Electric City: A Novel (16 page)

Martin wanted to believe that the man understood its true value. Anyone collecting Iroquois treasures might be in it for the money—but something about the sincere gleam of appreciation in Wheatfield’s eyes suggested otherwise. Without the reassurance from Midge earlier that morning regarding the preservation of the Steinmetz canoe, Martin
might have wanted more proof that this particular sale wouldn’t turn to regret.

Too late now to have insisted that he give up the canoe
after
spending a day with it on the silver surface of the lake. With Sophie.

Together, Martin Longboat and Jonas Wheatfield lifted the canoe down from its harness and deposited it on the patch of grass out front. The two men exchanged a nod and a handshake.

Sophie, after watching the transaction from a seat on the front steps, asked a bit shyly if she could go inside the house to use the bathroom. Even Bear had jumped down into the driveway for a chance to shake himself loose.

“Where are my manners?” Wheatfield apologized, holding open the screen door for Sophie. “Go on ahead. First door on your left, just past the kitchen. Can I offer you some lemonade? A soda?”

“Oh no thanks,” she called back over her shoulder. “I think we’re pretty eager to keep going.” Once inside the house Sophie passed a living room with green walls hung with so many paintings it looked like a gallery. There were masks from around the world lining the hallway, and the kitchen cabinets had glass doors revealing marvelously colored dishware. Even the bathroom displayed sepia photographs and a couple of vintage opera posters. Jazz was coming from a radio or record player in some part of the house she couldn’t see.

“She’s right,” Martin said. “Kind of you to offer, though.” He gestured to the coiled hose near the canoe, which balanced gracefully on its side.

“Sure thing!” Wheatfield said, looking around for something that would serve as a water bowl. But Martin had already beckoned to his dog and cupped his hands. Bear lapped noisily for a while, and both men laughed at the pure sound of something so simple.

“At least let me get a couple of glasses for you and your girlfriend,” Wheatfield said.

Sophie reappeared just as Martin was considering his reply; he couldn’t tell if she had heard the word or not. “Water?” he asked.

“Yes please,” she said, smiling.

When the truck steered back onto the lake road, it was only Bear who kept his gaze on what they were leaving behind.

G
RANDLY THREE-STORIED WITH
moss-covered stonework, a slate roof, and an architectural style Henry admitted he referred to as Old Money, the Van Curler house revealed itself at the end of a driveway guarded by elaborate wrought iron. While pulling open the gates for Martin’s truck, he couldn’t deny a twinge of jealousy at the sight of Sophie sitting right next to him in the cab.
But at least she’s here
, he told himself.

Glittering!
thought Sophie. Henry looked like a character in a movie, backlit by the Lake.

As soon as Sophie jumped out of the truck, Bear bounded off to explore. Martin busied himself with unloading his tent while Henry and Sophie stood hugging.

“Let’s swim before we do anything else,” Henry suggested, still holding Sophie in his arms.

Martin dropped what he was doing and started unlacing his boots. “Good idea.”

Bear headed straight for the dock at the water’s edge, as if the invitation had been meant specifically for him.

“Follow the leader,” Henry said.

Lake George was so blue it almost hurt. Motorboat engines whined in the distance and bees droned somewhere nearby. The horizon of hills framing the water was a palette of pine and aspen and spruce. From
time to time, the passage of a tiered steamboat turned everything into a hand-tinted postcard.

Bright wake billowing. A deck full of passengers traveling for miles. Red and black letters spelling out its name:
TICONDEROGA
.

“That one means ‘the junction of two rivers,’” Martin said, but only after Sophie asked.

“Confluence?” Henry asked.

“Coincidence,” Martin said.

Bear shook with abandon, sending water flying in all directions.

Combining provisions, they ate a picnic lunch on the dock and took turns with a round loaf of bread, tearing off fist-sized hunks and using Martin’s knife for the cheese, the hard salami. They filled themselves with green grapes, carrots, soda. They had peaches for dessert that left juice pouring down their chins and onto their hands.

Bear napped nearby on the sun-bleached planks and chased something in a dream, his paws and tail twitching with the thrill of pursuit. Martin rubbed his sleek back gently with the sole of his bare foot and Bear relaxed again. Sophie wondered if it wouldn’t be kinder to let Bear catch his prey first, let the dream win.

Lying on his back and squinting into the sun, Henry tried to whistle “Mellow Yellow,” but kept losing track of the melody.

Martin started reciting the words to “Nowhere Man,” in an exaggerated baritone.

“We can work it out,” Sophie sang. They took turns playing air guitar for each other, and tapping rhythms on the deck with their hands and feet.

Sophie wished she could mention that Martin had the most extraordinary smile. When it appeared with such sudden brilliance, it almost took her breath away. Discreetly, she looked back and forth between
Henry’s golden face and Martin’s jet-black hair. If they were both stealing similar glances at her, she didn’t allow herself to notice.

When Henry dragged some striped cushions from a distant region of the porch and threw them down on the deck, Sophie rolled their towels into pillows. There were three places to lie, side by side by side; she took the middle spot without even asking, and Henry lay down next to her. When their fingers interlaced so naturally, he was stunned to realize it had been years since he felt this happy, this released.

Bear barked halfheartedly as a family of ducks paddled past. Martin got up, encouraging Bear to relocate in a shadier spot.

Henry said, “Good move,” and then worried it sounded like he was sending Martin away. Nobody said
Three’s a crowd
, but it suddenly felt true.

“Okay,” Martin said, “time out.” He beckoned his dog uphill toward the farthest side of the house, telling himself this was another good reason he had brought his own tent. If he needed to, he could climb into the truck and drive to some other part of the lake altogether. Anytime he wanted.

