Lake Overturn

by Vestal McIntyre

  Chuck roughly yanked away the rest of the sheet and pulled Lina back onto the bed. She went to cover herself, but Chuck took her shoulders, turned her toward him, and cupped her face in his hands. “Do you know, Lina,” he said, “that I love every inch of your body, that every part of you thrills me?”

  Lina said, “Stop it. I’m not some kid. You don’ have to say those things to me.”

  “It’s true, Lina. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. I love to see you naked. You’re absolutely beautiful.”

  “You’re lying,” Lina said. But she felt, deeply, that he wasn’t. She could hardly believe it, as fat as she was, but Chuck did adore her completely and without reservation. And she wished she could say the same of herself. She liked Chuck, he was in her thoughts all day long, she might even be coming to love him, but those wisps of hair on the part of his back where wings would attach disgusted her, and there was sometimes an eggy smell about him that turned her stomach.

  When she went to leave that afternoon, a car was pulling into the driveway next door, so Lina waited until it disappeared into the garage. She turned to Chuck, who was standing behind her, and said, “I can’t keep parking in the driveway. Your neighbors know I don’ clean your house this often.”

  Chuck shrugged.

  “Maybe you don’ care, but I do! We’ve got to stop this,” said Lina, feeling tears rise. “We’re breaking the sixth commandment. I’m rushing through my houses to come over here. It’s no good. Mrs. Hood got after me. She could tell I didn’t vacuum.”

  Chuck took her in his arms. His voice was very gentle. “Tell Mrs. Hood to vacuum her house herself.”

  Lina laughed through her tears and swatted his shoulder. “You think it’s funny, but I have to make a living.”

  Chuck hesitated, then said, “I could—”

  “Don’t you dare,” said Lina. “Don’t even say it.”

  Chuck realized that Lina thought he was going to offer her money. This hadn’t occurred to him. Having never been poor, he had no concept of the terror of collection agencies or the humiliation of food stamps. He was barely aware that things like these existed. Poor people, in his mind, simply lived in smaller houses. What he was going to offer was that Lina park in the garage next time. He didn’t correct her, though. Savoring her anger, Chuck held her closer and felt the aching pulse of a returning erection. If he couldn’t be that crass man who would offer her money, he could at least let her believe that he was.

  As Lina cleaned the Sheltons’ house the next day, she thought of her afternoons with Chuck, turning her favorite moments like jewels in the light. When he was on top of her, he liked to take her face in his hands and hold it and stare into her face, unaware of the lost expression on his own. Never had she been treasured like this. Then she admonished herself: It’s so stupid; it’s so wrong. Then she fell back to remembering how sometimes, lost in the pleasure and in her, he’d bite his lip, trying to get it just right.

  Back and forth, it filled her day.

  When she finished the Sheltons’ and went out to her car, there, on the driver’s seat, sat a gift box. She looked around and quickly got in. She drove out of the subdivisions far into the fields and pulled over near an irrigation ditch. A magpie dipped its Popsicle-stick tail to slow its flight, and lit on a cattail where it bobbed back and forth like a metronome. The box was covered with white velvet and tied with a red ribbon—the type of box that could hold expensive jewelry. She untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. Inside was another box, a small plastic one with a circular button on the top, the type of button people in the movies pushed to make something explode. She took out this little box, careful not to touch the button, then realized: it was an automatic garage-door opener. Underneath there was a note that said, “5:30?”

  That week, Father Moore refused to give her penance. “Twice? Again? Lina, you must stop. There is no penance this week. Be strong. Stop doing this.”

  It frightened Lina not to do penance. Wouldn’t the sin sit on her soul? She thought of her father with his bent back and staggering walk—results of having lived his life under the weight of his sin. She did the previous week’s penance over again. Sandra returned. Lina didn’t see Chuck that week, so in her next confession she allowed herself a false sense of virtue. She had very little to report.

