Warped Page 8

  She thought, I never wanted this cabin. It had been the best offer she could think of, to get Jeff out of the city, away from the women at work, younger every year, with their MBA’s and their tight skirts. Away from the office on those Saturdays when he just needed “to show my face for a few hours.”

  She thought, I didn’t ask for Kate. Susan and Brent had made their case so carefully—the girl has never seen normal, and we can show her. And you’ll get some time to yourself. Play tennis, have a manicure, you deserve it.

  She thought, they say some men can’t help themselves.

  She thought, nineteen isn’t a girl anymore. It’s a woman who knows what she’s doing.

  #

  Everything should be so easy, Christine thought, lying on a chaise on the patch of lawn above the slope down to the dock. Spend half an hour on Google, make a trip to Home Depot, and there you go—simpler than baking a cake.

  Susan lay on a chaise next to her. They had smoothed sunscreen on each other’s backs. They had talked about how hot Viggo Mortensen was and whether his new movie would make it up here to the sticks. Christine thought Susan might be asleep.

  The kids were at a play date at the Greers’ place on the other side of the lake. In Chicago, the Greers lived in a slightly larger house in a considerably better neighborhood in Kenilworth. But Christine and Jeff’s cabin was nicer. Riley and Willow and the Greer kids, three of them between the ages of three and six, did well together—no fights, no bitter recriminations.

  And why shouldn’t Christine ask Kate to take the boat and pick them up? After all, Kate had become an expert at getting the thing in and out of the dock, something that still gave Christine trouble. And what else had Kate done today, besides sleeping until nine?

  Christine waited, drifting in and out of a pleasant doze, until the explosion ripped through the silence and a few shards of fiberglass flew within a few feet of where the women were sunbathing.

  #

  It would be a lie to say she hadn’t wondered if the blast would kill Kate. Wondered, and maybe wished a little, but Christine was a practical woman.

  If there was ever a time when she let herself be distracted by what might have been, that time was long gone. Chance, fate, destiny—whatever you called it, it was all just an excuse to blame things on. Spend time wishing things were different, and you might as well just hand over the keys and let life drive right over you.

  Christine intended to keep the keys to herself. She alone had made something happen. Fixed something. And now she would keep on fixing things until everything was as it should be.

  That was why, when they went to visit Kate in the burn center, she held the children up one at a time so they could stare wide-eyed into the cocoon of white bandages around the girl’s face, searching for something familiar.

  Why she was able to grasp Kate’s hand, the one that was still perfect, and squeeze gently, promising softly that she and Jeff and Susan and Brent would always be there for her.

  Why she returned to the cabin and led Jeff to their room and closed the door and took his face in her hands and let him ease her blouse off her shoulders.

  #

  Jeff hung up the phone and gazed out the window down at Wacker Drive fourteen floors below.

  Brent had called wanting to meet for a beer. Jeff said okay, even though it was only Wednesday and the beer would likely turn into three.

  Brent had been talking to his brother again. After Brent talked to Brad, he always called Jeff. It was as though Brent couldn’t make sense of the things Brad said until he’d retold them.

  The latest update was good. Not great, but at least Kate would be back to school in the spring, and the first round of surgery was covered by insurance.

  And Brad was off the sauce. Had been, since the accident—something good coming from something terrible. Jeff had thought about it a few times, but it didn’t make any more sense to him now than it ever had.

  Jeff hoped Brent would get all the news out of the way fast so they could talk about something else, and just enjoy their beers. He didn’t really like talking about Kate. He liked remembering her the way she was, with that crazy hair and those soft hippie shirts and the way she always had the start of a smile on her face, the kind of smile that made you think she knew some secret and she was considering telling you.

  There was a girl, an intern down the hall, who reminded him of Kate a little. Jeff wasn’t positive, but he thought she’d been warming up to him lately. U of C girl: smart, with funky black-framed glasses and deep red lipstick.

