Summers at Blue Lake Page 4

  I sat near the toddler area, which up until this year had been the place where Sam had spent most of his time. I missed his presence here and found myself getting teary thinking about my growing boy. I blinked and scanned the room. The ball pit, all pink and yellow and blue, surprised me with its color. I had thought the world would be rain-gray forever. The swirl of pointillist colors had a hypnotizing effect on me. I only realized I was staring when a young mother took her baby girl out of the ball pit whispering, “Time to go somewhere else, sweetie.”

  I shook my head to change my focus. Snap out of it, I smiled, a little more detached this time, as another little girl rushed by me. Beyond her, I took notice of a man sitting alone in a booth across from a table of discarded party hats and plates of half-eaten cake. Had he been there earlier? He seemed to be watching me, and I turned away quickly. Could this man be a child predator? The local TV news always warned parents that freaks of society haunted parks and school yards, preying on children.

  I spun around, anxious to locate Sam. He waved and held up a fistful of prize tickets from a fishing game he had conquered. He really was too young to be playing by himself, but I was drained of all energy. When boys and girls are kidnapped, the tearful mothers always say, “I only turned away for a second.” They never told the truth—how motherhood numbed you sometimes; how you spent days in a sleepy fog and nights in a state of alert; or how in your deepest self, you couldn’t even picture yourself grown up, much less somebody’s mother. And the worst truth of all—so secret it is unutterable: how the thief wouldn’t even need to steal the child, who, on the days of constant pulling, you would give away to the first person who asked. (Unless the first person who asked was your soon-to-be ex-husband. Then you would take the second.)

  At the next table over, Chuck E. Cheese was singing “Happy Birthday” to a two-year-old. The little girl started to cry. Her father took several pictures of the giant mouse without the crying girl—a deception worthy of the family photo album.

  That father’s ruse reminded me of Grandma Lena’s tactics. She often took deceitful photographs at weddings. I recalled the Stiller/Dietrich wedding in particular. It was one of the first times I had assisted Grandma Lena at her job. Everything had gone smoothly until the limo pulled up to the church. At that point, the bride stopped speaking to the groom because he tipped the limousine driver, whose tip had already been included in the car rental. But the pictures had to go on. Grandma Lena had tried everything to make the bride smile naturally and lovingly at her new husband. In the end, she had snapped a shot of the two of them in the back of the limousine, after which the bride got out and rode with her parents to the reception. And yet Stiller and Dietrich, married ever after, managed to parent two kids and celebrate anniversaries in complete ignorance of their misery.

  Sam was having too much fun to stop playing when the pizza arrived, but with the child predator making occasional eye contact, I reined Sam in for a slice of pepperoni. He was full of his usual chatter and had little interest in helping me put a dent in the family pizza combo. I chewed and swallowed two slices robotically, not tasting them. Pepperoni could have been Play-Doh for all the attention I paid it. Sam had taken three scant bites. The whole outing seemed a failure. Before I could consume any more careless calories, I declared that our meal was over. The man in the corner still had not moved, nor had he eaten. He seemed to be waiting, and I, transformed into Mother Bear, was not interested in the whys or for whats; my imagination could supply those details.

  “Come on, Sam. We are leaving.” I slid the hefty remains of our pizza into a cardboard box.

  “But I didn’t get to cash in my tickets for a prize,” Sam said.

  “We’ll come again. You have to save up for the good prizes anyway.”

  “I want the gumball machine.”

  “You don’t even chew gum.”

  “I can fill it with M&M’s.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  What choice did I have? I was a mother on the edge of divorce. I knew I would not deny Sam anything, even if I had to battle fatigue, a child molester, and a giant singing rodent to give it to him.

  ♦ 7 ♦

  1983

  GRANDMA LENA PREPARED THE GRILL. As a general rule she was not allowed to cook in Nonna’s kitchen, not because she couldn’t cook, but because Nonna had a system, and Grandma Lena seldom stuck to the rules. For example, Nonna liked to store all her bakeware in one place, but Lena saw more logic in putting all the glassware together, regardless of purpose. Thus, casserole dish and loaf pan went into the same cabinet, which infuriated Nonna on baking days.

