Summers at Blue Lake Read online

  Karen handed me another dripping bottle to pass to her husband. Shelly turned out to be a beefy man, somewhat defensive of his feminine sounding first name. When I asked if he’d rather be called by his surname, Ross, he had shrugged. “Ever since the show Friends came on the air, I’ve taken some ribbing about that name, too.” I didn’t know what he was like as a kid, but Shelly Ross, the man, looked like he could defend himself.

  Sam and one of the new neighbor boys he had befriended came running at the sound of bottle tops popping. They had been promised root beer floats. Karen scooped vanilla ice cream into two frosty mugs. The root beer hissed as it hit the ice cream.

  “I think I did this backwards,” Karen said, mopping up the overflow.

  “This is such a treat.” I handed her some more napkins.

  Karen nodded. “You aren’t kidding. You should have seen the first batch Shelly tried to make.” She licked her fingers. “It exploded all over the garage and my new red Audi. Do you know what soda does to a paint job?”

  “I’m still paying for it.” Shelly leaned over and kissed his wife. “Excuse us, BJ.”

  “Not a problem. Just pretend I’m not here.” And I wasn’t there. The problem wasn’t confined to standing on the outside of a particular embrace. I was on the outside of all embraces. Sometimes I felt as though I were hovering over this plane of existence, waiting to float away in thought.

  Only Sam kept me planted—while I read stories to him or tucked him into bed at night or watched him at play. He alone had the power to bring me back to the physical. Things would get better. My joy would increase as I became aware of it in the traces of my day. Was it Buddhism that placed such heavy emphasis on the power of the moment, the now? I would have made a poor Buddhist if I weren’t already such a poor Catholic. Fellowship of friends—my only congregation. Communion with root beer—my only sacrament. But it was as much religion as I could tolerate at present.

  Karen and Shelly stopped their display of affection, and Shelly looked up at the house.

  “Good exterior. Paint is still good. It shouldn’t be hard to sell. Do you mind if I look around inside?”

  “Be my guest. Do you need a tour guide?”

  “No, stay here with Karen. I’ll be quick.”

  Karen waited until he was out of earshot until she spoke. “He’s the top man at his agency. He’ll be able to get it off your hands if that’s really what you want.”

  I looked away at the two boys and Jules playing in the yard. I didn’t know what I wanted. I had been here for two weeks, and I had barely cleared out any of the living areas. I had not even attempted to open any doors to the closets and the attic. My movements were slow and deliberate in this house, as if the memory of my grandmothers depended on it.

  For today’s exercise in futility, I had spent an entire eight hours going through a filing cabinet of wedding photos. They were a parade of brides, unabashedly easy to date in their frocks: the seventies gowns with their unfettered lines, the pillbox hats of the sixties, and the beaded decadence of the eighties. I could easily have chucked the whole piece of furniture out with the garbage, but I couldn’t bear the thought of discarding all those memories. I was glad I didn’t, because I came across an interesting find, more interesting even than the photos themselves. No, the real discovery had been in the organization of the photos. Grandma Lena arranged her files alphabetically according to the groom’s last name, but when I got to Z, I noticed that the files started all over again at A. I examined the second set of records more closely.

  To my amusement, I discovered that Grandma Lena kept a separate file for those pairs who eventually divorced. And in the back, she even had a file marked “pending” for those couples in the heat of litigation. Those poor schleps: Grandma Lena had died almost ten years ago, leaving them to hang in marital purgatory. I wondered where in their lives they were now. Was reconciliation even possible these days, ever successful? Surely I could move them to the divorced file.

  Grandma Lena did not have a wedding file on me; she had died a month before Bryce and I eloped. That same summer my mother had found the first lump in her breast. Looking back, I wonder if I should have sensed the omens of my mother and my adopted grandmother, but at the time, I didn’t know that bad luck came in threes. And I certainly didn’t know that Lena had a file of divorcees almost as thick as her file of married brides.

