Gryphon (3 page)

Magda was looking at him suspiciously. She was a small girl, even for her age, with tightly curled hair and intelligently watchful brown eyes. She was wearing jeans and a pink sweatshirt that said “Say good things about Detroit” on it, the words printed underneath a rainbow. She and
Gregory climbed into the backseat, whispering to each other but then falling silent. Burrage looked in at them. “Do we have everything?” he asked, feeling shaky himself. “Jackets, caps, snacks, and shoes?” From his list he realized how nervous he was. “Anybody have to go to the bathroom before we leave?” They both shook their heads. “All right,” he said. “Here goes.” He backed the car out of the driveway into the street, where Mrs. Schultz happened to be standing, a slightly more vacant expression on her face than was usual for her.

“Where are you going?” she asked, through the open window on the driver’s side.

“Boating,” Burrage said.

Mrs. Schultz’s right hand flew to the door handle, clutching it. “Take me along,” she said.

“Take her along.” It was Gregory. Burrage turned around and stared at him.

“Mrs. Schultz? You want Mrs. Schultz along with us on our boat ride?” Both Gregory and Magda nodded together. “I don’t get this,” Burrage said aloud, before turning to Mrs. Schultz. “I suppose if you want to come along, you can. Are you dressed for it? Is your house locked up?”

“Doesn’t matter.” She walked around to the passenger side and got into the front seat, slamming the door fiercely. “Let them steal everything, for all I care. I want to go out in a boat. Let’s get going.”

On the ten-minute drive to the lake, Magda kept silent, though she would nod if either Burrage or Gregory asked her a question. Meanwhile, in the front seat, Mrs. Schultz was watching the landscape with her eyes wide open, as if she had never ridden in an automobile before. She was offering opinions. “I’m glad it’s Saturday,” she said. “If this was during the week, I’d be missing my soap operas.” They passed a water tower. “Never saw one of those before.” Burrage groaned. Mrs. Schultz suddenly turned her gaze on Burrage and asked him, “What does the horoscope say about today, Burrage?”

“It’ll be beautiful. It
is
beautiful. Warm. Nothing to worry about.”

“No episodes?”

“No. Definitely no episodes.”

“Good.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’m too old for episodes.”

When they reached the lake, Burrage paid to get into the grounds of
the state park, which included a beach and boating area. The two children and the old woman did not seem especially pleased about arriving; nobody announced it. They all stepped out of the car in silence as the moist vegetative smell of the lake drifted up to them. “Anybody have to go to the bathroom?” Burrage asked again, being careful to take the snack bag from the backseat. They all shook their heads. “Well, in that case, let’s go,” he said, and they walked down to the rowboat concession, Mrs. Schultz leading, while Gregory held on to Burrage’s hand and Magda held on to Gregory’s.

The boy in the concession stand, who was listening to a transistor radio and wearing a Styx T-shirt, tied them all into life jackets, Mrs. Schultz, because of her arthritis, being the hardest to fit. This job finished, he went down to the dock and pulled an aluminum rowboat out to where some steps had been built in the dock’s north side. Magda and Gregory went in front, Mrs. Schultz in back, and Burrage sat down in the middle, where he could row. “You got an hour,” the boy said, scratching his chest. “If you take longer, it’s okay, but you got to pay extra when you get back.” Burrage nodded as he lifted the oars. “You know how to row?”

“I know how,” Burrage said. “Cast us off.” The boy untied the boat and gave it a push.

“Bon voyage,” he said, lifting his leg to scratch his ankle.

Burrage watched the dock recede. Mrs. Schultz was observing something in the distance and sniffing the air. Both Magda and Gregory were staring down into the water. “How far do we go?” Burrage asked them all.

“To the middle,” Gregory said. “I want to go to the middle.”

“Yes, that would be fine,” Mrs. Schultz said. “Right to the middle.”

“Okay.” He felt a slight ache in his shoulders. “If anybody wants a snack,” he said, “there are crackers and things in that bag.” He stopped rowing with his right hand to point to the bag, and, as he did, the boat turned in the water.

“Come on,” Gregory said. “Don’t do that. Just row.”

“Be nice,” Mrs. Schultz said to Gregory. “Always try to be nice.”

