Story 16: Where Water Leads Her

All alone on the porch, Natalie was rocking in the metal glider, trying to match the rhythm to the waves one of the last boats of the night had just sent into the cement retaining wall around Lake Tapawingo. The stairs squeaked, and when she looked over, Chris had cracked the door open and was squeezing through, as if he didn’t think he deserved very much space, and then he was sitting next to her on the white vinyl cushions, grinning.

“I want to talk to you,” he said very quietly.

He was tan for so early in the summer. They hadn’t seen each other for months, since Christmas of their senior year. They hadn’t spoken since their separate graduations two weeks ago, his in Missouri and hers in Boulder. She thought he might be nervous, but she couldn’t remember him ever seeming nervous before. “OK.”

“In a week I’m moving to Chicago permanently,” he said.

“I know,” Natalie said. “Congratulations on your new job.”

He waved his hands to quiet her. “You said you’d make a decision by now. Remember?”

In fact, Natalie had spent an entire semester thinking about their future, or lack of it, without coming to a decision.

“You have a week,” he told her. Then he got up and, she thought, sneaked off the porch, turning once to grin at her before disappearing down the stairs. She still couldn’t believe that he’d given her an ultimatum.

Her mother came out on the porch. “Was someone here?”

“Chris came by,” Natalie said.

“Are you going out tonight?”

Natalie shook her head. “No. He just wanted to tell me he’s moving to Chicago.”

Her mother stood there, an odd look on her face, and brushed a strand of red hair out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Natalie.”

Natalie shrugged. “Don’t be. I’ve known he would for a long time.”

Her mother paused for a moment. “Are you hungry?”

“A little.”

“Your father is having a Winstead’s craving. Care to go down to the Plaza?”

“Sure,” Natalie answered, feeling that the world was racing by.

“I can’t find Debbie.”

“She went for a drive. Said she needed to be alone. We can bring her something back.”

“Let’s go then,” her mother said.

**

Once seated in a blue booth in the center of the restaurant, they immediately ordered a chocolate shake big enough for the three of them. No one said much, but conversations swirled around them while Natalie tried desperately to concentrate. What a greeting from someone she hadn’t seen in months! She sucked on her straw in time with the words “I’m moving, I’m moving, I’m moving.” Fragments of conversations with Becky, her mother, and Debbie came to mind: When are you going to see him? Why doesn’t he come to visit? Face it, he met someone else. You should too.

When he father asked her why she was smiling so much, she realized she must have had an idiotic look on her face. She felt herself blushing.

“Are you going to tell us why Chris came by?” he inquired finally.

“He wanted to tell me that he was moving to Chicago.”

Her father’s face stilled. “Did he ask you to move with him?” Her mother’s eyes widened.

“No,” Natalie said, but she could see he was still worried. A little chocolate shake seeped from the corner of his mouth. Natalie reached out with her napkin and wiped it.

“Do you want to?” he asked warily.

“I don’t know, Dad.” He kept staring at her until she looked away, tried to pay attention to nearby conversations, but the voices circled around her like flavor stirred into a drink and turned into something else entirely. The young woman in the booth to her left bent down to talk to her toddler. He looked up at Natalie and silently pleaded, Don’t leave me alone in a strange place! But that was nonsense, Natalie decided. Chris had already lived in Chicago the previous summer, while he did an internship at the Tribune. She turned to the family of girls across the aisle. I’m too sure! one of them thought. Barely a teenager and already she had lost her sense of romance. Natalie tried the group of boys at the table behind her parents, but they were useless. They gazed at her with eyes that wanted to play Pac-Man.

The waitress dropped off their plates of burgers and fries. Natalie outlined her French fries in ketchup. Then she looked up at her father and said, “I just don’t know!” His face settled into deeper lines as she spoke.

**

Debbie was hanging off the edge of her bed, trying to find something under it, when Natalie brought her a cold burger.

“I put the fries in the oven,” she said. “Want me to heat up this too?”

“No, I like them cold,” Debbie said.

“Here’s a shake.”

“Thanks. Hey—”

“What?”

“I saw Chris on my walk back here.”

“Yeah,” Natalie said, “he came over and told me he was moving to Chicago.”

Debbie shrieked.

Natalie’s father stuck his head in the room. “Everything OK?”

“Yes, Mr. Fisher.”

Ever since Natalie had pointed out how daintily her mother ate fried food, Debbie had made a point of eating burgers and fried chicken in huge bites—but only when they were alone. Now she stuffed one-third of the burger into her mouth. Not that Winstead’s burgers were that big.

