Lost Lake

by Sarah Addison Allen

  He walked over to them, looking a little embarrassed by his entrance. “Thanks.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  He leaned against the counter. “Sure.”

  “Why do you call it Handyman Pizza when it’s totally eighties in here?”

  He smiled. She could see the boy inside best when he did that, guard down. “That confuses a lot of people the first time they come in here. When this building went on the market, I wanted it because it has a large alley garage entrance downstairs, which was perfect for me because I’d finally saved enough to make my handyman business a brick-and-mortar company instead of one I ran out of my foster mother’s house. There are three stories. The third floor is my apartment.” He pointed his thumb at the ceiling. “The man who owned the place before me ran this restaurant here on the street entrance. He called it Flashback Pizza. I didn’t have any interest in running a restaurant, so I thought I would lease the space out. But the restaurant was popular with the locals, and they campaigned to keep it open. The previous owner had died suddenly, and people kept putting his vintage green high-top sneakers on the steps outside my apartment at night. Sometimes I’d find them in the garage downstairs. A couple of times they were even in here in the restaurant when I came down from my apartment in the mornings, on the floor at that table”—he indicated a neon orange table in the corner—“like he’d just been sitting there, then got up and left.”

  A man whose whole face seemed to be made of whiskers appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “I keep telling you, we didn’t do it,” he said. “It was his ghost. He wanted the place to stay open. He was buried in those shoes! Hi there, Kate, I’m Grady. Tell Eby I’m bringing chicken wings to her party, okay?”

  Kate smiled and nodded, but Wes ignored him. “Thus Handyman Pizza was formed. Two businesses in one. I have an employee and a dispatcher for my handyman business downstairs. And I kept the employees of the restaurant here, which Grady oversees.” He nodded to where the cook had disappeared back into the kitchen. “But there are weird crossovers, like when people call for a handyman and ask that a pizza be delivered, too. Or when customers in the restaurant bring in broken lamps, and eat here while the lamps are rewired downstairs.”

  “That’s very clever,” Kate said.

  “I just fell into it,” Wes said.

  “You always were pretty easygoing.”

  Wes snorted. “Meaning I let you boss me around.”

  Devin finished her pizza slice and said, “Hey, Wes, look what the alligator gave me.” She lifted the knobby piece of wood she’d set on the counter earlier. She carried it around with her like a flashlight everywhere she went. “I think it’s a clue.”

  Wes took the piece of wood and gave it due consideration. “A clue to what?”

  Devin shrugged. “Something the alligator wants me to find.”

  “It looks like part of a cypress knee,” he said, handing it back to her.

  “You know … it does,” Kate agreed.

  Devin looked excited. “What’s a cypress knee?”

  “It’s the part of a cypress tree root that sticks out above the ground or water. Your mom and I used to go diving around the cypress knees at the far end of the lake, looking for treasure.”

  “Not that you can do that,” Kate added quickly. “It’s too dangerous. My mother would have had a fit if she’d known what I was doing. I remember how tangled those roots were underwater. It’s amazing we didn’t get trapped.”

  “But we grew gills, remember?” Wes said.

  Kate actually reached up and touched a place behind her ear. “I remember.”

  She also remembered the story she’d made up about the three girls who went swimming in the cypress knees and got trapped, about how they had stayed there forever and grown up underwater, their hair floating like seaweed as they watched their parents look for them every day. And how, when they were grown, they figured out how to harness the fog and appear above the water. Ursula, Magdalene, and Betty. The ghost ladies.

  Devin hopped off her stool. “Let’s go back to the lake. I want to check out these knees!”

  “Are you coming to Eby’s party?” Kate asked as she stood. She called for Devin to wait by the door.

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  “So will most of the town, apparently. It’s snowballed into something bigger than Bulahdeen expected.”

  “I can come out later today, if you’d like. I can help get the place ready.”

  “I think everyone would be grateful for that,” Kate said.

