Lake Song

The lake house sits a mile or so back into dense forest, in a clearing that gives ground every year. The road to get there is not a road per se—it's gravel, yes, but not clear the way a road is supposed to be. Trees bend to drag knobby fingers across the hoods of passing cars. At night, it feels like something in the woods is watching, something that may jump into the road, but this is just the trees. Just the orchestra of cicada and owl. Finally, the road curves and the trees part to show the cabin at the bottom of the hill—a slab of wood and stone that smells of winter and wet.

This isn't the white-lined oceans of the west, the overhanging cliffs of the east—this is Up North Michigan. Up North, actually the western side of the state, does not have beaches. Shoes are necessary to walk the craggy shores that are more pebble than sand. The water is cold, even in the summer, and green with algae, green like the trees. The waves suck splinters of wood from the docks, lap at the hull of the boats—but they don't crash. There's no cry of seagulls. Just the creaking trees, and the whispers of lake song.

The yard is less grass than crisped pine needles, dead leaves. A wooden path connects the back of the cabin to the wooden steps down to the wooden dock down to the water. Only one weathered railing—the other eaten by the lake, or maybe the trees.

My cousins and I would pretend that falling from the path meant dying. When we got sick of swimming, we'd walk along the shore and collect stones. My cousins looked for Petoskey's. I liked sharp colors, or pearlescent shells. Sometimes, I'd pick pieces of glass, thrown by boaters who got too careless with their beer. The sand and the tide conspired to round the sharpness to something bleached and opaque by the time it ended up on shore.

When night came, we were shepherded inside. We weren't allowed out without an adult. Too many animals. Too many hungry trees.

I liked being on the water at night, but it didn't occur me until my early teens that I could slip from the backdoor while the adults were sleeping. The trickiest part was the glass door, which squeaked if opened too quickly, and locating where I'd put my sandals earlier. Then, blind in the deep darkness of the wild sky, I'd feel my way with my feet, following the sucking of the water, the whispering trees. I'd trace the wooden path, tread carefully with searching toes down the wooden steps, clutching the one weathered railing, until the moon lit the lake and lit the wooden dock. I'd walk right to the edge of the dock, take off my sandals, roll my pajama pants, and sit there with my feet grazing the top of the water. Most nights, I just looked at the stars and listened to my iPod. Other nights, I listened to the sirens.

They only ever came out late at night, and only when the weather was clear, and then only in the summer. They never sang loudly, not enough for me to make out the words—just a whisper, like a sigh or a fog in late morning, spreading petals on the water. It felt like a lullaby in a dream, like something I'd carried in me my whole life and only now could see the face of.

Maybe I should have been scared the first time I heard them. Weren't sirens supposed to kill you? Drown ships, lure them into rocks and sink them, take the survivors and pull them into the lake, swimming down, down, down to the bottom of the sea? To laugh at the last bubbles of life bulging from a sailor's lips? But wasn't like I felt the urge to go swimming. I was alive. The sirens were alive. The song was alive.

I wondered how they ended up in Michigan, if they got here as immigrants like my own family. All the stories I'd ever read about them said they lived in oceans, in the tropics. Maybe it was the fresh lake water that left their music impotent. Maybe they needed the sand and the salt of the sea to be dangerous. Maybe this was how they talked, and their music was deadly.

From fourteen to nineteen, I'd wait for the clear nights and slip out to the dock to listen for them like a ritual. I believed in it longer than I should've, and it made me feel special in a way—like I was the only one who knew the lake had mermaids. One summer, I asked my cousin if she'd ever gone out to listen for them. “Oh,” she said. “The music? My dad said it comes from the club across the lake.”

Maybe I should have expected this, and maybe it was a bit unreasonable to get so worked up about my superstitions being proven wrong. But I think, now, that maybe it speaks to the power of music, the power of it to skim the surface of the lake and mix with the sounds of cicadas and owls and water lapping the dock and become sirens. That maybe this was the point of the whole siren myth anyway—music's power to get under your skin and stir your brain, to pull you out, night after night, just to hear more.