“I’ll start with the mosquitoes,” I said, already sighing and fixing my gaze, attempting to establish patience and accuracy as the central tones. “They were all over the place. We got mauled on the path to the lake, and Emily and Katie were pretty annoyed by the time we found our canoe, which ended up being the one canoe lying facedown in the mud.” (I passed over my failure to insist that the girls buy fishing licenses, an omission in the service of a streamlined story more than an avoidance of personal misdeed.) “When Emily saw it all mucked up with crickets and spiderwebs, she decided right away she’d be fishing from the shore. That’s why Katie and I set off on our own. Of course the guy at the rental hut gave us three life jackets, but when Katie and I set off she was the only one wearing hers. Emily left hers on the shore, and I tossed mine in the bottom of the canoe, where Katie ended up grabbing it to use as a seating pad. Anyway, since Katie wasn’t much for casting and kept getting her lure tangled, we spent most of the first hour paddling around”—a slight exaggeration, given that I did
all
the paddling; I considered it a gimme after such an unflinching clarification in concern to Katie’s life jacket—“to different coves where she could just drop her line and wait for a bite. But it was hot that day and we started late. The fishing wasn’t looking very good. We tried top-water lures, divers, jigs, but none of us got even a nibble.
“Eventually Katie decided she wanted to move from the middle of the lake and try our luck along the shoreline. I’m talking about the shoreline almost directly opposite the beach. For the first couple of casts it was more of the same; she kept plopping the lure down right next to the boat. But when she finally let one go, she really let it go and it ended up sailing into the trees. The situation went even further downhill when she snapped the line trying to yank it out. That’s when I jumped out and swam to the shore, to get the lure back—”
Mr. Schell stopped me. He waved his index finger and rapped his foot against the stem at the bottom center of the table. “So
you
tipped it,” he said, his voice cracking high and windy, as though it had whistled through a gorge. “What did you think would happen jumping out like that?”
“I didn’t tip it,” I said, flatly, like it wasn’t as simple as that and the story was far from over. “I was careful, and the canoe hardly rocked. It’s not such a hard thing to do. And if you want to talk about the lure, well, everyone I know would’ve gone after a lure hanging in the trees like that, one way or another. The bigger mistake was the anchor. I shouldn’t have jumped out without dropping the anchor.”
Mrs. Schell stared down at Mr. Schell’s leg until he stopped shaking it. She didn’t care about the life jacket or the anchor. She wanted the rest of the story (which I’d only related twice before: once to the police and once to my parents, in fewer details at that; the only other person I’ve trusted with this account since then was a young Mexican divorcée I ended up dating for a few weeks following an award dinner for “Iowa Teachers of the Year”). Mr. Schell leaned back and crossed his arms. I craved a cigarette and for the first time considered myself an addict, increasingly dependent on muscle tension and aggravation to continue where I’d left off.
“I climbed the tree,” I said. “I was in the middle of reaching for the lure when Katie ended up hooking a brown trout. She was using my fishing rod, which had a different reel that she didn’t know how to use. But she cast it perfectly and when she hooked her fish I actually saw it swallow the lure and take off, in the water right below me. Katie started shouting and cheering for herself, even though she didn’t really know what to do next.”
“Did she land it?” Mr. Schell blurted.
“She almost did. The canoe tipped as she was taking the hook out.”
“So she took her jacket off while you were out in the middle.”
“She undid the top buckle, but she didn’t take it off. Maybe I should’ve said something, but it wasn’t like the whole life jacket was loose. Not at all. She was still wearing it when she hooked that trout.”
Mr. Schell laughed. His laughter wasn’t nearly as precise as Emily’s, and until his ears turned bright burning red I didn’t know exactly how to interpret it. He regained his previous composure while fixing his gaze on the leaning T-shirt boxes. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t want to break down in front of me, either.
“How big was it?” Mrs. Schell asked, pretending her question was forensically relevant and nothing more. I held my hands out the width of my shoulders. She turned to Mr. Schell only long enough to roll her eyes. “You’re exaggerating. We’ve got trout streams in Tennessee, you know.”
“Then you know that trout usually get bigger in streams than in lakes, and either way a five-pound brownie is an absolute hog. When it came splashing out of the lake, I practically fell out of the tree.”
