The House Across the Lake(13)

I couldn’t fucking do it.

That was clear the moment I stepped onstage. Well, stepped isn’t the right word. I lurched onto the stage, swaying as if hit by hurricane winds. Then I blanked on my entrance line. Then stumbled into the nearest chair. Then slid off the chair and collapsed onto the floor in a drunken heap, which is how I stayed until two costars dragged me into the wings.

The show was halted, my understudy was brought in, and I was fired from Shred of Doubt as soon as the producers thought me sober enough to comprehend what they were telling me.

Hence the tabloids and the paparazzi and the being whisked away to a remote lake where I won’t publicly embarrass myself and where my mother can check in daily.

“You’re really not drinking, right?” my mother says.

“I’m really not drinking.” I turn to the moose on the wall, a finger to my lips, as if we’re sharing a secret. “But would you blame me if I were?”

Silence from my mother. She knows me well enough to understand that’s as much of a yes as she’s going to get.

“Where did you get it?” she finally says. “From Ricardo? I specifically told him not to—”

“It wasn’t Ricardo,” I say, leaving out how on the drive from Manhattan I had indeed begged him to stop at a liquor store. For cigarettes, I told him, even though I don’t smoke. He didn’t fall for it. “It was already here. Len and I stocked up last summer.”

It’s the truth. Sort of. We did bring a lot of booze along with us, although most of those bottles had long been emptied by the time Len died. But I’m certainly not going to tell my mother how I really got my hands on the alcohol.

She sighs. All her hopes and dreams for me dying in one long, languid exhalation.

“I don’t understand,” she says, “why you continue to do this to yourself. I know you miss Len. We all do. We loved him, too, you know.”

I do know. Len was endlessly charming, and had Lolly Fletcher cooing in the palm of his hand five minutes after they met. Marnie was the same way. They were crazy about him, and although I know his death devastated them as well, their grief is nothing compared with mine.

“It’s not the same,” I say. “You’re not being punished for grieving.”

“You were so out of control that I had to do something.”

“So you sent me here,” I say. “Here. Where it all happened. Did you ever stop to consider that maybe it would fuck me up even more?”

“I thought it would help you,” my mother says.

“How?”

“By making you finally confront what happened. Because until you do, you won’t be able to move on.”

“Here’s the thing, Mom,” I say. “I don’t want to move on.”

I slam the phone onto the receiver and yank the cord out of the jack in the wall. No more landline for her. After shoving the phone into the drawer of an unused sideboard, I catch a glimpse of myself in the gilt-edged mirror hanging above it.

My clothes are damp, my hair hangs in strings, and beads of water still stick to my face like warts. Seeing myself like this—a mess in every conceivable way—sends me back to the porch and the glass of bourbon waiting there. The ice has melted, leaving two inches of amber liquid swirling at the bottom of the glass.

I tip it back and swallow every drop.





By five thirty, I’m showered, dressed in dry clothes, and back on the porch watching the sun dip behind the distant mountains on the other side of the lake. Next to me is a fresh bourbon.

My fourth for the day.

Or fifth.

I take a sip and look out at the lake. Directly across from me, the Royce house is lit like a stage set, every room aglow. Inside, two figures move about, although I’m not able to see them clearly. The lake is about a quarter mile wide here. Close enough to get a gist of what’s going on inside, but too far away to glean any details.

Watching their blurry, distant activity, I wonder if Tom and Katherine feel as exposed as I did when I was inside that house. Maybe it doesn’t bother them. Being a former model, Katherine is probably used to being watched. One could argue that someone who buys a house that’s half glass knows being seen is part of the deal. It might even be the reason they bought it.

That’s bullshit, and I know it. The view afforded to residents of Lake Greene is one of the reasons the houses here are so expensive. The other is privacy. That’s likely the real reason Tom and Katherine Royce bought the house across the lake.

But when I see the binoculars sitting a few feet away, right where I’d dropped them earlier, I can’t help but pick them up. I tell myself it’s to clean them off. But I know it’ll only be a matter of time before I lift them to my eyes and peer at the opposite shore, too curious to resist a glimpse of the inner lives of a former supermodel and her tech titan husband.

The binoculars belonged to Len, who bought them during a short-lived bird-watching phase, spending a small fortune in the process. In his post-purchase speech justifying the expense, he talked about their insane magnification, wide field of vision, image stabilization, and top-of-the-line clarity.

“These binoculars rock,” he said. “They’re so good that if you look up at a full moon, you can see craters.”

“But this is for birds,” I replied. “Who wants to see birds that up close?”