Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  She could have sworn there were six. Buick, Olds, Reo, Cadillac, Stanley and something else. She’d have to ask her mother, though that meant tipping her hand.

  She took her coffee out on the porch. Lise was polite enough to get up and give her a hug, and Meg thought she’d gained weight.

  “You look good,” she said.

  “What time did you get in last night?”

  “Not that late. Eleven-something.”

  Lise apologized for not waiting up, and Meg said she understood. Ken was off with his cameras somewhere. Her mother and Arlene had taken Rufus over to the ponds. Everything was going okay at home, everyone was healthy. She liked her new job, and Ken was looking for something better. Meg said things were rough but they were getting through them, and Lise said she was sorry.

  “It’s just as well,” Meg said.

  She sounded just like her mother over the phone, shrugging off seventeen years like a thin windbreaker. It’s awful, she could have said, but Lise’s “sorry” already covered whatever she might say. She couldn’t expect her to know what it felt like watching TV in bed by herself and then turning the light off and not being sleepy, lying there and knowing tomorrow would be the same. A confession would only embarrass both of them.

  “Sarah has a boyfriend.”

  “Really.”

  “Mark. Very hot.”

  “Is he nice?”

  “We rarely see him. He’s like a cat who comes prowling around at night. Don’t worry, you’ll have your own pretty soon.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Far out, a boat smashed past, the engine coming to them late, like a plane’s. Meg sipped her coffee and felt the blood spread into her limbs, her sinuses open with a twinge. They sat looking out through the big screened panels at the gray band of the lake.

  “One thing,” Lise said. “I told Sam he’s allowed one hour of video games a day, and that includes his Game Boy.”

  “I’ll tell Justin.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. It’s a good excuse, actually.” If nothing else, they shared the bond of motherhood, the practical application of power. There was something adult and businesslike about their relationship, separate and matter-of-fact, while she and Ken were joined by the inexplicable ties of childhood, a dependence that came from the lifelong effort of defining each other.

  They were leaving for the flea market at ten, or whenever Ken returned.

  “He starts to work and he loses track,” Lise said.

  She ducked back into her book and the sun came out, spangling the water, coloring the trees. The cottages on the far shore shone white as limestone. Meg followed a sailboat tilting in the wind off Midway, then, bored, looked to Lise, reading intently—Harry Potter, which she thought of as a kid’s book. This was what her mother and Arlene did, Meg thought: sat here and watched the lake all day as if they had nothing else to do. She was more like her father; she needed some project to work on, some complicated repair job, if only to keep busy. Maybe that was her problem. Her life was her project now, and work alone wouldn’t fix it.

  The danger of vacation, she thought, was having too much time to think.

  She contemplated another cup of coffee but knew it would send her into a spin, crack her into fragments, thoughts zipping off in all directions, too many of them dangerous. She needed something to eat, and went inside to see if there was anything that would appeal to Sarah.

  The fridge was the opposite of hers: so empty she could see through the racks, and clean. The eggs were probably fair game, the cheese bread she assumed her mother was saving. Milk, a small tub of margarine, cold cuts, a head of lettuce. The door was heavy with ancient, iffy condiments, some of which (like the purple horseradish) belonged to her father. The cupboard was half full of canned soup and taped-up boxes of pasta, packets of gravy mix, only the most nonperishable stuff—like a survivalist’s kitchen—but on the top shelf stood a row of cereal boxes. Her mother had remembered, because one was an unopened box of Cap’n Crunch, her favorite.

  It was so unexpected, this gift, so unlike her mother (who hated Cap’n Crunch, ridiculed the very idea of it), that for a second Meg wondered if she’d bought it because she felt sorry for her. But for her to remember, that was enough.

