The Secrets of Lake Road

Tired and worn from years of battling with Gram, her mother—whom she had stopped calling Mom when Johnny had come along—she sunk farther into the driver’s seat. Her right hand lay limp in her lap while she loosely gripped the steering wheel with her left. Everything caught her eye as she passed by, the cabins and screened-in porches, the fishing poles and tackle boxes left outside front doors, the maple tree she had stood under the first time she had kissed Billy.

She turned the corner and looped back around. The smell of sun baked earth filled her head, and the dampness from the lake clung to her skin. The sights, the smells, the feel—all of it reminded her of Billy.

If only Gram knew what she was asking, demanding she stick around for a couple of days, but then again maybe she did know and she just didn’t care. “You can’t change the past,” Gram had said. “All you can do is live with it.”

But the hardest part for Jo to understand was the disappointment in Gram’s eyes whenever she looked at her. It had become a thing between them, this look of disappointment, separating them through the years. Neither one knew how to bridge the gap nor did it seem that either one wanted to try. Too many years had passed. Too much had been said or not said for either to back down now. It was as though both mother and daughter had given up on each other.

“I’m disappointed in you, too,” she whispered to herself in the car as the Commodores crooned about love.

Subconsciously, or maybe consciously, she steered toward Lake Road and headed down the hill, taking it slow, maneuvering the Chevy around the potholes nobody bothered to fill. She spied Johnny and his friends hanging out on the steps of the Pavilion. He cupped the cigarette he wasn’t supposed to be smoking in his hand and pretended not to recognize their car. As she drove past, she kept her eyes straight ahead.

Pretending not to see each other had been their unspoken agreement since Johnny had turned fourteen two years ago. She didn’t ask the typical questions a mother might ask her teenage son about where he was going and who he was going with mostly because she understood his desire for independence, for freedom. She believed Johnny appreciated the trust she had placed in him, and so far he hadn’t given her any reason not to. She understood better than anyone his need to stray.

After all, he was a lot like her.

He even looked like her—dark hair, full mouth, high cheekbones. The way he looked and behaved, it was easy to forget he was half of his father, too. More times than not she thought of him as solely hers. She didn’t rag on him about things like smoking and drinking as long as he didn’t do it in front of Gram. Besides, he only did those things while he was here. She understood that, too. There was something about this place that brought out the best and worst in you, pushing you to extremes.

“There’s something in the lake water,” she had often joked, but she never laughed. A part of her believed it was true.

Caroline had always been a different variety of kid. From the moment she had entered the world, she had made demands Jo struggled to meet—the feedings every hour, the crying, the fussing, the tantrums when things didn’t go her way. “Mommy, you stay here,” a three-year-old Caroline had said, stomping her foot whenever Jo had tried to leave the house.

The image of Caroline standing in the yard outside of the cabin cut across Jo’s mind. The way she had looked at her, the yearning in her eyes, had scared Jo. A part of her felt threatened by Caroline’s demands of constant love and attention. No matter what Jo said or did, no matter how much of herself she felt she gave, it was never enough. It would never be enough.

For a long time she tried to give her daughter what she could, all the hugs and kisses and affection she demanded, but somehow she’d always come up short. Her biggest fear, her failure as a mother, was simply that she didn’t have anything left to give.

At thirty-two-years old, Jo felt used up.

*

She continued driving past Johnny and his friends, and parked on the other side of the Pavilion. The lake poured out in front of her. It was beautiful on the surface, glimmering in the hot summer sun, the water dancing in rhythm against the shore. And yet, underneath all that refreshing sparkle, deep in its belly, its true form lay waiting, where its cold dark reality lurked.

Laughter drew her attention to the beach on her left. Already she could see it was crowded. Families spread out on blankets and chairs. Kids jumped off the low dive and raced to the floating pier in the middle of the lake. Younger kids stayed in the shallow water closer to their parents, where it was safe.