Summer at the Lake Read online

  Her lips tightened and she considered me with a hint of displeasure, even perhaps anger.

  “That’s a clear enough statement of intent.”

  “In the meantime I will continue to enjoy romantic thoughts about you as a prelude.”

  “Romantic?” she sniffed. “I’d call them out and out obscene.”

  “But you don’t storm away from the lunch table.”

  She grinned. “You’re impossible…no, I don’t. I guess I still like you looking at me that way. But I have to protest for the record. Irish fixation indeed!…now tell me why this unexpected lunch? Is it merely to serve notice that you propose to seduce me before the summer is over? Or,” she was her happy self again, “to stare hungrily at my boobs, like an adolescent boy? Or did you merely want an opportunity to talk dirty over bookbinder soup and Crab Maryland?”

  “Could I respond, all of the above?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And none of the above?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I need someone to talk to. I’ve been wandering around Chicago all morning trying to figure some things out. I guess my unconscious led me to your doorstep.”

  “Unconscious indeed. Probably your id, but talk, my darling, please. I’ll try to help if I can.”

  Now the matriarch was a solicitous mother with an injured boy child. Had she not called me her darling?

  I told her what I had figured out about the accident and what I had learned from Tom Keenan. I even told her about who I thought had fathered Norine. I left out Tom’s final revelation.

  She drank her bookbinder soup very slowly.

  “Dear God, Lee, were we part of all of that?”

  “More or less. What did you think of your mother-in-law?”

  “She was always kind to me, a little too kind maybe. Doctor Clare was tolerant but I knew that he thought his son had married down. I suppose he blamed me for the problems Phil created for himself. If I were a good wife, his son wouldn’t have chased so many skirts. For a while I thought that was true. Then common sense took over. I wasn’t the one who had problems in bed.”

  “How did you stand it for so long?”

  “I got used to it…but back to Iris…I don’t like to say this, but we’re trying to be candid about those days. I used to think, even back in the forties, that she…well, sometimes, not always, she liked women more than men.”

  “Lesbian?”

  “I didn’t have the word then, Lee. I certainly don’t condemn the reality it describes now. But she looked at me kind of funny. And after Phil and I were married she would look at me or even touch me in ways I thought strange and didn’t like. Not often and not overt enough for me to be able to say anything, but still…”

  “My God!”

  “There are women who like to feel up other women and still enjoy sex with men. Maggie says that women can be more truly bisexual than men. Obviously it’s easier physiologically.”

  “You think that was going on at the Lake?”

  “It was a cesspool, Leo. The only question was how deep it went.”

  “Too bad we didn’t compare notes.”

  “How could we…but look at it this way, Leo. You’re a beautiful woman turning forty. Your husband is too busy for you or is really not able to love a woman. You have nothing to do except loll around in the sun. There are some other attractive women who are in the same situation and you find their bodies, shall we say, interesting. You develop a teenage crush on them, then the crush becomes really powerful. You fantasize about doing some things with them, just to find out what it’s like. One hot day, after everyone has had a little too much to drink, you start to play a little and the first thing you know you all find that you enjoy it. You pinch an ass, you grope at a boob, you pull off a strap, you French kiss, you feel a pussy, then…then the fun begins. Maybe two of you hold a third down and work her over.”

  “You should write fiction, Jane.”

  “I am.” She set aside her soup.

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I in it?”

  “Of course, you’re in it. How could I write a novel without you being in it. Actually I’m really doing a combination memoir and journal as the first step in the novel…thank you, Arthur, it looks delicious.”

  “Am I the hero?”

  “That,” she said pertly, “remains to be seen. Anyway there’s nothing about lesbian love in the story. Till today I was afraid even to think about it. Mind you I don’t think they were real lesbians, not even Iris. Rather they engaged in some adolescent groping and pawing and playing and discovered that there were lots of kinks in those activities and that they enjoyed them as a passing amusement.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw the three of them coming out of the Clare house one afternoon when I was walking to work. They were all tipsy and laughing kind of funny and looking like they had some wonderful secret. Besides they wanted me…Dear God, Leo, I had forgotten all about it. I never told anyone.”

  “You think they might have…”

  “Raped me?”

  “Well…”

  She hesitated. “I don’t want to be harsh. It was on their minds. When they were drunk enough they might have talked about it. If I gave them the opportunity, they might have even done it. I wouldn’t have used the word rape in those days, but that’s what was on their minds or in their imaginations anyway.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was never quite that bad; and, as I say, I didn’t know the right words. I thought about it a couple of times. I almost spoke to Mary Anne Keenan too. But then the summer was over.”

  Despite the harrowing conversation, we had disposed of our Crab Maryland.

  “Would you mind if I drank a small class of white wine, dear?” she asked.

  I was startled for a moment that she called me dear. Second word of endearment.

  “Of course not. Nothing stronger?”

