Kevin said, “Like worms! They have ‘work’ in the ground.”
This simple science—earth science—the little boy had gotten from Reno. Very gratifying to hear your words repeated with child-pride.
From the mother Reno knew that their now-departed father had often behaved “unpredictably” with the children and so Reno made it a point to be soft-spoken in their presence, good-natured and unexcitable, predictable.
What pleasure in being predictable!
Still, Devra was frightened. She’d dropped her play shovel in the dirt. Reno saw that the little girl had enough of helping Daddy with the terrace for the time being. “Sweetie, go see what Mommy’s doing. You don’t need to dig anymore right now.”
Kevin remained with Daddy. Kevin snorted in derision, his baby sister was so scaredy.
Reno was a father, again. Fatherhood, returned to him. A gift he hadn’t quite deserved the first time—maybe—but this time, he would strive to deserve it.
This time, he was forty-seven years old. He—who’d had a very hard time perceiving himself other than young, a kid.
And this new marriage!—this beautiful new family small and vulnerable as a mouse cupped trembling in the hand—he was determined to protect with his life. Not ever not ever let this family slip from his grasp as he’d let slip from his grasp his previous family—two young children rapidly retreating now in Reno’s very memory like a scene glimpsed in the rearview mirror of a speeding vehicle.
“Come to Paraquarry Lake! You will all love Paraquarry Lake.”
The name itself seemed to him beautiful, seductive—like the Delaware River at the Water Gap where the river was wide, glittering and winking like shaken foil. As a boy he’d hiked the Appalachian Trail in this area of northeastern Pennsylvania and northwestern New Jersey—across the river on the high pedestrian walkway, north to Dunfield Creek and Sunfish Pond and so to Paraquarry Lake which was the most singular of the Kittitanny Ridge lakes, edged with rocks like a crude lacework and densely wooded with ash, elm, birch, and maples that flamed red in autumn.
So he courted them with tales of his boyhood hikes, canoeing on the river and on Paraquarry Lake, camping along the Kittatinny Ridge where once, thousands of years ago, a glacier lay like a massive claw over the land.
He told them of the Lenni Lenape Indians who’d inhabited this part of the country for thousands of years!—far longer than their own kind.
As a boy he’d never found arrowheads at Paraquarry Lake or elsewhere, yet he recalled that others had, and so spoke excitedly to the boy Kevin as if to enlist him in a search; he did not quite suggest they might discover Indian bones that sometimes came to the surface at Paraquarry Lake, amid shattered red shale and ordinary rock and dirt.
In this way and in others he courted the new wife Marlena, who was a decade younger than he; and the new son, Kevin; and the new daughter who’d won his heart the first glimpse he’d had of her—tiny Devra with white-blond hair fine as the silk of milkweed.
Another man’s lost family. Or maybe cast off—as Marlena had said in her bright brave voice determined not to appear hurt, humiliated.
His own family—Reno had hardly cast off. Whatever his ex-wife would claim. If anything, Reno had been the one to be cast off by her.
Yet careful to tell Marlena, early in their relationship: “It was my fault, I think. I was too young. When we got married—just out of college—we were both too young. It’s said that if you ‘cohabit’ before getting married it doesn’t actually make any difference in the long run—whether you stay married, or get divorced—but our problem was that we hadn’t a clue what ‘cohabitation’ meant—means. We were always two separate people and then my career took off…”
Took off wasn’t Reno’s usual habit of speech. Nor was it Reno’s habit to talk so much, and so eagerly. But when he’d met a woman he believed he might come to seriously care for—at last—he’d felt obliged to explain himself to her: there had to be some failure in his personality, some flaw, otherwise why was he alone, unmarried; why had he become a father whose children had grown up largely without him, and without seeming to need him?
At the time of the divorce, Reno had granted his wife too many concessions. In his guilty wish to be generous to her though the breakup had been as much his wife’s decision as his own. He’d signed away much of their jointly owned property, and agreed to severely curtailed visitation rights with the children. He hadn’t yet grasped this simple fact of human relations—the more readily you give, the more readily it will be taken from you as what you owe.
His wife had appealed to him to be allowed to move to Oregon, where she had relatives, with the children; Reno hadn’t wanted to contest her.
Within a few years, she’d relocated again—with a new husband, to Sacramento.
In these circuitous moves, somehow Reno was cast off. One too many corners had been turned, the father had been left behind except for child-support payments.
Trying not to feel like a fool. Trying to remain a gentleman long after he’d come to wonder why.
“Paraquarry Lake! You will all love Paraquarry Lake.”
The new wife was sure, yes, she would love Paraquarry Lake. Laughing at Reno’s boyish enthusiasm, squeezing his arm.
Kevin and Devra were thrilled. Their new father—new Daddy—so much nicer than the old, other Daddy—eagerly spreading out photographs on a tabletop like playing cards.
“Of course,” the new Daddy said, a sudden crease between his eyes, “this cabin in the photos isn’t the one we’ll be staying in. This is the one—” Reno paused, stricken. It felt as if a thorn had lodged in his throat.
This is the one I have lost was not an appropriate statement to make to the new children and to the new wife listening so raptly to him, the new wife’s fingers lightly resting on his arm.
These photographs had been selected. Reno’s former wife and former children—of course, former wasn’t the appropriate word!—were not shown to the new family.
Eleven years invested in the former marriage! It made him sick—just faintly, mildly sick—to think of so much energy and emotion, lost.
Though there’d been strain between Reno and his ex-wife—exacerbated when they were in close quarters together—he’d still insisted upon bringing his family to Paraquarry Lake on weekends through much of the year and staying there—of course—for at least six weeks each summer. When Reno couldn’t get off from work he drove up weekends. For the “camp” at Paraquarry Lake—as he called it—was essential to his happiness.
Not that it was a particularly fancy place: it wasn’t. Several acres of deciduous and pine woods, and hundred-foot frontage on the lake—that was what made the place special.
Eventually, in the breakup, the Paraquarry Lake camp had been sold. Reno’s wife had come to hate the place and had no wish to buy him out—nor would she sell her half to him. In the woman’s bitterness, the camp had been lost to strangers.
Now, it was nine years later. Reno hadn’t seen the place in years. He’d driven along the Delaware River and inland to the lake and past the camp several times but became too emotional staring at it from the road, such bitter nostalgia wasn’t good for him, and wasn’t, he wanted to think, typical of him. So much better to think—to tell people in his new life, It was an amicable split-up and an amicable divorce overall. We’re civilized people—the kids come first!