“But she told you. Isn’t that a good sign?”
“I’m sure it’s partly our fault,” Emily said. “But Kenneth’s never had these kinds of problems.”
The waiter was approaching from behind Emily, and Arlene looked up to signal her. The perch was too much, the filet covering the rice pilaf. No, they were fine with their drinks.
“It looks very good,” Emily said after he retreated. She speared her lemon with a tridentlike fork and squeezed the juice onto her fish, her attack on Margaret forgotten.
The perch was excellent, and for a moment neither of them spoke, the meal needing their full attention. Finally Arlene cleared her throat and steeled herself with a sweet sip of her drink.
“I think Margaret’s all right,” she said. “It sounds like she needs the divorce.”
“You say it like it’s a good thing.”
“In this case it might be. I mean, how long have they been separated?”
“All right,” Emily said, “but how is she supposed to support herself now? Who’s going to pay for Sarah’s education?”
“I’m sure Jeff will do the right thing.”
“Not according to Margaret. According to her he’s got this hot little girlfriend he’s running around with.”
The news stopped Arlene. She could see this all too well, Jeff with his flashy cars and dirty jokes, the way he could make anyone laugh, even Emily. He seemed to Arlene an eternal teenager in the same way—she thought—Margaret must seem to Emily.
“It’s not just the divorce,” Emily said, “it’s everything. It’s too much all at once. She needs to spread out her disasters better.”
She’d heard Emily say cruel things in the past, but this was too much. She looked at her blankly over her perch, waiting for an explanation, an apology.
“What?” Emily said. “I’m the one who has to clean up after her mess—again. It’s always been like this, nothing’s changed. Eat.” She pointed with her fork, nodding at how good it was. “I can say this because I’m the one with ulcers from worrying about her. I’m the one who stayed up when she came dragging in at four o’clock in the morning. Henry said I was crazy, and he was probably right, but I can’t help the way I am. I’ll be worrying about her on my deathbed. Both of them. Kenneth’s no better. Neither of them has the least idea about money, and I know that’s our fault.” She sighed as if tired of discussing it, her knife and fork poised, then tucked in again.
The unstated assumption behind all this, Arlene thought, was that she couldn’t comprehend what the two of them had put Emily through. There had been a span of years when a litany like this would be followed by “You’ll find out when you have kids of your own,” but that was long past, though Arlene still filled in the words, felt their dismissal of her as someone without depth or responsibilities. If anything, she had lived her life too stringently, giving too much, asking too little in return. Her students had been enough, and the school, waiting for her every morning, the bright halls swabbed clean, the blackboards ready for the next lesson. It was only when she retired that she began to feel brittle and unloved.
“You’re lucky to have them,” she said.
She’d surprised Emily, because she had to dab at her lip with her napkin, then reached across the table and laid a hand on Arlene’s wrist as if to thank her.
“I know,” she said. “I know. Without Henry there’s no one to keep my feet on the ground. I start thinking about Margaret’s problems, or Kenneth, and I just work myself into a state.”
“They’re stronger than you think,” Arlene said.
“I wish that were true.”
“They’ve gotten this far, haven’t they?”
The waiter materialized to ask if everything was all right. Everything was fine.
“I guess I just want them to be happy,” Emily said. “And they don’t seem terribly happy.”
“I guess you just have to hope it’s temporary.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realized they applied to her—and to Emily as well.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Emily agreed.
“Things change.” Arlene gestured at the high white ceiling with its fanciful moldings painted gold. “Remember this place after the war? They wanted to tear it down. Now it’s a landmark.”
“I get the point.”
Arlene argued harder when she was drinking, thank God. Emily conceded that Margaret was still young and good-looking, and that Sarah and Justin seemed to have a strong bond. Yes, Kenneth did his best, and Ella was by far the brightest of the four children. At times Arlene thought that Emily didn’t listen to her, their conversations a monologue, but here was proof otherwise. Though the children would never know it, she’d successfully defended them, and the glow buoyed her as much as ordering dessert—a Boston cooler, her mother’s favorite, still anchoring the menu: a slice of canteloupe with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Emily had the Dutch apple pie with a block of sharp cheddar melted on top.
