“Watch out!” Kit says.
I slam on the brakes and throw my arm out in front of her, crossing her body. She looks at my arm in front of her stomach. We lock eyes for a moment. I lower my window, aggressively, yet it goes down slow. “You shouldn’t run in front of a car like that!” I shout.
“Fuck off, geezer,” the boy says. His eyes are spread far apart, practically on the sides of his head like an herbivore’s.
“Whoa!” my dad says. “What a dick!”
I automatically bring my hand to my face, then back to the wheel.
“You don’t look old, babe,” Billy says. “He must have been talking to me. You’re still smokin’.”
“It’s true,” Kit says. “And you look young.”
“Please,” I say. “Stop.”
I check all mirrors this time, pull out, continue, my hands shaky. Everything is reminding me that life can change in an instant.
“What are we doing now? Someone tell me.”
“I thought we could take Kit home,” my dad says. “She could pack some things. Sound good?”
“Yes,” she says.
She holds the strap of her seat belt across her chest.
“Where do you live?” I ask.
“The condos up on Ski Hill.”
I turn at the end of Main, pass the Village, not looking in at the valets. I follow a line of cars going slowly even though the strong sun has turned the snow into a safe slush. I turn on Ski Hill with everyone else.
Shouldn’t this be harder? I feel there needs to be more friction against this girl. She can’t just jump into our car and become a part of our tribe. I wonder what Cully would have done or thought, what I would say when he came to me. Then I think: maybe he wouldn’t have come to me. If he were alive this is something I’d probably never know about. A mother of a daughter would possibly know. A mother of a son would not.
Seth, the boy I was with when I was sixteen—his mother didn’t know. Then again, neither did he.
My dad went with me to the hospital, though he didn’t go in the room. The first appointment was with a doctor who was probably the age my dad is now. I was so uncomfortable at first, but I will never forget his gentleness, his kindness.
The next appointment, the actual D & C, was a week later. The doctor was a youngish woman, crisp and mechanical. She was descriptive: she told me everything she was doing and everything I’d feel in a dispassionate way that in the end was comforting. I looked up at the ceiling and I wondered, inside of me, what did it see? No eyes. What did it hear? No ears. What did it feel? No brain. It didn’t feel or see or hear a thing, I guess. I didn’t know. There was no language to use to describe it. And I couldn’t miss what was never there. No one could. Nothing was feasible. Nothing had changed.
Except everything. Afterward, I had touched my abdomen. I pinched my skin. I thought it was possible that that moment, that particular choice, would hurt me for the rest of my life. Or maybe it wouldn’t. I would never know. Everything just becomes a part of you. Gets woven into the tapestry. The next day was an ordinary day.
I drive through what must be at least a foot of snow, but it moves away like dust.
“You don’t even need me,” Kit says. “If I were really a snow shoveler, I mean.”
“It doesn’t stay this way,” I say. “It hardens. It builds and doesn’t budge.”
I take a breath of the fresh air and feel something approaching satisfaction because of the snow, the warmth, the thump of music from passing cars, and the idea of Cully, some hint of him beside me.
“Which complex?” I ask.
“Gold Camp Two,” she says.
I smile to myself.
“We had a friend who used to live there,” Billy says.
“Seger,” I say. “Remember? He was always baking some kind of casserole and he had that weird girlfriend. She was always sucking on Rolaids.”
“She wore some tight jeans,” Billy says.
“I wonder if she needed the Rolaids from the casseroles or the jeans,” my dad says.
I was so in love with Billy then, or in love with the idea of him, his cool recklessness, the things it lent me. I wonder what Kit and Cully talked about, what they did with one another, what they felt. Lux, he called her. What else did he call her? So many questions I can ask, so many more layers to unearth. It’s kind of like the helicopters coming back, a hopeful noise returning.
Something has taken not a turn but a slight shift. Cully is here.
No. No.
No, not true.
It’s like rattling a box. It’s luggage overhead. Contents may shift, but once you land, everything inside is still the same.
I turn into the lot of her building. The snow is piled thick on the roof like frosting, making the dark-brown complex look like a fabled gingerbread house.
I park behind an old orange truck with three dogs in back. One barks at us, then slumps down, his chin resting on the rim of the tailgate, which says CHE ROLET.
A shaft of light cuts across her building, illuminating the dirty windows.
“I’ll be quick,” Kit says. She gets out and all I can think is that she shouldn’t be quick. She should take her time.
• • •
THE THREE OF us sit on the bumper of my car. Both Billy and my dad are quiet on either side of me. How have I ended up here with these bookends? I cup my hands in front of my mouth and blow.
“How’s the GTO?” my dad asks.
“Starter’s fried,” Billy says.
“Have you tried banging on it with a hammer?”
“Yeah, that worked for a while, but the gear’s spun. I’ve got the parts on order.”
I look at both of them with disbelief. “Now what?”
“I just have to wait,” Billy says.
“I wasn’t asking about your stupid car. I’m asking about now. Now what do we do? This isn’t right.”
“What isn’t right?” Billy says.
