by Jim Heskett
Reagan was pleased with herself, able to hold a regular conversation with someone. It had felt like months since she’d been able to do more than spit awkward random sentence fragments. Most people didn’t even notice, so wrapped up in their own concerns.
“She tells me stuff like I need to get out of bed once a day and go for a walk, and I nod and say it sounds like a good idea.”
His eyes were almost black. “You just have to play the game. Be a model patient.”
She didn’t tell him about the session yesterday when, after an unusually long silence, Reagan said, “Did you know I had a 4.0 in high school?” She had been trying to say that even though she seemed stupid now, she wasn’t. But the shrink went on to lecture about living up to people’s expectations, missing the point entirely. Reagan got mad and knocked a bowl of candy onto the floor.
When their cigarettes were finished, he gave her a wink and they both went back inside. The next day, he transferred to a different facility and she never saw him again. She didn’t get to say goodbye.
During her second week, they switched her therapy to Dr. Ahern, and there Reagan experienced her first glimmer of hope.
Dr. Ahern spoke directly, and never lectured like the Group counselors or her first shrink. She would ask Reagan questions, and if Reagan didn’t answer, Dr. Ahern didn’t get upset and alter her medication as punishment.
By their third session, Reagan had grown comfortable enough that she had actual conversations with the therapist. Talking to the tattooed kid at the smoke hole and talking to a therapist were two different animals. But on that day, as Reagan stared out the window of Dr. Ahern’s office at a squirrel clicking, clucking, and chirping as it hopped from branch to branch of a giant oak tree, Reagan tested her.
“How do I get better?” Reagan said. She was expecting take control of your life.
“You just need to wait it out,” Dr. Ahern said.
Reagan stopped. She hadn’t expected this. “Okay. What do I do while I’m waiting it out?”
“You work on yourself.”
And then Reagan sunk back into her chair, because it seemed Dr. Ahern was like everyone else, after all. But Reagan wasn’t going to give up yet.
“Yes, that’s what everyone says, but… how do I do that? What does that look like? It sounds like a great idea, obviously, because I realize I’m messed up, but what do I literally do about it? When we have free time, I think, okay now I’m going to work on myself, so I write in my journal, and that gets me more angry because I end up writing the same things over and over again. How I messed up the last two semesters, how I disappointed my family.
“And when I was in Austin, I would wake up in the morning and say ‘today is the day I’m going to do something. I’m not staying in bed all day.’ But there’s nothing to do and I go back to bed. Do you see what I mean?”
A little glint of joy appeared at having captured her thoughts so perfectly, and then the reply changed everything.
Dr. Ahern smiled. “That’s the trouble, dear. You have to wait it out. It doesn’t matter what you do or what you don’t do. There’s only one job you have; there’s only one rule: you have to stay alive, that’s all. Every minute of the day that you keep on breathing is enough. You don’t have to figure anything out. You don’t have to finish school, or get a job, or even get happy, but you can if you want to. You can do anything you feel like. Except you have one thing you have to do: stay alive and keep on breathing.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
7:55 am
In Spoon’s dream, he had a frothing stubbie of Victoria Bitter in his hand, as he always did. This one was in a bar, maybe Australia, maybe Austin. He didn’t get sober until his sophomore year of college, so he did of bit of drinking after he moved to the States.
Reagan was at the opposite end of the bar, chatting to some stranger with a thick spool of mardi gras beads around his neck. Spoon wanted to cross the room to her, but the crowd of people clogged the space between them. He couldn’t find a passageway, and he tried to call to her but the collective roar of the crowd drowned out his voice.
When he woke up, the first thought that appeared in his head was whether Reagan had taken her medication. This was a strange idea, because Spoon had never considered this. Reagan always took her medication, even when she didn’t want to.
When they met fifteen months ago, she explained to him about her manic and depressive episodes, her hospitalization, and her recovery. Spoon had never seen the ugly side of the illness. He might not have known otherwise.
She said that mania was like a computer program with a hundred buttons to click, and each one lights up for only a few seconds, and as she races around to click each one, the lights move faster and faster until it’s all a blur. She loved it but also wanted it to stop. On the other side, depression was not usually about sleeping all day, although sometimes it was. Mostly, depression meant an endless series of rhetorical questions that resulted in a spiral of shame, judgment, and yearning to escape.
When she told him this, they were only two months into their relationship, sitting in his apartment, sharing tea. Spoon looked at her and had a hard time believing that the same charming woman sitting next to him could have acted as mad as a cut snake, as his father might say. After a few months, he did notice that she seemed to cycle through introversion and extroversion, but as long as she stayed on her meds, it never became more than that. She often wanted to chuck a sickie from work and spend evenings with him, and he would read to her when she claimed her eyes were too tired.
She dropped hints about her displeasure with the nausea and occasional dizziness some of the pills gave her, and she sometimes talked about her desire to be rid of them, to try yoga and meditation and homeopathic remedies, and Spoon never knew what to say to that. He encouraged her to do what she thought was right. But also, he would say he learned in AA that often what he thought was best for himself was absolutely the wrong thing, so he sometimes had to trust in others to help him make decisions about himself and his recovery.
