Kevin was never as good at snowboarding as Todd. He’d always been scared of the jumps. And that was the thing of it. Once you were trying for a backflip, you had better commit. The worst thing a person could do was get partway over.
His body hit the lip of the jump. From there, he fell to the bottom. Todd had been at the base of the half-pipe, watching. He saw his brother’s body hit, bounce off the packed snow, and land again, motionless. Todd knew, that first instant, it was bad.
They took him down the mountain on a special sled that holds a person’s neck in place in case they broke it. I can’t move my legs, he said. I can’t feel anything there.
You’re going to be okay, Todd told him. It was like he was inside his brother’s body, they were that connected. He felt nothing—nothing and everything. He could hardly breathe.
They wouldn’t let him ride with Kevin in the ambulance, but someone from the mountain took him in a car. The roads were very snowy. There must have been an accident up ahead. Nothing serious, but enough to slow them down. He was yelling at the driver. We have to get there.
Finally, they were at the emergency room. Running through the halls. Lights flashing. Nurses running, and doctors.
Much later, one of them had come to get him in the waiting room. Never mind trying to find our parents, he told her. I’m the next of kin.
Somewhere in the room, he could hear the words, “Damage to the spinal cord.” The good news is he’s going to have the use of his arms, the doctor told him. But it’s not looking hopeful he’ll walk.
All there was on the other end of the line then were great gasping sobs. More tears than Wendy had known possible, she who had known plenty.
I wish I was there, she said.
I just got done finding him.
At least he’s alive.
Ever since we were little there was this thing he always did to cheer me up, Todd said. This little dance.
So what do you do now? she said.
Stay with him as long as he needs me, Todd said. In the whole world, I only have one brother.
That night, lying in the dark, nowhere close to sleep, Wendy heard a sound on the roof, as if someone was throwing rocks. She got up and went into the dark yard. It was a hailstorm. Pieces of ice big as gum balls were pounding down on the orange tree, smashing against the hood of Garrett’s truck. She stood watching for a while, in her pajamas, imagining Todd, alone at the hospital, and back in his bachelor pad in Steamboat Springs by now, surrounded by pizza boxes and an ashtray full of half-smoked cigars.
Wendy remembered her own self, those first nights after her mother’s building went down, wanting only to disappear. If you had given her a spoonful of cocaine then, or a pill to make a person go to sleep for ten years, she would have taken it. Now, though, Wendy knew, she would rather be in the world, even with all the sorrow that went along with that, than to miss what it felt like to be alive. She would rather feel the awful sadness of losing someone you loved than have it the way it was for her father, when his mother died: losing someone he never had in the first place—feeling, at the end, as if he never even had anything to lose.
At least he’s alive, she said into the air, as the hailstones showered down around her.
Imagine if he never even had a brother. Imagine if you never knew how it felt to love anyone.
Sometime very late, Wendy made her way back to bed. In the morning, when she got up, the storm was over. Carolyn and Garrett were in the yard—Carolyn still in her bathrobe, barefoot, with her hair hanging loose and wild down her back. She was holding a couple of plant pots in her arms. Even Wendy could tell, the plants were past the point of nursing back to health.
I can’t believe it, Carolyn said. All my favorites. Destroyed.
It turns out even a cactus isn’t indestructible, Garrett said. Close, but not quite. He had an arm around Carolyn, more tender than Wendy had ever seen him.
We’re going over to my place, Carolyn told Wendy. I dread seeing what it’s like over there, but I might as well know.
We’ll be back in a little bit, okay, Slim? Garrett said. When we do, we’ll make sure we get some flowers sent to Todd and his brother in Colorado. I’m going to keep an eye out for those boys.
After they left, Wendy sat in the yard, among the pots of hail-damaged cactus plants. Some were definitely goners, but a few looked as if they might, with time, survive. Even among cactus, some were hardier than others evidently.
She went back in the house and took out her clarinet, and a couple of pages of the sheet music Josh had sent her. The tune she picked out was one of his favorites. “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” She had heard Josh playing this one so many times, she could almost hear the bass line, see his big hands wrapped around the neck of his instrument, his eyes focused on the middle of their living room. She saw him smiling as he watched her little brother and her mother doing their Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers routine with the rug rolled up. She heard her mother’s off-key voice, “You say tomato, I say tomato,” and her brother’s clear and high, the click of her mother’s tap shoes, the low thump of the strings. Steady as a heartbeat.
Home.
Looking out at the almond tree, with Shiva licking her leg and the sun coming out from behind the low hills, Wendy felt clear, for the first time in months, where she was going. It had been right to come to California. But it was right now to leave.
PART THREE
Home
Thirty-Four
When she told them she was going back to Brooklyn, they didn’t argue. This is not about me feeling angry anymore, Wendy told Garrett. She was done with that. The weeks since her birthday had been the best ones they’d spent. She just needed to get back to her brother and Josh now.
Garrett said he’d buy her the plane ticket, but she didn’t feel like riding on planes. She’d rather take the train.
