Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  “Please do not leave empty bottles in the refrigerator,” she told them both, holding it up.

  The blame fell between them, unacknowledged.

  Outside, a car slowly rolled by the windows—the Wisemans’ red Cadillac coming up the drive. She followed it through the screenporch, caught up to it before Marjorie could open her door. Herb Wiseman sat strapped into the passenger seat, emaciated, barely managing a wave, and Emily had to temper her reaction, freeze her surprised smile. The windows were closed for the air-conditioning, and Marjorie left the car running. Arlene and Kenneth came over to pay their respects.

  “We’re leaving,” Marjorie explained, and enveloped Emily in a perfumed hug.

  “We’ve been meaning to come see you,” Emily protested, looking her over.

  Arlene hugged Marjorie as well. Kenneth shook her hand with manly concern. Emily marked how unchanged she was—the neat white hair and enviable tan and even teeth, her summer uniform of faded alligator shirt, madras shorts and moccasins. She seemed fine, untouched by his illness, if anything more capable. Emily worried that that was how she’d looked, her health shocking next to Henry, vampirelike.

  “I hear you sold the place.”

  “I did,” she admitted.

  “It’s a shame. The old gang’s breaking up. I’m so sorry about Henry.”

  Emily thanked her—a reflex she thought she’d lost. She wanted to ask after Herb but couldn’t with him right there. He hadn’t moved, and wouldn’t, out of pride or infirmity she didn’t know.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drive this car before,” she said.

  “On the highway it’s fine. You’d be surprised, you get used to it.”

  “You’re brave,” Emily said.

  When they’d said their good-byes (she and Arlene craning their heads through the open window to give Herb a scratchy kiss) and the Wisemans had driven off, she puzzled over her own remark, wondering what part of it was directed at herself, self-congratulatory after the fact. They were only driving to Buffalo. She could tell from Herb’s mushroom color what was in store for Marjorie, the hope and panic, the preparation and the waiting. She’d have to call her when she got home, already dreading it along with the bills and her estimated tax payment, and reluctantly added it to her list.

  “Are we ready?” she asked Kenneth, to get him going, and he dragged himself inside to find the sunblock.

  Arlene took the rocker on the porch, her mission forgotten. The Wisemans had crushed whatever momentum they had, changed the tone of the whole morning. Emily didn’t dare sit down or she would succumb too, and she couldn’t afford to, not now. At home she’d have nothing but time to dwell on these things. Today she was playing golf.

  She lugged her clubs to the back of Kenneth’s car and figured out the latch, got a good grip and hefted the rattling bag in, surprised at how light it was. She’d always taken care of herself, and her mother had lived to be eighty-three. Again she thought of trim, prim Marjorie. They could each have another twenty years, hunched and shrinking to nothing inside their empty houses until the children worried for their safety and installed them in old-folks’ homes.

  Kenneth came out of the house with his bag, walking flat-footed, fussing with his zippers, taking his sweet time.

  “Let’s go!” she called, a tough coach. “Come on, Maxwell, let’s see some hustle!”

  2

  Lise heard the car start and turned her face toward the open window for a minute—the curtains motionless, the chestnut dusty and sun-dappled beyond the screen—verified the familiar engine, then turned back to the page with Harry eating Christmas dinner, hundreds of plump roast turkeys followed by flaming Christmas puddings and crumpets and cakes. Filch, Professor Snape and Professor Flitwick. It was like Dickens, everyone had funny names.

  Across the room, Sarah opened the bathroom door and clicked it closed behind her. Lise checked her watch on the cedar chest. It was still early. Meg was asleep, and Ella. Outside it was blinding, but inside the light was flat, the room shadowed. Emily was gone, and she was free, the whole morning hers. She slouched down, curling her back, making mountains of her knees, vowing not to get out of bed until she absolutely had to.

  3

  Sarah took Rufus with her—any excuse to get away from them. Aunt Arlene was busy taking pictures and didn’t ask to tag along, just looked at her funny, as if it was too early for her to be up.