Only two more sleeps until he could see her again.
He sat up in bed, careful not to jostle his knee, which was already throbbing. He stretched and picked up his mobile from Reagan’s nightstand, checking it for messages or missed calls. There was one message, but it wasn’t from Reagan.
Knee aching, he took some ibuprofen from his bag next to the bed and dry-swallowed them. He was glad not to be on painkillers any longer. Painkillers and trying to live sober never did mix well. That reminded him, he needed to get to an AA meeting, and soon.
He slipped on a pair of grundies and a t-shirt, then used his crutches to walk downstairs and into the living room. Anne was nowhere around, which was becoming a regular occurrence.
Mystery man Tyson loomed in Spoon’s thoughts. Anne had lied about the fight with him, that much was certain.
He limped into the empty kitchen and set his mobile on speaker mode to listen to the message as he took a bagel from above the fridge. Americans seemed not to understand the joy of crumpets for breakfast. He’d yet to find an American grocer that sold them.
“Hey, this is Ken,” the voicemail message said. “I hate to do this to you, but I was wondering if you could cut your vacation short and come back to Austin, preferably today.”
Ken didn’t know Spoon wasn’t on holiday, but was supposed to be at a job interview in New Orleans. Spoon was waiting to hear back from their HR person to find out if he could reschedule for next week. He hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to swing the extra time off.
The message continued. “We had a release last night which broke a bunch of stuff, so the team is pretty frantic. Our call volume is insane and our average hold times are around eleven minutes. As you can imagine, both Sales and Product are running around screaming about the end of the world. I wouldn’t ask except that the new guy we hired no call/no showed this morning, so we’re one short, no matter what. Please give me a call as soon as you can.”
The mobile rang again. Spoon looked at the number, then sighed and tapped the accept button. “Hi, Ken.”
“Spoon, my mate, g’day to you there.”
Why did everyone think the g’day mate jokes were so bloody funny?
“Did you hear my message?”
“I just woke up, but yeah, I listened to it.”
“Sleeping in on your vacation, are you?”
Spoon considered telling Ken something about a family emergency, but then thought about how Ken would fake sympathy for ten seconds and then get on with his point. Spoon decided to spare himself the trouble. “Yeah.”
“I hate to do this to you. I really do, but these are desperate times over here. When can you get back?”
If Spoon worked for a modern company, they would have remote desktop applications and the ability to set up a virtual network. But his company was not so modern. They required you to punch in physically at your desk every day.
Spoon hated the omitted truths and promises broken. Grateful to have a job, yes, but he wanted more than tech support. He left Australia and went to college in the States to achieve more than that.
“I can’t, Ken. My apologies, mate, but I’m not coming back until next week.”
Silence on the other end of the line. Spoon thought he heard someone else talking in the background. With the cubicles stacked so close together like prawns in a tin, it happened all the time.
“That’s not an acceptable answer, Liam.”
Now Ken was using Spoon’s Christian name, as his mum would, so the situation was getting serious. “It’s not as if I don’t give a stuff about the team. You know I wouldn’t let everyone down, Ken. That’s not what I’m about.”
“Then why can’t you come back?”
“Because I’m on my bloody PTO. You can’t ask me to cut it short.”
Spoon regretted letting his temper flare, even though most yanks wouldn’t recognize bloody as being a curse word.
More silence, for almost twenty seconds. Spoon chewed quietly, waiting for Ken to say something.
Ken cleared his throat. “I didn’t realize you saw it that way. We all have to make sacrifices for the team.”
And so began the guilt trip.
“I have to be honest with you, Ken, I wasn’t going to New Orleans for vacation. I had a job interview there.”
“I see.” Ken actually sounded hurt.
“It’s nothing personal. It’s just that I’m not so keen on tech support anymore. I want to get into project management and there’s a good opportunity for me there.”
“So this is how it’s going to be, then? Maybe you’re not a good fit for our team here,” Ken said, starting to sound a little choked up.
The conversation was slipping into melodrama. “Wait, Ken, I didn’t mean it like that. You know if I get the other job, I’d give a proper two-weeks’ notice and work hard in the meantime.”
“No, this is right. This is how it’s supposed to be and this conversation is now making all of it clear to me. You can drop off your keycard next Monday, or whenever you’re back from New Orleans.”
Click.
Not even a chance to explain himself. Spoon dropped the mobile onto the table and put his head in his hands. Now he was unemployed, and rescheduling this other job interview may not have helped his chances at that company.
He wondered what would have happened if he’d stayed in Australia instead of coming to the States. He could have apprenticed as a tradie, out on weekdays in his high-vis gear, working on telephone lines or cable like his dad had for thirty years of his life.
“You’ve cocked it up now, Spoon,” he said as he swallowed the last doughy bite of bagel.
What if he didn’t get the other job? He and Reagan had just moved in together, and it’s not as if they could pay their steep rent with her tips from waitressing.