  “Mom, come on!”

  Kate smiled as she walked away. “I’ll see you then.”

  * * *

  “Does she know you’re a part of this development deal, the one that’s going to take Eby’s property?” Grady asked, his timing perfect as he poked his head out of the kitchen the moment Kate and Devin left.

  Wes shrugged. “Unless Eby has told her, no.”

  Grady hooted. “You’re going to be in hot water when she finds out.”

  “Why?”

  “Has it really been that long?” Grady shook his head. “I keep telling you, you need to date more, son.”

  “I date enough.”

  “Going bowling with me doesn’t constitute dating. You never even buy me dinner.”

  Wes grabbed a wipe from under the counter. He paused, then asked, “What makes you think I’m even interested in Kate?”

  “That right there, what just happened, is called attraction. A-trak-shee-un. Look it up in the dictionary.”

  Wes smiled and turned to buss the counter. Grady knew that Wes had had girlfriends in the past. Not that they’d ever lasted very long. Everyone his age always seemed to be in such a hurry to leave. His longest relationship had lasted two years. He and Anika had fallen in love their senior year in high school. But not long after graduation, Anika had started making plans for them to leave. They had jobs that could travel, she’d said. He could fix anything, and she could waitress anywhere. His foster mother Daphne had encouraged him to do whatever his heart told him to. The problem with that was that his heart didn’t belong to Anika. Not all of it, anyway. A big part, sure. He did love her. But he also loved Daphne and Eby and the town. And Billy.

  It really all came down to Billy.

  If he left this place, he would have to leave his brother. And he couldn’t do that. He and Billy had been inseparable. Wes had never minded changing his diapers or teaching him to swim or walking through the woods with him to the lake every morning. Everything Wes did, Billy did. Everything Wes liked, Billy liked. Wes had almost died trying to find him in that burning house. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t find him. Maybe he was still looking for him. Maybe he always would be.

  There had never been a single force, a single person, who could compete with that memory, with that place in his heart. Except Kate. She’d made him want to leave all those years ago. Even then, he’d been planning to take Billy with him. But even she couldn’t make him leave now. Not that that would ever happen. No matter what Grady said, what he and Kate had now was just a memory of something good.

  It, and she, would be gone before he knew it.

  9

  The groceries were ready when Kate and Devin walked back to the Fresh Mart, and Kate tipped the bag boy who helped load Lisette’s boxes into the Subaru. Devin had already buckled herself in, and Kate was about to get behind the wheel when she heard voices coming from inside the store. A window cleaner on a ladder was squeegeeing the glass above the door, leaving the doors open.

  “Why do you keep coming in here? He’s married.” Kate recognized that voice. It was the young woman with the ponytail at the business counter—Brittany.

  “I don’t see your father complaining,” Selma said as she walked out. She didn’t see Kate standing there. Her skirt swished with agitation, and her heels clicked so hard on the sidewalk that they sparked and made black burn marks on the concrete. The air around her was charged with a bright red electri
city that every woman recognized. So did every man, but for entirely different reasons.

  “What’s the matter with Selma?” Devin asked.

  “Nothing,” Kate said, climbing into the car. “She’s just in a bad mood.”

  “The alligator likes her.”

  “Does he?” Kate asked absently as she started the car.

  “He likes everyone. I think he’s upset that he might not see them again. He doesn’t want them to leave.”

  “Even Selma?”

  “He thinks she’s pretty.”

  Kate turned to back out of the space. “Well, that means he’s definitely a he.”

  * * *

  They were a few minutes ahead of Selma in arriving back at Lost Lake. When Selma arrived, she got out of her red sedan and walked to her cabin without a word.

  Kate and Devin had just started unloading the groceries when Kate heard Selma call, “Kate! Oh, Ka-ate!”

  With a box full of vegetables in her hands, Kate turned to see Selma now standing on the front stoop of her cabin. “Yes?”

