Crow Fair: Stories

Lake Story

Glendive was unbearably hot in August, and for half of it I rented a cottage on the western shore of Flathead Lake, a little getaway in sight of Wild Horse Island and built a long time ago between two rocky points barely thirty yards apart, the lawn between them leading down to a pebbly shore and the deep green water in a kind of pool. The place was only available because the neighbor whose starter castle towered over the next small bay had died in the spring. A Kansas City resident who had made a fortune trading carbon credits and ringtones, he owned the kind of craft normally at the service of drug runners, a vastly powerful cigarette boat whose daily thunder made the nearby rental cottages uninhabitable. Pleas went unacknowledged, the petition thrown out as the smell of fuel continued to drift up from his dock. So after the boat owner died, concluding a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer, Memorial Day in the small surrounding neighborhood was given over to celebration. The jubilant air persisted as FOR SALE signs appeared on his property, then through its deterioration, especially as islands of quack grass started pushing up through the clay tennis court. Suddenly the small cottages, each with its tiny green bay and an evergreen-crowned rocky ridge running to the lake, were all back in business. I felt very lucky to have scored one of them on short notice, a one-bedroom clapboard house with a mossy shingled roof and overstuffed chairs fished out of winter homes elsewhere, before the age of dedicated cottage furniture. The fireplace was made of round stones from the lakeside, and a huge incongruous print of Niagara Falls was the main room’s only decoration. “Were these people all short?” Adele asked, noticing that every lamp lit us at waist level unless we slumped into one of the low-slung chairs to thumb the swollen copy of Redbook. At night, above these lamps, all was darkness.

I was having an affair with Adele, a married woman whose availability was also made known to me at the last moment. We’d been doing this for nine years, nine short-term rentals, each begun just as her husband finalized his schedule, which included an annual visit to his mother in rural South Africa, where communications were conveniently, if uncertainly, faulty. Adele and I otherwise avoided deceit of any kind, operating on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell basis, each suspecting that ours was the kind of flourishing relationship that would wither in the full light of day. Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but it fades passion like everything else. I’m a widower with grown children, but Adele’s were of an impressionable age, and God forbid they ever found out about us. They couldn’t possibly have understood. We relished this covert life and didn’t mind in the least that we could be deceiving ourselves, lost as we were in its pleasures and logistics.

Usually, we arrived in separate cars, but this time Adele came on the train from Seattle, where she’d gone for a design show. I picked her up at the station in Whitefish, observing our customary artifice—“You never know who you’ll run into in Montana”—before we took a look around from inside my car and began kissing. By now, there was no need for any foreshadowing in these early pecks: we knew what was coming. As I drove out and turned onto the highway for the lake, Adele said, “Seattle was wonderful, but then it’s summer. You smell salt water, and there are cranes and freighters and container ships like a real seaport. You don’t get that in San Francisco. And I met the coolest cowboy, a professional rodeo cowboy, and he could talk about anything. He was reading a book!” Adele looked great in a cotton summer dress, this one blue with tiny silver zigzags.

“And?” I asked.

“He was too big for a Pullman berth.”

I didn’t know if she was serious. I don’t think she was. It’s possible she had a wild side, but you wouldn’t know it by our relationship, which had almost nothing wild about it. Perhaps monogamous cheaters were commoner than I thought.

I loved Adele, and Adele loved me, but we were not in love, and she couldn’t make me jealous, though that principle was untested. I once pretended to be in love with her, and my saying so was greeted by silence arising from contempt. It was instructive. I barely made up for it by deferring ejaculation for about ninety minutes, which left me stooped for two days with lower back pain. I took some ibuprofen, and Adele read to me from Tartarin of Tarascon in recognition of my sacrifice. When we got to the part where Tartarin is unable to decide whether to cover himself with glory or with flannel, we closed the book and fell asleep with plenty of room between us on the bed, where we always left whatever we’d been reading and, lately, our reading glasses.

