“We’re not supposed to tire him out.”
“He’s not tired, look at him.”
They turned the corner onto the marina road and the sky opened up, the fishponds spread out on one side, the trees in the distance misted, hazed by rain. Far ahead, a single car ground by on the highway, the swish of its tires faint as a jet speeding high above the clouds. The road was cracked and they walked in the tangled grass, soaking their cuffs. Rufus blazed a trail, sniffing, his snout flecked with seeds from the timothy.
It was hot in the poncho, and Sarah slowed, worried for her hair. The poncho was the doofy bright orange kind crossing guards wore, or football fans. She didn’t really expect to see him, she was just hoping. And then she started thinking about Mark. She knew he wouldn’t write, they’d even joked about it. She thought it shouldn’t bother her so much.
“Let’s look at the fish,” Ella said. “That way you can scout out his house before we go by.”
“Right,” Sarah said, like she’d thought of it.
An official pickup truck with a sticker on the door sat in the hatchery’s drive, and the caged light above the entrance was on. From the back came the hum of a pump running. The ponds were raised above the ground, and once they were past the hatchery itself, they crossed the road and climbed a muddy path onto the checkerboard of dikes. Frogs plopped into the water to escape them. Rufus barked, way too late, and across the ponds a heron launched itself, flapping its hinged wings as it banked, giving them the profile of its hooked neck before sailing over the treetops. Sarah imagined the guy on the mower growing up across the road, seeing this every day, playing here. It would be part of him the way the lake was.
The rain made circles on the water, bubbles that floated a moment, then popped. Rufus tracked along the edge, his tail up in the air like he’d found something. In the shallows they could see ghostly fish nosing the surface, expecting to be fed.
As a girl, she’d come here with her father to watch the men cast handfuls of meal from burlap sacks, the slippery fish thrashing and flopping on top of each other to get it. The ponds could be drained, the fish running with the water through pipes, then captured in tanks and released into the lake, just to be caught again. The cycle had seemed unfair to her then, and still did.
She wondered if he fished. Her father didn’t. He thought it was a waste of time.
“Looks like someone’s home,” Ella said, ahead of her, pretending to examine the next pond.
Below, across the road, the coach light was on, a large, dark car in the driveway—his father’s probably. The house was small but neat, custard yellow with white shutters, nothing like the ones in Silver Hills. The front door had a half basket with flowers in it. She pulled Rufus along and caught up.
“Nice car,” Ella teased.
“It must be his father’s.”
“And I love the gnome by the birdbath.”
“Where?” she asked, just as she saw it, hiding in a patch of ivy.
“Did you see the kitten? On the roof of the garage?”
She tried to be inconspicuous, shielding herself with the umbrella, peeking around the lip. The kitten was the ceramic kind old ladies bought at the garden store for a joke.
“So what?” Sarah said, but she had to laugh too.
She hadn’t expected him to be waiting for her on the porch. All she wanted was some sign of him, a promise that she would see him again.
“This is dumb,” she said finally, and passed by the last pond, Ella right behind her. They followed a narrow trail down the dike and through a grassy ditch, climbing back up to the road.
The curtains were open, but there was only a light on in one window, a slice of wall, a piece of a table. She let Rufus snoop around the mailbox (no name, just a number), hoping to see someone walk past, but there was nothing. The flowers in the door basket were fake. On the small concrete stoop rested an astroturf mat with a plastic daisy in one corner. A graying wooden fence ran around the backyard, so maybe they had a dog. She kept looking for clues to prove he belonged here, that she wasn’t mistaken—the same way she investigated her father’s new place, the bland brick town house with its peeling window frames and aluminum storm door like a disguise, his Camaro the only true reflection of him. This felt the same: strange and disappointing, as if the house confirmed the distance between them. She wanted to check in the garage for his lawn mower. She wanted to go knock on the door.
Rufus found a spot and squatted.
“No!” Sarah said, but it was too late. He looked over his shoulder at her as he peed, Ella laughing under her umbrella.
