“Well, I had Cale a couple weeks after that, and everything was crazy, new baby and all that. And Tim, believe it or not, is a pretty good father. So I had second thoughts. But Caleb got bigger, and Josh kept calling, and he’d give me little reminders about my promise to him. Little hints. I hated him for it, but at least I realized he was right.”
“So?”
“So I talked to my mom, I sort of floated the idea of what if I just came and stayed at the house with the boys for a while? You’d have thought I had just told her she won the lottery or something. I mean, she was thrilled. She never had a good feeling about Tim, but she never really said anything outright. I guess moms just know things like that?”
“I think they do,” I say.
“But now Josh is gone. No one is going to find out what happened, right? So I could just go back to business as usual.”
“But are you going to?”
Emily starts to cry again. “I don’t think I can.”
“I don’t think you should.”
“I can’t. But the boys, I don’t know.”
“But one thing,” I say. “Now I know everything. I could tell your mom, or your husband.”
Emily wipes her eyes and looks at me. “You could, I suppose. But I know you won’t.”
The funny thing is, I know she’s right.
We find a hotel in a small town near a military base, and when we settle in to the austere room with two double beds there’s a feeling of something like relief. Emily sits on the bed closest to the bathroom and takes off her shoes while I look out the window and spy what looks like a Chinese restaurant, and maybe a pizza place and a beer and wine store in the strip mall next to the hotel’s parking lot.
“Does Chinese food work for you?” I ask.
“Chinese food is fine.”
I run over and order us carryout. Emily has asked for sweet and sour pork, but I won’t hold this against her. While I wait for the food to come up, I walk down and happily find my metal-capped table wine at the beer store. Two bottles are purchased, and I slip them into the big paper bag with our food and stroll back to the hotel. Emily looks like she’s fallen asleep, but she opens her eyes and sits up as I shut the door.
We sit on the floor to eat. I go for the cheap, splintery chopsticks; Emily wisely opts for a plastic fork. I procure two plastic cups from next to the ice bucket and bring out one of the bottles, and Emily gives me a barely convincing “no, no, well, okay” look before I pour.
I am pleased to see, in an oddly comforting way, that Emily’s cheeks turn red as she drinks. She takes a big swallow, and I do too, before asking what I’ve wanted to ask all afternoon.
“When do you want to leave him?”
Emily puts down her fork, and wipes the corners of her mouth with a dainty gesture that would be cute if it weren’t so perfect. “Is there ever a good time to do something like that?”
“Maybe before your kids are too old?”
“Please,” she says, and she takes a long swig of wine and tucks some of her hair back behind her ear. “Please. When you put it like that, it seems impossible.”
“What do you mean?”
“The boys. It’s going to be devastating for the boys.”
“Kids adjust.” I consider, for a moment, telling her about my own parents’ divorce and how well I adjusted to it, but then I don’t, because, now that I think about it, maybe I’m not that well adjusted at all.
“I know my mom will help. And my dad will be happy. Caleb will wet the bed, and Justin will hate me. But my mom will be there.”
“Josh would be very pleased to know you were doing it.”
“He would, wouldn’t he? I have a question.”
“Ask?”
“Was my brother always…was he very serious with you?”
“You mean like, serious about his art? Or more like—”
“I mean in general. His attitude.”
I think about this. “I’d say yes. He was pretty serious. He was pretty into his art.”
“He was totally into his art.”
“But sometimes he could be really affectionate. And sometimes…” I almost start to talk about the times with him in bed, but I realize this is not Gretchen I’m talking to. But Emily has picked up on it.
“Like when you…did…you know…” Her face turns red as she says it.
“He was very affectionate.”
“Was he funny?”
“What, during sex?” Emily’s face turns a deeper shade of red when I say this.
“Oh my God, no! I mean, just, did he laugh about things? Did he make you laugh?”
“He had a dry sense of humor, I guess.” Considering this, I realize I have no memory of him just laughing out loud. He had a little laugh he would make, like a puff of air through the nose, but that was it. Hoffman made him laugh like that.
“He used to be…he loved jokes,” Emily says. “Practical jokes, that kind of thing. He pulled off big pranks.”
This is news. “Really?” I ask.
“Yeah, sometimes kind of mean stuff, they put a lawn sprinkler in this guy’s living room once. And he stole a Ferris wheel when we were in high school—”
“A Ferris wheel? He stole it? Was that the picture at the funeral?”
“Yeah, like, from a carnival company, they fold up and fit on a semi truck. He put on a jumpsuit and smeared grease all over himself and he walked into the office and told them he had to take it to Toledo for inspection, and they just gave him the keys.”
“How does he talk people into things like that?” I say, then I correct myself. “How did he?”
“He was good at it. And he talked like twenty people into helping him set it up. He had the manual, and they set it up overnight in front of our school. Then when everyone came the next morning, there it was, just going around and around in the teachers’ parking lot. He wouldn’t let anyone ride it, though. He was too afraid they put it together wrong. So I guess he was kind of responsible. Even when he was being an idiot, he was responsible.”
“I can’t see him doing anything like that. I mean, I guess I can? Did he get into trouble?”
