The Possibilities

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  As we are now, I think to myself. I turn onto Highway 24. The road is flat, open—rolled out before me, syrupy black pavement and rippling oily air.

  “So how did you know him?” Suzanne asks. “From work or . . . ”

  “Yes, from work,” she says. “I was a waitress. He parked the car I borrow sometimes and—”

  “Is ‘parking your car’ a euphemism for something?” She punches the air in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That was—”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  Suzanne turns to face the back. “Did you know him well?” she asks.

  “I would have liked to know him more,” Kit says.

  “Then this will be nice for you tonight. My daughter’s putting on a party for Cully.”

  “Oh,” Kit says. “I didn’t know.”

  “They were best friends,” Suzanne says. “Grew up together, went to the same college . . . ”

  When Morgan applied to CC, Cully was irritated, which was rare for him. He told me that when she got there, he sent the message that he had his own life there.

  “You go to college to leave stuff behind,” he told me over the phone. “For her sake too. She needs her own life.”

  Now she will always be his best friend, immortalized. I can picture Cully shaking his head, smiling. Let her have it. I try to see Kit’s reaction. She’s contemplative, if not slightly irritated, left out.

  “If anyone’s hungry, I threw some sandwiches in a cooler,” my dad says.

  “Can we stop?” Suzanne says. “I don’t like eating from a cooler. Makes me feel poor. I like gas station food.”

  “I do too,” Kit says.

  “Me too,” I say.

  “I love Slim Jims,” Billy says, and I hold down a smile, feeling strange. I think I might be having fun and can’t see how this is at all possible. It’s the thrilling illegality. Sometimes I worry that my unhappiness will never end. But what’s more terrifying is the thought that it will. If happiness doesn’t last, then neither can its opposite.

  “We could stop at that gas station next to the antique shop,” Suzanne says.

  “Okay,” I say.

  Suzanne’s phone makes a noise and she bends over to her purse. “Where is it?” Her voice comes close to trembling.

  “It’s in the cup holder,” Kit says.

  The phone stops ringing and she listens to the message. When she’s finished, she holds her phone on her lap.

  “Just Dickie,” she says. “Said I could keep the cufflinks. I can’t believe I’ll see him tonight. God, I’m depressed.”

  “We’ll be there soon,” I say. “You can go right to the spa. Get a massage. Maybe we all should.”

  I feel guilty for my momentary sense of ease, considering where we’re headed. Kit must be so nervous and scared. Or might she be eager? I remember just wanting to get it out.

  We drive in silence for a while and I get mesmerized by the road, the fields we pass, and abandoned tractors. I glance at Kit in the rearview, talking to my dad.

  “ . . . and that’s why there’s a run called Goodbye Girl,” he says. “Twentieth Century Fox used to own the resort—”

  “They invested after the success of Star Wars,” Kit says.

  “Yes!” he says. “How did you know that?”

  “I took the walking tour,” she says.

  My father hits her thigh. “Kit,” he says, “that’s incredible.”

  Chapter 15

  There are two gas stations on either side of the highway. One is a Chevron, which is brightly lit like a grocery store. I’m surprised when Suzanne tells me to go to the less glossy one adjacent to the antique shop.

  “They have a great soda fridge,” she says.

  “When have you been here?” I ask. “And why?”

  “Day trips,” she says. “Sunday drives.”

  I imagine Dickie, Suzanne, and Morgan all together in the car. You can know people so well and still make discoveries about them as a family, but you’ll never know everything, the mundane day-to-day, the behaviors when the doors are closed. Families are all such elite clubs. I imagine a new woman in the car with Dickie, or on the back of his motorcycle, taking a Sunday drive. It seems worse than picturing her in his bed.

  I pull into the gas station. Compared to the robust, shiny pumps across the street, these look skinny, bare, and inoperable. The store would look closed if it weren’t for the neon sign in the glass window that says YUM DONUTS©. I turn off the engine.

  We all get out of the car. Kit stretches her arms overhead.

  “I’ll pump,” Billy says.