Garrett said he’d drive her back east in the truck if she could wait a week or two for him to finish up a few things on his job. He could bring her to New York and then head on up to Greenwich, take care of some things at his mother’s house, which he was selling.
Sometime I’d really like to drive cross-country with you, she said. Only I think I need to go now.
Some parents—most, and certainly her mother would have been one, and Josh would be another—would never let their fourteen-year-old ride alone on Amtrak from one coast to the other. That was Garrett for you, a guy who could leave his daughter alone in a hotel room in San Francisco in the middle of the night, to wander on the Embarcadero, a guy who could see a sign on a steep mountain trail in winter that said CLOSED FOR THE SEASON and decide to step over the chain.
But—this was the other part—he was also a guy who had let his daughter skip school for two months, trusting her to do other worthwhile things instead (as she had done) and to figure out, on her own time, when she needed to go back. He had made terrible, costly mistakes. He had also been willing to admit them. He might not remember to give Carolyn a Christmas present, but he would spend the next three days helping her dig up hail-damaged cactus plants and hauling them back to his house in the truck. He would never make it up to her mother—the way things ended between them, and after—but he would do better with the woman who loved him now. He was probably never going to change completely—never realize that most parents, even the ones fool enough to put their daughter on a train alone for a three-thousand-mile trip, would at least call ahead to let someone know on the other end that she was coming.
But he would remember, at least, to give her a package of beef jerky and a bunch of Bob Marley tapes for the trip and money for the dining car. He would have a book for her, his own ancient paperback copy of On the Road, and a set of yellowed postcards of artworks he loved, collected over the years, to study when she got tired of reading.
Anyway, he said, the really dangerous things that happen hardly ever come from the places most people think. As she well knew.
If anybody gives you trouble, tell
the porter, he said. But your best protection comes from your own strong self.
The good part about Garrett was his belief in his daughter—his faith that, if he wasn’t a totally reliable person, at least she was.
She went to school one more day to say good-bye to a few people—her band teacher and one girl she liked in English class, but mostly Henry. He didn’t say much, but she could tell he was really sad. You’re probably the only person I’ll ever know who has a red clarinet, he said.
That could be true, she said. But think of all the other colors.
She went to the bookstore to say good-bye to Alan. I’ll be out here to visit, she said. Keep a stack of interesting books set aside for me, okay?
Just remember these two words of wisdom, he told her: Picabo Street.
You were my one friend, Violet told her.
You could make a lot of other friends, Wendy told her. If you’d just call that number I gave you for the counseling center. She had tried discussing with Violet how it was for her, with Walter Charles gone, and what she might do to get him back, or see him sometimes anyway. Take parenting classes maybe. I bet Carolyn would help, she said. You don’t have to give up on being his mom.
Violet didn’t want to talk about it, though she had told Carolyn that once she signed the papers a few months from now, Walter Charles would be available for adoption. I just don’t want them changing his name, she said. That’s the one thing.
You can call me in Brooklyn sometime, Wendy said. Collect is okay.
Well anyway, I’ll probably see you before too long, Violet said.
They’re doing a Mother’s Day show on Maury Povich about moms and daughters that get back again and mend their relationship, she said. My mom sent in a letter about her and me.
What are you talking about? Wendy said. Have you forgotten what you told me about Maury? Have you forgotten Christmas?
It’s a free trip to New York, Violet said. They put you up in a hotel and give you money for a restaurant. Anyway, people change. Everyone deserves a second chance. Who knows, we might even stay out there. My mom has a friend with an apartment in New Jersey.
Wendy was going to ask, What about your job with Carolyn? What about learning about cactus gardening and going back to school?
She remembered what Carolyn had said then, how she’d better not get too attached to Walter Charles and Violet. Sometimes you don’t want to know what a person’s palm might tell you.
Wendy spent Saturday taking her posters off the walls and packing up her stuff. She’d accumulated a couple of new outfits and CD’s since she’d been there. Some artwork, her books, her clarinet. Also the cactus, which she hated to leave.
I was thinking we could rig up a basket to put it in, Carolyn said. Just keep it on the seat next to you on the train. Then no one will mess with you either. That was the other great thing about a cactus.
All that time the box from Josh had been sitting under the bed, with the presents her mother had bought over the last year. Ready or not, she figured she’d better open it.
There were a bunch of little things, joke presents: a set of collector cards of the Backstreet Boys, who Wendy and Amelia used to make fun of. Day-of-the-week underpants.
There was a pair of earrings she’d admired that a woman was selling on the street in Nantucket—silver with real garnets. Also a shirt she’d wanted at Macy’s that day, but it was expensive and not on sale. Unusual for her mother to buy at full price like that, but she had.
She had bought Wendy a glue gun for her art projects, and a special drawing pen she’d been admiring at Sam Flax but she didn’t think she’d ever mentioned it. A pair of leopard-skin-print stretch velvet gloves. A matching bra and panties set from Victoria’s Secret, the thinnest purple silk. A two-CD set of Ani DiFranco.
