3 Queen of the Lake
Queen of the Lake
It was ten o’clock at night by the time we reached Wonderland, but we could see the lights of the house from all the way down the long gravel driveway.
Then came the familiar old elm tree, where Forrest showed me the tree house he’d started to build for Jilly the previous fall, and beyond that a long run of granite steps leading up to a wide door with a pair of marble dogs guarding the entry.
I knew this place well. But always before, I’d made the trip with my parents—and only for our annual Labor Day weekend visit that I used to look forward to all summer.
Three perfect nights. Then the long drive back to New Jersey, knowing a whole year would pass before I got to return.
Now here I was with a whole summer at Wonderland stretching ahead of me.
It was dark now, but in the moonlight I could make out the vast rolling lawn where we played croquet and badminton, the rose arbor, the massive stone barbecue where Forrest roasted steaks, the firepit where we made s’mores, and beyond that, the dock, with a Sunfish and a couple of Old Town canoes, along with Forrest’s pride and joy, his Chris-Craft, named for Regina: “Queen of the Lake.”
“It’s about time I taught you how to water-ski,” he said to me.
A picture came to me, of how it would be out on the boat that summer with Forrest. Me in my swimsuit—a slimmer, more shapely version of myself, baby fat gone, my breasts filled out enough to look good in a bikini—holding on to the rope.
No sign of the children or Regina in this picture.
Just Forrest and me with the sun shining down on us.
I didn’t know yet that Forrest had a way of promising things he might not deliver.
He carried my red suitcase up the walk. I was still wearing the “Live Free or Die” hat. In his other hand Forrest held the boxes of moccasins.
“Honey, I’m home!” he called out. Just like a dad in a TV show.
In the family room, I could make out the sound of the television set.
The children were still up, probably because nobody told them to go to bed.
On the screen, a man and a woman were lying on a bed together, kissing with their mouths open.
A couple of empty bags of Cheetos spilled out onto the floor. Orange powder on the couch.
Regina lay on a chaise lounge, wearing a long white gown, her hair up in a bun, a string of pearls around her neck. There was a pair of knitting needles in her hands and a blanket over her shoulders.
“You brought Frances,” she said to Forrest—her voice low and whispery. She said this as a person might acknowledge he’d picked up milk on the way home, or a dozen eggs.
Regina scanned my body up and down. Something in the way she looked at me made me know she recognized my terrible secret: I was the only girl in my grade who hadn’t gotten her period.
This was when Jilly raced over to us in her pajamas, carrying an American Girl doll. Watching her leap into her father’s arms as she did, I registered the faintest stab. Imagine what it would feel like, having Forrest for your dad.
“Did you bring me something?” Jilly asked him.
“Boy did I ever,” he said. “I brought you Frances.”
She didn’t seem impressed.
Regina glanced over at me again, taking in my ratty haircut, my red suitcase.
Her mouth formed something that resembled a smile, but with Regina you got the feeling it was more like her imitation of a smile, as if she were reminding herself to turn her lips up at the corners.
She placed a long, thin, elegant finger on her forehead—that place between her eyes, as if rubbing the spot might make the crease there go away.
“I tried to get the children to bed, but they never pay any attention to me,” she sighed. She nodded in the direction of my suitcase. “Hayward will take that upstairs for you. We’ll talk in the morning.”
Hayward was the Emersons’ son—a bratty little boy I’d never paid much attention to before.
I’d figured he was probably nine or ten by now, but the first thing he did as he emerged from the TV room was tell me he was twelve—uncomfortably close to my own age.
In the year since I’d seen him last, he’d grown to the point that he was now the same height as me, possibly taller.
Nobody would have called him fat, but there was a softness to his body that spoke to a life spent on the couch, watching TV shows and playing video games, drinking sodas and eating Cheez Doodles.
In my hazy memory of him from past summers, I remembered Hayward playing with He-Man figures and watching cartoons.
The person who stood in the doorway now had the hint of a mustache on his upper lip.
Just the finest hair, but this was disconcerting.
I was supposed to function as this boy’s babysitter for the next three months, and here he was, beating me at puberty.
“Hey.” He seemed to be staring at my chest. His voice cracked in the way a boy’s voice does when he’s on the brink, and you never quite know any more than he does what octave the sounds will be that come out.
“We got Legend of Zelda,” he said. (Low octave to start, then back to high.) “We could play if you want.”
“Frances must be exhausted,” Regina pointed out, though she was the one who sounded that way. “She probably wants to see her room.”
I followed Hayward to the stairs. Even from behind, without catching a glimpse of his face, there was something about the way he strode down the hall that made me uneasy.