In This Life

by Cora Brent

  Emma allowed herself to be lifted into my mother’s lap. She yawned and said, “Colin’s making noises.”

  “He’s awake?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He’s making noises.”

  I had thought I would hear him if he cried. I set down my coffee cup. “I’ll go see.”

  There were fitful gurgling sounds coming from Colin’s crib but the second he saw me he erupted into a full blown wail. I lifted him while saying soothing words and willing my heart not to break into a million pieces over the thought of how much this sweet baby had lost.

  “Somebody has a stinky diaper,” I said with forced cheer and I tickled him after I laid him down on the changing mat. He smiled at me.

  When I returned to the kitchen I found my mother feeding Emma a plate of chocolate chip cookies but I figured this morning I could refrain from arguing about the virtues of a healthy breakfast.

  I took a bottle from the fridge, one that had been prepared by Heather, and settled into a chair with the baby. He eagerly latched onto the bottle and gazed up at me with wide blue eyes that reminded me of someone else. Heather had brown eyes. The blue eyes came from Chris’s side of the family and it looked like Colin was going to keep them.

  “How long are you going to be able to do this?” my mother asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Take care of that baby. You’re already stretched thin between your job and school and taking care of your daughter.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Are you offering to help?”

  She avoided the question. “Chris’s parents are dead as is Heather’s mother. Her father is alive but trust me, he certainly isn’t going to pitch in. And don’t get me started on Chris’s hot mess of a sister. Jane can’t even take care of herself.”

  Emma was watching us with wide eyes as she chewed her cookies so I didn’t snap back that this was not the time to be slandering people who were devastated.

  “I’m just thinking of you,” my mother sniffed when I didn’t respond.

  “Then help me out by handing me my phone,” I said. “It’s right there on the counter.”

  At some point while I napped in the kitchen chair Jane had texted. I raised my eyebrows over the message although the news should have come as no surprise. Of course he’d be coming here. Chris had been his father and although I knew they weren’t on the best terms I imagined the news still must have been a terrible shock.

  “Nash is on his way,” I said.

  “Who?” my mother asked.

  I sighed. “Nash Ryan. Chris’s son. You remember him, right?”

  She scrunched up her face. “Yes, vaguely.”

  “He’s driving straight here from Oregon. Jane thinks he’ll be here by late tonight.”

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t count on him for help either if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Actually I was thinking about Colin. I was thinking about how he had a brother he’d never met and how that brother was now his closest living relative.

  Colin waved a small fist in the air as he finished his bottle and I propped him up on my shoulder for a burp.

  I had no idea what to expect from the return of Nash Ryan. There’d been a time when his name provoked all kinds of volatile feelings inside of me. For some confusing adolescent years I’d thought I was in love with him, before I understood that love doesn’t mean trailing a guy’s every move while consumed with obsessive lust. It was nothing, just a pathetic infatuation I’d barely thought of in ages. I just hoped for the sake of the little boy in my arms that Nash would take an interest in him. Colin would need all the love he could get.

  More than anything, I hoped Nash had turned into a better man than the rumors implied.

  Twilight was settling again by the time I crossed the border into Arizona. Roxie lifted her head and stared out the window as we careened through the barren moonscape of the Mohave desert.

  “I think we’re due for a break,” I said and pulled over into the sand about a mile down the road.

  My dog was very well trained but I kept her on the leash as she went about her business. The full moon was starting to rise over the horizon and the colors of the sky combined with the vastness of the desert made the scene look like something out of a Star Wars movie. When I was a kid I’d been out this way once, with my dad. We were going to Lake Havasu. I could remember being fascinated by the open treeless spaces, full of sand and desolation, so different from the greenery of Hawk Valley, even different from the cactus-dotted stucco urban sprawl of Phoenix. It seemed impossible we were still in the same state. This is what people think of when they think of Arizona, this desolate desert. But it wasn’t all like this.

