Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  In two steps Rufus was off the dock, airborne. He hit with a smack, the splash carrying the chip away from him so he had to paddle after it, making the boys laugh.

  “No,” Lise scolded them, already up. “He can’t do that. He’s too old.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said to Justin. “Don’t you ever listen?”

  Lise could see him cringe as if he’d been hit.

  “It’s all right, we just need to get him out now.”

  The boys walked down the dock toward shore, whistling, as Rufus swam alongside, snorting like a seal. He hacked something up on the grass, then shook, ears flapping, and trotted out to her again, panting, his gums pulled back in a smile. There was no reason to be mad. She’d just have to watch him. She was getting everyone resettled, confiscating the Doritos in the confusion, when the 4Runner turned in.

  The boys popped up.

  “He still needs to look at the stove,” she said, and Sam sat back down, resting his chin on his fists. “Okay,” she said, “enough with the poopoo face.”

  Ken waved getting out of the car. He had a paper, and something in a brown bag.

  She would not go in and check on his progress. She would not pull off the cover and get the boat ready. She would not move.

  He got like this, obsessed with things. It didn’t absolutely have to do with his photography, or didn’t necessarily spring from it. Once it was matchbooks, once it was telephone poles. Old Volkswagens, Greek restaurants, patterned Formica counters. He would come home with an idea for a series, and for weeks she would have to listen to him spout about the cultural significance of tow trucks, and then a month later he would be off on some other kick, sometimes not even developing the rolls he’d taken. The first burst of infatuation was enough for him, and enough to spur her jealousy. At home he would forget the missing girl, whatever her name was, but for now she couldn’t help but feel replaced—like Meg, dumped for a younger, less complicated woman. She would win him back by default, not through any grand romantic development. At her age, it was the most she could hope for.

  As if to answer her, Sarah rolled onto her back, firm and perfect, and Lise looked away, scratched at a suddenly demanding mosquito bite.

  Finally he came down to the dock with the square wheelbarrow his father had assembled from a kit.

  “All fixed?” she called, and he gave her a thumbs-up. His new trunks were shorter than the ones the other day, a bright white line peeking out from each leg. He let the boys help him get the cover off, then asked them to stay out of the way as he straddled the gunwale and loaded the long red gas cans like bombs. She stood aside with the girls, useless, untrustworthy.

  There wasn’t room for him to work, so they hauled the inner tube and its snarl of rope onto the dock.

  “Life jackets, everybody,” she instructed, and helped the boys adjust their straps.

  “Is my mom coming?” Justin asked.

  “I’ll be your buddy,” Ken said, “okay?”

  This prompted the girls to claim each other, leaving Sam with her. As if, at this point, she could feel any more undesirable.

  Ken left the empty gas can under the cover and the boys’ sodas in the wheelbarrow. Emily and Arlene and Meg came down to see them off, Arlene snapping away with her camera while they paddled out, the breeze pushing them at an angle for the Lerners’ dock. Lise could see the weeds reaching up through the dark water, wrapping around the blade, and imagined the girl bobbing to the surface, rotted, something out of Deliverance. It was a wicked wish—killing his dream girl.

  He left the wheel and pushed through them to the stern, bending over the edge to lower the engine, then came back and tried the key. The motor whirred but didn’t turn over. He pushed the throttle up, thumbed the choke button and tried again, getting it to sputter. They drifted sideways into the blue smoke.

  “Keep paddling,” he said, as if he’d never rescinded the order.

  “Need a jump there, Captain Ahab?” Emily shouted from the dock.

  He twisted the key and the motor revved hard and long, not catching. He took his shades off and shouldered through them again and squeezed the rubber bulb to prime the engine. He was sweating and frustrated, and Lise knew not to bother him.

  “Watch the dock,” Meg called.

  “Use your paddle to push off,” he told Lise—as if they didn’t go through this every time they tried to go out—and she did, the bow coming around.