  “Yeah you will,” Suzanne says. She pats his back, then heads into the store. Their relationship has always been easy. When Billy came to town, mainly for birthdays or around holidays, Suzanne and Dickie always wanted to see him too. Dickie ended up becoming a client. Billy was always so hard to explain to people. With the moms I’d meet I’d find myself defending him—we just went our own ways, he’s a nice guy—and I’d catch their pitying looks. Suzanne and Dickie always understood that we were all okay without me having to explain or defend him.

  “I can’t wait to see the facilities in this place,” my dad says. “Will you get me some sort of sandwich that doesn’t involve egg or tuna?”

  “So, what then, turkey?” I say.

  “Strike that. I’ve got the sandwiches. I will take a Tiger’s Milk bar, a yogurt, and some beef jerky.”

  “Billy?” I ask. “Your order.”

  “I’ll have a large bag of Funyuns, a Coke, and a muffin. Oh, and a Slim Jim.”

  “Kit, do you need money?” my dad asks.

  “No,” she says. He hands her a twenty anyway. “Go nuts.”

  He walks toward the bathroom, shaking his right leg as he goes.

  The air is dry and windy. Suzanne opens the door for me and a little bell rings. Kit and I wander down the same small aisle. I collect the bar and the chips, then scan the shelf for myself. Every choice is a loss of some other opportunity. I weigh my options, then choose the bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Kit chooses the Sno Balls.

  “Is it what you craved?” I ask. “Do you have cravings?”

  “I have aversions more than cravings,” she says.

  “Ha,” I say. “So do I.”

  She looks toward the window at Billy outside, filling up the gas tank. “So you guys never married?” she asks.

  “No, we broke up before he knew I was pregnant. He was a fling, but we’ve remained friends.” One of the easiest friendships I’ve ever had, I think.

  “You guys would make a good couple,” she says.

  I laugh, quickly but maybe with too much effort.

  “You doing okay?” I ask. “This must be very strange for you.”

  “And for you,” she says.

  Yes, and yet I have to really focus on it, remind myself. I’m almost comfortable in this discomfort. It’s like being on an airplane and standing up. A relief. But I’m still on a plane.

  “I think I’m okay,” I say.

  Strange things seem to become normal very quickly, I’ve noticed. You just adapt. It’s like there’s some mechanism in us that converts maelstroms and foreign objects into something usable, like yen into dollar bills. Or maybe in my case, it’s just my mind, unwilling to fully comprehend that she is pregnant with Cully’s child and soon she won’t be. What should I be feeling? How should I be behaving?

  “I hope this wasn’t a mistake for me to come with you guys,” she says. “I didn’t know about tonight. Seems like a family thing.”

  “Oh, I think you’ve earned the right to be there,” I say. “To mourn him or celebrate him.” I lower my voice. “We’re sort of just doing this because we have to. Morgan does these things. Even his birthdays she’d organize. I’d have birthday dinners for him, or graduation dinners, including all of us, and she’d have to do one too. It’s how it’s always been.”

  “But it will be nice,” Kit says.

  “None of his friends
even go to school there anymore,” I say.

  “I probably shouldn’t go though,” she says. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

  We continue down the aisle, looking at all the packaged goods. I get Dad and Billy’s jerky.

  “Do you get tired?” I ask, remembering my fatigue with my very first pregnancy and feeling like I didn’t deserve it since there wouldn’t be an end result.

  “Just nauseous,” she says, “as you know.”

  “That could also be from drinking,” I say. “Have you been drinking a lot? This whole time?”

  “No,” she says. “Haven’t wanted to, really, until I found out about you. I know it’s bad, but I guess I knew it wouldn’t matter. That must sound horrible.”

  “Some people drink throughout the entire pregnancy. I’m sure you’re fine. Or you would be. Not that it matters.”

  We reach the end of the aisle and stand in front of the soda fridge. This is much easier. That line of conversation was too hard for me, but this soda fridge is inconsequential and neat and Suzanne was right: it’s a good one. It has the latest drinks as well as vintage cans of Sunkist. I pull on the glass door, which is decorated with a poster of a woman in a silver, one-piece bathing suit riding an energy drink called Galaxy into space. I get Billy’s Coke, then choose a root beer for myself, the plastic bottle, because it now has twenty percent more. Kit chooses a Snapple and I’m unreasonably pleased—like this is a good, healthy choice. Something obvious then occurs to me.

