Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  It was not a lie. There would be a right time to tell her about the job.

  “I’m so glad Lisa could come.”

  “She wouldn’t have missed it,” he said, and realized how false it sounded. “The paint looks good.”

  “Of course. Now that we’ve sold the place, it looks great.”

  Lise came by with the flowers in one hand and a duffel in the other, his camera bag over her shoulder. His mother accepted the bouquet, protesting, just touching one arm, as if tagging her back. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  “Don’t be silly, Emily,” she said, and headed for the door.

  Sam struggled out of a hug from Grandma, while Ella, acting grown up, lingered over hers, consoling his mother, patting her back. They were both all long bones, and their glasses nearly matched. While he and Lise always commented on how much of his mother was in Ella—the moodiness, the love of books—in person the resemblance was almost comical, two sisters separated by sixty years.

  Arlene gave him a lipsticked kiss on the cheek, smelling of cigarettes. She leaned in close, conspiratorial.

  “I don’t know if your mother told you, but we’re shooting for a moratorium on video games this year.”

  “Lise already read them the riot act.”

  “How’d they take it?”

  “Ella was fine with it, as you’d expect. Sam, well …”

  “I don’t think it’ll be a problem, as long as it doesn’t rain.”

  “What’s the weather supposed to be like?” he asked, but no one knew.

  They said hello to Rufus too, Ella kneeling beside him, enveloping him in a hug. He lay in the shade of the chestnut as they unloaded their tennis rackets and sleeping bags, Sam’s backpack full of Star Wars Legos and Pokémon cards, Ella’s crammed with bottles of nail polish and library books. Merck had occasionally sent Ken to their plant in Baltimore, and he’d learned how to fit a week into one carry-on. At some point his children would have to learn to make choices, to sacrifice. He feared, in the future, some crippling repercussions from these early indulgences, and thought that was due to his own childhood being for the most part idyllic, the hard facts of life reaching him only in his mid-twenties, as if until then he’d been swathed in a cocoon of his parents’ making, composed of equal parts love and money.

  Bringing the bags through the living room, he wanted to stop to look at the familiar sailing pictures on the walls, the ugly orange shag rug, the mobile of Spanish galleons that poked you in the eye. It was like entering a party full of good friends, and the memories each piece of furniture, each object on the mantelpiece stirred up as he passed orbited like overheard conversations. He would have time later, he thought, and envisioned documenting it all with the Holga.

  He lugged the bags upstairs where they would be sleeping, in the one long room under the peak of the roof. This floor was also shag-carpeted but in red, white and blue, the dresser drawers and brick chimney where it came through painted to match the bicentennial scheme. The walls were an old sort of pressboard, sky blue, soft as cork and flaking along the seams. He could see the ghosts of his father’s hammer blows around the nails. The past was as thick as the air up here—games of spin the bottle and post office, Meg blowing her cigarette smoke out the window, drinking illicit beers while their parents entertained the Lerners and Wisemans on the screenporch. There in front of the mirror on the low wardrobe was the 7UP bottle with the taffy-twisted neck his father won for him at the carnival in Mayville, and there on the cedar chest between the beds, the ashtray he made at camp, beating the square of metal until it took on the shape of the leaf at the bottom of the mold. The TV that hadn’t worked in twenty years, the fire truck he’d had as a boy that Ella cut her chin on when she was three. The room was so full of history he had to fend it off, concentrate on getting the kids settled. There would be time—and light, he hoped. He hadn’t brought his strobes.

  “Can you put the fan on?” Lise called from the bathroom, and he found the switch. The fan was built into the wall at the top of the stairs; it did nothing but make noise, even when he opened the two windows at the far end. The air smelled moldy and faintly, sweetly fecal from the generations of bats that had lived in the walls. At night you could hear them bumping and squeaking, and for a long time Sam had refused to sleep up here. He was still scared of them, but there was no graceful way out now without Ella calling him a baby.

  “Can we go down to the dock?” Ella asked. Sam stood right beside her, her client.

  “After you put your clothes away. Neatly.”

