Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

  “Beckie said Ron gave you an important project all your own. That’s so cool.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “You don’t sound too thrilled.”

  “I don’t understand why he did that.”

  “Did what?”

  “Gave the job directly to me.”

  “Why shouldn’t he? He owns the company.” Rosa’s voice rose, and Regina glanced at the open door. Rosa did a little jump with her shoulders, leaned in closer, and spoke more softly. “Why shouldn’t he give you a project? You do great work.”

  “What about Steven? He’s the art director. Ron gives projects to Steven, and Steven delegates them. You know that.”

  Rosa pursed her lips. “You got that fancy art degree. None of the other graphic artists have that. Beckie said Ron was impressed when you applied.”

  “Still, up to now, Steven’s been my supervisor.”

  “You were new. Beckie heard one of the sales guys talking about how good you are. Steven’s not the boss. Ron is. Anyway, what’s the problem?”

  “It’s the only thing I’ve got and it’s all on me.” She sighed and closed the file. “Rope to hang myself.”

  “No! You’ll do great!” Rosa nudged Regina with her elbow. “Besides, Ron likes you.” But her tone lacked conviction.

  “Liked. He’s been asking me out, and I’ve been blowing him off.”

  Rosa shifted uneasily. “I know.”

  Regina looked at her. “You know?”

  “He said something.”

  A chill. “Said what? To you?”

  “To Steven. Beckie heard.”

  “Like what?”

  Rosa looked away. “Nothing.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said you were defensive.”

  “He said that to me too.” When she’d turned down his latest offer to go out for drinks with the guys in sales after work. Just trying to help you get on in the company. Why do you have to be so defensive? “Anyway, if I don’t pull this off, I’ll be hanging out to dry.”

  “You’ll be fine. You’ll see.” Rosa edged closer. “Hey, that new guy down the hall said he knew you in high school. He’s so nice. Cute too.”

  Regina offered nothing but a smile, studying the file in front of her.

  Rosa lowered her voice. “He’s too young for me. Too bad! Anyway, he likes you, I can tell. He said when you were in high school, you were so beautiful and nice. Don’t you remember him?”

  Regina looked at the clock. “I remember him. Thanks, Rosa. I’m waiting for a call that I have to take at nine, okay?”

  Rosa patted Regina on the shoulder. “Righty-oh! You let me know if I can help.” And she hustled out the door, jiggling.

  Regina got up, closed the door, and paced. Work, her family, this project, even Al MacDonald. They all together made her want to run away again. To the far side of the world.

  The phone rang at 9:02. She took her time sitting back down and straightening the stacks of paper on her desk, then she picked up on the third ring.

  Her oldest sister’s soft, low voice was calm, as usual. “Ree? It’s Mary. Do you have a minute? I just want to keep you up to date with what’s going on.”

  “Is he better this morning?”

  “He’s resting comfortably. He knows where he is and who we are and what’s happened.”

  Regina let out her breath and shifted the phone to her other shoulder. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “No.” A moment of silence while that sank in. “He’s sleeping a lot, and he’s extremely weak.”

  “Well, of course—”

  “He can’t move his right side. He understands us, but he can’t talk.”

  “Like last time.”

  “No.”

  The last time her father had a stroke, three years earlier, he’d been hospitalized, struggled to regain his speech, and hadn’t walked right afterward. But he’d recovered.

  Mary continued. “I saw the neurologist this morning.”

  Regina opened her free hand and studied the red, crescent-shaped marks on her palm.

  “Periods of consciousness are short. He’s deteriorating. He may be gone soon.”

  A wave of anguish washed over her. “I told you, I can’t come.”

  “I know.”

  “I just got a big project, and it’s the first one that’s been given to me to do on my own.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No one else is working on it. I have to have it done by Wednesday, and the only way I can do it is to work all weekend.”

  “You don’t have to come. It’s okay.”

  Knowing Mary, she meant it. Mary understood. But it wasn’t okay. How could it be? Not to come home when her father was dying.

