Skinny Dipping

by Connie Brockway

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Naomi asked. “Is Sarah all right?”

  “Sarah’s fine. Has a baby girl. Healthy. Named her Solange,” she said. “Too early yet to tell about the cankles…But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “We know why you’re here,” Gerry said tiredly.

  “No, you don’t. I’m here because we can’t sell Chez Ducky,” she announced.

  “You okay, honey?” Johanna asked. “It looked like that door hit you square in the nose.”

  “I’m fine,” Mimi said, closing the door behind her. “Did you hear what I said about not selling Chez Ducky?”

  “Yeah,” Birgie said. She looked alert, interested. And well she ought to, thought Mimi. As matriarch of Chez Ducky, she should be the one doing this. “Why?”

  “We can’t sell because without Chez Ducky we’ll fall apart. As a family. We’ll disappear from one another’s lives. Chez Ducky is the touchstone—or maybe it’s a lodestone, I don’t know—but it’s the place we all keep coming back to,” she said triumphantly. “That is the reason why we can’t sell, why none of you have signed those papers yet!”

  At this, Birgie glanced furtively around at the others’ piles, and then casually covered up the bottom of her paper with her forearm.

  “Oh, bull,” Charlie said sourly. “You honestly think the bunch of us won’t get together again?”

  The lawyer stuck his legs straight out, slouched back down in his chair, rested his chin on his chest, and stared patiently at the toes of his wingtips.

  “Okay,” Mimi conceded, “maybe those of you here will, but what about the rest of the family?”

  Her family traded confused glances. “Rest of the family?”

  “Yeah,” Mimi said. “When will they all get a chance to be together? To get to know one another? Not just blood relations and direct descendents, but all the other people who are part of Chez Ducky one way or the other? What about Frank and Carl?” Mimi spoke directly to Gerry. “What about Halverd? How is he going to know his half brothers?” she asked Johanna. “What about Emil and your ex-son-in-law Willy? Or the cousins three times removed?”

  Johanna reached out and gave Gerry’s hand a squeeze. Naomi dabbed at her eyes.

  “How’re we going to make sure they know the story about Great-Great-Aunt Ruth and the runaway Model T? Who’s gonna tell Frank’s kids that his great-grandfather’s twin won a medal in World War II? Or that his great-great-uncle was a female impersonator during Prohibition?”

  “If we’re lucky, no one,” said Charlie, and Johanna swatted him.

  “And who’s going to tell everyone where they get their eyes or their hair color or their six toes?” Mimi asked.

  “What about that digital computer you’re working on?” Gerry asked.

  Mimi rounded on him. “You are missing the point, Ger!”

  “Yeah, Ger.” Amazingly, it was Half-Uncle Bill who’d spoken. He leaned forward. “You just keep on talking, Mimi.”

  Being championed from such an unexpected corner caught Mimi off guard, but she marshaled her thoughts. “If we sell Chez Ducky, all this stuff, who we are, who we were, is going to be forgotten. Because without all of us telling the stories, the threads will get lost and the connections will fade away. And don’t make any mistake about it,” she went on sternly. “This place isn’t just about Olsons anymore; we’re just the custodians.”

  Charlie chewed on the inside of his cheek. Gerry’s eyes had gone suspiciously wide.

  “What about my niece? What about little Solange?” Mimi whispered. “Where’s she going to go to know about all the people who loved her and all the people I loved? And your granddaughters, Johanna. They live with their mother but they come up every summer. Where will they know us and where will we know them if it isn’t here?”

  She had their attention now. “This family is a convoluted mess. All families are. We don’t have a homestead. We don’t have a family Bible. We don’t have a written genealogy or come from the same town or the same state. A lot of us don’t have the same name, and if we do, that could change tomorrow. What we do have is Chez Ducky. All of us.”

  She started walking slowly around the conference table. “Like the swallows to Capistrano, the monarch butterflies to Michoacán, Mexico, and the college kids to Cancún, so are we drawn inexorably to the weedy shores of Fowl Lake.”

