Summers at Blue Lake Read online

  “Were you in Africa or somewhere?” I asked.

  “Yes. I was in the Peace Corps. That’s where I met my husband.”

  Mrs. Bomberger had bragged that her son-in-law was a state lobbyist for environmental causes. She had called the two of them “the last two hippies on the face of the earth.” They were building a solar-powered house in Ranklersville.

  “Okay now.” Carole had finally caught up in her paperwork. “Anja Graybill is your maternal grandmother.”

  “Right.”

  “What words would you use to characterize your relationship with Miss Lefever.”

  “Grandma Lena? She is my grandma.”

  Carole gestured for more.

  “She’s my mentor, my swim instructor, and my pinochle partner.” I added the last part as a reference to Carole’s mother.

  “Do you have regular periods?” Carole asked casually. Whoa! I didn’t see that one coming. The statue with dangling breasts kept her strange vigil.

  “Yes.” I pulled my shoulders back—a show of my own breasts, in case she questioned my answer.

  “How long have you had them?”

  “My periods?” Or my breasts?

  “Yes.” She meant my periods.

  “For about a year,” I lied. Seven months, really. The statue knew I was stretching the truth.

  “Do you ever discuss your period with your Grandma Lena?”

  “Only when I run out of maxi pads.”

  “Are you having your period now?”

  “No!” I jumped up, but I sat back down, slowly. “Do I need to talk about this?”

  “I’m sorry if this is making you uncomfortable. I’ll move on.” Carole studied her notes. “Can you describe the event that took place in your grandmother’s backyard this morning?”

  “I was outside talking to Grandma Lena. She was picking blueberries, and I was eating them.”

  “What were you wearing?”

  I rolled my eyes. “My nightgown. I hadn’t gotten dressed yet.”

  “Why were you outside in your nightgown?”

  “I told you. I didn’t get dressed yet.”

  “Weren’t you worried about your neighbors seeing you?” For somebody with half naked figurines all over, Carole’s line of questioning was bordering on sanctimonious.

  “I hadn’t thought about it. I just wanted to say hello to Grandma Lena and eat some blueberries.”

  “Did Lena touch you while you were in your nightgown.”

  “I spilled blueberries and got blueberry juice on myself. She checked out the stain. She might have touched the nightgown, but not me.”

  “So that was a blueberry stain on your nightgown, not blood?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Did Lena touch you in any other way.”

  “No.”

  “Has she ever touched you in an inappropriate way?”

  “Does changing my diaper as a baby count?”

  Carole was not amused.

  “No, she has never touched me like that. We hug and kiss, but nothing funny.”

  “We also got a report that Mr. Kovack heard you yelling to Lena in the yard last week. Do you remember the incident?”

  “Grandma Lena was braiding my hair.” I made each syllable into a staccato punch.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He claims you were yelling loudly.”

  “It hurt.” I crossed my arms in front of me.

  “Did you ask Lena to braid your hair?”

  “Yes. Seventeen magazine, page eighty-three, ‘The New Braids.’ Number two: the fishtail. You can check it out for yourself.”

  The phone rang. Carole excused herself and went over to her desk. I slid closer to the open file folder on the couch. “Stop it. Get your hands off of me, you perv.” The statement jumped out at me from the typed page. Somebody needed to hurt that small man, Mr. Kovack. Me. I pictured a wayward explosive finding his house on the Fourth of July. If only I’d had the foresight to import the contraband to Pennsylvania when I came in June. You couldn’t buy any of the really good stuff here.

  Carole hung up the phone. I took a sudden interest in the handwoven shawl that was draped artfully over the back of the couch. The folder remained open.

  “Sorry about that. That was my boss. He has another case he wants me to see before the holiday.” She crossed to pick up her notes. “I think I have enough here to exonerate Miss Lefever of any molestation charges.”

  Too late. Mr. Kovack got what he wanted just as if he himself had locked my grandmothers in the town stockade.

  “Your grandmothers can drive you home.”

