Rob showed up at Quetico Outpost during one of the busiest weeks of the season, the second Mrs. Blain in tow.
They just popped in on their way to Toronto, to see Rob’s daughter and first grandchild. For Christy’s sake, Annette tried not to resent the intrusion, but it wasn’t easy. The new wife, Janice, was only a few years older than Christy and bubbled over with girlie enthusiasm for everything. Her effervescence was punctuated by stylish fashions—she wore a designer suit in the wilderness—and breasts bigger than watermelons.
“Thing is,” Rob was saying, Janice gushing a wet red lipstick smile at her as he talked, “The White Otter is full tonight, and we were wondering if you had a cabin available . . .”
In that moment, the truth about her ex-husband loomed before her in a tableau with the stark reality of a political cartoon. Until that moment, she had defined him by his intellect, his passionate speech, his good looks, and by his flaws—his penchant for skirt chasing, his inability to adapt to life on the Canadian Shield. But as he stood beside his child bride and panhandled for a free room from his ex-wife, she realized that he was defined by shallowness and insensitivity. The realization didn’t make her mad. It made her sad.
“Check with Christy on that,” she said. “She’s running the cabins this summer. She’ll know if we have something open.”
“How’s she doing?” Rob tried to get a conversation going, to feel better about the situation he had created. If he hadn’t become a political science professor, he would have been a used car salesman or maybe a politician.
“She’s great.” Annette gestured to the office. “She’s in there. So is your granddaughter. If you’re lucky you might get to change a dirty diaper.” Annette suppressed a chuckle. Rob had been terrified of shit-filled diapers at first sight. Indeed, he had to force himself to even hold his infant daughters, what with the puke and pee and poop they emitted.
The only thing worse than stinky kids was the vast, silent wilderness, with its dark, howling winters, summers of ferocious insects, and total absence of culture. No high-powered political movements, no poetry readings. He lasted two years in the Canadian Eden he had picked for his asylum. After two years he decided it was time to get a master’s degree in Toronto, eleven hundred miles away. After that, he came back for a month or so in the summers—enough to get Annette pregnant twice. The master’s segued into a PhD, then to a faculty position. When the U.S. offered a conditional amnesty for draft dodgers, Rob worked fast to nail down a professorship in Minnesota and moved south with the alacrity of a migrating duck. His objections to America’s foreign policies had been long since forgotten, along with his marriage vows.
The irony didn’t escape Annette. Canada had been his idea, but it was her country. She wasn’t going back.
Christy had a cabin for them, of course, and Annette invited them for dinner so that her daughter and granddaughter could share a little more time with them. As they sat, Rob asked if they had any wine. He wanted to propose a toast. Not enough to bring the wine, of course.
Annette opened a bottle of British Columbia red, not allowing herself to be offended at her ex-husband’s attitude. When the wine was poured, Rob toasted his first grandchild with so much gusto you’d have thought the child had just emerged from the womb. Annette dutifully raised her glass, sipped, and began eating.
Rob prattled about university life, the book he was working on, the articles he had published. Annette was silently astonished that the man could possibly think this tripe was of interest to the people he had left behind many years ago.
When he finally paused to take a bite of food, she asked Janice what she did.
“I’m an interior designer,” she said, blinking her eyes like a movie star in front of bright camera lights. “I do mostly commercial, but I’ve been getting some big residential jobs lately.”
“Tell them about the Gatsby house,” said Rob.
Janice smiled indulgently. “Busby, honey. Gatsby was a book. I think.” She laughed at her own joke.
“The Busby house is an ultramodern mansion, just fantastic. Eight bedrooms, ten bathrooms, a ballroom, tennis courts . . .”
Annette zoned out as Janice rattled off the conspicuous excesses of the house and detailed the colors and fabrics that she used to frost the patrician cake. Thank God she had escaped that drivel, she thought. Better a week of minus thirty cold than a day of festooning the wealthy in a gilded embryo.
“That’s very impressive,” Annette said when the woman finished. “It sounds like your career is really taking off.”
