Mirror Lake

by Andrée A. Michaud

  Without worrying about Moreau, I took the tattered book out to the four-hundred-million-year-old rock, where I tried to fit it back together. Hopeless. It was missing pieces, the ending had disappeared, and there was nothing I could do with the rest. It was wrecked.

  “Where’s your copy, Robert?”

  He no longer had one, he said. He’d burned it on Anita’s orders, since she’d decreed the book to be a bad influence on him.

  “But you did read it, Robert? You know how it ends?” No, he said. He didn’t know the ending. He’d never managed to get past page 94. Every week he’d started reading it again, and every week he’d stopped at page 94. For once Anita had been right, the book was driving him crazy.

  “But don’t you want to know the ending, Robert?” I asked.

  We were going in circles. Moreau had no interest in discovering how the story ended, his final argument being that we would find out soon enough. I didn’t agree and decided I would head into town as soon as Artie returned to buy another copy of The Maine Attraction — and, while I was at it, The Dead Zone, too. Until then, what with having Moreau on my hands, I’d take advantage. We spent the day cleaning the property, picking up branches, clearing the undergrowth, and tossing out a pile of old junk from beneath the porch. We even unearthed an old crib, which Moreau took for Junior.

  “Do you have children?” Moreau asked as we excavated the crib, sleeping under a heap of planks. Good question; did Winslow have any children? If I could trust in our conversations then no, he didn’t have any — unless he’d quarrelled with them, which wouldn’t be like him. Or maybe their mother, a woman of great beauty but incredible coldness, had abducted them years before, breaking the heart of poor Winslow, who’d subsequently attempted to drown his pain in alcohol and food, becoming obese and stupid and keeping quiet about his children’s existence despite, deep down inside him, the scar that wouldn’t heal.

  “Yes, I had a child,” I heard myself murmur, lapsing into silence to emphasize the words’ dramatic effect. I stroked the wood of the crib. “A little guy named Bobby. Bobby Junior,” I added before falling silent again, my evocation of this hypothetical child making me sadder than I could have imagined. And then I told Moreau Bobby’s story. By the end of it we were both crying, Moreau because he worried Anita would leave him with little Robert, and me because I had two sons I didn’t know, one real and one fake: Robert and Bobby, Junior and Junior. To console ourselves, and to reward ourselves for working so hard, I fetched a couple of beers which we drank to the memory of Bobby Junior who, if he’d turned out well, was no doubt caring for aids victims in Zimbabwe, or defending great causes with Greenpeace and the like. Unless he’d devoted his life to teaching snotty little brats the difference between an auk and a penguin, a thankless task from which he would recover by playing baseball on Sundays with his son — because maybe, just maybe, I was the grandfather of a young Babe Ruth whose little blond head I would never have the pleasure to ruffle. Which was all we needed for a volley of hatred to be levelled at Bobby Junior’s mother, the worst damn egotist the world has ever seen, and who’d only married Winslow out of self-interest — though what that self-interest might have been, we deftly ignored — only marrying him once he’d paid for her studies. She didn’t have the right to deprive Bobby of a father with so much to impart and she would regret the marriage one day, but too late, well done her, how fucking selfish, though not so well done for Bobby. Poor Bobby.

  On the second beer, we changed the subject, it being too painful for me to have to think about my missing son. I was such a good actor I even believed myself, wondering if perhaps Winslow did have a son — and if I was in the process of becoming Winslow through these tender recollections of the boy. I’d have to ask the bear.

  Later, we lit a fire with the branches we’d gathered, washed a few potatoes and put them on the embers, they’d go nicely with some sausages, and then, as Mirror Lake was submerged in darkness and the moths came out to feed the bats, we understood that we were friends, Moreau and I, until death do us part. We had no choice. If blood hadn’t been so frightening to both of us, we might have nicked our wrists and made a blood pact. Then star time arrived, time of the Pink Lady, now dressed in red, and finally John Doe time. “Who is John Doe?” I asked Moreau, and the oaf guffawed with laughter, exactly as he had done in my vision. Exactly as if I hadn’t changed the future. Exactly as if Arthur Bolduc had left the hubcap in the middle of the Cordon road.

