Phantom Limbs (26 page)

While we were there, we bought some sparklers and smoke bombs to share with the neighbor kids and a few fountains to set off at the end of the pier, like every year.

Back on the road, long stretches of farmland along the highway brought us closer to Silver Lake. After I pulled off on our exit, we passed all the familiar sights: the U-Pick berry farms and roadside fruit stands, the antique shops, the little Michigan wineries that produced wine whose taste my mom compared to paint varnish. As I drove down the smaller, winding roads toward the house, I tried to forget Meg and just enjoy the place I’d always loved so much.

When we got there, tires crunching over the long gravel drive, I parked under the enormous oak and we hauled our stuff inside. The house smelled like always: old and musty, with a hint of mothballs and pine cleaner in the background. It was a good smell, nostalgic.

Once the car was unloaded, I changed into board shorts and headed out. As I walked across the backyard to the lake, the grass warm under my feet, I soaked up the sounds of this place and time: the roar of a speedboat across the lake, the shrieks and laughs of kids in the distance, the gentle knocking of the paddleboat against the pier . . . I was back in my happy place. For a while.

I walked to the end of the pier, under the weeping willow whose branches Meg and I used to swing from. Sometimes Mason would watch enviously from the pier, his skin thick with white sunscreen, arms clad in inflatable water wings. I would pick him up and swing him around while he held the branches, then dip him in the water when he let go. Remembering his delighted laughter, how happy he was, clouded everything for a moment. There was nothing that wasn’t tainted. Even the best memories I could call to mind had a shadow side.

The sun lit the ripples of sand under the water, creating a brilliant pattern of curved lines. A tiny pink flip-flop floated a few yards out, strands of seaweed draped over it. I stepped off the pier into the lake, my feet stirring up the sand and muddying the clean, shallow water, which didn’t even come to my knees. The sandbar was a good 150 feet out; you could walk and walk, and the water would still be at waist level. Once you got to a certain point, though, it was like walking off a cliff, it fell off so fast.

Out on the anchored wooden raft, the neighbor kids shouted, shoved, and dived. Tommy Dunham was a year older than me, and his sister, Stephanie, was a year younger. She’d always seemed like a little kid to me, but seeing her now, in her teensy bikini, I realized that was no longer the case. Colin and Mark, the twins, would be seven now. Once, they’d been the same age as Mason. But they kept growing up, whereas Mason would forever be three and a half.

I swam out to join them. When they saw me and hollered out my name, it was almost embarrassing how glad I felt. It was nice to feel liked, to feel wanted. Like being popular, for a moment.

I spent most of the day with them, swimming, playing water Frisbee, and tubing. I figured I might as well pack my fun in before Football Guy arrived and I climbed into a hole. The Dunhams invited us for dinner, which was nice because my mom hadn’t been shopping for food yet. With all the Dunham cousins present and accounted for, there were sixteen kids there, and I kind of envied them their big family, despite the chaos. We had burgers and chips and Cokes, and then Tommy took all the older kids to the Sugar Bear for ice cream in his dad’s truck. When we got back, we made a bonfire and watched fireworks, which Silver Lake people take very seriously. But somehow they were a disappointment to me. It felt like something was missing. And it was.

It wasn’t just Meg, though — I’d had a couple of years to get used to fireworks without her at my side. But now, sitting on the old plaid picnic blanket next to my mom, I remembered a Fourth in Michigan when I was a kid and Mason was a baby — one and a half, I guess he would have been, just weeks after Meg moved to town — when I got annoyed with my mom for not watching the fireworks because she was watching Mason’s face instead. Every time there was a particularly great display, I’d look at her, and she’d be gazing at Mason. “You keep missing them!” I’d told her in frustration.

