With August came the long, breathless afternoons, the chestnut becalmed, waves shimmering mirage-like off the roofs of the cars. They were breaking records, according to the Jamestown station. Stalled, an inversion sat atop the Great Lakes like an overturned bowl. In Chicago five people had died, including a toddler forgotten in her car seat. Each morning the radio issued another heat alert for seniors and small children. They were to stay indoors and avoid exerting themselves, a pointless warning. It was too hot to golf, too hot to be out on the water. The lake was flat, the shallows choked with weeds. Henry wedged a racketing old box fan in the garage window, and still the sweat soaked through his Pirates hat. To keep busy he was replacing Emily’s rotted window boxes one by one, getting a head start on next year’s projects. She brought him glasses of ice water as if he might forget to hydrate, forcing him to stop work every so often and make the trek to the bathroom. Rufus didn’t move, panting where he lay, tongue lolling, leaving wet marks on the concrete. It was too hot to grill, too hot to drink scotch. For dinner they ate salads and rotisserie chicken from the Lighthouse. They turned in early, sleeping with their doors open and the attic fan barreling away, the whole house thrumming like the belly of a bomber.
The days were the same, the air thick, cicadas simmering in the trees. Arlene had a gel pack she froze and hung around her neck. She and Emily went shopping at Wegmans and came back raving about the air-conditioning. At dusk he watered the garden. Their tomatoes were monsters.
The irony was that it was cooler in Pittsburgh. Without the children, there was no reason to stay, but the idea of leaving was unthinkable.
When he was working at the lab, he saved his two weeks of vacation for Chautauqua. Even then, by the end he was itching to get back to the city. Now they spent the entire summer, and while he loved the cottage, he missed his workbench and his office at home, and their big bed. It happened every year. He could relax only so much without feeling lazy and aimless, and as the days passed, as predictable as the moon cycling through its phases, he found himself adrift in the muggy doldrums. He was sick of making the same window boxes over and over, sick of fighting the mice to a draw. He was paying for their important mail to be forwarded, and though Jim and Marcia Cole were looking after the house, and Dave Ferguson’s guys taking care of the grass, the idea that by his absence he was somehow falling behind haunted him, like Arlene feeling the need to prepare her lesson plans for the coming school year long after she’d retired.
When he couldn’t shake the thought, he sighed, taking in a deep breath and slowly releasing it as if he were deflating, a bad habit he’d picked up from Emily.
His impatience would fade, he knew, yet from time to time he caught himself gazing out the window, unfocused, his mind wiped clean. It took him longer than it should have to recall what he was doing, and why. He’d spent most of his life managing schedules and deadlines, it was only natural he should feel slack, lacking a tangible goal. He wanted to believe he was just daydreaming, but there was something unnerving about the blankness that descended on him. He worried Emily might walk in and think he was having a stroke. He hated this muzziness. Recovered, he attacked his work with total concentration, precisely measuring and marking his cuts with his father’s T-square, overcompensating for the momentary lapse as if it had never happened.
The heat wave broke, as the radio predicted, overnight, a thunderstorm waking him from a dream of skiing to the South Pole, making him go through the house room by room, closing the windows against the downpour. The next night it was cold enough for a fire. He shoved crumpled newspaper under the grate and sat back with his scotch, watching the first fluttering rush of flames.
“That’s nice,” Emily said.
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“You’re hired.”
A high moved in and stayed. The days were blue and fall-like, the nights cool and cozy with a fire going. It was their reward, Arlene reckoned, after how horrible it had been.
He thought his mood would change with the weather too, but he was still distracted. Rather than finish the window boxes, deliberately, at half-speed, he began to organize and put away what he could so the Tuesday after Labor Day, he had nothing to do but run the boat down to the Smith Boys and set out an array of sonic gadgets designed to repel the mice. He left the baits, just in case.
In the back of the Olds, Rufus curled up on a faded beach towel with his head down, already slobbering.
“You’re fine,” Emily said. “Go night-night.”
“Next stop Pittsburgh,” Henry said.
The day was bright, the gatehouse at the Institute busy. As they climbed the hills to the interstate, the lake spreading blue and glittering behind them, he agreed with her that it was a shame they had to leave.