Summer Lies (12 page)

She produced a smile, raised her glass, and drank. “I think I’ll go and take a last look at my book. Don’t wait up for me.”

He didn’t wait up, and went to bed without her. But he lay awake until she was lying next to him. It was dark, he didn’t say anything, breathed regularly, and after she’d been lying on her back for a while, as if wondering whether to wake him and talk to him, she turned on her side.

When he woke up the next morning, the bed was empty. He heard Kate and Rita in the kitchen, got dressed, and went downstairs.

“Papa, I’m allowed to go in the car!”

“No, Rita, it makes you ill. We’ll wait for that till you’re bigger and stronger.”

“But Mummy said …”

“Mummy meant later, not now.”

“Don’t tell me what I mean.” Kate’s voice was controlled. But then suddenly her control was used up and she screamed at him. “The shit you talk! You say you want to help Jonathan with the barn, and you sleep in half the morning? You say you want to go skiing with Rita in the winter and you think riding in the car is too dangerous? You want to turn me into Mummy at her stove, waiting for Daddy to be gracious enough to let her have the car? Either the three of us drive to Jonathan’s now and I let you out there, or Rita and I go alone.”

“I want to turn you into Mummy at her stove? What am I, if not Daddy at the stove? Just a failed writer? Who lives on your money? Who takes care of your daughter but isn’t allowed to decide anything? Nanny and cleaning lady?”

Kate had got herself under control again. She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You know I don’t mean any of that. I’m leaving now—are you coming?”

“You’re not leaving!”

But she put on her jacket and shoes, and Rita’s, and went to the door. When he blocked the two of them from going out the front door, Kate picked up Rita and went out through the veranda. He hesitated, ran after Kate, caught up to her, and grabbed her. Then Rita started to cry and he let go. He followed Kate off the veranda and across the meadow to the car.

“Please don’t do this!”

Kate didn’t answer, got into the driver’s seat with Rita on the passenger seat beside her, pulled the door shut, and switched on the engine.

“But not in the front seat!” He wanted to open the door, but Kate pressed the lock. He banged against the door, seized the handle, and tried to stop the car. It drove off. He ran alongside, and saw that Rita was kneeling up on the front seat, staring at him terrified with a tearstained face. “The seat belt,” he called, “put on Rita’s seat belt!” But Kate didn’t react, the car gathered speed, and he had to let go.

He ran behind the car but couldn’t catch up with it. Kate wasn’t driving fast on the dirt road but was still leaving him behind, and with every yard of road between two curves the distance lengthened. Then the car was gone, and he heard it further and further away.

He ran on. He had to chase after the car, even if he could no longer catch up with it. He had to run to remain in his life, in his wife’s, and in his daughter’s. He had to run, so as not to have to return to the empty house. He had to run, so as not to stand still.

Finally, he couldn’t go on. He bent forward, with his hands on his knees. When he was finally calmer and could hear something aside from his own breathing, he heard the sound of the car in the far distance. He straightened up, but couldn’t see it. The noise hung there, slowly faded, and he waited for it to
cease altogether. Instead he heard a far-off crash. Then everything was still.

He started running again. He imagined the car, which had hit the barricades and the sawhorses or a tree because Kate had wrenched the steering wheel to the side, he saw Kate’s and Rita’s bloodied heads against the shattered windshield, Kate tumbling onto the road with Rita in her arms, cars driving past heedlessly, he heard Rita screaming and Kate sobbing. Or were the two of them trapped, unable to get out, and any moment the gas would ignite and the car explode? He ran on, although his legs could barely carry him, and there were daggers in his chest and side.

Then he saw the car. Thank God it wasn’t on fire. It was empty, and Kate and Rita were nowhere to be seen, neither near the car nor on the main road. He waited, waved, but wasn’t picked up. He went back to the car, saw that it had hit the barricades and sawhorse, and that the sawhorse was wedged so tightly between the bumper and the underside of the car that it couldn’t move anymore. The door was open, and he got into the driver’s seat. The windshield wasn’t shattered, but in one spot there was a smear of blood, not in front of the driver but on the passenger’s side.