That evening at the lake, we sat out on the weathered deck and watched the blue twilight dwindle until the broad silver of its surface was lit with stars. Perhaps, Adele glanced at me, or I at her, but some wordless signal passed between us, and we entered by the screen door, just a crack, so as to exclude the moths, and made for the bed, which proved a squeaking seismograph that registered the tiniest movement. Even reaching to turn off the lamp produced a cacophony. This bed was good for nothing, and so we dragged the mattress to the floor, where there were only our own sounds to contend with. I touched her with my fingertips.

“You’re tracing. You can’t remember me from one year to the next?”

“I like being reminded.”

“You’re looking for change.”

“Nope.”

In the morning, I caught several very small cutthroat trout from the dock, using a child’s rod found in the garage and worms from beneath the paving tiles that ran from the house to a tiny garden shed. Adele woke up to fried eggs, fresh trout fillets, and sourdough toast served in bed. This was all a bit easier for me, as I lived alone, while Adele was married, happily married, to a very nice guy about whom I should have felt some guilt except that he was known for straying himself and had caused Adele a bit of pain over this. I mean, you looked at these things and you could see possible retribution in every direction, if that’s what you wanted, but I didn’t. Besides, some of my pleasure consisted in just having company.

We read on the shore until late morning, when it was warm enough for a swim. That is, the air was warm enough: the lake is never warm, but we dove in naked, paddled for a very short time, floating on our backs and gazing up at the cheerful little clouds over the Mission Range, then clambered out into the warm air, and had dried off by the time we fell into sex on one of the Adirondack chairs at the bottom of our sunny ravine, the glare on the cottage windows suggesting a steady stare. When we stood up, we laughed at the sight of each other before Adele, glancing back at the chair, said, “Eww, I’ll get it.” That’s when I had the idea that ruined everything.

The cottage came with a battered aluminum boat, an old Evinrude motor on its transom and a litter of things strewn in its bottom, life jackets, a mushroom anchor and line, a net with a broken handle, a Maxwell House bailing can, one oar, and a sponge. I looked into the red gas can; it was full, and the fuel smelled fairly recent. “I say we make a run across the lake and have lunch in Big Fork.” In my defense, it was a perfect day for it, windless and sunny, the mountains to our east wonderfully green and regular. Summer traffic glinted from the highway for miles across the water and along the ripening cherry orchards.

The motor started on the first pull. Adele in her summer dress and white-framed sunglasses sat facing forward atop a life jacket, while I, with an arm behind me on the motor’s handle, maneuvered us out of our little bay into the open water. I tried to memorize the position of the cottage in the landscape so we could find our way home, knowing as I did it wouldn’t be long after lunch that we’d be longing to drag the sagging mattress onto the floor again. We tended to overdo these exertions in what time we had, even though, as Adele reminded me, it’s not something you could store for later. I supposed that was true, as there was nothing routine about each renewal of ardor, though we did get better at it every year. If we were not as attractive as we once had been, we had the advantage of knowing what we liked with greater certainty, even as it had grown more unmentionable in polite company.

The surface of the lake sparkled green, and its placidity belied the occasional squall that popped unexpected out of the mountains, drowning kokanee fishermen, whose bodies sank like stones in the cold water. Now it was as delightful as a rain forest on a sunny day. I gave the pressure bulb on the gas line an extra squeeze, and Adele, sensing my movement, turned to smile, then rolled her eyes heavenward in bliss over our surroundings. Leaving a bubble trail and a straight wake, the little Evinrude pushed us slowly to the other side.

“We’re a long way from shore. Want to fuck in the boat?”

“No, I want lunch.”

