Fairy Tale Blues

by Tina Welling

  We were dangerous that first time on the slopes and didn’t realize it. We didn’t know how to snowplow or traverse, just headed straight downhill. Annie described how she saw a wedge of people below her standing in line for the lift and could do nothing but plow right through the middle of them. When she finally managed to stop, no one was standing but her.

  I looked like a big Hefty bag myself that first day, wearing a shiny black one-piece ski suit, also rented like the rest of the gear. I rode a chairlift to the top of a slope that didn’t look too steep from below, but once I got up there, I realized I would be in big trouble if I skied it. Made me shake just to think about it. So I bent forward to take off my skis; my weight shifted and I started sliding downhill.

  To this day I didn’t know how it happened, but I unexpectedly came up behind a woman with one of my skis on either side of her, as she was skiing just ahead of me. Hard to say which one of us was more terrified. She had no idea who I was, other than the big lug who was gripping onto her for dear life from behind. Locked together like that, we tore down the mountain and the whole way, I kept panting in her ear, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Eventually Annie and I learned a few skills. There were rules for idiots out there. The Rule of Three: most accidents happen on the third run, after three o’clock in the afternoon, and on the third day. All because of tiredness that leads to carelessness.

  As bad as we were, Annie and I were bound to have accidents on all those Rule of Three occasions. And we did, but none of them serious. Still, the rule we needed the most we couldn’t quite remember.

  “RICE. That’s what you do for injuries,” Annie had said.

  I had twisted my knee in a fall, but not seriously enough to see a doctor. “RICE,” I said. “I’ve heard that.”

  “Let’s see. R is for rest. I is for ice. What is the C for? And the E?”

  “That’s probably it. Rest and ice. R—ICE. Get it?”

  “E could be for elevation.”

  I said, “Rest and ice. That’s good enough for me.” Then I added, “Put some Scotch on that ice.”

  That wasn’t the only time we needed that rule and we eventually learned that RICE stood for the first-aid treatment of rest, ice, compresses and elevation.

  Today, the snow lay soft and creamy, the sunshine toasted the air to temperatures in the low teens and the sky capped the Town Hill in a solid blue. It felt good to relax in the chair and enjoy the scenery.

  I should have kept that appointment this morning with Lola the therapist, but once I remembered it was February fourteenth—sun on Snow King Mountain all day—I couldn’t resist. I had tossed my gear into the car and thought as I drove into town: Maybe I’ll see Lola. Maybe I’ll ski.

  I looked around. I sure wasn’t the only one who couldn’t resist getting out. There wasn’t a chair left empty; no free ride for a robin today, though it was too early for their return anyhow. I slid off the chair at the top, nodded to Judy in the booth—she had worked this lift for decades—and turned left to ski toward Grizzly Run, which would take me down through the mogul field in Kelly’s Alley.

  “Hey, Jess.”

  I looked over and spotted a woman so bundled in gear that I saw no clue to her identity, but the voice was familiar. Very familiar. And before my brain formed her name, my body knew exactly who she was and responded with a hot flush that crept up my neck and into my face. Thankfully, I was as bundled as she was—face mask, goggles, wool hat—and for a moment I was tempted to act like that wasn’t my name. Ski downhill fast, jump into my car.

  “Thought I might run into you here,” she said.

  “Lola.”

  I knew she was grinning her head off behind her balaclava, and now I knew she was silently laughing, because the frosted breath that had flowed in a steady, narrow stream from her now ballooned in puffy clouds.

  I joined her out loud. “Now you know who you’re dealing with, Lola.”

  “I knew all along, Jess.” She leaned on her poles and slid her skis back and forth with her head down a moment. She looked up. “No charge, but how about a session while we ride the chair after this run? I’d like you to know something.”

  “Sounds fine. Go ahead. I’ll follow you.”

  I nodded to the left of me at the cornice, a five-foot shelf of ice and snow that wind had created to hang out over the slope.