  He tried again, and this time the engine caught—the boys cheering, Ella looking worried—and he eased the throttle up until it was steady, deafening. He didn’t look back as he aimed them for the center of the lake. With the wind in her hair, Lise felt freed, as if they were really departing. She waved along with the kids, leaving Emily and the others behind, their figures diminishing as the wake grew and tilted and curved, finally dwindling to dots, the dock one among dozens, and then just a distant, green piece of shore, indistinguishable from any other.

  “Sorry,” he shouted from behind his shades.

  “For what?”

  “For being a jerk.”

  “That’s okay. You can’t help it,” she said, an old joke, worn but still with shifty implications, in this case a peace offering, temporary and happily accepted.

  The windshield was crazed, nearly opaque. She sat up to help him with traffic, swiveling to check on the kids. They skirted the no-wake buoys for the marina at Prendergast Point, cut behind a big cabin cruiser with two women in their twenties in bikinis and joined the main lanes. It was like getting on the highway. The hull thudded against the waves, Sam shouting “Unh! Unh!” to get a laugh. She held on to the bare grab bar built into the dash, letting the speed and noise pour over her, washing her clean. It had to be past three but the sun was still high. On the far shore the trees gave way and she could see a truck climbing a long hill. It was Thursday, somewhere people were working, and for the first time since they’d arrived she felt truly on vacation, emptied of all responsibility.

  They curled around Long Point, and Ken cut the throttle. As they slowed, the boat settled into the water. The air thickened, the humidity clapped back in place, and they could hear birds and, behind them, the motors of other boats. In the woods, behind a chain-link fence hung with signs, the old mansion glided by, a stucco imitation of a French villa. It was part of the state park, but they’d run out of money to fix it, so it sat there derelict, windows sealed with plywood, and each year when they swam in the cove Lise wished they could take it over, the whole family eating their meals on the broad stone patio. She and Ken had been inside once, years ago, before the children. The place smelled of mold and campfires. Deep maroon wallpaper from the twenties was peeling off in sheets; someone’s sneaker sat on the mantelpiece, decoratively centered. She’d been too spooked to make love, and Ken had been disappointed, a fantasy of his thwarted.

  She so wanted romance now. This should have been enough—a motorboat and a ruined villa, a moody starving artist of a husband. Mary Stewart could spin a thriller from less, with the right heroine. As a teenager Lise had wanted to be like the young, untried women on her covers, governesses and college students abroad unfailingly described as lissome or winsome. She really thought she would grow up to be one of them, plucky and windswept. What an idiot she’d been.

  Ken killed the engine and climbed over the windshield and she handed him the ceramic anchor, an overgrown ashtray. He tied it off on the bow cleat and played out the line until it hit bottom, then lashed down the excess.

  Sam asked why they couldn’t go tubing. Lise ignored him, stepping out of her shorts.

  “How come we always have to go swimming first?”

  “Don’t be a wiener,” Ella finally answered him.

  “Okay, who’s going to go first?” Ken asked, unfolding the ladder.

  Usually the boys could be counted on to do anything that put them in the spotlight, but Sam was grumpy and Justin wasn’t biting. Ella and Sarah hung back, loath to show enthusiasm.

  “Somebody,�
�� Ken said.

  “I’ll go,” Lise said. “I’m not afraid.”

  There were no protests, so she climbed over the windshield and pushed herself upright on the hot bow. The boat rocked beneath her feet, making her shift her weight; she crouched and put her arms out for balance. She chose to go off the starboard side, straight at the mansion. She needed a step or two to clear the edge of the bow. She thought of the kids paralyzed from diving in quarries, telephone poles and old pilings lurking under the surface. The mansion must have had a dock. Steamboats probably stopped here to let guests off.

  “Jump,” Sam prodded.

  “How deep is it?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Ken said, “it’s like twenty feet.”

  She decided to play it safe and go feetfirst, then wavered.

  “Come on,” Sam urged.

