Sarah Allen: Lost Lake

She was going to miss her daydream spot.

Giving up the money George had inherited fifty years ago had been the best thing she and George had ever done. But, as young and idealistic as they’d been, Eby still wished they’d squirreled a little money away, for times like this.

Times like this? She shook her head. She’d never in her wildest dreams imaged herself at seventy-six, forced to sell Lost Lake.

Seventy-six.

Good Lord, how did that happen? Yesterday, she was twenty-four making love under a bridge in Paris.

Suddenly, the front door flew open and two older women walked in in a gust of rose lotion and liniment oil. Eby gave a start and the front legs of her chair dropped to the floor.

“See? It’s still here,” said the woman with bright red hair. Makeup was caked into the fine wrinkles around her eyes, and she was wearing a cherry-print dress and four-inch red heels. She was helping a tiny old woman through the door. “She said she was selling it, not that it was gone . Can we go now?”

“No,” the elderly woman said.

The redheaded woman closed the door behind them and stopped to wave her hand in front of her face, as if to cool off. “Okay, what’s your plan?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” the old woman said. “All I know is that we didn’t know last summer was going to be our last summer, so we didn’t make it anything special. We’ve got to make this ending special.”

Eby stood. “Selma, Bulahdeen—you came!” Eby had called them just yesterday to cancel their reservations. They were two of the three summer faithfuls she had left, the old-timers who came back year after year. Eby watched the door, waiting for Jack, the third, to come in. But he didn’t.

“Bulahdeen called me after you canceled our reservations. She demanded I pick her up and drive her here,” Selma said.

“I couldn’t drive myself,” Bulahdeen told Eby. “They took away my license last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Eby said. In her eighties, Bulahdeen Ward was the oldest of all Eby’s guests. She was stooping like a fiddlehead fern now, curling into herself, making her appear that she was charging at life headfirst. She and her husband, Charlie, both former professors, used to come together to the lake until a few years ago. Charlie developed Alzheimer’s and was now in a nursing home. Since then, Bulahdeen had been coming alone. She was a quiet force of nature, the peculiar southern lilt to her voice as old as low-country sand. Selma, tall and painted and standoffish, was Bulahdeen’s every opposite. They were an odd pair. Bulahdeen had somehow, somewhere along the way, decided that Selma was one of her best friends. Selma vehemently disagreed. Bulahdeen didn’t care.

“And you don’t have to make such a big deal of it,” Bulahdeen turned to Selma and said, pointing a bone-knobby finger at her. “It was on your way.”

“I live in Meridian. Mississippi . You live in Spartanburg. South Carolina . That is not on my way.”

“Don’t give me that. You had nothing better to do.”

“Speak for yourself, old woman. I’ve got another husband to catch.” Selma was sixty-five but told everyone she was fifty, and she claimed to be an expert on men, though having seven husbands might mean to some that she was an expert on getting it wrong. Selma had a reputation for flirting with all the men who stayed here in the summers, in an offhand way, second nature, like the way a bird naturally flaps its wings when it falls. Thirty years ago, she’d visited Lost Lake with her third husband. She soon divorced him, like all the others, but then she kept coming back. No one understood why. She never seemed to enjoy herself.

“We stopped by town for some supplies before we came here,” Bulahdeen said as she walked to the check-in desk.

“ Supplies meaning Bulahdeen bought six bottles of wine,” Selma said.

Bulahdeen hoisted her purse onto the desk, then leaned against it with a deep breath. “When I mentioned to some folks about you selling this place, they seemed surprised.”

“Oh,” Eby said. “Well, that’s because I haven’t told anyone yet.”

Bulahdeen looked at her curiously. Her eyes were as cloudy as crystal balls. “Is it a secret?”

“Not anymore,” Selma said dryly, still standing at the door, ready to make an escape.

“No, it’s not a secret,” Eby said. “It just happened so fast. And, really, there’s no one in town I think would care. About the lake, I mean. Not anymore. The water park is now the biggest part of the town’s income. Lost Lake isn’t doing anyone any good anymore. Developing it will probably benefit Suley.”

“What are you going to do?” Bulahdeen asked.

“Inventory. Then figure out where to move and where to put all this stuff. Then travel, maybe. George and I always wanted to go back to Europe.”

Bulahdeen snorted. “I can guess Lisette’s reaction to that.”

“She doesn’t want to leave.” Eby’s eyes shifted to the front door again, as if waiting for someone else to come through.

“Jack’s not with us, if that’s who you’re looking for,” Bulahdeen said.

“Now he I would have picked up,” Selma said.

Eby turned to the wall of key hooks behind her. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d been counting on Jack coming. She’d dropped hints. But Jack, for all his wonderful qualities, did not always grasp subtleties. Eby should have been clearer . This was his last chance. She grabbed two keys with heavy brass fobs attached. “Here are the keys to your regular cabins. I’ll grab some linens and bring them to you. I haven’t cleaned the cabins. Just giving you fair warning.”

Selma walked over and took her key from Eby. “Yes, our last summer here is certainly going to be special.”

Bulahdeen took her cabin key and picked up her purse. “Selma, has anyone ever told you that you complain too much?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“So this is how I’m going to spend my summer?” Selma said, opening the front door and waiting for Bulahdeen. “Being insulted by the likes of you?”

“By the likes of me? Look who thinks she’s so high and mighty.”

“Watch out, old woman, or I’m going to leave you here.”

“No, you’re not.” Bulahdeen reached into her purse and brought out a set of keys and shook them. “I’ve got your car keys.”

“What are you doing with those?”

Bulahdeen cackled as she walked out the door.

“Bulahdeen, if you try to drive my car, I’ll have you arrested!”

Eby walked to the kitchen with a smile. She was glad they came.

When she entered the kitchen, which she had to pass through to get to the laundry room, Lisette was standing in front of an empty chair beside the refrigerator, her hands on her hips. She often did that—stare at that chair.

“Well, you’ll be glad to know that Selma and Bulahdeen came anyway. All this food won’t go to waste.” Eby gestured to the colorful array of enamel-covered cast-iron pots on the stove in the remarkable kitchen, Lisette’s domain. The appliances were cobalt blue, and the walls were stainless steel. Bright white lights shone overhead.

Lisette’s father had passed away a few years after Lisette left Paris. He’d obviously forgotten to change his will, or he thought Lisette would finally come back. Or maybe he didn’t even think of her at all, which was a strong possibility, given what Lisette had told Eby of him. Either way, Lisette had inherited half of her father’s modest fortune. Her mother, the other half. Lisette’s money explained the lovely kitchen in the otherwise shabby main house, and how Eby never had to worry about the cost of food. Lisette took care of all of that. To be happy, all she needed was a roof over her head and someone to cook for, which George and Eby had always given her.