Maybe they were throwing sticks into the ocean, and watching Scout
run into the waves. But there wasn’t time to worry: she could hear the sound of Dmitri calling out for her, wanting cereal and then a day of playing in the sand.
The phone rang and she held the receiver a minute before putting
it to her ear. Please, she prayed, don’t do this. Don’t be someone calling to tell me awful news. Be some telemarketer. But who did she really
want it to be? Did she want it to be Leo? She wished there were some
way of knowing where he was and what he was doing. And whether he
was okay. She took a deep breath and put the phone to her ear.
“Is this Evelina?” the voice said.
“It is.”
“This is Denny Gusev.”
“Hi, Denny,” she said. “Is Lewis with you?”
“No,” he said. “He left already. But—something happened.”
“Go on,” she said.
“It’s about Jesse,” he said, “and I think you should know.”
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Jesse
The curtains were drawn in Denny Gusev’s house, but a single ray
of light spilled into the living room, illuminating the mess on
the floor. It was a mountain of women’s clothing and makeup, things
Jesse didn’t know the names of but had seen in his mother’s cosmetic
bag at home. It was a newer house, and the floor didn’t creak when he walked across it. Lewis told Jesse to wait a minute, then disappeared into Denny’s bedroom with Scout. Jesse looked around the dark,
dirty living room. The furniture looked expensive, like something out of a magazine. Everything was grey or white or black. At the centre of the pile of women’s clothes was a big indent, and Jesse wondered if
that was where Scout used to sleep. Dogs loved sleeping on piles of
laundry; he knew that now that he had a dog.
On top of a bookshelf were photos of Denny and the woman
from the lake. Jesse held his breath and closed his eyes. Her ghost was here, ready to drag him down to hell. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into
the dark air. “I’m sorry. Please.” He tried to avoid her but the woman was watching him from the photographs, with a hundred pairs of
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eyes. It seemed to Jesse that photos of her were everywhere—on the
walls, the coffee table, the bookshelf, in the hallway.
“I’m a good person,” he whispered to the photographs. “I promise
you. I’m good. I know I am.” He knelt next to the piles of clothes and cosmetics. “I promise you I am a good person.” He gripped one of her
tubes of lipstick and then one of her shoes and tried to feel her spirit radiating from the objects. “I want you to know that I am good.”
He put down the lipstick and the shoe and walked to the bed-
room, where Denny was sitting up in the bed with his legs straight out in front of him and a folded newspaper on his lap. Scout was on his
back on the bed, his paws curled, his eyes closed tightly in sleep. Lewis sat in a chair by the window, flipping through a stack of unopened
mail. Both Lewis and Denny looked angry, as if they’d been arguing.
Lewis looked up and saw Jesse and put his hand out to Denny, as if to tell him, Stop whatever you’re about to say.
It was stuffy in the bedroom, even though it was the end of
September and the air was cool. A red bathing suit was hanging from
one of the knobs on the chest of drawers, the price tag still on. There were pictures of the woman in here, too, and more mountains of clothes, though on second glance Jesse realized that they belonged to Denny.
Scout flopped over and curled into a snail. Jesse sat on the end of
the bed and ran his hands through the dog’s thick fur. He tried to
think of something else, something that wasn’t the dead woman.
But the bedroom smelled like Scout did, like mildew and old, dead
leaves. Maybe Vera had smelled like this, too.
Jesse could see a small mountain of Scout’s dried poop in the
corner of Denny’s bedroom. It looked like it had been there for a very long time.
Denny was rifling through the newspaper. “Here,” he said, and
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man winced even as he turned the pages of the newspaper. His hands
were so stiff they looked like they were made of clay. Jesse read the funnies quickly, then began folding and unfolding the newspaper.
Denny looked as though he were going to cry. “Have you ever
had a dog before?” he asked.
“No,” said Jesse. “I asked for one every year.” He tore a piece of
newspaper free and folded it over, made a crease.
“What was the holdup?” Denny said.
Jesse smirked. He would use that expression sometime. The
holdup. “Dunno.”
“You have a way with animals,” said Denny. “Anyone can see that.”
“Really?”
“You both do.” Denny nodded at Lewis.
“Who wouldn’t love this dog?” said Lewis.
“People are assholes,” said Denny, then covered his mouth. “Oops.”
“I can handle it,” said Jesse, folding the newspaper again.
“Okay then, pal,” said Lewis.
Jesse folded the newspaper over and over onto itself, then handed
it to Denny.
“What’s this?” said Denny.
“It’s a boat,” said Jesse. “For good luck.”
