The Lonely (14 page)

Outside the Lake

The lake was always the temperature of inadequately microwaved mashed potatoes. It was as still as mashed potatoes, too. To dip one foot into the lake was to have it absorbed, sucked up, devoured. To kick that foot would be to gouge the surface. But you would never do that. Because the lake was like a large, sleeping thing, a lazy, deeply breathing beast that it wasn't wise to disrupt. And you knew that. When you swam in it, which was rarely, you stepped in gingerly, letting the wet, furry bottom of the lake sniff at you, evaluate you, lick you clean. Then, once it was sure you weren't up to anything, it let you move.

Boats glided hesitantly here. Paddles dipped slowly into the water: wooden spoons spreading icing on a too-warm cake.

There's long, dry grass growing all along the perimeter, and when the wind moved through it the sound of agitated rattlesnakes filled the air. But don't worry because it's just the sound. No real rattlesnakes hiding in the grass. In fact, Hector was the only other living thing that I had ever seen around here. But that might be because he was so good at his job, which I'll get to.

On this lake was the cabin that my family and I had been renting sporadically since I was little. Hector was the name of the dog who lived there. He was black with skin that hung from his face like unfolded sheets and red pooled around his eyes. He was a friendly dog and would let you tangle your fingers in his skin for a while, but he had a job and that job was to kill little rodents that hung around and pestered the renters. Like squirrels. He liked me, so sometimes he would bring me his victims, but I wasn't allowed to scold him because his employers asked me not to. So I accepted these gifts graciously, patted his head, then sent a stick flying into the water for him to fetch because I couldn't stand the sight of him gloating over a kill.

On windy nights I would sit in the long grass, pulling out handfuls like clumps of hair and holding them up in the air to let the wind take them away. Hector would always find me and let me warm my hands on his belly, then curl up halfway behind me, still open like a dried millipede. That way I could snuggle my way into him, between his paws, lean back against his belly.

Other times I would row a little boat out to the middle of the black lake, careful not to disturb it too much, and hold a fishing rod out for a while. I never caught anything. I'm pretty convinced that there was nothing alive in that lake either. Not a single fish or eel or plankton or mussel or bug. So when I was skewering worms onto a hook I was sending them into a vast, threatless nothing. A cruel, purposeless mission into the abyss for my entertainment. Maybe I made these worms appreciate life more when I was done. I might be god to them. And I liked skewering them. Pulling one by its end out of the bucket, watching him writhe a bit. Long, alive, engorged. Then I would stick him one. Penetrate his segments with a sharp end and watch white stuff come out. But he was still alive. He was always alive. Writhing around still, wrapping himself around the metal barb. Hector would watch me from the shore sometimes barking at random moments just to startle me.

“Shut up, Hector!” I'd scream just as loud. “You're scaring the fish away!”

And we'd both chuckle over that one because we knew that there weren't any fish to scare anyway.

Inside the Lake

Julia and I slept in the giant attic that skulked above the other rooms in the cabin. We shared a small bed in which neither of us slept very comfortably, each with half our limbs falling over the side and settling into some crooked, almost comfortable position. Julia was always awake before me, into her bathing suit and strolling along the beach before the sun was out to warm everything up. She said that she liked to have her goose bumps rubbed off by the sun, but really it was that she didn't like Hector very much and he didn't like her either, so she disappeared.

When I woke up alone this morning it was to the shrill reverberations of The Mother telling The Father what to do. Which I'd never heard before. In fact, at first I wasn't sure if it was The Mother's voice at all. I sat up in bed on my knees and peeked through the window. My fingers gripped the headboard and I moved my lips against my tight knuckles.

The Mother was standing in the yard, which was mapped with giant masses of dead grass. Brown and balding like the irregular pattern of hair that grows on an old man's back. Her bare feet were on this old man's shoulders, her ankles slim and imprisoned by the long frays that hung from her shortened white jeans like crystal teardrops from a chandelier. The jeans were hoisted high over her tilted-sideways waist, on which she'd placed one red-fingernailed hand. Her midriff was bare and still medium rare, having only spent a few hours in the sun so far. Cheap boning made its way up her rib cage; the skeleton of her floral tank top. Little cups were provided to hold the boobs. Boob cups. And hers had settled there like a thick liquid. She might have even been able to pour them into martini glasses for dinner later. Her sunglasses were white and thick and plastic and her lips were red. She was clucking directions at The Father as they attempted to install a croquet court together.

He stood tall with a mallet over his shoulder and a bag of wickets hanging from the fingers of his other hand. On his big feet black sneakers, bare legs to the thigh, then a pair of khaki-colored shorts, a red sweater encasing the inklings of a gut, dark sunglasses on his pale face. He was looking at The Mother impatiently, probably wondering what the hell had gotten into her. In that voice that didn't sound at all like hers, she was telling him where to stick the wickets.

