'Okay Then', by Jeff Hazlett
In the early twilight, Matt and Brooke walked along the beach, away from the cottage. The waters of Lake Bonaventure washed gently against the shore as the two picked their way around driftwood and pondweed and plastic bottles.
“Thank you,” said Matt.
“What’s that?” asked Brooke.
She’d ventured too close to the water’s edge and had to backtrack around the upwash to keep her sandals dry. Matt waited for her to catch up.
“Thank you for getting me out of there,” he said.
They glanced back to the cottage. They could see their friends on the deck, drinks in hand, their faces golden and glowing from the light of the firepit.
“Oh, I wanted to get out of there, too,” said Brooke. “And besides I think this is fun. If we pick up the pace, maybe we can track down that old woman you saw. What do you think she was trying to tell you?”
#
Matt had been the last to arrive, turning off the two-lane highway north of Augustana onto the gravel road that separated private farmland from the western lakeshore and the rental cottages. After parking his car at the top of the ridge, he started down the path through the trees, a steeper and trickier descent than he remembered from summers past. Many of the old steppingstones were covered in the slick, dark mud washed from the hillside by the recent rain.
He was dressed for the season in khaki shorts and a crisp black t-shirt; he carried a small overnight bag and a backpack with his laptop. Always his laptop.
As he emerged into a small clearing above the berm, he could see the cottage, its large wooden deck and the pier stretching out and out, well over the water. It was a familiar scene. The others were all swimming or sunning. Tony stood poised at the end of the springboard on the pier, his long swimmer’s torso as lean and muscular as ever.
“What are you waiting for, Rip?” cried the others. “There aren’t any photographers out here.”
Tony bounced on the springboard and rose into the air and tucked and rolled before disappearing into the water.
“Borrrrrrring,” called his girl Lila. “Show us something we haven’t seen before.”
Matt went unnoticed into the cottage and found all the bedrooms taken. He was used to it, a spot on the sofa. He didn’t mind. He stored his bag and his backpack off in a corner of the living room and went back outside.
“Look!” Tony called, climbing the ladder out of the water and onto the pier. “Lubber’s here! Hello, Matt!”
Matt waved, grabbed a beer from the cooler, and headed toward the group. A comfortable deck chair on the pier would be as close to the water as he would ever get. He’d never learned to swim – frustrating friends, girlfriends, gym coaches and the like as he grew up. With his fear of the water, he even refused the speedboat rides around the lake. But no one ever hassled him for it. Beyond his landlubber nickname.
He didn’t know where the fear came from. Not really. But he had an idea. When he was five, standing in the shallow end of the community pool at Elmwood Park, he got dunked. Some older kid, swimming underwater, pulled his legs out from underneath him and in an instant he didn’t know up from down. Thrashing and twisting and turning, he couldn’t keep himself from breathing in and his lungs sucked in water. Someone helped him out of the pool and, even as he coughed and spit, his body flooded with a white-hot rage. He scanned the water and the poolside for a likely culprit but saw no one.
The single trauma turned into a nightmare of sorts and dominated his sleep for weeks before it faded. Yet never completely.
Stepping from the deck onto the pier, Matt looked for Brooke and begged his eyes to find her without Edgar clinging on – Edgar, with his wide eyes, his gleaming smile and his upturned, baby-bird face begging love me, love me. Poor Edgar, thought Matt. He didn’t understand and perhaps never would – once you put a girl on a pedestal, you’ve put her forever out of reach. You didn’t have to be Tony to know that.
But before his eyes could find Brooke, Matt heard something from underneath the pier. A person.
Someone mumbling, “Come on, come on.”
He saw someone walking away along the shoreline to his right, toward the other cottages and the pavilion. An old woman. Barefoot. Long black hair with streaks of gray hanging down her back. She wore a pair of loose, purplish capri pants, a dark long-sleeve sweatshirt and a floppy hat with a wide brim. She had a black cat on a long leash, and the cat tarried and scurried, tarried and scurried. How odd, Matt thought, a cat on a leash.
As Matt watched her move further away, she turned her head and called back over her shoulder. He could not make out the words but felt they were for him. What was she saying?
#
Later, with everyone back in the cottage, Matt described the old woman. He opened his laptop and asked if anyone else had noticed her.
“The strange thing,” said Matt, “was how I never saw her face, yet I felt like she was talking to me. Trying to tell me something. I don’t know, I couldn’t make it out.”
“Why do you always do this?” asked Lila, her voice reaching a low baritone.
“Lila,” said Brooke.
“Seriously,” said Lila.
