Sage Harbor Cove

Lake Michigan isn’t an ocean, isn’t a sea. You can’t tell that by looking at it from the shore. The mind wants to think of a lake as some body of water you can see across. You can’t see the other shore from one side of Lake Michigan. It’s confusing for kids, the bright ones anyway, the kids that are inquisitive, that start to work things out for themselves, like Angus.

It’s easy to romanticize the boy that became my step-son. It’s easy to remember him as a skinny, intellectual runt that got beat up at school. He wasn’t most of those things. Intellectual, yes; but I ascribe my own failings to Angus when I’m not careful.

It’s too easy to project my own flawed memories onto him. I blame early onset dementia, an inappropriate joke for someone with a history of senility in his family. Virg gives me a look when I do it, not of disapproval, something more subtle. It’s a bit of pity mixed with exasperation. It’s a most female of looks. Yes, that’s sexist, old dog, new tricks, and all that. At least, I notice it’s sexist.

“How big does something have to be to be a sea?” Angus asked, looking out Lake Michigan from the floor to ceiling windows of our cabin.

We’re only there for a week, the first full week I spent with Angus and Virginia. Virg and I had dated for close to a year, but this is the first trip all three of us were on. It’s odd. I never had children of my own. I wasn’t quite sure how to treat this inquisitive boy, so I treated him like anyone else.

“It’s arbitrary, I suppose. There’s a sea in Palestine you can see across, lots smaller than Lake Michigan. There are seas that are just parts of oceans.” Was Galilee in Palestine? I could see the gears turning behind his brilliant blue eyes, absorbing, processing, wondering.

It’s the wonder that struck me. I always saw kids as ignorant little ankle biters. Angus can be that way, but not usually when he’s with me. Around other kids, he turned into something different, something more ‘kid-ish’ if that’s possible. I noticed it when his friends were over. His vocabulary stunts, his introspection hides, and he’s just another kid. Even with Virginia, he’d change the bright kid I know him to be into something dimmer.

“The Sea of Michigan,” he proclaimed. “Part of the Great Ocean.”

“Well, no. Oceans are oceans. Unless you’re Lettie Hempstock.” My joke was lost on him. I wondered for how long. Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane might be something Angus would enjoy. I wasn’t sure what sorts of things scared him though.

“Oh.”

“Are you ready to go into town?” Virg asked as she came down from the loft. Her hair was still wet from the shower. Long, soaked, deep red, the strands wouldn’t be this compliant once they dried. It was nice to see her relax, to skip the primping and hair drying she usually invests in. I liked her better like this, out of her suits, in jeans still mint from lack of use. She’d never be completely casual, but she tried. That’s for me. I know that and appreciate it.

“Yeah!” Angus hopped up, ready for an adventure.

The drive wasn’t long. We could have walked if we’d wanted to. We needed groceries, so we took the car.

Sage Harbor Cove is almost the Martha’s Vineyard of Wisconsin. If more rich people knew about it maybe it would be. As it is, it’s a place for those of us still clinging to ‘upper middle-class’ to get away, when we can. The streets are lined with parked Prisus’ and Leafs, the trappings of environmentally conscious soccer moms and hipsters. The shops are an odd mix of upscale kitsch and grimy holes that have been there before gentrification.

A little bell over the door of ‘Doug’s Market’ rang as we walked into the dimly lit excuse for a grocery store. It’s bigger than it looks from the sidewalk, space opening up in a TARDIS-esque illusion. It wasn’t bigger on the inside, it stole space from its neighbors. It was dark warrens with boxes and vegetables crammed in. I nodded at the girl behind the counter. Virg grabbed what passes for a cart, more of a hand-basket on wheels.

“Can we get macaroni?” Angus asked. The kid obsessed over low-country food, to the consternation of his mother. Virg came from money, rebelled against it to marry Angus’ father, and returned to form when that was over. It was a source of tension between us. One I hoped didn’t derail us.

“We’ll see,” Virg said. I could hear her wheels turning too. Oh, we’d get macaroni all right, but it won’t be Kraft Dinner. That’s the compromise. I’d do my best to keep eggplant out of it.

“Pick out a wine,” Virg directed me.

“Sure.” I resisted the urge to respond, ‘As you wish.’ Angus wasn’t the only one that modified his self in the presence of his mother.

The selection was slim, local, with a few boxes of red that reminded me of Pampered Chef parties and gaggles of giggling grandmothers, not some sinister sisters sniftering sangria. I’m kind of terrible at this. Wine is not my thing. I’m not so low as to grab a cube of Bud Light, but it’s a close thing. I pondered a bit, trying to decide what the appropriate expense was to impress Virginia.

