Wish You Were Here (52 page)

The closest row of ponds was dry, so she headed for the center where she knew they were stocked, and found one, the dark water busy with slowly opening circles as if it were raining—the fish feeding, kissing the surface. She chose a patch of grass to sit on, facing the road. Rufus hunched beside her, bored, his head on his paws. Up here anyone could see her, but she didn't care. Through the liquid shimmer wriggling above
the fields, she could see the cars on the highway slow before they turned in and the marina road far down past the hatchery. The chances that he would come back so fast were slim, but she kept checking, pretending to be interested in the even row of pines across the road, sharp in the harsh light, the tips of which were reflected, softer, in the pond. From the murky bottom, a string of pearly bubbles ballooned to the surface—a sign of life—then stopped, all done.

Her mother would ask what Mark had said in the letter, maybe seriously, in private, or as a joke in front of everyone, and she would have to say something. She'd hidden it in her flute case, under the blue velveteen, and the idea of it there now made her want to take it into the bathroom again and reread it, tear it to bits and flush them down the toilet. She wouldn't. She'd take it home and save it in the shoe box in the bottom of her closet with the other ones, a rubber band around them—the ones she wanted to reread now, to torture and reassure herself that it had been love.

She sat, the heat like a weight on her head, the monotonous cycling of the pumps drifting to her, small and faraway, over the empty ponds. She'd barely slept, would probably not sleep tonight either. She needed to eat something. The grass was itchy, and she scratched at her shins, made a painful cross on a mosquito bite with her fingernail. A cloud of gnats buzzed Rufus, and he rubbed his face with his paws. Two fish came over, knives in the brown water, paying them no attention, then vanished with a flick, impossible to follow, lost in the mirror of the sky. The wind lisped in her ears and the water shivered like skin.

It was beautiful, she knew, but it didn't change a thing between her and Mark. It didn't change anything, who she was or how she felt. It all took place outside of her, disconnected, like the rest of the world. Her life would be the same when they went home and school started and she only saw Liz on weekends, her father whenever he felt like showing up. It would be just her and Justin and her mother, with nothing to look forward to.

Two days. She wasn't being realistic. And yet she kept hoping to see the truck, would stand if it did come rattling up the road, would turn to face it as it passed, obvious, offering herself. He would see her, that was all she wanted, no wave, no words, just the two of them seeing each other, knowing.

The sun rose higher. A man in a ranger uniform came out with what looked like a crowbar, turned a wheel in another pond and went back in, totally ignoring her. A fish flopped out of the water. Her hair burned, and the shimmer made the highway break up, the cars blobs of color that shot spears of light. With his shaggy black coat, Rufus was too hot, panting in the grass. They ought to get back. Out of habit she went to check her watch, but it was gone, lost, her belt loop empty. She knew she would use it as an excuse. And in the end it was true: it was impossible to tell how long she waited.

They had to pull up the wickets to let them cut the grass, so Justin and Sam went around the side of the house and practiced whacking the balls as hard as they could, knocking them off trees and through bushes, gouging up clumps of mud. They played hockey, clacking their mallets together, then quit when the ball hit Justin on the ankle. They spun each other on the swing, stumbled off like drunks. They had a buckeye fight until Sam hit Aunt Arlene's car. She was out on the dock and didn't hear it with the mowers going. It didn't make a dent, but they stopped anyway. The guys finished and drove off, and Sam and Justin put the wickets and stakes up again, trying to find the same holes.

In the shade the cut grass was wet and stuck to their sneakers. It was a lot easier to hit the ball. Their shots went straight instead of bouncing, and when you knocked the other guy's ball, it went a long way. Justin was winning, and then Sam missed a wicket on purpose so he could hit him.

“Yes!” Sam taunted him, dancing like an idiot. “Who's the man?”

Justin stood off to the side while Sam settled his orange ball next to his red one. Sam's idea was to knock him forward, toward the porch, so he would have to come all the way back to go through the middle
wicket. Sam clamped his own ball underneath his sneaker, keeping his balance, lifted the mallet, then chopped down hard. He caught part of his foot, but got enough of the ball to send Justin's shooting over the low grass, headed straight for the porch. It didn't stop when it got close, it rolled right under, disappearing into the black gap, a hole in one.

