North American Lake Monsters (5 page)

Sitting across from her at the table, glasses of orange soda between them, he was further struck by the disorganized quality of the move. The number of boxes seemed sadly inadequate to the task, and it seemed like things were being packed piecemeal: some dishes were wrapped in newspaper and stowed, while others were still stacked in cupboards or piled, dirty, in the sink; drawers hung open, partially disemboweled.

Before Jeremy could open his mouth, Rebecca said, “They’s foreclosing on us. We got to be out by the weekend.”

For a moment he was speechless. “. . . I . . . Jesus, Becca.”

She sat there and watched him. He could think of nothing to say, so he just said, “I had no idea.”

“Well, Dennis ain’t been paid for a long time before he was killed, and he sure as shit hadn’t been paid since then, so I guess anybody ought to of seen this comin.”

He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He didn’t know if she’d meant it as an accusation, but it felt like one. It didn’t help that it was true. He looked at the orange soda in the glass, a weird dash of cheerful color in all this gloom. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. “What are you gonna do?”

“Well,” she said, staring at her fingers as they twined around each other, “I don’t really know, Jeremy. My mama lives out by Hickory, but that’s a ways away, and she don’t have enough room in her house for all of us. Dennis ain’t spoke with his family in years. These boys don’t even
know
their grandparents on his side.”

He nodded. In the other room, the boys were quiet, no doubt listening in.

“I need some money, Jeremy. I mean I need it real bad. We got to be out of here in four days and we don’t have no where to go.” She looked up at the clock on the wall, a big round one with Roman numerals, a bright basket of fruit painted in the center. “I’m gonna lose all my things,” she said. She wiped at the corner of an eye with the inside of her wrist.

Jeremy felt the twist in his gut, like his insides were being spooled on a wheel. He had to close his eyes and ride it out.

He’d sat at this table many times while Rebecca cooked for Dennis and for him; he’d been sitting here sharing a six-pack with Dennis when the call came from the hospital that their youngest had come early. “Oh, Becca,” he said.

“I just need a little so we can stay someplace for a few weeks. You know, just until we can figure something out.”

“Becca, I don’t have it. I just don’t have it. I’m so sorry.”

“Jeremy, we got no where to go!”

“I don’t have anything. I got collection agencies so far up my ass . . . Tara and I put the house up, Becca. The bank’s threatening us, too. We can’t stay where we are. We’re borrowing just to keep our heads above water.”

“
I can fucking sue you!
” she screamed, slapping her hand on the table so hard that the glasses toppled over and spilled orange soda all over the floor.
“You owe us! You never paid Dennis, and you owe us! I called a lawyer and he said I can sue your ass for every fucking cent you got!”

The silence afterward was profound, broken only by the pattering of the soda trickling onto the linoleum floor.

The outburst broke a dam inside her; her face crumpled, and tears spilled over. She put a hand over her face and her body jerked silently. Jeremy looked toward the living room and saw one of the boys, his blonde hair buzzed down to his scalp, staring into the kitchen in shock.

“It’s okay, Tyler,” he said. “It’s okay, buddy.”

The boy appeared not to hear him. He watched his mother until she pulled her hand from her face and seemed to suck it all back into herself; without looking to the doorway, she fluttered a hand in the boy’s direction. “It’s fine, Tyler,” she said. “Go help your brothers.” The boy retreated.

Jeremy reached across the table and clasped her hands in his own. “Becca,” he said, “you and the boys are like family to me. If I could give you some money, I would. I swear to God I would. And you’re right, I do owe it to you. Dennis didn’t get paid towards the end. Nobody did. So if you feel like you gotta sue me, then do it. Do what you have to do. I don’t blame you. I really don’t.”

She looked at him, tears beading in her eyes, and said nothing.

“Shit, if suing me might keep you in your house a little while longer—if it’ll keep the bank away, or something—then you should do it. I want you to do it.”

Rebecca shook her head. “It won’t. It’s too late for that now.” She rested her head on her arm, her hands still clasped in Jeremy’s. “I ain’t gonna sue you, Jer. It ain’t your fault.”

She pulled her hands free and got up. She grabbed a roll of paper towels and tore off a great handful, setting to work on the spill. “Look at this damn mess,” she said.

