I hope your heart is being less weird!
Love,
Nick
8
Zell
March 5, 2008
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hi, Hon.
Ahab got loose and ran after Old Mr. Bedard’s cat. I just can’t believe it. Every night I sit on the back steps just like we used to, and I look at the mountain. Every night I open the gate and wait for Ahab to come walking through. I want him to walk up to me and rest his long nose between my knees while I scratch his neck. If that happened, I would cry so hard. But he’s been gone for two weeks.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s probably good that we never got around to making ourselves a soccer team, because I would be a pretty shitty mother. I can’t even keep a dog from chasing a cat.
I hope they let you check e-mail in heaven. Or wherever you are. I try to picture you in a fairy-tale-like place where you can snowshoe and take photographs of birds and bobcats and deer all day long.
A perennial snowy mountainside near your own private cabin, where a perennial fire roars in a fireplace. An angel army protects you, and you always have hot chocolate, the way you like it, with a dollop of marshmallow fluff floating on the top. And whenever you want a foot rub, the heavenly version of me gives you one. That’s what I wish for you.
I love you.
I miss you.
I wicked miss you.
Love,
Your Zell
IT’S NOT FAR, but Garrett drives Ingrid and me to the Midmass Footpath trailhead behind the Wippamunker Building. Ingrid seems older, and taller, even though she was gone only a week. I try to remember if I felt different when I got back from Nature’s Classroom—more curious about my surroundings, maybe? Braver? More mature?—but I can’t really recall.
Garrett tells Ingrid about Ahab—that he ran away, and even though we searched long and hard, we didn’t find him. She doesn’t say anything, just weeps quietly in the backseat and looks out the window. After a minute she wipes the tears from her face. As we pull into the lot she asks, “When’s he coming back?”
“He might not, boo-boo,” says Garrett. He reaches into the backseat and strokes her chin.
She pushes his hand away. “Maybe we’ll see him today, on the trail.”
“We might,” he says. “We certainly might.”
“This one girl in my class?” says Ingrid, absently kicking the back of my seat. “Her uncle’s dog went missing one day? And three months later, they found him in Kentucky. The dog walked all the way from Wippamunk to Kentucky.”
“So maybe Ahab just felt like a road trip,” I say—even though Ahab was the laziest dog in the world, and the chances of him embarking on an extended cross-country jaunt are as slim as he is.
“Exactly,” she says.
We put on our snowshoes in the parking lot. It’s been a while since I stood this close to the big old converted factory. Nick’s darkroom was in a corner of the basement, where the walls were half dirt, half brick. But in the darkroom the walls were plastered over, of course.
Memory Smack: The day I sold my first freelance illustration I walked to the Wippamunker Building from the apartment Nick and I shared, which was right down the street. With a five-dollar bottle of champagne zipped under my fleece, I snuck unnoticed past the reception desk and descended the steep stairs. I ducked away from the cobwebs and rapped on the darkroom door.
Nick turned down Guns N’ Roses and opened the door a crack. “Pay the toll,” he said.
I slipped him the bottle.
“You sold something?” he asked.
“The inner ear.”
“Good money?”
“Great money.”
“You think you can do this? I mean, you think this is gonna work? Freelance?”
“Totally.”
He opened the door. I entered and closed it behind me, savoring the darkroom’s chemical smell.
We whispered. We always whispered in the darkroom. Something about it was intimate.
“That’s awesome, Zell.” Nick pinched the bottle between his knees and popped the cork. “Congratulations.”
We passed the champagne back and forth. We laughed and kissed. He showed me, through the enlarger, some photographs he was developing for that week’s sports section: the Wippamunk High School girls’ soccer semifinal.
He told me how earlier that day, his dad met him for lunch and they drove to Bedard’s Orchard to pick apples. And on the way there, they drove past an old house, white with orange-red shutters. Half a house, really—a twin—but a big old Victorian with new siding and a wide front porch, nonetheless.
