June 29, 1994
T
he clock said three-thirty when I heard someone walking on the front lawn below my window. The sound was heavy, watery, and thick. I was too afraid to sit up. The curtains were open to let in the breeze, and he might have been able to see me. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on the sound of his feet. But behind my eyelids, I saw Max's face. I saw Max watching me as I plucked the oyster shells from the sink, as I dumped soggy cigarette butts from the empty beer bottles. On the back of my eyes, I saw Max walking slowly toward the camp to find me, to make me go back with him again. I forced my eyes open, forced Max away. He was dead. He couldn't come here anymore. Suddenly, I realized that it might be the break-in kids: high schoolers who broke into empty cabins to drink and smoke pot. But it was too late for that; it was that strange spot of time between deep night and dawn. The sky was black, but the air smelled of morning. I pulled the blanket away from my ears so I could listen for voices.
I heard the steps again, the swish of pant legs and dew-drenched grass. My heart was pounding so loudly, I swear I could see my chest rising and falling. I inched my way slowly to the edge of the bed and crawled carefully onto the floor. The wood was hard on my knees as I made my way to the window. There was silence.
I peered out the corner of the glass, trying to see the yard below. It was too dark. There were no streetlamps here. I heard the sound again, and shrank back down to the floor. I looked through the window and it was like peering into nothing. I sat on the floor until I was certain that whatever was making the noise was either gone or just part of a dream I was having, and then I crawled back into the bed. I drifted in and out of sleep until Magoo's rooster started his cockadoodle-dooing at five-thirty and the sun was warm on my bare shoulders.
As I carried my coffee with me outside, I decided that I must have imagined the invasion. It's something I have done since I was little, talking myself into a fearful frenzy. I walked to the edge of the lake and felt calm. Silly. I put my feet in the water and drank the hot coffee. It was a strange sensation, terribly hot and terribly cold at the same time. I enjoyed this odd equilibrium of hot and cold, frightened and calm until Magoo started up his chain saw.
I walked back to the camp, whistling loudly over the chain saw's roar. And then I saw a glass jar on the steps to the unused front door. I walked slowly across the yard, thinking that maybe it was just the jar I kept the paintbrush in, stinking of turpentine and speckled with red paint. But there was something odd about its shape. Something unfamiliar.
I bent down and picked it up. It was a jelly jar, the kind with beveled edges. For marmalade or raspberry preserves. But there was no lid, and it was filled with murky water. The shape of the glass made kaleidoscopes of whatever was inside. I peered down through the top and realized that the water was teeming with polliwogs. I ran into the kitchen and set the jar on the windowsill next to the nest. I would need to get an aquarium if I wanted them to grow up. I picked up the jar again and looked inside. There must have been twenty or thirty of them.
I should have told Magoo thanks, but his chain saw was too loud for him to have heard me hollering through the open window.
I forgot about painting and drove into town looking for yard sales. I figured I could probably find an aquarium if I looked hard enough. When I hit the pavement and the houses grew closer and closer together, I realized I hadn't been into town for almost three weeks. I never thought that my small hometown would feel like a metropolis, but today, with the main street closed off for the farmer's market and people milling about everywhere, Quimby could have been Seattle for all of the traffic and noise. I decided to pick up a paper and have breakfast at the Miss Quimby Diner before I set out on my search.
When I walked into the diner, I could feel eyes on me like black flies. Glances swarming. The difference, I supposed, between this place and the city is that there is no such thing as anonymity here. And it had been way too long for me to blend in anymore. Faces were familiar, most I knew from high school. Faces grown longer, more tired. Eyes widened by time. Lips drawn. I kept my head down, some sort of Hester Prynne I imagined.
“Hi, Effie.” The waitress smiled. My eyes darted quickly to her name tag.
Maggie.
“Hi, Maggie.” I smiled. I recognized her.
“Coffee?” she asked, but she was already pouring the thick black diner coffee into the small white coffee mug.
“Thank you,” I said and watched her hands. Her nails were painted carefully, that shade of red I've always associated with being grown up. And I wondered, was it possible that she was my age? This girl, Maggie, who used to sit next to me in biology in the ninth grade, drawing endless circles on the brown paper cover of her textbook. Softly snoring during the dreary films of spiders spinning their intricate webs.
“Did you and that guy, what was his name? Mac? Max?”
I nodded.
“Did you get married?” she asked and took her notepad and pen from her apron pocket.
I shook my head.
“Oh, I'm sorry.” She blushed. “It's just you too looked so cute together when you used to come in here on Sundays. I was sure you'd be married by now.”
“Nope,” I said and sipped the hot coffee. It burned my tongue, but I wouldn't swallow it. If my tongue became ignited, I wouldn't have to speak.
“Probably better off without him anyways.” She smiled. “Dog?”
“Huh?” I ask.
“Was he a dog? You know, good-for-nothing. Good for
one
thing maybe.” She winked. “I'm just foolin' with you.”
After she handed me the laminated menu, I watched her walk away. I tried to imagine how Max and I must have looked to her. It amazed me that she remembered us that way. I remembered Sundays as silent. The long drive into town, Max bleary-eyed and sober. The newspaper a wall between us. The bitter grapefruit and cold silver spoon. Max's plate spilling syrup and strawberries. Texas-style French toast, batter dipped and deep-fried. Ice cream. This sweet decadence of his nauseating me. How must this have looked to Maggie? I didn't seem to recollect her ever looking at us longingly, the way I used to catch myself peering at couples with interlaced arms and that gentle contentment of being together. I didn't remember ever feeling envied. I only remembered the white of vanilla ice cream on Max's stubbly chin and the sting of citrus in that place inside my mouth where I bit the skin away to remind myself that I wasn't dreaming. That all of this was real. That I was still alive.
