My father takes off his loafers and lines them up side by side in military formation. “Race you across,” he says, grinning at us, and starts hopscotching his way expertly across the field. He’s been coming here since he was a kid. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” he shouts over his shoulder. He looks so happy, carefree, and it makes me happy. Anna kicks off her sneakers and races out into the field behind him, competing for the far side. I follow behind her, laughing, wind in my face, towel streaming out behind me like a banner. The cows move and munch around us, their swayed backs gently rocking, oblivious to the young girls rocketing past.
2:00 P.M.
The road to Black Pond is almost invisible, the center strip overgrown with wild grasses so high that as we drive, they brush the underbelly of our car, a sound like wind across a prairie. Ahead of us the road turns, forks, forks again, and again, before dead-ending at a broken split rail fence. Beyond the fence is a faint trail. I climb out of the car and follow behind Peter sharply downhill, dodging piles of coyote scat, gray with rabbit fur and thistle, to a little sand beach. Black Pond is the smallest kettle pond in the woods—a place only “Woods People” know about. Our pond is wide and clear. Its beauty is in its size, its mile-long expanse of pristine blue, the sweep of sky. This pond is older, wiser, wizened, as if it holds too many secrets. A bottomless watering hole surrounded by dense forest, that lives half of its day in shadow.
The beach is undisturbed, thick with pine needles. No one has been here in a while. When I was a child, this was a place to bring picnics. A place for a special outing. And each time we came, we had to remind ourselves which branch of the road to take, which fork. It was easy to get lost on the way. Once when I came here with Anna, there was a naked couple on the beach having sex. The woman was lying on her back, enormous thighs spread wide, the man rutting on top of her. There was something obscene about it. Not the sex, which frightened and fascinated me, but the way her body squished out on the hard ground like uncooked dough, and the way she didn’t seem to care if we saw them. We had backed away, racing for home, giggling in shame and delight.
Peter and I sit down on the bank. He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket. Lights it. “Do you remember the first time you brought me here?”
“Our very first summer.”
“I still think it may have been the most romantic moment of my life.”
“Well, that doesn’t say much for the rest of our life together.”
Peter laughs, but what I’m saying is true. I had brought him here for a late-afternoon swim. Later, when we made love on the beach, I suddenly remembered the naked couple, the woman’s legs wide open, the fleshiness of it all, and I’d moaned loud enough to make the pond echo. Peter had come then. I have always known there was something bad in me, a secret perversion I have tried to hide from Peter. That I hope he will never see.
“Look,” he says, taking my hand, “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For this morning. For last night. I know you were upset that I didn’t read Anna’s poem.”
“I was upset in the moment. But Jonas read it beautifully. And reading it for her every year is all that really matters.”
“Still, I’m sorry. I acted like a boor, and I regret it.”
“We’d all had too much to drink. You have nothing to apologize for. I promise.” Nothing.
“Just now in the car when I put my hand on your thigh, you flinched.”
“I didn’t flinch,” I say, hating myself for the lie. “In fact, I wish you would do that more often.”
He stubs his cigarette out in the sand, looks at me with skepticism, as if making sure I’m telling him the truth. “Well then, good.” He leans in, kisses me. His lips taste of smoke and salt. A few feet away from us, a box turtle slides off a log into the shallows.
I stand up, start stripping off my bathing suit. “What about that swim?” I cannot have sex with him now. Not after what I have just done with Jonas. I cannot wrong him this way, too, humiliate him. He grabs at me, but I dash away—dash for the water that I hope will purify me. Peter chases me, naked, flapping. I swim, breathless, toward the shadowy side of the pond, trying to stay ten strokes ahead. But he is faster, stronger, catches me from behind, pleased.
“Got you.” He presses his erection against my rubbery back.
“Rain check,” I say, wriggling out of his hold. “We really do need to get home.”
“Five minutes won’t make a difference,” Peter says.