by Maile Meloy
“No it isn’t!”
“Yes, it is.”
“There’s no gene for bravery that you have and I don’t,” Aaron said.
“Then maybe I taught her to be fearless, by playing those games.”
“Why don’t you have your own kids and speculate about their character traits?”
“If I were having a kid,” George said, “you’d just tell me I couldn’t afford it.”
And that was true.
Aaron didn’t like George’s courting of Claire, and didn’t like George inviting her skiing before he invited Aaron and Bea, but he couldn’t keep her from his own brother. She might need bone marrow someday, he told himself. She might need a kidney. Also there was the fact that Claire loved her uncle. So they went off to ski, for Presidents’ Day, because George had ambivalently asked them to.
THE FIRST MORNING, they all met in the gondola line. Jonna, the new girlfriend, flashed a nervous, welcoming smile, and Claire, back from California on a ticket that wasn’t cheap, hugged her tightly. Then she hugged George. Claire’s cheeks were pink with health and cold and happiness, and she wore a blue fleece hat that said UCLA on it. She asked Jonna questions as the gondola rose, and Aaron was inordinately proud of her: she was so vibrantly young and engaging and unself-absorbed.
Jonna, on the other hand, was a puzzle. If Aaron had met her on the street, he wouldn’t have pegged her for a ski instructor. She didn’t seem hardy or sporty or gregarious; she seemed delicate, prickly, and undernourished. She was wiry, about thirty-five, with a peroxide-white cloud of hair around her face, and a small diamond stud in one nostril that must have been hell in the cold. Aaron gave silent thanks that Claire had not gone in for piercing her face. Then he heard Jonna say that her father was a lift operator when she was a kid, so she skied for free, tagging along after the instructors in place of being babysat. That made sense. She was a ski brat the way people were military brats, and it had made her insecure. That was typical of George’s girls. He liked them needy and dependent, the opposite of Bea, who ran an emergency room and was born to command. The puzzle solved, Aaron stopped listening and watched people make their way—some quick and graceful, and some in a slow, shuddering slide—down the mountain below.
At the top, Claire went off with George and Jonna, the better skiers, and Aaron stayed with his wife. Bea never left the groomed runs where she could make long, easy turns all day without breaking a sweat. Years in the ER had left her with no attraction to danger. On the chairlift, they compared notes on Jonna. Bea guessed it wouldn’t last, that Jonna wouldn’t be able to buoy George up the way he needed.
“There’s a look little girls have who are adored by their fathers,” Bea said. “It’s that facial expression of being totally impervious to the badness of the world. If they can keep that look into their twenties, they’re pretty much okay, they’ve got a force field around them. I don’t know if Jonna ever had it. I think she’s always known about the bad things.”
“Does Claire have the look?” Aaron asked.
Bea turned to look at him, with amused affection behind her goggles. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “With you and George both? She’ll have it when she’s eighty. She’ll never get rid of it.”
THE FIVE ALL MET for lunch, piling hats and gloves on a long table, with the snow melting on their unbuckled boots, carrying cheeseburgers and fries on cafeteria trays. George was slowed by handshakes and questions from people he had taught to ski, and when he finally brought his tray, he squeezed between Claire and Jonna.
“Eight bucks for a veggie burger,” he said. “It’s like Aspen around here. Rich doctors like you, crowding the slopes and driving the prices up.”
Aaron said nothing and started on his second beer. It was so good and so cold. His brother was only joking, looking for attention, having gotten so much from the rest of the cafeteria. His ski students clearly loved him, and that seemed touching. Aaron’s patients didn’t love him that way. People loved their GPs and their dermatologists, but not their orthopedists. They saw him only under duress, and he gave them frustrating news. “George,” he said. “We should ski together this afternoon.”
“All right,” George said warily, pounding the ketchup bottle over his yellowish soy patty.
“You act like I want to push you off a cliff.”
“Maybe you do.” George resorted to a knife, and the ketchup slid out along the blade.
“You should take me on the good stuff.”
“You can’t handle the good stuff.”
“Sure I can.”
“Honey, you don’t always do well at eight thousand feet,” Bea said. “And you’ve had two beers.”
“See?” his brother said. “Listen to your wise wife.”
Aaron didn’t like to be reminded of his debility—no one else got sick at this altitude—and he was doing fine. “Did you take Claire on the good stuff ?” he asked.
“Dad,” Claire said.
“Claire’s a really good skier,” George said, through a mouth full of soy.
“I know she is. I taught her.”
“I taught her,” George said. “And she’s thirty years younger than you are.”
“But you’re only five years younger.”
“But I ski every day. Stop staring at my veggie burger. Eat your own goddamn burger. Your dead cow corpse burger.”
At twenty, George had dropped out of college to go cycling around France with a girl, and he became a vegetarian under her influence. At the time, Aaron had defended George’s decision to leave school to their parents. He had admired and envied his brother’s bravery—he was already in medical school and wouldn’t have known what to do without the structure of classes—and he thought it important that George be allowed to find his own way. Also, in his secret heart, he was glad his brother wouldn’t be a doctor, too; the medical profession wasn’t big enough for both of them. So he had told the parents to back off. But it seemed, so many years later, that it was time for George to drop the lingering no-meat affectation, or at least to stop proselytizing. “Look, you can eat soy protein if you want,” he said, “but why harangue other people?”