“I don’t think he lives here,” Sarah said.
“You better hope not.”
“Finish up,” she told Rufus, and they walked on.
“Maybe he lives next door,” Ella said, because there was a Mustang in the driveway, but again she couldn’t find any real evidence, just the usual stuff people left outside: a flowerpot, a barbecue grill, a pair of folding chairs. She could play the same game with every house on the road, and none of them would fit him.
“Forget it,” she said.
“We tried,” Ella said. “Wait till the rain stops, then he’ll be out riding his thing around.”
She was right, but the day was ruined. Now she was thinking of Mark and what he was doing at camp and why he hadn’t written.
They’d nearly reached the path to the tennis courts when a van pulled onto the road from the highway, its lights crossing them, shining off the puddles. The van was ugly and customized like a hot rod, with chrome wheels. It rolled up slow on them, like the guys from Dearborn cruising Superior, windows open, whistling at her and Liz from the backseat. There were two men in it, probably headed for the marina, except they didn’t have a trailer. The one driving had a beard and glasses. They both stared at her as if she didn’t belong there, let their eyes linger over her.
Before she knew what she was doing, her reflexes (her mother’s, really) kicked in, and with the hand holding Rufus’s leash, she lifted it up to eye level and gave them the finger.
The van’s taillights flared.
“Run!” she cried, and flew by Ella, Rufus bounding alongside as if this was a game. “Come on!” The road hurt her heels, and then, turning, she almost slipped on the grass. She made the break into the woods and cut through the bushes, the path giving mushily under her feet, branches flashing past, grabbing at her umbrella until she dropped it. She struck a hard root and hopped a couple of steps before running again, Rufus confused and then hauling her along. She couldn’t hear anything, as if she’d outrun sound. The tennis courts were around the next bend.
“Sarah!” Ella called.
When Sarah slowed and looked back, she saw Ella far behind, her umbrella closed so she could use it as a weapon, and she thought it was wrong to have abandoned her.
“Wait,” Ella called, out of breath, and Sarah stopped so she could catch up. The two of them would fight them together.
Ella was wheezing like Liz when she had an asthma attack, and had to bend over. “They’re not chasing us.”
“Maybe they’re coming around the other side.”
“I don’t think so.”
Still, she watched the path.
“Assholes.” It was her mother’s word, reserved for her father and other drivers.
“What happened?” Ella asked.
“You didn’t see me?”
The story gave them a reason to stay there and rest.
“The jerks deserved it,” Ella said. “I can think of a lot of people I’d like to give it to.”
“Like who?” Sarah asked, and they wasted a few minutes comparing lists. People at school, even some teachers. Rufus grew bored and sat down. Under the trees you could barely feel the rain. Around them, leaves dipped and nodded, and Sarah had the sense that someone was watching from the bushes. She remembered the girl from the gas station Uncle Ken had talked to the police about, and saw the driver shoving her in the back of the van.
“You don’t think they could be the ones who kidnaped that lady?”
She could see the idea hit Ella. “I don’t know.”
It made them both look at the woods differently—very Blair Witch, as Liz would say. They couldn’t stay there.
“I should go get my umbrella.”
“I saw where you tossed it,” Ella said. “I didn’t think I had time to pick it up.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it was smart. If they really were chasing us.”
Sarah gave her the finger and Ella laughed. It sounded loud.
“So we should go get it, right?”
“Right,” Ella said.
At first Rufus didn’t budge. They made him stand up—stiff, stretching his back legs—then went to retrieve her umbrella, cautious, listening for any sound that didn’t belong. Rufus had no clue, walking along like they were at the park, useless. Sarah took the lead because she could see better, Ella checking behind them at every bend. The whole way they stayed close together, a team.
