Cameo Lake (31 page)

Forty-four

A
nd the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. . . .
The words of the Christmas carol were so apt as we drove up from the bare ground of Providence to the winter-white landscape of the White Mountains. A fresh snow had fallen the day before and even as our headlights led us on to our destination, new flakes were brilliant in their beam. We passed through the village of Cameo Lake, its familiar brick and clapboard buildings were still decorated for Christmas. It was like seeing a playmate all dressed up. Even the Dairy Bar, long since closed for the season, sported a big wreath and a
SEASON'S GREETINGS
banner on the door.

The Cameo Lake Inn, on the West Side of the Lake, was an imposing nineteenth-century mansion, the summer home of an industrialist with a yen for the Alps. A pair of New Yorkers had bought and converted the house to an inn thirty years ago and never looked back. We arrived in time for the single seating of dinner and I knew then just why Grace and Joanie made this an annual visit. The five-course meal was fabulous and retiring to the small fire-lit parlor afterward was heaven.

“This is wonderful, guys. Thank you so much for my Christmas gift.”

Grace reclined on a Victorian settee, looking for the moment
more Rubenesque than ever. “We couldn't think of anything that you needed more than this.”

She was so right. Christmas night, when he brought the kids home, Sean finally laid his unexploded bomb at my feet. “Eleanor is pregnant.”

It was all I could do to act surprised. I had, for once, had the advantage and been able to digest my feelings about this new wrinkle in an otherwise shredded fabric, so I turned the table on him. “How do you feel about that?”

Sean smiled, and to his credit, didn't seem to look at this as the hook which would snare him. “I guess I'm happy about it. I never thought I wanted more children, and the idea of raising a second family is pretty weird. But, I guess that I would have eventually been doing that so, as I'm forty now, it's a good thing to start.”

“So, what you're saying is that you intended all along to marry her?”

He shifted uneasily on his feet. I noticed that the stain was still on his overcoat and I gestured to him to take it off. He shrugged off the coat without question, still wondering how to answer me. I headed into the basement with his coat and waited for him to follow me.

The basement was divided unevenly into halves, my laundry side and his workbench side. I took down a bottle of stain remover and went to work on the grease stain. Sean wandered over to his workbench. It had been so long since he used it that it was in fair order. Even so, Sean picked up various tools still on the bench and hung them on their proper hooks. “Would you mind if I left this stuff here? I don't have a basement where I am and there's no room in Ma's.”

“I guess so.” I took a wet cloth and rinsed out the remover. The wet mark would dry and I was pretty sure the stain was gone.

Sean finished hanging the hammer and screwdrivers and wrenches left out from his last project. “Cleo, I didn't intend that things would go this far.”

“I know, Sean.”

* * *

I was afraid that Grace would badger me about going to see Ben. I was unwilling to commit myself to a when and how. I would call him. Give him some warning and let him tell me if he wanted to see me. Every time I thought about making that call, I felt my insides contract with nerves.

That first day we went out and rented skis, and spent the morning keeping to the well-marked trails surrounding the inn. Afterward, Grace and Joanie were content to entertain themselves while I went back out to explore more of the trails. We met again at dinner, then spent the night soaking in the hot tub and playing cards with other guests.

Joanie had gone up to bed and Grace and I stayed for one more sherry in the parlor. The fire had gone to dull embers and the room was growing chilly.

“Have you called him?”

“Not yet.”

“It's only nine o'clock. Call him now.”

Buoyed by the sherry and Grace's stage directions, I went to the alcove with the pay phone. My hand actually shook as I dropped the coins into the box.
At the customer's request this phone number has been disconnected.
I heard the coins drop into the return slot and imagined that I'd dialed the old number. I ran upstairs to get my address book and rechecked it. I hadn't. He'd disconnected his phone again.

“I guess things must be heating up for him to do that again. It was an unlisted number.” I flopped back into the armchair, noticing that someone had come in and plumped up the dying fire.

“So go over there tomorrow.” Grace heaved herself up from the settee, “I'm going to be too sore to ski, and there are, as you know, great trails around the lake. Don't be obstinate, Cleo. Has it ever occurred to you that Ben might need you right now?”

I parked Grace's big car at the top of the driveway and snapped on the skis. The day was one of those perfect winter days, almost windless, azure sky and not a cloud in sight. It was deeply cold, but so dry it felt
comfortable and I thought maybe I was overdressed in vest and jacket. It wasn't difficult to pick out the lay of the road to Grace's cabin. The trees outlined a clear trail. I glided along, enjoying the sensation of effortless trail breaking in the powder that had recently fallen. The bare branches of the deciduous trees made strong shadows in the snow through which I skated, light and dark, light and dark. The little bit of wind sang in the pines, and without the birdsong of the summer, the woods seemed very quiet. Just as I came into sight of the cabin ahead of me, the bright red flash of a cardinal against the snow-covered roof caught my eye and I was unaccountably reminded of the first time I'd seen the cabin. How I'd sat in the car and wondered if I was doing the right thing. A cardinal had called for a mate, I remembered, his piercing whistle distracting me from myself.

I worked my way around the corner of the cabin to see the lake. It was breathtaking. As far as I could see, Cameo Lake was under snow. The deep freeze of the past few weeks had frozen the lake entirely and the recent snowfall had laid a layer of untouched white on the surface, making it a white desert. Not a track showed. And, except for the top of the ladder, poking up out of the snow like a periscope, the raft was invisible.