  She stopped, studying each face solemnly in turn. “Just as the salmon wander the oceans their entire lives only to return to the place from where they came—and I swear to God, Gerry, if you point out that no one was born at Chez Ducky, I will come at you like your worst nightmare—we are drawn back to Chez Ducky.”

  Gerry didn’t say a word.

  “Like lemmings have their cliff and elephants have their graveyard, some places we are simply compelled to go to, to leave, and to return again.”

  She stopped. There was no more to say. She’d given it her best shot, and now it was up to them.

  Charlie’s face was unreadable; Gerry was blinking like the sentimental slob he was; Birgie was doodling over the bottom of her papers; Johanna twisted her braid, concentrating; Half-Uncle Bill had thrust out his lower lip and was scratching thoughtfully under his toupee; and Naomi’s eyes were closed. She was chanting.

  They were almost there. Mimi could feel that they wanted to keep Chez Ducky. But they were practical, unsentimental Minnesota stock, and they were considering passing up a great deal of money. They just needed something, something to tip the balance. Any excuse. Anything…

  She took a deep breath. Closed her eyes.

  “Ardis doesn’t want us to sell,” she said and opened her eyes.

  For a full, pregnant thirty seconds no one said a word. Then Naomi cleared her throat.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” Mimi nodded. “If Chez Ducky is gone, then where does she go? Not you and I or just the kids…where do the ghosts go? Where will we go when we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil? Ardis is concerned. She thinks it’s a bad idea.”

  “Huh? Are you talking about the dead, er, the deceased woman?” The lawyer had come out of his trance and was staring at Mimi as if she’d sprouted a second head. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Nah-uh,” said Charlie, a small smile starting at the corners of his mouth.

  “If Mimi says Ardis doesn’t want us to sell Chez Ducky, Ardis doesn’t want us to sell. And that,” Johanna said firmly, “is good enough for me.”

  “Me, too!” Birgie said, slamming her hand on the table and jumping to her feet. Quite a feat, considering how much there was to jump.

  Half-Uncle Bill pushed himself back from the table. “Then I guess we’re done?”

  “Yup,” Charlie said.

  “Yup. Pretty much says it all,” said Gerry.

  “But…you can’t be serious?” the lawyer said. “You don’t really believe this woman talked to Ardis Olson?”

  “Well, now, Mr. Peterson, Mimi here is a professional ghost whisperer,” Gerry said with just a trace of what Mimi thought might be pride. Mimi blushed.

  “Tele-medium,” she mumbled.

  “You can’t argue with a professional, Mr. Peterson,” Half-Uncle Bill said and, grabbing Mimi’s arm, swept her out of the room along with the rest of the Olson clan.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  “Did you see your little niece?” Johanna asked as Mimi slid into the booth they’d commandeered at Buonfiglio’s.

  “I peeked,” said Mimi. “But she and Sarah and Mom were asleep and the nurse said Tom and Mary had gone to get a couple rooms at the motel.”

  Mimi kept expecting someone to jump to their feet and yell, “What the hell are we thinking?” and dash back to the lawyers’ office. No one did. Everyone seemed quite happy with their decision. No one had uttered a word about Ardis’s Directives from Beyond the Grave. Even Debbie hadn’t kicked up much of a fuss, capitulating with more grace than Mimi would have thought possible by saying, “It’s not like the land
’s going anywhere.”

  They ate amongst contented chatter and after a pitcher or two of beer began trading stories about people who weren’t even familiar to Mimi.

  “Who’s Olaf Junior?” she asked.

  “You know,” Gerry said. “The first Olson with six toes.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s true. I know I saw a picture of him and his toes on the dining hall table. All you have to do is look close to see ’em.”

  “You have pictures of Olaf Junior?” Charlie asked, interested.

  “And his wife.” Gerry nodded.

  “I gotta see ’em,” Charlie declared. “You gotta see ’em, too, Jo. Half your kids got six toes.”

  He stood up and started to sway. Mimi caught his arm and steadied him.

  “Hold on,” she said. “No one’s driving anywhere except me.”

  “I want to see those pictures,” Charlie said.

  “Me, too,” piped in Vida.

