The Lake and the Lost Girl

by Jacquelyn Vincenta

  Side by side, they walked to a still point before the camera, where the photographer requested that Mary loop her arm through her father’s. Church doors wide behind them, sun directly overhead in a cloudless sky, neither father nor daughter cast a shadow in the only photo ever taken of them together.

  8

  White Hill, Michigan—March 1999

  A Dream Self in a world of dreams:

  A Shadow Self, among the gleams

  The arc-lights cast.

  ~ Fannie Stearns Davis (1861–1934), “The Dream Self”

  At the dinner table Sunday night after his mother had returned from Misquers, Nicholas was too excited about his good news to eat, but he cut his lasagna into many small pieces as he ran through his announcement again in his head.

  “Guess what,” he finally began, looking back and forth from his mother to his father for a response. His father was reading a magazine, so after a moment his mother gave the obligatory “What?”

  “Well, this afternoon I went to the beach,” Nicholas began, still hoping for interest to rise in their preoccupied faces. “I went north in the dunes until I came to an old orchard I’ve never seen before. Down below there was a damaged sailboat, and I spent hours trying to draw it exactly like it was. I mean exactly. Not skip over a single detail.” Nicholas’s mother got up and went to the refrigerator. He waited for her to return. “Then this downpour started, and I ended up running to a barn and a cabin near the orchard, and the man who lives there showed me the workshop he has in his barn. It’s amazing.”

  “In Carson Woods?” his mother asked.

  Nicholas nodded. “He builds boats, so when I showed him my sailboat sketch, guess what?” When neither of them responded, he went on. “He offered me a job!”

  “A job, Nicholas?” His mother’s voice was surprised. “What kind of job?”

  “A job drawing boats.”

  “My goodness!” Lydia glanced at her husband, then back at Nicholas. “Who is this?”

  Frank was still absorbed in his reading and had not seemed to hear the announcement at all.

  “Jack Kenilworth,” Nicholas said, and at this, his father glanced over the top of his reading glasses.

  “What about Jack Kenilworth?” he asked as if these were the first words Nicholas had spoken.

  “He offered Nicholas a job drawing boats,” Lydia said.

  His father gave a short, hard laugh.

  “He’s an idiot,” Frank said, looking back down at his magazine.

  “You mean because he’s not an academic?” Lydia asked lightly.

  “He’d be an idiot if he were an academic. He’s a…parasitic hermit. Living on public land for nothing. Doing nothing.”

  “It was his family’s land before it was a state park,” Lydia said. “In fact, they didn’t have to donate it at all.” She turned to Nicholas. “What would you draw boats for, honey? Advertisements or something?”

  “Lydia, don’t lead the boy on. He can’t work for Kenilworth,” Frank said. “He’s only fourteen!”

  “I turned fifteen in December, Dad. Remember?” Why wasn’t the birth of your own child the easiest thing in the world to remember? Pretty sure his father would not look up and catch him, Nicholas scowled at him.

  “Fourteen, fifteen—he’s not accomplished enough to do anything like that, for God’s sake. With a guy like Kenilworth, Nick would just get blamed for doing something wrong.” Frank turned a few pages of the magazine, smoothing them with a heavy hand against the table, but his expression was dark. “Hell, even if Nick did put in hours, he’d never get paid. Not by that…con artist.”

  “Jeez, Dad.”

  “You don’t even know him!” Lydia laughed.

  “The hell I don’t. He came to a reading once, and I could tell right away what he was. A fake. A con artist.”

  Nicholas’s mind fogged with regret that he had brought the subject up at all. He hated these moments. He felt like a pathetic little kid, a five-year-old or something. His father only had to get angry to mess up the brains of everyone else in the room—and he knew it, too.

  “He sat in the audience at one reading, and you could tell he’s a con artist?” Lydia asked.

  “That’s right. Doesn’t take more than that with some people. Saw him making the rounds in the room afterward.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “‘Making the rounds’?”

