Cameo Lake (3 page)

“Okay, Timmy, put Dad on now.”

“Can't, he's not home yet.” Lily, on the other extension sounded put out.

“Late meeting?”

“I don't know. He's always got a late meeting.” She sounded like a future henpecker. “He ordered us pizza but he got mushrooms on it. I hate mushrooms.” Lily was all set to rehash the whole debacle, mushroom by mushroom, when I cut her off. “Who's home with you?”

“Gramma.”

“Good.” It was all right for the kids to be home a little while during-the day without supervision, but by suppertime I wanted somebody there. “Mind her, now.” My kids were past masters at avoiding toothbrushing.

“Want to talk with her?”

My inclination was to say no, but in the interest of relations, I said yes.

“Cleo?”

“Alice.”

“Kids are fine. Seannie bought them pizza.” I could tell by the tone of her voice her approval of this fast-food dinner was extremely tenuous. “I would have been happy to make them something. He didn't need to do that.”

“Well, he probably thought on such short notice . . .”

“But it wasn't short notice, Cleo. He asked me two days ago to sit tonight with the kids.”

“Well, thank you for doing it.”

Alice muffled the phone as she directed the kids to start cleaning up. “So. How are you, dear?”

“Great.” Then I wondered if that was an impolitic response to one's mother-in-law. “The work goes well. But I miss everyone.”

To her everlasting credit Alice didn't respond by telling me how much everyone missed me, or how things were going to hell in my house. A widow, a veteran of raising six kids, this woman understood solitude is not a bad or necessarily selfish thing.

My parents are but a vague memory of distance. Mother, precisely manicured and coiffed, her club activities and tennis dates providing her with a daily structure. Father, tall and rail thin, thin combed-back hair of indeterminant faded brown washed with gray, his rheumy eyes equally colorless, like the eyes of a fish. He favored brown suits, always double-breasted, and, as if to make up for his colorlessness, sported bright ties, snubbing the old school tie of his prep school but falling back on his Yale tie for solemn occasions. He seemed not to know what to do about me. I'd appeared late in my parents' well-ordered life together, a wholly unexpected child.

Sometimes I blamed myself for their “problem,” as I overheard it called. Assuming that if I hadn't come along, they would have still loved each other. Their one shared passion, after the years had driven out all the rest, was alcohol.

They were the worst type of drinkers. Silent and refined. Only the exceedingly slow and articulated way they spoke gave them away to me. Father and Mother—never Mom and Dad—enjoyed their cocktail before dinner, their wine with, and their postprandial cordial after. Then their nightcap. Scotch in ever larger tumblers, no ice, no water. I remember sipping from my mother's glass when she had stepped from the room. I spit the harsh scotch out onto the parquet floor of the living room, just missing the oriental rug. I knelt down and tried to mop it up with the hem of my private-school uniform. It was one of those days when my mother had been out all afternoon at her club, and she never even noticed the puddle or the wet edge of my skirt.

“Cleo is quite the young lady, isn't she?” I might have been twelve, just entering that peculiar hell of adolescence, when any reference to my ungainly and sudden height and tender breasts was
enough to make me cry. Mr. Ramsey was the husband of a fellow club woman, and he and his wife were frequent dinner guests. They all seemed to know one another very well, but I had never heard my parents refer to them by their first names in front of me.

“Yes, she's growing up very fast.” My mother said this as if I couldn't grow up fast enough for her. She plucked at my blouse to straighten it, instantly drawing attention to my unformed breasts, at least in my mind, and, by self-conscious assumption, in Mr. Ramsey's. She then put a harsh thumb to my cheek as if to rub out the obvious zit there. Now I realize these might have been construed as touches of affection, but I knew they were the same sort of touch once gives objects one is a little disappointed in. Maybe if I turn this vase in this direction I'll like it better.

When I met Sean I liked him right away. He had that effect on people, on women. When I met his family, I fell in love. Here were people who were loud and cranky and funny and teasing and, most intriguing to me, physical. They touched each other, quick embraces, slaps at hands reaching impolitely across the table. The girls played with each other's hair, they hugged their father, and Sean picked up their mother as a joke. It surprised me when Sean's mother—Ma they all called her, incessantly vying for her attention—gave me a hug after my first visit. She put me to work peeling potatoes on the second, and joked about sex on the third. They were earthy in that “salt of the earth” way. The McCarthys absorbed me into their family and I did my best to imitate their boisterous extroversion, but it never felt natural to me.

“Hey, Ma, thanks again for staying with the rugrats.” I didn't always call her that, but sometimes it just seemed fitting.

“Cleo, they're my grandbabies.”

“Is Sean okay?”

“Yes, Cleo. Everything's fine. Don't worry about anything.”

I rang off and sat for a few minutes in the big car, the mobile phone still in my hand. I hadn't meant to ask that last question in
quite the tone of voice I had. I knew that Alice took the right interpretation and her assurances carried the double meaning I needed. Sean was behaving himself. She was being vigilant.

My need for conversation unquenched, I did the next best thing and punched Grace's number into the keypad.

“Hey, have I told you how grateful I am you made me do this?”

“Once or twice, but not since you've been there. How the hell are you?”

“Great. Working well. Getting in some good runs.”

“Weather been okay?”

“Better than okay. I went for my first swim today.”

“Out to the raft?”

“Not yet. Just a quick in and out.” Mention of the raft brought my neighbor to mind. “By the way, Grace, who's the guy who lives across the lake from your cabin? The tall skinny guy with the cats?”

