The Possibilities

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “Oh dear,” I say, a ludicrous response. A new life flashes before my eyes like a montage in a rom com. I imagine caring for her, my round Kit surrogate. I’d take her on walks. Through the town, by the lake, the mountains behind us rising in faults and humps, like furniture covered with a white sheet. We could order pizza and watch movies, dipping our crusts into plastic containers of honey. I’d feed her like a goose.

  Pop. Montage over. Gone. I look at her, sharply.

  “If that’s what you want,” she says. “It’s your choice. You can decide.”

  But I’ve already made my choices in life. I’ve made so many. That’s why I’m here by this rocking chair. My choices have somehow led me to this. This isn’t my choice to make. What has just happened here? I guess what I thought was going to happen when she first started talking: a proposal.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” I say. “And Billy? He never wanted the first one, why would you think he’d want the last?” I hurt myself with my own words. “Why did you do that?” I look around to see if anyone is witnessing this. As always, no one. Just the cups and saucers. Just the solid mahogany bed.

  “Why did I do what?” she says. She looks frightened as though I’ll shoot. I notice her hand on her stomach and I turn and walk away.

  “You could at least answer me,” she says.

  I stop, turn, can’t believe she just said that.

  “You want an answer right now in Pete’s Antiques? Do I want your baby? I’m obviously going to need some time to think about that. Or will we be late for your appointment?”

  I walk toward the front of the store, feeling like that toddler, pulled into places I don’t want to go, leashed by something I can never escape. I want to throw a fit. I consider calling Morgan to tell her that we won’t be coming anymore, that life just got way too difficult, that this is a difficult age, an impossible age. We need to call it off, shut it down. What makes me get into the car? I don’t know, but I do it. I see them waiting for me and I sense Kit behind me. I can’t think of a better alternative.

  Chapter 17

  What happens if you cancel an appointment? Does the nurse ask for your reasons? Do they offer advice, question your choices, your future plans, your course of action? Or do they just let you go?

  The road begins to elevate slightly. I pass a sign that says View Ahead. Isn’t there always going to be a view ahead? There are turns in the road and they keep my mind focused. I drive fast, in an attempt to make everyone nervous. My silent, passive way of letting them know something has shifted, though no one is catching on. Kit, who’s up front now, is the only one who knows that everything has changed.

  The air is warmer here, the rocks a burnished red; the aromas of the dense pines are strong and a little sour.

  I hear the flick of a lighter.

  “Oh my God, that’s what I smell.” I turn to the back and see Suzanne pulling from her little pipe. “Stop it!” I say.

  Smoke billows from her mouth like scarves.

  “Billy!” I say.

  “What? I took a minor inhalation.”

  “Kit is here and my dad’s in the car!”

  “I don’t care,” my dad says.

  “I’m fine,” Kit says, and I turn to her with a perplexed expression.

  “I’m about to eat my snacks,” Suzanne says, as if this explains everything. “This is insurance,” she says.

  “Cully used to sell pot,” I say. “Doesn’t this bother anyone? Apparently not! You fuckers. You animals.”

  Everyone laughs, even Kit. I make some kind of noise, a roar, but it comes out as a roo so I end up sounding like a spurned cartoon villain. I grip the steering wheel and swerve on purpose, making Suzanne laugh.

  “Sarah,” she says, “it’s okay. Here. I’ll stop. All done. Unless, Kit, do you want to insure your balls?”

  “No, thanks,” she says, then catches my eye and stops smiling.

  I hear the crunch of a bag of chips.

  I look at Billy in the rearview mirror. He holds a bud right up to his nose and takes a deep inhale. “Where’d you get this?” he asks.

  “Yard guy,” Suzanne says.

  “That’s funny,” he says. “ ’Cause he works with grass and weeds.”

  “Brilliant,” I say. “God.”

  “Sweet,” Billy says. “I get sweet. Cherry, but there’s a funky undertone.”

  “Cherry?” Suzanne says. “What are you talking about? More like grape. But yeah, there’s a musty bottom.”

  “High!” I say. “It smells like it will get you high, assholes!”