“I’m just thinking of your arteries,” George said.
“My arteries are fine. Who decides to stop eating meat in France? You could have come back from that trip looking tan and healthy and full of steak béarnaise, and instead your skin was gray.”
“Boys,” Bea said. “Please don’t fight. For once.”
“We’re not fighting, we’re talking,” George said. “It’s not just about health. There’s a movie you should see, about slaughterhouses. Claire, you should see it. I’ll give you the DVD.”
“Please don’t give my daughter an eating disorder,” Aaron said.
“It’s not a disorder!”
Jonna stood, digging her coat out of the pile. “I’m going skiing,” she said, glaring at them both. She pulled her jacket onto one arm and rocked determinedly toward the door in her stiff-bottomed boots. She had a tattooed sun on the back of her neck, below the white-blond puff of hair, and it disappeared as she shrugged the coat up onto her shoulders.
Bea looked at George, as if expecting him to follow. “Aren’t you going?”
He held up his ketchupy hands. “She wants to ski alone,” he said.
Bea sighed, and dropped her paper napkin on her tray. “Claire, can you stand to ski the boring stuff with me?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Claire said. She draped an arm over her father’s chest, planting a kiss on the top of his head. Aaron resisted looking at George in triumph, but then Claire whispered, “Be good,” into his hair, which lessened his sense that he’d won this round.
Bea and Claire weaved through the crowded, noisy cafeteria, and the brothers watched them go. Even bundled in ski clothes, the two women had a matching grace. Women. It was so strange to see Claire that way.
“Do you and Bea still fuck?” George asked.
“Just stop,” Aaron said. “Yo
u’ve done enough for one lunchtime.”
“How often?” he asked. “Like, once a week? Once a month? Once a day? Do you take pills?”
Aaron started to pull on his coat. “Knock it off.”
“What about Claire, do you think she’s a virgin?”
Aaron grabbed his gloves and stalked away, but he was slowed by the staggering gait of the boots, which made him feel ridiculous. He couldn’t even storm out. He’d never been able to. He turned and asked, “Are you coming or not?”
THE TWO BROTHERS were on the highest chairlift, headed for the top of the mountain, and Aaron had calmed down. Life with George was like interval training—it was possible for Aaron to get his heart rate up and then quickly down again, from constant practice. He was admiring the trees gliding past, the white mare’s tails against the blue sky, and he thought of the winter he and George, as boys, were on a makeshift ski team, coached by another boy’s father, taking turns practicing slalom gates and taking jumps on their old wooden skis. George must have been about nine, and he was already the better athlete, instinctive and efficient, where Aaron was always thinking things through, using too much energy and movement, a gawky teen. He thought how spectacular it had been to watch George take the gates, and how proud he had been of his talented little brother. They were confederates, on that team of boys they didn’t know well, as they couldn’t normally be, when Aaron was in high school and George still learning to spell. They rode back home on the ski bus side by side, making jokes. He was about to ask George if he remembered the team, when his brother started in.
“How much money do you think you have?” George asked.
“You know, I was just enjoying this beautiful day,” Aaron said.
“Is it close to a million? Just ballpark. Not counting real estate.”
“George.”
“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. I read that in college. It had a big effect on me. Do you think you’re wasting your powers, getting money, when you could be out here all the time?”
“Why do you do this?”
“Do what?” George asked. “You never want to talk about anything real. You just cut me off. Like you must have a guess about whether Claire’s fucking. I know you think about it.”
Aaron imagined taking his brother’s parka in his hands and swinging him forward off the chairlift. He was strong enough, and had surprise on his side. They hadn’t brought down the safety bar over their legs. The only danger would be George pulling Aaron down with him. Aaron might break a leg, tear an ACL, become one of the miserable patients he saw every day, facing the loss of their mobility and their youth. He could be arrested, even. But at least it would all be over between them, no more attempts at family vacations, no faked brotherly love.
“She has a new boyfriend, you know,” his brother said.
That was news to Aaron, and hearing it from George was like the stab of a pocketknife in his heart. Not a wound that would kill him, but quick and painful and precise. He pretended it wasn’t news.
“You didn’t know, did you?” George asked. “He’s premed. He’ll be a sawbones like you. You’d think she’d be proud to tell you.”
“Why ask us here?” Aaron managed to say. “Why ask for a family ski trip and then do this?”
“I’m just trying to have a real conversation, like human beings,” George said. “About real things. To be close, like a family for once, instead of just riding up the lift saying ‘What a beautiful day’ like a bunch of tourists from Minnesota.”
“I’ve said nothing of the kind.”
“She’s an adult, you know? You treated her like an adult when she was a little kid and you treat her like a little kid now that she’s not.”
Aaron was startled. “Is she complaining?”
“No—I am! You think you’re always right about everything, but you’re not. I know a few things, too, you know? You’d think I’d be allowed to ask you a fucking question now and then.”
