Cameo Lake (6 page)

“Fine. You can wear it here, but not to school.”

“Mom,” Tim said in that wonderful rationalizing tone of children, “by the time school starts, it'll be too small.”

I pressed his face to my chest in a quick, stolen hug. But Eleanor's innocuous act of kindness nagged at me. I felt my antennae quiver and I forced myself to let it go. I would not give in to it because I needed to trust Sean. He hadn't given me any cause for concern since that time—between Lily and Tim—that time when I thought my world was going to fall apart and somehow we glued it back together.

I knew that Sean was often the object of crushes among the young women in his office. One or two had told me so. He had told me so. His easy charm and brotherly teasing often led them to imagine things. It wasn't the first time one of them had overstepped her bounds in little ways. Those crushes were not threatening because Sean did not respond to them. It hadn't been a schoolgirl crush which caused him to betray our marriage. No, that had been quite different.

I tried conscientiously to keep Lily and Tim off the raft when I thought Ben might be there. I tried to be sensitive to a childless person's privacy, keeping my kids at bay around folks who might not understand or appreciate the totally invasive quality of a young child's presence. Despite our almost daily conversations, Ben never once had mentioned having any children, and I rather thought it unlikely. Even grown children enter into a conversation eventually. So, to be a good neighbor, I thought it best to keep them a respectful distance apart.

Thus it was, with some embarrassment tinged with annoyance, that I looked out the kitchen window to see both my children lounging on the raft, Ben beside them. Tim was being animated about something and Lily was acting her cool best to be a young lady. As I watched, they began diving into the water with great splashes and climbing back onto the rocking raft.

“Damn it.” I stalked out onto the porch and, cupping my hands around my mouth, called out to them.

“What's the big deal? If he doesn't want to be bothered, he can leave.” Sean came up behind me, dressed only in bathing trunks, and it was hard not to notice that the frequent client dinners were beginning to have an effect on him. “Who is he?”

“Ben Turner. “As if it explained my concern for Ben's potential annoyance, I added, “He lives alone on the island over there. I'm sure he's not pleased to be splashed by the two munchkins.”

“Like I said, he can always leave.”

“He only uses the raft once a day. Surely he should have some quiet.”

“Too bad. The raft comes with the place.” Sean grabbed a towel off the drying rack and headed to the lake.

Before Sean could get there Ben had dived off. Then, as I watched, he rolled onto his back and waved at my two appreciative children, who were applauding his skillful dive. I laughed a little at myself. I was being presumptuous of Ben's feelings. I touched my lips with my fingers, plumbing my own motives for the truth, a writer's exercise. The truth was, I had presented a nicely edited version of myself and now Ben would begin to know me through others' eyes. Crabby and tyrannical mother of two. Insurance salesman's wife.

My schedule was upended by family, so I now ran in the early morning. Before anyone woke, before breakfast on the porch, good breakfasts of orange juice and eggs, slightly burned toast, the smell of which filled the cabin until lunch, before plans and decisions, I ran. The track ran between the lake and the cabins sheltered in the hillside;
great old trees, mostly birch and pine, seemed to hold the brown cabins safely on their rocky outcropping ledges. The scent of coffee and the sound of birdsong, the soft, worn, humus beneath my feet, the soft early-morning air heating up as I heated up.

These images cling to me now with a sweetness some people take from childhood memories. Running along the lake, looking down between the trees and seeing Ben Turner softly stroking through the still water in his Old Town canoe, in that memory-encapsulated moment I know what happiness is, that it is like the fog, you cannot touch it, it only moves away.

I walked back the last thirty or forty yards, cooling down, listening through my fingertips to my recovering pulse. Coming down the slope, I noticed a cardboard carton on the steps leading up to the screen porch, a big carton with a well-known cereal company name prominent. I laughed out loud recognizing the very same too-sweet breakfast cereal Ben had been sent as inspiration for a new jingle. Written in black Magic Marker: “Bon Appetite, Lily and Tim. Your friend, Ben.”

Six

T
here was a big Cameo Lake barbecue on the Fourth of July. A yellow flyer had been stuck in the screen door, a general invitation-to all the lakeside community. We all gathered at the ancient lakeside community hall, which smelled of old wood and mold. Everyone brought potluck salads, hot dogs, Jell-O, corn, watermelon, and pies. I hadn't met many of the East Side folks and none of the West Siders, if you discount Ben, who lived in the middle. It was a little hard at first, being first-time renters with no history there, but the universal leveler of children soon smoothed over awkward moments of self-introduction, and before long I was comfortable in the midst of other moms, trading stories of scheduling nightmares and soccer wounds.

