Rachel climbed out of the canoe, pulled the boat out of the water, up onto the shore. She stretched, said, “Don’t apologize, Spencer. No doubt it was just due to your raging teenage hormones.”
“Hey,” he said, brightening a bit, “I’ll be thirty in like, four months.”
She patted his chest, let her hand linger awhile on his left pec; it bulged impressively, perhaps from the morning’s paddling. “I’m going to find us a patch of shade. Whad’ya say you grab our picnic basket. I’m hoping there’s some chilled rosé in there.”
He blanched, shoulders slumped again. “Four bottles of Leinie’s okay?”
“Rookie mistake,” she lied, eminently impressed he’d packed a picnic basket in the first place. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.
WHEN SHE WADES BACK INTO THE LAKE, a loon is drifting off the shore—one of her favorite birds. It seems to watch her before diving down into the water and disappearing; she does not see it resurface. The lake is calm and she swims lazily back to camp, occasionally rolling onto her back to feel the sunlight on her closed eyelids. About thirty feet from shore, she stops swimming, lets her feet touch the bottom, silty and soft. Standing up, she pulls her hair back, adjusts the straps of her suit, and rubbing the water from her eyes, looks ahead.
Dr. Platz stands onshore, one hand raised in greeting. He is nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, like a rather bored coach assessing a particularly lackluster swim meet.
“Hello again,” he calls out boldly, his eyes never leaving her body.
Suddenly aware of the tightness of her nipples, she covers her chest with her arms, thinks momentarily about simply staying in the water, or swimming to some other part of the lake, but really, how childish, to run from this little man. And yet, what is he doing there? It doesn’t feel right.
Her towel is draped over a shrub, and he rather daintily picks it up, steps forward, and hands it to her. She quickly wraps it around her shoulders like a cape, moves past him, and stops near the trail, regretting her decision not to bring along a change of clothing, a can of Mace, some bear spray. What a creep.
“How was the water?” he asks, dropping his cigarette and rubbing it into the moist shore soil. “Still a little cold?”
“Nope,” she says, “water’s fine.” Then, before she turns to go, “What are you doing down here?”
He shrugs. “Saw something swimming and couldn’t figure out what it was. Came down for a closer look.” His eyes seem to search her body. “Look who it turned out to be, huh?”
Peeping Tom, she thinks, and begins to walk away, back toward Arrowhead. She doesn’t like this man one bit, and his strange presence here, on this abandoned shore, it unnerves her. She wants very desperately to be near her son, other campers, Nelson—anyone. If he was peeping—and she’s pretty sure that is the case—there is nothing in his body language to suggest he feels any shame about it.
“Maybe I was wrong,” he says. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re on to something here. Maybe men and women going to camp together—maybe it’s kind of a perfect idea.” He smirks, moves closer to her, a slither almost.
Slowly she backpedals her way up the trail; it takes a good deal of self-control simply not to run away from him, but they are, after all, adults, and he has yet to do anything really wrong. Just the kind of garden-variety male come-on a woman endures all the time until, of course, her body ages into simple invisibility.
“Aren’t you married?” she asks, trying to be a good sport about it, despite the repulsion she feels.
“Well, here we are. Alone, beside a lake, in this beautiful forest. You’ve got no husband . . . My wife would never have to know.” He smiles, singing under his breath, “Summer lovin’, happened so fast . . .”
“Remember yourself,” she says, in a tone not nearly fierce enough, a volume much too muted. She backs up, feeling so vulnerable now, without so much as a telephone, a pocketknife, a goddamned whistle.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, coming toward her, almost close enough now to seize her wrist, his light green eyes focused on her. “I didn’t see it at first, but you really are. You’ve got an amazing body.”
“Fuck off,” she seethes.
“Come on, I’m just complimenting you. Seriously, though . . . Wow. I mean, what do you expect me to say, after seeing you in a swimsuit?”
“I expect you to be an adult, to treat me like every other parent here.”
“Ah, but you’re not like every other parent here. That’s the thing. And I am treating you like an adult.”
