The Banks of Certain Rivers

by Harrison, Jon

  “And to top everything off, I’ll throw in a timeshare for both of you,” he says, smiling broadly. “Use it whenever. Rent it out if you want. And let me tell you this. I don’t want to hear your answer right now. You guys take a week to think about, and I’ll—”

  “I don’t need a week to think about it,” Alan says, picking his bike up from where we moved it to the ground. “I can give you my answer right now: no. No, no and no.” Leland shakes his head as Alan mounts the bicycle. “I’ll see you in the morning, Neil!” Alan calls, riding off down the drive.

  “Can you talk to that guy?” Leland asks, watching the bike clatter away in a cloud of late summer dust. “Are you able to get through to him?”

  “I don’t think there’s much of a point,” I say. “And honestly, I don’t think there’s much of a chance that I’m going to change my mind either.”

  Leland claps his hand on my upper arm. “I told you, I don’t want an answer yet. Give it some thought. Some serious thought. I’ll come by sometime next week, and you tell me then. That okay?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “All right,” Leland says, rolling up his plans. “Next week sometime. All right.”

  Inside, after Leland has gone, I unpack my bag, and when I fish my cellphone from my work pants pocket I find I’ve received a text message from my son.

  “Just got 2 Grayling,” it says. Like most of the other kids from Port Manitou, he’s gone with his friends to watch tonight’s game too. I tap a message back.

  “Have fun. Let me know when you’re headed home.”

  A moment passes while I stare at the phone, and finally it sings and hums in my hand. The screen says: “Will do.”

  I take a water bottle from the pantry and fill it from the tap; our water is drawn from a well and is rich in sink-staining iron. I can taste it when I take a long sip. Glancing back at the pantry I consider for just a moment how nice it would be to fill a glass with some of our mineral-rich ice cubes followed by some decent whiskey from the dusty bottle in the pantry I have stashed away for special occasions, but I’ve set a (mostly enforced) rule that the only alcohol consumption I do anymore is in the company of friends. This occasion, a night alone, is not so special. Water will suffice for now.

  I step through the dining room and past the sliding door to the back deck. Insects still drone over the dry field, and now and again a gust of wind whistles through the pines to move the long yellowed grass in waves.

  A text message sound dings from inside the house, and inside I need to wander around for a moment to find where I left the phone on the bookshelf. I’m expecting another text from Christopher, but instead I’m notified that a message awaits from ELL DEE, my shorthand for Lauren Downey. Slide to unlock. Tap to read.

  “Movie plans cancelled. Project shelf assembly is a go. Can we call a meeting?”

  I dial Lauren’s number, and she’s quick to answer.

  “A meeting?” I ask. “Like a meeting meeting? Or a meeting to assemble Ikea shelves sort of meeting.”

  “What would be your guess?” I can hear her smiling. “Doesn’t matter what it’s for, really, let’s call one. Do you want to grab something for us to eat?”

  “A meeting,” I say again. “I’ll be there in a little bit.”

  From: xc.coach.kaz@gmail.com

  To:w.kazenzakis@gmail.com

  Sent: September 7, 5:50 pm

  Subject:Ikea

  _____________________________

  Something reminded me just recently of the trip we took to Philadelphia the year Chris was in 6th grade. Our son only wanted to see the Liberty Bell, and you only wanted to see the first US Ikea store. I’m sure you remember the little argument we had about that. I thought it was kind of stupid to go in there, and you did not; we went back and forth, back and forth, and finally I said fine, fine, we’ll go in the store. We didn’t talk the whole time we were in there. Chris bopped around from display to display, oblivious, and I clenched my teeth and swore I would not be the one to give in to speaking first. I don’t remember which one of us did.

  Of all the stupid things we could have bickered about, right? Of all the regrets I could possibly carry around, can you believe that one memory hurts as much as any of them?

