The Girl of the Lake Read online

  “This new classmate,” he said, sitting with me before dinner one night. Always we had candles. Always some music, a full CD picked by one or the other of us for appreciation, anything from Olmec tribal chants to Italian opera to Neil Young to, say, Alabama Shakes or Bat for Lashes or one time Li’l Wayne (okay, Father hated this: too violent, too disrespectful to women, sort of filthy, my mistake) to that day’s selection, which was shakuhachi flute music from Japan, more silence than tones. Then talk, when the music was done, while he cooked: “Son, I think the reason she is dark is because somewhere back there she is partly Afghan.”

  I smiled at his joke. Claire Hesterly was Nordic blonde, lissome and fair, the band of her blue underpants visible when she bent to retrieve her New Testament: she was not Afghan. But I’d mentioned the girl’s tan, and he wanted to hear more.

  I said, “Oh, Father. She’s wrecking the curve. She’s in all the AP classes with me. She’s matched me on four calculus quizzes running. She can manipulate an integer like no one I’ve ever seen. And she beat me in bio: 110 on the mids to my 108!”

  “Anything over a hundred is a hundred, no?”

  “And chem, the same. A run for my money. And I know I shouldn’t put much stock in appearance, but she’s exquisitely beautiful. She looks like someone in a shampoo commercial.”

  “And not stuck-up?” One of my expressions.

  “Normal as wool carpet!” One of his.

  “Kali Hammad, you must ask her out.”

  “Jeffrey Brick has already moved in. They’re going out.”

  “Ah, the estimable Brick, in and out. She’ll grow tired of him. He’s a great athlete, and he has been kind to you, but he’s no scholar.”

  “Well, then, Eddie Rennsalear is right behind Brick. And Eddie has not been kind to me.”

  “She loves science, from what you tell me. Ask her collecting.”

  “Oh, Baba! Insects?”

  He gazed at me fondly, said, “Or ask her to the ancient Pueblo ruins.”

  “She’s more like snowboarding at Taos.”

  “But, Kali, son, you don’t know how to snowboard!”

  “You are very swift, Papa.”

  We waited in companionable silence. Baba seemed to count his breaths: he was checking his mental lexicon. What had I meant by swift? He retrieved a bowl from the high cabinet, unwrapped his best knife, chopped parsley fine, drained couscous into the sink, unwrapped a small packet of meat, chopped eggplant, chopped tomatoes, chopped onions, didn’t expect help: I was the cleanup crew.

  At length he said, “I just read a new study. Question: how do the many male capuchin monkeys who are not alpha males pass down their genetic material?”

  “They don’t, Father. That’s what makes the troupe strong.”

  He raised his considerable eyebrows, raised his chin, dropped a skillet on the stove, clicked a flame to life beneath it, poured a little oil in. “To the contrary,” he said. “All and only alpha-male genes would limit the pool to the point of disaster in only a few generations. Was the hypothesis. Finding? In fact, the alpha male’s genes in any given troupe were not predominant. They were not even majority. The sub-alpha males, alpha’s direct competitors, had no distribution at all. Sub-alpha would be your friend Eddie Rennsalear, and that sad case Freddy Orco. So who, given that evidence, do you think was ‘getting’ the young women of the monkey troupe?” Baba paused for effect, just a beat too long, gazing at me amusedly. The oil in his pan began to sizzle. He lowered the fire.

  “Who!” I said.

  “The whole cadre of submissive males, that’s who. They stayed entirely out of the alpha competition. Instead, they spent all their time with the females, engaged in female activities, grooming with them, helping with the young, looking for food. Huddling against weather, against the night. And very often while the alphas were battling for control of their harems, the submissive males were quietly mating, every day, all day, every night, all night, with any female they fancied.”