“You’re stalling,” Natalie informed her, but Debbie continued to gobble the burger. Then she went downstairs to fetch the fries, returning with a large plate containing the fries and one glob each of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. The arrangement was so symmetrical that Natalie ate two fries and then began fry-painting with the condiments.

“Ever considered opening your own restaurant?” she asked, but Debbie was apparently determined to do nothing but eat.

When she had finished all the fries, she glared briefly at Natalie and said, “I am so jealous of you!”

“Why?”

“Because you get to go off with this guy!”

“I’m not going off with him!”

“You’ve got to!”

Carefully removing the plate to a nightstand, Natalie moved over and hugged Debbie, then shook her a little.

“I’m not going away, Debbie,” she said. “After you leave, I’ll stay here for the rest of the summer and then take that publishing course in Boulder.”

Debbie put her head on Natalie’s shoulder. “I’ve had a feeling ever since I drove here,” she told Natalie. “That senior year was it as far as our being together in the same place all the time. And Chris just proved me right!”

“You’re getting carried away,” Natalie informed her. Debbie glared back.

“I’m allowed! I don’t always have to be practical!”

They lay down next to each other on Natalie’s bed and were quiet for a while. Then Debbie said, “Nothing like this ever happens to me. I have everything planned out, and it all seems good. But then Chris comes along and tells you he’s moving, and you know he wants you to go, and my entire life seems pathetic.”

Natalie didn’t respond. Debbie turned to face her and demanded, “And why are you so calm?”

When she woke up after midnight, alone on top of her covers, Natalie couldn’t remember if she’d answered. But the next morning, she noticed everyone looked at her differently over breakfast, as if she were—what? A kept woman? She got some coffee and went down to the dock, where Debbie joined her almost immediately.

“I’m sorry I was so weird last night,” she said. “I was startled. But I am still jealous.” Debbie blew on her coffee. “Because I’ve never connected with a guy. And Chris has always been so romantic, and you don’t even seem to care.”

“I haven’t reached the caring stage yet,” Natalie informed her. “I’m still trying to make a decision.” But she thought, I could go. But what would I do? When had she become so sensible? Perhaps all these years of friendship had caused her and Debbie to switch personalities.

“It’s your fault,” Debbie continued. “I expect relationships with men to be as good as our friendship.”

Another compliment from Debbie. That made at least five in the last two weeks from a woman who tended more toward assessment than support. Natalie asked, “What’s so good about it?” Then she was dumbfounded when Debbie had an instant response.

“Well, it’s lasted almost ten years. And we’ve never been mad enough at each other to stop being friends.”

Natalie smiled at the lake and agreed with Debbie, whose presence in her summer home, in her grandparents’ home, anchored it in her life. She didn’t know why. At times all her family had crowded into this house, almost burst out the walls with their exuberance. Yet Debbie had driven her red truck from Boulder to Kansas City and walked in the door one time, and the house had shifted from the dimension of childhood and dependence on family to the present, as real as the pink-beige sandstone buildings on the University of Colorado campus had been for the past four years. That’s why we’re still friends, she thought. Even though she knew the house would shift back when Debbie left in two weeks.

“You’ve never fallen in love because you never wanted to put in the effort,” Natalie theorized.

Debbie looked at her, exasperated. She had been growing out her blondish hair—“because you know short hair makes you look young, and I want to look old and experienced for my interviews”—and it reached to her shoulders now. “That is so rude. I make efforts.”

“Yes, but not with men. You expect it to happen all on its own, magically or something. As if love were going to drop down in front of you on the way to the UMC.”

“Thanks, O Delphic oracle,” Debbie said loftily. “I’ll become eminently practical like you and then maybe some man will ask me to move to—New Delhi!”

**

Natalie fetched more coffee and remained on the dock for a long time, content to simply sit. She noticed once that Debbie had been replaced by her mother, who was wrapped in a yellow towel and looking at her sadly.

“Don’t do it, Natalie,” she said abruptly.

“Huh?”

“Don’t follow a man around the way I did.” Then she dumped the towel in a heap on the dock, climbed down into the water, and swam out to the buoy in her matching red suit and cap.

Now I’m going just to prove I’d never be as traditional as you. Was that how women ended up where they did—because they said yes to someone years ago and were still following him? Natalie shook her head. These were dangerous musings.

Chris had been a summer romance. If she said that to herself often enough, she knew she would believe it eventually. OK, two summers, or at least a summer and a half, until her uncle had died and created distances spanning heaven and earth in her life.

