The Possibilities

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “I just wanted to be with you guys,” she says.

  I look at all of her—her face and arms, her beat-up boots, this girl on the brink of something. I glimpse a tag under her arm. “You left your tags on,” I say. “Turn around.”

  “Oh yeah,” she says, looking under her arm. “I tucked them in. I’ll give this back to you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I say. “I’m not going to return it.”

  “Please,” she says. “I feel bad. The room too. You’ve done enough. I shouldn’t be taking her dress. It’s her gift. Or you could wear it after. We’re the same size, I bet. I might get bigger anyway.”

  A flash of fear crosses her face, as if she’s seeing a version of her life appear, then disappear.

  “Here,” I say. I try to turn her around, but she resists and falls a step toward me. “I want you to have it,” I say. “Unless you don’t like it.”

  “No, I like it,” she says. “I love it, but—”

  “Then let me give it to you. I want to give something to you. I want you to have something from me. Just let me take off the tags.” I bring her to me, hold her still in a forceful embrace, and rip off the tags, hurting my hand and jostling her body.

  “Sorry,” I say. I stay there with my hand on her cool back, then close my embrace. Her arms are down by her sides and then she raises them and puts her hands on my back. I am holding my breath. I let it go.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” she says.

  Her cheek is warm against my neck. I savor this sensation of a child holding me, needing me.

  “It’s good not to know everything,” I say.

  We face one another, locking our gaze, which is a hard and rare thing to do with someone. We memorize one another and then, through a silent consensus, we continue toward the glow of the hotel.

  “I haven’t looked this decent since . . . since I had sex with your son,” she says, and laughs but chokes a bit on the laugh. A cry. There really should be a word for laughing and crying at the same time. There is one. When Cully was around eight we’d do Mad Libs at night, plotting the nouns, verbs, adjectives. Then we’d read our concoction and laugh so hard he would cry. Claughing, we’d call it. I would laugh at him laughing, wanting more. It was addictive.

  “Will you go back then?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says, and I try to picture what she’s going back to, her roots and sources, the climate and landscapes, all of which will guide her to tomorrow. I picture curvy roads and gray skies, red leaves and barbecues, Scrabble and sports coats.

  She will see her father and maybe she will understand him, his call to go, his right to make mistakes, and discover how difficult it is to see your father, and maybe one day your son, as men, with needs and base desires.

  I try to picture her mother’s face, but Billy’s mother comes to mind. I almost laugh at imagining Billy telling his mom he got some girl pregnant. I see her jaw not dropping but doing just the opposite. She’d emit a sharp yelp, the sound a dog would make if you stepped on its tail. What will Kit’s mother do? How will she respond? Not just her family, but the entourage of a family. They’ll have to adjust, relearn her, discover the reservoirs, complexities, and back alleys that will lead them to someone they always knew.

  We walk up to the deck. “Why did you wear a dress?” I ask. “With Cully.”

  “I don’t know. I just felt like it. I put on makeup. Wore a dress.” She looks down. “And these boots.”

  “Where did you go?” I ask.

  “Steak and Rib,” she says.

  Perfect. Just perfect. I smile even though my heart hurts. At this moment I love this life.

  I almost ask her for more, but this is something a mother shouldn’t know. This is something she can keep and return to. It’s her memory and so I let her have it.

  She walks ahead of me to open the gold-rimmed doors. I hear the music and am struck by the desire to dance and move. I watch her walk, a slight bounce in her step. I’m giving this girl back, she’ll be okay no matter what, and for some reason I know and deeply care that my mother would be proud of me.

  Chapter 21

  My father, Billy, Suzanne, and I sit in the mezzanine, waiting for Kit while people-watching and sharing a bag of Funyuns.

  “Morgan was wonderful last night,” I say to Suzanne. “So poised.” She’s looking at a magazine about what stars wore at awards shows.