The ignition worked when he turned the key, but when he put the car into reverse, it dragged the trapped sawhorse with it. He tied the sawhorse firmly to a tree with the rope, backed up, then rolled forward, backward, then forward, again and again. It struck him that this was his punishment for destroying the phone lines, and when the car finally freed itself from the sawhorse he was utterly exhausted, just like before. He loaded the barricades and sawhorses into the cargo area and drove to the hospital. Yes, his wife and daughter had been brought in half an hour ago. He had them tell him where to go.

The hallways were more pleasant than those he remembered in German hospitals, broad, with leather chairs and flower arrangements. A poster in the elevator announced that the hospital had been made Hospital of the Year again for the fourth time in a row. He was asked to go into a waiting room, the doctor would be with him shortly, he sat down, stood up again, looked at the colorful photographs on the walls, found the ruins of Cambodian and Mexican temples depressing, sat down again. After half an hour the door opened and the doctor introduced himself. He was young, energetic, and cheerful.

“There’s luck in bad luck. Your wife held her right arm in front of your daughter,” he put his right arm out, “and when your daughter was thrown against it with full force, it broke. But it’s a clean break, and it may have saved your daughter’s life. In addition your wife has three broken ribs and a whiplash injury. But they’ll heal. We’ll just keep her here for a few days.” He laughed. “It’s an honor to have the American Book Prize winner as a patient, and it was such a pleasure to be the bearer of good news. I recognized her immediately, I hardly dared speak to her—and she knew nothing about it and was thrilled.”

“How is my daughter?”

“She has a laceration on her forehead that we stitched up, and she’s resting. We’ll observe her tonight, and if there are no problems, you can take her home tomorrow.”

He nodded. “Can I see my wife?”

“I’ll take you there.”

She was in a single room, her neck and right arm encased in some white synthetic material. The doctor left the two of them alone.

He pulled a chair up to the bed. “Congratulations on the prize.”

“You knew. You were in town almost every day, and when you’re in town, you read the
New York Times
. Why didn’t you tell me? Because you’re not a successful writer, I’m not allowed to be one either?”

“No, Kate, I just wanted to keep our world here in one piece. I’m not jealous. You can write as many best sellers …”

“I don’t think I’m better than you. You deserve the same success, and I’m sorry the world is unjust and doesn’t give you that same success. But I can’t stop writing just because of that. I can’t diminish myself.”

“Down to my size?” He shook his head. “I didn’t want the whole circus to start up again, the interviews and talk shows and parties and all the rest of it. To have it all become the way it was before. Our six months here have been so good for us.”

“I can’t stand it if all that’s left of me is a shadow that disappears to its desk every morning and sits by the fire with you every evening and plays families once a week.”

“We don’t sit by the fire, we talk, and we’re not playing families, we are one.”

“You know what I mean—what I’ve been for you these past six months is what any woman could have been who’s preoccupied and doesn’t say much and likes to snuggle up at night. I can’t live with a man whose jealousy won’t allow me to be anything more than that. Or doesn’t love anything about me but that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We’re leaving you. We’re moving …”

“You? You and Rita? Rita, whom I’ve washed and dressed and cooked for and taught to read and write? Whom I’ve taken care of when she was ill? No judge will give you custody.”

“After that attack of yours today?”

“My attack …” He shook his head again. “That wasn’t an attack. I only tried to block things off, the phone and the Internet and even the road.”

“It was an attack, and the driver who brought me here is going to notify the sheriff.”

He had been sitting on the chair with his back hunched and his head low. Now he straightened up. “I sorted out the car, I drove it here, and the roadblock has gone. All the sheriff is going to find out is that you drove our daughter without a car seat or a seat belt.” He looked at his wife. “No judge will give you Rita. You have to stay with me.”

What was in her eyes as she looked back at him? Hatred? Not possible. A refusal to understand. It wasn’t her broken arm and broken ribs that were hurting her. What was hurting her was that he’d torpedoed her plan. She didn’t want to recognize that she couldn’t make plans without him. It was time she finally learned. He stood up. “I love you, Kate.”

What right did she have to look at him in horror? What right did she have to say: “You’ve gone mad.”

