Lake People (9 page)

They had been up for a few hours, Clara had hardly slept, and by now a cranky weariness had set in. “God damn it,” she said, but he crossed without trouble, of course he would, and Clara went to the van. There she saw that he had left the gas to the camp stove on. He could have blown up their entire van. Had the baby been in it he could have killed her. In a rage Clara crossed that land bridge. She tripped at the edge, and had she not been able to catch her balance she would have tumbled to her death. Paul did not see it, for his eyes were pinned decidedly upon the water.

“Give her to me,” she said. He patted the baby’s back and kissed her head. “You’re a child,” Clara told her husband. It was the way he had ignored her. He did this when he believed he was right; he had an uncanny ability to act as though she were only a space of air that he could see right through. “I’m tired of being married to a child,” she said. She held her arms out and eventually he handed the baby her way without looking at his wife. As she headed toward that small land bridge with the baby in her arms, she wished wildly that she had not said what she had said. She did not like heights, and she wanted Paul there with her now to hold her hand and make her know that she was safe. She wanted him to carry the baby across because she did not believe that she herself was capable. She should have laughed and apologized. Yet he was still watching that great ocean and Clara did not admit her error. With her baby in her arms she headed back for the narrow strip of land.

Later in her life Clara will think for a time that she could become a marine biologist. She will hear a young woman speak on the radio about a moment out on the ocean in the middle of the
night when she and her colleagues discovered that dolphins feed in groups. No one had known this yet and there they were, awake, watching it take place. The vastness of the night and the stars and the ocean, and the singularity of those dolphins and herself, and the moment when they all converge—Clara will know just what that woman must have felt. But for Clara, it will turn out, sitting on the cliff and watching a whale rise is enough.

She made it back to their camp spot just fine, and by the time Paul came back to her, the baby had eaten and was sleeping in her crib in the van and Clara thought that the fight would be over, that together they could walk the one path that led up the road and then down the hill to the base of the cliff. There was a small beach there; they could find driftwood and whalebones, sea glass to line their kitchen windows. But Paul was silent, and this alone sent Clara back into her rage. She went to the glove box—what was she looking for?—and he went to the driver’s seat, where he had left his backpack. He began to root through it with abandon, and Clara asked him to please quiet down, the baby was sleeping. This made him rustle his things more loudly. She asked him once more to quiet down and this time he cursed her. Clara was perched halfway in the van now, one leg up on the ledge to climb into the seat. The terns were gone and the sun was high and the water behind her glistened with life and light. She reached her arm over the emergency brake and grabbed hold of her husband’s bag. She pulled at it but he would not let go. Eventually his hand grabbed hold of her arm—not on purpose, she would decide and believe with her whole heart—and the pressure of it hurt fiercely.

“Damn you,” she said, and let go of the backpack.

They were both out of the van, standing by the campfire ring
where they had shared such a glorious night less than twenty-four hours before, and she knew exactly how to end the fight and move on to being good again, all she needed to do was claim fault, every last bit of it, and she was about to do just that when they heard that faint creak. They both turned around swiftly, but the van was already moving. For the rest of her life, Clara will be sure that for Paul, at that moment everything else in the world was absolutely still. Only that van with his baby inside existed, and only that van moved, slowly. It didn’t have far to go before it lumbered over the cliff. When it fell it was with a certain peace, even grace. There was no tumbling involved. Just like a tern that van went straight for the water.

But for Clara, more than the van existed at that moment. Paul was already running toward the path to the beach, but when Clara looked up she saw it, that slick black back of a whale. Upward it rose, slowly and smoothly as though it were a hand attached to the underwater clock that made the world itself move on. Clara watched it fall back in and rise again. Over and over again that whale rose and fell and how could she ever explain to Paul that it was for that vision that she did not move? That she had known he was headed toward the beach but she had also believed that what had happened had happened, but that here was her chance alone to watch a great old being rise from the depths of the earth?

