Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  17

  “Be careful on the stairs there,” Emily warned the children. “And you’ll take care of the fire?” she asked Ken—needlessly, Lise thought.

  She knew it was unfair, bristling at everything Emily said, and that the strength and, even more, the tenacity of her disdain baffled Ken, as if, lacking immediate provocation, she should be civil with Emily. He was like her father, she thought, wanting things to be pleasant, withdrawing into his den at the slightest hint of a disturbance between Lise and her mother, then poking his head out later to see if the storm had passed.

  The kids thumped above them, the bathroom door shutting, water running. Ken had moved to the couch to watch the fire with her. They held hands, Arlene quiet in the far corner like a chaperone. Meg toasted a last marshmallow. Outside, the rain fell steadily, endlessly, making Lise think of tomorrow, new excuses to go out, errands that needed to be run. The Book Barn, but she still had Harry Potter, and with the power out she wasn’t getting any of that read.

  When the lights went out, she thought they’d pop back on—if not instantly then within a few minutes, however long it took Niagara Mohawk to realize something had gone wrong. After the first half hour she imagined a falling tree limb clawing down live wires, or a bad car accident toppling a pole, sparks on the road and broken glass. Now she resigned herself to the darkness, gave in to the strangeness of the event. The blackout had actually saved the evening. It was early, before ten, yet it felt like midnight. Upstairs the water had stopped, and they could hear the logs sizzling and the juicy rumble of Rufus’s stomach.

  “I think I’ll put him out,” Meg said.

  “Good idea.” Ken patted Lise’s hand, then let go. “I’ll check on the kids.”

  He left her alone with Arlene, wrapped in shadows at the other end of the couch. Lise thought the silence between them was growing uncomfortable when she realized the breathy whistle she was hearing was Arlene sleeping. She leaned over and verified it and had to catch a laugh.

  She pointed her out to Ken when he came down.

  “Arlene,” he said, “go to bed,” as if talking to a child, and helped her up and through the door to her room.

  “Where’s Meg?” he asked when he came back.

  “Probably having a cigarette.” Her worry was that he wanted to talk with Meg, have one of their long heart-to-hearts by the fire. She patted the couch and he sat down and took her hand again, rubbed it with a thumb.

  “Last night was nice,” she said.

  “It’s a little cold out tonight.”

  “Too cold?” she teased.

  “Too wet.”

  “There’s always the car.”

  He laughed as if this was ridiculous, and shifted, leaning into her. “This is nice right here.”

  “It’s not very private.”

  “Meg might be persuaded to leave us in peace.”

  “I don’t want you to have to ask her.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  “I would,” Lise said. “I’d be embarrassed.”

  He said nothing to this, which was his way of saying he disagreed— as if, given the time and silence to contemplate what she’d said, she’d see how foolish it sounded. He wasn’t really interested, or only in being right. He’d turned what should have been romantic into a question of logistics, possibilities, what was and wasn’t convenient.

  “Forget it,” she said. “This is fine.”

  “Obviously it isn’t,” he said, and didn’t he sound exactly like his mother now.

  They were fighting, but he held on to her hand. He would make her pull away, make her the villain in this, as if he’d done nothing wrong. Why did everything between them have to be her fault, she wondered, and was about to ask him outright when Meg came back in with Rufus and sat down by the fire.

  “I can smell him from here,” Ken said across the room, taking the easiest way out.

  “It’s pouring,” Meg said.

  Lise took her hand back. “I’m going to go up,” she said, and stood, and he gave her a look that said she was being unreasonable. She decided not to give him any more proof. “I’ll see you up there,” she said, and left him and Meg to each other.

  On the stairs, she clenched her teeth, biting back an imaginary conversation. It was the first time they’d really talked all day.

  18

  “So,” Ken said, sitting down beside her, “how’s it going? I haven’t seen much of you.”

  “All right,” Meg said, but subdued, as if tired. The flames smoothed the lines around her eyes, and he could see her as the teenager he knew, the tough girl. Though he’d never told her, he’d taken pride in having a wild sister, her parade of boyfriends in hopped-up cars giving him a kind of secondhand cool. She’d seemed indestructible then.

  “Did you do your list?” he joked, and she laughed for him.

  “She never changes.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “A little, with Dad,” she allowed. “She calls more often. I’m sure she’s lonely all by herself.”

  “How are you?”

  “All by myself? Going a little crazy. I was telling Lise, all I can think of is the money, but it’s everything. You’re married fifteen years and then—boom. On top of all the other shit.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Good,” she said, but accompanied it by a dip and a twist of her head, as if working out a kink in her neck.

  “I can’t stop worrying about money either. You’d think by now we’d be doing all right.”

  “Lise’s folks can help you out.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “You should be glad,” she said, and then, as if closing the subject, “It’s just money.”

  He and Lise had savings bonds for the kids, and two mutual funds for their college, and though Lise would never let him touch them, he wondered if five thousand might help. She ran her hand over Rufus’s coat.

  “Hey,” she said, “remember the time we stole the Smiths’ canoe?”