He watched her for a moment. “I have liens on those houses we built,” he said. “They can’t sell them until they pay us first. The minute they do, you’ll get your money.”

“They won’t ever finish those houses, Jer. Ain’t nobody gonna want to buy them. Not after what happened.”

He stayed quiet, because he knew she was right. He had privately given up on seeing that money long ago.

“A man from the bank come by last week and put that notice on the door. He had a sheriff with him. Can you believe that? A sheriff come to my house. Parked right in my driveway, for everybody to see.” She paused in her work. “He was so rude,” she said, her voice quiet and dismayed. “The both of them were. He told me I had to get out of my own house. My boys were standing right by me, and they just bust out crying. He didn’t give a damn. Treated me like I was dirt. Might as well of called me white trash to my face.”

“I’m so sorry, Becca.”

“And he was such a
little
man,” she said, still astonished at the memory of it. “I kept thinking how if Dennis was here that man would of
never
talked to me like that. He wouldn’t of
dared!
”

Jeremy stared at his hands. Large hands, built for hard work. Useless now. Rebecca sat on the floor, fighting back tears. She gave up on the orange soda, seeming to sense the futility of it.

It was a week
before Christmas, and Tara was talking to him from inside the shower. The door was open and he could see her pale shape behind the curtain, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. He sat on the bed in his underwear, his clothes for the evening laid out beside him. It was the same suit he’d worn to the funerals, and he dreaded putting it on again.

Outside the short wintertime afternoon was giving way to evening. The Christmas lights strung along the eaves and wound into the bushes still had to be turned on. The neighbors across the street had already lit theirs; the colored lights looked like glowing candy, turning their home into a gingerbread house from a fairy tale. The full moon was resplendent

Jeremy supposed that a Christmas party full of elementary school professionals might be the worst place in the world. He would drift among them helplessly, like a grizzly bear in a roomful of children, expected not to eat anyone.

He heard the squeak of the shower faucet and suddenly his wife’s voice carried to him. “—time it takes to get there,” she said.

“What?”

She slid the curtain open and pulled a towel from the shelf. “Have you been listening to me?”

“I couldn’t hear you over the water.”

She went to work on her hair. “I’ve just had a very lively conversation with myself, then.”

“Sorry.”

“Are
you
going to get dressed?” she said.

He loved to watch her like this, when she was naked but not trying to be sexy, when she was just going about the minor business of being a human being. Unself-conscious and miraculous.

“Are you?” he said.

“Very funny. You were in that same position when I started my shower. What’s up?”

“I don’t want to go.”

She turned the towel into a blue turban and wrapped another around her body. She crossed the room and sat beside him, leaving wet footprints in the carpet, her shoulders and her face still glistening with beaded water.

“You’ll catch cold,” he said.

“What are you worried about?”

“I’m obese. I’m a fricking spectacle. I’m not fit to be seen in public.”

“You’re my handsome man.”

“Stop it.”

“Jeremy,” she said, “you can’t turn into a shut-in. You have to get out. It’s been six months, and you’ve totally disengaged from the world. These people are safe, okay? They’re not going to judge you. They’re my friends, and I want them to be your friends, too.”

“They’re going to look at me and think, that’s the guy that left his friends on a mountain to die.”

“You’re alive,” Tara said, sharply, and turned his head so he had to look at her. “You’re alive because you left. I still have a husband because you left. So in the end I don’t give a shit what people think.” She paused, took a steady breath, and let him go. “And not everyone’s thinking bad things about you. Sometimes you have to take people at face value, Jeremy. Sometimes people really are what they say they are.”

He nodded, chastened. He knew she was right. He’d been hiding in this house for months. It had to stop.

She touched his cheek and smiled at him. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

She got up and headed back to the bathroom, and he fell back on the bed. “Okay,” he said.

“Besides,” she called back happily, “don’t forget about Tim! Someone has to keep the beast at bay!”

A sudden, coursing heat pulsed through him. He had forgotten Tim. “Oh yeah,” he said, sitting up. He watched her dress, her body incandescent with water and light, and felt something like hope move inside him.

The house was bigger
than Jeremy had been expecting. It was in an upscale subdivision, where all the houses had at least two stories and a basement. The front porch shed light like a fallen star, and colored Christmas bulbs festooned the neighborhood. “Jesus,” he said, turning into the parking lot already full of cars. “Donny lives
here?”

