The Lake Of Dreams Part 27

When I finally made it to the door of Art's office, I found him staring at a computer screen. An old-fas.h.i.+oned adding machine sat on the desk, cascading paper onto the dusty tile floor.

He didn't hear me right away, and so there was a moment when I stood and watched him, concentrating hard, traces of my father in the shape of his hands and forearms, in the way his sideburns tapered into his graying hair. When he glanced up and saw me he was startled, and his face opened and went slightly slack with surprise; then he laughed, relaxing back into the chair.

"Lucy," he said. "What a surprise."

"Big leap?" I asked. "From hardware to software, I mean?"

He chuckled. "Sure is. You any good with spreadsheets?"

"I am, actually."

"Ah. Want to have a look?"

"No, not really."

He looked at me then, taking me in for the first time, and the uneasy expression that moved across his face echoed his look when he'd first seen me.

"No?" He folded his arms across his chest. "Then, what can I do for you?"

I felt sorry for him then, because he suddenly looked old and vulnerable behind that desk.

"I was just pa.s.sing by and saw the light was on," I said, gesturing to the window. "I parked here and went to the party. I saw you, but didn't get to say h.e.l.lo."

"I stopped in. It was fun. I always like the ring of fire, and the concert-I like that, too. Your father and I used to light flares as kids. It doesn't seem that long ago."

"I've been driving his car," I said. "You know, the one he fixed up?"

"I know. I went out to look at it earlier. He sure loved that car."

"Yes, he did. My mother hasn't had the heart to touch it all these years, so it's mostly just been sitting in the barn."

He nodded and looked out the window at the gravel parking lot, where the Impala sat at the edge of light from the streetlamp, the silver arrows glinting.

"He'd be glad, I think." Art said. "Glad to know you were enjoying it, Lucy."

I leaned against the chair. "I am enjoying it. Though it drives like a boat. And the other day I had a flat tire, coming back from Elmira. I had to call the car service, you know, and the guy who came pulled everything out of the trunk. You'll never guess what I found."

"I can't imagine-a tire iron?"

"Yes, actually. And my father's tackle box."

Art sat up straighter then, leaning a little forward. He folded his hands carefully on the desk.

"Yes? Are you sure? We looked and looked for that the night he died."

"I know. He used to take me fis.h.i.+ng. All the lures I remember were there."

"I see."

"Did you fish with him a lot when you were younger?" I asked, sliding into the chair, its leather smooth against the backs of my legs.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. We did. Summers, we were out on the water every morning. Me and Marty. We'd catch a whole string of fish sometimes. Other times we'd come back empty-handed."

I nodded, thinking with nostalgia of all the mornings I'd spent with my father in just this same way.

"It's funny, though," I said. "The lures were in the tackle box, just like you'd expect, but none of his tools were in the bottom. No tools, no wire, nothing. It made me sad, somehow, all that empty s.p.a.ce. Then I found the papers."

"Really?" Art said. "What papers were those?"

"A will. Your grandfather's will, in fact."

Briefly then, without pausing to weigh the possible consequences, I told the story-Rose and her daughter, and the will written by my great-grandfather, which included Iris.

His expression didn't change. After a minute, he sighed and leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head.

"So, do you have this will?" he asked. "Could I see it?"

I'd left it in the Impala, locked back in the tackle box.

"It's at the house," I said. "My mother put it away somewhere, I'm not sure where."

He nodded.

"Not that it matters," he said. "Such a will would hardly be valid, all these years later. Rose is long gone, and probably her daughter, too. What difference could any of it make?"

He had no idea, I realized. Not about the chapel or the windows, the fascinating life Rose had led, the other branch of the family, living not very far away.

"Well, actually, she's still alive. Iris, I mean. I met her recently. She has two grown sons, and grandchildren about my age."

"Are you serious? You say you met her?"

"Yes. It was really kind of amazing. She's ninety-five years old. Very together. She has the family eyes."

"Does she know about the will?"

I thought this was a strange first question to ask. "Not yet," I said. "I found it after I met her. But I think she should know, don't you? I mean, it might not be valid, but emotionally it might matter to her. To know she wasn't excluded."

Art's voice got lower then, not warm exactly, but inviting me to hear a confidence. I thought of Iris, and of Rose, of all the things I knew about the family that he did not know, and leaned a little forward, so I could listen. Listen, gather more, collect another piece of the puzzle that might let all the others fall into place.