  Frank glared at Lydia over the tops of his glasses. “I was reading from my fourth chapter about Mary, in which I compile the evidence and use her own lines to expand upon speculation about her marriage, and he asked some question about my sources, then went afterward to talk to a couple of my colleagues. A troublemaker. An arrogant asshole.”

  “Why did he question your sources?”

  “Exactly. Why indeed? He was pretending that he had knowledge that he did not.”

  “With all due respect, Frank, it’s possible he knew something you haven’t heard. He’s lived here all of his life. I’m asking, what did he have to say?”

  “I don’t even know. He was too ridiculous to listen to.”

  Lydia made an indignant sound. “Frank! We spend all this time on Mary Stone Walker, and all this money, and then when someone offers information, you turn it down? And who’s the arrogant one?”

  “As I said, he has no credibility. As a scholar, you can’t run around gathering up people’s family gossip and fairy tales. You have to research from a core line of facts, a strong hypothesis. Kenilworth falls way outside my line of facts. And note that he just came to a reading to provoke me, and there’s never been another peep on any other front about his knowledge. That should tell you something. He was just entertaining himself at my expense, and if I’d indulged him, I would have gotten an earful of bullshit. I know the type.”

  Lydia shook her head, ripped off a piece of French bread, and pressed her elbows on the table. “It probably isn’t too late to find out what he wanted to say. I mean, come on, you know how it is: a seemingly insignificant detail can trigger new understanding of the written material. This is what I have been talking about. There are people out there to speak with. There’s this scrapbook to examine. And who knows what else we might find.”

  “The old herbalist’s scrapbook, huh?” Frank grunted.

  “Why not? Somehow you have to move forward with the Walker manuscript, don’t you? Maybe Nicholas’s association with Jack Kenilworth can reopen the door with him. He seemed like a decent guy in high school.”

  “Defend the idiot. That’s right, Lydia, and get our son into a situation where he will be misled and taken advantage of.” Frank scraped back his chair to leave the table and nodded his head toward Nicholas. “I have plenty for you to do around here that you don’t get done, young man. You have a thing or two to learn before you go off playing at a job for a fool who squats on public land. And don’t you try to tell me that a boatbuilder can help me finish my dissertation, Lydia,” he finished, shifting his accusing stare toward his wife.

  Lydia’s jaw tightened. “You’re acting like a snob, Frank. Great example to set.” She cast a glance at Nicholas. “While attempting to insult a virtual stranger, you’re hurting your son’s feelings.”

  “The truth shouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Right, sweetie? Isn’t that what you always tell me?” Frank’s tone made Nicholas turn his focus to his plate. “I believe I know a bit more about Jack Kenilworth than you do.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you know much of anything about him,” she muttered. “Doesn’t sound like you gave him the time of day.”

  “I was there. You were not.” Frank shook his head. “You know, I think I’ll let you two talk this over without me since you’re happier ignoring the relevant facts.” He grabbed his truck keys, jerked the door open, and slammed it behind him.

  “Good grief, where did all that come fr
om?” Lydia said, leaving the table to scrape the food from her plate into the sink. Nicholas left the kitchen as quietly as he could.

  • • •

  For a while, Nicholas didn’t dare return to Jack Kenilworth’s barn, but when he did, the boatbuilder seemed genuinely happy to see him. They worked together for over an hour in the chilly barn, Jack explaining the plans point by point and showing Nicholas exactly how to transpose them accurately onto the wooden floor. While Nicholas used the colored pencils and compasses to repeat the process Jack had taught him for the water lines, Jack strode to a window cracked open near the end of the barn, sat down on a high stool, and lit a cigarette. When he finished the first, Nicholas noticed that he lit another and wondered why Jack didn’t just go outside. Fifteen minutes passed in silence, and Nicholas grew almost light-headed with joy at how clear and easy this process was for him. He was startled from a deep concentration when he heard Jack’s voice but didn’t process the words.

