Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  There was no one in the Chevy; the driver was inside paying. He swung the cans down to the island, giving himself a view of the front between the pump and the garbage can. He reached into his pocket and dug out the Holga and set it on the concrete. The temptation to line up the shot—or better, to bring the viewfinder to his eye—was excruciating. Instead, with one finger, entirely blind, he pressed the button for the shutter, heard the telltale click.

  He forwarded the film as he listened to the gas splash into the first tank. A woman emerged from the doors and headed for the Chevy. He pressed the button, hoping to catch her in midstride.

  Forward, and another, forward.

  A conversion van with an older couple pulled in at the outside pumps, but, kneeling, he was already shielding the camera from them with his body.

  When he was finished with the tanks, he pocketed the camera, carefully screwed the two caps on and hefted the tanks one at a time into the back of the 4Runner. As he closed the hatch, he had the chance to scan the lot, to check the position of the husband, still filling up. Another car was turning in, just a driver, a woman. He waited until she stopped at the very inside pump before crossing to the doors.

  In his concentration, he barely noted the flyer taped to the glass at eye level. Inside, he didn’t think it was strange that he pretended he hadn’t seen it. Logically it wouldn’t make a difference to him, someone from out of town. He noted the clerk—a kid no older than Tracy Ann Caler, busy turning on the pump for the woman—and made for the wall of sodas, aware of the cameras trained on his back, wondering if anyone watched the tapes at the end of the day.

  There were the tiers of candy bars, the Cheetos and Fritos, the dusty cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli. The lighting wasn’t ideal, but again, it didn’t matter. He used the glass door of the cooler to see behind him, then looked out at the pumps where the husband was hanging up the nozzle. Ken checked to make sure he wasn’t paying with plastic—no, here he came across the lot, innocently counting out his money. Ken squatted, stalling, pretending to search the rows of Cokes. He was right where he needed to be. Six shots left, maybe seven. Enough. He slipped his hand into the pocket where the Holga rested and drew it out like a weapon, then knelt there, breathing, listening for his partner to come through the door.

  12

  “It doesn’t fit there,” Ella said. “I already tried.”

  Sam kept forcing it.

  “What are you, stupid? It doesn’t go there.”

  “I don’t care,” Sam said, and jammed it hard so it fit.

  “Stop.” She fended him off with an arm and pulled the pieces apart, set the one in the middle.

  He pushed her, rocking the table.

  “Sam!” she hollered, and shoved him back.

  “Cut it out, you two,” their mother warned, and before Ella could defend herself, said, “I don’t care who started it, it’s over. All I want to hear out of you is silence.”

  13

  “Look at them,” Lise said, pointing out the window.

  Meg saw her mother holding the umbrella for Ken while he sprayed the mailbox. A cone of mist enveloped it, drifted on the wind, and they stepped back into the road.

  “There he goes,” Meg said, “saving the day.”

  “My hero.”

  “We couldn’t have done that.”

  “No way,” Lise said. “No one could have except her Kenneth.”

  14

  From the ferry the new bridge looked precarious, rising high above them as if on stilts. Fog hung underneath it between the concrete pylons, plumes of frothing runoff pouring down like waterfalls. Arlene watched the tops of the trucks highballing by as Emily fiddled with the knot of her scarf. The wind blew the rain sideways, flogged the Taurus so hard Arlene would have worried if she hadn’t crossed in far worse. The ferry hadn’t changed in her lifetime, the open deck large enough for nine cars, turretlike guide-houses the size of phone booths at the four corners. A young couple occupied the one nearest them, holding each other as they rode the choppy water. The whole trip took five minutes.

  “Okay,” Emily said, ready. For some reason, she needed to take her purse.

  “Are you sure you want to go out in this?”

  “Oh, don’t be such an old fart.” Emily opened her door and the wind stirred the ashtray so Arlene had to slap it closed.

  “Old fart you,” Arlene said to no one, then followed her out.