"Lucy," he said softly. "Surely you understand that the marshland is worth a great deal of money at this moment. It hasn't always been valuable, and it may not be again. This is a golden moment, is what I'm saying. Probably this will you're talking about is null and void. I'm not all that concerned about it. But even so, if you contact this person, this long-lost relative, you open up the door to competing claims, even litigation. And I warn you, the moment will pa.s.s, and anything you might have had-anything your family might have had-will be gone."

"It isn't about money," I said, but even I could hear the uncertainty in my voice. I was thinking of Blake, and the falling-apart house, even as I was remembering floating in the marshes with my father.

"It's always about money," Art said. "Make no mistake, Lucy."

Art waited a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was wistful. "I loved your father," he said. "He was always such a sunny kid, the one everyone was drawn to, growing up. That was hard, and I did some things I regret, and so did he, but I loved him. I like to think that if he'd lived, we'd eventually have made things right between us."

I took a deep breath, the air full of the scent of cut wood and iron. "It seems to me you had plenty of chances to make that happen."

He shook his head, gazing beyond me to the doorway, to some distant point in the past. "Your father was a very stubborn man. He had his ways. He wouldn't listen."

There was something in his tone, so nostalgic, yet so laced with sorrow and regret. And I didn't think that sounded true about my father, who had the gift of listening, who had taught it to me. I held still, feeling the quality of the air change in the room. I even blinked slowly, as if Art were a wild animal I didn't want to frighten away.

"When?" I asked softly. "When didn't he listen to what you had to say?"

Art didn't look at me or even seem to hear me.

"I tried everything," he said. "Everything I could to get him to listen to reason."

"And he wouldn't?"

He shook his head, pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes as if wiping away sleep.

"No. He would not. I tried three, four, five times. He wouldn't even speak to me by the end. When I found him that night he just kept casting his line into the water as if I wasn't even there. That's how it always was with Marty. Like I wasn't even there."

Now I could hardly breathe. "He was casting out his line," I murmured.

"Yes. Into the reeds."

"The night he died."

"Yes."

He looked across the desk then and we stared at each other, not speaking, as if his words had torn open the very air and all the oxygen was fading from the room.

"I was trying to do the right thing," he said, as if I would surely see the reasoning and understand this. "I was trying to help him. Help you all."

I closed my eyes for a second. "And he wouldn't listen."

"No." He looked away again, out the window this time, into the back parking lot, where the gravel was a dim gray beneath the streetlamp. "Marty would never listen to me. He'd showed me those same papers. The ones you found, I bet. Showed them to me and told me what he was going to do, didn't want to hear anything I had to say about it. And it was his land, sure, like he said." Art made a gesture of frustration, a swift cut of his hand, as if reliving the argument with my father. "His to throw away if he wanted. Foolish. Not my business, though. But this was. Dream Master was my my business. And I told him, again and again, if he found this person, if she laid claim to one piece, then what was to keep her from getting it all? Your father, he didn't know what he was opening up, what he was getting into." business. And I told him, again and again, if he found this person, if she laid claim to one piece, then what was to keep her from getting it all? Your father, he didn't know what he was opening up, what he was getting into."

Or maybe he did, I thought. Maybe he'd been enjoying a quiet kind of revenge. I didn't say this, though. I only nodded. I'd gone very still as Arthur talked, anch.o.r.ed by a strange calm, as if I'd stepped outside myself and was watching the conversation unfold from far away. In the silence, Art spoke again. I thought. Maybe he'd been enjoying a quiet kind of revenge. I didn't say this, though. I only nodded. I'd gone very still as Arthur talked, anch.o.r.ed by a strange calm, as if I'd stepped outside myself and was watching the conversation unfold from far away. In the silence, Art spoke again.

"I couldn't sleep for thinking about what he might do with those papers. Days, this went on. Then I woke up one night in the middle of the night. Was rudely awakened, I should say. Joey was always on the wild side, but usually he had the good sense to sneak in when he broke curfew. That night, though, he came home spitting mad. He was throwing things around, a car was waiting for him in the driveway. Before I could get up and ask what was going on, he'd found what he needed and left again, slamming the door hard on his way out. d.a.m.ned if I could get back to sleep. Beautiful clear night it was, the kind we used to wait for as boys. I had a feeling Marty would be out there. In the marsh, where he always went-I had a hunch he'd be there. It's where we always used to go. So I drove to the lake and took the boat out. I just wanted to talk to him if he was there. And he was. He wasn't hard to find. It was a very still night."

