by Sidney Hart
I went to the lake knowing I would not sleep that night, maybe never sleep again. There was no other place to go and be left alone. Surely I could not return to my room, not there with Harlan who would deny that he was in the car, deny that Sarah would ever be with him, deny, deny, deny. I walked onto the dock and stared down into the lake. The water was very still, I remember, as if poised to receive my body. A numbness shut out the cold of the late August night. Did I want to die? Did I want to be found dead in the bulrushes along the opposite shore where the stray tennis balls washed aground? Did I want to give up my life before it had even begun?
“What are you staring at?” The voice was deep and patient. “Do you think there is peace there in the water? Do you?” I looked at the man. It was Abe but an Abe I had never seen before. He seemed taller, straighter, more dignified. “Come with me, come away from the water. Come on,” he gestured, beckoning me to approach him. He was so different from the man I thought I knew it made me wonder if the entire night was some kind of bizarre hallucination, a lapse into madness. “Don’t talk, it’s all right. I know why you are standing on the edge. Come away from there, come with me and sit down over here,” he said, motioning to the lawn chairs on the grass, “I will tell you a story that maybe can help you with your disappointment,” he said softly.
“Disappointment? DISAPPOINTMENT!!!?? You do not have the words for what I’m feeling. Don’t think you can just…”
“Enough! Don’t speak to me in that tone. Listen to me, don’t be so arrogant.” His voice was firm and authoritative again the way he had sounded when he’d first called out to me. “I told you that Harlan was missing something and now it is clear how much he is missing. He is missing loyalty, he is missing compassion and, worst of all, he is missing a conscience. A man with a conscience could not do what he has done to you and to everyone that he charms. I have known men like him, cunning men. They are jackals. I know because I have been betrayed just like you.” A cascade of questions threatened to pour from my mouth but I knew there was nothing for me to do but listen. What was occurring was remarkable, a singular event that had to be respected. Abe was going to reveal his secret to me.
“Some young men can be very vulnerable, Melvin, always on the lookout for new fathers, new heroes to mold themselves after. They may not even know it themselves but it is a function of their youth. Harlan knows that and recognizing it in you he despised you for it, yes, despised you, don’t look so surprised it is the truth. He saw you as weak and he detested you for that. He respects Ron. He knows Ron is strong and independent. He also knows that Ron recognizes what he is so he woos you with false confusion about Ron’s mistrust and dislike. He reeled you in like a perch from the lake and you practically jumped into his net, eager to be in his company, eager to learn.” I must have grimaced because, though I didn’t attempt to speak, Abe raised his hand as if to stop me. “Shush, shush, let me talk. Maybe it will help you. Then you can have your turn.” We settled into the dampness of the lawn chairs and sat side by side while Abe continued. “It was so many years ago and yet there are days when it feels as fresh as right now. It involved a woman and a friend, just like you, it’s an old story, happens all the time, but when it is your story, well … I don’t have to tell you. I don’t even know if you can hear me right now. My ears were ringing for weeks after she … after it happened.”
“I hear you, Abe.”
“Maybe I should just talk about the best way to handle this. What happened to me happened to me. It was different. Similar but different. It was someone I trusted who took advantage. And the woman, the girl … ” His voice trailed off. “How do you separate the lovers? How do you assign blame? When it happened to me I was furious with my friend because I thought he had seduced Es … seduced her. I never considered that she was as eager for excitement as he was. I was foolish. You’ve been around here, you see how some of the women are, they’re not all so innocent as you’d like to think.” He stroked his face with a cupped hand. “Excuse me, that was unnecessary. But you do need to think that maybe Sarah was just as interested as Harlan, that’s all.” He had been disrupted by his musings and rose from the chair to stare out over the lake. He seemed in the process of forming himself, accreting substance and taking on a new shape. Until that moment to me he had seemed little more than an apostrophe, a presence indicating an absence. It was what was missing that had engaged me and Ron and the others and now he was revealing the pain whose existence we had only imagined, and then not kindly.
