Schroder: A Novel Read online

  It was unseasonably warm for June. We rolled the windows down and sailed our hands in the air. We didn’t stop, and we didn’t stop. We didn’t stop in Saratoga Springs; we didn’t stop at Lake Luzerne, or Glens Falls, or anywhere. We didn’t even slow down until we’d entered the Lake George strip and Meadow started shouting Popcorn! Candied apples! Frozen lemonade! The water parks and go-cart tracks had opened early, and tourists like ourselves were walking around half-dressed and jaundiced from winter. We had been here the summer before, Meadow and I and you-know-who-you-are, I mean our family, in what we might term Year Zero (to be followed by the post-divorce epoch, or Annum Repudium), but neither of us mentioned the fact.

  We parked on the street and ran down past a band shell and a playground and straight onto the small, hard-packed public beach near the dockside. Meadow wound her way through the sunbathers right out onto the sand and to my surprise waded into the water with her clothes on. She stopped only when the water soaked the hem of her tangerine-colored shorts.

  “Daddy!” she cried, turning back to me. “It’s cold.”

  “Of course it’s cold, silly,” I said, rolling my khakis up to my knees. “It’s two hundred feet deep. Come on. Let’s buy you a suit?”

  “No, Daddy! Not yet.”

  I smiled, secretly pleased, remembering how impossible it always was to tear her away from whatever her attention had seized upon: a bottle cap, a ladybug, the removal of sticker-backing goo from a glass bottle.

  I put my hands on my hips and looked around at the crowd of bodies. Some were inching their way into the icy water; others were spreading out picnics, parcels of tinfoil, coolers of ice, everyone trying to save a buck, bringing bologna sandwiches from home or smoking generic cigarettes like Basics or Viceroys, because we were all into it by then, the recession, we were all inside it or knew that we were about to be. An attractive young family was lounging close to the waterline near Meadow. I smiled at them, all four of them, that idealized American square—a large, good-looking father rapt by the movements of the distant steamboats, a strawberry blond mother in a sturdy bikini, a sarong wrapped around her waist, and two focused children digging in the sand.

  I said aloud, in their direction, “A day like this just melts away the stress.”

  The petite mother glanced my way. “It’s too pretty today, isn’t it? My problem is, when it’s this pretty, I just want to keep it. I just want to box it up and keep it and have it last forever.”

  “Oh, don’t think like that,” I said, taking a step or two in her direction. “That’ll just make you sad.”

  She smiled, tilting her head slightly.

  “Anyway,” I said, “you know where you keep a day like this? You keep it in your heart. That’s the box you keep it in.”

  My eye on Meadow, now almost up to her waist in Lake George, I grinned down at the woman’s children. “Hey, you two. Strike gold yet?” Below us, her children ignored me, just as her husband ignored me. The woman’s cheeks reddened. I probably could have kissed her on the mouth and he would have kept on muttering about the steamboats. I felt a rush of fellow feeling. My pity for her and for me and for her kids and for my kid and even for you, Laura, came over me in a wave so sudden and so felt that I almost lost my balance. I closed my eyes. I feel, I thought to myself. I clenched my hands open and shut. I feel. I’m alive.

  When I opened my eyes, the woman was staring at me.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m great,” I said. “Never better, in fact.”

  Along the weathered dockside people strolled quietly. But for the creaking of the dock boards and oars in their oarlocks and the chanting of vendors and the distant churning of the steamboats, the crowd seemed hushed, awed. The world was softening, opening up.

  “Spring always feels like such a victory,” I said. “Like you did something good to deserve it.”

  “That is so true,” said the woman. “Plus, it was such an icy winter. Icy and slushy and eewy.”

  “One of the worst. At least in my personal history. But”—I looked at her—“I guarantee you, it’s going to be an extraordinary summer.”

  She smiled again, displaying two pearlescent front teeth with a pretty little gap.

  “Really? How do you know?”

  “I just do. Butterscotch!” I called to Meadow. “Come back a bit toward shore, OK? The sign says, ‘no swimming.’ There’s no lifeguard yet.”

  “I’m not swimming, Daddy,” she called without turning. “I’m fishing.”

