Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  “That can’t be good for those racquets,” she said. “Why don’t you play a nice game of croquet?”

  Justin wanted to play golf, after last night, but Grandma said the clubs in the garage were expensive and not for children. “Why don’t you go ride your bikes?” she said.

  Sam was better at it than Justin was, and kept pretending to crash into him, slamming his brakes on at the last minute and fishtailing sideways, leaving thick skid marks. He did it too hard once and almost knocked Justin down.

  “Stop!” Justin said. “Idiot.”

  “Ya ya ya,” Sam said, and did it again.

  “Stop it!”

  “Don’t be such a spaz,” Sam said, and pulled ahead, slowed almost to a stop, then turned around and circled behind him.

  Justin did his best to ignore him. It was quiet with no one else out. Bugs flew through patches of sun on the lawns. He was glad it was the last day.

  At home his PlayStation was waiting for him in the basement, and their old refrigerator full of ginger ale and Hi-C. Upstairs in the cupboards there would be Pop-Tarts and Easy Mac, and if it was nice Sarah would take him to the pool. If Michael Schulz was back from vacation they could go over to Turtle Pond and fish from the bridge. Pokémon was on every day now except Sunday, and next weekend his father would take them somewhere in his Camaro, maybe to a Tigers game at the new stadium, which looked really cool. He could stay up late because there was no school yet, and then he would read under the covers with his flashlight until his mother told him to turn it off.

  Sam came wailing by and hit the brakes in front of him, showing off. “Race you to the marina.”

  “Okay,” Justin said, and let him go.

  Sam turned around. “Come on.”

  “Your bike’s faster than mine.”

  “I’ll give you a head start.”

  “How much?”

  As they haggled, they passed the shortcut to the fishponds. It wasn’t that far, just around the bend and down the long straightaway. “To the dock or just the parking lot?”

  “To the dock.”

  He thought if he got ten seconds he might beat him.

  “Okay,” Sam said, “ten seconds. Starting … now.”

  It took him to one-thousand-three just to get going, tilting the whole bike right and then left with each long push until he couldn’t hear Sam anymore. He ducked his head, and the road rolled under his tires, white stones stuck in the black asphalt. He tried to ride in a straight line, hunched against the wind like a racer. He should have counted to himself so Sam couldn’t cheat, because in no time he was right behind him, calling, “You’re meat, Carlisle!”

  Justin cut the curve tight so Sam would have to go outside and beat him on the straightaway. A few more houses and they’d hit the entrance with the brown wooden sign and the log guardrails like a park, the tall grass on both sides, except there was a police car parked sideways blocking the road, and more police cars back under the trees in the middle of the lot, one of them a Winnebago with its doors open, and policemen standing around, and they both slowed and looked at each other, the race forgotten. Finally there was something to do.

  2

  “I know you want to,” Lise said in the garage. “Why don’t you just go and get it over with?”

  “I don’t, actually,” Ken said. “They don’t want me there. Besides, we already signed up.”

  “Seriously. We can start without you, it’s not a problem.”

  “That’s all right.” As if that was the end of any discussion, he grabbed the racquets and went out to round up the boys.

  Lise had seen this reasonable act before and knew what it hid, his evenness itself a symptom of obsession. Not the grand, romantic kind but its opposite, a methodical, nearly detached concentration on one thing, because the world to him was made of things, objects and moments that could be frozen and contemplated rather than lived and appreciated. He wanted nothing more than to run down to the marina and shoot a few rolls, find out what the story was—not, she thought, because he was worried about the girl, but because the idea of her being missing intrigued him, tempted him like any other project, and he needed coverage. Maybe it was cold of Lise to see it this way, but there was no other explanation. He’d never met the girl, and even he wasn’t so sentimental that he could fall in love with a picture.

  The idea was ridiculous, and yet she couldn’t deny that she was jealous. She wasn’t twenty, she didn’t have a tragic story, never had. A girl from the suburbs, she’d gone to school and married, raised her children, worked. She had all the glamor of a bowl of oatmeal. Part of that was his fault, her life bent to his wishes, though he would claim the opposite was true, but ultimately her plainness came, like Meg’s wildness, from within. At bottom she had a cautious heart, maybe from trying to please her parents, afraid she’d fall short of their expectations. She saw the same dutiful pleasantness (colorlessness, really) in Ella and feared her daughter would be like her, sadly adequate, part of the background, never the star.

