The Lake of Dreams (6 page)

It was faintly light still, not quite nine o’clock. I lay down without undressing, punched speed dial, and closed my eyes. Yoshi picked up on the second ring, his voice low and smooth, like river stones.

“Moshi Moshi.”

“It’s me. I got here just fine.”

“Good. I miss you, Lucy.”

“Me, too. What are you doing?”

“Walking to catch the train. It’s raining a little.”

I imagined the lane, the river he’d cross before the station. If I were there I’d be lying in bed watching rain drip from the copper eaves, planning my vocabulary lesson for the day.

“I haven’t set up the Webcam. Maybe tomorrow. My mother isn’t very high-tech.”

“How is she?”

“Okay. Fine, really. But the house is very quiet.”

“You see. I was right.”

“I do see. She’s glad you’re coming. She wants to meet you.”

“Just a few days. I want to meet her, too. How’s your brother?”

“He’s good. He says hello. He’s having a baby.”

“What?”

“It’s true. Top secret, though. I’ll be an aunt in October.”

“Congratulations. I didn’t know he’d gotten married.”

“He didn’t. Not yet. I mean, I don’t know if he will. It’s all a surprise.”

“Well, tell him hello.”

“I will. Have there been more earthquakes?”

“A few, not so bad.”

“Hey. Did you turn off the gas?”

He laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I turned off the gas. Look, I’m almost at the station now, I have to go.”

“Okay. Call me tonight?”

“I will. Send me an e-mail if you can, okay?”

“I will.”

“Love you.”

He really must miss me,
I thought, startled—Yoshi wasn’t much for endearments, especially on the phone. “Love you, too,” I said.

I pressed the button and there was only space, all the miles between us filling up with darkness. I put the phone on the bedside table without opening my eyes, remembering the little concrete house we’d shared in Indonesia, its garden filled with mango trees and lush, swiftly growing plants I couldn’t name. We always met there when we got home from work, and shared a drink as the moon rose, listening to the rustling sounds of lizards in the tall grass. I wanted to reach out now and catch Yoshi’s hand in mine, to walk with him back into that tranquil life. But he was in the middle of a day and ten thousand miles away. I pulled the blankets up and fell asleep to the sounds and scent of water.

The dream began as a long and wearying journey in the rain, full of airports and frustrations, missed connections and clocks ticking, perilous deadlines. I was being followed, through corridors, first, and then through a forest. My suitcase, old-fashioned and made of leather, hit a tree and broke open, spilling everything. In panic, I started crawling through the foliage, the earth damp and loamy. I searched wildly through the velvet leaves of cyclamen, blossoms flaring around me like birds in startled flight. What I’d lost was important, somehow vital to me, life or death, and even though footsteps and voices were approaching, growing louder and more menacing, I couldn’t stop, pushing leaves away and digging in the earth with my hands, until the voices were upon me.

I woke, so frightened and disoriented I could not move.

Gradually, slowly, I remembered where I was. Still, I had to take several deep breaths before I could swing my legs over the edge of the bed and stand up. In the glaring light of the bathroom I splashed water on my face, studying my pale reflection in the mirror. My eyes, like Blake’s, were large and blue, but shadowed with fatigue.

The house was still, the closed doors in the hallway like blank faces. I unlocked them all. Everything was caught in time, as if the world had stopped the summer after my father died. In my parents’ room, the bed was neatly made. Blake’s room still had its posters of the moon and the earth, our luminous blue-green planet floating in the interstellar space of his walls. In the guest room, packed boxes were stacked high against one wall, so perhaps my mother had been up here after all, starting to go through the old things. When I opened the door to the cupola, stale, hot air spilled down the narrow steps, as if nothing had stirred in it for decades. It was like a tower in a fairy tale, where the princess pricked her finger, or spun straw into gold, or lowered her thick hair to her lover below.

No breath in that tiny rooftop room. Here, too, I opened all the windows, sweeping away the dead flies that had collected in the sills. When the room was full of the lapping sounds of the lake, full of wind, I sat on one of the window seats, breathing in the fresh air. The lake was calm and smooth, almost opalescent. I watched dawn come, the sun catching on the ring of keys I’d left splayed out against the painted seat: new keys and ancient keys, formed for locks that no longer existed, kept because they were beautifully fashioned, or because no one could remember what they opened and thought they might be needed someday.

My father’s lock-picking tools hung from the ring, too, folded like a Swiss Army knife into a compact metal case. They were a kind of inheritance, passed down from my great-grandfather, Joseph Arthur Jarrett. I opened them, wondering when my father had used them last. As a girl I would sometimes go to his office at Dream Master after school and do my homework in the corner, happy to be near the swirl of conversation and the scents of metal and sawdust, customers coming in for nails or tools or chicken wire or a special order of tile. Sometimes they came with their secrets, too, stored in metal boxes from which the keys had been lost. My father’s expression was always intent and focused as he worked, his scalp visible beneath his cropped hair in the harsh light, his face breaking open in satisfaction, finally, as the tumblers clicked and fell into place. He charged five dollars for this service, ten dollars for house calls, and people paid happily, so eager that they almost never waited to open their boxes in private: Bonds or jewelry or wills; a few times, nothing at all.

My father had taught me what he knew, letting me sit in his chair and press my ear against the smooth wood or metal of a shuttered box on his desk, instructing me how to listen to the whisper of metal shifting, something like a wave, smooth and uninterrupted, until suddenly the frequency changed slightly, became weighted, suspenseful. What was or wasn’t inside never really mattered; it was the whisper of metal on metal that he wanted me to hear. The first time I succeeded, the box springing open beneath my touch, he’d let out a cheer of delight and lifted me up in a hug.

