Bob at the Plaza (4 page)

Chapter 4

The Old Lady and the Lake

Early March

Here’s how I knew spring had finally arrived at the lake: instead of snow every day, I now had rain every day. And the mud that went with it. Mildness softened the air now and then and winds often whipped the waves into whitecaps. Mists rose off the melting snow. Since the clouds skimmed low over the lake, I still lived in a land of fogs, but with an occasional hint of warmth now.

With all the rain, and the snow melt, the level of the lake started to rise. At first I didn’t worry too much. My house had stood there for twenty years, after all, and it hadn’t been swallowed by the lake yet. Still, one morning while looking out the window evaluating the lake’s height, I made a mental note to keep my eye on the situation and maybe ask Stan for his advice. If anything, living out on that narrow peninsula, he risked more damage from high water than I did. I noticed the water covering up more inches of his property every day.

After breakfast, I went upstairs to resume working on my taxes, double-checking every entry I’d made the night before. After two hours hunched over my computer I had to believe the results: not only would I get a refund, but my check would be large enough to cover a nice, frivolous Easter weekend in Manhattan! “Woo-hoo!” I yelled, waving my arms in the air in front of my computer screen.

I printed out all my tax forms. I’d had no idea the Herculean tasks of carrying two mortgages for a while and then running a home-based business would ever have paid off like this! Now I could
really
enjoy myself in New York!

I phoned David to tell him the good news. “Do you have plans for dinner tonight?” popped out of my mouth when he picked up the phone.

“Who is this? Mona? Mary Lou?” he responded.

“Very funny, smart guy. I have some great news!”

“What’s up?”

“I just finished my taxes and for once I’m going to get a refund. A decent one, enough to pay for my trip to Manhattan. Hurray!” I yelled. “How about I treat you to dinner tonight so we can celebrate?”

“I’d love it. Can we make it tomorrow though? I told Alex I’d help him tonight. We’re going to work late and finish bottling some of his riesling. I don’t want to let him down.”

“How late will you be there?”

“I think we’ll be working at least until seven. That’s what time we wrapped up when we bottled the semi-drys. Besides, Alex has some sort of Chamber of Commerce meeting tonight so I’m pretty sure we’ll be done by then.”

I paused, silently reviewing timetables and logistics, then said, “That doesn’t seem too late. I could meet you at the winery and we could take separate cars to a restaurant in Southport. How about that new Greek place? People say good things about it.”

“Greek? Interesting choice. I haven’t had Greek food since I left Rochester. I used to love it. Sure, why don’t you come to the winery about seven?  We’ll probably be wrapping up by then, and I can introduce you to Alex.” He continued with enthusiasm, “And congrats, sweetie! Look how, after all these weeks of worrying and fretting about paying for that trip, the answer just falls into your lap.”

Glancing at the mounds of paper decorating my desk, I commented in a wry tone, “I don’t know about the ‘falling into my lap’ part, but you’re right, it is strange how the money just appeared. Weird how that works sometimes, isn’t it? I’m never lucky with money, and now this just happens. I will never understand how the Universe works.”

“Nobody does, but it almost seems as if you’re supposed to take that trip to the city, doesn’t it? ‘Meant to be,’ as they say.”

“I suppose you could look at it that way, couldn’t you?” I said, still studying the piles of paper littering the room.

I heard someone yell David’s name in the background, and he said, “Let’s talk about this more tonight. I’ve got to get back to work, but I’ll look forward to our date at seven. Later, sweetie.”

‘Sweetie’ again. I could get to like this. I put down the phone and gathered my tax documentation to label it and stash it away. Even though I’d submitted my tax returns electronically, I wanted clean and straight-forward paper trails in case—God forbid!—I ever got audited.

Lately I felt like I’d specialized in documentation: three tax filings and two enormous America Wins! entries. Other authors, like Ernest Hemingway, write about dramatic war-torn lives full of drinking and bullfights. I might be perfecting the drinking part, but replace bullfights with paperwork, and battling bankruptcy instead of Franco, and you’ve got my writing métier. No legacy of children will remain after me, but I’ll sure bequest a boatload of paperwork to mark my place in this world.