  “Wasn’t she?” Suzanne says. “We had breakfast this morning. She wanted me to say goodbye. She didn’t have a chance to see you after, so . . . ”

  I sense a bit of irritation and quickly try to run over it. “I’m sure everyone wanted to talk to her,” I say. “When she gets to town, I want to take her out and talk about it. It really was perfect, Suzanne. Just the way it was.” She looks up and curls her lips in, something she does when she’s shyly proud.

  “What do they do with the clothes now?” my dad asks.

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  My dad has chip dust on his lower lip. “I mean you can’t really wear those clothes to the supermarket—”

  “I’d wear the clothes to a supermarket,” she says.

  “You’d wear anything to a supermarket,” my dad says.

  “You have shit all over your face,” Suzanne says, and my dad wipes his forehead.

  I look up at the ceiling to see if I see the dancer, but there’s a painting of a water nymph on a horse-drawn clamshell. Opposite me is a portrait of a blond-haired man in a red smoking jacket, cross-legged and holding a cigarette holder. He looks a bit like Billy’s father.

  I look across the way at a young woman. The woman’s husband holds one of their kids while the other one reams his calf with a plastic truck.

  “Kit canceled the appointment,” I say.

  “Oh my God,” Suzanne says. “Are you—”

  “No,” I say. “We are just going to go straight home.”

  Billy and my dad take in the news but don’t say anything. Everyone seems to be creating their own scenarios.

  “Look who’s here,” Billy says.

  We all watch Dickie and Kit walk toward us, laughing about something. Maybe they happened to be in the same elevator. I’m betting in a short amount of time he has offered her a job or use of his cars or homes, just because she made him laugh. Their laughter makes all of us grin a bit, knowing how it feels to be talking to him: thrilled, privileged, with a touch of stage fright. I notice a new energy about her, a possession.

  We all stand as they near and Dickie has words for each of us.

  “Lyle, I miss you already,” he says to my dad. “Billy, when are we going to ride? Sarah, my friend.” He pulls me to him and kisses the top of my head, and then to Suzanne: “Sue-bee, who is this Kit? Where have you been hiding her?”

  Suzanne, Sue-bee, places her arm around Kit. “She was Cully’s girlfriend,” she says in a way that moves me.

  Dickie looks at Kit, head to toe, and flattens his palm against his chest. “Of course,” he says. His eyes water. “What a morning. What an a.m.!”

  I catch Suzanne looking at him with unabashed love. I walk to her side. “You okay?” I ask.

  “I’m good,” she says.

  “Come on, Sue-bee,” Dickie says. “I’ll give you a lift home.”

  “That all right?” she asks.

  “Is it?” I ask.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “I can’t stay mad at this fucker.”

  “Yes, you can,” I say. “But I’m glad you’re talking.”

  “The girl he was with,” she says, “she’s the girlfriend of the new general manager who was there as well.”

  She says this casually, though I know she’s relishing her mistake. I am too, relieved to be able to like him. “I’ll bring your car back tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “We’re off like a herd of turtles,” my dad says. “Did you take all the shampoos?” he asks Kit as they walk toward the escalator.

  Suzanne and I let
them all walk in front of us. I have everything in my large purse and Suzanne rolls a small suitcase behind her. We get on the escalator behind our group to descend.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thanks for being tough with me. I appreciate it.”

  “Anytime,” she says. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m a good listener when I drink.”

  I want to tell her that I love her, but that’s not how we work. We understand this.

  “Are you going to be okay? With Dickie. With everything.”

  “I will,” she says. “You?”

  I don’t answer at first, but then I say, “Yes,” because I’m beginning to believe it.

  • • •

  I GO THE other way to get back to Breckenridge. A little variation and some new scenery. Also, I want to drive by his college. I take Cascade toward the school, looking down the side streets we pass, the small homes with porches, chipped paint, and weeds, then later, small homes with nice paint and prim front yards.

