Lakeside Cottage

“You’re acting like an impatient city dweller,” she said.

“I am an impatient city dweller,” he replied.

They passed beneath the sign of the giant laughing pink pig, which had stood sentinel over the grocery store for as long as Kate could remember. The marquee held a sign that advertised, Maple Sweet Bacon—$.99/lb.

What are you so happy about? Kate wondered, looking at the pig. She and Aaron went inside together to stock up on supplies, for the lake house had sat empty since last year. Something in Kate loved this process. It was like starting from scratch, with everything new. And this time, all the choices were hers to make. Without her mother or older brother around, Kate was the adult in charge. What a concept.

“Mom? Mom.” Aaron scowled at her. “You’re not even listening.”

“Oh. Sorry, buddy.” She selected some plums and put them in the cart. “I’m a bit preoccupied.”

“Tell me about it. So did you get fired or were you laid off?” he asked, hitching a ride on the grocery cart as she steered toward the next aisle. He regarded her implacably over the pile of cereal boxes and produce bags.

She looked right back at her nine-year-old son. His curiously adult-sounding question caught her off guard. “Maybe I quit,” she said. “Ever think of that?”

“Naw, you’d never quit.” He snagged a sack of Jolly Ranchers from a passing shelf and tossed them into the cart.

Kate put the candy back. Jolly Ranchers had yanked out more dental work than a bad dentist. “Why do you say I’d never quit?” she asked, taken aback. As he grew older, turning more and more into his own person, her son often said things that startled her.

“Because it’s true,” he said. “The only way you’d ever quit on your own is if something better came along, and I know for a fact that it hasn’t. It never does.”

Kate drummed her fingers on the handle of the shopping cart, the clear plastic scratched with age. She turned down the canned-goods aisle. “Oh, yeah?” she asked. “What makes you so darned sure?”

“Because you’re freaking out,” he informed her.

“I am not freaking out,” said Kate.

Oh, but she was. She absolutely was. At night, she walked the floors and stared out the window, often staying up so late she could see the lights of Seattle’s ferry terminals go out after the last boat came into the dock. That was the time she felt most alone and most frightened. That was when Kate the eternal optimist gave way to Kate in the pit of despair. If she had any interest in drinking, this would be the time to reach for a bottle. L’heure bleue, the French called it, the deep-blue hour between dark and dawn. That was when her relentlessly cheerful façade fell away and she engaged in something she hated—wallowing. This was her time to reflect on where she’d been and where she was going. This was when her lonely struggle to raise Aaron felt almost too hard to carry on. By the time the sun came up each morning, she snapped herself out of it and faced the day, ready to soldier on.

“We should get stuff marked with the WIC sticker,” Aaron advised, pointing out a green-and-black tag under a display of canned tuna.

She put back the can of albacore as though it had bitten her. “Why on earth would you say that?”

“Chandler told me his mother gets tons of stuff with WIC. Women, Infants and Children,” he explained. “It’s a feld … fed … Some kind of program for poor people.”

“We are not poor people,” Kate snapped.

She didn’t realize how loudly she’d spoken until a man at the end of the aisle turned to look at her. It was the same one she’d stared at in the parking lot, only he was much closer now. Beneath a five-o’clock shadow, she could make out a strong, clean jawline. He had traded the shades for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, one side repaired with duct tape. In the split second that she met his gaze, she observed that his eyes had the depth and color of aged whiskey. But duct tape? Was he a loser? A nerd?

She whipped around to hide her flaming cheeks and shoved the cart fast in the other direction.

“See?” Aaron said. “This is how I know you would never quit your job. You get too embarrassed about being poor.”

“We are not—” Kate forced herself to stop. She took in a deep, calming breath. “Listen, bud. We are fine. Better than fine. I wasn’t getting anywhere at the paper, and it was time to move on, anyway.”

“So are we poor or not?”

She wished he would lower his voice. “Not,” she assured him.

In reality, her salary at the paper was barely a living wage, and the majority of her income came from the Seattle rental properties left to her by her father. Still, the job had defined her. She was a writer, and now that she’d been let go, she felt as though the rug had been ripped out from under her. “This means we get to spend the whole summer together, just the two of us.” She studied Aaron’s expression, spoke up before he turned too forlorn. “You got a problem with that?”

“Yeah,” he said with a twinkle of mischief in his eye. “Maybe I do.”

“Smart aleck.” She tugged the bill of his Seattle Mariners baseball cap down over his eyes and pushed onward. Lord, she thought, before she knew it, her little red-haired, freckle-faced boy would be as tall as she was.

The storm of his mood struck as it always did, without warning and no specific trigger. “This is stupid,” he snapped, his eyes narrowing, the color draining from his face. “It’s going to be a stupid, boring summer and I don’t even know why I bothered to come.”