  I ate my hamburger, Baba’s concession to my Americanized tastes. He always sautéed the ground beef in small squares with dried fire peppers and eggplant chunks, wedges of tomato, all of it served with tabouli, never French fries, because he could not stomach potatoes, chapati to be eaten on the side or used as a utensil. Hamburger buns made him snarl. I sipped my Coke. Coke he approved of for its caffeine, a kind of tea; he had once thought it was an Afghan product. I poured more ketchup. He approved of ketchup because somewhere in the deep past it had been Chinese, and he was very fond of the Chinese, who had birthed our religion, which was Buddhism.

  Baba looked at me long with great affection, spread his fingers on the table, his nightly gesture before I did the clearing. It was nearly time for my homework hours, nearly time for his evening study. He said, “Invite Claire Hesterly to Bandelier National Monument. We will show her the ancient Pueblo ruins. Invite her sisters, too. Not Saturday night—that’s for Brick and Eddie. Try Saturday morning. But first talk with her. Always talk with her. Talk with her Monday. Ask her how things are going with Brick. Listen very carefully to every word she says. Talk to her Tuesday. Ask about her sisters, their progress in school, sweet things they have said and done. Talk to her Wednesday. Ask about her dreams, both those in the night and those for the future. Pluck a stray thread off the arm of her sweater, compliment her eyes, any makeup she uses. No, please listen! On Thursday, talk about ancestral Pueblo ruins. Make your invitation—nothing to be nervous about. It’s only cliff dwellings. And, most important: invite her sisters. And I will pack a purely beta picnic lunch for all of you and serve as chauffeur.”

  MEANWHILE BABA WAS BEING investigated by agencies unknown for reasons unspecified: he was a foreigner with a security clearance during a season of suspicion, an Afghani who worked at a secret lab, and overnight that had become enough. Three men in suits and tight haircuts, accompanied by his surprised section chair, had made a humiliating visit to his lab and taken away his computers and then (with his permission—they had no warrants), had taken away the numerous computers at our own dwelling, including the laptop that contained my homework and all my many school projects. Since in that way it involved me, Baba filled me in. He was convinced it all had something to do with Claire’s father, one Morton Hesterly, who’d been a top-down appointment, dropped into the lab from above with high-level security clearances. Now I understood Father’s keen interest in Claire. My father’s new associate had arrived with his family in tow only six weeks before, was ostensibly a materials technician from somewhere in Maryland. But his hands were always clean, my father pointed out.

  CLAIRE HAD ALL THE answers in calculus the next day, a beautiful thing. I had only to correct our teacher, Mr. Givens, once—he was forever dropping cubed roots in the tertiary wave sets. Claire gave me a look longer than necessary. Her hair was combed straight. She wore a smart red jacket, black jeans. Gathering my courage, I walked her to study hall, which was half indoors, half out. If you wanted to work or were on detention, you stayed inside; if your grade-point average was above a B, you could go outside. Claire’s GPA was exemplary, but she elected to study. So I did, too, sat across from her at the large table and read my new library book: a photo compendium of women’s hairstyles. I concentrated on the construction of the French braid, a fine skill for the beta male, but also spent time over the diagrams for the swing braid, the pretzel braid, the double-double and triple-double braids, the Russian interlocking braid, the Chinese bun braid, the warrior braid.

  “Kali,” she said, teasing me. “What kind of book is that?”

  “I’m trying to learn a French braid. I always wanted to be able to make a French braid. In case I see my mother again. Don’t you think it’s the queen of braids?”

  I showed her the page, its careful photo diagrams, the long-necked, exquisite model, who was in no way more attractive than my interlocutor.

  “You can’t learn to braid hair from a book,” Claire said pleasantly. There was real kindness in her. Kind
ness, in fact, poured from her eyes, served as apology for her earlier teasing tone.

  “Well, it’s a start.”

  She went back to her book, and I to mine, but only briefly before she looked up. I could feel the warmth of her regard, breathed in it for several seconds before looking up as well.

  Claire said, “Where is your mother?”

  And I told her, the first time I had told anyone anything whatever about Mother Hammad’s struggles.