  “Okay, look,” Mimi said. “I’ll go get the pictures, and you all head over to Smelka’s—Don’t look at me like that; I mean it. You guys stay here and you’re just going to drink more. You need to get some good bland food into your stomachs. I’ll get the pictures and by the time you’re done with dinner, I’ll be back. We’ll look through them, and afterward you should be able to drive. Okay?”

  “When did she become queen of the universe?” Gerry grumbled.

  “Just be damn glad she is,” Vida replied.

  They split up on the sidewalk, where Mimi got into Sarah’s Lexus and the others started walking to Smelka’s. She could hardly wait to tell Joe and Prescott about the coup at the lawyers’ office, but she had no idea where they’d gone. Maybe back to Fowl Lake. She started for Chez Ducky, smiling. The western sky lit up in an electrical light-show extravaganza. Dry lightning always put on the best spectacle, but this was a doozie. Despite earlier tornado warnings, it didn’t overly concern her. All spring the weather and the weathermen had made a lot of noise that came to nothing. The ground was parched.

  True to her suspicions, by the time she drove up to Chez Ducky, not a single drop had fallen. The lightning, on the other hand, had grown close. Booms of thunder shook the Chez’s windowpanes and rattled the doors. Of course, a good sneeze produced much the same results.

  She let her eyes play over the blistered gray surface of its clapboard siding, the multicolored roof, illuminated by the lightning, the soft, moss-covered foundations. She closed her eyes and heard the echoes of generations of children and adults hidden in the sound of the wind rushing through the pine tops, could almost see their shapes moving across the windows. Inside, she looked over the boxes of pictures, trying to decide which one to take. She finally decided she might as well take them all; Charlie had been more than a little tanked. She loaded them into the Lexus’s trunk and returned for the last box. On her way out, she noticed the FedEx package lying on the table. She angled her head to read the return address label: Otell Weber. Her private investigator. Frowning, she ripped open the top and upended the contents onto the table. A small stack of paper slid out, held together by a paper clip. On the top was a typed letter from Otell:

  Dear Ms. Olson,

  I am very pleased to be able to report to you that my investigations have met with success. At the same time, I am saddened to inform you that those same investigations have led to incontrovertible proof of your father, John Henry Olson’s, death. Enclosed you will find a Xerox and faxes and photocopies of the pertinent records.

  To summarize, your father was hit by lightning in Bathgate, North Dakota, on June 26th, 1979, while attempting to cross a highway during a storm. He died without regaining consciousness en route to the nearest hospital in Minot. However, his possessions, including his identification, were damaged in the accident and when his body was admitted to the Minot morgue, he was mistakenly listed as “Henry Olson.”

  Enclosed you will find a copy of my bill. I accept no personal checks. Please issue a money order within thirty days to avoid late charges.

  Thank you for allowing me the privilege of working with you on this matter. Should you ever require my services again, please do not hesitate to contact me. It has been a pleasure doing business with you.

  Regards,

  Otell Weber

  Mimi let the file slide back onto the tabletop. Her father was dead. Gone. She lifted her head, staring around unseeingly at the walls, the ceiling, the furniture, the floors. She felt light-headed. Like the top of her skull was going to float away and the rest of her would soon follow. She concentrated, trying to conjure up her dad’s voice, his smile, the way he’d ruffled her hair, the way he’d picked her up and set her on his shoulders and galloped along the beach while she shrieked with laughter, the way he’d winked at her every night before he turned out the lights. Or left the house for “an adventure.”

  He wasn’t there…good.

  Her eyes flew wide open at the thought. Good.

  The thought was clearer now, firmer, more confident: Good.

  She didn’t want to be a modern-day Lady of Shalott, experiencing life only through a reflection of what others had been and done. But that’s what she’d been doing, weaving ghost stories because the living were just too hard to pin down. But now she wanted out of the tower, she wanted to take a ride in the boat down that cataract called Life, and she did not want to go to Camelot. She wanted to go to Minneapolis. Chicago. Maybe Rome.

