Acts of God (5 page)

“Oh, you know, same place. Divorced, a couple of kids.” I laughed, but she gave me an odd look as if she was sorry for me, and that made me angry. I'd always felt sorry for her because of where she lived and because her father never came and took her back to Wisconsin, the way she said he would.

The wineglass teetered in her hand and she took another sip from it. Her face was flushed and I thought that she'd already had too much to drink. “Well, you must come by. Nick and I would love to have you over.” She rested her hand on my shoulder. “Come by and see us.” Then someone pulled her away and I was happy to move on.

Patrick was waiting for me and he told the bartender to give me a beer. “She used to be my girl,” he said, patting my arm. The bartender said the beer was on the house and Patrick found us two stools off to the side. “I'm sorry if she upset you,” he said after a while.

“Just because she took you away from me…” I teased him.

Patrick grimaced, staring down into his beer. “You know it wasn't just that, Tessie. Things happen when you're growing up, things you can't quite understand.”

“It's all right,” I told him. “I forgave everyone long ago.”

“We were young.”

“I wonder what my life would have been if I'd stayed here and married you,” I said with a sigh.

“You'd be divorced with two kids and I'd be running a bar.” Patrick and I spent much of high school driving around in his father's car. I'd rest my head on his knee and stare up at the passing trees as he rubbed my head, my neck. The trees in Winonah arch so gracefully over the roads. The wind off the lake keeps their branches rustling, and I'd watch the branches from the vantage point of Patrick's lap as we drove. Sometimes his hand slipped to the side of my breast and then I felt that sweet awakening, a kind of ache that is more memory than anything else now.

Often he came to my house and we watched television in the finished basement my father built or sat in the den. There was something about him—a kindness that I carried with me over the years. His touch was light, as if it fluttered over me, and I imagined I'd find that same gentle hesitancy everywhere I went in the world.

Patrick and I, heads bent together, talked about this and that. He was estranged from his wife, though they were trying to work it out. Basically for the kids. “You know, Tessie, whenever I don't have anything to do, I drive by your old house. I just look at it and think to myself, Tessie lived here.”

“Do you? That's nice.”

He nodded, sipping his beer. We were silent for a minute. Then the band came blasting back on and we could hardly hear ourselves think. “Let's get out of here,” Patrick said. “Let's go somewhere where we can talk.”

We were heading outside to get some air when we ran into Nick Schoenfield walking in with a younger crowd. He wore a Hawaiian shirt open to his chest, which revealed a slight paunch. He was wide, built like a safe, and boisterous. Giving a wave to his friends, telling them he'd see them inside, Nick looked at us with his dark blue eyes, and laughed as if he'd just heard a great joke. “Tessie,” he said, recognizing me right away, “It's good to see you.”

“Well, it's good to see you, too.”

He and Patrick exchanged a series of male pleasantries—slaps, handshakes, and locker-room jabs. “Just like old times. You two back together?”

Patrick laughed with him as if I were somehow their private joke. “How ya been, Tessie?” Nick said.

“I've been good. I'm still living out West.”

“Well, the Coast agrees with you.” He nodded, looking me up and down. “I always think of you as the one who got away.”

“Did I?” I asked.

“Well, you give the impression you did. I thought you'd end up a star out there. You know you were voted ‘The girl the boys were most likely to be secretly in love with.'”

“I was? By whom?” Nick opened the reunion brochure, pointing. There it was. Tessie Winterstone. “I had no idea. When did all this voting take place?” I wiped the back of my neck with a cocktail napkin.

“The ballot was in one of the invitations.” Patrick laughed. “You probably threw it away.” Nick smiled, his blue eyes piercing as if they could see through steel doors. His grin was warm and he hadn't lost his looks. He had been a beautiful boy and the years had been kind to him.

For a time when they played varsity, my brother Jeb and Nick had been friends. When Jeb first started bringing Nick around, that was the way he smiled at me—the wide, confident grin of a boy who is sure of himself. His boldness unnerved me. I had a crush on him, but then all the girls did. I used to bring them tunafish sandwiches and Cokes on Sundays when they watched football games in the den. If I asked questions, they ignored me. Sometimes I stood in front of the television just to annoy them.