“Aaron, don’t start—”

“I’m not starting.” He ripped off his hat and hurled it to the floor in the middle of the aisle.

“Good,” she said, trying to keep her voice emotionless, “because I have shopping to do. The quicker we finish, the quicker we get to the lake.” “I hate the lake.”

Hoping they hadn’t attracted any more attention, she steered the cart around him and fumbled through the rest of the shopping without letting on how shaken she was. She refused to allow his inability to control his behavior control her. When would it end? She had consulted doctors and psychologists, had read hundreds of books on the topic, but not one could ever give her the solution to Aaron’s temper and his pain. So far, the most effective solution appeared to be time. The minutes seemed endless as she worked her way up and down the aisles, ignoring him the whole time. Sometimes she wished she could get into his head, find the source of his pain and make it better. But there was no Band-Aid or salve for the invisible wounds he carried. Well-meaning people claimed he needed a father. Well, duh, thought Kate.

“Mom,” said a quiet, contrite voice behind her. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll try harder not to get all mad and loud.”

“I hope so,” she said, her heart quietly breaking, as it always did when they struggled. “It’s hurtful and embarrassing when you lose your temper and yell like that.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” he said again.

She knew a dozen strategies, maybe more, for where to go with this teachable moment. But they’d just driven three hours from Seattle, and she was anxious to get to the cottage. “We need stuff for s’mores,” she said.

Relief softened his face and he was himself again, eager-to-please Aaron, the one the teachers at his school saw so rarely. His storms were intense but quickly over, with no lingering bitterness.

“I’ll go,” he said, and headed off on the hunt.

Some practices at the lake house were steeped in tradition and ancient, mystical lore. Certain things always had to be done in certain ways. S’mores were just one of them. They always had to be made with honey grahams, not cinnamon, and the gooey marshmallow had to be rolled in miniature M&Ms. Nothing else would do. Whenever there was a s’mores night, they also had to play charades on the beach. She made a mental list of the other required activities, wondering if she’d remember to honor them all. Supper had to be announced each evening with the ringing of an old brass ship’s bell suspended from a beam on the porch. Come July, they had to buy fireworks from the Makah tribe’s weather-beaten roadside stand, and set them off to celebrate the Fourth. To mark the summer solstice, they would haul out and de-cobweb the croquet set and play until the sun set at ten o’clock at night, competing as though life itself depended on the outcome. When it rained, the Scrabble board had to come out for games of vicious competition. This summer, Aaron was old enough to learn Hearts and Whist, though with just the two of them, she wasn’t sure how they’d manage some of the games.

All the lakeside-cottage traditions had been invented before Kate was born, and were passed down through generations with the solemnity of ancient ritual. She noticed that Aaron and his cousins—her brother Phil’s brood—embraced the traditions and adhered to them fiercely, just as she and Phil had done before them.

Aaron came back with the crackers, miniature M&Ms and marshmallows.

“Thanks,” she said, adding them to the cart. “I think that’s about it.” As she trolled through the last aisle, she noticed the guy in the John Deere cap again, studying a display of fishing lures. This time Aaron spotted him, too. For a moment, the boy’s face was stripped of everything except a pained combination of curiosity and yearning as he sidled closer. The guy hooked his thumb into the rear pocket of his pants, and Aaron did the same. The older he got, the more Aaron identified with men, even strangers in the grocery store, it seemed.

Then she caught herself furtively studying the object of Aaron’s attention, too. The stranger had the oddest combination of raw masculine appeal and backwoods roughness. She wondered how much he’d overheard earlier.

Snap out of it, she thought, moving the cart to the checkout line. She didn’t give a hoot about what this Carhartt-wearing, mullet-sporting local yokel thought of her. He looked like the kind of guy who didn’t have a birth certificate.

“Aaron,” she said, “time to go.” She turned away to avoid eye contact with the stranger, and pretended to browse the magazine racks. This was pretty much the extent of her involvement with the news media. It was shameful, really, as she considered herself a journalist. She didn’t watch TV, didn’t read the papers, didn’t act like the thing she said she was. This was yet another personal failing. Thanks to her late unlamented job, her work had consisted of nothing more challenging than observing Seattle’s fashion scene.

People magazine touted a retrospective: “Reality TV Stars—Where Are They Now?”

“A burning issue in my life, for sure,” Kate murmured.

“Let’s get this one about the two-headed baby.” Aaron indicated one of the tabloids. Kate shook her head, although her eye was caught by a small inset photo of a guy with chiseled cheeks and piercing eyes, a military-style haircut and dashing mustache. American Hero Captured by Terrorist Cult, proclaimed the headline.

“Let’s get a TV Guide,” Aaron suggested. “We don’t have a TV.”