The Lake Season

by Hannah McKinnon

  “Fine.”

  Iris waited for her older daughter to elaborate, as she attempted to switch gears from separated spouse to sullen teenager. It was like learning to drive stick shift all over again, only in one of those touchy European sports cars, the ones that never failed to stall in a long line of traffic.

  “So, what’s new at home? Is cheerleading going okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s going.” Sadie yawned audibly.

  “Did you just wake up?”

  “Nope.”

  Iris covered her sigh with her hand. No use letting Sadie hear her struggle two hundred miles away.

  “I can’t wait ’til you guys come up to the farm. We’ve got corn, tomatoes, peas. Maybe you could work at the stand? I’m sure you’d be better at the cash register than I am.”

  “Maybe. Is Aunt Leah there?”

  Iris swallowed. “Yes. But I’m not sure if she’s awake yet.”

  Instantly Sadie brightened. “Can you check?”

  “Well, sure, but why don’t you tell me a little more about what you’ve been up to first?”

  Sadie grew impatient. “I’m fine, I already told you.”

  “Okay, then how about Samson?” The dog was a pathetic last resort. But he was also the sole topic everyone in the family could agree on.

  “Samson rolled in something dead the other morning. Lily and Dad had to give him a bath in the backyard. He still stinks, though.”

  “No, he does not!” Lily disagreed loudly in the background. Iris smiled. They sounded so close, her chest fluttered.

  “So, can I talk to Leah?” Sadie asked again.

  Iris gave up. The fermenting smell of Samson’s coat was the most she’d gotten from Sadie since she’d arrived. “Hang on.”

  She handed the phone to Leah, whom she located downstairs at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. “For you,” she said.

  Iris plopped down across from her, trying to hide how hard she was listening, as Millie scrambled eggs at the stove. The two sisters had not spoken since the day before, but now, chatting with Sadie, Leah was her old cheerful self. Iris listened to the description of her wedding dress. Sadie’s excitement was audible on the line as she fired questions at her aunt, causing Iris to scrape irritably at her scrambled eggs. Why couldn’t she speak to her own daughter like that?

  “How’re the kids?” Millie asked her, setting a glass of juice before her.

  “Good. I miss them.”

  “Are they enjoying their summer camps?”

  “Seem to be.”

  “And Paul?”

  When Iris didn’t answer, Millie turned, her arched eyebrows raising the question again.

  “I don’t know, Mom. We didn’t talk much,” Iris mumbled, surprised by the annoyance in her voice. And a wave of shame rose up in her throat, as it occurred to her right then that her conversation with her own mother was not that unlike the one she’d just had with Sadie.

  Millie turned back to the stove. “Eat up, Iris. You need to stay nourished.”

  Iris forced herself to take a few bites as Leah held court on the phone. By this point, she’d lost track of which girl she was talking to; it appeared the phone had been handed back and forth as the topics jumped from swimming to movies, and more details about the now famed lemonade stand. Perhaps Leah should take over the daily phone calls; she’d garnered more information in one sitting than Iris had since leaving home.

  “Miss you,” Leah said, rising from the table.

  Iris motioned to her to pass the phone. “Leah!”

  But Leah had moved to the window. “Give your brother a big raspberry for me.” A pause, followed by a laugh. “Yeah, love you, too, Sades!”

  Iris bit her bottom lip. Love you, too. Meaning Sadie said it first.

  “They’re so grown-up,” Leah said, returning to the table. She set the phone down between them and Iris reached for it, but the line was already dead. “Can you believe Sadie made junior varsity?” Leah asked.

  “She what?”

  Leah cocked her head. “Didn’t she tell you? She made the JV cheer squad. And she’s just a freshman!”

  Iris stood and stalked to the sink, where she dumped her breakfast plate.

  “You barely ate,” Millie observed.

