Wish You Were Here (57 page)

His father didn't know, or else he'd be mad. He was just guessing.

The ants in the mailbox, the stove dying—everything was a crisis, Lise thought. So they wouldn't have coffee, big deal, it was easily ninety degrees out. Ken said it was probably just a fuse, he'd look at it when he was done eating, but Emily would not be calmed. The realtor was coming tomorrow (not to look at the stove, Lise wanted to say, but held back). And then, as lunch was winding down, Justin dropped his slice of watermelon on the floor of the porch, and Meg ordered Rufus and all of the
kids outside. Lise could see she was having a bad day and told Ella and Sam to steer clear of her.

By default she did the dishes, not really caring. It was easy with the paper plates. In the side yard, the boys were chasing each other, spitting seeds. Behind her, Emily hovered around Ken as he searched the control panel of the stove for a fuse box.

“I wonder if it could have anything to do with the heat,” Emily said.

“Possibly,” Ken said.

Lise finished the glasses and started in on the knives and silverware, the empty mac-salad container Emily wanted saved for no reason. She was sweating, her suit a clammy second skin under her cutoffs. The lake looked blue and breezy and cool, though she knew the sun would be that much worse out on the water.

“There we go,” Ken said behind her.

“Did you get it?” his mother asked.

He had. He held the fuse between his thumb and finger like a bullet, the glass tube burned a percolator brown in the middle. Lise was always amazed at how technically proficient he was. Perhaps that was his way of compensating, making himself useful, if not entirely involved in their lives.

Sometimes she wondered why she was with him, or why he was still with her when he found her so uninteresting. She joked with Carmela that she was jealous of his cameras, and while both of them knew that at heart she was deeply serious, they'd created a whole blue routine about what he did in the privacy of his darkroom. And she could see where it came from, there was no secret. Spending time with his family made her understand how he could see self-absorption not merely as its own reward but as a necessity, a place to hide. It was ironic—when she'd first met him, she liked him because he was quiet.

“I know Dad's got some in the garage,” Emily said.

“I don't know if he'll have one this size,” Ken said, and went to check, single-minded, the screen swishing and then subsiding on its piston. Lise wiped down the counters, Emily stepping out of her way, thanking her absently.

“No,” Ken came back to report. “I'll have to try the hardware up in Mayville.”

“Would you mind doing that now?” Emily asked, and Ken gave in.

“It'll take twenty minutes,” he explained to Lise on his way to the car. “It takes that long for the kids to find their suits.”

“It's almost two o'clock already.”

As if to spite him, she organized the children, driving them upstairs and sorting out their suits and towels and water shoes, forcing the boys to try to go to the bathroom, then slathering their freckled shoulders and scrawny chests with sunblock while the girls did each other. She convinced Sam to wear a hat, and established that Meg and Emily and Arlene would be staying ashore.

“I think I need a break,” Meg said.

Lise took the kids down to the dock, Rufus tagging along with his ball. She relieved him of it, set it sopping in her beach bag with a gentle “No,” and after a while he stopped pointing at the bag and lay down in the only shade, under the bench. The kids didn't need any encouragement to go swimming. She had her book but watched them instead, boys against girls in a massive splash battle. Justin wasn't a strong swimmer, and she'd promised Meg she'd keep an eye on him, even though the water was only waist-deep.

The heat melted whatever resistance she had left, made the day seem ideal. The lake was buzzing with motorboats, thick with sails, the weekend starting early. After the crappy weather, everyone was out. It reminded her of the beach, the sudden crush of weekly renters determined to get their money's worth. That part of the summer was over, just as this part was almost gone, and she cast forward to next weekend, dragging Sam through the mall (he was a size 12 now, and she was sure he'd outgrown his winter coat). The middle school had sent home a whole list of supplies he needed. Ken had read it aloud, incredulous, as if they were being ripped off, though each of the past three years they'd received the exact same list for Ella. She'd take Sam to Staples after supper one night and fill up a plastic basket. The only thing Ken would see was the flyer. Ella had an orthodontist appointment in there somewhere to get her braces tightened; Lise would have to take off work for it, use a few hours of hard-earned comp time. She could see the blocks of the calendar filling with ink—September, October. It was their turn to have Emily and Arlene for Thanksgiving—earlier, true, but easier than Christmas.