Mrs. Schell turned to the windows and smiled, really smiling, like she’d seen her fair share of brown trout take to the air and there was no greater thrill. When she turned back and nodded for me to continue, her smile hadn’t entirely left her. “She fought it for a long time,” I said. “I don’t know exactly, but almost ten minutes, I think. I was giving her instructions and Emily was cheering her on. Katie kept cursing the fish, calling him names. She couldn’t figure out why he kept hiding under the canoe.”
“What names did she call it?” Mrs. Schell asked.
“Little bugger. Little bastard.”
Mrs. Schell covered her mouth and turned away again, chuckling this time. Mr. Schell couldn’t believe it. He stared at her as he might’ve stared at an exotic bird let loose in his kitchen, flapping wildly. She laughed herself to a few eye-swelling tears, then leaned on her elbows and wiped her cheeks. She didn’t look up again until she’d composed herself, when I started to get the feeling she’d been training herself to ignore me, and simply focus on the story.
“It was a long fight,” I went on. “Part of the reason it took so long was because at one point Katie accidentally opened the reel. I could see it spinning backward, which meant her fish was running away with the line. But she’d hooked him good, and I thought she’d still catch him if she could get the line taut again.”
Mrs. Schell leaned forward, only slightly, but enough to let me know she wanted the story to continue forever, like the story was keeping Katie alive. But I couldn’t stretch it out because Mr. Schell was losing his patience. He knew the ending and was acting wary of the possibility that I’d change it, that I was inventing as I went along. His chin jutted out again and he tilted his head down so that his pupils were aimed up in preemptive warning. I kept going, just the same as before.
“By then Emily had made her way around the shore and was standing next to me. We kept telling Katie to sit down and hold the pole up high. That’s when her fish broke the surface, wiggling in the air and trying to throw the hook out. After he splashed back down Katie put a hand on the spool to stop it from letting out more line. She started reeling in again, as fast as she could. When we saw a bunch of splashes on the far side of the canoe, we knew she had it close. She leaned over to pull it in by the line.”
Mrs. Schell raised her hands, frantically interrupting. “You didn’t have a net?” she shouted.
“I didn’t think we’d need it.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” I said, raising my voice. “I just didn’t.” Which is when I realized it wasn’t just the anchor that was the big mistake, it was the net. Mrs. Schell saw that I recognized her point and nodded for me to continue. “So like I said, there were a few splashes, then at some point Katie let go of the line and jumped back. Maybe she thought the fish would bite her or something, but as soon as she jumped back the canoe tipped one way and then the other way. That’s when she fell in.”
Mr. Schell turned toward the backyard and his barbecue pit, looking like he wanted to crawl inside it and close the lid so he wouldn’t have to hear any more. Mrs. Schell held herself perfectly still, except for her quivering chin. When she lost it a few seconds later, Mr. Schell started searching the ceiling and mumbling under his breath, likely advising himself to hold it together for a few more minutes,
then
let go. Mrs. Schell covered her face with two flat hands. Her shoulders bowed inward and heaved. I didn’t know how to adjust my tone without crying so I just kept on with the confidence of a journalist who’d already told the story a thousand times.
“Emily dove in with her shoes on and everything. The canoe had drifted a ways, so it took us a couple of minutes to get out there. Maybe two minutes. I don’t know if Emily ever saw her underwater, but I didn’t.”
“When did she take it off?” Mr. Schell demanded. “When did she toss the life jacket?”
“I told the police it must’ve happened after she fell in. But they didn’t believe me and kept insisting she’d taken it off sometime before that. I didn’t know what else to tell them. I still don’t understand it. All I could figure was that her fish took off with the pole, and maybe she unbuckled herself to go after it. That was only a guess. We couldn’t see her from the shore, and when we swam out to the canoe, the first thing I noticed was
two
life jackets floating away.”
Mr. Schell tilted his head back again and gnashed his teeth and flared his nostrils. (It seemed he’d become an expert at these ill-tempered gestures, recasting himself as impulsive and unpredictable, qualities that I consider a greater threat than size and muscle.) I swore he was using every ounce of restraint not to upend the table and charge. “Emily told us!” he shouted. “None of you wore your life jackets because of the heat! You ditched them from the start!”
