Wish You Were Here (54 page)

She poured herself a bowl of the Cap'n Crunch her mother had bought for her, and noticed someone else had been into it. She thought of orange juice in one of her father's glasses—the Olds, maybe, his favorite—but Arlene had made coffee, and she left her Sue Grafton on the porch and took her breakfast out on the dock, indulging in the mix of sweetness and caffeine, the last socially acceptable buzzes, and ones she needed.

Since rehab she'd been tired for days at a time, a side effect, as if her body was exhausted by the change, sobriety a whole new time zone. It was easier here, given the rare luxury of sleeping late, but at home she was jittery early in the morning, her brain foggy. She felt dislocated, though she'd gone nowhere. She forgot to write notes so the kids could get out of school for doctor's appointments and ended up calling the office. The secretaries there must have thought she was a space case.

The sun cut through her. She hadn't had a chance to take a shower, and yesterday clung to her skin like grease. Now it melted. She was sure she smelled. The hell with it. She spooned up the Cap'n Crunch and followed a school of sailboats tilting by the bell tower, darting one way and
then the other as they tacked through the racecourse. She wondered how Ken was doing with their mother, and the whole scene suddenly felt precarious, as if it could be taken away. She could argue for the children, the idea of a shared legacy, continuity, but ultimately she would have to appeal to her mother's love for the place. Not for her or for Ken or even their father, but for her idealized view of what their family had been here, her perfect world that had never existed and that Meg had never fit into and railed bitterly against, trying to open their eyes—the same thing she realized she was now defending. She felt she was admitting she'd been wrong all these years, asking—as in rehab—for another chance. She'd been bored here as a child, ungrateful as a teenager. In her twenties, Ken and her mother hounded her about coming east, and she used money or whatever new job she had as an excuse, glad to miss the week of phony togetherness. It was Jeff who engineered the reconciliation, her mother doing it for the sake of the grandchildren, supposedly, though Meg knew she counted it as a victory.

She was almost to the bottom of the bowl, only a few soggy barrels floating in the sweet slick. Maybe it was her lack of options, she thought. It wasn't the cottage that was precarious, it was her life. Somehow, maybe in getting straight, she'd lost the hard-boiled ability to shrug the big things off. That was progress. She didn't care if it made her feel desperate. She
was
desperate, and at least now she could tell what she was feeling.

She set the dish on the dock, the spoon jangling, had a sip of coffee and lit a cigarette. She'd dreaded this week, and now that it was about to end, the thought of driving back to Detroit, back to that mess of a life, depressed her. Jeff said he'd call today. The thought made her even more annoyed at Sarah, and when she'd finished her cigarette and carefully stubbed it out, she rocked herself up off the bench and headed for the cottage.

Ella was teaching the boys card tricks on the porch, Arlene sitting there content, not even reading. Justin had finally tired of the ice pack, his bump a small purple knob. Indoors it was ten degrees cooler, and gloomy, the sun highlighting a strip of rug. Meg rinsed her dishes and fit them in the machine, thinking that any second she'd hear the jangle of Rufus's tags or the creak of the screen door. She'd gotten some sun on the dock, and took an old Pirates cap from the pile.

“I'm going to walk over to the ponds,” she said. “Why don't you guys ride your bikes? It's too nice a day to stay inside.”

“When are we going to go tubing?” Sam demanded.

But Ella took the hint, rallying the boys. Meg rolled open the garage door for them.

“How's the foot?” she asked.

“It's okay,” Ella said, almost pleased that she'd asked, and again Meg thought how much easier she was than Sarah. She was quiet and pleasant, and Meg could see why she was her mother's favorite of the grandchildren. Her mother flattered herself that the two of them were sisters under the skin, both tall and bony, when in reality Ella had received the qualities she admired from Ken, just as Ken had gotten them from her father. Her mother was more like Sarah, more like herself, guarded and intolerant, emotionally explosive, but she would never admit it, just as Meg tried to deny being jealous of Ella, despite liking her. She was, and she was baffled by her, in the same way Justin stumped her. Ella was good. Having been bad, Meg understood Sam better, his antics predictable, that free-floating creepiness his only wild card. She had no clue what Ella was thinking or how she felt, what she loved, just the bad girl's suspicion that it would be correct and dull.