  THE BASEMENT OF Murphy Nazarene was wallpapered with a print meant to look like pine paneling. But it was so old that it had turned gray and begun to peel away at the corners. Connie stopped herself from judging. Did she prefer the pastel-painted walls and chrome fixtures of her church? No, it was vanity—she said so to herself every Sunday. The measure of a church was its congregation, not its house, and on this Wednesday evening Murphy Nazarene was full of life. There had been a potluck dinner of lasagna, homemade biscuits, and Jell-O salad, then the kids had been wrangled into their various youth groups. The men were having a special outing at a bowling alley down the road, and the women now occupied the main rec room. The comforting sound of dishes being washed came from the adjoining kitchen as Connie helped Bill set up the slide projector. The women sipped coffee, pinching together the tiny paper wings that served as handles on the disposable cups, as they waited for the presentation to begin.

  Connie trembled a little in the light of all this attention. This group was far larger than the Dorcas Circle. But, then again, First Church in Eula had six or seven different women’s groups to accommodate the varying ages and interests of the congregation. There was the Esther Circle for college-age girls; the Rebecca Circle for young mothers; Pet Outreach, a group of middle-aged women who worked with a youth group, taking pets to nursing homes; and the Knit Wits, a group of seniors who listened to inspirational books-on-tape while doing needlework.

  There was also the divorcées’ support group. This had been formed during a time when Connie had been serving as a deaconess. She had opposed its formation. It was one of the few times she spoke out at a meeting of the board of deacons. In his teachings Christ himself had made strict prohibitions against divorce, she said. It seemed part of the group’s purpose to help these women find new husbands. To Connie this was tantamount to establishing a group within the church whose purpose was to facilitate adultery among its members. The other deacons and deaconesses sat in a silence of anger and guilt. Several of them had been divorced and remarried. It was a sobering speech, but a necessary one, and no one rose to rebut it—no one could have; Connie was too obviously correct. But they had gone ahead and voted the divorcées’ support group into existence, along with a corresponding men’s group, which then never really got off the ground, as it seemed that men either quickly remarried after a divorce or left the church.

  Connie had, she felt, been proved right over the years, as the divorcées’ support group, under the name of Naomi Circle, became a large, energetic group devoted more to gossip than prayer. Members of the circle who were unaware of Connie’s opposition to its existence had invited Connie to their events, and Connie had politely declined. It seemed pathetic for these women to revel in their sin. One year, they arrived at the church picnic, late and en masse, all wearing floral-printed dresses they had bought at the same store. The congregation had erupted into laughter and then applause. “Let the party begin,” said an old man at Connie’s table who had tucked his napkin into his collar, like a child. Connie shuddered. It really was like the arrival of the whores.

  Connie was more than happy to remain the one member of the Dorcas Circle without a husband at home.

  “Thank you, Connie,” said Bill quietly once the projector had been adjusted and an image of the African savanna appeared on the screen. The tiny fan inside the projector whirred and sent a warm air into the faces of Connie and Bill. “I guess you could take a walk or get some coffee if this bores you.”

  “Never,” Connie said. “I’ve been looking forward to hearing you speak again.”

  Bill smiled, turned away, and said, “Thank you for your patience, ladies. If someone could hit the light
s, I’ll get started.”

  Connie made her way to the back of the room and sat in a folding chair against the wall. The metal was cold under her back and bottom. The lady seated in front of her turned, and, with an exaggerated look of concern, mouthed, Can you see?

  Connie smiled, shook her head, and raised her hand slightly. It was a gesture that said not Yes, I can see, but Don’t worry, I’ve seen this before.

  “I thought I’d start with something pretty,” said Bill. “This is the view from the roof of our hospital.”

  “Ahh,” said the women.

  Bill proceeded with his presentation in exactly the way he had the week previous, except that, by necessity, his voice was louder and, perhaps because of this, seemingly more confident. Again, when he reached the slide of himself with the orphan children, it was upside-down. “Oops,” he said. “I’ll have to fix that.”

  The women all laughed.

