The lake is quiet tonight. I can see the slightest ripple as the cool breeze dances with the dragonfly and he tiptoes across the glassy surface. The sound of an owl hooting low in the pine near the edge of the rocky beach draws my attention. His mournful cry skips across the water like a phantom. The other voices are quiet tonight, satisfied. The owl insists on knowing the answer to his monosyllabic question, but no one’s answering. The other voices know, but they’re keeping it to themselves.
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I close my eyes and lean my head back. A deep breath of fresh crisp, dusk air fills my lungs. I’ve always loved the peace of the lake: its silence, its ability to hush the voices inside, to calm my jangled nerves after only a few moments.
The first time I noted the lake’s mystical ability to heal my broken psyche was near the beginning of this summer. Linda was in one of her typical moods, and as was her ritual, she was nearly finished with her nightly triplet of vodka martinis. I remember turning my back on her and walking out here to the deck, overlooking the lake.
That night was so clear, but there was some unexplainable tension in the air. I can’t really explain it but it was completely different from the tension inside the cabin. It was electric, buzzing. I remember wondering if a storm were brewing, or if some other atmospheric disturbance could have been responsible for such an exhilarating feeling of expectation.
Just being there, staring out on this mirror of water, of life, waiting for whatever phenomenon was expected, made my wife’s drunken ravings insignificant. She screamed at me through the glass, shattering her cocktail glass with the muffled tinkle of shards against the wall behind my head, but all of it was stuffed inside a huge invisible pillowcase, swallowed by the soothing silence of the lake. Her ranting was overshadowed by my excitement as I shivered with anticipation.
I’ve found an excuse to come out here on the deck each evening since, usually accompanied by a glass of good Bordeaux or Sauternes. Sometimes Linda would follow me, quiet as a dormouse and just as offensive, to lean silently against the stained and mossy wood of the cabin, sipping at her infernal drink and whispering to herself about me. These nights were always the worst, because her constant whispering and sipping would drown out the lake’s drunken silence. I happily began to hate her on one of those nights, and closed my eyes in a heartfelt prayer of gratitude when she went back inside for a tissue.
As my nightly routine evolved into ritual I would wait for that feeling to return. That thrill in the air, the anticipation. The feeling that somehow the lake wanted to say something, to speak to me. I was intrigued, but not truly surprised when the voices of the lake finally began to coalesce into words. I’d probably been hearing them in the white noise for months by then, but they had never become so clear until that night. The voices were so soothing now, so relaxed and friendly, it was like no other conversation I’d ever experienced.
Night turned into day and day into night again. The voices returned with stalwart precision, and I was always there to soak them in. They renewed me on a daily basis, lifting my spirits and calming my nerves. I would sleep like a baby on the nights I came in from the deck with their sound still whispering in my ears.
It was only when Linda interrupted my reverie that I began to hear the first hint of anger in the voices of the lake. In the beginning it seemed more an annoyance, really. A little louder, a little faster, then silence. I began telling Linda to leave me alone, wanting more than anything, needing to hear the lake speak to me again, fearing each moment of silence would stretch to an eternity. When she would finally leave the deck, within moments of her closing the back door, the voices would return, as relieved as I was to be rid of her.
This happened half a dozen times before she finally decided to heed my advice. She was usually in bed, snoring softly, when I came in from my evening conversations. The bedroom was getting colder night by night.