  She was on his to-do list, but now, staring at the traffic far below, Jeff’s mind wandered back over the summer. Driving up with Brent, playing old CDs and laughing the whole way. Finding the wives half in the bag on the deck already, their perfume sweet as their wine-soaked kisses. The kids with their sun-dusted hair, running down the lawn toward the dock, laughing and raising their arms to be lifted into the air. And Kate—especially Kate.

  You had to let it play out sometimes, remembering, all the moments and days and nights that had come along and surprised you with the way they made you feel. No one could say what was next, and the best you could do was dive in and let it all wash over you, avoid the eddies and the rocks, find your place in the current.

  Jeff turned away from the window. Shut his computer down. Ran his fingers through his hair. Picked up his coat and wondered if there was time for a drink with the girl down the hall before he went to meet Brent.

  ##

  DUTY

  Nancy Jackson went off her antidepressants in February and realized almost immediately she’d made a mistake. Not by going off the Celexa—she’d gained fifteen pounds in the year she’d taken it and her libido was skidding along rock bottom—but choosing to do it at the start of the rainy season. Every gray morning set her asail like a leaking boat into a placid pool of ennui and creeping despair.

  But after a week or so, withdrawal brought new sensations: irritability and a dizzy mania that was preferable to the lethargy. She was up in the mornings before her seven-year-old daughter, tidying things, organizing things. She lost eight pounds in one week. She developed a consuming crush on Hailey’s soccer coach, a man she’d barely noticed before; she sat in her car watching the girls practice in the drizzle, imagining Ted dragging her into the equipment shed and bending her over the scorekeeper’s table.

  Her doctor had given her a schedule to taper off the drugs. It proposed smaller and smaller doses over several months. Nancy wasn’t patient enough for that.

  #

  Tuesday morning she was at Jill’s, in the last house on Cherry Blossom Court, where they’d laid a cul-de-sac over the busted asphalt skeleton of the road that once wandered a couple of miles into strawberry fields.

  Payton was telling a long and pointless story about a home furnishing shop that had gone under before delivering the table she’d ordered. Nancy’s impatience would not brook much more of the conversation; as exhausted and jittery as she was, the other women’s concerns seemed unbearably trivial. She stood and set her coffee cup carefully on the table; her hands had been shaking a little lately.

  “Catherine’s in the powder room,” Jill said. “Go ahead and use my bathroom.”

  Nancy slipped into the master suite, past the enormous walnut furniture and into the cavernous bathroom. Two sinks, a huge slate-tiled tub, a walk-in shower with a complicated set of faucets on the walls and overhead.

  Nancy washed her hands and opened the medicine cabinet. It wasn’t the first time she’d peeked. She suspected everyone did it.

  There was a bottle of Effexor next to Jill’s deodorant and makeup remover. Jill’s name on the label. Nancy took the bottle in her palm and stared at it for a long time. Then she spilled half the pills into her hand and rolled them around. She put the bottle back on the shelf, then dropped the pills into the sink and ran water over them. When they didn’t dissolve, she picked up a quartz soap dish and used the corner to grind the pills down until
the pieces swirled down the drain.

  #

  Friday the Koshaks had a poker party. Platters of wings and mini-cheeseburgers and cheddar pretzels; the wives mostly stuck to the veggie tray. Nancy waited until Rex Nash cleaned everyone out with a suspicious four-of-a-kind to slip upstairs to the Koshaks’ bedroom.

  Elaine Koshak had a collection of Limoges boxes on a mirrored tray on her dresser. Nancy was surprised—Elaine’s style was relentlessly contemporary, her furniture all pale and uncomfortable. Some of the tiny hinged porcelain boxes looked vintage, probably worth hundreds of dollars. Nancy considered a tiny mailbox with a gilt letter in the slot, before slipping a miniature basket of painted tulips into her pocket.

  At home that night she waited until Gavin was asleep before taking it down to the workbench and carefully smashing it with a hammer. She kept at it until all the shards were practically dust. A bit of the gold band from the hinged edge remained like a curl of shiny lemon peel.

  #

  Monday she took Dusty for a walk along the path where it followed the creek. Dry in summer, the creek was swollen with the rain, eddies swirling and bubbling over rocks and fallen branches.

