Les hadn’t said much about Gideon. He hadn’t seen Gideon in nearly a year. He was bewildered and angry that Gideon had enlisted in the army without consulting him. Iraq was a dirty war, a sham war like they’d said of Vietnam. Like Gideon had wanted to put distance between himself and Star Lake, was that it? Between himself and his family.
Miriam was walking fast to keep pace with Les. She’d thought he was going to head back toward the parking lot, but he seemed to be walking in the opposite direction, back into the cemetery. Overhead, clouds were shifting in the sky like soiled sailcloth. Miriam didn’t want to think that the trip to the Gettysburg memorial had gone wrong somehow. Maybe it was too late. Les should have gone with the family, all of them, years ago, when Miriam’s brothers were young and Miriam was a little girl. Somehow the trip had come to be too important to Les and Miriam; there was a strain to it, like the strain of a balloon being blown bigger and bigger until it threatens to burst. And then it bursts.
There was a tall plaque beside the roadway. Miriam read aloud, in fragments: “‘. . . Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863, the greatest speech of the Civil War and one of the greatest speeches ever given by any American president. Four score and seven years ago. All men are created equal. Brave men, living and dead, who struggled here. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here—‘” and Les interrupted: “Bullshit. Who remembers? Who’s left? Just Lincoln people remember.”
It was the afternoon of June 3, 2004. Miriam’s father would disappear from her life on June 28.
6.
Months after the funeral, after Labor Day, when Star Lake emptied out and the downstate homeowners were gone, they trashed one of the new houses on East Shore Drive. Stoned on crystal meth like lighter fluid inhaled through the nostrils and a match lit and whup! whup! whup! it was like a video game, wild. A replica of an old Adirondack lodge of the 1920s, except the logs were weatherized and insulated; there were sliding glass doors overlooking the deck and the lake. Maybe it was a house their father, Les, had worked on; the brothers weren’t sure. Not Gideon—after the funeral he’d flown back to the Mideast; his duty had been extended—but Martin and Stan and some of their friends. Forced a back door, and no security alarm went off that they could hear. Trashed the place looking for liquor and found instead above the fireplace mantel a mounted buck’s head, sixteen-point antlers; shining their flashlights, outraged to see a Mets cap dangling from one of the points, a small American flag on a wooden stick twined in the antlers, sunglasses over the glass eyes, so they pulled down the buck’s head to take away with them, stabbed and tore leather furniture with their fishing knives, smashed a wall-screen TV, smashed a CD player, tossed dishes in a frenzy of breakage, overturned the refrigerator, jammed forks into the garbage disposal, took time to open cans of dog food to throw against the walls, took time to stop up toilets (six toilets!) with wadded towels, in the bedrooms (five bedrooms!) took time to urinate on as many beds as their bladders allowed. It had something to do with Les Orlander, though they could not have said what. Sure, they’d remembered to wear gloves; these guys watched TV crime shows. Martin wanted to torch the place, but the others talked him out of it. A fire would draw too much attention.
Miriam wasn’t a witness to the trashing, had not been with her brothers. Yet somehow she knew.
7.
“My damn mother, I wish. . .”
This second time. The words came out sudden and furious. Whatever was in her bloodstream had got into her brain. And the music was hurting. It scared her, the way the blood arteries beat. “. . . wish somebody would put that woman out of her misery, she’d be better off.” What was his name, he’d been Gideon’s close friend in high school, Oz Newell was Miriam’s friend here. Oz Newell was protecting her. Leaning his sweaty-haired head to Miriam, touching her forehead with his own in a gesture of clumsy intimacy, asking what’s she saying and Miriam says, “I want somebody to kill my mother, like she killed my father.” So it was said. For months it had needed saying, building up in Miriam like bile, and now it was said and the guys stared at her but maybe hadn’t heard her, even Oz laughing, so certainly he hadn’t heard. Hay Brouwet was trying to tell him something. Nobody could talk in a normal voice; you had to shout so your throat became raw. Hay was cupping his big-knuckled hands to his mouth, so Miriam could see that Hay was shouting, but the music was so loud, must’ve been she was so stoned, she couldn’t hear a thing.
Whatever is done. Whatever you cause to be done. It will have happened always. It can never be changed.
In that other time, before her father killed himself. On the drive home from Gettysburg. If Miriam had said . . . what words? If Miriam had said, I love you, you are my father. Don’t leave me. Of course, she’d said nothing. Underlining passages in her earth science workbook as her father drove north on the throughway, home.