Donny Winn was the vice-principal of the school: a rotund, pink-faced man who sweated a lot and always seemed on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Jeremy had only met him once or twice, but the man made an impression like a damp cloth.

“His wife’s a physical therapist,” Tara said. “She works with the Carolina Panthers or something. Trust me, she’s the money.”

The house was packed. Jeremy didn’t recognize anybody. A table in the dining room had been pushed against a wall and its wings extended, turning it into a buffet table loaded with an assortment of holiday dishes and confections. Bowls of spiked eggnog anchored each end of the table. Donny leaned against a wall nearby, alone but smiling. His wife worked the crowd like a politician, steering newly-arrived guests toward the table and bludgeoning them with goodwill.

Christmas lights were strung throughout the house, and mistletoe hung in every doorway. Andy Williams crooned from speakers hidden by the throng.

Jeremy wended his way through the mill of people behind Tara, who guided him to the table. Within moments they were armed with booze and ready for action. Jeremy spoke into Tara’s ear. “Where’s Tim?”

She craned her neck and looked around, then shook her head. “I can’t see him. Don’t worry. He’ll find us!”

“You mean he’ll find
you
,” he said.

She smiled and squeezed his hand.

He measured time in drinks, and then he lost track of it. The lights and the sounds were beginning to blur into a candy-hued miasma that threatened to drown him. He’d become stationary in the middle of the living room, people and conversations revolving around him like the spokes of some demented Ferris wheel. Tara was beside him, nearly doubled over in laughter, one hand gripping his upper arm in a vise as she talked to a gaunt, heavily made-up woman whose eyes seemed to reflect light like sheets of ice.

“He’s evil!” The woman had to shout to be heard. “His parents should have strangled him at birth!”

“Jesus,” Jeremy said, trying to remember what they were talking about.

“Oh my God, Jeremy, you don’t know this kid,” Tara said. “He’s got like—this
look
. I’m serious! Totally dead.”

The woman nodded eagerly. “And the other day? I was looking through their daily journals? I found a picture of a severed head.”

“What? No way!”

“The neck was even drawn with jagged red lines, to show it was definitely cut off. To make sure I knew it!”

“Somebody should do something,” Jeremy said. “We’re gonna be reading about this little monster someday.”

Tara shook her head. “Nobody wants to know anymore. ‘Boys will be boys,’ right?”

The woman arched an eyebrow. “People are just fooled by the packaging,” she said. “Kids shouldn’t be drawing severed heads!”

Tara laughed. “But it’s okay for grown-ups to?”

“Nobody should draw them,” the woman said gravely.

“Excuse me,” Jeremy said, and moved away from them both. He felt Tara’s hand on his arm, but he kept going. The conversation had rattled him.

Severed heads. What the fuck!

He slid clumsily through the crowd, using his weight to help along the people who were slow in getting out of his way. He found himself edging past the hostess, who smiled at him and said “Merry Christmas,” her eyes sliding away from him before the words were even out of her mouth. He was briefly overwhelmed by a spike of outrage at her blithe manner—at the whole apparatus of entitlement and assumption this party suddenly represented to him, with its abundance and its unapologetic stink of money. “I’m Jewish,” he said, and felt a happy thrill when she whipped her head around as he pressed further into the crowd.

He stationed himself by the fireplace, which was, at the moment, free of people. He set his drink on the mantel and turned his back to the crowd, looking instead at the carefully arranged manger scene on display there. The ceramic pieces were old and chipped; it had clearly been in the family for a long time. He looked past the wise men and the shepherds crouched in reverent awe, and saw the baby Jesus at the focal point, his little face rosy pink, his mouth a gaping oval, one eye chipped away. Jeremy’s flesh rippled and he turned away.

And then he saw Tim approaching through the crowd. Tim was a slight man, with thinning hair and a pair of silver-rimmed glasses. Jeremy decided he looked like a cartoonist’s impression of an intellectual. He stared at him as he approached.

This was what he had come for. He felt the blood start to move in his body, slowly, like a river breaking through ice floes. He felt some measure of himself again. It was just as intoxicating as the liquor.