“At least he pretended he didn’t know how to ride no-handed,” I said. “For all I know, he was just humoring me.”
I told Kirk how he’d always had my mother cut his hair and how he’d pretend to cry when she was finished.
“It sounds stupid,” I said, remembering how he’d flutter his hands and say he’d have to wear a hat until it grew out. “But it was really funny. My mom and I would crack up.”
I told him how my dad had flooded the backyard so I could practice my slap shot even though the pond we skated on was only two blocks away; I told him how he’d lie on the couch while my mom was at the piano, saying “Beautiful” or “Lovely” after every song she played.
“He loved Gershwin and Irving Berlin.”
“I’ve heard of the first guy, but who’s Irving Berlin?”
“He wrote ‘White Christmas.’”
“Oh.”
I told him how we’d watch Bonanza every Sunday night and how I thought it was so cool I had the same name as my favorite character. My dad knew this and during commercials he would say things like, “Little Joe, I’m riding over to Cheyenne tomorrow—you want to come with?”
“One night he told me to ask Hoss if she’d make us some popcorn.”
“‘I’m not Hoss,’ my mom said. ‘Hoss is a two-hundred-fifty-pound man!’
“‘Then you can be Hop Sing, the houseboy.’
“‘Hop Sing yourself,’ said my mom. ‘Go make your own popcorn.’”
I honestly couldn’t remember if I’d told anyone these stories; it had always seemed safer not to talk about my dad at all. But sitting in that stinky Dodge van while vampires disguised as bats roamed the night sky, I felt a rare peace.
“How old were you when he died?” Kirk asked.
“Fourteen.”
“Shit. That’s how old I am now.” Biting his lip, he picked at a hang-nail on his thumb. “I know my dad’s messed up, but it’d sure be a bummer if he died.”
I nodded. “Bummer’s the word.”
It was Kirk’s turn to talk then, and he had good stories of his dad too.
“We used to shoot baskets a lot and play horse—only if I was winning, he’d change the word to rhinoceros or elephant, some animal whose name had more letters, so he could catch up. And he was on a bowling league and he’d bring me to the bowling alley every Thursday night. I was the team water boy.”
I had to admit it was hard for me to imagine the guy I’d seen passed out on the couch and shuffling into the auditorium with a walker as the playful, funny man Kirk was describing.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“Look at us sitting in the dark in this van, man. Like we’re on a date or something.” He yawned and tipped his head, resting it against my shoulder.
Laughing, I pushed him off.
“He was at work one day and he fell off a loading dock. It really screwed up his back.”
“How do he and Kristi get along?” I asked.
Kirk shrugged. “Well, Kristi’s always acted like she was born into the wrong family—like she’s a princess or something forced to live with the servants—but when he messed up his back…well, she acted like it was his fault. I mean, I guess it is his fault he drinks too much, but he can’t work anymore and…” He shook his head. “My sister’s the biggest bitch in the world, man.” He shook his head and then yawned so big it looked like he was trying to take a bite out of a grapefruit. “I’m beat. Take me home, Jeeves.”
The biggest bitch in the world, aka Kristi Casey, came back into my life during my second semester at the U of M, the day after my femur fractured and I was almost blinded. She burst into my room, her smile still dazzling, still dimpled, and in my druggy, one-eyed haze I thought I must be seeing an apparition.
“Kristi?” I said, wondering if the ghost could talk. “Kristi Casey, is that you?”
“The one and only,” she said, and as she leaned over me to kiss my cheek, I smelled an unfamiliar perfume.
“You don’t smell like baby powder anymore,” I said, disappointed. Was it asking too much of this ghost, who’d gone to all the trouble of manifesting herself into human form, to have gotten Kristi’s smell right too?
The spirit laughed, and I had to admit that even though she had screwed up on the scent, she had the laugh down to a T.
“I left that perfume back in high school,” said ghost Kristi. “I’m into more sophisticated fragrances now.” She held her wrist under my nose. “This is Wind Song. Like it?”