“He talked his way out of it, like always. He never got into trouble. The carnival people thought it was…” She takes a gulp of her wine and blinks. “Jessica, my brother stole their Ferris wheel, and they thought it was funny. They all came and took pictures before they took it apart and drove it away.”
“That’s—”
“Yeah. He did things like that all the time. But then, you know, after everything happened, the, you know…he just kind of changed. Like it went out of him. And after I married Tim, it really went out of him.”
“Tim. Right. So when do you do it?”
“When do I what?”
“Leave?”
“When? When.” Emily sets her cup of wine on the floor next to her and folds her hands in her lap. “How about, two weeks from today. There. That’s as good a day as any. My parents will have had time to deal.”
“Will you tell them you’re going to?”
“Maybe I’ll tell my mom.”
“Good.”
“You can’t tell her, though. You can’t tell her we talked about this.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I told you, I won’t.”
“I want you to promise me. I want you to say, ‘Emily, I promise I won’t tell your mother.’”
“Emily, I promise.”
“Promise what?” She’s a little drunk. “I need to hear you say it.”
“I promise I won’t tell your mother.”
“Good. Thank you. Are we out of wine?”
“There’s another bottle.”
“I’ve had enough. But I’ll have more.” She laughs, with her head tipped back and her teeth showing, and I wonder if this is what Josh looked like when he laughed.
I pour us both some more, and we drink as we unwrap fortune cookies.
“I think I g
ot yours,” I say. “It says: ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.’”
Emily holds her little slip of paper up close to her eyes. “You will be rewarded for your patience and understanding,” she reads. Then she giggles and says, “In bed. Maybe I did get the right one.”
We’re too tired to finish the second bottle. Emily takes a shower and I lie on the bed and watch some show about people who risk death while fishing for crabs in Alaska. She’s in there forever, and by the time she comes out in her tee shirt and flannel pajama pants, I’m too damn tired to take one myself. So I go in and just brush my teeth and floss and when I come back out I find Emily passed out and snoring. The crab fishing show, incidentally, is over, and I turn off the television and the lamp between our beds.
I’m a little drunk, but sleep isn’t coming to me. I could go to my bag and get one of my remaining pain pills, but I know a better remedy, and even though I can’t remember the last time I did it, I’m pretty certain it will work. So I tune out the snoring and get to work. I’m almost there when suddenly Emily’s voice nearly makes me jump.
“I think I know what you’re doing over there,” she slurs. “Just try to be a little more quiet.” Then she starts to snore again.
I’m mortified. Even Katie never busted me like this. And it’s at least another hour before I finally start to fall asleep.
The drive on Monday is a little different. We’ve got our secrets now, we’ve bonded, and with this between us the conversation is no longer forced. There’s no mention, thank God, of my waking Emily up last night, so maybe (hopefully) she doesn’t even remember.
We actually aren’t saying that much as we roll along, just listening to an ’80s station, sometimes singing, sometimes talking, sometimes thinking. We chatted over coffee this morning too, which was great, but now I’m starting to feel the effects in my bladder.
This interstate pushes through thick green woods and over rolling hills. There isn’t much traffic. There are billboards here and there, advertising tourist shops, hotels, restaurants.
“I need to pee,” I finally say.
“I’ll stop when I can.”
We pass a blue sign announcing a rest stop in three-quarters of a mile and I almost cheer; my legs are crossed and I can hardly take it any longer. I groan out loud, though, when we get to the exit, because it’s covered by a barricade with a sign that says, “CLOSED FOR EXTENDED MAINTENANCE.”
“It’s that highway union,” Emily says.
“I don’t care what it is. Just pull over. Anywhere. Please.”
She pulls onto the shoulder and I practically dive out of the car; I run down a little embankment and into some trees and drop my shorts and squat and feel sublime relief. Then I feel like an idiot when I realize I’ve managed to spray the inside of my right shoe, and Emily sees it immediately when I get back in the car, and she laughs at me.
A sign says “Mackinac Bridge, 7 miles.”
We finally see the towers of the bridge pushing up into the blue sky over the trees as we head up the interstate, and I must confess I am a little excited about this. I give Emily some cash to pay the toll, and after the soldiers look over and under our car and the gate raises up, I turn off the stereo so I can better hear the weird hum beneath us.
“I always used to worry our car would blow off this bridge when I was little,” Emily says. I laugh at this, and then she says, “But then I read that a car did blow off here a few years ago.”
“Are you serious?”
“It was a Yugo.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“I’m not, I swear.”
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing we’re in a Chevrolet. It’s like a selling point. These heavy, union-made cars never blow off bridges.” Emily laughs at this, and I do too.
It really is a beautiful structure, and I decide right then that blue-gray and green are far better colors for a bridge than the rust-orange of the Golden Gate. I suspect no one will ever ask me for my opinion on this, though, so I sit and listen to the hum. Then we’re over, and I’m sad for a moment until I realize we get to drive back over on our way home. The soldiers on this side wave at us as we roll by their station.
“There’s a little beach up here,” Emily says. “Like a park. We always used to stop and have lunch there.”
