Wallingford had great difficulty identifying these heroes; the pages torn from magazines were wrinkled and water-spotted, the captions barely legible. “In a locker room in Milwaukee,” Wallingford struggled to read, “after clinching their second Western Division championship, December 1961.” There were Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, and Coach Lombardi—the coach holding a bottle of Pepsi. Jim Taylor was bleeding from a gash on the bridge of his nose. Wallingford didn’t recognize them, but he could identify with Taylor, who was missing several front teeth.
Who were Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston, and what was the “Packer sweep”? Who was that guy caked in mud? (It was Forrest Gregg.) Or Ray Nitschke, muddy and bald and dazed and bleeding; sitting on the bench at a game in San Francisco, Nitschke held his helmet in his hands like a rock. Who are these people, or who were they? Wallingford wondered.
There was that famous photo of the fans at the Ice Bowl—Lambeau Field, December 31, 1967. They were dressed for the Arctic or the Antarctic; their breath obscured their faces in the cold. Some Clausens had to have been among them. Wallingford would never know the meaning of that pile of bodies, or how the Dallas Cowboys must have felt to see Bart Starr lying in the end zone; not even his Green Bay teammates had known that Starr was going to improvise a quarterback sneak from the one-yard line. In the huddle, as every Clausen knew, the quarterback had called, “Brown right. Thirty-one wedge.” The result was sports history—it just wasn’t a history Wallingford knew.
To realize how little he knew Mrs. Clausen’s world gave Patrick pause. There were also the personal but unclear photos that required interpretation to outsiders. Doris tried to explain. That hulking rock in the wake off the stern of the speedboat—that was a black bear, discovered one summer swimming in the lake. That blurry shape, like a time-lapsed photograph of a cow grazing out-of-place among the evergreens, was a moose making its way to the swamp, which according to Mrs. Clausen was “not a quarter of a mile from here.” And so on… the confrontations with nature and the crimes against nature, the local victories and the special occasions, the Green Bay Packers and the births in the family, the dogs and the weddings.
Wallingford noted, as quickly as he could, the photograph of Otto senior and Mrs. Clausen at their wedding. They were carving the cake; Otto’s strong left hand covered Doris’s smaller hand, which held the knife. Patrick experienced a pang of familiarity when he saw Otto’s hand, although he’d not seen it with the wedding ring before. What had Mrs. Clausen done with Otto’s ring? he wondered. What had she done with hers?
At the front of the well-wishers who surrounded the cutting of the cake, a young boy stood holding a plate and a fork. He was nine or ten; because he was formally dressed like the other members of the wedding party, Patrick assumed he’d been the ring bearer. He didn’t recognize the kid, but since the ring bearer would be a young man now, Wallingford realized that he might have met him. (In all likelihood, given the boy’s round face and determined cheerfulness, he was a Clausen.)
The maid of honor stood beside the boy, biting her lower lip; she was a pretty young woman who seemed easily distracted, a girl often swayed by caprice. Like Angie, maybe?
At a glance, Patrick knew he’d never met her before; that she was the kind of girl he was familiar with, he also knew. She was not as nice as Angie. Once upon a time, the maid of honor might have been Doris’s best friend. But the choice could also have been political; possibly the wayward-looking girl was big Otto’s kid sister. And whether or not she and Doris had ever been friends, Patrick doubted that they were friends now.
As for the sleeping arrangements, Wallingford’s first look at the two finished rooms above the boathouse made the matter clear. Doris had set up the portable crib in the room with the twin beds, one of which she’d already used as a makeshift changing table—little Otto’s diapers and clothes were arrayed there. Mrs. Clausen told Patrick that she would sleep in the other twin bed in that room, which left the second room above the boathouse to Wallingford; it had a queensize bed, which looked bigger in the narrow room. As Patrick unpacked his things, he noted that the left side of the bed was flush to the wall—that would have been Otto senior’s side. Given the narrowness of the room, the only way into the bed was from Doris’s side; even then, the passage was skinny. Maybe Otto senior had climbed in from the foot of the bed. The walls of the room were the same rough pine as the interior of the main cabin, although the pine boards were lighter, almost blond—all but one large rectangle near the door, where perhaps a picture or a mirror had been hung. Sunlight had bleached the walls almost everywhere else. What had Mrs. Clausen taken down? Thumbtacked to the wall, above Otto senior’s side of the bed, were various photos of the restoration of the rooms above the boathouse. There was Otto senior, without a shirt, tanned and well muscled. (The carpenter’s belt reminded Patrick of the tool belt Monika with a k had had stolen from her at the circus in Junagadh.) There was also a photo of Doris in a one-piece bathing suit—a purple tank, conservatively cut. She had her arms crossed over her breasts, which made Wallingford sad; he would have liked to have seen more of her breasts. In the photograph, Mrs. Clausen was standing on the dock, watching Otto senior at work with a table saw. Since there was no electricity at the cottage on the lake, the gasoline generator on the dock must have supplied the power. The dark puddle at Doris’s bare feet suggested that her bathing suit was wet. Quite possibly, she’d hugged her arms to her breasts because she was cold.