“Lappi,” Arlene reminded her.
“That horseradish crap,” Emily said. “Did you ever call Mrs. Klinginsmith?”
“Not yet. Why?” She tried not to show her excitement. She hadn’t called Mrs. Klinginsmith because she didn’t think Emily was interested.
“I was thinking if the Institute’s booked we might try here. Depending on the price. I imagine it would be reasonable. They’re not exactly swamped.”
“No.” Then they would come next summer. In her relief, Arlene caught herself wondering—as she had since February—why Emily had bothered to sell the cottage. She didn’t understand.
“It’s not the Hilton,” Emily said, “but it’s better than the We Wan Chu.”
Arlene gouged a scoop out of her cooler and the ice cream froze her molars. “I’ll call her when we get back.”
She’d gotten what she wanted, and yet she was still dissatisfied. As much as she loved the Lenhart, she didn’t want to stay here. Even the Institute was second best, a compromise. She wanted the cottage, and now Emily was telling her unequivocally that that was not going to happen. Arlene could not reconcile herself to losing it and Henry in the same year, as if her only comforts were being taken away.
The waiter came to clear. Arlene wanted another cup of coffee but Emily was done. Emily figured out the tip and they split the check down the middle, their wrinkled ones piled high on the plastic tray. They took a last look at the lake—at the bridge—and searched for their coat checks. On the way out, everyone thanked them for coming, the maître d’ affecting a stiff bow Arlene thought he’d borrowed from the movies.
“We should stop at the front desk and see what their rates are,” Emily said, and though Arlene no longer wanted to, she knew Emily thought she was making a concession and it would be rude to say no.
“A single with two beds?” the sideburned boy asked, and after a moment’s consultation they agreed—for the sole purpose of getting a base quote—to entertain the notion of rooming together. The figure the clerk gave them brought the idea uncomfortably close to reality.
“Well,” Emily said on the porch, “the We Wan Chu is looking better and better.”
“I was surprised too.”
“I can’t imagine what they’re charging at the Institute—if we can get in. It was a nice lunch though.”
“It was,” Arlene said. And it had been, up to a point. Maybe it was the Rob Roys, but she felt rattled, unmoored in the gray afternoon, the rain dripping down through the trees. The idea that this might be the last time she saw the Lenhart sent her into a momentary panic.
“Are you going to be all right to drive?” Emily asked, as if she’d sensed it.
“I’m fine,” Arlene insisted.
They were careful on the stairs, holding the cold railing. The ferry was coming in, the diesel plowing a creamy wake. Like the Lenhart, it had been here a hundred years. Before that an enterprising Dutchman had run one hauled by oxen, and before that the Seneca had used canoes, naturally seeking out the easies
t place to cross the lake.
It was remarkable how far back her own history went here. Her great-grandmother had stayed at the Lenhart, her grandmother McElheny and her great-aunt Martha, her mother and father, then Henry and herself with them. It did not seem wrong that the hotel had outlived them all. There was nothing sinister about it; it was only her mood, her circumstances joined with the gloom of the day.
She started the car and pulled out before the ferry could unload. She had actually been looking forward to the cheese shop, but now the thought of it held no pleasure for her, seemed just a stop, not a true destination. She peered in her rearview mirror. The yellow monstrosity of the Lenhart filled it, the endless porch and its rockers, the hedge-lined promenade. Again, was it the fading exaltation of the booze on top of her funk, because she felt as if she were seeing past the trappings of the world to some ultimate truth beneath in which her life played almost no part, a game piece, an insignificant marker. Landmark or not, the Lenhart would burn down or fall apart, be demolished like Kenneth’s Putt-Putt, and the new bridge too, dynamited before a cheering crowd like the steamboats burning off of Celoron Park, but the point would always be there, permanent, eternal, watching over the lake while the seasons changed.