“So?” I said. I swallowed some champagne and passed the bottle.
“So, it’s for sale,” said Nick. “And it’s affordable.”
“I’ll have to make a few more sales first.”
“Maybe we could get a dog.”
“Maybe we could convert one of the rooms into a darkroom.”
“Maybe we could have a bunch of babies.”
“One thing at a time.” I sidled up to him, between him and the enlarger, and wrapped my arms around his neck.
He pushed my hair back from my face. “Hello, Pants.”
“Pants?”
“That’s your new nickname. Cuz you wear the pants.”
We laughed and made out in the red shadows. The cold tip of his nose mashed into my cheek. Behind Nick, the photograph of the ponytailed center forward heading the ball into the goal floated too long in the developer bath—so long it turned completely black.
REAL TIME, REAL PLACE. Ingrid, Garrett, and I hike past the Wippamunker Building, alongside the brook. Eventually the trail peels away from the water and heads north, toward the turbines of the defunct wind farm—the towers’ giant white blades glint above our heads. Every now and then Ingrid calls for Ahab. But other than that, there’s no sound besides the swish and crunch of aluminum in snow, and our panting breath.
After a while, Ingrid stops for a water break. “That’s the rule,” she says, passing me a bottle. “Hike for twenty-five minutes, break for five. I learned that in Nature’s Classroom.” She fishes around in her coat and holds up an empty, clear plastic baggie. “Ta-da.”
“What’s that for?” I ask.
“In case I see any animal scat, I can collect it.”
“Always be prepared,” I say.
Garrett smirks. “She never struck me as a girl who would be into that sort of thing, but hey.” He crosses all his fingers on both hands, and I know he hopes Nature’s Classroom somehow cured Ingrid’s Polly Pinch obsession.
But his face falls when Ingrid says, “Hey, Zell, remember when we went snowshoeing and I lost my red hat? The hat that belonged to my mother? Well, my dad and I went back there the other day, and it was still there, high up in the tree.”
I don’t comment, just half smile.
Ingrid stuffs the little baggie into her pocket. “Are you still baking?”
“Yeah. But it’s not the same without you.”
“Dad says the Polly Pinch ban is still in effect. Right, Dad?”
“You have to prove yourself, Ing. You have to do your homework. All of it. For a long time. Then you can bake with Zell again.”
“I know, I know.” She consults her pink Hannah Montana watch. “We’ve got two more minutes of break time. So tell us about this trail, Zell.”
I tell them about the Midmass. It’s a footpath, built and maintained by volunteers, scenic despite being so close to cities and suburbs. I show Ingrid the patches EJ gave me. “Nick’s dad got these for him and Nick,” I say. “They were gonna hike the Midmass together, but they never got around to it.”
“Can I have one?” she asks.
“Ingrid,” Garrett scolds.
“It’s okay.” I hand her one. “Here.”
“Cool, Zell. Thanks. Break time’s up,” she says. “Let’s go. Another twenty-fi
ve.” She snowshoes ahead, studying her patch and shouting for Ahab every few paces.
Garrett and I trudge behind her. “Nick’s dad live around here?” he asks.
What I tell him:1. His name is Arthur Roy, and he lives right across town in a little house on Malden Pond.
2. I haven’t seen Arthur in more than a year. The memorial service he planned for Nick—because I was too distraught to plan it myself—was held a week before Christmas, at the Collins-Parks Funeral Home in town. Father Chet recited a few generic words about death and heaven and Jesus before a small gathering of Nick’s mostly dark-haired, gray-eyed family, and me and my parents (Gail and Terry were in England, visiting Terry’s family). Afterward, as I was getting into the back of my parents’ car, Arthur approached me and thrust a heavy box into my arms. “Here,” he said. In the box were ashes.
3. Arthur called me that first Christmas Eve, but I didn’t pick up. He left a slurred, rambling message, something about sending me a fruit basket. I never got one.
What I don’t tell Garrett:1. I put the ashes in the attic and felt so walloped by Nick’s absence that I haven’t been up there since.
