Wish You Were Here (47 page)

“You're exactly what those people are looking for,” she'd said once at home, and all Sarah could say was “Great.”

Outside, lights were coming on. The sun wasn't gone yet, and everything was a weird orangey pink except the bright signs for gas stations and fast-food places. As they passed an exit, she watched the traffic on the road below, the restaurants busy with families, some of them waiting out front to be called, standing in little cliques like kids did before school.

Behind an Applebee's, a girl not much older than her in a green uniform was throwing cardboard boxes into a dumpster. She was blond and her ponytail was pulled through the back of her visor. Sarah turned to watch her, followed her dwindling shape as she went back inside, imagining the people she worked with, the jokes they made and the radio playing in the kitchen. She probably had her own car, Sarah thought, and didn't have to ask her mother for anything. She would be saving her money to escape. One day she would take a suitcase of clothes and leave a note and her real life would begin, just like that. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Whenever she was ready. The only hard part would be what to say in the note, and who to address it to.

Arlene was glad Margaret was driving. The one bad accident she'd had was at twilight. She'd stopped at a stop sign by Frick Park and looked both ways and thought she was all right, except the parked cars right beside her had hidden an oncoming car, and when she pulled out she turned directly into its path. No one had been seriously hurt, just shaken up, and the woman hadn't had her lights on, so it was not all Arlene's fault, but she'd been careful at stop signs ever since, especially around this time of day. That must have been twenty years now.

How many thousands of miles had she driven in her life? The circumference of the earth, she liked to remind her students, was just under twenty-five thousand miles, and her Taurus already had seventy-something. She'd put a good two hundred on the Volvo before it quit, and another hundred fifty on the dog of a Peugeot she'd liked the styling of (though Henry had warned her), and there were the two Chevys before that, her mother's Olds she inherited, and the rusty Ford she'd kept going through grad school. A million miles. It seemed an improbable, even boastful figure,
seeing as she didn't like to drive, but the numbers added up. Give or take, she'd driven around the world forty times, and yet she remembered most clearly her one accident, kept the memory fresh, ever vigilant.

She was tempted to see it as an analogy for her one attempt at love, a disaster that precluded all further risk, but it was not the same and there was no sense going over it again, not here.

In the back, the boys were asleep, their seats reclined like dentist's chairs. She fished for a Lucky but the pack was done.

“Can I borrow one?” she asked, holding up Margaret's box of Marlboros.

“I could use one too.”

The first tug was sweet, and Arlene looked at hers, surprised.

“Aren't they nice?” Margaret said.

“Very.”

They cracked their windows at the exact same time and laughed.

“You're sure I'm not your daughter?” Margaret asked. For an instant Arlene wanted to confess to a plot straight out of the Brontës, a home for wayward girls, a cloaked midwife smuggling a bundle through the woods under a bloody moon. In a way, it was true—soon enough she would be all that remained of her on earth, thoughts of moments like this floating up like her own memories of her old Peugeot or Walter's face inches above hers.

“Reasonably sure,” she said.

He opened his eyes in the darkness and lifted his head from the musty cushion. Something thumped outside, followed by voices—them—and he stretched and rolled himself off the couch, his stiff legs protesting. He shook his head so his ears flapped, and blinked until he could see, stopped in
the middle of the living room and arched his back, giving off a soft puff of gas, then padded into the kitchen, offering a warning bark. He sniffed his empty water dish and stood watching the back door as it rattled open.

The light was blinding. She was the first one in, and he went to her, his head down for her to scratch, the smell of mud rising from her shoes.

“There you are,” she said. “I heard you protecting the house, yes, Mr. Ferocious. Did you miss us? I bet you did. I bet you slept all day, didn't you? What a rough life, huh? What a hard and terrible life you have.”

“You've got a letter,” Grandma said, holding the envelope up and popping her eyes wide for her mother's benefit. “Must be from an admirer.”