  My friend and I exchanged a pair of knowing looks whose covert purpose was legitimate eye contact with one another.

  “Are you and your daughter staying on the lake?” the woman asked. “It’s going to be a beautiful weekend, they say. Unseasonably warm.”

  “No,” I sighed. “We’ve got to head home. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Canada.”

  “Oh. You’re Canadian?” The woman blushed again, and I detected a faint note of disappointment, as if she’d already become attached to me. “I always expect Canadians to look different. But they never do.”

  “It’s how we speak,” I said. “You have to wait until we start talking about how sooory we are.”

  The woman laughed, sweeping her foot in the water. “And your girl’s mother? She’s back at home?”

  “Yes.” I turned to face her. “My wife’s back at home. Waiting for us.” In the background, my friend’s husband dimly became aware of me. “She keeps calling us. ‘How many miles left now? How many more hours?’ She misses us.”

  “Of course she does,” the woman said. I watched her face, slightly rosy with the thought of it, whatever it is, the universal dream, the dreamed us. The wind played with the beaded hem of her sarong. She pulled one delicate foot out of the sand and the sand made a crude suctioning sound and the steamboat tooted in the distance and I finally looked away from her and across the lake at the hills.

  “Isn’t that something,” I said, overwhelmed. “The way the light is growing long on the hills across the lake. Look at that. The way the hills seem in a different dimension over there. What an afternoon. You’re right, you know. This day should not be allowed to end. We should be allowed to keep it. You know what? This is the first time this year that I haven’t felt like jumping off a bridge.” I looked at my companion. A breeze blew her apricot-colored hair off her brow, which was pinched sympathetically. “I know you don’t even know me, but I’m glad you’re here. I mean, I’m glad you’re here with your family. Your family makes me happy.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “It’s good, don’t you think? It’s the point, don’t you think? Togetherness. Like this. In families.”

  She gazed back at me, her expression uncertain.

  “Hey, Tex,” the husband bellowed. “Your kid is swimming in her clothes.”

  We all looked. In the near distance, but with commitment, Meadow was indeed swimming, her head held stiffly just above the water, a big grin on her face. Just then the sun reemerged from the sky’s lone cloud, spilling outrageous light across the surface of the lake, which now seemed to be filled with boiling gold. I shielded my eyes and watched Meadow swim.

  “Will you look at that,” I said. “I didn’t even know she could swim.”

  “You didn’t—” The woman stepped forward. “Is she all right?”

  “Oh, very,” I said. “Look at her. Solid. She must have learned last year.”

  “But is that safe? I mean, no one else is in the water, it’s so cold.”

  “You’re right, I should join her. Excuse me.”

  I was wearing tan khakis, rolled to the knee, and a short-sleeve blue-checkered dress shirt from Eddie Bauer. I flipped my wallet and keys backwards onto the beach and waded out into the frigid water until my shirt belled around me. When the water was at my chest, I pushed off. Leaning my ear into the water, I swam a lazy sidestroke past my daughter. “Hello,” I sa
id. “Fancy meeting you here.” She treaded in my vision, her glasses speckled with water. “This water is heart-stoppingly cold,” I said. “I mean, I think my heart just stopped.” Our laughter rang out over the water. From the beach, people stared. I could see my redhead looking beautiful and puzzled. Some things you can’t explain, you just can’t, no matter how sympathetic nor how moving in her own right is the listener.

  STEAMBOATS

  She wanted to ride the steamboats. We chose the Minne-Ha-Ha.

  “Ha-ha-ha,” we said. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  We ran up the gangplank, dodging the crowd, because we wanted the best view of the paddlewheels. We hung as far over the rails on the upper deck as we safely could, and after a toot from the calliope, the boat left the dock, and we were showered with a chilly mist from the paddles. Meadow screamed, drawing other children to us, several of whom stuck their heads through the rail bars until their parents called them back. We didn’t care. I mean, we were wet already. Behind us, the shoreline fell away, and a chaos of seagulls hung over our wake like bridesmaids holding a veil. The wind picked up, soft and clean.