  It was after four by the time we left Carole’s office. Nobody wanted to talk much. Grandma Lena turned on the radio, and we listened to the lament of a country song, which felt tame compared to our personal injustice.

  We could not guess how the day could possibly get worse, but it did. In her haste to follow the police car, Nonna had neglected to close the kitchen door. All three cats found their way to the kitchen to dart among the cooling cake pieces, occasionally fighting over them. By the time we walked through the back door, Greystoke, Chaz, and Octavia slithered guiltily around a confetti of dark cake crumbs. The only cake left in its original location held the dainty impressions of paw prints.

  Nonna was close to tears. Grandma Lena and I rushed to comfort her.

  “Let’s forget this mess,” Grandma Lena said. “Barbara Jean and I will clean it up tonight. Tomorrow you can start fresh, and we will both help you. The reception doesn’t start until eight o’clock.”

  “Yeah, Nonna. We can do it.”

  “We’ve all had a long day. How about we forget all of this for now and go to Red Lobster.”

  Nonna dried her eyes and laughed. “I love you girls.” She kissed me on the forehead and Grandma Lena on the lips. The kiss was more solid than passionate, but I still looked away.

  That night, we traded our group hug in for plastic lobster bibs. We traded in our neighborhood animosity for claw crackers and metal picks. We probed those poor lobsters and luxuriated in the taste of displaced aggression. As we dined, I watched my grandmothers. They did not talk about what had happened. The lines of their faces showed me that they had traversed that kind of hardship before. And I saw what it did to them: it toughened them in places and softened them in others. Their cheeks unfolded like old roses, although their jaws remained planed with the diamond angles of a trellis. Great crescents of skin hung from the back of their arms, but their shoulders refused to tilt into the posture of defeat. Bigotry had summoned gravity to their flesh, but my grandmothers had good bones.

  Grandma Lena was slightly thinner than Nonna, yet they matched, like couples should who had been together for a long time. Mates. Their relationship was not sanctioned, overlooked by some of their friends, perhaps, but not publicly condoned. And yet all of this adversity had soldered them together with a seam stronger than the parts it was binding.

  I wanted a love like that, but I didn’t think I could endure what it took to forge such a union. It was a quality I would see one day in my parents’ marriage, but only after doctors and diseases supplied the blows. Easy love—maybe there was no such thing. It was an oxymoron like bittersweet or jumbo shrimp.

  ♦ 20 ♦

  2000

  SIX MINUTES. That was exactly the amount of time it took for the sun to slip entirely from view once its bottom edge grazed the zenith of hill behind the lake. The anticipation of fireworks, a celebration that requires darkness, seemed to stretch the sun’s descent tenfold. Six minutes became an hour. I draped my sweatshirt over Sam who was sleeping on the front seat of Travis’s boat. His nap was the inevitable result of many hours of water sports and sunshine. Sam not only frolicked on an inner tube, but he also helped Travis steer the boat as I made a fool of myself on water skis, my first ever attempt at such a folly.

  Now with Sam asleep, the absence of his chatter hollowed out the evening, even though the n
oise of the nearby party seemed inescapable. This emptiness echoed the feeling I had after I took Jules to the vet to be kenneled for the night. How lonely the house seemed without his vigilant barking, but I had no choice. He had to be tranquilized every Fourth of July after his first, a nearly epileptic encounter.

  In contrast to Sam’s inertia, I experienced dusk in the form of jittery anticipation. And now I felt the need to be sedated. Being alone with Travis didn’t make me nervous so much as it filled me with awareness. And awareness was not something I wanted to feel while the nouns death and divorce were seeking present tense verbs. I reached for some of the prohibited wine that I had disguised in a thermos.

  “Want some?” I offered Travis a plastic cup.

  “No, I’m driving,” he answered. He was so relaxed out here on the lake. The anesthetizing effect of alcohol would have been wasted on him. For the first time I realized why he had chosen the boat over the business in the divorce settlement, and I wished that I, too, had a token, some souvenir of solace to take away from my marriage.