  I’d had no intention of tackling that challenge this morning, but had planned to ski past it to enter the slopes farther down the cat track. It wasn’t nice of me. Cornices were dangerous. They could avalanche at any time, especially on a sunny morning like this one. Besides that, most skiers avoided them because they didn’t know how to ride them or make the five-foot leap to the slope they hung over. My brash invitation to hotshot the run could severely injure Lola, if she didn’t recognize what was required of her.

  I guessed I was pissed at her for catching me out here, after I’d stood her up for our appointment.

  Lola poled off without hesitation, angled across the cornice and jumped. For a second, in her red ski jacket and white bibs, she was silhouetted against the blue sky in a perfect tuck. Suddenly it struck me that nothing I did surprised this woman.

  She was on to me.

  I felt hot and itchy around the neckline; then I let those thoughts go and followed Lola across the cornice, leaped into the air and flew down the slope behind her. She skied fast and gracefully. We had a great run, and by the time we merged into the lift line at the base of the mountain, I was happy I’d met up with her, at least for the skiing.

  First thing she said was, “We don’t really have to do this, Jess. We can talk about the weather if you’d rather.”

  “No, no.” I was feeling just an edge of shame for my bad behavior. “Let’s go for it.” We poled up the line farther; then it was our turn. We got positioned to catch the next chair, placing our skis on the marker. We switched our poles to our outside hands, turned slightly to watch the chair approach. It caught us behind our knees, we sat, lifted our skis and were off. Seconds later we dangled high over the valley.

  “Therapy is hard work, Jess, really hard. I don’t blame you for choosing to postpone it. But there is something I want you to know. Something that may help you hold the issues that arose during our last discussion while walking in Cache Creek.” She took a big breath. “And I hoped we could talk a little about your future with Annie.”

  “Sounds like a good news-bad news joke.”

  She ignored my attempt at lightening the atmosphere. She looked straight ahead.

  She said, “I’d left my response to your story, Jess, for our next meeting. I felt you needed to live with your own words and the acknowledgment of your feelings before hearing what I had to say.” She took a long breath. “But when you didn’t show for our appointment this morning, I felt something was left unfinished.”

  I nodded.

  “I want to acknowledge your relationship to your mother’s death.” Lola pulled her face covering down to beneath her chin and lifted her goggles to rest on top of her hat so that her face was fully exposed, and she turned toward me as much as dangling skis and the narrow chair allowed. “I want to affirm that yes, you are connected to the events that led to your mother’s death. The connection, however, is not one of blame. As a young child you carried no capacity for being responsible for another’s life.”

  Lola rested a gloved hand on my arm. “Jess, the connection was a causal link. Do you understand? This link between your presence and your mother’s dying was not one of behavior or choices. A causal link, Jess. Causes created events and you were present and part of that chain.” She paused, watching me. “I needed you to know that.”

  Her words felt like the truth. It was not the evasion I had groped for all my life, twisting the story around to make it fit my innocence. It was not the accusation I alternately wrestled with or floundered beneath, with its burden of shame. It was somewhere in the middle of those two; it was just the plain truth. A causal link. It
happened; I was there.

  Lola could have been reading me poetry, the way my heart warmed. The warmth spread all through my body. If we hadn’t been moving, I would have melted the eight-foot snow accumulation on the slope that was so steep at this part of the mountain it lay directly in front of me on the chairlift, not below as would be expected traveling over land. I lifted my goggles, which had fogged, and I pulled my mask down. I turned to Lola, who saw my tears.

  “Lola.” I could barely speak. I was swept up into the waves and waves of ease inside me that released some hard, iced-over place.

  I tried again. “Lola.” Then I gave up and hung my head and cried. Silent heaves shook my shoulders. My tears plopped onto my waterproof ski bibs and beaded fully formed on my thighs, sparkling in the sunshine like glass.