  Anyway, there’s one of those stores in Detroit now. I haven’t been there yet to buy anything myself (I don’t know if I could bring myself to do so), but these Swedish products keep making their way up to PM.

  -Neil

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A meeting. This is our shorthand; our shared private language. It defines for us something I am not quite ready to say in a more formal voice. Lauren would say it, she does say it, but in deference to my reluctant self a code word is employed. The meeting is called, and I’ll happily go.

  I find my canvas tool bag in the garage and check to make sure it has at least some screwdrivers, pliers and wrenches, the sorts of things I anticipate I’ll need for the assembly of prefab furniture. The bag is tossed in on the passenger seat of my decade-old truck, and I make one last trip into the house to grab the book I’ve been reading, one of Murakami’s early ones (sent to me by my brother Teddy; he and some of his friends started up a “dudes only” book club last year and he keeps bugging me to participate sometime via webcam).

  There are evenings like this, meetings like this. We get together when we can. Two years, almost, of Lauren and me spending time in each other’s company and saying nothing really about it. Over the course of this unspoken but seemingly real pairing, some standards have evolved. During surprise blocks of mutually free time, carryout is usually ordered and, if we’re meeting at my house, films are often viewed. Lauren has a strange affinity for the brat pack movies of the eighties; they carry a sort of novelty for her, and this novelty seems to be increased by the knowledge that more likely than not my brother and I saw these films in the theater upon their original release. Viewing Pretty In Pink once in 1986 was enough for me, but since Lauren seems to love it so, I’ll tolerate repeated showings.

  If we’re at Lauren’s, where there’s no TV, we’ll usually end up eating and talking, and, almost always, reading together on her college-era futon with our feet twined together under a tangle of blankets. She’ll have a couple nursing textbooks stacked in her lap along with a highlighter clenched between her teeth, and I’ll have some novel propped up on my chest: one of Teddy’s suggestions, or one of my own corny genre adventure-on-the-high-seas tomes. The Titanic will be raised, the world will be saved.

  In either place, if time permits after reading and eating and movies and wine, our clothes are often shed and our bodies come together. The tone of the meeting becomes something more serious. Sometimes (at my house) the act is conducted noisily, and other times (her condo has thin walls) it is a more silent congress of bare skin. Recently this has become more frequent. More and more frequent.

  In my truck, I cut through town to the new pizza place we discovered a couple weeks ago. I phoned in our standard order before I left home: a small cheese and olive for me and Greek salad for her (though history suggests I’ll sneak bites of the salad and Lauren will end up eating nearly half of the pizza).

  Lauren lives in an older condominium next to the Big Jib River spillway where it flows into Lake Michigan, just south of Port Manitou’s public beach and municipal marina. I cross the bridge over the spillway into her complex and pull in behind the Prius parked in Lauren’s open garage, and as I step out of the truck with our food balanced on top of my tools I’m heralded by the sound of sailboat rigging pinging against masts in the still-strong wind. Up the stairs to Lauren’s living room, and I manage to not drop our meal.

  The room is a mess of torn-open boxes and broken slabs of packing foam. Instruction sheets and cream-colored shelving boards are spread over the floor, and Lauren, in a sweatshirt and torn jeans, is seated cross-legged on her futon.

  “I tried to get started,” she says, smiling. “But I realized I should probably wait for you.”
r />   “This….” I look around the room. “Is kind of a disaster. Do you know what goes with what?”

  “Not really.” Another smile. “But the pieces are all labeled. We’ll sort it all out. How’s your mouth? Your lip’s still pretty swollen.”

  “It feels a little better. How did you get everything up here?”

  “Malcolm and his new boyfriend. They were leaving just as I got home.” Malcolm Rice, Lauren’s next-door neighbor, is a former student of mine, and was the first out-and-proud gay high school kid I ever knew. You see that more frequently now—it’s not such a big deal anymore, at least not at the high school—but ten years ago it was pretty impressive.

  “They insisted,” she says. “Really, they had everything upstairs before I could say no.”

