The Lake House

by Jeffrey Greene

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

About a month later, in mid-July, while visiting his sister in Lakeland, Florida, she informed him of the death of the mother of a friend from his childhood, Gary Sanchez, whom he hadn’t seen since the early Sixties. They’d been close for a couple of years, from the ages of about ten to twelve, before Jason’s family had moved from Bartow to Lakeland.

He remembered that Gary’s family had a cottage on Lake Hendry, some ten miles south of Bartow, not far from Lake Buffum, and that he had spent a weekend there once with Gary and his grandparents, fishing and swimming for hours at a time. His sister had given him Gary’s phone number, and pressed him to call and offer his condolences but, even though they had never parted in anger, he hesitated. Isn’t there a statute of limitations on lapsed friendships, beyond which even the obligatory condolences of death are no longer expected, or even desired?

Less from a natural reluctance to exhume something that the years had long since given a decent burial than fearing the awkwardness of not being remembered at all, he had to force himself finally to dial the number. But Gary did remember him, and it was a pleasant surprise for both men to discover that the ease and rapport that had characterized their long-ago friendship was still there.

After expressing his sympathy over the death of Gary’s mother, whom he scarcely remembered, the conversation grew lively, spanning nearly five decades. The ostensible difference between them was that Gary had stayed in central Florida and he had moved to Washington, but they both had stable marriages, grown children, amazement and dismay at the human condition, and something of a bunker mentality when they thought of what the future held for themselves and their loved ones.

At some point Jason mentioned the summer weekend at Lake Hendry when they were ten, and how fondly he remembered it, and Gary, too, spoke warmly of that time, and how much he still loved the place. The lake house had remained in the family, he told him. His own father, now eight years dead, couldn’t bear to sell it after inheriting it from his parents, and Gary was equally determined to pass it on to his own children.

Then Jason’s old friend surprised him by offering him the use of the lake house this very weekend, if he wanted it. Though the funeral was over, Gary was presiding over an open-house memorial on Saturday and wouldn’t be able to join him, but he was more than welcome to use it.

At first Jason demurred, not wanting to take advantage of his friend’s goodwill but, when Gary insisted, telling him that “the place has been waiting for you all these years,” he found himself warming to the idea, and accepted with thanks.

After giving him detailed directions to the lake and under which flowerpot Jason would find the house key, Gary urged him to do all the things they’d done as boys: swim, bass fish — there was plenty of fishing equipment in the utility room — laze in the sun, and Gary insisted that Jason use the small johnboat tied up next to the dock. It had no motor, but the lake was so small, barely fifteen hundred feet in diameter, that he could row across it in a few minutes.

After thanking him again, and promising to call him the next time he was in town, Jason hung up. He invited his sister and brother-in-law to join him, but was secretly pleased when they begged off, citing previous engagements.

His wife had been too busy with her Chevy Chase medical practice to come to Florida with him, so until he flew back from Tampa on Sunday evening, he was on his own. He could spend one or two days at the lake, depending on how he felt, and he decided to leave immediately and spend the night, then call his sister and let her know if he was coming back on Saturday or staying another night.

* * *

He drove south from Lakeland to Bartow, then the ten miles southeast to Lake Hendry. The gray, one-story cinder-block house, built in the early 1950s, with its low-pitched roof, jalousie windows and screened-in back porch, called up a flurry of memories. He wasn’t really surprised by its smallness, but he was impressed with the size of the lakefront property — at least half an acre of sloping, grassy yard dotted with aged and declining orange and grapefruit trees, sabal palms, slash pine, scrub oak and two grand live oaks shading the house.

Hibiscus, gardenia, and camellia bushes bloomed in hedges lining the front and sides of the house, and the little dock that he walked out on as soon as he arrived seemed in good repair. The lake, too, was smaller than he remembered it, and the groves that in his memory surrounded it were mostly, if not altogether, gone, replaced by houses and yards.

But the steady breeze off the water was still fresh-smelling and invigorating, the sun on the rippled water blinding, and healthy stands of water lily and maidencane grew several yards out from the shore on either side of the dock, The little white sand beach looked as promising a spot as ever to cast a plastic worm, in hopes of tempting a hungry largemouth bass.