  “I just want to be sure you know how serious it is,” Mary said.

  When he’d had the first stroke, Regina was in graduate school and waited one whole week, pleading classwork and exams, before going home. But there’d been no question of him dying that time.

  When Regina said nothing, Mary added, “If there’s anything you want to say to him, now is the time.”

  An old anger surged through her. “He hasn’t had anything to say to me, and he’s had eight years to say it.”

  “I’m thinking of you, Ree. For your own sake. I know you don’t understand, but who are you punishing when you stay away out of anger?”

  Regina didn’t trust herself to answer.

  Mary’s sigh blew through the line as a soft roar. “I want you to do what’s best for you.”

  Her voice was soft, and Regina didn’t doubt she spoke out of love and not reproach. Guilt dropped a cage over her. She hadn’t given him much opportunity to make amends. But then Regina steeled herself. “What about Robert?”

  Mary’s voice dropped. “He’s not here.”

  “How is she?”

  “Stoical. She sits there while the doctor talks, but she doesn’t really listen. She doesn’t want to hear that her husband of fifty years is dying.” Another pause. Then, “I told her I would call you.”

  “Why? Did she want you to?”

  “She asked about you.”

  Hope flared irrationally, made her catch her breath. “Does she want me there? If she wants me to come, I will. I can get my work done if I come in early Monday morning.” Her shoulders slumped with the realization that she had just demolished her own excuse for not going.

  “No, no, I told her I would let you know what was going on. You do what’s best for you.”

  “But what did she say?”

  “Nothing, it doesn’t matter. I said I was keeping you up to date. She worries that he feels bad about you. Worries that it’s all too much for me, driving her to the hospital, taking care of the house. She just worries.”

  “She thinks I should be there for his sake, and yours, and I’m not.”

  “It isn’t like that, Ree. She just worries about everything, no matter what anybody says or does.”

  “And is it too much for you? Do you need help?”

  “I’m fine for now. The driving is nothing. But we’ll have to figure out what to do about the house. I thought we’d talk about it this weekend. I wanted you to know that too. I’ll have to call everybody.”

  At the time of the last stroke, the whole family had converged at William Hannon’s bedside. Their sister Bebe had flown in from her home in Yorkshire, England, reaching Blue Lake within twenty-four hours of hearing the news. Regina, only fifty miles away, had arrived a week later, the night before Bebe left. Bebe joked about it at the dinner table.

  “I was on the other side of the pond.” She had begun to affect a British accent. “Ree was on the other side of the county.” Bebe let her eyes rest on Regina just long enough to satisfy herself that her youngest sister had no response.

  Mary’s voice brought Regina back to the present. “I’ve been waiting until I knew where we stood, but I can’t put it off any longer. I’ll call tonight. I imagine Frank and Edith will arrive tomo
rrow.”

  Which would be Saturday. Blue Lake was a three-hour drive from Richmond. Regina could still get there before anybody else. She bristled. “They all blame me for not being the dutiful daughter, but why should I be? I didn’t start this. They don’t care about me.”

  “He loves you, Ree.”

  “I’m not sure she even remembers who I am.”

  “She lives in the past,” Mary admitted, and Regina knew that the past did not include her. Mary’s voice took on a familiar pleading note. “She can’t help the way she is. It’s not about you. You know she can’t bear to live with the reality of what happened.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s been more than twenty years!” Regina drew back in frustration, but a picture came unbidden to her mind—a small, lifeless body floating face down in shallow water among reeds. She shook herself. This was not a memory. She’d been told all her life about how Alice Hannon had found her child drowned in Blue Lake, and this was how Regina always pictured it. The little girl drifting Ophelia-like in dappled sunlight, in a long, white dress with hair spreading in tendrils on the water, pink ribbons reaching out in her curls.

  She heard Mary’s soft tsk and imagined Mary’s gentle, sympathetic smile. “I know, Ree.”