  “That sounds like Malcolm.” I set the food on the coffee table and use my foot to clear a space on the floor to sit. “New boyfriend is a good guy?”

  “Very good guy.” Lauren goes to the kitchen to get plates and paper towels for napkins. “Quiet guy. He’s going to tune up my bike.”

  “Uh huh,” I murmur. I’m looking over one of the instruction sheets, and as I scan the debris around for something matching Part “A” on the diagram before me, I see one flat, unopened parcel leaning against the wall that makes me pause.

  “No,” I say. “You didn’t.” Printed on the side of the long box are the words 42” LCD TV. Lauren holds her napkin over her mouth with both hands and raises her eyebrows.

  “I did!” she squeaks.

  “This is the refuge, though—”

  “It was on sale.”

  “—Our place for reading!”

  “I’m not getting cable,” she says. “It’s only for movies!”

  “Are you going to take all the John Hughes movies from my house if you have a TV now?”

  “Are you saying you watch them?”

  “I’m not.…” I can’t keep myself from smiling at the question. “I don’t watch them. I’m just saying maybe I like the reminder of you in my home.”

  “Chris doesn’t ask about them?”

  “We have a million movies anyway, so I don’t think he even notices them there. He did watch some, I think. I’m pretty sure he saw The Breakfast Club at the end of the summer.”

  “Did he like it?”

  “I think he liked it. I also think he felt it was a little dated. It maybe hasn’t aged so well.”

  “Unlike other things around in the eighties.”

  I make a noise like “Psh!” and swat the top of the pizza box down on Lauren’s hand as she’s trying to grab a slice. “I wasn’t the only one here around in the eighties,” I say.

  She flings the top back up and says “Psh!” in return. “You’re the only one here who remembers them.”

  We work for the next hour, sneaking bites of food here and there, finding pieces, aligning them, driving fasteners home. A dent is made in the mayhem on the floor, and Lauren shuttles a stack of flattened, empty boxes downstairs to her garage as I stand one of the shelves up and slide it against the wall. It partially covers one of two colorful, orange-ish, modern paintings she has up in her living room. They were made by her ex-boyfriend, and I hate them.

  “You’ll need to move your artwork,” I call as Lauren climbs back upstairs, putting a little unfair emphasis on the last word. I pull the painting in front of me from its hook and angle it to examine the rough dabs of acrylic pigment.

  “We can move them right into your house,” she says. “I don’t know why you have to be so nasty about them. I mean, I do know, but still. I like them for what they are, not for the person who painted them. And you know that he’s not so—”

  “We don’t really need to talk about the person who painted them,” I say, and I hang the canvas back up where it was.

  “You’re acting like one of your kids,” Lauren says.

  “Oh?”

  “For such a measured man, maybe this is the one place where your job rubs off on you.”

  “Rubs off on me how?”

  “You’re being petty. Like a teenager. Jealous.”

  “So you have to be in your teens to be jealous, you’re saying.”

  Lauren gathers a pile of books from the floor next to her futon, and she gently elbows me aside to arrange them on the top tier of her new bookshelf. “It’s a more raw emotion at that age,” she says. “Everything is more raw then.”

  Lauren had grown up in a suburb of Pittsburgh. A Midwestern kid, not unlike me. She had a little brother, two years younger, and two working parents who loved each other, except for the year when she had been a junior in high school that they lived apart. When she talks about that, she laughs. It’s not like they stopped loving each other, she says, but maybe they needed a break from it. It was a raw time for her, too. It was a raw time for all of them.

  That was her rebellious time, the year her parents split up. She laughs about this. She laughs about all of her childhood, like it was a ridiculous ordeal that could have been borne only through laughter. Upon her parents’ separation she buzz-cut her long hair with clippers in a friend’s garage. Short and spiky—she giggles at the memory of it, giggles when she shows me a photo—looking like an otter’s fur. Her mother gasped when Lauren came home to show her. Her mother gasped, and cried. Lauren thought this was an overreaction at the time, but she hadn’t known her little brother had been busted earlier that week for selling shaky marijuana in their school parking lot. That was his rebellion. There were raw feelings all around.

