Preston Falls : a novel (9 page)

The gun just fits into the long duffel bag, which is excellent because he can sleep with it right by his side and Jean and the kids won't know shit; he sticks it behind the seat of the truck. So. All squared away. But wouldn't you know: just as he's pulling out of the driveway, some asshole cruises by and gives the swivel-head stare. Might as well have a fucking loudspeaker announcing that Willis of Westchester and his faithful watchdog are now vacating their weekend home and that every teenage doper in the county is now invited to come on in and rip off all his expensive shit. Though he's probably overreacting. It's a Lumina van, which always makes Willis think of Sendero Luminoso, but which is in fact a car for decent people.

By the time they get to Lake Edwards, Jean actually wishes the trip could have taken longer. It felt so good getting farther and farther from Preston Falls; couldn't they just go and go, the three of them, forever? The kids were a joy. They stopped at Grand Union for picnic stuff and Roger didn't whine when she told him he couldn't have some Schwarzenegger video he picked up and brought to the cart. (She did let him get a bottle of Sportif; the caffeine wouldn't kill him this once.) They stopped at a Stewart's for ice cream, and Mel took Jean's word for it that Stewart's stuff didn't have bovine growth hormone (in fact Jean has no idea) and ate a small dish of peach frozen yogurt.

And her luck's holding: they score the last available lean-to. The ranger points out the location on the big map and gives her a small map, on which he traces the route in yellow highlight pen, marking their lean-to. Aspen, with a star. The afternoon has stayed hot and the kids are eager to get in the water, so they'll probably eat well, then sleep well. And it's supposed to stay sunny, so they can hang here till late tomorrow afternoon and get their fill of swimming; she'll worry about fighting the holiday traffic when it's time to worry about it. (The Tappan Zee will be a nightmare.) Maybe she can even get them to go on a hike. And if she can keep them from napping on the drive home—car games? loud rock and roll?—they'll be ready to pop into bed right after supper and be well rested for the first day of school. Which she truly can't believe Willis wouldn't want to be home for. But let's not get into that.

She parks in the space by their lean-to and just leaves all their things locked in the Cherokee; great as it would be to come back and have their camp all set up, stuff gets stolen even in places like this. She hands Roger the map and has him find the path to the lake; really, it takes so litde to make him feel proud. As he leads them down sandy switchbacks

through the pine trees, she considers telling him he's the man of the family today, but that's laying it on too thick. Just let him feel good about himself, without getting him thinking about why he's feeling what he's feeling and so on and so on—what Willis used to call Willis's Disease. And maybe still does, to somebody

Roger spreads their blanket on the hot white sand, and Jean waits until his back is turned to smooth out the folds and creases, Mel says she's going to go change: the first word out of her, now that Jean thinks of it, since they were at Stewart's. So something's up with her. It's all fine and good to tell yourself they're hardened to their father not being around, but the fact is.

"How come you have to go change?" Roger pulls at the neck of Mel's t-shirt; she yanks his hand off and twists away. "You have it on under there, stupid," he says. "Why don't you just take your pants off? That is so stupid."

"Roger," says Jean.

"It's not any of your business, Roger," says Mel, turning red.

"It's not any of your —''

"Stop," Jean says. "Your sister's entitled to change where she wants to change, with no input from—"

"But she's not changing," says Roger. "She's just—"

"One more word," says Jean. "Got it? Let's please not have anything ruin this beautiful day, all right? All we have is today and tomorrow, and that's it for the summer. You guys are back in school, I'm back at work. ..." Admitting, in effect, that despite all the propaganda she feeds them, school and work are a drag and a burden.

"But Mom?" Roger says. "Isn't it summer until September twenty-second?" Borderline backtalk, which he thinks he's craftily disguised as a point of information.

"So they say. See how you feel about it Tuesday morning."

Jean watches Mel walk toward the bathhouse; she's gotten so lanky you can see space between the thighs of even those loose cotton pants. Mel's being siUy, but Jean goes through the same thing: once you're on the beach in a bathing suit you're on the beach in a bathing suit, but taking down your pants in public to reveal the bathing suit feels immodest. Well, better to have Mel be this way than the other. Roger, meanwhile, has pulled off his t-shirt and is working on his shoes and socks.