6
This time Ken was careful on the stones, now glazed with rain and smooth as glass. As his own reflection loomed in the black window of the door, the insane idea came to him that he could dig them up and plant them in their backyard—by their garage—so he would always have them to walk on. It was a child’s wish, so extravagant and pure that he had to smile as he dismissed it. He could see himself trying to justify it to Lise, see her smirk at his softheartedness. And yet there must have been something to it, because once inside, with the door closed behind him, rain knocking the roof, he imagined prying up the stones and hosing the mud off them, laying them in the carpeted bed of the 4Runner like tiles.
He didn’t have time for this. He had the Nikon and two rolls of black and white. He’d told Lise he wanted to look over his father’s things for their list, but she knew it was an excuse.
His first worry was seeing. Only a dingy light filtered in through the two windows facing the lake, one of them blotted, crossed by lines of ivy. The still air smelled of mildew and gasoline—a smell unchanged from when he was a boy, as if this place had been waiting for him. He leaned over Ella’s bike and flipped the switch by the little refrigerator, but the light in the porcelain fixture screwed to the rafters refused to come on, the dark bulb probably ten years old, rusted firmly in its socket. He found a utility light on the workbench and hung it from a nail. The result was glaring; even turned backwards it flattened everything.
The bench was a mess, and for a moment not only the garish shadows but the profusion of junk stumped him—tools and gas cans and extension cords, saws and scraps of wood, an air mattress folded flat, cases of deposit bottles sorted by color. He recognized a few signature pieces: a plumber’s wrench blackened with age, its teeth chipped silver; a Chock full o’ Nuts can jammed with dried paintbrushes and stirrers; a peach basket ranked with spice jars full of fasteners, each labeled with masking tape, his father’s block lettering identifying deck screws and machine bolts and locknuts. The majority of it was stuff he’d never seen before: a single, pristine masonry bit mummied in its shrink wrap; an unused tube of Liquid Nails for a caulking gun; a coil of copper solder; an unopened roll of nylon rope for the boat. It seemed wrong, all of it heaped up as if dumped there.
At home his father’s workbench had been brushed clean, a flexible hose bent ductlike over the circular saw to vacuum the sawdust away as the blade ate through the wood. A push broom leaned in one corner, a dustpan stuck on top of the handle. How many times had he cautioned Ken to clean from the top down? “It’s all going to end up on the floor anyway,” he said, and made a show of sweeping before hanging up his apron. On the bench, under the steady fluorescent light, rested the simple truck they’d made together, or the airplane, on a folded-over sheet of newspaper, glistening under its drying coat of varnish, and the next morning it would be ready for him. This looked more like his own workbench, their old kitchen table exiled to the basement, piled with tools used and then left out, dead batteries, failed superglue projects.
His eyes skittered over the two giant metal shelves on the far side, loaded with moldering liquor boxes and rusty cans of paint, a gallon of blue wiper fluid. Beside them sat a cracked Coleman cooler, a patio table missing its glass top, a large box for an air conditioner they’d never owned stuffed with orange life jackets he remembered wearing, now probably home to a colony of mice. Hoses, ropes, buckets, lumber—there was just too much. It was like moving. He didn’t know where to start.
“Don’t try to see anything, just start shooting,” he could hear Morgan saying.
He was cheating, with the flash, and it would look awful, but there was no way to get this right, not with the Nikon. All he needed was his wide angle, one good light and a fill and he could get everything he wanted—but there, he was thinking too much.
It felt mechanical, every frame too simple, just coverage, documentary at best. The bench was the worst, completely uninteresting, a mess. He did the fridge, open and closed, the two gas cans and the funnel, the scarred front of the metal cabinet. Each scuffing footstep between setups echoed, and with every shot he felt worse, until he straightened up and stopped, let the Nikon rest against him and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
Sometimes it was like this, after not having worked for a while.
Or when you suck, he thought. When you’re just not very good.
He was still spacey from last night, staying up late with Meg. He hadn’t been that stoned since college. It was weird being here to begin with, the week a hole in their real lives. Back in Boston it was all waiting for him—their shrinking bank account, his shitty job, Morgan’s wise advice.