2. One time in high school, Nick told me his only memory of his mother, Ilene. He was on his back on a brown-and-yellow carpet and looked up through a glass table. It was someone else’s house, he said, because they never had a glass table, or a two-tone carpet. His mother smiled down at him through the glass. She pressed her nose against it, and her breath fogged it up and obscured her face. That was the only time he ever talked about her.
3. Arthur left our wedding early, right after he finished his dinner.
4. He came to Okemo with Nick and me for a weekend, when Gail and Terry first moved. Nick was irritated because his dad read a book the whole time. He sat at the kitchen table in his holey socks and didn’t join conversations or the Saturday night game of Trivial Pursuit. The book he read was about gardening; I remember because of the irony: Arthur doesn’t garden—he didn’t then, either—and his yard’s always looked unruly and overgrown, like his beard.
Garrett and I snowshoe next to each other, not really talking much, for a good while. Ingrid’s fifty feet ahead. Whenever the trail curves, we lose sight of her, but we hear her call, “Ahab!”
“So the contest deadline’s coming up, right?” asks Garrett. He’s obviously changing the subject, and I wonder if I went on too long about Nick’s dad.
“In a couple days,” I say. “Yeah.”
“Have you got anything?”
I explain my recipe involving strawberry yogurt and Nutella. It’s totally not what EJ recommended, but I just can’t come up with anything fresh and foodie, as he says. I guess I’m in a rut.
“I know I won’t win,” I say. “But I have to finish what I started, right?”
“Right.”
I ask him about the babysitting situation, and he says Ingrid’s going to spend a lot more time with Trudy. It’s hard for him to ask for help, but she seems to love having Ingrid around, he says, and he’s glad for her involvement, because a girl should know her family, and Trudy’s the only family around, really.
“She cried her heart out when I told her she couldn’t bake with you,” he says. “Cried her heart out.”
I look up the trail. A man stands a few feet from Ingrid, a fellow hiker. I hear her ask him if he’s seen a dog.
“Ingrid!” shouts Garrett, hands cupped around his mouth.
The man has a roundish head of black-and-white hair. A beard grows close to his eyes and almost completely covers his cheeks. He doesn’t wear snowshoes. Red gaiters cinch just below his knees and cover all but the toes of his boots.
For a second—even less than a second—I don’t recognize him. Then I think, it’s what Nick would look like in thirty years, if he stopped shaving.
Arthur. I run to him, a bouncy, slow-motion run, because of my snowshoes, which slap my heels with each stride.
I stop when I’m a foot from him, and then I don’t know what to do. Arthur doesn’t say anything, just squeezes his eyes shut and hugs me tight. I can’t remember the last time he hugged me. My wedding, maybe?
I let myself be hugged. Finally I stand back as Garrett catches up to us.
“This is Arthur Roy,” I say. “Nick’s dad. These are my neighbors, Ingrid and Garrett.”
“We’re gonna turn around now and head back,” says Garrett. He squeezes Ingrid’s hand. “We’ll wait for you in the parking lot.”
After they turn, she says, “Daddy, is Zell okay with that man?”
“She’s fine,” Garrett says. “She’s going to be fine.”
Arthur hears the exchange and smiles sadly after them. He clears snow from a nearby fallen log and gestures for me to sit with him.
“I haven’t been hiking in so long,” he says.
I look at the ground. I realize he’s probably had those gaiters since the 1970s.
“It feels good to be out here,” he goes on. “Isn’t it a shame that all these years this old trail’s been here, so close by, and Nick and I never took advantage of it?”
“It isn’t so surprising to me,” I say. “I bet there are a lot of people around here who intend to take advantage of it but never do.”
“Maybe I will hike the Midmass after all. Maybe you and I can do it together.” Without looking at me, he grips my knee.
“I’d like that,” I say, even though I know we’ll never hike it together. We just won’t.