I nodded. It was pretty. I closed my eyes, happy to fall back onto the soft pillow of my narcotics while I breathed in the beautiful song of the wind.
“Wait a second,” I said, pushing aside the arms of Morpheus, intent as I was to make a joke, to make this faux Kristi laugh the way I had made the real one laugh. “Why would anyone call a perfume Wind Song? I mean, wouldn’t you say that farting is a wind song?”
The apparition put her hand on my forehead.
“Maybe you shouldn’t try to talk, Joe.”
I wasn’t about to argue humor with a ghost, and besides, I was already asleep.
In eight games with the Gophers I had scored eleven points: eight assists and three goals. A reporter from the Minnesota Daily, after writing a story about me, invited me to her sorority dance. Another girl sent packages of cookies to my dorm room with notes that said while she hoped I enjoyed the gingersnaps, she was the sweeter cookie. And when Eric Wilner, the team captain, couldn’t use two tickets he had to the North Stars, he gave them to me. I had been living a life better than the one I dreamt, only now, thanks to an unbelievably stupid—and embarrassing—move, it was over.
“I was at the game,” said Kristi when I woke up. I wondered why she was still at my bedside; after all, hadn’t I been sleeping for a month? Or had it been seconds?
“I was home on break,” she continued as I tried to focus my good eye on her face. “And I was hoping to get together with you, but geez, I sure didn’t think it’d be in a hospital room.”
“I think I messed up my eye,” I said, touching the convex bandage over my left eye. “Oh yeah,” I said, nodding at my leg in traction. “I broke my leg.”
“You got mangled, Joe,” said Kristi, and her voice somehow balanced glee and concern.
“I did?” I thought for a moment, but my mind seemed as cloudy as the winter sky framed by the square hospital window.
“You can remember that I used to wear Love’s Baby Soft perfume but you can’t remember you got creamed on the ice? Well, you did have a concussion—maybe that explains things.”
“I did?”
As she began the play-by-play of what happened, a nausea that had nothing to do with my injuries began curdling inside me.
Hockey’s not exactly badminton—with all the checking and tripping, with sticks, pucks, and often fists flying, it’s not a huge surprise when a player finds himself taking a little field trip to the emergency room. I myself had been there twice, once as a bantam when I got a high stick to the forehead and had to get six stitches just below my hairline and once as a squirt when I took a nice backward dive on the unforgiving surface of the rink and knocked myself out. It’s understood that in a fast, physical game, played on ice no less, there is a possibility of getting hurt; still, I never in a million years imagined the way I’d get hurt that would put me in the hospital.
“I saw everything,” said Kristi. Sitting on my bed, she practically squirmed with excitement. “Mark and I had great seats—we were in the third row right on the center line and—”
“Who’s Mark?” As drugged and in pain as I was, I still was curious about Kristi’s social life.
“Oh, just this friend of mine from college. Anyway, we were basically right across from the benches and I saw you fall when you were changing up.”
I remembered that. Geez, I had felt so stupid; I couldn’t believe it. I had gotten off the bench and was ready to hop back onto the ice when the blade of one of my skates got caught on
something—a water bottle? The bench leg? Someone’s discarded mouth guard?—and I felt myself stumble forward over the boards. That was as far as my memory took me.
“It was kind of funny at first,” said Kristi. “You know, it just looked like some clumsy move that you and your teammates would laugh over. But suddenly there’s a Badger trying to catch a pass and he slams into you and your leg is still caught up in whatever it was that it was caught up in and you’re hanging off the boards—your front half lying there on the ice and your leg bent really funny up behind you. And then, bam— the puck flies in and smacks you right in the face just as you fall to the ice. Really, Joe, I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re lucky you didn’t get brain-damaged.” She leaned close to me, her beautiful face inches from mine. “You’re not brain-damaged, are you, Joe?”
“Agghhhhhhh,” I said, squirting spit out of the side of my mouth and rolling my eyes back in my head.
