I will myself up and stumble for the bathroom.
Our ‘temperature center,’ as Dad calls the gadget above my sink, reads fourteen degrees outside—the coldest it’s been since we moved to Gillette. It’s probably sub-zero with the wind chill, but I don’t care. It’s Thanksgiving, and the Thackers have invited us to dinner.
The thought of being in Kyle’s house—after too many tiring visits from a policeman named Bob and too many sensitive visits from a crisis counselor named Kathy and too little of seeing Kyle—has me in the kitchen by nine. I shouldn’t push it. I mean, I’m still sore, even though it’s been six days since Em attacked me. My stitches tug with every move I make. When I lift things, my bruised ribs twinge. But I want today to be perfect. So by the time Dad wanders downstairs I’m peeling apples, juicing oranges and lemon and mixing melted butter with cinnamon and sugar, oatmeal and flour.
“You go now,” he says, heading for the coffee.
But I don’t go. I lean against the counter, ignoring the dull throb in my side, reading the recipe aloud as Dad finishes the two cobblers I started. Turns out, baking is a lot like my biology lab work. Just follow the directions.
With the cobblers ready, Dad shoos me away to rest. I down an Advil, snuggle under a quilt, and fall asleep on the couch while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The TV is off when Dad touches my shoulder and pats my head. “Time to shower, baby,” he says softly.
I trudge upstairs. I’ve avoided showering—the water feels like stone on my bruised skin—but I want to be my best today. In the bathroom I strip off my clothes and, for the first time since coming home last Saturday, study my body in the mirror.
My entire right side resembles a massive birthmark, the purple edges fringed in sickly yellow-green. My breast looks like an inkwell topped by a small brown nipple. A half-moon of black stitches curves over and between two of my ribs, poking from my skin like a monarch caterpillar’s spikes. In the shower, I rest my forehead against the cool blue tiles and cry.
Around three-thirty in the afternoon Dad loads the unbaked cobblers into the Jeep. He’s different today, in a pair of stone-washed jeans and a rust-colored cable sweater and fancy cowboy boots. His hair’s grown long enough to brush the collar of his shirt. He’s put in his contacts again.
As he helps me into the passenger seat I say, “The old look has returned!” He grins, ear to ear. But our ride to the Thackers’ house is a quiet one.
We haven’t talked about Portland since I woke in the hospital. I mean as far as I’m concerned we’re not going, but our unspoken feelings hang between us like a swinging blade. I missed school this week and Dad stayed home from work, cooking my meals and helping me up and down the stairs and barely letting me out of his sight. I’ll be home all next week, too. I guess that’s when I’ll break the silence-barrier and tell him: once my stitches are out, I’m going back. I have to. If I don’t go back to school it’s as good as Em running me out of town.
At least that’s the way I see it.
Dad eases the Jeep onto the snow-swept gravel drive beside the Thackers’ house, taking us round back. It’s the first time I’ve been here in daylight since my date, my so far one-and-only date, with Kyle. But now I remember this place from last summer—the day of the yard sale. His mother had strewn the lawn with old clothes. Card tables piled with kitchen ware and garage tools were set-up near the road. My boots were there, standing in a line-up with a lot of other boots, on a hen-and-chick-infested rock garden wall. They had been the first thing I’d seen at the yard sale, and the only thing I’d bought.
Dad skids to a stop near the detached garage. He turns the key and the engine sputters into silence. He unlatches his seat belt, but he doesn’t open the door. “There’s something I should tell you,” he says.
I brace myself because really, I don’t know what else to do. I haven’t been out of the house since Dad brought me home from the hospital. I didn’t know one fifteen minute car ride would make my body feel like I’ve been dragged over rocks. Maybe I should have saved a pain pill for today but they made me sick, so on Monday I handed them over to Bob the cop. I wish I hadn’t. My side throbs in rhythm with my heartbeat.
Dad says, “Ray Thacker invited a . . . friend.”
“And?”
“She’s someone I’ve had coffee with. A few times.”
As I shift in my seat, pain does a hara-kiri through my guts. “You have a girlfriend?”