Now that he couldn’t be heard by Henry or Sophie, he sang quietly to himself in his family’s language. The generous-limbed oaks and resin-rich pines seemed to lean closer. His bare feet traced patterns on the earth that spoke long love letters to a mother. He untied his hair, let it sweep across his shoulders like a mantle of black feathers.

Deep inside, he heard fragments of story his grandmother had told, preserved on a spool of magnetic tape. Adirondack was Ratirontak, porcupine, “eater of trees,” which also mocked native people forced to consume bark and buds in hungry seasons. Eventually it became a term used by the Dutch to refer to the French and English behind their backs.

On the edge of the Van Curler property farthest from Henry and Sophie, Martin found his perfect climbing tree, as though it had called his name. The lower reaches of the white pine invited him into their arms, and before long he was high enough to see beyond the house, the dock, the rocky shoreline. He scanned for the half-hidden streaks of metamorphic rock embedded in the dense forests; he watched the day brighten and fade along the hip of the mountains.

On the branch he straddled, some notches had been carved into the shapes of letters. No surprise to recognize an
H
, but there was also an
A
, in knife-scratched lines side by side. No numbers. Martin placed both hands on the bark as though to soothe its scarred skin, returning his gaze to the horizon. Beyond the northernmost reaches of the Adirondacks, his great-uncle Miles had gone to Canada in search of a wife and had never come back. Those bridge workers must have climbed trees like this too, before making widows of all those women.

Bear naturally waited for Martin to return to ground, while Henry and Sophie either did or didn’t notice how long he was gone. Loons consoled one another, back and forth, plaintive and eloquent. Sunset came slowly and doubled itself on the surface of the lake.

T
HE SKY TURNED
velvet, pocked with stars. Martin had settled on the wide front lawn in his tent, and Sophie was in one of the guest bedrooms: bird’s-eye maple dressers and floral print everywhere, drapes layered in lace and gauze. She thought Henry seemed embarrassed by all these trappings, and so she pretended to be unimpressed.

Looking out her window, she noticed the glow from Henry’s windows not far from hers, leaking gold into the darkness. As a kind of echo, she could see the lozenge of light inside Martin’s tent, a lantern sketching the silhouettes of man and dog.

Although she had brought along a light flannel nightgown, she couldn’t decide whether or not to put it on. She pulled off her sweatshirt and her T-shirt; unclasping her bra, she now stood with the nightgown in her hands, waiting for a sign telling her what to do next. The flannel was soft from years of winters, and didn’t really make any sense here in the summer on the lake, but she’d imagined an unheated house, a cool night, the need to feel something comforting against her skin. The itch of having lied to her parents flared up like mosquito bites or poison ivy.

Listening with her breath held tight, she could hear Henry in the room next door, through the wallpapered wall they shared. There was a creaking closet door, tennis shoes tossed into a corner, a belt buckle
dropping onto the hardwood. Then she heard water running in the bathroom sink, accompanied by the cascade of pee into the toilet.

Henry was humming now, a tune she didn’t recognize. She guessed he was trying not to listen for sounds of her.

Brushing his teeth, Henry scrubbed hard as though to erase any chance of stale breath. He had kissed Sophie in the moonlit hallway, leaning into her so that the shape and fullness of her breasts under her clothes were unbearably clear. He had to make an excuse to pull away and say goodnight. Surely she could feel how much he wanted her. Was that going to frighten her away or draw her closer?

At boarding school, it was all most of the guys wanted to talk about, who had done it and with which girl, where and how many times. They boasted and exaggerated and probably lied outright to each other. He had “gone all the way” just once, with someone from town he’d flirted with after a track meet. Her name was Gail and she’d been the one to initiate sex, surprising him with her game attitude and apparent experience. Among the thousand ways he missed having an older brother, this was one of them: as a source of instruction about how to handle himself with a girl. No chance of such conversations with his father either. He was on his own.

Sophie chose a tank top over a pair of cotton shorts. There was no full-length mirror in her room so she didn’t have to examine her legs to consider whether or not Henry liked them. She washed her hands and face and even rinsed her feet; she brushed her hair and waited with a surprising mixture of hope and fear for the knock on the door.

Trying to read a book, she remained stuck on the same page, unable to bring her focus back to the words.
Middlemarch
, a book her English teacher had recommended for summer, and Sophie had barely made it to page twenty. When the rapping on the door came, she threw the book onto the nightstand and leaped out of bed.

Henry stood there wearing almost exactly what she had on, except instead of shorts he was in jeans. Barefoot and with messy hair as though he’d been running his fingers through it, looking for ideas.

“Can I come in?” he said.

Henry thought about that one time with Gail and couldn’t quite make the images fit with the feeling of Sophie in his arms. If he told her he had brought along condoms, which he had, would Sophie consider him crass or overconfident? Did he want to know if she’d had sex with anyone else? Somehow he was certain she hadn’t, but did it matter? Would it matter to her to know he’d been with someone his classmates would have called a townie, dismissive and cruel except when they would have wanted to hear the details and then do it with her themselves?

Sophie whispered she didn’t know what to do and what she really wanted to say was that she was insecure and terrified. They had removed their shirts and then Sophie’s shorts but Henry kept his jeans on. The sight of Sophie’s breasts in the moonlight (they had turned off even the reading light beside the bed) made Henry feel as though he might simply explode before he touched her at all. The texture of her skin when he pressed his bare chest against hers, the way her nipples rose like perfect berries into his mouth, all of this was beyond anything he had read about or heard in locker rooms.