She had the sudden memory of being a little girl, taking a long road trip with her family to somewhere. They were on a three-lane highway, her parents arguing in the front, her sister snoring in the back seat beside her, and April, gazing out the window, had locked eyes with a boy sitting in the back seat of a minivan passing them in the left lane. The van had sped past them, but ten minutes later the two vehicles were again side by side. And this time when she and the boy made eye contact, he smiled and she smiled; he waved and she waved. Then the boy had bowed his head for a moment, and when he looked back up he was holding a piece of paper with two words scrawled in black marker: help me.
April had laughed, the boy had laughed, and then the car sped past them and was gone. She knew at the time that it was a joke; they both were laughing. But there were nights afterward when, seized by the irrational fears of preadolescence, she had convinced herself that it wasn’t a joke, that the boy had been abducted by horrible people who were taking him somewhere to do horrible things to him, and he’d been trying desperately to get out a message. And April had failed him utterly. I could have saved him, she would think, lying in her bed and staring up at the ceiling. I could have saved him and I didn’t. So whatever happens to him, whatever those people do to him, is my fault. And she would pray, God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me.
Now, as the dark outlines of the first low mountains loomed closer, April searched for distraction on the radio. She flipped through channels—a newsreel about suicide bombings in Iraq, a country singer claiming he was better off since you left him, and an angry man saying that since taking office in January, Barack Obama was already the worst president this nation had ever seen. When she landed on a Christian station and she heard the voice of a preacher talking in long, honeyed tones about “walking in the light of Christ,” she turned off the radio in despair.
After the prophetic ministry service was over, all the congregation had crowded around Paul as if he were some sort of celebrity. “Great word, Paul!” they said. “Amazing word. We’re excited for you!” as if he had come up with those words, as if he were somehow responsible for it. April had stood in the hallway for a while, a little way apart from everyone, watching him smile and nod at all who wanted to “congratulate” him. And she had noticed another woman standing on the opposite end of the hall, also watching the throng around Paul. But this woman was smiling, with tears in her eyes. The rude shock came when April realized that it was Paul’s mother.
April got to the inn at nine forty-five. Though it was late on a weeknight, the town of Lake George was still bustling with people on the streets, businesses still open, as if she had arrived in the downtown area of a large city and not a small Adirondack tourist town. There was obviously some sort of festival going on. Driving down the street, she had seen more than one collection of bikers on Harleys, and street vendors selling hot dogs and cotton candy.
Waiting in her car in the parking lot of the inn, she watched a family of tourists piling out of their SUV, the mother leading the pack with a toddler sleeping against her chest, and two older kids following, the father behind carrying a cooler and picnic basket. A silver Porsche pulled into the lot, and a young blond couple hopped out. April guessed they were up from the city on vacation. They waltzed into the building with their arms around each other’s back, their hands in each other’s hip pocket. April hated them for making love look so easy.
Five minutes after ten, and Paul still had not arrived. April drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. By ten fifteen, she didn’t know whether to be annoyed or worried, and she kept checking her phone to make sure she had service. They had agreed not to text each other, but a call was permissible if absolutely necessary.
Finally, at ten twenty, she recognized the church pickup truck, pulling into a spot on the opposite end of the lot. April waited till he had parked before she dialed his number.
“April, I’m so sorry,” he said when he answered. “It took me forever to get out of there. They basically surrounded me.”
“I’m going to go in first and take care of everything,” she said. “Once I’m in the room, I’ll call and give you the number. Just wait here until then.”
“I wanted to pay for the room,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, and hung up.
Affairs, when April had imagined them, took place in dingy motel rooms with puke-colored carpeting and stains on the sheets. Their room at the inn was large and clean and comfortable and filled with all manner of rustic Adirondack kitsch—exposed beams running across the ceiling, a large stone fireplace on the wall across from the giant bed, a small wood carving of a bear roaring in a corner by the minifridge. Of course, it was preferable to that dingy motel of her imagination, but somehow less romantic.
April sat on the bed and waited, shivering. The AC was turned up too high, but she didn’t bother getting up to fix it.
When Paul came in, he flicked on the lights, tossed his bag on the floor, and rushed over to her. “Hey,” he said, and sat beside her on the bed and kissed her on the mouth. “You okay?” he asked, pulling away and standing back up as if to assess her.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’m fine.”
“I’m really sorry about the wait. It took me forever to get out of the church.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s fine. I hardly had to wait at all.”
“And I wish you hadn’t paid for the room. I wanted to.”
“I know you can’t afford this, Paul.”
“But it’s your birthday.”
April checked her watch. “Not for another hour and fifteen minutes.” She reached out to him and used a word she hadn’t spoken since her daughter was born: “Now, stop apologizing and fuck me before I’m forty.”