  She gathered herself up, swayed back and hurled herself toward the edge, measuring her steps. She pushed off, flying not up but straight out, and tucked her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms tight around her shins in a cannonball.

  She hit the water hard, a shock to her bones. The cold closed over her, and the silence. She let her weight take her down into even chillier depths.

  When she opened her eyes there was only a yellowy, shining hint of the surface above, the water green and swamplike, silted. The cold stilled her heart, isolated its beating against the faint, silvery sound of propellers passing far out in the middle of the lake, submarinelike. She could see herself on the muddy beach, limp and white-lipped, eyes open like a fish, her slicked hair a shocking contrast. He’d take pictures of her then, rolls and rolls of film, coveting her a way he never did in life.

  She’d never know. Her own buoyancy pushed her, will-less, to the surface. The castle was gone, nothing but trees above her.

  “How is it?” he called, and she found him, standing on the bow in his silly short-shorts.

  “It’s nice,” she lied.

  14

  The whole point of her not going on the boat was so they could talk. Meg had hoped Arlene would clear off and leave them alone. While Meg invented likely errands to send her off on, she installed herself on the porch with her novel and a tall glass, half listening to the Pirates game on the Erie station.

  It was too hot to walk Rufus, too hot to sit on the dock. Her mother took the rocker beside Arlene and Meg took the glider, conceding defeat, if only for the moment. As always, Ken had left her the hard job, slipped away, blameless, while she confronted her mother. Despite her train wreck of a life, their roles had stayed the same. She thought it was by default, or weakness on his part, not a show of faith in her, but she was willing, maybe even eager, to be wrong.

  The three of them read in the shade while the sun glittered on the water, the noise of the boats like a racetrack, then quiet for a time. The Pirates were winning in Chicago. In the middle of a sentence she would be drawn into the game, the shouts of the crowd or the announcers joking with each other. They were still advertising Iron City beer, a staple of her teenage years, Vitamin I, and she remembered cutting school and drinking in Frick Park, walking the gravel paths far into the woods, sitting on the side of a hill and looking down the valley at the busy steel mills and the gray Monongahela. She would be with James and Gina and Sully and Ray, and Teddy, who smoked Newports. Spring or fall, it didn’t matter; the days seemed promising, an adventure. For lunch they’d hit the Open Pantry, getting gross premade hoagies wrapped in plastic and cold quarts of pop, more cigarettes, a new lighter. As the afternoon wore on, they’d slow down, knowing they had to go home.

  “How was school?” her mother would say over the dinner table.

  “Boring,” she’d say, and go up to her room and listen to music.

  It didn’t seem twenty-five years ago. Nothing seemed twenty-five years ago, but it was, and for a moment she saw the past like a forgotten country spread out behind her, a landscape seen from a speeding car, the backwater towns and cracked streets and shabby apartments she’d lived in still there, and the girl she’d been, as if she could recapture her (redeem her) by returning to that hillside in Frick Park and start again.

  She couldn’t, just as she couldn’t help but fall under this spell of regret. She was especially susceptible here, now, afraid she wouldn’t be able to persuade her mother to keep the place, that—as with her life and her sobriety—it was already too late.

  “You’re thinking,” Arlene said. “That’s not allowed.”

  It’s dangerous, Meg wanted to say, but blamed the mesmerizing glare of the lake. “It’s like diamonds.”

  “I hope the children have their sunglasses,” her mother said. “Sun like this can do permanent damage to your eyes.”

  “If you look directly into it,” Arlene tweaked her, but too quickly, as if coming to Meg’s rescue.

  Meg appreciated the gesture, but thought it called too much attention to her, and really, she didn’t need any help. As with so many of her mother’s random observations, there was a judgment attached, an implied failure on her part, even if Sarah and Justin happened to be wearing their sunglasses. At another time in her life, Meg might have seen her warning after the fact as purposeful, designed to hurt, but this summer, with larger things on her mind, she’d acquired enough distance to understand that this was simply the way her mother saw the world—as a place you had to prepare yourself against or face dire consequences. She wasn’t so much malicious as thoughtless. She would have said the same thing to Lise or Ken or to Arlene. She would have said the same thing twenty-five years ago.

