Mountain Road, Late at Night

by Alan Rossi

  Nathaniel again began looking through boxes they had packed, searching for the will, thinking that he just needed to search for the will and find it and then everything would be solved. Stefanie helped, going through dressers and shelves and cupboards even. After spending a few minutes looking through boxes that he had already looked through, and knowing that he’d find nothing there, he went to the second bedroom, opened the center drawer in the desk, and pulled out Nicholas’s laptop, carried it out to the living area, and put it down on the coffee table and said, We’re probably going to have to get into this, right? Feeling, as he said it, that it was a violation, that not only did he not want to search through his brother’s computer for some document, he also didn’t want to take it into a computer store and ask them to crack the password or whatever they might do, it all felt a little too much, like why couldn’t Tammy be reasonable? When he asked Stefanie what they were supposed to do with this, did they take it into a computer store if that’s what it came to, she looked at him and said, A computer store isn’t going to crack the password. Nathaniel then started trying passwords, typing and re-typing, knowing that there was no chance that he was going to guess one, and when Stefanie said it, You’re never going to guess it, and as he turned his head to say he knew, he saw Jack was standing in the hallway, watching both of them, Nathaniel trying to open his father’s computer, Stefanie going through his parents’ things. For a moment Jack stood there, little jeans on, the socks on his feet loose and worn, dirty-looking, his sweater maybe a bit too tight, his eyes looking not at Nathaniel but at the computer. He began crying. Nathaniel closed the computer, stuffed it behind a pillow, and went over to him and picked him up and told him that it was okay, buddy, everything was okay.

  After calming Jack, after telling him it would be okay, after telling him they were here, after Jack had asked again why they were putting all of his mommy and daddy’s things in boxes, after Nathaniel tried to put him down for a nap, but couldn’t, he’d just napped, after he stopped crying and was staring vacantly and holding Nathaniel’s pantleg as they walked around the house, after Nathaniel quietly looked at Stefanie above Jack and shook his head to convey that he didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t know what they were doing, after she went to the bedroom and he could hear her own muffled sounds of crying, after taking Jack to another part of the house so he couldn’t hear, after thinking again that he didn’t know what to do, that this Tammy woman would be here sometime tomorrow and would be wanting to take Jack away with her that afternoon, or the following day, which he couldn’t let occur, wouldn’t let occur either that afternoon or the following day, but what about the day after, and the day after that, after sitting with Jack and singing with him on Nicholas’s guitar and trying, again, to not think about his own loss, his brother gone, and trying to be there for Jack, after spending the afternoon with him, taking a cold walk out on the trails, telling Jack maybe they’d see a turkey or a coyote, after Stefanie prepared lunch, Jack still hovering against his leg, after they ate, after Nathaniel kept thinking of the town, what they thought about all this, what they would know and wouldn’t know when it was all done, what people would think about him, if he could do this or not, was he like Nicholas or not, whether his father believed he could do it or not, after all this the early evening still hung in a grey fog of rain, a rain that Nathaniel once thought acted as a sort of cloak, a privacy for them, but which now he felt was obscuring things, like a veil pulled over the world, so that he couldn’t see clearly. Later, Tammy called and said she was stopping for the night but would arrive tomorrow morning and would pick up Jack then if that was okay, and when Nathaniel had said to her that he hoped she knew she wasn’t going to just take Jack tomorrow, that they were going to talk about this, Tammy had said, Whatever gets you to sleep at night, Nathaniel, he’s coming with me. After this phone call occurred at around five in the afternoon, Nathaniel’s father called again.

  He was calling from the hotel. He asked Nathaniel if maybe he should call Tammy and talk to her. Nathaniel sat up on the sofa and looked at Stefanie, hand over mouthpiece, and said, quietly, the lawyer. He replied to his father by saying that he could do that if he really wanted to, but he didn’t have to, that Nathaniel had already been talking with her, and it had ended amicably enough, and she was going to arrive tomorrow, Nathaniel told his father on the phone. Maybe it would be good, his father said, for the mother-in-law to know that there was another group on the same side, that maybe that would discourage her from making a claim of guardianship when she saw an entire side of the family against her. Actually, yes, Nathaniel would be really grateful to his father for that. He didn’t want her here in the morning just trying to haul off Jack.

