Cameo Lake (10 page)

Eleven

T
he first flashes of impotent heat lighting began just as I lay down, more pulsing sheets of light than streaks. I fell instantly asleep and dreamed of cityscapes and the voices of my children. I didn't dream of Sean. Still, my sleep was intermittent, disturbed by the light of another scorching day. By eight o'clock I was up and back at my computer. The kids slept on and I didn't chide them awake.

The humidity was layered over the lake like whipped cream over a pie. I sat in a tank top and running shorts, hunched over my laptop, rereading the last few paragraphs from the night before and trying desperately to get back into that groove where no other world but Jay and Karen's existed. Where the betrayals and disappointments were products of my controlling imagination and not about me.

Morning had not brought with it a lessening of my anger at Sean. The anger was less white hot, but no less real. It reminded me of another anger long ago. If Sean couldn't hold up his end of the bargain in this situation, why did I think he could maintain his end of a bargain now almost eight years old? He had been so contrite, so sorry, so boyish in his belief that he could be forgiven for his infidelity. So assured and yet grateful that I would be like his mother had been when Francis McCarthy cheated on her.

My parents divorced when I was sixteen. Typically, they never
spoke of the cause of their separation, but I knew deep down that Mr. Ramsey was the catalyst. The separation and divorce came suddenly, without warning and without negotiation. I never saw Mr. Ramsey again. It was as if they had needed an excuse to go their separate ways, a minimum of fuss. When Alice discovered Francis cheating, she screamed bloody murder and threw a lamp at him. They stayed married and seemed content.

I looked up from my screen, still exactly as it had been an hour before, and saw Ben paddling north, up the widest part of the lake. I picked up the binoculars and focused on him as he drew the paddle through the still water. Under the scrutiny of my gaze his strokes were graceful, making the motion seem effortless, rhythmic, and strong. He switched sides and paddled on the starboard side of the Old Town, digging deeper into the lake, the motion etching fine muscle against his strong back. Thinking myself entitled to a mean thought, I compared him to Sean. My husband's physical fitness was limited to an occasional business round of golf. In spite of my chiding to be active, he remained sedentary. His natural body type saved him from being overweight, although, as I had noticed earlier in the summer, his lifestyle was beginning to catch up to him. By the time he was Ben's age, he'd pretty much look like his father. Rusty red hair faded to yellow, paunch outlined by expensive suspenders. Good suits to disguise the bandy legs.

I shook myself out of the visual punishment. It wouldn't be that bad. Sean's legs were pretty good. I lifted the binoculars again and watched my neighbor bend the trajectory of the canoe toward the pier belonging to the lakeside general store. The store had only opened for the season just before July Fourth and I found it useful only for Popsicles and the kid's bait. The price of milk was absurd and the owners carried only one kind of bread, the “squishy white bread” which my kids loved and I wouldn't let them have.

I lowered the binoculars and wondered for a moment when I had become such a nosy neighbor. I admitted to myself that I was fascinated with Ben Turner because he let so little of himself out. He was niggardly with details, letting clues drop here and there, obviously
protecting himself from saying out loud that he hurt. I had meant what I said out there in the middle of the night on the middle of the raft. I could be a good listener. I hoped that he understood it wasn't really just nosiness, it was an offer to be the neutral wall he'd offered me.

Lowering my binoculars, it occurred to me that my interest had not been entirely on his story. Thinking of our midnight visit on the raft, the warm breeze on our bare skin, I recalled the sense I felt sitting there, as if we were doing something very naughty. Playing with fire.

“I know you probably have a waiting list a mile long.” I stood in the dank director's cabin of Camp Winetonka.

“Well, yes. We have a repeat clientele which takes precedence over . . .”

I listened with a sinking heart to the slightly supercilious affectation of the camp director, who was also the owner, and, I believe, the cook. She was one-half of a married couple who had opened up their camp thirty-five years ago and never looked back. The place seemed very homey, if a camp can project that. Because it was a day camp, there was only the director's cabin, which was also their summer home. A teepee took center stage in the flat, dusty fire-pit area. Everything was incredibly neat and tidy, and as I waited for her to speak to a counselor, I noticed a boy scooping up a pile of horse manure.

Mrs. Beckman was a round woman, wearing knockoff Boy Scout khakis and a broad-brimmed hat, which she took off and hung on an antler as she ushered me into the office. Under the hat was a head of steel-gray hair. I had never used the description “steel-gray” for any of my characters, deeming the words way too trite. But in this case, steel-gray was the only adjective appropriate. For a minute, I thought the hard curls were a spun aluminum wig.

“Mrs. Beckman, I understand. May I explain to you my problem?”

Mrs. Beckman sat with her hands folded on top of her desk and nodded. “Of course.”

