Everything (7 page)

The last clear hot day of summer
they took off from the state park at Big Arm in Howard’s speedboat and headed out toward Wild Horse Island, June, Howard and Layla. It was just after Labor Day, and the big fancy lake houses that lined the shores like railway stations built for fun were all deserted except for one or two: an older couple reading in the sun, a college girl tanning on the end of her dock, lizardly.

The lake stretched twenty miles north from here, blue as an eye, ending in the white Swan Range. Last week’s rain had fallen as snow in the mountains. It felt like summer down on the lake—it
was
summer—but up in the mountains the seasons were turning. It was a Tuesday and a very pleasant sense of playing hooky for all of them, a stolen day while the rest of the world was at work. In fact, Howard was working—a cabin he needed to take a look at out on the island—and
neither of the women had anywhere in particular to be. June had rotated through her normal weekend shift and UW didn’t start for another two weeks.

June had nowhere else to be, but still that delicious taste of a stolen day. Howard had traded his Western hat for a baseball cap that said King Ropes Sheridan Wyoming; he stood behind the wheel in bare feet, cleaving the breeze with the prow of his mustache, going much faster than was necessary. The cool lake water whipped into spray and misted the women where they sat in the stern, lounging with Diet Cokes. So many gifts, June thought: this day, this sunlight. Days when living felt easy. She didn’t get too many of them, but she knew—when they pushed off from the dock with a full tank of gas and a loaded cooler, nowhere to go on purpose and her cell phone locked safely in her car—that this would be an easy day.

Even Layla, Layla was a gift. Without Layla, it would have just been June and Howard, and she wasn’t ready for that yet. If she was ever going to be ready for that. That mysterious third party, she thought. Yesterday she had said she would come along and then felt, all day, a hot little ball of dread in her belly. A half-dozen times she had picked up the phone to tell him she couldn’t come after all but she couldn’t think of the right lie. She was no good at lying, anyway. Then Layla had come by, without warning or explanation. She said she was out for a drive and saw her light on. June thought this sounded unlikely. Her house was eleven miles out of town and on the opposite side of the valley. But whatever she came for, June would never know. She was glad to see her. They drank a glass of wine on the porch and listened to the quiet night, talking about nothing. Maybe that was it, June thought. Maybe all the girl needed was another heart beating next to hers, a little breath and conversation.

* * *

At the end of the night, without asking Howard first, she invited Layla to the lake.

Howard seemed surprised but not upset to find this out. She couldn’t read him worth a damn.

That mysterious third party, June thought. Someone to perform for, someone to referee. The grind of small mistake on small mistake. It was so hard to know what to say! Like coming in halfway through a movie, she thought, trying to figure out what came before. Howard had brought wine coolers and hard lemonade for them but nonalcoholic beer for himself, which meant—what? June realized at the sight of the O’Doul’s that she had never seen Howard take a drink, yet she was sure or almost sure (why?) that he had had a drink or two along the way. But having Layla on board meant that the question couldn’t be raised or even noticed; it was all smooth sailing and small talk and easy.

Howard suddenly cut the engine to trolling speed and the front of the boat lurched down into the water. He stopped in front of a soaring glass-fronted house on the shore, pointed toward the sky like praying hands.

See that place?

The women nodded.

Coach of the Detroit Pistons, Howard said. Never seen a single person there.

Let’s go burn it down, said Layla.

* * *

Yes, let’s, said June.

Howard kicked the boat up to planing speed again. None of that, he shouted. We’re in favor of real estate on this boat.

June said nothing but she wasn’t so sure—all these millions of dollars, all these empty, quiet houses. The only places that seemed occupied were the old mom-and-pop operations, little leftover cabins with canoes on the lawn, but these were dwarfed and outnumbered by the new money places, soaring glass and big speedboats up on covered shore stations. A quick fierce nostalgia lying there in the sun—her and Taylor and sometimes RL and Dawn would rent a place for a week in the summer, smoking pot on the dock and watching the shooting stars …. It seemed like minutes ago; it seemed impossible that the baby girl Dawn had brought bundled to June’s wedding was across from her now, long legged and pretty. Taylor, she thought, shooting across the water in another man’s boat. Taylor. Even the world they lived in was gone, the little rat shacks and falling-down cottages with names like “Our Back Achers.”