It was later then. They were somewhere else; the air smelled different. There was less noise. The vibrations had ceased. When they’d left the Star Lake Inn, Miriam didn’t know. Possibly she’d passed out. An inky mist had come over her. She remembered laying her head down on her crossed arms on a table to which her skin was sticking. Though she knew better, there was the fear that her brothers would see her, drunk, disheveled, sluttish in the company of older guys, some of them bikers, stoned, excited, looking for a way to discharge their excitement, a dog pack sniffing for blood. In this pack, Oz Newell was her friend. Oz Newell swaying on his feet and oozing sweat would protect Miriam, she knew. There was an understanding between them. Miriam believed this. For Oz carried her to his beat-up Cherokee, lifting her in his arms. Miriam was limp, faint-headed, her mouth slack and eyes half shut; she could feel his arm muscles straining, the tendons in his neck. Oz’s face was a strong face, like something hacked from stone. The skin was coarse, acne-scarred. The jaws were unshaven. It was late, it was past 2 A.M. Miriam had to be carried; her feet were bare, very dirty, the soles scratched, bleeding. One of those dreams where you have lost your shoes, part of your clothing, strangers’ eyes move onto you, jeering. The stained red T-shirt and cord skirt riding up her thighs—Miriam tried to tug the skirt down, her fingers clutching, clawed. She’d been running in the gravel parking lot. Hair in her face, panicked. “Don’t! Don’t hurt—” but no one was listening to her. Kevin had left the inn; the pack had followed him, Miriam clutching at Hay Brouwet’s arm, but he’d thrown her off as you’d flick away a fly. Miriam had not remembered that Kevin was wearing a Yankees cap but this had to be Kevin, big-jawed boy with sun-bleached hair straggling past his ears, Kevin with the rich father, Kevin complaining of the sleek white sailboat, he was headed for a Jeep, ignition key in hand he was headed for a steel-colored Jeep parked partway in weeds at the far end of the lot when Oz Newell and Hay Brouwet and Brandon McGraw and their friends advanced upon him cursing—“Fuckface! Where ya goin’!”—and Kevin turned to them with a look of utter astonishment, so taken by surprise he hardly had time to lift his arms to protect his head. The men were whooping and rushing at him, fierce as dogs in a pack; Kevin tried to run but they caught him, cursing him, slamming him against the Jeep, the Yankees cap went flying, Kevin’s head was struck repeatedly, Kevin fell to the ground as the men circled around him, punching and kicking with their steel-toed workboots. Miriam clutched at their arms, pulled at them, begged them to stop, but they paid no attention to her, even Oz Newell shoved her from him, indifferent to her pleas. And a part of her was thinking, Hurt him! So he will know.
There was justice in it, such a beating. You felt this. Though you could not acknowledge it, not even to Oz Newell and his friends.
In the gravel, partway in the weeds at the end of the lot, the bleach-haired boy lay writhing and vomiting. His clothes were torn, his chest exposed. He had not been hurt. It hadn’t been a serious beating. They laughed in derision, watching him crawl toward the Jeep. Bleeding from a broken nose, but a broken nose isn’t serious. His front te
eth were maybe loosened. The pretty-boy face had been roughed up; he’d had to be taught a lesson. Rich fucker. Rich guy’s fucking son. Stay away from the Star Lake Inn, fucker. Stay away from our girls. Next time it’s your head that’ll be broke. Your brains you’ll be puking. The guys were feeling good about this. They were grateful to Miriam, who was their friend Gideon’s young sister, for needing them. For turning to them. The adrenaline high is the best high, the purest high. Laughing so tears stung their faces like acid. Except they had to get the hell out, fast. What if somebody inside the inn had called 911? Two or three of the guys had come on their motorcycles, some in pickups. Oz Newell had his beat-up Cherokee, which smelled like he’d been living in it. There was a plan to meet at another place a few miles up the road at the Benson Mines, open till 4 A.M. But Oz Newell said he’d better get Miriam the hell home.
On Salt Isle Road the wind was moving in the tops of the trees like a living thing. There was the moon sliding in the sky, about to disappear behind clouds. And the clouds so thin and ragged, like torn cloth blowing across the face of the moon. “Look!” Miriam pointed. “Makes you think there’s some reason to it.” Oz glanced sidelong at Miriam, sprawled in the seat beside him. He’d had to toss soiled shirts, Styrofoam wrappers, beer cans into the back to make room for her. “Like the moon makes a center in the sky. So the sky isn’t just . . .” Miriam was losing the thread of what she was saying. It was an important thing she meant to say, might’ve said to her father; maybe it would have made a difference. The Cherokee was lurching along the narrow lakeside road. Whatever had gotten into Miriam’s brain was making her feel like she wasn’t inside her skull but floating a few feet away.