“I lost Ilene. Nick was so small when that happened. He couldn’t even talk yet.” He sighs. “And then I lost Nick. Our boy.”
He holds his hand over his eyes, like he’s shading them. He sits like this for a while, and soon his pinkie trembles. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around at all, Zell,” he says.
“Me, too.”
“I just can’t.”
“I understand.”
“I know you do,” says Arthur.
A twitchy squirrel crosses the path a few feet away. It hops over the upturned snow, then skitters up a tree, and soon after, we hear hikers approach, and our heads turn in the direction of crunching snow. An older couple tramps past, the man huffing heavily, the wife searching the bare branches for songbirds. She smiles and says, “Beautiful day.” Arthur nods and waves in response.
When they’re out of view, when we can’t hear the scrunch of their snowshoes, Arthur turns and looks me straight in the eye. “Spread his ashes?”
“Not yet,” I say, swallowing a lump in my throat.
He nods.
“Not yet,” I repeat, a little louder this time. He grips my shoulder and pulls me tight, and we sit locked in a sideways hug for a long time, until my toes and nose turn numb.
A FEW EVENINGS AFTER THE MIDMASS HIKE, I wake slumped at my drafting table. Before me is the outline of a spleen I started. I drooled on it, apparently. So I tear the paper from the clips and ball it up and hurl it at Hank.
My heart hammers wildly, then slows, as Gladys sings about neither one of us wanting to be the first to say good-bye.
I realize I’m hungry. Ravenously, deliriously hungry. So I go downstairs. I root around in the refrigerator, knocking over a pickle jar, a jelly jar, a tub of butter. I open the freezer door, and behind a stack of frozen Polly Pinch meals, I notice the small white package labeled FAIRY GOAT MOTHER FARM. 100% ORGANIC. MADE WITH LOVE BY TRUDY KNOX. It’s the goat cheese that Trudy gave me that first time I visited her house and saw the Barn.
I lean against the counter. “All this time,” I say in Ahab Voice, “and you’ve been settin’ on buried treasure.”
First, I thaw the goat cheese in the microwave. Next, I preheat the oven. An image leaps to mind: Nick’s mystery present, blazing away on the top rack.
They say fire is therapeutic. Cleansing.
“Ha!” I shout.
My fridge has one of those old-fashioned egg savers—a dozen roundish indentations on a built-in tray. In one of the little indentations sits not an egg, but a lime. I pl
uck it; greenish gray mold clings to the very bottom. I slice off the moldy part and grind it up in the garbage disposal. “Mere jetsam, lads!” I say. “Cast it to the gray water. Arr.” I juice the remainder of the lime, unsure of the role it will play.
Next, I survey the cans in my cupboard. Great Northern beans? No. Artichoke hearts? Pass. Pineapple rings?
Hmm. Pineapple rings.
I open the dusty can and drain the juice. I arrange the rings in a casserole dish and smear goat cheese on top. I pour the lime juice over it. Next I reach into the cupboard and pull out honey and drizzle it on, long and slow and thick.
“Into the fire it goes! Yarr!” I put it in the oven.
Minutes later, I slide my hands into my dollar-store camo oven mitts, courtesy of Garrett, and watch the timer tick off the few remaining seconds until—ding!
I reach into the oven. I lift the lid off the casserole dish. The pores of my skin open as fragrant limey steam rises.
After it cools, I taste it. It’s not quite a winner yet. And besides, it lacks Ingrid’s special touches, her contributions.
But it’s a start.
It’s a g.d. start.
WINDOWS DOWN. Icy wind whipping. Heat blasting. I fly up Main Street. In the passenger seat sits the casserole dish.
I stick my head out the window and howl into the flying-by night. I howl all the way to Trudy’s house.
INGRID’S AT THE KITCHEN COUNTER doing homework when I walk in, and she slides off the stool and runs to me and smashes her bony little body into mine. I hold the heavy dish out to keep my balance.
“Hold on,” I say. “I don’t want to break Garrett’s rules.”
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