Everything passed. And that was right, she thought. There was no sense fighting it. There was nothing to be done, and yet the inevitability of life nagged at her, death without resurrection, the end of things.
“Your blinker’s on,” Emily said.
“Thank you,” Arlene said, and silenced it.
15
The new two-dollar room smelled of must and cat pee and there was no order to the shelves. The top rows were too high for anyone but a giant, yet there was no step stool or ladder, only a pair of bake-sale tables like an island in the middle of the room, piled with boxes of encyclopedias marked NOT FOR SALE, as if someone might abscond with them. Everything was cobbled together from cheap pine, the dark knots bleeding sap. The shelves were packed tight, which Lise thought couldn’t be good for the books. She inched along, freezing between steps, her head turned sideways to read the spines. One hand kept her place while the other kneaded the muscles of her neck.
The books had come from basements and attics, the rooms of children long since gone, the houses of the recently deceased. It was like a time warp. She recognized titles she’d had to read in high school and college English classes: dozens of soft, dog-eared copies of Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby, sixties paperbacks of John Updike edged blue or red or cheddar. There were revolutionary best-sellers like Soul on Ice and The Feminine Mystique, Manchild in the Promised Land and The Sensuous Woman, and wedged right next to them an eighties guide to the stock market, a book that showed you how to win at poker, a partial set of Pearl S. Buck the faded color of baby aspirin. There were three copies of Etiquette by Emily Post, and church cookbooks in plastic spiral bindings, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! anthologies, and a dictionary stamped PROPERTY OF FREDONIA STATE UNIVERSITY (they could use one for Scrabble, Lise thought) along with the usual book-club offerings from Danielle Steel, John Grisham and Stephen King. There were books on the football stars of 1973 and The Pentagon Papers, Rod McKuen, Arthur Hailey, Judith Michaels, A. J. Cronin.
“Junk,” she said, and straightened up, her eyes tired, her sinuses tight from the mold and dust.
The shelves ran solid around all four walls, the only light the overhead fluorescents. It wasn’t worth the trouble. She hadn’t planned on buying anything anyway. The idea was to have fun looking at the books, admiring the odd find. They’d been at it a good hour and a half and they still had to hit the video store.
The original part of the barn was crowded, and she’d lost Meg, probably off in the Mystery section. It was amazing how many books she remembered from last year, as if they’d waited for her. She skipped the room called Old Favorites—squat moss-green hardbacks from the twenties by writers like Gene Stratton-Porter and Grace Livingston Hill, prized by new homeowners looking to decorate their mantels. Literature, Self-help, Romance broken down by imprint. Biography tempted her, and Travel. In Fiction she found an Oprah novel she hadn’t gotten around to for ten dollars, but she still had Harry Potter waiting for her back at the cottage.
She couldn’t justify the expense. Ken would note that she’d bought something unnecessary, would hold it against her like a willful mistake. She could get that at the library, he’d say.
He was so cheap he squeaked. It had been a joke between them, one he shouldered easily, because he was proud of being sensible about money, like his mother, but Lise was tired of feeling guilty for not squeezing every penny. Their budget, laid out so coldly, had become personal. She was working now, and she could do what she wanted with her money. She never begrudged him what he spent on his darkroom, only the time he stole from them.
And again, she was aware that she was fighting with him even though he wasn’t there with her. It had been like this all year, the two of them sharpening their arguments on their own so that when they did fight there was a cutting precision to their jabs, leaving both of them wounded even after they’d reconciled. They knew each other too well, and used that intimacy as a weapon, revealing and then attacking the shortcomings and sore spots, the reasons behind the larger misunderstandings they relied on each other to leave comfortably unplumbed. Sex, money, the children, their families. None of it was a secret, and yet even now she shied from the idea. Their worst fights were either waiting for them or would never happen, all or nothing.
