Lake Effect - Hillary Behrman

This excerpt is from Hillary Behrman's debut collection, Lake Effect, winner of the 2024 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction.  

He cooked and we ate our entire dinner including dessert out of one cast-iron frying pan, scooping up the last of the chocolate ice cream embedded with bits of grilled onion and potato. Our spoons, the only dishes I needed to wash because, he explained, “You never wash a cast-iron frying pan, just wipe it down, the residue of every meal you ever ate adds seasoning to the next.”

A slimy onion worm stuck in his beard, wiggling up and down as he talked.

“Samantha, are you even listening to me?”

When Dwight said my name, he paused after each syllable, like he needed to sound it out, like he was learning to read, like he’d never heard my name before.

“Sam. My name is Sam.” “Yeah. Whatever.”

He left the table.

I didn’t wash the spoons, just licked ’em clean and put them right back in the drawer. My mom would have been horrified, but impressed too, by my efficiency.

I was fourteen when my dad started leaving me in the care of random people, my mother dead less than six months. Most of the time he asked one of the female nurses he worked with at the hospital to stay with me. He was never gone for very long. But this time it was a guy from the pathology lab, Dwight—red haired, bearded, and so skinny I could see the hollowed-out joint where his leg hooked up with his torso. His jeans hung low on his hips, he kept his hands in his pockets, but that just made it worse, I mean really, get a belt.

After dinner we drove around, first downtown, then out to the industrial area by the river. Eventually we doubled back, heading away from the city and out along the lakefront on the freeway.

Lake Erie froze solid that year, but Dwight said the toxic sludge at the bottom of the river and the sheen of oil across the top would keep the Cuyahoga from freezing. He took the exit ramp fast, fishtailing on black ice, just missing the guardrail before regaining control of the car. Turning left and then right, we plowed across a flat white field that must have been a parking lot, our tires razoring straight lines in the fresh snow. He pulled the car right up to a cement barrier.

“What is this place?”

He jumped out. Ignoring my question. “Come on Samantha, live a little.” 

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