After sorting, stapling, labeling, and filing, I stood for a moment with empty hands. Of course, images of Bob drifted into my mind. Why did I always think of him when I was at loose ends, or between projects? I tried to shove the thoughts away, and went outside to monitor the ever-rising lake instead. I noticed Stan in thigh-high rubber boots, wading in the water around his house, and hurling large rocks from the shallows onto his lakefront. He must have been working for a while, since I counted at least twenty substantial rocks littering his beach. After watching him for a few minutes, I put on my coat and boots and slogged along the shore to his place. Stan saw me coming and waved.

“Can I ask a dumb question?” I said when we got within talking distance, me on dry land and Stan ankle-deep in churning water.

“Sure, if you don’t mind that I keep working while we talk. If I stop moving I’ll freeze, and I need to get more done today,” Stan answered.

“Well, that’s kind of my question. What are you doing out there?”

Stan stretched down and shimmied his rubber-gloved hands into the silt around a football-sized rock. After heaving it onto the lakefront twenty feet to my right, he observed, “You’ve seen how the water’s getting higher, right?”

“Sure.”

“If the water keeps rising, and with all of the rain and melt-off we’re getting, it will, it’s going to wash off all the shale on my lakefront and I’ll be in big trouble. But if I can cover up some of the shale with these big rocks, these rocks will protect my shoreline and I might not get flooded.” 

I looked around, noticing the composition of Stan’s beachfront for the first time. Tiny bits of shale made up the property, with no grass or ground cover to hold the pebbles in place.  A wall built at the edge of his land comprised of the substantial rocks he dug out of the water could form a breakfront that would absorb most of the destructive pounding of the waves if the water rose. A bitter, frigid task.

I tried to imagine another way to accomplish the same results without spending hours standing in churning, icy waves. “Couldn’t you buy something, maybe like cement blocks, to build a breakfront?”

“Too much money when I can get these rocks for free,” Stan responded, moving constantly through the waves while scanning for buried stones. “Besides, you can’t build permanent structures in the lake without a permit.”

“But won’t you run out of big rocks eventually, after you pull them all out?”

“Nah, the lake always pushes things around, and the currents keep uncovering new rocks. You just have to grab them when you see them, before they get covered with shale again.”

Reluctantly, I shifted my gaze from Stan’s lakefront, with its stub of a sturdy protective wall, to my own beach with, metaphorically speaking, its naked lakefront butt hanging out and getting spanked by the waves. “So, Stan, do you think I should, uhhh, do something to build up my own lakefront?” I asked, dreading his answer.

Stan paused his slow rock-searching shuffle through the shallows, straightened up, studied my beach situation for a moment, then said, “It wouldn’t hurt.”

Ahhhhh, nuts. I was afraid of that. Another one of those homeowner situations where everybody except me knew what to do, and how to do it. Some people are meant to live in apartments or condos, hiring professionals to maintain their homes, and I freely admit I am one of those people. What I know about fixing lakefronts, roofs, heating systems, retaining walls, gutters and holding tanks could fit onto the head of a pin, with room left over for a thousand dancing angels. I’d never seen an ad in the yellow pages for ‘Lakefront Builder-Uppers’ either, so I was pretty sure I was on my own.

“Hey, Stan?” I broke out of my incompetent-homeowner reverie.

“Yeah?’

“So all you have to do is pile up the rocks into a wall?”

Stan looked at me, deadpan. “You don’t think that’s enough? Standing in a freezing lake and heaving a ton of rocks into a wall?”

“No, no, no. That’s not what I mean,” I back-pedaled frantically. “I mean, after you pile the rocks into a wall, are you done?”

“Nope. Then you shovel shale behind the rocks to make your lakefront higher. Or reinforce it with sandbags. If you’re lucky your wall will be higher than the water when the water rises.”

I’m no engineer, mind you. But I didn’t need to be an engineer to know this project would require a lot of work. Hard, physical, dirty, cold, wet work. Especially if you remember that I’m a woman of a certain age with a predilection for books, cookies, and wine, who avoids strenuous exercise whenever possible. A slightly out-of-shape woman with no extra money in the bank to pay a ‘lakefront builder upper’ repair person even if I could find one in the yellow pages. I could see the path the next couple of weeks would take, and it wasn’t pretty.

“I suppose I have to buy some waterproof boots, huh?” I yelled to Stan as he fished for rocks toward the far end of his property.