  She dug through the milk crate where they kept the balls.

  “What do you think?” Meg asked, in shorts and worn sneakers, her ponytail pulled through the back of a cap. “Should we bother the girls?”

  “Let them sleep.”

  “Do we have any new ones, or is that a stupid question?”

  “Just these.” Who knew how old they were. The can she held was metal, yellow and red with a mouth that would slice open your wrist if you weren’t careful—long since outlawed, she assumed. They played once a year here, maybe twice, since Emily and Henry had given up tennis. There was even a can of dull white ones, still fuzzy and oily-smelling, and those had been on the way out when she was a teenager.

  “Let’s check them before we get up there,” Meg said. “Give me a couple.”

  “The boys can do that.”

  They sent them out to the road, then called them back when they started having too much fun. She gave Rufus a dead one, and he took it under the chestnut and lay down, turning his head to gnaw on the rubber. Meg got some water and they were all set.

  “The girls aren’t coming?” Ken asked.

  “By the time they get ready, we’ll be done.”

  She knew the police wouldn’t be finished by then, if it was what she thought it was. They’d be there all day, probably all weekend, taking pictures, searching the woods and bushes, sifting through the high grass, troopers in rubber gloves bagging cigarette butts and underwear, dusting a Coke can. And he’d be down there, he’d find a way—not long, no, he’d feign a natural curiosity, maybe leave his camera to placate her. That was almost worse, a kind of sacrifice to her.

  They walked up the shadowed road between the oaks, past the Wisemans’ and Nevilles’, the boys swerving ahead on their bikes. Between the houses, the lake was bright and blue, fishermen trying the reeds, a few sailboats out, and she was surprised at how fast the week had gone by. It was the same at the beach—it took her a while to get into vacation mode, and then it was over. She was already thinking about the drive tomorrow, cleaning out the car. She thought she’d had enough of summer, or this summer. It was wrong of her, she knew—she’d liked Henry so much better than Emily.

  “Look at that sweet Bug,” Ken said, meaning the Nevilles’ VW convertible, sitting in their garage.

  “Did you see the Smiths’ new addition?” Meg said. “It’s huge.”

  “They’re winterizing it.”

  It drove her crazy, the way they spoke of their neighbors, as if they actually knew them. Emily knew them socially, and Arlene, but those friendships hadn’t passed to the next generation. She couldn’t recall a single time in all their years together that Ken had said more to one of the Nevilles or Craigs than a hello on the road. Lise had done it herself, a casual half-wave hedging rejection, and yet she still felt an outsider, lacking that easy familiarity he and Meg shared like a secret language—Lerners and Crattys and Loudermilks.

  The path wound through the cool woods, b
etween the dappled ferns, a thin skin of moss showing the scars of shoes and bike tires, exposed bony roots scuffed to a dirty sheen. The light caught a giant spider-web, its owner weaving in the center, its long legs working like the fingers of a single hand. She could hear the boys opening the chain-link gate, then pulling it shut. She wondered if someone had found the girl and called the police, and she immediately thought of Ken, where he was this morning (in bed with her), as if he were a suspect.

  He was. Whatever wasn’t right with their marriage, she thought she could trace it to his evasions, what he dwelt on but didn’t reveal, another reason she resented him talking so easily with Meg. At home she had to ask him questions in bed to get anything out of him, and then, cornered, he gave himself up grudgingly, their lovemaking afterward a reward he hadn’t earned.

  They came out into the sun and saw they had the courts to them-selves—a good thing, because the near net was drooping, the cable slack. The boys had dropped their bikes on the ground and were inside, trying to hit home runs. The door protested when Ken pushed it open. Cracks an inch wide ran like fault lines through the asphalt, and because there wasn’t a garbage can, around the green park bench lay a dangerous collection of rusty can tops, their pull rings sticking up.