“I think Sarah was probably your first love. She will always be that for you, Melvin, no one can take that from you. Even though she breaks your heart she is the lover you will never forget and the one who will make you smile when she appears in your thoughts. But for that to happen you must find it in yourself to forgive her. If you don’t, you could end up like me.” This was said without ruefulness or irony and it was achingly poignant.
“Forgive her? I don’t understand what you’re talking about, I don’t know how to do that. I can’t do that. I can’t.”
“You can’t do that tonight, I know that, I wasn’t expecting you to just do it. This will take time, I understand, but I wanted to plant the seed of the idea. Time is a friend in these circumstances. My doctor, Dr. Rosensteil, always talks about ‘a tincture of time’ as part of his treatment. I …”
“Abe, please don’t talk anymore.” He had ceased to be transfigured and abruptly, mysteriously, had reverted to his usual dull, gloomy banal self. Whatever spirit had induced the transfiguring process making him seem like a noble sage had vanished, evaporated as quickly as the steamy breath of the lovers.
“I need to be left alone now, I need to think.”
“Well, as long as you don’t do anything foolish …”
“I’m not going to kill myself if that’s what you mean. I’m not going to kill anyone. I just need to be left alone for a while. Please.”
Abe looked at me with large sad eyes and shook his head no. “I can’t leave you alone, that’s all there is to say. I won’t talk anymore but I won’t leave you alone with yourself, that would be wrong.” He folded his arms across his chest and waited for me to react. “Right now I’m about as upset as I have ever been in my life. You can’t do anything but make me more upset. Just get away from me, you hear me? Get the hell away.” I turned and walked quickly towards the path to the highway resisting the urge to look to see if he was following. I broke into a trot to keep my eyes straight ahead and fled from him. He called out to me but the slap of my soles on the tarmac road laid a noisy cover over his words and, finally, he gave up.
It was very late and when I reached the state road there were no cars to be seen. A barrier of three rows of heavy metal cable lined the shoulder at the far side of the highway and I crossed over to perch on it. The image of Sarah waving her cigarette at Harlan seized me as soon as I sat on the cables and my spirit felt as though it had been bludgeoned. Rage, jealousy, disbelief, and despair swirled over me like a swollen river that had jumped its banks. It was unbelievable, what else was there to say, unbelievable that they could be lovers. And Abe said I must forgive them if I am to get over this. He must be crazy. People commit murder over things like this, they cross continents to hunt down the lovers and repay them for the pain they’ve inflicted. But I knew I would never kill either one of them, would not even harm them, didn’t have it in me to do harm to anyone.
I was glad to be alone. I could cry and then be silent, then cry again and not have to answer to any witnesses. It was very late but still no light in the eastern sky so there were a few hours of sleep before the morning wake-up call, the sleep of others. A car came speeding down the highway heading towards town and as it passed someone yelled “Jew asshole” out the driver’s side window. “Townie prick!” I yelled back, but he was already gone around a curve. Maybe I could do harm to him, I mused, as I entered the hotel’s property and walked towards the recreation hall. There was no one else around. The staff and the guests
were all in bed asleep. The thought of tomorrow’s ordinary routine was slowly beginning to numb the pain but then the realization that I’d have to confront Harlan in the morning revived everything. The wound was still too fresh. I wanted Harlan to be asleep before I returned to my room so I went to sit on the steps of the canteen for a while. I had barely sat down when someone screamed. At first it sounded to me like a child having a nightmare but then there was another scream and it clearly was the sound of a woman’s cry from somewhere outside, not from a building. I stood up to hear her better if she screamed again and scanned the area around me but saw nothing. Then, like the echo of my own eruption, there was a loud “NOOOO” coming from the area of the tree-lined entrance driveway. I looked around for a tree branch or a large stone but seeing neither broke into a run