  Rounding a bend, she found the dog rooting at a large, black, glossy bird that was clearly injured. Droplets of blood flew, but she couldn’t see the source of the wound.

  “Dusty,” Nancy murmured and tugged at the leash. There was a low, humming sound in his throat as he pawed and bit at the thing. The fur on his back stood up in a ridge along his spine. His black lips were bared, exposing white teeth. Dusty was a gentle dog, the sort to bring slobber-covered tennis balls to whoever happened to be around.

  Nancy kept watching long after the bird had stopped flailing. Feathers drifted, a few coming to rest against her shoes. Blood dripped from the bird and created a slash of red against the chalky gravel of the path.

  Abruptly, Dusty dropped the bird and looked up, ears stiff. He listened for a few seconds and then turned and poked his snout into Nancy’s thigh. A smear of slimy detritus remained on her pants.

  Nancy walked home with Dusty leading the way, sniffing at invisible smells. She got the dog into the back of her SUV by tossing a liver treat inside. She dropped Dusty at the groomers and drove to the car wash. While she waited, she watched the Mexicans washing and buffing her car and thought about the way the bird had struggled. Its wings had been so much bigger than she would have imagined, the feathers gleaming blue-black; when Dusty shook the bird in his jaws, it had spasmed in a way that struck her as almost sexual.

  That night Gavin came into the living room, where Nancy was reading Metropolitan Home and drinking a glass of red wine.

  “Top Model’s on,” he said. “Hailey’s watching it by herself.”

  “Well, why don’t you watch it with her for a change,” Nancy said, surprising herself with her tone. She didn’t ordinarily raise her voice with Gavin.

  He folded his arms over his chest. “Christ, Nance, how long do you plan to go on being a bitch?”

  Nancy looked up from her magazine, considered her husband’s anger. It was a rare enough thing, and it didn’t do much to improve him—made the brackets around his mouth more pronounced, emphasized the vertical line between his brows.

  “As long as it takes,” she said.

  #

  Nancy had volunteered to run the Easter egg hunt with Catherine Desjardin. Champagne brunch would be served in Nancy’s dining room. The kids would eat in the kitchen.

  Nancy was expecting Catherine at seven on Easter morning, to help set up the borrowed folding chairs and hide the dozens of plastic eggs. At five-thirty, Hailey stumbled into Nancy and Gavin’s bedroom and threw up on the rug.

  Nancy had been awake for an hour, lying on her back and squeezing her eyes shut; she’d been imagining that she was a stowaway on a ship, maybe a liner that had been put into service during World War II. She imagined lying in the dark on a narrow bunk—a top bunk—only inches from the ship’s steel walls and ceiling, a storm on the ocean rocking the ship. All around her soldiers were losing their footing and falling, but she was well hidden and secure in her bunk.

  The sound of Hailey’s retching got Nancy’s attention. She sat up and pushed the covers off; Hailey rushed to her and pressed her soiled face into Nancy’s nightgown. “Shit, Hailey!” Nancy said, before she could stop herself. She shoved her daughter away with such force that Hailey sat down hard on the floor and started to wail.

  “Get her, Gavin.” Nancy gave her husband a jab in the side. She stepped over the puddle of vomit and shut herself in the bathroom, locking the door.

  She ran a hot shower and threw her nightgown in the trash, twisting the top of the plastic trash bag closed against the smell.

  In the shower, she closed her eyes and let the water run down her face. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to stand on her porch looking out at all the other beautiful homes on Cherry Blossom Court, waiting for everyone to come out on their porches and smile and wave and pretend that they all liked each other more than they actually did.

  But she had a job to do. Nancy had been in their most intimate places, touched their private things. In some way she’d touched their secrets, too, the ones they never revealed. The rage. The disappointment. Now she carried those with her, mingling with her own; she was doing them a service they didn’t deserve, that they would never even understand.

  Eventually, Nancy turned the water off. The shower enclosure was dense with steam, and she toweled off slowly. She hadn’t used soap. She wasn’t a lot cleaner than when she got into the shower, but soap was no good for the stains she carried anyway. Those, she knew, were permanent.