  Her first steps were wobbly, though the ferry was rock-solid, the diesel chugging evenly, hauling it along the cable. She slitted her eyes against the wind. Rain stung her cheeks as she veered toward the rail. Emily opened the door to the guidehouse for her, and she ducked in out of the storm, wiping her wet hands on her pants.

  “Well, that was fun.”

  “I’m glad I bundled up,” Emily said. “You’d never know it was August.”

  No, Arlene thought, it was typical of August at Chautauqua, but let it go. Rain snaked down the windows, braided streams twisting like curtains blowing in the wind. They stood and watched Bemus Point draw slowly closer, the old casino and the new docks along the shore, fat cabin cruisers bobbing in the slips—lawyers from Buffalo.

  “The casino has seen better days, I’m afraid,” Emily said.

  “I’m surprised it’s still standing. I thought it would have burned to the ground by now.”

  “It always was a firetrap. Did you ever see them burn the old steamboats off of Celoron Park?” Emily pointed down the lake as if the place were still there, the roller coasters and flying swings standing unpopulated in the rain.

  “I’ve heard about that.”

  “They used to do it for Labor Day. They’d buy one of these old hulks and anchor it offshore and soak it in kerosene. Terrible for the environment, I’m sure. You couldn’t do anything like that today. It would be sitting out there all day where you could see it, and that night when the park was about to close, they’d set it on fire and everyone would watch it burn. It was better than fireworks.”

  “I wonder why we never saw one,” Arlene said.

  “They stopped right before the war.”

  “We were here then.”

  If it was a mystery, it would remain unsolved. One of Emily’s more infuriating talents was bringing up an intriguing subject for no specific reason, dropping it in your lap and then flitting off to something else before it could be fully inspected. It reminded Arlene of her students’ propensity for non sequiturs. But they were children, easily distracted. Now, like the teacher she was, Arlene waited, testing her hypothesis, the deck vibrating through her shoes.

  “Remind me to get some of that good Lappi at the cheese shop,” Emily said. “I know I’m going to forget.”

  “Lappi,” Arlene repeated.

  Emily was just trying to make pleasant conversation, and here she was grading her. After all the years they’d been sisters-in-law, they were still new to each other. When Henry was alive, Arlene had been a fifth wheel. Now the two of them were a couple, calling each other to propose a movie (the spate of Jane Austens was a favorite), a day in Shadyside, an expedition to the grocery store. And how much better it was than going alone, even if Emily did wear on her nerves. She felt engaged, part of the world in a way she hadn’t before Henry’s death. “Arlie,” he’d summoned her, and asked her to take care of Emily as if it was a burden, but surely he’d known. He was smart, her brother, probably smarter than her for all her love of knowledge and logical arguments. He understood her.

  “And you must remind me,” Arlene said, “to remember that horseradish spread I like.”

  “That dreadful stuff. Must I?”

  “You must,” Arlene said, pleased, as if she’d struck a deal in her favor.

  The attendant moved to the bow, and they hurried back to the car, braving the rain. The diesel shifted gears, suddenly went quiet, and, floating, they docked, the stopped momentum making them lurch forward in their seats. Waiting for the attendant to unhook the chain, she was tempted to turn the he
ater on, but didn’t. The young couple had one of those new Volkswagen bugs, in an ugly green she supposed was fashionable. She followed them off, a steel plate clanging as the nose of the Taurus rose and then fell.

  “A day like today,” Emily said, “we should have no trouble parking,” and though Arlene thought her optimism—like so many of her pronouncements—groundless, it proved true.

  The Lenhart was the same buttercup yellow that had delighted her as a girl, and she thought that maybe they could stay there next year if the Institute was booked solid. The place was built on a different scale, a grandiose robber-baron excess that now seemed quaint and endangered. They walked up the hedge-lined promenade under the dripping oaks and onto the cavernous porch, the rockers herded away from the railing to stay dry.

  Before they reached the door, Emily stopped. “I’d like to take in the view, if you don’t mind.”

