The Sweetheart Deal

by Polly Dugan

  Scabbed onto the back of house was a fresh wood box, bright and uniform in color, with holes cut out for windows. Edges of Tyvek that had come loose flapped in the weather, like the corners of a wrapped but battered gift. The yard was dotted with piles of scraps: stacks of Hardiplank siding, rolls of Tyvek, two-bys, and berms of dirt dug from the trench that Leo hadn’t backfilled. The windows he’d ordered were stacked against the back, the glass smeared with grime. Tarpaper covered the top and plastic was laid over it. Inside, the floor joists had sheets of plywood piled on them. On one plank laid across two sawhorses, bags from Home Depot and Lowe’s with the receipts still in them, blueprints and sheets of paper with notes and lists in Leo’s handwriting, a coffee cup with cold, shallow remains in the bottom and a plate sprinkled with careless crumbs.

  As much as it pained me to fasten Leo’s kneepads around my own legs, and to drape the straps of his tool belt over my shoulders and buckle it around my waist, when the weather cooperated, the roof was where I started, slowly, laying the tarpaper Leo had already bought. The days the weather made it hard to work up there, I did what else I could. I got organized and oriented myself with the plans and the progress Leo had made. One afternoon I backfilled the trench in the rain. But first, after the funeral, after everyone had left, I asked Audrey if she would take me to rent a car.

  “Sure,” she said. “But what do you need a car for? You’re welcome to use mine. I guess if you think you should have one, okay, but—No, no, you can’t do that, it’s too expensive.”

  “I’m driving up to the mountain,” I said. “I want to be there. I want to see it. I want to get a good look at Mount Hood.”

  Because she insisted, I took her car. “I won’t need it till you get back,” she said. “And if you need chains, you’ll have them.”

  It wasn’t a short drive. For people who go up to ski every weekend, no doubt it becomes routine and the ride seems shorter, but for me there was a lot of ground to cover between Portland and Government Camp alone, at the base of Mount Hood. Off Route 84 into and through Gresham on 26, then through the town of Sandy, “The Gateway to Mount Hood,” and the other hamlets and mountain villages—Welches, Zigzag, Rhododendron—that peppered the national forest banking the road on both sides. I alternated between listening to NPR—and Oregon Public Broadcasting—and local music stations until as the elevation increased I lost reception and the connections died away. With no CD in the player, in silence, with each mile I climbed, I retraced what had been, without his knowing it, Leo’s last trip with his family.

  There was more than one resort on the mountain, and after I got a coffee in Government Camp, I followed the signs to Meadows and found an empty place to park in the crowded lot. I walked around and through the lodge, by the racks of skis and poles and snowboards, looking at the people I passed, none of whom noticed me, a guy with no gear, not dressed to spend the day. I got a drink and sat inside the lodge and watched the slopes and everyone gliding down; the awkward and the intrepid, the beginners and the experts, the little kids in ski school—fall and stand up, fall and stand up—the lines forming at the lifts, all from a chair by the window.

  I didn’t understand how he could die skiing, wearing a helmet. He’d been skiing since he was four. He made his kids do fire drills. It was a shameless taunt that of all those he’d saved, Leo didn’t survive his own accident. He’d lived through so many mishaps with me on and off the slopes: icy conditions, the missed jump, whiteouts that only made us stop and wait, but not quit; the time we had to find the road and walk back to the lodge, his parents on the verge of cardiac arrest; the acid and mushrooms and drinking; one night during senior year, when he was sober but still drove too fast on Donahue’s moped (no helmet) to 7-Eleven for snacks while the rest of us rolled joints. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Surviving all that wild youth only to have this be his undoing.

  The mountains out here were a far cry from what Leo had grown up skiing on and we’d skied together back east—­Camelback, Elk Mountain, Killington—but he’d adapted and made this mountain his own for all the years he and Audrey and the boys had skied it, until the mountain had claimed him. Maybe mastery had been part of the problem. He was never reckless, neither of us was—though maybe his mother or Audrey might have disagreed—he knew his limits and was confident of his ability on the snow, in a variety of conditions, and I’d never seen him out of control. That’s always what seems to be the fatal flaw in sports with any margin of risk: Once you think you know what you’re doing—far from reckless but encroaching on invincible—that’s when you’re fucked. Once you become an expert at something you aren’t exempt from making mistakes, you just make them less frequently. Still, all it takes is one. My sister had gone through a horse stage in her early teens, and my mother was never quite comfortable with any of it. So when Christopher Reeve had his tragic accident years later, well past Kate’s own time riding, my mother said during one phone call, “Thank God she never got hurt. I’m so glad she didn’t stay with it.”

  After I finished my beer I asked directions to the ski patrol office—No, no emergency, I told the woman, I was looking for someone I wanted to say hello to. When I got to the office, a guy, Tom, was waiting to meet me. I told him I was a close friend of Leo’s and asked if anyone who had worked that day was here now. Tom was forthcoming with his condolences—he knew about it, of course, but said nobody who’d been there that day was in the office now, but if I wanted he could check who might be out on the hill. I thanked him and told him not to bother, but asked him to share my thanks with them.

