The Year of Second Chances, page 15
“I’m Robin,” I said. I would have to redo a portion of his facial hair, but it was worth it.
“I’m Gregory,” he said, still chuckling. “And you take your sweet time.”
When I was finished, Gregory blinked in his chair, eyelids heavy with the silvery fake lashes I’d just glued on, and stood. The other actors turned to behold my work, on break from blocking the death of Claudius.
“How do I look?” Gregory called, fluttering his lashes again. “I feel like I’m back in my drag days.”
The cast laughed—good-naturedly, but still. My stomach flipped.
“I mean that as a compliment,” Gregory assured me as he stepped in front of the director.
Maybe I had overdone it. I watched the director regard him, arms crossed as she leaned close to his face. I found myself getting defensive. So the ghost’s look was dramatic. So what? The best horror always toed the line between terrifying and absurd, at least that’s how it was for me. The slowness of Jason’s walk. Freddy Krueger’s wit. The Exorcist girl clownishly spinning her head around. Even in my own life. Gabe’s life. One week, he was next to me on the couch. The next, he was dead. It was nonsense, a parody of the way things were actually supposed to work. Maybe I didn’t have it in me to create a realistic, sophisticated Shakespearean ghost because I had seen the reality, and I didn’t care for it.
“Let’s see it under the lights,” the director rasped. “Kenzie?” she called, and a mousy person with a clipboard popped out from backstage. “Get the houselights, hon.”
As the stage manager jogged back to the lighting booth, I began to pack up my case. I didn’t want to see their reactions. Whatever, I thought. I didn’t ask to be here, anyway. If they didn’t like me, they could find someone else. It struck me that I never used to be like this. If this were a few years ago, I would have bent over backward to find out what the director wanted, what the show needed, to know I was essential, contributing. But grief had changed me. It felt good to stand by what I had done. I began to pack my makeup.
Ted was making his way toward me through the chairs. “Whoa,” he said. “Robin, like really, whoa. I knew you could do it,” he said with a touch of pride. “I had a feeling.”
I smiled at Ted. “Thanks for the opportunity. It was fun.”
Suddenly, the houselights went dark. I paused to look—I couldn’t help myself. The stage lights clicked on, illuminating Gregory in the center. But he was no longer Gregory. The contours I’d drawn made his cheeks skeletal, his eyes like two black holes. The frost in his hair glittered in a crown. His blue lips began to form words, which he delivered in a hoarse growl. “I am thy father’s spirit, doom’d for a certain term to walk the night . . . Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder . . .”
When his monologue was finished, a silent chill hung in the air. I didn’t know if it was a good chill or a bad chill until Ted began to clap.
Gregory joined in, pointing his applause in my direction. A few of the actors did the same, talking among themselves as they stared at Gregory in a kind of terrified awe. He still looked inhuman, even in corduroys and cable knit, yet the earthly details I’d added—the ice in his hair, the touch of pink like burst blood vessels—inspired pity. I had done that. Something primal and proud and hungry bloomed inside me.
The director interrupted my reverie, pointing at me with a smirk. “You’re hired. Now take that shit off him before I have nightmares.”
14
A life goal of mine is . . .
To wave goodbye to someone from a train window, like in the movies.
In the car, Jake kept looking over at me as he tapped his hands to the beat of the radio. Service on our phones was getting spotty as we made our way north, so we listened to local stations, classic rock and jingles for furniture outlets. Deep green firs streaked past the window. Towns dotted the road with midcentury motor lodges and pine-sided bars and one-roomed churches, fading from view as quickly as they rose up. Above the rooftops, dawn was pink and lavender and blue-gray. We sipped steaming hazelnut coffee and milk from company travel mugs I’d fixed for us. Breakfast of hard-boiled eggs from the cooler. Now, we were quiet. Jake had turned his head from the road again.
“What?” I asked him.
“It’s just so good to see you. It’s cool we’re finally doing this.”
“What, ice fishing?”
Jake shrugged, tilting his head from side to side in a maybe gesture. “Sure.”