“I came to the lake to write . . .” Oh God, how pretentious did
that
sound. “I'm a novelist.”

“Would I have heard of you?”

“I don't know. I write as Cleo Grayson. I wrote—”

“
Cardinal Rules
!”

“Yes.” I felt that little blush of pleasure which comes with someone-recognizing your work.

“And
Tillotson's Mecca.”

“You know my books?”

At this point, Mrs. Beckman was up and around her desk and melted into a much softer person. Even her curls began to move. “Ms. Grayson, it would be an honor to have your children be our guests. We call them guests, you know.”

At long last, my work was paying off.

“They start tomorrow. Full days, five days a week. Mrs. Beckman was very accommodating.”

I lay on the raft, almost dry now in the intense heat. Ben had just climbed aboard. “Good. I expect that you'll get a lot done while they're learning really useful stuff like lanyard weaving and bow hunting.”

“Stop it. They mostly get to do what they best love, swim and schmooze.”

“Schwim and smooze, huh?”

I laughed at him, and rolled over to dry my backside. “What about you? Getting much done?” I leaned my chin on my fist.

“Enough. I have to go to New York pretty soon with it.”

“New York. God, that seems a million miles away from here.”

“It is when you try to get there via mass transportation.”

“How are you getting there?”

“Renting a car, flying out of Boston.”

“Why are you renting a car?”

“You've seen the Wagoneer? It's got over two hundred thousand miles on it and I can't ask it to do heavy work anymore.”

“I'll drive you down.”

Ben lay down next to me on the hot surface of the redwood raft and placed his chin on his hand. “Nonsense. You've just cleared the slate to work, I'm not going to take any of your time away from you.”

“I'd love to do it . . . just give me a day's notice.” My volunteering had been spontaneous and without forethought, but my disappointment as he refused my offer was genuine. “It isn't that far.”

“Cleo.”

I cut him off. “Look, I get very stale if I don't take a day now and then to do nothing. Or to stimulate my senses. Besides, I need to do some research.” This might have been true. I could make it true. It seemed very important to me just then to have that hour and a half alone with Ben, to see him outside of the context of the lake. To see if the friendship we knew on the raft was mobile.

“Well, it would make my life easier. But that's not why you were put on this earth.”

I wanted to come up with a snappy response, but his words touched something in me. Hadn't I been put on this earth to make Sean's life easier? Keeping daily distractions at a minimum while he focused on building the firm his father had left to him; asking little of him domestically except to take out the trash, a job he'd passed on to his son in recent months. Hadn't I made it incredibly easy for him to dump the kids on me? Easy for him to fool eight years ago, depending as he had been on my blind trust in him. I felt punched. Not by Ben's words, but with the sudden realization that Sean's maneuvering had triggered an alarm bell I had long thought dormant.

“Ben, sometimes I do wonder why I was put on this earth.” My voice carried with it the weight of my bitterness.

Abruptly I stood up to dive off the raft, heedless of the direction I faced. Before I could launch myself, Ben grabbed me by the hand. “Jesus, Cleo, not from that side, please. The rock.” The look on his face startled me with the intensity of his concern. I would almost have said that he was terrified that I would deliberately launch myself off the rock side of the raft.

“I'm sorry, I forgot.” Ben still clung to my hand and I could detect a faint tremble, and I knew that I had given him a shock by my
thoughtless action. I squatted down next to him. “I won't make that mistake again.”

“You think I overreacted.” He let go of my wrist and stood up. “It's better than not reacting at all.” He dived in, swimming toward his shore with an emphatic reach. Once on shore, he didn't look back at me, just scooped his towel off the ground and went into his cabin.

I touched my wrist where he had gripped it. There would be bruising—not an effect of violence, but of caring.

Twelve

S
even-thirty. Some inner time devil made me look at the clock just as it read seven-thirty. I should be in the car making the evening phone call but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd go up in a few minutes. A few minutes either way wouldn't make any difference. Sean's mother had always preached, never go to bed angry, but I had. Nursing bitterness like a warm beer.

Mercifully, my train of thought was derailed by the kids pounding up the back steps and into the kitchen. They had been a little reluctant to go to camp, chafing against regimentation after these three weeks of unbridled activity. However, once Lily heard that they had horses and Tim realized he knew a boy from the East Side who attended, they were aboard on the concept and already wearing the Camp Winetonka T-shirts I'd brought back after my interview with Mrs. Beckman. In honor of the perfect solution to my work dilemma, I promised myself a work-free weekend, all play, as much for myself as for them. Tomorrow we were going blueberry picking and canoeing. I thought about asking Ben to join us, but didn't. I needed family time, and maybe Ben and I needed a little space between us.

