They lasted almost until Junior’s first birthday, when Laura left Jack for her ob-gyn. She told him tearfully, sitting him down on the edge of their bed in the basement apartment, that they never would have worked out. Dr. Whatever-the-Fuck was, unlike Jack, her “intellectual equal.”
He left the job with his father-in-law, moved out of the basement. Moved back in with his mom. Got his GED. Bagged groceries, took night classes at the community college. Was promoted to assistant manager at the Stop & Shop. Saw Junior once every two weeks, picking him up from the doctor’s mansion in West Hartford. Jack’s mom died—lifelong smoker, lung cancer. He sold her one-floor house, which turned a surprisingly okay profit. Moved to his own apartment in the same shitty part of Hartford. Was promoted to manager at the Stop & Shop. Got his bachelor’s, graduating with a degree in physical education. Got a job as a PE teacher at a local elementary school. Twenty years hopping around schools until he eventually became the director of PE at one.
He knew Al Billings, the head of athletics at Marigold, from one of his previous schools. Al reached out because he thought that Jack could be a great fit for the open camp director position: hardworking, tons of experience in schools, a real self-starter. Great with kids but tough when necessary. Al’s call came at just the right time; Jack was just getting out of, or trying to get out of, something with one of the kindergarten teachers at school. She was his age, never married, pretty but slightly overweight, unbelievably insecure. A history of abusive boyfriends, Jack learned, and he was the first who wasn’t. It had initially been an arrangement of two lonely people, he had thought, but she had begun to treat him like some sort of savior, to dote on him, ask questions about their future together. He would have rather been lonely than trapped. He took the Marigold job.
It came with a pay raise and a year-round cabin. He’d looked forward to the mix of social and solitary aspects, for he thought of himself that way, as someone who liked to be around people but, after some time with them, needed to retreat, recharge. During the summers, he would be surrounded by campers and counselors; but from Labor Day to Memorial Day, he’d live in his house in the woods, put in a few morning hours in the office, and spend the afternoons running along the trails, hiking in the snow, and reading books he’d never bothered with before. Maybe he’d start a vegetable garden. Maybe he would get a dog.
He just hadn’t anticipated how long that first winter would be. The action-packed summer went fast, and the cold days dragged on. Lakeville was a seasonal town; the local men were drunks, and the local women were ambitionless, cloying. It did not take him long to realize it was less lonely to stay in and get a good night’s sleep than it was to drink his Jack Daniel’s neat in a mostly empty tavern. Before spring’s first thaw, he found himself anxious for the summer again. In early April, using a book from the Lakeville library as his guide, he planted cucumbers, tomatoes, and red peppers. He built a trellis and waited for the vines to start climbing.
—
Weekends at camp were more unstructured than the weekdays, so Jack rode around in his golf cart that Saturday, the day after Rachel passed him the second note. He was so distracted that he had to brake quickly to stop himself from hitting two older kids on their bikes.
“Watch where you’re going, boys!”
He went back to the staff lodge that night because, he told himself, it was a Saturday. He had never gone two nights in a row before, let alone three.
At the poker table, she sat next to him, pressed her thigh against his, and made brief but imploring eye contact with him. She was older than her years, he began to tell himself. She must have been. She was self-possessed, mature. She knew exactly what she was doing.
She passed her note. He left and read it outside: “Oar house @ 1.”
He wouldn’t just be fired if the board found out; his nascent career as a camp director would end nearly as soon as it had begun. He’d probably never get another reputable job.
He wasn’t even the type to go for younger women. It felt creepy, unseemly, the difference in their ages.
And yet.
Somehow.
He suspected that to Rachel he was a conquest—an authority figure, a commodity. Her youth reflected his own aging self back at him. It made him grasp his own mortality more clearly, feel simultaneously free of and shackled by time.
So nothing really mattered. And therefore, everything did.
—
Inside the shed, it smelled like dust and overgrown dandelions. They knocked down paddles leaning against the walls, life jackets from their hooks. He felt too serious to laugh. It had been a while, and he finished too fast, but then he worked on her and took them both by surprise. They lay on a plastic tarp after, and he let her sleep for half an hour before waking her and telling her it was time to go back to her section. When she woke, there was no glimmer of regret as he’d expected there to be. She simply stood, brushed herself off, gave him a long kiss, and left the shed without a word.
—
The next day, Jack rode around on his golf cart feeling high. He kept thinking about Rachel and at one point rode past the girls’ Hemlock section—for the thirteen-year-olds, where she was a counselor—just to catch a glimpse of her. He saw her chatting with a pair of campers, and when she saw his golf cart approaching, she looked up and shyly smiled. The thought of that smile distracted him throughout the day, but it also gave him a certain levity and confidence as he spoke at flag lowering, at dinner, at the opening campfire.
Later that night, she slithered so swiftly around his bedroom and under his sheets, knew exactly what to do in a way he hadn’t experienced in half the grown women he’d been with. But then came the reminder: She mentioned that she had just completed her freshman year at Michigan.
He already had a son when he was her age, he told her.
“Where is he now?” she asked.
“Medical school.”
“Were you married?”
“Briefly,” he said.
It continued like this for three more nights: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The heat still had not broken. She spent each night in his cabin and left early in the morning in order to make it back to her tent before the campers awoke. The sex was good for both of them. And he was getting used to the pillow talk, which he hadn’t had with anyone since the kindergarten teacher over a year ago. She was a smart girl, Rachel. One night he asked her, postcoitus, what she was studying at school. She said she was thinking of majoring in gender studies.
“You’re not one of those militant feminists, are you?” he joked as he twisted a piece of her hair between his fingers. In truth, he felt intimidated by her intelligence. Why did he always do this to himself, go for the women he was too stupid to actually be with? Sometimes he felt like a token to them: a working-class guy, athletic, dumb, good with his hands.
She jerked her head away. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I was kidding.”