“I’ll tell Nelson,” she says finally, firmly. “Take one step closer and I’ll fucking get you booted right outta here. You hear me?”
This seems to startle Platz, as if he were spellbound before. He holds up both hands. “All right,” he purrs, “let’s just chill out, huh? Let’s just . . . calm down. Why don’t you just take this as a compliment or something? All right, I admit it, I think you’re really sexy. I’m guilty. But I mean, I haven’t done anything, right—what did I do? I haven’t even touched you. Have I touched you?”
“You’re a fucking pig,” she spits. “Your poor wife.”
Hands still casually raised in a way that lets him win even as he loses, he shrugs. “I’m just a guy,” he says. As if that were pardon enough.
She wheels and quickly moves toward her cabin, suddenly atremble, and very close to nausea.
39
INSIDE HER CABIN SHE DROPS THE CANVAS PANELS before peeling off her swimsuit, painfully aware of her nakedness. She suddenly thinks to lock the door, too, for good measure. What should she do? Leave? Go to Nelson? With what? News that Platz is a pervert? Is she in true danger? Doubtful.
She startles when the door shudders loudly with an insistent knock, the flimsy hook-and-eye lock bouncing under the stress, and then Thomas’s voice—bless him—“Mom? You in there?”
“Hold on, a minute,” she says, her voice quavering, hands aflutter. She dresses quickly, unlocks the door.
“Jesus,” Thomas says. “I’ve been trying to text you, like, all morning. I mean, I haven’t seen you in two days.”
She sits down on a cot, covers her face with her hands, tries to stabilize the world, to focus her breathing. She reaches for her phone, then covers her face again. Her hands feel like hummingbirds, vibrating with adrenaline, desperate to fly away.
“Mom, are you okay?”
She nods vigorously, but she isn’t. She isn’t okay.
Thomas takes a step toward her, as if a part of him would like to sit down beside her, perhaps wrap an arm around her—but he doesn’t, just stands in the doorway, hugging his own shoulders, looking so concerned. He is just a teenage boy, she thinks. These aren’t his problems to solve, or even things he needs to be aware of.
She breathes deeply, claps her hands and looks up at him.
“Sorry about that,” she says happily enough. “Weird morning, that’s all.”
He hesitates, fingering the door’s eye hook. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. I’m fine, Thomas.” Brightly, there, yes, that’s right. “So. What’s up?”
“Ummm, I was headed to Shotgun merit badge and wondered if you’d want to come watch.” He is still staring at her with genuine concern. “Mom? You sure you’re okay?”
She shakes her head, trying to recenter herself. “Yes, I’m just, I’m sorry. I think my blood sugar’s low or something. Shouldn’t have skipped breakfast this morning. Anyhow, yes, I’ll come with you, thanks for asking.” She nods with further newfound excitement. Give me something to do . . . Someone other than Platz to worry about . . .
“We kind of have to get hiking, though, Mom—like, pretty much pronto.”
“All right,” she sighs. “Lemme get a bag.”
She collects her phone, a book (she’s rereading East of Eden for the third time), suntan lotion, a bottle of water, a baseball cap, and a bag of gorp—good old raisins and peanuts.
SO SELDOM does she take walks with her
son, that at first she is shocked he’s chosen not to run along ahead, or lower his face to ogle his phone or wristwatch or some other gadget. Or even maintain a safe ten-pace buffer zone off to her right or left on the margin of the trail. No, here he is, loping right alongside her, long arms swinging cheerfully enough. His uniform is a fright, all rumpled and stained, and he insists on wearing Chuck Taylors rather than boots or even sandals. His hair is greasy and floppy and his skin shines with enough oil to polish a saddle.
“Mom?” he asks.
She looks at him.
“Uh, do you think I have to come to camp next year? I mean, like, if I work hard all year and get my Eagle done, or really close to done, it wouldn’t like, make sense to come back, would it?”
She smiles grimly.