She stood in the middle of the room – tall, straight, now sporting cutoffs and a t-shirt over her swimsuit. She caught Matt’s eyes with hers and stared him down.
“Lila, please don’t,” said Brooke.
“We’re not your writers group, Matt,” said Lila. “We’re not here to help you workshop something. We’re not here to give you feedback on your ideas. We’re just here to drink and smoke and swim and have a good time. It’s a weekend away from work and the boredom of work. We can’t fight boredom with boredom. No fantasy bullshit. No mystery bullshit. No escapee from a mental institution bullshit. Remember that one? When you said the Freezy Weezy girl looked like someone you saw in a news bulletin, an escapee from the looney bin? Not this time, Matt. Not this time. I mean it. I don’t want to hear it.”
She disappeared up the stairs to her room.
The water pipes ached loudly and let everyone know she’d jumped in the shower.
“Sorry, Matt,” said Tony. “Her company wants her back in the office full time, back in the capital, and she’s thinking about quitting.”
The others showed little reaction, bystanders to a familiar playground scuffle who did not want to take sides.
“The capital?” asked Edgar. “Maybe I’ll see her there. What’s that? Is it possible I’m moving, too? Possible but as yet undetermined.”
Edgar, whenever he discussed his life, interviewed himself. He asked questions and then answered them before anyone else had a chance to jump in.
Could Edgar make more money in the state capital? Without a doubt, he said. More homes, more listings, more money. Could he make it work there? Sure, but was he ready to make a commitment like that? Be in it a hundred percent? He didn’t know. And, besides, was it really the money he liked? He found his buzz in getting people’s confidence, getting the listing, being the answer guy, the problem-solver. So for now it was Augustana. Sweet, familiar Augustana. Was he making the right choice? Almost certainly. Might that change? He couldn’t say.
Tony and a few of the others went out to the deck to light the firepit. Edgar followed.
Matt slipped his laptop into his backpack. He understood Lila’s complaints and felt their truth deeper than his friends might ever suspect. Yes, he was trying to be a writer. And he was always trying to make something out of nothing whenever the group got together. Sometimes for the sake of a story. Sometimes for the sake of having something to say, something to contribute. He didn’t swim, he skipped the speedboat rides, he always showed up single, the odd man out, and his life was so different from everyone else’s. He taught kindergarten, of all things, and his days were filled with hugs and smiles and tears – and the never-ending need to invent and improvise in order to keep little hands busy. Since becoming a teacher, adult company had grown even more awkward for him.
Brooke pulled an oversized sweatshirt on over her sundress and grabbed her sandals.
“We’d better hurry,” she said.
Matt didn’t understand.
“If we’re going to catch that old woman, we’d better hurry.”
#
Matt was surprised they got away without Edgar latching on – maybe his fascination with Brooke had waned.
It’s not that Matt didn’t understand – Brooke was a beauty, small and lithe with strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes and an easy manner. Growing up, he and Brooke had been bicycle buddies, tennis buddies, movie buddies. One summer they’d even been pool buddies, at the same Elmwood Park community pool where he’d been dunked by that older kid. Brooke was a good swimmer; Matt was a good spectator. Sometimes Brooke would coax him into the water, into the shallow end. “Just float,” she’d say. “Don’t try to swim. Just get on your back and float. Fill your lungs with air. Arch your back a bit. Relax. Feel it. Float. And I’ll paddle you over to the other side.” But whenever he tried to lay prone on the water he felt himself sinking and his feet would shoot down, searching for the bottom.
The two were even work buddies when they got older. They shared a summer job after high school graduation at Augustana’s daily newspaper, The Gazetteer. Matt had his eyes on a Journalism degree in college, and Brooke’s family owned and published the newspaper. Matt got paid a few bucks; he wasn’t sure, but he thought that Brooke might have been working gratis or just hanging out. She came and went as she pleased and didn’t seem to have a boss.
He showed up his first day in a sport coat and tie and carried his backpack, empty except for a pad of paper, a few pens and a granola bar.
He no sooner arrived than Brooke called out, “Let’s go!”
They had an assignment – hit the small downtown business district and capture a half-dozen man-on-the-street interviews. Ask people what type of businesses they wanted to see move to town. Get their names and snap their picture and then prep everything for the local affairs section of the Sunday paper. It would show up next to the report on the Chamber.
It took all morning, and the responses left a lot to be desired.
One man wanted another liquor store in town, preferably closer to where he lived than his other options. But when Brooke pulled out a digital camera to snap his picture, the man darted away.
“I can’t have my picture took!” he screamed.
One gal, who may or may not have been pregnant, wanted a daycare.
