Summers at Blue Lake Read online

  And that’s exactly how we ended our friendly chat—in lawyer mode. Karen had promised to call Bryce the next morning and get him to fax his notes to her. “You have got to try to keep this in Michigan if at all possible. It will be easier for you, but I can advise you until you get a chance to talk to someone there.” I was glad I had called my old friend. Karen had proved to be sympathetic. Before Shelly, she had been married for eighteen months—to someone she described as “a real shit.” From shit to Shelly. Hoeing the ground, I laughed aloud at my private little joke.

  “Something funny?” A voice startled me, and I recoiled.

  I looked up to see him, the child stalker, hovering above me.

  I dropped the hoe and then fumbled unsuccessfully as I tried to reclaim my grip on the only weapon I had. Sam? Where the hell was my son? I swung around scanning the empty yard and growing more agitated with each passing second. Without thinking, I raked my dirty, gloved hand through my hair.

  “My God, Sam. What have you done with him?”

  “Who?” the stranger asked as Sam came zooming by with an Imperial X-wing fighter.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “It’s just my son, see and…” My words trailed off to bury themselves in a heap of my humiliation.

  Thinking a handshake might be in order, I removed my garden gloves. Even though they had been covered, my fingers had half moons of dirt under each nail. The dark side of the moon. I hid my hands behind my back.

  The man shifted his weight. “I thought that was you at the restaurant last night, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “We know each other?” I squinted to see his face in spite of the strong back lighting.

  “Travis? Travis McKenzie.” He laughed then, knowing he had my attention.

  I repositioned myself out of the sun. “Oh, my God.” In the shade of the large rhododendron, I finally got a good look at the man before me.

  In my defense, he looked nothing like the lanky youth who used to mow this very lawn. He had a small clipped beard. His hair was cut close to the scalp in the places where he had any hair at all. But he was sexy bald; his stance was secure, and his smile held me in devilment as he waited for me to finish my appraisal of him. In the same look, I found that he was measuring the changes in me. I took a step closer, and in the radiating amber of his eyes, I finally glimpsed the boy I had known.

  “I’m sorry, Travis. Wow. It is you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t tell you what I thought when I saw you yesterday.”

  He laughed again. “That bad? I thought you looked a little spooked.”

  “You’re here. Wow! I have been really trying to find you to tell you about Nonna, and here you are.”

  “Yes, here I am.”

  Had I really tried to find him? I looked down at my filthy hands and hastily spun around hoping for a towel or old shirt to wipe them. Seeing none, I glanced up and saw a wry grin once again come over Travis’s face. Great! I amuse him. I stumbled backward over my hoe and only increased my discomfort and subsequently his pleasure.

  “I’m sorry I am such a mess.”

  “No, you’re not. You look great. As beautiful as always.”

  I sputtered some indecipherable sound, hoping to convey a general denial. “Let me go inside to rinse off, and then we can catch up. Would you like some iced tea?” I asked. Nonna’s trademark hospitality—I had almost forgotten.

  “Sure.”

  “Lemon?”

  “Please.”

  I scurried away like I had that night at the restaurant, but this time I let Sam continue with his fun. Travis would not endanger my son, though I didn’t know if the same could be said for me. Travis’s devastating impact on me had been well documented—“Dear Diary,” not to mention my early sketchbooks.

  I should be immune to him. I should be immune to all men.

  Inside the house, I washed the dirt from my hands and arms, letting the cool water wash all over me. Calm down. What was this feeling inside me? Was it merely surprise at seeing Travis here after these years? I distractedly dried my hands on the linen towel I used exclusively for the dishes and removed the heavy cut-glass pitcher from the refrigerator. Hurriedly I carried the tea to the counter and steadied myself. Tell me this isn’t happening. Through the lace curtains in the open window I could see Travis petting Jules and talking with my son.