Sam laughed, doing his stupid Nelson—“Ha ha!”

“Shut up. You have to get it.”

“It's not my ball.”

“You hit it.”

“If I get it, you have to forfeit.”

They both got down on their hands and knees and looked. Sam brushed away the cobwebs with his handle, and as their eyes grew used to the dark, they could see the cool mounds of dirt in back that could be hiding anything—rats or giant spiders or worse.

“There it is,” Sam said.

The ball was too far in to reach with a mallet. Maybe Sarah or Ella could get it later.

“Let's play wiffle ball,” Sam said, and jumped up, and Justin followed him. Losing the ball bothered him—it was his, and he thought they should tell someone—but Sam was already whipping the bat around like a light-saber.

They couldn't find the wiffle ball anywhere. They looked on the porch and in the garage, Sam even ran around back. It wasn't under the porch. Rufus sometimes chewed them up, or the wind blew them into the lake and they floated away. Maybe the mowers ran it over.

Sam picked up a buckeye and tried to hit it and missed. He tossed another one up and connected with a plastic smack, the buckeye whistling off across the yard.

“Whoa!” Justin said.

The two of them collected enough buckeyes to fill their pockets and made sure home plate faced the lake so they wouldn't hit the cars. Justin pitched first. He wasn't very good, but the buckeyes were so small it was hard to make contact, and Sam struck out twice before he even foul-tipped one. The next three pitches bounced in the grass at his feet.

“Throw strikes,” Sam ordered him.

Justin did his best, lobbing the biggest buckeye he had over the heart of the plate. Sam swung hard and lined it cleanly, the buckeye coming
straight at his face. Justin put his hands up, sure he was going to catch it, but somehow his hands moved or closed too soon—as if it had changed direction or slowed in midair, a trick—and he could see it had sneaked through, was still coming. He had just a split second before it hit him to remember the feeling he had leaving the croquet ball under the porch, and thought: I should have gotten it.

“Get right,” his mother cried, waving an arm at the ball, which continued to hook for the woods, disappearing into the trees with a leafy ripping.

They both listened for the knock that would mean it had struck a limb or a trunk and might kick out, but there was nothing, just the shadows on the grass.

“Oh crap.”

“It's not that far in,” he said, and teed his ball high.

He hadn't played in two years, and then just the one time with the two of them, his father's last round with him, though none of them suspected at the time. While both of his parents were ardent golfers, and encouraging, his swing was the product of thirty years of softball, his short game strictly from the Putt-Putt. Sometime today he would let loose a long sky-climbing bomb of a drive or sink a thirty-footer, and his mother would say, “Imagine how good you'd be if you played regularly,” but he knew he possessed no hidden skills, that the few moments he rose above his own mediocrity were flukes, gifts to be appreciated, not relied on.

He skulled his tee shot—thinking too much—and it bounded over the cart path, a weak grounder just clearing the light rough and stopping on the nap of the fairway.

“You'll have a nice lie,” his mother said.

She took the passenger seat while he stabbed the shaft of his wood into his father's bag. He drove the cart no matter where their shots were,
just as his father had, the scorecard clipped to the middle of the steering wheel, the Holga stuck in a cup holder. They were playing the fifth, a small par-four, 360 yards with a dogleg left, and so far she hadn't gotten into his job. He wasn't foolish enough to believe she'd let an opportunity like this slide. His strategy was to answer her questions head-on and then turn the conversation to her plans, hoping she'd respond to his honesty with her own. The only hard part, he thought, would be defending Meg, stating her case with both tact (a strength) and force (his great weakness). He was prepared to lose any argument they might have, bow out, satisfied that he'd done his best, introduced the issue, leaving the real work to Meg, whose idea it was in the first place. They'd played the same game when they were kids, nothing had changed. He was still trying to make peace between them, and he wondered how much of his personality—how much of his life—had been decided by his position in the family and the role he chose, however unwillingly. He thought it was unfair, being the youngest, but here he was doing it again, the faithful messenger risking his head.

“There's you,” his mother pointed, and he swung the cart alongside his ball. The lie was slightly uphill. He took a three-wood, one of the few clubs he could hit with any consistency.

