July, July.

by Tim O'Brien

  Janice went inside. She washed up, changed into a clean nightgown, got into bed, and turned out the light. There was still that distant sizzling sound, and in the dark of memory Rudy sang, "Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight, come out tonight," and then he yelled, "Blades!"

  Janice refused to listen.

  She shut her eyes, shut her ears, and began planning her morning activities, the white gloves she would buy, the revenge she would exact. As Janice drifted off, it occurred to her that she should say a little prayer, except she'd quit praying many years ago. She was a believer, yes, but she hated God. Idiot husband, two unborn babies.

  12. CLASS OF '69

  "WELL, IT'S SAD," Ellie Abbott said, "but I don't understand. All you did, you had drinks with this henpecked old man. Gave him some attention, flirted a little." Ellie hesitated. "To be honest, I'm not really sure why you broke in that night. I mean, why?"

  Paulette Haslo swept a hand across her eyes. "No choice, it seemed. Thought I'd lose my job. My whole life."

  "Except you did lose your job."

  "Oh, yes."

  They sat together on a concrete bench in the small wooded park above campus. The morning was hot and quiet.

  "All right, listen," Ellie said. "Here's what I'm getting at: what about your own feelings? This isn't a criticism, Paulette. Please don't take it that way. But I really didn't hear much about you. Plenty about that old woman, Janice what's-her-name, but hardly a word about Paulette Haslo. And she's what I care about. Why you did it, everything that happened afterward. It had to be horrible."

  "It was. It was horrible."

  "So?"

  Paulette pushed to her feet, looked up at the July sky. She was a tall, shapely, almost muscular woman—a swimmer, a bicyclist. There was just a sprinkling of gray in her hair, no fat at all on her hips or stomach. More than any of them, Paulette had kept a grip on her youth.

  After a time she laughed to herself, started to say something, then stopped and moved her tongue along her teeth as if to retrieve an elusive scrap of language. "I did love him, you know."

  "Love?"

  "Rudy. No sex, no affair, but he was just this ... He was a good man. Never any pretension. No agenda, no subterfuge. Loved him a lot."

  "I thought he was—"

  "Old?"

  "I suppose," said Ellie. "Old."

  Paulette smiled. "Sixty-four. And once upon a time I guess that would've seemed ancient. Not anymore." She smiled again. She seemed embarrassed. "Been single my whole life, Ellie. Lived alone. Thirty years, two boyfriends. Six months each. Trust me, the preacher thing scares men off."

  "I can imagine."

  "Can you?"

  "I think so."

  "The price, I guess," Paulette said. "Men think you're this pious, press-your-knees-together nonentity, this nobody, not even a woman. Rudy was different. A peculiar guy, no question about it, but he put the Paulette part first, the minister stuff second. Made me laugh. Made me feel like a girl. Almost pretty. Almost beautiful sometimes."

  "You should feel that way," Ellie said. "Beautiful face, beautiful figure. God, that chest of yours. I'm jealous. Women pay a fortune for boobs like those."

  Paulette rolled her eyes. "Not what they used to be. But Rudy liked them."

  "You just told me—"

  "Right, I know. And we didn't." Paulette stared down at the sunlit campus, and then chuckled to herself and looked up at Ellie with a happy grin. "If you're interested, there's a story."

  "I'm interested."