PRESTON FALLS

"You know, I forgot to ask," she says. "What was it like staying at the Bjorks'?" With Roger you have to make questions open-ended; if she asks Did you have a good time? he'll just say yes.

"Okay," he says.

God give her patience. "What did you do?"

"I don't know. Watched this video Raiders of the Lost Ark.''

"Oh really?" Hmm. Well, probably not so bad. From what she can remember. Some little girl in Roger's class had a slumber party where they watched The Silence of the Lambs; even in Chesterton this was considered a bit much. "And how was that?"

Roger shrugs, "It was okay. It had Nazis."

"That's right, I forgot that part," she says. "They were after the Ark too, weren't they?" Nazis: just lovely. "I mostly remember the snakes," she says. "And the big rock. You know, that's chasing them?"

"Can I go in now?"

"Sure," she says. "Just don't get wet."

"Mtf-om." He sounds genuinely irritated, and she guesses she can't blame him.

He walks to where the sand is hard at the water's edge, then gets down and starts doing push-ups; a woman next to him, holding her little daughter's hand, stares and steps back. Aha. Jean thought his arms and shoulders were getting big; how long has this been going on? He probably started at day camp, maybe something he picked up from the older boys. This must be his way of announcing it to her. So should she mention it or not? He gets up, wipes his palms on his swimming trunks and strides into the water.

ReaUy, he's such a little striven It's just that he's wound so terribly tight. Which is right at the top of the list of things she can never forgive Willis for. Once, when Roger was six, his friend Adam came over for a play date and she and Willis took them to Waldbaum's to pick out stuff for lunch. When they got to the chips-and-soda aisle, Roger went running to the bottles of Sportif, yelling "My dad makes this!" And Willis said, "I don't make it. I work for the company that makes it. As I've told you several times." You could see Roger just shrivel; little Adam (a cool customer) looked up at Willis as if he were some strange specimen of something. When the boys moved on, Jean said, "You're the one who's being a child." And Willis said, "Fine. In that case you can be the grownup." He took out his car keys and dangled them at her until she felt she had to stick out her hand. Then he walked aU the way to the sta-

tion, took a train into the city, spent the afternoon in his office—he said —and didn't call until about seven o'clock: he was shocked at himself, he must be more stressed out than he realized, would she forgive him. And she did. At the time.

She waits until Mel gets back to watch Roger, then goes in to change into her suit. Not exactly your luxo bathhouse. But places like this are part of what a child's summer ought to be: cement floor, gray-painted wood benches, cubicles with canvas curtains down to knee level. And even that smell, of other people's excrement. She's glad to be able to give them this at least. Though God knows if it leaves them with anything, really. Like no kid ever got into drugs after smelling pine trees and human shit in the summertime. She finds a vacant cubicle, draws the curtain (which leaves an inch at each side) and gets out of her clothes. Her poor legs are so white. And that line down the inside of her thigh where the seam of her jeans presses in: that's attractive. And of course she's forgotten to shave up top, and she hates those little curls peeking out. Oh well. Actually, this is not the world's absolute worst body. For someone who's forty and has had two kids? Except she might as well weigh three hundred pounds. In fact that might make things better: maybe Willis would think it was camp to make love to her.

The sun sparkling off the water hurts her eyes when she comes back outside. Where's Roger? Okay: Mel's out there with him, knee-deep; they're splashing each other as if the thing about Mel's bathing suit had never happened. Carol would say there was something healing about water; Jean guesses they're playing together because they don't know any other kids here.

Should she go in? The sun's getting low, and that blue, glinting water looks so cold. But Mel and Roger seem to be having a ball, and she did go through the whole thing of getting her suit on. And who knows what the weather will be tomorrow, really. She takes her clothes over to the blanket, makes sure the car keys are safe in the pocket of her jeans and that the jeans are covering up the camera. Then she walks across the hot sand to the water's edge; a cool breeze comes in off the lake and she hugs herself. Hmm, let's think about this a second. It's so typical of her: imagining she's deciding something that she's already decided.

