HE DANGLED his toes in the lake, watching them, wondering about the protuberance of his life. He pictured himself a contorted nail in a door frame; thick, cream-like paint covering him as though to help him blend in. Each layer achieving the opposite. A gob of paint, dried on the head of a nail begets more gobs of paint until someday one wouldn’t be able to tell where it began.
A splash. Off to his right, some shouting. Sounds awakened him, startled like fireworks in a still, orange-blue evening sky. She approached.
“Good evening, Claire,” he said.
“Family quarrels,” she said, “are bitter things. They don’t have rules. They’re not like aches or wounds.” She absorbed in the smoke of her cigarette; then, exhaling, let it wrap her face like ribbons. “They’re more like cuts in the skin that won’t heal because your body is out of material.”
“Out of material?” he asked.
“Not my words,” Claire replied. “I read it somewhere and it stuck with me.”
She sat next to him, removing her sandals and letting their feet dance in the water. To their right, the splashing continued. Boys and girls. Nieces and nephews. Parents, aunts, and uncles watching from the house, drinking beers, smoking. The men stood around the grill, pushing tubes and patties of meat around the fire-blackened grill.
“Desmond, this isn’t going to last long.”
His mind played a montage of their relationship. Photographs of smiles. Mountains and canyons in the background, their faces the contrast, the focus. Desmond didn’t know why, but whenever he got sentimental he always pictured himself and Claire holding hands. The final picture in the album. Two pinkies, entwined.
“What do you mean?” Desmond asked.
“This peace and quiet,” Claire said. She glanced behind them. They could feel shivers in the dock. Footsteps. She turned back to Desmond. “Shall we jump in then to avoid conversation?”
“Of course.”
They slid from the dock into the green water. Desmond had two fears: One--complete and utter darkness; the second--touching the mossy bottoms of lakes or ponds.
Claire arose from the surface, easily pushed up from the bottom and dove further out into the lake, away from the dock. Desmond, however, arose, floating for a moment to capture his breath, then sunk slowly below the surface. He kicked with his legs and pushed hard with his arms. But in the same breath, Claire move three times as far.
“Desmond!” she called. “I’m beating you!”
Before Desmond could respond, the man on the dock did. “It’s not a contest! You kids these days, always turning things into a competition. When did having fun start meaning someone had to win something?”
“Hello Fred,” replied Desmond.
The old man stood at the end of the dock, holding a can of ginger ale. It was the cheap, off-brand. Uncle Fred was always one to save a penny.
“What are you kids running away from me for anyway?”
Desmond turned from him, locking a glance with Claire. She smiled intuitively. With her arms like paddles in the water, she stepped slowly toward Desmond.
“We weren’t running!” Desmond explained. He glanced at Claire, whispered, “We were swimming.”
“Come ‘ere, come ‘ere, I’ve got a question for you,” Fred said.
Claire slowly pushed through the murky water back to the dock. Desmond, however, did a side and back stroke, so as to not touch the mossy belly of the lake. Upon reaching the dock, Claire had no problem putting her bare feet on the algae’d ladder. Desmond watched, dreading the feel of slime, imagining what it would feel like if his foot slipped and green goo entrenched itself under his toenails. So instead, with one hand paddling to keep himself afloat, he raised the other in the air. “Who wants to pull me out?” he asked, half-joking.
Claire, his secret keeper, said, “I’m not strong enough for that.” She smiled, daring him to be brave.
Uncle Fred quickly set down his soda and proclaimed, “I’m your man!”
If Desmond had to choose the possibility of moss under the toenails or skin-on-skin contact with someone of which whom he shared no intellectual commonality, he would definitely choose the former. However, he had not expected the latter to be an option. Quite the contrary. He expected this:
Desmond: “Who wants to pull me out?”
Claire: “I’m not strong enough for that.”
Uncle Fred: “I’m quite old, use the ladder.”
What Desmond forgot was that Uncle Fred was not your typical annoying relation. Despite his thriftiness and advantage-hunting, which, most might assume was a revelation of selfishness, Uncle Fred was always the man to help, even if it meant his own embarrassment or the exposition of his own ignorance. This quirky trait is what led them to their current predicament.
“Maybe,” Desmond said, “maybe I can just pull myself out.”
“No, no, come on! It’s no trouble at all. Here.” Fred squatted on all fours. After making sure he was braced, he reached out a hand to Desmond. “Now, we’ll count to three. You do a bit of jumping up and down to break inertia; then, when I say ‘three,’ I’ll pull and you jump and we should get the whole kitten in the field.”
