Lost Lake (7 page)

“You say she just showed up?” Bulahdeen asked.

“I tried to keep in touch with her, but her mother wouldn’t have it. Apparently, today Kate found a postcard I sent her fifteen years ago. She decided to come see me.”

“Atlanta is a long way to come just to stop by,” Selma said, staring out over the darkening lake.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bulahdeen asked.

“It means she wants something.”

“Oh, hush,” Bulahdeen said. “Don’t listen to her, Eby.”

When Kate and Devin reached them, Eby waved away some of the smoke billowing in front of her like a potion. “The hot dogs will be ready soon and hopefully not too burnt. These grills are unpredictable,” she said. “Kate, Devin, I’d like you to meet Bulahdeen and Selma. Ladies, these are my nieces.”

“Come here, baby. Sit with me,” Bulahdeen said to Devin, patting the seat beside her at the picnic table. “Would you like a piece of candy?” She took a warm linty roll of Life Savers from her trouser pocket.

Selma had yet to acknowledge them, her gaze still on the lake. She was sitting alone at the next table, leaning back with her legs crossed and her skirt billowing down like a stage curtain. She was fanning herself with an old complimentary card fan from a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Selma sniffed and suddenly put the fan down. Eby knew she’d been paying attention. “You call that candy? That’s not candy. Come with me … girl,” Selma said, as if she’d forgotten Devin’s name already. “I’ll give you some real candy.”

“Can I, Mom?” Devin asked.

Kate automatically turned to Eby, and that made Eby smile. No one looked to her for direction like that anymore. People in town used to do it all the time. It had been the reason most locals came out here. Eby always used to know what to say, what to do. And the falloff had happened so gradually that she wasn’t sure if the reason she stopped helping was because people stopped coming, or vice versa. Eby nodded at Kate, telling her it was all right. Selma made terrible first impressions with other women.

“Okay,” Kate said to Devin. “But save it until after dinner.”

“Selma, don’t take that child into your cabin,” Bulahdeen said. “It looks like a brothel in there.”

“What’s a brothel?” Devin asked.

“A place for only
beautiful
women,” Selma said as she walked by them. Devin hurried after her like a cat following a string.

“Don’t worry,” Bulahdeen said as Kate watched them go. “Selma really does have better candy. But she’s not doing this out of the goodness of her heart. She’s doing this so she can specifically say, ‘I’ve got the best candy here,’ and make it a double entendre. Mark my words.”

“Selma doesn’t seem very … happy to be here,” Kate said.

Bulahdeen shook her head. “Oh, that’s just the impression she likes to give. She’s come back every year for the past thirty years. I think she comes for the rest. She’s been married seven times. I know I’d need the rest. But she only has one more to go.”

“One more what?” Kate asked.

Bulahdeen leaned forward and said, “Husband. Selma has eight charms. Eight surefire opportunities to marry the man she wants. She’s used seven of them. I’m anxious to see who she’ll use number eight on. He’s bound to be a big deal, being her last and all. He’ll have lots of money. And he’ll probably be old.”

Kate looked to Eby again. This time, Eby just smiled. Kate hesitated, then said to Bulahdeen, “You mean eight actual, physical charms?”

“That’s what she says.”

“So she thinks she has magical powers,” Kate said, her eyes going to where Selma and Devin had disappeared, probably second-guessing her decision to let her daughter go off with this woman.

That made Bulahdeen laugh, and she reached over and patted Kate’s hand. “Magic is what we invent when we want something we think we can’t have. It makes her happy to think she’s a femme fatale. We go along with it.”

A minute later Devin came running back, delighted with a single piece of chocolate wrapped in gold foil. Selma sauntered after her.

“I’ve got the best candy here,” she said, taking her seat back at the separate table, away from them.

“What did I tell you?” Bulahdeen winked at Kate. “Selma, there’s not a man for twenty miles. Don’t you ever turn it off?”

“Of course not,” Selma said.

“She really does have the best candy here,” Devin said. “I don’t want her to turn it off.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Selma said.