  “I think that would be nice,” Arlene said, though she was cold.

  The floor was dirty and peeling. A few boards were new, the wood raw and tattooed with shoe prints.

  “That’s not kosher,” Emily pointed out.

  The bridge did ruin the view—had become the view, running like a fence across the lake, blotting out the far shore. Arlene remembered some long-lost weekend dance at the casino, Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra. Once again she’d been passed over by Henry’s friends and had gone to a window of the ballroom where she looked out at the lights of the cottages, wavering like flames on water black as oil. She’d been a silly teenager, terrified that no one would ever love her. No one had, perhaps— certainly not Walter, though she’d hoped. She’d had her chances. It had long since stopped being a need.

  “It’s criminal, that’s what it is,” Emily said.

  “They could have picked a better design,” Arlene agreed. “Bridges can be pretty.”

  “It appears they were going for the strictly functional.”

  “They achieved that.” Arlene half turned to show she was ready to go.

  “It’s so disheartening,” Emily said, keeping her there. “You look at something like this and you have to wonder what kind of society we’re living in.”

  Arlene’s first inclination was to ridicule this as more of Emily’s hand-wringing, but in its immense ugliness the bridge seemed to support her claim, as did the woeful state of the casino, even the floor they were standing on. She thought of her school, falling apart around her, and the neighborhood, much of it burned out now, the business district gone.

  “Are you hungry?” Emily asked. “I think I’m going to keel over if I don’t get something to eat soon.”

  “Me too.”

  “Oh, that damned alarm,” Emily said as they retraced their steps. “I tried calling the Lerners at home and got their answering machine. Isn’t that maddening? I told them to leave us their code so we can turn it off. I’m not going to have that thing waking us up at three A.M. every night.”

  In the front hall of the Lenhart, they gazed up at the portraits on the walls, staying on the plush runner leading them like a conveyer to the maître d’s lectern. The walls had recently been painted, but they hadn’t bothered to do the trim in cream the way she remembered. Emily made a dubious face, as if disappointed. They gave their jackets to the coat-check girl, keeping their purses, and just then a draft followed a guest in from outside, chilling them. The maitre d’ was young and wore a business suit, probably off from college. The reservation was under Maxwell, a window table.

  “Ladies,” he said, and led them past a board on an easel advertising Sunday brunch.

  The great room was set to accommodate hundreds but was empty save a strip of tables along the windows, most filled by women their age, though at the one next to what seemed to be theirs a baby in a high chair hammered at his tray with a spoon.

  “May we have that one instead?” Emily asked, motioning to a table farther along, and the maître d’ retrieved the menu he’d just put down. The mother of the child tracked them as they passed.

  Finally they were settled, their purses resting on the low windowsill. Their view was much the same as it had been on the porch. The bridge loomed above them, the trucks like flying billboards. The yellow in here was cheerier, lit warmly by chandeliers and wall sconces. The silver was pleasantly heavy, the monogrammed handles nicked and soft-looking from being washed. The menu had the fresh lake perch, her favorite. A waiter in a white coat dropped off an iced butter dish, oversized pats embossed with the hotel’s name in script.

  “I believe this carpet is new,” Emily said.

  “I love the potted palms.”

  “I’m sorry about changing tables, but at this point I am not in the mood.”

  “This is fine.”

  “I know it’s a terrible thing to say about one’s grandchildren, but I swear they are the rudest children at times. And spoiled? I cannot believe what their parents let them get away with. Do you see this or am I making it up, because it seems that way to me.”

  “All kids are that way,” Arlene said, trying not to contradict her. She’d heard this same complaint every year and knew not to join in lest Emily turn on her. “Especially when you get a bunch of them together. They get their own little social scene going, and then you become the intruder, the authority figure telling them what they can’t do.”

  “That’s their parents’ job, but I haven’t seen them doing it. I haven’t seen them play with the children once, and this morning Sam didn’t get his breakfast until after eleven because his parents couldn’t be bothered. I guess I shouldn’t let myself worry about these things.”

