I woke up from the dream in my old room in Sam’s house. I was in a cold sweat and my heart was racing. How could I put the past behind me when Danny was always in my dreams? I was late meeting him in Hawaii—everything that happened was my fault. Everything.
Eighteen
I LAY IN BEDfor a few minutes until I heard someone yelling outside. I finally perked myself up and parted the curtains of my bedroom window.
There he was, but at least he was wearing a bathing suit this morning. I watched him do a perfect racing dive from the dock into the lake. “Grow up,” I muttered, then wondered when I had become such a grump.
I showered, dressed in yesterday’s jeans and aTribunesoftball T-shirt, clipped my hair into an upside-down ponytail. I walked outside into the fragrant summer morning. I needed to be outside and away from my nightmares.
There are about twelve hundred identical white docks around the twenty-six-mile circumference of Lake Geneva. Each dock is eight feet wide, thirty or so feet long, and nearly every house on the shore seems to have one. In November the docks are taken out of the lake for the winter; then come spring, they’re painted and placed back in the water.
I took my coffee mug down to the end of Sam’s dock, where I could watch the mallards and the swooping seagulls fishing for breakfast. Wisconsin is crazy for fish, mostly perch, some cod, and trout. This is the birthplace of the Republican party, but also the fiscally responsible Democrat William Proxmire, he of the Golden Fleece award given to government agencies that waste taxpayers’ money. Interesting state.
Out on the lake, I could see Brendan Keller doing that strong freestyle I’d noticed the morning before. As I watched, he started swimming toward me. He got bigger in frame, closer, then he came right up to the edge of Sam’s dock and hauled himself up.
He shook himself off like a dog.
“Hey!” I said.
“You ought to get into a bathing suit and come for a swim, Scout. The water is unbelievable. That is not an exaggeration.”
“Can’t,” I said, sounding a little like a poop even to myself. “Previous engagements.”
“Working?” He smiled as he sluiced water off his body with the edges of his hands, as I’d seen him do before.
“I’m on my way to see Sam,” I said. “I was just thinking about doing a column on government waste. Life of the mind, y’know.”
“You eaten?”
“Drinking my breakfast this morning,” I said, lifting my mug.
“You can do better than that,” he said. “Now, don’t give me any trouble. I make five-star blueberry pancakes. Really fast. Trust me, okay?”
Trust him?I opened and closed my mouth, but I was tired of sputtering. And I didn’t want to argue right then, or even have a discussion.
So I did what he asked. I trusted him to make five-star blueberry pancakes.
Really fast.
Nineteen
EVEN AS I WASwalking down the shoreline with Brendan, I was asking myself what I was doing. But what was the harm? And to be honest, I was hungry and five-star blueberry pancakes sounded pretty good.
Shep Martin’s place was new but homey. The kitchen had tall windows and skylights, spanking-clean marble counters, hardwood floors. Acoustic jazz was playing (someone great singing “Stagger Lee”). And the pancakeswereexcellent. Not gummy, not burned, not dry. They werejussssstright.
Unfortunately, it was turning out to be a little awkward between Brendan and me. He said that he’d gone onto theTribwebsite to re-read some of my old columns. He’d been touched by my kidnapped child story, and my survey “Who would you rather be stranded with on a desert island—your spouse or your cat?” made him laugh out loud.
I nodded pleasantly but didn’t really give much of a response. It was starting to feel a little uncomfortable for me. I didn’t want to be there any longer, but I didn’t know how to make a graceful exit.
As we finished the pancakes, Brendan told me that he was a radiologist and that he lived in South Bend, Indiana. I said that was great—a one-word answer.
He shook his head, seemed puzzled. “I don’t usually talk about myself,” he said. “I guess all this fresh air is working on me. I’m taking a sabbatical. You can sit in the dark looking at X-rays for only so long before you want to go off screaming in search of some sunlight.”
I really had stayed longer than I’d meant to. I had planned to eat and run. Finally I thanked Brendan for breakfast, then headed back to Sam’s. It was all I could do not to run.
I walked east a hundred yards along the path at the edge of the lake, until I reached the foot of Sam’s long front lawn.
The girls greeted me with little meows, and we climbed uphill toward the house, taking the path beside my grandmother’s perennial border. Sam did so many things well, didn’t she? Except maybe find the right husband. And God only knew what else was coming in the letters.