“I have plans,” she said, “as soon as Little Pete moves back to town.”
Another guy wanted a bigger gun store.
“Or just let everybody sell guns, like they used to, damn it.”
The editor killed the story.
The entire summer, part of Matt’s job was to listen to and transcribe the Opinion Line. Readers could call and leave anonymous comments about anything that was on their mind. Matt selected the best contributions and then transcribed them for a weekly posting on the newspaper’s back page. He didn’t get a byline, but it was, without a doubt, the most highly read section of every Saturday edition. One day, Brooke hung out with him as he played through the submissions.
“I have a black bear that’s been hanging out in my backyard. If anyone wants it, just drop by. I’m at the end of the wash down by where the rocks fell and blocked the gate. Just honk when you get here. Oh, she likes blueberries.”
Matt flagged it and transcribed it for the posting.
“Does anyone have an AR-15 I could borrow? Or maybe a Sig MCX? We’ve got the cousins from Yancy coming by next week and we’re going to take them squirrel hunting. Call Junior B.”
Brooke protested, but Matt transcribed it as well.
“You tell the city council I see them. I see what they’re up to. Corrupt sons-of-bitches. All of them. And I’m fixing to do something about it, too.”
“Not specific enough,” said Matt. “It’s Ram down at the barbershop complaining about the new hair styling place and how the city council took out the parking meters in front of the new shop.”
It went on and on.
And then a female voice, low and throaty: “Oooooo. Who’s that new boy y’all got workin’ for ya? Tell him to wear that purple tie again. I like it. Gives me the tingles.”
Matt replayed the message a few times. The caller didn’t leave a name or number.
Brooke laughed.
“Use it, use that one.”
“That’s just Lila,” said Matt.
“Lila? Lila doesn’t sound like that. Besides, you think she likes you?”
“She likes pranking me, disguising her voice, maybe Tony egging her on.”
“So Lila, huh? You don’t think it could be someone else?”
#
The two continued down the beach, and their walk became less earnest.
Brooke bumped into Matt more than once, trying, it seemed, to knock him toward the water.
“Have you taken up hockey?” he asked. “Where did you learn to hip check like that?”
She only laughed.
They wandered past the other rental cottages and toward the pavilion, lit now for the evening with strings of lights along its roofline and along the edges of the canopy leading out to the docks. A gentle pulse of music sounded from speakers hidden in the eaves. The scent of grilling burgers wafted over the picnic tables, and visitors lined up at the concession stands and, closer to the water, at the paddle boat counter.
Matt and Brooke walked up the concrete steps and into the covered area and sat down at one of the tables.
“No old lady,” said Brooke, looking around. “Well, not the old lady you described.”
“You have to wait,” said Matt. “If mysterious characters were just sitting around scarfing down fries, they wouldn’t be mysterious.”
A family sat down at a nearby table, a mom and a dad and three youngsters, with two overflowing trays of food. Matt recognized one of the children, a young girl from his kindergarten class. Gretchen. The one who adamantly insisted that no two people in the world could have the same name. “It’s against the law, Mr. Matt,” she said. The strength of her convictions convinced the class, and when halfway through the schoolyear a new girl named Gretchen showed up, original Gretchen wasted no time enforcing the law. Soon enough everyone began calling the new girl “Tootie,” not as in sweet but as in the number two, the second Gretchen. The new girl seemed unphased; she embraced her new nickname. Perhaps it made her feel special. Matt keenly hoped that the girl’s mother would also prove easy-going about such things.
There in the pavilion, Matt didn’t worry about Gretchen recognizing him – out of context, the kids didn’t know him from Adam. Which was fine with him. He enjoyed teaching and he loved the kids, but it was summer. School was out. He wanted to be a different person now. Not Mr. Matt.
“It’s too bad Lila was so hard on you,” said Brooke. “If she only knew.”
“Huh?”
“What huh? Don’t give me huh. I’ve read your short stories. The ones you have on your website, anyway. If Lila only knew.”
She let her words hang in the air and drift slowly away as she looked around the pavilion with a deliberate nonchalance; she checked her nails, the ones on her left-hand fingers with mock exactitude, waiting for a reaction.
True enough. Matt had based more than one short story character on Lila. Even earlier, when she was tearing into him, he listened only faintly, letting her voice fade into the surroundings as he noted once again her deep olive-toned skin and her smooth, powerful thighs. An Amazon in cutoffs, ready to conquer the world.