Like most lakes in the southern part of the state, Cloverleaf was rather shallow and no more than six miles in circumference. All the houses on the shore, most of them summer cabins, were distinctly visible. A slight breeze from the west blew over them. With the sky blue, and the temperature in the low seventies, Burrage, as he rowed, felt his heart loosen
in his chest while the mildness of the day crept over him. He could see several families splashing in the water at the public beach. He smiled, and noticed that Mrs. Schultz was doing the same.

“Tell me when we get to the middle of the lake,” Burrage said. “Somebody tell me when we’re there.”

“I’ll tell you,” Magda said. It was her first complete public sentence of the day.

“Thank you, Magda,” Burrage said, turning around to see her. She was doing finger-flicks in the water.

Five minutes later she broke the silence by saying, “We’re there.” Burrage raised the oars from the water and let the droplets fall one by one before he brought them into the boat. On the south side of the lake an outboard was pulling a water-skier wearing a blue safety vest. Gregory was letting his hand play in the water, humming a song from the Glenn Miller tape, and Magda was now staring down into the water with her nose only four inches or so from its surface. “I see a monster down there,” she said. No one seemed surprised. “It’s got a long neck and an ugly head.”

“A reptile,” Mrs. Schultz said, nodding. “Like Loch Ness.”

“It could bite,” Gregory said. “Watch out.”

“Sea monsters,” Burrage said, “may not be extinct. Pass me the crackers, please.”

“After I have mine,” Mrs. Schultz said, her hand in the bag. She was sniffing the air again. “I don’t believe I have ever seen a sea monster, not this far inland. I’ve heard about them, though.” She waited. “I like this lake. It’s a nice lake.”

“There’s a bug on me,” Magda said, tapping a finger on her sweatshirt. “There. It flew away.”

“Pass me a cracker,” Gregory said. “Please.”

“Look at that water-skier,” Burrage said. “He’s very good.”

The rowboat began to drift, pushed by the breeze. Gregory munched on his cracker, and now Magda was dipping her fingers in the water and experimenting with wave motion. Mrs. Schultz had taken a handkerchief out of her sleeve and put it on her head, apparently to minimize the danger of sunstroke.

“Does anybody want anything?” Burrage asked, feeling regal.

“No,” the other three said.

“Don’t ask me if I have to go to the bathroom,” Mrs. Schultz complained.
“Once is enough.” She waited. “Do you know,” she said, “that my grandfather owned land just north of here? He was Scottish, and, of all things, his life’s dream was to build himself a golf course. He was even going to build the hills. But, for some reason, it didn’t happen. Instead, he learned how to play the oboe and could play it lying down in a hammock, during the summer. He had the lungs of a seven-year-old boy.” She looked at Burrage. “He never smoked cigars.”

“What’s that?” Magda asked. Her finger was pointing toward shore.

“What’s what?”

“That.” She was still pointing. “That smoke.”

“That’s a charcoal grill,” Burrage said. “Somebody’s cooking hamburgers outside, and that’s where all the smoke comes from.”

“Cooking with charcoal is bad for you,” Mrs. Schultz said. “Too much carbon. Cancer.”

“Where’s the grill?” Magda asked. “I don’t see it.”

They all turned to look. Thin strips of smoke rose in the distance behind or near a house. It was hard to tell. The house was a plain white one that seemed to have a screen porch but no other distinguishing features.

“Is that house on fire?” Magda asked.

“No,” Burrage said. “It is
not
on fire.
They are just cooking hamburgers.
” He did not want to shout. “It’s Saturday. People cook hamburgers on Saturday all the time.” Because there was more smoke, he felt he should raise his voice somewhat. “You shouldn’t worry.”

“Maybe we ought to row toward it,” Mrs. Schultz suggested, the handkerchief on her head fluttering as her head shook.

“No,” Burrage said. “I don’t think so. The children should stay away.”

“Look,” Gregory said, “they’re so small.”

“Is there someone inside the house?” Magda asked, and began to cry. “I hope there isn’t anyone inside. What if there’s someone inside the house?”

“It’s not a fire!” Burrage shouted, unable to stop himself. “They’re just cooking lunch! You’d see flames if it was a fire!”