  As a result of her banishment from the kitchen, Grandma Lena claimed the grill as part of her command of the garden. She was as good a cook as Nonna. She would grill peppers alongside steaks. Or if she barbecued chicken, she would garnish it with grilled pineapples or kebobs of pearl onions and mushrooms. For that evening, when Travis and Margot would join us, the menu was simple: steak and potato salad. The meat hissed and spewed its aroma so that all of the Mulberry Street neighbors poked their heads out of the windows and wondered jealously if they still had some rib-eyes in the back of their freezers. As I waved to Mr. Kovack next door, I was glad to claim ownership of the aroma of grilled meat.

  Margot drank a virgin daiquiri (alcohol didn’t mix with her meds) and directed Grandma Lena as she cooked. “I think they are done on this side.”

  “I’m grilling here. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  “No, I’ll stand. I have been sitting all day in Dad’s hospital room.”

  Margot was Grandma Lena’s half sister, but she was more like a daughter. She was only a couple of months older than my mother. Although they never lived together and weren’t related by blood, Mom and Margot acted like sisters in a way that Lena and Margot never did. In fact, Mom was maid of honor at Margot’s ill-fated wedding. They didn’t see much of each other after Mom moved to Richmond. On the few occasions I saw Margot, I liked to address her as Great-aunt Margot. I had used the title earlier, when she and Travis arrived for the barbecue.

  “Stop, you make me sound ancient and decrepit.”

  Margot was not close to being old. She seemed a decade younger than my own mother. Margot’s vitality made the age gap between her and Lena even more pronounced. I studied them, looking for an undeniable connection. They had similarities—an athletic slimness, a tilt of the head when deep in thought—but it did not seem enough to prove a relation.

  Margot stopped and smacked an imaginary bug on her thigh and curled her thumb as if she had caught something. She had waited long enough for Grandma Lena to inquire after her ailing father.

  “The nurses said it won’t be much longer now. He doesn’t make much sense these days. On Sunday, he thought Travis was his father, and he kept screaming at him to get away. I have no idea what that was all about.” Margot took a long sip from her glass and reached for her cigarettes.

  “Travis, honey, will you get me my lighter?”

  I had been listening to the conversation while setting the table. Grandma Lena came over and grabbed the vinyl place mats out of my hand.

  “Barbara Jean, this table needs to be wiped off first,” she said tersely. She had already forgotten that I had asked to be called BJ.

  Normally, she wasn’t this prickly, but Margot had set her off by talking about her father. Grandma Lena had never liked her stepfather, the Reverend Ernie Platz. Now he was dying of complications from a stroke, of which doctors had no medical evidence. Margot did not press her older sister to go see him, even though he had been the only father Lena had ever known. I had never met the man.

  “You wouldn’t want to,” Nonna had told me, but I didn’t quite believe her. Travis had always spoken fondly of his grandfather. They had gone fishing together, and he had shown Travis how to wire his own radio. I wondered if Travis was sad about his grandpa. He hadn’t seemed distracted by grief that afternoon when he was flirting with Karen.

  I never had
a grandpa. Well, I suppose I did at one time. Dad’s father had died before I was born, and his mother died soon afterward. The only grandparents I had ever known were my grandmas. As I circled the glass table with wet paper towels, I wondered about my other grandfather—the one nobody ever talked about—Mom’s real dad. He was a war hero. Nonna had his silver star upstairs in her music box along with a small photo of him in uniform, but that was it. The box played “Edelweiss” from the movie Sound of Music.

  I had seen The Sound of Music several times, and my grandpa looked less like the romantic lead, Christopher Plummer, and more like the young telegram boy. I couldn’t think of Grandpa as being a war hero when, to me, he was the traitorous Rolf. The two ideas twined themselves in my thoughts until I had given my grandfather an absurd complexity considering he was little more than a picture to me.