  Sam was a dry riverbed in his need for attention. If I was honest I would have admitted to being a bit parched myself, but like most mothers I had learned to push my needs into small thirsty pockets of denial. Pockets, like the kind old actresses tout in those TV ads for superabsorbent paper towels. Sam didn’t have the same affliction. He showed Travis his Star Wars action figures with one unendorsed space alien thrown in for effect. Then he grabbed Travis’s hand and led him into the tent.

  As Sam disappeared from my view, I gasped knowing that tears were on their way. I wasn’t sure why my emotions came flowing out just then, but I could guess. After four days of living with ghosts of my grandmothers, ghosts of my girlhood, ghosts of my marriage, the reality of my past had confronted me—in the form of a real person who could verify that I had lived well during those hot and hasty days of my youth. Travis McKenzie was my alibi for a summer when nothing made sense, yet it happened in sequence, as fate scripted. Maybe I would never be able to reconcile that summer with the facts I had growing up, but a big piece of that puzzle was currently sitting under an old canopy with my son, waiting for me to bring him a glass of iced tea.

  ♦ 9 ♦

  1983

  “STOP IT! OW!” I cried as Grandma Lena pulled another lock of my hair.

  “Hold still.”

  I sat on a garden bench. Beside me, my Seventeen magazine was opened to page eighty-three, “The New Braids.” Grandma Lena passed her right hand over her left hand in an attempt to turn my thin tresses into the full fishtail braid. It was no use. As soon as she pulled a slippery strand into the finished rope, another strand freed itself to float around my head like an aberrant thought.

  “Go into my emergency wedding kit and grab the Aqua Net,” Grandma Lena said.

  “I can’t use hairspray. I’m going swimming. The braid has to be tight on its own.”

  “Why do you want to get your hair all fancy if all you are going to do is go in the water?”

  “I just want it to look cool.”

  The model on page eighty-three didn’t seem to have a problem keeping her braid in place as she bounced a beach ball in the spray of the ocean. Her Bonne Bell lip gloss was shiny and her tan was even. A piece of pink cellophane accented the bottom of her braid.

  “Good luck, sweetie,” Grandma Lena said as she pulled harder.

  I bit my lip to suppress the howl, but it didn’t work. My scalp was on fire.

  “Ow, you are hurting me!”

  Mr. Kovack looked up from his garden with an evil grin. Grandma Lena waved at him with a comb.

  “The hydrangeas look marvelous, George,” she said, then whispered to me, “The coot. I caught him in our mailbox yesterday looking for a missing phone bill, or so he said.”

  I suppressed a laugh. My grandmas and George Kovack had a history of disputes since the day he moved in four years ago. Usually, my grandmothers got the best of him.

  “You are just going to make him madder,” I said, handing Grandma Lena the elastic band.

  Last August, Mr. Kovack had called the police because my grandmas were making too much noise. When Officer Steffy arrived, he found six women and two men engaged in a poetry reading on the porch. One thing about Officer Steffy, he loved to recite Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Um” even more than he loved to recite the Miranda warning. He left my grandmothers’ house only briefly to return the squad car, give his report, and punch out. He came back later with his wife, and they stayed until Keats could no longer be heard over the roar of a hundred mating crickets and the distant lament of a cat in heat.

  In early fall, it was Nonna’s turn to co
ntact the authorities after Mr. Kovack shot an arrow into Greystoke’s hind leg. Apparently he was angry because Nonna and Grandma Lena’s three cats were defecating in his prized flower beds. The huge fine that followed the police visit did not help to diminish the animosity. Although some of the neighbors didn’t agree with their lifestyle, most of them sided with my grandmas—even the ones who complained about cat poop in their own yards.

  Those neighbors were the families who had bought their property from Nonna when she sold off plots of the family farm. They were with her when she christened Mulberry Street in a block party like no others. And when they needed someone to water their plants or collect their mail while they went on vacation, they called my grandmas. But Mr. Kovack didn’t care. He interrupted his vigil only to mutter the words vile and dyke into his rhododendrons. Even then, Grandma Lena couldn’t keep from goading him.

  Grandma Lena snapped the last loop of the elastic band over my finished fishtail.

