My immediate thought was, What other boys? No one else existed for me then.
I realize this is still my problem. I’m not happy about it. I don’t want to be this way. It isn’t that I value myself more than others. Maybe I just want to protect others from the likes of me, save them from having to draw from their deck of learned expressions and emotions.
“Good job,” Suzanne says.
“Yes,” I say. “We’re doing good.”
We’ve been working efficiently and I wonder if this has something to do with the tension in the room, if she even notices it. I take a look around, the bags of folded large T-shirts, the thirty-four-inch-waist jeans, the one snowboard poster, a remnant of his teenaged self. This is a room that belonged to someone who didn’t intend to live here much longer.
“You want a glass of wine?” I ask.
“Of course,” Suzanne says.
• • •
I GO UPSTAIRS and pour us a glass of chardonnay, the only kind of wine she likes. I think of it as the drink of old ladies. I’m about to go back downstairs, but the sight of my dad and this girl outside together makes me stop and watch. They are both chipping the ice off the front deck in what seems to be a chummy sort of silence. It looks like she’s trying to chop down a tree with a butter knife, but she seems to enjoy it. I would—the repetitive choreography, late sun on my back, the lifting of big chunks of ice. It would be satisfying, like peeling paint or sunburned skin, or doing penance.
I put the wine down, get cash from the drawer in the kitchen, and walk to the deck door, sliding it open. “You guys okay?”
“We’re doing well, aren’t we, Miss Kit?”
My dad heaves his body into his shovel and grunts like he’s bench-pressing. He does more in one dig than she does in five.
“I should get going soon,” she says.
“Yes, you’ve got beers to twist open,” my dad says.
“No,” she says. “Just things to do.”
I search my dad’s face for disappointment. This is the most active I’ve seen him in a while. “You go sow your wild oats,” he says. “Make a sweater.”
“My wild oats have been sown,” she says, and looks briefly at me. “I think I’ll just go lie down.”
“How much do we owe you?” I ask.
“I’ve got it,” my dad says.
He takes his wallet from his back pocket and takes out more than the task warrants.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“What do you mean, it’s okay?” my dad asks. “Are you doing community service or are you making beer money?”
He hands her the money and she takes it.
“Thank you,” she says.
They look one another in the eye. I feel for him. He must miss having young company. He and Cully would snowboard together all the time. Cully had gotten him off his skis and onto a board years ago. Sometimes they’d take the shuttle and when they got off, walking with their boards tucked under their arms, beanies pulled down, from a distance, they’d look the same age. They’d look like friends. I wish I could see this again.
“Come back tomorrow,” my dad says. “Then I’ll really put you to work. Bring better gloves next time. Or hey, I have some for you.” He looks at me, excited.
“We have all this stuff if you want it,” my dad says. “Do you like rap? Or punk rock? New and old school. We’ve got tons of records, I mean CDs you can have. We’ve got gloves, hats—”
“They might be big—” I say, feeling a possessiveness.
“Books,” he says. “You can have it all.” He says this last line like a salesperson, then bats his hand in front of his face, swatting away his own joke.
She looks at me and seems to register something in my expression though I’m trying my best to remain blank.
“I should go,” she says. She leans the shovel against the rail—a shoveler who borrowed our shovel. Our street is so quiet I feel as though we’re on a stage. A soft spray of snow is beginning to fall.
“Really,” my dad says, less enthused this time. “We really do have a lot of things you could use. You’re welcome to come in and take a look.”
I don’t object. Something about her reassures me, an intelligence and sensitivity. My first inclination was to say, “It’s mine,” followed by the desire to hide, to not let her see who we are, what’s happened to us. But my purpose is to clean out. So why not come in and shop his life? It would be nice to have her want something, to put his things to use. I imagine her with one of his books or one of his sweatshirts, something of his going on her adventures.
“You should,” I say. “Come in. We’re cleaning things out.” I don’t want to say the things belonged to my son who is dead, not yet. She’d feel like she was in a horror film. “My son has outgrown them,” I say instead, and exchange looks with my dad.