  It was raining the next day after Artie had returned, a good hot rain drumming down on the metal roof and playing a piece for us no score could ever equal. Artie crept into the house in the middle of the night without making a noise, and went to sleep on the couch while Moreau was snoring away in his bedroom like a sad angel with broken wings descended from the heavens, nostalgic for paradise. An angel not so much fallen, no, as slightly pitiful, lost in the face of the immensity of the firmament and of earthly suffering, the extent of which he could not have imagined. A disappointed angel, let’s say.

  At seven in the morning, Artie was already banging the saucepans around, a fair indication he wasn’t happy. When I arrived in the kitchen with my tousled hair, I saw he’d only set the table for two people. Was I his second guest, or the one he was annoyed with? His smile said no, he wasn’t annoyed with me. That was a shame because I wasn’t hungry at all, but as I didn’t want him to be any more irritated than he was already, I sat down but did specify that I didn’t want any sausages this morning, thank you. He threw a sombre look my way, his eyes bulging, and I said, “Okay, Artie, fine, but just a little one.” That made him happy.

  We ate in silence at first, but I could see something was worrying him, so I asked him if there was anything he wanted to get off his chest, hoping these morning confessionals wouldn’t become a habit between us.

  “It’s Robert,” he began.

  “Yes, I know, I knew it,” I said. “Go on, Artie,” and I sat in the pose of an attentive psychiatrist.

  “He slept in my bed . . .”

  He slept in my bed . . . Put it like that and it was true, he slept in my bed, Robert slept in my bed, Bobby stole my bed, it all sounds quite dramatic. Should I have laughed or cried? Neither, Artie’s big eyes told me. So I defended Moreau. I mean we were friends, right?

  “We thought you were going to sleep on the other side of the lake with Anita, Artie, that’s why Moreau took your bed. But we’ll change the sheets, don’t worry.”

  I shouldn’t have mentioned Anita, he took it badly. He wasn’t the kind of guy who’d take advantage of a woman’s momentary vulnerability to jump on her, he shot back. He respected women too much to do that, and Anita in particular. “She’s so smart, so beautiful, so nice . . .” If I thought he’d slept with her, he went on, I was a bastard, a fucking bastard, a nothing. In just ten seconds I’d become the villain, my plate had disappeared, its contents ended up in the dog bowl, and I looked like a lunatic. I tried to explain what I’d said, then changed my mind, I had nothing to explain. I pulled on my plaid shirt, my cap, and my running shoes, brushed my dentures, and went out.

  The rain was falling in one of those magnificent summer downpours I like so much. A warm, quiet rain refreshing the atmosphere and washing down the trees, the flowers, the rocks. The whole world was bathing in a shower and smiling, its mouth open wide, even the four-hundred-million-year-old rock offering its big grey head up to the softness of the rain and emitting a light vapour of contentment while drops bounced lazily on the lake. So relaxing was the rain that I didn’t conceive of the anonymous raindrop characters as thousands and thousands of John Does; no, instead I thought about thousands and thousands of diminutive and lovely Chinese girls running in the streets of Shanghai or Beijing beneath their parasols or straw hats, what with the music of the chimes still in its oriental phase. Even the mosquitoes seemed pleasant, gathered in a corner of the porch and frolicking as they waited for the rain to stop. No s
ign of the bear, though, despite my leaving out a sausage and a potato for it. The raccoon must have snatched them, but I didn’t begrudge him doing so, the day was too beautiful to be angry and besides, wasn’t that one of nature’s immutable laws — first come, first served? Winslow should have hustled.

  Normally I would have enjoyed such a day. I’d have gone swimming with Jeff — it’s so lovely swimming in the rain — or I’d have gone fishing. Winslow liked it and the fish bite more when it’s raining, but the times were abnormal, as usual, and I had shopping to do. I whistled for Jeff. Bill arrived, I asked him where Jeff was, he told me he was in the cottage, and I went to find him. I swallowed two aspirin for my headache, didn’t say goodbye to Artie, and the two dogs and I headed to Augusta in the fine drizzle and gloom, humming the blues.