  She poured herself a bowl and took it out on the dock, holding it away from her as she walked so it didn’t spill. A green-headed mallard paddled under the boards as she crossed above. With every step, the planks gave a little, swayed like a shaky bridge. The wind was up, and she wished she’d brought her sunglasses. She settled herself on the bench and dug in before the cereal got soggy, feeling the sugar energize the muscles of her jaw, a tingling release of enzymes. The rush reminded her of getting high.

  She held the bowl close to her chin and scooped up a spoonful, painfully sweet on her teeth, and suddenly thought of Jeff. It was nearly a year, and yet he could still paralyze her, make her mind turn inward and begin chewing at herself like Rufus with a hot spot. Jeff had left because she was old and Stacey was young; because she had a temper and Stacey was a pushover; because she was dull and Stacey was exciting. All true and simple enough (Stacey was twenty-eight and played squash, wore a size four), but the more she brooded on these facts, the more she was convinced there was another, deeper reason he wasn’t telling her, and never would, some secret shortcoming of hers that made it impossible for anyone to ever love her fully. She had sensed this as a child, learned it, perhaps, from her mother, with all the conditions she put on her, carried it like a cross and then a mark of honor through adolescence until, in her mid-twenties, she began to search in earnest for someone who could prove her wrong. She’d found Jeff, and he’d fooled her into believing she was worthy of that kind of love.

  The boards jiggled beneath her feet, and she turned to see Rufus padding toward her, her mother in her quilted jacket and clip-on sunglasses stepping onto the dock. Still defenseless from the memory of Jeff, Meg felt as if she’d sneaked up on her.

  She stood, squinting, as Rufus pranced around her knees, his claws scrabbling on the boards. She was almost finished, so she set the bowl down, and he sloshed away at it.

  “Don’t give that to him,” her mother said, but took her in her arms, kept her hands after they’d separated. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  “It wasn’t a choice.”

  “I know things aren’t easy with just yourself.”

  “I’m used to it. How are you?” she countered.

  “Good,” her mother said. She took her hands back and sat down. “We’re not getting as much rain as I’d like, but it hasn’t been too bad.”

  “Getting out to the club much?”

  “I try to get over for a dip around lunchtime. Afternoons it’s a zoo, as you can imagine.” She laid a hand on her arm. “I’m so happy you could make it. I see you found your cereal.” Rufus was done and licking his nose.

  “I can’t believe you remembered.”

  “For years it was all you’d eat. I saw it in the store yesterday and I just thought. Is it still utterly dreadful?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ve caught up with Justin, but haven’t seen hide nor hair of Sarah.”

  Meg explained her new sleeping habits, and predictably her mother reminded her of her own as a girl, as if they were the same person, the world and time identical for all of them.

  “How late did you all get in?” her mother asked.

  “About eleven.”

  “You could have called. I thought you said you’d be here in time for dinner.”

  “I should have told you,” she said. “Jeff scheduled a meeting yesterday morning with the lawyers, very last-minute.”

  Her mother sat up straight for the news, her face grave, and Meg thought that she was taking this personally, seeing it as her failure as well.

  “Basically we were going over the paperwork,” she said, when Rufus wheeled around, wagging his tail. The dock shook, and they both turned to see Justin and S
am racing across the boards toward them.

  “We’ll finish this later?” her mother asked, as if Meg might try to avoid it, and it was funny, her mother reading her like that, because that was exactly what she’d been thinking.

  “Yes,” Meg said, just as the boys thundered up, Game Boys in hand.

  They were breathing hard. Both of them wanted to talk.

  “Sarah and Ella say they don’t have to go to the flea market,” Justin reported.

  “And?” Meg said.

  “Do we have to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all you’d do is stay here and play your Game Boys. Aunt Lisa’s rule is one hour a day. How long have you been playing for?”

  “Half an hour,” Justin lied.

  She took the Game Boy from him, and Sam slid his into his pocket. “You too.” He stepped forward like a prisoner and handed it over. “When you come back from the flea market you can have your other half hour, all right?”

  “I don’t want to go,” Justin said.