  “I want to take a long bath and I don’t have any clean towels.”

  Kate nodded to the main house. “I’m sure Eby has some in the laundry room.”

  “I’ll wait here,” Selma said. “You said you were helping Eby, right? Eby usually does this.”

  Kate and Devin took the first load of groceries inside. “I’ll be right back with the rest,” Kate said to Lisette. “I have to run some towels over to Selma first. What is it with women like that?”

  Lisette shook her head slowly and wrote something on her notepad. She is lonely.

  “She doesn’t act lonely.”

  Lisette smiled and wrote, None of us do. Not even you.

  * * *

  Minutes later, Kate knocked on Selma’s door. Selma called for her to come in. When Kate entered, she saw that Selma had already changed into a Chinese dressing gown and was lying on the couch, reading a magazine. The cabin seemed hazy but not by smoke. The haze had a scent, like a perfume.

  Scarves were draped over lampshades. High-heeled shoes lined the hearth of the fireplace. There were open hat boxes strewn around, but they didn’t contain hats. One contained candy; another, hundreds of tiny makeup samples; another, inexplicably, bottle caps. Kate stood at the door and held out the towels.

  Selma tossed the magazine aside in a truly impressive show of ennui. “Just put them in the bathroom. And take the old towels with you.”

  Kate went to the bathroom, set the new towels on the sink, and came back out with the used towels, which were covered in makeup. She walked to the front door, about to leave, but then stopped and turned. “I saw you at the Fresh Mart today. You were having an argument with the girl there.”

  Selma sighed. “She doesn’t like me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I flirt with her father. The man who owns the store. He’s married. It’s what I do. All my husbands were married when I met them.” She rubbed her bare ring finger distractedly. “But she doesn’t have anything to worry about. If I’d wanted him, I’d have used my last charm to get him by now.”

  Kate opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally she had to ask, “All of your husbands were married?”

  “Strange, isn’t it? But those are the rules,” Selma said.

  “You have rules?”

  “I didn’t make them. They’ve been there since time immemorial.”

  “So why didn’t you stay married to any of them? You obviously went to a lot of trouble to get them.”

  Selma frowned, then stood. “It’s never what I think it’s going to be.” She gestured to seven picture frames on the mantle, some large, some small, each photo of a smiling man. The youngest was an old photo of a man in his twenties, the oldest was a recent photo of an elderly man. “Those are my husbands,” Selma said. “I keep them around to remind me what not to look for the next time.”

  Kate watched Selma walk over to the mantle. She picked up a small jewelry box. It was chestnut in color with tiny flecks of ivory inlay on top. On its own, it was completely innocuous, and Kate would have thought nothing of it. But the way Selma picked it up and cradled it made it alive somehow. Kate stared, fascinated. She could feel its pull.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “No,” Kate said, shifting her weight and swallowing.

  “The secret to my success,” Selma said, holding out the box and opening it slowly in front of Kate.

  Kate leaned forward and looked inside. She frowned when she saw that it was empty, save for a small heart charm sitting on the black velvet lining. “What is it?”

  “Ha!” Selma said, snapping the box shut, making Kate jump back quickly. “I knew it. Only women like me know what it’s for.”

  “What do you mean?” Kate felt a little light-headed, like she’d stood up too quickly.

  “It’s a charm. My last one. I’m saving it to use on my last husband. He will be old and rich, the last one I will ever need.”

  Kate wondered if Selma clung to this idea of charms the same way Kate had clung to Cricket, because when you run out of rope, you grab the first thing within reach. When Selma divorced one husband, maybe the charms comforted her with the fact that she wouldn’t have to be alone for long, that another one would come along soon.

  After standing there awkwardly for a moment, holding the dirty towels and watching Selma smile and stroke the box like a cat, Kate turned and left the cabin. Once outside, she stopped on the stoop. She took a deep breath of lake air and felt her head clear. She looked back at the door she’d closed behind her and wondered if understanding Selma was really possible.