Darkness fell, and the only illumination came from the umbrella poles wrapped in strings of twinkle lights, which Eby had found in the storeroom and brought out for one last summer. They created round dots of light across the lawn. As they ate hot dogs with brown mustard and dill potato salad on paper plates, they talked about the summers they’d had here. The summer it had rained every day and all the wallpaper peeled off the walls, and a carpet of frogs took up residence on the lawn. The summer it was so dry you could see the bottom of the lake, and guests waded out and found trinkets they thought they’d lost in the water years ago—coins with wishes still attached, old barrettes, hard plastic toy soldiers. Kate didn’t say much, but she seemed to enjoy the stories. It relaxed her a little.

Eby kept glancing at her. Kate had said it had been a hard year after her husband died. That in itself wasn’t unusual, not for a Morris woman. But the fact that she was here was significant. It showed some focus, some purpose, which
was
unusual for a grieving Morris woman. She had the look of someone stepping outside for the first time in a long time.

After they ate, there was silence, save for the thrumming of the nighttime wildlife, a strange sort of chorus that seemed to call from one side of the lake and answer on the other.

Devin held up the piece of candy Selma had given her earlier, and Kate nodded that she could have it now. The rattling of the candy paper caught Selma’s attention. As Devin put the chocolate in her mouth and made a dramatic this-is-so-good face, there might have been a hint of a smile on Selma’s lips, but it faded as quickly as it had appeared.

“This is almost how it used to be, with young people around. I’m going to miss this place,” Bulahdeen said, filling her jelly jar with wine again. She always got a little tipsy at this time of night. Eby sometimes wondered if she came here because she could drink what she wanted and her children couldn’t stop her. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to plan a party. For right here. With decorations and liquor and music. Yes! We’ll say good-bye to this place with a party! Next Saturday. That’s a good ending to this story. Not the best, but good enough.” Bulahdeen foraged around in her purse until she found a notepad and pen, and she started writing.

“Will there be dancing at this party?” Selma asked from her table.

“Only if you want to dance with me,” Bulahdeen said.

Selma sighed. “No, thank you.”

A farewell party.
Rattled, Eby got up and started collecting their paper plates and cups. Kate immediately stood and helped her. Devin wiped her hands on her dress and went to inspect a frog who was taking advantage of the bugs the twinkle lights were attracting. Selma leaned back as Devin passed her, as if afraid Devin was going to touch her with her chocolate-covered fingers.

“Do you still have that dance floor you and George used to bring out at night?” Bulahdeen asked Eby. “Those huge wooden squares that snapped together?”

“I just saw them in the storeroom when I brought out the string lights,” Eby said. “I’d forgotten they were there.”

“Those were some good times, weren’t they? Dancing on summer nights.” Bulahdeen swayed in her seat to imaginary music. “George even hired a band on the weekends. Remember that? Kate, will you and Devin come?”

Kate walked to the wooden trash can by the grills and put the remnants of dinner inside the plastic bag. “I don’t know if we’ll still be here.”

“Oh. I thought maybe you’d be here for a while,” Bulahdeen said. “To help Eby.”

Kate turned to Eby. “Do you need help?”

“It’s going to be a big move,” Eby said, dumping the rest of the plates and cups in the trash. Too big. Too overwhelming.

“I’ll be glad to help in any way I can.”

Eby hesitated. At this rate, Lisette was going to be no help at all. But, at least with Lisette, Eby had an excuse not to do it. “Are you sure?”

“Devin’s on summer vacation. And all our things are in our new place by now. I’m supposed to start work at my mother-in-law’s real estate office soon, but there’s no fixed date.”

“You’re a real estate agent?” Bulahdeen asked.

“No. My husband and I ran a bike shop.” She paused. “I sold it last year, after he passed away.”

That sobered Bulahdeen a little. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, if you’re going to stay a while, I could certainly use your help,” Eby said with resignation. A farewell party. Help with moving. It was all falling into place. She didn’t admit to herself until now that she had thought that Kate and Devin showing up was some big sign telling her she shouldn’t sell, that there was another way to save this place. It was silly, of course, because her family had never been a sign of anything good.

Bulahdeen took a celebratory swig of her wine and plopped the glass back on the table. “Good! That will make five people for the party,” she said. “No—six! We’ll have it during the day so Lisette can come.”