I stood leaning on my poles and gazed across the lake at Ben's cabin. It looked so tiny, tucked in snowdrifts which came up to the sills of the windows. I hesitated. Maybe I should only look at Ben's cabin and move on. Maybe I should just leave him alone. I stood leaning against my poles and looked across the distance which in summer had come to seem so close. The white expanse seemed so much wider without the way station of the raft. I wondered, Should I just go back? But I didn't. I slid down the embankment and started across the lake.

A thin whisper of chimney smoke had beckoned me.

By the time I reached the midway point of the nearly invisible raft, I realized that mine weren't the only fresh tracks. I also realized that I was very visible, a dark speck on a white surface. I paused in mid-stride
to unzip my jacket. I was close enough now to hear the sound of a gas generator and I knew that Ben had gotten his electricity. The sound of it was loud enough to block out the sound of an approaching snowmobile. I was startled by its sudden appearance, and more so by its even quicker departure. The photographer's camera pointed at me like a weapon. I remained rooted to the spot, uncertain whether to keep going or retreat. Until I stepped onto Ben's shore, no one could associate us, I might be just a random skier crossing the lake. Once I touched Ben's shore, I would become part of the tabloid story.

I saw his cabin door open up and then I knew what to do. Ben came down from his porch, no coat or hat, unlaced boots. I thought he was going to run out onto the ice and I started skiing as fast as I could toward him. I called out a warning to him about the photographer, but he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. We met just at the shoreline in a quick embrace. Ben bent to release my feet from the skis and picked them up under his arm. “Cleo, that idiot raced off too fast to get a really good shot.” And with that he kissed me. It wasn't a kiss of passion, it was a kiss of solidarity.

Inside the cabin I knew immediately what was happening. “You've brought her home, haven't you?”

“Yes. It was time.”

Forty-five

T
he sound of the generator was an odd background noise to the quiet drama unfolding inside the cabin. Ben took my coat and hung it on a peg beside the door. He didn't right away speak to me, only held my face between his hands and looked into my eyes, as if to assure himself that, unannounced, I had really come to him.

I wanted to apologize for doubting the trueness of our relationship, I wanted to ask him if he wanted me to leave. I wanted to know if he could love me. Everything I wanted to ask was answered in the look in his eyes, then his gentle lips on my forehead. Stay.

Then I could hear a snowmobile over the sound of the generator. I pulled away, but Ben only smiled. “That's Jeremy. He's our private nurse.”

Two days before, the doctors had told Ben that Talia had succumbed to pneumonia. She had been slowly withering away and the news was almost welcome. “I promised her that I'd bring her home. Right from the beginning, when there might have been some hope, I whispered to her every day that I would bring her back here.”

“You kept your promise.”

“The thing is—” Ben lifted a kettle off the stove and poured water into our teacups—”we never resolved our argument. I've spent a year and a half imagining how we could. That night she told me she
was in love with someone else. She told me not to touch her. In the time since, I've touched her every day and I've had a thousand variations of that argument which would have ended differently. The only thing I am sure of is that she did love this place. The only certain thing was that she would want to be here.

“I tried to find out who the lover was. No one has ever come forward to say, ‘Hey, Talia Brightman was going to run away with me.’ No one has shown up grieving. Even after the hoopla last month, no one has come forward for a fifteen-minutes-worth of fame.”

“Are you saying you doubt what she said?”

“Sometimes.”

I sipped the tea and tried to imagine the cruelty of someone to tell such a lie. “Ben, what would you have done if things had happened differently?”

“I would have given her her freedom.”

Jeremy, the middle-aged African-American I remembered from my visit to the nursing home, came from Talia's room and the two men left me to confer in the living room. I tidied up the cups and wiped down the counter. I didn't listen, but I could hear. Things were drawing to a close. Without the life-support and breathing apparatus, it was only a matter of the clock of life winding down. Talia was drowning again, this time in her own fluids. I breathed the only prayer which came to mind, a plea to let God take her quickly and let Ben get on with his life.

Ben came back into the kitchen and sat down. I stood behind him, my arms around his neck. I kissed the top of his head, where the little bald patch was, and then lay my cheek against it. “Do you want me to go?”

“No. Please don't. I like knowing you're here.”

“I'll have to call Grace and let her know where I am, but your phone is out.”

“No, just another unlisted number. It is amazing how persistent these people are.” Ben caught my hands and kissed them. “Cleo,
thank you for being here. I don't know how you knew to come, but I'm glad you did.”

“You can thank Grace Chichetti.”

I made the phone call brief, telling her where the car was if they needed it and how Ben was. Grace said they would get a ride to pick it up, and I wasn't to leave Ben's side. “I love you, Grace.”

“I love you, too. In a Platonic kind of way.”

I've never been good at waiting. So I made cookies. Then I foraged around until I came up with ingredients for dinner, hot dogs and beans. I straightened up the living room and kitchen. Jeremy came out and we sat together, making small talk while he ate. Then Ben came out and we sat quietly while Jeremy performed some nursing task. Ben only picked at the dinner I set before him. Then they both went back in and I sat alone in the darkened living room until I fell asleep.

Entering my sleep like a dream was the sound of a piano, the familiar motif crossed and blended now with something new and I awoke to hear what would become the solo flute passage in Ben's homage to Talia. I knew then that she was gone.