“Yeah, but it was the whole idea of the film, that you can transcend your circumstances, be what, and who, you want. I don’t know if Jack told you, but I grew up here, lived here year-round. Itwas a great childhood, but it was isolating. We didn’t have cable, and the regular reception was terrible, but we did have a VCR, and we’d get movies from the library. I never imagined myself even going to college, much less getting an MBA, until I sawHidden Gemstoward the end of high school. Now I’m a partner in an accounting firm. You were the face of the idea that I could aim for more, if that makes any sense.”
“It does,” Blair said, “but I still think most of the credit goes to the writer or the director.”
“Or the producer,” Jack said, drawing her attention. “You know, the person who makes the whole thing happen.”
He wasn’t sure what his point was, as she hadn’t been producing back then.
Allie must have wondered what his point was, too, because she shot him a bewildered look. “I have to hit the road soon, but let me give you a tour.”
Jack was unprepared for the wave of emotion that hit him when they went inside. The outside of the place had looked different. It was the same structure, same wood siding, but whereas it had always been painted beige, now it was a slate blue and had black shutters that hadn’t been there before. And there were window boxes full of impatiens. He’d wondered if the place was looking too good for Blair’s purposes.
But inside.
He prayed the women, who’d gone in ahead of him, weren’t noticing how he’d stopped in his tracks, how he had to put his hand on the wall to get his bearings.
It was all the same.
And it was all still there, inside his head. It was a strange sensation for the two pictures to match up so suddenly and so thoroughly. It was as if the place itself had reached inside his mind and yanked out this heretofore dormant memory.
The wood-paneled walls Blair had wanted. The rough wood kitchen cabinets Mr. Jensen had built with help from Jack’s dad. The sleeping loft at the far end of the space, where the air was always hot and stale.
All that rummaging about inside his head was giving him vertigo. He went over to the familiar Formica table and sat. Ran his fingers along the chrome edge. Was jolted by another memory, of the way the table had a leaf. It used to be kept in the closet in the bedroom. He and Allie would struggle to install it when they wanted to play pick-up sticks.
“You OK over there?” Allie asked.
Jack shook his head. Both women were standing by the fireplace, facing the fish mounted on boards on the wall above the mantel.
“You remember we used to play pick-up sticks on this table?” he asked Allie, wondering why he was having such an outsize reaction. He’d seen the photos Allie had sent, but somehow this was… more. Bigger.
“Yep. We still have them.” Allie pointed to a shelf holding a bunch of board games. “My daughter used to play with them, but now she’s a jaded modern child who cannot be entertained with mere sticks.”
“Why didn’t we play on the ground?”
“Because we only played stuff like that when it was raining. And the carpet was really thick and gross, remember? Orange shag. The sticks would get stuck in it.”
A sense memory of the orange carpet barreled down on him even as he looked at the low-pile gray beneath his feet.
“Dad recarpeted a couple years before he died, so it’s not as bad, but carpet in a lake house is still gross. It’s too humid for carpet. Not to mention all the wet and sandy feet.” She pointed at him. “Foot bucket is still out back, you hear me?”
He nodded. Foot bucket—there was another memory that exploded to the surface.
“It’s funny to think of Jack as a kid,” Blair said. “What was he like?”
“He was really serious.”
“Color me shocked. Did he watch the movies you were talking about with you?”
“No. He wasn’t into movies.” Blair performed a snort. “He was here in the summers, and we spent most of our time outside. When the weather was bad, we played board games, or read.”
“Or sometimes we stayed outside anyway,” Jack said, another memory overtaking him. “You remember that time we took the canoe out in the storm and your dad came after us?”
“Sure do.” She turned to Blair. “Metal canoe. Height of stupidity to take it out in the water when there’s lightning. We were grounded for a week.”
“We were?” Jack didn’t remember that part.
“That’s when we first started writing letters, remember? I got so bored, I wrote you a letter. My dad let me go to the library, so I gave it to Mary and asked her to give it to you.”
“Really?” He remembered corresponding with Allie, but he remembered it as a school-year habit, a way to keep in touch when he went back to the Cities. Oh, but wait… “Did we put letters in that hollow tree out near the old Newland house?”