  There was a pause on the line then there was the sound of sweeping, gusting rain on the roof of the cabin, the wind suddenly picking up, a very strong gust, seeming to increase the longer it went. Nathaniel told his father to hold on a second. He listened, though he wasn’t sure why he was listening. From the upstairs bedroom loft (once Nicholas and April’s bedroom), he heard Stefanie and Jack talking. He climbed the ladder to look into the loft and could see the blue glow of Stefanie’s laptop lighting the room. Stefanie was sitting cross-legged on the bed and Jack was sitting in the space between her bent legs. Stefanie was playing him music and singing quietly. Then, from the back of the property, he heard a crack, like the snapping of a giant’s bone, then the resultant crash of limbs and leaves. The wind picked up again, spraying rain on the windows below the porch.

  Nathaniel backed down off the ladder and said sorry and reiterated that it’d be great if his father let the Tammy woman know that she was outmatched here, thanks for doing that. There was another brief pause on the line then Nathaniel’s father said that that wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. What he had in mind was to construct a sort of compromise, the compromise being that Jack would stay with him and Katherine, the grandparents. Nathaniel stood up, said hold on to his father, and ran to the bottom of the loft ladder, whispered for Stefanie to get down here, and put his father on speakerphone. She climbed down the loft ladder, leaving Jack listening to music, and Nathaniel said, Is he sleeping? She said yes, he’s out, and then Nathaniel mouthed to her, holding the cell phone away from his face, I can’t believe this shit. He told his father he was back and his father told Nathaniel, before he got upset, to hear him out, to think about the goal. If the goal here was what was best for Jack, then please consider his position, because look, to be perfectly frank, this woman had a clear argument against Nathaniel and Stefanie becoming the guardians, especially if they didn’t find a will, which was looking more and more likely to be the case. Nathaniel had a record, for instance – he’d been arrested and convicted of possession of marijuana and driving while intoxicated, and yes, while all that happened eight or nine years ago, it was still something Tammy was undoubtedly going to bring to court with her. Stefanie wasn’t a natural-born citizen. I’m an American citizen, Stefanie said, that’s such bullshit. But not a natural-born one, Nathaniel’s father said, hi Stefanie. So I’m on speaker, okay. So, yes, you’re an American citizen, but a naturalized one, since you were born in Mexico. I have no idea if that might be a factor, but it could be. I’m just asking you both to hear me out here. And look, the important thing that’s going to come up is that Stefanie, I don’t mean to be insensitive here, but Nathaniel told me that you had an abortion. Dad, Nathaniel said. His father continued, saying, Yeah, okay, that was some time ago, yes, but you still had an abortion, and you two, you both travel for work. You’re both gone all the time. Nathaniel, you’re gone four days a week. How’s that going to look? Nathaniel said that they’d have to think about it, and his father said he wanted him to think about one other thing, before they started thinking about it. Think about it like this: look at them and look at April and Nicholas – so different. Wasn’t it true that Nathaniel and Stefanie didn’t want children? Hadn’t Nathaniel conveyed that he felt himself to be too selfish a person to
have kids, and also didn’t want to be tied down by kids, wanted to travel and do exciting things and go see the world, which was what they’d been doing for the last few years. Look, Nathaniel’s father explained, did Stefanie and Nathaniel consider how April and Nicholas had been raising Jack? Nicky and April didn’t even own a television, Nathaniel’s father said over the phone. They took those things very seriously – your brother literally thought television and media in general was something that kept people from experiencing real life. They only owned a computer because Nicky had to write his articles, but they didn’t even have internet at their house. Nicky drove up to work to email people. Every day he drives to work, even when he isn’t teaching, checks his email, and if he doesn’t have a class, he drives back home, Nathaniel. Drove, Nathaniel said. He doesn’t do any of that anymore, drove. There was another pause on the line and his father continued, saying, they don’t have a dryer for god’s sake. His father wanted them to consider that Jack had been living this very particular life. What’s going to happen when he goes to your house and you watch Netflix every night, or you’re home at three in the morning from the country club restaurant, or Stefanie is out of town twice a month? Nathaniel felt a sort of blankness in himself, an inability to respond – his anxieties being presented to him as though through slideshow – but then he said that it wasn’t as though his father and mother were some better option. They didn’t live like April and Nicholas, they had a dryer and a TV and internet, come on. But we’re finished with our careers, his father said. We have time to devote. Plus, your mother, this would mean so much to her. She hasn’t spoken for over a week, and I think this silence is okay at first, but at some point it’s selfish, and she needs something to pull her out of it. She’s writing these little notes, so she’s talking, but she’s not talking out loud, and she needs something. Nathaniel said that was completely backward thinking, that you couldn’t use Jack to help Mom, and his father said that wasn’t what he meant, and Nathaniel said that this was of course what his father would do, take a situation that was about something entirely different, and turn it into something he had to solve, his parents’ selfishness was so glaringly obvious, he wondered how a person as intelligent as his father couldn’t see it. His father said, Nathaniel, this is a conversation, just a discussion, it’s not the end, I just wanted to present it to you, it’s not set in stone, it’s the beginning, and Nathaniel said, No, it definitely wasn’t, and hung up the phone by pushing the little red button on the screen. Stefanie said she didn’t know what to do now. She said they just had to stick by what they knew, what April and Nicholas really wanted, they had to consider that this was a difficult situation for his parents, too, not just them, and that this was just a bump, they’d come around. Nathaniel thought of the text first, then wrote it, which read, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t talk to me first, and then sent it to his mother, who, after a moment, wrote back a text that read, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m about to call this Tammy person. Will let you know how it goes. Nathaniel showed the texts to Stefanie and, feeling a brief anger that resolved into confusion, which in turn slipped into a hesitant understanding, said, My dad didn’t even talk to her about this.