She thought of how they’d gone dancing on their first date, three years ago. She couldn't remember the day, but she saw the country-rock bar, heard peanut shells crunch under her feet, and tasted the Coors. For a moment, she couldn’t wait for him to put his hands on her waist and pull her into a crowd again. Then she saw the red cap dividing the water, now coming toward the dock, and the image vanished. She stomped into the house and found her father sitting on the couch, reading the paper’s special section about the upcoming party conventions.

He looked at her and put the paper down. “What is it?”

“You can’t imagine what Mom just said to me!”

“After a quarter-century of marriage, I just might be able to.” He patted the brown fabric next to him, and she sat down. She noticed the picture of Reagan in the paper had been torn a little.

“She said I shouldn’t follow a man around like she had.”

“Really?” He stiffened, then folded the paper and tossed it across her, onto the pile on the hearth. “Well, she did follow me here.”

“But I’m not her. Why does she think I’m just like her?”

“Of course you’re not!” he said. “You’re a mixture of both of us.”

They stared at each other for a moment, both dissatisfied. Then he asked, “Don’t you want to be like your mother and me?”

“Dad, I just graduated from college. I want to find a job and start my life on my own.”

“And would going to Chicago help?” he asked. She was startled.

“I don’t know!”

“Why don’t you know?” he asked sharply. “You’ve been with him for three years!”

“Because we’ve never been together long enough for me to be certain of him,” she said.

“You don’t have to be certain before you make a decision, Natalie.” He spoke patiently, as if she were still very young.

“I don’t?” After sitting for a few moments, unable to say anything more, Natalie went upstairs to take a shower but had to wait for Debbie to finish. Her father came up shortly afterward, went into his bedroom, and closed the door, but his telephone voice was too loud for a hollow brown door to hold it in. He was still talking when Natalie and Debbie left to go hang out on the Plaza.


**

When they returned, they were startled by the sound of too many voices in the living room. Natalie walked in to find Chris, his parents seated on either side of him on the couch, chatting with her parents and eating Chinese food.

“Great lo mein!” Chris greeted her. “Have some.”

“Sit down and fortify yourselves, girls,” his mother Beryl said. “Your parents invited us over for a discussion.”

“Uh, maybe I should eat upstairs,” Debbie offered.

“No, stay!” Natalie said, panicked. A discussion with a capital D. Her parents were occupying the only chairs, so she and Debbie sat on the hearth. Chris and his father Joe handed them plates of vegetable lo mein and wontons and kung pao chicken. Her mother handed her chopsticks and a napkin and a significant look.

I had nothing to do with this, Natalie thought back, but all she said was, “Can somebody get us some drinks?” She was determined not to contribute to this conversation more than was absolutely necessary.

Her father took the hint. “While you were gone today, Natalie, I talked to a colleague of mine who teaches at the University of Chicago. I told her that you might be going to Chicago and asked if you could stay with her.”

“Oh, I might be!” Natalie said, mustering all her sarcasm. She wished the fireplace would change into a vacuum and suck her up and out. Her mother raised her eyebrows, and Natalie returned the favor.

“It’s not appropriate for you to live with Chris.”

Debbie’s eyes widened, and she almost swallowed a wonton whole. When she began to cough, Natalie hit her between the shoulder blades. Her mother asked, “Are you all right?”

“I always eat fried food in big bites,” Debbie explained, which made Natalie giggle.

“Why?” her mother asked, nibbling a wonton.

“No reason,” they said in unison.

Her father pressed his point. “Did you understand what I said, Natalie?”

“Dad! I haven’t seen Chris in six months and you think I’m going to live with him?” Did they have to discuss her nonexistent sex life in two family groupings?

“That would be a little hasty,” Chris said, smiling slyly.

Natalie glared at him. She was sure it was all a plot to get back at her for her refusal to make a decision. “I’m glad all of you have made up your minds that I should go. I haven’t.”

“We’re not trying to pressure you, honey,” her father said. “We’re just making plans in case you do go.”

“You two are young,” Joe said. “If this doesn’t work out, you can always move back here.”

Clearly they were all against her. Even Beryl was nodding, the same woman who had only tolerated her the first year she had dated Chris.

“Don’t you think it’s a little odd that all of you are so much more intent on this than I am?” Natalie asked her father.

“Chris is the only one you’ve ever loved,” he pointed out. “I don’t think you should give up just yet.”

Natalie busied herself with her food.

He continued. “And also, I don’t think following a man around is always such a bad thing.” He stared at Ashley for a while.

“You needn’t repeat everything I say, Natalie,” her mother snapped.

