“Not about that. But she obviously knew him well. And she’d obviously worked hard to track me down.”
“He fell in love with her. Maybe a few years ago. I can’t say that your mom was probably as lucky, judging from her pride.”
“You know, there’s no way you could know that. There’s no way I could.”
“I’m sorry, Claire. I’m not trying to offend you. I just like stories. I like thinking about stories. And yours is pretty interesting, you have to admit. I like thinking about what happens to people.”
“I’m not offended. It’s just a little weird that your guesses seem on target.”
“I’m just observant. I get it wrong every now and then, but most of the time I’m right. You think about most people’s lives. They aren’t that different from each other, even though people think they are.”
Claire nodded. She felt a kind of heat generating from high in her stomach, and it worked its way into her face.
“I have to admit, I like the thought of my father falling in love.”
“He was alone for a long time.”
“Genevieve.”
“But he was. Your wife leaves you. Your daughter disappears. For a few months, right after that, he fell into a woman’s arms who thought he was charming and funny. She lived in an older suburban neighborhood where there were high oak trees, and maybe sometimes he spent the evening there and they watched a movie with her little boy. But at night, while she lay sleeping next to him, after autumn came, the wind would blow the acorns down from those high oaks, and he would lie with his head propped up on his elbow, listening to them hit the sidewalk and the road, everyone’s cars parked in their garages, the wind in those drying leaves, and the unrhythmic, hollow plunk of the acorns, and they would remind him, then, of you disappearing, of the loss, and how he never predicted it, and he knew that he couldn’t go on sleeping in that neighborhood or with that kind woman, where the truest thing that ever happened was at night when those acorns fell randomly from the trees.”
Claire looked over at her. Genevieve’s voice was hypnotic. She remembered being a small girl and wondering what her father was thinking when he lay in the mornings with his shoulders turned away, seemingly looking out the window.
“You make it sound like that’s what actually happened,” she said. “It’s funny, because when I was a kid, he did lie in bed with his head propped up like that.”
“Most men do,” Genevieve said. “Doesn’t Jack?”
Claire nodded. “You make him sound so lonely. My father, I mean.”
“Maybe. But maybe he’s just thoughtful, you know? And he knows the difference between being lonely and alone. But he is alone a long time after he breaks it off with the woman. Many years. Don’t get the impression this is because you never called or tried to see him. I’m not saying there isn’t a hollow in his heart where his memory of you is nestled like a sleeping rabbit. He knows you’re out there. But he’s bought a house on a lake a few miles out of town.”
Claire almost said, “Which one?” before remembering this was Genevieve’s story, and she’d probably never been to Michigan.
“It’s a tiny house. A small screened porch facing the water, a living room, a kitchen, and one bedroom, a spare room upstairs, but a big garage, where he can work on projects for remaking the house to his own tastes. There are other cottages on the lake, some owned by people who only use them in the summertime, and in the evening, during those summer evenings, your father props up a lawn chair and sits where the edge of the grass meets the water, just in front of a large willow tree, and he watches some of the children from these vacation homes go tearing down a long pier, and leap into the water.”
“You know, his mom lived on a lake like that. My grandma.”
“Did she? Anyway, he’s friendly with his neighbors without making friends. They’ll ask him to watch the dog when they are away, and he’ll amble along the lane that circles the lake, keeping the dog leashed until they get to the small public access with the tall reeds—the lake isn’t large enough to allow anything other than small fishing boats—and then he’ll let the dog hunt minnows in the shallows, or he’ll toss a tennis ball into the water and watch the dog’s dark head pursue it out past the lily pads. Winters, the lake freezes over, and he’s one of the few people who continue to live there, and Saturday mornings he watches the ice fishermen trudge out through the snow, and hears the sharp thrust of their augers as they chip away at the ice come across the lake with the rays of the winter sun.”
The thought of ice and snow briefly cooled the inside of the cab. Claire felt herself being pulled into the story.
“And that’s how his days go. For most of those years you were gone. I mean, if you think about it, Claire. These years raising your baby. It’s not all that often—maybe Christmas, maybe the Fourth of July—you sit back and embrace everything that’s happened. But most of the time it’s day upon day, like it is for everyone, like it is for your father. What’s his name?”