I flip my mirror down to make sure I look the same. My eyes seem smaller.
“And what do you mean ‘this is the good shit’?” I ask. “What was Cully’s?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Kind of shwaggy-looking. Not something I’d buy.”
“Why not?” I say, feeling absurdly defensive. I crack the window.
“It’s green,” she says. We look at one another, smiling a little. I feel like a young girl.
“No shit it’s green,” I say.
“I typically buy purple,” she says. “At least lately. It’s the strain that’s going around. These things come in trends. Just like anything. Fashion, food, even countries to adopt children from . . . Remember when Romania had its heyday? Can you imagine adopting from Romania? You’d get some angry gymnast with fetal alcohol syndrome.”
“What are you talking about?” I laugh. “Should we get out, or what?”
“No,” Suzanne says. “I guess not. I just wanted . . . I don’t know what I wanted. To see him.” She looks out into the crowd. “To see him, maybe talk, I—oh, God. Oh my God. There he is. Do you see him? Right there! Oh. My. God.”
“Where?” I search the crowd.
“Far right. By that heating lamp.” She points and gestures, which isn’t helping me.
“There are tons of heating lamps,” I say.
“Right below it. Right there. Next to orange guy.”
I scan the crowd for orange, seeing people dressed absurdly well to be out here, and then I land on him. He’s pretty hard to miss. Dickie’s an impeccably handsome man who exudes wealth and thorough showering. Black-silver hair, hard, square jaw, the lines on his forehead strong like cracks in ice. He always looks freshly pressed, smacked, and dry cleaned, and his expression is one of perpetual jocularity. He has his flaws—excessive teeth whitening, low attention span, the scent of a distillery looming about—yet he possesses a quality that makes everything he does seem right. He’s kind of like my father, I realize, but effortful.
“He looks good,” I say. I miss him. We were unlikely friends. Maybe because I was the only person who didn’t want anything from him.
When we met I was working at the Summit Daily, where I wrote for the visitor’s guide. Over dinner one night Suzanne told him about my old desire to be a reporter and Dickie told me to audition for Fresh Tracks, a new show the resort was going to air in the main hotels.
“You’d be perfect,” he said. “A local girl giving visitors the inside scoop. I’ll set it up. Give it a shot.” I was buzzed on the good wine and the new friendship and connections. Suzanne looked across the table at me as though everything was already taken care of. I know he helped get me the job, but both he and Suzanne have never made me feel that way.
“What are you talking about?” Suzanne looks at me with watery, disbelieving eyes. God, I should never smoke pot. I’ve never been good at it. Some people are pros. The ends of my eyelashes seem to have acquired tiny weights and the word fingerling keeps running through my head.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I meant that he doesn’t look different to me, like Mirabelle said.”
“What?” she says again, and I realize something has happened. She hasn’t even registered the comment. Either that or I’ve said “fingerling” aloud.
“He looks terrible,” I say. “Like a potato.”
“What do you mean? Look. Look at him.” She shoves her hand, palm up, toward the crowd.
I scan for Dickie again, then see what she’s shoving me toward. Shit. I see. He has acquired another mark of flair, and she is young and porn-bodied.
“She’s . . . she’s . . . she’s black!” Suzanne says.
I put my hand on my mouth so I can be positive that what I’m thinking doesn’t escape.
“What?” Suzanne says.
“I didn’t say anything.” I prop my leg up onto the seat.
“I’m not racist.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t like poor people, I admit that. But I’m not racist.”
I nod my acceptance.
“Where did he even find her?” She leans toward the windshield. It’s like we’re watching a movie at a drive-in. “I can’t believe he’s here in front of everyone. The Scovilles are here, Cindy Giacometti, Mirabelle—oh my God she must just be loving this. They’re all gabbing about it, I’m sure, those sluts. This is unbearable.”
For people I don’t know well, I still know each one of her friends thoroughly from the soap operas they create, which are later broadcast to me.