  “What?” Nicholas asked.

  “I said, ‘So how’s life?’” Jack’s chuckle turned into a cough, and he waved the un-inhaled cigarette smoke out the window.

  “Life’s okay,” Nicholas said. He didn’t think his lines would be accurate if he tried to talk while setting them. He nodded, waiting to see if Jack wanted to say more.

  “How’re your folks?”

  “Same as always.”

  “Good, I guess?”

  “Yeah.” The comments his father had made about Jack popped into Nicholas’s mind, and before he thought it through, he said, “I guess you know both my parents. My dad said he met you once.”

  “Did he?” Jack gave Nicholas a small smile. “Once, huh?”

  Jack’s expression sent a wave of nervousness through Nicholas’s stomach, and Jack seemed to notice a change on the boy’s face because he dropped his smirk and stood up, brushing off his jeans. He was businesslike as he stooped beside Nicholas.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said. Nicholas watched the man’s brown eyes become sharply focused on the colored lines Nicholas had drawn. After a couple of minutes, Jack said, “Looks great so far.”

  Nicholas’s face and shoulders relaxed, and Jack slapped him lightly on the back.

  “Hey, relax! What are you worried about?”

  “I wouldn’t want to mess up your floor,” Nicholas said as he eyed Jack.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Jack shook his head. “That’s not anything to think about, messing up a line. It’s just not catching the errors when you make them. That’s the real concern in this process. Once I lost a whole load of birch because I made one miscalculation early on and everything else was off. The lofting should protect against that, but as I’ve said, it’s not my strength.”

  Nicholas wanted to keep working, preferring the abstractions of numbers and lines to words. Now his thoughts were prodded by the question of why Jack made it sound like his dad was lying about how many times they’d met. It seemed inconsequential, yet strange. The wind rolling through the open window was cold and ruffled the boat plans on the table.

  “What’s bugging you, kid? You’re doing just fine. Better than I expected, actually.”

  Nicholas shrugged and straightened his shoulders. But he couldn’t regain his concentration. Maybe if Jack would leave he could; more and more these days, he could hardly think when he felt other people watching him. “You can go ahead and work on something else. I’m fine, I think.”

  “Okay, good.” Jack stood up, smiling, and headed toward the door. “I have some calls to make, bills to pay. Let me know if you need anything.”

  Nicholas exhaled happily and looked back down at the project, but Jack spoke again.

  “And say, tell your dad he crossed my mind the other day. I was wondering how his…his work is going.”

  When Nicholas looked up, he thought he saw a glint in Jack’s eyes, but then it seemed like nothing. “What work?” he asked, uncertain whether Jack even knew his father was an English professor.

  “Well, the college… He still teaches, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was writing a book about Mary Stone Walker, last I knew.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he finish it?”

  “Not yet.” There was a long pause. Nicholas thought about making something up about the book being accepted by a publisher and they were just waiting for details to be worked out, but Jack cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Hard to finish a book, I guess, when the subject doesn’t have an ending. Or at least not the ending you’re hoping for.”

  It surprised Nicholas that Jack knew anything about his father’s manuscript, and his apprehension about Jack’s attitude dug in.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, pushing his glasses up.

  “You know what I mean,” Jack said kindly, not taking his eyes off Nicholas. “He believes she lived for many years after her disappearance.”

  Nicholas’s face grew hot. He didn’t know where to put his gaze, so it stayed locked on Jack’s. He had the urge to say, “My father says you’re a con man,” but the desire to hear what Jack had to say was stronger.

  “Is he still caught up in that…quest?” Jack asked.

  The only response that came to Nicholas was a false expression of confusion, so he said nothing for a moment, but Jack waited. “Do you mean looking for documents?” Nicholas said at last.

  Jack nodded slowly.

  “Well, sure,” Nicholas said, as if he himself thought it was great fun. “It’s a hobby of his. Kind of like a treasure hunt, I guess.”

