal, his silence not empty but dignified. Ken still could not figure him out.

  “Can I please play my Game Boy?” Sam asked.

  He’d gone far past his hour, but Ken didn’t want another battle.

  “Till we get home, but that’s it for today.”

  “Okay.”

  It came on with an electronic tweet, and reflexively Ken said, “Sound.” He drove, Sam beside him, bent over the little screen, unreachable.

  In the movie, the father was the same way, so lost in his job at the amusement park that he completely missed Paris and the kids’ adventures. The film was typical, Ken thought, telling children that their parents were selfish and that they deserved better—a Disneyfied guilt he didn’t remember from the movies he grew up on.