The Facades: A Novel by Eric Lundgren

tangling in the cheap white frames of her drugstore sunglasses. When Kyle was a baby, it was our escape,
     once a month in the summer if we could afford the sitter. We came here and tried to pretend we weren’t tired parents, ignoring
     echoes of our son’s crying in the violins.
    “You’re going to the pavilion?” Kyle had asked earlier that night, seeing me alone at the front door with the basket. “You
     sure?”
    I nodded without answering.
    “Do you have bug spray?”
    I told him I couldn’t find it. “Mosquitoes don’t like the taste of me,” I said, and asked if he wanted to come along.
    He paused his game, a citizen about to bite the dust. “No, I don’t think so,” he said deliberately, as if reading aloud in
     class. “I think it would be weird.”
    As in fact it was, and he’d had a point about the bug spray. My neighbor was slathering it on, adding a chemical sheen to
     his torso. The orchestra slogged through the slow movement of the night’s first Mozart symphony, serenading the lowering cloud
     of hungry mosquitoes. They had always, quite understandably, preferred the taste of Molly. Now they settled for the remains.
    W E HAD GONE to the pavilion the night Molly got back from New York all those years ago. When I’d taken her to the airport, five days
     before, she’d been effervescent and hopeful, singing chirpy bits of
Tosca
to the friends who’d come to see her off, everyone certain of her success. The Molly who got off the plane was humbled and
     veiled, sunglasses and an old lady’s scarf over her hair. How could I explain the difference in my mood on these two occasions?
     During the send-off, as Molly sang and laughed, I was miserable, all too aware of my own glum irrelevance (which would only
     become more pronounced in the probable New York future). As Molly disembarked the plane in heavy disguise, I was here alone
     to drive her home, to comfort her, to cook her the spaghetti that she only ate in emergencies. Only I knew how to cook it
     right. Ifound myself once again a necessary Norberg. I trilled secretly. On the ride home I listened to the story of her nightmare
     audition, the pond of darkened faces down there among the plush cloth, the voice calling out “that’s enough” with chill finality,
     out of that murky reddish darkness. I listened and nodded, murmured and consoled. When she had talked herself out I carried
     her luggage into the bedroom and put her to sleep. Later, I sat on the edge of the bed. She blinked, and I saw the innocence
     of sleep give way. Molly’s irises clouded as she oriented herself in the Midwest, in Trude, and finally in the crappy one
     bedroom off Dead Mayor Boulevard where we were living in sin at the time.
    “Let’s get drunk,” I said, stroking her cheek gently, as if I might smear her freckles.
    “I can’t go out, Norberg.”
    “Let’s get drunk and go swimming.”
    She laughed, then cried again until her small frame shook. Snot poured from her nose and I wiped it away with an old handkerchief
     bearing my father’s initials.
    “I could use a dip,” she said. “I’m pretty gross.”
    The pool was packed, the drained heat of a June day and a northern breeze conspiring perfectly. In the water we got into a
     splash fight with some kids, who retreated after absorbing a few of Molly’s waves. Then we lay down in the grass, Molly gloriously
     supine, her thighs littered with freckles, necessary Norberg up on his elbows making sure the lifeguards didn’t look too close.
     We strolled side by side on the path that outlined the fountains and ended at the pavilion.
    “What do they understand about opera in New York anyway?” I asked.
    “A lot, actually,” Molly said.
    “Opera is about failure and heartbreak. Near misses, tragically missed opportunities yearning, and nostalgia. Is there any
     better place to cultivate these feelings than in Trude?”
    “Nice try, Norberg.”
    “Can the humiliation of
Pagliacci
really be