Afterward, lying on a bed much more comfortable than her own (although she wasn’t crazy about the flannel bedspread), April said, “So I guess we should probably talk about what happened to you tonight, huh?”
“Do we have to?” Paul asked. He lay naked beside her, still a little dazed from their lovemaking.
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“I just don’t know what to say about it.”
April didn’t, either, but she felt the need to say something. She wanted to know what Paul actually thought. She placed a hand on his chest. “It was a good word, Paul,” she said, mimicking the tone of the people in the congregation who had come up to him afterward. She giggled.
“Shut up,” he said, laughing, but there was something in his smile that troubled April—she detected an edge of discomfort, as if he wasn’t happy with her teasing.
So she pressed on. “Do you feel a new sense of direction now? A sense of the Lord’s purpose? No more wandering in the desert for you?”
“Ha, ha,” Paul said, sounding vaguely distracted. “I don’t know. It’s weird, but I sort of did feel … something up there. I’ve never believed in God—never believed in anything like that—but I was thinking afterward, maybe I’ve been a little unfair. I’ve always thought of Christians as judgmental and closed-minded, but really, I’m just the same in the other direction. Who am I to say definitively there’s no higher power somewhere out there in the cosmos?”
“Not to be a downer,” April said, “but you really couldn’t have picked a worse time to get converted.”
He laughed, and again there was something strained about it. “Come on,” he said, “obviously I’m not converting. I’m just saying maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental when it comes to other ways of thinking.”
“Hmm,” April murmured. She was remembering years ago, when, as new members of the congregation, she and Ray had been prophesied over. Most of their word focused on how the Lord had brought them together as a couple and how blessed their marriage would be and how far they would go together.
“I mean, you must believe it,” Paul said, “or did at one p
oint. Why else would you go there?”
“Yeah,” she said almost to herself. “Why else would I?”
There was a long pause, and for the first time since they’d first slept together, the silence was uncomfortable. Finally, Paul said, “You know the Waids? Richard Waid came up to me after the service tonight, asked if I’d be open to giving DeShawn guitar lessons.”
“What did you say?”
Lying down, Paul gave an understated version of his signature shrug. “I’m not much of a teacher. They could find someone who’d give him better lessons. But I said I’d try, because I don’t think that kid would take lessons from just anybody, but he might from me. And I think learning guitar might be good for him. It definitely helped me when I was his age.”
April nodded, but she couldn’t help herself. “Maybe that’s the ‘big thing’ the Lord is leading you to—guitar lessons for DeShawn.”
This time, Paul didn’t even recognize her joke. “No, but seriously, could you imagine being stuck in this town with no one who relates to you? I don’t know, maybe I could actually be a good role model to a kid for once.”
April looked at the boy beside her, staring up at the ceiling, completely oblivious. It was the same look she’d seen so many times on her ex-husband. It was the same look she’d seen on so many men at church, in town. They had no idea how they sounded. And although April was no prophet, lying on the bed in this Adirondack hotel, she had her own vision. Paul would give this boy guitar lessons. While mixing sound, Paul would start listening to what they said at Sunday service and during Wednesday-night prayer meetings. The clear, simple message of love and grace would have its appeal. People would invite him over to their houses for Sunday dinner, for touch football, for afternoon hiking trips. Paul would be struck by how nice everyone was. There would be a girl, someone Paul’s age (April could think of a few), beautiful, gentle, Christian. When Paul “gave his heart to the Lord,” he would quite genuinely be unable to separate his feelings for the girl and his feelings about religion and would conflate them as one and the same. Paul would find quitting such unsavory habits as drinking and smoking not so hard with such a vibrant and solid support group as the church. Really, there would be only one small snag standing between him and perfect happiness: April. His little secret, his dark spot. The woman twenty years older than he, whom he had slept with when he first came home a mess. Would he confess to the church, blaming it on his confusion, his vulnerability, or would he bury the secret down deep inside him and pray to God she did the same?
April sat up on the bed, letting the sheet fall away from her chest. “Let’s go out,” she said.
“Out?” he asked, not lifting his head from the pillow.
“We can get drinks.”
This made Paul take her seriously. He sat up and tried to read her face. “Do you think that’s the best idea, going out in public together?”
“Why not? Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”
“No! It’s just that … I know we’re not in Grover Falls, but there’s still the slim chance we’d run into someone we know.”
April shrugged. “I’m willing to risk it.” She got up off the bed, allowing Paul to see her in her full nakedness. “So I’m hopping in the shower, and then you’re taking me out for my birthday.”
