Chapter Nine
I spent the entire drive back to the cabin rehearsing what I could say to Buckeye. DAVE. Switch to Dave. If I called us Buckeye and Goldy, I’d just be lingering in the past. I clicked on the radio. “If I Could Turn Back Time”
by Cher. Funny bit, universe. I pictured Dave sitting outside in the darkness, brooding. Did he still smoke? Sorry for being rude earlier, I was just in shock. Let’s talk about how we might manage being in such close proximity this
summer. No, that sounded like I was the HR manager.
How did he really think I was a walking moral compass?
I felt like a person who never knew the right thing to say or do.
I was selfish. I knew that about myself and tried to change it, but the fact remained.
I looked out for number one a lot more than I wanted to admit.
There was a young part of me that wanted to run into his arms. But an even younger part of me that was still angry.
I had to start thinking with my independent, emotionally evolved thirty-year-old mind.
He was just a man I’d known once. I’d built him up in my imagination because I was a romantic who loves grand narratives.
Like most women, I hung onto the idea that virginity was real and that he was someone special just because I’d lost it to him.
What a farce! Maybe he was just someone with a bad tattoo and, it appeared, a somewhat transient life.
But I was no longer one to talk on that front.
I’d planned to drive by a field of painted birdhouses on the way home, a local attraction.
But between the weird mom hallucination and the old love of my life haunting the cabin, I drove home quickly.
I barely looked at the scenery. I turned the radio off.
But when I pulled into the parking lot, his truck was gone. No Rush greatest hits. Just birdsong, wind chimes, the horses
making little snort sounds, silence. I’d worked myself up into such a frenzy it was almost a letdown.
There was so much I wanted to ask him. Where had he been all these years? Did he get the letters? Did he read them out loud
to his friends in a mocking tone? Was it strange that I still kept the letters he’d written me during camp in a box under
the bed? Did he ever read the novel The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer and think about me, about the small world that we’d created at camp where we’d felt safe, and loved, even
admired and inspired to become artists, the opposite of the way we felt at home? When he fell in love again—if he had been
in love with me in the first place like he’d claimed—did it compare? I grated carrots into a bowl, sliced some scallions,
threw in a handful of dried cranberries. Was he still a militant vegan? Did he still listen to Modest Mouse at full volume
to go to sleep? I poured some bottled tahini dressing in a swirl and gave it a stir. I snipped some parsley and sprinkled
it on top. I cut a lemon in half and gave it a tight squeeze. At camp there was often a giant white plastic bucket of this
salad. Dave would eat a bowl of it with chickpeas on top when everyone else ate burgers. He used to be so skinny, lanky; when
he’d skateboard in the paved parking lot, he seemed like a giant compared to the children he was teaching to ollie. I stirred
the salad into pleasant swirls. I ate it standing over the sink. I didn’t realize I was ravenous.
I filled the sink with laundry soap, placed my underwear and sundresses into the warm sudsy water. Then I made a coffee and
sat outside at the picnic table, writing a to-do list for the week.
Prep workshop lessons for camp. Write a beat sheet for the movie.
Swim. Ride one of the horses? Do one county exploration thing every day.
I paged through the county tourism magazine Ben had left for me and circled things I’d like to see.
I’d texted and erased several messages to Ben.
What are the horses names, again?
What’s the ETA on that stove?
Has Ian taken Cassie in the hayloft yet bc I didn’t know about the likelihood of bats in haylofts when I wrote that scene.
That kiss sure didn’t feel . . . fake.
I erased them all. He’d be busy. His phone in his trailer. Why did I even care?
Finally I settled on a quick check-in: Loving the cabin, have adopted the cat. How’s set life?
I was doing all the things I made my heroines do—question themselves, become preoccupied, pine after men who possibly didn’t
deserve them, who they barely even know. I turned a timer on, threw my phone gently on the grass below the table, and opened
my notebook. I came up with several writing exercises that would work for the teens at camp. Then I turned the page and sketched
out a monologue in the voice of my film-to-be’s main character. The writing was forced, and every word felt leaden, but by
the time my timer went off, I’d written a full page, and some of the sentences weren’t the worst. I’d inched closer to the
answer to who is she and what does she really want?