Meg was going back to even less. As a boy, he’d thought their family was special, somehow blessed. Maybe he’d expected too much or not worked hard enough. It couldn’t be just luck or poor choices.
He turned around and searched the walls, hoping something would leap out at him. A wooden rake, an aluminum fishing net, a bamboo pole his father used to rescue kites and balsa-wood gliders from the chestnut. The flash brought out the raw wood, and he wondered how it would print. He’d expected the cottage to give him pictures, to make him feel more, but what he saw through the viewfinder didn’t express what he felt about his father. So much of this junk could belong to anyone. The scuffed Husqvarna chain saw, the silly mermaid boat-bumper with its jokey boobs. After Goodwill came, an expensive cleaning service would cart the rest away to the town landfill, leaving the floor clean as his father’s workshop.
He spent the second roll on the far end, taking the utility light with him. He remembered these cobwebbed lawn chairs, easily thirty years old, their aluminum tubes pinched and split with metal fatigue, home to spiders. Lime-and-white seats woven with gold threads. He wanted to run inside and grab a roll of color, but knew he’d never get back out.
By now he was counting down the number of frames left, ready to surrender. The last were throwaways, obvious stuff: the kids’ bikes, his father’s golf bag, the grill. He would have to come back when there was some real light.
He capped the Nikon. His father’s golf clubs he didn’t need to put on the list, or the barbecue starter. They were his legacy as surely as his father’s broad forehead and reticence, his tendency to frown like a bulldog when thinking hard. The tools he gave a cursory inspection. There was a new Makita drill, a good set of socket wrenches—things his father would hate to see go to waste. His father’s highest praise for anything was that he’d gotten his money out of it. It was a bitter joke of his mother’s that he’d only just had the Olds tuned up when they discovered he was sick. “Six hundred and fifty dollars,” she would say, outraged, as if the dealership had failed to cure him. The week before he was scheduled for his first surgery, he drove it constantly, the two of them spinning through the winter countryside around Pittsburgh, cushioned in its plush, heated interior, visiting towns they’d heard of all their lives yet had never seen. Coraopolis, McKees Rocks, Ir
win, Zelienople. For a week they got up early and hopped in the car, talked and didn’t talk, filled up the tank, squeegeed the windshield, all the time knowing. It was those conversations Ken wanted to hear now, the basic decision making of which road to take, what restaurant to stop at.
The bench’s jumble confused him again, too much to process, his father’s obsolete car orbiting with the packets of sandpaper disks and tuna cans of roofing nails, all of it tumbling through memory unconnected, meaningless. He turned from the mess and went to the window overlooking the gray lake. The sill was dotted with dead flies, filmed with dust. He stood there ignoring it, peering out through the clouded glass. As a boy, this was his favorite vantage point to watch whoever was on the dock, and now the same sense of secrecy, of spying on something important, fixed him here, the wet planks and greening pilings and the mist over the water locked like a vision, paralyzing his mind and body as if it required absolute concentration on his part to communicate its message.
A drop of water fell from the gutter, bright as a diamond. He blinked, and the vision broke, its meaning lost, if it had ever possessed one. The lake was no mystery, or the rain.
Everyone’s father dies, he thought. Everyone goes through this.
In their most honest, vicious arguments, Lise accused him of being unfeeling. Not cold, she’d say, just empty. Sometimes she wondered if there was anyone in there. It was not true, of course, in the broadest sense (she accused him in these same arguments of being oversensitive, a baby), but at times he recognized in himself a holding back, an emotional conservatism he associated not with his father, whose unruffled calm he aspired to, but with his mother, who, faced with any catastrophe, resorted to a rigid order, formulating and crossing off lists until the crisis had passed. He saw in himself her escape into routine, submerging himself, when threatened, in his work.
It was not that he was unfeeling, only that, being a private person, he kept what he felt to himself.
It amazed him how he could be truthful and evasive at the same time, even when he was only thinking. There must be a deeper level, he suspected, a base so selfish and weak that he feared contemplating it.
Wish You Were Here Page 24