Wish You Were Here (21 page)

She dragged the trash out the kitchen door and into the rain. The screen swung shut too fast, and the bag caught on a sharp corner, jerking her back, a cold drop falling down her collar. “Come on, you thing,” she said, and tugged. It let go, a white hole appearing in its skin, a balled tissue peeking through. It was bad enough that it was raining without this kind of nonsense.

She needed to get herself organized. She still had to run last night's dishes, and there was that postcard for Louise Pickering she needed to get out today, otherwise it wouldn't arrive until she was back home, and that was no fun.

On her way to the garage, she recognized the shearing squeal of a power saw and the gunlike report of hammer blows echoing from the Smiths' new addition. It was larger than the cottage and blotted out what had been a lovely view from the road. The permit had been a bitter fight among the homeowners' association. It was one more reason the Lerners were leaving, and a small but nagging factor in her own decision to sell. Manor Drive wasn't what it was when Henry had first brought her here.

She had her old tennies on so she was careful on the stones, and opened the door all the way before pulling the bag through. She pushed the wheeled garbage can and found there was something in it. A bungee cord threaded through the handle on top protected it from raccoons. She unhooked the cord and popped the lid to find a bag from last year, dark liquid pooled in the folds; the winelike smell made her turn away and clap the lid down. She swallowed a large breath, set the lid aside, muscled the new bag up and in, then clamped the top on again.

She had to step outside a second. “Good God,” she said, ignoring the drops falling all around her. Kenneth was probably still asleep. The children would be down any second, needing breakfast. She could make corn cakes from last night's leftovers. The idea appealed to her. Though they had the rest of the week, she didn't see how they would eat everything in the fridge.

She unlocked the garage door and rolled it up, creaking in its steel track, then tugged the handle of the can. It was more bulky than heavy, and easy to roll, at least until she cleared the concrete apron and bumped onto the sodden grass. Her tennies were smooth and she had to take baby steps. Rufus watched her, dry behind the kitchen door.

The Wisemans had their can out, which reassured her. She rolled hers around the mailbox, out onto the hard, glossy road, then backed it into the grass and left it there, her hands suddenly unburdened, her first task of the day crossed off. How strange that she still took satisfaction from such mundane things. They just had to be done all over again—but not this one. This really was the last time she would take the can to the curb.

There would be time to get maudlin later. Back in Pittsburgh there was nothing but time. Again, the notion of inviting Margaret and the children to come and live in the house with her flashed and died without residue. Stupid, not what Margaret wanted. They would be at each other's throats in no time.

The idea that she had been in real trouble and hadn't told her hurt. It was just one of a list of things Emily needed to say to her. With the rain, she might not get the chance.

What a gray, dismal day, the lake choppy and mouse-colored beneath the trees, mist out on the water. She hurried back to the kitchen as fast as her tennies let her. Rufus pranced behind the screen door.

“What is it?” she asked, wiping her shoes on the mat. “I already fed you. Go lie down.”

Before she got the dishwasher going, she went into the living room and listened to see if anyone was in the shower. The box of detergent was a green foil brick, clumped from the humidity. She had to bash it with the heel of her hand to fill the compartment. When she turned the machine on, it stalled, then kicked in with a solid knock.

There was enough corn to make cakes for everybody, and syrup in the cupboard. She turned on the light over the cutting board. With the day so dark and the steamy thrum of the machine, it made the kitchen seem cozy. Living alone, she'd come to appreciate these brief, untroubled moments, fleeting as moods, delicate as spells. At home she cultivated them with the radio, with trips to the window, a cup of tea with cream, a favorite Dorothy Sayers, but more often they surprised her like this, needed only to be recognized for the treasure they were.

She was suddenly inordinately proud of putting the garbage out by herself—realizing at the same time what an absurd figure she must have seemed. It wasn't yet seven. The trash didn't get picked up until noon.

