Under a Dark Sky

by Lori Rader-Day

“I thought so, for a minute or two. Youthful obsession, more like. But apparently second chances do exist. Hey, maybe you’ll stay long enough that you’ll learn the sordid details.” He flicked at the ID tag on my suitcase. “Chicago, huh? Good place to be from.”

  I wasn’t from there. Bix was, and so when he’d retired, we settled there. When we’d first arrived, I couldn’t believe I lived under such a skyline—I couldn’t believe that the skyline actually existed outside films and television, outside dreams of what a city should look like. I had come from a much more suburban area: sprawling, without center, ugly. Chicago was lovely. The high-rises were jet-black blocks against the night sky, everything lit fiercely and defiantly. Lights left on, welcoming, beckoning, except to the east, where the city came to an abrupt halt at the crescent shoreline of Lake Michigan. To the east of the city, the lake lay dark, the sky to the horizon.

  I walked to the window and drew aside the curtain. There it was. The far side of the same lake, though we were up against the very northeastern tip of it. It seemed like the end of the world just now.

  This is why I’d come. To expand the world that had turned so small. To come to the end of something and step over into what was next. To see the damn stars as Bix had wanted, and then kiss them all, and him, good-bye. To get over him, at least enough to get on with things, whatever those things turned out to be. To get on with life and what was left of it.

  There was too much of it left to live it out hiding from the night sky. And, more damning, there was far too much of it remaining to ride out the money Bix had left me. All those systems set in place, and the clock was winding down, even so.

  “Chicago’s nice,” Malloy said, fidgeting with his watch again. Up his arm, down his arm, rattle around his wrist. He didn’t seem to like the feel of it on his skin. “But you can’t see any stars there.”

  “A few,” I said. “But I guess not enough.”

  MALLOY LEFT ME to go reattach himself to Hillary. I sat down on the bed and pulled the camera bag strap over my head. The bed was comfortable, laid with a fluffy comforter I was sure would be no comfort to me. Not at night, anyway. I could hear low voices in the kitchen and wondered how much of the conversation was about whether or not I would stay.

  I wouldn’t have wanted me here, in their place. I didn’t want me here now.

  One night. I could make it through one night.

  I would have to cover the windows. There were extra blankets folded on the chair in the seating area. They would do. I went to the door and tried the switch for the overhead lights. Weak. Far too weak.

  A radio sat on the nightstand. I turned it on, fidgeting with the dial until something local and boring came on, then turned it off.

  “Hello?” Hillary stood at the door, raising her knuckles to knock and then dropping her hand when she saw me. “Oh, wow, this is so cute. Look at this little living room you’ve got. It’s so homey.”

  “I probably won’t stay more than a day,” I said. “Maybe you and Malloy can grab this when I go.”

  She tilted her head, smiling. “I don’t think that will be the way it goes.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Seems like you’re the first lady of this place.”

  She laughed. “If you mean because Malloy is so—well, he’s just so much himself, isn’t he? I’ve never met anyone like him.”

  Hillary had done it again. She had such an innocent way of slashing through to the truth and now she’d struck gold again. So much himself—yes, maybe that was the thing about Malloy that had reminded me of Bix. Even though he’d been through so much, even at the end, when things weren’t quite what they seemed, he had always been so much himself. And that’s what had bothered me most. Lying should leave a trace.

  Hillary went to the window, murmuring over the view of the lake and woods. I watched her hair slide over her narrow shoulders. I had never been a woman like this, the porcelain kind, slim at the wrist. I hadn’t met too many of them, either. On base, they might show up, young, married, deer in headlights. They were rare creatures, tottering around on slim legs and heels too high to be practical. Most of us were practical. You had to be. And if you couldn’t protect yourself, you didn’t last long, not out in the field and not among the wives on base, either.

  “Are you nervous to be inserted into the family this way?” I said.

  I hadn’t meant to be unkind, not consciously, but it must have sounded that way. She turned from the window, a furrow between her eyebrows. For a second, she looked older, harder. And then the moment passed. “Is it that obvious?” She shrugged. “I mean, they just love him so much, you know? You can tell how protective they are of him.”