  After she drove Bill past the moonlit field, Bill mentioning more than once that he was pleased with how the talk had gone, after she dropped him off at the parsonage and he quickly thanked her and bid her good night, Connie went home and took in the two boxes which, they had decided, could remain in the trunk of her car until the next speaking engagement. She reheated a meat loaf and called Gene over from Enrique’s. They ate quietly, both deep in thought. Then Gene went to his room, and Connie opened the box marked number one, took out the carousel, and set it on the kitchen table. She carefully lifted the slides one by one to the light until she found the one of Bill and the children. She turned it right-side up and returned it to its slot. Then she continued through the rest, remembering what he had said about each.

  Connie returned the carousels to their boxes and put them by the door. She heard the amused music of Lina’s voice, as she did several times a night if the TV wasn’t on, but didn’t mind it. This happy noise reminded her that in an emergency she could yell and Lina, and possibly some other neighbors, would come running. Connie returned to the table with the envelope that contained her prayer-chain letter. She had received it the day before but hadn’t yet decided on the wording of her prayer request.

  The prayer chain was made up of fifteen Nazarene women around the country, and the letter—a bundle of fifteen notes written on everything from flowery stationery to recipe cards—made its way from one woman to the next. When you received it, you prayed for the other specific requests, removed your old note from the pile, added a new one, and sent it on. Some women wrote detailed lists—Claire from Reston, Virginia, used the prayer-chain letter almost as a journal of her family, thanking the Lord for her grandkids, praying that her son would find work and her daughter a husband; other women were brief—Susan from Phoenix, who had lupus, wrote the same thing every time: “Pray for healing.”

  Connie took out a small pad, sat back down at the table, and wrote, “Connie in Eula, Idaho, would like the members to pray for the Nazarene hospital in Savanes, Ivory Coast, and she would like to thank the Lord for giving her a small role in its mission.”

  AFTER LESS THAN a week at home, Sandra Hall went back to Salt Lake City for another round of treatments. Chuck and Abby picked up burritos on the way home from the Boise Airport and ate them at the bar in the kitchen. Chuck flipped through the mail, then stopped. “Stanford,” he said. “Big and fat.”

  Abby put down her burrito and took a deep breath before opening the envelope. “Congratulations . . .” she began, then was overwhelmed by tears. There were tears around every corner these days.

  Chuck got up and embraced her from behind. “Call your mom. I’ll clean up.”

  Later, as Abby stared into an open book, unable to focus, there came a knock on her bedroom door. “Abby?” called Chuck. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  Chuck held the handles of a large paper shopping bag in one hand. “I was just going through some things in the basement and—what was the name of that kid you were helping with the science project?”

  “Enrique.”

  “Yes, Enrique,” said Chuck. He sat on the edge of Abby’s bed and put the bag down between his feet. “I don’t need all these things. They’re accessories to the train set—trees, houses, stuff like that. They’ve been sitting down there gathering dust. You said Enrique was building a model of Eula, right? Well, maybe he can use these.”

  “Are you sure, Daddy?” Her father’s train set was his favorite possession. It was worth a lot.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m too old for this stuff anyway. See if he wants it.”

  “Okay.”

  Chuck remained for a moment. “You know I love you, right, sweetheart?”

  Abby nodded.

  “All right, then.” He rose and kissed Abby on top of her head. “I’m off to bed. Good night.”

  “Good night,” said Abby. Chuck walked out into the hallway. “Daddy?” He poked his head back in. “Are you all right?”

  He knew what she meant by this, and he appreciated her concern. “Yes, sweetheart”—Chuck smiled and said this firmly, so she would believe him—“I am okay.”

  “Good night.” When the doctor had his private meeting with Abby three years ago, he had told her to watch for “certain signs,” one of which was the giving away of treasured possessions. He had been careful not to mention what such signs warned of, but Abby knew. Her father must have confessed suicidal thoughts.