in the direction of the screams. The lawn was soaked with dew and it was slippery but I hugged the tree line and raced towards what were now the muffled sobs of the woman. As the front gates came into view I stumbled on what seemed to be the exposed root of a tree but when I looked down there was a softball bat that had been dropped there. Lifting it, feeling its heft, gave me confidence I was well armed. There was a car parked just outside the gates and two men were struggling with a girl. One man stood behind her with a hand forced over her mouth while his other arm grasped her across the shoulders from below the chin. The other man was trying to lift her legs off the ground but she kept kicking furiously and he was cursing her and punching at her calves and thighs. Staying hidden in the line of trees I stole up behind the one whose back was to me and then leapt out and swatted him on the head with the bat. He dropped his grip on the girl and fell to his knees. Without an instant of hesitation I pulled the bat back as if to take a full swing but the sane and sober part of me realized that could be lethal and I choked up before bringing the bat around. It met his head just where the ear reaches for the temple and he quickly collapsed. His friend, initially stunned by the noise of the first blow, stopped grabbing at the girl’s legs and was just about to lunge at me. That was when time itself seemed to pause and things began to happen in slow motion. There was no sound, no fear, no thoughts. It was Johnny now lunging at me over the fallen body of the girl, the Johnny that Ron had beaten outside Freddie’s bar. Now my implement was no longer a bat but a ramrod, something to be thrust not swung. As Johnny leapt, his arms extended to grab me, I pushed the tip of the bat into his Adam’s apple and pressed hard. Choking, he fell to the ground and then began coughing. Dispassionately and methodically I stepped beside him and swatted him in the head with the meat end of the bat. Both men lay unconscious in the hotel driveway. It was time to get away from this place quickly. As I knelt down beside the whimpering Sarah I said, “Are you okay?”
She rose slowly averting her eyes and ignoring the hand I had extended to assist her. Once on her feet she staggered for a few steps before getting her balance. She’d burst into tears, gain control, then start to cry again. I stood in place and waited until she was composed. My own state was too tumultuous to trust.
“We ought to be getting out of here before they wake up. Are you okay?”
“I’m all right, just a little shook up. Thank you,” she said, looking at me for the first time.
“I did what I had to.” There was so much else to be said but I didn’t know how to begin. We stared at each other uncomfortably but relieved to be safe.
“C’mon, let’s go,” I said turning back towards the hotel.
“You must hate me.”
“I do not hate you, let’s just get out of here I’ll walk you back to your room.”
We walked down the main driveway in tandem, she leading the way. Her shoulders were slumped and her feet searched the ground with small, tentative steps. Without either hate or love in my heart I watched the twitch of her buttocks, then wondered where Harlan’s hands had been on and in her body feeling suddenly enraged. Sarah stopped, as though she’d sensed my change, and turned to me.
“I heard you scream, the ‘no’ you let out. I walked right past you in the parking lot but your face was hidden in your hands.” She embraced her shoulders with her hands trying to shut out the cold. “I didn’t feel I was being bad until I saw you, crumpled up like you were broken. I know I’ve been bad in so many ways.” She shuddered. “I’ve lied to you, I’ve cheated on you, I don’t know why you’re even listening to me. I thought I was so cool, above it all, not doing anything to hurt you, just having some secret fun on the side, what you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you and if Harlan took advantage of you, well, I’d warned you. Then, when I saw you tonight, I realized what I had done and there’s probably no undoing that damage. I walked around the grounds of the hotel trying to think of what I’d say to you. Harlan said, ‘deny it was you’ when we parted but I’m not that good a liar, Mel, and I don’t want to hurt you anymore than I already have. I was deciding whether to look for you when those two goons grabbed me and started pawing at me and trying to drag me off into their car. Thank God you came when you did.”
“It was your scream.”