  “Well of course you should,” Arlene said.

  She checked the table for an ashtray and realized with a familiar disappointment that the whole room was nonsmoking. She broke open a roll—ice-cold—and offered the basket to Emily, who was going on about Kenneth and Lisa being burned out from working, their priorities mixed up. She wasn’t completely serious, but neither were her criticisms empty. Arlene couldn’t fathom her dislike for them. She’d always seen in Kenneth and Lisa a younger version of Henry and Emily, the wife the real driving force behind the marriage, the husband just going along. Perhaps that wasn’t true. She spoke with them so little now, all her information filtered through Emily.

  She was saved by the waiter, who gave them his name before taking their drink order. It was a clue to how Emily was feeling, and Arlene was pleased when she asked for a Manhattan. There was something extravagant about mixed drinks at lunch that made her happy. She ordered a perfect Rob Roy, which seemed to momentarily confuse the waiter.

  “Well done,” Emily said when he was gone. “The look on his face was priceless.”

  “My great-aunt Martha used to have a perfect Rob Roy whenever we came here. She said it was a proper drink.”

  “It is. I just haven’t heard anyone order one in ages. I can see the bartender flipping through one of those little books. You’ll have to give me a sip.”

  They talked of Pittsburgh, as always, and their changing neighborhoods. They talked of politics and of schools, public versus private, and of Emily’s neighbor Marcia, who Arlene knew to see but with whom she’d exchanged maybe ten words all told. Marcia’s daughters were in college now, and Emily tracked their academic success as if they were her own children. One of them was doing a semester abroad in England, which led to a long, swooning monologue on the trip Emily and Henry had taken there in the mid-seventies, and the cathedrals they’d seen. Arlene thought of Henry tramping the worn cobbles of Oxford, a place she’d always wanted to see, or huffing up the spiral stairs of some Gothic tower, Emily ahead of him, chattering away. He only half paid attention to her when she was like this. He’d nod or supply an interested “huh” at the right place as a sign for her to go on. It seemed to Arlene, sitting there listening to Emily, that in some way she’d taken his place.

  The drinks came, and they both ordered the perch, as if it were a tradition. Emily proposed a toast. “To the Lenhart. Happy days.”
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  “Happy days.”

  The first sip of her Rob Roy put a chill in her skin, which changed, as if with a flick of a switch, to a syrupy warmth melting over her bones.

  “How is it?” Emily asked.

  “Perfect. Have a sip.”

  “That is a proper drink. Maybe I’ll order one for myself. I’m not driving.”

  The drinks restored the Lenhart’s charm. They both had another after the French-onion soup, vowing it would be their last. The family with the baby left, along with the other earlybirds, leaving only a few scattered couples. Arlene thought this must be what coming in the off-season must be like, the hotel at their disposal. She pictured winter—ice fishing, a sleigh crossing where the ferry ran. That god-awful bridge. The rain on the water made the place cozy. Setting down her Rob Roy, she was fascinated by the outside light caught in her water glass, the ice silvered with veins of air. She was looped.

  “I haven’t told you about Margaret,” Emily said. She looked over her shoulder as if someone might hear, as if this were a real confession, something new she’d just decided to share with her. “I’m worried sick about her. I’m sure she’s told you she’s getting the divorce.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was in the cards long ago, in my opinion. You saw how she treated Jeff.”

  Arlene wasn’t sure she agreed, not knowing either of them well enough, but dipped her head, interested.

  “Well, it turns out she’s also broke and a recovering alcoholic. And do you know what? I’m not surprised. I know what a terrible thing that is to say, but it’s true. Nothing she could do would surprise me at this point.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do. She’s forty-three years old, for God’s sake. You’d think she’d know better, with two children to take care of. It makes me so angry.” Emily clenched her fingers above her soup as if she might leap across the table and strangle her.