  When we reach the campus, cars slow for the student pedestrians and we inch our way to the crosswalks. There’s Rastall on the left where he ate, and to the right, Slocum where he slept. There’s the gray looming chapel where we went to baccalaureate. I almost point these things out like a campus docent. Skateboarders jump off the steps by Rastall, and I imagine that Cully would have done the same when he was here. It’s suspenseful, each attempt they make down the set of stairs. I notice we are all watching as we inch toward the crosswalk. It reminds me of watching the valets, observing these boys, these very alive boys, going through motions Cully himself had made and should still be making, but it feels different right now than it did not so long ago. I guess the difference is that I’m not angry at them, and I’m not ashamed to be watching. I’m happy when they land, and the sound of the wheels cracking against the pavement is satisfying.

  I move up and now I’m the first car. “So polite,” Billy says.

  “I noticed that,” I say. Each kid who crosses in front of us waves or nods their appreciation of our stopping. They all look at one another too when they cross, meeting each other’s gaze in a silent greeting. At an opening I move to the next crosswalk. I picture Cully crossing this street over and over again, nodding at the cars, at the other kids passing by. A group in the quad kicks around a hacky sack. Another group is playing rugby, then further on, in front of his old dorm, are kids in a square of sand playing beach volleyball.

  I remember settling him into his Slocum dorm, my sad attempts at finding reasons to stay in the room. Do you need a microwave? A brighter lamp? I couldn’t believe how his roommate slept through my entire stay and departure. I mouthed, Is he okay? pointing at the large boy from Maine, his mouth agape like a hippo’s, long legs hanging off the edge of the bed, his palm pressed against his chest as if pledging allegiance.

  I couldn’t get myself to go, wanting to make absolutely sure he had everything. Cully assured me he was fine, he didn’t need anything else, but he looked so forlorn and small, like my father sometimes does in the back seat of a car. How would Cully get on here? I thought. The boys in his wing all wore things ironically, and the girls seemed to be either Texan beauty pageant contestants or hideous statements against those contestants. Long skirts over jeans, armpit hair, heads wrapped up in cone-like contraptions. It was like being in Africa or India. I smile at the memory. He got along just fine. He loved it here.

  Further down the street through the intersection I see the beginning of the large homes, Victorians with robust mailboxes that have legible numbers. They’re the academic residences; the kind with New Yorker magazines not staged on a console but used and read. Herb gardens and bread makers, teenagers that blog.

  “Cache La Poudre,” Kit says.

  “What about it?” my dad says.

  “I saw a street sign back there,” she says.

  “Hide the powder,” Billy says. “Cache La Poudre means ‘hide the powder.’ I looked it up after sending him a care package. But I bet you wouldn’t have to look it up, right, Kit? Am I right?” Billy scoots up a bit from the back seat to Kit in the front.

  “I would have,” she says. “I took Chinese.”

  • • •

  MY FAVORITE PART of the drive from Denver to Breckenridge is the section of huge, isolated homes on precarious cliffs, then Lookout Mountain, the site of Buffalo Bill’s grave. I love his grave, especially because of the nearby herd of buffalo. I always try to make eye contact with the beasts, sure they’re seeing me too, commiserating. They seem to be presiding over Buffalo Bill, standing in for him, mourning him eternally. Wide, open spaces, stoic beasts, hooves trumpeting their affirming sounds, as if to declare, Buffalo Bill was here! He existed! and then less emphatically, He was important to us and we loved him.

  Grainy ashes. We live. We disappear. Sometimes I feel so sorry for all of us.

  I pass the herd of bison. Goodbye, Buffalo Bill.

  Kit has missed it. She’s asleep. Everyone is. I feel comfortingly alone, trusted, guiding my craft filled with loved ones. I meditate on these full days, knowing I need to keep working out the kinks. I don’t think I can go back to my job, and the thought of this inability fills me with hope and energy, like the sky has opened up. It’s not that I’m too good for it, it’s just that I’ve changed. I no longer fit it. As my dad said, this life has so many lifetimes, and I’m ready for the next one.

  I look beside me at Kit and then in the mirror at the other sleepers. It comes to me that I am dreading something my dad and Billy will have to do too. Let this all go. Let her be on her way without knowing what will happen.

