Wish You Were Here (66 page)

“What's this one?” Lise asked, and when Ken hesitated, Meg told her.

“I could never fit through it as a kid.”

“You never tried,” Ken said.

“You never gave me the chance. You were too busy making fun of me, remember? Margaret's Misery.”

“That's terrible,” Lise said, but he didn't offer an apology, and Meg felt ridiculous dragging up the past when her own was such a mess. Especially with the secret she was conveniently keeping, waiting till it was safe to tell him.

She'd tell them about Jeff and Stacey at the last second, as if it were a surprise to her.

It had been. He'd done it just to ruin her vacation. She couldn't believe he'd be so cruel—or yes, she could. After the last year, she could believe anything.

They watched Sam and Justin squat down and shoulder through—Ken leaning against a tree to steady his camera—and then Sarah and Ella, that easy. The boys whooped and screamed behind the rocks, making
their voices spooky, and she remembered Ken doing the same thing while she tagged along behind her parents, smoldering as she kicked at stones. Just thinking of her childhood made her feel childish. She wanted to climb up to the crack and see how big it was, maybe slither through just to prove she could. It wouldn't change anything, and she was self-conscious with them all there. If she were alone she would probably do it and ruin her clothes and then feel stupid.

They walked on, past Crow's Foot and Indian Fireplace and Paradise Alley, past the Golden Gate and the Tower of Babel and Counterfeiter's Den. By now it all looked the same to her.

“Who came up with these names?” Lise asked.

Ken went ahead so he could shoot from above, lying down on top of the rocks and leaning out so far that Lise yelled up, telling him to be careful.

“I swear, he's worse than the kids,” she said—something her mother would say of her father, that she herself had said of Jeff.

Meg thought they had it backwards. Adults
were
worse. Kids couldn't help being self-centered—needed to be. They didn't know what would happen when they did things and how they could hurt other people. There was a difference between ignorance and stupidity.

She wanted to be honest with Ken about the house. She thought she'd have a chance to talk with him last night. And he'd understand, that was the terrible thing. He wouldn't resent her mother bailing her out or think she was a hypocrite, even if he did initially. Maybe that was why she held off telling him.

Jeff she couldn't deal with right now. She'd have to soon enough, and with all of her concentration she pushed him and Stacey out of her mind. This was her time.

They finished the lower part of the trail and she and Lise corralled the kids and drove them uphill to the bald tops of the rocks. The path ran along the edge. It was dangerous up here, the gaps and crevices tempting, and there were no fences to stop people from jumping across. She wasn't surprised there'd been accidents. Lise had to take Sam by the hand. Justin stayed clear. Here was the Ice Cave and the Covered Bridge, and the last one, the Gap, an anticlimax.

“That's all she wrote,” Ken said, and folded the brochure away.

“I don't know why,” Meg said. “It seemed shorter this time.”

“It did?” Lise asked.

“I guess I remembered it differently.”

Once the words were out of her mouth, she realized how they sounded. She only meant that the place felt strange to her, smaller, that she couldn't believe she'd ever been intimidated by it.

The snack bar was closed indefinitely, much to Justin's disgust. She remembered the wrapper in her back pocket but there was nowhere to throw it. She needed to clean the car anyway.

She got the air going and buckled up, then made sure everyone was safe. As she pulled out she gave the place a last look. The sun warmed the trees, left everything beneath them in deep shadow—a postcard. The parking lot was empty, only the flimsy railings leading to the snack bar, the old man in the ticket window reading his Stephen King. There was nothing to be afraid of. That life was behind her now—not gone, no, it was still a part of her, but it belonged to the past, and she needed to keep it there, to relinquish her grip on it, as hard as that might be, if not impossible.

She started off, driving along beside the barn and the picnic pavilion. “Say good-bye to Panama Rocks,” she said.

“Good-bye!” they all hollered.