  “And help make the beds,” Lise called.

  “They’re already made,” Ella said.

  “We have to strip off the old sheets and put on new ones.”

  Ella sighed.

  “And no sighing.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Ella said, going along with the joke, but a minute later, trying to fit a contour sheet on, she almost burst into tears. “This stupid sheet won’t go on.”

  Lise came out of the bathroom and looked at the problem. “That’s because it’s a double.”

  “How am I supposed to know that?”

  “It’s nothing to cry about, “Lise said. “Here, this one’s queen-size, it should work.”

  Sam was done shoving his clothes into the dresser and stood there watching them.

  “Ken,” Lise said, “help him with the other one,” and he stopped filling the medicine cabinet with their toiletries.

  When they were done, Lise sent the children off to the dock and took over putting their clothes away.

  “I swear, everything’s a crisis with her. And it’s only going to get worse.”

  “I don’t think she’s so terrible.”

  “Just wait,” she said, but halfheartedly. They both knew they were lucky with Ella. Sam was the tough one, always would be. Boys were supposed to be easy, but that hadn’t been the case with him.

  The room was dim. Outside, the golden hour was starting, the light beginning to sweeten. Lise pulled her book from her beach bag, one of the kids’ Harry Potters. He unpacked his camera bag, the little he had. He would wait till tomorrow, slip out early and see if he could find something plain to start on. She stretched out on the bed and set her bookmark on the cedar chest.

  “Just a few pages,” she promised. “It’s getting good.”

  He laid a hand on the small of her back and bent down awkwardly to kiss her. “I’ll be downstairs.”

  His mother and Arlene were on the screenporch, reading the Jamestown paper and watching the lake. The Steelers had crushed the Bills. He hadn’t even known they were playing, and suddenly fall seemed that much closer. Arlene said the chance of rain tomorrow was thirty percent. His mother was worried about Meg.

  “It’s six o’clock,” she said. “Don’t you think we ought to get dinner started? I imagine these kids are hungry.”

  “There’s no rush,” Ken said.

  “Well I’m going to need something to eat soon.”

  “What are we having?”

  “We were planning on hamburgers, if you can manage the grill.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, and went out to the garage, the screen slapping shut behind him. He was almost to the door when he slipped on one of the flat stones and fell hard on his bottom. “Son of a bitch,” he said, checking his wrist. The edge of one stone had gouged out a pale twist of skin but there was no blood. They were always slick; it had something to do with moss and condensation, the fact that the chestnut kept them in shadow most of the day. He was pissed that they’d tricked him again.

  He was still shaking his head at his own stupidity when he opened the garage door and saw the shot. The whole garage was stuffed with his father’s junk, and everywhere he looked he saw interesting collisions. He stopped automatically, wanting to run upstairs for the Nikon. The light was wrong, too soft to get the detail he wanted—the extension cord coiled in the enamel basin like some Far Eastern delicacy, the child’s life jacket protecting the jug of wiper
fluid. But this was exactly the problem, according to Morgan: he had to stop building his shots.

  Tomorrow he’d bring just the Holga, leave the details to chance. He turned from the messy workbench and found the shallow grill and a bag of charcoal and dragged both out under the chestnut.

  They had an old electric charcoal starter, a loop of wire the size of a spatula on a black plastic handle. He plugged it into an extension cord running from the strip of outlets on his father’s workbench and piled the charcoal on top of it. While he waited for the wire to warm, he took an Iron City from the little fridge in the garage and stood there sipping and looking out at Sam and Ella on the dock, Rufus tucked between them. He wondered if they were happy, and thought at least they were happy to be out of the car, away from their parents. He could not help but see them as himself and Meg, sitting there thirty years ago, but what he and Meg would have discussed at that point—she thirteen and ready to leave, he so far behind at nine, snug in his own private world—he could not recall. The water made everything seem possible, as if they could cross it and begin a different life on the other side, shed the past and be those other people they’d dreamed of. Perhaps that was why his work was so dull: his desires had become practical when they needed to be extravagant.