  Roxie lapped up the water I gave her when we returned to the truck. I swallowed a bottle of water myself and gazed up at the stars that were just starting to appear. My dad had been very into astronomy. He’d taken some classes at the local college but abandoned his studies after I came along and he knew he’d be working forever at the small family store in Hawk Valley, where an astronomy degree was about as useful as nipples on a man. But he’d never lost his love of the sky, often driving up to the big observatory in Flagstaff.

  “That’s the thing about the stars, Nash. Whether you can see them or not, they’re always up there. Not many constants like that in this world.”

  I flattened the empty water bottle and tossed it in the glove compartment so Roxie wouldn’t chew it up. After Jane’s phone call I’d launched into furious action, hastily packing up so I could get on the road. It kept me from thinking. The last thing I wanted to do was think too hard. Driving made sense because I didn’t have anywhere to leave the dog and anyway there were no direct flights to the tiny regional airport forty miles outside Hawk Valley. If I flew I’d have to get to Portland, wait around for a flight to Phoenix and then rent a car for the two hour drive to town. Or I could bite the bullet and drive straight through, avoiding all that hassle.

  As for lodging arrangements, I’d figure that out when I got there. There was no telling how many days I’d be staying. I’d be there at least until the funerals, and until I knew the baby was taken care of.

  Once I was on the road I found out there was no escaping my thoughts no matter how hard I tried. The empty miles gave me too much time to think. And too many fucking memories to think about.

  The last time I’d talked to my father was four months ago, the day my brother Colin was born. We didn’t speak for long and we hadn’t spoken since. He regularly texted pictures; pictures of the baby, pictures of Heather and the baby, pictures of the three of them together as a perfect happy little family. Maybe he figured all those pictures would motivate me to take a trip out there and meet my baby brother. I thought about it. But Chris Ryan and I had always been oil and water. I believed I was doing their family a favor by staying away for now.

  I knew how things would go if I took a trip to Hawk Valley. My dad and I would inevitably launch right into some petty argument or continue old competitive patterns. Heather would be uneasy about her role in the discord between us, though my father and I had been at odds long before she came along. And the baby was too young to know who the hell I was anyway.

  So instead of visiting and stirring up problems I sent the kid a five hundred dollar savings bond plus a sappy card about happiness and blessings and shit.

  Anyway, I was sure I had nothing to offer a brother at this point. We were twenty-five years apart for crying out loud. All over the place I saw men my age who were becoming parents themselves. My own father had a kid in kindergarten when he was my age. He and my mother were practically kids when they met at a party down in Phoenix and my dad began driving down there every weekend to see her. They sure as hell didn’t plan for me. They couldn’t even legally order a drink when I was born. They also didn’t stick together for very long. I didn’t remember Chris Ryan as an affectionate father. He could be harsh, unyielding. Sometimes he said things I found it tough to forgive him for. It was true that he’d me
llowed out in recent years but by then the distance between us was too wide. I knew he saw Colin as his second chance, the chance to start all over and raise a child the right way. I didn’t want to interfere with that.

  Yet somewhere in the back of my mind I thought the day would come when we’d get another chance. Someday maybe he and I could sit on the creaking front porch of his old house with a couple of beers and have a conversation like fathers and sons did in all places and times.

  Someday.

  It was all too bitter a fucking pill to swallow at this point. I couldn’t quite choke it down yet.

  Darkness had long since settled when I finally reached the city limits of Hawk Valley. The place looked pretty much the same as it had the last time I’d seen it. Hawk Valley was a town stuck in time, maintaining a dusty kind of quaint charm while trying to keep its small businesses above water. The real estate boom and bust cycles of Phoenix didn’t stretch this far north and vacation home buyers tended to bypass the place and choose mountain cabins instead. There was a small college on the outskirts of town but on the whole Hawk Valley was more of a pass through place that relied on the fringes of the tourist industry spending their loose change in the souvenir shops on Garner Avenue or grabbing a quick lunch at the local cafes. The people who lived there just got by and held onto what they had.

