Cameo Lake (12 page)

Fifteen

B
en brought the ice cream, chocolate chip with only one serving missing. I served the pizzas on the screened porch, citronella candles burning all around us against the mosquitoes, turning the dinner into a picnic. We polished off the two pizzas and I reconciled myself to making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in the morning. We played the junior version of Trivial Pursuit, Tim and Lily neck and neck for wedges until the last toss, when Tim pulled off his first-ever win against his sister. Ben and I had both been remarkably stupid. Lily was a little suspicious of Ben, yet perfectly happy to imagine I knew very little trivia.

After a long, hard day at camp, neither kid was unwilling to call it a night and so, with only the most pro forma of protests, they trundled off to bed with a quick good-night kiss. I was almost as nonplussed as Ben when Lily spontaneously hugged him good-night as if he had always been part of the routine.

Ben came with me to the kitchen as I pulled the unopened bottle of chardonnay out of the refrigerator. When I turned around he had the binoculars off the hook and was looking out over the lake toward his cabin.

“You get a good view from here.”

I confess, a little guilty flush touched my cheeks. “Grace left them
here. I like watching the birds. There are so many.” It was lame, but I felt compelled to say it.

“I've got a nice amateur birder's book. I'll lend it to you.” He hung the binoculars back on the hook. I handed him a glass, aware of his slightly amused smile.

We sat side by side on the iron glider, facing the water. The twilight was nearly done, only a rim of light still glowed in the West.

“Thanks for the dinner. You're very thoughtful of an old hermit.”

“Not many people describe themselves that way.”

“I suppose.” Ben leaned back on the glider, making it move a little beneath us. He closed his eyes and breathed a settling sigh. “Mmmm, it's nice to sit here. We always meant to build a screened porch on our place, but somehow never did. We were always forced inside at night by the bugs. There were a lot of things we meant to do. Like install electricity.”

There was that oblique reference,
we,
not
I
. I took the opening, as tiny as it was. “You said you and your wife lived here year-round?”

“Sort of. It was our home base, I think I told you. After my . . . ummm . . . professional setback I winterized it, and then when Talia came along I added the back bedroom. I did most of it myself, see,” and he put out his hand where a scar I had noticed lay just the other side of his thumb. “Almost put paid to my career with that little mistake.” Once again, Ben had skillfully moved the topic from the personal to the amusingly anecdotal, but then he reversed himself. “Actually, that was before I was married, when I was living alone out here, almost as hermit-like as I am now. Somehow nearly cutting my thumb off awakened me to how much I really wanted to stay in the music business, how much I loved to play.”

“Why do you call yourself a hermit? Hermits are antisocial or religious fanatics, aren't they?”

“Or both. They are people who grapple with demons.”

“Are you grappling now?” The wine had propelled me beyond ordinary polite caution.

“Yes.”

“Can you speak of them?”

Ben took my free hand in both of his and lifted my knuckles to his lips. I wasn't alarmed, and although there was an element of the sexual in the act, the touch of his lips to my hand was most certainly a gesture of apology. “No. Not even to you, not yet.”

“Okay.” I withdrew my hand and gripped my wineglass with both.

“Cleo, when I can speak of it, I will speak to you.”

“Ben, you owe me nothing in the way of explanation. Your life is yours, I'm just a nosy neighbor.”

This time he simply took my hand. “I love this place. It's where I feel . . .” Ben didn't finish his sentence, so I prodded a little. “Where you feel what, Ben?”

I could see him clearly in the light coming from the kitchen, although the porch was dark, the citronella candles having guttered out long ago. Ben's face was smooth, except for the crinkles around his eyes and that natural looseness which comes with age at his jaw. There was experience described by those little ocular lines and in the grooves outlining his mouth like parentheses, which deepened as his lips compressed.

“You can tell me.” Now I did press, just a little more.

“Where I feel she's still with me.” His voice was so soft I almost didn't hear him.

He left soon after that. I wanted to walk with him down to the canoe, but he shook his head no. “You'll get eaten alive, Cleo. Stay put.” He touched my cheek, cupping it gently in his long hand. “Thank you so much for having Lily call me. It means a lot.”

His gentle touch had brought strange tears to my eyes, and I felt almost bereaved, as if there should have been more said. I shut the screen door and watched him as he pushed off, his paddle in the water the only sound now.

Sixteen

T
uesday morning I was more efficient about dropping the kids at camp and getting back to the lake before nine o'clock. I had a new pot of coffee going and my computer booted up within minutes and got to work. It didn't go as well as it had been, and I kept looking up from my screen to stare out at the lake in the July sun. I couldn't seem to block out the voices of the beachgoers, the shrieks and scoldings seemed intrusive this morning. The perpetual sound of talk radio as broadcast over a too-loud boom box annoyed the hell out of me. I turned up the volume in my Discman, but the batteries were running out and I kept getting a buzzing in my left ear which tickled my eardrum. I tore off the headphones and stood up. I'd only been at work for an hour, forty-five minutes. Hardly a day's worth. Less than a page and a half of new stuff.

I knew that it wasn't that the distractions were any worse than the day before, it was my inner agitation which kept my characters from working. An agitation born of last night's conversation with Ben. There was a lingering sense, as I seemed often to have, that I'd said too much and Ben had said too little. Caving in to frustration, I pulled on my bathing suit and grabbed a towel. Sometimes facing the distraction negates it. I headed for the beach.