  “It’s so nice,” Sarah said, “I thought I’d go over to the ponds.”

  It was simple lying to her, she didn’t even have to try. With her mother it was tiring, keeping track.

  I hope we can still talk the way we used to.

  She hated the way people said they were sorry about things like it wasn’t their fault, like someone else was doing them. Like Mark apologizing when he was getting what he wanted.

  It was sunny and she’d barely slept, and the walk seemed farther than usual. Her stomach hurt. There was nothing in it, but she was sure she’d throw up if she tried to eat anything. The hot asphalt smell of the road reminded her of last month, riding her bike past the mailbox, the slow days she waited to hear from him, and she felt stupid and pathetic, let down again.

  The hardest thing was not being able to talk to him, to scream at him all the things she’d thought of last night, to ask him why. At least with Colin she’d told him face-to-face. “I think we should break up,” she said, not “I want to break up.” It wasn’t a request. She had reasons if he needed them, as if he might agree with her, think it was a good idea. She didn’t say she was sorry. Once the words were out and she could see his face change, she thought he would hit her, but suddenly he was helpless, blinking and red-cheeked, stunned, saying he didn’t understand, asking her to explain, and she knew it would be easy. She wanted it to be over and for him to go away, but otherwise she felt nothing, not even relief, just a dull impatience like a headache.

  That was how Mark felt about her now, and she was just as confused as Colin had been. “What did I do wrong?” Colin had asked, and she’d tried to be nice, saying, “Nothing.” Now she saw how useless that answer was, how cruel. It said, There’s nothing you can do, so don’t try. You don’t exist. It was the same feeling she had after her father dropped her and Justin off, when he said he’d have to ask their mother if a certain day was okay—the feeling of not being wanted the way you wanted someone else. She knew it too well.

  And still, she wanted to call the camp office long-distance and talk to him. She’d started a dozen letters in her head full of biting lines, selecting exactly what she could say to hurt him—that he was clumsy and dumb, a child—and then pulled back, thinking they weren’t true, not completely.

  The terrible thing was, she didn’t even like him that much. She’d known it from the start. She never expected him to write. All July she’d been fooling herself. It was the time of year more than anything. She’d felt the same loneliness last summer at Grammy’s, spent the cool, buggy evenings wishing she were home, and then when they were back in Silver Hills she couldn’t stand her room, the stuffed animals and yellow walls reminding her of how long she’d been in that house, how long she still had to go.

  The thought of school starting soon only made things worse. She’d wasted the whole summer. She was supposed to be excited—“Think of all the new people you’ll meet,” her mother gushed—but secretly she was afraid. She didn’t think it would be that different from middle school, the same gray routine of the bus and the cafeteria and band practice while the weather turned, the days growing shorter, made up of phone calls and homework, but the place was huge and Liz’s parents were sending her to Dearborn Academy. For the first time since kindergarten they would be split up. When she asked her mother how much it cost to go to Dearborn, her mother laughed and said, “Too much,” as if she couldn’t be serious. Her father said the only reason they moved to Silver Hills was for the school district. “For you kids,” he said, as if it was a sacrifice and she was supposed to be gratefu
l.

  Rufus pulled her toward the shortcut, passing the empty A-frame. The grass hadn’t been cut, and the ditch by the road was high with black-eyed Susans. Ahead of them, insects circled out of the woods, specks caught in the light, then swung back into the shadows. Rufus padded along, panting, a drop hanging from the tip of his tongue. She’d have to make sure he had water in his dish when they got back.

  She heard the truck before she saw it, jolting and squeaking over the road to the marina. Her first reaction was to hide, to duck into the cool woods, tugging Rufus with her, but it was coming too fast and on principle she didn’t want to give in. Fuck them. She saw the black shape of it flashing through the leaves and thought it was a van or a big pickup towing a boat. It was only when it crossed the intersection ahead that she saw it was a small dump truck hauling a trailer with lawn mowers on it. In the bed, leaning on the back of the cab, were two guys in baseball caps and T-shirts, and without seeing their faces, she knew one of them was him.

