Wish You Were Here

by Stewart O'Nan

  She made shrimp dip, a ritual she’d inherited from Henry’s mother, the queen of cream cheese. She covered it with plastic wrap and set it in the fridge to firm. Someone hadn’t put the clip back on the potato chips, and they were rubbery. She fed them to the disposal and took down a new bag, propping it on the chopping block. There was enough ice, enough of the children’s drink things.

  It was too hot to be inside, and she went out on the porch where she’d left her book. Margaret and Arlene were still on the bench, Arlene gesturing to the world at large with one arm, explaining something. Emily thought another mother might see it as a defeat—sitting here by herself while someone else counseled her daughter—but she understood. As much as she might wish it, it was too late to change their places in the family. All she could hope for was a softening of their roles, if not trust then a grudging respect for what they’d put each other through, if that was not too much to ask.

  Rather than watch them, she read her book. She’d just fallen into it when the boat pulled in with Kenneth and the children.

  Arlene came flapping off the dock and across the yard. “I need my camera!”

  “You’re worse than he is.”

  It was on the table beside Emily, and she handed it to her. At the door, Arlene looked back as if she were coming, holding it open, an invitation to join her. Ever the diplomat, she thought. Arlene knew them both too well.

  “Go ahead,” Emily said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  17

  He couldn’t read the face Meg gave him as he unloaded Lise and the kids. His mother and Arlene were there, so she would be using code, but her even look—closed and matter-of-fact—didn’t seem hopeful, confirmation that things had gone the way he expected. He thought she had no reason to be upset. She didn’t really think their mother would change her mind this late.

  Meg helped the kids lug everything back to the house while he and Lise put the boat up, and by the time they finished, she and Arlene had gone out to the Lighthouse. He didn’t bother with a shower, not with the crowd. He’d just get dirty going through his father’s workbench anyway. He’d have time to wash up before he had to grill the shish kebabs. It would be cooler then too.

  He smuggled the Nikon outside. He was dull from the sun, his forehead tender, and a cold Iron City revived him. He set the sweating bottle on top of the little refrigerator—his now. The garage was hot and airless, a rich, secretive smell from childhood he associated with loneliness and spying. How many times had he watched Meg and her summer boyfriends making out on the dock? A mellow light slanted through the side window, intersecting lengths of scrap wood jutting from a barrel, a strange bouquet. He bracketed it, hoping one setting would catch what he’d seen. He thought of just freestyling, but nothing jumped out at him, not the campy mermaids or the geometry of the ladder hung on the far wall. He could hear Morgan warning him and shook his head to banish the voice.

  He started with what he knew he wanted, his father’s tackle boxes. There were two: the rounded green metal-flake one he remembered, and the new square two-tone brown plastic one his father actually used. They were not quite his yet, not until he took them down to the basement at home and set them in a respectful place. Here they were still his father’s, on the workbench where they belonged. He opened the green one, stepped back and bracketed it, pleased with the symmetry of the trays, the different hooks and lures in their uniform spaces.

  The brown one he wasn’t as happy with. It was cheap and common, not really his father’s at all but a functional substitute. The green one’s latch had given way. After it had dropped most of its contents on the lawn, his father had picked this one up at Wal-Mart. In his father’s eyes, it was simple: this one worked and that one didn’t. Ken wondered if he could have the green one fixed. Maybe the differences between the two would create something interesting.

  He was going to close the brown one when he noticed a Zippo lighter in the bottom compartment among the bright bobbers and packaged leaders. His father had supposedly quit smoking years before he bought the new box, so it was out of place, an anachronism. He palmed it, then flipped it over, hoping for an inscription (a retirement present, a door prize from some convention), but it was just brushed steel, scratched and nicked with use. The wick was charred and the flint was good, but it didn’t light, the fluid long since evaporated, the cotton wadding inside dried up. As a teenager, Ken and his friends had all carried Zippos as part of their style, though they were actually useless for lighting pipes. He’d mastered the switchblade flick that popped the top, ready, any second, to light some untouchable girl’s Marlboro.

  There were no cigarettes to go with the lighter, and he vaguely remembered his father once using it in lieu of a knife to melt his line when a snag proved impossible to free. Rather than upset his mother, he thought he would give it to Meg as consolation.

  He thought she would interrupt him as he framed the beer bottles neatly cased for return, the kindling cut from scraps of some forgotten project, but when she and Arlene returned from the Lighthouse they took the bags inside, leaving her van under the chestnut, its engine ticking.

  It was Lise who finally came out and asked him if he was done yet. “Your mom’s making noise about dinner.”

  “Is everyone out of the shower?”

  They were, leaving him zero hot water. He ducked his head under the spray, clenching his muscles, and then when he got out, the humid room made him sweat. He dropped the lighter in the pocket of his shorts, a conspicuous lump.

  Meg was on the lawn, helping the kids shuck the corn. She looked up as he passed, and this time he was sure she was asking him something, that she needed to talk. He got the coals going with the starter, and Lise brought out the packages of shish kebabs, Rufus loping alongside her, champing his loose lips and drooling.

  “I guess Jeff called,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “I’m just piecing things together. It sounds like they talked for a while.”