  ##

  SKOGSRA

  Erland Shold watched with a leaden heart as his son prepared for work. Something was not right, some insidious and black-souled demon had found them again. Perhaps it was the skogsra, the alluring spirit his grandmother warned him about on the nights when she drank her home-mulled akvavit. Skogsra were unpredictable; they would as soon help you as curse you. Except for Erland, for him, Berta Shold predicted, there would only be bad luck.

  Berta made this prediction after meeting Margie. Beautiful Margie, who loved to comb her waist-length blonde hair on the porch in the summer. Who came from a town thirty miles down Highway 2 that made Perrysville, population 4,500, look like a city. Who married Erland after two weeks of courting and left him two years later—left him with a son, left with burns on her fingers. In the spring he found things that had been abandoned in an old flour tin on a shelf in the shed: torn paper bindles, a pipe gone opaque with residue, a cheap lighter that no longer worked.

  Margie was a skogsra, his grandmother insisted, and Erland’s weakness for her would be his downfall, as it was for all men who could not resist their lure.

  Berta Shold had been in the ground eighteen years. His son was twenty—Karl did not remember the old woman. Now Karl stood at the sink with the last of his coffee, absently running a clean cloth along the edge of the sink. The boy left the kitchen perfect every morning before he left. When he came home, he cleaned it again, and never complained; Erland, with only one arm, could no longer do it right.

  “I’ll be a little late tonight, Dad,” Karl said, turning to rinse the cup.

  “Date with Sidnee?” Erland knew he shouldn’t ask. Already knew the answer. Couldn’t help it.

  “Nah….I’ll probably be home around eight or nine. Maybe we can watch the game, you don’t mind recording it”?”

  Twins and Braves. “Sure. Listen, son…”

  Karl came over and gave his father a quick hug, a pat on the back. The boy didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say.

  After he was gone, Erland stared at the newspaper for a long time without reading it.

  #

  Karl never lied anymore if he could help it. He was down to a very few virtues and those that remained were slipping away like sand through his fingers.

  But he also
could hardly tell his father the truth.

  Through the door at Ivey’s—ten minutes to ten, early customers done, only the hard-core coffee drinkers and a few housewives. Sidnee, at the register, squaring up a stack of checks—the way her lips parted when she saw him, the way her eyes widened.

  The tiny shot of rage that mixed with his pleasure at seeing her.

  He joined her by the register. Squeezed hands under the counter, where no customer could see.

  “Forty dollars so far,” she said, patting the pocket of her polyester uniform. A good morning. Sidnee worked five-thirty to two; more than half of her tips came early. Lunch was slow at Ivey’s. At dinner it picked up again. Especially on Thursdays—All-You-Can-Eat Pasta.

  “Good girl.” Karl kept his voice gentle. Sidnee, a reward he didn’t deserve. Nothing was her fault. They were sixteen when they started dating and they were each other’s’ first. He was still her only.

  Officially Karl was a host—he seated people, got them their menus and water, sometimes coffee if Sidnee or the other waitresses were busy. But he did more—Lauda Kern, his boss, stayed home more and more afternoons and evenings to drink. Karl did the books. Ordered supplies. Scheduled the meeting room. The dribs and drabs he skimmed off the top, Karl tried hard to believe, were earned.

  He had $4,900 saved so far and that was after he gave his dad most of the money every week. When he got to $12,000 he’d pay the last of his father’s bills and then he and Sidnee would be off to Duluth and he could start earning better money to take care of all of them.

  #

  Karl clocked out, walked out. Blinked for a couple minutes in the sun. Even at six-thirty it was bright. June in rural Minnesota: warm, damp, green, bugs returning.

  Just three miles, a pleasant drive, to the turnoff. Another mile of dirt road and then a few hundred yards of weed-tufted tracks. You couldn’t see the lake from here, but you could sense it: the smells, the reverberation in the ground, thousands of frogs. Ted’s car already there, his gleaming green Mercedes, a few splatters of mud clinging to the wheel wells. Karl hiked along the old path, barely visible anymore.