  Everyone laughs again. “I’m not trying to be funny.” I try to take slow, calming nasal inhalations, but with Kit next to me I’m conscious of sounding like a mad bull.

  “Is it a body or head high?” Billy asks.

  “It’s like a cannabis convention back here,” my dad says.

  I make Kit’s window go down. I periodically glance at Suzanne and Billy in back, trying to communicate my anger, but they’re busy, pensive as if in Napa tasting wine. They mumble to themselves:

  “It expands.”

  “Oaky. Spicy.”

  “A basic strain.”

  “But good soil.”

  “I taste fertilizer. It’s not organic.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that. THC is high. Tingly. An up high.”

  “Citrus lineage?”

  “I taste oriental carpets.”

  Laughter.

  “Came from this guy Phil T,” Suzanne says. “He is very cool. A pioneer. He took his dinky family business to another level. They were just a marginal mullet operation churning out shwag, but he got into botany, horticulture; toyed around with light, soil, temperature. No one was doing this then, at least not in Colorado. Now everyone’s sensitive to the nuances of—”

  I see a wide-enough shoulder ahead and pull over. We skid a little on the dirt and I brake hard, then turn to the back.

  “You guys are seriously irritating the shit out of me right now,” I say. “I am livid. No wonder our son did this, Billy. You sound like a trained professional.”

  “Cully dealt green marijuana,” Suzanne says. “Relax.”

  “Is there something you’re forgetting, Billy? Dad?”

  “Come on, Sarah,” Billy says. “We’re just having a little fun. It won’t hurt . . . ”

  “No one is supposed to have fun and it will hurt . . . you know.” I gesture toward Kit but realize they don’t know what I know. They don’t know what I’ve been offered, what I need to think about. But if she hadn’t made her little offer, would it be okay to make this car into a sweat lodge? Is it okay for her to drink like she did last night? What if she’s already ruined the baby’s life? Why do I care more now?

  “Sorry, sweetie,” Suzanne says from the back. “Sorry, Kit. Thought it could help your eyes.”

  “Sorry,” Billy says.

  I’m sorry. My anger is curious to me. What or who am I defending? A big rig rolls by, making the car tremble.

  • • •

  NO ONE HAS said a word for the past hour. We are almost to the hotel and I feel like I need to tell them it’s okay. I’m okay now. They can all leave time-out. I am eager to get to the room and think, though I’m put off that I have to think at all. Half an hour ago, on the road with the curves and trees, I thought, A baby. Yes, a baby. It wouldn’t have to end. Cully wouldn’t have to end. I can still be a mother.

  Now we’re in Colorado Springs, on Nevada Avenue, passing frightening motels, EZ Pawn, Bobby Brown Bail Bonds, places to get cash fast! and a baby seems out of the question. My soaring thoughts come down, down, down. Dirty cars speed alongside us. The sidewalks are littered with wrappers and sooty, frothy old snow. I imagine many elderly people have met their ends in these crosswalks. I imagine many young people have met their ends in the Stagecoach or the Chief Motel. We pass a car dealership with red and blue flapping flags and cars that look donated. Above is a billboard advertising the upcoming gun show.


  “Look, a hooker,” Suzanne says.

  I look at the woman walking into a wig shop. Lavender down jacket. Stiletto heels.

  “I wonder if business slows when it’s cold and prostitutes can’t show as much skin,” Billy says.

  “You think she’s buying a wig or doing an a.m. bj?” Suzanne says.

  “Maybe both,” Kit says.

  “A wig helps, I’m sure,” my dad says.

  Pikes Peak seems embarrassed in the distance, a blush cast down its side.

  “You’re bound to get shortchanged if you live here, don’t you think?” Suzanne says.

  “Morgan lives here,” I say. “Cully lived here.”

  “They went to CC. That’s not living here,” Suzanne says. “That’s like a pocket of warmth.”

  “The hooker’s a pocket of . . . never mind,” Billy says.

  I want so badly to talk to my dad alone and yet don’t know what to say. Sometimes I resist his advice, then doubt my own choice in the end. I need to talk to Billy instead. I stop at a light behind a minivan with a Baby on Board sticker. Are you kidding me, gods?