The water softly slapping the desiccated pilings, the great blue heron hunting nearby in the grassy shallows, the hordes of dragonflies patrolling the yard and the reeds around the shoreline, a lone fishing boat trolling slowly across the middle of the lake, the rustling of dry palm fronds in the warm wind and the forlorn cries of seagulls gliding and dipping overhead: all acted on his senses like a chorus of singing voices from the past. It felt like a homecoming.

He found the key and let himself in the house, then opened the windows to air it out and changed into a bathing suit. He had no food or drink but would worry about that later. In the utility room, he found fishing rods, a tackle box, a set of swim fins and a mask and snorkel, and something he hadn’t been expecting: a fully inflated inner tube, which like everything else here, evoked his childhood dream. He carried it into the back yard, along with a spinning rod and reel and the tackle box. He felt like swimming now, followed by a little fishing toward sunset. He might even catch his dinner for tonight, if his luck held.

It was by now four in the afternoon, and well over ninety degrees, so he took off his shirt, tennis shoes, and glasses, and leaving them in a pile on a lawn chair he had carried down to the shore, he waded in to about waist depth, then dove under the clean, dark water and swam a good hundred feet before surfacing. He floated on his back, squinting nearsightedly at the many mansions of the Florida sky, with its cumulus, cumulonimbus, stratus and cirrus clouds, traveling in windward fleets across the blue immensity.

A slider turtle surfaced a few feet away from where he floated, and again he felt as if he were reliving his childhood in an adult body. It also occurred to him that Florida had seen a tremendous resurgence in its alligator population since he was ten years old, and he soon left the water and dried off.

He sat in the lawn chair on the shore, the water lapping over his feet, reveling in the brilliant sunlight and the lake breeze, feeling his shoulders beginning to warm and angling his glasses to sharpen his vision for distance, trying to see across the lake, which Gary had mentioned covered a mere hundred and three acres. Off to the southeast there was still an area of grove land, sloping upward in neat, dark-green rows, but there was a clearing near the shore where a house might be. Maybe later he’d take the boat over there and do a little sightseeing.

He leaned back in his chair, feeling as if he were suspended in a kind of bubble of pure nostalgia, where it was neither 1962 nor 2011, but a blissful zone equidistant from all the dates of his life, where time did not so much pass as dissipate into the slow rhythms of the lapping water, the crepe-paper rustle of palm fronds, the wind chimes hanging from an orange branch, the fussing of bluejays in the yard, and the relaxed beat of his heart. He forgot all about fishing.

Later, after a shower, he found a locally-owned, pleasantly funky barbecue joint off Highway 17, and ate enough ribs, beans, and slaw, washed down with two beers, to constitute both lunch and dinner. He bought a six-pack of beer at a convenience store, and when he got back, stuck it in the otherwise empty refrigerator, then took a long nap.

It was around six-thirty when he got up, and still very bright and warm outside. He called his wife and told her about Gary Sanchez and the lake house, and that he wished she were here with him. He reminded her when to expect him on Sunday evening, then they said goodbye.

He walked out to the boat and turned it over, disturbing a few of those delicate striped spiders that always seem to spin their webs in and around freshwater boats in Florida. Remembering something that Gary told him, he went back to the utility room and got a boat cushion/life preserver, then dragged the boat into the shallows and, positioning himself on the seat between the oars, he pushed off and rowed out past the lily pads and maidencane, pausing long enough to put on his prescription sunglasses, then slipped his regular glasses into the case and stuck it in the side pocket of his shorts.

Except for the man trolling the lake a couple hours before, he hadn’t seen a soul on the water, and there was no one out at all now, which for a third time reminded him of his dream.

All these years later, he was by himself once again on a small lake in central Florida, in a rowboat if not an inner tube, as if this scene had been recreated solely for him. In the last few minutes the wind had subsided completely, leaving the placid water disturbed only by his small wake and unhurried oar strokes. He had some heartburn from the heavy meal and a stitch in his side, but otherwise felt fine.

He was now in what seemed the exact center of the lake, and from here he could count the number of houses and see, if imperfectly, into neat waterfront yards, patios and porches, but there was no one at all about, which struck him as so unusual for a Friday afternoon on a lovely lake in midsummer that he shipped the oars and sat for a few minutes, meditating on his perfect, if almost uncanny, solitude.