What I didn’t understand then was that, for her, watching Mason’s face as he saw the fireworks was better than the fireworks themselves. As I looked at her, her sad eyes on the sky, I wished I could turn back time and do it over. I wished I could see Mason’s face the first time he saw fireworks. I wanted to tell my mom I was sorry, that I didn’t understand then, but I did now. But I couldn’t say those things. It would have been too hard, too much.

So I didn’t say anything. I just watched the show and felt kind of broken, until finally I reached out and put an arm around her, hoping she wouldn’t make a big awkward deal out of it. But the small gesture hit her as hard as I suppose I knew it would, and when her eyes spilled over, tears welled up in mine, too.

I felt a hand touch my arm, and I glanced up to catch my father’s surprised glance. He didn’t know my arm was already there.

The next morning I got up early, stirred by the sounds of my dad making coffee. When I came out, he gave me a wave and put a finger to his lips to let me know Mom was still sleeping. I fixed myself a cup of coffee and went out onto the back patio.

A mist hovered over the still lake, and the only sounds were the distinctive, eerie calls of loons somewhere on the water and the occasional splash of a fish jumping. I sat and sipped my coffee, wishing I could press the cosmic pause button and things could stay like this all day, before Meg showed up with her boyfriend and ruined everything.

When my mom was up, we headed out to Grandma Sally’s for breakfast, where I feasted on malted strawberry waffles and sausages. I texted Dara a picture of my plate with the caption
VACATION!
, and she wrote back:
Guess that means you put in your 6 grand.
Ha, right. Six thousand yards of lake swimming? Doubtful. But then I felt guilty. I did have Senior Champs coming up — I needed to get some yards in.

After breakfast, while my parents shopped for groceries, I went to the adjacent hardware store to find supplies for making a folding mirror box.

The hardware store smelled of lumber and paint, fertilizer and rubber. A key-cutter screamed in the back. I wandered around for a long time, thinking, shopping, and planning. I wanted to make the box small enough to fit into a swim bag or backpack so Dara could easily take it everywhere. So she’d always be okay, with me or without me.

After a final stop at the berry farm for a ten-pound box of blueberries, we returned to the house. The Brandts weren’t there yet, and the lake was so beautiful, I decided to take the rusted old rowboat out.

I rowed out to the west side of the lake, where there was a wonderland of water lilies that would have made Monet wet his pants. They were Meg’s favorite — we would pick armloads of them. But they barely survived a few hours out of the water.
Nothing lasts forever
, my mother would say. I hated when she said that. My dreams were of beginnings without endings.

I wished I could bring Meg there, without Football Guy. But since I probably wouldn’t be able to bring Meg to the lilies, I decided to bring the lilies to Meg.

I must have spent an hour or more, hauling lilies out of the lake as the noon sun beat down on me. Sometimes five or ten feet of tubular stem came off with the flowers, like slender garden hoses, other times just the blossoms. The bright yellow centers, the long, elegant petals, the sweet smell of them — it all reminded me of summers past with Meg.

My back ached and I grew wet with sweat as I leaned, grabbed, and pulled, over and over, as if enough water lilies could somehow communicate to Meg how sorry I was for everything that had happened, for all the hurt she’d been through, for the ways I’d failed her. I piled them onto the seat of the bow. By the time I finished, they formed a small mountain. An altar, an olive branch, a message, a plea.
I. Am. So. Sorry.

I imagined how this gesture would strike Football Guy, but I honestly didn’t give a fuck. All I cared about was the way Meg’s eyes would light up, the happiness it would bring her.

I was rowing back when I saw them. I’d had my eye on the pier and the rear of the house, trying to find my way back (I could hear Meg’s navigation lady voice in my head:
at raft, veer left
). He stood chest-deep in the lake, holding Meg in his arms like the cover of a fucking romance novel.

Suddenly, my romantic gesture seemed idiotic, masochistic. I tried to think of a way to avoid running into them with all my stupid lilies, but short of pretending to be blind and deaf and rowing frantically to the opposite side of the lake, I was stuck. And then Meg started waving at me, and I had no choice but to row over to them.

