Stillriver

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Ronald still lived with his parents in a brick bungalow east of town, built by Ronald’s father on the north branch of the Still river. As well as a younger brother, Mex, who was small and friendly and dark like his mother, Ronald had an older sister who’d gone away to Detroit and not come back. His father was a hard man and hard on Ronald; his mother was – at least two people said much the same thing with much the same pitying sigh – a gentle, decent woman who kept quiet and stayed deep in the background of her husband.

  Ronald had left school as soon as he legally could, at sixteen, and was now either nineteen or twenty. He worked with his father, building pole barns in fall and winter, switching to erosion construction for lake cottages in the warmer seasons. It was heavy work and he was built for it – six foot one, about one hundred and ninety pounds of labour-generated muscle.

  It was as a young teenager that he had saved Raleigh Somerset from drowning in the channel, and been feted as a hero. This might have been the only (and commendable) noteworthy thing about Ronald, had he not during the following years shown a growing, chronic addiction to fighting. This was remarkable, if only because Stillriver wasn’t the South Side of Chicago; it was actually a very peaceful place. The sandlot fistfights of teenage boys were rare and undangerous – nobody would have dreamed of using a weapon. Once in a blue moon there would be a ruckus in one of Main Street’s two bars, but it was invariably confined to some drunk taking umbrage either because they had cut him off at the bar or because he had decided someone smaller was eyeing up his wife.

  But Ronald didn’t have to be drunk or wait for someone to push him into a corner. He was game and ready to go at the first look on somebody’s face he didn’t like, the merest gesture or word that offended his sensibilities, which for all their lack of refinement were trigger-quick to sense a slight. Ronald liked fighting so much in fact that he often went looking for it – in the tavern at Spring Valley on Saturday night, at Scotch Haven, the snowmobile resort, when there were big, rowdy dances, in the Mexican-only bar in Fennville where he won the fistfight but only just avoided getting stabbed, and even, since opportunities were apparently thin on the ground, outside a Dairy Queen in Stillriver one hot and muggy summer night.

  He had put people in hospital and been there himself, and once spent three days in a Wayne County pokey. He had fought older men, bigger men, men his own age, and two smart-ass high school kids who had unwisely given him lip. The only exemptions to his relentless, persisting love of violence seemed to be small children, men suffering from acute physical disability, and women. So chronic was his preoccupation, this waging of a one-man amateur war, that it was almost funny.

  Almost but not quite, for behind the semi-jocular currency of anecdote – and a general willingness, given his heroism saving Raleigh, to cut Ronald more than an average share of slack – lay a darker undercurrent, a sense that Ronald’s behaviour was a step or two (or three) beyond sheer feistiness, was in fact the conduct of someone so well out of order that he constituted a menace.

  Having seen Ronald approximately once a year through the course of a decade and a half, Michael now found him popping up all the time, on the periphery perhaps, but visible just the same. He didn’t exactly camp out in front of Michael’s house (or Cassie’s for that matter), but for someone who didn’t live in town he now seemed to spend a lot of time there, usually cruising in his vanilla pickup truck. And Michael knew enough about himself to know that Ronald scared him half to death. It was the same kind of fear he’d felt in the anxious emotional wake of his mother’s death, but now his former inchoate, panicky timidity was focused on one instigating agent. Michael wasn’t scared of Ronald all the time, but he wasn’t ever free from fear for long.

  Yet there wasn’t anything Michael could do about this, for he did not live in a culture of complaint. Take your medicine, be a man – spoken out loud, the sobriquets sounded ridiculous, but their force was still there. His father had never been given to macho displays, despite his size, or flaunted an aggressive masculinity, but there was a quiet strength to him. And anyway, what exactly could Michael complain about? Ronald wasn’t actively harassing him or Cassie, wasn’t even following them, and when met he was always so friendly. Passing Michael and Cassie on one of their walks, he smiled shyly at Cassie, then grinned at Michael. ‘How’s it going?’ he said, and went by. In the drugstore, where to the best of Michael’s memory Ronald had never come in before, he’d pick up a Chronicle, then seem to wait to make sure it was Michael who served him. ‘Thanks, little buddy,’ he took to saying. Little buddy? Michael was almost as tall as Ronald and, though about forty pounds lighter, no longer thought of himself as little.