The boat slowly drifted counterclockwise, bringing him around to face the southeast, and as it did the blank area surrounded by grove land that he’d been curious about came into better view. He slanted his glasses to sharpen the focus, then did something he knew was unwise: he stood up in the boat, maybe to help him deny rather than confirm what his eyes were seeing. For what he was seeing appeared to be the lake house of his memories. He hadn’t dreamed it after all, or if he had, his mind must have patterned it on this house.

Then something happened, or rather, two things happened almost simultaneously, that changed everything: one of those unexpectedly chilly winds that can blow up at any time of year on a lake, coming at the same moment the sun was hidden by dark clouds in the west, raised goose bumps on his bare legs and arms and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw his glasses case slipping out of his pocket. With a reflexive grab he caught the case before it hit the water, almost losing his balance in the process.

He sat down, still holding the case, unnerved by what had just happened, so similar to his dream that it felt like déjà vu, then put the case on the seat beside him. But whatever dread he’d felt as a ten-year old, either awake or dreaming, was outweighed now by an intense curiosity to see the house close-up and, turning the boat southeast, he rowed hard toward it.

As he neared the little cove that sheltered the house and its tiny beach with its narrow strip of white sand, he was conscious of a dryness in his mouth and a violent increase both of his indigestion and the pain from the stitch in his side. His left shoulder and arm hurt as well, and he thought he must have strained a muscle from rowing too hard. He maneuvered the boat so that he faced the house and back-paddled to keep himself at some distance offshore.

It was now impossible to deny what his thudding heart already knew: it was the same brown-painted bungalow of his memories, with a decrepit dock that might or might not support a man’s weight, a faded green aluminum rowboat turned over on the weed-grown yard, a long back porch or veranda, two screen doors from — he assumed — two separate rental units, weathered Adirondack chairs, the windows, railings and eaves clotted with cobwebs and mud dauber nests, the roof and gutters covered with oak leaves, dead branches and clumps of Spanish moss, and an unhappy silence and neglect suggesting years of abandonment.

Strange that in his recollection, the house was in the same condition. If it really was the same house he remembered from childhood, wouldn’t it be a ruin by now? Whatever the answer was, this house had clearly been untenanted for years, which didn’t mitigate in the slightest degree an irrational feeling that the house — or someone inside it — had been waiting for his return as long as he’d been thinking about it.

Had he been awake or dreaming when he saw it for the first time? Even now he couldn’t say. He only knew that his ten-year old self had fled this place in terror, and the middle-aged version of that boy was now trying to decide whether to row back to Gary’s house or go ashore and take a closer look. It mortified him to realize that he was still afraid, and that he was no closer to understanding why now than he had been as a boy.

The dark clouds to the west had burgeoned into a massive thunderhead, completely hiding the sinking sun and deepening the shadows under the trees surrounding the bungalow. There’d be a thunderstorm soon, and he shouldn’t linger much longer.

But just as he was about to turn the boat around and head back, he noticed that there was, after all, someone in the house, because he had managed to slip into one of the Adirondack chairs, the one deepest in shadow, without his noticing it. Sound is supposed to carry well across water, yet he hadn’t heard a door open, or footsteps on the wooden veranda, but there the man sat, so still and quiet that Jason wondered if he’d been there all along, silently watching him.

An oppression rose in his chest as the pain in his arm, shoulder and side increased. He was gasping for breath as he stood up in the boat, trying to get a good look at the man’s face, which seemed to draw the shadows into its deep lines and hollows. Realizing that he was still wearing his sunglasses, Jason took them off and put on his regular glasses, and now he could see the high, sallow forehead, the lantern jaw and hard little mouth, and the black eyes that held his gaze with an unblinkingly intense, yet somehow impersonal, interest. It was him — of course it was him — the man he’d seen weeks before in the cigar lounge and never forgotten, and then the pain rose into his throat and stopped his breath, and almost without realizing it, he tumbled out of the boat into the water.

He remembered the frantic kicking of his ten-year old legs as he’d held onto the inner tube and propelled himself instinctively away from the house, saving himself for all that was still to come, but this second and last time he had neither the strength nor the will to struggle and, as the water closed over his face and he sank down into the cool, secret depths of his lake of dreams, he was surprised, even grateful, for the immense relief that came with surrender.