She held off turning on the radio until she'd sliced all the corn from the cobs, the thin white juice like milk on the cutting board. The flattened slabs and rows of kernels made her think of stuck-together puzzle pieces. If it rained like this all day, they would have to break out the board games, erect a card table and start one of the giant puzzles—Turner's London Bridge in fog, a field of tulips under a windmill. The Jamestown station would have the weather. She moved the few steps to the radio by reflex, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

She was just in time, an intrusive, unmusical tone noting the hour. A ticker-tape clicking introduced the lead story.

“So far police have no leads in the case of a Sherman woman,” the announcer gravely enunciated, “abducted yesterday from a Mayville convenience mart.”

The dish towel still in hand, Emily held both sides of the radio, leaned close to the louvered speaker hole, but the man told her nothing of value. Local and state officials were working together on the investigation, and then there was something about a crash on the Southern Tier, traffic backed up for miles, a driver taken by LifeFlight helicopter.

She made sure to get the weather—intermittent rain today and tomorrow, Wednesday a mix of sun and clouds with a chance of showers. Basically they weren't sure.

Maybe there was something on TV. She zipped into the living room, Rufus right behind her.

The set took forever to warm, and then the only channel she could get had a national wake-up show on, a man and woman sitting in plush armchairs surrounded by flowers. As if summoned, the boys thundered down the stairs. She clicked it off so they wouldn't put on a video.

“All right,” she said. “Who wants corn cakes?”

“Me!” Justin said.

“What's in them?” Sam asked, looking worried.

“Liver,” she said, “and brussels sprouts.”

“No.”

“What do you think is in them?”

“I don't know.”

“Here,” she said, “if you don't like them, we can give them to Rufus, how's that?”

“Okay,” Sam said, and she wasn't sure if he was serious or joking. He was an odd little thing. She knew Kenneth worried about him. There'd been that trouble at school, and then the guidance counselor suggesting he be tested, and Lisa refusing, a whole soap opera that went nowhere.

But the woman. That was the danger in the morning, other people's business impinging on yours, cluttering up your mind. In the kitchen, she remembered word for word what the radio had said. Abducted. And Kenneth the first to discover her gone. The police would probably want to talk to him again. They would have to get a paper, find out who she was.

The dishwasher ground on, cycling higher. The window above the sink was beginning to steam up. Outside, the Wisemans' oaks flailed; on their dock, the Indians flag stood rigid in the wind, the lake pitching with whitecaps, dishwater gray. It was a day to stay inside, to cuddle up under a blanket and read by a warm light. Who knew with Chautauqua weather. It could be sunny by lunchtime.

While the griddle warmed, she stirred the batter. Arlene came in, wearing the same sweater as last night, and asked if she needed any help. Emily freed her to go have her first cigarette of the day, standing like an
exile under the chestnut. The butter sizzled, filling the kitchen with a sharp, salty smell. She wished there were bacon for the boys. She'd tell Kenneth to get some, but she knew she'd forget, and started another list. Milk, bacon.

The butter had disappeared, only a lick of smoke curling up. She spooned the batter onto the hot griddle and stood there, spatula in hand, not yet watching the edges, just standing there, time passing around her. She wouldn't miss the old Westinghouse with its untrustworthy burners, the clock that hadn't worked since the mid-seventies, the broiler that cut out without warning. She loved food but despised cooking. It was something Henry—having never been expected to feed anyone—never understood in her.

This was different, a gift, though she supposed she did still worry about meals. At home the clock nagged her, said she needed to eat something even when she wasn't hungry. Maybe it was the lake, or summer, but she was ravenous.

Arlene opened the door, letting in a cold rush of wind. She returned her lighter to the windowsill; she had another on the screenporch for easy access.

“I found out what happened,” Emily said.

“What happened to whom?”

“At the gas station yesterday.”

She checked the cakes; they were ready. While she started another pair, she told Arlene what she'd heard on the radio.

“Interesting” was all Arlene said, as if she didn't care.

“I thought it was, someone out there kidnaping people in broad daylight.”

“I'm sure there's a whole story behind it they're not telling.” Arlene rooted in the fridge for her orange juice.