She shrugged the thought off, shaking her head to clear it. The sky was cloudless, a thin blue bleached white at the horizon. The kids were doing handstands.

“No,” she told Sam, “we're not throwing mud.”

“Yes we are.”

“Do you want to go on the boat?”

“Yes,” he said brightly, as if the two weren't connected.

“Then smarten up.”

They wanted her to come in with them, splashing and taunting her from the edge of the dock. She hid behind her book, looking back toward shore, expecting Ken to show up any minute. She'd left her watch on the mantel but it was well past time. She didn't think he'd taken a camera. Her worry was that he'd stop at the gas station or buy a paper, catch up on his missing girl. She promised herself not to ask. Beneath her, Rufus murmured in his sleep.

Finally the kids quit, bored with tormenting each other. They laid out their towels on the gray boards of the dock and shivered in the wind, the water drying to dots on their skin, then disappearing. She'd have to goop them up again.

Lying side by side, Ella and Sarah seemed years apart, Ella still bony and girlish, her proportions all wrong, where Sarah had filled in and rounded out, her body pronounced, the only baby fat left in her face. Lise hoped Ella wouldn't compare herself to her. Lise had been a late bloomer too, and knew that impatience—the fear that things would never develop or would stop partway, her body left unfinished (she was reconciled overall but would never be happy with her nose, her legs, her stingy upper lip) . She could see that Sarah would attract boys and then men, whether she wanted to or not, the same as her mother. Lise wished she could have given Ella better genes, or more, since her eyes—Lise's best feature—and the shape of her face were unmistakably Ken's. She'd survive, but how much easier the coming years would be if she had Sarah's looks.

Lise wished she could just give in to sensation, let the heat bleed away all her thoughts. Stopped, stilled like this, it was hard for her not to think of the future—to worry, really. At home she didn't have time to wallow, her pleasures and defeats fleeting, attenuated by her schedule. Here there was nothing to occupy her mind but their problems—common enough, and stultifying, since she saw no improvement ahead, let alone real solutions.
They would talk in the car on the way back, a sort of enforced communication, but with the kids right there they couldn't discuss anything serious, and by the time they pulled in the drive they would be too tired, so wiped out she'd be lucky to get the laundry started.

Two jet skis racketed past, spewing rooster tails, freeing her. She'd never been on one, just as she'd never ridden a motorcycle—Meg had owned one once—and she had a secret urge to try it, though she hated the noise, and the way at the ocean people came in close to jump the breaking waves. It looked like mindless fun, just going. There were so many things she wanted to try but had somehow never gotten around to: skydiving, bungee jumping, snowboarding, windsurfing. She had to believe it was circumstances that had prevented her, not timidity. At the pool, she'd been the first in her grade to climb the high dive, and there was the time she and Tammy Artman sneaked into school on Sunday, walking the dark halls like girl detectives, every corner a thrill.

“When are we going?” Sam asked, half sitting up.

“When your father gets back.”

“How long is that?”

“Not long.”

“I'm thirsty.”

“Then go get yourself a drink.”

“Can I have a ginger ale?”

She hesitated before she said yes, made him say please.

“Can I please have one?” Justin echoed.

“Yes,” she said, and then had to holler “Walk!” to stop them from killing themselves. The girls barely stirred.

None of them had a watch. She followed a large sailboat as it patiently approached and then passed beyond the bell tower. A seaplane roared over the far shore, waving its wings for the beach crowd at Midway, a maneuver she'd only seen on TV and thought was dangerous.

The bell rang once. Two-thirty? Two-forty-five?

“This is ridiculous,” she said out loud, and looked over her shoulder. Nothing.

The boys came back with their cans and a bag of Doritos and sat tailor-seat on their towels, eating, Rufus nosing between them, gobbling up anything that dropped. And then, before she could stop him, Justin held up a whole chip in front of him and frisbeed it out over the water.

In two steps Rufus was off the dock, airborne. He hit with a smack, the splash carrying the chip away from him so he had to paddle after it, making the boys laugh.

