The Lake of Dreams (4 page)

That was the story, anyway. As I checked in for my flight, I wondered how he’d felt, pinning his dreams on such a faraway unknown—no telephones back then, no e-mails, and no going back. For me, nearly a century later, there was such a careless ease about distance. At almost the same time as our takeoff from Tokyo the day before, we landed at JFK, its corridors bustling with amazing human diversity. After another hour in the air, the lakes came into view, long, narrow, and deep, deep blue—pressed into the low green hills like the slender fingers of a hand. North-flowing rivers once, they had been deepened and widened by the slow work of glaciers. I studied them until they disappeared beneath the silver wing of the plane, remembering the cold, clear shock of the water, the layers of deepening cold and deepening color, the shallows of the shores giving way to the blueness of the depths, turquoise and indigo and finally midnight blue.

I’d e-mailed my brother that I was coming, and as I rode down the escalator to baggage claim I saw Blake waiting, studying the descending people, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. His face opened in a smile when he saw me, and he waved. In some ways Blake had been hit hardest by our father’s sudden death. He’d done well at the Maritime College, and he’d taken some good jobs on big boats in the Great Lakes, but he kept circling back to The Lake of Dreams for summers, a kind of holding pattern he couldn’t seem to break.

“Hey, Sis,” he said, wrapping one arm around me in a hug. He’s six foot four, and even as tall as I am, I had to stand on my toes to hug him back. “Mom’s at the doctor, or she’d be here, too.”

“She’s doing okay?”

“She’s doing fine. It turned out to be a sprain, after all. She’ll have to wear an Aircast for a couple of weeks.”

My bag circled by on the belt and I pulled it off, remembering the moment, just a day before, when the luggage service had picked it up from my tiny patio in Japan. A world away, it seemed already. I started toward the car rental area, but Blake caught my arm.

“You can use Dad’s old car while you’re here,” he said. “No need to bother with a rental.”

“Really? The Impala?” I asked, as we made our way out the automatic doors to the parking lot. “Has Mom actually started that thing up? It’s been sitting in the barn for years.”

“I know, but it still runs. Mom had it checked out a couple of months ago, thinking she might sell it, I guess. It’s all tuned up and in good shape.”

“I’m surprised she’d think of selling it.”

Blake glanced at me, his eyes—the family eyes, a changeable blue flecked with green, with long dark lashes—both serious and amused. “Things move on, Luce. You’ll see. Lots of changes this time.” He tossed my bag into the back of his truck. “How about you? How’s your life these days? Do you miss Indonesia at all? I think about my trip there all the time. Especially that park we went to—the one with wild-looking trees, and the volcanoes.”

Blake had come to visit me just after I’d met Yoshi, and we’d gone snorkeling on the coral reefs, hiked through the lowland rain forests. It had been Yoshi’s idea, actually. He’d gone with some friends a few weeks earlier and thought Blake and I would enjoy it.

“We had a good time, didn’t we?”

“We sure did. It was steamy hot, though. What’s Japan like? And how’s my good friend Yoshi these days? Things okay? I like him, you know.”

“I know.” They’d hit it off, Yoshi and Blake, drawn together by a love of sailing and all things nautical, as well as by a kind of carefree approach to life that sometimes drove me crazy. They’d both been enamored of rambutans, the hairy red fruits piled high on roadside stands like shaggy Ping-Pong balls, and had pulled over five or six times to buy baskets full, peeling them to reveal the sweet, translucent fruit within. “He’s planning to come, you know. In a couple of weeks.”

“No joke? That’s great, Lucy. I’ll be glad to see him again.”

“Me, too.” I told Blake about my life then, about Yoshi and the geothermal springs, the incessant trembling of the earth, talking in a stream because I was so tired and so happy to see him and so disconcerted, as I always was, to be back in this place I’d known so well, where life had gone on quite steadily without me. Blake filled me in on the businesses that had opened or closed, the classmates who’d had babies or gotten married or divorced, all sorts of local gossip.