  “How far along are you?”

  “I must have conceived the night before he . . . or a few days before. Or that week before. One of those.”

  “Oh,” I say, realizing what she’s recalling. “And it’s been confirmed, of course. By a doctor.”

  “Yes,” she says. She looks at me worriedly, like she’s explaining death to a small child.

  I count back the weeks—all of January, all of February, half of March.

  “So it’s still just a thing, a speck,” I say. “A mung bean.”

  “I’d have to look up mung bean.”

  For some reason this makes me snort-laugh, but then I say, “It’s not too late?”

  “No,” she says. She looks me in the eye.

  “Sorry,” I say. “The mother in me,” and then I’m reminded that I’m not one anymore. We walk to the outskirt of the store so I can get Dad’s yogurt.

  “These are so good,” Suzanne says. She’s walking down the aisle of Chapstick, miniature packets of pills, gardening gloves, and nuts, and eating from a bag of sour cream pork rinds. “This was all I ate on Atkins.” She looks at what Kit’s holding.

  “Very cool. I had my doubts about you. Thought you’d be one of those almond-and-cheese-stick types. That’s what Sarah always gets, but look at you—pink balls tarred in coconut. Think of the fun we can have with those. Enough balls jokes to get us to Wyoming.” She sighs as if we’ve all accomplished something, then walks toward the counter in that slow, open way that suggests you follow. We do. “Only at a gas station are you allowed to buy things like this,” she says, nostalgic. “I’ve had some good times here.”

  We reach the counter, where there’s a pleasant aroma of hot dogs and the interior of a new car. I pick out a single-package banana nut muffin.

  “Is this all together?” the clerk asks. He’s a lanky boy with hair so stiff from gel you’d think it would make a sound if knocked upon. We put our things on the counter. Kit reaches in her bag for money.

  “Don’t bother,” I say.

  “We have a trickle-down friendship,” Suzanne says. “This too.” She moves four shrink-wrapped brownies toward him and hands over her card. “Hopefully they’re laced with something.”

  He runs the card, with his tongue poking assertively through severely chapped lips. Chapstick, aisle two.

  “Did you find everything you’re looking for?” he asks, belatedly. He bags our things in a way I’d say is overly tender.

  “Nope,” Suzanne says. She takes her open bag of chips out of the plastic bag.

  “Would you like to make a donation to the Eagle County Charter Academy soccer team?” he asks.

  “Never heard of ’em,” Suzanne says.

  She walks out and we follow, the bell sounding its bright chirp.

  “Chapstick, aisle two,” I say.

  “Ha!” Suzanne says. She looks at Kit, still trying to figure her out. “Your balls look so good,” she says to her. “I bet you’ll eat both of them.”

  “You’re so trippy,” Kit says.

  “Trippy? Never heard that one before.” Suzanne puts her arm around Kit and squeezes her like a fellow frat boy. She holds her other hand out in front of them. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Four,” Kit says.

  “Your eyes are fine,” she says, and I remember we told her we’re taking her to the eye doctor.

  “I’m going to go next door real quick,” I say, needing a moment alone.

  I walk on the dry gravel to the shop next door and look at the fields with crooked gates and tamped-down golden grass. I think about Cully’s fondness for the smell of fuel. Two-stroke exhaust.

  A crow caws and I smile to myself. That December morning when I walked away from his body, a crow released a forlorn cry, my shoes against the snow made it sound like I was walking on ice cubes, and I could smell the resin on the trees. I thought, I can’t go outside again because of that fuckin’ bird and the sound of my shoes and the smell of sap. Every time I come out here, I’ll hear and smell his death.

  But look at me now. I’m walking and the crows can caw their little hearts out.