  “Nice,” Meg said.

  “I’ll get them later,” Ken said, and toed them under the bench. “How are we going to do this? We’ve got an extra.”

  “Let’s just hit for a while to warm up,” Lise said. “There’s room.”

  She double-knotted her Tretorns and fitted her visor in place, sloughed her racquet cover and took Sam’s side. The far side was in the sun, and Justin had to shield his eyes and then missed the ball completely, the force of his swing spinning him. Meg came to his rescue, backing him up, but Sam hit it to his backhand and he just waved at it, spaghetti-wristed. Every volley stopped with him, the balls multiplying behind him.

  “You can borrow my sunglasses,” Sam offered, and they met at the net, but it didn’t help. To make things even, Ken joined them, putting Justin in the middle, and Lise felt sorry for him. Meg and Jeff were both athletic, so was Sarah. At best Justin was tentative. He was flat-footed and turned the racquet as he swung, so when he did hit the ball, it caught the wood and shot off in odd directions. She could see him reddening, hunching his shoulders after each whiff, dragging his racquet. She tried to guide the ball to Meg and Ken and then a soft hop to his forehand, rooting for him, while Sam sprayed all over the place, happy to chase the balls into the far court.

  “Good one,” Lise said when Justin returned one just wide, but he was scowling, and when he missed again and whacked his racquet on the ground, Meg took him aside, bent over, lecturing him face-to-face.

  “I’ve got one,” Ken said, and started them again.

  Sam had run off and it was just the two of them ranging alley to alley. She played so seldom now that she was surprised to find she could still hit her backhand with some power. She couldn’t remember the last time she really ran. She was sweating, loosening up, a lifetime of private lessons flowing back into her limbs, her footwork returning. Topspin, drop shots—it was all there. Back when Henry and Emily still played, the couples paired off and had a doubles tournament, which invariably came down to how Ken was serving, and even then she could pull out some breaks to give them a win. There was a long stretch of years they’d been unbeatable, probably still were.

  Justin took a seat on the bench, and after some long volleys Sam joined him. He’d brought his Game Boy and the two hunched over it, lost.

  “Unbelievable,” Ken said.

  “Looks like Canadian doubles,” Lise said.

  “You up for it?” Meg asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be?”

  “Better get ready to do some running,” Ken said.

  “You better get ready to do some losing.”

  Lise served first, usually her forte, but had trouble getting her first serve in and ran more than she wanted to. She won her serve, then lost Ken’s. When she let up at all they played her side to side, trying to wear her down. She lobbed the ball deep to get back into position, then tried to split the middle. Soon she was conceding points, looking for easy kill shots, like the high hops Meg left on her second serve. Lise knew it was mean to go to Meg’s backhand so often, but then her serve deserted her and anything was fair game.

  “Vicious,” Ken said.

  “Brutal,” Meg said.

  Lise smiled and waved her racquet at their compliments. She was running too hard to talk. She retreated to the one patch of shade between points, clinging to that magical advantage. She couldn’t remember Ken serving so well and thought he was pressing just to torture her. She came up with a pair of aces and went up 4–3, then broke Meg again—the weak link.

  All she had to do was hold service—easy. She took her time. The sun was above them and her throat was a flue. The line of sweat on her visor inched toward the tip of the bill, her hair slick on her neck. She walked back after winning another point, her eyes on the ground, and caught a fat ant crossing the baseline, looked up and saw the clouds moving behind the trees, the entire sky shaking with every step. The heat came off her face, pulsed behind her eyes. Her head felt light as a dry gourd, a bright, empty room holding only the score. Even Ken’s girl stood off to the side, by Emily, the two of them spectral, bleached by the white light.

  “Forty love,” she said, “set point,” and missed long with her first.

  She looked around the fence for another ball and thought she saw someone walking through the woods. The boys were gone, maybe it was them.

  To her surprise there was a ball in her pocket.

  “Wide,” Ken called from the other side, and she shifted over, careful not to foot-fault.

