At the water’s edge, we back down the creosote planks of what was the seaplane dock. Our lake is really a long, open area where twenty miles of marshlands drain into the Coubillion River. The water is brackish, the color of chicory coffee, when it empties from the wetlands, but now, as the tide pushes seawater in from the Gulf, it is gray and cloudy with a shimmer to its surface, like hot fish broth.
Teeg drops the tailgate, and he and my father both hitch their pants before beginning the work that will erase the last traces of our past lives, that will be a final step on our year-long road to lame-o.
But before the first slot gets the heave, my mother appears in flower-print overalls, carrying a roll of duct tape and smelling of the heavy lemon wax she’s been using to seal her cherry buffet, sidebar, and secretary. In the past two days, she’s put down carpet runners, draped the antiques, and packed her grandmother’s Rutherford crystal and Celine service for twenty-four.
She walks right by me, moving with deliberateness past the pylons. When she passes Jim Green, his awful bulge clearly outlined in those shorts, she lifts a hand in disgust and says “please.”
She halts before Teeg and Berlin.
“It is enough,” she says, “that my dining hall has suffered under green felt, fake gold trim, velvet wallpaper, and spangled flooring. It is sufficient that thirty men are to tromp through our house in short order. But that’s my friend’s china off the end of this pier, and you’re not throwing your foolish gaming machines atop it.”
Teeg closes his tailgate, carefully latches it. He tips his cap and nods to her.
“Don’t you sheep me, Doctor,” my mother says. “I know all about you. I was at those officers’ parties, if you’ll remember. I could read a German newspaper, too.”
We hear another plane, faint and pitched, high in the bright haze above.
“Smile for the birdie,” my mother says, but nobody looks.
I cross my arms and turn toward the water. The straight-on sun gives an illusion of great depth, and for the first time I wonder what else is at the bottom of that lake.
* * *
Six hours later, we are again on the end of the dock, this time in lawn chairs, fishing for dinner. The sun shines low at our backs, casting our outlines on the water. The lowering tide is draining the marshes, drawing currents rich with shrimp, bait crabs, and fingerlings into our lake. This is the time when gar and specs swim up the river to hunt in fast schools. But we’re after redfish today, and Berlin has decided that light, temperature, and water-clarity all dictate the use of the simple gold spoon. Randy has joined us, and we cast flashing spoons in turn.
To keep from crossing lines, we have established zones: Berlin casts to the left of the dock, near shore, at ten o’clock; Teeg casts at eleven; my mother fishes over Mrs. Teeg’s china at noon; I aim for one o’clock, while Randy must fish over the submerged slot machines we ended up dumping along his bank. The air holds the rotty smell of raw cane, and we drink Junior League tea, sweet enough to fur your teeth.
Randy and I have our shoes off, our pants cuffed, so when I swing my legs, our feet brush. Randy keeps snagging his lure. He tugs his line all different directions.
I’m afraid we’ll pull up some strange article of Mrs. Teeg’s, a brooch or brassiere she’s been missing out in California.
“You say you’re from Kansas City?” Berlin asks Randy.
“It’s Oklahoma.”
“Certainly, Oklahoma City,” Berlin says. “Do much fishing in Oklahoma, son?”
“I can’t say I got the opportunity.”
Teeg asks, “So, what do they do for kicks in Oklahoma?”
“Terrorism, sir.”
“Oh, boy,” Teeg says and chuckles. “He’s good. This boy’s good.”
“Don’t mind him,” I tell Randy. “He’s pretending he’s drunk for old times’ sake.”
“You know what the problem with the ATF is?” Teeg asks Randy.
Randy casts again, reels, pays great attention to the motion of his lure.
Teeg says, “The problem with the ATF is they eat too much mustard.”
Berlin laughs.
“Boys,” my mother says. She lifts a hand for silence, then squints as she feels the fishing line between her fingers. She cocks her head, eyeing the tip of the rod, before jerking it back to set a hook in the first redfish of the day. I dig through the tackle until I find the balloons and begin blowing up a medium-sized red one.
Berlin lands the fish and pays out six feet of line from his rod. Using the hole from the hook, he carefully feeds the line through the fish’s lip and knots it, so that the fish has a stretch of monofiliment tied to its mouth. On the other end of the line, I tie the balloon and we let the fish go.
“What are you doing?” Randy asks.
I look at him funny. “Fishing,” I tell him.
The balloon wanders haphazard into open water until it falls in with the rhythm of its school, and we watch it slowly backcircle around the lake.
There’s no use casting until the school heads our way. Berlin rattles the ice in his tea. Teeg whistles long and loud for Beau, calling him for the feast of fish guts ahead. I put my hand on Randy’s shoulder. He gives me this look, where, instead of shy, he looks older, like he’s not sure he wants to get caught up in me because I’m only sixteen, like he thinks I’m going to be a lot of work.
When the balloon hunts its way around to the dock again, we know there are dozens of redfish, seventy or eighty, ghosting by under the surface. We all cast in volleys, the fish striking left and right.
Randy loses a lure on the submerged slot machines. He has to cut his line.
He’s a little offended at the ease with which we land fish, I can tell. He keeps swiveling his head when someone’s rod bends under a new weight. Every time a fish is netted and thumped with an oar, he shakes his head.
“What the heck does my line keep snagging on?” he asks.
“Don’t be a sorry sport,” I tell him.
In ten minutes, we have a dozen fish in a five-gallon bucket. Berlin starts cleaning, while Teeg skins, scales flying everywhere like lost contact lenses. I help my mother fold chairs because it’s getting dark.
Randy still holds his pole. He nods toward the lake, where a balloon skirts through the current. “What about that fish?”
We all just look at him.
* * *
The next night, Saturday night, I stand in front of the mirror, upstairs, in my old bedroom. You can smell the old sheets, standing yellowy on the bed. On the walls hang my father’s worn-out flight maps — Cuba, Cayman, the Dominican Republic — places that captivated me when I was younger. In the mirror, my lips are Soft Chenille, my nails, Cosmopolitan-7.
It’s past seven thirty and still no Randy. I know he never promised 100 percent to take me to the Sadie Hawkins’, and for about a 5 percent chance, I have been to my mother’s boutique in Lafayette, where homosexuals rubbed my scalp and conferred on how long my roots should burn. For maybe 10 percent, I let two Vietnamese women paint my toes, bought polka-dot stockings, and then doused myself — down my neck, along the backs of my arms — with Petit-Chou.
Who knows if there will be a raid tomorrow. Downstairs, I hear my mother loading china into the trunk of her Lincoln for the trip to Aunt Clara’s, and from various rooms in the house come the sounds of Berlin opening all the old wood-frame windows and propping them up with dealers’ canes. I lift the folds of my black skirt and let them fall, watching the sheer silk return to my legs in the mirror. The truth is the side slits point to my hips. I undress, folding everything into a garment bag, and put on a jersey and jeans before going down into the garage to pull the cover off the Super Sport.