“Oh. Ben Turner.” There was a downturn in Grace's voice, a tinge of disgust or dismissal, I couldn't decide.

“Who is he?”

“A loner. Keeps to himself.” There was hiccup in the line, not a noise but the absence of noise, and Grace excused herself. “Sorry, Cleo, I've got to take this call. Call me tomorrow. No, wait, we leave tomorrow. I'll call you when we get home.”

Sitting there with the disconnected phone in my right hand, I wondered whether my absence was working out too well for everyone else. Who has not, in childhood, thought . . . they'll miss me when I'm dead. That'll show 'em. I sat there in Grace's car and wondered if I was being shown just exactly how unmissed I'd be. Life certainly goes on.

Day six and Karen and Jay were shaping up nicely. With my Discman providing background music, this day heavily Dvorák, I advanced Karen's falling in love with Jay, who remained aloof or oblivious to her feelings. I hadn't quite defined his motivation or conflict yet, it would come out as I got to know him better. I had given him a nifty
occupation—restaurateur. And, with Karen being a food critic pathologically afraid of gaining weight, I had opened up a whole world of potential conflict. I got hungry as I devised a menu for Jay's restaurant and gave up mid-entrée. My Spartan diet was getting boring and I decided a pork chop was exactly what I wanted. It was late enough in the day to call it quits, anyway.

He stood in the checkout line just ahead of me in the Big G supermarket. I watched his choices as they rode the conveyor belt to the cashier, who popped her gum and chatted relentlessly with the teenage bag boy. Milk, eggs, whole-wheat bread, and cheese; canned soup, five pounds of sugar, a hand-picked bag of baking potatoes; cold cuts, a two-pack of chicken breasts, and a tiny, one-person pot roast. His array looked almost like mine, except I'd chosen pork chops instead of beef. The one concession to temptation, in his case was a two-pound bag of Oreos; in mine, Fig Newtons. He'd picked up a copy of
George,
I'd snagged
Vanity Fair.

It crossed my mind that our menu plans were similar because we were single people living in a world which put things in six-packs. I had never experienced having to buy groceries in such limited quantities before and never realized how difficult it was if you wanted to avoid eating the same thing over and over. I had a notion to comment on our groceries, something about how if we combined our resources we could have more choice and still be economical. But, of course, I didn't. I didn't speak. After all, we really didn't know each other.

He turned toward me as he fished his wallet out of his back pocket. He smiled with that little “You look familiar” smile. Civility. I smiled back with a little nod of, yes we do sort of know each other. He picked up his bags—paper, not plastic—and walked out.

The gum popper looked at me long enough to ask my bag preference, then continued her conversation. I stared after my neighbor until he was obscured by the display of beach balls blocking the store's windows. I could see only the top of his head with its tan baseball cap, then he was gone. In the one split second of eye contact my interest in my neighbor moved from mild to more.

. . . He had the most mild eyes of any I had ever looked into. Full
deep brown, they revealed a man incapable of hurting anyone but himself . . .

“Thirty-nine twenty-seven, please.” The cashier's gum-muffled voice startled me and I knew I'd been writing description in my head. Those collie eyes would suit Jay perfectly. I wrote that line on the back of my receipt and stuck it in the back pocket of my shorts.

I maneuvered the big car around my bicycle-riding neighbor, pedaling with determined pace on his twelve-speed trek bike, its panniers filled with his groceries. This far into the White Mountains, there is no flat, just up or down, and he was working hard. I left him in my rearview mirror as I turned into the parking lot of the local library. For such an outpost, the Cameo Lake Public Library is well endowed, and I took a leisurely time registering as a patron and picking out a couple of quick reads. I never like to read anything too good when I'm working for fear I'll give up when faced with superior writers.

Chiding myself for leaving off work for so long, I was going a little-fast along the narrow secondary road which looped around the lake. Ahead I saw something on the side of the road which quickly resolved into my neighbor squatting next to his bike. I was a full twenty yards beyond him when I stopped and, in neighborly determination, reversed to where he stood. I buzzed down the passenger side window. “Need some help?”

He was slow to come alongside of the car, almost as if he thought I might hit the gas pedal and take off. He stood off a little from the passenger side of the car and looked in to see who it was who had stopped. “Thanks. I could use a lift. Flat tire.” He gestured toward the now supine bicycle. “I live on the lake.”

I restrained myself from saying “Yes, I know” and simply popped the release for the back door. “I think it'll fit inside. This car is so big I think you could slip a full-sized motorcycle in without trouble.”

I pulled a little farther off the narrow road, aware suddenly of the danger from cars just like this one speeding past. Bike settled, my neighbor climbed in. “I'm Benson Turner.” For a moment, it almost seemed as if he expected me to react.

“Cleo Grayson.” He took my hand in the briefest of greetings, but long enough for me to get a sense of warmth and long fingers, a little callused.

“I live on one of the islands, so you can drop me at the road to the boat ramp. I'll be fine from there. It'll be less out of your way.”

“It's not out of my way. I live across from you in Grace Chichetti's cabin.”

“Oh.” Ben pressed the palms of both hands against his knees. “I didn't realize that was you. I've seen you running.” He seemed a little uncomfortable with that admission, but I couldn't make myself leaven the tension with an admission of my own voyeurism in watching him chop wood. However, as nominal hostess in this situation, I felt compelled to find small talk. The mile to the access road loomed interminably. “I hope you didn't break any eggs.”