The Lake

The Lake Richard Mills (bio) In the middle of the afternoon—no, it's toward the end, just at the point where you should begin saying 'evening' but it's still warm and it's still light—my uncle very nearly kills them. He's drunk and unsteady, pouring more wine for the doctor and his wife. The two of them have been sitting on lawn chairs for two hours waiting for food, looking around to see if anything is going to be done, if there's a possibility of it happening. But there's no sign that dinner will be coming any time soon. In any case, as my uncle tries to walk into the cabin to fill up their glasses again, he hits his shoulder hard on the doorway, giving lie to my aunt's claim that yes, yes, he can drink all day, alright, but he never shows it—he's been at it since first thing this morning and it's more than evident now—but she's in the kitchen as drunk as he is and she can no longer be quite sure of what's happening around her. Still, she surfaces for a bit and, as he's pouring the wine into the doctor's glass (one of the big tumblers that we use at the lake because expensive things are broken if they hit the floor, as they sometimes do), she suddenly reaches out and knocks it out of his hand, shouting my god, my god it's bleach that he's almost given the guests. "Bleach! God almighty, Sam," she says, laughing and watching it running down his arm and onto his shirt. "My god! Not this one," she says, both of her hands up covering her mouth—pressing them against her red cheeks. "Not this one," she says, holding up the bottle that's been left on the counter and shaking it at him. "Not this!" she says. She keeps an old wine bottle on one of the shelves for those occasions that she gets around to doing washing in the little tub of a machine that's outside the back door. It's this that my uncle has taken hold of, using it to fill the glasses to the brim. Convulsing with laughter, the two of them have to hold each other up, absolutely paralysed by it—and then the doctor and his wife outside join in a bit awkwardly when they hear the story, when they finally make out what my aunt is saying. [End Page 103] "We're trying to do you in," my uncle shouts through the open screen door to the wooden deck outside. "Trying to do in the doctor! Do in the doctor!" The doctor is from Edinburgh (which is close enough to Irish for him to be invited out here to the lake for dinner with us) and he says that it's not like him to drink, and not this early, and he says now now he wouldn't know the difference if he did have the Clorox. His wife is beside him. They met in Edmonton when she arrived to work in the cancer ward that he used to run. (The dust of Manila hardly off her skirt and feet, she says to my aunt, and there she was a married woman!) There's some story about him having had to leave the city and move his practice out here, some irregularities or indiscretions that my mother whispered about but I can't remember. All I know is that we're not to mention his arriving in so small a place as this—nor are we to ask questions. Hearing them laughing behind me, I run to the top of the flight of stairs that leads down to the lake and stand looking out. * * * Later, I'm kneeling in the kitchen and, staring up, the only thing I can see is the vein in my uncle's forehead, large and purple along his temple. I've been seconded to help him fix the stove so my aunt can boil water for the corn that she's finally found in the bottom of...

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