Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet (classic fiction txt) 📕

They had gone camping in Joshua Tree one weekend, Susan and he, not so long after the accident, because they had to get out, they had to go anywhere, they had to escape, and it was the closest empty place they’d heard of. Casey was in rehab then—the physical therapy kind, not the drug-using. They’d driven east on the interstate out of L.A., through the miles and miles of industrial sprawl and car dealerships flying their advertising blimps in the gray, smoggy sky along the crowded freeway. Finally they pulled up outside the visitors’ center and sure, there was concrete, just like at home, the concrete parking lot; but beyond it there was sand and sand and mountains and sky, and there was air all around them, plenty of room to breathe. The spiky cactus-trees were everywhere, the low mountains, the campsites with gigantic boulders.

What he remembered now from that trip, besides the stars, was how they hardly spoke, he and Susan, they hardly talked at all. But it was not bad, it was not a measure of distance, or it hadn’t been back then. It was restful and good, peace in the wake of a long struggle.

Their borrowed tent had a transparent window in the top of it. He had lain there on his back at night, on top of his sleeping bag, and gazed out at the stars while Susan slept beside him. He thought they’d never looked so clear, and there had never been so many.

Casey would like this tree-house, he thought; Casey would love it here. She had looked into flying, flying in a glider. There was a program that could take her up in the sky. She hadn’t done it yet, but she still could. He would call her and say do it, do it. To know that lightness . . . it was not the running, not a vision of her once in a race, say, her slim young legs flying, though there had been times like that and he remembered them well enough. Field Day at school, when she was in the hundred-yard dash: he loved to watch her but she complained both before and after the race, even holding her purple ribbon. She did not like running. Hard to believe while he was watching her go, it so closely resembled joy . . . or flying a kite once, on a beach in Cape Cod, her feet kicking up sand on him. There were cliffs near them and the water was far too cold for swimming.

But that was not what distressed him, the memories of running. Only the simple memory of her face—her face without tension, without strain or grief.

“My daughter would like this,” he said.

“She would,” nodded T.

“I wish I could just take her—take her anywhere,” said Hal, with a rush of agitation. He saw Casey in flight, swooping. “Anywhere she wanted to be.”

He was staring out at the cruise ship. Its lights were like the lights of the ballroom in the resort—was it last night? No, the night before—dancing with Gretel. The nearness to the water made the lights blur and shimmy, part of the very same liquid.

“You know,” said T., and Hal realized T. was looking at him, reaching out to rest a thin hand on his arm, “she’s going to be all right.”

“I don’t know,” said Hal, but it came out like a sigh. Something about the guy’s bearing reassured him—his confidence, his certainty. He said Casey would be all right. So she must be.

“I promise.”

No need to move.

Only around the cruise ship was the water dappled with light; other than that it was blackness. Hal did not want to take a step, in case the platform broke beneath him or he fell off the edge, but this was fine for the moment. This was where he was now.

7

The boat was anchored on the east side, where no one would see it coming from the mainland. There was no dock there, only a narrow sandy path through the tangles of mangrove.

After a breakfast of instant oatmeal and water Hal followed T. along the path, ducking between branches. T. carried a canvas sack of his belongings slung over one shoulder. They had swum in the shallows on the other side of the island but the saltwater bath had not made T. seem any cleaner. He was still wearing the filthy painter pants, on which the pockets bulged.

“I have a razor, you can shave at the hotel,” said Hal to his back. “Before you get in touch with anyone. Because the cops, I mean if they see you like this, you know, the credibility issue.”

“You have to wade out,” said T. over his shoulder. “I recommend just leaving your shoes on. There are branches just beneath the surface, things that can cut.”

They emerged from the bushes with their feet already in the silty water; the roots of the scrub reached below the surface, long, thin vertical brown lines like wooden drips. Hal felt their knobbiness through the soles of his shoes. The cool water was around his knees now and his feet slipped in the mud beneath. He could see the boat ahead, a long, simple white shape with peeling paint.

“Here we go,” said T., and dropped his sack in. He climbed over the side and held a hand out to Hal. “Help?”

“I’m fine,” said Hal, and stepped in awkwardly, the boat rocking.

•

As the motorboat throttled down, nearing the beach, Hal realized they had an audience: Gretel. Gretel and the cornboys.

She was watching them from the swimming dock a few hundred yards away, standing on the sand in her blue bikini and shading her eyes as she looked out over the ocean toward them.

The cornboys, in overlarge sunglasses and a hot-pink double kayak, were paddling toward Hal and T.

Gretel raised her arm and waved.

“One of the Germans,” he told T., who was easing them into a slip. He waved back at her, trying