  Regina leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling. It was the story of her life. Alice Hannon was a prisoner of grief, and Mary made excuses for her.

  On cue, Mary added, “I don’t think a mother ever gets over the loss of a child.”

  “I’ve got to go. I’ll try to come.”

  Mary’s voice softened. “I would love to see you, and it would mean a lot to him too. But I know how you feel. It’s up to you.”

  After she’d hung up, Regina dropped her head in her hands. Another image welled up in her mind, this one real, an early memory of thick green grass sending trails into water where the mowers couldn’t reach. In this memory, on the lawn leading from the house to the lake, she is humming to herself, lost in her own world, alone in the heat of summer. Bees drone, birds cheep in shrubbery nearby. She steps on matted grass and her foot slips, lands with a splash in slick, deep mud. She catches herself with her left hand. Water splashes on her face, her fingers sink in silky muck. She’s not afraid. She likes the sun-warmed water. She feels her mother’s presence somewhere behind her, then Mary splashes in next to her, snatches up her wrist, pulls her onto dry ground. Mary looks back at Alice. Why is Mary so upset?

  Regina opened her eyes. The memory was archetypal, vivid because in Regina’s childish mind, Mary was alarmed out of all proportion to the danger. Her adult mind understood completely. Mary hadn’t been afraid that Regina might drown, wasn’t worried that Regina might have been frightened or in danger. Mary was concerned about what tender spot this trivial moment might have touched in their mother, what wound it might reopen.

  She’d asked Mary once, hating the shrill note of self-pity in her own voice, “Why were you worried about her? What about me? I was the one who fell in the lake!”

  Mary’s lips parted in surprise. “I knew you weren’t going to drown.” She reached out to stroke Regina’s hair. “I was watching, Ree. I would not have let you drown.”

  3

  The Suicide’s Ghost

  On the other side of the building, Al MacDonald leaned back in his fake-leather seat, which creaked and dipped alarmingly. The chair was obviously everyone else’s last choice, foisted off on the new guy. He thought about buying his own chair, then decided he would first ask them to buy a new one for him. That would be an interesting test of the water.

  The morning’s revelation sat squarely in the center of his consciousness. He had stumbled across Ree Medina, and she was calling herself Regina Hannon. The more he thought about it, the more completely sure he was that she’d gone by Ree Medina when he knew her in high school. He gave his head a little shake and squeezed his eyes shut, as if clearing blurry vision. Of course her name was Medina. He could picture it on her notebooks, could hear teachers taking roll and calling on her in class. What had she said? That Medina was her sister’s name? Maybe, but it was also hers. Some people called me Ree. What? Everybody called her Ree!

  The window opposite his desk opened onto a lawn at the front of the building. His mind’s eye conjured the grassy view from eleventh-grade homeroom. He was the new guy then too. His parents had bought a house that put them over the county and school district line. He sat in the front row on the first day of school with a hot red face. His pants were too short. He’d resisted shopping for clothes before the school year started and realized too late that he’d grown four inches. The girls behind him tittered, presumably laughing at him. He blew it off and looked out the window.

  Outside, a pretty girl—slender, with downcast eyes and a heart-shaped face—walked alone toward the main entrance. White blouse. Knee-length dark green skirt. Hair like sunlight around her face. Minutes later, she entered the classroom. She glanced around, waved at a few people, and picked the front row. His row. Two more girls came in behind her, so she moved down two seats and sat down next to him.

  He felt her arrival as a sweet puff of fresh-scrubbed scent. She greeted him with a quick smile that stopped his heart mid-beat, then turned her attention to the front of the class as the bell rang. What was the teacher’s name? Tiny, dark-haired woman who teetered on sky-high heels. Cochran. Miss Cochran read names in alphabetical order, checking off those present, double-checking those absent, and when she called Ree Medina, the girl next to him raised her hand.

  So there—she went by Ree Medina in high school.