We’d left the main roads to climb the low rise between the lakes. The landscape was deeply and comfortingly familiar, the country roads following ancient trails through the lush green hills and fields, broken by white farmhouses, red barns, silos. The Iroquois had lived on this land once, and they had named the lakes: Long Lake, Beautiful Lake, Place of Blessing, Stony Place, Canoe-Landing Place, The Lake of Dreams. After the revolution, their villages were razed and burned to the ground—blue and gold historic signs marking General Sullivan’s brutal campaign were scattered every dozen miles or so. The land had then been allotted to the vanquishing soldiers, who carved farms from the forests, braving the long winters for the brief, exquisite months of summer. Along the shores, summer cottages and rough fishing camps had sprouted, and over the years these had been replaced by ever larger and more ostentatious commuter homes. Still, we drove primarily through farms; from the county line at the top of the rise, we followed the road down a long hill, through green fields that ended at the silvery blue edges of the lake.

“Your old friend Keegan is back, by the way.”

A pulse then, the familiar quickening I always used to feel.

“Is he? I haven’t seen him in years.” This was true, though it didn’t feel true.

“He is. He opened up a studio in the old Johnson glass insulator factory by the outlet. That whole building’s been renovated. Restaurants, galleries. Very trendy.” Blake glanced across the cab at me. “You remember Avery, right?”

“
Your
old friend.”

Blake smiled, nodded. “Right. We’re back together, you know. She’s a chef in a new vegetarian place in the Johnson building, too. Did I ever tell you that when we broke up the second time she went to culinary school? She’s really good.”

By then we had reached the intersection with the lake road, near the entrance to the depot. The lake was deep enough for battleship training, and during World War II hundreds of families had been relocated under eminent domain, their houses and barns razed like the Iroquois villages before them, airstrips and Quonset huts and weapons bunkers rising almost overnight out of the land amid the corn. Usually this stretch was deserted except for the dull green military vehicles that came and went on their mysterious errands, but now dozens of cars were parked on the grassy shoulders, and a small crowd had gathered at the open gates.

“What’s going on?”

“That’s the other big news,” Blake said. “See what happens when you stay away so long? The depot closed, just last week. It was announced three, four months ago.”

I was still thinking of Keegan, the way he used to speed his motorcycle flat out on this stretch, the wind tearing at our sleeves, so it took me a minute to process this news.

“Is that possible? I thought the depot was a fact of life.”

“Yeah, weird, isn’t it? The economy is lousy here anyway, and now it’ll only get worse. This place employed a lot of people.”

I looked south along the shore at the miles of undeveloped land behind the formidable fences. Our mother’s grandparents had been among those evicted when the land was taken and we’d heard stories of that loss all our lives. We’d grown up traveling along the depot’s miles-long fence with its barbed-wire summit, the world within a secret place we could never enter. Blake slowed to maneuver through the unexpected traffic, then stopped, waving over a guy wearing jeans and a jacket with the logo of the local television station.

“Hey, Pete. What’s happening?”

“Hey there, Blake.” Pete was short, with wiry dark hair, and he sprinted across the road, ducking to look in the truck window. “It’s a rally—save the black terns, or something.” He gestured to the south, toward our land, toward the marshes. “One group is trying to get all of this designated as a protected wetlands area. I don’t know what the rest want yet—about six other groups have showed up. You here to watch the fireworks?”

Blake laughed. “Not me. I’m on my way back from the airport. My sister just got in—this is Lucy. Lucy, Pete.”

I nodded hello.

“Developers here, too?” Blake asked.

Pete nodded. “Oh, yeah. All kinds. Plus, the Iroquois want it back, and there’s a coalition to protect a herd of rare white deer that’s living on the land. Some of the descendants of families who got evicted during the war have filed claims, too. You sure you don’t have a dog in this fight, Blake? Everyone else seems to.”

Blake grinned. “Nah. Haven’t even figured out who the dogs are yet.”

Pete laughed. “Plenty to choose from, that’s for sure. Well, good seeing you. Good to meet you, Lucy.”

He slapped the side of the truck as he stepped back. Blake drove slowly through the crowd, picking up speed as the road cleared. Glimpsing the shallow reeds where my father always loved to fish, where herons hid in the rustling grasses, I was pierced suddenly with grief, remembering the long, thin sound of the line flying through mist.

“I used to love it when Dad took us fishing.”

Blake took his right hand from the wheel and gripped mine for a second.