“No,” Lise scolded them, already up. “He can't do that. He's too old.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said to Justin. “Don't you ever listen?”

Lise could see him cringe as if he'd been hit.

“It's all right, we just need to get him out now.”

The boys walked down the dock toward shore, whistling, as Rufus swam alongside, snorting like a seal. He hacked something up on the grass, then shook, ears flapping, and trotted out to her again, panting, his gums pulled back in a smile. There was no reason to be mad. She'd just have to watch him. She was getting everyone resettled, confiscating the Doritos in the confusion, when the 4Runner turned in.

The boys popped up.

“He still needs to look at the stove,” she said, and Sam sat back down, resting his chin on his fists. “Okay,” she said, “enough with the poopoo face.”

Ken waved getting out of the car. He had a paper, and something in a brown bag.

She would not go in and check on his progress. She would not pull off the cover and get the boat ready. She would not move.

He got like this, obsessed with things. It didn't absolutely have to do with his photography, or didn't necessarily spring from it. Once it was matchbooks, once it was telephone poles. Old Volkswagens, Greek restaurants, patterned Formica counters. He would come home with an idea for a series, and for weeks she would have to listen to him spout about the cultural significance of tow trucks, and then a month later he would be off on some other kick, sometimes not even developing the rolls he'd taken. The first burst of infatuation was enough for him, and enough to spur her jealousy. At home he would forget the missing girl, whatever her name was, but for now she couldn't help but feel replaced—like Meg, dumped for a younger, less complicated woman. She would win him back by default, not through any grand romantic development. At her age, it was the most she could hope for.

As if to answer her, Sarah rolled onto her back, firm and perfect, and Lise looked away, scratched at a suddenly demanding mosquito bite.

Finally he came down to the dock with the square wheelbarrow his father had assembled from a kit.

“All fixed?” she called, and he gave her a thumbs-up. His new trunks were shorter than the ones the other day, a bright white line peeking out from each leg. He let the boys help him get the cover off, then asked them to stay out of the way as he straddled the gunwale and loaded the long red gas cans like bombs. She stood aside with the girls, useless, untrustworthy.

There wasn't room for him to work, so they hauled the inner tube and its snarl of rope onto the dock.

“Life jackets, everybody,” she instructed, and helped the boys adjust their straps.

“Is my mom coming?” Justin asked.

“I'll be your buddy,” Ken said, “okay?”

This prompted the girls to claim each other, leaving Sam with her. As if, at this point, she could feel any more undesirable.

Ken left the empty gas can under the cover and the boys' sodas in the wheelbarrow. Emily and Arlene and Meg came down to see them off, Arlene snapping away with her camera while they paddled out, the breeze pushing them at an angle for the Lerners' dock. Lise could see the weeds reaching up through the dark water, wrapping around the blade, and imagined the girl bobbing to the surface, rotted, something out of
Deliverance.
It was a wicked wish—killing his dream girl.

He left the wheel and pushed through them to the stern, bending over the edge to lower the engine, then came back and tried the key. The motor whirred but didn't turn over. He pushed the throttle up, thumbed the choke button and tried again, getting it to sputter. They drifted sideways into the blue smoke.

“Keep paddling,” he said, as if he'd never rescinded the order.

“Need a jump there, Captain Ahab?” Emily shouted from the dock.

He twisted the key and the motor revved hard and long, not catching. He took his shades off and shouldered through them again and squeezed the rubber bulb to prime the engine. He was sweating and frustrated, and Lise knew not to bother him.

“Watch the dock,” Meg called.

“Use your paddle to push off,” he told Lise—as if they didn't go through this every time they tried to go out—and she did, the bow coming around.

He tried again, and this time the engine caught—the boys cheering, Ella looking worried—and he eased the throttle up until it was steady, deafening. He didn't look back as he aimed them for the center of the lake. With the wind in her hair, Lise felt freed, as if they were really departing. She waved along with the kids, leaving Emily and the others behind, their figures diminishing as the wake grew and tilted and curved, finally dwindling to dots, the dock one among dozens, and then just a distant, green piece of shore, indistinguishable from any other.