  But all I had was a thermos of cheap wine. I was tempted to chug my cabernet to get to the awaited buzz, but I was already exposed. I had told Travis more than I should have in the early afternoon, while Sam was busy playing in the gravelly sand. I couldn’t help it; of all the men I had known (not an extensive survey, by any means), Travis had always projected a vulnerability, a poignancy that reeled me in more than a swagger ever could. Call it my personal kryptonite, or even better, call it my phenobarbital, because my truths had overflowed in its presence.

  “I can tell you the first night Bryce cheated on me, though I wouldn’t admit it to myself at the time. He had gone to a party without me. It was some sort of business function. And when he came home—it wasn’t like I smelled perfume on him—he was just different somehow. He started to blame me for all kinds of things, including letting him go to the party alone. Like it was my fault he had strayed.”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “Did Elizabeth cheat on you?”

  “No, she blamed me for things.”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, not the real issues. She found fault with my work, my ideas for the business. It seemed to center more around my inadequacies as a business partner than as a husband, but it was really the husband part she had issues with.”

  “Was it difficult being in business with your wife? I’ve heard people say it can be too much togetherness.”

  “No. Togetherness just accelerates the inevitable. In the beginning, it was great. Liz had been traveling too much with her sales job. I hardly got to see her. So one summer she announced she was going to quit, and she did. She just started showing up at my job sites. I did landscaping in the summer, even when I was teaching.” Travis paused as if he were caught in the web of the memory.

  “Anyway, she’d bring these elaborate picnic lunches, but I couldn’t just stop what I was doing, so she’d pick up a spade or some clippers and work right alongside of me. I think some of the best times in our marriage were when we were working together side by side. We’d dream and make plans. We fed off of each other’s enthusiasm. That’s why the decision to quit teaching and go into landscaping full-time was so easy to make.”

  That conversation had ended there without an awkward pause. I considered what Travis had said. I couldn’t imagine Bryce and myself ever working together at the same job. At times it seemed we hardly inhabited in the same house. I had crumpled the wax paper that had held my sandwich. Travis had interpreted the signal for what it was: my reluctance to delve deeper into this topic. We finished our lunch, gathered the sand toys, and launched the boat. The energy of our confessions circled us the remainder of the afternoon. Even now, on the cusp of fireworks, that energy was expanding.

  “How is Margot doing?” I asked, sipping my wine.

  “Believe it or not, she’s getting married. Maybe third time’s the charm.”

  “Really? I missed a marriage in there somewhere.”

  “You didn’t miss much. I hardly knew number two, but Ken’s a nice guy, a few years younger than she is. She moved to North Carolina to be with him. He’s a professor down there.”

  “Where?”

  “Murfreesboro. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Chowan College, sure, it’s not too far from Richmond. I had a high school friend who went there. Too bad Mom’s not still alive, they could have …” I could feel my voice splintering. For a second there was an expectant void, then the sound of a firecracker cut through the calm, and a chill ascended my spine.

  Words unspoken—questions, never posed—hung in the air with the achy, gray smell of gunpowder. It wasn’t that my mother was dead, but the other—the bigger silence. Longer. And all at once, I let it go to join the smells of festivity, the ripple of white water, and the dreams of a small sleeping child.

  “Travis. I need to ask this. I don’t want you to think I’m stupid, but I really don’t know. What happened with Lena and your mom?” And the question I didn’t ask, Why didn’t I ever hear from you again?

  Travis eyed the setting sun. He seemed jealous of its easy departure. “God, I don’t know. I thought you might be able to tell me. There was some kind of fight over Granddad’s funeral. I know that.”

  The splash of water and kids having one last swim sounded into the twilight. As noises, they fused and emptied the air like silence. Travis looked at me. He knew what I was really asking him.