They all set off, the boys weaving in front of her, Ella behind them, precise and upright, coasting through the shadows. Motorboats roared, skimming the gaps between the houses. Everyone would be out on the lake today, and the drive was quiet. The Lerners' birdbath was full of mucky water, last fall's leaves decomposing. The Wisemans were gone. The Diamonds had sold their place ten, fifteen years ago, and the new people had added dormers.

She was just distracting herself. She expected to see Sarah and Rufus slumping up the drive toward them any minute—and the flip side, straight out of
A Is for Alibi,
a clutch of police cars and ambulances clogging the marina road, a circle of men on the bank of one of the ponds. It was not far-fetched when she thought of her lost years, all the fearless, stupid things she did, the places she let men take her and the shape she'd been in. She could have been killed and disposed of so easily, no corpse for her mother to mourn, and at times, in her stoned bravado, she would have said that was fine with her.

Justin cut a turn too sharp and almost fell, and she had to stop herself from yelling at him. “Let's be careful!”

They took the shortcut. The A-frame that had been new and daring when she was a girl now seemed quaint and outdated, misplaced. It needed
a ski slope and snow. Sam and Justin stood up on their pedals and raced ahead, Ella following, calling, telling them to wait for her at the corner. She looked back, and Meg waved for her to go ahead. Her fears were just that—hers. Sarah could take care of herself.

Ella led them around the corner, then reappeared a minute later, swinging wide, shrugging and holding up both hands. Sarah wasn't there.

Meg tried not to act surprised.

“Maybe she's at the tennis courts,” Ella guessed.

“Lead on.”

The road past the ponds was long and shadowless, wavy with heat, and Meg wished she had a bike. Cars shot by on the highway. If someone kidnaped Sarah, they'd leave Rufus. He'd be wandering around, dragging his leash. Sarah was smart enough not to get in a car, Meg thought, and then for a second she wondered if she'd planned it, run away with someone.

No, that was unfair—she was judging Sarah by her own life. At sixteen she'd taken off with her first serious boyfriend, James, saving up baby-sitting money, carefully packing a bag. His Mustang overheated on the turnpike and when the police shipped her home, her parents sent her to a Catholic boarding school in Ohio, where she received an education in being sneaky. She drank 3.2 beer and made straight Cs and her parents didn't seem to care. They'd given up on her, and maybe that lack of ambition or pride on their part was why she felt so incapable, why for so many years she treated herself as worthless. If she expected too much from Sarah, she had her reasons. Better too much than too little.

Before she reached the path, Ella came spinning out of the woods. Not there either. Ella rode beside her, waiting for instructions. Her eyes were fishlike, magnified by her glasses, and she seemed alarmed. Meg wanted to calm her, worried that she might upset Justin.

“Try at home,” she said. “We're probably just going in circles.”

Under the trees the path was humid and buggy, puddles in the deep ruts, a faded beer can in a rotted stump—maybe her own, from a lifetime ago. She picked it out, an act of penance to guarantee Sarah would be there. As she tramped by the empty courts, can in hand, she was confident. Sarah was smarter than she was at that age, more mature. And logically, she convinced herself, there was no other answer.

Downstairs, the door to the screenporch clapped shut, knocking Lise out of Hagrid's darkened hut and into the sticky sheets, her feet sweaty. A blade of sun lay across the cedar chest, chopping off the tail of her watch-band. Harry's dragon was finally hatching, and she needed to get up and make lunch for everyone.

It took her two tries to sit up. The bottom sheet had pulled off again and she fixed it. Her back hurt from the slab of a mattress. She couldn't wait to get home to their trusty waterbed, but the thought of their bedroom brought with it all the things she needed to do—buying new school clothes for Sam and Ella, putting together Sam's birthday party. She didn't know where she'd find the time. Even when she wasn't working, she'd hated the way summer arbitrarily ended on Labor Day, suddenly cut off, the weather too nice to be inside. The kids knew it was a gyp, moping around the house until the bus showed up. A week and a half from now she'd be nagging Sam to do his homework, telling Ella she couldn't watch TV until hers was done.