“One: use your mallet to drive a stake directly into the center of the court.”

A clanging clonk.

“All right, done.”

“Now, place the next wicket twenty-one feet from—”

“Why are we putting a croquet court here? There's no grass. There hasn't been any grass for years. A proper croquet court is meant to have grass.”

“I don't care if it's not the exact same croquet court that the Queen of England has. I want a croquet court, so please keep going.”

“I just think that it's incredibly stupid to put in an improper court.”

“Just pay attention. Please. Twenty-one feet from the center. Scoot.”

Scoot.

And he did. The Father scooted his way across the court, his posture sulking, his face puzzled, trying to recall the point at which he scooted when she said so.

He readied the first wicket to smash in. I had to stop watching because I kept picturing the ground as that old man's back and couldn't stand the sight of The Father ramming metal hoops into it. I decided not to go outside until they were done. Instead I just listened to them banging.

The Mother telling The Father what to do was something I hadn't seen in a very long time, possibly ever. Usually she did whatever he told her to do, or she predicted his needs first so he didn't even have to tell her and he could just keep being a big, silent mystery. And the more she resembled a doormat, the more he seemed to treat her like one. Her willingness to bend over backward to accommodate; her messy, gushing, wide-open, over-the-top love for her family: these things were all incredibly irritating. And it made you want to abuse her for it. See how far you could push her before she snapped. It made me wonder if The Father wasn't always a big black mystery, making noises from the basement, grunting replies, ignoring everyone. Maybe she made him that way. And she made me the way that I was, too. She taught me to worship him unconditionally. To wear it all over my face like raw egg, to let him treat me however he wanted, to let him push it as far as he wanted because I would always want him.

But it seemed she had a new strategy, a strategy that appeared to be working. She would be mean to him, look less like a doormat, squawk orders at him in tight clothes so that he didn't know what to do but obey. Now he might love her again, and want her, and I would be the only pathetic one left in The House.

I couldn't think about it anymore without wanting to scream. So I decided that I would distract myself with breakfast. Then I might choose a movie to watch. The cabin came equipped with three: an old horror movie called
Freaks
, the cartoon version of
Robin Hood
, and finally, someone's colonoscopy, probably the man who owned the cabin, maybe he got off on dropping videos of his colon into houses with children in them. Either way, I wouldn't make the mistake of watching it a third time.

Breakfast was a bowl of Rice Krispies with chocolate chips on top and a tall glass of tomato juice, which I consumed while leaning over the local newspaper. A squirrel had reunited a man and his son this past weekend. And a quadriplegic won the lottery. Scratch tickets. I wondered if she was going to give a portion of the money to the person who scratched the ticket for her. I also wondered what percentage of her clothing had Winnie-the-Pooh characters on it. I'll bet it's a big portion. Every time you see an adult with Piglet on their shirt you can bet that they're buying or have already bought some scratch tickets. Sometimes The Mother buys scratch tickets too, and once when I was with her with at a convenience store I asked her why.

“Mom. You're never going to win. Ever. You're basic-ally just paying to be disappointed.” I'd heard The Father say this to her as well.

“I know, Easter,” she said, fingering through her wallet for her credit card, “but you've got to put yourself out there sometimes.”

Her eyes were carefully scanning the tray of tickets that lay before her. I wondered what she could be looking for, how one ticket could be differentiated from another. I also wondered how buying a lottery ticket could be considered “putting yourself out there.” So I asked her.

“I don't know what you mean by that,” I said. “How are you putting yourself out there? You're not doing anything but choosing a ticket.”

But she was too busy trying to get the storekeeper's attention to explain.

Another clang from outside. Wickets were being planted and a deformed croquet court was born. I covered my ears. The Mother walked in, loud heavy steps replacing her regular quiet way of walking.

“Good morning, honey.”

She ran a hand along my hair before heading toward the sink. I shook it away like I always do.

“Morning,” I replied with my mouth full.

“Do you smell something?” she asked me, using the inside of her forearm to dab the glow from her forehead.

“No.”

“Ugh, really? Something smells awful in here, Easter. What did you do?”

“Are you seriously asking me that? What do you think I did? I took a giant crap in the corner, Mom. Was that wrong?”

The Mother laughed and shook her head and pulled two glasses from the cupboard and filled them with water.

“What's the matter with you today?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“You're different. There's something strange about you.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Easter.” She was lying.

“You do know. You're acting like someone else.”

“And who exactly am I acting like?”