“I don’t know,” I say. “This whole thing we have going on. We’re driving to a five-star resort with a stranger who’s pregnant with Cully’s baby. Our grandchild.” I emphasize the our. “It’s like a Lifetime movie. I just hope she’s thought about this hard enough.”
“I’m sure she has,” Billy says. “She’s twenty-two. She seems like a smart girl. Having a baby right now? Sorry, but that would mess up her whole life.”
“Or enhance it,” I say.
“Think if it were Cully,” my dad says.
“That comparison doesn’t work.” I cross my arms over my chest and bounce on the bumper. I look up to the condo that Kit went into.
“I know,” my dad says. “But would you want him to have a baby if . . . ”
I don’t answer. I don’t know. Or I do know but don’t like my answer. I would be embarrassed if Cully had a baby. I know how wonderful my choice ended up being, yet I also know how much was cut away from me. It was a loss of the very brief time in my life when I was responsible for just myself. Kit could have a baby and it would be a loss of the person she was about to be. Or she’d have a baby and it would be wonderful. There’s a way to justify everything you do.
“I don’t see them together,” I say. “I don’t believe it. She seems so reserved, so . . . smart. Sorry, but Cully wasn’t very ambitious, obviously.”
“Cully was very smart,” my dad says. He looks straight ahead.
“I know,” I say. “I know.”
“And you don’t move here to find guys pursuing careers,” Billy says. “You come here to play. They sound like us, like how we were.”
We all take a moment to contemplate this. The similarities are awful. Here we go again, repeating ourselves, right on time like Old Faithful.
“It was brief,” my dad says. “A fling.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Think of the ratio here. Five guys to every girl. She must have gotten so much attention. She must have, you know, gotten around.”
“She said he was the only guy she was with
here,” Billy says.
“I don’t believe it. What young girl comes to live here and only has sex with one person?”
“They can’t all be like you,” Billy says.
“Oh, shut up, I wish. I should have shopped around.”
He laughs and I look down at our shoes in the snow, side by side.
“I’m just saying she didn’t make this up,” Billy says. “I can tell.”
“You can’t tell the time! How would you know? You don’t know anything. Dad, tell him. Do something.”
I look at my father, desperate for him to fix all of this somehow. I push off of the bumper and look at the two of them in this parking lot. A gust of wind blows their hair in a similar direction. I put my hands in my coat pocket. It’s cold in the shade, but I like the briskness.
“I think,” my dad says, “that you need to get over it. We all know Kit is telling the truth. That’s not the issue. That’s done. I also think that if Cully were here, he would not want to have a baby, and you’d support that. I’m not even sure what we’re talking about. Kit is doing what she’s doing. If she were your daughter, you wouldn’t want her to raise a baby on her own. I know you always wished you had gone on to grad school—”
“But I had Cully instead! At twenty-one. The same age, pretty much. I don’t think you could argue—”
“You wanted to apply for that scholarship,” my dad says. “What was it called?”
“Maxwell,” I say. “And so what? I’d be some serious reporter and not had Cully? Who knows if I would have made it anyway? I’m an idiot. I never would have done anything anyway.”
I remember something insignificant just then from college—leaving an interview and not knowing how to get back on the freeway. It’s silly to think that I’ve forsaken an opportunity, silly to think that I could have been somebody when I couldn’t even find the freeway . Diane Sawyer could have done it on mescaline, and there I was in a cul-de-sac asking a girl with a single dread popping out of her head like a cactus where to go.
“I don’t regret having him and having time to actually raise him,” I say. “I know you laugh at me and my job, but I happen to like my life, or I did.”
“No one is saying any of that,” my dad says. “We’re only saying—”
“We? What’s all this ‘we’ shit! Why are you both so supportive? Do you just go around telling everyone to get abortions?”
They exchange looks as if I’m insane and want to keep that information hidden from me.
“I am only saying that Kit is passing through,” my dad says. “She wants to move on to other things. This is her experience, one of many. This is her mistake.”
I know all of this. I know, but still I feel the need to argue, to defend something or someone I can’t name. How has my son repeated my mistake? It would be different for him though than it was for me. Kit would probably move back home, Cully would continue on his trajectory. I wonder if Billy’s thinking the same thing. There wasn’t as much change for him, as much sacrifice and consequence. I’m surprised by their support, their effortless understanding. I’d think their egos would come into play, or their wanting of Cully. I’d think, I don’t know, that they’d be more men-like, whatever that means.
“It’s not like we want to do this,” Billy says.
“But we are,” I say. “We’re taking her to do this to your son’s baby. Our grandchild. Dad, your great-grandchild.”
They don’t say anything for a while.
“It’s not a baby,” my dad says. “You know that.”
I look at my father as if he has just hit me. He knows he can win this battle. So does Billy—they have reserves to draw from. They know my past. God, first time I have sex I get pregnant. I was like an after-school special. They know I donate to Planned Parenthood, that I go to their pink ball every year and give a “Let Your Child Be on TV!” package to the silent auction. They know I would be adamant against Cully’s having a child at this stage in his life. Maybe they’re just being his voice or supporting Kit—noble men, congratulating themselves for being on a woman’s side. No, that’s not it. Maybe it’s because really, they know I’m arguing against myself, not wanting to admit that I understand Kit and that part of me, a big part, supports her. They’re being Cully’s voice, and my reluctant one. I shake my head, sick with myself, with all of us, with her.