Willis pulls into the entrance with "Fuck tha Police" blasting; not until he sees the booth up ahead does it hit him that this isn't quite the Lake

PRESTON FALLS

Edwards vibe. Yet to turn it off would be craven. He edges way over to the right, then cuts the wheel hard left to pull a U-ey. Poor old truck has trouble making even this wide a turn, and the passenger-side wheels crunch gravel on the other shoulder. He gets back on the state highway and goes another mile before "Fuck tha Police" is over and he can eject Straight Outta Compton and stick in Back to the Barrooms; he pulls over to the side, waits for traffic to get past, then makes another U-turn and heads back for the park. But then it strikes him that while either Merle Haggard or a pickup truck might be plausible, both are too much. So he pulls over yet again, takes out Merle and sticks in Who's Gonna Fill Their Shoes, although isn't George Jones even more of a cliche? All this bullshit so that whoever's at the booth won't think he's what he fucking is. And now watch: it'll end up being the one black park ranger in all of Vermont.

At the booth—hey, it is an old white guy—he lets 'em have maybe three seconds of George, then turns the music down and leans out his window. "Hi, how you doin'? My wife and kids should've got here, I don't know, like an hour ago? Came in a Jeep Cherokee?"

The ranger looks up at him. He's a fat old geezer with hair coming out of his ears. "You know how many cars come through here today?" Then he looks at Rathbone.

"Don't people have to register when they come here to camp?" says Willis.

"Oh, so they come to camp,'" the ranger says. "You didn't tell me that."

"Name would be Willis." Guy wants to be a prick? Fine.

"You better pull it over there." The ranger points, then goes into his hut. Booth. Whatever. Being told you better this or that isn't Willis's favorite thing, but he parks over on the grass, rolls his window two-thirds of the way up so Rathbone can't jump out and walks back to the booth. On the far side of the parking lot he sees blue water through the pine trees; a motorcycle-looking guy in a sleeveless denim jacket is lugging a cooler on the path to the beach.

"They're in Aspen," the ranger says. Willis thinks for half a second that this is some bizarro put-down, something to the effect that people from Westchester should be off skiing with Jack Nicholson. "That's this lean-to right here." The ranger's pointing to a plexiglassed map on the side of the booth. "You go up that road. All the way up the top of the hill. And you stay to your left where it forks."

"Aspen," says WiUis.

"They go Aspen Birch Cherry Dogwood," says the ranger. "Now, your dog there stays in the campground. You come down to the lake, you leave your dog, you understand?"

"What's your problem?" says Willis.

"Say what?" The ranger puts a hand to his ear.

"I said what's the problem," Willis says. Pissed at himself for backing down even that much.

"7 don't have a problem, mister. Unless you give me one."

"Fine," says Willis. "So what do I owe you?"

"Your wife paid," says the ranger. Little note of contempt here for a man who would allow his wife to pay? Never mind the fact that his wife got here an hour2igo and therefore had to pay. "I'm charging you the day rate for your second vehicle there," says the ranger. "Be three dollars."

Willis gets three limp singles from his wallet and holds them out just far enough so the fat son of a bitch has to reach for them. Willis flatters himself that he's done it so subtly the poor stupid bastard doesn't even understand why he's now angrier than ever. This is about class, really: Willis of Westchester gets to loll, while this sad old fuck has to spend the last glorious weekend of summer in a hot uniform. But hey, who is Willis to fly in the face of Providence?

The ranger produces a card with a hole in the top the size of a quarter and a mingy little white plastic bag with a stylized green pine tree. By this time, four cars are lined up at the booth, engines running.

"You hang this on your rearview mirror." He hands Willis the card. "This here is for your garbage." The bag. "Anything you carry into the park, you carry it out again, you understand? You're not out of the campsite by eleven a.m., you pay another day irregardless."

"Noted." Willis snottily enunciates the t and the d. Irregardless: love it.

"You're to drive directly to the campsite."

One of the lined-up cars honks.

The ranger looks over his shoulder and gives them what he must imagine is a Clint Eastwood stony stare—poor bastard has a stomach on him that comes out to here—and while his head's turned, Willis flips him the bird, pumping once, twice, three times.