“Who cares,” I say. “Cindy Giacometti is miserable. You told me her husband says ‘Fuckwad’ to his reflection every morning. Ceri Scoville looks like that blond muppet from The Muppet Show. She’s like a cartoon application of herself. Or something. Why do they all get that same fish-mouth face anyway? And Mirabelle? She’s the biggest social climber I’ve ever met. God, someone rich comes to town and she swoops in for the attack!”
“Look at her,” Suzanne says. “Look at that . . . that girl. What is she, a masseuse or something?”
I look. The woman—the girl—reaches into her purse. Dickie yells something and she laughs, but not too much, which probably means she’s known him for a while. I feel so embarrassed for Suzanne, so sorry.
“He’s the one that looks bad,” I say. “No one is laughing at—”
“She looks like a TV host,” Suzanne says.
I open my mouth, stare straight ahead. Deal with it, I tell myself. Let it roll right over you. What does that even mean? I watch the woman put on lip gloss. She’s wearing knee-high boots with a mangy fur trim. Her breasts look powerful, like little generals. She looks trashy. I run my hand through my hair.
“I can see her lips from here,” Suzanne says.
“She just glossed them,” I say, feeling defensive of this girl.
“I had my lips done,” Suzanne says. Her voice has become calm and spooky.
“I had my eyes done, my breasts. I took Paxil to kill my appetite. I’ve spent thousands on Pilates. I’ve taken stripper aerobics, for Christ’s sake. Would have done crack whore toning.” Her voice breaks a little. “What was it for? What was the point of all that maintenance if I’m going to be traded in like a . . . like a frickin’ leased Honda?”
I remember when I went with her to Denver for her plastic surgery, how every woman who walked out of the office looked the same and reminded me of someone I vaguely knew. Do all wealthy men like that carp with boobs look? Or do these women get together and tell each other they look good so they can’t see straight?
“A lot of clients make the same requests,” her doctor said when I mentioned it. “Pronounced, taut cheekbones, full lips, square jawline, eyes that look awake.” I was glad Suzanne was just getting a little lift in the eyes. Her doctor’s face was not a good advertisement for his services. He looked like he was speeding down an eternal luge.
Dickie’s girlfriend is thin yet plumped, something I feel can never be attained again at my age, that thin, toned fullness. “You’re too good for him,” I say.
“No, I’m not,” Suzanne says. “That’s the whole point. The whole problem. It’s so unfair. What happens to us.”
Don’t include me in this, I want to say. “We should go.” I turn the key so the radio comes on. “Okay? Let’s get out of here. Let’s just go home.”
“Fine,” she says. “Forget him, right? Let him have that happy ending, then trade her in after a year. Or less, I bet! Let’s go. Let’s get a drink somewhere. Hit up Cecilia’s. Let’s party.” She punches the air with her fists. “I don’t want to go home yet. My lonely house. It’s so cavernous. I want to drink in a small space.”
It’s a familiar progression: sadness, anger, sarcasm, need for total inebriation.
“I have wine,” I say, thinking of my dad at home.
“No, I need to go out,” she says. “I need action. And music. People! Poor Morgan. What am I going to tell her? I want to call her, but she’ll know something�
�s wrong.”
“My dad,” I say. “I need to get home. The room, going back to work—it was a big day.”
“Of course,” Suzanne says, and her mood shifts. “Big day for Sarah.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Suzanne,” I say. “Is there something you want to say? First you call me trashy—”
“What? I didn’t call you—”
“You said that girl looked like a television host and—”
“I wasn’t even thinking about you! I was thinking of those Extra, E! News, model girls. My God, don’t flatter yourself.”
There’s a solid, single knock on my window and we both jump.
“Jesus!” Suzanne says.
The pale-faced girl with the all-terrain backpack stands outside. I turn the ignition on to put the window down. A song plays on the stereo—Doncha wish your girlfriend was hot like me—and the girl hands me a piece of paper. Her arm is noosed up to her elbow with rope bracelets. I read the flyer. It basically says that Suzanne’s SUV is responsible for global warming, wars, and the massacre of thousands. I hand it to Suzanne.