I resumed cruising speed, and in a short time we were at the dock south of the golf course. I tied up without interference from the marina staff, who may have been eating. We climbed from the boat, Adele straightened her dress as she looked around, and with my hand on the small of her back, I led her to a pathway along the Swan River, where youngsters were swimming off docks in front of well-kept cottages nearly lost in greenery. By now we were uncomfortably hungry and followed a boardwalk to the nearest restaurant, which looked popular, at least with locals. The obvious tourists were pouring into a bigger place across the street with water views and outside dining. Once seated, we were encouraged by the originality of what was on the blackboard menu. They seemed especially proud of something called MISSION RANGE BASIL TOMATO GREEN CHILE MEAT LOAF. That item ran the length of the board, unlike FRIED CHICKEN or SOUP OF THE DAY. We ordered it and received startlingly sincere congratulations from the waitress, a rawboned brunette with a cigarette behind her ear and a shamrock tattoo on her forearm. I was glad to get our orders in, because the restaurant was filling up, and already other couples were standing in front waiting for a table. Adele remarked that we became an ordinary couple once a year, the South African part of the year; when we relied on ordinary opportunity, we were just garden-variety adulterers. “There was a good bit of that at the design show, I think. Trade shows seem mostly for that. Couples just getting acquainted, regret in their faces. Getting out of town. Departing from duty for desire.”

“Sounds like a bus route,” I said.

“For some, it is a bus route.”

“We’re solitary travelers. Smartphones, a boat, meat loaf.”

With the dining room full, the noise picked up, and Adele and I drew closer. Our food arrived. My state was such that I could feel the least adjustment of her chair in my direction. Someone waiting outside for a table was smoking a cigarette, and our waitress closed the door in his face. Adele held a forkful of meat loaf in front of her and said, “Eat up, get the bill, and take me back to the cottage.” My heart raced at how effortlessly she could reduce all else to preliminaries.

A heavyset woman dining alone walked toward the cash register holding her bill like a specimen. She glanced our way, then glanced again, and then headed toward us. Adele didn’t see her coming until she was nearly at our table, by which time Adele went white and jumped to her feet, clutching her napkin in grotesque exuberance. “Esther!” It came out as little more than a croak at which she clutched her throat, as if to blame an unchewed bit of food for the strange sound. By the time I was on my feet, wiping my mouth, causing a shower of crumbs from my napkin, I knew I was hosed. Esther, Adele’s sister-in-law, a woman in late middle age, was possessed of a kind of authoritarian face, an effect unrelieved by her close-cropped yellowish hair and a red summer blazer. I was a “colleague” from Glendive.

“You didn’t go to South Africa with Marty?” Esther said.

“I was at a design show in Seattle. With Marty away, I thought I’d take a leisurely train ride here, grab something to eat, and rent a car to drive home. Walked in and here he was. Old Home Week.” I guessed that was me, though Adele was pointing in case there was doubt.

“Matching meat loaf!” I cried stupidly. Esther, evidently no fan of wordplay, gave me a bit of a look.

“What brings you here?” Adele asked with a grimace.

“Damage control: one of our legislators got drunk and T-boned a travel trailer with his speedboat. Ran it right off the lake into the middle of an RV park.”

“Esther does PR for … who exactly?”

“Anyone with American money. Looks like you’re nearly finished. Ride home with me and save on that rental. I can wait for you in the car. No hurry.”

“Are you sure you won’t join us?” I asked, but Esther laughed grimly, perhaps tellingly, and went out the door without another word.

“I hate her,” said Adele. “Three hundred fifty miles in a white Honda Civic is not what I had in mind. And she’s got breath like kerosene.” The waitress brought the check.

Adele stared into my eyes. “I’m sure you could see, as I could see, that she’s onto us.”

“I’m not particularly intuitive but, yes, I thought there was something there.”

“Something unpleasant as if …”

“We’d been nabbed.”

“Well, maybe not so clear as that but suspected, perhaps. Can I ask you a favor?” she said.

“Of course.”

“Don’t ever do this to me again.”

“And all this time, I thought it was mutual.” I didn’t know what else to say, or why I more or less sang these words. I’d never seen Adele angry before, and I was startled at the transformation.

“This strikes you as a good time for irony?!”

“Adele, people are staring.”

“Staring! I’d love to be able to worry about stares.”

Esther appeared in the doorway and came toward us in big strides, like a forest ranger. “Everything okay?” She glanced back and forth between us with transparently insincere concern. Adele’s mottled face made an implausible attempt at reply.

“Just winding up here, Esther. I’ll be right along. Sorry to hold you up.”

Esther backed away giving us a good long look at her quizzical expression, then strode out the door again. I perhaps felt less vulnerable than Adele and believed that while Esther was happy to exhibit her intuitions, hers was still a theory masquerading as a fact. She had nothing to go on.

