Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille (44 page)

Three years ago when they were at the cottage, she began suffering headaches at bedtime, or sore throats, or stomach cramps, or pulled muscles, or dozens of other ailments. That same summer she went from sleeping in just a pair of boxer shorts to a full, flannel nightgown. She’d start complaining about her night time illness before lunch, and after a while, he figured they were all a charade. The last time they’d made love had been a year ago, in this bedroom. He remembered her back to him, and he pressed against her; he could feel her muscles through the flannel, her hip’s still delicate flare. She didn’t move away, so he pushed against her again. It had been months since the last time, and the day had been good. She hadn’t avoided him. She laughed at a joke. Maybe she’s thawing, he’d thought, so he watched her, and when she went to bed, he followed. No chance for her to be sleeping before he got there. But she undressed in the bathroom, came out with the collar buttoned tightly at her neck, didn’t look at him, and laid down with her back toward him. He didn’t move for a while. They’d been married too long for him not to recognize all the ways she was saying, “No.” Still, it
had
been months. He moved next to her. Outside, waves slapped upon the shore. The boat rattled in its chain.

It was the most loveless act he’d ever committed. Within moments, her whistling snore began.

That was the last time.

Why was she angry with him? Why had it gone so terribly bad? The closest they’d come to talking about it came that Christmas, after Savannah went outside to play in the snow, and he and Leesa sat wordlessly in the living room. He’d finally said, “What’s wrong?” The sweater he’d given her draped across her hands; she didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t like this color any more.” Later he found the gift tossed in the back of the closet.

Whatever the source of the anger, it grew worse at the lake. The distance widened, and the nightmares came more often. He lifted the covers as little as possible and lay down. Leesa didn’t react. Poul looked at the ceiling. A light from a passing boat swept shadows from one side of the room to the other. Its small motor chugged faintly.

Leesa wasn’t whistling. He knew she heard the same motor. If her eyes were open, she’d see the same shadows. “Savannah scared herself on the dock today,” he said into the darkness, the sudden sound of his own voice startling him. Only the cooling cottage’s creaks and groans answered.

Hours later, still awake, he heard a noise downstairs. A muted rasp. He propped up on his elbows. Footsteps, then another scraping sound. A bump. Nothing for a long time. His eyes ached with attention, and saliva pooled in his mouth he didn’t dare swallow. After minutes, he slipped from the blankets and moved from the bed, crept down to the living room, every shadow hiding an intruder, the pulse in his ear like a throbbing announcement. He turned on a light, flicking the room into reality, then into the kitchen where moths clustered against the screens. On the porch, Savannah lay atop her covers, sleeping. Scratch marks showed where she’d pulled a chair to the door. She’d unhooked the chain, but the deadbolt defeated her. Poul tucked her in, then he grasped the door knob to check the lock again. Slick brass felt cool under his palm. Savannah had sleepwalked. When she was three, she’d done it for a few months, but she hadn’t done it since. The pediatrician said it wasn’t uncommon, that she’d outgrow it.

Through the porch door’s window, the eastern horizon glowed, turning the lake surface purple, but the dock was a black finger with a black boat’s silhouette beside it. A muskrat swam, cutting a long V in the flat water.

The knob turned under his hand. It turned again. Whoever held it on the other side was shorter than the window. Poul slapped his head against the glass. A bare stair. He ran to the kitchen, banging his shin against a stool, breath ragged in his throat, grabbed the deadbolt key from its drawer, and stumbled back to the porch. Outside, he looked up and down the shore. A quarter mile away, his closest neighbor loaded fishing gear into his boat. Poul ran around the cottage. There was no one. Mindless, he sprinted up the long dirt driveway until he stopped at the highway, bent, with his hands on his thighs, gasping. Empty road vanished into the woods on either side.

He sat on the shoulder. A deep gouge in his left foot bled freely, and he realized both feet hurt. It took ten minutes to hobble back to the cottage, and wearing only shorts, he was profoundly cold. The sun bathed the cottage’s front as he walked to the door. Grass cast long shadows. His own barefooted prints showed in the dew. Poul stopped before going in. Another set of prints led to his door, rounded impressions, small, like a child wearing galoshes, coming from the lake. Then, as if the sun was an eraser passing over the yard, the dew vanished.

Leesa took Savannah into town for lunch and shopping. They needed to stock the refrigerator and freezer, and Savannah decided she couldn’t live without fruit juice in the squeezable packages.