  The flat, lazy land rolls by, or we roll by it. I look for bumper stickers. I look at lives inside of cars, station wagons, and SUVs, kids in a back seat watching videos on the back of the front seats.

  I Love Loveland.

  Denver Broncos.

  There’s No Excuse for Animal Abuse.

  Four out of Three People Can’t Do Fractions.

  When we’re almost to the Silverthorne exit, Kit stirs and opens her eyes to outlets and fast food. I am so scared for her, so excited for her, for whatever will be.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “They’re asleep,” I say, and she looks back.

  I turn up the stereo, change the station, landing on some sultry, wordless jazz.

  “My dad used to come home saying he sat on jazz all day,” I say. “He had a massage chair that would poke and prod from all directions.”

  “He sat on Max Roach,” Kit says. She stretches her arms, touching the ceiling, and says through a yawn, “In college I tried to like jazz.”

  “We’re already in Frisco?” Billy says from the back.

  “Who did what to who?” my dad says.

  It’s as if they smell the onset of home or feel the change in the weather. My eyes can feel it. It’s dry and brisk. We curve around the iced lake. The mountains are so much bigger here—a lame observation—but after being in the Springs, I notice it more. They’re a part of the background there, whereas here the mountains are the foreground. They dominate, intrude, and they give me the inelegant thought of Fuck yeah. This is my house.

  “That was quick,” my dad says.

  “So says the passenger,” I say.

  “I’m going to miss this,” Kit says.

  “You going somewhere?” he asks, which makes me hold my breath. I don’t dare meet his gaze. I didn’t tell Suzanne either. I want Kit to be able to slide out just as she slid in.

  “Will you come back to the house?” my dad asks. “Have some dinner?” She looks at me, as if for approval. Do I need to go yet? she seems to ask. No, I want to answer. Don’t go.

  “You should,” I say.

  “I could eat,” Kit says.

  “I’m starvin’,” Billy says.

  “Like Marvin,” my dad says.

  “I walked across this lake with Cully,” Kit says.

  “Oh yeah?” my dad says. He sounds like a l
ittle boy listening to a story. “Why?”

  “To get to the other side,” she says. “No, it’s kind of a funny story.”

  I take glances at Kit while she tells the story. She takes her time. She has changed since we were in the car yesterday, driving out of town. She was quieter then, shy, stingy with her humor. She tells us about the lake, how it was covered in snow, and on the edges there were small gray hutches. They walked along the edge at first, and then Cully ran toward the middle where the snow was thick. He hurtled through the snow and she followed, exhilarated. He stopped and waited, but then had a look of alarm.

  “I looked behind me,” she says, “and I saw this thing, this beaver.”

  Billy laughs.

  “He was waddling toward us, flapping his tail.”

  She describes his crusty-looking tail, his old-man mouth and yellow canines, his marble eyes gleaming with rage. “Cully told me to run, so I ran, you know, kind of laughing, but kind of scared, right? I mean, I knew they could be vicious and—”

  “They have scent glands in their anal region,” my dad says.

  “Jeez, Dad.”

  “Now, that’s just cruel,” Billy says.

  “Oh my God,” Kit says. “Lyle, you kill me. Anyway, so when we got to the other side, I almost expected to see the beaver with his arm in the air shaking his claw at us. He was so humanlike. He was really . . . pissed.”

  “You got chased by beaver,” my dad says.

  “That’s exactly what Cully said,” she says. “Time with him was never dull. I always felt like I was on some huge adventure.”

  I make eye contact with Billy. I picture our son and Kit reaching the other side of the lake, catching their breaths by this road. Perhaps a car slows, a family inside staring out, as if spying a pair of deer. I think of someone looking into our vehicle now. We look like everyone else. We are everyone else. I picture Cully tromping through that high, deep snow. That’s how I feel physically from all of this. Moving through grief like it’s a thick drift, exhausting but enlivening. It makes your muscles ache. It makes you feel you’ve inhabited your body completely.