  Her father came back home at the beginning of her senior year. Not that he’d really ever been entirely away; he’d been around every weekend for the duration of their separation to mow the yard and ensure that the systems of the house were in good functioning order. It was just a trial, her parents said later. They needed some space. In the end, they decided they liked being together more than they liked being apart.

  Before all that, though, before parental separations and otter fur haircuts, there were pig-tailed summers with a two-week vacation spent each July in Port Manitou, Michigan. Their family had no real ties to the place; Lauren’s father read about it in some travel magazine, they visited for two weeks, and they liked it so much they came back every summer after that (on the year of their separation, her parents split their visits over the first and second weeks of the trip). Lauren came to love it. My family was visiting then too, and we’ve tried to figure out if our trips ever overlapped. I’d wager they did, even though we can’t pin down the dates. I wonder sometimes if I ever would have recalled seeing her and her brother out of the thousand or so kids I ever saw building sand castles on the beach. I have no memory of it. I was focused on other things.

  Port Manitou figured into Lauren’s choice of colleges. She wanted to be close, relatively, and ended up studying nursing at University of Michigan. She would make the drive up north to stay with her family on their summer trips, and after a while she started coming up on her own. She made friends here. She met a guy. After graduation, Lauren went back to Pennsylvania to work in a hospital near her hometown for a few years, but when she learned of an opening for a nurse at Port Manitou’s Urgent Care Clinic, she moved up and stayed. It didn’t take her long to discover that the clinic, a satellite operation of one of Northern Michigan’s big hospital systems, was mired in operational politics and general staff misery, and as soon as she found work elsewhere at a little hospice and home healthcare business, she left.

  Lauren was one of Carol’s first nurses when my mother-in-law returned from her hospital stay. I worked pretty closely with all of the nursing staff then; I was over at the house frequently, moving Carol’s things to her new bedroom downstairs, building a ramp for the step down into the living room, doing all of those projects that needed to be done for her to live comfortably in her new situation. Downtime was frequent. Carol was pretty medicated, and the nurses stayed a lot, Lauren most of all. I couldn’t do loud work while Carol was sleeping, so Lauren and I would chat. Insi
gnificant topics were discussed at first: what movies had we seen recently, funny stories about my students or her patients. Little things.

  I found myself over at the farmhouse more and more. I didn’t even realize I was doing it, I don’t think; Lauren was easy to talk to, and quick to laugh at my stupid jokes. I liked being with her. Over time, our conversations began to dip into more personal territory. She learned where I was from, about my siblings, and the circumstances of Wendy’s accident and current state. She told me about growing up, going to school, visiting Port Manitou with her family as a kid like I had.

  She was dating a bicycle mechanic-slash-multimedia artist at the time. They’d hung out when she was in college, and kept in touch when she was back in Pennsylvania. He loved painting and music and bikes, and he seemed to love her too, somewhere along with his other passions. She hinted to me at times that the relationship wasn’t going anywhere, but I never pressed. She also hinted that she loved being a nurse but was considering going back to school to widen her opportunities. I never pressed too much about that either. I hoped she wouldn’t move away.

  I’d bring lunch sometimes. I’d tell stories over the dining room table, and she’d laugh her easy laugh.

  One day things shifted, a tiny seismic tilt that realigned our interactions. I came over to the farmhouse to find Lauren in tears, nearly inconsolable, and she managed to tell me she’d just got a call from her mom; her little brother had been in a serious car accident and it looked, at the moment, like he might not survive his injuries. She came to me, and I put my arms around her shoulders, and she cried against my chest for what seemed like a very long time. I knew about that sort of loss. When she calmed down enough I drove her to her condo in town, and told her to let me know if she needed a ride to the airport, or anything else.