It was past twelve and they hadn't come back yet. Emily needed to stop reading and get something to eat, but the day was too pleasant, as was the silence she and Arlene had achieved. The radio was playing a Mozart piano concerto, a big ice-cream sundae of a piece that went with the view of the lake, the shadows on the dock. It was a perfect day for golf, and she wished she and Kenneth could go again. But then, it would be an absolute zoo today, the beginning of the weekend. Maybe it was just as well.

Henry's shoes. She should get them before they slipped her mind.

She had to remember the salt and pepper shakers, and the tumblers for Margaret. The red Fiestaware pitcher. She hadn't decided about the teakettle, and she was sure she'd find things in the drawers—old church keys and nestled sets of measuring spoons that summoned up memories. There were beer cartons in the garage she could use to pack everything, wrap the breakables in newspaper. And that was just the kitchen. She hadn't even looked at the upstairs yet.

It was easier to lose herself in the high sky, the clouds blooming heroic above the hills, very Hudson River School. Any urge to move dissolved in this vision, her inertia sharpened and sweetened by the Mozart, and then her book seemed foolish and uninteresting, a waste of time. She needed another week here without the children.

She wished Mrs. Klinginsmith would call already. She'd hoped— vainly—that the septic guy would come and do his thing while everyone was out, but no, she would be spared nothing. All the more reason to savor these peaceful minutes before the storm.

She thought she was calm, considering—too calm, possibly. Her worry all along had been that she would regret selling the place when it was too late, but that wouldn't happen, she already regretted it. She almost wanted the septic guy to find a problem—if not for Margaret.

Beside her, Arlene shifted and her cushion farted. Rufus raised his head a second, then subsided. Emily tried to remember where she'd found the cushions, and why she'd chosen the blue roses (it was probably all they had at the Jamesway). Their faded ugliness touched her, and for a moment she thought she could use them at home, a little bit of Chautauqua in the backyard. Not seriously though—there was no room in the car.

A breeze stirred the trees, sent leaves fluttering into the lake. She felt like a nap, but there was too much to do. She wasn't tired, just scattered, distracted by so many loose ends and the inevitability of leaving.

There were peaches in there that needed to be eaten, and meat from last night, and a pitcher of lemonade the children hadn't touched.

She couldn't forget Henry's plaid thermos, the one he took with him fishing—probably out in the garage. She dreaded having to burrow through that mess. It would be easier to ask Kenneth, since that was his jurisdiction.

She remembered seeing a TV movie around Christmastime about a widow who found a cigar box of old love letters while she was going through her husband's things, and in learning his secrets, discovered herself. Nothing like that had happened to her. Henry had been reliable to the end. He'd had time to go over their finances with her, the insurance and how the taxes would fall out. Later, talking with Barney Pontzer, it all proved true, rounded off to the nearest thousand.

She hadn't gone through Henry's office or pawed over his workshop yet, though occasionally she'd flick on the lights and walk through them, admiring his blotter and his circular saw (both immaculate, just as he'd left them), as if touring the house of someone famous. During his life he was steady in his enthusiasms, and they had been modest. His idea of a great treat was taking the whole family out to Poli's or Tambellini's, announcing it at breakfast so she wouldn't start dinner before he got home. The only time Henry had surprised her was by dying, and she had not suddenly become a stronger person, just alone.

From the road came the sustained squeal of brakes, a lull, then a tap on the gas, a lurch forward and the brakes again. Rufus didn't move.

“Mail's here,” Arlene said without looking up from her book.

“He's early. Remind me to stop it tomorrow.”

She stepped over Rufus to get to the door. The station wagon was down by the Loudermilks', the man leaning out of his window. She approached the box slowly, as if it might explode. She wasn't expecting anything, unless Louise had written her on her own. Overnight a spider had spun a web around the flag, trapping it against the side. She looked up and down the road, then jumped back as she opened the door.

Nothing, just the mail—glossy coupons, dueling flyers for the Golden Dawn and the Quality Market, and the fall issue of
The Navigator,
the high school newsletter they received for paying their taxes every year. She ducked her head, double-checking for ants, then slapped it shut. Let the new owners worry about them. They still had to schedule a termite inspection. Maybe they'd find something then.