  “You stole the canoe, I was just along for the ride.”

  “And the light came on and Jimmy Smith came running down their dock, and you dropped your paddle?”

  There was the time she ran over the lawn chair with her Jeep. The time Arlene broke the tire swing. The time Duchess jumped through the screen door. He relaxed into the rhythm of their shared memories, glad not to talk about where their lives were headed. It reminded him of how they used to talk at night up here, her voice reaching him from the other bed until their mother climbed the stairs and said it was time to go to sleep. Tonight was just another installment of that ongoing, lifelong conversation.

  “It’s weird,” she said, “to think this is it. Last year I thought we shouldn’t be here—”

  “It’s what he wanted.”

  “It’s what she wanted. It was terrible. All I could think of the whole time was him in that hospital. She just didn’t want us there because it would have been harder on her. Well, tough. This year I’m thinking, Where are we going to go next year? I’m not going to be able to afford anywhere nice. I don’t understand why she thinks she has to sell it.”

  “She wouldn’t come up by herself.”

  “She’s not going to be by herself. Arlene will be with her. Arlene loves it up here.”

  She was getting loud, and Ken glanced at his mother’s door. “She needs the money.”

  “How much money does she need? Do you know how much she got for it?”

  “She was asking three-twenty-five.”

  “She probably got at least three hundred. What does she need with that kind of money?”

  Though she’d justified herself countless times over the phone, his mother had never told him precisely why, only that he and Meg weren’t in any position to take it over and she had no business dumping it on them. The taxes alone would kill them. He’d believed her, just as, now, he believed Meg.

  “Have you talked to her?” he asked.


  “You think she’d listen to me? She thinks I’m not smart enough to deal with something as important as real estate. And you know who made all their investments—Dad. He made all their money, and now she’s the big financial genius. It drives me nuts. Until last year I handled all of our money, and did quite well with it.”

  “‘And did quite well with it,’” he mimicked.

  “I know—I’m starting to talk like her. I hear myself saying something to Sarah and think, Oh shit.”

  “It’s like a horror movie, you’re turning into her.”

  “Then why does she still hate my ass?”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “Just what I stand for, whatever that is. Anyway, it sucks.” She looked around her on the floor for her cigarettes and surprised him by standing up. In the old days she would have just lit one here, tossed the butt in the fire. “Come on,” she said, and led him through the kitchen and outside into the rain and then into the garage, damp and smelling dangerously of gasoline.

  “We shouldn’t leave the fire.”

  “You still get high?” she asked, and packed a pipe.

  “Are you allowed to do that?”

  “It’s medicinal,” she said, and handed it to him.

  He knew the etiquette from high school, from attics and basements and cars, concerts like milestones, and then college, apartments with mended, mismatched furniture, TVs you turned on with vise grips. Flick the wheel, tip the lighter and the flame bends, sectioned like candy corn. Breathe in the burning flower, leaves vaporized like a jungle under napalm, the brain a map of lost colonies. One hit and he was back there, this weird minute of the future a vision, his sister an old ghost come to warn him of something.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said, and passed it back.

  The dark rear of the garage was built of lines and angles he hadn’t noticed before. He thought of Tracy Ann Caler, and how little room it took to hide a body, and was surprised to find himself thinking like a murderer.

  He coughed and couldn’t stop, as if he were allergic.

  Meg popped the fridge and handed him a beer. It was cool in his palm, the foil label scratchy. He twisted the top off and it left a hot spot on his skin. She gave him the pipe again and he realized he’d only had one hit. It seemed he’d been high for hours.

  “What is this shit?”

  “It’s supposed to be Thai. Guy in AA hooked me up with it.”

  “It’s pretty good.”

  “It works.”

  “How do you do it?” he asked—before he could take it back. He’d never asked her before, and now to do it so offhand seemed wrong, as if he were trespassing.

  “Not drinking? By not drinking. It’s not like there’s a patch.”

  “It must be hard.”

  “It’s not like it’s my whole life. I do other things too.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just sick of talking about it. It’s not you personally, though it’s kind of tough with that beer there.”

  “You gave it to me,” he protested.

  “That’s what I get for being nice.”

  He took a swig and the bubbles spread across his tongue and fizzed, a wheat field of white balloons, water rising over a thatched welcome mat, dropping in the walled lock of a canal.

  “I bet you’re sick of talking about Jeff too.” It came out like a thought, uncensored.

  “He was a shit. He was sleeping with this little bimbo at work even before I went into rehab. It’s all a big soap opera.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and stepped on her foot as he went to hold her.

  “Thank you, and ow. Yeah, a little blonde with boobs. There’s nothing more humiliating than being dumped for a cliché. Of course the kids don’t know. They think it’s all my fault.”

  “I’m sure they don’t.”

  “Believe me, they do. Dad’s the fun one, Mom’s the bitch. That’s how it works.”

  He thought of himself and Lise, and his mother and father, and couldn’t deny it.

  “That’s all right,” she said, but then didn’t explain why. “Let’s go see how your fire’s doing.”