  “Possessive,” I said. But then I was again thinking of Bix.

  “That, too,” she said, without the smile this time. Somewhere in the other half of the house, one of the women laughed. “But there’s no question how close they are. They want to be around him so much. One of them is always calling, and this trip, well, I think it’s been in his calendar almost as long as I’ve known him.” A strange, blank expression passed over her face, but then she rallied. “Hey, we’re going to do a bonfire down by the lake tonight, maybe. We—Malloy and me—we want you to join us.”

  That was clearly out of the question. “I might make it an early night tonight,” I said. “It was a long drive here and it will be a long drive back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? You’re really not staying?” She seemed honestly disappointed, and then I remembered the other two women pulling each other around the house to get away from her. In other circumstances, I’d feel bad for her. “Don’t you want to see the stars before you do, at least?” she said.

  Paris suddenly stood in the door. She gazed over the suite, the open curtain to the lake, my suitcase on the bed. “Did either of you bring a corkscrew?”

  “They don’t have one in the kitchen?” I said.

  “I guess it’s such a family place,” Paris said. She turned and we followed. I had a feeling Paris was accustomed to being followed at every turn she made.

  In the kitchen, the group had begun an attack. Sam and Malloy pulled at drawers and opened cabinets methodically from one side of the room to the other while the rest of us gathered around Dev. He stood with the neck of a wine bottle between his knees, prying at the cork with a screwdriver.

  “You found a screwdriver but not a wine opener?” I said.

  “Martha had it with her,” Paris said. “She’s handy like that.”

  “It’s from her trunk,” Sam said, stretching for a high cabinet.

  “Hey, keep your mind off my trunk,” Martha said. Behind her, the back of Sam’s neck turned bright pink. “A single girl’s gotta be ready to take care of things herself.” She looked at me. “You know how it is.”

  Dev had chipped away some of the cork.

  “Oh, poke it through,” Paris groaned. “A little cork never killed anyone.”

  Several fabric carry-alls with slots for six bottles of wine apiece sat on the counter. I tallied the bottles visible in the room. “The cork may not kill you,” I said. “But your ambition might.”

  Sam looked to see what I meant. “You don’t like wine?”

  “Sam is a distributor,” Martha said, bumping him out of the way to open a drawer that had already been checked. She pulled out a silver cake knife with an intricate, tarnished handle. “Look at this beauty. Now we need some cake,” she said, and then slid it back. “Sam’s been working on us for years. He’s got us all talking tannins and vintners. I can’t believe I just said ‘vintner.’”

  “I don’t mind wine,” I said. “Occasionally.” Martha looked at me with pity that I probably deserved. “I just didn’t plan on replacing all my body’s fluids with it this week. You won’t be driving anywhere, right?”

  “And we have lift off,” Malloy called, pulling a silver corkscrew out of the back of a drawer and raising it over his head to cheers from the others. He ignored the bottle Dev had been battling, took up
another bottle, and pulled the cork with a practiced skill. Dev set the bottle with the screwdriver stuck in the cork on the counter more heavily than I thought was warranted.

  “Now,” Malloy said, “who remembers which cabinet had the glasses?”

  “Sam is our wine hookup,” Paris said to me. “He gets the good stuff.”

  “I guess now’s as good a time as any,” Sam said, turning to the cabinet door over the sink and taking down glasses. There were six matching ones.

  “What do you mean?” Malloy stretched beyond Sam’s reach to the uppermost shelf, where one oddball wineglass sat, neglected. He rinsed it out and poured the first dram of red. Sam watched as his friend took a sniff, sloshed the wine around the bowl of the glass, and finally sipped. The sort of thing I would have made fun of to amuse Bix, but I could tell from Sam’s hungry eyes that he cared. When Malloy gave them all a satisfied grin, Sam launched back in. “I . . . left my job. I might do something entirely different.”

  “You’re serious?” Martha said, her perfectly painted lips opening and closing a couple of times as she decided what to say. “But . . . but you love that job.”