Did he mean that this was more than ice fishing? Whenever we’d gotten close to the subject—the subject of we—one of us always seemed to back away, scared of disturbing the peace. I guess that’s how we were together, we couldn’t help it. We floated off into the jetsam of our rambling brains, or we were quiet for long stretches, only interrupting each other’s solitude to share a point. Even now, trapped in a car with my nervous energy, he seemed just as at ease as he was when we were waxing poetic on I-35 about Baskin-Robbins flavors, or Jordan Peele, or the strange appeal of tiny houses. He was so easygoing, so pleasant, it was as if he was never uncomfortable, which made me want to be comfortable, too. But maybe that was the problem. What I loved about our interactions was also what kept them from ever coming down to earth, where I might have to address why it felt like seven sparklers were lit in my chest at once.
All week I’d felt like a teenager, bored in school, barely noticing the payroll and vendor contracts and bonus requests, staring out my office window in anticipation of closing time. He’d dropped the invitation on Wednesday, as casual as can be. Wanna go with me? The deep freeze has hit the lake by now.
Now, here we were, two feet from each other, and I wished I could just let things hang, like our airy conversations about nothing. But I wanted him to know more and more I had been picturing him as we spoke, that I could imagine us like this, as a couple, sharing sleepy insights over coffee, taking weekends up north.
Soon, a sign nailed to a mile-high tree pointed us to Lake Farway. The Prius turned and roamed deeper into the woods. In the stillness, the road crackled with rock and ice. Needled branches brushed the sides of the car. Jake began to get excited as we crawled closer to the water, reminiscing about past trips with his friends Diego and Smitty, about the fish they’d caught and hadn’t caught, about how beautiful this area was in the summer, too, and that maybe I’d see it someday.
Would I see it someday? I thought but didn’t say. Is that what he wanted?
Parked, we made our way down a thin, rocky path, toward the shoreline of smooth stones and snow-capped driftwood. When the trees broke, revealing the lake, I gasped at its stark beauty, squinting in the white glare. In the distance, two figures were putting up a small tent. Diego and Smitty spotted us, waving. To keep our balance on the vast, shimmering slate, we took each other’s hands. I held Jake’s tight. He squeezed back.
A couple hours later, the four of us sat on makeshift stools of overturned plastic buckets, our knees almost knocking around the hole augered into the ice. Whiskey had been poured into Coke cans. A tiny space heater pumped. Our poles were on the ground, lines unmoving. We had started with small talk, establishing that I was an accountant, that Diego was a consultant, that Smitty—a nickname for Abigail Schmidt—owned a tree-trimming business. Then the three of them had fallen into what almost sounded like another language, a shorthand of inside jokes and references.
They paused only to watch one of the poles move, though when Diego checked it, the bait had been nibbled, but the fish had escaped.
“Fair warning, I am kind of cursed,” I joked.
“Uh-oh,” Diego said as he hooked a new worm. “Is this why we’re not getting bites?”
“Yeah, I was kind of wondering why you went out so far,” I said, nodding out toward the ice. Before Theo was born, Dad used to take me out on Brokenridge Lake. He taught me how to tell how thick the ice was by sight and feel. How to grind a hand auger to make a hole. I was eager to share something I actually knew. “Usually you try to stay closer to the shallows in the morning for feeding, right?”
“Stay closer to the shallows, she says,” Smitty said, turning to Diego. Diego snorted.
“Normally you would be right—” Jake began to say.
“Trust us,” Smitty interrupted. “We know Lake Farway.”
Jake had warned me that Diego and Smitty weren’t going to be mean, but they were going to be wary. The three of them had grown up as neighbors, and with Jake being the youngest, they had always been protective. I steeled myself.
“So you two met how?” Smitty asked. She stared at me openly with her Baldwin-blue eyes, blond curls peeking out of a hunter’s orange beanie.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know, Smits,” Diego said. He was on the heavier side in a sporty green coat, with a full black beard and dark eyes that rested on me without pause. “We know you guys met online. Jake talks about you.”
Smitty shrugged. “It’s polite to let a couple tell their own story the way they see fit.”
