Wish You Were Here (7 page)

“I'm sure they are. She's probably just being Meg.”

“Probably.” He looked thoughtful. He still had the paper open, and she could see he wanted to get back to it.

“I'm going to read for a little.” She waved her book.

“Okay,” he said, and let her go.

She opened the door and stepped up into the musty dark of the boxed-in stairs. She tried to be quiet climbing them, a hand on the wall. It was warmer with every step, even with the fan bombing away. They'd left the bathroom light on, and Sam and Ella were sprawled out on the floor in its dim reflection, Sam with his pillow half underneath him, his nightshirt twisted and his belly poking out, Ella with her mouth open and her knees making a tent of her sleeping bag. Sometimes when she watched them sleeping they seemed darling and full of promise, but more often she thought them graceless and ungainly (Sam's hair an explosion, Ella's fingers clenched), and felt all the more tender toward them, as if they needed protection from her own judgments. Here was a picture for Ken, flawed and breathing, not those cold arrangements his professor called art.

She didn't dare say that to him, not the way he'd been lately. Seeing him so desperate worried her. He'd taken what he loved and turned it into work. She believed in him, he knew that, but that wasn't enough. He wanted everyone to say he was wonderful, and that, she thought, would probably never happen.

She took her book into the bathroom with her, laying it on the red crescent mat in front of the toilet, then sat there distracted, scratching
at her lifeline, examining the withered grain of her thumb, thinking of the dishes she'd washed, phones answered, lovers touched, her entire life there in her skin. Like anyone. The world turned cosmic when you'd gone too long without sleep. She rubbed her eyes, ground her eyebrows under her fingertips. What was he going to do—what were
they
going to do? The book lay there on the mat between her feet, but suddenly she didn't care about Harry Potter; she was only reading it to see what the kids found in it. Escape. She could use some right now.

The water smelled, a fact she conveniently forgot from year to year. For cooking they used bottled water, long plastic jugs they kept on the counter by the microwave, but for brushing her teeth she was stuck with the tap. The basin was stained. Fartwater, Sam called it, and she swished and spat fast, then covered the taste with a slug of Listerine.

“Uck,” she said, and found herself in the mirror. On her chin was the beginning of an Emily-induced zit.

“Isn't
that
nice.”

She took her book from the windowsill and navigated the dim room to the head of their bed, then backtracked and found Ella's flashlight from camp, turned it on and stuck it beneath her pillow. She felt grubby after the car but the shower smelled and she'd never get her hair dry. She dumped her shorts and top on the pile by the dresser and pulled on a T-shirt, then sat on the bed and swung her legs under the humid sheets. She settled in, the flashlight nestled in her shoulder, throwing its bull's-eye against the page and beyond, the ceiling alive with an eclipse.

She was sure she'd read this sentence before. Harry was taking the train from platform nine and three-quarters to Hogwarts, then meeting the headmaster Dumbledore for the first time, the picture on his business card disappearing when Harry turned it over. No wonder the kids loved this stuff, there was always another marvelous thing popping up. By the end of the section she was deep in that magical world. She actually had to stop herself from going on to the next chapter. She patted her stomach for her bookmark and set the book reverently on the cedar chest, then thumbed off the flashlight.

At the far end of the room, the fan barreled on. Ella stirred and slurped—her braces made her—and Lise wondered what time it was, and if Meg was okay. Their windows overlooked the garage, stark as film noir in the floodlight above the kitchen door, the barbecue grill sitting beneath
the tree. There was no wind, just the lake slapping faintly. She would hear if Meg's van pulled up, the gust of the engine finishing, the croak of the emergency brake.

The pillow smelled of mold, and she wished they'd brought their own. Across from her, the other bed was empty. Meg would be fine, she thought, but couldn't stop imagining the red-and-blue lights of police cruisers blocking the highway, flares throwing a ruby glow over the crash scene, glass scratching under the firemen's boots.

Ken's father's death was expected, had only deepened his isolation from them, lost further in his work. Meg's death would be different, a chance for Lise to intervene. She would comfort him, bring him back to the world. Or he might grow even more remote, curled around his disappointment. She couldn't live with that kind of sadness, that kind of man. His distance already took so much energy to bridge. She could feel it wearing away her spirit, like water cutting into rock.

