Chapter 4
Lee jumped back into a defensive crouch. Thora kept screaming an extra couple of seconds after recognizing him. Her fear had
flipped over to anger.
“What are you doing here?” she spat. “And why do you have George’s truck?”
“George gave me the truck when his vision was getting bad,” Lee said. His tone was much calmer than hers.
“When?”
Lee scratched his head. She hadn’t seen him since the summer after college graduation. He’d filled out since then. In college,
he was scrawny, neglecting sleep and food for his demanding architecture program. Now he was a house painter, according to
Cody. His frame had bulked out with both muscle and fat as a result. Thora’s first thought was, He looks good. Her second thought was, What the fuck, brain?
“Must have been four years ago, now. I came for a visit and he told me to take it.”
Now she was angry that the truck looked restored as well.
The chrome had been polished, the dents hammered out, and a new coat of red paint hid all the old rust spots.
That was just what she could see superficially.
Knowing Lee, he’d probably overhauled everything else, too.
He didn’t know how to leave anything alone, not even an old truck.
“Okay, fine. And what are you doing here now?”
“I’m here to see George.”
Thora’s stomach filled with lead. George had been dead for three years. Surely Cody must have said something to Lee. How could
it be that he didn’t know? Cursing her ex-husband in her mind, Thora braced herself to be the bearer of bad news.
“George passed away, Lee. It’s been three years.”
His knees buckled, and he leaned on the truck for support.
“No,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Thora said. Then she got mad at herself for offering these admittedly paltry words of comfort. George was her family. If Lee hadn’t renovated Juniper, George would have come to the city to live with her, at least for the winters. She
even picked a place a short bus ride from Central Park so he could have some access to nature. Instead, he died alone, and
Lee was to blame. He should be apologizing to her.
At least, that’s what she was telling herself.
“No, it can’t be,” Lee repeated, louder than the first time. He was typically so soft-spoken that the volume startled her.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Lee. You can go in the house. He’s not there, I promise.”
“I just talked to him on the phone,” Lee said.
Juniper had a way of flattening time, so full of strange objects from different historical eras, nestled in the woods with little around but unadulterated nature. It was comfortingly weird and easy to imagine that both the camp and George would always be here, suspended in time.
“I know,” she said.
“You don’t,” Lee said. “I talked to him a couple of days ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
He pulled his phone from the pocket of his fleece-lined canvas jacket. He showed her his call log. Indeed, there was an outgoing
call to George Williamson that lasted five minutes. She clicked on the contact to verify the number as Camp Juniper’s landline.
“Someone was playing a prank on you,” she said.
“Thora, I swear to you, I talked to George. It sounded like him, he knew me, and he said it was a good time to visit. I apologized
that I hadn’t been back in a few years.”
Tears were welling in his eyes. They were a soft hazel color and angled slightly downward, making him seem a little bit sad
at all times.
“Lee, come into the house. The phone is not even hooked up.”
Together they climbed the flights of stairs up to the porch and entered the house through the Great Room. In the kitchen,
a heavy black rotary dial phone sat on the counter close to the jack. It wasn’t plugged in.
Lee plugged the cord into the wall and picked up the receiver. He hit the plungers on the phone’s cradle multiple times, trying
to reestablish a dial tone. Thora, who recently dealt with all the utilities, knew there wouldn’t be one.
“Thora, I talked to him. It was him.”
Lee’s eyes were wide and glassy, with some combination of grief and confusion, maybe mixed with a little fear. She felt the
fear, too, refracted through so many childhood ghost stories.
“You couldn’t have talked to him. So who did you talk to?” she asked, knowing the answer was something strange and unexpected.
A wave of shock passed over Lee, and he sat down in one of the chairs of the small dinette set where she and George had shared
breakfasts on the odd morning they didn’t eat outside.
“Three years?” he said, his head dropping to his chest. Small spots, teardrops, appeared on his trousers. She sat beside him
quietly. Every few breaths, his breath faintly hitched.
Thora was unused to seeing men cry. Cody’s upper lip was stiff as they came. Her father and brother prided themselves on their
stoicism.
Nonetheless, his tears did not especially move her. What did concern her was what this meant for Juniper. Unexplainable shit
started happening before she even arrived; that was some kind of a record.