  “His wife told me how kind everyone was,” I said. “I wanted to tell you how much that meant to her, and how much it means to me,” I said.

  “We did what we could,” Tom said. “It’s not a part of the job any of us ever wants to do.”

  I stayed less than two hours. I didn’t need any longer than that, and after that much time, I had to leave. I drove back down the mountain the way I’d come, reversing my trip to Portland. Audrey had told me someone from the resort had driven her and the boys home that night, and as I drove west, all I could think about was how that journey must have pushed her to the brink of madness. What an agonizing trip it must have been for the four of them. A nightmare end to the day their family had begun that morning, the same as every other.

  Audrey

  I don’t know how we—how I—got through that early time, the weeks before Daylight Saving and the first signs of spring. Like people always say, the goddamn sun still rose every morning. The weather followed its own erratic whims. The hummingbirds chased each other away when it was their turn at the feeder and the squirrels bickered and recovered what they’d buried, maintaining their fat and biding their time. The laundry piled, the mail came, the bills still needed to be paid, the food made, the dishes cleared and washed and used again. The boys had homework, and still argued, and each day Andrew simmered a little more with an anger that was unlike him, and Brian screamed in the night from his dreams, still needing his mother, still needing me. Christopher came right home every day after school instead of hanging out with his friends like he always had, though some days Joe Assante came home with him. And still, the sympathy cards kept coming, the phone kept ringing, and the voicemail and my inbox kept filling.

  After the boys returned to school, after I got them all out the door in the morning, I went back to bed. I told Garrett I was going to read, but I buried myself in bed and slept for hours, hiding from my grief and exhausted from the insomnia, or from getting up with Brian. I never opened a single book. The fire bureau reached out with resources I wanted no part of.

  I listened to Leo’s voicemails I’d saved on the landline and on my cell. On my way, babe. What a sight you’ll be for sore eyes, one said. And, I wish I was home tonight, darling, but I’ll see you when the tour’s over. At the time, saving them seemed unnecessary, and though I was grateful now that I had them, they gave me no comfort. I had the voice of a dead man talking to me, not me
now, but to the me I was the day he’d left them, still alive. Since the voicemails could never be anything more, I went to bed, wearing the heaviest, warmest clothes I had, and every time, the last thing I put on over them all was Leo’s fisherman’s sweater.

  Erin called and texted, but otherwise left me alone for three days after my family and the McGearys were gone. I never answered the phone, but I texted her back: Thanks, got your vm, talk soon. I didn’t want her to worry about me, but I didn’t want to talk to her either. All the energy I could muster I spent on the boys—after that, I had nothing left. Then, on the fourth day, she came over with groceries, did all the laundry and put it away. She came up to my room when she got there, and again before she left. Both times she lay down on the bed behind me. The second time, before she got up she said, “I’ll see you again in three days. That’s when I’ll be back. I’ll come sooner if you want me too. Let me know.”

  When she returned, when she said she would, after she dropped her own kids off at school, I was, as I imagine she expected, in bed. She lay down behind me again. “Sweetie, how about a shower?” she said. “Or do you want me to run you a tub? Tell me.”

  “Shower,” I said.

  She got me in the bathroom and set up, like I were an invalid. When I’d finished, she had changed the sheets and vacuumed and laid out clean clothes for me.

  “Come eat something,” she said. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

  Garrett was already working, and Erin had eggs, toast, and coffee waiting.

  “I can’t eat all this,” I said.

  “Eat what you can. You can’t disappear. I’m not going to let you disappear,” she said. “After this we’re going to take a walk, just a little one—it’s not raining. And then if you want to, you can go back to bed and I’ll come over again tomorrow. The kids have dentist appointments in the morning, but I’ll be here right after.”

  I pushed around as much of the eggs as I ate and managed half the toast, but the coffee was good.

  Her voice got thick and she started to cry. “Audrey, I’m so, so sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”

  “You’re doing it,” I said.

  Then we walked without talking and when we came back, after she left, I didn’t go back to bed, but I did lie on the couch under a blanket until the end of the school day.

  The next morning, after the boys were gone, I tried, I really did. I took a shower and stood in front of my dresser in my bathrobe. I got tired of standing and sat down in front of it. I sat on the floor staring at the drawers for an hour, sucking in small but regular breaths, which were all I could manage. It was too much to decide. I didn’t know how to do the next thing and the next and the next to get dressed. I couldn’t manage it. Erin would be here soon and she would find me on the floor. I didn’t care. But then I got angry, so angry—I put on the first thing I saw in the drawers I opened and the first thing I saw in the closet. I may have been broken, but I was a grown woman and I could dress myself.

  Downstairs in the foyer, I put on one of Chris’s ski hats—he would only wear Patagonia; Brian constantly called him a brand snob, but Chris claimed they were the only ones that didn’t itch—and sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. Garrett came in from the addition and refilled his cup.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Good morning,” he said. He looked at me with a curious expression and sat down across from me. “Did you sleep?”