“No,” Dad says, touching my hair. “Not a girlfriend.”
“But you like her, right? You’re all dressed up.”
Dad looks away from me, watching in the rear-view mirror as Kyle exits the kitchen door. I watch Kyle, too. He walks toward our Jeep with his hands shoved into the pockets of a really cool duster. His hair dances with the wind, forward and back. “Her name is Jesse Madsen,” Dad says, and I jump. “Ray invited her to coffee with us. I had breakfast with her last Friday.”
“Wait. You were breakfasting with this Jesse girl when Em attacked me?”
“She’s a woman, honey. And we had breakfast in the morning. Not. Not, you know.” Dad’s face reddens. He pulls at his collar. “Ray invited her today and I haven’t known how to tell you. I’m sorry to spring it on you. It’s just. Well. I didn’t know how you’d take it.”
Dad opens his door then, leaving me to take it with my mouth hanging open. Cold air gusts into the Jeep and I shiver, which makes my side ache more. He leaves the door ajar, of course, while he intercepts Kyle near the rear bumper. I hear “We’ll be a minute” and “Will you take the cobblers in?” but the rest ebbs with the wind. Then Dad opens the back hatch.
Kyle says, “Hey, beautiful girl.”
I have the overwhelming urge to scream for him to forget the cobblers and carry me into the house instead. But I just look at him, and smile.
Back in the Jeep, Dad rests his arm across the steering wheel and studies me. The interior is cold now and our breath floats up, little puffs of tulle void of talk. I stare toward the barn. Wind has blown the snow into glass-smooth dunes and soon, I think, more snow will fall. “It’s your life,” I finally say. “If you’re over Mom, well, it’s okay. You deserve to be happy.”
“I appreciate that.” Dad pulls his fingers through his hair. He hasn’t blinked once since returning to the Jeep, at least not that I’ve noticed. He’s looking at me so intently it’s like he’s Superman, capable of probing my thoughts with alien, x-ray eyes.
“What?” I ask.
Dad frowns. “I will never be over your mother, Aspen. Never. But I don’t expect you to understand that. She was the love of my life. Until you’ve lived that experience, until you’ve built a life with your soul-mate, how can you comprehend the depth there, or the sacrifice? Something in me went with her the day she died and that part of me is gone, for good. Your mom and I used to talk about what we’d do if we found ourselves alone. We created vibrant, wishful fantasies. We wanted the other to be happy.”
“So it’s like you have permission,” I say to the side-view mirror. I don’t want Dad to see the hot tears creeping into my eyes.
“Back then it was a game, honey. Something lovers do when they think about the impossible reality that one day they’ll find themselves alone. In practice it’s not been like that at all. I’m walking wounded. If I’m not battling depression, I’m battling guilt. Then I met Jesse and began to feel, well, better. Am I’m wrong, to want to love again?”
“Don’t know,” I say. With my pinkie finger, I draw little waves on the foggy passenger window.
Dad touches my shoulder. “I don’t know either. I want to be happy, even though I know it won’t be like it was before. And now this crap with Em. Am I over-reacting to want to take you back to Portland?”
Leaving the waves unfinished, I look at Dad. “Yes,” I say. “Definitely.”
He draws a long, deep breath. “I’ve always wanted the best for us, baby. But now you’re older. You have ideas for your own life. You have the
right to define yourself, just like I did. Like your mother did. I don’t know what ‘the best for us’ means anymore.”
“Maybe what’s best for you and what’s best for me isn’t the same thing.”
“Maybe. But you’re my child and always will be and I will always, always do all I can for you. Being in Gillette has helped both of us figure out how to go on, but what happened to you has me backsliding. I’ve been living the nightmare of your mother all over again, only this time I see the violence coming and I hate it. I’m not dealing with it well. I tell myself you’re okay, that you’re almost grown, that even if we stay here you’ll be all right. I’ve done what I can to make sure of that. I went to the school and documented everything. I filed a police report. For god’s sake, I’ve let the cops come into my home and talk to you whenever they’ve asked. But I’ve been following Em’s path into the system. It’s her first time offense, and her family is connected. She won’t pay a heavy price. She’ll come back to school in the next few months. Maybe even the next few weeks.”