“How did it happen?” Lee managed to croak out.
Had he moved through the stages of grief that quickly? Past denial and already on acceptance?
Thora caught herself. She knew as well as anyone that grief was never so polite as to arrive in stages. Sometimes it announced
itself, as if ringing one of the dainty dinner bells in the Bell Room. Other times it was the bashing of a church bell that
rattled her bones. Even if Lee wasn’t her favorite person, he deserved some kindness right now.
“I’m not sure,” Thora said. “My cousin came to check on him and found him. It had been a while.”
Lee’s face crumpled at that news. “Which cousin?”
“Mikey.” Mack’s younger brother shed his asshole prankster persona after experiencing that trauma.
“Poor kid.”
At that, Thora felt the grief welling up in her, too. She couldn’t let Lee see her in this vulnerable state.
“Excuse me,” she said, and left the kitchen.
She went into the Wood Room to pull herself together. She’d give him some private time to grieve and then she would politely
ask him to leave. His letters, tucked neatly in a pigeonhole, drew her attention again. So she indulged her nosiness, picking
a random one from the pile and scanning past the salutation.
You never knew, the last time you jumped into the water at Devil’s Cauldron, that it would be your last time. That’s probably
for the best, or the anticipatory grief would have subsumed you. Better for that last time to be filed into your memories
with all the others. Just one exhilarating day of cliff diving among hundreds.
Devil’s Cauldron was one of many swimming holes tucked away in the Adirondacks that George loved.
But as I’m still able to go, I can share the stories. Maybe that will help alleviate the sadness now that the hike to the
Cauldron has become too treacherous for you.
The first time I went, with Cody and Thora, we had such a time. Thora was convinced we’d want to spend all day there and insisted
on packing sandwiches. She was right.
I think my lips were turning blue by the end of the day.
I had no idea water could still be that cold at the height of summer.
It was a shock every time I jumped in. I started with the smallest jumps.
Meanwhile, Thora was doing these majestic swan dives from the top of the falls, straight into the deepest part of the pool.
Cody kept telling her to be careful. She told him that she was diving into water so deep that it was nearly impossible to reach the bottom. Thus, the challenge was issued.
The contest was to bring a stone back from the bottom of the pool as proof. Cody must have tried five times before I told
him he needed to stop before he passed out from lack of oxygen. I was a lifeguard in high school, so it was simple for me.
I picked out a flat stone so I could show off by skipping it right after I surfaced.
When it was Thora’s turn, she surfaced about as quickly as I did, handing me her stone. The one she picked up was also flat,
but shaped like a heart. Next time I go, I will bring back a stone from the bottom for you to keep.
Thora returned the letter to the desk, remembering the details of the story that Lee left out. Namely, that her bikini top
had come untied as she dove into the pool, and when she emerged to give Lee the rock, she also gave him the full show. Of
course he wouldn’t reveal that detail to George. Given how generously she’d been endowed by the gods, she could guess why
the day was indelibly etched in his memory. Thora pictured herself emerging from the water triumphantly, like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, tits out and handing her heart to the wrong guy.
They all had a good laugh about it at the time, and neither Lee nor Cody made anything weird later. The three of them then
went skinny-dipping in Lake Woodhill during that same trip, having breached some threshold of comfort with each other. Still,
that was under cover of night, and Thora had been too entranced by Cody’s body in the moonlight to pay any attention to Lee.
In addition to being a fun trip down memory lane, the letter’s sentiment touched her.
How often was she unaware of something happening for the last time?
There was a last time she kissed Cody before their divorce.
She didn’t know if it was especially sweet.
The last time she spoke to George, she had no idea what she’d said.
She opened one last Christmas present still believing it had been brought by Santa Claus.
But she couldn’t live her life as if every experience were her last. As Lee put it, the anticipatory grief would swallow her. The regular grief was bad enough.
She picked up another letter.
Yes, my grandfather is faring well after this latest health scare. Many thanks to Thora for driving me to Boston so I could
be in the hospital with him. I had pledged to spend the year using my bike and public transit only, and I regretted it the
moment I got the phone call that he was back in the hospital.