He drove through town along the main street. He would have liked to put the barricades and sawhorses unobtrusively back on the pile, but the town fair was over and the piles had been cleared away.

He called the phone company from the general store and reported the damaged lines. They promised to send a repair crew the same afternoon.

In the house he went from room to room. In the bedroom
he opened the curtains and the window, made the bed, and folded the nightshirt and pajamas. In Kate’s study he remained standing in the doorway. She had tidied up; the desk was clear except for the computer and the printer and a printed stack of paper, and the books and papers that had been lying on the floor were back on the shelves. It looked as if she’d closed not just the book but a part of her life, and it made him sad. Rita’s room smelled of little girl; he shut his eyes, sniffed, and smelled her bear, which he wasn’t allowed to wash, her shampoo, her sweat. In the kitchen he loaded dishes and pots into the dishwasher and left everything else where it was: the sweater, as if Kate could walk in at any moment and pull it on, the paints, as if Rita were about to sit down at the table and keep painting. He felt cold, and turned up the heat.

He stepped outside. No judge was going to take Rita away from him. In the worst case, the right lady lawyer would get him generous alimony. And then he would live here in the mountains on his own with Rita. And Rita would grow up with a mother who lived a five-hour drive away. Kate wants to push things to the limit? Let her find out what she gets out of that.

He looked out at the forest, the meadow with the apple trees and lilacs, and the pond with the weeping willows. No skating all together on the frozen pond? No sledding all together on the slope beyond the far bank? Even if Rita managed emotionally without her mother, and he managed financially—he didn’t want to lose this world that sometimes had felt in summer as though it had always been his and always would be.

He would work out a plan for keeping his world together. It would be a joke if he couldn’t, given the good cards in his hand. Tomorrow he could collect Rita. In a few days Rita and he would be in front of the hospital waiting for Kate. With flowers. And a sign saying “Welcome home.” And their love.

He went to the car, unloaded the barricades and sawhorses, and carried them to the spot behind the kitchen where he chopped and sawed up the wood for the fire. He worked until darkness, pulling the nails out of the sawhorses and chopping and sawing the barricades and braces into pieces. In the light that fell there from the kitchen window he stacked the wood into the pile, removing some of the logs he’d already stored for the winter and packing the new pieces between them.

He filled the basket with new and old wood and carried it inside to the fireplace. The phone rang; the phone company was calling to let him know the line was working again. He checked with the hospital and was told that Kate and Rita were asleep and there was nothing to worry about.

Then the fire was burning. He sat in front of it and watched as the pieces of wood caught alight, burned, glowed, and fell apart. On one of the blue ones he could read “Line” in white letters, part of the inscription “Police Line Do Not Cross.” The fire melted the paint, wiping out the inscription and consuming it. This is how he wanted to be sitting in front of the fire with Kate and Rita in a few weeks. Kate would read “Not” or “Do” on one of the pieces of wood and remember today. She would understand how much he loved her and slide over to him and cuddle up.

“You recognized me, didn’t you?” No sooner had he sat down next to me than he started talking. He was the last passenger; the stewardesses closed the doors behind him.

“We …” We had stood with other passengers at the bar in the lounge. Rain beat against the windows, the New York-Frankfurt flight had been postponed several times, and we passed the time overcoming our irritation with champagne and tales of delayed flights and missed opportunities.

He didn’t give me time to reply. “I saw it in your eyes. I know that look: first it’s a question, then it’s recognition, then it’s disgust. Where did you—Stupid question, at the end my story was in all the papers and on every TV channel.”

I looked over at him. He was roughly fifty, tall and lean, with a pleasant, intelligent face, and black hair going rapidly gray. He hadn’t told any stories at the bar; the only thing I’d noticed was his loose-hanging, softly creased suit.

“I’m sorry”—why was I saying I was sorry?—“I don’t recognize you.” The plane took off and climbed steeply. I like the minutes when your back is pressed against your seat and you feel it in your stomach and your body senses that it’s flying. Through the window I looked down at the city’s sea of lights. Then the plane banked in a wide curve, all I saw was sky, until eventually the sea was below me with the moonlight glowing off it.