“What were the musicals about?”
“Just things that had happened during the summer. We’d stay up here for two and a half, three months a year, so there were hijinks galore, and not only among the kids—the adults cut loose, too. Get a few G and T’s in them, and all bets are off. You know those pink flamingos, the lawn ornaments that are popular with white trash?”
When I had been a freshman in high school, our neighbor Mrs. Falke had acquired a pair and set them in her yard. But I merely said, “Uh-huh.”
“Well, Billy and Francie Niedleff buy a couple in town and put them in front of our place. After we figure out who did it, Maj wants revenge, so one night under the cover of darkness, she attaches them to the bow of Mr. Niedleff’s sloop. Mrs. Niedleff returns them to our yard a few nights later, and they’re wearing Cubs baseball caps, these little hats she made out of cardboard, because Dad just hates the Cubs. And so on and so forth for the whole summer, until the shenanigans culminate with Dad going into the lav one night, and what does he find standing in the tub but a real live flamingo.” Charlie chuckled. “I tell you, I’m not sure if Dad or the bird was more terrified.”
“But what did you do with it—you didn’t keep it, did you?”
“Oh, they took him to the zoo down in Green Bay the next day. He managed to take an epic crap before then, but hey, he was in the bathroom. Can you blame him?”
Charlie was still chortling when I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t mention our engagement to your family this weekend. Is that all right? We could invite your parents and my mother and grandmother to lunch in
Madison and tell them all together.”
Charlie turned toward me, grinning. “Having second thoughts?”
“It feels more respectful not to tell either family first,” I said. “Plus, it might be too much to say to your parents, ‘This is Alice, and by the way, she’s my fiancee.’ ”
“You’re not worried they won’t like you, are you?”
Not entirely honestly, I said, “No.” We were passing tall, skinny white birch trees, and along with my anxiety about the impending introductions, I had started to feel the restlessness that arises when you know you’re nearing water but it hasn’t yet come into view. The drive from Madison was almost four hours, and it was past three o’clock as we turned onto a series of smaller roads eventually leading to a dirt one, which we bumped along for three miles. Then, at last, I saw Lake Michigan through the trees, still distant but blue and sparkly in the sun. Charlie pulled off the road and drove onto a stretch of lushly green grass dotted with sugar maples, evergreens, and irregularly spaced white-shingled buildings of various sizes. I took the largest one to be the clubhouse.
“Halcyon sweet Halcyon,” he said, and he began honking in rapid spurts. He pointed to the big building. “That’s the Alamo, which is where Maj and Dad and some of the grandkids sleep. They might put you in there, but it’s likelier you’ll be in one of those.” He was pointing at the smaller cottages. “That’s Catfish, and Gin Rummy, and Old Nassau. And you see that one?” He grinned. “Smoked my first joint there, and nearly burned the place to the ground. It’s called Itty-Bitty.” He stuck his head out the window, and I saw that someone had emerged from the biggest house and was approaching us, someone who strongly resembled Charlie except with darker hair. Charlie drove directly toward this person—he was probably going fifteen miles an hour, not fast but not all that slow, either, given the proximity—and the closer Charlie got, the wider this guy’s smile grew. He walked with complete nonchalance, and at the last second, when I was already wincing, Charlie slammed on the brakes, and the guy called out, “You’re so chickenshit, Chas!”
Charlie parked the car next to a wood-paneled station wagon—there were five cars pulled up near the back of the house—and the other man approached my door, resting his forearms on the roof while peering down at me through my open window. “So you’re the reason none of us have heard from Chasbo in weeks,” he said. “Now I see why.”
“Back off, perv,” Charlie said, and there was a happiness in his tone I had not heard before, not quite like this. “Alice, meet my brother Arthur.”
We shook hands through the window. “I admire you,” Arthur said. “Not every woman is willing to go out with a retard.”
Charlie was out of the car by then, and before I really knew what had happened, he’d tackled Arthur from the side and they were rolling over and over in the grass, tussling and laughing. I opened the car door and stepped out. The smell, that sweet clean smell of northern Wisconsin—it almost made Halcyon seem worthy of its pretentious name. I looked around at the five buildings. I was pretty sure, though Charlie had not explicitly said so, that these structures represented only the Blackwells’ property, their compound, and not the entirety of Halcyon, as I’d thought when the houses had first come into view. With my own recent foray into real estate having taught me to think in such terms, I guessed that the largest house was five thousand square feet; three of the others were about eight or nine hundred square feet each; and the last, Itty-Bitty, couldn’t have been over two hundred. A bed of periwinkles grew around the base of an elm tree, and the grass was such a rich green that I was tempted to take off my shoes. I walked around the side of the big house. Perhaps twenty feet in front of me, a slate sidewalk was embedded in the grass, and beyond the sidewalk, past a sloping grassy descent of about forty yards, was a narrow rocky beach and then the water. A long dock extended into the lake. At the end of the dock, figures lay on towels and sat in folding chairs. Out in the water, there was a raft off which a person in red swim trunks jumped while I watched.
When I returned to the car, Charlie and Arthur were standing and they walked toward me, panting agreeably. “Tell me, Alice,” Arthur said, “is Chasbo’s impotence still a problem, or did he get that taken care of?”
“Cured by the same doc who treated your flatulence.” Charlie was grinning. “Super fellow.”
“Better gaseous than limp,” Arthur said, and Charlie replied, “Keep telling yourself that, ass-blaster.”
“Alice, be honest,” Arthur said. “Was it Chas’s silver tongue that won you over?”
Charlie set one arm around Arthur’s shoulders. “Everything I know, I learned from my older brother.”
They both were grinning the same grin, and Arthur said, “Welcome to Halcyon. You guys want a beer?”
We opened the trunk and carried our things toward the house—“I’m not sure where Maj is putting Alice, but we’ll stash her stuff in the Alamo for now,” Arthur said—and I held my purse and the basil plant (it now seemed officially cornpone, hippie cornpone), and Arthur took the suitcase I’d bought the previous winter from Dena’s shop, which was swirling pink and brown paisley vinyl with pink leather straps. As we reached a screen door at the back of the house, Charlie asked, “Who’s around?”
“Let’s see . . . Ed and John are out fishing with Joe Thayer, Ginger has a migraine”—Arthur raised his eyebrows