  She was disappointed. She’d wanted to end it with him—because it was between the two of them, finally. Meg was just in the way, the same with Emily and the girl. Lise imagined a line of searchers sweeping past the courts while they played, wading through the ferns. If she won, they would keep going, walk on into the woods and never bother them again. If she lost, they’d stop and find her, his precious dead girl, let him take pictures of her laid out on the ground. And then Lise thought it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he’d ever be fascinated with her.

  He had been once, but that part of their life was gone and impossible to get back, like her game.

  “Forty fifteen,” she said, and let it rip.

  3

  They sat on the porch with the radio playing the classical station from Jamestown, the occasional powerboat or car drowning out the strings. A breeze rustled the leaves without disturbing the shadows on the lawn. By the door Rufus lay capsized, his legs stretched out, paws twitching in his sleep.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Emily said. “If I had the money I wouldn’t be looking around here. I’d try somewhere like Point Chautauqua where they’re done building. You’ve heard about the lady from Chicago and her party barge?”

  Arlene hadn’t.

  “Oh, you’re in for a treat. The road association is all up in arms. It seems this lady from Chicago bought the Smiths’ other lot, the one back by the marina road, thinking it has lake access, which it doesn’t. Now she wants to park her party barge at the common dock.”

  “How big is it?”

  “Twenty-five feet, I don’t know. There’s supposed to be a meeting next week. We’ve been getting letters on it since last fall. You can bet this kind of thing doesn’t happen at Point Chautauqua.”

  She couldn’t be serious, Arlene thought. They’d never stayed at Point Chautauqua. She didn’t honestly think they could buy into someone else’s genteel tradition the way the meat people from Chicago scooped up all the old Victorians at the Institute.

  “I’ve always liked that area,” Emily confessed. “There are some beautiful period places there.”

  “Expensive.”

  “I’m sure they don’t come up for sale very of
ten. It’s all families that have been there forever.”

  “I’ve never stayed on that side,” Arlene said.

  “You get the sunset. I think it’s more of a camp-type atmosphere.”

  “It would be different.”

  “I think it would be nice.”

  Arlene thought she might be fishing for her approval. They both knew she was powerless in this, that Emily was including her as a courtesy, like her father mentioning the family finances over dinner, a tactical flash of a closely kept hand.

  The music returned, buoyant and joyful, something in flight. Over toward Midway the makings of a race were gathering, a school of Lasers tacking back and forth, weaving like cars before the starting line. She was so used to this view. She tried to imagine what the boats looked like from that side and couldn’t quite.

  There was so little to hold on to that the smallest change was a loss. She would even miss the Lerners’ alarm going off, the dank smell of the shallows, the mildewed rooms.

  She was tempted to ask Emily flat out, offer to buy the place herself, borrow on her life insurance.

  She wouldn’t, of course. Couldn’t, out of some sense of dignity, an invisible line. Emily wouldn’t take her seriously.

  Beyond the trees an engine brayed, steady—a big speedboat, but they couldn’t locate it, and then a shape cut through an opening above them, an old silver seaplane banking low over the water. They followed it haltingly through the gaps until the racket passed.

  “I’m sure that’s not legal,” Emily said.

  “It’s a pretty one.”

  “Kenneth would know what it is.”

  Henry would have, but neither of them said it. They sat back and watched the water like a stage, waiting for something else of interest to appear.

  Arlene thought that this time tomorrow they would be packing up to leave, and imagined Pittsburgh, the hot park, her apartment musty from being shut up, her plants wilted. In the past she would have been preparing for her classes, laying out the calendar by chapters. Now the days ahead seemed endless, space that needed to be taken up somehow. Reading, and trips to the Frick. She liked the park in the fall, kicking the leaves, the paths that wound down under the bridge. She’d tried it last year when Henry was in the hospital but gave up before she passed the tennis courts. She knew how things got ruined, and didn’t want to do that to something she relied on. Instead she visited dutifully until it felt like a vigil, and by then it was. The last month he couldn’t stop apologizing for putting them through this, and it was true, every day she had to steel herself so she wouldn’t seem shocked by his thin arms sticking out of the gown. In the parking garage Emily cursed him for worrying about them, as if he should be thinking only of himself now, the world a distraction unworthy of his attention.