I nodded, remembering how I'd stood talking with my father in my mother's moon garden on that same night, surrounded by such quiet it seemed I could hear the flowers in their delicate unfurling.

"He must have heard me coming, but he didn't even look up. I pulled the boat up near him, cut the motor. Then we just drifted. He kept casting his line, reeling it in. Wouldn't speak. We drifted, two boats, dark fish swimming beneath us."

Dark fish swimming everywhere, I thought. I thought.

"Finally, I grabbed hold of his boat. The metal was cold, and I was so frustrated; I told him he was being a fool. He turned around, maybe he only meant to knock my hand away, but his hand hit me in the face. I stood up, and he did, too. I don't think I hit him first, but maybe I did. Who knows, I might have. I just kept saying Marty, stop it, d.a.m.n it, stop, but he wouldn't, and so I pushed him away. Hard. Hard as I could. He lost his balance, fell. I did, too, on the recoil. I fell into the bottom of my boat, almost capsized it. Went skidding away, careening. It was dark. I didn't see anything as much I felt it, heard it. It was a terrible sound, his head cracking against the side of the boat. It must have been his head. He didn't cry out, shout, anything."

Art paused and looked at me and it was all anguish on his face. I couldn't speak, caught in that still place, that airless vacuum, the dark fish swimming all around.

"I tried to find him," Art said. "I looked and I couldn't see him. It was so dark. It seemed like such a long time I was there, after he fell. But I don't know. I wanted to get help. I remember thinking I would get help. So I left. I left him."

I still didn't speak, remembering the voices traveling across the lawn in the beautiful dawn, my father lifeless on the stones, his skin swollen and iridescent, like a fish, the way my mother knelt beside him and touched his cheek so gently, and how he did not turn to kiss her palm.

"It wouldn't have made any difference," Art said. He was looking at his hands now, speaking to them. "It wouldn't have mattered, by the time I got to sh.o.r.e. Even by the time I left, nothing would have made a difference."

He wasn't looking at me, but I knew what he wanted, what he was waiting for in that dusty room with its fluorescent lights-he wanted me not just to hear him but to agree with him. To say it was okay, what he'd done, reasonable under the circ.u.mstances, and thus to become complicit in my father's death. Art looked so old now, sitting behind the desk, as if the telling had deflated him, leaving his skin to sag and cling more closely to his bones.

"Lucy," he insisted, meeting my eye at last, pleading now. "Talk to me, please. It would not have mattered one bit if I had stayed."

I stood up without a word, shaking, and walked out into the night.

He followed me, a shadow in the darkened door of the building. "Lucy," he called after me, speaking softly, his voice carrying across the gra.s.s. "Don't forget that you and your brother have a great deal at stake in this, too."

I stopped at the edge of the outlet, so filled up with pain and rage and outrage that I could barely breathe. Art stayed on the stoop outside Dream Master for a moment longer, the building dark behind him, looking in my direction. Then he turned and went inside, the door falling shut behind him, clicking as it locked.

How long I stood there, I couldn't say. The evening was mild and the streets were still full of tourists. Bursts of laughter floated out over the water from The Green Bean, and people strolled along the path, holding hands, eating ice cream, pa.s.sing me, sometimes stepping around me, as if I were a pillar or a bench or a statue. I stood that still, caught in the airless, breathless pain of that long ago morning when they carried my father from the lake.

The windows above the gla.s.sworks were all dark-maybe Keegan was already asleep, Max breathing lightly, the rooms filled up with calm. I started walking hard and fast along the outlet into town, my thoughts so wild and scattered. It was a beautiful night, clear and warm, and so many people were lingering outside restaurants or strolling along the lake. Twice, people pa.s.sing cast odd glances in my direction, and I realized I'd spoken out loud-a word, a phrase, agitated, nonsensical.

I walked in that state for a long time, past all the cozy homes with their lights on, people moving inside, reading or watching television or was.h.i.+ng the dishes. Doing ordinary, untroubled things. They couldn't see me striding past their houses, tears flowing down my face at some moments, possessed by an anger so fierce I was almost doubled up at others. I walked to the edge of town and then back, past the church with its arched red doors. I thought of the Reverend Suzi, but it was too late to call her. The streets were quieter by the time I found myself in the parking lot again, standing with one hand on my father's Impala, the car he had loved so much, the place he had hidden his last secret.