  “She was going to talk to Mom about the place.”

  “You said,” she said absently, and he thought she was bored with his family’s annual melodramas, that in the end she only wanted to go home.

  “I’m just worried about her,” he said.

  “That’s good of you.” She gave him a kiss as a reward and discovered the Zippo. “What’s this?”

  He showed it to her. “I thought she might like it. I didn’t think Mom would want to see it.”

  “No, she wouldn’t.”

  From the porch, Meg called, “Should I put the corn in?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Lise went in to do the salad, and again he found himself imitating his father, waiting, a long barbecue fork in one hand, a beer in the other. Rufus stayed with him, curled up on the concrete apron of the garage. Finally he got the kebabs on, the smoke floating over the garage and the dock. The kids started a game of croquet. The sun was gone from the sky, and the air over the lake was gray, a touch of mist building. The Chautauqua Belle chuffed by, tooting its whistle. The locusts whined.

  He knew what his mother’s answer had been—that was never in question. He wanted to know how Meg felt about it, and what he could do to help.

  He could not pick out a single instance that he’d helped her, a particular time he lent her money or took care of her or the children. They were too far apart for that. He called her, and sometimes she called him back. After talking with her on the phone he felt powerless and ashamed, as if her problems were his fault. They weren’t, just as they weren’t their mother’s, but the feeling would stay with him for days, dispersed only when Lise teased it out of him. “She’s an adult,” she’d say, the exact opposite of his mother, who loved to mock Meg from a position of wisdom: “She thinks she’s still a teenager.”

  For him she was both, and also his big sister in the fifth grade, the face that had peered through the bars of his crib at nap time. She had paved the way for him, often to places he feared to follow, but
she’d always been on his side, his advocate in all matters, even when they sent her off to boarding school. She sent him thick letters covered with vines and flowers, melting psychedelic designs. On the phone she joked that they should run away together.

  The kebab on the end was burning, flames licking through the grill. He doused it with a spritz of his beer, stirring up a cloud of ashes, and backed off. He rearranged them and ran inside for a knife, peered into a bloody cut and decided they were done enough. The burnt one would be his.

  “You don’t want that,” his mother said in the kitchen, raising a hand to take it, and he had to protect his plate.

  Meg built a steaming pyramid of corn on a pink flea-market platter and broke out a new stick of butter—“Not margarine,” she boasted.

  If she was overcompensating, he couldn’t tell. Maybe he was the only one thinking of the place, tomorrow being their last day. Maybe it was Jeff.

  They barely all fit on the porch. Rufus stood outside the door, peering through the screen, wriggling his nose.

  “There’s no room for you,” his mother apologized. “You just wait.”

  His meat was tough. The boys had trouble cutting theirs, and then he sliced through Justin’s paper plate, the juice staining its wicker holder. “Get a new one,” his mother instructed, and Meg went. Ken brought the whole thing inside, trying not to drip on the carpet.

  Meg peeled a paper plate from the stack and fitted it in, and he transferred the meat, his hand underneath it, in case.

  “Hey,” he said, “you talked to Mom.”

  As he asked, he was surprised to find that, after everything, he still held out some hope. She could tell him their mother had changed her mind and he wouldn’t be shocked.

  “I did,” she said, and even though she was busy cutting Justin’s meat, he could read her voice easily. He’d heard it over the phone for years. It was the flat, disinterested tone that said his mother would never change, that it was foolish to think she might.

  “What did she say?”

  “What did she say,” she repeated, working, a signal that she didn’t want to talk about it. “She said we should have said something earlier. And she’s right, I understand that. She says she needs the money, which I didn’t know, but that’s fine. We had a good talk, actually.”

  He checked the doorway to make sure no one was coming, but she was done, ready to head back out.

  “Look what I found,” he said, to stop her, and showed her the lighter.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Dad’s tackle box.”

  “Nice.” She tried to give it back.

  “Keep it. I’ve got no use for it.”

  He wanted her to be thrilled with the gift, touched the way he’d been when he discovered it. She just thumbed the lid open and flicked the wheel, testing it, then folded it closed, unimpressed.

  “Arlene might like it,” she said, and despite himself, he agreed. Nothing could make up for losing the place. He couldn’t believe he really thought it would comfort her, a lighter that didn’t even work.

  They went back outside and reclaimed their chairs, laid their napkins in their laps. His meat was gristly and tasteless, dots of fat congealing on the plate. His mother was telling the story of Duchess being sprayed by the skunk who used to live behind the woodpile and the shopping cart full of tomato juice they bought to wash her, how in the middle of it Duchess got away from them and they had to chase her through the neighbors’ yards. She was young then, and too fast for them. They finally found her hiding under the Loudermilks’ toolshed, covered with dirt.

  “Can you imagine, on a hot day? It was worse than the skunk.”

  She laughed at her own story, enchanted with their history. In her corner, Meg was busy eating, completely ignoring her, cool and solitary, and Ken thought that she was right. Things didn’t change.

  18

  They didn’t have to do the dishes tonight, Grandma and Aunt Arlene would take care of them so they could play miniature golf.