  In the first bookstore I visited, the bookseller, a young man, didn’t know who Victor Morgan was and didn’t have The Dead Zone in stock. It was the same thing in the second, they hadn’t heard of Victor Morgan either, and oddly enough they’d sold their last copy of King’s novel just ten minutes before I showed up. In the third, I asked to see the manager, who I could see assumed I was nuts but he was at least polite. He offered to check and see if the Victor Morgan was still in print, and told me he’d never heard of the author. “Is he American?” he asked, letting the question mark devolve into suspicion, as if casting doubt on my memory. No, he’s Zulu, you jerk, I thought, deciding in my mind he was a dunce. But I followed him to the computer monitor anyway, and after we’d checked the sites of every possible distributor, publisher, and warehouse, I understood that even the computer had no idea who Victor Morgan was. Nothing. No trace of Victor Morgan. It was as though he’d never existed. And as for The Dead Zone, there was just one copy left in the whole of the state of Maine.

  By the time I was back outside, the rain had doubled in intensity and naturally I stumbled into an enormous puddle, just like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day, prompting the same hilarious laughter from each of the dogs, their two blond heads framed in the window of the car on the other side of the street. Since the dogs were laughing, I decided to be Zen about it, stepped in another puddle, recited a haiku, and went to phone Stephen King to tell him he ought to check in on his agent. But as neither Stephen nor his wife Tabitha were at home, I left a message and hung up cursing. Then I looked up Victor Morgan in the directory. And it must have been my lucky day: there was one. Someone was going to have to pay for Victor Morgan’s disappearance and I didn’t give a toss whether or not this particular Morgan was the right one. His mother only had to marry a Polish guy and call him Gerard. His problem, not mine. So I phoned him and railed and put him in his place like a stinking piece of rotten fish. I’d never seen a fish, rotten or not, put a person in his place but was sure the scene would not be a pretty one. I gave him a real piece of my mind, called him every fishy name that popped into my head — fish eyes, fish face, chub, hammerhead, blubber mouth, shark, poor salmon. After I hung up I felt a little better. And on my way back to the car, I carefully walked through the same puddles again to appease the dogs, who, having seen Groundhog Day, were expecting as much.

  Once I was in the car, I undressed, stripping off everything but my hat, not wanting to get into trouble with any morality police. As I scoured the glove compartment to find something to dry my face with, I came across a Johnny Cash tape, so Bill, Jeff, and I drove home to Mirror Lake listening to classics like “Cry! Cry! Cry!” “Get Rhythm,” “I Walk the Line,” and “Folsom Prison Blues.” I’d discovered Cash quite late, but better late than never, and I wondered how I’d managed not to know about this giant for so long — because Cash truly was a giant, unforgettable, a guy who goes looking for the lonesome cowboy deep inside you and puts the taste of dust and iron in your mouth. Listening to Cash is like listening to the beating heart of the United States of America with its craggy-faced men, their nostalgia for wild spaces, and women chopping wood as they give birth. It smells of animal shit and drought, of desolate plains stretching back as far as memory goes, of tribulations and of love, all these smells receding with the setting sun, when the silhouette of the lonesome cowboy disappears over the horizon or is struck by a Remington bullet just before the credits roll and the final music plays. Listening to Cash makes me feel really good, even if it makes me melancholy, which isn’t quite a contradiction, though fortunately the sun pierced through the clouds just as we reached Mirror Lake, because I’d started crying like a baby, a very small baby lost in the wilds where his mother has succumbed to the heat.

