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The sand feels hard and cold underneath me and so I get up, extending a hand to my daughter which she hesitantly takes, her palm sliding away from mine before they’ve barely touched.
“I thought we could drive into Geneseo and pick up some groceries. See the town.”
Katherine hunches a shoulder. “Okay.”
A few minutes later, having roused Ben from the sofa, we pile into the car and head down the narrow road around the other side of the lake, to the small town of Geneseo. I drive slowly down its main street, charmed by the faded Victorian buildings, the fountain in the middle of the street. On the other side of town we find a Walmart as big as several city blocks, and far bigger than the C-Town Supermarket we shop at in Brooklyn.
Ben and Katherine’s eyes goggle as we push an enormous cart into the store, passing six-foot-high stacks of donuts in plastic containers, huge tubs of candy and caramel popcorn, sugar bomb after sugar bomb. When they were little I was much better about sugar intake; I made my own baby food and I bought organic when I could afford to. I cut up carrot sticks and julienned red pepper for their preschool snacks. At some point I stopped, maybe when my mom had her first stroke and everything started to feel like too much effort.
At some point I gave up on that persona, the mom who bustles around, volunteers endlessly, who makes homemade cakes and sneaks broccoli into brownies. And at some point Ben started inhaling sugary snacks like a junkie in need of a fix. I try not to buy them, but inevitably, exhausted, I break.
Today, though, I tell Katherine and Ben they can have one sugary snack each that will last them for the week. I wag my finger, speaking sternly, hoping to imprint this on their young minds. To show them I mean what I say, for once. “Choose carefully,” I warn. “It’s the only one you’re going to get.”
And I tell myself I’ll keep to it as I load our cart with healthy vegetables and little tubs of hummus, because the only way to be different is to start doing different things.
Back home I wipe the inside of the cabinets with a damp cloth before stacking our newly bought groceries away; there is something inherently satisfying about making this place a home, even in such a small way. Katherine asked if we could buy some plants, and even though I’m no gardener, I agreed to an azalea bush in a plastic tub that we can take back to Brooklyn with us, assuming I don’t kill it before then.
Twilight is settling over the lake as I clear up after our admittedly uninspired meal of frozen pizza straight from the freezer. I’ll cook tomorrow, or really the day after, since tomorrow we’re going to dinner at Rebecca’s.
Rebecca.I picture her tall, slender form, the knife-edge pleats on her capris, the easy, enthusiastic way she had of talking. Everything about her was effortless and elegant, like she didn’t have to try with anything. Life just comes to people like that, like fruit falling into your hand.
I wonder how much we’ll see of her and her family this summer. Our houses might not be far apart but our lives, our worlds, surely are. I’m not sure how we’ll manage to fill an evening with conversation, never mind a whole summer. But perhaps we won’t see the Finlays very much.
While Katherine and Ben get ready for bed, I slip outside onto the darkened bit of beach and sit down on the hard, cool sand. I can’t put it off any longer, I need to call Kyle.
His cell rings four times, and with each shrill, persistent ring I get more and more tense. We didn’t part on the best of terms, although I can’t say it was particularly acrimonious. It simply was—the silence, the sighs, the feeling that I’m letting him down again somehow.
The decision for me to go away for the summer was entirely my idea and it ended in a standoff, with Kyle, exhausted from working a nine-to-five job he hates, seeming bitter that I’m spending more of his money on something he won’t even enjoy, and then shrugging his agreement. I know he resents that I don’t work a nine-to-five job like he does, but I wanted to be there when the kids were little, and childcare was so ridiculously expensive, it wasn’t even worth it for me to go back to work. Now they’re in school someone still needs to be able to stay home when they’re sick, and go to the school plays, and pick up the dry-cleaning, and all the rest.
Finally, just when I think it’s going to switch over to voicemail, Kyle picks up. “Tessa? Are you okay?” His voice sounds abrupt.
“Hey! Yeah, I’m fine.” I gaze out at a few distant, twinkling lights on the water; someone is out on a boat, enjoying the dusky, purple twilight. “We made it.”
“How is it?”
“Fine. Good. The lake is beautiful.” Kyle doesn’t answer and I close my eyes, wondering how to navigate this moment, as with so many others. Even from hundreds of miles away the tension feels unbearable, hostility tautening the silence. “Thank you for making it happen,” I say stiltedly. I feel I owe him that much at least, despite his reluctance to spend four thousand dollars on a summer rental. “I know you weren’t that keen, but I think it will be really good for the kids to be here.”
“I hope so,” he says. “I hope it’s good for all of you.”
There is a subtext to the sentiment that I can’t discern. Is he saying it spitefully, or is he implying that we’ve needed this break from each other, that he’d rather I wasn’t there? Oh, the minefields. Rayha has told me that all marriages go through rocky patches; her own marriage lasted for five years before Zane’s issues drove her husband away. He lives in California now and never visits. Again, I feel like I have nothing to complain about. Nothing to feel unhappy about. And yet… I can’t shake the nebulous yet insistent feeling that something is very wrong. Something has been very wrong for a while, and I don’t know what it is or how to fix it.
“What have you been up to?” I ask.
“Work.”What else?is the implication, and for some reason that stings a little. I know he will miss Ben and Katherine, but he’s got a lot of freedom… freedom to watch what he wants on TV, eat what he likes, take up the whole bed.And who knows what else?
That treacherous little voice unsettles me, because I haven’t let myself think that way. I know things are bad with Kyle, but surely we haven’t hit that low, I hope.
“Are you going to relax on the weekend? Go for a bike ride?” The bike that takes up half our living room and which Kyle hardly ever uses. I didn’t mean it as a dig, but belatedly I realize it could sound like one.
“Maybe. It’s over ninety degrees, though, so I don’t know.” Kyle lets out a sigh. “I’m glad you got there safely and that you’re okay. Are Ben and Katherine around? I’ll say hi.”
I walk back inside to hand the phone to Katherine, and then Ben, half-listening to their monosyllabic replies as I wipe down the kitchen counters. Kyle hangs up, or Ben disconnects the call, I don’t know which, before I can talk to him again and say goodbye, which is more of a relief than a disappointment.
“Why doesn’t Daddy come here for the weekends?” Katherine suggests when she and Ben are tucked in their beds. Moths hurl themselves against the window screens with a rat-a-tat-tat sound and in the distance I hear a motorboat’s engine being suddenly cut. Compared to the noise of the city, it feels eerily quiet, deathly still.
“It’s expensive.” I sit on the edge of Katherine’s bed, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. I made up the two narrow camp beds in the second bedroom with the mustard-yellow sheets in the linen cupboard, after airing them outside for a little while. Ben is lying on top of the sheets, already sweaty even though the night is turning cool. He radiates heat like he’s full of atomic energy.
“Still.” Katherine pleats the sheet beneath her fingers and I let my hand drop. “He could come up some weekends, couldn’t he?”