“People can change,” I say.
Dad huffs. “People can change, Aspen. But they rarely do. We are who we are. Em is a mean girl who will likely grow into a meaner woman. I’m not in the front row of whatever’s going on with her, but I’d say she’s not aware of how bad her behavior is. I’d say she’s sorry she was caught. Not sorry she hurt you. That’s a huge difference. I don’t like you being anywhere that girl can get to you.”
“Then I’ll avoid her, you know? I’ll make sure I’m never alone. She’s just mad ‘cause Kyle dumped her. She took it out on me but now that’s done. She’ll get over it and life’ll go on. You’ll see.” I pause, swallowing at the urge to whine. “I want to stay.”
Dad shakes his head. “I have good things happening here, too. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take you back to Oregon in a heartbeat if it seemed the right thing to do. It would only be until you graduate. Six months. I don’t get your stubbornness. You could stay in touch with Kyle. I’m not asking you to let go of your friendship with him. Why not go back, for just a while?”
I look away from Dad. I could explain myself. Maybe. But I don’t want to tell him how I’ve turned Portland into my personal shrine. He’ll laugh at me. He’ll think I’m being childish. He won’t understand that going back means allowing the Portland I knew with my mother to be defiled by whatever Portland has become without her. He doesn’t seem to get that going back is backwards.
Smoke streams from the two stone chimneys of Kyle’s house, blending with the brooding clouds above. Angella stands at the sink, rinsing something, the window a snapshot of cheery yellow. Then she moves away. The view is a Christmas card, a perfect wintry vision. And framed in the kitchen doorway is Kyle, watching me watching him, the palm of his hand pressed flat against the glass inset of the storm door.
My heart becomes a firework.
“This is going to sound crazy,” I say, facing Dad again. “I mean, maybe it’s an only-child thing. But I’ve always had a part of me by my side. Does that make sense? Growing up, it was Mom. She helped me navigate the world. She was my compass. She knew me. She was an amazing comfort I didn’t even realize existed outside of me until she was gone.”
“Honey—”
I hold up my hand, like a stop sign. “Then I met Kyle. I’d seen him in class and stuff, yeah. But the day I actually met him, a girl had me cornered in the parking lot. She wanted a pin I was wearing—I guess it had belonged to her aunt. She was fighting me for it, and winning. Kyle rescued me. We sat in his truck for a while after that, talking about school and everything. I told him about Mom. I cried like a baby in his arms and he just held me, like it was the most normal thing in the world for him to do. Like he was born for that moment, you know? Then he brought me home. It was the day I called you and said I had a headache.”
Dad looks away, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel. Wind gusts buffet the Jeep, pelting the windows with ice crystals. “You should have told me this before,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah. Maybe. But I’m starting to get that we all have our private things. That day is precious to me. It’s sacred, or something. You have memories like that, right? With Mom? Since that day all I think about is Kyle. It’s like I don’t know where he ends and I begin.”
Dad’s mouth pulls into a twitchy smile. He takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “Aspen, baby,” he says. “We all go through feelings of infat—”
I shake my head. “Don’t tell me I’ve got a grade-school crush. I know how I feel. I know it’s something different. I won’t pretend to understand what you had with Mom. I’ll never completely understand, no matter how long I walk the planet, because I’ll never be you. But you loved my mother. You loved her for a long time. That love started when you were sixteen—you told me so yourself. So maybe you know enough about love to understand where I am with it. Because I swear Dad. When I climbed into the cab of Kyle’s Chevy and turned to look at him, I didn’t just see a hot guy who’d saved me from a parking lot disaster. I saw my future.”
20
JESSE MADSEN IS taller than I am and dressed in skinny jeans and a western-style black lace shirt. Her dark-blonde hair reminds me of a wheat field after rain. She has great jewelry—turquoise and agate threaded on strand after strand of liquid silver beads. She smiles as Dad introduces us then compliments Mom’s necklace, which I’m wearing for the first time since I got out of the hospital. She notices my boots and comments on how I’ve painted them. She says, “God, I’m sorry about what happened at school,” while her eyes glisten with diamond-bright tears. When she wanders off with Dad his hand is fixed like glue to the small of her back.