  He tipped the bottle and checked the starter, glowing away under the coals, just beginning to smoke. Another five minutes. The Lerners’ was for sale, and as he was wondering what they were asking, the balance from the ATM came back and stung him, hovered and flitted off again. He would not be done with it until he looked at their checkbook. He took another sip and realized the beer was already working on him, and he remembered his father doing this, standing out here by himself, tumbler in hand. When it rained, he’d set up directly under the chestnut and the smoke would filter up through the leaves. Before his father, his grandfather Maxwell was in charge of the barbecue. Now it was his turn.

  The last sip was mostly air. He flipped the bottle and caught it in his palm like a gunfighter and went to get another. The interior of the little fridge impressed him in its simplicity, the beers he’d bought last year still vigilant, ranked shoulder to shoulder, the freezer compartment clogged with frost. He could see what the print would look like (another thing Morgan warned him against) and shut the door. All he’d had to eat today was an egg-salad sandwich around Albany; he’d have to be careful with these beers. The last time he was drunk he’d gone all maudlin on Lise, thanking her for sticking with him. It had made them both feel pathetic the next day.

  “How are the coals coming along?” Arlene called from the kitchen door.

  The top of the pyramid was on fire, the centers of the briquets dark. They always took longer than you thought.

  “Five, ten minutes.”

  “Is everyone going to want cheese on theirs?”

  “Everyone but Sam.”

  He unplugged the starter, leveled the coals with the glowing wire, then set it on the concrete apron by the garage. Rufus was smart enough to stay away from it, but he kept checking to make sure it didn’t catch anything on fire.

  The lake had gone calm, flags limp at the end of the docks. The sun hung just above the treetops, throwing shadows. In the field across the road, a family of rabbits was out, feeding under the apple trees. They stayed close to the bushy edge of the field, brown balls in the dark light, cheeks working as they nibbled the grass. He counted five, one just a baby. This was what he would miss after the cottage was gone, these slow moments.

  He decided he shouldn’t have had that second beer.

  He held a hand over the coals, mostly gray now, then set the circular rack on its post.

  Lise was in the kitchen, helping Arlene, who had spilled a potful of snap beans on the floor. Lise gave him a goofy look as he swung through. He warned her with a straight face, and she let him know he was being no fun.

  “Are those coals ready yet?” Arlene asked.

  The burgers were waiting on a plate. He grabbed a spatula and took them out and slid them on, watching the fat drizzle and flare up. Sam and Ella had come in from the dock and installed themselves on the screenporch. From around the corner he could hear his mother asking them questions. Lise and Arlene were working on the salad. He flipped the burgers, nearly dropping one through, saving it with his hand, wiping his greasy fingers on the grass. The burgers were thick and would take a long time, and he wondered where Meg was, not at all surprised that she was late. They would talk tonight, long after his mother and, grudgingly, Lise had gone to bed, and she would tell him about Jeff and exactly what happened. He hoped so. While it never played out that way, he always thought that together they could solve any problem by talking, the way they’d joined forces as kids, the two of them against the world.

  It seemed they’d lost that battle—or maybe it was just him, his disappointment tinting everything. But Meg really was struggling. His own problems were ones he’d knowingly chosen. She’d never had that luxury.

  He felt he’d let her down somehow, not been involved or helped out enough. Not that she would have listened to him. For months he didn’t hear from her, and then she was calling him practically every day, keeping him on the phone until his ear was sore. All she did was complain about Jeff, or the kids, or her therapist. Some days, she said, I call in sick and just lie in bed and read. I don’t get dressed, I don’t do anything, I just lie there. And then the next minute she’d be all excited about her promotion and this new program at her work, as if the rest of it didn’t exist, until one day she admitted she’d been fired months ago but didn’t want to tell him because she knew he’d tell their mother.

  She was so fucked up.

  He flipped the burgers and dug into one with the corner of the spatula, but it was still raw. The coals were hot enough, he just had to be patient. When he went inside to rinse off the plate the kitchen was empty, everything laid out on the table. He came back out with the cheese. He was tempted to peek again but held off.