Already it seemed as though the days were getting shorter. The long twilights of June were gone and evening settled in by eight o'clock. The heat continued oppressive, but the kids didn't seem to
notice. We played a slightly moldy game of Monopoly, the fake money sticking together with the humidity. By ten, Lily and Tim were sound asleep and I was left alone with nothing to distract my thoughts.

I got in the car and drove up to the top the drive. Sean had picked up the phone on the first ring, not commenting on the lateness of my call. “I'm all set for next Friday. I'll be up around nine.” He was quick to tell me this, quick to fend off unpleasantness. He was clearly relieved that I had found a palatable solution to having the kids with me. “Cleo, that's perfect. We should have done something like that from the start.”

“Right.”

“You have to admit that Cameo Lake is a far better place to hang out in the summer than Providence.” There it was, the justification for his actions. Press on the guilt, smooth it along like peanut butter.

“Of course it is, Sean. Don't you think I felt a little selfish being here without all of you?”

“You never said that.”

“No, all I said was that I needed uncomplicated time to finish my work.”

“Maybe this isn't uncomplicated but it is more fair to the kids.”

“And to you, Sean?”

He either missed or deliberately ignored my meaning, jumping off the subject with a bound. “I'll be up next week. Maybe we can rent a boat and sail around.”

I sat on the porch and stared across to Ben's light, listening for his music, but there was none.

I woke at dawn, drenched in sleeper's sweat. I got up to pee and once up couldn't bear lying down again on those damp, sticky sheets. The night had been untempered by any breeze, the air at once still and heavy. I pulled on yesterday's shorts and tank and tied my running
shoes on without socks. I took a long time stretching, listening to the variety of birdcalls. Stretching my back, hands against my waist, I looked up as a hawk launched itself from a pine tree. I thought that I should stop at the library and get a bird book so that I could begin identifying some of these creatures more exotic than the robin and jay I knew.

Putting a moderately paced tape in my Discman, I set off. No sense courting an early-morning heatstroke. I ran up through the woods along the soft path strewn with pine needles and cones. I was used to the slippery surface by now and knew how to use it. I ran quietly past the cabins with their still sleeping occupants, down to the imported-sand beach, between the rows of up-ended canoes, and on, back up through the woods, higher and higher into the deeper part of the forest. The hardest part of the run followed as I moved past a blue trail marker that served as my halfway point. Now I traveled along the ridgeline of the hills, darker and slightly cooler than any other part of the run. Here there was a little breeze and I felt it against my skin. I was tiring by now, the incline unforgiving in this weather. My pace didn't keep up with the music and the conflicting rhythms made me a little crazy. I yanked off the earphones and allowed myself to start walking. Breathless in the thick air, I bent over, a sudden stitch punching me in the side.

I leaned back against the rough surface of a pine tree, staring through a break in the tree line toward Ben's island. I touched the place on my wrist where he had held me and looked to see if I had bruised. There was no mark, but the intensity of his grip lingered in memory. He had not frightened me. On the contrary, Ben's fear for me had worked loose feelings I had not looked for in such a casual friendship. It seemed as though I was already looking to Ben for support I should have looked to my husband for. In a strange way, as much as I felt Ben was protecting himself against revealing too much, he was open to knowing me. If I had to put a word to it, he was kind. Dare I say that at this point, in such a short acquaintance, we were becoming necessary to each other, in the way certain touchstones are necessary? Was I so lonely in my life I needed Ben? Was he so lonely
he needed me? I touched my wrist and told myself I was reading too much into an act of ordinary merit. Except that the look on Ben's face was extraordinary, hardened with alarm, then softening to relief. He was right, I had thought he'd overreacted, and the look on his face did nothing to explain why.

With the thought of Ben's hand on my wrist, I was thrust back into remembering why I had stood up to dive in the first place. The tiny bell tolling at a distance which spoke of danger. I listened to it as I began to walk back to the cabin. I replayed my recent conversations with Sean and I came up with nothing more sinister than his backing out of our deal, which I should have anticipated. There was nothing to speak of another infidelity except a trip to the zoo and more than one late night. Nothing except my intuitive mistrust. That was something I had learned, not something which came naturally to me. I hadn't been the least suspicious that summer in Narragansett. I was blindsided. But I had forgiven Sean, thus I was muzzled against speaking unsubstantiated doubts. We'd gone the counselor route, delved into the issues, made promises. He would behave and I would forgive. He still flirted, but I tolerated that. To the best of my knowledge, Sean had been faithful ever since.

I drove a spike into the tolling bell.

The kids were still asleep and I left them alone. I put on a pot of coffee and took a quick lukewarm shower. Selfishly, I was grateful for the gift of an hour I could work while the kids slept. I wasn't going to work at all on this Saturday, I had planned on a free weekend, but I needed to do it. I needed the power that comes of being able to manipulate and control events. Entering the world of Jay and Karen calmed me down, gave me an hour's respite from my own reality.