“Kitten in the field?” Claire asked, bemused. Uncle Fred was full of these little sayings no one had ever heard before.
“I believe its Chinese. All right now--one...”
Desmond said, “Wait, just wait a moment.”
Fred explained to Desmond, “Now you’ve got to bounce if you want to break inertia.”
“But that means I’d have to--Well you see, I can’t touch the bottom.”
“Nonsense, it’s barely three feet. See the water marker?” Uncle Fred pointed to one of the dock’s legs upon which was glued a depth chart. The water splashed on a three.
“Two....”
Toes. Moss. Seaweed. Fish. Snails. Slime. Desmond thought of his corpse, green and distended, half-floating at the bottom of the depths.
“Three!” Fred grabbed him, Desmond pushed up from the lake’s underbelly, and seconds later, he stood, dripping on the dock.
Fred smiled. “Good work!”
Claire handed Desmond a towel. The sweet smell of it contrasted with the fishy smell on his skin. He was thankful. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said.
“Moss doesn’t bite,” replied Claire.
Desmond pushed the towel over his body. He loved the way water beaded on his skin, and then, by simply pushing a cloth, the beads were gone. He wished it was magic, but knew otherwise. He imagined himself microscopic, watching the interweavings of thread break the surface tension of each water droplet. Then, like mercury, the water would jump as one into the threaded cage. The water wasn’t disappearing, it was going from high density to low density. The water clung to what didn’t have it.
“Tell me more about this ‘Kitten in the field’ thing,” Claire said to her Uncle.
Desmond was mostly dry. Towels wrapped around their waists, he and Claire sat next to her Uncle.
“It’s an old Chinese proverb I read online. In times of drought and famine, the only thing left to eat would be the household cat. But you knew times were good if you could put your cat out in the field.”
“That makes perfect sense,” replied Claire, smiling.
“But enough of this small talk,” Uncle Fred went on, “I’ve been meaning to ask the two of you something...” He paused, as if waiting for affirmation of his assumed permission to place his quandary.
Claire made big eyes at Desmond, so he said to Fred, “Okay...”
Fred nodded and took a sip of his ginger ale. “Being an unmarried couple,” he said, “what’s it like seeing arguments like the one that was just had.” He motioned behind them, to the house. “Is it--is it hard for you to see that? Does it make you wonder if you don’t want to get married? I mean, you’re both in a relationship, I assume because you want to get married.”
“You want to know if it’s hard for us to stay together after seeing married couples have an argument?” Claire asked.
“Well, more or less, yes,” replied Uncle Fred.
“Married people fight,” Claire said.
It was Desmond’s belief that those who fancied themselves wise had a symbiotic relationship with the feeling of being an outsider looking in. It was the feeling of being foreign, and only this feeling, that also gave them the idea that they possessed wisdom. In turn, their wisdom made them feel like an outsider. And so, two feelings existed, both needed for the other to exist.
“They do fight, yes,” replied Fred.
“So why would that make either of us not want to get married?” Claire asked.
“Married couples often get divorced. Married couples often argue. Do you think there’s a correlation?”
Claire got out a cigarette, lit it, and exhaled smoke like there was fire inside her.
“Are you married?” Desmond asked. Uncle Fred gazed out to the water. The wind blew. Above them, a wind sock danced in the breeze.
“Of course you know I am,” Fred replied.
“When you argue with your wife, do you fear you will get divorced?” Desmond asked.
“No.”
“Then why would it be different for us?”
“Ah, because it is different. No two people can share the same experience. Just because I do not fear divorce does not mean that you do not fear it.”
Feelings do not make one wise.
Desmond smiled. “And of course,” he said, “you are right, because I do fear it. Claire and I aren’t married, not yet, but every argument we have I think about my fear of breaking up. My fear of losing her. It is this fear that makes sure I do just the opposite. So in answer to your question, seeing arguments the married have does not make me fear marriage, instead it makes me look forward to the challenge of it.” He made eye contact with Claire. She smiled.
“Good! Very good!” Fred laughed. He clapped frivolously in the air. “I couldn’t have said it better myself!” Standing, he finished his ginger ale, and retreated from the dock.
Desmond looked to Claire. They smiled. “Hand me a cigarette,” he said. They sat together in the calm wind, the green lake bouncing with the rhythm of life. They dangled their toes in the water. Desmond looked at his feet. They were clean and he was happy. Claire grabbed his hand and they sat together, pinkies entwined.