  “It’s just a job,” Sam mumbled.

  “You’ll still get your discount, though, right?” Paris said.

  “You mean, do we still get his discount,” Martha said without looking at Paris. “But why, dude? I thought you were going for that promotion—” She glanced all around, her eyes landing on me as Malloy handed me the first serving. He had kept the mismatched glass for himself. If none of them noticed, I did. “I’m sorry,” Martha said. “Maybe you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Well, I don’t really, but I thought you should know. No, I do not get the discount anymore,” he said. “I’m a civilian.”

  Malloy had served the women. Martha took a sip and exclaimed over it. Now Malloy opened another bottle of the same label and poured for the men, Sam first.

  “None for me,” Dev said.

  “Oh, shit, I forgot,” Sam said. “I meant to bring you a greez and I forgot.”

  “A what?” I said.

  “Pinot grigio. I’m allergic to red grapes,” Dev said.

  “So he drinks wine like a very fine lady,” Martha said, winking at him.

  “Every time I’m with these guys, I’m two seconds away from an EpiPen,” Dev said.

  “He can’t even kiss me when I’ve had red,” Paris said. It hadn’t stopped her from sipping at her glass.

  “We’ll swing into town for some reinforcements tomorrow,” Dev said.

  The staggering amount of wine on the counter was not enough.

  “So, Sam. What happened with work? We talked about you going for the gold at that place,” Malloy said. “Did it not work out?”

  Sam looked my way. I got the hint and set down my glass. I hadn’t wanted it, anyway. I’d lost the taste for alcohol but hadn’t wanted to explain. “I’m going to grab a few things from my car before it gets—” I stopped and tried again. “I’ll be right back.”

  Outside, the air had turned cooler. Shadows drew across the clearing and over the cars. I went to mine and pulled open the back door. I’d brought a few snacks from home to subsist on until I could run over to the town for the week’s staples. Now I wouldn’t have to go shopping, and I wouldn’t have to make things last. I grabbed the bag and shut the door. After a moment of hesitation, I locked the car with a beep of the key fob, convincing myself that I would have done it anyway. Even in my secured garage in Chicago, I locked my car. So why did I feel as though I was warding off something? Or someone?

  I stood next to the car, surveying the scene. The guest house’s design was flat and uninviting from this side. The woods—pines, cedars, a peeling birch or two—crawled up to the property and dangled branches near the roof. On the far side of the house, the land dropped away. The lake, then. If I only had a few hours here, I might as well take advantage of them.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed something moving. But when I turned my head, there was nothing there but a stirring among the branches from a breeze. I hit the lock on the button again and headed toward the kayaks and around the house. There was a ridge and then the low grass of the guest house’s yard gave way to long wisps of sea grass before thinning to sand. A wave slid among the pebbles that rimmed the shore, which stretched off into a public beach to the north. A handful of people punctuated the curl of the beach as it turned in on itself, a wide-open cove. Just to the south of the guest house, a skinny strip of natural peninsula struck out into the water, a headland protecting the shore from rougher waters. This must be the so-named Straits Point.

  Above, the sky was a bright blue with only a few thin clouds. It was a shame, really, that this place was so dedicated to darkness. The park’s daylight was highly underrated. Everywhere I looked, a postcard-worthy photo framed itself. I hadn’t brought my camera outside with me, but who was I kidding? I wouldn’t have pushed the shutter button, anyway.

  I walked along the curve of the land to the south and out onto the slim promontory. It curled around on itself, a finger beckoning, a half grin of land jutting into the water. The curve protected the beach and, at its tip, brought me face-to-façade once again with the guest house. For a house that faced into a scenic waterfront, west, probably into a perfect sundown every day of the week, it had few window openings in this direction. I shaded my eyes. Someone moved quickly out of view in one of the windows.

  I kicked a rock into the shallow water. There was something about the peninsula that made me think of walking a pirate ship’s plank. Turning to the lake again, I could almost believe I was alone.

