Lake Life

by David James Poissant

  “Not the weekend we were hoping for,” Richard says, and she moves to him.

  She takes his head in her hands and kisses the top of it. She holds his face to her chest. She can be mad at him and love him at the same time. No one stays married thirty-seven years without learning that trick. And she’s no saint. She can be unkind.

  One night, years ago, they reached a disagreement. She wanted a fight, Richard wouldn’t engage, and she locked him out of the house. They’d been budgeting toward retirement, and the numbers weren’t adding up. Turned out, Richard had been sending checks to Michael and Diane. Not small checks, hefty sums. What Lisa called enabling, Richard called love, and they disagreed until she pushed him out the door. He spent half an hour in the rain before she let him in, and he caught pneumonia the next week. Maybe the rain and illness were unrelated. Maybe the pneumonia was her fault. Either way, at his age, he could have died. And if he can forgive her that—

  Richard raises a hand to her waist, and she steps away.

  “Thad’s looking for his comic books,” she says.

  Richard doesn’t say, I told you so. “Don’t,” he’d warned her. “Thad will come looking for those.” Still, cleaning the house, she’d dragged the comic boxes to the curb.

  “I feel like I threw out his childhood,” she says.

  “We can replace them,” Richard says. “There’s a comic shop in Highlands.”

  “I think they were X-Men,” she says. “Didn’t Thad like X-Men?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard says, “I never asked,” which more or less sums up the riches and limits of his parenting. On the one hand, he was not the father attempting to live vicariously through his sons. He never asked too much or raised a bar they couldn’t clear. On the other hand, he didn’t know his sons. He never missed a graduation, and rarely missed a performance or baseball game. But ask him, the next day, which team won, and he could tell you only the equation running through his head while, just beyond the chain-link, his boy hit a home run.

  Lisa joins him on the bed and lets him take her hand. If asked, she’d have trouble explaining the tenderness she feels in this moment for this man. His hair’s gone white and wiry. His eyes are blue. He’s no longer the man she married, but he’s still the man she loves.

  My dear, how much regret do you carry with you in your heart?

  “Something’s going on with Michael and Diane,” Richard says.

  She must make a choice. Her husband is warm beside her. His hand is soft. But she’ll keep her word. She promised Diane.

  “I think they’re just upset about the house,” she says. She doesn’t like to lie to him.

  “Well, that’s not their call. It’s simply not their call.”

  Richard stands, moves to the dresser, and builds a cardboard box. He pulls shoes from the closet floor: a pair for fishing, a pair for town, a pair to mow the lawn. He is a fussy man, exacting and precise. Every day, to work, he wore a bow tie. When Richard saw that Lisa tied it better, straighter, he asked her, each morning, to tie his tie. And she did, for nearly thirty years.

  The tie was the first clue, the tie and the smell.

  Richard lowers the shoes into the box, then spends a minute arranging them, pulling a pair out, squeezing them back in.

  “They want us to keep a house and maintain a property, just for them, when they’re here two weeks a year, at most,” Richard says. “They have no appreciation for what we pay in property taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance. They have no idea how money works.”

  Then stop giving it to them, she wants to say. Maybe they’ll learn. But that’s an argument for another day.

  He grumbles, filling up the box: slippers, hangers, a bathrobe he hasn’t worn in years.

  The lake house isn’t a logical place to retire, he reminds her. It requires too much repair. Even with the house repaired, he’s not sure he can picture wintering here. Lake Christopher, in the off-season, is lonely, desolate, and the mountain roads can quickly turn to ice.

  Still, Lisa finds it vexing, measuring logic beside longing, memory beside saying goodbye.

  Richard paces and packs, speaking authoritatively, but also like he’s trying to convince himself of this decision that she’s made for them.

  “Do you want to keep the house?” she says.

  Richard need only say a few words, and she’d take it all back. Skip the closing, cancel the sale, risk a lawsuit, pay what it takes. The words, though. She needs them to be right.