  “Steaks are ready,” Grandma Lena called from the brick patio.

  Travis, the slap-on-the-back growing boy, was first in line to get his sirloin. Margot sucked down the last of her cigarette. Nonna hastily shuttled the potato salad and steamed peas to the table. I sat on the aluminum chair to wait for my turn. This was my extended family, not Auntie Em or Frauline Maria. Just two grandmothers who loved each other more than was prudent and a cousin with his mother, my grandaunt, who weren’t really related to me at all.

  ♦ 8 ♦

  2000

  AFTER THREE DAYS of summer rain, the plants tangled each other in plush new growth. Dead lilacs bowed as roses and hostas and ferns introduced the world to June. The greens were so brilliant they burned a fluorescent path in the slanted shaft of morning sun. Even the abandoned vegetable garden, which should have been a wasteland, was spilling over with a few stubborn strains of last year’s arugula, butterhead, and cress—lettuces that should not have been perennials here in Pennsylvania’s Zone 6. And as I thought about it, maybe they weren’t. Maybe Nonna had planted them before she died. Either way, I anticipated a bittersweet harvest.

  Although I had hired a neighboring teen to take care of the lawn during the summer, I forced myself outside to pull weeds and tend the flower beds. As the queen of inner sanctums, I had never quite caught the landscaping bug. Bryce had taken care of the lawn when he wasn’t at the office or on the golf course. But today, I didn’t mind sinking my knees to the rain-soaked earth and wrestling with stubborn weeds. In all truth, I was glad for the diversion.

  Sam and Jules bounded out of the house at first morning light. Sam had found an old canvas tent in the attic, and I had followed through on my promise to set it up for him. Luckily Sam was used to playing alone. He had a great imagination and an attention span to see his adventures through until naptime. Now and then, he would sail past me and turn my bent form into a part of his story line.

  “Imperial troopers ahead—activate the force field.”

  He would zoom out of sight again to the tattered canvas spaceport. He loved the original Star Wars trilogy so much that I often thought he must be a carryover from the boys of my generation. It was as if he were one of the brothers I was supposed to have instead of the son that he was. Whatever his preference, it was a relief to see him having so much fun and expending his pent-up energy.

  Last night, after Sam and I had returned from Chuck E. Cheese’s, the message light shone its red alert on the answering machine. It was Bryce, of course. Erroneously thinking he might actually care that we had made it safely to Pennsylvania, I had called him the night we arrived at Nonna’s house.

  “We made it here in one piece. Call us when you get a chance.” Then I added, “Sam wants to talk to you,” hoping that would get his attention.

  It had taken him three days to respond. True, I hadn’t called him on his cell phone, but I thought he would at least have the courtesy to check the machine at home.

  Eventually Bryce had called back, not with a message for a son who was hungry for attention from his father, but with a point on legal matters—and this before we had a chance to sit down together and talk to Sam about the possible dissolution of our family.

  “Uh, Bobbi, it’s, uh, Bryce. I have looked into a few things. We could have this all wrapped up by Christmas, if that’s the route we decide to take. Call me and we can go over my notes. Don’t worry, I haven’t gone to a judge for any of this. I have just taken the liberty of drawing up a few documents. Call me. Oh, hi Sam, buddy. Are you practicing your putting? Bye.”

  Sam blinked back at the answering machine—a poor substitute for a father. He was quiet. Then he said, “Daddy should know I didn’t bring my golf clubs. They are in the back of his car.

  “I know, sweetheart. Daddy has a lot on his mind right now.”

  “Are you guys getting a divorce?”

  I stepped back, stung by Sam’s frankness. He was a smart kid; I had expected him to pick up on the current climate, but I didn’t even know that he had ever heard the word.

  “Do you know what divorce is?”

  “It’s bad, but Daddy gets money from it. Is Daddy going to take all of our money?”

  Our money. One of the reasons that I was able to continue as a studio craftsperson was that Bryce had carried me financially when I was between commissions. It had seemed like an equitable arrangement considering that I shuttled Sam back and forth to preschool. Sam had never been put into day care. Three times a week, a sitter came to the house while I was in the studio. And once a week, the two of us went to playgroup. But what would happen now? Would I be forced to get a nine-to-five job?