“This car encourages the massacre of thousands?” she says.
“If not millions,” the girl says.
A scene flashes in my head: Cully at nine, or somewhere around there. The two of us sitting down to dinner, Cully telling me about the hoses that are jammed down the throats of geese, pumping their stomachs with feed. He had a teacher at the time, Mrs. Lamb, who would fill their minds with her politics. We had to stop going to restaurants that served “that liver thing.” Then came the dolphin and tuna problem. We absolutely could not have the stuff in our household even though I loved eating it right from the can. Now I wonder, Why didn’t anyone fight for the tuna? Why do we only protect some creatures? Why not eat dolphins?
This young girl is staring at me and I wonder if she has asked me a question. I take in her beak nose and slightly protruding eyeballs and wonder if she’d hand out these flyers if she were any prettier. That’s what happened to Cully, I think. He became cool and stopped fighting. Or he just slipped into the next of many stages.
“Just something to think about,” the girl says. “The earth your children will inherit.”
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Suzanne says. “This is just perfect. Listen, hippie—envy always comes to the ball dressed as self-righteousness and high moral standards.”
“Did you just make that up?” I whisper.
“No,” she says, her mouth unmoving like a ventriloquist’s, then louder to the girl, “Do you know how much money I’ve raised for charities? For people with cancer, for hobos and kids and elephants. I can do more for this world in a day than you can do in a lifetime, so don’t lecture me. Go do something with your life besides sticking slogans to your pitiful vehicle, a van, most likely, that probably can’t even pass an emissions test. God, I hate when people tell me what to do. Do I ask you to brush your hair?”
“Earth Trust is just asking you to reconsider what you drive,” the girl says.
“I won’t reconsider,” Suzanne says. “I do enough. I give, give, give. I could stab an endangered species if I wanted to. Everyone wants to save the earth at your age. Give it four years. You’ll want an Escalade. Then blood diamonds. Then you’ll want a coat that’s made out of bunnies and eagles or some crap.”
I begin to laugh but freeze when Suzanne says, “And her son has died. She has more important things to consider and reconsider, and doesn’t need some chick in shit-colored corduroys talking about what our children will inherit. My daughter’s inheriting a goddamn Bratz doll!”
The girl, a bit frightened, lowers her eyes, then walks toward a minivan and puts a flyer underneath the wiper.
“Minivans too?” Suzanne says. “No one’s safe.”
“You shouldn’t have said that,” I say. I’m gripping the steering wheel.
“Oh, she’s fine.”
“I meant, you shouldn’t have said anything about him. You shouldn’t use him to . . . to trump hippies.”
I glare at her, hoping I’m communicating my anger because nothing seems to be getting through.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she says. “I’m obviously a little worked up and upset about other things.” She gestures to the ice rink. Dickie stands with his arms crossed over his chest, a look of contentment not only on his face but rippling through his body.
“Can we please get out of here?” Suzanne says.
I make one of those juvenile scoffing sounds.
“What?” she says. “Let me have a moment, okay? One moment. Then we can go back to you.”
“Oh, please,” I say, but don’t know how to follow up. I start the car.
“This is hard for me,” Suzanne says. “I’m miserable, just so you know, and I need help too. I’m sorry, but I do. I’m going through this all alone. I can’t talk to you. I can’t talk to my other friends without them telling everyone they know. I can’t talk to Morgan and show her how much I need her. I can’t interrupt her life with my needs.”
She begins to cry and I resent it. She has enviable problems, though I know that’s unfair to think. I’m sure there are people out there who’d envy my problems, who’d call them “first world.” I find that so hard to believe, but I know it’s true.
I drive out of the parking lot, passing the girl, who’s still putting flyers under people’s windshields, reminding them of yet another thing they’re doing wrong. What if I ran her over? What if some neurons snapped in my head and created this urge? Things happen in an instant. In five seconds the life that you know can be over. Five seconds, ten. The same amount of time it takes to shock green beans.