  “I want what you want,” Richard says.

  What she wants? What she wants is for Richard to go back in time. What she wants is for him not to do the thing he’s done. I want what you want are not the right words.

  Richard wears the face he wears for Spades, inscrutable to the point of infuriating.

  And she wonders if she’s being petty. What if selling the house isn’t about starting over? What if she is punishing him?

  When Lisa tied Richard’s bow ties, she practiced the twisted knot method, that last bend in the fastening that rendered the knot fuller, puffier. It suited Richard’s warbler, her pet name for his Adam’s apple, one more pronounced than most men’s. His voice wasn’t deeper for it, it was just the shape of him, but Richard was self-conscious. He believed bow ties distracted from the feature, and she let him believe it.

  One evening last year, Richard, home from work, walked through the door, and she knew that the knot at his neck was not the knot she’d made. This knot was untwisted, the product of a less-skilled hand.

  “Darling,” she asked, “did your tie come undone?”

  “No,” he said. “You tied it perfectly.” But he didn’t smell right. He didn’t smell like himself. Then he kissed her on the nose and retreated to the shower, though he seldom showered at night, and Lisa knew.

  She said nothing, but watched as Richard returned home, several days a week, his bow tie retied by another hand. There were no emails, voice mail messages, or texts, no wayward love note left in the pocket of a shirt. His cell phone showed no history, which meant he was deleting all records of his calls. But his list of contacts showed a new addition: K. Lisa had only to call the number to hear the voice of the woman welcoming her husband into bed, but she couldn’t bring herself to call. After a few months of this, Richard’s bow ties came home, each night, the way they’d left the house, and when Lisa checked his contacts, K was gone.

  “What do you want?” Richard says. He leans over the open box. Meticulous as he is, he seems not to notice he’s built it upside down, UP arrows pointing to the floor.

  “I want to sell the house,” Lisa says, and stands to help her husband pack his things.

  20.

  Michael finds Diane in the bedroom they’ve shared in this house for as long as they’ve been together. The room is dark. The shades are drawn. But Diane isn’t napping. The bed is made, and she sits at the end of it.

  “I’ve made a decision,” she says, and Michael shuts the door and joins her on the bed.

  He doesn’t have to ask to know what the decision is. He wants to face her, but she’s rarely seen him drink before dinner, and he needs her not to smell the moonshine on his breath.

  Back home, it’s easier. Fifteen ounces a day of vodka will keep his hands from shaking. Pop a few Altoids coming home from work, and she won’t smell the alcohol on his breath. Of course, the worse their finances have gotten, the cheaper the vodka. The cheaper the vodka, the worse his headaches the next day. He’s heard charcoal filtration helps, but it’s hard enough hiding liquor bottles around the house without having to hide a Brita, too.

  “Before you say anything,” he says, but her hand grips his knee.

  “I’m having this baby,” she says. “It’s not up for discussion.”

  Michael rises and moves to the window. Their window doesn’t face the lake. Their view is pine trees and sunlight. His parents’ mailbox is a plastic bass whose mouth opens for the mail, and the road beside the mailbox is empty. This far back on
the bay, the only traffic would be neighbors or the friends of neighbors come for weekend getaways.

  Michael could live here. He thought one day he would.

  “We don’t have to make a decision today,” he says.

  “You’ve said that for weeks,” she says. “I’m tired of waiting. The decision’s made. I love you, but it’s made.”

  His forehead throbs. His bandage needs changing. He needs another drink. “Don’t I have some say in this?”

  “Some say in my body?”

  “Some say in our baby.”

  The room is dangerous with happy memories.

  As teenagers, they spent a lot of time on this bed. She wore his shirts. They were kids, practically. But that was a long time ago, when money was no concern and pregnancy was unthinkable. On a rainy day, they’d sneak back here and make love, and no one knew, or, knowing, no one cared. They’d shower after, and sometimes, in the shower, they’d make love again. It’s been so long since they’ve been together that way, any way at all. Since before news of the pregnancy, certainly. The last time may well have been the conception itself.