“Nice kid you two have,” a crazy old guy said, sidling up to me.

“Thanks.” Was twenty too much? Twenty felt like too much. Five was too little.

“You folks in town for the Michy sighting?” The geezer asked.

“Michy?” I asked, distracted from my task.

“Yeah, there’ve been sightings lately; of our lake monster.” Oh. That.

I hadn’t given it much thought when we’d planned the week. Sage Harbor Cove is the home of Lake Michigan’s version of the Loch Ness monster. I always figured it was a couple of old coots, like this winner, who took grainy pictures of stumps in the water and stirred up the tourism. It hardly seemed necessary now that Sage Harbor was a playground for the overly mortgaged.

“Oh. I guess I did hear something about that,” I said.

“Lake Monster?” Angus asked, his eyes gone wide. Where the hell had he come from?

“Michy, the Lake Michigan monster!” The old guy said, finding a willing listener. “She comes to Sage Harbor Cove every spring, as she migrates from the south up north.” I rolled my eyes.

“Cool,” Angus said.

“What’s cool?” Virg asked walking up with a full cart. At least, it had the telltale blue box of Kraft Dinner. I guessed Angus won that battle.

“There’s a lake monster! We have to go see it, Mom!”

“I didn’t know anything about this,” I defended myself. Virginia gave me that look.

“You usually see her at sunset, when the wind blows in from the lake,” the old guy said. I could see the twinkle in his eye, the humor at catching us, instilling the sense of the monster in Angus.

“We’ll see,” Virg said. “Did you get the wine?” I grabbed the first bottle that presented itself, ignoring any price tag. It could have been Dom Paragon for all I knew.

“Yep. Got the wine.” She gave me the look again.

“Remember, sunset, when the wind blows in off the lake,” the old guy said. Angus bounced.

“There’s no such thing as lake monsters,” Virginia said in the car, on the way back to the cabin. I’m not sure why she wanted to shut this line of inquiry off. Her ex-husband was prone to flights of fancy. He filled Angus’ head with stories of aliens that terrified the kid. He still slept with the light on because of it, afraid the Greys would come to abduct him in the night.

“How do you know? It could be a dinosaur.”

“The dinosaurs died millions of years ago,” Virginia said.

“Nun-uh. There’s still dinosaur fish in the ocean. Michy lives in the water. She could be a dinosaur.”

Virginia gave me a pleading glance. I don’t know why she wanted to squash the idea of a lake monster, but she looked desperate.

“That old Guy’s just looking to attract tourists,” I said. I didn’t want to refute the validity of lake monsters.

“You don’t think there’s a lake monster either?” Angus said.

I could hear the hurt in his voice, a hurt that crushed a little bit of my soul. His mom was past that crushing, that pain when you took away childish dreams. She’d had eight years to get over that pain. I’d known Angus for months. I was still feeling out how this dad thing worked.

“I didn’t say that, but I think that old guy has ulterior motives.” Words like ‘ulterior’ were lost on other eight-year-olds. Not Angus. I was bringing him into an adult discussion, not quite patronizing.

“I guess,” Angus said, deflated. I hated myself. I hated that Virginia put me up to it. I really hated myself for thinking about how she’d make it up to me tonight.

“I’m just afraid he’ll turn out like Henry,” she said, later that night. The cool air off the lake blew in on us, in the loft. The breeze tickled the hair on my leg, dangling off the little twin bed that we’d explored. The lake smelled fresh, amazingly. You’d expect a lake to have a funk left from rotting fish or some other organic thing. Maybe Angus wasn’t wrong when he called it the Sea of Michigan.

“It’s not like we’d find a lake monster, not a real one anyway.” I ran my fingers through her unruly locks, combing them gently.

“I know. I just — I want him to grow up to be smart, not some ignorant hick.”

The moonlight played in the blinds as they rattled, perturbed by the breeze. Her hair looked black in the dim light, a glorious mop of frazzles that mirrored her mind, her worry, that she hid so well. She was different when Angus wasn’t there to impress. None of us are our true selves for anyone I suppose. We’re all many facets. Who we show the different ones to reflects on us.

“He’s smart Virg, smarter than he lets on. He’s kinda like you in that way,” I kissed the top of her head, resting on my shoulder.

“I hope so,” she said, without much enthusiasm.

She was tired. It’d been a long day, not all grumpy. Grilling steaks on the deck had been fun, dancing and singing and carrying on. Angus even joined in, though he didn’t know the words to Even Flow. My Edie Vedder impression made them laugh. The flannel shirt helped.

I hope so too, I thought as she fell asleep. I’d have a crick in my shoulder in the morning. I didn’t care.

“You don’t get to pick the wine anymore,” Virg mumbled in her sleep.