  Lightning bugs started their phosphorescent mating rituals on the back lawn. It was the hour when the more cautious motorists turned on their headlights, and the cool of the earth rebounded hard into the graying air. Other, peskier insects joined the parade, and I lit a citronella candle in sad defense.

  Sam came running up to us. “Do you have a jar for us to put our bugs in?” he asked.

  “I think I have one by the sink. Watch the kids a second, Karen, I’ll run in and get it and see if I have any more candles.”

  I stepped inside the house from the back door. My eyes took a second to adjust to the harsh artificial light, and I bumped into Shelly making notes in the kitchen.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said making my way to the sink.

  The jar was sitting there, but it still had the smears of mayonnaise clinging to its side. I turned on the faucet and proceeded to rinse out the jar. I didn’t realize I was humming until Shelly asked me a question.

  “Maybe you can tell me. When was the electrical work last updated? Do you know off the top of your head?”

  “Nonna had some work done after Lena died. Maybe 1992.” I struggled to arrange the events and dates in my head. “Yes, it was definitely that year. We had just moved to Michigan, and I had come back out here to help her clear out the garden.”

  Shelly scribbled more notes.

  “Was the plumbing done around the same time?”

  “No, I think that was a few years earlier. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  When I returned to the porch, I saw Sam directing his friend in the dark.

  “It’s right over there. Go get it.”

  Sam, afraid of flying insects, wasn’t the one who wanted to catch the bugs. I should have guessed—but the neighbor boy wasn’t complaining as he zigzagged to the next glowing target.

  Karen motioned for me to join her on the porch swing. We sat under the blue wooden canopy of the porch and downed the remaining swigs of root beer. It should have been relaxing, but the air between us was taut with something undefined. I had known that Karen wanted to get me alone all evening. The beverage dispensing was just a ruse for whatever it was she had on her mind.

  “Spit it out. You have something to say,” I said, breaking the silence.

  “How did you know I wanted… never mind. Look, you’re right. I have something to tell you.” She paused to arrange her words, but decided to pare her thoughts, stripping them naked of her usual sentimentality. “Bryce really wants out of the marriage. You should go to Michigan and sign.” Karen didn’t mince words. “I don’t give that advice very often, but he is offering you one sweet deal.”

  “What if I decide to stay here? What about custody?”

  “It would be trickier, of course, but I think Bryce is open for negotiations.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Negotiation was never a big part of our marriage.” Especially in the last year.

  I could see that Karen was ready to take this conversation to the next level, but I turned away. I didn’t feel like discussing my marriage tonight, with all the other questions on my mind. My courage came and went. I wanted to query Karen, but I didn’t want the answers.

  “What is it?” It was Karen’s turn to ask. “Now you have that look on your face.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s not about the divorce.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s about Nonna.”

  Karen waited. A lightning bug landed on the railing and blinked. I thought back to the conversation I had with Travis on the boat. Travis ha
d known I was upset, but he didn’t try to soothe me or refuse the paintings. Maybe he was using them as leverage, but for what?

  “Karen, you were there. What made Nonna bequeath her father’s paintings to Travis?”

  “Did Travis come to see you?” Karen asked.

  “Yes. He hasn’t taken the paintings yet. He wants to buy a house in the fall, so he’s asked me to hold them for him. Did Nonna say anything to you?”

  “She amended her will only recently. You might have grounds to contest the will, but she was pretty adamant when she came into my office that day.” Karen paused, remembering. “She told me that she had just spoken to you earlier on the phone. I assumed she had discussed the changes with you and that you were okay with them.”

  “When was that exactly?” I didn’t recall our ever discussing the paintings.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to go back and check my notes. I think it was early fall.”

  “About the time that Travis had come back into town.” I spoke my thoughts aloud.

  “I don’t think she had contact with him, but she may have known.”

  “But why did she change her will?” I asked.

  “I gathered that it was because of something you had told her in your phone conversation.”

  What had Nonna and I talked about last autumn? I could tell Nonna almost anything, though all of our recent conversations revolved around Sam.

