by Nancy Star
Shelley snorted. “People are allowed to be best friends
with anyone they want, except their sister.” She turned
her back and said to Ivy, “I love your shirt. I wish I had a shirt like that. I wish I had your hair.”
Lane stared at her cousin’s shirt. It was orange corduroy
with snaps and a pocket, nothing to get excited about. As
for Ivy’s hair, Lane couldn’t imagine why anyone would
want hair the color of dead leaves.
“I always wanted blue eyes,” her sister said next.
What about Lane’s eyes? They were blue and her sister
had never said a word about them. A sour taste came into
her mouth as if something were percolating in her stom-
ach. She moved closer to her sister and reached for her
hand. With great economy—Ivy never noticed—Shelley
flicked it away.
Ivy turned in a slow circle. “Whose room is this
anyway?”
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There were no clues. Except for Sylvie’s embroi-
dery, the Mecklers didn’t put things on walls. Rule
Number Six.
“Hers,” Shelley said with a tip of her head. Now she
wouldn’t even say Lane’s name. “Mine’s down the hall.
It’s bigger. I always get to pick first because I’m older.
We move a lot. Most of our houses are bigger than this
one. In our last house I had an office next to my room
with a desk and a chair. My dad lets me open his mail.
My room has two closets. Want to see?”
They were heading out to see when Lane called over,
“My room has a secret door.”
Ivy stopped. “A what?”
Lane did not look at her sister. “It looks like a regular
window but it’s really a door.” This was how logic looked
when it was born out of desperation. “You can go outside
through it. Onto the roof. Shelley likes to go out and sit on the roof to watch people. Sometimes I go with her.”
“You do not. She does not.”
Ivy whispered, “You’re allowed on the roof?”
“Nope.” Shelley shook her head. “But I go anyway.
It’s fun. I spy on people. If you stay perfectly still—” She froze. She unfroze. “No one even notices. I’m very good
at staying still.” She froze again.
“Wow.” Ivy was impressed.
Well this had backfired.
“My parents don’t know,” Shelley said. “Cross your
heart you won’t tell?”
Lane needed to minimize the damage. “It’s not dan-
gerous. It’s not really a roof. It’s flat. Shelley would never go out on a pointy roof.”
“It not flat.” Shelley pointed to the window. “See for
yourself.”
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The danger of the eclipse temporarily forgotten, Ivy
looked out the window. “Not flat.”
Now there were teams. Two people on Shelley’s. Just
Lane on Lane’s. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “If you’re so
brave, how come you’re not going out there to watch
the eclipse?”
“Too cold,” Ivy said. “Plus she’s afraid to go blind.”
Lane saw her sister flinch at the word afraid. “Shelley’s not afraid,” Lane said. “She’s not the scaredy-cat. You can use my pinhole box,” Lane told her sister. “We made them
school. You won’t go blind if you use that.”
Shelley picked up the carton in the corner of the room
and examined it. “You forgot to make a pinhole in it,” she told Lane. “You’re crazy if you think this would work.”
“A total nuteroo,” Ivy said.
Something flickered across her sister’s face. Shelley
didn’t seem to like Ivy calling her a nuteroo.
“I’ll go with you,” Lane told her sister. “Without the
box. Just us two.”
“Your sister is a loony tune,” Ivy sang out. “I wish I
was your sister instead.”
“We’ll all go out.” Shelley walked over and opened
the window.
A bitter breeze blew apart the pleated curtains. From
where she stood, Lane could make out a thin sheen of
black ice on the roof.
“Who wants to go first?” Shelley asked. No one an-
swered. “Okay. I will.” She lifted a leg and straddled the sill, then poked her head out the window. She drew it
back in and blew a cloud of vapor into the room. “I’m
smoking. Who wants to smoke with me?”
Ivy laughed and puffed out invisible air. “I’m smok-
ing too.”
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Shelley lowered herself on to the roof. “No one’s
outside.” Her hand held tight to the sill. “I can see into everyone’s house. They’re all watching the eclipse on
TV. It’s starting.”
h h
h h
The sun was strong and Lane was parched. She stopped for
a water break on the small land bridge that gave Spectacle Pond its name. On the first day she walked the pond,
with Nathan—he stopped often to pick up trash along the
way, stuffing the trash in his pockets with a smile—he’d
explained how along the right eye of the pond there were
homes and around the left eye it was all undeveloped land
owned by a public trust. The relationship between the
eyes was not good.
“Riparian owners want to protect their privacy,”
Nathan had told her. “Trustees want public access and
conservation. Such are the problems in paradise.”
Now a sound broke through her thoughts. It was
nothing she recognized. She scanned the pond through
the trees as she walked, high grass sweeping her knees.