  "I'll make it quick," said Paulette. "Couple of years ago Rudy and I went off on this retreat together, this place up north, an old tourist camp in the middle of nowhere. My idea. Thought it would do him good. God knows where Janice was—laid up with bad temper or something. Who knows, who cares? Anyway, the retreat was run by this retired hippie. Guy named Larry Tabor, absolute lunatic. Larry Tabor's Funny Farm, that's what Rudy ended up calling it. The point is, neither of us had ever been there before, no idea what to expect, and it turned out to be this neoreligious place, very avant-garde. The first morning, before breakfast, we all troop out into this big meadow, maybe fifty of us, and everybody starts doing yoga. Rudy, too. Give him credit: sixty-some years old, not the yoga type, but he's game, he jumps right in. So after a few minutes people start taking off their sweatshirts. No problem, I think. It's hot. But then they whip off their T-shirts, then their pants, and before you know it they're down to nothing, not a stitch. Fresh air and mother nature. Doing yoga. Rudy looks at me—you know—kind of puzzled. I'm mortified, I had no idea, but he figures I knew all about it, thinks I'm into this naked yoga thing. So he shrugs. Peels off his clothes. And I'm stuck, no options. Next thing you know I'm bare to the wind. Lotus position, headstands. You know me, Ellie. I don't take showers nude. And the whole time, Larry Tabor stands up front like this crazy cheerleader or something, egging us on, all these chants and mantras, and then he yells, 'Come on, people, let's everybody cavort with nature.' Cavort? I'm a minister, right? Except no way out of it. What the hell, I cavort. Grab my boobs, start prancing around that field. Later on, when we sit down for breakfast, Rudy can't stop talking about how graceful I was, how he never knew religion could be such fun. And then he grins. Looks right at me and grins. And suddenly he's ... he's a new person. He's thirty years old. No fool, no buffoon. And there's this incredible electricity in his eyes, this glow, like he could look right inside me and see every detail, everything I am, everything I ever did. This absolute burning aliveness. And I'll tell you something. Right then I would've married that old coot. Would've loved him forever."

  Ellie laughed. "Man of your dreams?"

  "Oh, he was. My prince." Paulette rubbed her nose, smiled.

  "Now he's dead. Your turn, Ellie."

  13. LOON POINT

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1999, when Ellie Abbott lied to her husband and flew off to meet Harmon in Minneapolis, she felt some guilt and malaise, and considerable terror, but very little remorse. She did not contemplate turning back. All she wanted was to get away with it. At O'Hare, before catching a connecting flight, Ellie called her home outside Boston and spoke to the answering machine. "Mark," she said. "I miss you." Then she stopped and listened, imagining the flutter in her voice, the betrayal. After a second she said, "Hey, kiddo, I love you lots," which was true.

  Ellie was fifty-two years old. It was her second affair. She had only a dim sense of the protocol.

  "Kisses," she told the machine.

  Harmon met her at the Twin Cities airport and they drove north for several hours, to a resort called Loon Point, where they spent five days and four nights. It was not a luxury resort, but the cabins were comfortable and newly painted, and there was a nine-hole golf course and a big lake with growths of pine and birch pushing up against the shore. They had a good time, mostly. They fished for walleyes, played golf, sunned themselves on a pebbled beach, talked in a vague way about whether they would ever live together and how it might be made to happen. There was no real romance between them, no heat, but there was affection and good humor and the trust of co-conspirators. And there was also a shared history—the sticky ideals and illusions of 1969. After graduation, Harmon had gone on to become a dentist. Ellie had become a waitress, then a dance instructor, then the wife of Mark Abbott.

  Now, she was not sure what she was.

  An adulteress, to be sure. A liar, a cheat.

  More than anything, though, she was a mix of the many things she was not: not content, not hopeful, not fixed to any moral destiny, not the person she had imagined she might be back in 1969.

  On their fifth day up north, after breakfast, Harmon drowned in the waters off Loon Point. Ellie witnessed it from a reclining beach chair. Harmon raised his arms up high, the morning sunlight gathering all around him, his hands closing into fists. He looked once at the sky. He went down and came up and then vanished. There was no drama to it. Ellie waited ten minutes, thinking she'd lost him among the waves.

  It was ne
arly two hours before Harmon was brought to shore in a boat. His eyelids were half open, his pupils like thin wafers of quartz. His arms and legs seemed oddly shrunken, out of proportion to the heavy chest and stomach, and on his face there was an impatient, almost harried expression, as if he were working on the teeth of an unhappy six-year-old. He had lost his distinguished good looks. While the paramedics leaned over him, Ellie wondered how she'd ever come to care for such a man, someone so wet and dead, whose swimming trunks had slipped below the knees and whose buttocks looked wrinkled and fishy white in the bright morning sunlight. Her own transgressions, of course. Her own gross stupidity. She understood that. But despite herself, Ellie couldn't push away a peculiar sense of anger. She felt betrayed. As the medics secured Harmon to a stretcher, she tried to imagine how she might explain things to Mark, sorting through amendments to the truth, testing the possibilities, but in the end nothing persuasive came to her. She felt caught. A snagged sensation. It all seemed so radical, so unfair and unnecessary, and as the medics lifted Harmon into a shiny white ambulance, Ellie wished he were properly alive so she could scold him.