She shouldn’t be here. She knew it suddenly but completely. A betrayal.

Then pulled herself back in. A trap, a comfort, a sameness in that sadness. It was not her friend, she reminded herself. Don’t make a friend of your disease.

She looked up to find Layla grinning at her.

You looked like you were having an argument with yourself, she said.

* * *

I was, said June, and grinned right back. You want to go swimming? You think it’s warm enough?

I am, Layla said. And that water’s not going to change much. Captain Howard!

Yes, ma’am.

See if you can find us a swimming spot.

Howard shut the engine off then and there, and the boat eased back down into its own wake, white frothy water surging past them. He said, As good a spot as any.

A little yang, June thought. An excess of masculine energy. Then before she could think about it and stop herself, she stood and stripped her T-shirt off in one motion and dove.

The water was instant cold, enveloping. As soon as her fingers touched the cold water, her body screamed
mistake
and tried to levitate but could not stop itself and plunged deep into the even colder depths. Somewhere she heard another splash and knew it must be Layla diving after her. June swam to the surface and shook the water out of her eyes, and there was Layla and they both started to shriek from the cold. Like little kids in a public pool they screamed and shrieked again, loud and high-pitched and piercing, pure yin.

They shrieked to please themselves and they did. When June looked up, though, she saw Howard Emerson looking down from
the stern like a stern judge, a hanging judge thought June, and turned to Layla and screamed again, louder. Layla screamed back. They paid no attention to Howard. I love this girl, thought June.

Then a cannonball splash and Howard was in the water with them, or mostly in the water; his cap set firmly on his head and his mustache dry and bushy. He had taken his tiny sunglasses off at least. He blinked at them from blank face to blank face (June had tried his glasses on once in secret and his eyes really were that close to useless) and for once looked powerless, confused. June liked him then. Stripped of his manly shell, that chitinous outer layer, he looked momentarily approachable. He could be like that always. He could be lovable.

This reminds me of New Zealand, he said, and the bubble burst. He was right again. He was right always.

But why was June such a fussbudget? She didn’t need to be.

Like porcupines, she thought. Very, very carefully.

When were you in New Zealand? she asked brightly.

A while back, he said. A few decades ago. Back when it was still a long way off the beaten trail.

And what were you doing there?

Ah, he said, letting his legs float up in front of him, paddling idly with his hands to stay afloat. He said, I had this other life. I was kind of a surf bum.

* * *

Well, that sounds interesting, she said; though really all this dressing up, these other lives made her nervous. Cowpoke, surfer, Indian chief, she thought. It was like dating the Village People.

The blue water and the mountains rising right up out of it, Howard said. Snow on the mountains. Of course, it was completely different there but it looked quite similarly.

Similar, she thought. Not
similarly
. But she didn’t say anything.

This water is
cold
, she said.

You get used to it.

If you don’t freeze and die first.

Nobody’s going to die, said Howard. You can’t die from this. If it was a little colder, maybe. I fell out of a boat once and into Puget Sound, and it was a close shave whether they could get the boat turned around in time.

Was this a little boat?

No, it was quite a good size, thirty feet or more.

How do you fall out of a boat? There’s nothing to it, really.

The thing not said, she thought. It had to be drinking. Fighting. Something he didn’t want to talk about yet, some chapter closed and hopefully long gone. She lay back in the water and
looked up at the deep blue sky, scatters and rags of high cloud. The top six or eight inches of water were nearly warm from the sun. What did she want from him?

That was a difficult time in my life, he said. Seattle was.

Just hearing him say this made June realize that she didn’t know where Layla was. He would never say a thing like this within her earshot. She looked around and didn’t see her anywhere.