  She said, “Here’s a joke. Where does a dog do his grocery shopping?”

  “I don’t know. Where?”

  “The Stop ’n’ Smell.”

  “That’s brilliant.”

  “I made it up. I can roller-skate, you know.”

  “You can swim, you can roller-skate. What else can you do?”

  “I can fly.”

  “Of that I am skeptical.”

  “Knock-knock,” she said. “Orange.”

  “Wait. You forgot to let me ask who’s there.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Ha! No, I ask you.”

  The steamboat chugged up the eastern bank of Lake George. Dusk was falling as the boat came about, and we saw the yellow ball of sun disappear in a glint through the keyhole of the northernmost mountains.

  “Poof,” she said. “Good night!”

  “Yeeeeer outta here, sun,” I said.

  “Yeeeeer out, sun!”

  “You’re goin’ down, sun.”

  “Way down,” she said. “All the way downtown.”

  “You’re goin’ downstate.”

  Grinning, she climbed a metal bench on the deck. “But I can fly,” she said. “Watch.” Stretching her arms out for balance, she placed both sneakers on the armrest, and started wheeling her arms, looking ungainly.

  “Careful,” I said although she was well clear of the railings. Her shorts were bunched up over either thigh accordion-style, and her T-shirt rode up over her belly as she seesawed above the bench. When she jumped, her wind-knotted hair trailed like streamers.

  “I’ll eat my hat,” I said. “You can fly.”

  “I told you.”

  “Come on, you crazy kid. Your lips are purple.”

  We entered the warm inner cabin, where most of the families had fled from the afternoon bluster. An infant given free range was crawling across the tacky linoleum floor, batting an empty soda can in front of her.

  “I’m hungry, Daddy.”

  I looked around the cabin. “We should get you some dinner.”

  She pointed. “How about something from that venting machine?”

  “Brilliant,” I said. “It can vent us some dinner.”

  Famous Amos cookies and a Yoo-hoo for her. Grainy hot coffee for me.

  “Voilà,” I said, choosing a bench. “Dinner.”

  Underneath us hummed a powerful motor. The vibration was loud and emptied my mind. I watched the green wall of mountain pass on the starboard side, near enough to see the play of songbirds in the branches.

  Meadow said, “Daddy, am I allowed to marry you when I grow up?”

  Involuntarily, I winced and looked at my shoes. “Nah,” I said, warming my hands on my paper cup. “You can’t. Besides, you don’t want to marry me anyway. But that’s sweet of you to ask. Truth is, you really ought to find someone closer to your own age.”

  “Mariah’s my age. Am I allowed to marry Mariah?”

  “In certain states.”

  “I’d like to marry you. That’s my choice. Knock-knock. Daddy? Knock-knock.”

  I looked at her, trying not to look as sad as I felt. “I love you, you know.”

  “I know. Knock-knock.”

  “I love you with my whole soul,” I said. “I wish I could explain it.”

  “I know it already.”

  “Good.” I smiled. “So you know what a soul is?”

  “Sure,” she said, straightening. “The soul keeps the body up.”

  I watched the vast sky absorb the darkness, my head buzzing, my heart too full.

  “You have a wonderful way of putting things,” I said. “You have a wonderful way of seeing things. You have a wonderful mind.”

  “I know,” she said, shrugging. “You say that all the time.” She fished in her bag for another cookie.

  A blur of happy sensations and half-glimpsed intentions, and we were back inside the Mini Cooper, Meadow strapped into the booster seat, tucked under a large new beach towel that read “Queen of American Lakes.” We were driving again. North. The moon doggedly following us through the gaps in the trees. I turned on the radio. Al Green. I’m so tired of being alone. I’m so tired of on-my-own. In the rearview mirror, I watched Meadow surreptitiously stick her thumb in her mouth. Immediately her eyelids grew heavy.

  “Doesn’t the dentist want you to stop sucking your thumb, sweetheart?” I said, remembering some injunction delivered via Pop-Pop. “So your teeth don’t get bent out of shape?”

  “I’m not sucking my thumb,” she mumbled, mouth full.

  “You sleepy?”

  “Nope. I’m wide-awake. I’m going to stay awake all night.”