  “I guess I must have,” I said. “I didn’t for a long time, but then I wasn’t awake when the alarm went off. How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” he said. “It’s good to have something to focus on. He did a great job already.”

  I nodded. “Yes. He did.”

  Garrett stood up. “You want me to make you something to eat?” he said. “I can cook you an omelet, or scramble some eggs?”

  I shook my head. “Not right now. I’ll have something in a while.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to make some toast. How about a piece of toast?”

  “Thanks, no, that’s okay.”

  The front door opened and Erin called, “Hello.”

  “In the kitchen,” said Garrett.

  I got up to refill my coffee as Erin came in the room. “Hi, Garrett,” she said. He nodded his head and raised his eyebrows at her. He buttered his toast and left.

  She hugged me and stepped back and looked at me from head to toe.

  “Do you want a cup?” I said.

  “I’ll get it,” she said. “So, what’s happening here, sweetie?” She lifted and lowered one hand in front of her, then with both hands massaged the air between us. She smiled a smile I’d seen many times before, when I was being funny and on a roll and she was building up to laugh out loud.

  “What?” I said. “What’s happening with what?”

  “You’re up.” Then the smile on her face vanished and her voice turned gentle. “And you got dressed. That’s great. I hope you didn’t rush because I was coming.”

  “No, I didn’t rush,” I said. “It actually took me a really long time.” I started to cry when I looked down and saw what Erin saw, and what Garrett had seen: a lace blouse with cap sleeves and a twirly green cotton skirt I’d worn most of the previous summer, the first things I’d seen and put on after I’d opened my closet. I stood in my favorite strappy wedges, shoes not meant to be worn for months.

  “I got the boys off to school and then I dressed myself.” I sat back down with my coffee. My tears blurred my vision. “I’m just getting started. It was really hard but I’m doing it.”

  “Oh, I know you are,” said Erin. She pulled a chair next to mine and sat too. “I know that. I can see you are. But it’s raining out and it’s cold and I thought maybe if we went for a walk or got a sandwich later, you might be warmer in something else.” She put her arm around me and pulled me toward her. She slipped off Chris’s hat, put it on the table, and leaned in until our heads were touching. Resting against me, she started to hum, and I felt her vibrations as much as I heard her. Garrett came into the kitchen with his empty plate and put it in the sink. He leaned against the counter and looked at the two of us looking back at him.

  Erin stopped humming. “We can do this,” she said into the room. “We’re going to be all right.” She began to hum again, with her lips against my forehead, and the two of us rocked together, barely moving, and after a minute, Garrett left the kitchen and walked back into the addition.

  Audrey

  The next morning, because she came earlier, Erin found me in my bathrobe sitting on the floor staring at my dresser. The first thing she did was sit down next to me, and then we were both staring.

  “It would be nice to stay like this, I think,” she said. “I could sit here for a really long time.”

  “I know,” I said. “So let’s.”

  And we did, for I don’t know how long, together, not saying anything. Then Erin got up.

  “I brought you something—I’ll be right back.”

  She went downstairs and came back up.

  “I’d like to go back to sitting, but why don’t you get dressed first?” She had a green pad of Post-its and a pen. When she reached her hand out, I took it and she pulled me up.

  Together we rearranged my clothes so that similar things were together and I couldn’t go wrong with what I grabbed. On the Post-its she wrote numbers one through six. And while I got dressed that morning, she stuck the Post-its on the drawers with my underwear (1), bras (2), and socks (3). She stuck Post-it four on one of my closets—I had two—the one Leo and I shared. On the other closet, where I hung my skirts and dresses and kept my summer clothes and shoes, she stuck the Post-it on which she’d written Not Today. Inside the number four closet—where every time I opened it I’d see Leo’s things on his side—Erin stuck number five on the shelf holding my folded shirts and sweaters, and on another shelf she put the last Post-it, six, where I could pick any one of the pairs of pants stacked there.

&nbs
p; Starting the next week, every Saturday, I drove to the cemetery alone. Every morning I went, it rained. I would bring the boys when I was ready. That first month, after I’d sat next to his grave and talked to him, my face was swollen and my body was spent.

  Are you okay? I said. I want to know you’re okay. I’m sorry, we should have gone on Brian’s birthday. I’m so sorry, Leo. I’m sorry you were alone. I’m sorry the weather changed. I don’t know what to do. It went like that every time, so I had to be by myself.

  There had been so much to navigate. My family and Leo’s family leaving had been as hard as it had been a relief. Fielding the firefighters and their wives, who all called and emailed after the funeral—some I knew well, some a little, and some not at all. The flowers, and cards, and the food Violet had people bring. When I read each card and note, more than once, it was disorienting that they were for me.

  I had hung up Leo’s skis in the basement, and packed his boots and ski clothes in a bin of their own. I didn’t know what else to do with them. I couldn’t throw them away. But I couldn’t sell them or give them away either. It would have been a terrible thing to do to the equipment, and to an interested party. My husband died wearing them, skiing on them. Even free seemed too high a price for something a man died in. So I put them where they had always been stored, and didn’t look at the skis when I was in the basement.