Electric City: A Novel (15 page)

All too soon, Henry would be going back for his senior year at Exeter, to be further molded into the person his family expected and required him to become. He could feel the pressure around each evening’s dinner table, when his father pulled attention away from the formalities of the meal just long enough to ask his son about preparation for the imminent start of school. There was perfunctory interest in test scores, college applications, but everyone knew the predestined outcome. Harvard was the family alma mater. There was only one university that anyone named Van Curler could attend.

At the house on Wendell Avenue, the whiteness of walls and linens and china, doubled and tripled in mirrors and polished silver, all provoked a tight buzz at Henry’s temples. Just yesterday morning, he tried wearing a pair of Ray-Bans inside the fluorescent kitchen, and his father
had said, “Those are ridiculous. Off.” At which point Henry had elected not to attempt that particular battle.

Boarding school—despite its not-so-vague impressions of a tower favored by kings who needed a place to lock away their enemies until they could execute them—was located a few hours distant from Electric City. Though he’d been teased about coming from the source of blackouts, in his own mind he was far enough
away
there to be passably anonymous. In summer, the lake house at Diamond Point offered its own form of sanctuary, and though full from floor to ceiling with heirlooms announcing the Van Curler legacy, the place still waited for him like a friend.

“Please tell the gardener if you see him that he needs to do something about the gophers again,” his mother had written in a note left where he’d be forced to see it on the small table by the coffee pot. “Love, Mother,” she had signed.

It was difficult to imagine his parents even in their most intimate moments speaking of love to each other. As far as he knew, they still shared a bed, and might have had some rituals of comfort that were utterly private between them, as he supposed they should be. And yet, the ghost of their firstborn hovered between them no matter how fully they’d relocated themselves, no matter how much they pretended, even to one another, that they had moved on. Sometimes it surprised Henry that they wanted to keep him in attendance at boarding school after Aaron had died. Maybe it was easier to act as if both sons were still alive and simply away studying, easier than if Henry were around to remind them too much and too often of the one who wasn’t there.

Just past dawn, packing almost nothing, Henry slipped out the front door before anyone could slow him down. Alone in his MG, top down and wind blotting out every thought of either past or future, he allowed himself a palpable longing for Sophie in the passenger seat beside him. He pictured her laughing, holding his hand even when it was resting on the gearshift.

Bugs splattered his windshield, and the northernmost edges of Electric City flew past in a pine-colored blur. Acres of cornfields waved their boundless blond tassels into the blue air. He sang the chorus of “Wild Thing” into the engine noise, head lifted toward the sky. What would his own wildness look like if he ever really tried it on?

As he approached the pullout for the Country Store, he debated about stopping for a cup of coffee or pastry, a few pieces of penny candy to relive some flicker of happy childhood a hundred years ago. When the family had been a foursome, they always picked up a bottle of maple syrup or an apple pie to bring to the house on the lake. Aaron and Henry were allowed to select one handful each from the seemingly infinite variety and cascade of sweets, the kind displayed in widemouthed jars or, better yet, filling the deep drawers of a wooden cabinet that were always open, always abundant.

His heart raced as though he’d gorged himself on sugar, and though he even felt himself salivating, there was also a bitter taste in his mouth, almost like bile. One of those family trips to the lake had been the very last time they were all together, but none of them had sensed anything different about it. Henry and Aaron had probably argued in the car over some trivial remark, or whispered bets on who would find an arrowhead for their collection. Gloria and Arthur would have been planning another game of bridge with neighbors, discussing the need for an improved ventilation system in the basement.

Why couldn’t he recall now if they had climbed the white pine on that last visit to the lake house? Competed as usual about who reached highest and descended fastest? His palms were suddenly sweaty on the steering wheel. Memories could cut like glass if you rubbed at them too often, asked where the invisible line was crossed between before and after. Instead of turning toward the parking lot of the store, he gunned the engine and drove on, letting the wind pour through.

S
OPHIE’S PARENTS THOUGHT
she was on a Lake George trip with a school friend’s family. She had never lied quite as elaborately as this before, but she couldn’t think of any other way to make the journey possible. It would have been horrifying even to suggest that her two new friends were boys. Her father had tried convincing her as a small child that a blue dot appeared on her forehead when she was dishonest. She had believed him for many years, checking in the mirror to see if it was visible in the way he warned.

“I’m the only one who can see it,” he insisted when she challenged him. Now she felt a strange nostalgia for the argument, puzzling over his willingness to be false in the name of endorsing
her
obligation to the truth.

Simon, remarkably, had come through with her alibi, assuring their parents he would keep an eye on his sister while she spent the weekend with Melanie and Alice at the lake.