“It's probably from Mark,” her mother announced, and started telling everyone about him before Sarah could take it and get away, her own surprise and uncertainty turning to pure anger so that when she flopped down on her sleeping bag upstairs she didn't know how she felt.

He'd promised he would write her and then their last night together they'd had that fight. All July she waited for the mail jeep, watching the flag on their box from the kitchen window, then trudging up the driveway with her arms full of catalogs for her mother, the magazines that still came for her father. She had to stop herself from writing him first. All day she spoke to him in her head, said his name to the blue sky. Lying on a towel beside the Kramers' pool, she composed quick and simple letters, sometimes just one question. An ant skittered by on the concrete, skirting the dark stain of a drying footprint, then vanished into the jungle of grass. Bees crawled over the clover blossoms, working, while she lay there waiting for the day to end and tomorrow to come, another shot at the mail jeep.

She'd stopped him from unbuttoning her cutoffs and he'd called her a tease and she'd hit him and called him a fucker. He just wanted her body, to get whatever he could.

He tried to apologize but she said, “I'm going home.”

She didn't, not right then (he knew she was serious, and that was all she wanted). But by her curfew they hadn't completely made up, and the next morning he was gone, leaving her to rethink her decision and remember the nights she'd come in sopping and wanting more.

The pool was just a place to waste time. She rode past his house going home, even though she had to push her bike up Stagecoach so she could coast down Carriage like it was on her way. It was one of those big, perfect homes her mother pointed out when they drove by, impressed with the flowerbeds. The driveway was empty except for the backboard, the garage doors down. One day she'd seen a newspaper, and the next day it was gone, so his parents were home. She wanted to run into them by accident and rode by on Saturday, hoping his father would be out in the yard, but it looked like it did all week, so maybe they were away. Maybe a neighbor was taking care of things. Mark hadn't said anything about them going on vacation. She wondered if his mother was inside all the time, watching her.

The days ran into each other like a looped sample, the same cereal for breakfast, Justin in his PJs playing Pokémon Stadium in the basement, their mother asking the same questions: Weren't the Kramers getting tired of her? Why didn't she ride her bike to the library? Did she want to invite Liz over?

Every day the flag was still up, still up, still up, and then it was down and she went out in her bare feet, stepping gently, flipping through the pile as she walked back up the drive, but it was all for her mother. There was no mail on Sunday, and Tuesday it came early and was all junk, and suddenly it was August and they were supposed to go to the cottage.

And so she'd given in and written him, sent him a short, carefully worded letter that said she missed him and hoped he was having a good summer. She was fine and getting tan, he wouldn't believe how dark she was. She'd bought a new swimsuit. She even joked that she was getting tired of waiting by the mailbox every day, but not anymore because they were leaving. If he wanted to write back, he could use this address. When
she came to the end, she wondered how she should sign herself, and finally decided on “Love.”
Love, S.,
she wrote, and licked the envelope closed and added a ladybug sticker to be safe.

If she set it on her desk she might not send it at all, and she didn't want her mother to see it, so she slipped it in her backpack along with her rolled-up towel and found her flip-flops and headed off, stopping at the box on the corner of Buckboard and sliding it in as she straddled her bike. The metal was hot, wavy lines coming off the top. Once the weighted door swung shut, she wanted it back, but it was too late, and really she was glad. If she hadn't, she'd be thinking of him the whole time she was at the cottage. At the pool, she imagined the jeep coming to pick it up, the guy unlocking the box and dumping it into a sack, then driving away, as if she had nothing to do with it. On the way home she passed the box and wondered if it was already gone.

That had been a week ago, and this was postmarked Monday from Petoskey. So he'd gotten her letter and written back immediately. She wished she could remember exactly what she'd said in hers, every word.

Saturday she would see him. It seemed months away, but it was just three days. Two and a half.

She turned the envelope over in her hands and slit the end of one flap with a nail as far as it would go, then dug a finger in and tore the hole open.

“Your machine's blinking,” Margaret called.