  God, how he misses young Michael, young Diane. Time, take him back. Make him young. Let him be eighteen again.

  “We can’t afford a kid,” he says.

  “We can. If you make assistant manager, that’s another two dollars an hour. That’s an extra eighty bucks a week.”

  “I don’t want to talk about work.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “I brought up money.”

  “Work is money, Michael.”

  Diane pulls her feet from the floor and crosses her legs on the bed. The fan creaks overhead.

  “I’m not asking for a divorce,” she says. “I don’t want one, but I’m ready if it comes to that.”

  Beyond the window, the world goes gray. He wants air. He wants to be out of this room.

  “Also,” Diane says, “I told your mom.”

  Then he’s on the bed. He’s at her side. Let her say that to his face. Let her smell the moonshine on his breath.

  “We had a deal!” he says. He’s whispering, but, to his ears, the whisper is a shout.

  “I don’t remember a notary. I don’t remember any dotted line.”

  “I don’t want my mom involved in our decision.”

  “My decision.”

  He can’t stand it. Who is this woman before him? What happened to the girl in the shirts too big for her, caressing him, promising to love him for all time?

  “I didn’t plan to tell her,” Diane says. “I meant to comfort her, and it slipped out.”

  “How is that a comfort? How is that anyone’s business but our own? Yesterday a child died. I get it. I was there. More than anybody, I was there. We’re all grieving. But—”

  “She lost a child too,” Diane says, a look on her face that says she’s said too much.

  The room pulses. For a moment Michael can’t hear, sound suspended, then muffled, then roaring back, the bedroom big, then small, then big again.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t mine to say.”

  He never knows he’s been grinding his teeth until they hurt. He unclenches, rubs his jaw.

  “I would have had a…”

  “Sister.” Diane takes his hand, but he doesn’t want her touch, and he lets go.

  “Why would you tell me that?” he asks. “Why would she tell you?” Thirty-three years he’s lived without this loss. Why now?

  “I’m sorry,” Diane says.

  “Please don’t tell Thad.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I don’t know. You had no trouble telling me.”

  “Don’t be mean,” Diane says.

  Kitchen sounds. The dinner hour has arrived.

  “Was there a name picked out?” he asks.

  “Her name was June.”

  “How far along was she?” he asks. “When she lost the baby, how far along was my mom?”

  “Oh,” Diane says. “Oh, Michael, I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. The baby was born. She was a month old.”

  The bedroom is a heart, beating. He feels Diane’s hands on him, but her touch, it drains him. Her very nearness leaves him cold. He needs a drink, needs to be out the door. He can’t get away from her fast enough.

  21.

  The table is set, air thick with the delicious stink of chicken soup.

  Jake tried vegetarianism once, but found he ate healthier as a carnivore. Short of meat, he stuffed his face with chips and fries. Sure, there are alternatives, proteins minus slaughter and blood. But slaughter and blood taste best. Screw tofu. Screw nuts and beans. Give him chicken any day. Deliver unto him a xylophone of beef with smoke-kissed ribs.

  Lisa stirs the soup. “It’s a throw-together,” she says. “I hope that’s okay.” She unclips a cellophane bag and removes a stack of thin red bowls. “It kills me, using this stuff. But don’t worry. I’ll rinse these and bring them back to Ithaca. They have a plastics plant that takes number six recyclables.”

  Jake wasn’t worried. Recycling isn’t the kind of thing he gives much thought. The planet has, what, thirty good years left? How big the landfills get, in the meantime, seems beside the point.

  “I’m sorry the week’s turned out this way,” Lisa says, and Jake joins her at the stove. In a wide, cast-iron pot, last night’s chicken bobs in stock. Lisa salts and stirs. There are carrots in the soup, celery and noodles, little leaves.