  Claire bit her lip and listened closely. “Not fair,” she said when I was done.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS her turn to share. She told me that she had had to move a dozen times since junior high school: horrible. She reeled off the names of a dozen towns, a dozen high-school mascots—Tigers, Sharks, Wreckers, Robins. And so forth, including American schools in various foreign capitals—Eagles and Warriors and Generals. She’d been able to keep a friendship or two going via Snapchat and Instagram, but mostly it was very difficult to be or to have a friend or maintain a steady romance. Her sisters were her best friends, sadly. Because both of them were quite “bent,” as she put it. Antonia, one grade behind us, was actually famous for her weirdness, also for climbing the water tower during recess, also for calling Mrs. Chichester, the French teacher, “Mrs. Chimp-chester,” repeatedly, without a blink from our simian instructor. There was a sister named Judith, too, still in junior high. “My phone-in therapist says they’re damaged from all the moves. Also, my mother has been in a major depression since Judith was born. Also, my father is basically a Nazi.”

  “How did you come out so normal?”

  “Oh, Kali. I didn’t. I use studying to keep from noticing how crazy I am.”

  “But, Claire, Claire Hesterly, you’re the sanest person I’ve ever met.”

  Instead of complimented, she looked crestfallen. She said, “My father says I’m unreliable.”

  I only looked at her—her lineaments much more complicated than I’d until that moment known, her beauty so mutable: first this face, then that, finally her own face, something beyond simple physicality, something that made her soul seem accessible to me. I noted a trace of makeup aglitter on her eyelids. I’d have to ask about that, about how one went about keeping glitter on the eyelids, for what could be more beta to know?

  “Unreliable,” I said, a quiet joke, since her father was so completely, obviously wrong. I thought of my father’s advice and reached nonchalantly across the table to brush a crumb off the arm of her sweater, neatened her stack of books.

  “Something in your teeth,” she said kindly.

  I took care of that problem with my tongue, unembarrassed. Then, after a very long time of quietly being together with her across the study hall table, I said, “Is Jeff Brick fun to date?”

  And every complication left her eyes. Even her posture shifted: happiness. “He is so dreamy,” she said. And then she went on, painful for me, a lot of stuff I knew about him, a few things I didn’t: he was a kind of god, apparently. The team had won yet another game over the weekend, and Claire was effusive: “Did you see that pass? He’s like a pro quarterback, Kali.”

  I had not seen the pass.

  She said, “Forty-seven to seven!”

  “Almost unfair!” I said, catching her tone.

  “But I’ll tell you a secret.” She seemed to consider her impulsiveness, gave me a long look. “The boy can’t kiss.”

  A kind of heat penetrated my chest. “Anyone can kiss,” I said. Bravado, purely theoretical: I myself had never actually kissed anyone but Baba, and perhaps my mother, no doubt my mother. “You just put your lips together and etcetera.”

  “No, no,” she said laughing. “Not at all.”

  “Not at all,” I said, the heat from my chest reaching my face.

  “And he’s clumsy in other ways as well.”

  “Other ways?” I said ingenuously, then realized what she was saying. Something about sex.

  Claire blushed very hard from her clavicles upward, skipped elegantly past our inadvertent subject: “Plus he’s always got practice. And the team studies together! Can you imagine studying with Freddy Orco?”

  I kept a neutral face, said, “Are you going to the game this Saturday?”

  “It’s all the way down in El Paso. Not a chance.”

  Beta heart pounding, I said, “I have an idea for something to do.”

  CLAIRE WAS SEVENTEEN, LIKE me. Her sister Antonia was the famously sullen redhead one grade behind us, just turned sixteen. The mystery sister, Judith, strawberry blonde, was thirteen. All the same height, and the same height as me. Enough looks to go around in that family! The girls came giggling out of their house—an oversize development federal just like ours—rushed for the car as if they were making a prison break. Their mother came out into the sunlight behind them, just as good looking as her daughters but sadder, the forever-trailing wife. Then the spy came out, Mr. Hesterly, and he was all smiles, too, like a steel girder in a good mood.