  “I’m not hungry.” She was torn; desperately wanting to stay and hear more about her kids, and furious that she’d gotten so little from them herself. Not to mention Paul; he’d barely spoken to her. They were still parents, after all. He should’ve told her about the junior varsity squad.

  Upstairs her bedroom was already sticky with humidity, the morning haze having risen off the lake to fill the upstairs chambers of the house. Iris tugged her blankets back into place in a makeshift attempt to tidy up, then stripped them off the bed altogether. She spun around to the window, raking her hands through her hair. What was she doing here? It had only been a week, but already it seemed she was missing the kids’ whole summer. If she packed quickly, she could be on the road and home in three hours. But the thought of that filled her with an emptiness so acute, she had to force herself to breathe. It would only make things worse. As much as she missed the kids, she didn’t want to see Paul. She didn’t want to drag the kids into the mess she was sure would erupt if she were to return home unannounced. And so, like a refugee, she was forced to sit tight where she was. The farm was hardly neutral territory, but there really wasn’t any place else for her to go.

  There were two new messages on her cell, but she had to walk back downstairs and out onto the patio to get any reception. The first was from Joan Myer, the cookbook editor. “Hello, Iris. I wanted to get back to you with a final decision about the proposal.” Joan paused, and Iris held her breath. “I’m sorry, but as much as I love the concept, I can’t get my team on board with this writer. She’s not a chef. And what we need is an actual chef.” Iris closed her eyes. She’d known it was coming, but as with all rejections, it was like a punch to the gut. Now she’d have to call her author and share the bad news.

  In the next message Trish’s voice boomed into her ear, grounding her instantly. Good old Trish, who wanted to know if she was free to grab a drink. Was the pope Catholic?

  Quickly Iris punched in Trish’s home number. It didn’t matter that it was eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning. A drink was exactly what she needed.

  • • •

  Wednesday night was ladies’ night at the Hampstead Brewery. Iris paused outside the pub doors, glancing down at her baggy mom jeans. She hadn’t brought anything terribly trendy to the lake, not that she owned anything terribly trendy these days. Since she’d arrived Trish had already ordered her to go shopping, and fast, before marital assets were divided.

  “What?” Trish had said, looking at her with exasperation. “You need to wake up, Iris. A separation is the last set of doors before a divorce.” She’d looked Iris over as she said it. “Besides, it might not hurt to get Mama a new look.”

  But shopping for her new self would have to wait. For now, her dark jeans and white T-shirt would have to do. She fingered her chunky silver bracelet nervously as she peeked inside the pub window. The bracelet was a gift from the kids for her last birthday, something Sadie had picked out. The girl had great taste, and had recently begun to troll Iris’s closet, borrowing little things here and there. Iris suspected that was part of the reason for the fashionable gift. But it didn’t matter. At that moment, it felt like her kids were wrapped around her wrist.

  Inside the pub the music was loud. “Jack & Diane” played on an old jukebox in the corner, and a row of young men lined the stools at the mahogany-paneled bar, glued to the ball game on the TV screen. Not much had changed since Iris had been a regular here, during her college summers, except perhaps for more tourists in madras shorts. She made her way through the small dining area to the rear, where Trish waved from a corner table ove
rlooking the lake.

  “Sit that bottom down,” she ordered Iris, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. “I already ordered you a drink.”

  Iris took a deep sip of the icy lemon martini.

  “So tell me everything,” Trish said, leaning in.

  Iris laughed. Trish had known the ins and outs of the Standish family since childhood, and the recent reunion was, therefore, ripe for analysis. “Shall I just whet your appetite for the wedding, or sate it altogether?”

  Trish didn’t hesitate. “By all means, sate it!”

  For the next hour, Iris did just that, filling in every tidbit from the weekend, from Leah’s dress fitting to Stephen, who as far as she could tell was pretty damn near perfect. Go figure.

  “Sounds like quite the guy,” Trish said.

  “Which we should be happy about.” Iris paused. “Except for the fact that—”

  “He’s nothing like the other guys she accumulated over the years,” Trish said, finishing her best friend’s thought.