  “Yeah. I heard him talk about the process. More than once, actually. Probably half a dozen times. It’s interesting.”

  “Yeah,” Nicholas said as lightly as he could. He turned his eyes back to the boat plans. Clearly someone was being dishonest, either his dad or Jack, although he could not imagine a reason for either of them to do so. “Why do you think it’s interesting? Doesn’t have much to do with boats.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “Well, I do have interests other than boats. But you’re right. Some versions of the story don’t have much to do with boats. Then again, some do.”

  “Some versions?”

  “Right. There are no boats in the story where the poet drowns in the lake, or in the one where she runs off and goes into hiding somewhere in Michigan to write more poems.”

  Nicholas was well aware that various scholars had studied Mary Stone Walker and that different theories existed about her fate, but he wondered why Jack took an interest. It seemed impossible that the boatbuilder loved poetry or that he had studied the poet herself.

  “Do you read a lot of poetry?”

  Jack seemed slightly annoyed. “That isn’t all there is to the story of a poet’s life. Their poetry.”

  Nicholas shrugged, watching him. So his dad was right. Jack Kenilworth really didn’t know much about the subject. He hadn’t studied Mary Stone Walker, because if he had, he would care about her poetry.

  “Well, did you know her?” Nicholas asked.

  “Of course I didn’t know her. I’m thirty-eight. She died sixty years ago.”

  “If she died,” Nicholas said. Jack’s casual certainty sparked a flash of combative feeling in him.

  “That’s right.” Jack nodded his head. “Your father’s hobby. As for yourself, take my advice and stick to a hobby like drawing, Nicholas. I’ll let you work. I need to make those calls before five.”

  Nicholas watched the boatbuilder walk out of the barn and thought of his father’s harsh comments about him—but the way Jack stood and walked, and the way he talked, just did not bring to mind a con artist.

  9

  White Hill, Michigan—April 1999

  A piece of separate outstanding rushing is so blind with open delicacy.

  A canoe i
s orderly. A period is solemn. A cow is accepted.

  A nice old chain is widening, it is absent, it is laid by.

  ~ Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), “Sugar”

  Hours of writer’s block stacked up into days, then weeks, and Lydia felt her confidence cracking. She’d never experienced such dullness in her mind. What if it never went away? One night at two a.m., frozen awake by fearful scenarios of her life without income, Lydia took her notebook and went in search of an all-night diner. Observing strangers, speculating about their lives, and writing down random details and bits of dialogue had worked to stimulate her imagination during her college years. She’d been a different person then, but maybe reviving that “different person” was exactly what she needed to do.

  At the Cherryland Truck Stop, she sat at a white Formica booth watching semis and the occasional car roll from the dark veins of the highway to the gas-pump islands, releasing strangers who entered the store needing something and left with bottles and little bags of things. For years she’d been lucky, she guessed. She had rarely gone more than half a day feeling creatively stuck. Now she felt as if she might never be able to give life to any fictional world again, and she was at a loss to explain why it was happening.

  She could get by with one or two, maybe three, inferior novels and still sell books and earn royalties. But what if her income suffered at some point? She could, and if she had to, she would write other things—feature articles, advertising, whatever she could find to do—but those would pay peanuts compared to her midlist successes with the romance novels.

  However, she was married. She had a partner who had a job with open-ended advancement possibilities. If Frank would finish his dissertation and obtain his PhD, and then agree to teach full time at Carson Community College, he could become an associate professor in two years. He also had a book he could finish and potentially sell to both academic audiences and general readers, if he would just decide to.

  The University of Michigan Press had virtually promised to publish his book. He had discussed the possibility multiple times with at least two of the editors. That, in turn, could lead to speaking engagements, more articles, and—she would have to insist—a moratorium on antique spending. That budgetary change alone would leave several hundred dollars more in their account every month for savings and paying down debt.