“I need to go,” she says.
“Snowboards, movies,” my dad says. He is let down. “So much. A ski pass. I bet you could sell it. I guess that would be illegal. Clothes, but they’re boys’ clothes. You don’t want boys’ clothes.”
“Dad,” I say. I touch his shoulder. “Next time.” We need to let her go now.
“Oh,” Kit says. She looks confused, alert. “I thought you were husband and wife.”
We both laugh and she looks at us, concerned. My dad revels in her mistake, but I watch her carefully. Something has shifted. She is not at all amused by the innocent mistake. I don’t know what I should say or that I need to say anything. I don’t think I’m capable of dealing with anyone more unusual than myself.
“Nope,” I say. “This is my dad.”
“Thank you, though,” he says. “You made my day.”
She looks like she has more to ask but is holding back.
“It was nice meeting you both,” she says, rushing now toward the steps. “Thank you for letting me . . . do this.”
“Thanks for your help,” I say. “Be careful.” I look at the top of the ice-covered stairs that they never got to. The ice has little dips in it like a golf ball.
“Your book,” my dad says. She turns and looks at the black book on the railing.
“It’s for you,” she says. “It’s a calendar.”
“Okay,” my dad says, and we watch her go. She walks fast as if we’ve said something that has offended her.
“That was different,” I say. “You think she’s Mormon?”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. Don’t they leave Bibles with you or something?”
“It’s not a Bible,” he says.
She gets into her truck and we watch her drive down the street. My dad waves, but she doesn’t wave back.
“That was kind of odd,” I say. “Did you guys talk much?”
“Sort of,” my dad says.
“What did you talk about?”
He stares out onto the street, arms crossed in front of him, pondering something. My question finally reaches him.
“Uh, let’s see,” he says. “She loves the mountains. She just graduated from college. East Coast. She’s from Bronxville, New York. She isn’t ready to go to med school—her dad wants her to. She had a good cadaver physiology program at her high school. What else? Her name isn’t short for Katherine. She’s named after her grandfather, Christopher Lux. She was ready to go back home. She’s lived here since July, but someone who lived here urged her to stay.”
“Who?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“What else?”
“Hon, I wasn’t taking minutes.”
“Actually, it sounds like you were. You covered a lot.”
“I like to talk,” he says. “These kids all stalling. Figuring out what they want to be. It’s nice to hear about their plans, or lack of.”
Like Cully. I imagine this girl moving here and remember my longing to leave here, to forage for happiness, change, escape, renewal, my own ground. At DU, I’d lug around my huge video camera and tripod. They became a shiel
d in some way, a way to overcome shyness, a way to make my curiosity legitimate.
“Oh, and we talked about soups,” my dad says. “Hearty soups. And I may have mentioned a few things about the ski business—coping with losses, new initiatives—”
“You must have bored her to death.”
“No, I . . . she seemed interested. She held her own.” He puts his hands on his hips. “We made a dent out here,” he says. “That was good.”
“Good,” I say. I try to think of more work, more tasks, things to make him feel useful and strong.
My dad takes her calendar from the railing, flips to today’s date. Blank.
• • •
I WALK BACK downstairs, stopping in the doorway. I wonder if my dad will move into this room, since it’s larger than the one he’s in, or if it would be too strange. Then again, he lived in the room he shared with my mom. There may be something comforting in the reuse. I walk in and put Suzanne’s wine down on the desk.
“Much better,” I say, my voice sounding different in the emptier room. “Where are you?” I hold my elbow with one hand, my glass of wine with the other.
She walks out of the closet, holding his newest ski jacket. “I think you should see this.” Her voice hesitant, almost fearful.
I feel a swell of adrenaline. “See what?”
“Something of Cully’s,” she says.
I wait on edge, as if what Suzanne has found may be able to bring him back.
I look at the coat draped on her arm and in her hand, something small and black along with a wad of bills. Money in a coat pocket. I love finding money in a pocket—it’s like a gift from yourself.