The papers were still inside-I'd put them back in the tackle box because it seemed the safest place-reminding me of why I'd gone to see Art in the first place: to tell him about Iris, to talk with him about the owners.h.i.+p of the land. Not to hear this confession, words like lightning, transforming my known world like sand melting into gla.s.s.

Dream Master was dark. I went inside through the back door, which, oddly, was unlocked, as if Art had left in a hurry. I went into the storefront and, without deciding to do it, started pulling things off the shelves: gallons and quarts of paint cras.h.i.+ng onto the linoleum, bucket after bucket of nails, a whole shelf full of doork.n.o.bs. I tipped the barrel full of marbles and they bounced and scattered across the store, shards of light glinting through the window onto their moving edges. It felt so good to hear things crash, to see the display of light fixtures teeter and go down. I made my way down one aisle, then another, the floor beneath my feet growing sticky with spilled paint, treacherous with marbles. The safes crashed one by one, each making a satisfying thud against the floor.

As the last one fell, a car drove down the street perpendicular to the store, lights flas.h.i.+ng in the plate-gla.s.s windows. I froze, holding still until the car had turned and driven away. But the moment was broken. I didn't have the will to destroy anything else. Instead, I picked my way through the ruins and went down to the office, turned on the light.

There, I went through the files, pulling them out and stacking them on the floor. I don't know what I was looking for exactly, and I didn't find anything of much interest. Receipts and records of sales and s.h.i.+pments, going back decades. Maybe because of the flames on the beaches all around the lake, maybe because of the painful leaping in my heart, I had fire in my mind as I searched. I kept thinking how easily these papers would ignite, how they'd go up in smoke, how the flames would lick at the walls until they caught on the rafters hidden beneath and traveled upward into the attic, dry as kindling, where nothing would stop them. There was an old gas tank buried beneath the parking lot, and I thought of that, too, how a spark might travel there and ignite a vast explosion.

I went so far as to take a sheaf of old invoices and light the corner, letting them burn out over the metal trash can. Ash formed and fell. My fingers were stained black.

Would I have set fire to this building, imagined by my great-grandfather, created from his industry and imagination, so full of the artifacts of the past? I don't know. It was possible, alive in my mind, that I might do so. I opened the cupboards where we used to hide as children and started pulling papers out of there, too, letting them fall into a heap on the floor, the heap that could become a bonfire. The pile grew to my ankles, my calves, my knees. One match, I kept thinking. There was lighter fluid on the shelves, and paint thinner. One match and the place could go up in smoke, and fire, and ash.

Then I saw the handwriting. My father's, neat and slanted to the left, different from Rose's script, the letters long but more rounded, more fluid, unmistakably his. They spelled out the date January 1972 on a pale blue ledger with a cardboard cover. That was the year he met my mother. The year he was sent to Vietnam. I sat down at the desk and ran my fingers across the rough paper cover, imagining my father sitting at this same desk, reaching for a pen. January, snow as high as the windows, maybe falling through the cones of the streetlights in the early dusk, maybe swirling in eddies across the drifts in pale late afternoon light. And my father, so young, so full of dreams for his life, standing on the cusp of change, though he did not know it. It could break your heart to think of it too closely, to imagine all that might have happened, to know all that did.

I sat at the wide desk where a long line of ancestors had sat before me, and I opened the ledger. There were my father's careful notes on the neatly ruled pages, with their pale blue and red lines and the columns, all the numbers my father had written down so precisely. I was taken back then, to the Sunday evenings when he sat doing the accounts at the dining room table, a pencil tucked over his ear and his fingers flying over the adding machine. I ran my fingers over the numbers, flipped the pages. Number after number in his neat handwriting. Numbers and dates and more numbers, tallied into precise columns at the bottom of each page. There was such a precision to this work, such an order, that even looking at it brought me a deep sense of comfort. All the pages were full. At some point the dates switched to February, and then to March, and then they ended.

When I looked up again, all the wild anger that had driven me had drained away. I was left with only a weariness so strong I felt I might not be able to get up. But eventually, I did. I skirted the pile of papers and turned out the light, making my way through the hall and back out into the empty parking lot. The door had been unlocked; anyone could have caused the damage. That's what I told myself anyway as I drove up the lake road. The house was all lit up, and when I came in, my mother and Yos.h.i.+ and Andy were gathered in the kitchen by the phone.

"There you are," my mother said.

Yos.h.i.+ put his arm around me.

"Where were you?" my mother asked. "Why didn't you answer your phone?"

"I was just walking."

"For four hours? Lucy, it's after midnight."

"No, it's not!"

"Look."