Poul sat in a lawn chair at the foot of the pier for most of the morning. The sun pressed against his forehead and eventually filled him with lazy heat. Ripples caught the light, sending it in bright, little spears at him. Waves lapped the shore. The boat, tied to the dock, thudded hollowly every once in a while like a huge aluminum drum.

If he shut his eyes, it could be thirty years earlier. The sun beat the same way, and the same ripply chorus floated in the air. On the beach he and Neal had talked about deep sea diving and fish. Poul was frustrated. He had a wonderful face mask, fins to push himself along and a snorkel, but the mask was too buoyant. He could dive underwater, but he couldn’t stay near the fascinating bottom where the catfish lived. So he had a brain storm. In the boathouse he found a pair of rubber snow boots he’d left from January when he and Dad had come to the lake to fix a frozen pipe. They were supposed to fit over shoes, so his bare foot slopped around. He held the top open. “Fill them up, Neal,” he said.

His brother looked at them doubtfully. “Why do you want to do that?”

“Cause this will keep me from floating.”

“Oh,” Neal said with admiration. He used a yellow, plastic shovel to dump sand in. When it was full, Poul forced the bottom buckle closed. The sand squeezed his leg; he fastened the next one, and it was even tighter. Sand spilled over the top. After the last buckle, there was a strap that cinched the boot closed. It felt like his feet were in grainy cement; he couldn’t even wiggle his toes.

Neal laughed when Poul tried to walk. Each foot must have weighed an extra ten pounds, and it was all he could do to shuffle forward. Poul adjusted his face mask and snorkel. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” said Neal. “Find the big catfish, okay?”

Poul nodded as he waded out. The water slapped higher on his body with each step from shore. When it reached his armpits, he put the snorkel in, then slowly squatted, his feet holding firm beneath him. He turned; underwater, the sand held ripples, a sculpture of the surface motion, while the underside of the surface undulated, meeting the beach at the shore. Then he stood, blew water from the snorkel and gave Neal a thumbs up. Neal waved back.

A few steps deeper, and the water line rose on the face mask. Another step and he was completely underwater, breathing through the snorkel. No fish, but a lot of suspended material, bits of algae. Exotic noises. A buzz that must have been a boat cruising along. A metallic clink that might be a chain under the diving platform a hundred feet away. His breath wheezing in and out of the snorkel. Other, unidentifiable sounds. Poul the adventurer, an explorer of undiscovered countries.

Then, a fish just at his vision’s edge, much deeper, swam along the bottom. Poul froze, hoping it would come close, but it stayed maddeningly far. He moved toward it, sliding his foot only a few inches. It flicked away, then appeared again, still now, head on, as if it were watching him. An encounter with an alien would not have felt any more exotic. Poul leaned toward the fish, his hand out. A gesture of hello.

Water filled his mouth, straight into his throat and he was choking. It hurt! Eyes tearing, he looked up. He’d gone too deep. The top of the snorkel was below the surface. Blind panic! He flailed his arms, trying to swim up, but his feet didn’t budge. He jerked, screaming through the snorkel. No air! No air! He turned toward shore, and took a step. He took another, then blew hard, clearing the water and breathed in gasps. Without pause, he continued toward shore. When he was shallow enough, he ripped the face mask off and sucked one huge breath after another. By the time he got to shore, his throat quit hurting, but he wanted to get away, to lay down and cry. He could feel it in his chest, the horrible pressure of no air, the moment when he didn’t dare inhale.

“Did you see a fish?” Neal asked. He was sitting with his toes in the water, arms wrapped around his knees. “Was it totally cool?”

Poul shook his head, hiding his tears by unbuckling the boots. He scraped his feet pulling them out. Later that day Dad would smear first aid cream on them, his eyes unfocussed, his hands shaking.

Poul left the boots on the beach and went into the woods to cry. He’d never been so scared. He’d never been so scared! And when he returned an hour later, Mom was walking up the shore, calling Neal’s name. “Where’s your brother?” She’d asked, her eyes already wild. “Weren’t you watching Neal?”

Poul rose from the lawn chair; he could feel the nylon webbing creases in his backside. Neal was six, he thought. Savannah is six. The two facts came together with inevitable weight. For years he hadn’t thought much about Neal’s death. Every once in a while, a memory would flare: the two of them talking late at night, after they were supposed to be asleep, the model airplane Neal had given him for his birthday, the words carefully inscribed on the back,
For mi big brother. Luve, Neal.
Neal trusted him, looked up to him, but most of the time Neal didn’t exist anymore. Then Savannah was born, and Neal came back, a little stronger each summer. Maybe that’s what Leesa sensed: the younger brother, dead within him.