Two books. One was the same paperback edition of The Member of the Wedding that Alan had given her back in the fall. When she opened it, there was an inscription in her mother’s handwriting.
“This was my favorite book when I was your age,” she had written. “In certain ways, the girl in it reminds me of you. Her fierce, brave spirit and her hunger for adventure. Her zest for life.”
The other was a book about sex for teenagers.
“We can talk about any of this stuff,” her mother had written. “But I know that can be hard to do sometimes, even with your mom. So for those times when you might not be able to discuss something with me, this might help.”
One more thing remained in the box. It was in an envelope. She opened it very slowly, undoing the top instead of ripping the paper, picturing her mother sealing it up all those months before. After this one last gift from her mother, there would be no more, ever.
Inside was a round-trip plane ticket, New York to Sacramento, with the dates left open.
“I shouldn’t have given you such a hard time about this,” she had written on the card. “A girl has every right to get to know her father.”
He drove her to the train station. She had said good-bye to Shiva and Carolyn back at the house. No way to say good-bye to a dog, no matter how much you were going to miss them, of course, and the same applied to people, actually.
Garrett carried Wendy’s bags out to the car. All except the cactus and the clarinet, that she managed herself.
Two nights and three days on a train, he said. You sure you’re up for this?
She had expected Garrett to be a little awkward about telling her good-bye, and he was.
So, he said. I hope it turned out the way you wanted.
I didn’t even know what I wanted, she said. But it did.
I’ll be back there before long, he said. Attending to my mother’s estate. And I’ll get down to the city.
You can meet Josh and Louie.
We could even take in a ball game, he said. I’d really like to meet your dad.
My other dad, she told him.
It was good having you here, he said.
For me, too.
You’re always welcome back. Goes without saying.
I know.
But it probably makes sense for you to get back to your life there with the family. The little brother. I never had one of those, but I can imagine what a good thing that would be. The one other person in the world who can appreciate all you had to put up with from your crazy parents, right?
He looked as if he was ready to hug her then. She set the cactus plant down.
You’ve got all the snacks Carolyn packed for you, right? he said. You’d think there wasn’t a scrap of food to be had between here and the East Coast.
Well then. He put his arms around her. Still not exactly Josh’s kind of embrace but firmer than it has been back when she met him in the fall.
I always liked a road trip myself, he said. That’s the thing about a plane trip. You get to a place too darn fast, before you have a chance to take in all the miles in between. It’s a long way from here to New York City in more ways than one.
He had gotten her a sleeper car, with a bed that pulled out from the wall, though for now she set out her things on the seat next to her. If it was her mother and Josh seeing her off, or just Josh, or Josh and Louie, they’d be standing on the platform waving till the last possible minute, but looking out now, she could see Garrett walking away, his gray hair—no longer in the ponytail—curling up around the collar of his jacket.
The train began to move—a slow lurching first, then picking up speed as it made its way out of the yard and out across a long, flat expanse, heading east. It had begun to rain, and the sky was a flat, dull gray. She was just as glad. Harder to leave California, when the sun was shining.
She took out the little packet of postcards Garrett had given her and studied them, one at a time. There was a painting of a wheat field by van Gogh, with a sun swirling overhead and a road winding off to a farmhouse. There was a painting by someone named Bonnard, of a woman lying in a bathtub, a portrait of a man by El Greco, a mother with a child on her lap by Mary Cassatt, a
group of cartoony-looking figures that looked as if they’d been made out of cardboard, by a man named Red Grooms. The card said it was part of a larger work called Ruckus Manhattan. There was a black-and-white photograph of the rock face of El Capitan at Yosemite, taken by Ansel Adams. She flipped slowly through the stack, then went back to study them a second time. Across the seat from her, a woman had settled herself with a little girl young enough to still have a pacifier. She was reading to the little girl, but Wendy wasn’t paying attention at first. Then she heard the words . . . “goodnight stars, goodnight air.” Goodnight noises everywhere.
She fell asleep. When she woke up they were in the desert, a dry, golden landscape, and more sky at one time than she’d ever seen. Something about the sound the train made felt good—the steady, lulling rumble under her of wheels on the track. A few hours must have gone by like that, in which she did nothing but stare out the window. She thought of Tim at the Laundromat, and how, when her brother was little, her mother had sometimes set him on top of the dryer, if he was fussy. The vibrations, when she turned it on, had seemed to comfort him.
They were heading into the mountains now, out of Utah into Colorado, with the sun going down. Wendy made her way to the dining car and ordered a bowl of soup, that she sipped, alone, still looking out the window, though the view now in the near-darkness was jagged peaks and snow.
Sometime after Denver the porter came by to make up the bed. Wendy put on her rabbit pajamas and climbed in. She thought of Louie and how he would love this. She imagined his hot little body snuggled against her. What do you want to talk about now, Sissy? Which do you like best, a fire engine or a Jet Ski? When we grow up, can we still have our same rooms?
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