On the way out they'd passed an auto graveyard, the cars laid out in rows. Ken saw it first (it would be like a playground for him, all those stilled objects, and she almost told him to stop). The damage to some of the cars astonished her. Surely no one could have survived that collision, or that one there, the roof chopped off. Lise was surprised to see a whole row of minivans—sides caved in, windowless, noses smashed flat—each speaking of some family's terror.

“Actually,” Ken had said, “I'm surprised there aren't more.”

She expected that from him now, the morose, heartless comment. Logical, flat, at the core a pitiless truth he pretended to accept. No, the sad thing, she thought, was how quickly she agreed with him.

Arlene swiped at the bench with her hand, only to find it dry. The air fooled her, cool and filled with water. How bright it was in the dark. Overhead, the moon let in light like an eye, its spectral outline to one side. The stars winked, the field deepening the longer she looked up, but it was hard on her neck. She exhaled, found Rufus with her ankle, inhaled and tapped the ash behind her into the water.

She and Henry used to take the canoe out on nights like this, dipping the paddles in silently, a war party sneaking up on the enemy. When they were far enough from shore so the light from the cottage was just a dot, they stopped and let it drift, the only sound their breathing, the paddles dripping, fish breaking the surface. Henry took out the Pall Malls he'd filched from Uncle Perry's jacket and, shielding the kitchen match from shore, they lit up and lay back, keeping the brilliant end below the gunwale, taking the smoke in and breathing it out languorously, the way people did in the movies. One each, and even that was a risk. The butts sputtered when they flipped them overboard. If they timed it right, they would be sitting there in absolute black when the clock tower up at the Institute struck twelve, the solemn tolling of the bell clear and sharp as the moon, seeming to go on far too long and then echoing away to nothing in the hills, the lake still again.

For a while they didn't speak, and then Henry said, “That was a good one.”

“It was a great one.”

Their voices were tiny in the dark and made everything seem more important. They talked about the war, and what branch Henry should enlist in, and how she would become a nurse and follow him to the South Pacific. They talked about what they were going to do now that the war was over, what college to go to and what kind of jobs they wanted. They talked about Emily, and whether Henry should get married before he finished
his degree. But always there was the canoe and the moon and the bell tower chiming midnight.

“I think,” Henry said, “that this is my favorite place in the whole world.”

“Me too.”

If only they could stay here, never get older. But it was already too late.

“Will you come out here with her?” she asked one night, and she knew what it sounded like, but he didn't laugh.

“No, this is just for us.” And the way he said it, she didn't have to make him promise.

They'd been out a few times after that, though she knew Emily resented it. Their talks were different, as if she were in the canoe between them.

Tonight Arlene had come out to hear the bells. The canoe was long gone, and their father's mahogany Chris-Craft (the
Lady Belle,
after their mother), and the old dock, but she was sure that at some point back then her body had occupied this same space, breezed through it like a ghost—riding in a boat, or diving, fishing the pilings. She had probably filled every square inch of this shore at some time or other, and a hundred feet out into the lake. But this water was all new, the old moved on to God knows where. Downstream. She thought of the diagram she'd taught her third-graders, the rain falling on the mountains, rolling through the fields to the sea only to evaporate and rain down again from the clouds. It was all the same water, cycling over and over, yet it seemed the lake no longer knew her.

Last fall when Henry was in the hospital, she visited every day. Once, when Emily had left the room, he gestured for her to come closer. She took his hand and bent down to hear him better.

“Arlie,” he said, and it was an effort.

“Yes, Henry.”

“Be patient with her.”

She could have asked him who he meant. “I always am.”

“I know,” he said, and found the strength to lift his other hand and sandwich hers, as if he were comforting her. She thought he had meant to thank her for putting up with Emily all these years, but instead it felt as if he was charging her to take care of Emily, passing Emily along as if she
was a child. It was unfair: she'd never wanted Emily, only him. She'd wanted him to acknowledge that bond that existed before any other and that she thought was stronger—having been in love just once—than any since. But it seemed he'd forgotten how they'd been, or could not tell her, and it would have hurt her even more deeply to press the issue, beg him like a woman jilted.