I came up behind Glenda and Carol, ensconced, as usual, in low-slung
beach chairs, visors and big sunglasses masking their faces, making them look vaguely E.T.-ish. Their multiple children gamboled about and I had not a prayer to figure out which children belonged to which woman. I thought I understood Carol to have the more, but I might have been mistaken. I was certain Glenda had the oldest. Suddenly in their midst without the protective coloration of my own children, I felt out of the circle. Surely this must have been what our ancestors experienced trying to join other family groups around fire pits. As expected, the verbal challenges came quickly.

“So, Cleo, not working today?”

“I am, I just needed a little break.”

“How do your children like that camp?” Glenda managed to turn up her lips, the only visible moving part on her face, in a condescending smile.

“Well, they're having a wonderful time, doing very interesting things. Learning new skills.” I let my own sunglass-disguised gaze linger over the tussle two of the children were having over a Gameboy. “They're learning to ride and properly manage watercraft.” I'd seen two older boys in a canoe the other day, fooling around and not wearing life jackets. I had no idea if those boys belonged to these women, but I liked making the point.

“So, when's your husband coming? Friday?” Zing.

“Yes. Friday night.” Zap.

“It's difficult for some husbands to make the trip every weekend, I certainly know. But I wouldn't hear of Carl not coming every weekend. After a week of kids kids kids, it's my saving grace.” Carol smoothed more sun block on her stubby legs. “Of course, with the kids all day at camp, you don't have that problem.”

How did these women know my business so well they could take shots at it?

“Yes, although I rather enjoy my time with my children. They're good companions.”

I got up and strode into the water. The July sun had heated the shallows into bathwater, but the lake dropped off suddenly and the deep water was cold. I thought about making for the raft, but didn't.
It was too early in the day to do that. I swam back to the group, intending to towel off and go back to work.

“Have some lemonade,” Glenda held up a plastic cup to me as I rejoined the group.

Maybe I'd passed muster, Glenda's condescending smile had grown genuine while I swam.

“Thanks.” I took the cup from Glenda and sat on my towel. “Have you been in yet?”

Both women shook their heads. I don't think I'd actually ever seen them in the water.

I accepted the plastic cup of lemonade and sat down, happy to have some useless chat, thinking that the sniping was over. I was wrong.

“So, how is Ben Turner these days? You seem to be very friendly with him.”

I dripped a little of the cold lemonade down my front, and I paused to wipe it with my fingers before responding. “Ben is fine.” I wanted to ask them if they spent all their time spying on me, but I knew that the high road was better with women like these. Any protest and I'd be more interesting to them.

“Grace used to be friendly with Ben, too. Before the accident. Actually, she was a great friend of his wife's. Poor thing. You know that she was a world-famous flautist? Or is it flutist? Anyway, she once did a benefit concert for the local hospital. The lake residents sponsored it. Donated the proceeds to the hospital.” Carol's voice trailed off dramatically.

I remembered clearly Grace saying she really didn't know Ben, describing Ben as a loner. Hardly the great friend of Carol's description. I had to believe that Carol was making noise out of some weird lakeside feud, trying, by my known friendship with Grace, to win me to the side on which Glenda and Carol were aligned. Intimating that if Grace was one of them, hence, by association, I should be, too. What bitches.

“They never had children. Now, of course, we can guess why.”

“No, I can't guess why.” I know my voice was a little sharp.

“They were having trouble.” Glenda actually cupped her hands over her mouth and mouthed “trouble” as if it had been the word “cancer” in my grandmother's mouth. Or “Negro.” Or any of those words not spoken aloud in polite company.

“What kind of trouble?” I demanded quite loudly.

“Well, I heard they were having difficulty with her traveling so much. You know, her concerts took her all over the world. She was in great demand and he wouldn't go with her.”

“I was told by someone who knew, that there were drugs involved.” Again Glenda mouthed the words “drugs involved.” I assumed because of the kids being within earshot.

“What did happen?” I had to ask. I had wanted Ben to tell me, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to know for myself.

“Well, no one really knows what the circumstances were. Just that she hit her head and never regained consciousness. And that they'd been seen to argue in the parking lot of a restaurant. So . . .” she flipped a hand palm up in the classic attitude of foregone conclusion.

Glenda snapped her head around to yell at her kids, interrupting the flow of the story, effectively ending it. “Any rate, she's been gone a year now and he's still walking the earth, unrepentant.”

“Oh, no. You can't say that.” But Glenda wasn't interested in any challenge to public opinion about Ben Turner. She lurched up and to the water's edge to shout at the kids. Carol screwed the cap to the sun block back on and made no comment.

I thanked them for the lemonade and walked home.

I sat in my wet bathing suit and pounded out sentences, putting words in my characters' mouths, smoothing out the disturbance in my heart by feeding it to them. And all the time I was typing, I kept thinking about Ben, about how I could not imagine him in domestic violence.

I heard a sound like a music box, one hand playing the piano. A gentle theme, uncluttered, pure. Joined then by a bass chord, consolidating the motif, giving it force and structure. I hadn't heard this before. It was new, daylight born. Sweeter, happier, than what Ben had composed before.