Jake and I glanced at each other. Hopefully my blush was hidden under the cold on my cheeks.
“Oh, we’re not—we’re not an official couple, or anything,” I clarified as I smiled at both of them, my stomach in knots. Right for the jugular.
“And yet he invites you out to Lake Farway.” Smitty raised her blond eyebrows and tsked. “That is not a taking-it-slow maneuver in this friend group, I have to say.”
“Lay off,” Jake said, laughing uncomfortably.
“Yeah.” Diego kicked at Smitty’s boot with his own, chuckling. “Stop policing.”
“What?” Smitty continued. “Barbecue, sure. But dragging someone out to the middle of nowhere in subzero temperatures? And this is a very intimate venue, is it not?” Smitty lifted her gloved hands to acknowledge the vinyl walls.
“Ha, well . . .” I said stupidly. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Jake. At anyone. Was I supposed to respond to that? What was I, a kid? Yes. In dating terms, yes.
After another hour, the lines had not moved. We’d eaten all the beef jerky and cheese I’d brought, gone through all the Coke cans. Outside, behind the thick clouds, the sun was getting higher. The fish wouldn’t be feeding for much longer.
“All right, fine,” Smitty said, tossing her rod to the ice. She looked at me with a reluctant smile. “Let’s do it Robin’s way.”
I gave her a small smile back but was quick to start packing things into the cooler, not wanting her to think I was reveling in victory. Together, we deconstructed the tent, moving everything closer to shore. In what I thought was a good spot, Smitty began to chip away at the ice with the auger while Jake and I watched. Diego went to the car to procure more soda.
“Why did you say you were cursed?” Jake asked me after a moment.
“Oh, it was just something Gabe used to say whenever we went fishing.”
“Ah.” There was no Jake-like laugh. He dropped to his knees to take a turn at the auger.
Had I said something wrong? I’d been careful to keep Gabe out of his mind, out of mine. But even now, Gabe’s voice wove in and out of my hearing. His boots had appeared next to mine on the frozen water, conjuring the Mississippi. Of course it wasn’t really him. That’s what I kept telling myself. But I’d begun to understand why Marcy liked consulting a woman who claimed to speak to the dead. Last night, as I dug through storage looking for fishing poles and gloves, Gabe seemed to be in the corners of every room, the corners of my vision. Well? What’s the verdict, hon? When he didn’t answer, I had goaded his ghost with an old six-pack of home-brewed beer I’d found in the garage. This has gone bad, I told the Gabe of my brain, daring him to appear. I’m going to have to throw it out. His handwriting was on the label of each bottle, always so precious to me, cramped and boyish. Garobbie Beer, he called it, a combination of our names. I’d stood at the sink and poured the sour yeast-smelling liquid down the drain, mourning the last workings of his hands as the liquid disappeared.
Wordlessly, I bent to take my own turn on the auger. I leaned hard into each spin, ice chips flying. Maybe Jake was sensing my split mind. Maybe we should have stayed commuter friends, or whatever we were to each other. Maybe pushing this IRL had been a bad idea.
Taking turns cranking, we formed another reasonably sized hole. The four of us settled back down on our buckets, and when I asked for the whiskey, Diego insisted on pouring.
“Strong,” I said, wiping my twisting mouth.
“Welcome to ice fishing with us,” Smitty said.
“Cheers,” I said.
“To Robin,” Jake said, lifting his can.
I couldn’t tell what was in his expression, but I was happy to catch his eyes. “Don’t cheers me yet,” I said, smiling at him. “Not until we have fish.”
“Eh, who cares. The fish isn’t the point.” He winked. I felt relief.
Soon, however, all four lines got tugs, bringing in flopping perch after perch, their splashes disrupting a game of blackjack that I had tried and failed not to win. Diego’s and Smitty’s cries of delight echoed across the ice. They held up their hands to me for high fives.
As morning stretched into afternoon, we rotated seats for our turn at being closer to the warmth of the space heater. We played Never Have I Ever and Diego lost, which, he reminded us, actually means he’d won at life. We found our preferred peeing spots on shore—mine was deeper into the bush, but I got to see a cardinal. Smitty passed around a Black & Mild, and I beat everyone at hearts, and we sang Queen to the empty tundra.