  “Why are you naked?” asked Moreau when I climbed out of the car. But I ignored him. I headed straight to the lake, dove in, and let the cool water take care of the rest. For a brief moment in time, the absent but obsession-inducing faces of John Doe, Victor Morgan, and Bob Winslow were erased. After a minute’s breaststroke, accompanied by Bill and Jeff, I went back inside the cottage, still ignoring Moreau, whom I’d suddenly decided was responsible for my misfortune; and Artie, without allowing me a minute to get dressed, accosted me. He wanted to know where I’d been, if I’d seen Anita, if she was okay, if she’d talked about him at all, and if she’d done so with a tremble in her voice, a subtle one, “she’s so nice, so beautiful, so pretty . . .” No doubt because I was in a foul mood, I told him that Anita had a lover and I’d been playing golf with Stephen King.

  He only seemed to absorb the second part of my answer, which meant, from a psychoanalytical point of view, that he’d desexualized Anita’s image by rendering their love platonic, with the effect that his eardrums refused to vibrate as soon as someone said anything that might evoke his beloved’s genitalia. So he resolutely put any potential lover of Anita out of mind and focused instead on Stephen King.

  I told him about our golf game in great detail, and embellished it with everything a fictitious scene can possibly be embellished with. As I was describing King’s exceptional swing, I noticed Artie’s big round eyes staring at me, his big bulging round eyes with their incredibly dilated pupils marooned in the white of his face, white as the first snow, pale as an early winter, his mouth open to ask a question that had frozen before it could be born on his moist lips, his plump, moist lips.

  “What’s going on, Artie?” But he stood, petrified, hypnotized by a tiny dot apparently sitting right in the middle of my face, on my nose or just next to my third eye, which wasn’t quite in the middle. “What’s going on?” I repeated, but his eyes, which had moved away from my face and settled on another vague spot in the corner of the room — a dead fly, a mouse crap, a cookie crumb — did not seem to belong to someone able to speak.

  While he thawed, I went to get dressed, thinking that perhaps I’d been a little rough on him, slandering Anita. I may also have made an error in my psychoanalysis, attributing a purity of intention to Artie that isn’t available to just anyone. When I returned, Artie’s posture confirmed that I’d been perspicacious on the psychoanalytical front, because it appeared that not only had his brain wiped any trace of my comments about Anita, but that he’d elevated me to his own personal pantheon. I was a god, a god who hung out with other gods, and he wanted to know when I was going to ask Stephen King to dinner. Artie told me dinners were his specialty, and that he already knew what the menu would be. So as not to disappoint him, I said we’d invite him over the following week — which I shouldn’t have said, but my intentions were good and the truth of it was that I had other things on my mind. Cornering the bear in which Winslow had been reincarnated, for one. And given that Winslow was the only person on earth who’d read The Maine Attraction all the way through to the end, and since he was the living memory of Victor Morgan I needed to find some way of attracting the bear and making him talk.

  But, first of all, I had to solve a few logistical problems.

  Question one: How do you catch a bear?

  Question two: How would I attract Winslow? (With fish, my unwavering common sense opined.)

 
Question three: Was there any fish in the fridge?

  “No,” Artie said.

  In the freezer?

  “No.”

  Could he maybe go and buy me some little fillets in town?

  “But the lake’s full of fish,” the moronic Artie replied. And it was too late to go into town, the shops would be shut.

  Indeed, it was starting to get late. With all the palaver, I hadn’t noticed. The lake was taking on the pink hues of a sunset I’d have had the joy of contemplating full on if I’d been at my house on the other shore. Confronted by this deplorable reversal of fate, a new wave of sorrow unfurled inside me, a few tears pearled in my periwinkle eyes, and Artie tried to console me by promising to buy me fresh fish in the morning, first thing, immediately after breakfast. As for tonight, we still had some sausages he would cook on the fire Moreau was in the process of lighting.

  Moreau! I had a few things to say to him. I thanked Artie, valiant Artie, and went out to join Moreau with the intention of settling matters with him once and for all. This had gone on long enough: I wasn’t Winslow and didn’t want to be him. All I wanted was to return to the past, to my cottage, my north shore, my bed, my Jeff, my books, my peace. Moreau knew things, and he would tell me them tonight. Moreau was oblivious, so I decided to go straight in for the kill.