  Lola removed her glove and dug in her pocket for tissues. She handed a couple to me, used one herself. We sat silently on the chairlift. Lola watched me, and I watched something inside of me dissolve and seep away into the glittering air, where cold temperatures iced our breath into iridescent flakes that fluttered before our faces in the sunlight. This memory of my mother, this burden of her death, was such a part of me, it felt like another spine—the story that held me together, framed and described me. Yet it had also held me in place. I was going nowhere till this story unshackled me.

  Abruptly we arrived at the summit, and I scrambled to pull myself together to get off the fast-moving chair. These damn things stopped for no one. You just had to glide right off as if you were snow on a warm fender and land on your feet, ready to ski out of the pathway of the others coming quickly behind you. Not a problem for me usually.

  Now one hand held ski poles, the other wiped tears and my gloves were tucked under my arm. Lola held my elbow and tugged me off the chair and onto the side of the path before I created a pileup. She handed me a couple more tissues from the bulge of them in her pocket.

  I got myself mopped up and I said, “Thank you, Lola. Thank you for this.”

  Lola seemed to know that I needed a reprieve from the intensity of emotion. She said, “You lead this time. I’ll follow.”

  I poled off and took us straight down Amphitheater, which was almost a perpendicular run below the chairlift cable we had just ridden up. We used the chairlift towers as a slalom and coursed down in high speed. Near the base, exhausted and breathing heavily, I looked back and there was Lola right on my ski. I skied past the lift line, turned to a stop and faced the sun with a big grin on my face. Lola followed and we both leaned on our poles and laughed from the sheer exuberance of it all.

  I said, “Only in Jackson Hole does a therapist have to be a skier to keep appointments with her clients. And you’re an expert skier.” She was really something.

  Still winded, she said, “Being a skier came long before being a therapist. I raced in high school and college.”

  The lift lines were noticeably longer. Noon-break skiers from the offices in town.

  “Lunch? My treat.” Figured I should get sustenance for the bad news part of this session.

  To get to the resort’s restaurant the easy way, versus the hard way of walking up slope in our ski boots, we had to get in the lift line for the Cougar Run, ski across Old Man Flats, then down to Rafferty and on over to the hotel. Once there, we took off our boots and jackets before the lobby fireplace, warmed our hands; then I asked a friend I spotted working there to store our gear for us, and we went upstairs to the restaurant.

  We ordered; then Lola said, “I don’t necessarily believe in endless therapy sessions, Jess. After today, we can continue our work on an as-needed basis, but I did want to make sense of our earlier meeting, after you spent some time with your thoughts. I wanted you to have a realistic understanding of your role in your mother’s death. That was good news I needed to pass on to you.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “Not bad news, that’s your term. But life goes on and the past contributes to the future. You are experiencing marital difficulties. This is not unrelated to your boyhood trauma.” Lola put her napkin on her lap and realigned her silverware. She looked up and said, “You and Annie glow in my memory of being two people who deeply love each other.”

  “We do. We deeply love each other.”

  “Which doesn’t always add up to being happily married.”

  “No, I guess not.” If your wife abruptly leaves on a plane the night of your anniversary celebration, a guy’s got to admit something’s off. I drained my glass of ice water and nodded to the waiter for a refill. I was damn thirsty. The first glass, I bet, just replaced fluids I’d lost in tears. The second glass replaced sweat from our ski runs; I was soaked to the skin under my bibs. After I drank more, I said in my defense, “But I make her laugh. We have great sex. . . .”

  “To use your reference then, the good news is that you are a great date, Jess. But the bad news is that I wouldn’t want to be married to you.” Lola chose a lemon tea bag from the small carved wooden chest and began to unwrap it. “And perhaps Annie feels similarly.”

  I didn’t find that particularly an insult. I said, “Great dates don’t grow on trees.”

  Lola smiled. “Actually, they do. Palm trees.”

  She was okay. Good skier, good therapist, a sense of humor. But all joking aside, Lola didn’t find my casual perspective on being a better date than I was a husband admirable. We left it at that. I wasn’t interested in pursuing it further. We talked casually about our dogs and skiing, ate our lunch, then layered our gear back on for a couple more runs on the mountain.

