Or Not

by Brian Mandabach

  14 September—Fourteen years old

  Last weekend we did that hike up to the Goat-horn saddle—today I feel like taking it easy, lying around the tipi.

  Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.

  —J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

  It’s a true fact that there isn’t much of a story to the summer once I got over my antipathy toward Ally. For me, the story lies in the way I found some happiness, how I found a friend for a couple of weeks. Then, of course, I lost it all again to the gruesomeness of school and my regular life. But there are a couple of tales along the way, too.

  The day after the welcome dinner, the whole family caravanned up to the cabin. I’ve told something already about how we planned and executed the tipi painting and how I began to come around to Ally. But the big turning point was how she helped me in my campaign to spend the whole summer up here.

  It was supposed to be the way it had been the year before: Sean was going to live at the cabin full-time, guiding tenderfoot tourists on fishing trips, and I would come up with Mom and Dad, commuting back and forth. The wish of my heart, however, was to live up here all summer.

  The first victory came because of the tipi painting. When I was whining about having to go home, Ally said to Mom and Dad, “You mean Cassie’s going back with you on Sunday?”

  “We don’t feel comfortable with her up here alone,” said Mom.

  “But how are we going to get the tipi painted?” Ally said, and filled them in on her vision.

  “Couldn’t you just sketch it out this weekend with her, and let her finish it on her own?”

  “I guess,” she said. “Could you handle that, Cassie?”

  “You know what happened on my last attempt.”

  “And Sean is going to be farting around fishing all week,” she said. “If Cassie was here, we could hang out.”

  “Why don’t you drop Sean off where he meets his clients in the morning?” Mom suggested. “They all have giant SUVs anyway—they don’t want to ride in his car. Then you could come down to the city.”

  “I guess I’d rather be here in the mountains, but thanks for the invite. I just wish Cassie could stay—she wouldn’t be alone if I’m here.”

  “I wouldn’t be alone even staying here with Sean, Mom.”

  She turned to Dad. “What do you think about this week?”

  “I think it sounds okay,” he said.

  “Nobody’s asking me,” said Sean. “I’ve got a week alone in the mountains with my girlfriend, and now I’m going to have my kid sister tagging along.”

  “Thanks, Sean, thanks a lot,” I said.

  “I was just kidding, Littless,” he said. “I never mind having you tag along. I think it would be awesome if you were here all summer, but a week would be a good start.”

  “I’ll take good care of her,” said Ally. “It’ll be just like summer camp. Three round meals a day, good clean arts and crafts activities, early bedtime.”

  “Well, if you can get this girl to bed early, Mary Poppins, you’re hired,” said Mom.

  I couldn’t resent Ally after that. I’m good at getting my way, but I had never had someone help me before. It was a great feeling—I remember getting this rush of admiration for her, or gratitude. I just suddenly adored her.

  We got to work on the tipi the next day, mixing up paints, experimenting, trying to get the colors we wanted. We measured, made sketches, and figured out how we would do the high parts. Dad has a big ladder that he offered, and we had already made a shopping list for a trip to the hardware/art store.

  The rest of that week I remember as a busy, blurry time—a good time that, as Tolkien said, is soon told.

  Ally had me out of bed early—it’s hard to sleep when someone is painting the walls of your tent. We would paint through the morning, have lunch, and go until the clouds looked like they were about to rain on our creation. Some days we got in another session in the evening. Sean even picked up a brush a couple of times.

  While we painted, we talked. I got to hear all about her middle school years, which seemed almost as bad as mine. She’d gone to a snooty private school where you had to be very careful how you acted if you wanted to fit in.

  “So I was careful—what I wore, what music I liked, what I said—it’s very stressful to conform.”

  “Yeah, Ally, you’re a total conformist.”

  She was wearing a tie-died sports bra and a white cotton skirt, paint spattered, tied in a knot above her knees, showing off her hairy legs. Reaching up with the paintbrush, she displayed her unshaven pits as well.

  “Shaving is not natural,” she explained to me. “And what’s even scarier than women shaving their bodies is that men are doing it now too. Or maybe the scariest is that I think there’s any difference. Are we not mammals? But you should see my middle school pictures—perfect lip-gloss, perfect hair: perfect phony.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got my parents to let me go to the public high school instead of one of the prep schools they wanted to dump me in. But I think any high school would have been better than junior high.”

  “I just assumed school was always going to be miserable.”

  “Oh, it will be. Wretched. But high school is so much bigger, with different kinds of people. Some are mean—jocks and socs—but the people who don’t fit in can find other people who don’t fit in.”

  “I can’t believe I have another whole year of middle school. If only they hadn’t kept me out of kindergarten for a year. Then I’d be done with it. I wish this year were over.”

  “Don’t wish that—you’re wishing your life away. And if anything were different, everything would be different.”

  “That’s what I am wishing for—when I’m not wishing I’d never been born.”