“Let’s go there,” I say. “Wait, stop at this gas station.”
“We’re fine on gas.”
“I want to see if they have a disposable camera.”
Emily pulls into the parking lot of the minimart, and I run in and find a disposable digital camera. Then we’re off again, and it’s only a few minutes until we’re in a gravel parking lot ringed with picnic benches and shady trees. The breeze off the lake is almost chilly, but the sunshine cuts through the cold as we walk down to the beach. I’ve got the little plastic camera in my hand, and Emily is a few steps in front of me.
“Don’t look,” I say, and when she does look, I take a picture of her with the lake and the big bridge in the background.
“That’s going to be a great picture,” Emily says, and she pulls a face of mock disgust.
“It will be. I’ll e-mail it to you when I get the disk.”
There’s a beat-up official-looking truck close to the beach, and a man in green coveralls is kneeling down next to it with a wrench, working on some water-valve-type thing sticking up out of the sandy ground.
“Excuse me, sir?” Emily asks. “Would you take our picture?”
The man works his way up to his feet with a groan and dusts off his hands on his work clothes. He doesn’t say anything, but he holds out his hand for the camera.
“It’s the clear button,” I say. “You don’t need the flash.”
Emily and I stand next to each other. She smiles, and I smile. The man snaps a photo, and then he takes another with the camera oriented vertically.
“Nice picture,” he says. “Nice picture.”
We thank him and walk off to the edge of the water. We look at the bridge, and the waves, and the colored rocks in the beach. We don’t say much. Emily walks, and I follow, and we come to an informational plaque next to a bench.
“Opened in 1957,” I say.
“Yes.”
I keep reading, and as I do, I start to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Josh was wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t the longest suspension bridge.” I don’t know why I’m laughing like this, but I can’t really stop.
“I could have told you that. The longest one is in Japan.” Just as the plaque says.
“He was wrong. He said it was the longest. He was wrong!”
“He wasn’t always right about everything, Jessica. But he sure acted like he was.”
“He did,” I say. “He did act that way. But this time he was wrong.”
“You seem to like that.”
“I do.” I say this, and I smile. “I do.”
After the park, Emily and I grab some lunch at a funky little sandwich/trinket shop in the town by the north end of the bridge. The man working there seems grateful for our presence; tourism here, even in the middle of the summer, seems nearly dead.
Emily wants to go visit her family’s old cottage after we eat. It’s only about an hour to get there, she says, and since I don’t really have anything else to do, I tell her I’m in.
We don’t say much as we drive. The road winds through a thick evergreen forest interrupted by stands of white-barked birch trees, and Emily leans forward and looks almost excited as we zip through them.
“There’s a curve just up here,” she says, “where you can see the bay. Josh and I would like, compete. Who would see the water first. It’s almost, there it is, there it is!”
We come around a curve and, for a moment, the surface of the big lake shines up through the trees.
“We’re almost there,” Emily says. She slows at one of the dirt roads headed off to o
ur left, and then she shakes her head and speeds up. “Oh, shoot. It’s been a few years. I never actually drove here myself. And there used to be a sign, oh, Jess, it’s still here!”
We slow and turn in front of a hand-carved sign that says “CEDAR LANE.” Peeling hand-painted signs with very Anglo-sounding family names hang by hooks beneath it. Andersons. Brainerds. Smiths. No Haddens. The gravel crackles beneath the car and it’s suddenly darker as the trees close over us, and Emily smiles and leans close to the wheel and looks up, out through the windshield, at the trees.
“It’s right down here,” she says. We pass some tidy cottages, A-frames and log cabins; porches with wind chimes and screen doors. The lake shows in blue-green flashes between them as we drive by. There’s a woman tending some tomato plants in a plot next to her driveway. She waves as we go by, and I wave back.
“I don’t know who that was,” Emily says as we go around a curve. Then she looks surprised. “Oh! There it…Wow, they built a garage, that wasn’t here when we had it.” We pull up to the garage; it’s painted barn red and there’s a high-end SUV out in front. Emily parks next to it.
It’s hot in the clearing in front of the garage. Emily seems almost reluctant to step out of the car, but she does, finally. She looks at me and smiles almost nervously, then she turns down to the direction of the lake.
“Hello?” she calls. There’s no answer, just the hum of summer insects. “Hello? Let’s just, I guess we could just go down.”
Emily walks, and I follow. We climb down wooden steps, down a slope through the trees, and they lead to a perfect little cottage, also barn red, built up on the bank above a wide rocky beach.
“Hello?” Emily peeks in through an open, screened sliding door. She’s smiling. “Hello?” There’s a radio or something on inside. “It’s exactly the same. It hasn’t changed. Different furniture, I guess. The kids’ rooms were back there. We slept out on the deck sometimes, if it was warm. This is…these trees are bigger. We used to…Josh got stuck up in that one…”
She talks, breathlessly, on and on and on. Every rock, every tree, every breaking wave carries some memory for her.
“…That hand pump, it never worked. Let’s go down to the lake, my gosh, the water is so low this year!”
Jessica Z Page 30