“Whew. No more than usual.”
“Ha ha ha.”
Kristi leaned even closer and kissed my cheek. “Well, listen, Joe, it’s great to see you again—I’m just sorry it’s under these circumstances.”
She stood up and wound a scarf around her neck before putting on her coat, and I figured out she was leaving.
“Do you have to go?” I asked.
She wiggled her fingers as she drew on a glove. “I do—but I’ll come back tomorrow. What can I bring you?”
“How about a Kristi Special?”
She laughed as if I’d just told her a great joke. “I was thinking more along the lines of magazines or candy.”
“There’s no candy sweeter than a Kristi Special.”
She said something, but it wasn’t loud enough to hear over the fatigue that suddenly roared in, as dense and thick as a blizzard.
A compound fracture of the femur. A separated shoulder. A puck to the eye. A concussion. And worst of all, the sad dark knowledge that I was out for the rest of the season. Kristi hadn’t been the first to categorize all of the injuries and their inevitable consequence, but she’d been the first one I’d understood through the vapor of the pain and drugs. And because she was Kristi, I couldn’t hate the messenger—I was just so glad to have the messenger back in my life.
I had been loving the whole college experience: my classes were engaging even if they were huge, the girls were cute, and my roommate, a turkey farmer’s son from Worthington, was nice enough when he wasn’t sleeping, which he mostly was.
But it was when I laced up my skates as a Golden Gopher that I knew Fate had winked at me, singling me out for not just dessert but whipped cream too. And then all of a sudden I was lying on a hospital bed, looking at everything with one eye while nurses checked the lines of stitches that climbed up my leg like thin black bugs.
I don’t recommend slogging across campus on crutches in the middle of a Minnesota winter. My leg ached—I swear the pins they implanted were mini-icicles—and having those crutches’ pads shoved up under my arms did not make my still-sore shoulder feel any better. Plus snow and ice isn’t the easiest surface to get around on for an able-bodied person…. Plus I still had waves where I’d see everything double. Yeah, I was in a funk.
“Joe, honey, you got some mail,” said my mother one gray afternoon that perfectly matched my prevailing mood.
I had regressed; not only had I left my dorm and my sleeping roommate to move back to my aunt’s house, but I was driven to and from school. I assured everyone it was just until I could get around better, but I sure didn’t mind the ease and convenience. Okay, the babying. My mom and aunt treated me like I was the Great Poobah and they felt honored to wait on me, serving me my meals on a tray as I reclined on the couch (it felt better to have my leg up), typing my papers, and one night playing three hours’ worth of whist just because I was the mood for it.
“It’s not from Kelly, is it?” I had just broken up with a girl who was less a nice home ec major and more an obsessive weirdo, and she—via letters and phone calls—liked to remind me what a jerk I was.
She looked at the envelope. “No, fortunately—it’s from Madison. Isn’t that where Kristi goes to school?”
I might have actually smiled.
“Yeah, it is,” I said, reaching for the letter.
“And there’s a postcard too.”
Wow. Pay dirt. I looked at the front of the postcard, a picture of a cow in a meadow, before flipping it over.
Bonjour mon ami—
I heard through the international grapevine that you broke your leg. Jesuis desolée. As you may have been smart enough to figure out, I’m in France right now. In the town of Limoges—famous for porcelain and tasty beef cattle. I just got a job (I like everything about being an artist but the starving part). I’m an au pair, taking care of two little boys named Benoît and Pascal. We have mandatory finger painting and I’m teaching them how to sing “Chelsea Morning.” How do you like them pommes? Get better!
Darva
I smiled for the second time that day and laid the postcard on my chest, imagining little French boys in berets singing Joni Mitchell. Then, on a roll, I smiled again as I opened Kristi’s letter.
Hey Joe,
I’m supposed to be listening to my boring astronomy professor’s lecture on supernovas, but I think they probably have more exciting lectures on Uranus…ha ha.