  About three o’clock, I was sent off with a “Good luck” and a pat on my upper arm.

  “Whatever you have to do to turn being a great date into a good husband, Jess, do it. You and Annie together are worth the effort it will take from you.” She pushed off toward her car in the parking lot.

  I followed her toward my own car. “You sound kind of hopeless.” That struck me hard at the moment. The remark about great dates growing on palm trees—did she think Annie might stay in Florida?

  Beside her car, Lola pressed her pole tips onto her bindings, released them and stepped out of her skis. She leaned her poles and skis against the car fender. “Not hopeless. Not hopeless at all, Jess. Though not hopeful, either.” She opened the driver’s-side door and tossed her goggles and balaclava across the front seat and began to pare down a layer, removing her bibs to drive home in jeans. She tossed the bibs over the seat to the back, then lifted her skis and poles to lock them into her cartop carrier. She turned to face me.

  “I am sorry to say so, but you’ve worn her down. I spotted that two years ago. You have exhausted her great love for you, Jess McFall. Just wrung her dry.” Lola let that sink in a moment and she watched my eyes. “If Annie is smart, she will take her time restoring herself. And if she returns home, I hope she comes armed with skills to protect herself from you.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Perhaps it’s a result of your boyhood experiences or perhaps it’s a result of your own personal laziness, but you take advantage of people around you . . . in the nicest sort of way. A wife—in fact anyone involved with you—must protect herself from your mild-natured abuse.”

  “Abuse. That’s damn strong language, Lola. I don’t abuse anyone.”

  “There used to be a playground joke when I was a kid that went something like ‘When they were passing out noses, you thought they said roses, and you asked for a big red one.’ Well, Jess, when they were passing out ‘accountability,’ I don’t know what you thought they said, but you seemed to think you could get by in life without any.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.”

  “That’s how you protect yourself: you don’t know about it. This appointment you had with me today? I suspect you chose not to admit to yourself that you were going skiing, instead.” Lola spoke forcefully; I’d never heard her sound like this. “How come you think I knew it, when you didn’t?”

  “Our meeting wa
sn’t an accident?”

  “Not even a causal link, Jess.”

  I felt some surprise over that.

  “It’s called ‘accountability.’ I felt accountable for responding to the issues raised in our first appointment.” She stared me in the eyes, not smiling. She said, “You use people up—that’s abuse.”

  “You called me a ‘cuddly predator’ a couple years back. Now you make me sound like a goddamn vampire.”

  “A vampire.” Lola seemed to be speaking to herself. She nodded studiously. Then she got in her car, started it, backed out and drove off, all without looking at me. I had the feeling she wouldn’t mind if she never saw me again in this lifetime.

  She couldn’t hear me but I spoke to her image in the side-view mirror as she pulled away.

  I said out loud, “Ditto, lady.”

  What the hell did she know? Maybe she touched something earlier with my mother stuff, but as far as Annie was concerned, Lola knew nothing. If Annie were smart, she said. As if Annie shouldn’t come home.

  What did Lola know about smart?

  I skied across the lot to my own car, ripping off gloves, hat and goggles as I went. When they were passing out smarts, Lola thought they said . . . Found my car keys, after searching eight of the damn zippered pockets in my jacket.

  When they were passing out smarts, Lola thought they said farts and she asked for big, smelly ones.

  Thirty-one

  Annie

  Hours of bliss had passed. All the windows and doors were open to the sound of rain as I sat at my worktable immersed in color. Classes had intensified and midterm project deadlines loomed ahead. For the pretend business I was assigned to create for my contemporary craft class, I needed a salable craft item, with supporting lines to market and a business plan. I had chosen to create a line of knitted dog coats and accessories. With the help of Caridad and the employees at the yarn store, I’d made leaps in my knitting skills. I had advanced from square items to circular ones, learned to follow patterns, purl, make stripes, increase, decrease, even crochet. Bijou and Mitzi made good models. I’d also pulled in Daniel’s dog, Jeter, for variety.