“Score,” I say, and immediately feel guilty about it. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Can’t go a day without it. After Cully died I felt guilty for singing in the car. That’s when I was still counting. Counting the days since he died. I don’t know what’s worse—doing that, or having lost track, to have stopped counting, which I have. I’ve rounded up to months. Three. Guilt came for feeling hungry, for having that sensation. It came from yawning, from putting on makeup, dressing nicely. It came when I felt sexual desire. I remember the first time this happened—some scene in a movie set me off and I nearly wept, feeling so awful that I had a response, that I still felt anything at all. The body just keeps going. It doesn’t care what you’re up to. I remember how guilty I felt for not buying him the most expensive urn.
“This is a lot of money,” Suzanne says. She spreads the money out like a fan.
“He was a valet. He always had a lot of bills everywhere.” I keep my distance, looking at it, quickly.
“These are hundreds.” She makes eye contact with me, but I can’t hold it.
“Okay,” I say. I take another sip, then point to the desk. “Your wine’s right there.”
“These are hundreds,” she says again. “There’s got to be about three grand here.”
“Well, he was working at the hotel since, what, June? June until December, so—”
“So he parked a lot of cars?” she asks. “He was extra cute and polite and got tipped in hundreds? This isn’t Vail.”
“What are you getting at?” I look at the money in her hand, then away again as if it’s something I’m not supposed to see.
“I’m not getting at anything.” She waves the money, like a fan. The bills look damp and old. “But you don’t think it’s weird these are hundred-dollar bills? We tip with ones and fives—well, you do. I tip with a twenty, but—”
“He probably exchanged the ones.”
“Why wouldn’t he put it in the bank?” She gives me a patronizing look that I can’t stand. I hate when her questions aren’t really questions but her superior alternatives.
“I don’t know!” I say. “What does it matter? Maybe he was going to buy something for himself. A car or a computer.”
“Okay, this is a scale,” she says, as if saving it if she couldn’t get through to me the first time.
She extends the black scale toward me, making me walk up to it. It looks like a calculator. I take it, turn it on, and am tempted to weigh something. “You’re like an attorney, springing evidence on me.” I look at this object in my hands and give it back to her.
“I’m not trying to do that,” she says.
“Then don’t!” I turn away because my heart is beating so fast I feel I must look panicked. I walk to the stereo and start to rummage through CDs. My hands shake. Obie Trice, the Roots, NOFX, Rolling Stones. I flip through them all.
“Don’t be defensive, Sarah. I’m trying to help. It’s okay. I mean, you can put it together, I’m sure. The baggies of pot, now this. He obviously . . . had a second job.”
“It can get busy at the Village,” I say, still not facing her. “And people used the valets even when they weren’t staying there. He did well. He worked hard. He worked all the time.”
I turn around, keeping my hands in fists by my side.
“Sweetie, I know. Look, it was probably just pot—at least not the hard stuff.”
“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything!” The room is too small. I have nowhere to go. I walk to the door. I need to leave this room, this friend, this life. I touch my throat.
“I know I don’t know the specifics,” Suzanne says. “But I mean”—she laughs—“you kind of gotta consider the—”
“You should consider putting a beeping mechanism on your ass in case you back up!”
The CD begins to skip, a sound I can’t stand. I go back to the stereo, slam the button to make it stop, then look at Suzanne to see what I’ve done. Her eyebrows are raised in a way that says she is better than me and she will rise above my comment. She puts the cash on the bed, then raises her hands to indicate she tried, and now she’s done. The room has an angry hush, like the silence after a lovers’ quarrel.
“Whoops,” I say.
“Yeah, whoops,” she says. “I don’t even know how to respond to that. Oh right, I can’t! Because you’re in mourning!”
My jaw tightens. I bite the inside of my lower lip and try to summon some control, some eloquence. “You can say whatever you want,” I say. “So what if he didn’t put his money in a bank. He was doing things his way. I know you didn’t approve—you’ve never approved of him—”
“Stop,” Suzanne says. “I loved him. I loved him so much. You know that. We all did.”