Spoon returned upstairs. He dug into his suitcase and retrieved a small, felt-covered box. He opened it and looked at the sparkle of diamonds glaring back at him. The engagement ring he was going to give to Reagan in New Orleans, once he’d gotten the job and they had started to look for a place to live there. Now what the bloody hell was he going to do with all that?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
8:15 am
As Reagan trudged along the Tonahutu trail between Granite Falls and Haynach Lake, she slowly settled into the blue-day realization that she was alone. Not literally. Her two cousins were huffing and puffing behind her, she had a host of friends in Austin and a boyfriend in Denver who loved her. She was alone in the sense that she was twenty-four and her parents were gone. Again, not literally. Her mother still existed, as far as she knew, but since that woman had mailed divorce papers to her father a few years ago from California, no one had seen or heard from her.
But now she supposed she was a grown-up because she had no one to fall back on. Stepmother Anne was going to fade away and disappear. Drink herself right into the arms of some other man to fulfill her needs. She had no real reason to stick around now that nothing tied her to Reagan.
Reagan and her companions crossed a tiny log bridge over a rushing creek, and the bridge was a single log laid across the water, broken and dipping into the water in the middle. They passed one at a time, not sure if it would hold all three of them. The water below was clear and bubbly, but looked the color of tea because of the rocks below.
After a few minutes of silence, they came upon a crumbling log cabin with no roof and nothing inside.
“What’s that?” Charlie said.
“I’d guess it’s an old ranger outpost,” Reagan said. “Avalanche killed it, probably, so they abandoned the thing.”
Charlie smacked his hiking pole against a decaying log, then nodded at her.
The trail became muddier, and often they had to jump across sections of miniature pools like rice patties created from the clomping of horse hooves. Then they traversed a series of dog-leg switchbacks that crested a rim and descended into a small meadow full of aspens. The change in tree types meant another shift in elevation, and the skinny aspen husks rose from the ground like a thousand bony fingers waving to her.
“What do we do if we see a bear?” Charlie said, hustling to pull even with her. He’d donned a Broncos cap, probably to cast a shadow over his sunburned cheeks. She doubted either of them had brought any sunscreen.
“Probably nothing,” she said. “It won’t bother us unless we get in its way. If we have to, we can throw a rock at it. But, like the moose herd, we’ll avoid them if we can.”
“Roger that, good buddy,” Charlie said, smiling at her. He seemed to be trying to cheer her up, and she guessed that she’d been unable to hide the redness in her eyes and the weight dragging her face into a constant frown.
But the bears didn’t concern her. Instead, it was the key against her thigh. With every step, it dragged on her like a dumbbell weighing pounds instead of less than an ounce. Where was the lock that fit it? Safety-deposit box? Lockbox? Safe? If the key opened a safe, then where? Dad had a safe in the house, but that opened with a combination.
“Let’s stay focused on getting to Haynach by lunchtime,” she said. “That’ll keep us on track to getting up and over Flattop before mid-afternoon.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Dalton said. “If Charlie can keep his fat ass in gear.”
Reagan shot Dalton daggers, and he seemed to remember he’d agreed to take it easy on Charlie. He tossed an uneasy flick of the head in her direction.
An older couple emerged from between two tree
s ahead. They were arguing as they hiked, in some language other than English. Reagan turned her ear toward them to focus on the words. She’d never understood why she was more likely to see European and Asian people in American National Parks than actual Americans. They didn’t appreciate this immense beauty down the road from their cities.
When Reagan reached a spot in the trail under the shade of a giant boulder, they paused to check the map. Identifying the peaks to the north and south overshadowing the trail would give her a more exact location. She hunted the map and figured the jagged one to the north was Nakai peak, and Snowdrift was the one to the south. The looming specter of the steep and grassy Flattop Mountain dominated the view to the west. She studied this for a minute, and based on the distance, they should have found the turnoff for Haynach already.
“Did either of you see a wooden sign? Would have been small, like the ones that tell you to turn off for the different backcountry sites.”
Dalton and Charlie glanced at each other.
“I didn’t see shit,” Dalton said. “Just trees and rocks and more trees and rocks.”
Reagan scanned the map again as she eased the rope hipbelt away from her skin to get a little break from the burning. The blue line indicating Tonahutu creek, which led to Haynach, turned on the map just before the dotted gray line indicating the hiking trail. “Anyone remember the creek turning, at least?”
Recognition flashed in Charlie’s face. “Oh, yeah. That was a little while ago. Twenty, thirty minutes. It was at a bend, going uphill.”
Reagan folded the map and stuffed it in her pocket. “We have to go back.”
“Why?” Dalton said. “I thought we were under this big time crunch to get up over Flathead before the storms came in.”
Reagan didn’t say because Haynach was where she and Dad had eaten lunch on the second day of their trip. She’d tried to explain the importance of that to Dalton yesterday, and he hadn’t seemed to care. No matter what, she was going to stick to the itinerary. They could give her that, at least.