My dad leans back, straightening his back against the trunk and tapping his fingers on his knees. “I love you,” he says in a casual way. “I love my grandson. None of that is changing. It never lessens.”
It doesn’t. That love for a child—it just grows and grows, which makes things both harder and better. My vision blurs. Tears fall or slide or drip—they do whatever down my face. I take my time. I go through some feelings, rifle through them like pages in a catalog, circling what looks good, changing my mind, settling on nothing.
I make my voice even: “So we take her to her appointment and then what?” I imagine us dropping her off, saying Good luck! I feel we’ve been over it already, but I still want to talk and talk until everything feels right, though it probably never will.
“Why do you want to take her anyway? Why do you want to have anything to do with her?” I know this is a false question, the kid in me wanting to show off an ability to be cold.
“I think she could use the company,” my dad says. “She’s alone. Scared. I’d like to be there for her. She came to us for a reason and took such a roundabout way of telling us because this is difficult stuff. But she did it and I respect her for it.”
Billy nods his head beside me and I realize how quiet he has been.
“Will you be able to do this?” my dad asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
My son is dead. And now my son’s child will be dead and my dad’s great-grandchild will be dead, and yet everything will be the same. There is no child and my son is and will always be gone.
My father laughs inexplicably.
“What’s so funny?”
He stands and twists from side to side. “I was thinking about this time with Cully. We were in the car and some guy behind us honked his horn. Cully yelled out, ‘Make like the wind and blow me!’ ” He chuckles again, the smile still on his face, remembering. “I don’t know why I thought about that just now. He wouldn’t have wanted a baby, hon. Not now. You know that.”
I think about when he was born—out popped Billy. Well, maybe the total resemblance took a few weeks or months to appear. They both had jovial, wide mouths, grins that took up most of their faces. What if this one were to come out looking exactly like Cully when he was born? What if it’s a girl? What if she looked like me?
“In a way he’ll be dying all over again,” I say.
“You can’t think about it that way,” Billy says.
“I know,” I say, and the truth is, I don’t. But I have nothing left, I think to myself. “But no one can tell you what to think, you know?”
“I do,” Billy says. “I think it too.”
“Think what?” I ask, but as soon as I say it I understand what he’s talking about. He is thinking and feeling all the things I’m feeling and saying, and my dad probably is too. They are both scared, and they’re behaving like men, wanting to be in control of this fear somehow. They know what she wants, but not necessarily what they do.
Billy stands and the car bounces. He wipes his hand over the back windshield to remove the snow that has accumulated, then blows two puffs of air into his fist. My dad looks lost, glassy-eyed, but when we make eye contact his face brightens. I hear a door close above us and see Kit carrying a small bag. She has changed into black jeans but still wears my sweater under her coat. When she walks down the steps we make eye contact for a moment, and in this look I recognize a kinship.
Billy opens the passenger door for her.
“Remind me to put some WD-40 on this hinge,” he says to me.
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
It’s time to get Suzanne. I imit
ate my dad’s twisting stretch before I get in. It’s a beautiful day, I realize. I live in a beautiful place. The surrounding pines, so impossibly tall, sparkle with snow. I tilt my face up and inhale, willing my surroundings to enter me somehow and to remind me how small I am.
Chapter 14
I drive under the bridge that marks the entrance to the Shock Hill subdivision, though “subdivision” doesn’t seem like an apt word for something so grand.
“What is this place?” Billy asks.
“Expensive,” I say, passing a home the size of a lodge. “They started building in two thousand, I think.”
“Can’t imagine what these people’s first homes look like,” Billy says.
“They have their own gondola,” my dad says. “Goes to town and the mountain.”
I shake my head at the size and heft of these homes, yet mine is relatively large as well, at least compared to the historic homes in the center of town. You sort of get used to it. Not only that, but like it better, in a way. I think of my childhood home, the Victorian on Ridge Street—I thought of it as large, but now it looks so small, like a quaint inn or a youth hostel. Older models of cars, or little Styrofoam cups of coffee we all used to be content with. Now it’s impossible to go back.
I turn into Suzanne’s cul-de-sac and idle in her driveway. Maybe mountain homes are so large in order to compete with the mountains. The view from Suzanne’s living room looks out upon the ski hills, the town, and the ten-mile range beyond.
“Let’s try to keep this to ourselves,” I say, but the home seems to have made everyone forget.
“This place is really on the large side,” Billy says.
“It ain’t shy,” I say. “And Kit, the heated driveway makes your fake job obsolete.” We all gaze at Suzanne’s home and the clean block of pavement. Sometimes I see beauty, sometimes I see maintenance. The many peaked roofs make it look like six homes put together.
“What happened to the bear?” Kit asks.
“Good God,” I say.
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