  “No, I have to talk to Dublin this afternoon.” She glanced at her watch. “You need all your wits about you for that.”

  “One white wine, one Jameson’s on the rocks, please.”

  My erotic feelings for Jane had vanished completely in the horror of what she had described—a young woman in her middle teens being stalked, there was no other word for it, by three hungry women.

  A little summer game all right, but a truly sick game.

  “I would have fought like hell,” she said. “And I was stronger than any of them, maybe all of them put together. They were all soft and kind of flabby.”

  “Jimmy was a victim and you almost were a victim. Thank God there were no more.”

  “That we know of.”

  That possibility shocked me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t know who else they might have tried to seduce or rape—a black servant, a girl from town, maybe even Eileen or Angie…”

  “No!”

  “I saw the look in their eyes, Lee. You didn’t. They were women on fire with their game. Go after a daughter? Probably not. I can’t recall any signs in Eileen or Angie. Teenage moods, but what do they mean? And I certainly didn’t think about it in those days. But now I’m convinced that there was so much evil in that group that they might have done anything. Then it stopped.”

  “They might have seen the deaths of Eileen and Jimmy as divine wrath coming down from heaven to punish them.”

  “I’m sure they thought of that. Do you believe that’s the truth?”

  “Certainly not,” I said crisply. “Our God doesn’t play it that way.”

  “He would forgive them?”

  “He loves everyone, Jane. We have to believe that. Maybe nothing else, but that at a minimum.”

  She smiled. “If you believe that, Lee—and I do—than you might as well believe a lot of other things too.”

  “Did you ever talk to Maggie about any of this?”

  “Sure I did. She didn’t like the
way they looked at her either. Later on when she knew all the words she said they were involved in an interlude of predatory homoerotic play. She said that two of them might have victimized a third and won her over to the game, a very dangerous game she called it. They might then go looking for more victims. Hopefully they didn’t find any.”

  “Sexual abuse of children.”

  “Of young women anyway. With terrible potential, Maggie said, for doing very great harm to them.”

  “Yet you accepted one of them for a mother-in-law.”

  “By then, Leo, I think she was afraid of me.”

  “But you must have been afraid of her at first.”

  “I should have been, Lee, I should have been. But I was so numb I didn’t care.”

  “No thought ever of getting out of the marriage before the wedding day?”

  “Some,” she sighed, “no thanks, no dessert, not today…you knew of course that I was pregnant at the time of the marriage?”

  I nodded.

  “I hope you don’t think too badly of me.”

  “I’ll never think badly of you at all, Jane.”

  “I finally got tired of saying ‘no’ to him. It didn’t mean anything any more. After he’d made love to me a couple of times, he kind of lost interest in me. Conquest is the name of his game. For a long time I was furious. Then I realized that I was fortunate that he chased after other women. I didn’t have to put up with him.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Never any ill will in him. Just an overgrown spoiled brat.”

  “I’m growing a little tired of hearing that excuse, Jane.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She drank her wine rather quickly. “It all seems too bizarre, Leo.” She put down the glass. “Infidelity, illegitimacy, murder, large sums of money disappearing, women playing at sex together,” she hesitated, “threatened rape of a girl by the women…and our lives at that time seemed on the outside to be so serene and happy.”

  “So it seemed. And so it was some of the time.”

  I did not know whether I would tell her about Korea. There was something I had to say first anyway.

  “I owe you an apology, Jane. It’s a funny kind of an apology, but I’ll call it that anyway.”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” she said firmly.

  “I do, actually. When I came home from Korea I was a mess emotionally as well as physically. Most men who’ve been in combat feel they’ve been abandoned by those they left behind. All the more so when you’ve been a POW. Then when you find out that you’re officially dead…”

  “I can’t see how it would be any other way, Leo.”

  “Yeah, well I finally got rid of most of it—time, therapy, stubbornness. What’s left is mostly in my dreams at night.”

  “Oh?”

  “They’re one of the things you’ll have to put up with when we finally share the same bed. I can generally be calmed down by the usual means and I’m not dangerous.”

  She shook her head in amused astonishment. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Just making a prediction…anyway, I came back angry and stayed angry for a long time. I think I’m pretty good now, all things considered…”

  “Pretty good,” she smirked, “I don’t see any ill effects, none at all. Except when you’re standing in a movie line…”

  “OK, but I’m talking about then, not now. I never tried to put myself inside those who thought they had lost me. I never tried to understand the trauma of death and the second trauma of resurrection. I figured they’d just be happy I was back. I couldn’t figure out the odd reaction when I returned.”

  “A lot of guilt maybe and a lot of anger.”

  “I suppose so. I love my brothers and sisters, good people all in their own way, even the naive ex-priest married to the naive ex-nun. But I don’t see them all that much and I’m certainly not close to them.”

  “Your mother could not wait to tell you about me.”