  Maybe it was the way her mother was raised, her grandfather and grandmother White religiously strict. Yet when Meg remembered them, she recalled how the two of them watched TV after dinner, planted in matching chairs for hours, both of them smoking, sharing the same ashtray, her grandmother heaving herself up to get them each a bowl of ice cream to eat with the local news. No, it was just her mother, her tentative, judgmental nature. If you made the right choices in life, you might be rewarded, but if you made the wrong ones, you were doomed. Meg had been wrestling with that idea for forty years, hoping to disprove it. Only her pride kept her from admitting that she’d given up, that her mother had won.

  She needed a cigarette, needed to get up and move around. As she expected, Arlene tagged along after her, the screen door slapping shut. They stood under the chestnut and watched the boats, their dazzling sails. She looked for an opportunity, waited until Arlene had gone on about the heat wave in the Plains and the forest fires in the west as if they shared a personal stake in them.

  “They were bad last year too,” she agreed, and paused, clearing the air. “Listen,” she said softly, and bent closer. “You wouldn’t be insulted if I needed some time to talk to Mom alone, about the house?”

  “Of course not. I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Tell her we like it here,” Arlene said. “Tell her it’s cheaper than anyplace else. I know she still wants to come up next year. The only reason she’s selling the place is because of your father, I’m convinced of that. It’s not hard to care for, especially with the new roof.”

  She gestured toward the cottage in full view of her mother, and Meg had to turn her around.

  “You don’t think it’s the money?” she asked.

  “I think she sees it as one more thing to take care of. She’s taken care of a lot in the last year.”

  “She didn’t have to do it all herself.”

  “That’s her way,” Arlene said.

  Meg didn’t respond to this, relying on Arlene’s solemnity to cover her. The lake and the radio filled the silence. It was too large of a subject, her mother misguidedly trying to insulate her and Ken from their father’s illness, if that’s what she really thought she was doing. Helping him die with dignity. It was a fight for another time.

  “I was thinking you might go out to the store and get something we need for dinner.”

  “The shish kebabs. We’ve g
ot an order in at the Lighthouse. I don’t know if that’ll give you enough time.”

  “All I need is an hour. Not even.”

  “I’ll just drive around if I have to,” Arlene said, and now Meg wanted to say she was sorry, that she wasn’t in the way.

  “Thank you,” Meg said, and laid a hand on her shoulder, and Arlene brightened, grateful—like Justin, Meg thought—to be part of things.

  “Good luck,” Arlene said.

  Back on the porch, Arlene waited until the Pirates had batted before she announced she was going out to the Lighthouse. “Any special orders?”

  “We have more than enough dessert,” her mother warned. “Someone’s going to end up taking one of those pies home.”

  “Not me,” Meg said, comic relief, as if to distract her.

  When Arlene had gone, her mother turned off the radio. “I think it’s a habit,” she said, “always having something on. I do the same thing now when I come home. Two minutes haven’t passed and I’ve got my music going. It’s like having someone else in the house.”

  “I know,” Meg said. “With me it’s the TV.”

  “That’s worse.”

  “I don’t watch it. It might not even be in the same room. It’s just hearing another voice.”

  “I’m sure that’s it,” her mother said.

  They subsided, pleased with this rare agreement, and turned to their books. Meg held off, not wanting to be too blatant. Her mother was quick to see any serious difference of opinion between the two of them as criticism, and took criticism as a personal attack, went defensive, whether that meant dismissing her concerns as foolish or lashing out at her. Her father and Ken had spoiled her, Meg thought, going along with anything just to placate her. Stoned or sober, Meg refused to, and their fights escalated from clashes over small concrete issues into tests of higher principles and finally, irrationally, into proofs of who they were and what they owed each other. She had to avoid anything that sent them down that track. She thought everything depended on how she started.