  Maybe she really was magic.

  * * *

  Selma put the box back on the mantle. She didn’t understand why she acted this way. She couldn’t seem to help herself. And she had been this way for so long that she didn’t think she could be any other way. Not that she wanted to. Her mother had hated it, had hated what Selma had become, but Selma didn’t care. She wasn’t her mother. That was all that mattered.

  Selma tried not to think of her mother, but when she did, she felt pity. She was a fading photo from the past—thin, transparent, disappearing from the window at the kitchen sink, where she would always stand and wait for her husband to come home to her.

  She didn’t like to think of her father either, but when she did she felt anger, sometimes longing. But he too was a whispery figure of her past, consisting mainly of the scent of newspaper ink.

  The only thing from her childhood she really liked to think of, what she remembered in striking detail, was the endless string of women with which her father had cheated on her mother. She remembered the hems of their dresses, the curl of their hair, the color of their eyeshadow, the marks their jewelry left on their skin. When she was very young, she’d had no idea who they were, these strange women who would show up at their front door, looking for Selma’s father. Selma’s mother would slam the door in their faces, but Selma would sneak out and follow them down the sidewalk, entranced by these painted creatures and the music created by their bracelets. They’d always had bracelets.

  When Selma was older but still too young to stay at home alone, her father would take her to bars on nights her mother drugged herself into a stupor with sleeping pills. Hidden in a corner, drinking Virgin Marys, Selma would watch her father interact with these women. It hadn’t been her father who had called the shots, though. These women had all the power. How charmed they’d been. How potent to the people around them.

  Ruby, a beautiful woman with dyed black hair and the largest bosom Selma had ever seen, had been the woman who had finally made Selma’s father leave her mother. The others, Selma realized now, had just been playing with him, batting him around like a cat with a stunned mouse. They hadn’t wanted to marry him, because if they had, he would have left long before then. Selma had been thirteen when this happened, and she had loved going to visit her father and Ruby’s apartment in downtown Jackson.
Selma had been on the cusp of womanhood, and Ruby had been all that Selma had wanted to be. Ruby, in her better moods, would show Selma how to apply makeup, making her lips so pink she looked like she’d just taken a bite of a cupcake. It had felt that way, too, sticky and thick. It had been during one of these makeup sessions that Selma had asked Ruby about her bracelet.

  Ruby had stepped back and held up her hand, making the four heart charms jingle. “Women like me have exactly eight times in our lives to get the man we want. This is how we keep track.” She’d rattled the bracelet again. “I had eight charms. I have four left.”

  “What happens to the charms?”

  “They disappear the moment we decide on the man we want, the moment we know. The first few men are usually out of spite. We use them to steal the men of women we don’t like. The last four are usually for money. The very last one is the last chance to get exactly what we want. Is it money? Is it revenge? Is it love? Is it a family? It’s the most important charm.”

  Selma had listened with rapt attention. “Do you have to use them all?”

  Ruby had laughed, a sharp sound like a barking seal. “Darling, why would you waste them?”

  Selma had tried desperately to process it all. She’d wanted to know everything but was afraid it was too much, that she didn’t have what it took to understand. Boys had just started to intrigue her, and she had trouble thinking beyond finding one to hold hands with. That was all. Just one. That had been all she’d wanted. “If you fall in love, can you just keep using the charms on the same man?”

  “Of course not,” Ruby had said, and her condescending tone had wounded Selma. “Who could love one man that long?”

  “So you’re not going to stay with my dad?” Selma had asked.

  “No. Be still,” Ruby had said, putting a row of false lashes on Selma’s eye. “Your mother and I used to go to the same school, a long time ago. She used to make fun of me, she and her friends. She used to think she was so much better than me. Now look at her. Her life is pitiful, and I can have any married man I want. I guess I showed her, didn’t I?”