  “Good. Then you can keep me company.” I smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Turns out, I don’t like the quiet. G.K. Chesterton called it ‘the unbearable repartee.’ Silence, that is.”5 I was driving—just driving—Lake George constant alongside, the moon skipping through the branches.

  “And it’s too quiet without you around,” I said. “No knock-knock jokes. No songs. I feel like I missed a year of your life, really. It’s not your fault. But you can swim and I didn’t even know it. It’s like my life’s been on pause, but yours—yours kept going.” I laughed at myself. “God. Your mom used to hate this about me, how I would just talk and talk—”

  Predictably, there was no response from the backseat. Her thumb was suspended in front of her mouth, but her head had fallen to one shoulder, her glasses resting on the bulb at the end of her nose.

  People say that I’ve found a way

  To make you say that you love me

  Hey baby, you didn’t go for that it’s a natural fact

  That I wanna come back show me where’s at, baby

  We lost the radio signal somewhere north of Ticonderoga.

  WELL-WORN DREAMS

  Let me tell you more about that scenic byway north alongside Lake George, about my state of mind. Dusk had fallen, leaving only the outline of the Adirondack foothills on the east side of the lake, black behemoths in the purple dark. Stars were clustered above the neon signs of innumerable roadside motels. The motels themselves were indistinguishable, their names infinite recombinations of the words cove, lake, and cozy. The air through the gap in the driver’s-side window tasted clean and atmospheric, as if siphoned from virgin space.

  When I had driven through this thicket of life, into the northern darkness, a truly keen sense of longing had washed over me. I realized that my situation was irreparable. I was like a dead man, appealing my death. It made me too sad, to realize how late and how insufficient such an appeal would be. But why couldn’t this have been mine? This world, this world of togetherness. These towel-dried families trekking under the streetlights barefoot like migrating turtles, four or five to a room, sleeping below a ceiling fan, dreams leaping from head to head, the baby curling now against his sister, the dad—suddenly awa
kened—lazily counting his brood, one two three kids and a wife, the wife (old friend, how could you still be so pretty?) in the midst of some well-worn dream. Walking to the ice machine in his boxer shorts with a bucket. Moths swarming the spotlight. Midnight, a touch of Canadian Club in a plastic cup. Why couldn’t I be him? Even the boredom, the functional alcoholism—I would have taken it. I would have been grateful for it, every day.

  But the dead man, his soul in ascension, goes north. I drove a little farther than I had planned. (There’s a lot of road up there.) I knew only that to go further from one thing is also to come closer to something else.

  Closer, but to what exactly?

  Further, but from what?

  The guilty mind accelerates, its pedal stuck. Thoughts come with too much velocity. This is its own punishment. Whenever headlights appeared in my rearview mirror, or I saw a car catching up with me from some distance, this velocity took effect. As the lights came closer, filling my rearview mirror, I could not help but drive faster. To speed, like my mind. Only once the cars passed me would I feel myself reeling from the sudden deceleration of my mind. The red glow of the taillights left me nauseous. I knew I was doing something wrong. But many wrong things had been done to me. And sometimes wrong things are done in the service of rightness.

  I passed a sign that read, PARADOX, 2 MILES, and laughed bitterly.

  Meadow stirred in the backseat.

  “Daddy?” she said sleepily. “Are you OK, Daddy?”

  “God yes, I’m great. I mean, it’s great to be with you. Go back to sleep.”

  And that’s when we lost Al Green, and all I could raise on the radio were a couple of angry men talking about Manny Ramirez. I spied the black smear of Lake Champlain to the east.

  There is no such thing as forgetting.

  Unsettled by the sight of Lake Champlain’s dark expanse, I fled the back roads for the thruway. I searched the contents of my friend’s glove compartment and to my relief found a flask with a crusted nozzle and took a swallow. The dashboard glowed spaceship green. The radio signal, as I said, had been lost. It was close to midnight by then anyway. No one seemed awake with me. No one seemed alive at all. In the backseat, Meadow slept, the beach towel pulled to her chin. I considered waking her up, just to hear the sound of someone else’s voice.