Where’d she go? June said.

The girl?

The girl, June said. Where’d she go?

Howard whipped himself upright and scanned the horizon with his blurry eyes. June wheeled around in watery panic herself and then, by accident, saw Layla’s seal head surface a hundred feet away, swimming for China. Slippery porpoise, she thought. Pretty girl.

She’s there, June said.

Where?

Way over there, June said, and pointed, and Howard pointed his head in that direction, though he would never see her. June was touched by this, his willingness to protect. Manly men and difficult girls, she thought. Where the hell was Layla going?

And why was everybody going crazy all at once? Couldn’t Layla just wait her turn?

* * *

Layla! she cried. Layla, where are you going?

But her voice was lost immediately in the vastness of the water, dying out in a few feet. June felt small and the water felt cold.

We’d better go get her, June said.

I still don’t see her, Howard said.

Well, she’s out there, June said. We’d better go get her.

What’s she doing?

Going cuckoo, June said. I don’t know.

They clambered aboard via the swim ladder and there ensued a brief moment of truth: Howard’s considerable-looking dingus under his wet bathing suit, June’s fat and sag under his gaze. Oh, the body, June thought. He was small without his clothes and white as a Scotsman where the sun didn’t strike him, on his upper arms and back and belly and legs, but he had a firm look and he was not at all fat. June knew that she looked all right for who she was. But she had seen herself too often in the mirrors of the gym to like being looked at. She was good for her age but it was not a good age.

Howard was a gentleman, though, tucked his eyes away and pulled a T-shirt on and fired up the boat and chased off after Layla, who he could see now, with his little sunglasses on.

What is that girl up to? he said, more to himself than to June.

* * *

She didn’t have an answer. Briefly considered pulling a shirt on over her wet suit but that felt like a coward’s way. This is me, she thought, a little shopworn, a little used. This is me.

They caught up to Layla, and Howard cut the engine.

June asked, What are you doing?

Layla dog-paddled for a moment and then said, Swimming. I felt like swimming.

I could see that. Do you want to come aboard?

I don’t think so. Is that all right?

June looked at Howard, asking. He said, We’ve got all day.

All right then, Layla said, and dove under the water and came up into the crawl, a long-limbed easy movement without hurry or splash, and started for—where? She was pointed at Bigfork, a dozen miles away. She headed for the big empty middle of the lake, out of sight of houses, only the hills and mountains and water. After a few minutes Howard fired the boat up again and they followed her at trolling speed, staying well back, letting Layla alone as she swam into the empty heart of the lake. The quiet, when they shut the boat off again, was immediate, enveloping. It was a Tuesday, and everybody else was at work, and the three of them were alone on the lake.

Rainy late September
, four o’clock, everybody in a hurry and nobody getting anywhere, brake lights reflected in the glossy streets, RL driving the big Ford pickup and Betsy next to him on the bench seat with her baskets and bundles.

I am shit scared, Betsy said.

I understand, RL said.

No, you don’t.

No, he said. I don’t.

After a minute she said, I think they just want me in there tonight to keep an eye on me. Nothing’s even going to happen till
tomorrow morning. I think they just want to make sure I don’t eat anything.

After a minute more she said, I think they just want to make sure I’m not enjoying myself.

You want to get a beer? We’ve got time, I think. Glass of wine?

I don’t want to be late.

Late for what? You said it yourself.

Oh, she said. Oh, OK. Just someplace without smoking.

Because smoking is bad for you.

That business will kill you, Betsy said.

You can’t smoke anyplace anymore, RL said. Those days are over. You don’t get out much, do you?

I don’t want to, Robert. If it was up to me, I’d just crawl back into my little hole, you know, lead my little life till it was over. I like my own bed and my own cooking.

Sitting across from him at a table next to the window of the Depot Bar, the rain light washing over her face and a tall brown glass of ale on the table in front of her, Betsy said, You can still smoke in Liquid Louie’s.