  “But you like the flea market,” she reminded him. “Remember the man with all the Hot Wheels?”

  “We never get to buy any,” Sam said.

  “You talk to your father about that.”

  “Why don’t they have to go?” Justin said.

  “Because they can take care of themselves.”

  “I can take care of myself.” But he realized it was a weak argument. “Do we have to?”

  “Yes, you have to,” she said. “And no pouting. We’re going to have a wonderful time.”

  4

  The first thing Ken noticed was that it wasn’t there. His mind was set on getting gas; the pump-shaped caution had popped on when he started the car. It could go another thirty miles, Lise insisted, but he didn’t want to push it. Meg and his mother and Justin were ahead of them in the van. He was just following, remarking on the familiar scenery. They came up past the golf course and by the diner and then the main gate of the Institute, decked out with hanging baskets of flowers, but when he glanced over to show Sam the Putt-Putt, to say maybe they could go tonight, all that was left was the orange-and-white fence. The snack bar was gone, demolished, and the soda machines and the windmill, the hooded fluorescents that made the air shake at dusk and the speakers that blared “Travelin’ Band” and “Mercy, Mercy Me.” Vanished, nothing now but high grass. A saggy roll of chain-link fence blocked off the parking lot, a FOR LEASE sign prominent.

  “Whoa,” he said, easing the 4Runner up the curve by Andriaccio’s, and Lise laid a hand on his leg as if to comfort him. She had a way of anticipating his feelings, and he wanted to say, Wait, I haven’t even started processing this. The hand stayed there, stroking him, consoling.

  “Your mother and I noticed it coming up,” Arlene said from the backseat.

  “No one told me.”

  “I wonder what they did with all the balls,” Sam said.

  “It’s a chain,” Ken explained. “They probably have a big warehouse somewhere that sends supplies out to other ones around the country.”

  “You’d think they could make money here,” Arlene said. “With the Institute right across the street.”

  “That’s an older crowd,” Ken said. “And there’s Molly World now, and that new place in Lakewood with the driving range.” He didn’t say that when he was a boy the course was deserted, just him and a few other goony kids happy to be off by themselves, the teenager behind the counter bored and listening to a different radio station. The paint was flaking off the fence even then. They didn’t bother to scrape it, just slapped another coat on top. So someone had finally pulled the plug on it.

  The idea that he could go back and shoot the lot rose and fell away again, replaced by the vain wish that he’d brought his Nikon along last year, documented all the dumb obstacles—the concrete triangles and inchworm hills, the clattering loop-the-loops and gopher holes. Close work, maybe with a fishbowl to give it that nostalgic, gritty carnival look. Too late.

  “I’m surprised the Institute hasn’t bought up the property,” Lise said. “With all their parking problems.”

  “Maybe they have,” he said.

  “Can we go miniature golfing?” Sam asked.

  “Sure,” Ken said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  The CD protected him—early Bill Evans, real Sunday-paper music. He aimed the 4Runner down the long hill by the cemetery, the snowball trees bright between the graves. A bare-chested boy with a backwards cap and work boots was cutting the grass, slouched down and riding the mower like a Harley. The chaff was wet and stuck to the headstones.

  “Think he’d be cold,” he said, and Lise patted him and withdrew her hand.

  She’d be expecting him to be thinking of his father, and he had been, seeing him under the shadowed grass in his suit, the box making a space like a cave. Ken could see no further, refused to, his eye flying out in front of the windshield, grabbing the first thing of interest—the plastic-sheeted greenhouses of Haff Acres Farm, and then its signs for pies, corn, the usual roadside menu.

  “Corn on the cob,” he said, drawling it out, “and Lighthouse chicken,” just as they passed the market with its silly half-scale beacon on top.

  Lise pinned him with a look, but he deflected it, distracted himself with the gas gauge.