Eventually a pickup baseball game evolved and we played until it got too dark to see the ball. I was reminded of church school picnics years ago, when the staid white-shirt-front and prim white-glove set pulled on madras shorts and sneakers and got loud and so out of character they were forever changed in my girlish view. Somehow, I thought, as I stood waiting for my turn at bat, somehow our children had missed that adult transformation. Their parents and friends of their parents were commonly seen running or playing tennis or roller-blading through the park. The adults in my girlhood were
grown-ups. In my kids' view, maybe we were just big kids without curfews. I heard Tim refer to Ben by his first name and I didn't make a move toward correcting him. I assumed Ben had introduced himself that way.

As the long July twilight faded, the lakeside gathering formed up a caravan to the site of the Cameo fireworks, a private ski area a couple of miles away on the other side of the hill. Neglecting to bring along chairs, Sean and I spread our blanket on the rough ground and lay down, Sean's head on my lap, Tim and Lily boxing us in. The display was loud, brief, and enthusiastically received by the assembled masses.

The finale over, the throng headed for their tightly packed cars. The darkness turned everyone into anonymous shapes, a single moving unit of blankets and coolers and lawn chairs. I grew disoriented and somehow got separated from Sean and the kids. I bunched the blanket around my shoulders, glad to have it in the cooling July night, trudging along with the crowd. Flakes of conversations from earlier in the day surrounded me and I exercised my ability to put names and faces together, depending a little on instinct and the limited revelations of flashlights. “Good night, Carol. Good night, Glenda, nice to meet you . . .”

I realized that I hadn't seen Ben at the picnic. It wasn't a sudden realization and I knew that, on some level, I had been waiting for him. What surprised me was my disappointment. I told myself it was because I wanted to introduce Ben and Sean properly. Walking back to the parking lot, I couldn't exactly fathom why I thought that was a good idea. Or why I thought it was important. It wasn't as if this neighborly acquaintance would be long-lived.

By the middle of their first week at the lake, charcoal-grilled hamburgers and chicken had already begun to lose their novelty and my family was keen to go get restaurant food. The day had turned oddly fall-like for early summer, and we ended by going to an afternoon movie in the next town over, and then even farther afield to a restaurant
Grace and Joanie had recommended. A converted railroad depot, this place offered something for everyone, fine dining, a pub, a dance floor, and the Red Sox on TV.

After we'd been shown to our table, in what looked like the former station manager's office, I went to the ladies' room. On my way back I saw Ben at the bar, munching peanuts, sipping a beer, intent on the baseball game on the suspended TV. He had his back to me and I debated an instant before going over to him. Just at that moment a commercial came on and he lifted his beer, bringing me into his line of sight . I was rewarded with a grin.

“Hey, Mr. Turner.”

“Hey yourself, Ms. Grayson.” He swung around on the barstool to face me.

“Ben, thanks awfully for the cereal. Now you only have yourself to blame if my kids bug you.”

“Oh, they don't, Cleo. They're great kids and it's . . . actually a nice reminder.”

“Of what?”

“That life can be fun sometimes.” He shook his head in self-derision. “Too much time alone. Sorry.” He took another sip of his beer. For the first time I thought he might have had several before this, a flatness in his usually bright eyes. “So, what brings you out this way?”

“Tired of hamburgers. I needed a night off from cooking, and the kids needed some electronic stimulation. Sean needed a restaurant meal.” I sounded like a bad hostess complaining about her guests. “How about you?”

“Yankees are playing the Red Sox and the only TV in Cameo is in Tony's Pizza and they only serve bottled beer.”

“I see.” The commercials were over and Nomar was up. Ben didn't look at the TV but at me. If he had had more than the pint in front of him it wasn't obvious in his speech. I pulled myself back, it shouldn't bother me if a guy liked a beer or two and a ball game alone. Ben's mild brown eyes were just slightly clouded, and in the poor lighting of the bar I could only just detect a shrinking away
from me when I heard Sean's voice and felt his hand on my shoulder.

“You coming back, Cleo, or what?”

Ben didn't smile at Sean. He knew who he was and, having that advantage, Ben waited as Sean introduced himself and put out a hand, less in friendship than in territorial bounds.

“Sean McCarthy. Cleo's husband.”

“Benson Turner. Cleo's neighbor.”

Having, figuratively, pissed on me, they shook hands and simultaneously glanced up at the TV as Nomar fanned. I felt myself diminish as the two men postured their baseball knowledge. Finally I interrupted, “Sean, the kids are by themselves.”

“Well, you're the one who disappeared,” he got in, sotto voce, as we headed back to our table.