  “There,” she said triumphantly. “It’s as good as it’s going to get.”

  I reached my hand up to touch the slippery plait.

  “Does it look like the picture?” I asked.

  “Who are you trying to impress, young lady?”

  All my intended sophistication suddenly seemed as childish as play cosmetics or dress-up clothes.

  “Can’t a person try to look her best without a having motive? I’m just trying to express the inner me,” I said. It was not the best exit line, but I took my remaining dignity with me toward the house and left Grandma Lena to harumpf over the rest of my magazine.

  From the hydrangeas came a snicker.

  “Back at ya, George.”

  ♦ 10 ♦

  2000

  I WISHED I COULD have filled Nonna’s fruit tray with something besides tea and glasses, but I had yet to go to the grocery store—even for the milk I was supposed to get the previous night. And I had no lemons. Why had I even offered them to Travis? Shopping was near golfing at the bottom of my list of possible pastimes. Most often, my attention span petered out before the back nine or around aisle eleven. Either way, it was about an hour into the exercise when my focus would soften, and I would miss an easy putt or need to double back to aisle five for the salsa. Neither deficiency had helped me score any points with my husband.

  Travis took no notice of the missing lemons. He drank the iced tea slowly, perhaps out of kindness. I fumbled with my own glass, using it as a prop as I decided what to say next. My mind was generating questions even faster than it had when I had mistaken Travis for a child molester. Part of me wished he had stayed in that persona. I felt pretty sure I could protect my son from a predator, but what about me? Maybe Travis was the one in need of protection.

  “So, what are you doing here?” I wanted to be direct, but the question was lacking in civility.

  “I live here.”

  “Live here where?”

  “About five miles away. I’m renting. It’s a dump, but it’s fully furnished.”

  “How long have you been here? You weren’t at Nonna’s funeral.” I felt my voice getting tight. I sounded like I was attacking him, but Travis remained unfazed.

  “I only just found out that she died. I don’t read the papers much. May is one of the busiest times for me with Mother’s Day and spring planting. I’m sorry I missed the funeral.” Travis leaned back into his chair. “Anja was a sweet woman. Damn fine cook. To this day, I dream about her pastries.”

  I was satisfied by his answer, but I didn’t reply. In the pause, I gauged our silence for signs of discomfort, but I found none. Travis fit into this garden, even though time had passed and the vegetation shadowed more of the yard than it had seventeen years ago. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, partly to relax and partly to understand the moment.

  “Didn’t Karen tell you I was coming today?” Travis asked.

  “No, and I just talked to her last night, too.” I popped one eye open at him. “I wonder why she didn’t say anything. Last thing she told me about you was that you were in New Jersey.”

  “Yeah, well, I left there about nine months ago after my ex-wife bought me out of our landscaping business. I’m working at Konkle’s Greenhouse until I can get some clientele in this area.”

  Two eyes open now. I hadn’t missed the ex-wife reference, but I was biding time, organizing my thoughts. “You are in landscaping? I find that hard to believe. You didn’t like working on this lawn.”

  “That was a long time ago, BJ. I worked ten lawns that summer, I’ll have you know, not just this one. And I was an English teacher for a couple of years, but I liked my summer work better, so I made that my full-time job.”

  “So your ex-wife,” I said coolly. “That would be Liz?”

  “Yes. Elizabeth.”

  I wanted to ask him more about her, about them. I stopped myself because suddenly I realized I wasn’t prepared to speculate about the state of my own marriage. To Travis’s credit, he didn’t ask.

  “And you’ve been in touch with Karen?” I asked. Safe questions now, BJ. Stay focused.

  “She was in the greenhouse last week. They buzzed me because some woman wanted to know about crepe myrtle trees. I came to the front of the store, and there was Karen with her husband.”

  “You met Shelly?”

  “He introduced himself as Ross, but I didn’t catch if it was his first name or last name.”

  “She told me his name was Shelly.”

  “Maybe it’s Ross Shelly,” Travis said.

  “Or Shelly Ross.”