I ordered eggs and toast, but couldn't bring myself to eat the shiny yellow yolks floating on the milky sea of egg whites. And so I punctured each embryo, let the yellow run across my plate and ate the buttery toast while I read the paper. I circled the yard sales and left enough money for my bill and a tip for Maggie before she even came back to the table. On the way out I saw her at the cash register. I was afraid she would think that I was skipping out on the tab, so I stopped and said, “I left the bill on the table.”
“That's fine. Are you livin' up to the lake again this summer?”
“Um-hum.” I nodded.
“I live up there now too. I gotta work weekends, but maybe sometime we can get together. Play poker or somethin'. Have a few beers?” She shrugged.
“Sure,” I said and waved as I headed toward the door.
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The first yard sale was at a trailer park on the edge of town. I pulled in through the gates, past the rows of mailboxes, and parked in the dirt parking lot. I walked through the maze of trailers, waving happily to people sitting on their steps drinking coffee and hanging clothes on makeshift clotheslines. I used to love the idea of mobile homes. The notion of a home on wheels was like something out of my storybooks when I was little. But as I wandered looking for the sale, I noticed that most of these mobile homes had not moved. Most of them had rooms attached, windowless afterthoughts. Front porches made of concrete. Most of them didn't even have wheels anymore.
I found the sale at the end of one of the rows. There were about four people bent over mountains of clothes and card tables littered with knickknacks and trinkets. TV trays, milk crates, a bean-bag chair. And an aquarium. I could barely believe my luck. I looked around for the owner of the trailer, and checked the glass for cracks. It seemed perfectly intact.
“Tropical or saltwater?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
A man was hobbling down the steps of the trailer, holding a pair of roller skates in one hand and a cigar in the other. His face was tanned and wrinkled like a shrunken appleâhead doll.
“Freshwater or saltwater? Whatcha want the tank for?” he asked and started to cough. It sounded as if his lungs were turning themselves inside out.
I felt suddenly, terribly, sick. “Tadpoles.”
“Whatcha want to keep tadpoles for?” He put his hand over his mouth and stifled another cough. “You must live up to the lake. Which camp you staying at?”
He had mistaken me for a summer person. “I'm Gussy McInnes's granddaughter,” I said defiantly.
His face lit up. He set the roller skates down and offered me one shrunken hand.
“Well, you don't say. Gussy and I go way back. All the way to grade school. How is she? How about that old man of hers? Frank it is, isn't it? Quiet man.”
My heart thudded in my throat. “He's fine.” I didn't know why I was lying. Maybe it was too hard to say
passed away.
“He and I are repainting the camp this summer.”
“Well, you give my love to Gussy. Tell her Kaz says hello,” he was coughing again.
Breakfast turned in my stomach.
“How much for the tank?” I asked.
“For Gussy's girl?” His chest rumbled. “I'll tell you what. How about you go into town and get some tropical fish from the pet store? Bala sharks, neons. Some rocks. The filter's already in there. No polliwogs. Let them live in the lake. If you promise to let them go, you can have it.”
“Free?” I asked.
“Sure thing.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Let me look around and see what else I might need.”
“Sure thing,” he said and lifted the aquarium up. “I'll set this aside for you, while you browse.”
I found three cobalt jars, covered with dust. A daisy pin made of colored glass. A box of children's books for a dollar and a piece of antique lace big enough to cover the daybed. Gussy would love it.
Kaz put all of my treasures in a plastic grocery bag and stuffed them into the aquarium. “No frogs.” He smiled and helped me put everything in the back of the Bug.
I felt guilty about the tank all the way home. But what was the difference between keeping fish and keeping tadpoles? They were more apt to die in the lake than they were in my care.
I took the long way home, around the lake past the cottage with the red swing. I drove slowly with the windows down so that I could inhale the smell of wildflowers. The tree next to the swing had spilled purple petals all over the lawn, making a violet carpet. The shades were drawn; whoever lived here had probably not arrived for the summer yet. Except the wooden flag on the mailbox was up. I stopped the car and looked at the house. There was no car in the driveway. The shades were drawn. What harm could it do? I wouldn't take anything. I just wanted to know who lived there. I got out of the car and closed the door quietly. I looked down the road to see if anyone was coming, but the coast was clear.
I ran quickly across the road and pretended to inspect some wildflowers. I picked a bunch of daisies and looked down the road again. I walked slowly to the mailbox, and my heart was pounding. I touched the metal latch, which was hot from the sun, and gently pulled the door open. It made a terrible sound of rusty hinges, and I jumped. My hands were shaking, but it was too late now, I reached in and pulled out a bundle of mail, mostly bills. There was also a large manilla envelope addressed to Columbia University Visual Arts Division. I struggled to read the return address, and then heard a car. I quickly shoved the envelopes back into the mailbox, crushing the corner of the manilla envelope in the process. I could feel sweat trickling down my sides. I pushed the door closed, stood the flag back up, and returned to the daisies. The car slowed as it approached me. My heart settled as I saw that it was only Magoo driving down the middle of the road in his big blue Fairlane. He rolled down his window.
“Nice day,” he said.
“It's beautiful.” I smiled nervously.
“I'm goin' into town for the night. Visiting my grandbabies,” he said. “You keep an eye on my place?”
“Sure.” I smiled. “How old are they now?”
“One's six. The baby just turned two.”
“It sounds like Lucy's got a handful,” I said.
“Sure does. That's why she needs me to visit every now and again,” he said and started to roll up the window. “We'll see you tomorrow.”