He paused before he addressed the ball and gazed down the fairway, gauging the trees for a sense of the wind. His father had taught him to concentrate on every shot, not let emotion control him. “They're all worth the same,” he loved to say, and “You need to think before you hit.” As a child, Ken had felt helpless before his advice, certain it didn't apply to his loopy, inside-out swing. He could think all he wanted and the ball would still rocket out of bounds or duck-hook into the scrub. He would chase after it with his bag, angry, slashing the underbrush, then dumping his clubs with a clank when he found it, gritting his teeth to slow himself so he could think again, inevitably developing a headache he would blame on the sun. His father was infuriatingly calm and self-deprecating of his own play, wry and lighthearted, as if they were having a good time. “I liked your decision to lay up there,” he'd say, or “That was the smart shot.”

The smart shot here wasn't a three-wood. It was too much club. If he hit it thin, he'd overshoot the dogleg and end up in the woods, the rough if he fluffed it. He'd wanted to use some muscle to make up for his drive, a tactic his father would shake his head at—teenage caveman stuff. The smart thing to do was to take maybe a five-iron and leave the ball
right so he'd have an approach shot, except he was shaky with his five-iron, horrible with his four.

He walked back to the cart and pulled out a five-iron, scratching at the ridged club face with a thumbnail, as if for luck.

“I
see,
” his mother said theatrically.

“Well,” he said, “we shall see.”

His precise but unconscious imitation of his father shocked him, made him suspect his spirit was near. It made sense, here where they'd been together. His father's money club was his five, the one in his hand. If he was channeling him, Ken thought, now was a good time.

He took a practice swing, scuffing the grass, then settled his feet a half-step closer, checked the fairway where he wanted it to go, getting his shoulders in line (front shoulder closed, head down, follow through—all the moves his father taught him in the backyard, posing him in slow motion, one hand on the club), then lifted into his backswing and let it fly.

He barely felt the ball at all, and—a small triumph—he'd kept his head down, didn't jerk up to watch the shot.

He heard a familiar click from the cart. His mother had the Holga pointed toward him but had turned to see where he'd gone.

“Looks good,” she said.

Now he could pick it out, still rising, a black dot in a white sky, dead right but clear of the trees, one of those shots that could fool him into thinking he might be able to play this game. The ball touched down, got a true hop and a long roll, stopping well past the turn, in the middle of the fairway.

“Very nice,” his mother said.

“Hey,” he shrugged, “it's Dad's five.”

“It's your father's driver too, and I haven't seen you hit that all day.”

On the way to her tee shot, she apologized for taking a picture of him. “I couldn't resist.”

He said he knew the feeling. “Probably be the best shot on the roll.”

“No,” she said coyly, pleased they were teasing each other.

He had no problem getting along with her. It was when Lise or Meg entered the picture that they ran into trouble. It wasn't just jealousy but a female love of control, at once social and familial, the complicated opposite of the macho dream of independence, dominance through intimacy.
It was politics on a dangerously heartfelt level, where the smallest disagreement could be taken as a betrayal, and out of sheer self-interest he'd developed the slippery skills of a pawn. Even alone with her, joking, he was aware of a subtle positioning, as if he were attending a queen.

“How's your work going, by the way?”

“Good,” he said, a reflex, and slowed the cart. “I think it's somewhere in here.”

“I thought it was a little farther.”

“I'm sure you did. It's definitely in bounds though.”

Passing into the shadows beneath the trees was like entering a dark house. The ground was bare back to the white stakes except for the trees' tortuous roots and some swaths of moss, a few skunk cabbage and sunstruck ferns. This reprieve was only temporary, he knew. After she hit, they'd get in the cart and she'd circle back to the topic, her criticism taking the form of puzzlement, his job incomprehensible—what it was and why he would choose to do it—as if paying the bills and saving money on supplies wasn't justification enough. Building his skills, as Morgan would say. He wasn't being realistic, she'd imply, painting him as naive, a dreamer. He had nothing tangible he could point to, not even the promise of success. His friends from high school were doctors and lawyers—an alarming number of them, as if the country were locked in the grip of illness and litigation—and their neighbors' oldest daughter, whom he remembered as a shrieking baby, was a full-fledged editor in New York.