When Wallingford closed the bedroom door to change into his swim trunks, that same purple one-piece bathing suit was hanging on a nail on the back of the door. Patrick couldn’t resist touching it. The purple bathing suit had spent much time in the water and in the sun; it’s doubtful that even a trace of Doris’s scent was attached to it, although Wallingford held the suit to his face and imagined that he could smell her.
In truth, the suit smelled more like Lycra, and like the lake, and the wood of the boathouse; but Patrick clutched the suit as tightly as he would have held fast to Mrs. Clausen—had she been wet and cold and shivering, the two of them taking off their wet bathing suits together.
This was truly pathetic behavior to display in the case of a no-nonsense, some would say frumpy, one-piece tank suit, fully front-lined, with the shoulder straps crossed in the back. The built-in shelf bra with thin, soft cups was a practical choice for a large-breasted but narrow-chested woman, which Doris Clausen was. Wallingford returned the purple bathing suit to the nail on the back of the bedroom door; he hung it, as she had done, by the shoulder straps. Beside it, on another nail, was the only other article of Mrs. Clausen’s clothing in the bedroom—a oncewhite, now somewhat grimy, terry-cloth robe. That this unexciting garment excited him was embarrassing.
He opened the dresser drawers as quietly as possible, looking for Doris’s underwear. But the bottom drawer held only sheets and pillowcases and an extra blanket; the middle drawer was full of towels. The top drawer rattled noisily with candles, flashlight batteries, several boxes of wooden matches, an extra flashlight, and a box of tacks.
In the rough pine boards above Mrs. Clausen’s side of the bed, Patrick noticed the small holes that tacks had made. She’d once tacked photographs there, as many as a dozen. Of what, or of whom, Wallingford could only guess. Why Doris had apparently removed the photos was another unknown.
There came a knock on the bedroom door just as Patrick was tying the strings on his swim trunks, which he’d long ago learned to do with his right hand and his teeth. Mrs. Clausen wanted her bathing suit and the terry-cloth robe; she told Wallingford which drawer the towels were in, unaware that he already knew, and asked him to bring three towels to the dock.
When she’d changed, they met in the narrow hall and descended the steep stairs to the ground floor of the boathouse; the staircase was open, which would be hazardous to little Otto next summer. Otto senior had meant to enclose the staircase. “He just didn’t get around to it,” Mrs. Clausen commented. There was a gangplank and a
slender dock that separated the two boats tied up in the boathouse, the family speedboat and a smaller outboard. At the open end of the boathouse, a ladder went into the water from the dividing dock. Who would want to enter or climb out of the lake from inside the boathouse? But Patrick didn’t mention the ladder because Mrs. Clausen was already making arrangements for the baby on the big outdoors dock.
She’d brought some toys and a quilt the size of a picnic blanket. The child wasn’t crawling as actively as Wallingford had expected. Otto junior could sit up by himself, until he seemed to forget where he was; then he’d roll over on his side. At eight months, the child could pull himself up to his feet— if there was a low table or some other sturdy thing for him to hang on to. But he often forgot he was standing; he would suddenly sit down or topple sideways.
And most of little Otto’s crawling was backward—he could back up more easily than he could move forward. If he was surrounded by some interesting objects to handle and look at, he would sit in one spot quite contentedly—but not for long, Doris pointed out. “In a few weeks, we won’t be able to sit on a dock with him. He’ll be moving, on all fours, nonstop.”
For now, because of the sun, the child wore a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and a hat—also sunglasses, which he didn’t pull off his face as frequently as Patrick would have predicted. “You swim. I’ll watch him. Then you can watch him while I swim,” Mrs. Clausen told Wallingford.
Patrick was impressed by the sheer amount of baby paraphernalia Mrs. Clausen had brought for the weekend; he was equally impressed by how calmly and effortlessly Doris seemed to have adjusted to being a mother. Or maybe motherhood did that to women who’d wanted to have a baby as badly and for as long as Mrs. Clausen had wanted one. Wallingford didn’t really know. The lake water felt cold, but only when you first went in. Off the deep end of the dock, the water was blue-gray; nearer shore, it took on a greener color from the reflected fir trees and white pines. The bottom was sandier, less muddy, than Patrick had anticipated, and there was a small beach of coarse sand, strewn with rocks, where Wallingford bathed little Otto in the lake. Initially the boy was shocked by the coldness of the water, but he never cried; he let Wallingford wade with him in his arms while Mrs. Clausen took their picture. (She seemed quite the expert with a camera.)