Savannah is six, Poul thought, and Neal has been waiting.

He went through the cottage and made sure the screens were tight. It wouldn’t do for the house to be filled with mosquitoes when Leesa and Savannah returned. For a moment he held a pen over a notepad in the kitchen, but put it down without writing. A beach towel went over his shoulder, and he walked to the end of the pier. Standing with his toes wrapped over the edge, a breeze in his face, felt like leaning over an abyss. Beyond the drop-off, he saw no bottom. The big fish were there, the fishy mysteries he’d left to Neal.

He dove in, a long shallow dive that took him yards away without a stroke. Water rushed by his ears. Bubbles streamed from his nose. He came to the surface, treaded. From his shoulders to his knees, the lake was warm, a comfortable temperature perfect for swimming, but from the knees down it was cold. Neal hadn’t known how to swim, he thought. To even go on the pier, Dad had made him put on a life jacket, and Poul was the older brother. How many times had he been told to
protect
him, to watch out for him? And it didn’t matter what he’d been told, Poul
wanted
to keep his brother safe. At the playground, he listened for Neal’s voice. When someone cried, Poul stopped, afraid it was Neal. Loving his brother was like inhaling.

Neal went into the lake; he never came out. Neal must have hated him, Poul thought. At the end, he must have cried out for him, but Poul didn’t come. He didn’t warn him.

Poul swam deeper, put his face down, eyes open. Without a mask, his hands were blurry. Beyond them, blackness. How deep? Were there pike? He imagined a ghost catfish, its eye as broad as a swimming pool rising toward him.

But try as he might, Poul couldn’t drown himself. He floated on his back, letting his feet sink until his weight drew his face under, and just when the time came to breathe, he kicked to the surface. He couldn’t let the water in. Swimming parallel to the shore, he passed Kettle Jack’s, swam by dozens of cottages like his own until his arms tired. Each stroke hurt, his shoulders burning with exhaustion, but they never quit working. The lake let him live, and Neal never came up to join him. Poul waited for a hand (a small hand) to wrap around his ankle, to pull him down where six-year-olds never grow older. Instead, the sun moved across the sky until Poul was empty. Completely dull, drained and damaged, he turned toward shore, staggered up a stranger’s beach, and walked on the lake road toward his cottage, staying in the shoulder, where the grass didn’t hurt his feet.

If Neal didn’t want him, who did he want?

This far above Kettle Jack’s was unfamiliar to him, but the look was the same: long, dirt driveways that vanished in the trees below, or led to cottages camped along the shore. Old boats sprawled upside down on saw horses. Bamboo fishing poles leaned against weathered wood. Station wagons or vans parked behind each house. Towels drying on lines. Beyond, in the lake, sailboats cut frothy wakes; the wind had picked up, although he didn’t feel it much here.

He started walking faster. Leesa and Savannah would be home by now. He wondered what they were doing. Leesa never watched Savannah like he did. Her philosophy was that kids take care of themselves, generally, and it’s healthier for a child to have room to explore.

He hadn’t realized how far he’d swam. Way ahead, the tip of Kettle Jack’s pier poked into the lake. Maybe Savannah and Leesa would walk there to see Johnny Jacob’s kittens. But it was hot, and Savannah hadn’t swam yet. Yesterday she’d fished. Today she’d want to swim. He could see the scene. Leesa would pull into the driveway. Savannah would put on her swim suit to go out on the beach. She had sand toys, buckets, shovels, rakes; little molds for making sand castles. Leesa would set up a chair, lather in sun lotion and read a book. Savannah could be in the water now.

Poul broke into a jog. How idiotic it was to leave the cottage, he thought. No, not idiotic. Criminal. If vengeance waited in the lake, if some sort of delayed retribution haunted the cold waters, why would it care for him? Where would his suffering be if he drowned, like Neal, relieved of responsibility at last? He was running. Kettle Jack’s passed by on his left. It was a mile to his cottage. He’d swam over a mile! And maybe that was the plan: to get him out into the lake and away. Suddenly he felt as if he’d lost his mind. What was he thinking? What sane father would dive into the water away from his daughter? Savannah is six, he thought, and she needs her daddy.