I looked outside in the direction of The Father. She stood there waiting for an answer. I looked back down at the newspaper, and she sighed and left the room.

I did smell something, though. Something awful. I got up and stood in the middle of the living room, gathering my brow into a wrinkled mass, eye squeezed shut, lips pursed tight, trying to concentrate on where the smell was coming from. But there were no leads. Just the enormously stagnant grip of the smell itself.

I searched. Starting with the undersides of things, sliding my hands beneath every couch, chair, dresser, end table, collecting mittens of dust bunnies and shoe leavings. That's what The Mother called the stuff that blusters in with you from outside when you walk through the door.

I lifted cushions and moved furniture and unloaded shelves and drawers and cabinets. The smell never intensified regardless of what I pulled up or knocked over or unearthed; not a single clue. It was an unsolvable puzzle. I wanted it to resemble anything at all, to get heavier, to reek from one direction, to emanate the stink like a signal tower: beep, beep, beep. I stood up straight, still, tall. I made myself totally available to the stink, open to it for signs. I listened closely. Beep, beep, beep. I tore through baskets of magazines and crossword puzzle books and stray crayons, I pulled off the cushions on the couch and dragged my fingers between all the cracks. BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. I tore through closets, fisted boots and hats and other seasonal closet clothing to make sure they were empty. BEEP BEEEP BEEEEP. I stood swaying before the gutted closet, trying to spontaneously generate or pry from myself some new sense capable of locating this smell. A smell has got to make itself known in more ways than just the nose! I tore the doors off the kitchen cupboards, yanked up floorboards, pierced the softness beneath my nails on flimsy vinyl bathroom tiles. BEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEEP. I ripped up the carpet, turned every table upside down, pushed the TV over. BEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEEP. Such a squealing smell! But I couldn't find anything anywhere.

That night over dinner The Mother expressed her repulsion about the smell while we were all trying to eat chicken pot pie together, on bar stools around the kitchen island. Everyone's knees off to one side awkwardly. The dining room table was covered in a giant croquet blueprint that The Mother was making a decorative project of to put up in our real house. She was getting what she wanted left, right, and center. Last year The Father never would have tolerated us eating at the kitchen island because The Mother had a giant art project on the table, but this year, in her boob cup shirts and in her new way of talking to him, she was getting everything.

“Good god, what is that smell? Does anyone else smell that?”

“No,” I said.

I wanted to be the one to find whatever it was that smelled, so I couldn't have her snooping around.

“Really? You don't smell that.”

She looked at me as though she couldn't possibly believe that I couldn't detect the near-unbearable stench that was slapping all of us in the face right now.

“Nope.”

“If that's true, then there's something wrong with your nose. We need to get your nose checked.” She turned to The Father. “Can you believe this? Do bad noses run in your family? Easter can't smell that awful smell.”

He walked over and put a hand on my forehead.

“She feels fine to me.”

She looked at him in that antagonistic, stunned way that he hated. Perhaps he was on to her manipulation, had been on to her the whole time, and right now, all of a sudden, he might lunge at her over the kitchen island, grab her throat and squeeze. He might do it with one hand and then use the other to scoop steaming hot chicken pot pie from the disposable tray into her face, smear it up her nose, into her eyes. I might walk over with the salt and shake some on her. Then The Father and I would get into the car and go back home together. When I found it, I'd show him my secret smell.

He didn't, though.

All he said was “I was joking,” and he poured a spoonful of pot pie onto his plate.

“We should really call Gary about this. Can you stand this smell?”

He shook his head slowly, not really listening to her, just agreeing.

“All right, then, it's settled. I'm calling Gary tom-orrow.”

Gary was the guy who owned the cabin and rented it out to people like us. I bet it really was his colon in the video. He looked like the type to have digestive problems; his bottom lip always a stiff half circle, one big paw at the base of his distended belly, a faded golf shirt aching to stay tucked into his pants over it. A bald head, ruddy cheeks, and an unhealthy colon from what I could tell.

The Mother liked to make a big deal of everything. Who cares if the place smelled like diarrhea? She always had to meddle.

I wanted to twist the end of her nose off and chew on it like bubble gum. But I didn't.

Instead I waited until they both went to bed, waited until the air was so quiet that not even the ghost of the hammering
croquet mallet lingered. Then I began another exhaustive search, made more difficult this time because I had to be careful not to wake The Parents. I rifled through drawers, unloaded shelves, peeked under the cracks of locked doors. Nothing at all.

And the next morning I woke up early to search again, just in time to see Julia's sandaled foot passing over the mat in front of the door, the corner of her beach towel flicking up like a super hero's cape.

“See ya,” I whispered uselessly.

She wasn't one for goodbyes.