Cameo Lake (22 page)

Thirty

I
don't now how long I sat there. Long enough that my tea grew cold and the room dark. It was very quiet, quieter it seemed than any other night on the lake. Even the bullfrogs and the night birds kept still. I was listening and it seemed as though the isolating dark had stranded me from everyone. The cabin lacked even a noisy clock to remind me that I wasn't alone. My children were gone, their sudden departure without farewell leaving me with a disturbing sense of permanence. What if something happened? My straitlaced upbringing had not allowed for fanciful superstition, but my twenty years with the McCarthy family had exposed me to plenty of crossed fingers and knocks on wood. Never go to bed angry, always leave by the door you entered. It seemed to me that there was some aphorism about always say goodbye. I'd said goodbye to neither my children nor my husband. In this soul dark moment I could believe that I would never see any of them again. I imagined losing Lily and Tim to this corruption in their father's life. If anyone knew that I, too, had been corrupted, I might truly lose them.

I tried to stand and shake off the enervation. I needed to pack, to gather our belongings spread from one corner to the other of the cabin, load the big car, and go home. Yet I sat there, letting the dark cultivate my fears within its protective shield, a petri dish for my
emotions and my fears. Within the dark I imagined a broken umbilical, like the lifeline to an astronaut. I saw myself floating away, reaching back, just grazing the fingertips of someone. I pinwheeled away and then suddenly noticed that the other astronaut was moving away from me. I must have dozed, the imagery so unchosen.

A light and fluid sound came to me then, I might almost have imagined it, so delicate and faint. Music. Sweet and hesitant, then stronger. A flute.

I stood and went to the porch, looking across the lake toward Ben's darkened cabin, the only light there his porch light, my Gatsby beacon. The flute music stopped and I heard the screen door screek open and bang closed.

I was cold again and suddenly desperately afraid of being alone, of letting my random thoughts control and frighten me. I took my fleece jacket off the peg and walked out of the cabin to the lakeside. Grace's canoe rested half in and half out of the water, the painter tied to the picnic bench to prevent it drifting away. I groped for the knot and untied it. The paddles were in the canoe and I used one to shove off.

I struck out for Ben's porch light, which glowed as it had every night since that first night in June when I sat on my porch, wondering if coming to Cameo Lake was a stupid idea, a selfish move, or if it was exactly what I needed to do. I stroked gently, soundlessly, across the expanse between our shores.

As I drew closer, I could see the tiny flicker of a citronella candle. The hyperacoustics of the lake brought the sharp sound of bottle against glass.

“You shouldn't be on the water without lights.” Ben's voice was a whisper, yet clearly audible.

“I know.”

“Is this a good idea?”

“Probably not.” I felt the bow of the canoe strike sand. I could just make him out, a dark shape coming toward me.

He bent down and hauled my canoe up onto the beach without my getting out. “Let's go inside.”

We walked side by side. I was acutely aware of the enfolding dark and Ben's hand around mine. As we crossed the porch, he picked up the bottle and glass beside his chair.

Inside, Ben lit a kerosene lamp on the piano and then took a second jelly glass out of the breakfront. Without asking, Ben filled my glass with scotch and dropped an ice cube in. “Sometimes drunk isn't a bad place to be.”

“Are you an alcoholic?”

“Occasionally I turn to drink. I did when Kevin died, I did when Talia . . .” He paused, unused to having someone know about Talia. “After her accident.”

“Ben.” I wanted him to stop this.

“Hey, I'm an ex–rock star, I'm not pure. Never pretended to be. Just because I maintain this quiet, controlled image . . .” He sat heavily into a chair and I realized that he was pretty well gone.

“Ben, what set you off tonight?”

“How can you ask that of me?” In the soft light of the lamp, his eyes were shadowed, impossibly deep in his face. Involuntarily, I thought of Heathcliff. “Haven't I already told you my secrets?”

“Not all of them, Ben. Not all your secrets. Not really.” I did sit next to him then, afraid of my own candor.

He was quiet. Whatever rage he had allowed me to see the tip of, was shoved back down into submission by the next gulp of scotch.

“Ben, please don't do this to yourself.” I rested my hand on the hand which held the glass. “Or at least tell me why.”

“Cleo.” He shook his head. “It would be the epitome of unfairness to burden you further.”

The first swallow of scotch had burned tears into my eyes. The second felt better, and I drained my jelly glass to feel warm and unstructured. It was a different calm than drinking wine.

“Are you going to divorce him?”

I fought the urge to lay my head down on Ben's lap. “I think it's what Sean wants.”
Do you love her? I think I might.
Abruptly I stood up, needing to quell the urge to seek the comfort I imagined Ben's hand stroking my hair would give. It seemed safer to be moving
around the dim room, keeping some physical distance. The yellowish light from the kerosene lamp glittered off Talia's flute, lying on top of the closed lid of the baby grand, and I walked up to it. The gold mouthpiece reflected the light more warmly than the silver body of the instrument. Beside it, the photo I'd noticed before.