“I know,” he said. “I did, too.”

It was a deep and yet comforting silence that rose between us, one I could have shared with no one else. When we reached the driveway, low-hanging branches of the apple tree scraped the truck roof. The grand house, Italianate, with two wide porches and a cupola, sagged a little, as if it had exhaled a deep breath. Paint was peeling on the trim and the porch. My mother’s moon garden had run completely wild. It had once been a magical place, white crocuses, daffodils, and freesia poking from the mulch, the angel trumpets and night-blooming water lilies carried outside once the air had grown as warm as skin, everything fragrant and luminous, the blossoms floating in the dusk. Now, the trellises were broken and leaning at crazy angles; the moonflower vines cascaded over the fence and tangled in the overgrown roses. The peonies were in full bloom, extravagant and beautiful, and the lavender and lamb’s ears had spread everywhere, straggly in the center, ragged at the edges.

Our mother was sitting on the side steps in the sun, her legs extended and crossed at the ankles, her right arm in a bright green cast cradled across her ribs. I’d come back to visit many times in the decade since I’d left for college, and she’d been to see me in Seattle and Florida. Each time I was struck by how familiar she looked, and how young. Her face was almost unlined, but her hair had turned a silvery gray when she was still in her twenties. She wore it pulled back, silver at her temples and running in a thick rope down her spine. She stood up when we pulled in and came right over to meet the truck.

“Lucy!” She hugged me with her good arm as I got out, her cheek soft against mine, smelling faintly of oregano and mint. I hugged her lightly in return, remembering her broken ribs. She kept her good hand on my arm as we walked. “I’m so glad to see you, honey. Oh, you look so good, so beautiful. Did you get taller? That’s not possible, is it, but you
seem
taller. Come in—are you starving? Thirsty? You must be just exhausted.”

We went through the screened-in porch to the kitchen; I dropped my bag near the door. Everything seemed just the same, the wide windows overlooking the garden, the table pressed against the wall, the turquoise-and-white-checked curtains I’d made in middle school still hanging in the window of the door. My mother filled tall glasses with ice while Blake cut wedges of lemon and poured sun tea from the big glass jar she always kept on the sunny counter in the summer.

“To Lucy,” she said, lifting a glass with her good hand. “Welcome home.”

“Is that Lucy already?” a voice from the dining room called.

Art, my father’s brother, older by a less than a year, came to stand in the doorway. Even as I realized who it was, I was shocked. He had aged, his broad face slackening, and his hair, gone gray at the temples, cut short and bristling. Somehow in this aging he had come to resemble my father so closely it might have been his ghost standing in the doorway. I couldn’t speak. Art didn’t seem to notice, though. “Here’s the wanderer,” he said, stepping into the kitchen to give me a quick, tense hug. “Home at last. How long are you staying?”

“A couple of weeks,” I said.

“Good. You’ll have to come see us—lots of changes afoot.”

“I was telling her.” Blake was leaning against the counter. “There’s a big brouhaha over at the depot today, did you see it?”

Art nodded. “I did. They wanted me to sign a petition. Wetlands—well, damn. I told them that’s prime real estate, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build.”

Blake laughed and agreed, and I glanced at my mother, who was standing with her injured arm across her waist. She caught my eye.

“Art was kind enough to replace the bathroom faucet today,” she said.

This meant:
Don’t make a scene, Lucy, please
.

Undeterred, I was about to tell Art exactly what I thought about losing the wetlands, but then the ancient freezer on the porch shuddered on, forcing me to consider the muttering old house, its demands and complaints, and the kitchen renovation, which had been less than half-finished when my father died, walls torn out, appliances in boxes, dust from the Sheetrock gathered in the corners. Art and my father had never gotten along, but Art had come to finish the kitchen job. Twice in those numb weeks after the funeral I’d walked in and seen my uncle’s legs sprawled out from beneath the sink, tools spread out around him as he struggled with the couplings, and thought it was my father.

“Dad loved those marshes,” was what I finally said.

Art was a big man, with long arms and hands thickened from years of work. He drummed his fingers on the counter, looking in my direction but not quite at me; his gaze traveled past me, to the scene outside the window, to the lake.