She
remembered, even if everyone else was gone, and there, as if proof, came the first peal from the bell tower. And then the second, chilly, drifting away over the lake. She sat there listening without a cigarette, holding herself against the cold, while far out on the water she lay back, happy, waiting for him to say something.

Justin refused to wake up, so Ken had to carry him. Meg grabbed the sleeping bags and asked Sarah to bring the pillows. Yes, and Tigger. The rest would just have to wait till tomorrow.

She'd been driving so long her only goal now was getting inside the house, getting the kids down, then collapsing herself. Her eyes hurt, and her back, even her hands, cramped from gripping the wheel, but they'd made it, and with no tickets, no major fights. It seemed a great accomplishment.

The grass was wet and lumpy beneath her feet—she was stepping on chestnuts. She was surprised to find Arlene holding the screendoor for them; usually she was asleep by this time. She was not surprised that her mother had already gone to bed. She'd hear about it first thing tomorrow, how worried she'd been (but not enough to stay up).

Inside, the light hurt her eyes, and then when she headed upstairs she couldn't see, and had to stop, and Ken bumped into her from behind.

The fan was running and the air smelled the same, instantly snatched her back thirty years, turned her into a thirteen-year-old with her period, hiding up here on a beautiful day. Sam and Ella were by the chimney, and she laid out Justin's bag right beside them, unzippered it so Ken could set him down. Sarah was there with his pillow, and Meg slid it under his head. She pulled off Justin's shoes and socks, Sarah pushed Tigger into his arms, and she folded the flap over him.

Lise was asleep in one bed, the other queen was for her. It seemed a waste of space, all that room. Jeff had left her nearly a year ago, and she still wasn't used to sleeping alone.

“You can take care of yourself, can't you?” she asked Sarah.

“What about my toothbrush?”

“Do you really, absolutely need it?”

“I guess not.”

“It's not going to kill you to skip brushing this once,” Meg explained, but Sarah put on her wounded face, as if she were bullying her. “Which bag is it in?”

“My purple one.”

“Get ready for bed,” she ordered, and went downstairs and through the living room and out the screenporch and across the lawn to the van.

She thumbed the button for the back hatch, but she'd locked it at the rest stop and had to dig in her pockets for her keys and then hold them up to the moon to find the right one, and then when she opened the hatch the bags fell out onto the grass. She threw Sarah's purple one aside and shoved the others in, reached up and slammed the hatch down before they could escape again, then headed for the house, sure that all this time Ken and Arlene were watching her.

“Here,” she said to Sarah in the bathroom, and Sarah thanked her mousily, as if she might yell at her. “Don't give me that face, all right? I've just driven twelve hours by myself so we could be here with your cousins.”

Sarah's face changed to one Meg was too familiar with lately, the pinched lips and downcast glare, and while she now regretted saying anything, she couldn't let this pass. “Just stop with the attitude. You keep this up, it's going to be a long week for both of us, and I don't know about you, but that is not what I came here for.”

She left her there at the sink, mad at herself. They were both tired. Christ, she was trying to do her a favor. She hadn't driven this far since college, but that meant nothing to Sarah. In Sarah's eyes, every fight they had was between the two of them alone, a bare contest of wills fought in a stone ring on some sand-swept plain like in her sword and sorcery books. In Sarah's eyes, Meg was sure, she was always the one who attacked first, as if she carefully plotted each ambush, leaving Sarah no choice but to defend herself.

Downstairs, Ken had brought all the bags in, which meant she'd have to take them upstairs or hear about it tomorrow morning. She did not want to start things with her mother like that. Already she would have to explain why she was so late, and though she'd had five hundred miles to come up with an answer, she didn't have one. The truth would not do. She was prepared to tell her mother about the divorce—expected, maybe even welcome news, after all the back-and-forth—but she couldn't say she spent the morning in a pointless, informal three-hour meeting, and that it had ended nastily, with Jeff's lawyer threatening to bring up not just her years in therapy but her rehab, and that later her own lawyer—the woman she was paying good money to fight for her—advised her to take the settlement and give Jeff the visitation he wanted, and that she had cried in a stall in the women's room, her face hot in her hands, because she knew she would lose the house and they would have to move, and the kids would have to start over in another school district because they couldn't afford Silver Hills anymore. Her mother did not need to know all that.