As we ended an off-tune rendition of “Another One Bites the Dust,” Jake scooted closer on his overturned bucket and poked me with his elbow, eyes sparkling. “I’m glad you came.”
If I were a braver soul, I would have kissed him right then.
As the sun set, we hit the road. The cooler was packed with ice and two perch. “I like your friends,” I told Jake.
“And they like you.”
“You think so?”
“They sure didn’t sing with anyone else I’ve dated,” Jake assured me.
My heart leaped. When it stayed up, I realized I was still holding something in. I remembered how quiet Jake had gotten as we’d drilled a new hole in the shallows. “Sorry if it was weird that I brought up Gabe.”
“Aw, no,” Jake said, shaking his head. “You can talk about him. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Nothing bothers you,” I told him with a smile.
“That’s not true.”
“I just mean that when I talk about him, things seem heavy. And I like how light I feel with you . . . you know.” I scrambled to make it sound more casual. “Hanging out. Sometimes when I talk about him, it opens a whole other can of worms.”
“Nice fishing reference. But really,” Jake said, his tone more serious, “try me.”
I hesitated. Did he mean it? How much could I say without scaring him? Without becoming the same sad widow who’d sobbed in the parking lot when we first met? But he’d still come back after that, hadn’t he? Maybe I could land for a moment. Maybe I could open up another part of myself.
“Well, I felt guilty going on this excursion, that’s for one.”
I thought of all the blankets and sweaters and stray socks I’d collected last night from every corner of the house—months and months of a sedentary life, and now I was leaving it behind without the one person who would have wanted me to. He would have been the one to dig into storage last night for the rods and snow pants, I told Jake. He would have been muttering to himself as he fiddled with his tackle box. He would have wanted me to get out.
“Even when he was alive,” I said, “I would have probably stayed home if a friend had invited me to something like this. Or, like, gone and done whatever he was doing. He was my best friend, you know? I wanted to be around him all the time.” I looked out the window. Cold climbed up the edges of the windows in spiky flowers of frost. “And now I feel guilty telling you this.”
“I’m not jealous or anything,” Jake said. “It’s your past. It’s part of you. I’ve got Roxana as part of me, too.”
Roxana was the ex he’d split with a year or so ago, I’d learned through occasional references. They’d met while she was getting her biology PhD. The idea was that she would get a job and they’d get married, but they never made it past the postdoc before she went back to Europe.
“See, but I’m a little jealous of Roxana.” I kept my tone light as I turned back to him, raising my eyebrows.
“Oh, are you?” Jake said.
“I am,” I said, smiling. I leaned my head back on my headrest.
Good things take time. That was what Jake had written on his Bubbl profile, and the refrain moved through my head with the hum of the tires. The radio crackled in and out as the sun set over the highway. My eyelids got heavy.
When I woke, it was dark, and the peace I felt was strange. Usually I slept lightly and dreamed vividly—running up the side of a steep bank, grasping for roots; wandering a half-abandoned mall with too many levels and broken escalators—but here, next to Jake, I’d slept deeply. The kind of knocked-out where time jumped forward without me in tow. Something had shifted in the air. In me.
He cleared his throat. The car was slowing down now. “We’re back in Brokenridge.”
I smoothed my hair, my pulse beginning to wake now, too. “Wow,” I said, fighting a yawn. “I guess I had too much fun.”
A smile played across his mouth. “It was cute, though. Your little snores.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, casual, though I found myself sitting up straighter. “We barely got to talk.”
We hit a red light at the intersection before the courthouse, still glowing with Christmas lights.
I looked over at him. “I’m guessing you have to get back home.”
“Do I?” Jake asked, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “I mean, is that what you want?”
“I don’t know,” I said. The light turned green.
Across the street was the post office, and the Red Lyon, and the old Curl Up and Dye, where I had gotten my first haircut, my first updo for a school dance, where I’d gotten my hair done for my wedding. Behind us to the north was the Green River and my childhood home.