  Later on, she almost cried. Someone handed her a Kleenex. There were boats on the lake, many waterfowl, and the morning was warm and pleasant.

  After the ambulance took Harmon away, a young policeman folded Ellie's beach towel and led her by the elbow up to the cabin. The man's grip was without sentiment, almost casual, and Ellie felt steadied by his presence. He seemed at ease with tragedy. When they reached the porch, the policeman handed her the beach towel. "There'll be things to take care of," he said. "I'll wait right here, give you a lift into town."

  Oddly, then, he winked at her. Or maybe not. Ellie couldn't be sure.

  "No hurry," the policeman said. "Take your time."

  Ellie showered and changed into a skirt and blouse. It was not yet noon. As she used Harmon's hair dryer, Ellie contemplated calling Mark and blurting out the truth. A full confession. Names and dates and places. The notion tempted her, but Ellie sighed and shook her head. She dialed her home number, narrowed her throat, and informed the answering machine that her flight had been canceled, that she would be delayed a day or two. The call helped only a little. She pulled on a pair of sandals, devoted a moment to her lipstick and mirror.

  Outside, the policeman stood fingering an unlighted cigarette. He smiled apologetically and returned the cigarette to its pack.

  On the ride into town, Ellie rolled down her window. "Go on," she said. "Smoke."

  The man shook his head. He was a careful driver, alert, both hands on the wheel. For several miles Ellie watched the trees go by, little flashes of open lake, then she put her head back and re-leased a surrendering sigh.

  "I should explain," she said. "We weren't married. Harmon and me. Not to each other."

  "Oh, yes?" the policeman said.

  "You understand?"

  He nodded, just barely. "It's a tragedy. Sad world."

  "What I mean is," said Ellie, "I mean—here's the point—I hope this can be kept confidential."

  "Confidential?"

  "You know."

  The policeman seemed to think it over. He had a pleasant way of squinting into the morning sunlight. "Well, see, I guess it depends on what you're asking for." His voice was low and fluid, almost a drawl, misplaced in Minnesota. "The man's drowned, of course."

  "Yes, he is."

  "That's a problem. We don't often hide bodies."

  Ellie sat up straight. "I wasn't suggesting anything of the sort. Common sense. Ordinary discretion. It's not illegal or anything."

  "I guess not."

  "Basic decency," said Ellie. "I don't see why someone else should get hurt."

  "You mean—"

  "I mean my husband."

  The policeman stiffened slightly, as if his back were bothering him, then he pulled on a pair of sunglasses. "Well, there's the risk," he said. "People play games, people get hurt."

  "It wasn't any game," Ellie said.

  "No?"

  Ellie sensed the man was mocking her, or something worse, and for the rest of the ride she went out of her way not to look at him. She paid attention to her breathing. In front of the courthouse, when the policeman tipped his hat, Ellie pretended not to notice, lashing back with silence. As she walked up the courthouse steps, the man called out to her.

  "Lots of luck," he said.

  There were interviews with the county coroner and sheriff, two formal statements, several periods in which she sat alone in a cramped anteroom and drank coffee and waited. At times Ellie felt a kind of nerve sickness. The world seemed aligned against her. She would picture Harmon's face, then Mark's, and instantly her stomach would cramp up. She couldn't see a way out. There was some sorrow, to be sure, but mostly she felt mistreated by circumstance. She blamed the lake and Harmon and the raucous waterfowl. A conspiracy of nature, it seemed, and there was no sense of moral participation. The affair itself had started almost by accident. An exchange of Christmas cards, a few casual letters. And now, after seven months, it had ended the same way, without choice or volition, as if she were strapped into the back seat of her own life. And the odd thing, Ellie thought, was that poor, dear Harmon had once seemed so safe. A married man. No demands. A solid, plump, slow-moving dentist with a grown daughter and a big modern house on the outskirts of Minneapolis. They'd been sane about it. All the precautions, all the safeguards, and everything had seemed so logical and foolproof.

