Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

Did I? But I couldn’t remember; couldn’t say if, sometime between the knock-kneed thirteen-year-old-tomboy Kate I’d first met and the Kate who sat beside me now-the Kate that was, in every way, a free agent and grown woman, smart and sensible and basically interesting-I’d detected any signals from Joe and Lucy, one way or the other.

“Besides, Jordan. I don’t need their permission. You think you do, but that’s because you’re a gentleman. All the more reason, if you ask me.”

Out on the black lake, the loons went to work again-not the long, mournful cries of first darkness, but a crazy babbling that seemed to ricochet to the far shore and back, and the tussling splash of wings on water. It took a minute for everything to quiet down once more.

“So, it’s agreed, then?” Kate said. “You’ll kiss me sometime? It’s just an idea I have.”

We were holding hands, though I couldn’t say exactly how this had happened. “It seems like a good one.”

“And kids, lots of kids. I was an only child, and that wasn’t the best deal around.”

“God almighty, Kate.”

She laughed again, enjoying herself. “A little fast? Okay, I see your point. In fact, I can’t even kiss you now, much as I’d like to. You might think it was only because you’re rich.”

“I’m not rich.”

“Oh, yes you are, Jordan. You might be too nice to know it, but you are.” She paused and straightened her back. “So I’m not going to. I wish somebody had kissed somebody around here a long time ago, but now we’ll have to wait.”

I was barely following any of it; I felt like I was being dragged from a horse, though I was happy too-more than happy. “If you think that’s best.”

“And I’m not the prize, you know. I don’t necessarily come with Harry’s deal.”

“I never thought you did.”

She leveled her gaze at me. “Just so that’s clear. And I have med school to think about. It may not seem like it, but that’s mostly what’s on my mind right now.”

I nodded. “That makes sense to me.”

“Good.”

We heard Harry’s door swing open. A dark form stepped out on the porch: Hal again. With his hands on his hips he arched out his back in a long stretch; catching sight of us, he gave a little wave to tell us everything was all right. He sat down in one of the chairs with his feet up on the railing, and then I saw someone else coming up the path to meet him. It was the right size and shape to be Frances, but when she stepped into the light of the porch lamp I saw it was Lucy. She was carrying a picnic basket-a late supper, I figured-and passed it to Hal over the rail. The two of them spoke quietly for a few minutes before Lucy hurried back the way she’d come. Hal stood a minute before taking the basket inside. At last the light by the door went out.

“I’m worried about her,” Kate said finally. “She’s taking this hard.”

“Your mother you mean?”

Kate nodded. “She’s always been fond of him. It wasn’t always easy for her up here, but Harry was one of the good things.”

For a second we just sat there, looking at one another. I felt her thumb brush over the top of my hand-the smallest gesture, light as air.

“ Goddamnit, Jordan.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Am I all alone out here? Are you really that rusty?” She signed impatiently at my blank look. “That was when you were supposed to try something.”

“Just then? I thought we were supposed to wait.”

“We were, Jordan. I never said how long.” She shook her head, though I thought she was about to laugh. “Another moment lost,” she groaned.

“This is complicated,” I said.

“Yes and no.” Kate rose, releasing my hand to come around behind me, where she knelt on her haunches and put her arms around my chest, her chin resting in the hollow of my shoulder. It hurt a little, and I think that’s what she had in mind. “You lovely, lonely man,” she said, close to my ear. “You really are this place. Harry knows it, I know it, my folks know it. Everyone knows it but you.” Then she pressed her cheek to mine-a bright quick burst of Kate-and was gone.

I awoke knowing it would be a last morning: not the last morning, but a morning of final things.

I have always been a deep sleeper. My nights are long and restful, dependable as a hammer. The usual gripes of men my age-the acid reflux, pinched plumbing, and insomniac dread that send us prowling the halls to mull over every missed field goal, botched kiss, and embarrassing pratfall of our lives-have yet to affect me, and though I know the day can’t be far off, that one of these nights the boom will fall, for now I sleep the sleep of the dreamless dead. According to Lucy I don’t even snore. I just kind of snuffle every once in a while into the pillow, like a good golden retriever.

So I awoke that morning as always, 5:10 on the dot without an alarm to tell me so, just the feel of the turning world doing its work and my mind as empty as a bucket, and the first thought that came to me as I lay under the blankets in the chilly room was the fact that Harry had not died, because somebody would have come to tell me if he had; and then this other notion, a strange one: this idea of final things.

Lucy was already up and about; I heard the shower running, then the groan of the old pipes as she turned the water off. Lucy wasn’t one to dawdle in the bathroom, and it wouldn’t do for her to find me still in bed. I rose and dressed quickly for the day. Khakis and an old denim shirt frayed at the collar and wrists, a Synchilla vest that Kate had given me for Christmas, wool socks and Birkenstocks, which I’d trade for boots when things got rolling; on my belt, a Buck knife and one of those all-in-one tools in a leather holster, the only gizmos I carried. Once we were closed down for the season, I’d planned to do something about those groaning pipes, maybe even rip down the bathroom once and for all and make it nice, with some new fixtures and tile. I’m a man, a hole in the ground is pretty much all I need, but redoing the john was just the sort of project I enjoyed, and it would have made a nice present for Lucy. But those plans were now moot-a relief, in a way, and also strangely depressing. Outside the sky was paling, not black to gray but easing into a kind of mellow tan color, meaning a clear day ahead, and hot: the last real day of summer.

I was standing at the window when Lucy entered the room, wearing a bathrobe and squeezing the water from her hair into a towel.

“So,” she said, and looked at me expectantly. “A quiet night?”

“Looks like Harry may get his wish. I think we would have heard if anything had happened.”

“I thought so too.” She sat down heavily on the bed and looked at her feet. “God, I hardly slept at all.”

From the look in her eyes I knew that she was thinking about her own father, who had passed four years before. By then my in-laws, Phil and Maris, had sold the sawmill and moved down to Orchard Beach, into an apartment complex that pretended it wasn’t an old folks’ home but of course was: no kids allowed, not a single resident under sixty, ramps on all the stairways and handholds in the johns. Phil’s arthritis had gotten pretty bad by this point-all that standing around on the hard ground through too many Maine winters-and he was deaf as a fence besides, from listening to the saws; like those old-time hockey players who skate without a helmet, Phil never once used earplugs, though he made everyone else wear them. He and Maris had talked about Arizona or even Las Vegas, someplace warmer and drier for Phil’s knees, though this was just talk; they’d never been to either place that I knew of, even to visit. Phil Hansen and I had been through our rough patches over the years. I think we had far too much in common to be completely comfortable with one another, and I sometimes held it against him, the poor care he took of himself. But in the end we’d let bygones be bygones, and when he’d died of a stroke-actually three strokes spread over as many weeks, bringing him down slowly, like a chopping axe blade-I had served as one of the pallbearers, weeping the whole way from church to gravesite. The funny thing was, it had taken Maris all of six months to pull up stakes and settle in Scottsdale, where she was now keeping company with a widowed dermatologist and had a golf handicap in the low teens. I was pretty sure Phil wouldn’t have minded all that much, though Lucy fumed for days whenever we got a postcard from her mother, always with the picture of some golf course on it and three blandly cheerful sentences saying, more or less, why the hell didn’t I do this before?