  “Go,” they said, “have fun,” and everybody jammed into his mother’s van and went to Molly World. Usually they only went there for bumper boats and go-carts, but the old Putt-Putt was closed. This was supposed to be a harder course.

  “I’m gonna kick your butt,” Sam said, sticking a finger in Justin’s face.

  “I’m gonna kick your butt,” he said.

  “I’m going to kick all your butts,” Uncle Ken said from the front.

  He would, too. Uncle Ken always won at miniature golf. He was even better than his father.

  “Can we do the bumper boats?” Sam asked.

  “We’ll see.”

  “That means no.”

  “That means we’ll see.”

  “Are we going to have ice cream?” Ella asked from the middle seat.

  “Yes, we are going to have ice cream,” Aunt Lisa said, right beside Justin. “You can’t go to Molly World and not have ice cream.”

  It was weird sitting in the way back with Sarah’s scrunchy in front of him. She was mad about something, because she didn’t talk the whole way there, and Justin thought it was because their father had called and they didn’t get to talk to him. Justin missed him too, but come on, they were going to Molly World. And besides, it wasn’t their mother’s fault. They’d see him when they got back. She promised.

  They went by the house with all the goofy stuff in the yard, and the one with a goose for a mailbox. They went by the sign for the McDonald’s and the bar like a log cabin with all the motorcycles outside, by the Pizza Hut and the Blockbuster.

  “Can we go to Blockbuster?” he asked his mother.

  She made him say it twice because she couldn’t hear, and by the second time he already knew the answer.

  “We won’t have time tonight.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow we’re going to Webb’s for dinner.”

  Sam groaned.

  “Can it,” Uncle Ken said.

  They went to Webb’s every year on the last night. They had to get dressed up, and it was boring. Even the gift shop didn’t have anything except gross goat-milk fudge.

  The lights were on at Molly World even though it wasn’t all the way dark yet. Inside the fence he could see fake palm trees and the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building with King Kong waving at a plane. The ice-cream stand was a giant sundae with a cherry on top.

  On the roof of the booth where they got their putters was a flashing yellow light like on a tow truck. When it was lit, the guy in the Molly World shirt explained, the first person to make a hole in one won a free game.

  “Why do they have to play the music so loud?” Aunt Lisa asked.

  “Because it’s fun,” Ella said.

  Justin took a green ball and Sam took a blue one. They had a sword fight until Aunt Lisa stuck an arm between them.

  “Calm down,” she said.

  There were too many of them, so they had to split into two groups. His mother and Uncle Ken went with him and Sam while Aunt Lisa went with the girls. They had a choice of two courses.

  “Let’s play both,” Justin said.

  “We’re only playing one,” his mother said, “so pick the one you want.”

  They picked the one with King Kong; the girls wanted the Eiffel Tower.

  “Okay,” Aunt Lisa said, “we’ll see who’s faster.”

  “I don’t know,” Uncle Ken said. “You’ve got Miss Pokey there.”

  “Dad,” Ella said.

  “We’re gonna cream you,” Sam said, but then they had to wait to tee off. The people in front of them had three little kids and none of them could hold their putters right. They chased their shots around like hockey.

  “Come on,” Justin said.

  “Shush,” his mother said. “It’s not a race.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing.”

  It was just like at home. She was always yelling at him for no reason.

  “And don’t
give me that face,” she said. “You start with that, you can go sit in the car.”

  By now the other people were done.

  “Sam, you go first,” his mother said, like she was punishing Justin, but she wasn’t because he didn’t want to play anymore.

  The hole was boring. It was straight and went up a bump like a triangle at the end. If you hit it to either side, it would send the ball down a dead end. Sam hit his too hard; it went up the bump like a ramp and jumped the back wall, bouncing past the other family and under a pine tree. He chased it down and did it over again, and this time it was too soft, and then he almost kept it on the bump but it just rolled off; he did that again, then came back the other way, bouncing it off the back, and it went in.

  “How many?” Uncle Ken asked.

  “Four,” Sam said.

  “Okay, Just,” his mother said.

  It wasn’t a four, but he knew not to say anything, his mother would just get mad at him.

  Justin put his ball on the center spot on the rubber mat and looked at the hole.

  “Nice and easy,” Uncle Ken said.

  His mother said nothing, and he thought of Sarah in the van, if she was mad like he was now. When his father got mad he yelled so you could hear it upstairs.

  He didn’t want to hit it too hard. He pulled back the putter just a little and swung.

  It was straight, and going for the hole. He was afraid it was too soft, that it would stop or swerve when it hit the bump, but it climbed the triangle and rolled past the hole.

  “Get in!” Uncle Ken yelled as the ball knocked off the back wall. It almost stopped, then curled, made a slow turn like water swirling down the drain, and went in the hole.

  “Who’s the man!” Justin said, and raised his putter like Steve Yzerman when he scored.

  “Wow!” his mother said. “Nice going.”

  “Good job, Just,” Uncle Ken said.

  And then Sam was in his face, pushing him, almost knocking him over. Justin thought it was part of the celebration, like when you won the Stanley Cup, but Sam was shoving him, shouting like he’d messed up. “The light’s on, you idiot!”