It was the worst time to lose my nerve, but while caught between summoning a response and attempting to understand Emily’s lies I ended up shoving backward in my chair, banging against the countertop and yelping in surprise. Mr. Schell jumped to his feet, slamming his knuckles down on the table and leaning forward so the hanging candle lamp shone white on his face.
“You actually believe your own bullshit, don’t you? She was never wearing a life jacket. You thought you were such a hotshot with a canoe she wouldn’t need one. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME,
BOIY?!
WHEN WILL YOU BE READY FOR THE TRUTH?!”
“I was ready for the truth when I rang the doorbell,” I said, tapping a source of previously unknown equanimity. “Either the jacket was defective, or Katie unbuckled it after she fell in. But I’ve already explained everything I came to explain.”
Mr. Schell smiled big and toothy, refusing such an ending, tempting me to stand up and meet him eye to eye. Mrs. Schell covered her splotchy cheeks and forehead, every once in a while shaking her hands out as though begging for something she couldn’t put into words. And that’s when I closed my eyes and my lips fell open and my chest expanded and my whole body rose. In the next couple of seconds I summoned such a colossal pillar of breath that I felt it sucking in from a collective sigh at the center of the room, as if I were breathing not only for myself but for all of us, all the Schell family and all of mine, our ancestors, too. When I opened my eyes again—in all likelihood I’d only blinked—Mrs. Schell was reaching for her husband’s clenched fist, pressing her head to his knuckles and wetting them with her tears. His boyish eyes were still bulging, deliberating between courageous revenge and confused retreat as I rose to my feet, moving with such deliberate gentility that there was no doubt I was only standing up to leave. I pushed my chair back under the table and turned around, half expecting Mr. Schell to now draw his antique pistol and shoot me in the back. But he didn’t, and soon I was past the hallway and out the front door, crossing over a moonlit lawn glistening with melted snow.
After I stepped into my truck and started the engine, I surprised myself by pausing before driving away. I looked up at the Schell house and thought about all the times I’d waited like a chimp on the front porch. I thought about Katie’s schoolbooks in her closet that had already lost a good deal of their value and might never get resold. I thought about all those corny stenciled T-shirts in the storage room downstairs. After a while I realized I was mostly staring at my own reflection in the dining room windows, absorbed in a brief meditation that might’ve been broken with the filmic sight of Mr. Schell stepping into the window frame and aiming and firing. Of course that didn’t happen, but I imagined it would and had to laugh at myself as I drove away, knowing perfectly well that Mr. Schell was sitting at the kitchen table huddled around his wife.
Fifty-one
I realize now that in the course of my mission to accurately record the final act of my first romantic relationship, I’ve neglected several significant coinciding events, such as the surprise I received one frozen February morning when I woke to find Zach at the kitchen table, already several cups of coffee ahead of me, slopping through a bowl of oatmeal as he described the incredible new sickness he felt blowing all his bartending money the same night he made it, especially since his dear Rachel wasn’t the type to wait at the end of the bar for the last hour of his shift like a common-law, good-for-nothing tramp. Of course Frank had been more than happy to loan him a few pairs of padded overalls, “so long as he gave them a good workout,” which it turned out he did. Even during the most trying weeks of our endless winter, Zach took an enthusiastic interest in learning all the tricks of the Moretti trade, which included becoming fluent in veteran jargon, and never complaining, and lending a hand wherever he could. (This is not to suggest he didn’t find his place as the joker on the crew, only now he considered his sophomoric high jinks as essential to our esprit de corps, usually presenting them in combination with the ritual one-hitters he passed around before our r ush-hour ride home.)
After only a few months, everyone agreed that Zach had found his calling, especially in view of his intense pride in his ability to operate every piece of machinery on the site, including breakers, crawlers, excavators, dozers, augers with big ripper buckets, and skid loaders with hydraulic tiltrotators. He even gained such a reputation for innovative time-saving suggestions that Frank decided to introduce him to the political nuances of the process by requiring his attendance at all meetings with the state overseers. By the end of April we’d already finished most of the preliminary work to reconnect two lagoons, thus restoring the original free-flowing water system and putting to rest a great deal of concern over the timetable for our part of the project; at one point we made more progress in ten days than Frank thought we could in three weeks. As for myself, I passed most of those days in the former landfill, rocking around in a caged tractor, trying to convince myself I was digging up a glorious past when in fact I was only taking out the trash.