She heard it again. Was it a bleat? Was it a goat?
At the edge of the left eye of the pond she saw it, a
flutter of fabric. A shirttail, dark, the same color as the tree trunks—flapping in the wind. The sound, the bleat,
repeated.
A voice, a woman’s, called out, insistent. “Come on.
Let’s go.” Another flutter of fabric. A woman was stand-
ing in the pond calling out, “Stop. Stop that right now.”
Lane moved quickly, mud sucking at her sneakers,
to help.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The woman—tall, spindly, her white hair loose in the
wind—stood in the pond submerged to her thighs. “Okay,”
she said calmly. “Let’s try this again. You want to kick
me? Kick me.”
Lane called over, “You okay?”
The woman turned and Lane caught a flash of her
face. Skin, weathered. Eyes, electric blue. Her finger was at her lips. “Shh.”
Now Lane saw why. There was a deer, a fawn, stuck
in the mud. The woman turned to the deer but she spoke
to Lane, keeping her voice steady and low. “I don’t want
to startle her. She’s been trying to get out of this muck
since yesterday. I’m afraid if she doesn’t get out soon, she’s going to die. Yesterday she was kicking hard. Now she’s
not. She’s weak. Barely moved in an hour. It’s okay,” she
cooed to the fawn. “You can do it.”
“Can I help?”
The woman nodded. “Just move slow so you don’t
startle her. If the mud sucks at your shoes, use your arms to pull up your thighs.
Quietly,” she added in a whisper.
Lane did as she was told and moved, slow and steady,
through the water. The muck grabbed her shoes so she
lifted her thighs with her hands and took long steps until she was next to the woman.
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“I’ll take the rear,” the woman said. “You hold her
neck.”
They worked together, gently pushing and pulling,
rocking the deer back and forth until Lane heard the
sharp sound of suction releasing, and the fawn leaped out
of the water, legs spread wide, and took off. There was a
racket of rustling, branches being broken as she ran, and
then the fawn was gone; only her muddy prints remained.
The woman tilted her head back and laughed, and
then called out to the vanished deer, “You’re welcome.”
She wiped her muddy palms on her jeans and extended
a hand. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for letting me help. I’m sorry—I forget
your name.”
The woman hesitated. “Do I know you?”
“We met at Opening Party. I’m Lane Meckler. Henry’s
mom? I was with Nathan. I’m renting his house. I’m sorry.
I’m terrible with names. I’m terrible at parties. Which
is why I don’t usually go to parties. I don’t usually go
anywhere.”
“Neither do I. We’ve never met. I wasn’t at the party.
I’m Aggie. Griffin’s mom.” She saw a flicker of recogni-
tion on Lane’s face. “Wow. Amazing how quickly people
get caught up on who’s who around here.”
“No, I just—Henry, my son, he saw Griffin at the
party and—”
“Ahh. He got scared. Don’t worry. I’m not offended.
Griffin scares people. He doesn’t mean to. It’s just he’s big and he doesn’t speak. Except to animals. He loves to talk
to animals. Thanks for your help. Feel free to continue
on your way.”
“My son doesn’t speak.” Lane felt her cheeks heat up.
She hadn’t expected to share.
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“Does he only talk to animals?”
“No. He only talks to me.”
Aggie nodded. “Griffin talks to me too. Not much,
but to be honest I don’t talk much either. Mostly I talk
to myself. When I’m home. And sometimes when I’m
walking in the woods. But not if I hear someone coming.
Then I just try and blend in with the trees. I guess today I was so busy concentrating on our little deer friend, I
forgot to hide. Well now you know. Aggie’s tip: dress to
disappear.” She gestured at her clothes, a study in browns and greens, perfect camouflage, if it weren’t for her shock of white hair. “It works by mutual agreement. I want to
disappear and everyone else wants me to disappear too.
Which eventually I will. And then what?” She laughed.
“Oh boy. You’re going to have a lot to tell the next time
you go to the Rec. The weird lady told me she’s afraid of dying. Don’t say that, though. Don’t say anything about me being afraid. That wouldn’t go well for Griffin. Oh
boy. You’re going to be able to dine out on this for years.”
Usually when people shared their suffering in person
with Lane she just smiled as she looked for the nearest
exit. But listening to this woman who sounded broken,
she felt something shift. She was never any good at turn-
ing away from the wounded. “I worry about dying too,”
she said.
“You do? Why?”
Lane surprised herself by answering. “My husband died
this year. Now my son will only speak to me. If I died
today—he might never speak again.” She took a breath.
Her eyes felt wet. Was she about to cry? She couldn’t
remember the last time she cried. She quickly wiped her
eyes and checked the back of her hand. Damp. “Okay. I
guess now we can both dine out on each other’s stories.”