  A shared custody arrangement meant I spent summers and vacations here as a kid. Then the summer I turned fourteen I became a permanent resident. It wasn’t by choice. It was because the worst possible nightmare had come true. But that was the last thing I wanted to think about. The current situation was fucking terrible enough to handle without dwelling on the past.

  The news was all over the local radio. Raging brush fire in the Hawk Mountains. Two lives lost. Blaze a hundred percent contained at this point. There was no information yet on how the flames had ignited but with high winds and dry conditions it wouldn’t have taken much. The fact that the skies saw fit to open up just as the fire roared out of control was a lucky break for the emergency crews. It just didn’t happen soon enough for my father and his wife.

  Jane was too distraught last night to hand out many details. While I was paused at a traffic light on Garner Avenue I tried to call her to let her know I was here. I was worried about her. My aunt was a fragile kind of soul. She probably wasn’t dealing with the death of her big brother very well.

  “Hello?”

  “Jane. It’s Nash. I just got to town.”

  “Nash. Oh god, this is all so awful and I can’t say how sorry I am. Jane’s asleep in my room. She asked me to answer if you called.”

  I was confused. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, sorry. This is Kat Doyle.”

  The matter-of-fact way the woman said her name made me think it should mean something to me. I searched my memory but after twenty hours on the road all the connections were shot.

  “I’m heading over to my father’s house,” I said, although I didn’t know what I expected to find there. My voice cracked at the word ‘father’. When I said it out loud I couldn’t escape the truth that I didn’t have one anymore. Chris Ryan, the man who taught me how to catch a ball and hammer a nail was dead. Sure, he had his flaws. So did everyone.

  “Why don’t you just come to my place?” Kat Doyle said. “I know there’s so much to deal with but it doesn’t have to all get done tonight. Jane badly needed to get some rest but she’ll want to talk to you. And Colin’s here. I’m sure you want to check on him.”

  I digested this information and asked Kat Doyle for her address. I couldn’t even begin to list all the things that needed to be sorted out. Jane wouldn’t be in any position to handle the funeral arrangements. There was no one on our side of the family who would take the reins and I knew Heather didn’t have much immediate family either. But all that could wait for a few more hours. The woman who answered my aunt’s phone was correct. I wanted to make sure my brother was all right.

  Kat Doyle lived in a duplex among the old houses where some mining company had built housing for its employees some eighty years ago. The mines that were ten miles outside town had been closed since the Regan administration and at first glance most of these leftover houses looked like prime projects for one of those moronic home renovation shows.

  The woman who answered the door had long reddish hair that curled halfway to her waist, a vaguely familiar face and a body that not even her shapeless t-shirt and flannel pajama pants could hide. Of course I felt like an asshole for even noticing her body in these circumstances but some things are just hard wired.

  “Nash,” she said and her green eyes were full of warmth and sympathy.

  “Kat?” I guessed.

  She nodded. “You might remember that I used to live three houses down from you. I was a few years younger though.”

  Something clicked. I recalled a skinny girl with a cap of boyishly cut red hair who always wore classic rock band shirts that were way too large for her. Kathleen Doyle was well known not for her looks or wardrobe choices but because she was a local legend, a damn genius who won every academic award ever invented by the Hawk Valley Unified School District and generally put everyone else to shame. She also used to follow me around all over the place even though I never acknowledged her.

  “Kathleen,” I said. “I remember you now.”

  A pleased smile tilted her lips and then faded just as quickly. Her eyes filled with sudden tears. “Heather was my cousin,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Nash. We’re all still in shock.”

  Standing outside Kathleen’s door I could smell the smoke in the air. It was everywhere. Never again would I be able to light a campfire without wanting to fucking vomit.

  Roxie stuck her head out of the window of the pickup truck and barked once, just to remind me she was still there.

  “Settle down,” I called and she whined once but sat down on the seat.