  I thought quickly and answered Sam. It was far from the well-worded explanation I had been mentally composing for the last few weeks. “Daddy will not take our money. I’m not sure if we are getting a divorce, but Sam, nothing will change the way we love you, okay?”

  Sam looked unconvinced, and I took a strange pride in his skepticism.

  “Look, Sam. As soon as Mommy knows what is going on, I will tell you. You’re my guy, but right now Mommy isn’t even sure what is going on. Let’s just take it one day at a time and enjoy our adventure this summer, okay?”

  It was a cop-out, and I knew it, but Damn, Bryce, I wanted him with me when we explained everything to Sam. He owed me that much.

  After Sam fell asleep that night, I thumbed through Nonna’s address book, my finger resting on the number I found. Sewicky. Karen had joined her father’s law office a few years ago. Her dad was looking to retire. When Karen approached me at Nonna’s viewing, I recognized her immediately but was unprepared for the age that had crept onto her face. Lines and softness, a couple of gray hairs. I had automatically touched my cheek to question the play of time on my own face.

  Karen, though matured, had sparkled in her condolences. She was newly married to a man she introduced only as Shelly. In full calculation mode, Nonna had asked Karen to take care of her final will so that I would have a friend, geographically near to the estate, who could lead me through the process.

  I pounded out the dirt from a clump of dandelion. The will was not on my mind when I dialed Karen’s number last night. In reality, I was calling on her more as a friend than as an attorney, which gave her license to be straightforward with me. And though, previous to the funeral, I had not spoken to Karen in years, we renewed our acquaintance and assumed an easy sisterhood. Karen had listened attentively about Bryce and had interjected “that bastard” when it was appropriate, which was often.

  But even today as I ripped at weeds that danced with images of my husband’s smug face, I knew the failure was not Bryce’s alone. I had never worked at the marriage. I hated Bryce’s law buddies and his golf cronies. They were pompous and condescending. I had never tried to see beyond their bravado, but instead chastised them and compared them to my crowd of artist/activist friends. My friends had ideals that transcended bank accounts and country club memberships. They fought for freedoms and rallied, armed only with slogans and chants.

  “There is a reason they throw protestors in jail,” Bryce argued.

  “Yeah, so you can
get a payday,” I replied.

  “It’s so easy to renounce a paycheck when you are living so comfortably off of mine.”

  The contrast in our personal values seemed adorable at first. Yin and Yang. We balanced each other, especially at public functions. We were that golden couple who volleyed off each other’s lines as if we were performing a comedy sketch. Our rebuttals were light and humorous and improvisational. But then Sam came, and the differences that were so fresh a couple of years prior turned into stale shouts and rehearsed accusations. Slogans: Lay off! It’s not going to hurt him. Chants: Fine, go! See if I care.

  I began to spend more time in my studio when Bryce was home, which was seldom. I used the excuse that I had to take care of Sam when he wasn’t around, and therefore my work was suffering. (It wasn’t.) Bryce justified his absences with the fact that he was trying to make partner before thirty, a goal he easily accomplished. As a couple, we ceased to exist. We shared an address, but lived as two planets in different orbits around the same sun (son). I went to gallery openings, including my first solo exhibition, alone. To awaken my husband to his own behavior, I stood him up the night the senior partners and their wives were taking us out to yacht night at the club. Sam had caught a slight cold, but I had not bothered to call Bryce to tell him I would not be there.

  And sex. The great indicator. We used sex as a way to disappoint each other and to keep score in our little game. Tit for tat, to use a bad pun. Denying each other sexual gratification was rejection in its most blatant form. I wasn’t so much surprised that Bryce had an affair as I was surprised he had been secretive about it. Then again, maybe his discretion was more for the benefit of his professional image than for me. I didn’t tell Karen everything. Why make myself culpable? Lawyers didn’t want to know the truth anyway.