  “BJ, I wanted to call you.” He stroked his beard, and then turned away. “Mom had forbidden me to talk to you after she had her fight with Lena, and it tore me up. I can’t tell you. I mean, normally a kid of sixteen doesn’t listen to his mom, but you should’ve seen her. I was so worried about her.” He paused. “Hell, you know her history. I didn’t want her to try anything. I felt so protective of her after Granddad was gone. We were all each other had after that. Even now I worry. I shouldn’t. She has her own life, but all along I’ve felt like I was the parent, and she was the child.”

  “The fight between her and Grandma Lena didn’t have to do with me, with us? Did it?”

  “No. It was about Granddad. Something Lena said about him, or maybe that she wouldn’t go to the funeral. Something that Mom couldn’t forgive. You and I were just the victims of it all.”

  All of the tacit questions that separated us now had commonality. Neither of us knew what transpired between Lena and Margot, but we shared the ignorance.

  “What would Margot say now, about you running into me? About us spending time together? Have you told her?” I asked.

  “I told her. She changes the subject when I mention other women. I think she is still holding onto the convoluted hope that Liz and I will get back together and give her grandchildren.”

  “Ah! The scourge of being an only child. I felt it, too, but I obliged my mother.” I looked at my sleeping son. The gold eked its way back into his hair after it had dried. He was so peaceful.

  “Oh, I wanted to oblige my mother. Nothing would have made me happier, but it wasn’t a possibility. I have a ridiculously low sperm count.”

  “Oh, Travis, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—”

  “It’s okay. I have come to terms with it a long time ago. I just never told Mom. She shouldn’t give up her dream. Besides it’s not like I don’t have any swimmers. They’re just a proud and select few.” Travis straightened his posture as if to restore something that was bent inside of him. I wasn’t uncomfortable around him after his admission. Quite the opposite. I felt folded into his confidence.

  I smiled. “That’s the thing I am the proudest of. That Mom got to be with me and Bryce when Sam was born. She was in the room with us. I am so glad I made her a grandma before she died.”

  It wasn’t the time to cry, but the wine and the breeze opened me to my easy tears. I didn’t try to hide them. If Travis continued to hang out with us, he’d see the waterworks before too long. Across the lake, the sun had finally set, though its l
ight still left a queer tint in the sky above the hills. I looked at the water for comfort. It was blue, the unnatural hue found only in a paint box. Not flag blue or blueberry blue. It was Sid Stevens blue. Blue Lake blue.

  The first of the fireworks erupted over the northwest shore. Travis began to nudge Sam awake in the front seat. The loud sounds had done the job for him. Sam sat straight up with a “Wow.” I dried my eyes, determining not to make this Fourth of July as tearful as the last one I had spent with Travis, all those years ago.

  Travis winked at me; Sam sat on his lap. It was perhaps the third time Sam had witnessed fireworks in his short life. Each time the rockets spat into the air—red, green, gold—they illuminated the wonder on his young face. Red wonder. Green wonder. Gold wonder. The lake, swallowing its blue, reflected this new spectrum. A triple showcase: in the sky, on the water, on Sam’s face.

  I faced away from the display, watching the fireworks only as they bounced off my son. Travis smiled at me and at the well-being of the child on his lap. Cheers resounded from a nearby boat.

  The slow awakening. I began to feel a delicate tug at my loins, almost imperceptible at first. The sensation was so distant I hardly recognized the symptom of my own longings. The floating boat nodded us: my son, a man from my past, and me. My thighs shivered in return, and I could not deny what I felt. Sexual awareness I thought had expired, now steadied and bloomed. A faint pulse inside. I wanted to wrap my arms (and legs) around Travis and conquer death. I had begun the month of July by praying for some relief from my life, but now I pleaded with the universe for a resurrection.

  ♦ 21 ♦

  1983

  FOR MY PENANCE I had to give Karen my favorite bottle of platinum nail polish, help her spy on Travis the next time he did yard-work, and get her into Macy Killian’s upcoming nuptials.

  “I can’t believe I had to go to the Blue Lake celebration alone with Ray. It was like I was one step away from dating my brother. It was so gross. I think he wanted to kiss me. He even took off his headgear while we were watching fireworks.”