“God, I hoped somebody would hear that. Then one of them slapped his hand over my mouth and I bit his fingers. I managed to scream once more and then he had me from behind and I couldn’t move anything but my legs and the other guy kept grabbing at them, and …” She was agitated, crying and speaking rapidly, trying to purge herself of the terror she had felt by telling me as many of the details of her story as she could remember. “I hoped you would be around. I hoped you weren’t so angry that you’d leave me to them. I knew you’d recognize my voice, I knew it.” I had recognized her dread and fear and helplessness, but not her voice. Had I been like Harlan I would have smiled modestly accepting her description and attendant gratitude and, perhaps, sought to extract sexual compensation, but I was not like him. Still reeling from the night’s events I said nothing. Let her think what she likes, I mused, it’s not my responsibility. We arrived at her cabin in silence a short time later and she paused at the entrance.
“Mel, I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. I never meant to hurt you, I care deeply for you, I … I’m in love with you. I didn’t know that until tonight but now I know, I love you. Please forgive me.”
Again the tears, the convulsive sobbing, the imploring looks and beseeching hands. And I? Once again I was numb. What I had wished and waited for from her was now being offered and it had no more effect upon me than the casual glance of a stranger.
“It’s late, you’re safe now, go inside.”
“Don’t go, Mel, please don’t go.”
“Shhh, you’ll wake everybody up. It’s okay, you’ll be fine,” I droned in a monotone. “Go in.”
She was still crying when she turned away and left me. I was stunned, there is no other way to describe my state at that moment. Any one of the events of that night would have been sufficient to provoke a turmoil of emotions but to have experienced betrayal, revelation upon revelation, violence, and a declaration of love, the so wished for declaration of love, one after the other, torrentially, demanded an intense numbing to endure such a flood. At first I thought I should not return to my room for the remaining hours of the night. Facing Harlan in such a state would be a mistake. He would read it immediately and mold it to his own purposes. As furious as I was I knew if I was to come away with any sense of pride I would have to have control of myself when the confrontation occurred. In the past, bristling with outrage and righteous indignation, I could dissolve into tears too easily when my argument was dismissed with the dispassionate, impersonal reason of my opponent. For me, all arguments were personal and the one to come with Harlan couldn’t be more personal. And it would come very soon.
6.
If you’ve had your heart broken then you know it is a long time your pain will be with you unrelieved. You take the pieces of your shattered story and fit them together over and over again like a jigsaw puzzle hoping each time to form a new image. You want the picture to be different than the one on the cover of the puzzl
e box but the pieces give you only the same sadness that you know: you’ve lost your love; it’s over. Just then, still in the grip of the shock, I did not attempt reconfiguring events in search of a prettier picture. It was too soon for that. It did not, however, require much mulling over to see Harlan as others had perceived him from the start. Smooth glided easily into slick, charming into manipulative, instructive into destructive.
But Sarah, what was I to make of her? Had I given it any thought at all in the beginning of course I would have realized it was likely a Hank was lurking somewhere at the periphery. Such a pretty girl would not be without an attachment. There was Ron right under my nose with a Vivian in the remote reaches of the Catskills but a Martha on site. Was I no more to Sarah than what Martha was to Ron? Was I her summer accommodation? And Harlan. Was all of her criticism, suspicion and distrust just a means to keep their relationship hidden and protected, a way to avoid revealing to me the depth of their passion, a passion she did not feel for me? Was her picking a fight about him tonight a way for her to spend more time with him? The curdling feelings of humiliation were sickening. I looked up at the sky. Soon it would be dawn. There was work waiting to be done, kitchen work and personal work. I walked around the main building trying to calm myself, trying to imagine the argument with Harlan and what to say to him. After a while it was clear there was nothing to be gained by postponing my meeting with Harlan. I knew what had to be said and what I had to do. I knew it was time. I was ready.
When I returned to our room Harlan was lying on his cot and smoking. He must have been waiting for me because it was not his usual practice to just lie around smoking in the early morning hours. Late as it was Ron was still out. Stripping off my sweater I said “Hi,” affecting a calm demeanor while fulminating inside.
“Did you and Sarah have a good time tonight?” he asked in a matter of fact way.