He screamed her name as he went. He needed her help. He was a large, strong man, but they both knew that she was the stronger swimmer. She did run to help him, but by the time she got to the beach he was already in the water. She did not go in after him. She had no faith that anything could be done. For even then, just minutes after it had happened, it seemed clear to her: a whale had entered this cruel and beautiful world at the precise time that her infant had exited it. It was not a belief that would
quell the sorrow but it was a belief that might add some order to the mystery.

Underwater, the van wasn’t hard to find. Like a puzzle piece it had fit itself in between two boulders. Its nose faced upward and its tail end rested upon the sandy ocean floor. Paul found it quickly. The tide was coming in but he must have felt stronger than the force of the entire ocean. The windows were up and the doors were shut. Clara could imagine his time under that water. She could see seaweed long and thick as trees in a rainforest, and she could see that van lit up, glowing with the life of her daughter inside. She could see her Paul taking one breath to inspect his options, and then one more to dive under and rescue the baby. She could see him as an adept explorer in the cold ocean. But none of that could possibly be true. Aside from the terror, it must have been dark and it must have been sheer luck that led his hand to the door of the van, and led him to the crib where his baby lay, her back against the bars, grasping desperately upward.

She was okay. Miraculously she was. He came up with her in his arms and he tapped her back. Her skin had turned a little blue but she coughed and she did not cry but she did breathe; she breathed fine then and she still does today. It must have been five minutes that she was under the water. They would never know. It could have been less and it could have been more but anyway Clara’s husband had the baby in his arms and he walked right past Clara on the beach. The few other people in that cove were on the beach now, too, though neither Clara nor Paul realized it. Paul walked up the hill to the shack where the owner of
the campground stayed, but he wasn’t there so he walked to the man’s truck and started it. Clara got in and for nearly six hours they rode in silence to the nearest hospital. Paul would not hand the baby over. He had wrapped her in Clara’s sweater and now he kept her on his lap, and stopped every half hour or so to hold her against his chest. How Clara would have liked to be held like that. But she knew then that never again would her Paul come back to her. Her fault this time had been too great.

I WAS WITH
my father when I first crossed the bridge to King’s Point. I was twelve and we were to attend a party of some distant relatives whom I had never met before. Up we went to the peak of the bridge, and for a moment all earth was shielded from us, nothing remaining but endless sky and lake. Right then I imagined a body launching itself over the edge and going onward, unleashed from this weighted life. But the truck crested the hill and we descended.

King’s Point is just a mile from the Kettleborough Pier, and beneath the bridge a narrow strip of rocks connects it to mainland. But more often than not, those rocks are covered with
water, so in truth King’s is more of an island than a point. I had heard that famous people lived out there, actors and politicians. Their houses dotted the edge, while the center of the point remained a mass of thick pine. There was—and still is—only one road, which circled the perimeter and dropped sharply to the mansions and lake. Each mansion was numbered and the house we were headed for was 24. It wasn’t hard to locate—its mailbox was roughly the size of my own closet. The house itself was not visible from the road, but when the car dropped down the drive that grand white house rose up as though straight out of the water. It was the stuff of movies, with white pillars on the porch and stone statues in the yard, laughter rolling off the granite floors and into the lush green grass.

My father climbed out of the truck and walked right to the door and opened it up and went in as though he had been in a place like this a thousand times before. I clung at his back. We entered a drawing room that our own house could fit into. There were maybe twenty people in there. From that wide, echo-filled room three stairs rose to an open kitchen. All of this was granite, save for the three-basin sink, which was metal. The adults clanked their glasses and tossed back their heads, and it wasn’t long until my father joined right in, though it was clear even to my childhood self that he was of another breed entirely.

“Don’t you look like Paul Newman,” one woman said to him.

“Aren’t you a bowl of chocolate chips.”

“Don’t you look like Robert Redford.” Devnet’s mother said that.