Walking back to the house, she remembered taking care of her parents' place in Kersey before it finally sold. The realtor had suggested taking up the carpet to highlight the oak floors, and the day Emily visited (she and Henry stopping by the cemetery first), she'd found it ripped up and discarded in the backyard with the old kitchen cabinets, as if the house
had been skinned. She could see what they'd do to the cottage—gut it, maybe even tear it down and build new. The lot was more important, with its frontage. The buyers came from Cleveland construction money. They'd put in a new dock, probably have a massive cabin cruiser.

“Anything interesting?” Arlene asked.

“
The Navigator,
that's it.”

Emily took her seat again, then wished she hadn't. Mrs. Klinginsmith had told her the cleaning service would take care of everything, but she had to at least defrost the fridge and scrub the cabinets, do the bathrooms. It wasn't how she'd planned on spending her last afternoon here.

And she'd been so worried about the stove. She should have just left it alone. The buyers would want a new one. In a month, all these things she fretted over would disappear, leaving her mind free—for what? Was that why she was stalling now, afraid of facing those lonely hours? She felt tricked, even if she was the one who had engineered the deal.

The Mozart was over and something mawkish and overwrought was on. Tchaikovsky, she thought, making another sugary appeal to the heart, like that horrid movie. It was enough to drive her inside.

“Ready for lunch?” she asked Arlene.

“In a minute.”

She'd forgotten the melon, but she could finish that at breakfast. The children would eat the cold cuts and the yogurts, the bagels and cream cheese. For some reason Lisa had bought two jars of pickles; one of them was still unopened. She actually looked forward to throwing away the ranked condiments in the door, God knew how old some of them were— the salad dressing that had separated, the chili sauce clotted like a scab around the cap. She'd have to get Kenneth to haul the garbage out to the road before he took off.

In the living room the phone rang—Mrs. Klinginsmith—and she shut the door to get it. As she suspected, Arlene hadn't budged.

“I'll get it!” Emily said.

“Thank you!”

The answering machine—she hadn't even thought of it. It was practically new. She'd have to unhook it tonight, make a diagram of the wires.

“Hello,” she said.

“Emily, hey,” a man said, happy to catch her. “How's it goin' up there?”

“Hi Jeff,” she said, and wished she'd let it ring. “Good, good. How are
you
doing?”

Meg was trying to be careful with the knife, but then the tomato slipped in its own juice and she had to stop and compose herself and start over. The blade wasn't sharp enough, denting the skin instead of biting through, and she had to saw at the last slices, bending the tomato and squishing the guts to mush. The fucker. She couldn't believe he was doing this to her.

It was probably about something else entirely, something stupid. But he knew she didn't want to talk to him, he knew that. She couldn't have made it any plainer yesterday.

She laid the slices out on a paper plate with some lettuce from last night's salad and rinsed her hands. Someone else could cut an onion; she wasn't going to cry in front of everyone. There were buns if they ran out of bread. She got the mayo and ketchup and mustard and pickles from the fridge, and dug in the silverware drawer.

They'd been planning it all along, she thought, the two of them. It had to be Stacey's idea. He'd do anything for her, and screw the rest of the world. The idiot thought he was in love.

She'd promised herself not to think about it, to set it aside until they got back. At least he hadn't told her mother (so she hoped; she was overexposed as it was, at the mercy of her judgment).

It was the timing of it that hurt her more than anything, as if they'd been waiting for the divorce to be legal so she'd be out of the way—as if she'd kept them apart. And then to tell her over the phone in the middle of her vacation with her family and invite her like they were old friends.

She set out the cold cuts and cheese in their wax-paper wrappers, and the last of the mac salad. Justin came in to inspect the fridge and before he could escape she asked him to pour the milk. She'd already lined up the glasses.

“That's good,” she said. “Just take yours and leave the rest.”