  Nor did he feel able to say anything to Cassie, who seemed unaware of the ubiquitous presence of her admirer. She had been so understanding that day on South Beach when he had told her about the panic attacks that would sometimes still seize him. But his fear of Ronald was different; it touched at the very core of what he assumed made her want to sleep with Michael, indeed made her love him: his masculinity. She was a girl, and although after living in an all-male household Michael found something wonderful and strange and sometimes daunting in this simple fact of otherness, he also had a fundamental sense that women wanted to know they could be protected. And from this it seemed logical that if he showed too much weakness, Cassie would herself feel weakened and under threat – and would despise him for it.

  As the snow melted and spring came, Michael found himself increasingly bothered by Ronald’s lurking presence. It was as if the release from winter’s restrictions on movement somehow made the spectre of Ronald even more anxiety-inducing, in the way that depressives suffer more in the longer, lighter days of spring precisely because their own internal winters persist. Michael found much of the satisfaction he had always derived from the drugstore now eroded, since he never knew when Ronald might make one of his casual forays in for a newspaper or cigarettes. Even the pleasure when Michael’s admission letter from the University of Michigan coincided with the one Cassie got too was soured on his way home, when Ronald passed in his pickup truck, waving at him happily like an old friend.

  Fortunately, he knew that the sense of menace he felt would go away in the autumn, when he and Cassie would be in Ann Arbor. And early in the summer it went away in any case – he didn’t see Ronald or hear anything about him for six weeks. As the days passed, and the source of his agitation failed to make an appearance, Michael gradually relaxed. Business was good at the store and Alvin’s health largely recovered; Cassie and he could make love again now that the weather was good, and the summer proved warm and sun-filled. He caught himself thinking I wish this could go on for ever as he walked downtown one day to work, passing the Gilbert house, and for the first time he felt a twinge of regret that he would soon be leaving.

  Then in late July Ronald was back. Minimally at first – Michael only saw the taillights of his truck as it turned off Main Street two blocks ahead of him – but it had the effect of even the smallest cloud when it blocks the sun in an otherwise cloudless sky. And the next day Ronald bought a Chronicle in the drugstore. ‘How you been little buddy?’ he said with a big smile as he handed Michael the money.

  Michael felt his anxiety return almost two-fold, so much so that he almost didn’t notice the change in Cassie’s house. For on one of his rare visits there, as he went to use the downstairs bathroom, he saw that there was a bed in what had been the parson’s study, and his slippers were on the floor beside it.

  ‘Is your father sleeping downstairs?’ he asked Cassie as they left the house and went for a walk down to Stillriver Lake.

  ‘The stairs are too much for him,’ she explained. ‘He gets so breathless he can’t get to sleep. So I moved him downstairs.’

  ‘It’s that bad?’

  She nodded, then changed the subject. But something niggled at the back of Michael’s mind, and when about an hour later he kissed her goodbye and went back to the drugstore, he realized what it
was. If the parson was too ill to climb the stairs, he was too ill to look after himself. And Michael thought, Who’s going to look after him?

  ‘I am,’ said Cassie firmly, sitting in the kitchen of Michael’s house. His father had walked downtown to get the mail and Gary was cutting the grass outside. The way Cassie was twisting her hands belied the confident tone of her pronouncement. ‘I am,’ she repeated. ‘There isn’t anybody else.’

  ‘What about Ann Arbor? How can you look after him when you’re there?’

  She stared down at her hands. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Who will then? Your aunt?’

  ‘I will. My aunt’s offered but he won’t move out there.’

  ‘What about home help or whatever they call it?’

  ‘We haven’t got the money. Especially if I went to Ann Arbor.’