Aaron stared at his brother in amazement, but they were at the top of the hill, and had to lift their ski tips and shuffle forward on the icy ramp as the chair discharged them, a process that always felt infantilizing to Aaron, because he had learned it when he was a child, or because it was so awkward to lose momentum after the majesty of riding through the air. George seemed to experience no discomfort, but then he was used to it. It was his job.
They stood at the top of the lift, at the top of the mountain, with people poling past them. Aaron had a headache, and wished he’d never agreed to come skiing. Would he never learn? A small child in a helmet, ski tips together in a snowplow, dropped bravely off the edge. Claire had been that young when she started, her hair bunching out of a purple headband. She had been so brave and so small, and now she was sharing a bed with a callow premed who might not understand—who couldn’t understand—how important it was to her father that she stay safe and protected and well.
“I tried to get Claire to smoke pot with me once, but she wouldn’t,” George said.
The air felt very thin in Aaron’s lungs.
“Most kids would have taken the joint,” George said. “I think she knew you wouldn’t want her to. She’s loyal to you.”
“Is this your peace offering?”
“If you want to see it that way.”
“Let’s just ski.”
“I bet she’s smoked some by now.”
“Take me on the good runs.”
“That’s a bad idea.”
“You can bait me, or you can protect me,” Aaron said. “But you can’t do both. Where’s the good snow?”
George shrugged, and they skated and sidestepped and skied to a place where the slope divided: an easy blue-square run on the left, and a black diamond posted on the right, with a rope strung between two poles, barring access.
“This is the best run here,” George said.
“It’s closed off.”
“We’ll go under the rope.”
“I could lose my ski pass,” Aaron said. “You could lose your job.”
“It’s not closed for avalanche. They’re just roping it off to keep down the broken legs, because all the once-a-year bozos are out for the long weekend.”
“Like me?”
George shrugged again.
“Let’s stay on what’s legal,” Aaron said.
“I thought you wanted the good stuff.”
“Not if it’s off-limits.”
“The best runs are always off-limits,” George said. “Off-piste. Interdit.”
“Interdit?” Aaron said. One bike trip at twenty, and George thought he was on the French cycling team.
“It’s not a bad run,” George said. “I promise. I take it all the time. Even you can do it.”
Aaron looked to see if anyone was coming down the mountain behind. No one was, so he followed his brother, ducking under the orange rope that George held for him, feeling a little dizzy as he straightened. Then his head cleared and they were on the other side. The whole mountain was below them, the trees in sharp focus, ice crystals floating in the air. He felt a rush of exhilaration at having broken the rules. He had been such a good student, a dutiful doctor, a faithful husband. Maybe he should have flouted authority more in his life, been more like George, ducked the ropes, been the Fire. The slope didn’t look that bad. A little steep.
George had already taken three neat turns straight down the steepest part. Aaron carved his way around the side; he didn’t have George’s control. A few times his edges skidded, and his legs felt shaky. The snow was deep but not always soft. Aaron’s headache had returned, or he had begun to notice it again. He felt thirsty, in spite of the two beers. He regretted the beers.
They skied down to a second steep slope, George still well ahead, and Aaron stopped to catch his breath and rest his knees. Bending over to stretch, he had an attack of vertigo, followed by nausea. For a moment he blamed the burger, but then he recognized the feeling, and understood his growing headache. Bea had been r
ight, that he had forgotten what altitude sickness was like, and how quickly it came on. She had brought a physician’s sample of the pills, but he had told her he didn’t need them, and was too old to be stressing out his kidneys. He sat dizzily against the hillside, to rest a minute.
He heard a shout, and squinted at the small figure of his brother below, against the white slope. The distant George patted his hand on his head to ask if everything was all right. They had learned the signal as kids in canoes. Aaron didn’t think he could stand, but he patted his head anyway: Everything’s fine. He tried to push himself to his feet, slid a few yards on the backs of his skis, and collapsed into the snow again. There was another shout from George, a more urgent hand signal, which Aaron didn’t bother to answer.
If they’d had it out when they were younger, really whaled on each other, then maybe it would be out of their systems. They could be civilized to each other now. But George had always been younger, and Aaron too restrained to take advantage of his greater strength. By the time they were the same size, Aaron was in college and didn’t think about his brother. And if he had thought about it, he’d have realized that George could already beat him. He lifted his head and patted the top of it, to show that he was on his way down, but George had started side-stepping up the mountain. He was coming at a good clip. The nausea surged again, and the remains of Aaron’s burger came out in a soupy mess in the snow, between his knees. He coughed, with the taste of bile in his throat. George would never let him forget being rescued from his own puke on the closed black-diamond run. The story would be hauled out every time they were together: Remember that time? George would regale Claire with her father’s weakness, and Claire would be caught between them, sneaking her father guilty looks.
He struggled to his feet and stood uneasily, resting on his poles. Then he dug his edges into the hillside and tried to ease into a turn, but lost his balance and fell to his downhill side. It all happened very quickly. The skis went into the air as he rolled, and rolled again. One ski released and skidded free, and the other wheeled with him, and then he slammed into something that turned out to be his brother. They tumbled, and came with George’s help to a tangled stop.