  By the time the cold day ended, Nathaniel observed that there was more rain, so light it almost seemed to rise from the trees on the mountain rather than fall from the sky. An almost full moon slid between quickly moving clouds. He imagined the eastside of the town, his father and mother, where they watched television in the hotel they were staying at, a room on the second floor – his father described it to him, needlessly Nathaniel had thought – which overlooked a small ravine where a river flowed, kudzu curling around trees. He wondered what his mother and Tammy had spoken about, but was tired, and didn’t try to conjure it – what was the point, he thought. He pictured the downtown, the mother-in-law maybe arriving late in the afternoon and settling into the Bed and Breakfast he had arranged for her, eating Baby Ruths and reading one of the six People magazines she had brought. He saw the town, people exiting their yoga classes, sweaty and red-faced, smiling and open, people eating dinner on the patios of restaurants, students readied in their dormitories and apartments for the coming night, drinking beer and rolling joints, the streets emptying of noise and people going home or leaving home, the surrounding mountains alive with unseen animal life, and the mountains seeming to hold the town, which was how Nathaniel always saw it, like a hand holding a hand, pulling dark toward all beings, the slow erasure of the myriad things in existence.

  In his dead brother’s house, Nathaniel carried Jack from the loft to the boy’s bedroom. Nathaniel read him a book, the bear book again, and when he finished reading to Jack, the boy fell asleep for the night, asleep once more, as though sleep was the boy’s response to loss. Nathaniel watched him, and then lay down next to him. Jack was wearing just his blue underwear and a white shirt, his hair was fine and soft, very dark, and his closed eyes, with long lashes, appeared woven shut. Part of Nathaniel wanted Jack to stay peacefully asleep forever and part of him wanted to tell him something, though he didn’t know what, and he kept thinking of what he wanted to tell him, thinking of the night he received the phone call, the phone call which had come after several years of Nicholas convincing both the families to visit together, since Jack so rarely got to see his grandparents or aunt and uncle, Nicholas tempting all of them with visions of springtime mountains, hiking on wooded paths, batcaves, hot springs, waterfalls, organic foods, the impressive meals Nathaniel would make, and not only that, but their nephew, Jack, who was really growing up pretty fast. Both sides of the family had waffled about dates and travel until all finally relented and the visit had been scheduled, a weekend in the spring, certain food items bought for April’s mother and for Nicholas’s parents, other items that Nathaniel asked to have on hand so he could make a couple nice meals, the house was cleaned, cold spring rains swept through, and five days out, Nathaniel received the phone call, which he couldn’t keep from visualizing, as if compelled to by some alien source: Nicholas and April were involved in a car accident on a winding mountain road in the rain, late at night, after a beer tasting and dinner party for Nicholas’s tenure, a party which, Nathaniel learned from the police, the couple had left very late, and coming down the winding mountain road, it was speculated that his brother had been tranced into a brief sleep – rain on windshield, wind in trees – his eyes closing, and when he woke, the car was heading off the road into the trees and Nicholas had overcorrected and the wheels slipped on the wet asphalt and the car went into a tailspin that caused it to careen directly toward the dividing concrete abutment, which the car hit and then skipped over like a stone, all soundlessly in the quiet rain on the mountain, sending the car airborne until it again landed, flipping three times, literally rolling down the mountain road in the wrong lane, and both the brother and his