  “But think about it. If you had been born even a day later, you might not be you.”

  “So, if I weren’t me, I wouldn’t exist.”

  “Or maybe worse, what if you could change one thing, the worst thing that has ever happened to you, but it changed a whole series of events and prevented the best thing that ever happened from ever happening.”

  “But is it worth it, all the awfulness?”

  She stopped painting and looked down from the ladder. The sun was behind her, and I looked away.

  “You have to love your whole life, Cassie. Each moment is the only thing that’s real. If you damn even one moment, you risk damning the whole thing. Think about it. Each moment arises and then slips away so quickly—if you’re not living in the present, if you’re living in the past or for the future, you’ll miss it, because every now happens only once.”

  We have good conversations in my family, Di, I know we do. Sean’s cool because he listens to me and doesn’t make me feel stupid or like a little kid, but there’s a distance now that I didn’t notice when I was little. And Dad’s great, but he always wants to play and show off, and he really likes to hear himself talk—even in earnest. Especially in earnest. Mom usually wants me to do something or think something—she wants to influence me. And both of them are always parenting me. Nothing escapes being tinted by the color of that relationship. I used to think there was something wrong with me, but Ally says once you get to a certain age, you just can’t relax with your family. She says it’s nature’s way of getting us ready to leave home.

  But with her, it’s how I always imagined it would be with a big sister and a best friend. She took me seriously, she listened to me, and she talked to me, giving her ideas but not pushing them on me. I can’t believe how fast I went from seeing her as an outsider to loving her and wishing she w
ould never leave.

  Great birthday dinner and great present, Di. I’ll start from the beginning.

  I woke up after a little snooze in my tipi, and when I went up to the cabin, I overheard Mom and Dad talking about me. So I lingered on the front step for a minute.

  “Did you check on her?” Dad said.

  “Sound asleep, can you believe it?”

  “It sounds like we’re talking about a baby, doesn’t it? ‘Did you check her,’ ‘sound asleep.’”

  “She really looked like our baby—our great, tall baby lying there on her sleeping bag with her eyes closed and her mouth open. Remember those little nursing blisters when she was a newborn?”

  “She had the sweetest little lips. I can’t believe it’s been fourteen years.”

  “Do you want to go wake her up?”

  “Too late.” I opened the door. “These burning ears woke me from a sound nap.”

  “You rat, what did you hear?” said Mom.

  “‘Can you believe, it’s been fourteen years, our little baby girl,’” I mocked.

  “Well, happy birthday, darling, thanks for being born.” She hugged me.

  “Thanks for bornin’ me, Ma. What’s for grub?”

  “Sautéed wonderful bean curd,” said Dad. “Smothered in five-meat special flavor.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Your mother actually made you a cake,” he said. “In these primitive environs.”

  “Wow, Mom. Thanks.”

  Dad has always disdained such suburban improvements as a deck, but he did build us a table and some chairs that we set up on a flattish bit of gravel for “outdoor living.” We ate out there: all three of us at one end of the long table and my big pink-wrapped present at the other end.

  We started with a bowl of good spicy guacamole and my favorite blue chips, followed by veggie enchiladas in hot red chile. Mom and Dad were drinking Tecates and I had a bottle of sparkling apple cider.

  At cake time, though the sun had slipped down behind the mountains, it was still too light for the candles to make much of a glow. But the wind cooperated and left the blowing-out for me. Mom and Dad sang to me, I paused for my wish, and blew out all fourteen in one breath. I wouldn’t tell them my wish, Di, and I won’t even tell you—I’m afraid writing it is just as bad as telling.

  Dad passed me the box, and I peeled off the pink unicorn paper and set it aside.

  “This giant box must have taken the last of the unicorn paper,” I said. “It’s been my birthday theme since I was about six.”

  “Yup, this is the last of it. Our little girl is growing up.”

  I gave the box a shake. “Not fragile, is it?” I said, and began to unfold the flaps that were tucked in at the top.

  “Um, no,” said Dad.

  Then I opened the box.

  “Not the old box in a box routine!”

  Sure enough, inside the first there was another box. Then three more and finally a card with a poem by Dad:

  Of all the Joys we’ve ever seen,

  Of all that in the World have been;

  The fairest flower beside still water

  Is you, our dear, our loving Daughter.

  And inside was a printout of an e-mail travel itinerary: Colorado Springs to Portland. I’m going to Oregon to see Sean and Ally! I still can’t believe it.

  “Happy birthday, sweetie.”

  “You’re letting me go all alone?”

  “Well,” said Dad, “you all got along so well last summer. And your brother is on the straight side—I don’t think he is going to be hauling you off to any fraternity parties. As for Ally, we don’t mind her too much. She seemed a little hippiefied at first, but we got to like her okay.”

  “I thought it was love at first sight.”

  “I was favorably disposed, but you never know if style is an indication of substance.”

  “And this was her idea. She certainly is your ally, your Ally,” said Mom.