Denny took the boat and examined it. “I could wear it as a hat,”
he said. He put the newspaper hat on his head and he looked at Jesse.
After a long time, Denny spoke. “You were the last person to see
her alive,” he said. He took the hat off and put it on his lap. “Could you—could you tell me what happened that day? I am trying so hard,
still, to understand.”
Jesse looked at Lewis—would he save him from this moment he
did not want to have? But Lewis was looking at the floor.
Jesse thought of his father. This did not happen. And his mother.
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woman, and now, Denny. He thought of Lewis. He wanted Lewis to
love him. He wanted Lewis to love him so very much. In the presence
of Lewis, Jesse felt he was his true self—an honest, kind, good boy.
But that didn’t matter if he continued to lie. He looked at Scout, who was at the foot of the bed. Scout was staring at him with his big grey-blue eyes. Scout knew what had happened that day. Scout knew. Jesse
felt he could continue to lie to Lewis and even to Denny right now,
but not to Scout.
“Do you think she killed herself?” Denny said.
“No,” said Jesse. “No.” He looked at his hands.
“Jesus, Denny,” said Lewis. He got up from the chair, walked to
Jesse and put his hands softly on his shoulders. “We can go home if
you want.”
“I miss her,” said Denny. “I miss her so much.”
“It’s okay,” Jesse said to Lewis. It wasn’t. It wasn’t okay, nothing was okay, but maybe if he just said a few nice things about Vera, it would all be o
ver and he could go home. “She was a very nice woman,” he
said. Lewis sat back down, and Jesse looked at Denny. “She was very
nice to me.”
Denny closed his eyes and put his hands in the air. Jesse wasn’t
sure what he was doing. What he was reaching for. “I know. Vera was
kind. Yes, she was. Yes. Thank you.”
“We should probably get back,” said Lewis. But Denny shook his
head, his face suddenly annoyed. He turned to Jesse.
“Maybe,” said Denny, “if it’s okay, you could tell me a little more
about your time with her.”
“What do you want to know?” Jesse said. He could feel his blad-
der, full and pressing against his abdomen.
“Anything,” said Denny. “Anything you remember.”
“She thought I was lost,” said Jesse. “She was worried that I was
cold.”
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“Were you?” said Denny.
“I was. I was really cold.” It was true. His bones had ached with
cold.
Denny and Lewis were looking at each other. The silence was
unbearable after a while, and so Jesse continued. “She gave me a ride to look for my dad.”
“And then?” Denny said.
He took a breath. This part he had rehearsed with his mother so
many times. “Scout jumped out of the car.” Jesse hesitated, thinking
it through. The woman had called the police, then Scout had jumped
out of the car. Right? No, not right. “I mean, I opened the door and
Scout jumped out of the car.” Yes, that was it. The reason she dropped the phone. His teeth had started to chatter, even though the room
wasn’t cold. His bladder felt as though it were inflating. What would happen if he ran—ran out of the house and didn’t stop running?
Could he survive, on his own, on the streets? Should he go?
“Okay,” said Denny. “And why didn’t she call Scout back to her?”
“She called for him,” said Jesse. “She did. But he ran into the
woods.”
“And she ran after him?” said Denny.
“She did.”
Jesse tried to picture it, as if it had really happened. He could see her running after the dog in his mind, her jacket streaming out
behind her, Scout’s paws kicking up snow. He closed his eyes for a
minute, seeing it, then opened them again. It wasn’t too much of
a stretch to imagine it—although it had been him she’d been running
after, not the dog.
“And what did you do?” said Denny.
“I stood there, by her car. I waited for my dad.”
“What was Scout running after?” said Denny.
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“I don’t know. A mouse maybe.”
“A mouse?” said Denny.
“A squirrel. I don’t know,” said Jesse. The detectives had not asked
him this. He and his mother had not talked about what kind of ani-
mal Scout was after, or even if it was an animal at all. “I didn’t see what it was.”
“And she ran into the woods, onto the trail? Into the forest?”
Jesse looked at Lewis. He could see that he was failing the test.
Denny and Lewis and Scout were all looking at him, and seeing that
he was a liar.
Lewis had been mostly silent this whole time but now he leaned
forward in his chair, an expression on his face that Jesse had never
seen before. “Try to see it in your mind from the very beginning,”
said Lewis. “Can you describe the parking lot to me? What you
looked at while you waited for your dad?”
There were two parking lots at Squire Point, Jesse knew that
much. He remembered that his father had parked in the first lot.
That was where they always parked. The other lot was for people who
wanted to go camping. They never parked there. “It was the first
one,” he said.