  We laughed. I couldn’t help myself. In spite of my longing to establish the pace of this interview, I let go, uncoiled the kite string that carried the sound of our laughter to the trees.

  “What’s so funny?” Sam poked his head out of the tent. His hair was rumpled from play, and his eyes were glistening in a way they hadn’t for weeks. He came running over to me, and I wrapped my arms around him.

  “Do you have kids? You must—to eat at a place like Chuck E. Cheese,” I said. Sam crawled onto my lap. He was getting too big for the habit, but he was as curious as I was to see if Travis had kids, hopefully a boy his age.

  “No, I don’t have any kids. I was getting a trailer hitch put on my truck at the U-Haul place across the street. I just needed a place to wait out of the rain.”

  Now Travis was speaking Sam’s language. At the word truck, his curiosity blossomed.

  “Travis, what do you haul with your truck?” Sam asked. The r’s came out like w’s. Twavis. Twuck. His nursery school teacher had told us not to worry, his r’s would come in time.

  “I haul my landscaping equipment: tractors, edgers. And my boat.”

  “Mom, he has a boat!”

  “Ask your mom if you can go to the lake sometime. I only go on Sundays because, in this area, people don’t like me to work on their yards on a Sunday. Plus the greenhouse is owned by Mennonites who don’t keep Sunday business hours.”

  “Can we, Mom, please? This Sunday, please.”

  I looked from Sam to Travis. The affirmations that escaped my lips echoed in my thoughts as I got ready for bed that night. Yes, Sam. Yes, Travis, we’d love to go. Yes, we can be ready early. I pulled on my tank top and pajama shorts. The air was close. Already sweating, I turned on the window fan. My grandmothers never installed central air; it wasn’t a priority. They had only a small window unit in the kitchen to keep Nonna’s cake icings from melting. I had forgotten how hot the nights could get in these bedrooms. Even though the stone walls were thick and cool and helped somewhat in the lower part of the house, they couldn’t keep the rising heat from reaching our bedchambers. This was the first night I had needed relief from the heat, the damp muck of the air after all that rain. I washed my face, not bothering to dry it. I wet my hair, too, and the back of my neck. Anything to soothe myself. But inside, I knew it wasn’t the heat that was vexing me. More troubling was my encounter with Travis and the promise of more encounters.

&nbs
p; We had made the decision: we were taking his boat to Blue Lake on Sunday. It was the same lake that swallowed every wish I had ever made while skipping rocks. The very lake that held all my confessions, my girl prayers to Mary, full of grace! The lake where Travis had first kissed me on my fourteenth birthday. Mer-y, full of grace! A kiss wet with the water, my prayers, and his mouth. Mermaid, full of grace! The first kiss and the last kiss. It wasn’t supposed to be good-bye or even happy birthday, just Thank you, God (of mermaids), Amen.

  ♦ 11 ♦

  1983

  GRANDMA LENA REQUIRED MY HELP with two weddings in one day. With the high season upon us, it was not uncommon for my grandmothers to be involved in as many as five weddings in one weekend. Nonna referred to the end of June as the first harvest. We started our work at ten o’clock on the last Saturday morning in June. The bride was fat and pink with eyes that blinked through heavy eye makeup. Her big white dress, ornamented with thousands of crystal beads, sparkled so brilliantly in the sunlight, I thought our efforts were doomed. Like photographing a snowstorm. I underestimated Grandma Lena’s talents. She artfully arranged the peach bridesmaids in a cluster around the bride. The frightened, thin groom perspired heavily as he waited for his turn to pose. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This is the worst part.”

  “Not by a long shot,” he replied under his breath, as Nonna called him to get his picture taken.

  After that, I said very little but handed out tissues and a few bobby pins.

  The next wedding, one that also featured Nonna’s cake, was more subdued—only one attendant apiece. We zipped through the pictures in no time at all. There was no long train for me to artfully arrange, and I had few names to call as Lena progressed to each new group shot.

  “She was married twice before,” I overheard the soloist explaining to the organist.