Kate looked confused. “Lisette can’t come out at night?”

“Lisette thinks evening meals are bad luck, so she doesn’t like to be around food after sunset. That’s why there’s always been breakfast and lunch served in the main house, but never dinner. George built the grills for guests to cook out at night.” Eby smiled as Kate looked to the main house, where one light was on upstairs, Lisette’s bedroom light. A shadow passed by the window, as if she was watching them. “We must seem very strange to you.”

“No.” Kate shook her head. “It’s what I remember most about this place.”

The unmistakable sound of tires crunching over gravel was heard in the distance, and everyone turned. A pair of headlights soon flashed through the woods. Kate looked around for Devin, a slight panic in her voice as she called for her. Devin, who had lost interest in the frog, was jumping from one pool of umbrella light to the other across the lawn. She ran back to her mother.
That was curious,
Eby thought.
Who did they think it was?

A dark blue Toyota appeared and circled around them, coming to a stop in front of the main house. A lean man in his sixties got out. He smiled and lifted his hand in a shy wave.

“That makes seven!” Bulahdeen said happily, writing his name down.

“If he’ll be at the party, I might come,” Selma said.

Bulahdeen made a
tsk
ing sound, not looking up from her list. “You know he’s not here for you.”

“It doesn’t mean I can’t dance with him.”

“Who is that?” Kate asked.

“That’s Jack Humphry,” Eby told her. “He stays here every summer. He’s been in love with Lisette for years. He knows this is his last chance with her. Look at that expression on his face. That is the look of a man who has finally woken up.”

“I know that feeling,” Kate said.

Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she was proud of Kate for fighting her way back. But Eby didn’t say anything. She could fix a lot of things, but family wasn’t one of them. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to come to terms with. It was the very reason she’d left Atlanta. She squeezed Kate’s arm, then pulled the bag out of the trash can and walked to the main house to greet Jack.

Because it was high time Lisette woke up, too.

5

In the inky stillness
of the next morning, Lisette woke up and dressed quietly in the silks her elderly mother still sent her from Paris—cool slippery things that made her feel like she was covering herself with fresh air. For a while, after she left Paris, Lisette threw away her mother’s packages on principle. Lisette was not the same vain pretty girl her mother had once known. But then Lisette started making an exception for the lingerie. It was not vain if no one but herself saw her wear them. She then put on a blue dress and a freshly laundered apron that smelled like the lemongrass soap Eby used for the camp’s sheets and towels, the only soap that could take out the damp mustiness that wanted to cling to everything in this place.

She moved soundlessly downstairs to start breakfast, first cracking open the door to Eby’s bedroom slightly to make sure she was still breathing. She had done this every morning since George died. Eby did not know. Eby did not like it when Lisette worried too much. Their relationship had always been disproportionate that way. It was only Eby, capable and confident, who was allowed to worry about Lisette, moody and delicate.

Lisette turned on the lights in her kitchen and began to work. Everything was quiet, too quiet. But she had forced herself over the years to become accustomed to morning, even though it was evening she used to truly love for its energy and restlessness. That, at least, she would acknowledge she got from her father. His restaurant had stayed open late, one of the latest in Paris, and it had attracted people of poetic and turbulent minds.

The ghost of Luc sat quietly in the chair in the corner, near the blue refrigerator, as he did every morning, looking as he did the last time she saw him over dinner when they were both sixteen, his good white shirt stained yellow from nervous sweat under his arms, his young face eagerly watching her every move. He was caught in the moment before she had handed him the note over dinner, the one that broke his heart, a note like countless others she had written before. She had not understood what it was like to be rejected, as she had never been rejected herself. She had been shocked to hear of his suicide the next day. What was she, a monster? No one should have the power to hurt another that fully, that completely. She deserved to die in the same way, because changing was out of the question.

Eby had saved her with her goodness. That was why Lisette had decided to follow Eby wherever she went, finally settling here at Lost Lake. Eby made her a better person. Lisette had no idea what she would do without Eby. It frightened her so much that she could not think of it. She could not see her life anywhere but here. She would never go back to Paris. What did Eby think would happen? That Lisette would see her mother and suddenly want to live with her again?