Oz Newell said, surprising her, his voice was so deliberate: “Back there, Miriam, what’d you say about your mother? I didn’t maybe hear.”
So Oz had heard. Heard something. Miriam thought, He will do it. For me. It could be an accident. There were so many accidents with guns. All the men owned guns. Boys owned guns. Even off-season you heard gunfire in the woods. Les Orlander had not been one of those who’d owned many guns, just two. The shotgun, the rifle. The rifle taken into custody by the county sheriff’s department, then released to the family, and Stan had appropriated it, and the shotgun, to take back to Keene with him. Oz could use a rifle. Oz could fire through Ethel’s bedroom window. Oz could hide outside in the bushes. Oz could fire through the windshield of the Cutlass when Ethel was driving into town. It could be a robbery. A stranger. This time of year there were many strangers in the Star Lake area. There were many strangers in the Adirondacks. There were break-ins, burglaries, vandalism. There were unexplained beatings, killings. It would happen swiftly and then it would be over and Miriam could live with Martin in Watertown, where he was out of rehab now and working as a roofer, and he’d seemed lonely, and Ethel had said, Honey, come home, live with your sister and me, and Martin had pushed her off, saying he’d sooner be in hell.
In childish bitterness Miriam said, “My mother. What she did to my father. She should be punished,” and Oz said, as if perplexed, “Punished how?” and Miriam said, wiping her mouth on the shoulder of her au sable boathouse T-shirt, “Some way.” Miriam’s brain was becoming vague again. It was like clouds being blown across the face of the moon; you couldn’t see what was behind the rapidly flowing movement, if it was moving also. Oz, driving the Cherokee, braking at curves, said nothing. He was driving more deliberately now, as if he’d realized that he shouldn’t be driving at all. Miriam could hear his panting breath. She said, “I’m not serious, Oz. I guess not.”
Oz said, hunching his shoulders, “Shouldn’t say a thing like that. About your mother. See, somebody might misunderstand.”
Turning into Miriam’s cinder driveway, Oz cut his headlights. Miriam saw with a pang of dread that the front rooms of the house were darkened but the outside light, at the carport, was on, and lights were burning at the rear of the house: kitchen, Ethel’s bedroom. “Miriam, hey! Christ.” Oz laughed; Miriam was clutching at him. She was kissing him, his stubbled jaws, the startled expression on his face. He pushed her away and she crossed a leg over his, jamming against the steering wheel. She was desperate, aroused. It felt like drowning, wanting so to be loved. Should be ashamed, but it was happening so quickly. Her mouth against the man’s was hot and hurtful, her hard, hungry teeth. She had no idea what a kiss is, the opening of mouths, tongues, the softness, groping. Oz laughed, uneasy. Pushing her away more forcibly. “Miriam, c’mon.”
She was too young, Gideon’s kid sister. She was a sister to him, or she was nothing. He was sure she’d never had sex with anyone, and damned if he’d be the first.
“I love you. I want to be with you.”
“Sure, baby. Some other time.”
Miriam jumped from the Cherokee, made her way wincing, barefoot, into the house. So ashamed! Her face pounded with heat.
The kitchen was two rooms, one a former washroom. Les had knocked out the wall between. There was a long counter with a scarred white enamel sink. The beautiful cabinets of dark, polished wood Les had built. On the linoleum floor were scattered rugs. Miriam saw that Ethel wasn’t in the kitchen even as, in her bathrobe, a cigarette in hand, Ethel entered the kitchen from the direction of her bedroom. Ethel’s eyes were brimming with emotion, fixed on Miriam in the way of one staring at a blazing light, blinding.
Miriam’s heart gave a skid. She loved this woman so much, the two of them helpless together, like swimmers drowning in each other’s arms.
Her voice was brattish, exasperated. “Why aren’t you in bed, Mom? I told you not to wait up.”
Now that Les was gone and would not be coming back, Ethel was in mourning. Her face was pale and puffy without makeup, raw. Yet strangely young-looking, her mouth like a bruise, wounded. In the chenille robe her body was slack, ripe, beyond ripeness. The loose, heavy breasts were disgusting to Miriam, who wanted to rush at her mother and strike at her with childish, flailing fists. Miriam, who was staggering with exhaustion, limping barefoot, hair in her face, and her ridiculous tight red T-shirt and white cord skirt stained with her own vomit. Wanting to hide her shamed face against Ethel’s neck which was creased, smelling of talcum.