  “First words when they came to the hospital in San Diego. First words…well that’s over and she never forgave me for not being a priest. But I didn’t like the reaction of any of them and I never tried to figure out why. I guess I have some catching up to do if it’s not too late.”

  “They adored you, Lee. More than you ever knew. I think they even understand why you had to leave them. Megan, you remember, was there in the hospital when your mother told you the good news. It’s not too late.”

  “It’ll be interesting to try to put things back together with them. But worst of all I didn’t understand what it all did to you.”

  “How could you?” She was dangerously close to tears. They would be coming before long.

  “I don’t know what I could or couldn’t do. I know what I didn’t do and that’s what I’m talking about.”

  Her eyes brimming with tears, she reached out for my hand.

  I stumbled on. “I didn’t try to see what you had suffered, were suffering, and would probably suffer for the rest of your life. Not even at the beginning of this summer.”

  “What difference would it have made, Lee? You couldn’t have said anything to me anyway. Not till this summer. Now you’re saying it and I’m very grateful. I don’t think I ended my marriage because you were free again and back in Chicago. It wasn’t the only reason anyway. But it was certainly in the back of my head, as you probably guessed.”

  I hadn’t but I thought I’d better not say it. It was as close as she had come yet to saying explicitly that she still wanted me as she always had.

  “You must have gone through hell, worse hell than that prison camp,” my voice choked.

  She tightened her grip on my hand. “I’m sure not. I survived and I’m all right. Maybe I’m a better person for it. I hope I don’t let Lucy down.”

  “Lucianne is what she calls herself.”

  “I forgot.” Tears began to spill over on her cheeks. “Damn, I’ll ruin my make-up.”

  I gripped her hand, now pliant in my own. “Anyway, I’m sorry and I’ll try to look at all that has happened from inside you in the years ahead.”

  “I hope that is not a suggestive promise,” she burst out laughing.

  My turn to blush. “Freudian slip. Take it any way you want!”

  We both laughed and much pain was exorcised.

  “All right, Leo,” she said, composed and confident again, “I understand what you are trying to tell me and I appreciate it and am grateful for it. I hope it’s a turning point in your life and my life. Though I repeat that I’m not available at the moment or for the foreseeable future…and you should phone poor dear Megan before the day is over.”

  She freed her hand from my grasp.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Now may I go back to my job?”

  I glanced at my watch. If I took a cab back to the University I would have forty-five more minutes to talk to her and still make my appointment with the biologist.

  I made an impulsive decision. “One more thing, if you can spare me a few minutes.”

  “To judge by your expression, Lee, this one is dreadfully serious.”

  I slumped against the back of the booth. “The most terrible truth I have heard in all my life.”

  I told her Tom Keenan’s story about Korea. She turned pale.

  “May I have another drink, please?”

  I signaled the waiter. “Another white wine and Jameson’s, please.”

  “Two Jameson’s,” she said. “Why, Lee, why?”

  “Someone wanted me dead.”

  “Why would they want you dead?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Phil?” She winced in horror. “I don’t think he’s that evil.”

  “Or his father?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Lee, they changed our lives, came damn close to ruining both of them.”

  “I fooled them, whoever they are. I came back from the dead.”

  The waiter brought our drinks.

&nbs
p; Jane swallowed a large gulp. “Resurrection is the ultimate revenge?”

  “That remains to be seen, Jane.”

  “It does indeed…do you feel manipulated, violated?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Why,” she asked again, “would anyone be so evil? We were two kids in the process of falling in love. Why intervene in our lives to destroy them?”

  “I know why they’d intervene in your life, Jane. You’re a prize worth having. Maybe someone wanted that prize more than anything in the world.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Phil. He’s not capable of that kind of hunger.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Maybe it was someone who out of sheer perversity could not tolerate the happiness we were stumbling toward.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “There are strange people in the world, Jane. We know that from what you said earlier.”

  “I can’t see anyone we knew in those days doing such a thing, can you?”

  “No…I figure I was incidental. Someone wanted you and I had to be cleared out of the way. I was just a poor kid from the neighborhood on the fringe of things.”

  “Do you really think that’s how you seemed in those days, Lee?”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “I don’t believe you could have been so unperceptive…still be so unperceptive. A big redhead with charm and brains and a clever tongue, you were destined for greatness and everyone knew it after the first fifteen minutes talking to you. It’s easy to see why someone would resent you and want to destroy you.”

  “I’m not exactly what you call great.”

  “I won’t argue now. You’re the only one that’s ever on television. That’s enough for the moment…dear God, Lee, unseen powers and forces intervened in our lives and changed them completely…for evil reasons…I feel utterly fragile.”

  “They used us, Jane, like a little boy uses his marbles or a grand master his pawns.”

  “Rich and powerful and absolutely evil.” She drained her drink and grabbed my hand. “I’m frightened. Are they still out there plotting against us?”

  “They might be, Jane. They might be. I intend to find out. If they are I’ll destroy them.”