She kicked Sam's balled socks out of her way and stepped over a mess of water shoes and flip-flops. She peed and turned on the shower and the fan, dug in the low wardrobe for her bathing suit and a pair of cutoffs. The zit she'd seen coming the other day was here, a red dot on her chin, a hard nodule she could press against the bone. The shower smelled. A fat black ant scurried behind the toothpaste and over the far edge of the vanity.

“This is
not
what I need,” she said, but submitted.

She hadn't slept well, and with the reading she'd developed a headache, her brain a dense, heavy bread. At least there was hot water—sometimes there wasn't after the girls. Normally she'd linger in the shower, head bowed, the warm force of it on her neck a pleasure, cleansing, but even
with her eyes closed she couldn't ignore the sulfur. It was almost noon and she'd gotten nothing done.

She heard them when she turned off the water, no words, just raised voices on the other side of the door, sudden and harsh, like notes sharply struck, blows dealt and parried—Meg and Sarah. She stilled herself like a hunter, an animal sensing danger, stood there naked and wet, listening. She couldn't hear clearly, and dug a pinkie in each ear.

“You don't care because you're selfish, that's why,” Meg was saying. “You think the whole world revolves around you, but guess what, it doesn't.”

“I don't think that,” Sarah said.

“Then maybe I don't have to explain all this to you. Maybe you know all this already. Are you bored, is that why you're not saying anything?”

Lise couldn't hear Sarah's answer, just a murmur. She wondered where Sam and Ella were, as if she could protect them from this.

“I don't need this shit from you.”

“I'm
sorry,
” Sarah cried. “I said I was sorry. What else can I do?”

“You can think of someone other than yourself for a change. And you can stop acting like I'm some kind of mental patient. I don't have to explain my life to you.”

A dribble of leftover water fell from the showerhead. Her skin was chilled, and she noticed she was wringing her hands like an old woman.

“Did you want to say something?” Meg said. “If you want to say something, say it. Don't give me that look.”

And then: “I didn't think so.”

She heard one of them cross the floor and rumble down the stairs—Meg, making an exit—and then silence, though she knew Sarah was right outside the door.

She couldn't stay here forever. She pushed the glass door of the stall open with a loud click and stepped onto the bath mat. The towels were not quite dry and smelled of mildew. She did a thorough job of drying off, taking her time.

“You okay?” she'd ask if Sarah looked like she wanted to talk. She and Ella got into it sometimes, but not like this.

She tugged on her suit and her cutoffs, rolled on her deodorant. She brushed her hair carefully in the mirror, and then, hoping to give Sarah
ample warning, rinsed her toothbrush and flicked it with her thumb before squeezing on a blob of toothpaste, grimaced at the taste as she spat. And still she was not prepared to open the door, had to prime herself to grip the knob, ready to act natural, whatever that meant.

Emily was sure it was unfair of her, but she couldn't help thinking he played the same way he approached life—distracted and haphazard, conservative to a fault and then, when his execution failed him, taking risks that didn't pay off, hoping his luck would overcome his lack of skill, waiting for a break. As she watched him hit from the rough, something Henry said of him as a child returned to her: “He expects hard things to come easy.” She'd defended him on principle, saying Kenneth was just a boy, but Henry hadn't said it lightly or out of frustration, and through the years she'd reluctantly come to agree with his assessment.

As if to disprove her, he reared back and blasted his five-iron onto the green. She caught hers fat, cuffing up a muddy divot, leaving it short.

The heat was withering, even under the hard canopy of the cart. Her iced tea had become warm and thin. And the course was crowded now, after the turn. She hated when the starter sent people off on ten. Maybe they should have just played nine and called it a day.

She got out and dropped a pitching wedge on, hopped back in.

“Well done,” he said. The breeze while they were driving was nice. He parked on the path behind the green and the two of them climbed the rise with just their putters, tufts of cottonwood fluff drifting down around them. Her ball had rolled to the fringe but he was still away. She steered clear of his line and knelt to fix her ball mark, patting it flat.