This Is Not Your City (10 page)

Brindell Builders had a contract renovating ancient resort cottages built four-deep on narrow lots surrounding Empire Lake, twenty-five miles inland from Lake Michigan. Charlie's father looked the other way when Robin and his son moved into a frontage cabin as soon as the plumbing was hooked up. Charlie brought home flowers Robin put in Mason jars; she made him eggs in the mornings, learned how to use a level and a power saw. They spent weekend days at the beach, and watched the Cherry Princess crowned at the Cherry Harvest Parade. They did the dune climb at the national park, and took photographs of Sleeping Bear itself, the dune that was eroding, that would slide, the rangers told them, off the bluff and into Lake Michigan within a generation. They visited the International Nun Museum, and Robin bought
a set of magnets. She bought old posters at the flea market in Weldon to tack to the bare walls of their borrowed home, and little beeswax soaps from a beekeeper in Benzonia. That summer, their bodies smelled like honey, and they could lie in bed under the ceiling fan and press their noses against each other's skin and smell the slow scent of sated bees in a field near the Benzie River.

Charlie was blond and tan to his waist, the burnt brown-overred of a pale man who works outdoors. Robin would lay her hand against his chest and worry he'd get skin cancer someday. Then she'd picture them as two old people, lovingly cancerous together in a little house on a lake somewhere. Robin's father was black, her mother white, and Robin what her parents had joked was the warm color of an expensive coffee drink, her hair dark and tightly curled. Elderly Latina women had always come up to her asking for directions.
I'm not Dominican,
she'd tell them, in English.
No, not Puerto Rican. I don't even speak Spanish.
In Chicago, or even Kalamazoo, Robin hadn't stood out. In Beulah, Robin would watch people watch her, not hostile, just curious, wondering,
What are you? Are you—something? Something different than what we are?

What are you?
Robin was always tempted to ask them.
What somethings are all of you?

During weekdays Charlie worked for his father and Robin volunteered at the Museum of Maritime Rescue; if she got her foot in the door, her supervisor had said, the Park Service might have something for her next summer. She retyped the labels for an exhibit about knots and gave presentations to visiting groups of summer campers. She spread a blue tarpaulin on the grass behind the museum and asked for volunteers to step onto it. The cut-ups waved their arms around and shrieked for help as Robin tossed ropes that slapped dryly against their sneakers.

On Sunday mornings Robin and Charlie went to Leland and looked at the boats in the slips. It was like touring a zoo, the habitats and lifestyles of the rich and aquatic, the white boats filled with tanned women in Capri pants and broad sunhats. Men in cargo shorts and polo shirts would come up the steps from the galley with trays of yellow eggs, blackened toast, rose-colored bacon, orange juice and champagne in long-stemmed glasses. Even the children were angular and bright, spidering around the
confines of the fifteen-foot
Easy Street,
out of Manistee, or the thirty-foot
Lazy Daze,
out of Port Huron, or the enormous twostory
Sunny Side,
out of Grand Haven, whose dining deck stood well above the pier and which Robin and Charlie knew only from the enormous laughter that floated over the starboard side, the glimpses of dangling feet and hands and wet towels flapping from the railings. They all looked like people in advertisements for summer clothes, for boats, towels, lakes, a state of being.

The older women had small, soft white dogs. Once a Shih Tzu jumped from the stern of a boat onto the pier and circled Robin's ankles, confused, its toenails catching on the rubber strap of her flip-flops. Charlie scooped the dog into his arms as its owner climbed out to meet them. She offered them a drink. In the flaring red sunset they toasted Charlie's dog-catching abilities. Robin raised her glass and watched the light pour across the water through the clear vodka tonic. The waves slapped against the hull and Robin felt the deck rock beneath her. Her life, she thought, would be large with joy.

 

Brindell Builders finished the Empire Lake job after Labor Day and Mr. Brindell gently evicted Robin and Charlie. Robin rolled up the posters, stripped the bed, put the last of the honey soap in a Ziploc bag and spent three weeks on Charlie's top bunk. “I think it's time I got a job,” she told him.

But it was October: the fudge shops were closed, the kayak rentals shuttered, the boats in Leland going into dry dock. A strip club called the Pirate's Booty didn't need any more servers.

“We don't need any more performers, either,” they added.

“I wasn't asking,” Robin said.

The Beulah Community Center needed someone for six hours a week to teach classes on basic Internet usage. The Educational Outreach Coordinator, Mrs. Halstead, was a grandmotherly woman who had once babysat for Charlie. She called Robin “Honey” and was straightforward about the prospects. “Retirees wanting to open email attachments with pictures of their grandkids. Maybe sell stuff on eBay,” she explained. “That'd be about it, Honey.”

Robin taught Tuesday and Thursday mornings, never more
than three or four people in each class. Tuesday's only attendee was Mr. Zendler, frail and spotted, with the beginnings of a hump rising above his bent head. Robin instructed him in the finer points of a free email account. “Click on ‘Compose Message,' right here,” she said, pointing to the screen with a long pink pipe cleaner she'd found in the Center's Arts & Crafts closet. Mr. Zendler had brought his son's email address written on a folded paper napkin, and Robin watched him hunt-andpeck it in. “Then the subject line.”

“Y-o-u a-r-e a m-o-t-h-e-r-f-u-c-k-i-n-g i-g-n-o-r-a-m-u-s,” Mr. Zendler spelled out, painstakingly, on the keyboard.

“Just so you know, I don't think a subject line that long will show up in his inbox.”

Mr. Zendler backspaced his way to “Fucking Ignoramus = YOU.”

“Is there anything going on I should know about?” Robin asked.