wife were killed (the wife probably died instantly, the police said, the brother later in the hospital). The police on the scene noted that three deer were eating grass near the car. Nathaniel thought about the accident going unreported for some hours, imagined Nicholas trapped, ensuring his death, and leaving behind a blue-eyed, dark-haired, happy four-year-old boy who could not stop crying in Nathaniel’s car on the way back from the hospital, saying repeatedly, Where’s Daddy? Where’s Mommy? Lying next to Jack now, all Nathaniel wanted to do was go back in time, if not to when his brother was still alive, which his mind couldn’t compute, then back to the moment sitting in his car with the boy, back to the moment he had first held Jack again after several months, the boy crying, back to the moment when he had known exactly what he had to do.

  KATHERINE

  Thought after thought, do not become attached. [. . .] Whether it’s a past thought, a present thought, or a future thought, let one thought follow another without becoming attached. [. . .] Once you become attached to one thought, you become attached to every thought, which is what we call bondage. But when you go from one thought to another witho
ut becoming attached, there is no bondage.

  —PLATFORM SUTRA

  Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think.

  —DHAMMAPADA

  Louis Walters had a mole on his cheek, which, if he didn’t shave, grew long, curling hairs from it that, Katherine had noticed in the past, were thicker than his facial hair. One of the hairs was white and coarse. Katherine had pulled it out with tweezers once, declaring an experiment. Two weeks later, it was growing back, and in his guest room – Louis Walters’ wife was out of town, which she often was – Katherine rolled on top of him and, squinting, had said, Let me see. Jesus, it’s an unstoppable hair. Terminator hair. If you just let that thing keep growing, I bet it’d turn into a fingernail.

  Katherine could see the hair now – slightly longer than the rest of his facial hair – in the Skype window on her computer screen. Louis Walters wore wire-frame glasses and his head was shaved bald. In his forties, he was in extremely good shape, tall, very fit, and his eyes, dark green, were set in his face in a way that, coupled with his baldness, made him appear somewhat bug-eyed, which the glasses helped, making him appear handsome even if he wasn’t exactly handsome. He was wearing a grey checked button-down, his upper body and head on the screen. She’d contacted him – in the space of time David had left to go on a hike, to clean out his mind, he’d said, and to pick up some groceries for the room – because she wanted to discuss their situation with him. This was what they called their affair: their ‘situation.’ It’d begun as a kind of semantic denial of what they were actually doing, then it became a joke. She often said things like, I’m not sure if the situation we’re in is sustainable. I’m not sure we can keep using up our own inner resources on each other. We have to protect some for those we’re already with. They talked about the relationship, their situation, in environmentally apocalyptic terms, which seemed apt. She didn’t know how it’d happened. You melted the glacier of my heart, she’d once said to him, mocking a woman in a romantic comedy. The problem with that, he’d said, is that it’ll make the ocean of your understanding overflow and flood the land of your life. They’d been in his office that time, and she’d looked at him and said, Oh, good one. There was the sense of accident about it all, as though she’d somehow tripped into the situation, like tripping on a sidewalk into an easy and mindless trot. But it had all colored darkly when she learned about Nicholas, when Nathaniel called her and through tears – she could hear them – told her that Nicholas was gone. Now she felt she had to end this thing with Louis Walters. Nicholas being gone somehow clarified how awful she was being. She couldn’t take it anymore, that’s what she was going to tell him.