  With a creaky swing of the front screen door, Shelly made his presence known on the porch. “Are you girls having a heart-to-heart? I can come back later.”

  “No,” I assured him, “come join us. What have you got for me?”

  “Not much, yet, I’m afraid. I’ll have to compare similar properties before I can finish my appraisal.”

  He tucked his notes into his back pocket and squeezed into the empty spot on the swing. The chain groaned under his weight, but none of us bothered to move. The night with its fireflies and fizzy root beer was too buoyant for body weight to be an issue.

  Karen and Shelly left soon after they drained their bottles. They both promised to be in touch with various quotes, forms, and estimates. I had the nearly impossible task of ensnaring my son when it was bedtime. Sam would have sooner touched ten winged creatures than gone to bed. He fought my orders until his friend’s mother appeared on a lighted porch two doors down and called, “Hayden, time to come home and take a bath.”

  “Hayden. That’s what his name is,” I said under my breath. Only terrible mothers did not know the names of their sons’ playmates.

  Capturing sleep proved to be much easier than capturing bugs for Sam. He was exhausted after a long day playing in the fresh air. My activities of the day had also been mentally and physically draining, but sleep evaded me. I wrestled with sheets as I tried to pin down my thoughts. My mind kept circling around the phone call I had with Nonna last fall. What had we said to one another? I tried to remember the sound of my grandmother’s voice, but my brain faltered over the memory.

  Around midnight, in that hazy realm near sleep, I had a realization that made me jump out of bed and run barefoot to the kitchen. I tiptoed over to the phone and hit the button marked Announcement. Nonna’s gravelly voice greeted me immediately.

  “The lady of the house isn’t in, right at the moment, but if you leave a message, and I can figure out how to retrieve it, I will call you back.”

  I suppressed an audible cry, but the silent tears flowed nonetheless. Her voice. Her words. It had been Nonna’s joke to call herself the lady of the house after Lena’s death. While Lena was alive, neither of them could be the sole titleholder. Now that title belonged to me. I was the lady of the house—a house that was haunted by the voices I knew once and loved. I slid down the wall to sit on the cool linoleum of the kitchen floor. I missed Nonna and our connection. My friends could never understand my closeness to my grandmother. Other people had grandmothers they loved, but it wasn’t the same. The generations didn’t dilute our relationship like they had between my mom and me. Nonna and I were sister souls, able to communicate with a look. Perhaps that was the key to our last conversation. Maybe it was never what I said to her, but the inferences that Nonna made. She knew me too well.

  “Nonna, I need some help with this one. You’re going to have to guide me through all of this.” My thin voice echoed in the dark kitchen.

  Contemplatively, I looked up. In the hazy moonlight, distorted even more by my tears, the painting on the far wall took on a luminescence. It did not look cubist at all. Had I ever really studied this particular piece? The fragmented light of my tears gave the painting an impressionistic feel. I wiped my eyes to see clearly, but that painting retained its influence, more Monet than Braque. But something was amiss. The gentle hills and water didn’t look European; they looked familiar and familial.

  I had looked at the painting perhaps a thousand times, but never the way I saw it now. The water in the picture was blue, unabashedly so. Not like any blue found in nature, more like the blue of a promise. The painted sky was dark, save a hint of a light source. The stately hills divided the sky and water like a chaperone separating two lovers. But the division was incomplete; the blue of the water dotted the sky, and the water reflected the purpled night. Not even the hills could come between them.

  I stood up and walked over. As if led by instinct, I easily took the picture down from the wall. Behind it, the kitchen wallpaper brightened in a square of print, unbleached by years of sunlight. I took the painting to the window and turned it over. Enough light passed from the moon that I was able to read the inscription. “Brubaker Lake, 1909. Marry me, Ada. All my love, Sid.”

  I touched the inky loops knowing I was guided to find these words. My fingers traced the o in the word love. Round and round, like a ring. Exactly like a ring.