The grown-ups, as Patrick began to think of Doris and himself, took turns swimming off the dock. Mrs. Clausen was a good swimmer. Wallingford explained that, with one hand, he felt more comfortable just floating or treading water. Together they dried little Otto, and Doris let Patrick try to dress the child—his first attempt. She had to show him how to do the diaper. Mrs. Clausen was deft at taking her bathing suit off under the terry-cloth robe. Wallingford, because of the one-hand problem, was less skillful at taking his suit off while wrapped in a towel. Finally Doris laughed and said she would look the other way while he managed it, out in the open. (She didn’t tell him about the Peeping Tom with the telescope on the opposite shore of the lake—not yet.) Together they carried the baby and his paraphernalia to the main cabin. There was a child’s highchair already in place, and Wallingford drank a beer—he was still wearing just a towel—while Mrs. Clausen fed Otto junior. She told Patrick that they should feed the baby and make their own dinner, and be finished with everything they had to do in the main cabin—all before dark. After dark, the mosquitoes came. They should be settled into the boathouse apartment by then. There was no bathroom in the boathouse. Doris reminded Wallingford that he should use the toilet in the main cabin, and brush his teeth in the bathroom sink there. If he had to get up and pee in the middle of the night, he could go outside with a flashlight and be quick about it. “Just get back to the boathouse before the mosquitoes find you,” Mrs. Clausen warned.
Using her camera, Patrick took a picture of Doris and little Otto on the sundeck of the main cabin.
The grown-ups barbecued a steak for their dinner, which they ate with some green peas and rice. Mrs. Clausen had brought two bottles of red wine—they drank only one. While Doris did the dishes, Patrick took her camera down to the dock and took two pictures of their bathing suits side-by-side on the clothesline. It seemed to him the height of privacy and domestic tranquillity that they had eaten their dinner together with Doris dressed in her old bathrobe and Wallingford wearing only a towel around his waist. He’d never lived like this, not with anyone. Wallingford took another beer with him when they went back to the boathouse. As they navigated the pine-needle path, they were aware that the west wind had dropped and the lake was dead-calm; the setting sun still struck the treetops on the eastern shore. In the windless evening, the mosquitoes had already risen—they hadn’t waited till dark. Patrick and Doris were waving the mosquitoes away as they carried little Otto and the baby’s paraphernalia into the boathouse apartment. Wallingford watched the encroaching darkness from his bedroom window while he listened to Mrs. Clausen putting Otto junior to bed in the next room. She was singing him a nursery rhyme. Patrick’s windows were open; he could hear the mosquitoes humming against the screens. The loons were the only other sound, save an outboard puttering on the lake, over which he could hear voices. Perhaps they were fishermen returning home, or teenagers. Then the outboard docked, faroff, and Mrs. Clausen was no longer singing to little Otto; it was quiet in the other bedroom. Now the loons and an occasional duck were the only sound, except for the mosquitoes.
Wallingford sensed a remoteness he’d never experienced, and it was not yet fully dark. Still wrapped in the towel, he lay on the bed and let the room grow darker. He tried to imagine the photographs that Doris had once tacked to the wall on her side of the bed.
He’d fallen sound asleep when Mrs. Clausen came and woke him with the flashlight. In her old white bathrobe, she stood at the foot of the bed like a ghost, the light pointed at herself. She kept blinking the flashlight on and off, as if she were trying to impress him with how dark it was, although there was nearly a full moon.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s go swimming. We don’t need suits for a night swim. Just bring your towel.”
She went out into the hall and led him down the stairs, holding his one hand and pointing the flashlight at their bare feet. With his stump, Wallingford made a clumsy effort to keep the towel tight around his waist. The boathouse was very dark. Doris took him down the gangplank and out on the slender dividing dock between the moored boats. She shined the flashlight ahead of them, illuminating the ladder at the end of the dock.
So the ladder was for night swims. Patrick was being invited to take part in a ritual that Mrs. Clausen had enacted with her late husband. Their careful, single-file navigation of the thin, dark dock seemed a holy passage.
The flashlight caught a large spider moving quickly along a mooring line. The spider startled Wallingford, but not Mrs. Clausen. “It’s just a spider,” she said. “I like spiders. They’re so industrious.”
So she likes industriousness and spiders, Patrick thought. He hated himself for bringing Stuart Little instead of Charlotte’s Web. Perhaps he wouldn’t even mention to Doris that he had brought the stupid book with him, let alone that he’d imagined reading it first to her and then to little Otto.
At the ladder, Mrs. Clausen took off her robe. She’d clearly had some practice at arranging the flashlight on the robe so that it pointed out over the lake. The light would be a beacon for them to return to.
Wallingford took off his towel and stood naked beside her. She gave him no time to think about touching her; she went quickly down the ladder and slipped into the lake, making almost no sound. He followed her into the water, but not as gracefully or noiselessly as she had managed it. (You try going down a ladder with one hand.) The best Patrick could do was clutch the side rail in the crook of his left arm; his right hand and arm did most of the work.
They swam close together. Mrs. Clausen was careful not to swim too far ahead of him, or she treaded water or just floated until he caught up with her. They went out past the deep end of the big ou
tdoors dock, where they could see the dark outline of the unlit main cabin and the smaller outbuildings; the rudimentary buildings resembled a wilderness colony, abandoned. Across the moonlit lake, the other summer cottages were unlit, too. The cottagers went to bed early and got up with the sun.
In addition to the flashlight aimed at the lake from the dock in the boathouse, there was another light visible—in Otto junior’s bedroom. Doris had left the gas lamp on, in case the child woke up; she didn’t want him to be frightened by the dark. With the windows open, she was sure she would hear the baby if he awakened and cried. Sound travels very clearly over water, especially at night, Mrs. Clausen explained.
The Fourth Hand Page 24