It was a warm night, and after their air-conditioned room, April welcomed the heat against her body, her hair slightly damp from the shower. Though it was closing in on midnight, the streets were still filled with people, which only strengthened April’s sense of deliberate recklessness—the more people, the greater the sense of anonymity, the more likely you were to be ignored. She and Paul walked down the cobbled sidewalk, past a few touristy stores selling things like “I NY” T-shirts, scented candles, locally made dream catchers, throw pillows featuring bull moose and black bears. A sad-looking Native American mannequin stood in the window of a gift shop—April didn’t quite get what the sales pitch was. The sweet smell of cotton candy and fried dough floated on the air.
After a few minutes, April reached out and grabbed Paul’s hand. He looked at her nervously, and she gave his hand a squeeze and pointed up the block, where a long line of people stood around an ice-cream shop. “Come on,” she said, pulling him along. “Let’s get soft serve.”
The shop was called the Twist, and they had to stand in line a good ten minutes behind a dad and his two whining children. April wondered what sort of parent got the kids ice cream at midnight. She decided he was probably divorced and had visitation rights this week.
When they finally reached the window to order, a girl who didn’t look much older than Laura, wearing heavy eyeliner and chewing her gum with fierce determination, greeted them. April smiled and asked for a chocolate and vanilla twist in a cone. The girl turned to Paul, nothing in her bored expression acknowledging anything strange about the two of them being together. Paul asked for the same.
“Paul,” said April, “don’t you know how this works? You’re supposed to get a different flavor so we can sample each other’s cones.” She tousled his hair then turned back to the ice-cream girl. “He’s taking me out for my birthday,” she said, and as the girl’s eyes grew wider, April put her arm around Paul’s waist. “I’m turning forty.”
“Happy birthday,” the girl said, chewing her gum and not even trying to disguise the look of fascinated horror on her face.
Paul gave April a quizzical look, and she smiled back, daring him to say anything.
The girl handed them their cones. “On the house,” she said.
As they walked on down the street with their ice cream, April thought about the couple she had seen while waiting in the parking lot of the inn, and drawing Paul close, she tucked her hand in the tight, warm hip pocket of his jeans. She tossed her half-eaten cone in the corner trash can and put her head on Paul’s shoulder. She could smell his aftershave and a hint of sweat. People passing by for the most part ignored them, but every now and then they got a strange look.
“April, what are you doing?” Paul’s voice sounded stuck somewhere between amusement and alarm.
“I’m just being your girlfriend. Isn’t this what boyfriends and girlfriends do? I’m a little out of practice.”
“It’s just, before, you were worried about anyone finding out about us—understandably. Now, though, it’s like you want people to know.”
“Maybe I’m reassessing the situation. Maybe I don’t care anymore.”
“But what about your job?”
“We’re not doing anything illegal. Besides, it’s summer vacation.”
“And your church?”
“I’ve been looking for an excuse to quit doing that Bible school anyway.”
“And your kids?”
“They can deal with it. If not, they do have a dad in Buffalo.”
“April, come on.”
“What?”
“Just be serious for a second.”
“I am. Does my new level of commitment to our relationship make you uncomfortable?”
“You’re obviously not going to send your kids away for me.”
“I’m just pointing out that they have other options if they find my life choices distasteful. Do you know I could never get a dog, because my daughter’s allergic? I’ve always wanted a dog.”
“So I’m a dog now?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying I’m tired of planning my life around what my kids do and do not approve of. And anyway, I think they’d come around to our side eventually. We’ll just have to give them time to adjust. It might be good for them to have a father figure around. You know, a role model.”
April let go of him and turned to smile at him. He looked utterly lost. She walked quickly on ahead, turning around at the end of the block to see him standing on the sidewalk, staring at her.
“Think about it, Paul—family movie nights, tr
ips to the beach. It could be heaven.”
She started laughing and quickly put her hand to her mouth. The warm breeze caressed her face. Paul was looking at her as if she were crazy. Maybe she was. But if the very idea of a future together struck them both as ridiculous, this was not likely to end well.
In that moment, she felt like crying. She looked around her. Down the street to the left, she detected the promising signs of a bar: laughter and boisterous chatter, and a neon sign advertising ice-cold Blue Moon.
“Let’s go this way,” she said.
A gaggle of bikers held half the bar hostage—large men with long beards, clad in denim and leather and bandannas, some still wearing sunglasses despite the late hour. April couldn’t help admiring their shamelessness, their complete lack of self-awareness. It was pretty adorable, really. She was grateful for the bikers because it meant she and Paul could sit at a small round table in the corner of the bar, more or less ignored by everyone else.
Paul stared at his glass of beer with a sad look on his face, not touching it, as if the drink held some secret he didn’t want to learn.
“What’s the matter?” April asked loudly over the music. She took a long sip of her Long Island iced tea.
Paul had balked when she asked him to order her one. “You know how much alcohol is in one of those?” he’d said.
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