“The first parking lot,” said Lewis.
“Where we always park. It was snowing.” But still the men looked
disappointed in him. The detail he should have been able to provide
was what Scout was running after. That was what he had to invent.
Lewis got up from the chair, sat next to Jesse on the bed, and put a
hand on his shoulder. Jesse felt the heat from Lewis’s hand, the weight of it, the pressure.
“Scout was—Scout was running after—” But he couldn’t think
of anything. A cat? Why would there be a cat in the woods? It was
a good thing he didn’t say it was a cat. A mouse was stupid enough.
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He should have said a fox. A fox or a rabbit. A rabbit—that seemed
more likely. “A rabbit,” he said, but Lewis was already asking him
another question—
“So you stood there until your father came?” said Lewis.
“Yes,” said Jesse. He could feel a kind of exhaustion creeping in
behind his eyes. He wanted to lie down.
“You didn’t move,” said Lewis.
“No.”
“You stayed in the first parking lot, waiting for your dad.”
“Yes.”
He was crying, though the two men didn’t seem to notice. Denny
was staring at him. Jesse thought Denny might open his mouth to
reveal those five hundred teeth. His mouth might open like a great
white whale, and he might eat him.
Lewis turned to face the window. He seemed to be whispering to
himself.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse said to Denny. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Oh,” said Lewis, turning to face Jesse. “Oh no.”
Jesse looked up at Lewis, then realized that Lewis was staring at
his legs. He had peed himself. His pants were growing dark with it.
“This isn’t right,” said Lewis. “Let’s stop this.”
“What do you mean?” said Denny. “We’re only talking.”
“Denny, please,” said Lewis. “This is wrong. The boy is scared to
death.”
“I have waited for such a long time,” said Denny. “Are you my
friend, Lewis?” Denny was saying, “Are you my real—”
“Will you be quiet?” said Lewis. “Be quiet. He doesn’t know any-
thing. It’s over.”
“But it doesn’t make sense to me—my god, it makes no sense at
all—”
“I told you to shut up,” said Lewis, and Jesse winced. He had
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never heard Lewis speak sharply before. He wondered if Lewis had
another side, a violent side, a bad side, and if he would have to be
frightened of him now, too. Maybe all this time Lewis had been trick-
ing him. Maybe Lewis had known all along. And if Lewis knew,
would he kill him now?
But instead Lewis put his arms around Jesse and whispered in his
ear, drowning out the sounds of Denny’s pleading. Lewis whispered
that it was going to be okay, that he loved him, that he was here to
protect him, and that he would take him home.
It had been so cold in the back of his father’s car o
n the long drive back into town from Squire Point, his brother periodically turning to look at him. The sound of his own breath. His chest heaving. Running
his nails over the upholstery, concentrating on the feeling of the fabric, and watching the snow falling in clumps outside the car.
“Jesse,” whispered Lewis. “Jesse. You don’t need to do this any-
more. I’m sorry. It’s okay.” He stood and turned to Denny. “I’m taking him home. I’m taking the boy home.”
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Lewis
“It’s over, it’s over. I’m taking you home,” Lewis said. He searched his patrol car for a tissue but there was only a napkin from his lunch
days ago. Should he stop and get the boy a chocolate bar? What good
would that do? He drove around for a long time, thinking, then pulled up in front of Evelina’s house and walked with his arm around Jesse,
whose shoulders were still heaving. The boy wiped his tears and looked up at him. Lewis unlocked the door, and Scout ran into the house.
He needed to watch over this boy. Children with this much pain
inside of them turned into monsters. Children with this much
pain ended up in jail. They hurt people. They had to hurt someone
as much as they had been hurt.
“You don’t have to lie to your mom,” Lewis said. “I’m the one
who made a mistake. I scared you half to death. I was the one who
was supposed to be in charge.”
Was that the kind of thing a good parent would say? Lewis
couldn’t remember a single time that his own father had apologized
for his behaviour. Lewis was the one who had to apologize; Lewis was
the one who had to make everything okay. He wanted to be a good
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parent to the boy. He wanted to be. Was it okay to reverse the roles
like that? For a parent to apologize to a child? Would the sky rip
open? Would the ground fall out from underneath his feet?
“Hey,” said Lewis. “I’ll tell your mom what happened, all right?
You go on and watch some TV. You’ve been through enough today.”
His heart was pounding and his palms were slick with sweat. Once
Jesse was absorbed in the television, Lewis took the phone from the
kitchen wall and walked with the long cord until he was in the bath-
How a Woman Becomes a Lake (ARC) Page 20