  ‘But Cassie,’ he said, with a sickening sense that he would not be able to argue things his way, ‘you can’t give up college. We’ll work something out.’

  ‘There’s no alternative. My father’s getting worse, Michael. Not better, and not even the same. Worse.’

  ‘But he must have insurance.’

  ‘Yes, he does. And it would pay for three hours of home help a week. It’s too late to increase the cover – he couldn’t afford the premiums anyway. Any extra money he ever had went to Marshall College.’

  ‘I’m surprised he didn’t make you go to school there,’ Michael said bitterly.

  ‘He wanted me to,’ said Cassie with a small, wry smile. ‘It’s the one time I didn’t do what he wanted.’

  ‘Well, you’re making up for it now,’ said Michael angrily. ‘Can’t he see you should go to college? Isn’t he concerned about you?’

  ‘He’s too ill, Michael. He needs me. And I’ll go to college – it’ll just have to be a little later on. I can take courses at North Shore.’

  ‘It’s not the same, Cassie, and you know it. You’ll be smarter than your teachers there. And what about us? What am I going to do in Ann Arbor without you?’

  She lifted her eyes and held his. ‘You’ll be fine, Michael. It’s what you always wanted. New things, new people. And you’ll always know where I am,’ she added, trying to smile.

  ‘Why don’t I stay too?’ he asked suddenly. ‘We’ll both go later. I can work in the drugstore, find something else if Alvin hasn’t got enough for me to do. Then in a year or two, we’ll both go to Ann Arbor.’

  She was shaking her head. ‘No, you’ve got to go. You’ve worked too hard to blow your chances now. It’s what you’ve wanted for a long time. You can’t stay here.’

  ‘Sure I can,’ he said, warming to the idea. ‘I’ll get my own place.’

  ‘On what? Two fifty an hour? Alvin may want you to take over some day, but until you do he’s going to pay you peanuts. He has to – it wouldn’t be fair to Marilyn any other way.’

  ‘Forget Alvin,’ he said brusquely, feeling he was floundering. ‘I’ll get another job. You’ll see.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Why not? There are some jobs around.’

  ‘Because if you do that, Michael, I’ll break up with you. And you’ll just have wasted a whole lot of time when you could be at college.’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that,’ he said with bewilderment.

  ‘I would,’ she said.

  He saw she wasn’t bluffing, and he felt a sudden, terrible hurt. ‘I thought you loved me,’ he said, with a croak to his voice.

  Cassie lowered her eyes and said softly, ‘I do, Michael, I do. That’s exactly why you’ve got to go.’

  Then Cassie broke down. She clenched her fists and put them over her eyes as her shoulders heaved, and Michael heard the sound of choked, shuddering sobs. He went and knelt down besides her chair, then put his arms around her, saying, ‘It will be all right, I’ll come back all the time, it’s not that far.’ And to himself he cursed the parson, finding his dislike flaring into hatred.

  That last month of summer before he went away was the first time he’d felt depressed since the aftermath of his mother’s death. So much of the anticipation he had felt about leaving had been tied to Cassie’s coming with him that now he felt only an emotional deflation at the prospect of going. When he saw Cassie he didn’t want to talk about college, since she wouldn’t be there to share it. And when they made love at the Half, he found he said little, focusing so intently on the brute, carnal taking of her that it unnerved her, once in fact being so rough with her that she cried. ‘Talk to me,’ she’d say as he moved towards climax, but he was too busy trying to take part of her into him, as if that would let him take her with him when he went away.

  Two weeks before college began, Michael was reading the bewilderingly large catalogue of courses the university had sent when his father appeared in the doorway of his room.

  ‘You going to be okay for money in Ann Arbor?’

  ‘I guess so. I’ve got the student loan now.’

  ‘You sure that’s going to be enough?’

  ‘I’ve saved quite a lot from the drugstore. If I have to I can always get a part-time job.’

  ‘You shouldn’t work while you’re going to school.’

  ‘Why not? You did.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I don’t want you to have to.’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  His father looked slightly exasperated. ‘I know you’ll be all right. That’s not the point. And how are you going to get back here? The bus will take you hours – you’ll probably have to change two or three times.’