  It was getting dark, shadows filling in the trees, bats flitting like swallows. From the screenporch came a blast of laughter—Lise—and then his mother saying something, and Arlene, and more laughter, the children in it this time. What they were laughing at he could not imagine, this strange family of his. He stood under the chestnut with the spatula in hand, waiting, like his father.

  3

  “I can’t believe this,” her mother said, digging through the napkins in the bag. “I swear, they are such idiots.”

  Her mother jerked the van left and pulled a U-ey across the oncoming lanes and half onto the gravel and back toward the lights of the Taco Bell. Justin’s milk rolled out of the cup holder and fell to the floor, but it wasn’t open.

  “It’s okay,” Sarah said, since it was her Mexican pizza they’d forgotten.

  “No, it is not okay,” her mother said, as if she was the one who messed up. “You need to eat something. We paid for it and we’re going to get it, that’s the way this thing works, not whatever they’re trying to pull.”

  She didn’t apologize while they waited in the drive-thru line again, and when they got up to the window, she said, “My daughter ordered a Mexican pizza?” to the guy in the visor, like it was a crime, and all Sarah could do was look away, hide in the dark of the car. Beside her, Justin was almost done with his Gorditas. Shreds of lettuce stuck to his shirt, a glob of sour cream on Tigger’s arm. She wiped it up with a finger and reached between the seats for a napkin.

  “I hope you don’t do this very often,” her mother said. “It’s not a very good way to stay in business.”

  Mom, she wanted to say, it’s Taco Bell; no one cares. It was like Mark, getting majorly pissed off about something tiny.

  “Sorry about that, ma’am,” the guy said, but her mother had the overhead light on to inspect the new bag, to make sure what was in the box was actually Mexican pizza. She clicked the light off and handed it back to Sarah before pulling forward. Sarah sat the warm box on her lap, unopened. She didn’t feel like ea
ting it now, she just wanted to be out of there.

  It wasn’t PMS, her mother was just like this sometimes, and it frightened her, not knowing when this crazy person might show up. Once she was out, there was nothing anyone could do, not even her father, certainly not her. And then five minutes later she would hug you and kiss you on the forehead and say she was sorry, that things had been hard for all of them lately, as if all of them had been screaming and swearing because someone left a towel on the floor.

  On the highway, the dark fallen around them again, her mother asked her how her pizza was.

  “It’s okay,” Sarah said.

  “What?” her mother said. “I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

  “I said it’s okay.”

  “After all that it better be fantastic, hunh?”

  She was always doing this, trying to make things funny after they happened.

  Sarah took a few bites and then closed the lid and set the box on the floor with the rest of the mess. The van was like this most of the time now. Before a trip, her father used to take two grocery bags out to the driveway and fill one with trash and one with pop cans. Her mother didn’t even think of it, so they rode in a nest of crumpled maps and rolled Doritos bags and used tissues, in the pockets of the doors an army of sticky Rugrats and Darth Mauls.

  “Did everyone get enough to eat?” her mother asked an exit later, and Sarah made sure to answer clearly. Justin mumbled, and her mother was on him immediately. Sarah gave him a look: don’t be stupid. She pointed to the food on his shirt and he brushed it off without her mother seeing.

  He tapped the back of his wrist and she held up two fingers for two more hours. They were still in Ohio, not even to Cleveland. She clasped her hands together and tilted her cheek against them, feigning sleep, then pointed to him. It was already past his bedtime. Sam and Ella wouldn’t be waiting up for them this late, only the adults. They would have to go straight to bed, her mother trying to find Justin’s toothbrush and then telling him to just use Sarah’s.

  He didn’t want to go to sleep, so they sat there in silence, their faces now shadows, now sliced by light, angles opening and closing like doors. Outside, trucks whined by the other way, headed west. She couldn’t decide if she missed Mark. He promised he’d write and then he didn’t. He was probably still pissed off about that last time, using it as an excuse. He’d wanted more than she wanted to give him, and then was hurt when she said no.