  The counter at the Putt-Putt had been covered with astroturf and the putters laid out by size, their rubber grips the color of hot-water bottles. By each tee stood a pole with a slanted metal plate on it (painted orange) for players to fill out their scorecards. When he made a hole in one and his ball was the color that was lit up on the special board, he sprinted for the snack bar to collect his winnings.

  He’d never thought of his father like this, in a flood of images. It took a conscious effort to remember him, to bring back a moment the two of them spent together, tromping out in the snow to cut down the Christmas tree at his grandfather White’s farm, or looking in on him in the upstairs office at home as he silently paid the bills. What that meant he was careful not to answer, let it float free to be picked up again and examined the rest of his life. He did not doubt his love for his father, or his father’s for him, only the strange way memory presented it, mixed as it was with all this other garbage. Their bond was not automatic, a reflex, but, like his father, measured and reliable, bracing as medicine.

  They were closing in on Mayville. Ahead on the left was a combination filling station and convenience mart, the Gas-n-Go. He posted up by the yellow line and let Meg go on, waited for a camper to pass, then turned in.

  “Are they open?” Lise asked, because it was Sunday and the pumps were free, but there was a blaze orange sign in the window. He remembered the tank was on his side and pulled it up close.

  There was another world outside of the car, away from them, and air. He stood there gripping the steel handle, watching the numbers turn as the cars passed, and wondered what it would be like to live here year-round, the wind blowing over the icy lake, combing the hollow reeds, rattling the windows. He could see himself feeding a fire, eating soup and crackers, piling extra blankets on the bed. In the mornings he would go out and work in the snow and the Scandinavian light. He would be patient, do a study of clouds, like Stieglitz dug in at Lake George. His life would be quiet and dignified, every second concentrated, aimed.

  The pump clunked off, and he squeezed out a round number, slapped the latch down and replaced the nozzle. A white pickup pulled in as he crossed to the front doors, searching his pockets for a twenty. There was no one at the register, so he waited, scanning the tabloids with their overexposed candid shots and grainy long lenses. And people got paid for that crap, good money too.

  He looked around the store, walking to the end of the short rows in case the clerk was busy shelving, but didn’t see anyone. In the middle of one aisle sat an unopened bag of Cheetos like a pillow. A radio was going behind the counter, and a closed-circuit TV showing the pumps— the man from the pickup filling his ta
nk. (He could see a whole series of these stills, each with its own story.) By the register sat a tall cup of coffee, a half-full ashtray beside it. He shook his head, crinkled his face like it might be a joke.

  The rest rooms were in the far corner, in a low hall at the end of a wall of coolers. He knocked on both doors. “Hello?” he called. “I need to pay for some gas.”

  When he came out, the man from the pickup was standing at the counter. Ken shrugged. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.”

  “That’s strange,” the man said. He had a cowboy hat and graying muttonchops, and Ken wondered if he was local. He didn’t have that honking, almost midwestern accent he associated with western New York State.

  “You check the bathroom?”

  “I knocked on both of them.”

  “You got me,” the man said.

  They went out front again, each of them taking a side, and Ken saw the truck; according to its license-plate holder, it was from Sayre, Pennsylvania—not far. Lise stared at him from the 4Runner and he waved that he would explain later. Behind the store three plastic buckets that had contained potato salad were drying next to the fence around the dumpster, a hose coiled on the wall, the end still dripping on the concrete. The ice machine was unlocked.

  They tried inside again. Both restrooms were empty. He left the Cheetos where they lay, stepping over them.

  “Someone was here.” Ken pointed out the coffee by the ashtray.

  “I wish I had time for this,” the man said, and took out his wallet. He folded two twenties and wedged them into the keys of the cash register. Meg and his mother would be parking by now, wondering what happened to them. It seemed reasonable, so Ken did the same with his twenty and followed the man out.

  “What was that all about?” Lise asked.

  “It was bizarre. There was nobody there.”

  “Nobody?”

  “The place was deserted.”