My last memory of Nick was when he intercepted a pass and scored the winning touchdown in a game that made the Winonah Wildcats first in the state, beating Evanston. Evanston had huge, black players. (The joke used to be “Why did Evanston get the blacks and Winonah get the Jews?” And the punchline: “Because Evanston got first pick.”) It was a big deal for the white boys to win. Nick rode around town, waving from the back of a convertible while the town cheered.

Larger-than-life caricatures of him were painted on the picture windows of all the big stores. Though he never realized his athletic promise, everyone believed he'd grow up to be just like his father. Mr. S., as his father was called, had once been a star quarterback for the Chicago Bears. He was a beefy man with knees so bad he wobbled, but he'd given the Bears some of their finest victories. In local restaurants people asked for his autograph.

Nick was being groomed for something big. That much you could see from the start. His father rooted for him at every ballgame and chided him whenever he missed an easy pass, a basket, a pitch, depending on the season. He was always coaching his son from the sidelines. On Saturdays Mr. S. made Nick work at Prairie Visita Automotive, a business he owned a share of. Nick didn't like to go, but his father insisted because it built character. All through high school Nick had grease under his nails. Now I noticed that they were manicured and buffed.

Nick paused, his head cocked, a frown on his face. He seemed to be listening for something, like a distant train. “Lousy band,” he said at last. Patrick shrugged and said they were local and he couldn't afford better.

“Well, tell them to get a new bass player.” Nick ruffled my hair as if he was really glad to see me. He had that same wide grin he'd always had, though his features were puffy like those of someone who didn't sleep much or did his share of drinking.

“So is she there?” Nick asked Patrick, an almost pathetic but slightly bemused look on his face.

Patrick nodded. “She's there.”

“Well,” Nick said, “is she behaving herself? How drunk is she?”

“Drunk enough,” Patrick said.

Nick dropped his head down and shook it, the way I'd seen him do when a pass wasn't received or his team had lost an easy point. Then his smile came back and he slapped me on the arm. “So, Tess, what do you hear from Jeb?”

“Oh, the usual. He's still making out like a bandit.” My older brother had, in fact, done exceptionally well for himself. He worked on Wall Street, had three kids, an apartment on Park Avenue, a house in the Hamptons, an impenetrable wife. We rarely spoke, though he sent me money from time to time, with a note, saying it was a gift for the kids. But it was always too much for a gift and more than the kids needed. He and I knew that.

“And you?” he asked. I told him it had been going great.

“Oh, less of a bandit.”

I laughed. I told him that I had two terrific kids, and I worked for a real estate broker near Monterey. I got divorced a few years back but it was all right because I liked my freedom.

Nick listened intently, taking this in. “Well,” he paused, “you always did.” I wasn't sure how he knew this or if it was even true, but he said it in such a way that it seemed to be so. It left me feeling strange, as if this person I hadn't seen in years and who hardly knew me then was aware of something about me that I didn't quite know myself.

Nick heard someone call his name and said he had to get going, but it was great running into me. He told me his business took him west from time to time, and I gave him my card from the real estate office, scribbling my home phone on the back. Then he ruffled my hair again, gave Patrick a fake punch, and walked inside.

*   *   *

The houses get bigger as you drive down to the lake. It wasn't anything I'd ever really noticed before, but I noticed it late that night as I drove down to the shore. I took Lake Road and watched as the small brick- and wood-frame split-levels near the railroad trestle turned into sprawling ranch houses, which we called prairie houses, and then as I got nearer to the lake those houses built close to the ground rose into the two- and three-story mansions made of stone where the rich people lived.

I passed the old Everett Log Cabin, which had been my favorite house when I was growing up and for which Mr. Everett himself had chopped and honed the big trees and where his son still cut his lawn with a scythe, which my mother for years considered to be an abberation. And the Frank Lloyd Wright house on the corner of Laurel. Then I came to the old fairy castle where a princess was said to live.