  Why had I so wanted to be alone here? Maybe only because that’s what I’d expected. Would I want to spend a week in a house with strangers, even if I could?

  Even from this distance, I could hear them chattering inside the house, moving things around in the kitchen and laughing. A lonely sound, the laugh of a stranger.

  I knelt at the water’s edge at the point of the peninsula. The water here was clear, the sand below fading quickly out into the depths. I looked around at the image I would not capture with my camera: clouds, a sailboat out in the wind, tipped so that the sail was a bright knife of white into the water. I ducked my head and found the right angle on the gray-green lake to show its flatness to the horizon, unadorned by bird or boat. Empty. After a few minutes, I rose and walked back to the mainland.

  To the side of the house, a group of Adirondack loungers encircled a fire pit. I sat in one and fed myself cheese crackers out of my stash. From this viewpoint the guest house’s style was architecturally interesting and angular, though overly modern for my tastes. But it was a handsome place set upon the very land’s end. The fingernail’s edge of the mitten state’s middle finger. Bitterly cold in the winter and sold to the world as a winter wonderland in radio and television ads and on buses careening down Chicago’s snow-packed streets—who needed more exposure to snow and brisk wind? We had plenty of that in Chicago, thanks, enough for a lifetime every single winter until we started to question our sanity for living there. But then came the spring and it was just as scenic and seductive as this park was now. Someone must have been quite enchanted by all this land to have offered to enclose it as a state land package, and many more must be drawn here for the trees, the waves, and now, with the special park designation to regulate the lights, the dark sky above.

  Bix had been taken in, somehow. Without him here to serve as docent to all the wonders before me, I couldn’t say I was. We had this lake back home.

  Hillary was mincing down the yard toward me. “Can I join you?” she called, not waiting for the answer.

  So much for having a moment to myself. “Sure,” I said. “Cheese cracker?”

  “Thanks.” She took a few and nibbled at one like a rodent. “Sorry if you thought they wanted you to leave.”

  “They did,” I said. “It’s fine. I don’t really care if Sam gets a new career. Do you?”

  “I
do, a bit. Malloy talked him through some decisions he was making about it a few weeks ago. A pep talk for his promotion. He spent a lot of time . . . But I guess it didn’t work. And now we’ll have to talk about it some more. I guess we have to talk about something. So what do you do?”

  Do? I fell asleep as the sun rose, spending most of my efforts trying to catch even a few hours of rest, rushed around in the last hours of daylight to try to live a life, and then I incarcerated myself behind an arsenal of lamps and light fixtures until the first rays of sunrise the next day. I hid behind my dead husband’s forethought and planning. I struggled to see what was next.

  “I’m not working at the moment,” I said. It was a sore subject every time my sister brought it up. Michele hated that I didn’t work. No kids, no job, and now no husband.

  I’d had a job, once. It had been hard to build any kind of career, trailing behind Bix base to base. But in Chicago, I’d gotten the kind of job that I might have done for the rest of my working life, without ambition. But Bix hadn’t wanted me to work in the insurance office. Low-level administration as a concept made his head spin. Since he left the Army, he’d run his own company—sales, service, and chief bottle washer, as he liked to say. He worked with his hands, met new people every day, never had to sit more than a half hour behind some desk. He worked hard, or at least he seemed to. My lack of ambition had made him inexplicably angry, even though I’d had to keep any ambition I might have come by tucked inside because of his job. To teach me some kind of lesson, he’d bought insurance policies through me—life, accident and dismemberment, disability—hoping it might light a fire inside me for sales. It didn’t.

  Even worse: if I dared to voice a desire or interest, he was quick to suggest I pursue it. Caught watching a baking show? I should go to French pastry school. Reading an article on some type of crafting? Why don’t you set up an online shop? If we listened to a radio story on therapy dogs, he would soon be researching what it took to train them. For me. He was happy in his own choices, but had boundless energy for any idea that might wedge me loose from where I was—he thought—stuck. When I said I might want to take up photography, that was it. The camera was researched and gifted. I quit the job with his blessing. With his insistence, really. My sister had a lot to say about that, too.