A smoldering, teeth-baring thing awakens in my gut.
Kyle curls his arm around my waist and pulls me into the dining room. He asks, “You want hot cider?” and I nod, gritting my teeth against his touch. I need him near me, especially now, but the pressure of his weight hurts.
As I settle into my chair, I can’t keep from sighing. Angella’s Thanksgiving table is laid in natural stoneware plates and recycled glass stemware and hand-forged twig-handled utensils. Her centerpiece is simple—candles in squatty little mason jars nestled among gnarled tree branches. There are tea-dyed linen napkins and a dried sprig of leaves on every plate—one leaf bearing our names written in metallic gold ink. The air is laced with cinnamon and clove, turkey and nutmeg, apples and sugar and buttery baking bread. Everything is so much like my home in Portland used to be that I feel fabulous and sad, all at once.
When Angella calls everyone to the table, Dad and Jesse enter from another part of the house—the living room, maybe. They each carry a glass of wine. Ray Thacker trails after them, laughing at something. I gawk at Dad. I can’t help it. It’s weird to see him paired with a stranger. It makes him seem like a stranger, too.
Jesse takes the seat directly across from me, so it’s impossible not to look at her. As we eat our butternut squash soup appetizer she uses her spoon properly, scooping toward me when gathering the creamy purée. She chews her dinner roll with her mouth closed and takes small, dainty sips from her glass of red wine. She listens well and asks smart questions. When she laughs, her voice is as soft as elevator music.
If I don’t count the obvious fact that she’s not my mother and never will be, I can’t find anything wrong with her.
Sometime between my sugary yams and warm red cabbage salad the pain in my side becomes unbearable. Every breath pulls my stitches and irritates my bruised ribs, sparking small white lights behind my eyes. Staying upright requires more and more of my energy. Dad launches into a story from his childhood days spent growing up in Wyoming. It’s a story I’ve never heard before, though I notice he doesn’t admit it took place here in Gillette. Kyle rests his arm around my shoulder, leaning close while he listens. I’m tempted to scream for the way his weight aggravates my injuries, but instead of a scene I set my fork to my plate and whisper, “I need to lie down.”
/> Dad and Ray Thacker jump to their feet as Kyle helps me from my chair. “I want Kyle,” I say, ignoring Dad’s pained look. I’d tell him ‘sorry,’ but whatever. I can barely breathe.
Kyle makes our excuses and, holding my arm, walks me slowly through the kitchen then past the rope ladder leading to the Jam. “It’ll be good to get you up there again,” he says softly. He kisses my cheek. “For now, though, I’ll put you in my bed.”
We cross the main entry of his house—a wide, leaded glass space lit by a deer horn chandelier. The floor is unusual, a solid sheet of slate. My boots sound sturdy enough as I cross the stone, but when I step into the carpeted hall on the other side of the entry, I almost trip. Kyle steadies me and asks, “Are you okay?”
Probably not, but I say, “I’ve never seen your house.”
“The Jam’s my house,” he answers. “It’s the only space in here exactly like I like it.”
I nod in silent agreement. Mom was like that, always telling me When you pay the mortgage you can have it your way any time she’d rearrange my room without asking me first.
The hall branches and we turn right, wandering past two closed doors then through a third. We’re in a rustic bedroom filled with pine log furniture, a bearskin rug I hope is faux and, hanging on the wall, the coolest Native American blanket I’ve ever seen. A little parchment-shaded lamp glows next to a fluffy, full-sized bed. “So this is where you sleep,” I say.
Kyle shrugs. “This is where I keep my clothes. Mostly, I’m in the Jam.” He guides me to the far side of the bed and pulls the covers away. “You need my help? Maybe I could undress you.” His grin brings out the dimple in his jaw.
I wish I felt up for what he’s thinking. “I . . . don’t know,” I say, and sit to the edge of the mattress. Kyle pulls my boots from my feet then lifts my legs, gently easing me down until I’m lying flat on my back.
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