One Night at the Lake, page 3
“Please, Umma, can I keep him?” I breathed, holding the warm, wriggling little creature against my neck, which he industriously set about licking. “Please please please please please?”
“All right, Ji-Eunah,” she sighed. “But you are responsible for him. His food, his walks, his poop—everything. He’s yours to take care of.”
My new puppy beeped with alarm as I squished him into the hug I gave my mom.
Winfield was a dog of indeterminate origin, although he had the expressive eyebrow markings of a Rottweiler and the size and tenacity of a large Jack Russell. I was determined to prove to my parents that I was worthy of their trust, so not only did I scrupulously look after him each and every day, but I undertook to train him in his manners all by myself. Winfield and I drilled for hours: sit, stay, come, heel. I can still remember the flush of pride I felt each time he began to obey one of my commands, shiny black eyes alert and tail swishing for his treat.
And then there was the day, a late gray-skied afternoon in the middle of December, when Winfield and I went out for a walk just as the first snow of winter began to fall. Winfield was enraptured, his doggy nose twitching at the air, and as the flakes began to mass on the ground, he spun and leapt, barking, wild with excitement over this strange thing befalling his landscape. By the time we reached the park where I liked to walk him, he was jerking at his leash, tangling his legs in it, so I made him sit while I unclipped it. I wasn’t supposed to let him off leash, but he’d learned his commands so well. Every time he ranged too far away, I called him to come to me and he did, prancing around me with his tongue lolling. I was just about to clip him back up for the walk back to our house when he saw the squirrel.
“Winfield! Come!” I shouted, but he shot off like a bullet, hot in pursuit of that audacious rodent, through the damp brown leaves that littered the ground. I chased Winfield and squirrel up a small rise, which I crested just in time to see Winfield launch himself off a steep bank of earth, directly into the path of a gray Range Rover driving too fast up the opposite side of the hill.
“Winfield!” I screamed again, but by the time I reached the street I could just make out his small black form, motionless on the snow-glazed asphalt in front of the Rover. More flakes drifted through the headlights to land on his body. “Winfield,” I sobbed, reaching to stroke his head but too scared to touch him.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even see him,” a woman’s voice behind me said. Then there was a rush of motion and somebody was kneeling by my side.
“It’s okay; he’s breathing,” a girl’s voice said, calm and strong. “Mom, he’s still breathing, we can save him. Help me pick him up; we can take him to that vet down near the train station. Remember we took Rory there when he swallowed that ball?”
Dazed, I watched as the girl and her mother gently lifted Winfield and set him on the back seat of their car. Only then did I notice who they were. As if the situation had really needed to get worse.
“Well, are you coming?” Leah said, voice sharp with impatience. “He’ll feel better if he knows you’re there.”
I wiped my nose on the back of my wrist and climbed into the car next to my dog. He looked even more terrible up close—his two hind legs were horribly bent, and there was an odd hitch to his shallow breathing that clawed me with fear. Winfield was going to die, and it was all my fault. My stupid fault, for letting him off his leash when I knew better, I knew better. A fresh wave of sobs overcame me.
“You’re June, right?” The sound of my name snapped me out of my hysteria, and I looked up to find Leah peering at me around the passenger seat. “June Kang, from school?”
I felt a flicker of surprise that she knew my name. Pronounced it right, even. Silently, I nodded.
She tucked a hunk of her curly brown hair behind her ear. “Right. Well, I’m Leah if you don’t remember, and this is my mom, Cheryl. We’ll call your parents as soon as we get to the clinic, to let them know what happened.”
I shuddered at the thought of my parents’ reaction. Winfield hurt, because of my stupidity, and now these strangers having to know about it and spend their own time to rescue me.
“I’m so sorry we hit your dog,” said Leah, her businesslike manner dropping for the first time. “But he really is going to be okay. Look, he’s trying to wag his tail.”
I knew she was just saying it to make me feel better, but as the car glided smoothly down the hill toward the Hudson, I tried to believe it. I tried to be as strong as she was.
My dad arrived a few minutes after a very worried-looking vet tech swept Winfield off to surgery. Leah and her mother both got to their feet when he entered the waiting room, melting snow clinging to his plain canvas jacket.
“Are you Mr. Kang?” Cheryl Tessaro said. “I’m so terribly sorry to have hurt your dog. He darted right into the street before I even saw him.”
“Why was the dog off his leash?” my father said, ignoring her and speaking to me. I withered all over again under the force of his disappointment.
“He slipped out of his collar,” said Leah boldly. I cut her a warning look—it hadn’t gone well for me the one and only time I’d ever tried to lie to my father—but she raised her chin and continued. “His fur was wet from the snow and it made him slippery. June is extremely upset,” she said, putting an arm around my shoulders.
My dad flicked his assessing gaze from me to Leah and back again, and I guess he could tell the one thing she was telling the truth about. He nodded briefly. “Thank you for helping my daughter. You can go now.”
I flinched. My Korean-born father had been mocked enough to be self-conscious about his English, so he tended to speak tersely in front of Americans he didn’t know well; his short sentences often sounded curt. But Leah just shook her head.