“Just a second.” In the kitchen, Emily finished refilling Rufus's water dish and gingerly set it down in the corner, Rufus crowding her knee. “There you go,” she said, and he looked up from drinking as if to thank her.

“Okay,” she said, breezing into the living room, “what's all the hollering about?”

The answering machine had been a late addition, and they'd never found a suitable place for it. She had to lean over the arm of the couch and reach under the lamp to hit the button. It was so seldom used that she was surprised to find there were two messages.

“Hello, Mrs. Maxwell,” Mrs. Klinginsmith said, “this is Dorothy Klinginsmith. Friday I have a man coming to inspect the septic system, if that's all right. I'll be there to coordinate things so you won't have to do a thing, I just wanted to warn you.”

“She couldn't wait till next week?” Margaret asked.

Emily just shrugged, still intent on the machine, waiting for the second message. She hoped it was Mrs. Klinginsmith canceling. The thought of anyone intruding on their last day at the cottage was dismaying.

“Hey guys,” a man said, and it took Emily a second to recognize him as Jeff.

“Dad!” Justin said, turning from the TV.

“I guess you're probably out on the boat or something. I'll call back tomorrow. Nothing big, just wanted to say hey. Hope everyone's having a great time. Okay, bye-bye.”

“Can we call him?” Justin asked.

“It's late,” Margaret argued, though it was only nine. “You can talk to him tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay,” Justin said glumly, dragging back to his spot on the floor slump-shouldered, and Emily had to restrain herself from butting in. She couldn't imagine denying Kenneth or Margaret their father. It wasn't her right.

“‘Just wanted to say hey'?” Margaret asked later, while Lisa was getting the boys down. “What the hell is that?”

“Maybe he's just checking up,” Kenneth said.

“I don't think it's that odd.” Emily had no reason to doubt Jeff's sincerity. All along she'd suspected Margaret of exaggerating his irresponsibility, especially toward the children, whom she was certain he loved. Emily's only criticism of him—unspoken and, she hoped, unfounded—was that he hadn't protected them from Margaret at her worst and was now abandoning them to her.

“You don't think he did that on purpose? Come on!”

“Am I missing something?” Emily asked.

“She thinks Jeff's trying—” Kenneth started.

“He's playing games,” Margaret said. “Pretending he's Mr. Reasonable. Did you hear the voice he used—‘Hey guys.' I mean, please. You don't want to hear what he sounds like when he talks to me.”

Emily thought that what evidence she had was to the contrary. She could bring back all too easily Margaret's distorted face and the torrent of saddening profanity and vicious threats leveled at her, the late-night finger waved in her face, prodding her to retaliate. At times she had, and then had been ashamed at what could never be retracted, the measured, devastating words that lingered between them even now like wreckage.

She'd never seen Jeff get mad. Maybe that was saved for those closest to him, and was all the more horrible for it, like the few times she'd seen Henry angry. You could only know people so much.

“He wants you to think it's all my fault,” Margaret went on, “and it isn't. I'm not perfect, I admit that, but I was trying to make things work, and the whole time he was sneaking around on me. So I don't want you buying any of that ‘Hey guys' bullshit.”

The room went silent around her, and Emily felt a responsibility to reassure her they were on her side, no question. Because that's what she was asking.

“Do you want me to unplug the phone?”

Margaret checked her face to make sure she was serious, and this seemed to placate her. “No. Now Justin
has
to talk to him. I'm sure Sarah will want to too. It's not that, it's the whole thing.” She waved her hands to indicate how large the problem was, and how sick of it she was.

“I understand,” Emily said, and she thought she did. She was more puzzled by her own hesitation to give Margaret her support from the beginning, as if she needed to earn it. That was how Margaret must see her—stingy, setting conditions on her love. She'd been accusing Emily of this since she was a teenager, insisting she'd been wronged, that at bottom Emily was disappointed in her. She was surprised to discover it was true.