While they stared, the boat rocked gently underneath them. A fish jumped behind them and slapped the water. The breeze brought them a scent of smoke. Burrage turned around and glanced at the opposite side of the lake, where the boy in the rowboat concession was sitting with his feet up in the booth. Gregory reached out for Burrage’s hand. “You
didn’t know about this yesterday,” Gregory said. “It wasn’t in the horoscope. Daddy, Magda’s crying.”

“I know,” Burrage said. “She’ll be all right.”

“I want to know if someone’s in the house,” Magda said. Mrs. Schultz was murmuring and muttering. “I want to know,” Magda repeated.

Suddenly Mrs. Schultz stared at Burrage. “You said there wouldn’t be any episodes,” she said, pointing her finger at him. “God damn it, you said nothing would happen to us! And look at what’s happening!” She was shouting. “Look at all the smoke and the fire!” Her finger, still pointing, pointed now at Burrage, Magda, and Gregory.

“Mrs. Schultz,” Burrage begged, “please don’t swear. There are children here.”

“It’s a fire,” she repeated. And then she turned around in the boat, bent down, and cupped her hands in the water. Raising her arms, she doused her head. The water streamed into her gray hair and washed the handkerchief off, so that it dropped onto the gunwales of the rowboat. Again she reached down into the lake and again she scooped a small quantity of water over her head. As the children and Burrage watched, handful by handful the old woman soaked her hair, her skin, and her clothes, as if she were making a formal gesture toward the accidents of life, which in their monotonous regularity had brought her to her present condition.

A FEW MONTHS AFTER
she had put her husband, all memory gone, into the home, she herself woke one morning with an unfamiliar sun shining through a window she hadn’t remembered was there. A new window! Pranksters were playing a shabby joke on her. She rose heavily from the bed, a groan bursting by accident out of her throat, and shuffled to the new window they had installed during the night. Through the dusty glass she saw the apartment’s ragged backyard of cement and weeds. A puddle had formed in the alley, and a brown bird was flapping in it, making muddy waves as it bathed. Then she looked more closely and saw that the bird was lying on its side.

“I remember this view,” she said to herself. “It’s not a new window. I just forgot to pull down the shade.” She did so now, blocking the sun, which seemed to her more grayish-blue than it had for years. She coughed rhythmically with every other step to the bathroom.

It was Tuesday, and their anniversary. He would forget, as usual. Now, in his vacancy, he had stopped using shaving cream and razor blades. He tore photographs out of their expensive frames, folded them into baskets, and used them as ashtrays. He took cigarette lighters to pieces to see how they worked and left their tiny wet parts scattered all over his nightstand. He refused to read, claiming that what she brought him was dull trash, but she had suspected for a long time that he had forgotten both the meaning of the words and how to read them from left to right across the page. She didn’t want to buy him cigarettes (in his dotage, he had secretly and then quite openly taken up smoking again). He lost clothes or put them on backward or declared universal birthdays
so he could give everything he owned to strangers. The previous Wednesday, she had asked him what he would want for their upcoming anniversary, their fifty-second. “Lightbulbs,” he said, giving her an unpleasantly sly look.

She glanced at his lamp and saw that the shade was pleated oddly. “They give you plenty of bulbs here,” she said. “Ask them.”

He shook his head for thirty seconds before he replied. “Wrong bulbs,” he said. “It’s the special ones I need, with the flames.”

“Lightbulbs don’t have flames,” she said. “It’s filaments now.”

“Don’t argue with me. I know what I want. Lightbulbs.”

She was at the breakfast table reading the paper when she remembered that she had dropped an egg into the frypan, where, even at this moment, it must still be frying: hard, angry, and dry. She forgave herself, because she had been thinking about how to get to the First Christian Residence before lunch, and which purple bus she should take. She walked to the little four-burner stove with its cracked oven window, closed her eyes against the smoke, picked up the frypan using a worn potholder with a picture of a cow on it, and dropped her last egg into the wastebasket’s brown paper bag. Now she had nothing to eat but toast. She was trying to remember what she had done with the bread when she heard the phone ring and she saw from the kitchen clock that it was ten thirty, two hours later than she had thought.