It was pleasant not eating my own cooking, eating something other than hamburg or chicken. I had a nice Yankee pot roast dinner and Sean an Italian dish of some sort. Lily and Tim opted for tacos, and the McCarthy family was happy.

The music from the lounge heated up, from easy-listening ballads to blues. At some point I realized the canned music had been replaced by live and I talked everyone into going into the dance floor area to listen to the girl singer. She was tiny, way too tiny and way too young to have the husky, smoky blues voice she had. The lights in the lounge were dimmed, dark enough now to just make out shapes in the room, couples mostly, slow dancing to the beat.

The kids discovered the arcade games in this increasingly all-purpose restaurant. Happy with four quarters apiece, they went off, and Sean and I sat at the one vacant table some distance from the band and enjoyed a last drink.

“Let's dance,” I urged, “cheek to cheek.”

Sean shrugged me off. It would take an act of Congress to get the man on his feet. “I'm beat. Let's go home.”

“The kids still have a game to go.” Sean finished the last of his beer and waved the waitress away.
“I'll go check the kids. You pay.” He tossed me his credit card and threaded his way through the crowd back toward the arcade.

The waitress had disappeared, so I picked up the card and headed to the bar to pay for our drinks. Ben was still sitting there, the game in extra innings. A car commercial came on and he pointed, “That's one of mine.”

The sound was off and I couldn't bring to mind the right theme for that car. “What does it sound like?”

Ben hummed, then vocalized the notes. I instantly recognized it and sang along for a few measures. He laughed in pleasure at our little duet, then tucked his pleasure back, as if embarrassed. “Not dancing?”

“No. Sean's pulling the kids away from the games. He's tired.” There was a little note of irritation I neglected to hide.

Without a word, Ben took my hand and towed me to the dance floor, where the blues singer was singing “Frozen Heart,” a favorite old song from college years. We moved around the floor as if we'd practiced, a slow waltzy movement. Ben's long thin body was perfectly suited to mine, and he was easy to follow. At the last note, shimmering against the poignant words of the song, a ballad of lost love, Ben held me away and I made a spontaneous curtsy as if we had been on a ballroom floor, not the tight space of a crowded bar. I lifted my head in time to see Sean, one child on either side, coming for me.

“Game's over.” Sean kept a neutral face on. “Are you ready to go home yet?”

For an instant I thought he meant Providence.

“Thanks for the dance, Cleo.”

“You're welcome, Ben.” I was slightly defiant in my bearing, waiting for Sean to hiss the single vituperative marital sentence it would take to condemn my fun.

There was none. At least not then. We climbed into the Volvo and pulled out of the parking lot and into a downpour. I buffered the silence with commentary about the meal, the movie, the nasty weather, the hope for good weather tomorrow, insulating the four of us with chat, keeping at voice distance the opportunity for Sean to
speak of my indiscretion. I was afraid that he would see my dancing with Ben as reaction against his refusing to dance. It truly wasn't. Even as I nattered on about the delicious crème brûlée dessert, I tested my motives against his perceptions and came up clean. After all, I hadn't initiated it, it had been a spontaneous thing.

A deer darted across the road, a doe, a spotted fawn close on her tail. Sean was far enough away he didn't have to slam on the brakes and so we slowed to a halt. The doe stood her ground until she was certain the fawn was there. With a bold leap, she and the fawn cleared the brushy verge and disappeared. In the few seconds of the doe's hesitation, the four of us sucked in our breath, letting it go only as she vanished.

“Wow.” We chorused.

The doe's sudden appearance shut down my distracting chatter, and I couldn't pick the rhythm up again, so I watched out the passenger window at the raindrops rolling spastically down the pane of safety glass.

When I looked back at Sean I saw that rather than being tense in that peculiar way he had when chewing on an uncomfortable topic, he wore a preoccupied look, as if his distractions were far away and he was staring hard at them in his mind's eye.

The car stayed silent the rest of the way home, the kids out cold in the back after a mild skirmish for seat room which neither of us got into.

“Come sit with me on the porch,” Sean said after we muscled the two sleepy children into bed.

I boiled water for cocoa and fussed with that for a few minutes. The rain had slowed and a fine mist lowered itself over the lake until no lights were visible anywhere around. The sky above the mist must have cleared, because enough moonlight filtered through it to give the night a little pale illumination, shaping the tops of the tallest pines.

I handed Sean his mug of watery hot chocolate. He took it with a smile, a slightly self-conscious one which reminded me of our early days together, when his self-deprecating humor was charming.

“I hope you don't think I was upset that you danced with that guy.”

I was glad the lights in the cabin were off so Sean couldn't see my surprise. “I guess I did a little.”

“Well, I guess I can stand to have my wife waltzed by a former rock star, as long as he keeps it polite.”