So how’re you doing, Joe? I can still picture you falling so weird on the ice—yikes! I suppose you’re not having fun sitting out all those games either…but wait, I’m not writing to depress you, I’m writing to cheer you up!
So get a load of this—I tried mushrooms for the very first time. Have you ever? It was wild! My friend Brian (he’s from Santa Fe and says this Hopi Indian kid in high school turned him on to mescaline) and I and another couple took them and went to the movies—oh my God, we saw Serpico—that Al Pacino is cute! (That’s how I judge all movies—on how cute the leading man is, ha ha.) Next weekend we’re going to go camping and take them—Brian says being out in nature on mushrooms will blow my mind! I can’t wait!
Other than expanding my universe, it’s the same old same old. My roommate’s kind of a jerk—a big fat load who eats in bed when she thinks I’m sleeping. She sounds like a big rat, gnawing through her potato chips and malted milk balls. I am cheerleading, but for the JV basketball team, which is kind of b-o-r-i-n-g. I’m thinking maybe cheerleading is more of a high school thing….
So I hope you’re feeling better and getting stronger and life’s treating you better because YOU DESERVE IT!
Write me when you have time.
Love,
Kristi
I stared at the word love for a long time. Breaking all recent records, I smiled again.
Ten
I didn’t—couldn’t—suit up for games, but when I hobbled into the stands, the crowd gave me a standing ovation. The next time they cheered, and the game after that they clapped. Well, some of them. I didn’t think I liked getting attention for being the spaz who fell over the boards, but when the applause stopped I felt—and this is going to sound pathetic—a little abandoned. Then I got pissed off, resenting the fans for watching the players on the ice instead of me and then resenting them for taking my attention away from the game. To tell you the truth, it was a relief when the season ended.
But then just when life seemed to be getting back to something I might enjoy again—I was off my crutches and back in my dorm—my mom told me she had a boyfriend.
She said this during what had been a perfectly nice dinner. Beth had been telling us about a new cheesecake cookie that her company’s test kitchen had developed.
“This was not one of their better efforts,” she said. “They had these hard red chunks in them that were supposed to be the strawberry flavoring. Hal Lawson was in my office—he’s in charge of R&D—and he bites into one.
“‘Guess we’re going to have to research a better strawberry substitute,’ he says, and pulls out a piece of the tooth he just brok
e!”
My mother laughed for about a half second and then started clearing the table.
“Speaking of dessert,” she said, “we’re going to have company for ours.”
She looked frazzled, as if she’d run up a bunch of flights of stairs and still couldn’t find the room she was looking for; there were pink spots high on her cheeks and she was sort of breathless.
“Who’s coming, Carole?” asked my aunt, a tease in her voice.
“His name is Len, Joe,” she said, looking at me. “He teaches civics at my school.”
She blew at a curlicue of hair that was spiraling down from her forehead and grabbed my plate, even though I wasn’t quite done, and stacked it on her own.
I glared at my aunt. “Did you know about this?” I was suddenly mad at her, mad that my mother would confide in her before me. As usual, I was the last to know about anything.
“I didn’t tell you about him,” said my mother quickly, “because I didn’t know if there was anything to tell. We’ve only just…well, started going out.”
“Great,” I said, with a big oily phony smile. “I can’t wait to meet the guy.”
“Joe—”
“No, really, Mom. I mean it.” And it was true, despite the sour sarcasm in my voice, I had a great curiosity to meet the guy whose sudden appearance in my life made me want to run to my room and bawl like a baby.
He was bigger than me, which made me immediately defensive, and rumpled-looking in a frayed-collar, snagged-knit-tie, bad haircut kind of way. That I noticed all this made me feel like a big fruit and made me resent him all the more.
We both watched my mom shake the aerosol can and swirl pyramids of whipped cream on slabs of pie. I found myself smirking when she handed me the piece with the most whipped cream, but then I caught my aunt Beth’s look, which asked, What is your problem?
The View from Mount Joy Page 12