The Lake of Dreams (18 page)

I imagined my great-grandfather lifting his face, the light from the comet falling all around him as he dreamed of a new life. Like everyone else, I’d always found this story, passed down through the generations, very moving and important. But now I wondered: where was Rose?

“This bottle must have been forgotten, then,” my mother said. “Packed away for safekeeping, maybe, and then forgotten. Let’s see if they were right about the vintage.”

“Evie. I say we save it.”

My mother looked steadily across the fire pit at Art.

“It’s my wine,” she said lightly, though the hardness in her voice was audible now. “I found it in my house, after all. And I want to know how it tastes.” She took a corkscrew from her skirt pocket and asked Blake to open it. After a second’s hesitation, he did. The cork, nearly a hundred years old, squeaked as it turned against the glass.

My mother took the bottle from him and poured us each an inch of the wine, such a dark red it looked like a piece of the night. I had a childhood memory of when the comet had returned in 1986, of staying up late in the cupola to search the dark sky, our disappointment when we finally located the comet, so faint and far away. That’s what I remembered, but maybe the disappointment came from other events at that time; it had been the turning point, the comet and the celebration, the day my father packed his things up at Dream Master and left for good.

“To the solstice,” my mother declared. We lifted our glasses, and drank.

The wine tasted dark and sweet. It was okay, rather sharp, edging toward vinegar, not magical. Once we finished people sat talking until Art stood up to leave.

“Evie,” he said, and paused. He seemed about to say something more, but then he waved his hand with a laugh. “You sure throw a good solstice party,” he said. “Come on, Joey. Let’s get going.”

Blake and Avery stayed a few minutes longer to help clean up. Then they walked across the lawn, hand in hand, and climbed back into the boat. The sail caught the moonlight like a wing.

“Great party, Mom,” I told her as we stacked the leftover trays of hummus and vegetables and dip in the refrigerator. “It was good to see everyone.”

“It was nice,” she agreed. She met my gaze as the door fell shut. “Lucy, I meant what I said out there. I haven’t made up my mind to sell this place, and even if I do, I haven’t decided to sell to Art, not by a long shot.”

“But you’re thinking about it,” I said, leaning against the counter. “I suppose that’s all right. It’s not like it’s got anything to do with me anymore.”

“Well, that’s been your choice, hasn’t it?”

“It’s been the way things have worked out, that’s all.”

“You didn’t have to go to school on the opposite coast, Lucy. You didn’t have to take jobs on the other side of the world. You
made
those choices.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “I went to the best programs,” I said, finally. “I took the best, most exciting jobs. You told me to go. That summer after Dad died. You gave me your blessing.”

My mother ran her hands over her face, down her neck, and sighed.

“Yes. Yes, I did. You’re right. I wanted you to live your life. I still want that. I worry about you, so far away, it’s true. It’s hard. You don’t realize it, Lucy, but after that tsunami, for instance, when I couldn’t reach you, it was terrible.”

“I wasn’t even in Indonesia then.”

“But you see, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know where you were. For all I knew, you were on one of those devastated beaches.”

I’d been in New Zealand when it happened, hiking with Yoshi and some friends, and we hadn’t heard about the tsunami for several days. When we got back to Jakarta, Yoshi and I volunteered at the orphanage where we’d worked the year before, where children who had lost their families were being sent. We did what we could, whatever they needed, though we still felt helpless in the face of all that loss.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to do a better job being in touch.”

My mother shook her head. “You’re a grown-up, Lucy. I trust you to know what you want. But it goes both ways, don’t you see? I have a life, too. Maybe you’d feel happier if I rattled around in this old house forever, and spent every waking hour trying to keep it up, but I will not do that. I’m telling you. Will I sell this place to Art? I don’t know. I might. I might sell to someone else. Or I might wait another year, or two, before I do anything at all. I won’t be pressured, that is one thing I do know. Not by you, or Art, or anyone.”