  Chapter 16

  The plank flooring in Pete’s Antiques is soft; the shop, warm. It smells like ancestors instead of hot dogs. I lean over to look into a huge black bowl mounted on faded, red wooden legs. Dead people once owned everything here. Gave birth on the beds, had sex on the settees, ate from the spoons, banged the gongs.

  “A cauldron,” someone says, startling me. I turn to see an older man, perhaps Pete. He runs his finger along the bumpy rim of the bowl.

  “Some things beg to be touched,” he says, and I wonder how other people respond to that because I’m not sure how to. “This came from Manitou Springs.” He has an animated voice with a sardonic lilt that infuses his words with air quotes. “Manitou is the witch capital of Colorado.”

  “Yes,” I say, because saying “I know” seems obnoxious.

  “Do holler at me if you need my assistance.” He walks away, holding his hands in an awkward prayer position behind him. I go to the back of the shop where the larger furniture is displayed. There aren’t any customers back here.

  I head to the wooden rocking chair but change my direction when I see the bed—a four-poster mahogany. There’s a sign that says Please Touch and so I get onto it, letting my legs hang over the edge. I run my hand down one of the posts and look at the smooth board, the eddies in the wood. I had a bed like this when I was a girl and wonder what happened to it. I’d lie back and stargaze at my own arboreal galaxy in the canopy, writing poems and listening to the Rolling Stones, ruing my life without a mother, but since I couldn’t completely remember her, I think I sort of relished the ruing itself. I think of Seth now, the senior to my sophomore. I would lie in my canopy bed and pine for him. Some things beg to be touched.

  When I was that age, speakers at assemblies would always talk about all the pressure we’d soon face or were facing—pressure to do drugs, to have sex—but when I turned sixteen and was dying to smoke pot and have sex, I found the search for both to be impossible.

  Then there was Seth. Then there was a party. On the top of what’s now Peak 7, construction workers had cleared a small amphitheater of space, behind it fragrant trees spaced widely apart, fallen branches serving as benches. We all drove up on the access road, built a bonfire, drank beers and wine coolers. Further down from the clearing was the Igloo, which was really an old wooden shack, a crawl space built for skiers to warm up. It ma
y still be there.

  Seth asked if I wanted to go in with him to talk.

  “Sure,” I said, knowing exactly what was going to happen, or at least knowing what I wanted to happen: I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to crawl out of there with him, with everyone looking at our smug expressions, wondering. He had been flirting with my friend, Amber, but something told me he was drawn to me, something in his flitting, suggestive gaze told me we were going to put our arms around each other, if not that night then the next, or the next, or possibly, hopefully, the next.

  I think I was enamored with him just because he paid attention. He’d look at me, almost luridly, which had to be the most flattering thing in the world. I’d feign annoyance, but my heart would race. He was beautiful, and you wanted to be around him because he’d make you beautiful too. He was like Billy in some ways, the way he could make me feel, though Billy was always kind.

  That night I would kiss Seth. I would let him feel my breasts. And he did kiss me. For a long time. And he did feel my breasts, for a long time too. At one point he squeezed my nipple and it startled me. “Ouch,” I said.

  We stopped kissing then, and he drank from his beer. From the Igloo I could see light from the bonfire through the wooden slats. He put his hand on my leg as if to keep me there. I had never met someone so sure of himself. This confidence, I learned, could take a person places, but as far as I was concerned our journey would be ending soon. We had done enough for now. We were on a construction site. I imagined it resuming someplace else.

  “I’m good,” I said when he offered me a drink, and then I crawled toward the opening of the shack. He slapped my butt, then grabbed me by the hipbones and pulled me onto his lap. It felt territorial and nice. He held me around my waist. “Stay.”

  “Okay,” I said. I could stay a while longer. Outside, the clearing, smallish and asymmetrical like a skating pond; the fat stars, the fragrant trees, the flicker of flames from the bright, illegal bonfire. I was seeing poetry. I wanted poetry.

  He moved his hands on my thighs. I could feel myself, my body, wanting. I could feel him hard under me. I moved, slightly, on top of him, and then I turned my head and kissed him, still moving the lower half of my body on his. At another pause I made to leave, but again he pulled me back onto him, as I knew he would.