  “Good one, Mom.”

  “Well, I took some convincing on this one. I didn’t really see what there was for an eighth-grader to do at college, but she talked me into it. You won’t actually be at the school anyway, they’re taking you to her uncle’s beach house,” she said. “It seems like it will be a fun weekend for you.”

  Looking at the itinerary more closely, I saw that the reservations had me leaving two weeks from today and coming back Tuesday. “You’re getting me out of two days of school?”

  “Don’t you want to go?” said Dad.

  “No, no—yes. I just can’t believe it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I got up and hugged them both.

  “It’s a big opportunity for you to show responsibility,” said Mom. “You’ll have to get your school work done ahead of time and be your most grown-up self on this trip. Do you think you can handle traveling alone?”

  “Of course, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  We discussed the plan. I would fly to Portland, Ally and Sean would pick me up, and we’d drive down to the coast. The house belonged to Ally’s uncle, who lived in LA and let family stay there whenever they wanted, and it was perched right on the beach.

  It was getting cold and dark when the party broke up with many a happy birthday/thank you/love you hug. Then I went up to the Carrock and lay in the chill under the stars before coming back to write everything into you, Di.

  Pause.

  But for the wind in the trees, all is silent.

  And something slips in between the ground and the canvas, or slides down the poles from the apex of the cone, or maybe it seeps out from my pores, escapes with my breath, emanates from the crown of my head.

  All is silent.

  If the pen on the paper is loud in the stillness, the rustling of my sleeping bag is deafening. I’m so happy, and then in the midst of the fullness, I am empty and alone. I miss Ally so much. What good is a weekend when there are so many hours before and after? So many hours and days and weeks and months and years.

  Moments.

  That’s the worst part. So many “nows” to live through alone.

  I’m damning them, Ally, I know.

  What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be glad, count my blessings, be thankful, and blah, blah, blah, blah?

  NO.

  I won’t do this.

  I won’t let my stupid self ruin this.

  I have more stories to tell, and if I am afraid of the future, afraid even of the present, I can fill this empty moment with the stories, so the stories of passed moments, past presents, become now again at the point of my pen on the page, now and more real than ever, like a song is real, playing over and over again.

  Okay. I can do this. I’m casting downstream and bringing up the brightly spotted trout—up, up, up into my net …

  The first week of the summer went fast, with Ally and I painting in the sun and going into the tipi or the cabin when it rained. I took her on hikes all around the place, up to the falls for a splash break, across the Carrock meadows, and down to the beaver ponds for a dip. The ponds had been blown out the spring before when we’d had a big rainstorm on top of the usual snowmelt. The flood washed out the old muck, so once the beavers rebuilt, the water was nice and clear—but cold.

  Ally surprised me by just stripping off her clothes, wading into the water, and diving for the deep end of the pond.

  Then she came up whooping and sputtering with cold.

  “What are you doing?” she said when she saw me wading out in my tank and shorts. “Why don’t you take your clothes off?”

  “Shy, I guess,” I said.

  “It’s just us, and besides, you’ll dry a lot faster than your clothes will.”

  “I’ll change.”

  “Suit yourself.”


  “I will—just as you unsuited yourself.” I launched myself into the water, remembering Mom’s dip in the reservoir and wondering why my female role models were always taking off their clothes. My shorts and top were uncomfortable in the water, though, and by the end of the week I was down to, well, nothing.

  I can’t imagine Jenny or anyone at school hearing about this. Skinny-dipping! It sounds so naughty! Most haven’t even read Anne Frank’s Diary, but when they saw me with it, they were all whispering about the “lesbian” part. How dare Anne actually have an honest thought along those lines. And this is the passage that causes outrage?

  Our swimming was nothing sexy, anyway—not even like Anne’s “ecstatic” thoughts. After the initial shock, I became aware that being naked was not necessarily sexual. We talked about it later, as we painted, and Ally said that it’s the hiding of body parts, among other things, that turns them into sex objects.

  “What about porn?” I said.

  “What have you seen?”

  “Just a magazine I found in Sean’s room once.”

  “Really. Was it pretty bad?”

  “Not hard-core—I don’t think—naked women posing—”

  “That’s it, though—it’s the poses, the ‘fuck me’ poses,” she said. “Seen anything on the internet?”

  “I don’t use computers if I don’t have to, but when I used to search for Greenpeace and PETA sites and that stuff came up, I would just click it closed as fast as possible.”

  “Good. You’re innocent—but that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The body is innocent, it’s what they do to it that makes it pornographic: starve it, pump it up with silicone, shave it, and pose it—videos and commercials are just as bad. Worse, even. It’s dehumanizing.”

  “You sound like my mom—Dad too—the feminist party line.”

  “Really?” she said. “The only message I got was that sex, if it existed, was nasty, nasty, nasty.”

  That would be a good place to stop now, Di. I’m good again—I wrote myself through it.