The air was so charged. “All right, then. But what about Andy?” I asked, surprising even myself.

She held up her hands. “What about him?”

“Does he know about all this?”

“No. Not that it’s any of your business, either, Lucy. But the fact is, I just met Andy. It’s fun, going out, that’s all. I’m having fun. Why is that a problem?”

“It’s not. I didn’t mean that.”

“Then, what did you mean?”

I took a deep breath, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, the distant lapping of waves against the shore. I’d spoken without thinking, and I didn’t really know why I was so upset. It had to do with the land, yes, and all the intricate and difficult family history. It had to do with Blake so willing to go along with Art, and even with Avery being pregnant. The dark taste of the comet wine was still in my mouth. I’d never told my mother about meeting my father on the night he died. I’d never told her that he’d asked me to go fishing. In some alternate universe there was the day we might have had if I’d said yes, a day when we came back at dawn with a line full of fish, an easy day of sunshine and grilling trout and dinner on the patio—a day that would have led us somewhere else, not here.

“I don’t know,” I said, finally. All the energy seemed to have drained from the room now, but maybe it was just jet lag. “I don’t know what I meant. It’s just—you know, a lot of changes, very, very fast.”

She nodded, but didn’t speak right away. “Not so fast,” she said, finally. “Not really, Lucy. But it must seem fast to you. I get that.”

I almost told her then how it might have changed everything if I’d gone fishing that night, how we’d be in a completely different place if I had. But she was happy now, that was the thing, maybe as happy as I’d ever seen her. In this moment, at this time, she was happy.

“All right. Who knows—maybe selling the land, even to Art, would be okay. I mean, Blake and Avery can’t raise a baby on a boat.”

She turned and looked at me hard. “What did you say?”

I closed my eyes for a second and swore silently to myself.

“Look, I wasn’t supposed to say anything. But that’s why Blake took the job. And that’s why Avery didn’t even sip the comet wine.”

“Oh, you’re right. Oh, my! It makes sense. But I didn’t realize—”

“Don’t tell him you know, okay? He’ll be upset. I promised him. And he promised Avery. She’s looking forward to making some sort of formal announcement.”

“I’m the grandmother-to-be. They won’t care that I know. I’m sure they won’t.”

She paused and pressed her hands against her face, her silver rings flashing. She shook her head once, let her hands fall.

“Oh, it’s very exciting, isn’t it? What a shock. Though now that I know, I guess it makes perfect sense. You’re right,” she added. “They absolutely cannot raise a baby on a boat. Where’s my phone?”

“Oh, please. Don’t tell him I told you.”

“I won’t. I’ll say I guessed. You’re right, she didn’t drink. When’s she due?”

“October, I think.”

My mother was already punching numbers into her cell, and didn’t seem to notice when I left the room and climbed the stairs.

I lay awake for a long time, the events of the evening running through my mind, before I finally fell asleep. Later that night a thunderstorm came in, and in my restless sleep I dreamed another dream like the one on my first night here, the urgent seeking of round things hidden beneath the leaves in the forest. But this time I found them, beautiful spherelike shapes tucked beneath leaves, as delicate as rain but made from glass, so beautiful it was painful to look at them, filled as I was with yearning. When I picked them up they turned liquid in my hands and fell to the earth, and rolled away in tiny beads, and I crawled after them, my heart breaking to think of all that beauty lost. I gathered all the fragments together and sat on the forest floor, trying to put them back together, to mend them with glue, to fasten them with metal rods, but time and again they melted at my touch, and disappeared.