  “ ‘Baby on Board,’ ” Suzanne says. It seems everyone is trying their best not to react, but maybe it’s just me who’s imagining this.

  “The message offends me,” my dad says. “So if there isn’t a baby in the car, it’s okay to just plow through it?”

  “ ‘Dad Farted and I Can’t Get Out,’ ” Suzanne says.

  “No way,” Kit says.

  “Right there,” Suzanne says. I see the sticker on the beige minivan ahead of us in the right lane. When we pass, we all turn to look at the driver, but the windows are darkly tinted.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen this many bumper stickers,” Kit says.

  “This is a bumper sticker town,” my dad says. “But these are good ones. Usually here it’s all ‘God Bless Our Troops Especially the Snipers.’ ”

  The scenery begins to change, as if the town is shedding a layer. We drive up Lake, a peaceful road that leads to the hotel. I haven’t been here before. When I’d visit Cully I’d go to the Antlers. I’m glad the party is here and not on campus. I don’t want to be there, to see the buildings where he tried to build and edit himself, to see Slocum Dorm where he lived. I don’t want to see the life he had right before he didn’t have one.

  The trees are scraggly, bereft, making me proud of our bare aspens, the elegant shadows they cast. On the side streets I see homes with shade trees and American flags. Homes with Christian values—sons that play soccer and daughters with mild eating disorders.

  The road seems like an entry way to something promising, and sure enough I see the hotel ahead, a beige muddy pink, the many flags in front making it seem like something important.

  “It’s like a gay embassy,” Suzanne says.

  Designs are carved into the grass in front. Gardeners are hunched in the hedges, all Hispanic men, probably not knowing why the hell rich people always need to carve shapes into their bushes. Pikes Peak now looks proud. There’s a unity of color between the mountain, the strokes of light down its face, and the powdered mustard–rose pigment of the hotel.

  I drive into the grand roundabout. It feels like we’re in the Mediterranean, not Colorado Springs where only a few miles back was a strip club called Le Femmes.

  “I’m going to the spa,” Suzanne says. “Clear my head. Who’s with me?”

  “I can sit in the lobby,” my dad says. “Close my eyes and clear my head under an elk carcass. For free.”

  “Are they antlers!” Billy says.

  “Are they real!” my dad says.

  “Billy, I need to talk to you,” I say. “Can you try and get it together?”

  “You kids gonna have a nooner?” Suzanne asks.

  “Are we?” Billy asks.

  “Everyone, please shut up.”

  “Oh, come on,” Suzanne says. “Everyone’s trying to have a good time. We love you. Join us.”

  “Kit is pregnant with Cully’s child,” I say to Suzanne.

  I stop the car.

  “Oh my God,” Suzanne says, with a voice I rarely hear her use. “Are you all right?”

  I’m not sure whom she’s talking to. No one does, or at least nobody has an answer. I look at Kit’s hands placed on her lap. Long fingers, chipped nails. She needs more calcium. I wonder if she’s angry at me for outing her this way.

  “What are you going to do?” Suzanne asks, and again, I’m not sure whom she’s talking to.

  “Kit’s going to go live her life,” Billy says. I look back at him, wondering what he’ll say when I tell him about her offer.

  “Oh,” Suzanne says.

  “Don’t,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Don’t what?” Suzanne says.

  “Just don’t say or think anything. Now you know.” I look back. She lowers her sunglasses and turns away from me.

  “How far along are you?” she asks Kit.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Where the fuck are the valets? Isn’t this a five-star place?”

  “Well,” Suzanne says. “You know how I feel about this.”

  “I told Sarah I’d have the baby for her,” Kit says.

  I feel like I hear a collective intake of air. I look at Kit and she’s pleased, like she’s found the way to get me to engage.

  “You what?” my dad says.

  “I told Sarah that I’ll have the baby for her,” she says again.

  “That is wonderful,” Suzanne says. “It’s . . . it’s truly beautiful is what it is. It’s like a new life for him.”