  And she wanted to go with Joe, not Lancelot. Their relationship was bound to be messy and convoluted and everything but straightforward. There would be no guarantees. But it wasn’t just Joe’s life she wanted hers meshed with. She wanted it tangled with Prescott’s and her mother’s and Tom’s and Sarah’s and Mary’s and Ozzie’s and all the cousins and ex-wives and future wives and stepkids, and all the messy, tangled relationships that came with them.

  That was the deal. Chez Ducky wasn’t anything without all the people who came here, who’d found their own route to this odd, mismatched little community. Not a place, a tribe. An ever-shifting shoreline of faces and names, who kept coming back because here they belonged.

  She’d always thought of Chez Ducky as being timeless, of never changing, of being a constant, but she’d been wrong. Chez Ducky was a revolving door of histories, changing from day to day so that you never knew who was going to be there or what their story would be or how they would be connected. Only that they were.

  It didn’t matter that she couldn’t find her father’s spirit. She knew it was here, and that was enough.

  She was walking back to the car, still smiling softly, when the lightning hit, striking so close that the earth beneath her shook and she tripped and almost fell. She smelled burning ozone and then smoke.

  She ran around to the front of the Chez to see what had happened. The Big House was fine, no fire anywhere—No. There was definitely fire somewhere. She loped back to the beach where the sightlines were more open. On the other side of Prescott’s house, the Sbodas’ cabin was on fire. Black smoke billowed and churned above the rooftop before being caught by the wind and pushed flat in a black pennant pointing straight at Prescott’s house and, from there, Chez Ducky. And Fawn Creek and the fire engines were half an hour away.

  For a second she could only stare. After all that. After all her angst and worry, and finally to go against decades of habit and make a stand and win…? They were being screwed over by a storm. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. The woods was a tinderbox. There was no way the fire wasn’t going to wipe out Chez Ducky before anyone got here. Not to mention Prescott’s Palace and…

  “Jesus!”

  Lightning flashed again and she fled from the beach toward Prescott’s house. Like most lake owners during the off season, Prescott didn’t lock his door when he was going to be gone only a short while.

  Inside, Blondie and Wiley hurled themselves anxiously at her, bouncing and pawing at her legs. She shushed them, fumbling in her jacket pocket for her cell phone. She flipped
it open. None of the little black bars indicating signal strength appeared. Not one.

  She stabbed 911 anyway and held the phone to her ear. Nothing. She headed into the great room, her eyes toward the north-facing windows. Through them, a hundred yards away, the Sbodas’ cabin was a bonfire. Black snakes of smoke crawled out from the eaves and shot out toward Prescott’s house, the fire leaping behind it, fed by the wind. A peal of lightning cracked open the sky overhead. Blondie howled.

  She had to get the dogs out of here. She raced for the door, calling them by name. Blondie and Wiley were there ahead of her, leaping around like maniacs, their eyes ringed by white. Bill was nowhere to be seen.

  “Bill!” she screamed. “Bill!”

  Nothing. She looked down at Wiley and Blondie, realizing she couldn’t get all three out at once. She couldn’t just open the door, either. In their fright they might take off into the woods and be lost. Or worse. She wrenched open the front closet and got out their leashes, snapping them to their collars, her fingers stiff with terror. Then she opened the door and yanked.

  The dogs didn’t need any encouragement. As soon as the door was open, they bolted for the woods, dragging her with them. She barely kept up, stumbling after them along the footpath, heading pell-mell toward Chez Ducky.

  They broke from the woods and dove for the Lexus. She yanked opened the car door and the dogs flung themselves in. She slammed it shut and spun, heading back for Prescott’s on a dead run. Her legs ached and her lungs burned and she imagined she could hear the sound of the fire eating through the woods. All she could think was that Bill was somewhere inside the house, cowering or, knowing Bill, snapping angrily at the flames.

  She saw the fire’s light before she emerged from the woods. She stopped dead in her tracks, awed by the sight. Prescott’s entire house was backlit in brilliance. But it was not on fire. Not yet.

  The air was filled with the sound of things breaking, bursting, cracking, and behind it all the rushing roar of a runaway locomotive. The smell of burning pine and the noxious odor of smoldering rubber hit her nostrils at the same time. She dashed into the house, sweat streaming down her face, the salt stinging her eyes. “Bill! Bill!”