Devnet is where the story begins. I was promptly introduced to her, as she and her younger brother, Thomas, were the only other children there. They were staying at this house—owned by their grandparents—for the entire summer.

“Preteen,” Devnet called me after our introduction. She was thirteen and as she told me this she sighed and put an exasperated
hand to her forehead and said, “Oh, Alice, it’s all about to start happening to you. Love, ache, lies, the works.” The way she said that word,
ache
, it did indeed sound just barely out of my reach.
Devnet
, too, the name itself. It sounded womanly and I asked her where it came from.

“I’m named after my parents’ dead baby,” she told me. Then she moved behind me, boldly grabbed my waist, and steered me to her bedroom. There were bunk beds there, and Devnet climbed up to the top and instructed me to join her. Her brother, when he appeared, was ordered to remain on the floor.

“Today we saw the monster of the lake,” he called to me.

“Hush up,” Devnet said. She crossed her legs, asked me what I liked to do, and listlessly spoke of the woes of teenage life.

“First we saw the shadow and then it flighted away,” Thomas said.

I told Devnet that I liked to ski. She scoffed at this, and once again reminded me that it was all about to start happening. And then to her brother, “Scat,” she said, “skedaddle.” He did, and Devnet went on with her lecture, though I was much more interested in the monster, who had the reputation of appearing just before trouble.

“The gnomes are coming, Alice!” Thomas called from the hallway. “The giants are coming!”

“I’m thirteen and already life has become
too much
,” Devnet said. She lay back against the pillow with one arm thrown languidly upward. I said I had to use the bathroom—a fib—and climbed off that bed. I let Thomas lead me to my next adventure, which he discovered when he opened the refrigerator door. There were lobsters in there, at least twenty of the faintly blue beasts. When we moved those thick plastic bags of them to the counter it wasn’t but a minute before every single lobster began violently to thrash for life.

“We’ve got to save them,” Thomas said with conviction. Panicked,
I plugged up the metal sink and filled it with cold water. Thomas reached over and dumped an entire canister of salt in. In a soft and urgent voice he spoke to them, said, “There now, you little cloppers. Now we’ll get you to the ocean, there, now you can swim free.”

“If it weren’t for the rest of the world I would not eat you,” I whispered as those sad, maroon beings began to slow their hold on life. “I’ve got to fit in, don’t I?”

Devnet found me quickly enough. She pulled me away from the sink, saying that her father wanted us to run to the store with him. And what would have happened, had I not done that?

“He says my stupid mother forgot the corn,” she said.

I had no mother, and wanted one desperately, so I was shocked to hear Devnet speak of her own mother in such a way. She pushed me out the door. Dusk had just begun to fall. Devnet’s father was already in the driver’s seat. I had not told my father I was going but I got in without protest. On the way to the store, her father had her take the wheel so he could remove his jacket, and once that was off he tipped his seat back a bit and told her to keep steering us the whole way there. This frightened me, and I sat straight-backed in the seat, preparing my arms and legs for the event of a crash, laboring over whether or not to speak up for my own safety. But we made it to the store just fine, and Devnet’s father sent her in with a twenty-dollar bill. That stretch of time when he and I sat silent in the car together, what an assaulting fear it filled me with. His breath was slow and heavy, and now and then his eyes—which were dark and lovely; he was a remarkably attractive man—would catch me in the rearview mirror and just hold me there. I had a strange sense that he would start the car and drive me away, take me as his unwilling lover. Finally Devnet reappeared. She was wearing blue-jean cutoff shorts with a bathing suit underneath—I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed
this before or why I noticed it now. But I did, and as she walked across the pavement to the black car with that large bag of corn, she just looked so skinny and helpless that for a moment I became certain in a very unchildlike way that I would fare better than she in this short life. She thrust the corn into the backseat. She was allowed to steer again on the way back to the mansion, and this time I wasn’t afraid, though I should have been.