“I’d better leave.”

I didn’t dare try an affectionate farewell given Esther’s circling. I said, “Well, kiss, kiss.”

Adele said, “Same.” She got up, gave me a small waist-level wave, and went out. I wasn’t proud of the speculating I began. I barely knew Adele’s husband, Marty, a petroleum geologist originally from South Africa and something of a lady’s man, as I said. There might be a tiny contretemps just on principle, with some awkwardness on those rare occasions when we met again; or the shit might really hit the fan, with Adele winding up out on the street and Marty drawing me into fisticuffs, for which I have no particular talent. I was cringing at how quickly my erotic stream of consciousness had evaporated into a haze of measliness and fear. Adele came back and sat down.

“Screwed. She left. She’s going to turn me in.”

“Adele, honestly I doubt it.”

“I’m toast, and you know it.”

Part of me wanted to exploit this heightened state erotically, but that seemed a dangerous idea, and so in the end we made a gloomy pair heading across the lake to the cottage, Adele facing the bow while I steered. The lake was still quiet except for cat’s-paws and the wakes of birds. Just past midway, I could smell the piney breeze from shore as I dwelled on Adele’s shape through her blue dress, and as she braced herself on the seat. Her hair was loose, stirred around her shoulders by the air moving across the boat. I thought that at some point she might look back at me, but she never did. In our nine years of meeting I had given her very little to go on, and now I could see that it wasn’t enough.

I tied the boat up and tilted the engine on the transom. Adele was already walking up the dock but stopped halfway, her forefinger crooked and pressed it to her lips in thought. “Maybe I’m overreacting.” I followed her partway, encouraged that she was taking a more hopeful view of things; but what I had to say put an end to that.

“Deny everything. Esther wasn’t here. Marty wasn’t here. Tell them their data is corrupt.”

Adele’s arms fell to her sides in disgust as she walked the rest of the way to the cottage. I could only follow and then watch her throw her belongings into her suitcase. I may have breached the bedroom door too enthusiastically; it banged against the wall behind it, causing Adele to look up sharply from her packing. “Is this your James Cagney moment?”

“No, no, it isn’t,” I said mildly.

“I’m so sorry,” she said tearfully. “This has always been inevitable. I should have taken it better. I love Marty. What the fuck have I been doing?”

I had a flippant answer for that, too, but it would have only revealed my bitterness. I hardly needed to be reminded of her love for Marty, who had always seemed pretty and bland and devious to me, although I probably made that up. All I really knew of Marty was that women found him presentable. I thought his expensive clothes were odd on a petroleum geologist, and that to me suggested a real slyboots in his finery. But I also knew my inferences were utter crap.

Either Adele didn’t want to be seen with me on arrival in Glendive, or the long ride together would have been too fraught; either way, we ended up at the nearer Kalispell airport to rent her a car, a Kia that made her seem bigger than she was as she gave me a forlorn wave and departed. Kaput.

I moped around the cottage for another day and headed out. The day I got home, Esther and I met for coffee at her request. She hadn’t abandoned Adele at the restaurant after all; she’d gone for gas. When she returned and discovered us gone, she searched frantically for Adele and finally gave up and drove to Glendive. I suppose she was aware of what we were up to together; but taking Adele away must have seemed the perfect chance to break it to her that Marty wasn’t coming back anytime soon. He’d met someone in South Africa, an English girl working at a branch office of Deutsche Bank.

I had dinner with Adele that winter at Walkers American Grill in Billings, always crowded with local suits, but now it didn’t matter who saw us together. She was working hard and living alone, her marital situation still unresolved. She blamed herself for everything but placed her hopes on Marty’s irresolute arrangement with his girl in Johannesburg. “He honestly doesn’t know where it’s all going,” she said, smiling uncertainly. “He told me he just wants to live it out.”

I guess I’ll have to wait. Esther thinks I’m being a dope, but she’s so instinctively protective I can’t take her seriously. She’s a specialist in damage control, adequate company, and may see more in me than is actually there. We’re kind of in the same boat.