I paused here, gazing down the long driveway at the house with its huge castle-like structure with turrets, a round tower, a big circular drive, and a fountain that poured around an arched cupid. The gates were looming, black wrought iron, and the huge front door was made of glass and wrought iron. From the road you could look down the long drive and see into the marble entranceway.

My mother liked to walk me down to this house when I was little. She'd stand with me at the wrought-iron gates. Sometimes she'd wrap her fingers around the iron as if she were trying to get in. I didn't usually feel sorry for my mother, but I did when she brought me here because I could tell there was something she wanted that she'd never have. Everytime we came here she told me the same thing. That the family was reputed to come from an obscure branch of Hungarian aristocracy and a real princess lived inside. Years later when I grew up, I learned that she was not a real princess at all but the heiress to Princess Pat cosmetics, but my mother—who knew the truth—liked to pretend we had royalty living in our midst.

When I was a kid, I tried to imagine what it was like to live in this castle. I envisioned myself dancing on its marble floors, sleeping in a canopied bed. But no matter how often we came here we never saw anyone waltzing inside, and we never got a glimpse of the princess. Still I imagined for her a happy, wonderful life.

The road down to the lake was dark and winding, black really, but once I got beyond the twists and turns of the old Indian trail, the moon was out and the beach shimmered a hot bright blue. I pulled up so that the car faced the lake and sat with the windows rolled down. The moon sent a trail of gold out across the water. The water lapped the shore peacefully, though I have known Lake Michigan to be not so peaceful.

The thing about Lake Michigan—what makes it a dangerous lake—is that it has a pretty shallow shoreline, then it takes this big drop about a mile out, and it's about as a deep as a lake can be. In the middle nobody knows how deep it is. It's also true that there's as much magnetism on its shores as on the North Pole, so it is very difficult to navigate by compass when you're out in the lake. A lot of ships have gone down over the years, and almost everyone who goes down in them is lost. It's a dangerous place that looks nice and safe, which is what in part makes it so dangerous.

Tonight it looked peaceful. For a few moments I sat, enjoying the view. Other cars were parked nearby with their windows down. A pair of legs stuck out of the backseat of one. I used to come here with boys and kiss in the backseat of their cars. Now I was gazing out at the lake, alone. I sat for what seemed like a long time, half an hour or so, not wanting to leave. But then I forced myself to turn on the ignition, which seemed so loud in all that quiet, and drive back toward town.

In town I turned left instead of going straight to the highway. I knew I should be heading back, but there was one more thing I wanted to do. I took a detour down Dearborn to Sandburg, then crossed Lincoln, following the railroad tracks to the trestle. Driving under the trestle, I made a right and went a block or two until I came up to 137 Myrtle Lane.

I pulled over and got out of my car. It was still a hot night, but there was a breeze now coming off the lake. I stood under the sycamore and maples as the branches rustled. The house was dark, but in the moonlight it seemed to glow. I hadn't stood in front of this house since I'd left for college. It still had the white picket fence around it, but the old rose bushes had been taken out. There was a thick, unsightly hedge now. Heavy white wrought-iron furniture lined the front porch and a flagpole was spiked in the lawn.

Once I went with my parents to the house when it was being built. It smelled of fresh paint and sawdust. The toilets had no walls around them and the bowls were filled with cigarette butts. My father walked around with a set of blueprints in hand. My mother wanted a closet somewhere and my father stared at the blueprints, shaking his head.

When they weren't looking, I found a razor blade. I'd never seen a razor blade before and I drew it across the skin of my forearm, cutting a line. Blood flowed, soaking into the unfinished wood. It wasn't a very deep cut, but my parents screamed, horrified. It left a thin white scar. When I touch it, I think of home.

I used to imagine that I'd live in this house again one day and I was furious with my mother when she told me she'd sold it. “What do you want me to do,” she shouted at me into the phone, “keep living in the past?” She moved into a condo in town and neither of us went back to Winonah again. There was no reason to, really.