  His depression had been less sadness and more a general loosening of his hold. He lost weight and this was evident in his drawn face and in his walk: his feet touched the ground soundlessly as if he barely weighed anything. According to the cliché, happy people “walked on air,” but Abby knew that, in real life, happy people stepped strongly and felt the world under their feet. She remembered leading him into the school gym for parent-teacher conferences when her mother was away. He squeezed her hand so tightly that it hurt, and turned a harrowed look from teachers to students to the basketball court beneath his feet, as if it would drop away, leaving him to float up to the rafters. It had been the most terrifying moment of Abby’s life, to see her father so frightened.

  But Abby wasn’t concerned now. His feet were not lifting again away from the earth. In fact, despite his sadness about her mother, he seemed to be clutching life stronger than ever. And he was giving away only the accessories, not the trains.

  The next morning Abby awoke too early, as she often did, and couldn’t go back to sleep, so she ate a banana and decided to go for a drive before school. She took her father’s bag out to the car and peeked in as she set it into the trunk. Tiny trees in boxes. She lifted one out. The tree trunk was painted in great detail—minute brown and black brushstrokes whorled at a tiny knot—and the leaves were rubbery flecks that seemed to have been sprayed on. She put the box back in the bag and closed the trunk.

  Dawn lit the hazy gray sky pink, and the birds chirped in staccato, as if they, like Abby, were cold. Abby drove out of town, through the wheat and alfalfa fields, where children stood in twos and threes on deserted corners, waiting for the school bus. The closest house that must have been theirs was far away across the field. She passed the last field and entered the rippled landscape that led up toward the Owyhee Mountains. Here the sagebrush never changed color but remained forever the same silvery blue, a shade other plants turned only when they were dead. But while sage would have looked pale next to a plant that grew in a more generous climate, it looked positively lush in comparison to the tumbleweeds that tangled with it and the yellow cheat grass that sprang up between its branches. After a half-hour drive Abby looped back into Eula. The oaks and elms, which until a month ago had been the same earnest green as that tiny model tree, had now turned bold shades of red and yellow. All these extravagant colors had been borrowed from a state far from Idaho.

  That afternoon Abby took the bag to the lunchroom, where all the junior high kids were eating and hollering and doing tricks with straws and milk boxes. Abby spotted the two sitting by themselves: Gene, poor kid, was a weirdo
, but Enrique was like a little chubby-cheeked angel. He leaned forward across the table toward Gene, apparently giving him some sort of instruction. Then he looked up, saw Abby, and beamed. Abby went and sat down at their table.

  “I have a present for you,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “It’s for your model.”

  She slid the bag toward Enrique, and he looked into it. “Neat!” he said, taking out a box of trees. “Can we really use them?”

  “Yeah. They’re yours.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want them back after?”

  “No.”

  “Where’d you get them?” Enrique asked, taking out a boxed silo, then a house.

  “They’re my dad’s. He collects train stuff. But he wanted to get rid of some of it, and I had told him about your project, so . . .”

  Enrique’s face turned, and it seemed to Abby that the fact of the gift had suddenly caught up to him and, seeming like charity, hurt his pride. He put the house, still in its box, on the table, and frowned at it.

  “Anyway . . .” Abby said apologetically.

  Enrique was torn. He had immediately fallen in love with these tiny things—the fact that they could be used in the science project had barely registered—but the idea of accepting a gift from Mr. Hall made his guts freeze. In the weeks since he had come to suspect that Mr. Hall was the one who had kissed his mother, he had grown to hate this man he had never seen, but to whom he had assigned, in his imagination, thick white hair and a carnation in his lapel—Blake Carrington on Dynasty. Now this underhanded tycoon was using his sweet, unsuspecting daughter to send Enrique gifts. Was it a way of moving in on his mother?

  But this stuff was neat. Really neat. It was all Enrique could do not to open the box and lift out the house to see if its front door opened on tiny hinges, as it seemed it might. If Enrique was strong and refused the gift, how would he explain it to Abby? She might be hurt, and to hurt Abby was more than he could bear.