“I'm sure,” Emily agreed, but somehow Arlene had made any speculation unappetizing, killed it with her teacher's deadening objectivity.

Emily called the boys in before the second set was done, trapping Arlene at the counter. “Would you mind pouring them some milk?” she asked, busy microwaving the syrup.

“Can I have juice?” Sam asked.

“After you finish your milk. Did you want some?” she asked Arlene. “Otherwise I'm going to fridge the rest of this. I don't imagine anyone else will be up for a while.”

“That's fine,” Arlene said, and left. Emily turned down the burner and spooned two for herself.

“Are there any onions in them?” Sam asked.

“No, there are no onions in them.”

“I don't like them.”

“Then don't eat them,” she said, exasperated. He'd barely touched his plate, just a wedge missing. Justin was tucking in as if to prove him wrong. If she didn't know better, she would have said Sam belonged to Margaret and Justin to Kenneth.

“Can I be excused?” Sam asked.

“Drink your milk, then clear your place.”

He chugged half the glass.

“Whoa,” she said, “whoa. That is not how a gentleman acts. And Justin Carlisle, this is not a race. I know you both want to go play your Nintendo, but while you're at the table, you will act accordingly. Now let's try that again.”

They suffered her, their impatience and ungainly restraint the same she knew from her own children and, from the other side, her own childhood. Perhaps that was why children were so reassuring: no matter how the world changed, you could count on them being the same.

“Can I be excused?” Sam asked.

“Wait for your cousin,” she instructed, and he sighed.

Finally she released them, telling them to wash their hands before touching anything.

The dishes, meanwhile, had finished their cycle but were still too hot to put away. She did the breakfast dishes by hand, wiping down the sink and draping the dishcloth over the spigot. The griddle she dried immediately so it wouldn't rust. Putting it away, she remembered her mother's, perpetually greased, attracting fat black ants that skittered over the linoleum. Some morning—maybe a rainy day like today—her mother had taught her how to fry bacon, how not to be afraid of the popping grease (saving it in a can kept next to the timer), and then eggs over easy, the way her father liked them. She couldn't have been more than ten. Every morning before school she cooked his breakfast. In high school she tried to disguise the smell with Evening in Paris, opening the window on the bus until her neighbors complained. Every morning before going to work her father kissed her cheek and thanked her, said what a good cook
she was. And then, every night, her mother put her to shame with lavish dinners that probably took ten years off their lives, the gravy boat a staple, real cream with dessert. That way of life seemed unthinkable now, antique, and yet it had been hers, was still the guide and yardstick she relied on. She wondered if the children would remember her the same way, these strange corn cakes hopelessly old-fashioned.

Of course. She would be their past. Time was not a circle or a line but a kitchen, a lamp, an armchair.

She would look at the children's lists today and make her decisions. She would see how much would be kept and how much jettisoned. Oh, most of it would fit in at any Goodwill, but there were pieces she was secretly rooting for, combinations she'd appraised like a matchmaker. She wanted Margaret to have the cedar chest (and someday hand it down to Sarah). The wardrobe upstairs had always been Kenneth's, and the dresser in the guest room Arlene's (and the night table that went with it; it would be silly to break up the set). Lisa would want nothing, and that was fine with Emily. She would no longer allow herself to be perplexed by her daughter-in-law's mystifying coolness toward her. After all these years, Emily had built up a protective indifference of her own. Some people would never be sympathetic, and to struggle against that fact was foolish, maybe even dangerous, but surely wasteful.

She tidied up the kitchen, then, satisfied, draped the dish towel over the handle of the oven to dry. She gave Rufus a treat and looked out the window again, the drops on the glass—the glass itself, the dust-specked sill and its tarnished lock—filling her with a dread sense of confinement. She would go absolutely bats with the kids in the house all day. Maybe she and Arlene could take a trip to the Book Barn, have lunch somewhere.

In the living room, the boys were playing their Game Boys but had courteously turned the sound down. She took her book to the couch and tried to read, distracted by their cries. They huddled over the plastic tablets like monks, all concentration, while she couldn't go two paragraphs without looking up.