I brushed the grass back and forth with the palm of my hand, staring out at the sun dimpling the skin on the lake. The housewife was now moderating an argument between two of her children over who got the last Popsicle stick.
“I was supposed to meet my friends right here,” the man said a bit sadly, “by the picnic tables at Sunset Beach.” He looked around once more, in case they’d shown up while we were talking. “Probably they just ditched me.” He laughed, but he didn’t seem to be joking. I felt a pang for him. He was the effeminate type, a guy who probably had a hard time making male friends. My brother would have made high school horrible for him. CJ too. I thought of the traveling businessman who came into my father’s bar all those years ago, far from home and just looking for a few minutes of conversation.
“You better introduce me to your parents,” I said, standing and tugging the navy dress down over my damp bathing suit. There was still something about him that irked me, and I didn’t want to be too nice to him in case I gave him the wrong idea. I wanted him to understand I was coming along because he needed my help and because he seemed a little rejected, because that Sunday there had been a galactic explosion of sunlight and freedom, because life has a way of staggering its mileposts, and I was certain I had a ways to go until I got to the next one.
* * *
I admitted to myself that something was wrong with him in the car, but through some lethal interaction between denial and decorum, I kept the conversation going at a sparkling cadence.
I prattled on about culinary school and helping my friend Tina pass her jurisprudence exam. I saw a hint of something cold in him when I mentioned the exam—resentment, though that couldn’t be right. He was a summer associate at Baskins-Cole, and that seemed a hierarchical impossibility.
We exited I-90 and made a left at a stoplight, climbing into the mountains. We hadn’t been able to get the trunk shut with my bike inside, but he promised to drive slowly. When he’d said his parents lived in Issaquah, I had pictured a street like mine. The homes on top of one another and kids playing in the yard, fathers mowing the grass in their weekend moccasins. It wasn’t that this wasn’t Issaquah, it was just that a lot of the houses up here were second homes for wealthy Utah families.
“Do your folks live here year-round?” I asked.
“They do now,” he said, flashing a smile at me as if to say that was a great question. “They sold their place out east after my dad retired.”
He was from the East Coast. I’d known it. “Where on the East Coast?”
“Philadelphia,” he said, turning into the driveway of a spacious alpine-style home with a green roof and shutters, tucked invisibly into the woodlands. It was quiet and secluded, but there was a gleaming black Chevy parked in the driveway, recently washed, and there were lights on inside.
“Dad’s car.” He indicated with a jut of his sharp chin. “Does that assuage any lingering concerns?” His laugh was self-deprecating.
I blinked at him, a little unsure if I should correct him or not. “Assuage,” I said.
He put the car into park and turned to look at me in genuine distress. “What did I say?”
“You pronounced it ah-soge, but I’m pretty sure it’s ah-swaje.”
He tried to laugh it off, but I could tell he was embarassed. “I’ve been saying it wrong all my life. That’s just great.” He opened the door. “The boat’s in the garage.”
I hesitated. “You said you’d introduce me to your parents.”
He gazed up at the house, rocking back on his heels. There was a light on upstairs and one in the back of the house, looking down on the lake. “Looks like Dad is up finally. He’s been sleeping late because of his pain pills. That’s Mom in the kitchen for sure.” He wiggled his eyebrows mischievously. “She’s making pot roast tonight. I tell her she should eat more fish, but you’re welcome to stay if you’re hungry.”
I opened the door and stepped onto the gravel driveway. “I wouldn’t want to impose,” I said, though on some level I understood I was participating in a charade that was designed to keep me calm and cooperative. I knew there was a darker motive behind the dinner invitation; but still I expected to walk into that house and find his mother browning onions and carrots on the stove.
The house was very beautiful and tasteful; I could see how a person like him had come from a place like this, and that set me at ease too, just being able to make sense of him, because I had found his old-world mannerisms odd, almost as though he were from another decade, or acting in a movie about people from another decade. He was just born rich, I realized, making my way into the back of the house. Not even Tina was born rich. It seemed to stand that a person like that might act a little strangely. It’s not like there were very many of them in this world.
The home was decorated like a vacation rental or a luxury winter resort. Animal antlers in varying sizes hung above the old brick fireplace. The furniture was dark brown leather, with flannel pillows and blankets thrown about. It was all very plush, very cozy, but as much as it sickened me to admit, the rooms had an abandoned feel. On any other gloomy day I might not have noticed, but that Sunday sunlight blazed a trail of dust through the living room. I looked at the pictures of his parents on the doily-covered side table and started to tremble. They were normal-looking and covered in a fine layer of grime.
I could hear him in the kitchen talking to his mother about me. “I couldn’t find those guys anywhere but I found someone nice enough to help with the sailboat. Boy, it’s a scene down there.”
I followed his voice into the kitchen, fixing my hair for his mother, tugging down the hem of Tina’s navy dress.
“Here she is now,” he said as I stepped into the kitchen. There was a grin in his voice but not on his face. His arm was bent at a ninety-degree angle, elbow flush against his rib cage, the gun in his hand level with his hip and sort of cocked to the side so that I was half waiting for him to say, Hey! Look at what I found here! in his queer British dialect. He wasn’t aiming it so much as he was showing it to me.
I must have looked so brainless, glancing around the kitchen for his mother. Left, then right, like I was getting ready to cross the street. He had been talking to her. Perhaps she was in the pantry getting the flour? Pot roast called for a roux. I would soon be tossing around words like that with people like me, people who wouldn’t look at me like I had two heads. Roux. Au poivre.
“Get undressed,” he said. I’d heard people describe rapists and murderers before. How their eyes went black and they saw pure evil. But the man I saw before me was the man I’d seen at the lake, in the car. I’d seen this man all along. I’d seen him and I’d gone with him anyway, because he’d asked for my help, and I’d already denied it to my mother that day. I’d have been a real bitch to tell someone no for the second time in twenty-four hours.
“You’re not going to use that,” I told him, an especially insane thing to say and exactly why I said it. I thought I could get him to comprehend the gap between what he was doing and who he was, because it was an insane gulf, a death swim. He was a law student in tennis whites who had broken his arm playing racquetball with his…
I hadn’t noticed it at first, but when I did, icy terror packed my chest. The sling hung around his neck, sweat-wrinkled and abhorrent as a used condom. Whatever was broken in this man was not a bone in his arm.
* * *
There were times, with CJ, that I’d been disgusted too, that I hadn’t wanted our skin to touch, that I had to grit my teeth and will him to be finished with me. At least I didn’t have to pretend to enjoy this, I thought. At least.
* * *