  “Devil,” Baba said under his own big smile, waving back from the driver’s seat of our sensible minivan. And I understood suddenly that my old man was exacting a kind of preemptive revenge, and not only helping me, subtle man. Of course Mr. Hesterly thought his mission was secret from one and all. And doubtless he thought this innocuous playdate was a way to get closer to his target. If Father was right, perhaps the spy would tip his hand, or overplay it. I climbed out to wave to the oncoming females. Mrs. Hesterly gave me a long look. Oh, was her life sad. Her husband narrowed his eyes at her.

  “How nice of you!” she cried.

  “My pleasure,” I cried back.

  “Home by dinner!” Mr. Hesterly called.

  Young Judith yelled, “Shotgun,” and cut behind me, climbed in the front seat I’d vacated. I found myself buckling in between Claire and Antonia in the rearmost bench seat (the middle one having been removed by yours truly, and with some difficulty, for the scientific-equipment transfers my father was always making). Claire smelled of sweet soap, Antonia of the Walmart perfume counter, overwhelming olfactory competition, myself in the crossover zone. Baba found my eye in the mirror, nodded with pleasure for me, everyone’s plan working perfectly. And we were off, an hour’s drive to the National Monument. “I like that skirt,” I said to Antonia, after my father’s advice. Her thighs were freckled, hairless, thoroughly naked.

  “Santa Fe,” she shot back. “Grrl Power Boutique.”

  “It’s mine,” Claire said. “Actually. From like grade school.”

  “Actually, it’s not yours at all, Cruella.”

  “And I like yours, Claire,” I said. “I like the length.” Past her knees.

  “You can braid my hair first,” Judith called back, bouncing in her seat.

  So. Claire had been talking about me. The ensuing silence in the wayback was finally broken by her: “Are you ready for the bio test?”

  AT BANDELIER WE CLIMBED out of the car, the only car in the large parking lot. The ranger station with its restrooms was closed, October being the beginning of off-season for the legions of summer RVs. We hiked along the wide trail into the mouth of Frijoles Canyon toward what informational signs told us was Tyuonyi, an Ancestral Pueblo Peoples’ site, excavated in the early twentieth century, perhaps two hundred rooms arranged in a closed circle. Claire walked with Baba, talked with him seriously about her aspirations: she wanted to be a surgeon. “All that cutting!” said my father, disapproving. But then, he was never happy when humans played God.

  Judith ran off ahead in her jumper—she looked like a very tall child, but built exactly like her sisters—high boobs, narrow hips, long legs. Antonia walked with me a few hundred paces, long enough for me to come up with words to say, but before I said them (something about how I liked the red and green of the ponderosa pines high against the blue of the sky), she suddenly bolted, ran off to catch her little sister. That Grrl Power skirt was no bigger than a paper towel. Her thighs, her hips, her shoulders were on another level of development from Judith’s. Anton
ia was the beauty of the troupe, certainly. Her hair flowed about her shoulders; her speed was breathtaking. I slowed to walk with Claire and Baba.

  Continuing their conversation with a mere nod at me, Claire intoned bookishly, “The population here is now thought to have been in the thousands. It all crashed at once.”

  “Disease?” my father said.

  “Possibly drought,” Claire said.

  No, Claire was the beauty of the troupe, and she’d studied up on Bandelier.

  “But no one really knows,” I said: we were all good students.

  We came to the central village, a great circle of a ruin, once a sort of apartment house, a communal warren of small rooms in a band around an elliptical courtyard containing three stone-lined pits in perfect circles.

  Judith was already walking through the complex as through a maze, ignoring the signs: STAY ON PAVED PATH. “You’d have to walk through everyone’s room to go to bed!” she observed.

  Antonia was nowhere in sight.

  “I believe they climbed in through holes in the roof,” Father said. “And perhaps you need to climb out, young lady.”

  The circular pits were kivas, I knew, religious places.