“That
you
should know about?” Mr. Zendler snorted. Actually snorted, and Robin went home that night and told Charlie, “This old guy snorted at me today.”

He was back on Thursday. Twenty minutes into the class he left the computer lab and came back with red plastic lunch trays from the kitchen. He built little walls around his computer and glared at the rest of the class. It was clearly an effort for him, reaching to position and balance the trays. Robin wanted for a moment to help him. She had written her email address on the whiteboard, so the seniors could send practice messages, and after class was over and she'd put the trays back she checked her account. Subj: Snoop = YOU! from [email protected].

 

On one of the last nice afternoons of the year, Robin and Charlie visited the old state mental hospital, an enormous complex of Tudor-style stone palaces, decommissioned and emptied of patients. One wing was a bed and breakfast; the staff quarters had gone condo. The old lobby was a museum, featuring a glass display case of Items Ingested by Mental Patients: a buffalo nickel, a shoelace, a strip of film, most of a light bulb, the sleeve of an old Coast Guard-issue raincoat. Robin and Charlie had mugs of hot cider in a cafeteria with bars across the windows, then walked around the grounds, yellow grass and bare trees. They held hands inside a wide pocket of Charlie's coat. Under an oak an enormous gravestone marked the resting place of the World Champion Cow of the Insane.

“You didn't tell me she was dead.”

“Only blue-ribbon milk cow ever tended solely by the mentally deficient. Don't let anyone tell you there's nothing to do in Benzie County,” Charlie said.

 

In class the next week Mr. Zendler was in a confiding mood. “My son's trying to get me to move downstate,” he said, after the other seniors had left. “Says I shouldn't be up in the woods alone.”

“How far out do you live?”

“In the park. The access road's seasonal, but I've got chains.”

“
In
the park? Sleeping Bear?”

“The government bought this whole county for nothing. They bought just enough so the rest of us couldn't afford taxes and couldn't sell to anyone but them. A handful of us wouldn't budge, got our property grandfathered in.”

“You're living by yourself in the national park?”

“I just
said
that. And I've got a
house.
I'm not living in a tent like a goddamn hippie or something.”

“But is that safe?”

“Last time I tell you anything.”

“Okay, sorry. But just—let me know if you ever need help with anything.”

“You can bring me some groceries after class.”

“You came around fast.”

“Pretty girl offers to bring me things, how do I refuse? I'll type a list. Make a map in that drawing program. Send them as email attachments. Last time I checked I was supposed to be learning something in here.”

The next afternoon Robin took Charlie's pickup to the grocery store with Mr. Zendler's list and followed his directions deep into the park. She turned off onto a restricted access road, the pickup churning on fresh snow. The house was several miles in, a peeling A-frame sitting in a clearing where the road deadended. Mr. Zendler didn't help her carry his groceries in, but he did make them both tea, one bag for two cups. He insisted she take her coat off, warm her hands over the space heater he'd dragged alongside the kitchen table. The room was spare, bare walls and linoleum flooring. A handful of magnets were stuck to the fridge—a calendar from an insurance agent, a baby picture in a hard plastic sleeve, a cutout of a Ski-Doo. The only clutter was a mountain of black trash bags piled in a corner of the kitchen. The smell was ferocious, seeping into the tea until Robin pushed her mug away. “Do you mind taking away some garbage with you?” Mr. Zendler asked. “Don't exactly get curbside pickup out here.”

Robin shrugged. “Okay.”

“You seem like a great girl, Robin.”

“Thanks.”

“You deserve a good man.”

“Mr. Zendler—”

“I don't mean me, ignoramus. I'm 82 years old.”

“I've already got a good guy.”

“You need a better one.”

“I have Charlie Brindell. Do you know him? Does he pass inspection?”

“Sure, I know Charlie. Like I said, you deserve a better one.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing you won't find out in due time, Honey.”

“Mr. Zendler—”

“I'm afraid I'm feeling like I need a rest. Take your time, leave when you're ready. And thanks for taking that trash with you.” Mr. Zendler disappeared into a room off the front hall and shut the door. Robin stood by herself in the kitchen, then started dragging trash bags, heaving them into the truck bed. Bag by bag, she moved the mountain out of Mr. Zendler's house.

Robin and Charlie had found an apartment to rent, a onebedroom unit in a resort-owned complex on Lake Mullett, smaller than Empire, a little farther inland. Mr. Brindell had helped them negotiate a special rate for the off-season. They didn't know where they'd live come summer. Robin put the posters back up, used the honey soap down to damp splinters. The night after she visited Mr. Zendler she boiled frozen ravioli and over dinner asked where they could dump a truckload of garbage bags.

“The landfill, but we'd have to pay,” Charlie said.

“I couldn't just let them sit there.”

“Zendler's not your problem. He's been around forever. My dad worked on his house when he was trying to get enough built to hold onto the claim.”

“Is there a reason you don't want me helping him?” Robin asked, and Charlie looked confused. In bed that night they squeezed together to sleep, pressing skin to skin for the warmth of it. The next morning Charlie woke up and said, “I dreamed I loved you and you didn't love me back.”

“Don't dream that,” she said.

“I can't help what I dream.”

Mr. Zendler didn't show up to the next class until nearly the end. He sat quietly at the far side of the computer lab, typing an email that turned out to be for her.

 

The Museum of Maritime Rescue was closed for the season, but Robin had continued to volunteer in the afternoons, doing exhibit maintenance, some filing and envelope-stuffing. She drove home in the dark. It had been snowing off and on all that week and the roads were soaked in brown slush. The truck surfed when Robin braked. She was glad for the garbage still in the truck bed, keeping her from fishtailing too badly. “You seduced me,” she told Charlie when she got home.