Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

It was my turn to laugh. “God, Joe.” I pulled away and looked into his puzzled face. “You can still be the thickest man alive.”

He frowned good-naturedly, his eyes wide and dark, still uncomprehending. “What are you talking about?”

Twenty years. How could he not know?

“I chose you, didn’t I?”

From the sound of Harry’s coughing I knew that somebody, Hal probably, would be up most of the night to tend to him, so I made a thermos of strong coffee and assembled some fried chicken and rhubarb pie left over from dinner, put it in a basket with plates and cups and napkins, and stepped outside.

The moon was down, and the air was cool and still. I found my way along the trace between the two rows of cabins, nearly all of them dark by now, their occupants snoring away. The only exception was cabin twelve, which had been booked by a bunch of lawyers on some kind of retreat; approaching, I heard the low, rough voices of men talking and drinking on the porch, and smelled the dry sweetness of cigar smoke. It was an aroma I secretly liked, even as I knew I would hear about it the next day from the other guests. “Was somebody smoking a cigar last night?” someone would ask in the dining room, loud enough that the offender, if he was in the room, would have the opportunity to publicly repent. As far as I knew, though, it was still perfectly legal to smoke a cigar in the Maine woods-Joe had smoked his share until I’d finally gotten him to quit-and none of my business. I thought I might stop in to tell them they might want to keep their voices down, but as I passed, the talking ceased; three of them waved from the porch and gave me a polite and nearly simultaneous “good evening,” like a group of tipsy teenagers trying to sound sober. A bunch of good boys, these lawyers, and so I waved back and continued on my way.

Cabin ten, where I’d put Hal and his little girl, was dark, January long since tucked in, but the porch light was on at number nine, where Harry and Frances were staying. As I came around the corner I saw Hal, sitting in an Adirondack chair in a cone of light and swirling insects, reading a magazine with his boots up on the railing. A cigar would have done something about those bugs, and I thought of asking the lawyers if they could spare one. But then Hal looked up with an expression of sudden alertness and put one hand over his brow to peer into the darkness beyond the lighted porch.

“Franny?”

I stepped up to the rail with my basket. “Evening, Hal.”

Hal unfolded his long limbs from the chair and came over to meet me, bending at the waist to kiss me quickly on the cheek. “Where you been keeping yourself, Luce?”

“Oh, you know.” I tried to smile. “Things to do. Sorry I couldn’t meet you when you arrived.” The cabin behind him was dark and silent, and I kept my voice low. “How’s your father doing?”

Hal took a breath and scratched his head. “Asleep, finally. Though to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure it’s really sleeping, what he’s doing. He just kind of goes away for a while. I’m taking the first shift while Franny gets a little shut-eye.”

I held up the basket for him to see. “I brought you something to tide you over.”

“That’s not the fried chicken, is it?”

I nodded. “Some pie, too.”

He leaned forward, smiling. “Good God, Lucy, you’re my hero. Pass that over here.”

He held out his hands to take it, and I lifted the basket over the rail. Hal raised the top and surveyed the contents before selecting a drumstick and a napkin, and poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos. A wick of steam rose off it in the chilly air.

“You’re a regular mind reader, Luce. I was just sitting here wondering when Franny would relieve me so I could sneak over and raid the kitchen.”

“My pleasure.” I waited a moment and watched him eat. “I saw your little girl, Hal. She’s really something.”

He grinned proudly around a mouthful of chicken and took the napkin to his face. “Poor kid, got her mother’s looks. I told Sally, the day she turns sixteen is the day I start digging a moat.”

“I don’t know about that, Hal. I think I can see a little bit of you in there. Remember, I knew you when you were just a kid.”

He gave a little laugh. “Just a kid, my fanny.” He fished out another drumstick and held it up for emphasis as he talked. “Eleven is not just a kid, Luce. Eleven is a burning pyre of adolescent lust. You and the other waitresses had me so worked up, I could barely think straight.”

I felt a charge of pleasure; assuming he didn’t mean Daphne Markham-and I surely didn’t think he did-or one of the two older women who had tended the dining room with me, women my mother’s age if not a little older, I was the only waitress he could have been remembering.

“Those were good days,” I said.

“Better than this afternoon, anyway,” Hal said. He finished his second drumstick, wrapped up the bones in the napkin, and closed the basket. “Best I should save this for later. Franny might be hungry too. Who knows? Maybe my dad will surprise us all and actually eat something.”

“There’s enough there for an army. But if you need anything else, you know where the key to the kitchen is.”

“Back door, one step to the right, reach up, on the nail.” He nodded. “Piece of cake.” He raised his gaze past me then, casting his eyes over the lake, and gave a little nod to tell me to look where he was looking. I turned and saw, out on the dock a hundred yards distant, two figures sitting on the edge, their feet dangling over the water. It took me a moment for my eyes to discern what my brain had already guessed: Jordan and, sitting beside him in her gray sweatshirt, Kate.

“Those two getting along?”

“I think they’ve always liked each other.” I was surprised how guarded I sounded. “They’ve known each other for years.”

For a moment we said nothing. The silence of the lake and the late hour seemed to encircle us.

“The truth is,” Hal said, “I think my father just wanted to give it to somebody it already belonged to.” He looked at his hands a moment. “It’s the best kind of present. I’m only telling you in case you were, you know, wondering.”

“We all adore Jordan. Everybody’s happy for him. Joe too.”

Hal stood and lifted the basket from the floor. “Well, I guess I should look in on the patient. Scares me when he’s this quiet.” He moved around his chair, then stopped, suddenly gone into deeper thought.

“He loves this place, Lucy. That’s what it’s really all about. When my mother died, I know it saved him, somehow. He told me that once. The summer after she died, he came up here, and that’s what got him through it. I’ll never forget it. ‘It has the pure beauty of having been forgotten.’ That’s what he said about this place. He said it again this morning.”

My eyes were suddenly swimming again. I didn’t want Hal to see, so I stepped back from the railing, away from the light.

“Luce?”

“I’m all right,” I said. My voice caught a little, and I breathed to settle it, letting the air in my lungs push the tears away. But I knew I was only buying a moment, if that. In another minute I would be crying for real, the kind of tears you’ve kept inside so long you don’t know what they mean anymore, whether they’re happy or sad or both, only that they have to come out; as long as they’re coming, they own you, body and soul, these tears, and I didn’t want this to happen in front of Hal, or Joe, or anybody. I wanted to cry in a dark room somewhere, nobody around for miles to hear me, and cry until I was all cried out.

“It’s late,” I managed. “I should go. Good night, Hal.”

Twenty steps from porch to path, a hundred more down the shore toward the lodge, through the tangled shadows of the trees, the veil of laughter and cigar smoke. The pure beauty of having been forgotten, I thought, and that was the end for me.