  Having satisfied himself on that point, Al returned to the present and applied himself to the drainage map of a tobacco field. His problem was to situate a warehouse on limited acreage prone to flooding. It reminded him of carving out campsites between rice paddies in the mountains of Vietnam. He found this kind of problem intriguing, and he was good at it.

  Two hours later, he scooted back in his chair and barely caught himself as it spun on overactive casters and tipped sideways. Should he ask her out for lunch? The idea had been in the back of his mind all morning. Try to talk her into lunch. For a friendly chat about old times. Seeing her again, he was freshly reminded how it had cut him to the heart when she left. He sifted through her words and expressions from that morning, gauging whether she would welcome his attention. And again he wondered how he could have been so unimportant to her that she’d leave without so much as telling him goodbye.

  He allowed himself another excursion into long-dormant memories. That first day in eleventh grade, she’d surprised him at the end of homeroom by asking him about his next class and walking into the hall with him. She smiled and gave him a friendly little wave when he headed for gym and she for French class. She turned up again in English class after lunch, on the other side of the room. No empty seats were near him, but she met his eyes with that same little wave, just a lift of the fingers, and a smile.

  The second day, in homeroom, he paused next to the chair she’d sat in the day before, stalling, warding off possible intruders, until he saw her coming. Then he quickly moved aside so she could take the seat next to him. She rolled her eyes, but in a good-humored way, not so anybody else could see it. Just to let him know she understood what he was doing. Then she laughed. Not laughing at him—a friendly laugh. Yet he knew instinctively that he shouldn’t try to move in too fast. She had a way about her that was both warm and cool. Sweet, accessible—and yet with definite stop signs.

  That the two of them became friends, as they gradually did, was, to him, an amazing gift. She sat with him in homeroom every day and walked out with him, chatting mostly about their classes and what they were studying. She smiled and waved whenever she saw him. He noticed, over time, that she mixed as easily and readily with pretty girls and cool guys as she did with sideliners like himself. At the same time, she kept to herself. No one girl seemed to be her best friend. She didn’t date, as far as he had ever seen or heard. He never saw her in the halls w
ith a guy, unless it was a guy who trailed after her, trying unsuccessfully to get to first base. Yet she was the one who had taken the lead in befriending him. For his part, he felt like looking behind him on both sides. Me? Really?

  Usually she took the bus that served the west side of the county. From the track where he ran laps after school, he could see her lining up and getting on. One day late in October, after a particularly long workout, he spotted her leaving school alone, long after the buses had left. He called to her, and she stopped to wait for him. She’d stayed for Latin club, then stayed beyond that, talking to her teacher.

  “How are you going to get home?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll walk. It’s a nice walk.”

  But the wind from a cold front whipped her hair, and she pulled her light coat around her. He fell in beside her, wishing he’d showered instead of pulling his sweater on over his track suit. The wind turned sweat cold against his back.

  She was carrying too many books, so he offered to put some in his backpack. Handing them over, she dropped one. Emma. He picked it up and spotted in it a sheet of paper he recognized—a list of suggested college prep summer reading. “Are you reading the list?”

  She smiled. “I’ve read most of it.”

  “Me too!”

  They’d reached the first main street, and she was turning left. Home for him would have been to the right, but he walked her way. He’d been dying to talk to somebody about all those books. His brother, aiming at med school, had scoffed at the list, heavy with nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century novels, but Al had found a good many of them on the shelves in his older sister’s bedroom. She’d gone off to college though, so he couldn’t talk to her.

  The sun dashed in and out of clouds, and a sharp breeze scattered leaves in front of their feet. Al preferred Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad to Jane Austen. Ree loved the Bronte sisters and Edith Wharton. They turned off the main street in town and followed a side street that became a narrow country road without sidewalks. Tall Queen Anne’s Lace, heads drying into feathery upturned cups, filled the ditches that lined mown hayfields. Another turn onto a smaller road, where two cars would have passed with difficulty, led them into pine trees planted in straight rows.