  If it weren’t for Cassie this wouldn’t be an issue; did his father really think he’d be coming back a lot? He must have read Michael’s mind, for he said gently, ‘Normally I wouldn’t expect to see much of you. But Cassie told me. Seems to me you’ll need a car if you’re going to see her very often.’

  His father was suggesting he needed a car? This from the man who hated driving? ‘I can’t afford a car,’ he said harshly.

  His father’s eyes widened a little and he was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘What if you had the money?’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Your mother left you some in her will. Don’t get all excited – it’s not that much. But it ought to stretch to a used car. You were supposed to get it when you turned twenty-one, but I think in the circumstances she’d have wanted to release it early.’ And then he added, ‘Your mother would have liked that girl.’

  He was due to leave the day after Labor Day, and spent the weekend working in the store. On Sunday afternoon Ronald came in and bought an expensive pocket comb, a bottle of Brut aftershave, and a large bag of Brach’s red-and-white striped peppermints. As he took his change from Michael he said, ‘You have a good time down there.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘She’ll be just fine.’ He gave a small, chesty laugh.

  ‘What?’ Michael was too surprised to let fear censor him.

  ‘I said, you’ll be just fine. See you, little buddy.’

  Michael had Monday afternoon off, and planned to take Cassie to the Half in his father’s car, but when he went to pick her up she opened the door and put a finger to her lips. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I can’t come out.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘He’s feeling faint. I can’t leave him.’

  He swallowed his disappointment as best he could, and the next morning she came to the house to see him off – his father was driving him down to Ann Arbor. As they pulled away he looked back. Gary was already heading for the house, but Cassie stood in the driveway, in the shade of the big maple tree, waving and waving until they turned the corner and were out of sight.

  2

  AFTER ALL THIS buildup, his first year proved strangely anti-climactic. At first, his thoughts stayed so much on Cassie back in Stillriver that he had trouble taking in his new environs. He missed her terribly, but was angry with her, too – how could she have let her father ruin her life? And mine, he thought bitterl
y. And he worried that, trapped in Stillriver with her friends and Michael away, she would somehow become vulnerable to what he feared most. She’ll be just fine.

  But within a month of starting college, he discovered that his worries were unfounded. ‘Hey Mex,’ he said as cheerfully as he could, when on his second trip back to Stillriver he ran into Ronald’s little brother by the barber shop. They talked sports for a while until Michael managed to work the conversation around to Ronald.

  ‘He’s making good money now,’ said Mex, and Michael tried his best to look pleased by this. ‘He says he’s never met a bigger bunch of airheads, but the Gulf people pay him double what my dad did here.’

  ‘What Gulf people?’ asked Michael sharply.

  ‘Gulf of Mexico. He’s down near Galveston. I thought you knew that.’

  With Ronald out of the picture, Michael found his worries about Cassie evaporated, but his missing of her remained. He lived in a small, clean room in a large new dorm that he grew to detest for its soullessness. He worked hard but found his mathematics course very difficult; most of the class seemed to know more than he did and to learn more quickly, and they were mainly freshmen too. The rest of his courses were lectures, held in large halls with hundreds of students, the only human interface the smaller sessions conducted by graduate teaching assistants. Of these, the only important course for an aspiring pharmacy major was chemistry – which he found straightforward but painfully dull, for he found he could take no interest in a micro world invisible to him.

  An old high school classmate named Ward Alison, now working at a second-hand car dealership in Burlington, sold him a used Honda Accord for a good price, and it served him well, getting him to Stillriver in a little over three hours and never breaking down. During the week he spent most of his time, when he wasn’t in class, working in the library. So he made only a few friends – friendly acquaintances really – and was lonely much of the time. By spring, when Cassie was finally able to visit him for a weekend (her aunt, the parson’s sister, visited from Oregon and offered to look after the parson for a couple of days), he realized there were people on his own floor he hadn’t even spoken to.