Her job as a parent is in some ways winding down, though she knows that she’ll always be his mother, this lanky teenager striding beside her, bobbing his head to some unknowable beat, some inner music utterly foreign to her. She peers over at him, wonders what secret mysteries might reside in his heart and brain. What girls he’s surreptitiously in love with. What drugs he’s experimenting with. What books he might be discovering. What music. What colleges he’s researching.
This human being she has parented largely alone—this organism—once so small he weighed less than a large watermelon. And how she carried him everywhere in those early years: to the grocery store, on hikes, around airports, to the farmer’s market, the library. He went everywhere, wrapped to her chest, his eyes staring up at her, or out at the world. How they were companions. Closer than spouses, closer than lovers, or friends. This little boy, falling asleep at her breast, petting her face, his fragile little fingers near her lips, her ears, clutching her hair. Her whole life, this boy.
“Thomas,” she says.
He looks over at her. “What?”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Mom . . .”
“No, I’m serious. I mean, you can be a total asshole, of course, and are there plenty of times you disappoint me, yes. Frequently. But . . . I’m just really very proud of you.” You are the only thing I have in this world, she wants to say.
“So . . . What about camp, though? Do I have to come next year?”
The answer comes to her lips more easily than she might have thought. “No,” she says, “you don’t have to come back here. Not if you don’t want to.”
The only people in the world who might notice his absence are Nelson and her, possibly Jonathan, who occasionally asks about Thomas’s progress toward Eagle. The world, it seems, does not much care anymore if you are an Eagle Scout, or even a Tenderfoot. It’s all about how many “followers” you have, the perfection of your spray-tanned abs; whether you had the genius to sell a start-up company that hasn’t produced a single viable product.
Maybe she won’t miss it, either, with Nelson retiring and goons like Platz lurking around. No, she’d be better off at home, she knows, tending to her garden or chipping paint off the house, maybe getting it ready to be put on the market. It is, after all, a house meant for a family, not a soon-to-be empty-nester.
“Mom?” Thomas asks.
“Yes?”
“Look, I know this is sort of weird and everything, but would it be okay if you didn’t go to Scoutmaster Doughty’s cabin anymore? Some of the guys were talking about it and . . . I know you’re just friends, but still . . .”
She stops on the trail, confounded by these boys, their fathers. “Thomas,” she says, “Mr. Doughty is seventy years old. Do you really think I’m interested in him romantically?”
The kid shrugs. “Someone said you left his cabin at like, five in the morning. That’s, like, Walk-of-Shame type stuff, Mom.”
She’s not about to argue the correct sequence of time or the legitimacy of her visit. Easier just to acquiesce, agree to his demands, which she is about to do, when she remembers that this is also her vacation, her time, her camp. She cares about this place, too. She cares about Nelson, and this might be her final year coming here. No—she won’t be treated as some kind of pariah simply because she’s a woman. How would that make it easier for the moms, aunts, and grandmothers who may come after her?
“No, Thomas. No. Look, if I want to visit Mr. Doughty, that’s my business and his. We are two adults and we happen to be old friends. I know this is a difficult concept for you, because you’re a teenage boy, but, believe it not, men and women can be friends without desiring some kind of sexual escapade.” Rachel’s voice has risen during this, she realizes. “I mean, Jesus.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Thomas mumbles, then glances up at her. “Still, wouldn’t you be pretty pissed at me for coming home at like, five, after being at a girl’s house?”
Hypothetically, the kid is right, of course. The difference is, Thomas didn’t have any girlfriends that he wasn’t interested in necking with, whereas she couldn’t possibly imagine Nelson in a romantic light without collapsing into giggles.
“Tell you what,” she says. “If I pay Mr. Doughty another visit, I’ll be back at camp by midnight. That seems reasonable. Most of you boys won’t even be asleep by then—still looking at your phones or pads or whatever.” She does not care to think about what precisely they may be looking at on those phones or pads, blotting out the natural world.
“Fine,” he says.