“No, I’ll stay. If you wouldn’t mind dropping me off home once they tell us Winfield will be okay. My mom needs to get home to my brother.”
“Leah, honey, June has her dad here now, so she won’t be alone. Don’t make him go to extra trouble to drop you off later.”
“Mom, how far can they live from us? Briarcliff is tiny.”
“It’s no trouble,” said my dad. “I will take her.”
Leah’s mother shrugged in defeat. Defeat, I would come to learn, was a position everyone in Leah’s life had to come to terms with.
And so Leah stayed. As the last dim light drained out of the sky, we sat side by side in that waiting room that smelled of antiseptic and bandages, and she kept up a ceaselessly scrolling chain of chatter, one thing after another, whatever it took to keep my mind off my little dog who was dying on the surgical table because of my unforgivable carelessness. I heard how Leah’s favorite class was science, but it made her mad that Mr. Paulson always called on the boys even though she usually knew the answer. I heard about her younger brother, Sam, who had been injured falling out of a tree a couple of years ago, and how no one could make him be able to use his legs again, but even though he got frustrated sometimes, he never felt sorry for himself or said how things were unfair. I learned that Leah wanted to become a research scientist who studied the nerves so that she could figure out how to reverse paralysis. It was no wonder she wanted so fiercely for Winfield to heal.
Finally, well after seven o’clock, a tired-looking woman in scrubs walked out from the back of the clinic. “Miss Kang?” she said, and I gulped down a breath as I made myself sit upright to receive the awful news. I felt Leah’s hand clutching mine.
“The good news is, Winfield pulled through his surgery, and he’s going to be all right,” the veterinarian said. I sagged back against the seat as the air whooshed out of me, so relieved I almost missed her next words. “The bad news is, it’s going to be a long recovery. He had several broken ribs, some internal injuries, and two broken legs. Unfortunately, his back right leg was too shattered to save.”
“What does that mean?” My voice was a reedy croak in the quiet room.
“It means we had to amputate his leg just below his hip. Once his other leg heals, he’s going to have to learn to walk on three legs. I promise you he can do it,” she said kindly. “It won’t be easy, but he will learn. Because he’s a smart, strong little dog, and he’ll have you there to help him, right?”
My eyes blurred with tears as I nodded, thinking of where my training and “helping” of Winfield had gotten him this time.
“I’ll help too,” said Leah. “My little brother can’t walk so well either, so I know what that’s like.”
“See? There you go. It’s great that you and Winfield have a friend,” the veterinarian said to me.
I could almost physically feel the warmth of Leah’s smile as she squeezed my hand. It lit up that dark, dreary room and beamed through my shame and grief, making me believe that I could teach Winfield to be okay. From that day onward, she was my beacon. There is only one person on earth I have ever loved more.
* * *
—
When I open the door to my apartment, the silence I step into is as suffocating as the air. I cross to the living room windows and heave open the heavy sashes, a swell of summer sound rushing in on the breeze: the groaning compressor of the A/C unit upstairs, a car passing on the street below, a man calling out a greeting to a neighbor on her stoop. Ollie is mystified by my disinterest in air-conditioning, but I love an open window more than a chilly draft. I like the sounds of the world around me, just like I like to watch the sights of it from the window. The faces of the buildings across the street offer a checkerboard of light and dark. Each bright room has a story. Someone is home safe.
I walk to the turntable and drop on a Van Morrison record. I used to think listening to music on vinyl was a hipster affectation, but after the first weekend I spent ensconced in Ollie’s old apartment, watching the late winter snow fall and making love while we worked our way through the highlights of his encyclopedic music collection, my tune—pun regretfully permitted—changed swiftly. As Van’s soulful voice fills the room, I pour myself a glass of wine and sink into our silky leather Eames lounge chair. The chair, a real ’60s vintage one, was one of Ollie’s dad’s prized possessions until he gave it to us in honor of our buying this apartment in Carroll Gardens a few months back.
The thought of Ollie’s father reminds me, like nearly everything in the last three days has somehow reminded me, of Seneca. God, that place. My mind is stuffed with memories, which I both hate and can’t bear the thought of being without. It’s odd to think that, if things hadn’t happened as they did, I’d have forgotten most of them by now. But instead, there they all are—gleaming sharp and hard as a set of heirloom sterling I can’t stop polishing. The mist that clung to the treetops of the Catskills valley we drove through on our way there, after an early evening rain; firelight flickering on Ollie’s face as he played Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” my favorite song, flawlessly on his guitar; the rich, heady air, full of the scents of summer grass and blooming flowers and the clear, cold lake water. The vertigo of falling in love.
And of course, Leah. The sharpest, hardest gleam of all.
I can’t pretend to Ollie that I am happy about this trip, but I meant it when I said that I was willing. And yet he didn’t seem convinced that I’d be strong enough. I will be, because I have to be. It’s as simple as that.
One of the reasons I love him is the way he gives everything he has to his people, every single time—that’s the way I’ve lived my own life as a daughter, a lover, a friend. So I will always do the same for him. He is an elemental requirement for me: food, water, sleep, Ollie. And when you love somebody that much, you give them what they need. I just have to forgive him for needing this.