A little shrine, I thought. A Talia shrine. I must have said it out loud because Ben's voice, clear in the darkness, agreed with me. “I suppose it is. Occasionally I take it out and put my lips where hers spent so much time. It always tastes like metal. Like she often tasted. Unyielding.”

“Gold is soft.”

“Talia was cast iron.”

I pulled a rocking chair to face Ben, still sitting on the cluttered couch. He poured more scotch into my glass and then into his own.

I should have left then, before my judgment was any more clouded by the exhaustion of my spirit and the scotch. But I couldn't. He seemed so sad, like me, caught between anger and despair.

“What happened, Ben? Why do this to yourself tonight?”

He didn't say anything for a time and then laughed a short, mirthless laugh. “Your husband.”

“I don't understand.”

“You love him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You stopped him from going off the west side of the raft.”

“And why does that bother you?”

“I didn't stop Talia from diving off.” Abruptly Ben stood up and began circling the small illuminated space in front of the piano. “I was on the raft when she went off. It was as dark as it is tonight, the moon gone down, and the motion of the raft under our feet was disorienting.”

I stayed in my chair, watching him appear and disappear through the ovoid pool of kerosene light.

“She wouldn't let me touch her. I thought that maybe she was afraid she'd lose her resolve to leave me if I touched her. She kept backing away.”

Ben suddenly came to a standstill and grasped the back of the rocking chair I was sitting in. I felt his shaking through the narrow spindles of the seat back.

“The odd thing was that, beneath all the anger, I believed that we would survive the moment, and that it would even maybe make us stronger. That this was the moment for us to begin to try harder. That there would be a second chance.”

Ben let go of the chair and I put a foot out to stop its rocking.

“She was just within reach. I could feel her breath on my arm and in the dark I could have reached out and held her. I could have reached my arms around her and held her against me and against any struggle. She realized it and said the last words she would ever say to me. ‘Don't touch me.’” Ben's voice was a soft hissing mimic of how Talia's must have sounded that night. “Then she turned and dived off the raft.”

Now I was on my feet, frantic to put my arms around him, to hold him safe against this haunting with my own need to be touched, to be held safe against the cruelty of love. He kept moving, as if propelled by the immensity of his story, unable to stop the headlong rush of words, as Talia was unable to halt the impetus of her dive against the rock.

“So, you see, the lake community is quite justified in shunning me. I did cause the accident. Only it wasn't that I physically pushed her, it was that I didn't put out a hand to stop her.” He stopped then and let me put my arms around him. “It was my fault.” His voice was cracked and hoarse as if he'd been screaming, but he wasn't weeping. I was.

“Ben, you can't say that. You know that's not true.”

“I knew what was going to happen. I knew the direction she was facing. Yet in that split second when I might have called out a warning or put out a hand, I didn't.”

“Ben, you were hurt and angry.”

“And in that moment, silent.” He pulled away from me and picked up his glass, taking a mouthful, closing his eyes against the burn. “And that's the difference between you and me.”

* * *

We were silent for some time, standing apart, on either side of a rag rug on the floor. The colors of the rug in the kerosene light were questionable gray or blue, white or yellow. I stared at them, trying to remember. Ben picked up the flute and took it apart, wiping each one of the three joints carefully with a cloth before setting it into its case.

“Maybe you will be able to write the flute part when she's gone.”

Ben kept rubbing the gold mouthpiece and said nothing. I hadn't meant to be cruel or outspoken, only truthful. Scotch truthful. For a moment I wondered why my parents were so inhibited if this is what scotch did for me. “I mean that maybe you haven't given up hope that she'll come back.”

He snapped the case shut and walked away from the piano. He went to the wood stove and put a match to an already laid pile of newspaper and kindling. Still quiet, he added two logs and then stood up, rubbing his long hands against his jeans.

“Do you want me to go?”

“I want you to stay.” He might have meant forever.

The dry wood popped and the kindling crackled. The sudden warmth in the chilly room felt good. We came together in front of the stove, reaching out to one another in a natural way, compassionate friends. Needing the affirmation we lent each other, needing the physical release from our overwhelming pain, we held on. They were separate pains, yet similar enough to be numbed by the simple act of touch. And comforting touch became loving touch and we gave in. The rag rug served as our oasis, the kerosene lamp flickered and failed as we sank to the floor. In the dark every sensation was heightened by its unexpectedness. I was aware of the rough surface of the rug, but absorbed into the feel of Ben's hands on my skin. For however long it was that we lay together, and I could not say how long, we built an impenetrable wall around ourselves, keeping our troubles outside and only our passion within.