She didn’t want a boyfriend just to fill an empty spot beside her and tick off the relationship box on her list of goals.
She wanted transcendence. She wanted intimacy. To be truly known. To have radical amounts of fun and pleasure. To feel afraid
and do it anyway.
Exactly what I wanted.
The sound of Dave’s truck barrelling down the laneway broke my concentration.
He drove quickly. Kind of reckless. Or maybe he’d just been here a million times.
He had the golden retriever in the passenger seat.
The back of his truck was filled with long planks of lumber.
He cut the engine but didn’t get out right away.
I thought about pretending to write, be unbothered.
He had to walk by me to get to his cabin.
Instead I just gathered up my things and gave him a little wave, which he returned.
Maybe I didn’t have to offer any big speech. Maybe if we wanted to just quietly move around each other, accepting the weirdness
of this situation, we could just do that. He didn’t seem as though he was rushing to say anything monumental to me. I went
back into the cabin, but I wasn’t going to hide again. I put my swimsuit on, and my cut-off shorts, threw one of the plush
towels around my neck. It was barely hot enough to swim but if I found a patch of sun, I could reasonably warm up enough to
jump in? All the objects and activities at the cabin were so quintessentially summer, and all summer things in some ways reminded
me of Buckeye and Goldy. He’d been the one to teach me to swim. I felt the way he used to hold me up in the lake water while
I kicked my legs, trying not to feel scared, before he gently let me go. I remembered how he yelled, “You’re doing it! Good
for you!” as I dog-paddled toward him while he backed away.
I opened the cabin door and paused—thought about putting on a cover-up over my bikini top. You’re overthinking. Don’t change yourself just because he’s here. He hasn’t turned the Rush greatest hits off for you. He
doesn’t seem bashful at all, actually. I tried to move down the steps as if completely unaware that he might see me. Walking to the beach path meant I had to walk
right in front of his cabin.
He had ear protectors on and was sawing away at some lumber, and he literally was not looking my way. At all. Why am I always like this?
But I didn’t want to deal with it. I estimated that I could walk between our cabins toward the barn and then turn sharp right toward where I knew the water was, through the tall grass instead of on the path.
I looked at my feet as I scrambled around the cabin.
The back meadow looked idyllic but the landscape was uneven, the wildflowers were beautiful but there were burrs and scraggly vegetation scratching up my legs.
I kept going out of pure stubbornness. I’d made it halfway through the meadow toward where I assumed I might eventually find the path, and had just popped a flower behind my ear, when I heard my name.
I turned, peering through the tall grass.
Dave was running toward me. He had a panicked look on his face.
When he reached me, he leaned over, placed his hands on his knees,
out of breath.
“Um, hey, sorry, I haven’t jogged in a while”—he laughed a little—“but you should take the path to the lake. It’s tick season.
You’re gonna be covered with your bare legs and all.”
We both looked at my legs, a bit of tan from the beach but still pale by most standards, now a bit roughed up by the grass.
I felt embarrassed that he was looking at my legs.
“Oh, shit. Thanks. I hadn’t thought about ticks at all. In fact I’ve never thought about them.” Why was I babbling?
“They’re very bad in this area. I didn’t want you to have a shit experience with one your first week here.”
“Thank you. So, where’s the path?”
“You have to walk around the old tractor, you’ll see it. You might want to put on some bug spray. The chemical shit, not the
lemon herb stuff that Ben’s mom probably left in the cabin.”
“I’ll get some in town tomorrow.”
“I’ve got some in my cottage.”
“You’re not trying to lure me into your murder house are you?”
He laughed. “I’m not the murdering type, unlike the ticks.”
I followed him back through the grass, where we’d trampled enough that it was less horrifying.
He was wearing these rust-coloured work pants and workboots, an ordinary blue T-shirt that somehow looked extraordinary on him.
I could still see his young face in moments.
When we reached the clearing, he instructed me to look at my skin for ticks and I couldn’t help but notice the blue in his shirt really made his eyes sparkle in an oceanic kind of way.
People always say that about blue eyes and it’s so cliché, but in this moment I realized, oh, it’s a real thing. I glanced down. “I don’t see any bugs.”