* * *
—
I wake in the darkness when Ollie brushes my hair off my face and kisses my forehead. When I open my eyes, he’s lying close, head propped on his hand, studying me in the dim light seeping into our bedroom. Heart surging with love, I reach up to cup his cheek, relishing the familiar texture of his beard against my palm. The first time we slept together, he asked me if its roughness bothered my sensitive skin.
“I love it,” I said. “It makes you my Ollie.”
I regretted it immediately, of course, because the last thing I wanted was to remind him of Before. But it’s never become less true than it was that very first day.
“Baby,” he says now, and kisses my lips. “We have to stop this. I can’t take the silent treatment.”
“I wasn’t trying to punish you,” I say, as he skims his hand under my nightshirt—an ancient, threadbare Allman Brothers T-shirt I co-opted from him ages ago. “I was being quiet because I was upset.” I can feel every fretting callus on his fingertips; my nerves respond to his touch like grass does to the wind.
“I know,” he says, “but when you want to be quiet, that’s exactly when you have to talk to me. That’s how this works.” He shoves the shirt up to my collarbones and trails his tongue down the center of my body.
Lightning shoots along the path he takes. “Ollie, this isn’t—whoa—we shouldn’t talk about this right now. Why do you always—oh. Mmmmm.”
“Why do I always use sex to get you over being upset with me? Because it fucking works.”
He is right. It does. I’m aware that it’s a bad idea to let my partner distract me from a disagreement with sex, but my body doesn’t care. Orgasms unlock me, and Ollie knows it.
“I think I can talk to you now,” I say when I can form sentences again.
“I noticed that,” he whispers against my lips as he sinks inside me with a slow roll of his hips.
I wind my arms around his shoulders and bury one hand in his hair. “I felt like you didn’t believe me when I said I could handle going to Seneca. Like you thought I was too weak.”
He stops moving and pins me with his gaze. “No, absolutely not. I would never think of you that way. It’s not that I didn’t believe you; I know you want to do this for my family, and that means the world to me. I was just worried about you. Not because you’re weak; because I want to protect you. There’s no way this won’t be hard on you.”
Dread drags at me like undertow. Am I kidding myself to think that I can manage this? Being in that house again, standing on that dock, looking at that water?
I stare up at Ollie’s precious face, and everything he feels is right there for me to see: the love, the worry, the hope. And I understand then that there was only ever one answer I could have given; and so I give it again. “It will be okay. I will be okay. I’m not who I was seven years ago, and I really want to do this. Have faith in me.”
He nods slowly. “I do. And I’ll be with you the whole time. I remember what it was like, my first time after.” He looks away for an instant, and it makes me hate that we weren’t together then, that I wasn’t there to help him. When the shadow passes, he meets my eyes steadily again. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me. I promise I’ll take good care of you.”
My eyes drift closed as I kiss him to promise him back. But in the darkness there is Leah. I can see her, twirling by the water’s edge, face turned up to the sky with a sparkler in each hand and the silhouette of her long hair and her skirt billowing against the starry night. Leah, spinning.
Leah, sinking.
5
Leah
WHEN YOU LIVE IN MANHATTAN, heading out for a road trip on a spit-shined summer afternoon always sounds so much more epic than it turns out. First you have to wrangle all your people to show up at the appointed place and hour, then find room for everyone’s shit and snacks and water bottles and phone cords and Jesus Christ already. And then, on a holiday weekend like the Fourth of July, you’re guaranteed an absolute minimum of one hour spent gnashing your teeth at the Hudson River crossing of your choice, followed by enough New Jersey to make you truly believe you will die there.
None of us can relax until we’re out of the Garden State, mainly because Ollie is in commander mode. For a guy with such a mellow personality, he’s a nightmare about anything related to driving directions and traffic: It’s like he beams all the neuroses that the rest of us spread over various topics onto this single, completely uncontrollable element. He will not engage with any of my attempts to converse, just shifts his eyes with obsessive focus between the road and the GPS screen, occasionally barking responses to relevant queries but mainly being a total grump.
But at last, once the snarl of exits and overpasses in eastern Jersey finally coughs us out onto the interstate, Ollie deems it safe to shut off the GPS lady and turns on the radio. It’s in the middle of a Billy Joel song, because of course it is, and Ollie lands fearlessly on the high harmony of “He works at Mr. Cacciatore’s down on Sullivan Street.” It isn’t really a road trip until Ollie starts singing along to the radio. I smile at myself in the side-view mirror, kick my Havaianas off, and plant my feet on the dash so I can admire my juicy pedicure.
“Are we there yet?” says June, popping her head into the empty space between the front seats.
“No, but Ollie’s butt cheeks have finally unclenched from the traffic, so maybe now we can have a civilized conversation.”
“Oh, was that the wheezing noise I heard a minute ago?” she says, swatting the middle finger he waves in her face. “Okay. Civilized conversation: Go.”
“I would like to discuss the fallout from the Rick the Dick breakup,” I say. “I can’t believe he tried to booty-call you after he dumped you.”
“I can’t believe you slept with somebody who thinks Blink-182 is one of the best bands of the last twenty years,” Ollie says.