“Yes,” Janice said, wrinkling her little nose with practiced cuteness. “But not for long. We’re trying to get pregnant, and I want to stay home with the baby for a few years.”
Out of the corner of her vision, Annette could see Christy freeze, her fork halfway to her mouth, staring in shock at Janice.
“Well,” said Annette. “I hope Rob does as well by you as he did by me in that department. There may be better husbands, but I can’t imagine better kids.”
Janice stared at Annette, wanting to say something, unable to summon words. Rob had turned scarlet and was staring at his plate. Christy was politely trying to suppress a grin.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” said Annette, raising her glass high. “To fertile ovaries, men with high sperm counts, and kids we can love forever. The older I get the more I realize the rest of it is just the flotsam and jetsam of life.”
After dinner, when Rob and his wife departed for their cabin, Annette worked on the computer, updating the Quick Books for the canoe outfitting partnership while Christy put her daughter to bed. The house fell silent until Christy returned to the living room.
“He’s weak. He’s just a weak man.” Christy’s words filled the hushed room like rolling thunder. Annette stopped her work.
“Who are you talking about?”
“Dad,” said Christy. “But it applies to Aaron, too. It makes me wonder if there are any strong men anymore.”
“I couldn’t say for sure,” said Annette. “It seems like there are quite a few around here, but most of them are married. And who knows what goes on behind closed doors.”
The room went silent again as both women mulled their thoughts.
“The other thing, . . . you always have to remember that we’re all weak in some way.”
“How are you weak?” Christy asked.
Annette shared a bemused smile. “Chocolate. This place. Wanting to get laid now and then. I think we could put together a list, not that I care to.”
“How is this place a weakness?”
“Oh, you know,” Annette sighed. “As long as I’m here I can never have romance in my life, and I’d like that. I never thought about it before, but after Gabe started writing, it came back, the wanting to love someone that way. There aren’t any eligible men here. I suppose there aren’t many for a woman my age anywhere else either. But I couldn’t live anywhere else now anyway.”
“What about Gabe? What if he’s the one?”
Annette stood and stretched. “He’s not. Our time came and went a long time ago.” She said it and she meant it, but as she pictured his face in her mind a small smile played at her lips.
“So why are you seeing him?”
“It will be fun. And interesting. He’s still a good-looking guy, he’s smart, and he knows things I don’t know. Just talking to him used to be fun, and, judging from his e-mails, it probably still is.”
Christy sat next to Annette. “You know, what you were saying about never finding romance here? I wonder if that’s me, too.”
“I wonder, too,” said Annette, putting an arm around her daughter. “It might be different for you. You’re younger and there are a few young single men around here and we get customers coming through. So maybe something good will happen. But it might not. You might need to think about relocating at some point. I’d miss you like crazy, you and Rebecca. But it would be worse to have you stay here for me and miss out on real intimacy and a real partner.”
Annette poured the last dregs of the dinner wine into a wineglass, and the two women stood on the patio, sharing the wine, looking out on the lake as the sun cast long shadows from the far horizon. The air was settling into the usual evening calm, the lake’s surface like glass.
“When I see the lake like that, I always think of our first canoe trip with you,” said Annette. “You were just a few months old and Rob thought I was crazy, but I wanted you to grow up with this place in your blood. So we went. Just four days. We paddled from Beaverhouse to Batchewaung. It was bright and sunny when we put in, but we didn’t even get off Quetico Lake before the rain started. It rained for forty-eight hours. We were worried to death about you, but you did just fine and so did your sister. Then, on the third day, the rain stopped, and when we paddled into Batch, the park turned into paradise. The sun was shining, no wind. Not a sound. Not a whisper. Midafternoon and the lake was like a mirror. You could see the clouds in the water so clearly you couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky started. It was like the canoe was floating in the clouds. It was one of the most amazing moments in my life.”
“What did Dad think of it?” Christy asked.
“He said it was like nature was reading a poem to us,” said Annette.
“He said that?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, he once was someone who believed in good causes and had a strong aesthetic sense.”
“It’s not easy to picture.”
“Don’t be too hard on the old boy, Christy. We all do the best we can.”