Debbie leaned over and muttered, “They’ve got you surrounded. Throw up your hands and pretend to surrender.”

“Thank God you’re here,” Natalie replied. Then to her father, she said, “OK. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“When I talked to Julie—Professor McClintock—she said you could stay with her for a month or two. She also said she would look into jobs for you at local presses.”

“That was nice of her, considering she doesn’t know me,” Natalie said.

“She’s very nice. I think you would be safe with her.”

To her left, her mother was rolling her eyes. Her father handed her a piece of paper with Julie McClintock’s phone number. To her right, Chris and his parents watched her accept the paper as if it were the transfer of sacred objects. Natalie stood up, and Debbie followed.

“I’ll give her a call,” she told them. “And I’ll let you know when I decide what to do. I really don’t have anything else to say.” She grabbed Debbie’s arm and walked through the kitchen and out onto the road. They had passed only three houses when Chris caught up to them, panting. His brown hair was sticking out on one side.

“That’s all?”

“Look, Chris,” Natalie said, turning around, “I thought that I would come here this summer and see you and we would say goodbye. That was my plan.”

“I didn’t want to,” he said simply.

“You’re just going to have to wait until I make up my mind.” She turned around and linked arms with Debbie, ignoring him. Eventually they heard his footsteps retreating, or maybe it was just the distance they were creating between a summer romance and their friendship of almost a decade.

That night the two of them walked around the lake twice, with a pit stop at the house to get drinks and snacks. “I want to wash away the taste of that food,” Natalie said, and luckily her mother had baked cupcakes the day before. They took six with them, along with apple juice to quiet the dust that got in their throats every time a car drove by.

They didn’t say much, just commented on the scenery of the lake here and there. Then Debbie said, “You act like Chris has done something to you.”

“He has! He keeps asking me to make decisions, and I can never decide what to do about him. I love him, but I don’t know if we have a future—I keep going back and forth.”

“When did you start being so practical? You were so impulsive when I first met you.”

“When I saw how much easier your life was when you planned things.”

“Really?” Debbie looked pleased.

“Yes. The only decision I could manage to make was that I wanted to work in publishing. So I signed up for the publishing course and I researched what presses I’d like to work at and I even looked at apartments near some of these presses. I told Chris I was doing all this, and he never said anything. So now he’s trying to get me to change my plans without ever really asking!”

“Oh, Natalie,” Debbie said a little sadly. “I do make plans all the time—I can’t seem to help it—but half the time I end up changing them.”

“Well, so?”

“So change yours.”

They stopped in front of an endless expanse of yellow, red, and white zinnias. There was no turf—only zinnias and a flagstone walkway. “Now that’s a monoculture,” Debbie said.

“You’ve all turned into Stepford wives,” Natalie complained. “It’s like Chris put a spell on you or something. I’m the only one who seems to be able to think about it.”

“Here’s something for you to think about,” Debbie shot back. “Can you live with the ‘what if’ factor?”

“I don’t know,” Natalie answered. “I’ve been too busy wondering why everyone was acting so weird.”

“I think that’s the major question. If you don’t go, will you wonder what might have happened?”

“Of course I’ll wonder,” Natalie said. “I’ve been wondering about him for three years.”

“So go then, and stop wondering.”

“I guess you’re right,” Natalie said. “But all the same, sometimes I just hate how logical you can be.”

**

The next afternoon, hot and muggy like all June afternoons in Kansas City, they were in the center of the round, wet world, lying head-to-toe in an enormous inner tube. Exactly halfway between the dock and the buoy—or at least, that’s what Debbie said. Natalie wasn’t looking, except when Debbie wiggled her toes. Natalie wanted to tickle her, but the other day Debbie had kicked her in the head when she did that. A boat went by, and its waves spread out and rocked them for a few seconds. The choices here were pure: lie in the sun and brown or roll off into the water and cool the skin.

Natalie didn’t berate herself for waiting so long to make the decision. She had needed to make it here, where her relationship with Chris had begun, bloomed briefly, and then gone into a long dormancy. She had needed her parents and Debbie to encourage her to risk this—if they had been opposed, the grief would have kept her near them. This summer, she had thought to grasp the end of her relationship with Chris, knot it up to the beginning, and hide it somewhere in this house. Ever since her uncle had died two years ago (even since her great-uncle had died when she was fifteen), summers at the lake had been lived at the edge of grief. Her memories of Chris belonged in such a place. But their future, if they had one—that needed a new place to take root.

Today, when she swam to the dock, she would climb out into a new life, one stretching before her for decades. She couldn’t wait to get started.


The End