Somewhere distant, in the mountains beyond Star Lake, a melancholy cry, a sequence of cries. Loons, coyotes. Les had taken Miriam outside one summer night to listen to plaintive cries he identified as the cries of black bears.
Ethel smiled uncertainly. Knowing that if she moved too suddenly, Miriam would push her away, run from the room. Barefoot, wincing in pain. The door to her room would be slammed shut, it would never open. “You look feverish, honey.” Ethel must have smelled male sweat on Miriam. She smelled beer, vomit. Unmistakable, the smell of a daughter’s vomit. But shrewdly deciding not to go there, in that direction. So grateful that the daughter is home. Coming to press a hand against the daughter’s forehead. Miriam flinched, dreading this touch. For hours she’d been dreading it. yet the hand was cool, consoling. Ethel said, her voice throaty, bemused, “Where’ve you been, are you going to tell me?”
For a moment Miriam couldn’t remember. Where had she been? Her mouth was dry, parched as sand. As if she’d slept with her mouth open, helpless in sleep as a small child.
“Nowhere. Now I’m back.”
Bleeed
Hadn’t known the girl. He had not. All he knew was, she was the daughter of friends of his parents. Or maybe just acquaintances, for his parents had known many people in those years. First he remembered of her, a distinct memory, he’d been thirteen years old and in ninth grade and she’d been only five years old, a lifetime between them at those ages. One small child interchangeable with any other small child, girl or boy, and of virtually no significance to a boy of thirteen, for whom no one matters much except a select gathering of boys his age and older, and a very few girls. And there was his mother speaking to him in a voice frightening to him, impulsive, intimate, and her hands on him as if to restrain him from slipping away: “That
poor child! And her parents! Of course, they have to be grateful that she’s alive, and that terrible man has been—” and he saw a shudder of revulsion in his mother’s face, and quickly he looked away, for there was something wrong in this, his mother speaking to him in a voice he rarely heard except when his parents were speaking together in the privacy of their bedroom and the door was closed against their children; and Jess was the sort of boy lacking not curiosity exactly but the recklessness required for wishing to overhear exchanges between your parents you understand are not meant for you to hear. And so Jess resented this behavior on his mother’s part. That look in his mother’s usually composed face of revulsion tinged with excitement. For there was something sexual in this. Jess knew, and didn’t want to know. For what could terrible man mean if the girl had not been killed, except sex? Jess was embarrassed and resentful, hotly his face pounded with blood, badly he wanted to escape. What had he to do with a child eight years younger than he was! And his mother saying, “If you’ve heard anything, Jess, will you tell me? Tell me what you’ve heard.” (They were in the kitchen. Jess’s mother seemed to have been waiting for him there. Had him trapped between the refrigerator and the stove.) At thirteen you no more want to speak of sexual matters with a parent than you would want to speak of God with a parent. And so, not meeting his mother’s gaze, Jess mumbled that he hadn’t heard anything about whatever this was his mother was telling him, whatever ugly and unspeakable incident wholly unrelated to him and to any of his classmates, Jess took care not to repeat the girl’s name—the name of a five-year-old girl means virtually nothing to a boy of thirteen—assuring his anxious mother that no one at his school had been talking about it, so far as he knew. So far as he knew was possibly the truth. So far as he knew was, for a boy of thirteen being questioned by his mother in a way distressing to him, the most negotiable of truths. “The worst of it has been kept out of the news, so far. Her name isn’t being released and actual details of what he did except ‘repeated assault,’ ‘critical blood loss’—imagine! A five-year-old girl! Nothing about the family, and a picture only of the . . . ‘perpetrator.’” Jess saw that his mother’s mouth, which was usually a smiling mouth, was contorted. Harsh lines bracketed his mother’s mouth. This is the way she will look when she is old. When she is older, Jess thought. Wanting badly to escape now, push past his mother and run upstairs to his room, shut the damn door behind him and burrow into his most secret and forbidden thoughts, sick thoughts, guilty thoughts, where neither his mother nor his father could follow him. For there are places in the world like secret fissures and fault lines into which we can burrow, and hide, where no one can follow. Stammering now, insisting that he hadn’t heard anything about the girl, nothing at school, daring now to lift his eyes to his mother’s eyes in a desperate appeal, and it was then that Jess’s mother uttered the astonishing words Jess would never forget: “I wish I could believe you.”