Meg quickly extricated herself from Football Guy’s arms and lowered herself into the water. “Hey, Otie!”

“Hey,” I said, slowing the boat with the oar.

“Jeff, this is Otis. Otis, Jeff.”

His dark blond hair hung in his eyes. His face was chiseled and cocky-looking. He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Otis. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I shook his hand and mumbled something back.

Meg’s eyes widened when she saw the lilies. “Otis! What did you do?”

“A birthday present — a few days early.”

“Jeez, look at that,” Football Guy said.

Meg reached into the boat and took a lily, her eyes stopping my heart with that outside-the-fifth-grade-classroom way that was so ingrained in my memory. What I wouldn’t have given for this moment to be happening without her fucking boyfriend there. He smiled, watching her as she held the flower to her nose and closed her eyes.

But when she opened her eyes, it was me Meg was beaming at. It was a smile that contained things her boyfriend knew nothing about. And it flooded sunshine into the cobwebbed corners of my heart.

I rowed the rest of the way in, and they followed along. Jeff climbed onto the pier and helped hook the boat up. He was tan, and he had green eyes. Even I had to admit it: he was good-looking. Fuck.

On the other hand, he did have just a little spare tire around the middle. I definitely had him in the muscles category. Since it was so hot anyway, I pulled off my shirt to play up my advantage. Kind of pathetic.
Gee, Mueller, you’re practically even: you have a six-pack, and he has Meg. Close one!

I sat down on the pier, my feet dangling. Meg stood in the shallow water and gathered up an armful of the water lilies. She buried her face in them.

“Can you put some in a vase?” Jeff asked her.

Meg shook her head. “They’re too ephemeral.”

Ephemeral.
Ten to one Football Guy had no idea what that meant.

I nodded in agreement. “Most evanescent.”

Meg grinned. “Nothing lasts forever.”

“Except cat pee.”

I was rewarded with her laughter. She stood there under the weeping willow, branches draped like strands of sunlit emeralds, holding that jumble of green-and-white water lilies. She was so beautiful, it hurt to look. Yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

I sat swishing my feet in the water, and Jeff sat down, too. He reached out with his legs and pulled Meg to him.
Okay, dude, Meg’s yours, I get it!

Meg held out the flowers toward me. “Could you hold these for a sec?” I took them, and she pulled herself up and sat on the pier between Jeff and me.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the flowers back and burying her nose in them again. “So were there fireworks last night?”

“Yup.”

“Aw.” She stroked the petals of a flower between her thumb and forefinger.

“You’ll see them tonight.”

“I know, but I’m sad I missed them.”

I glanced at her and did a double take, laughing to myself. She had managed to transfer a stamp of bright yellow stamen powder to the tip of her nose. I pointed at my nose, hoping she’d get it, but she just gave me a quizzical look.

“You have yellow,” I mouthed.

She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, then checked back with me. I nodded.

We dragged our feet lazily through the water, the sun sparkling on the ripples we made. A Jet Ski roared in the distance, and that familiar lake smell hung in the air, mossy and fishy and green. Minnows flashed under the surface. It was almost — almost — perfect.

Meg bumped me with her shoulder. “So when’s lunch?”

“Mary Margaret,” I said, shaking my head. “Do you ever stop eating?”

“Mary Margaret?” Jeff said.

She glared at me, then turned back to Jeff. “My full name,” she told him grudgingly.

“What? How did I not know that?” he asked. “Mary Margaret,” he repeated to himself. “
Mary.
Huh.”

She huffed and tried not to smile, but I saw one fighting for freedom. I was biting back a smile, too. He didn’t even know her
name.

We headed in for lunch. Meg selected a handful of lilies to bring inside, and we gave the rest a burial at sea. Or at lake, as it were.

Inside, my mom fixed sandwiches while the dads made a run for booze and ice. “How’s the lake?” she asked, setting the food on the table.