My composure is a farce and I let it go. “I know.” I sit on the bed, my hands shaking. There’s too much adrenaline running through me for me to cry.
“Look,” she says, “I know this must really suck.”
I give a quick laugh of agreement. Her observation was apt. She walks over to me and places her hand on my shoulder. Gives it a quick squeeze. I feel like a kid being forgiven.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I can’t believe I just told her to put a beeping mechanism on her ass like she’s some kind of dump truck and she’s the one saying sorry. I look up at her, the word Mom entering my head. She’d scoff if I told her that. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe this is something she feels herself. She’s been a friend who’s lasted through all the trends of friendships. I love her, I need her, and I don’t have to tell her this. We don’t have heart-to-hearts. In my life I have never had such an easy and unexpected relationship with another woman, not having to pander, not having to dress the part. It can be bliss to be so ugly.
I met Suzanne when Cully was almost two. I knew who she was but didn’t think she knew who I was. We were going to the same playground by the rec center, our babies were eight months apart. She knew all the other moms there and seemed like the ringleader of the bunch. I remember always looking at everyone’s wedding rings. Just like it is with the opposite sex, I felt immediately attracted to her. That happens sometimes: a recognition, or something about someone’s face or mannerisms that make you suspect you’ll get along. I could tell she noticed me too on those days at the playground.
“He’s so big,” she said one day abou
t Cully, and then, “Actually, I don’t know. I always say that to everyone.”
I laughed. “Breaking-the-ice talk,” I said.
“I know!” she said. “I hate it. What are the other mommy pickup lines—let’s see. ‘Do you like your stroller?’ Or ‘Is he eating solids?’ ”
“ ‘I love your burp cloth,’ ” I said, at ease with my brand of humor.
We made plans for the following afternoon and I went home as if I had been asked out on a date. I told her immediately I was a single mom, something I never told other moms. It was always so awkward, and I didn’t want to hear their responses because the responses usually made me think less of them and I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted friends. But the single status seemed to cause other moms to back up, then back off. It’s like when I was dating and would never consider guys who wore pleated pants or tie-dye. For them, my lack of husband was a deal breaker.
“Single?” Suzanne said when I told her. “Lucky.”
I stand up now and drape my arm over her shoulder and turn us to face the window. “Fuck,” I sigh.
“You can say that three times,” she says. “At least it’s pretty out.”
Shavings of snow float by and the flakes swirl in currents toward the ground, giving them a mood of anger. I used to fold the laundry in this room, watching Cully play outside. Who would have thought back then that this would happen to that baby? That big baby. It looks so barren here. I see a thin skin of ice hardened over the small, slow-moving stream.
“What now?” I ask. We separate.
“Well, I was going to take you out to dinner,” she says. “Now maybe he can take us out.”
She gets her wine from the desk. “I guess you need to see the humor in it,” she says.
“I don’t see it yet,” I say. “And I’m an imbecile. I don’t deserve dinner.”
“You’re not an imbecile,” she says. “It’s not like there were clues screaming at you. It’s not like it was something . . . I don’t know, that changed him.”
I trace back, seeing if she’s right, if there was something that should have alerted me, but all I can think of is my bad job, my poor parenting. I backed off of him about not doing anything after graduating from college. At first I was a pain, trying to make him feel lazy and ungrateful; I was always recounting things other kids we knew were doing—building irrigation systems in Patagonia, teaching English in China, going to law/med/business school. Then I eased up, remembering all the people who took a pause in life. Billy, for example. His slower evolution, his two-year stint as a ski bum dishwasher. I eventually warmed to Cully’s temporary job, understanding that in order to stay in a resort town, you needed to take what you could get. He found the job that would allow him to stay and I needed to endure his pace. He had time, something I didn’t have at his age. Time to want, to explore, time to be curious and to do nothing at all. I never thought Cully cut me off from what I wanted to do, he just redirected me. Reporting on the world’s affairs, reporting on day spas: I pretended there was no real difference.
The Possibilities Page 5