  They hadn’t seen her, and for an instant she stopped, trying to decide whether to turn around and hurry and cut them off or pretend she hadn’t seen them. Rufus looked up at her and then back down.

  “You’re a big help,” she said.

  She thought of how desperate she’d been with Mark, and walked on, slowly, checking over her shoulder, and when the truck crossed Manor behind her, she kept going. She wasn’t going to run after it waving her arms. She didn’t even know his name. She didn’t even know if it was him.

  If he was cutting their lawn, she didn’t want to miss it. There were only two days left—one, really, since today had already started.

  She kicked a white stone from the A-frame’s driveway and watched it skitter and hop along the asphalt, adjusted her course and caught up to it and kicked it again, and then again until it slid off into the weeds, and by that time she was almost to the road, her mind filling with possibilities.

  The sun made her squint, the flat ponds shadowless. The crooked lines of tar used to fix the road were soft and smelled strong, intoxicating as magic markers. There were no cars coming, so she walked Rufus down the middle, past the hatchery. The same official pickup stood by the door of the building, the same hum of a pump coming from inside. Once they left the road and climbed the dirt path up the side of the dike, she took Rufus off his leash.

  The closest row of ponds was dry, so she headed for the center where she knew they were stocked, and found one, the dark water busy with slowly opening circles as if it were raining—the fish feeding, kissing the surface. She chose a patch of grass to sit on, facing the road. Rufus hunched beside her, bored, his head on his paws. Up here anyone could see her, but she didn’t care. Through the liquid shimmer wriggling above the fields, she could see the cars on the highway slow before they turned in and the marina road far down past the hatchery. The chances that he would come back so fast were slim, but she kept checking, pretending to be interested in the even row of pines across the road, sharp in the harsh light, the tips of which were reflected, softer, in the pond. From the murky bottom, a string of pearly bubbles ballooned to the surface—a sign of life—then stopped, all done.

  Her mother would ask what Mark had said in the letter, maybe seriously, in private, or as a joke in front of everyone, and she would have to say something. She’d hidden it in her flute case, under the blue velveteen, and the idea of it there now made her want to take it into the bathroom again and reread it, tear it to bits and flush them down the toilet. She wouldn’t. She’d take it home and save it in the shoe box in the bottom of her closet with the other ones, a rubber band around them—the ones she wanted to reread now, to torture and reassure herself that it had been love.

  She sat, the heat like a weight on her head, the monotonous cycling of the pumps drifting to her, small and faraway, over the empty ponds. She’d barely slept, would probably not sleep tonight either. She needed to eat something. The grass was itchy, and she scratched at her shins, made a painful cross on a mosquito bite with her fingernail. A cloud of gnats buzzed Rufus, and he rubbed his face with his paws. Two fish came over, knives in the brown water, paying them no attention, then vanished with a flick, impossible to follow, lost in the mirror of the sky. The wind lisped in her ears and the water shivered like skin.

  It was beautiful, she knew, but it didn’t change a thing between her and Mark. It didn’t change anything, who she was or how she felt. It all took place outside of her, disconnected, like the rest of the world. Her life would be the same when they went home and school started and she only saw Liz on weekends, her father whenever he felt like showing up. It would be just her and Justin and her mother, with nothing to look forward to.

  Two days. She wasn’t being realistic. And yet she kept hoping to see the truck, would stand if it did come rattling up the road, would turn to face it as it passed, obvious, offering herself. He would see her, that was all she wanted, no wave, no words, just the two of them seeing each other, knowing.