  “You brought your dog?” Kathleen asked. She looked puzzled.

  “Yeah. I was driving anyway and didn’t know when I’d be going back to Oregon.”

  She appeared to mull that over and gave me a long look of appraisal that I couldn’t quite interpret.

  “Come inside,” she said and backed up so I could clear the doorway. “Oh wait, what about your dog?”

  I snapped my fingers in the direction of the truck. “Roxie, stay.” I turned back to Kathleen. “Don’t worry about her. She’s well trained and the window’s open. She’ll be fine.”

  Kathleen Doyle’s kitchen looked like a time capsule from 1983. However, except for a few dishes in the sink everything was neat and clean.

  “Coffee?” she offered.

  “No thanks. I’m not a fan of caffeine.”

  She poured a cup anyway, probably for herself. “I’m too big a fan,” she said. “I don’t know how I’d get through a day otherwise.” She set the coffee pot down. “Do you want me to wake Jane up? She’s asleep in my room. She took a powerful sedative to calm down and Kevin—her boyfriend, Kevin Reston—didn’t want her to be alone while he went to take care of fire department matters.”

  Kathleen paused to take a sip of her coffee. She leaned against the kitchen counter in her bare feet and pajamas and watched me. Again, I got the feeling her sharp green eyes were conducting a rapid assessment.

  I leaned against the nearest wall and stared back at her. Now that I was here in Hawk Valley the reality was starting to sink in. My father and his wife were dead. My baby brother was an orphan. I hadn’t cried yet but this girl was looking at me in a sad way that said she understood how much I wanted to. The fire had been a ferocious act of nature so there was no blame to assign but I wanted to scream and break something with my hands anyway. And even though I hadn’t shed a tear yet I could easily sink to the floor and weep until the sun came up again. But I wasn’t going to do any of that in Kathleen Doyle’s kitchen.

  “You sure you can’t use some coffee?” she asked. “Or maybe a snack? I could whip up something if you’re hungry.” />
  “I’m fine,” I said.

  But in fact exhaustion was catching up with me. I hadn’t slept last night and then spent twenty tiresome hours on the road thinking about regret and anger and loss and the time my pet mouse died when I was five and my father created a cigar box coffin for it before digging a hole and attending a very sincere funeral in the backyard.

  “Do you want to see him?” Kathleen asked.

  “See him?”

  The idea was horrifying. All day I’d been willing my mind away from imaginary echoes of last screams and visions of charred bodies. It made sense that the remains would have been recovered by now and brought to town. The sight of blood had never bothered me, not even when it was my own. But I knew I’d break if I looked at what was left of my father.

  “He’s asleep in his crib,” Kathleen said. “But you can take a peek in there.”

  I breathed with relief. “You mean Colin.”

  “Yes.” She tilted her head. “Of course I mean Colin.”

  Kathleen set her cup down and motioned for me to follow her. The kitchen adjoined the living room, and then a short hallway branched off into two bedrooms. Kat led me to the smaller one and I blinked, trying to adjust my tired eyes to the dim light. There was a small bed occupied by a child. I had no idea what age the kid was but I could tell it was a girl. Kathleen touched the child’s sleeping face and then moved on to the little crib in the corner.

  He slept on his back, his balled fists over his head. We hadn’t turned on a light but something about our presence seemed to disturb him because he scrunched up his face and let out a high pitched whimper that sounded like a small animal in pain. Then his face relaxed and he breathed evenly in peaceful slumber.

  I didn’t know jack shit about babies.

  Yet as I stood in a dark room beside Kathleen Doyle while we stared down at the tiny creature that was my brother it occurred to me that he was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. Something fierce and foreign twisted in my chest as I watched him and I found myself wishing I’d visited right after he was born. My dad thought I would. He’d asked, even offered to pay for the plane ticket though he knew I didn’t need the money. I just needed to let old grudges go. And now that I was finally here, it was too late.