  “Exactly! And that should be a good thing, right?”

  Trish shrugged. “I’m sure in Millie’s book it is. Boy, she had some real winners back in college, didn’t she? I used to be so jealous, listening to her stories when she came home during semester breaks.” Trish laughed, recalling some of the stories Iris had tried to forget. “Well, now that she’s finally found ‘the one,’ things are gonna be boring. No more dashing off to the Himalayas with . . . what was his name again? The guy from her senior year that she left school for?”

  Iris rolled her eyes. “Martin the mountain climber.”

  “Right. And no more midnight rescue missions to Portland police to bail Leah out. She was dating some activist at the time. What protest group was she involved with?”

  “PETA, I think?”

  Trish threw up her hands. “My point exactly. This guy seems rooted. A necessary change, if you ask me.”

  Iris couldn’t disagree. “Let me ask you something. How was Leah last year when she moved back here? Did you see much of her?”

  “A little. She came by the café every once in a while. Why?”

  “Did she seem happy?”

  “Yeah, I guess. She always is, though, don’t you think?”

  “Something’s different about her.”

  Trish narrowed her eyes. “Spill.”

  “Something’s off,” Iris admitted. “She’s getting married to this great guy, and she’s finally settling down, but she’s not . . . herself. When Stephen left for Seattle, she basically took to her bed.”

  “Maybe she missed him.”

  “For two days! And it’s more than that. She’s taking pills.”

  “What kind of pills?”

  Iris paused, wondering if she sounded like an alarmist. Maybe, as Millie had insisted, it really was no big deal. “I saw a bunch of prescription bottles up in her room. She says they’re for sleeping.”

  Trish shook her head. “Christ, it seems like everyone I know is taking something for something. But let’s be honest. How sane were you before your wedding?”

  Iris laughed. “You know I was a wreck. But this is different. One minute we’re trying to lure Leah out of the house like an injured animal. And the next thing I know, she’s bouncing on Cooper Woods’s tailgate sporting a bikini.”

  “Ah.”

  “Don’t ‘ah’ me. It’s just that she’s all over the place.”

  “Like Cooper’s tailgate?”

  Iris sipped her drink. “Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want. But she seems either really high or really low. Does that sound like depression?”

  Trish leaned back in her seat and regarded Iris coolly. “Sounds like good ol’ Standish sibling rivalry, if you ask me. Are you sure this isn’t more about you?”

  “Give me a break. It’s just that she and my mom have this thing going with the farm. Sure, Millie has been nagging me to come back up here forever. But it’s not like you can just drop your kids on their heads and take off. And besides, Leah is famous for all these ‘great big ideas.’ How was I to know this one would turn out?”

  Trish nodded sympathetically.

  “And I’m happy for her, really. But now everything’s changed at home with Paul, and I thought maybe I could come back here and feel, I don’t know . . . normal. But it feels like I’ve been gone too long to be myself. I don’t have a place here anymore.”

  “You know that saying ‘You can’t go home’? Well, it’s bullshit. That’s the one good thing about family. They have to take you.”

  “Yeah, but now that I’m here, it’s like I’m this big fat disappointment.”

  Trish looked into the bottom of her empty martini glass. “Well, on that point, I’m afraid I’m siding with Millie.”

  Iris’s face fell. “You think I’m a disappointment?”

  “No, not the disappointment part. But I think you stayed away long enough to make it hard to come back.”

  “Like I did it on purpose? Why would I do that?”

  Trish shrugged. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  Iris hailed the waitress, who brought them another round. “I’m going to need another drink for this, aren’t I?”

  Trish reached across the table. “Look, I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but you can’t give them all the blame for your estrangement. Outside of a hot toddy three Christmases ago, I haven’t seen you in years. It’s like you fell off the map or something. What happened?”