  ♦ 15 ♦

  1983

  THE DAY BEFORE A WEDDING always held a heightened sense of drama. On those occasions, I awoke to the delicate aroma of cake and the anticipation of a sinful breakfast confection. My favorite cake was red velvet, but it was a mixed blessing because I would have to listen to Nonna cursing in Greek as she tried to get the pale icings to cover the dark red color. She resorted to a crumb layer for those—an extra step that hid the traces of dark cake. The easiest cakes to frost were the yellow and lemon ones. White cakes were too dry and crumbly to ice smoothly. Usually Nonna could steer her brides to select the less demanding options if she enticed them with a lemon curd or chocolate mousse filling.

  On July third, she had no such luck. The bride was the daughter of the mayor. In addition to ordering the darkest chocolate cake, the MOB (mother of bride) had made several other demands that would invoke all of Nonna’s skill and artistry. The wedding and reception were to take place in the top floor of the old bank building. It had a view of the lake and the fireworks. Mrs. Edson wanted the cake to simulate the lake with the happy couple watching fireworks, a.k.a. sparklers, from a white chocolate candy bridge—all of this in the heat of July.

  When I peered into the kitchen and saw cutouts of brown cake spread all over the breakfast bar and table, I thought twice before disturbing Nonna. Instead I sneaked out the front door and circled the house to find Grandma Lena who was already at work in her dewy gardens.

  “Barbara Jean. You’re still in your nightgown.”

  “So?”

  “So, a young lady of your age and maturity should learn to be more modest.”

  Modesty wouldn’t get me breakfast. I reached over and picked some blueberries from Grandma Lena’s pail. She slapped my hand, which sent several berries to trail crimson juice down the front of my white cotton nightgown like a bloody handprint.

  Grandma Lena touched my nightgown lightly where I had stained it. “Boiling water will take care of that. But don’t touch my berries. Those are all I have, and Anja promised me a pie as soon as she is finished with that cake in there.”

  “You’re not going to get a pie.” I reached for another berry. “Nonna is call
ing for Zeus to ride again.”

  “Good morning, ladies.” Mr. Kovack hailed us much too cheerily from the other side of the bushes.

  “Good morning, George.”

  I hid behind the hedge, but he had already seen me. Grandma Lena nudged me.

  “Good morning, Mr. Kovack.”

  He disappeared into the house with his paper, and I scurried, too. Modesty was suddenly in vogue.

  ♦ 16 ♦

  2000

  “GOD, JUST GIVE ME a break from this life,” I prayed aloud.

  June had ended, and July had begun with friction and its usual companion, the heat. I had spent only one other July, a disastrous one, at the house on Mulberry Street. I tried not to let the memory darken my expectation.

  Even if I had abandoned past evidence of gloom, the day had brought new cause for dread. The July sun had shown its face for a mere five hours when I found myself cursing at the towers of boxes in the living room.

  What had I expected when I called Bryce? Sure, honey, go right ahead and enroll Sam in the Pennsylvania school system. I don’t mind if I rarely get to see my son. Call me in twelve years, and I’ll come down for his graduation.

  I hadn’t even been sure about making our move permanent. I wanted to cover all the bases—just in case. But now, I had shown all of my cards. Bryce, though, was holding trump, and it wasn’t hearts. He would agree to my custody terms, if I came to Michigan to sign papers, his papers, as soon as possible. And he wanted Sam for the rest of the summer.

  “You can make this as ugly as you want to make it, Bobbi. Or we can be nice. The choice is yours.”

  Doing things his way. Stupid! Why didn’t I listen to Karen? By calling Bryce today, I might have jeopardized any chance I had of the big monthly checks he had dangled before me only two weeks ago. It hurt my pride, but I was a realist. Without alimony from Bryce, I would have to seek employment outside of my art to make ends meet. And then I might not have time to do my metalwork. Bryce had hinted today that he even had the power to take away my last name in this battle. Was this the end for Bobbi Ellington Designs?