“Don’t worry,” said Brooke. “I’m not going to tell her. She doesn’t read, anyway. So she’ll never know. But you do seem obsessed with her dark hair. Dark hair loose on her shoulders in that ghost story, dark hair in a ponytail in that time travel thing, dark hair in braids with blue and pink tips in that detective story, tracking down the priest who murdered all those cafeteria lunch ladies.”
Damn, thought Matt, I really need to pick a genre.
“And I was never really sure why that priest – Father Quinn – why he killed all those cafeteria lunch ladies. The motivation, as it were. Soggy fish sticks? And how come when you use Tony in a story it’s always set in the mountains and he’s always wearing a turtleneck? You know I’m not sure the last time I saw him in a shirt. He didn’t even wear a shirt to graduation.”
“Well,” said Matt, “he can’t fight the forces of evil bare chested. He’d get cold.”
Matt noticed Gretchen staring at him now, probably wondering why his voice sounded so familiar, striking a deep chord of recognition that she would never be able to decipher.
“How come there are never any blondes in your stories?” asked Brooke. “Aren’t we interesting? Aren’t I interesting? Can’t I solve a mystery or battle aliens from outer space or whatever? What’s up with that?”
He didn’t know why it was so easy to write characters based on Lila and Tony and the others. And then, whenever he tried to base a character on Brooke and build a story around her, everything became impossible. He didn’t know why, but the words always came out wrong. He would thrash about for days, crumpling and tossing sheet after sheet of paper. It made him think that he had no talent for writing, no talent for anything, and he retreated to the easy and familiar, the bold and brash Lila and the undefeatable Tony.
“Let’s get a paddle boat,” said Brooke.
“What?!”
“Don’t give me that. I know you can’t swim. But it’s a paddle boat. It will do all the floating for us. We’ll stay over the shallow water and if for some reason you fall overboard just stand up. Or reach up and I’ll grab you. We’ll follow along the shallow water near the east side of the lake. We’ll look for a nice spot. You never know, maybe your old woman is floating dead out there, wrecking things for all the turtles and the frogs. There’s a story for you.”
#
Brooke was up and gone, down on the dock, picking out a paddle boat. Matt’s mind was aflame with worry. About the night. About the dark water. About drowning. About dying. And suddenly worry about second Gretchen and how unfair it was that she was going to live the rest of her life as Tootie. Well, it’s her first-grade teacher’s problem now, he thought. Mrs. Baker. Let her worry about that.
And then worry about being without his laptop, without a way to take notes about everything – about the feeling of the moment, about Brooke, about how to create a sweet, take-charge blonde at whose core lived a joyful randomness and an indefinable allure. Without, of course, putting her on a pedestal. No pedestals. No. He might not be Tony, but at least he wasn’t Edgar. He would not be Edgar.
“Okay then,” he said. “Okay then. Getting a paddle boat.”
An old woman came to the register at the paddle boat counter. An old woman with long dark hair with streaks of gray. She wore a dark, long-sleeve sweatshirt and a floppy hat with a wide brim. A black cat lounged lazily on a back table.
“Ah,” said the old woman. “Good to see you, young man. Good to see you. So you heard me after all? From earlier, when I called out to you down by the last cottage.”
“What?” asked Matt.
“I called out to you – and you must have heard me – paddle boats half-price after seven o’clock.”
“Okay then,” he said as he paid. “Okay then. A sign from the universe.”
Matt walked along the smooth boards of the dock. Too smooth, he thought, downright slick, slippery, dangerous. The water lapped against the piles underneath. The lake licking its lips, he thought, the lake waiting to swallow him whole after years and years of patient waiting.
Matt watched as Brooke stepped aboard a paddle boat, so small, its deck barely above the level of the water – and shaped like a swan, its neck and head at the bow and two large wings along each side. A giant white swan. They would sit and paddle side-by-side, mid-swan, Brooke at the steerage.
Matt stood on the dock.
“Good news!” called Brooke. “This one has a brand-new drain plug in the center valve.”
“What?!”
Brooke laughed.
“The rub rail’s good, too,” she said, stomping her feet against the bottom of the boat. “Virtually unsinkable!”
“Stop it!”
Matt grabbed hold of the swan’s wing and steadied himself. The boat dipped ever so slightly and he lost his balance; his weight took him forward and he stepped on board and fell into his seat.
“Okay then,” he said.
“Okay then,” said Brooke.
“I’m in it now.”
“Yes, you’re in it now.”
“Okay then,” he said with a deep breath. “Okay then.”
# # #
Jeff Hazlett lives in Omaha, Nebraska. His short stories have appeared in Lighthouse Digest, Talking River Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Writing Disorder – and are expected soon in other publications. Find him at jeffhaz.com.