  Now, glancing at her wristwatch, Ellie found herself wondering if anything on earth was proof against her own foolishness. Somewhere in the building, Harmon was stretched out on a cold steel gurney, and all the fine logic and safeguards could not flush the lake from his lungs.

  Again she had the urge to call Mark. She loved him and wished she could remember why.

  In late afternoon, after what seemed many years, the coroner stopped by to ask if Harmon had a history of heart trouble. Ellie shook her head. She had no idea. There was a short silence as the coroner studied her legs. The man blinked once, nodded crisply, and said it was something he might better discuss with the immediate family.

  "Sure," Ellie said. "They'd know."

  It was nearing dark when the policeman drove her back to Loon Point. Tiny beads of rain dotted the windshield. A wind was blowing, which made the car shimmy, and the sky had swollen up fat and purple. Neither of them spoke much, except to note the occasional lightning off to the west.

  At her cabin door, the policeman offered a vague smile. "Considering everything," he said, "you might want to pack up soon. Guy's wife and daughter come in tomorrow morning. You probably don't need to be here for that."

  "Probably not," Ellie said.

  "There's an early bus. Six-fifteen, I think."

  "Thanks. Good night, then."

  "Night," the young man said. He gazed out at the storm beyond the lake. "Look, if you need anything—a few bucks—it's no problem. We've got vouchers."

  "I'm not a whore."

  The man's eyes crinkled. "Well, fine, that's a good chunk of information. Easier for everybody."

  "Anything else?"

  "I guess not." He made a small, conciliatory movement with his hand. "Unless I could help you pack. Brew up some coffee. People don't need to be alone."

  "In my case," Ellie said, "that's all I need."

  "We could talk."

  "About what?"

  "Everything," he said. "No shortage of subjects."

  He was still smiling. When the wind picked up, his upper body seemed to bend toward her.

  "In the car this morning," Ellie said, "I thought you were making fun of me. Disapproving."

  "No."

  "It felt that way."

  "Not at all, ma'am. The world does its nonsense. One thing I know for a fact: approve or disapprove, it don't count for zip." He swiveled and faced her. "What about that coffee?"

  There was no coffee, but Ellie made hot tea, and they went out to the porch and sat on a wicker sofa and
watched the storm move toward them from across the lake. The man kept his hat on. He was in his mid-twenties, Ellie guessed, and something about his youth made her aware of her own weakened spirit, her melancholy, how empty she had become. She pictured Harmon wet and dead, all that flesh. The image frightened her. It made her feel cruel.

  "I did care for him," Ellie said, too quickly, conscious that it was not the full truth. "Harmon, I mean. I knew him years ago, in college. A wonderful guy, loads of fun, always laughing, and when we—" She wanted to stop herself. "It wasn't a fling. He would've married me. It was out of the question, of course, just impossible, but for some reason I couldn't come right out and admit it. Not even to myself. I suppose it would've ruined the fantasy."

  "Which fantasy?"

  "The trite one. Running off together. Such a strange, ridiculous thought."

  "So you strung him along?"

  "Probably. Or myself."

  The policeman shook out a cigarette, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger. "And your husband?" he said. "He doesn't suspect?"

  "No," Ellie said. "Not a clue."

  "And you love him?"

  "Mark?"

  "Mark. Yes."

  Ellie closed her eyes and began to say something, but then stopped, because there was nothing she could say that was entirely true. Out in the darkness, the first droplets of rain made a soft, random patter in the trees, a sound that seemed to come from a time when she was a little girl. The desolation was overwhelming now. Fifty-two years old. Harmon was dead, and Mark was on his own planet, and it was hard to imagine a future for herself. Ellie wanted something. She wanted it very badly, but she did not know what.