“Maybe we should skip the wine,” I say. “Maybe the whole pot and drinking combination doesn’t help.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge,” she says.
I turn on the blinker, summoning a calm I hope shames her. “Okay, that was rude,” I say. “I meant it’s not helping both of us. I wasn’t directing it toward you.”
“Your son sold pot, Sarah. And you had no clue. Don’t judge me. Just let me mourn too. I know it’s just a marriage, but let me.”
The words seem rehearsed.
I drive. I grip the steering wheel and I drive. My son sold pot. That can’t be the last word. There’s more than that. There is supposed to be much, much more than that. When he turns thirty I’ll be fifty-one. When he’s fifty I’ll be seventy-one. I’ve done the arithmetic, cringing at my age multiplying. Now I cringe at the cringing. How wonderful it would be to reach that age, to see him age with me, back behind yet parallel.
I drive through town as if in a trance, Suzanne crying silently beside me and the stupid stupid song playing, Doncha wish your girlfriend was raw like me. Doncha.
Chapter 7
After I drop myself off and Suzanne speeds away wordlessly, I make a meal with things on the verge of ruin. Green onions, sour cream, half a lime, steak. I make tacos without a taco. My father is on the couch watching a young star on television insist that she’s just an average person. Why would anyone insist on being that?
I pour myself a glass of wine, then walk over with our dinners. I sit and curl my legs under me, then take a sip of wine and am ashamed by the relief it brings me. I’m a good drinker. I don’t get mean or emotional. If I do become weepy it’s because a shot of warmth and affection for humanity enters me unbidden. But now I think I could be entering shaky territory. I feel stupid and naive about Cully, and I hate getting into fights with Suzanne.
“I don’t feel like eating this anymore,” I say. “I want Cocoa Puffs.”
“You on drugs?” my dad asks.
“What?” I say. “No.”
“I can smell it.”
I put my plate down and keep the wine. “I took a hit of pot. I forgot.” I roll my head back and forth. “Then I fought with Suzanne. I’ve had a rough night.”
“What did you fight ab
out?” my dad asks.
“Nothing, really. I take up too much space.”
“I think it’s the other way around. Your weight is probably the same as one of her kneecaps.”
“Dad, she’s not even that big. We need to stop.” As I say this I remember what I was thinking about in the car:
Her overdone foundation makes her look embalmed.
Her sapphire and diamond rings are giving her sausage fingers.
Her fur coat makes her look like she’s being attacked by a Kodiak.
“I’m just having fun,” he says. “Fat jokes are fun for everyone. Farts too. Always funny. In fact, I think she looks quite good.”
“I know,” I say. “She does. I should tell her that. I get so angry because she’s so self-absorbed, but that’s what makes me feel better at the same time. To have a friend who isn’t tippy-toeing around me.”
“This is good,” he says, nodding and chewing. “You always know when to take the meat off the heat. And you know to let it sit. It’s a good thing to know.”
“You taught me well,” I say, then lean over to reach my fork. I stab a piece of steak. “Good,” I say.
He looks out toward the deck, pondering something in the distance, then resumes his dinner.
“I hope I did that for you,” he says. “Teach you well. Been there for you. It must have been hard without a mother. I’ve tried . . .”
There are moments when his shoulders sort of sink a bit and I feel guilty for ever raising my voice at him, for being impatient, then further guilt for the guilt itself that stems from knowing a parent is going to die one day (when Cully is fifty-eight, I’ll be seventy-nine and my dad will be gone). Guilt and having to remind yourself to wait it out gracefully, to cherish their existence, not everyone has their parents, and so on. Oh life. Oh death. Why haven’t we all learned how to deal with it yet? The most basic thing in the world. Got to get life-trained. Death-certified.
“You did just fine,” I say. I remember him always checking in with me, to the point where it got tiresome. I was okay, and his attention made me feel bad about this.
The Possibilities Page 7