She slid the Oprah novel from the shelf and read the inside flap, aware of the other customers browsing around her. For a second she read without comprehending, unfocused, the sense of the words eluding her. A young mother coping with the death of a child and how she finds strength in a time of crisis. The power of love and faith, the perseverance of the human spirit. It was the kind of book Ken would ridicule as false and sentimental, as if it were common knowledge that the world was not like that. She thought of losing Ella or Sam. It was bad luck to even think it, but the book made her search her mind for a plausible scenario—a car accident, a drowning—and then the aftermath. No mother would be able to go on, and yet everyone had to. If it were her only child, then the grief would be complete, but otherwise there would still be work, laundry to do, meals to plan. She turned the book over and looked at the cover, a painting of a plain ranch house with trees in front, a tomahawk of a folded newspaper waiting on the porch, as if this could happen to anyone.
She kept the book and went to look for Meg, sidling through the line at the front desk, missing the step down into the History section and almost falling. Past Music and Art there was a wall of fantasy paperbacks that made her wish she’d asked Ella to come. Lise didn’t know which ones Ella did or didn’t have, so there was no point in looking. She could see herself coming back with something Ella already had, and Ken’s reaction—and Emily’s, her opinion of Lise vindicated once again.
Meg was down on one knee, hunched over the bottom row, a small stack of paperbacks at her feet. “You ready?”
“I think so,” Lise said.
“What did you find?”
She showed her the Oprah.
“That’s supposed to be good.” Meg stood and flashed her her loot, a clutch of Sue Graftons. “I started at H, so now I’m going back to the beginning.”
Lise had read them and thought Kinsey was a ringer for Meg—tough and pretty, kind of messy inside, untouchable. Her own person, with all of her faults. It had to be lonely, just her and the children. When Ken had traveled for Merck, doing trade shows or shoots in Baltimore, she couldn’t sleep, the bed suddenly too large, the house too quiet. At the airport she would smother him as if he’d come back from a war and their sex the first night would be incredible. Maybe that’s what they needed: for him to go away. But Jeff wasn’t coming back.
On their way to the register, Lise thought of their conversation at the Red Lobster—Meg’s money worries, Sarah and Ella starting high sch
ool. Of her friends, only Carmela had as much in common with her, and though they’d been neighbors for eight years, she would never know Ken the way Meg did. She wished they weren’t such rivals, that she trusted Meg more, that her problems didn’t thrill her with their possibilities for disaster.
The line was short but the owner was slow, writing up each slip by hand, pressing hard on the carbon. He took down the title of every book as if he planned on restocking. With his cardigan and Ben Franklins and his avalanche of a desk, he was supposed to seem homey and warm, Lise thought, but he and his wife had been gouging tourists for years, tweaking the seasonal markup then buying back at half-price, reselling the same tired stock summer after summer at a hundred percent profit. He’d once yelled at Ella for flipping through an art book, afraid she’d ruin his investment.
Lise examined the Oprah book, hoping for imperfections—dogeared pages, sentences underlined, any excuse to ditch it. There was nothing, even the spine was pristine, as if it hadn’t been read. She could borrow it from Carmela or find it at the library. She wouldn’t get to it here anyway, with Harry.
“He’s taking forever,” she said, as if that were a reason, and went to the Fiction section, found the gap she’d created and slid it back where it belonged.
16
The rain had driven everyone down to Lakewood, to the gritty stretch of strip malls around Wal-Mart, the muffler and brake shops, the Rite Aid and Johnny’s Texas Hots. Meg noticed the road into Jamestown had been widened to accommodate the boom; traffic inched between the new lights. The wipers jogged her nerves, and the radio. Patience, patience. One two three four five six seven … She wished she were alone so she could get stoned.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Lise. She just wasn’t sure. Lise judged her, she knew, but Lise judged everybody. She was like her mother, partly afraid of Meg. The idea that she was someone dangerous was amusing, and she traded on it whenever she could, but lighting up now, as they cruised between the discount Christmas stores and tile outlets, would be too much.
Wish You Were Here Page 28