Chapter 8

I WOKE UP EARLY, TO A GRAY DAWN, RAIN COMING DOWN SO hard and the clouds so low that it was hard to tell where the sky ended and the lake began. The rain had knocked the balloons from the trees, and the paper lanterns we’d strung by the patio sagged, heavy with water. I went downstairs, the residue of my dream lingering, all beauty and loss, and made a cup of tea, moving as quietly as I could. My mother was sleeping in; she didn’t have to be at work until ten, and it was something of a relief not to see her after our argument the night before. Some of the food from the party was still out on the counter, so I snacked on Brie and crackers and took a cluster of grapes when I went upstairs. I closed the door to my room and sat cross-legged at the head of the bed, sipping at the orange pekoe while I gazed out the window, the rainy lake mist-covered, the grass dark green, drenched, and flattened. Yoshi had promised to be home by seven, and it was five minutes before that. I dialed into Skype and he answered right away, his face filling up the screen.

“I brought home some noodles,” he said. “I’m here in the kitchen. Do you mind if I eat while we talk? I’m starved.”

“From that place down the street?” I asked. It was a small shop, paneled in light wood, with stools pulled up to the counter where they served big bowls brimming with noodles and broth. Yoshi and I liked to go there on weekends.

“Yes. I got your favorite, curried noodles,” he said, lifting the spoon to show me before he ate a mouthful. “Too bad for you that you’re so far away.”

“I have my own pleasures,” I said, holding up the grapes. “You forget it’s early in the morning here. It’s not at all a curry time of day. So, how are you?”

“Not so great, in fact,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t talk earlier, but the office was a little tense when you called.”

“What happened?”

“It’s the Indonesia project. There were those objections from the people in the village, you remember that? They don’t want the site destroyed, because they think it’s sacred. So, we spent the last week drawing up a set of alternate plans that would let the bridge go around the site. Win-win, right?”

“Sounds that way to me,” I said.

“Hang on just a second,” he said, and disappeared. I thought of all the times I’d been warned not to go out at dusk in Indonesia—a transition time, when it was easy to lose your spirit or suffer some sort of danger. It had always made sense to me, illogical though it was, and it made more sense now that I was in this other kind of transition, drifting between the past and the present, between the life I’d been living and whatever sort of life was to come, a time when I sometimes felt I might lose myself entirely.

Yoshi was on the screen again; he’d gotten a bottle of sake. “Right, exactly: win-win. That’s what the engineers all thought. Completely good solution. But the manager disagreed. It would add too dramatically to the cost; and they already own the rights to the land in question anyway, so they don’t have to compromise.”

“You were vetoed.”

“Yes. And worse—I argued.”

“Ah. I see.” There were any number of expats in Yoshi’s company, so it was more flexible than many, but with his looks and heritage and fluent Japanese, Yoshi was expected to walk a different walk. It seemed to me that he overcompensated, staying longer at the office and going out drinking with his business clients more often than anyone else, trying to offset moments like this, when the differences in his training and philosophy broke through. “It’s not a big deal, though, is it? I mean, they’re not going to fire you.”

I was half joking, but Yoshi didn’t smile.

“No. At least, I hope not. It’s just very quiet around me right now. The fact is, when they hired me they expected my experience in Indonesia to be helpful to them, but they didn’t expect me to advocate for the Indonesians. So now I’ve been assigned a partner when we go to Jakarta next week.”

“Really? A chaperone?”

“Something like that. I’m not too happy. So, no, it’s not a big deal in some ways. But to be honest, I’ve been giving some thought to quitting.”

“Quitting? Really?” I laughed, but in fact it filled me with a rush of panic to imagine us both adrift in the world.

“Some thought, yes. Not real serious thought, mind you. Just the late-night thinking after a bad day.”

“If you quit, we’d both be unemployed,” I observed.

Yoshi must have heard the flare of panic in my voice, because he smiled into the computer, across ten thousand miles. “I’m just frustrated, that’s all. Let’s change the subject. What’s been happening with you? Is it pouring? I’ve been checking your weather.”

“It is.” I glanced out the window. The sky was beginning to lighten at the horizon, a pearly gray-white line above the green, and I hoped it would clear. “I’ve been making fascinating discoveries about my ancestors,” I said, and told him about the windows I’d discovered and the trip I planned to Rochester to visit the Westrum House. Yoshi was interested, though he was having a hard time following all the various relationships.