  Later she told him, laughing, that she had come to the conclusion that she was too chicken to kill herself long before she ever met Jeff. And later still, sobered, deciding a final time to go to bed, she said she’d been through times like this before and lived. She waved everything off as if it were an unpleasant smell, nothing serious.

  He hugged her and sent her upstairs, then banked the fire alone, breaking apart the brittle, glowing logs with the poker, unsure why he’d doubted her power. She was used to trouble, was attracted to it the same way he chased after success. She was just better at getting what she wanted. But this didn’t relieve him of the feeling that he had somehow let her down, had not been a good brother to her.

  It was late, and his eyes felt bathed in vinegar, dusted with salt. The light of the fire didn’t reach the stairs. He walked like Frankenstein in the dark, his arms out to fend off the invisible, and then when he found the door, he had to crawl up, his hands feeling each carpeted step ahead of him.

  The kids were asleep, the watery reflection of a flashlight coming from the cracked bathroom door. Ella was curled tight, Sam flat on his back. He tucked the flap of Justin’s bag over the stuffed Tigger in his arms.

  He couldn’t see Lise, just a shape under the covers, a shadow on the pillow. It was past two, and he didn’t want her to know how late they’d talked. By the foot of their bed, he slowly emptied his pockets, placing each item quietly on the low wardrobe’s hard top, a thief in reverse. Among the clinking change was the Ballantine ball mark, its thin edge a dull razor. He could barely see the three intertwined circles in the dark, but the cosmic thought came to him that they were like the three of them, Meg and himself and his mother, joined forever.

  His father was separate from them, lost.

  Only for now, he thought, and then was afraid he was just trying to comfort himself. He would live the rest of his life without him. Thirty, forty years. There would be days, weeks, when he wouldn’t think of him, not even fleetingly, and this seemed wrong.

  Meg wasn’t done in the bathroom, so he stood there waiting in the dark, the mirror giving back his shirt, his arms at his sides. The roof tapped, and he hoped it wouldn’t rain tomorrow. He wanted to shoot the Putt-Putt, and the Gas-n-Go, its short aisles lit by jittery fluorescents. He could use the Nikon, that wouldn’t be cheating.

  The door opened, letting out a dim wedge of light that fell over the children.

  “All yours,” Meg said. “I left you the flashlight.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He was quick, trying not to run the water too much, sitting down so he could pee quietly. When he came out, Meg was already in bed. He turned the light off and set it on the cedar chest, stripped to his boxers and got in, the sheets producing goose bumps, a rush across his front. He needed to warm up before he pressed against Lise, and lay there rigid as a mummy, eyes shut.

  He thought of his father lying like this in Homewood Cemetery under the ground and the stones and the dark, starred sky. He thought of Tracy Ann Caler’s family, awake, waiting, any second, for the phone to ring. He wondered if there was a way he could help search for her.

  “Sweet dreams,” Meg said from the dark, as she had when they were kids.

  Then, it had been offered literally, an invitation to another, better world at the end of the day. Now it seemed just an affectionate habit that had stuck, little protection against the lives that went on inside of them, real or imagined. And yet, then and now, he thought, she was the one who wished it first, for him, and truly meant it. His sister.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said.

  19

  What she had done to earn this was a mystery. Ella didn’t recognize anyone at the party, or the room she was in, the long powder-blue couch, and she seemed to be drinking champagne, her hair frosted blond, stiff bangs
hanging in her eyes. Her teeth were perfect, her braces gone. Laughter, music, a brick wall and a window behind her and the guy in the black suit with red socks talking. There were so many people dancing she couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, and then Sarah was there, sitting down right beside her, so close she could see the sparkle eye shadow they’d tried the other day, and Ella wanted to say, Let’s get out of here, this is crazy, wanted to stop Sarah because she could feel Sarah was going to lean in and kiss her, wanted to kiss her, had wanted to kiss her for so long, and now it was almost happening and Ella didn’t know what to do. It would happen, it had to, she just had to wait for it. It didn’t make sense, she couldn’t figure out why Sarah was in love with her, but she was happy anyway. It was exciting, and frightening. Here it was, Sarah was leaning in, her face inches from hers, her eyes closing, her eye shadow bright. Ella knew she would let Sarah kiss her—had known all along, couldn’t stop—and then anything could happen.

  20

  Emily woke to Rufus yipping, voices and a red light flashing in the folds of the curtains. Her first reaction was that the police were outside taking care of the Lerners’ alarm. It took her a confused minute to realize it was the clock on her bureau blinking, telling her urgently, again and again, that it was exactly midnight. Beyond the wall, the dishwasher surged.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” she said, and kicked free of the covers and took her bathrobe down from the hook. She didn’t know what time to reset the clock for, guessed three A.M. and turned it to the wall, then hit herself with the door as she opened it.

  “Honestly now.”

  Rufus trotted along beside her. The TV was on in the middle of The Third Man, someone walking up a dark staircase. She clicked it and the VCR off, and the lights by the couch and in the kitchen. The outside light was fine. The dishwasher she let run.