  Iris stared at her lap. It was a soft blow, one that she knew Trish hadn’t intended to sting. But the delivery was deserved. Each summer Iris had promised to come back with the kids. But when they were little it’d been hard; there were playpens and baby equipment to tote, cribs to set up; Millie’s dogs were too loud, the house too close to the water. They’d seemed like good reasons at the time. And Paul had never been one for the outdoors. Boats and lakes meant mosquitoes and mud. Why risk West Nile virus when you could sip iced drinks with umbrellas by a perfectly chlorinated hotel pool? Though Iris couldn’t totally lay the blame on him. Hampstead was her home, where her friends and family resided. She should’ve been more insistent about returning. More independent. More something.

  “I’ve pretty much sucked in the friend department, huh?”

  Trish shook her head softly. “No. But you missed a lot of birthdays. I wished you’d been here for more of that stuff.”

  It was Iris’s turn to reach across the table. “Me too. I’m sorry about that.”

  Still holding her friend’s hand, Iris looked out at the lake, which was turning a rich shade of purple under the setting sun. Trish was right—she should’ve come home sooner.

  Trish clinked her glass against Iris’s, interrupting her thoughts. “So. Speaking of people who suck, tell me about Paul.”

  Iris laughed, genuinely, for the first time in days, but a wave of hurt followed close on its heels. “You know those women you see on the news, the ones who go to the hospital with what they think is a bad stomachache, and then they pop out an eight-pound baby? And you think to yourself, ‘That’s ridiculous. How could she not know she was pregnant?’ Well, that’s me.”

  Trish coughed. “You’re pregnant?”

  “No! I mean I never saw this coming. I know I’ve been living in this dead relationship for years. And yet when Paul mentioned separation, it was like I’d been hit by a Mack Truck.”

  “How do you feel now?” Trish asked.

  “Out of control. Like someone is making this massive life-wrecking decision for me, and all I can do is sit on the sidelines and watch.”

  Trish made a small noise of empathy. “I can’t imagine. I just don’t get how men can do this.”

  “But it’s not all him.”

  Trish raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “Are you kidding?”

  “Don’t get me wro
ng, if I were to see him standing in the rearview mirror, I’d still throw the car in reverse. But on some level Paul is right. We are horrible together, and we have been for a long time. I guess I figured we’d survived this long, why pull the plug now?”

  Trish shifted in her seat. “Look, there’s no easy way to ask this. Do you think he’s having an affair?”

  The word caused Iris’s throat to tighten.

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve asked. I’ve looked. But there’s nothing there I can find.” When he’d asked her for the separation, she’d lost no time going through Paul’s stuff—emptying his pockets, checking his email, even going so far as to peruse the credit card statements. As sure as she felt it in her gut that there had to be someone else, she came up empty-handed.

  She cleared her throat. “You’ve no idea what it does to you, having to skulk around like that. You go from feeling suspicious to guilty. And wondering all the while if you’re the one who’s crazy.”

  “Well, you’re not crazy. It happens.”

  “Well, I can’t seem to find any proof. But I still have this horrible feeling.”

  Trish nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry, kiddo.”

  “There’s one thing I do know. Once we had kids, he started looking at me differently.”

  Trish was a firm believer in embracing the full female experience, saggy post-nursing breasts and all. “You mean, like you’d turned into someone’s mother, instead of a sexual partner?” She scoffed. And she held no tolerance for men who traded up—or more accurately, down—in the age department when all their partner had done was age gracefully in the natural order of things.

  “No, really. I could see it when I stood next to him brushing my teeth in the morning. Or whenever I walked in the door. It’s like he’d look up expecting someone else, but it was just me.”

  “Just you? Don’t even go there. Not after you supported him through law school and raised those kids.” Trish’s voice rose, and the couple beside them glanced over.

  “Paul always pushed me to go back to work at the agency in Boston. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe it would’ve taken the strain off him. Or made me, I don’t know, more interesting. That’s one thing our therapist suggested.”