“Yup,” he hollered back. “You don’t want to be standing for hours in ice water without them.” I shivered at the mere thought of it. “I’ll come over and help you whenever I can,” Stan continued, resuming his icy stroll back toward me. “You let me dig out the biggest rocks. You don’t want to hurt your back lifting them, not if you’re going to sing in New York in a few weeks.”

“You’re the best, Stan!” I yelled. “I’ll figure out a nice way to say thank you, I promise.”

“Stop carrying on like that, now,” Stan gently reprimanded me. “This is what neighbors do for each other out here. Now get yourself to the hardware store and buy some rubber boots, like mine.” He sloshed one foot in the air for me to glance at the details on it. “Then we’ll see what we can do.”

“Okay. Do you need anything in town as long as I’m going that way?”

“Nope, I’m all set.” I waved goodbye and left Stan wandering in the waves, pausing occasionally to bend and heave a rock onto the shore.

As I bustled into the house, I scolded myself all the way. “You see, Roz, there you go complaining to Katie about how bored you are with just cooking and cleaning, so the Universe decides to spice up your life by flooding your house. When are you just going to learn to take life as it comes and keep your whining to yourself? Honestly . . .” I thought of the wet, cold, weeks ahead. “When are you going to learn, Roz, that whenever you complain about having a headache, the Universe decides to take your mind off that pain by dropping a five-pound frozen chicken on your foot.”

(Now that I think about it, I realize that one day I’ll probably start worrying about the nagging nature of my rich inner life. Today, though, was not that day.)

The hardware store offered a selection of rubber waders: I could choose black or army surplus green. I guess not a lot of fashion-forward women spend their time heaving rocks in spring floods. Begrudgingly, I shelled out the bucks for the black boots. Might as well invest in the classics, I figured. Maybe Coco Chanel got started with her little black dress this way.

Late-afternoon sun slanted through the naked trees as I drove home from Avondale. Only an hour or two remained before dark. Stan, ever sensible, had wrapped up for the day.  Normally I’d spend those hours showering and primping for my date with David. Tonight, though, I planned a soggy rendezvous with the lake first.

My new waders were large enough that I could stuff two pair of socks inside them, and I did. Then I donned my oversized puffy jacket and rubber gloves. Sporting my huge black boots, dark-green hooded jacket, and bright-yellow rubber gloves, I waved at myself as I stomped past the mirror. “I look like a fricking glandular daffodil,” I muttered, shaking my head as I went down the stairs to my lakefront-level cellar.

Now here’s the thing about wearing waders and rubber gloves when you walk into a lake churning with snow melt-off: you may
think
you’re going to keep warm, but you’re just deluding yourself. All you’re doing is postponing the inevitable. Imagine sticking your foot into the freezer. It might stay dry for a bit, but it’s still going to get wicked cold eventually. That’s just what happens in a lake. Only much quicker.

For about thirty minutes I imitated Stan and sauntered through the shallow waters surrounding my beach. I hunted for good-sized stones—maybe a little bigger than my head—pried them out of the muck, and hoisted them onto the shore. After digging out a dozen rocks I clambered out of the frothy water and piled my rocks into a pitifully tiny cairn. Hands and feet numb, filthy from the chin down, my only thought when I hiked upstairs was,
This is going to be a verrrry long spring
.

A steamy shower restored me. Mascara, lipstick, black slacks, a lighter-than-normal-weight sweater, and I was dressed for my celebratory dinner. For a change, I unearthed a pair of pearl earrings from the bottom of my jewelry box. While I rummaged for the pearls, I eyed the ring I’d found yesterday, still isolated in its white jeweler’s box. I hadn’t tried it on yet. I realized, with a sinking heart, that in light of my current lakefront crisis, it might be a while before I could resume my Bob quest.

By seven o’clock, after a slow drive along dark winding roads, I pulled into the winery, navigated past the dim tasting rooms and toward the lights in the back. As I left the car I could hear the clink of glass and men’s voices in the rear workroom.

The processing area was high ceilinged, cold, full of tall steel vats with wine meters and gauges poking out of them. Some massive oak barrels lined the back wall, and complicated machinery loaded with conveyor belts and empty wine bottles stood against the wall closest to the loading dock. As I entered, David and Alex packed bottled rieslings into sturdy cardboard cases.