THE GUN RANGE is not much more than an open-air pavilion with some picnic tables, and a clearing where shooters take aim on the clay pigeons “thrown” out of a bunker carved into the rocky soil. Rachel takes her book and sits on a bench, casually listening as the counselor takes roll call. Then the class of boys begins discussing gun safety and etiquette, a shotgun laid out on the table before them, the instructor (himself not quite twenty-one years of age) pointing at the stock, the barrel, the magazine . . .
She opens her book, but remains distracted by the instruction, though the boys are paying rapt attention, not a one of them reaching for his phone, or taking pictures, and all of them silent. One reason why she and Trevor settled on a house in the country was his affection for firearms, something that stupefied Rachel at first, and in fact made her fairly uncomfortable. To see him sitting at the dining room table in winter, disassembling one of his shotguns, and cleaning the components, or walking outside with one of his assault rifles, ready to take target practice. This was not something she grew up with; her own father had never been a gun owner, had not, that she knew of, ever even been hunting.
But she never said anything to Trevor because, after all, guns were his tools. And as long as he was active duty, she wanted him to be the world’s best gun expert, the sharpest shooter.
He would invite her out to the shooting range he had established on the southern part of their property, though it was a while before she ever took him up on it. The range was really just a small ridge covered in sumac and away from the road, beyond which there was nothing but fields of corn and some raggedy patches of forest, but the houses were few and far between, the traffic scant. He’d built a shooting table out of plywood and lengths of throwaway two-by-fours, onto which he set his ammunition and guns not presently in use. From the second story of their farmhouse, earplugs jammed in, she’d watch him: this bearded man five hundred yards away, breathing the cool autumn, winter, and spring air, making beer bottles shatter or blasting apart at the rotten fruit he picked up at grocery stores for free. Watermelons exploding to reveal the pink fruit inside, black seeds and chunks flying out into the white snow. Cantaloupe, honeydews, pineapples. Trevor, out there, a thermos of coffee behind him maybe and spitting his Skoal every now and then, but mostly, she knew, just gutting the brown juices.
The first pineapple he’d set perhaps fifty yards away. Then he’d walk another one twice that far, brushing its crew-cut leaves before walking back to his gun. By the time he was satisfied that a gun was properly sighted in, he would set an orange on a fence post and pace off a hundred and fifty yards. She would hold her breath, up in that drafty bedroom, the curtain
s occasionally fluttering beside her even with the windows tightly shut, and without fail, the orange detonated, staining the snow, sometimes sending a crow flapping up out of the crown of a nearby white pine. The very panes of glass shivered from the report.
He would practice for hours, stopping only to eat lunch in the kitchen, or to visit the bathroom, and always he would invite her to come shoot, too.
“Look,” he would say, “I understand that you don’t feel comfortable around guns. And, in a way, I think that’s a good thing. It would be a better world, of course, if there were no guns at all.”
He would lean against the kitchen counter, forearms bulging beneath a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Five separate times, he gave her this speech, she remembers. Never once breaking eye contact, never once raising the tone of his voice, or making the speech less serious than what he thought it merited.
“But that’s not the way it is,” he continued. “Guns are everywhere. A person should know how to use them. In case of emergency.”
Sometimes she’d stare at him blankly during this speech, sometimes she’d just nod attentively as she spread butter or marmalade on a piece of toast.
“Look, Rachel. The world is not composed of good people and bad people. The world is composed of people who are hungry, and those who are not hungry. It goes back to energy, to entropy. If you are hungry for food, you will be hungry for God, too. Or politics, or some kind of love. The people who are hungry have holes in them that can’t be filled. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen starving people at peace with the world. I’ve been in villages where starving people gave me their supper. Food doesn’t have anything to do with it; it’s about the deeper kind of hunger, those holes.
“So, if I want you to learn how to shoot a gun, it is not because I want us to share some kind of ‘hobby.’ It is not because I think this is fun. It’s because I want you to be prepared.”
The first two times she heard this speech, she laughed. “The ol’ Boy Scout motto,” she said, giving him a light push before turning back to whatever it was she was in the middle of.
The Hearts of Men Page 27