“I’ll be able to see them on the beach every day from my lifeguard chair,” he told them. “And I’ll keep Sophie out of trouble.”

Whether his claims were a brother’s bravado or generosity, she wasn’t sure, because in his car together, he grilled her all the way to the appointed meeting place with Martin. Who
were
these guys, what exactly made her think she was safe with them, why wasn’t she hanging out with those alibi-girlfriends anyway?

“They’re gentlemen,” Sophie told him, and Simon took a hand off the steering wheel to slap his thigh when he laughed.

“You’re kind of old-fashioned for a kid,” he said.

They parked on a stretch of gravel just east of the Mohawk bridge, where Martin and Bear waited. The streamlined canoe had been carefully strapped to the steel frame above the bed of Martin’s pickup, just high enough to give Bear room to lie down on an old blanket underneath it. Simon gave a low whistle of admiration when he reached out to touch the curving wood. In contrast, Sophie was struck by the harsh reflection of the bridge’s ugly underside, the way it seemed to double the river’s metallic gray-brown sheen. It looked less like an invitation than a warning, a place where nothing would want to live.

“I’m trusting you,” Simon told Martin, leaning against the door of his Mustang, tipping his mirrored sunglasses onto the top of his head and regarding him with a Serious Older Brother look. “No dangerous stuff, right?”

Sophie blushed and mock-punched Simon’s muscled arm.

Martin returned the serious face, then pointed at Bear, who was wagging emphatically from the back of the truck. “Guardian of all virtues,” he said.

With a casual toss, Sophie’s paisley overnight bag rested against the rolled-up tent Martin had brought because he hated sleeping in soft beds and his dog loved the night air. Bear’s chocolate-lab head was like a silk pillow; Sophie would have liked to stroke him for the entire trip.

“What does he do when you’re at work?” she asked Martin.

“Grieves like an orphan,” he said.

They sat side by side on the only seat of his truck, with Bear’s majestic head leaning in through the sliding window. It went without saying that they would take the country roads rather than the newly built Northway, which would have been faster but not at all kind to the canoe or the dog.
So much better to stay inside the scenery rather than keep it on the margins of a blank concrete invention
, Sophie thought. Martin fiddled a few times with the radio dial but never quite found any station worth keeping.

“Are you okay with silent time?” Martin asked.

Sophie nodded. “Mm-hm.”
The rhythm of truck wheels and visual music was soundtrack enough,
she thought.
And Henry at the end of the road
.

Dramatic clouds played catch with the sun, dappling the road with light and shadow. Signs for hamlets like Burnt Hills and Gansevoort passed one after another. Sophie wondered if Martin wasn’t tempted to pull off in search of a place to dip the canoe in water, or at least invite her to climb out of the truck for long enough to splash their faces and arms. Give Bear a drink too. When she tried very quietly to pronounce Kayaderosseras Creek, he named it out loud for her, and then she repeated it the right way.

“What does it mean?”

“You’d call it ‘the land of the beautiful lake of the winding river.’”

Saratoga Lake, Fish Creek, Lake Lonely. In the height of summer, birches, elms, maples, and oaks were all rejoicing in their glorious greens. The woods periodically yielded to scattered ranch-style homes and farmland, produce stands offering ears of corn and fresh eggs. A one-engine fire station, an elementary school. Cows. Bear went on alert every time he caught the scent of livestock or manure, lifting his head and sniffing energetically into the breeze. Martin smiled at the way he
and Sophie were mostly limited to eyes and ears, while his dog’s nose interpreted so much more of the world. Molecules in the air telling complicated stories of birth and death. Annie had built a chicken coop once, but after it was raided by foxes too many times, she finally gave up trying to keep the hens alive.

“Sometimes you have to declare someone else the winner,” she had said.

Assuming Sophie had missed it, Martin pointed out the dense construction of a beaver dam just before they crossed into Adirondack Park.
MOURNING KILL
, the sign said. It was time to start looking for the turnoff to surrender the canoe.

Martin hoped the ease of the delivery in Silver Bay would be auspicious for the rest of the journey. Jonas Wheatfield, the buyer, waved the truck into his slate-paved driveway and handed Martin a check before they’d even unstrapped the canoe. Martin folded the payment for Annie into his deepest pocket.

Wheatfield looks nothing at all like his name,
Martin thought,
more like a study in opposites
. His hair was dark and cut short like a Marine’s, yet he wore cutoff jeans shorts and a T-shirt advertising beer.

“One of a kind,” Jonas Wheatfield said, stroking the hand-polished frame.