  The sun rose higher. A man in a ranger uniform came out with what looked like a crowbar, turned a wheel in another pond and went back in, totally ignoring her. A fish flopped out of the water. Her hair burned, and the shimmer made the highway break up, the cars blobs of color that shot spears of light. With his shaggy black coat, Rufus was too hot, panting in the grass. They ought to get back. Out of habit she went to check her watch, but it was gone, lost, her belt loop empty. She knew she would use it as an excuse. And in the end it was true: it was impossible to tell how long she waited.

  4

  They had to pull up the wickets to let them cut the grass, so Justin and Sam went around the side of the house and practiced whacking the balls as hard as they could, knocking them off trees and through bushes, gouging up clumps of mud. They played hockey, clacking their mallets together, then quit when the ball hit Justin on the ankle. They spun each other on the swing, stumbled off like drunks. They had a buckeye fight until Sam hit Aunt Arlene’s car. She was out on the dock and didn’t hear it with the mowers going. It didn’t make a dent, but they stopped anyway. The guys finished and drove off, and Sam and Justin put the wickets and stakes up again, trying to find the same holes.

  In the shade the cut grass was wet and stuck to their sneakers. It was a lot easier to hit the ball. Their shots went straight instead of bouncing, and when you knocked the other guy’s ball, it went a long way. Justin was winning, and then Sam missed a wicket on purpose so he could hit him.

  “Yes!” Sam taunted him, dancing like an idiot. “Who’s the man?”

  Justin stood off to the side while Sam settled his orange ball next to his red one. Sam’s idea was to knock him forward, toward the porch, so he would have to come all the way back to go through the middle wicket. Sam clamped his own ball underneath his sneaker, keeping his balance, lifted the mallet, then chopped down hard. He caught part of his foot, but got enough of the ball to send Justin’s shooting over the low grass, headed straight for the porch. It didn’t stop when it got close, it rolled right under, disappearing into the black gap, a hole in one.

  Sam laughed, doing his stupid Nelson—“Ha ha!”

  “Shut up. You have to get it.”

  “It’s not my ball.”

  “You hit it.”

  “If I get it, you have to forfeit.”

  They both got down on their hands and knees and looked. Sam brushed away the cobwebs with his handle, and as their eyes grew used to the dark, they could see the cool mounds of dirt in back that could be hiding anything—rats or giant spiders or worse.

  “There it is,” Sam said.

  The ball was too far in to reach with a mallet. Maybe Sarah or Ella could get it later.

  “Let’s play wiffle ball,” Sam said, and jumped up, and Justin followed him. Losing the ball bothered him—it was his, and he thought they should tell someone—but Sam was already whipping the bat around like a light-saber.

  They couldn’t find the wiffle ball anywhere. They looked on the porch and in the garage, Sa
m even ran around back. It wasn’t under the porch. Rufus sometimes chewed them up, or the wind blew them into the lake and they floated away. Maybe the mowers ran it over.

  Sam picked up a buckeye and tried to hit it and missed. He tossed another one up and connected with a plastic smack, the buckeye whistling off across the yard.

  “Whoa!” Justin said.

  The two of them collected enough buckeyes to fill their pockets and made sure home plate faced the lake so they wouldn’t hit the cars. Justin pitched first. He wasn’t very good, but the buckeyes were so small it was hard to make contact, and Sam struck out twice before he even foul-tipped one. The next three pitches bounced in the grass at his feet.

  “Throw strikes,” Sam ordered him.

  Justin did his best, lobbing the biggest buckeye he had over the heart of the plate. Sam swung hard and lined it cleanly, the buckeye coming straight at his face. Justin put his hands up, sure he was going to catch it, but somehow his hands moved or closed too soon—as if it had changed direction or slowed in midair, a trick—and he could see it had sneaked through, was still coming. He had just a split second before it hit him to remember the feeling he had leaving the croquet ball under the porch, and thought: I should have gotten it.

  5

  “Get right,” his mother cried, waving an arm at the ball, which continued to hook for the woods, disappearing into the trees with a leafy ripping.

  They both listened for the knock that would mean it had struck a limb or a trunk and might kick out, but there was nothing, just the shadows on the grass.