E. Doctorow - Loon Lake

Clara held a relentless view of the world. There were no visible principles. Every one of her moods and feelings was intense and true to itself — if not to the one before or the one after. She lightened and darkened like the times of the day.

I smoked a cigarette from the monogrammed cigarette box. Clearly, in my aspiration it was FWB I would have to contend with. FWB, the man who was paying for everything. Conceivably this gave him an advantage.

I mashed out the cigarette, stretched out on my back before the fire, put my hands under my head and closed my eyes.

I slept in that position for several hours. I remember coming awake with the fire out and sunlight glowing on the windows. The silhouettes of branches and leaves wavered on the log wall and a reddish gold light filled the room. I heard the sound of an airplane. It grew louder and then with a rise in pitch it receded and grew faint. I lay there and it got louder again and finally so close and thunderous that the cups rattled in the sink. Then the sound receded once more, the pitch of the engine rising. I went to the window: a single-engine plane with pontoons was banking over the mountain on the other side of the lake. I watched it, a seaplane with a cowled engine and an overhead wing. As it banked, its dimensions flared and I saw a smartly painted green-and-white craft zooming over the water and then lifting its nose and banking off again, the sun flashing on its wings. It was very beautiful to see. Again it was coming around. I ran outside. I watched several runs, each one was different in speed or angle of descent, it looked as if the pilot was practicing or doing tests. You didn’t often see airplanes this close.

And then as the show continued here was Clara Lukaés coming through the woods from the main house. She wore a white evening gown. She carried her shoes in her hand. She peered up through the trees, she turned, she walked backward, she stopped, she stood on her toes. She moved through patches of light and shade, and reaching the little clearing in front of the cabin, she took me in with a glance and turned to see the plane in its run.

It was very low this time. It drifted down the length of the lake and then dropped below the tree line.

“Are you here?” Clara said. She passed into the house and I followed. She stood in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips, and realizing she still held her shoes, she flung them away. At this moment the phone rang. It was in the bedroom and she ran in as if she was going to attack it.

“What!” I heard her shout by way of greeting. A pause. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t count on it!” she said and slammed the phone down.

I waited a minute. When she didn’t come out, I moved to the doorway. She was sitting on the edge of her bed in some distraction slipping off one shoulder strap, then the other, shrugging her gown to her waist. Losing all volition, she dropped her hands in her lap and sat hunched over without glamour or grace. Her hair was matted and tears streamed down her cheeks.

She had no degrees of response, she lived hard, and the effect of her crying on my heart was calamitous. Her eyes were swollen almost immediately, her breasts were wet with her tears. Her looks collapsed as if they were a pretense.

“Hey,” I said. “Come on. Come on.”

After a while she stood up and let the gown fall to her ankles. She had nothing on underneath. She was big-breasted for such a thin narrow shouldered girl. She stepped out of the gown and went into the bathroom and a moment later I heard the shower running. Her behind was small and firm, if a bit on the flat side. The prominence of her backbone made me smile. It made me think of the scrawny backs on sunburned little girls who came to the carnival in their bathing suits and convened at the cotton candy.

While she showered I found a percolator and put up some coffee. She came out wrapped in a white bath towel with a big maroon FWB monogrammed on the front. She accepted a mug of coffee and sat on the couch with her legs folded under her and held the mug with both hands as if for warmth. She had washed her hair, which lay about her head in wet curls, she was no longer crying but the exercise had left her eyes glistening and as she looked at me I wondered how I could have found anything to criticize. I had never in my life seen a woman more beautiful.

“This place is getting on my nerves,” she said. “How do I get out of here?”

“I’ll take care of it, leave it to me,” I said without a moment’s hesitation. Without a moment’s hesitation. She glanced at me as she sipped her coffee. I waited for my justice. I wondered if I had taken her too literally if she would laugh now crack my heart with her laughter. But she said nothing and seemed satisfied enough by my assurance. Sun filled the room. She put her cup on the floor and curled up on the sofa with her back to me.

Drops of water glittered in her hair. After a while I realized she had gone to sleep.

I ran out of there determined not to be amazed. I should concentrate on what I was going to do next. Amazement would set me back. I wanted to sing, I was exhilarated to madness. But the way to bring this off was to think of my brazen hopes as reasonable and myself as a calm practical person matter-of-factly making a life for himself that was no more than he deserved.

Then Bennett himself was suddenly in full force in my life like a storm that had arrived.

I found myself that same morning with three or four of the groundkeepers, each of us with a pick or shovel on our shoulders, we were hurrying to a site in the woods off the main bridle path. Bennett was waiting. He was standing on a hill of some sort. His horse was tethered to a tree along the trail. “Come up here,” he called.

We climbed up the face of an enormous boulder imbedded in the ground. “I’ve always wondered about this,” he said. “I want it exposed.”

The foreman of us, an older man long in the Bennett service, took off his cap and scratched his head. “You want us to dig this rock up?” he asked.

“Dig around it,” Bennett said. “You see here? This is the top of it, we’re standing on top of it. That’s what this rise is. I want the whole thing uncovered, I don’t know why it’s here.”

The workmen had trouble believing what he wanted. Bennett didn’t get mad. Instead, he took one of the picks and started going at it himself. “You see?” he called out, breathing hard between swings of the pick. “Work it away, like this. You see that, how it extends? Goes all the way over here.”

“Here, Mr. Bennett,” the foreman said. “Don’t you be doing that. You, you,” he said to us. “Get to work.”

So we started digging out a boulder that might be the size of a dirigible. Bennett watched each of us to see that we understood.

“That’s the way,” he said. “That’s what I want.”

He was sturdy and vigorous. Moved around a lot. A short wide-shouldered man with a large head. His hair was white but very full and combed as I combed mine, to a pompadour. He was well tanned. Blue eyes. A handsome blunt-faced old bastard in a riding outfit.

I had expected someone older, more restrained.

He climbed down off the rise and for several minutes crashed around in the woods nearby to see if he could find another rock like it. “You see,” he shouted, “it’s the only one. “Damnedest thing!” he called out as if we were all colleagues on some archaeological expedition.

Then he mounted his horse and rode off in the direction of the stables. As soon as he was out of sight the foreman leaned on his shovel, took off his cap and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Jesus Mary and Joseph,” he said.

We all sat down on the boulder.