  “Stop,” I say, my voice weak. “Please.” I turn back, pleading. Billy’s jaw is clenched. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

  “Sarah,” Suzanne says. “This is a gift. Morgan will—”

  “Don’t tell Morgan anything,” I say. “She’ll just take it and run with it like you do. Please get out and go. Do what you do—spend gobs of money and eat enough to fill a void as big as . . . as a whatever. Don’t you dare pass moral judgments.”

  “A crevasse,” my dad says. “A hat box. I’m not saying that you’re—I’m just thinking of big things—”

  “Sarah,” Suzanne says, softly. “You can’t speak to me that way.”

  A slick-haired valet opens my door with gusto. He has no idea what he has just interrupted but knows from my look that it’s something. “Welcome to the Broadmoor?” he says.

  We all get out, avoiding one another.

  “Chip will bring your luggage to check-in,” the valet says.

  Chip has black hair and green eyes and is stunning. He makes us all stutter a bit before getting back on track.

  “Hi, Chip,” my dad says. “We don’t really have much luggage.”

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  “Yes, Chip, thank you,” he says. “Traveling light.”

  He and Kit exchange brief smiles. Billy notices too.

  I walk to the lobby and feel like I’ve been riding on a horse. My legs are sore even though I haven’t used them, and I’m exhausted and feel sunburned even though I haven’t done anything. I walk ahead of everyone else, wanting distance, or given distance. I hear their voices like a clique behind me, judging me.

  “I’ll get you your own room,” I hear Suzanne say.

  “Thank you,” Kit says.

  “This is going to be good, you know that? It will all be okay.”

  “It’s up to Sarah,” Kit says.

  It’s up to me.

  Chapter 18

  I have Billy get me a seven-dollar chocolate bar from the gift shop and bring it up to my room. I’ve ordered a bottle of zin, why not. I open the drapes and walk onto the balcony. I look out at the fake lake and the fuckin’ swans. Then I hear the knock from room service and walk back into the room.

  Everything is so floral here, everything so clean and chilled. I want to mess things up, then call someone to make up my room. I love hotel rooms—the empty drawers, our lives condens
ed and unfettered. Sometimes I think hotel maids have the best perspective on human nature, all the gunk we leave behind. I want to talk about this with Billy—the lives of maids, the decor in hotel rooms. I don’t want to talk about the things that make my heart hurt. I open the door to Billy and a room service waiter who’s wheeling in my single bottle of wine.

  I’m taken aback for a moment at seeing these two men together, one scruffy, one polished as if by machine. Couldn’t you dress better? I want to ask one. Do you really need a cart? I want to ask the other.

  “Come on in,” I say.

  Billy makes an “after you” gesture to the waiter. He rolls in the wine reverentially. “Where would you like this?” he asks.

  In my mouth.

  “On the balcony,” I say. “So I can see the fake lake.”

  Billy raises his eyebrows and walks in, kisses the top of my head, which feels natural and yet at the same time alarming.

  “Take a moment,” he says.

  We follow our server to the balcony. He picks up the bottle and shows it to me. I nod. He opens. He pours me a sip and then the waiter waits, one arm behind his back.

  Billy does the honors. He swirls the wine, sticks his nose in the glass, then takes a hearty swallow. “Naughty,” he says. “Fruit forward. Rebellious. Want some?” he asks the waiter.

  The waiter laughs, disproportionately relieved. “Nah, thank you, sir. Thanks.” His voice is different now, like it’s okay to be himself and not a guy who always wears a crisp white shirt, a black vest, and stands with an arm behind his back. I want to ask this man, What would you do? Or better yet, What are your problems? Take me to them.

  I walk back inside to let Billy deal with the waiter and the wine and the pouring and the thank-yous. I can’t do any of it right now. I go into the bathroom, which is like a retreat, and shut the door. More floral. A claw-foot tub. There’s a sweetness here that doesn’t match the topic. I hear them both laugh and I bet Billy got him to have a sip.

  When I hear the cart roll by and the door close, I come out. Billy stands by the door of the balcony, holding a full glass of dark red wine.

  “He didn’t really know about letting it breathe,” Billy says, “but I told him.”