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“I don’t dine out. Anyway, how would that help
either of us?”
They moved through the muck toward the trail and
then walked on, side by side in silence.
Aggie broke it. “Did your son stop speaking because
of what happened to your husband? Was he with him
when it happened? Never mind. It’s none of my business.”
“That’s okay. I don’t mind.” It was true. She didn’t
mind, which was strange. “He wasn’t there. He stopped
speaking because…” What was the right answer? There
were so many choices. Because he was grieving over his
father’s death or because she’d waited too long to tell him his father died or because he’d been accidentally thrown
away in a cardboard box. It was unsettling, tallying it all up. Who would want to speak, after all that? “I’m not
sure why.”
“He doesn’t want to tell you,” Aggie said, as if she
were repeating something Lane had said.
But she hadn’t said that. Henry had never offered a
reason and she had never asked him. Because his thera-
pist and everyone else kept saying her job was to act like nothing was wrong. Was it possible they were wrong?
Was it possible Henry’s silence was modeled after hers?
She had to admit, she was an expert at not saying things.
“…me for some tea?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. Don’t know what I was thinking. Dumb
idea.”
“No, I’m sorry. I got carried away by a thought.
Please—what did you say?”
“Just—that’s my house.” She pointed up the path. “So
if you ever wanted to come over for tea, you could. You
don’t have to. It’s fine if you don’t.”
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“I’d love to,” Lane said and then, “How’s now?” sur-
prising them both.
h h
h h
Seated on an Adirondack chair at the edge of Aggie’s
dock, Lane stared across the pond at the large building on the opposite shore. She counted a dozen kayaks, turned
upside down. “Who lives there?” she asked when Aggie
returned with their tea.
Aggie laughed. “That’s the Rec. I spent more hours
of my life in that building than I care to remember and
now that I never step foot inside, I get to stare at it all day. My destiny.” She lifted her cup as if making a toast.
“I wish it well. From far away.”
“You don’t like the Rec?”
“The Rec’s a building. I have nothing against the
building. Although—have you met Peggy Mellman yet?”
“Maybe.” Lane was never sure who she’d met.
“She writes the Pond Scribbler. All the news unfit to print. The Kuritskys are just back from Peru. The
MacGregors had a visit from their grandson. Peggy
Mellman will want to do a story about you. Fresh blood.
Don’t worry. Peggy’s harmless—but she has this theory
that the Rec makes people do things they wouldn’t oth-
erwise do. Kind of a handy excuse, don’t you think? The
building made me do it?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I don’t either. But I can tell you, every day there’s
; a different drama in there. I don’t mean little things ei-
ther, although little things too. Someone gets a splinter, someone gets a stomach bug, someone gets a bug in the
ear or a fly in the eye. I’m talking about big things. One 341
Nancy Star
year, Tim Stinton—he was ninety-two—lays down on the
couch for a nap that seems to last forever. Turns out it was forever. I can’t remember how long he was there before
someone finally figured out he was dead. Heart attack.
That same summer we came this close”—she pinched the
air—“to having a birth. It was Louisa’s, Stretch’s first wife.
Her water broke. Luckily the ambulance came in time.
Hooray for paramedics. I think I heard she married the
paramedic after the divorce, but I could be wrong. My
ex was in charge of knowing things. I was always a bit of
a wall hugger. Odd mother of the odd child.”
Lane felt a chill. It was like talking to a version of
her future self.
“Louisa and her baby disappeared after that summer,
which happens on the pond. People disappear. I don’t
mean disappear in place, like me. I mean their time is
up. Like poor old Tim Stinton dropping dead, or Louisa
moving off after her divorce. Wren and Simon moved off
for a while too after Nathan and Ruth split. I wasn’t that fond of Ruth but I’ve always liked Nathan.” She took a
long look at Lane. “I can see it now. You’re his type. A
little younger. But so what? Me and my ex were born a
week apart and a lot of good that did us.”
“We’re not together. We’re friends. New friends. I’m
renting his house. He’s been very kind to my son. I don’t
know anything about Ruth. I don’t know much about
Nathan’s past. He doesn’t talk about it.” Lane felt some-
thing nagging at the edges of her consciousness. A vague
sense of—what? She closed her eyes and tried to pull in
the thought. Something about Roxie. A letter to Roxie.
The letter from the woman worried about the scary father
of her daughter’s friend. The letter where Roxie told the
woman, When it comes to our kids we can’t take chances.
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She met Aggie’s eyes. “Should I be worried about
Nathan? I’m very fond of him and my son adores him.
But—is there a reason he never talks about his past?” She
laughed, surprised by her question. “What am I saying?
I don’t talk about my past either.” She shook her head.