Beneath the lip of the window seat, almost hidden beneath layers of paint, but visible now that the cushions had been stripped away, was a little keyhole. I slid down and squatted on the floor amid the dust motes and the carcasses of flies, slipping a thin metal tool into the keyhole and pressing my ear against the wood. I closed my eyes, imagining my father on those long ago days, making the same motions I was making now, listening in this same intent way. When the last tumbler clicked into place I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, feeling a relief so intense it was almost like joy, and pulled open the cupboard door.

The space seemed empty. In the soft glow of sunrise, I reached inside and felt along the floor, worrying about dead mice or, worse, finding nothing but grit. Then my wrist grazed a stack of papers and I pulled it out. Dust streaked my hands and permeated the papers. At first I felt a rush of excitement; surely, if someone had taken such pains to hide these, they must be important. Yet aside from the mild scholarly interest they immediately evoked—they were mostly flyers and little magazines that seemed to have been written by or for suffragettes—the pamphlets were disappointing, more like insulation than a true find. I closed the cupboard, the lock clicking back into place, and carried the keys and dusty papers back to my room. I lay down on the bed, meaning to read through them, but I got caught in the mysterious tides of jet lag, and fell asleep instead.

Chapter 3

MY MOTHER WAS ON THE PATIO WHEN I GOT UP, WEARING A dark purple jogging suit and drinking coffee; her silver hair was pulled back in a purple scrunchie. She had moved the vase of glads with their supple pink throats to a shady spot beside a low stone wall. The lake was as smooth as glass, silvery blue. It felt good to be outside, in so much space and fresh air after the density and bustle of Tokyo.

She pushed the list she was making out of the way and poured me some coffee from the thermal pot, the rich scent drifting over the table.

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Thanks.” I took the cup, sipped—it was strong, very hot. “That’s good. Thanks. I slept okay, I guess. I was up a lot—jet lag.”

“No wonder. Such a long trip.”

“Not so long. At least I didn’t have to walk.” She laughed, and I missed Yoshi. “What’s that—a grocery list?”

“It is indeed. You’re just in time for the solstice. It’s the day after tomorrow—everyone will want to see you.”

“Oh, the solstice party—that’s right.” All the years I was growing up, my parents had star parties whenever there was a minor celestial event—an eclipse of the moon, an alignment of planets, Venus drawing close. The adults brought telescopes and had bonfires on the shore and we children ran until we were so tired we fell asleep on blankets on the grass or curled up in the hammock. I remember being carried inside from those parties, my father’s arms so strong around me, falling into the softness of the bed, sleepy and safe, into clean sheets that smelled like wind. “I forgot about the solstice.”

“Then you’ve been away too much,” she said.

“So you say,” I replied. “Every time I come to visit.”

“Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” she said, and finished her coffee. “Sweetie, I need to go to work today. I wish I didn’t, but I’ve missed so much time with the accident. So here—take these.” She slid a set of keys across the glass-topped table, the bones of her hand moving visibly beneath her skin. “The Impala,” she explained, though I knew. “It’s all tuned up, ready to go. There’s an extra house key, too.”

“Thanks.” I remembered my father taking us for drives on Sunday afternoons, hours when we’d meander with no particular destination, taking in the bursting forth of spring or the trees with their autumn leaves, golden or orange or fiery red against the deep blue sky. “Blake says you might sell it?”

She nodded. “Probably. It’s hard to let it go, but it’s time. No one in the family wants it, and it’s silly to have it just sitting out in the barn.” She paused before she spoke again. “I’m thinking of selling the house, too.”

I didn’t answer right away. “Seriously?”

“I know—it must be shocking. For a long time I couldn’t think about it. Your dad is so much a part of this place. And what you said yesterday is true, he loved the lake, and the marsh, especially. So it’s hard. But look at this place, honey. I’ve become pretty handy over the years, believe it or not, but I still can’t keep up with it all. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while, but it was talking about the gardens in the ER—how beautiful they’d once been—that finally made me realize how far gone things really are. You see something every day, and you don’t notice. But when you really look”—she gestured to the tangled jungle of vines and weeds and flowers, the peeling paint on the porch—“I have to admit that it’s beyond what I can handle.”

“But wouldn’t you miss living here?”

“Of course I will. But I won’t miss the responsibility. Or the taxes! Anyway, I’m just starting to think about it, honey. No need to panic.” She smiled. “It would probably take a couple of years just to clear the place out.”

“It might take a couple of decades, actually,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “There’s so much stuff everywhere.”

“Well, you don’t want it,” she said thoughtfully, and I realized she really was quite serious about selling. “You’re off gallivanting around the world, and Blake can hardly leave his boat for dry land, much less take on the upkeep of this place. Still, it’ll be the end of an era.”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds, trying to sort out how I felt. Everything my mother said made sense, and yet I hated the thought of someone else living in these rooms, even though it was true that I didn’t want to live in them myself.

“The end of several eras,” I mused, thinking of Blake and Avery with a baby on the way, which I could not mention. “Oh, speaking of old stuff, I found something last night that I want to show you.”

Upstairs, I collected the pile of dusty pamphlets I’d left on the table by the bed. When I came back my mother had been deadheading the flowers, and spent blossoms were piled on the stone wall; she was talking on her cell phone, laughing.

“They’re beautiful
.
They’re right here in front of me. Thanks so much—so thoughtful. And your stitches? Oh, good. Tonight? I’m sorry, I can’t. My daughter just got in and I don’t know our plans
.
”

I splayed the papers and pamphlets out against the glass table, trying to pretend I wasn’t listening in on my mother’s conversation. In full daylight they looked older and more worn, the paper brittle, the edges stained, the dust of decades woven into the fibers.