  He and Thad don’t cook. For dinner, there’s the good Thai place and the bad Thai place. There’s the Korean barbecue taco truck. There’s pizza and ramen. So much pizza and ramen.

  Eight years since he sat in his mother’s kitchen. Eight years since he drank her tea or sipped her chicken soup. Eight years since Arizona. He left the facility early—he was eighteen, no one could make him stay—and he did not go home. He couldn’t be near the people who had sent him there. Never mind that his mother thought she was helping. Never mind that she lived under the crush of her husband’s thumb. She was his mother. She should have protected him from Arizona, from his father, from all bad things. She should have loved him, no exceptions, no matter what.

  Eight years since he’s spoken to his parents. If they know he’s a painter in New York, they have not reached out. He will not reach out to them, will not give them the chance to prove their love conditional again.

  Jake holds the bowls, and Lisa ladles. Richard moves to the table, then Michael. They sit, men ready to be fed, men used to being served. Thad wouldn’t sit. Thad, were he here, would help his mother, but Thad is in the bedroom, sulking.

  “Dinner,” Lisa calls, but still no sign of Thad or, come to think of it, Diane.

  The table is set with waters, and Michael makes a trip to the freezer. When he returns, a tumbler sweats beside his bowl. He’s an alcoholic. Jake’s 90 percent sure. He doesn’t know whether to be sad or amused that no one in the family seems to have picked up on this. How Michael downs moonshine at every meal. How, away from the table, his hand is a fist around a travel mug. Could be everyone knows and says nothing, the way Jake suspects his parents knew who he was long before they let on. But whether the Starlings suspect Michael, whether they don’t know, whether they know and hope for the best, they have certainly been good to Jake. They can be intense—Michael’s outbursts, Richard’s stoicism, Lisa’s earnestness—all that unrestrained, unasked-for love. But as found families go, he could do worse.

  Jake and Lisa sit. Jake sips his soup.

  “It’s wonderful,” he says.

  Michael and Richard sip, saying nothing, the son looking so much like the father, it gives Jake pause. He could paint them. These men, side by side. Still life with soup. A little American Gothic. A little Munch. But it’s been done. Everything good has been done before.

  A door opens, and Diane joins them. She’s been crying, anyone can see. But then, maybe they all have, given what they witnessed yesterday.

  For Jake, what lingers is the si
ster on the boat, screaming, pointing at the empty water wings, at the lake that swallowed her brother whole. The screaming never stopped. Not after Michael surfaced, blind with blood. Not once the police arrived. Not even when Jake stood, hours later, in the shower, ears filling up with water that would not wash away the sound of that girl’s voice. Not until he turned the shower radio on and let the music in. Not until he took himself in his hand and made himself relax. He’s not a monster. He’s had a sad life. And he knows what to do when the sadness gets to be too much.

  Diane sits between Michael and Lisa, and Lisa places a hand on her shoulder. It stays there, which seems to comfort Diane, though no one’s talking. Michael drinks. He won’t look at his mother. He won’t look at his wife. Something’s up.

  Finally, Thad emerges from the bedroom. His hair is combed. His shirt is changed. He really is sweet-looking, the kind of eyes that grab you, a face that, seeing it, you want to kiss. He’s no Marco. He’s the boy next door, the sensible choice. Which is boring, or else lovely, depending on your mood.

  “Sorry,” Thad says. “I was reading the news.”

  Lisa’s hand leaves Diane’s shoulder.

  “I don’t want to know,” Lisa says. “I don’t want to know what that maniac is up to.” Thad tries to speak, but his mother cuts him off. “This house is a place of peace. This food is a dinner that I made. That man gets enough of our attention. He’s not welcome here. Not this week. Not at my table. Not in my home.”

  “It’s not your home,” Michael says.

  “For one more week it is.”

  If Michael wanted everyone’s attention, he has it now. He stands, grips the table, and gently pushes off. He’s drunk. He hardly lets it show, but Jake doesn’t miss much. Michael pours himself another drink and sits.