by Laura Bell
In the early fall of 1998, Jenny’s sixteen, almost seventeen, and has been elected junior attendant for the Greybull High School homecoming game. She lets me shop for her while I’m traveling, “something nice,” she says, “a dress,” and I find her one. A long black dress with cap sleeves and a tie at the back, maybe too elegant for the occasion, but she says she loves it. Amy comes home from college in Laramie and joins me in the bleachers for the game. We buy big bags of popcorn, then wait for halftime and the chance to hoot and holler for our girl.
When the attendants come out onto the field, Jenny’s the only one in a dress and she carries it off with great style, escorted by her best friend, Jeremy, an artist, splashy in a bright tie-dyed T-shirt and jeans, his left arm in a cast. As friends they seem fearless, missing the self-consciousness of being boyfriend and girlfriend. In the photograph taken of them after the game, they’re all smiles. Her right arm’s around his shoulders, and she’s pinching his cheek with her left hand as if to say, Isn’t he a doll?
This fall, with Amy away, Jenny begins showing up at my door at suppertime. I’m surprised at first, as if a wild bird has decided to take up residence on my shoulder, but understand that with her sister gone, she’s lonesome. They have always been inseparable, counting on each other first and foremost in a world where their mother could fall off a horse and die, their father could disappear into alcohol, and I could walk away from the home we’d made together. In Amy’s presence, Jenny had been the quiet one, adoring and deferring to her. But this fall she spills out words and stories of school and friends, and my jaw drops in amazement at this person I haven’t known. I make no sudden moves, lest she fly away.
One weekend we make a quick road trip south to Laramie to see Amy. Another day I take her out of school so we can drive north to Montana to get her braces removed, and she smiles wide and seems to stand taller. We take pictures, and she suddenly has grown into a stunning young woman. Our time together is mostly spent at the Stone School, where she stops often for tea, for dinner, for help with homework. One night she calls to say she’s done something to her knee and is wondering what to do. “Do you want me to come over?” I ask. When she doesn’t answer, I say, “I’ll be right there. Give me a few minutes.” Pulling into the driveway, I see the trees we planted have grown sprawling and that the house looks shabby and in need of paint. “Let’s ice this knee,” I say, “and elevate it. If it’s not shipshape by morning, we’ll go into the clinic and have them take a look.” I get her set up on the couch with ice and pillows, hot tea and a book. “Will your dad be home soon?” I ask. “Yes,” she says, “he’ll be home soon.”
That night I toss and turn with the weight of my choices. The winter’s work at Snowbird affords me the luxury of this time and space back in Shell Valley. I depend on it, I tell myself, and she has a father who loves her dearly. I remember Amy’s words late one night when I’d been drinking wine and apologized to her for leaving them. She looked me in the eye and said, “But you didn’t leave. Look, you’re still here.” I repeat these words out loud but somehow believe I’ve chosen wrongly.
It is early November when I close up the schoolhouse and leave the valley. The cottonwoods along Shell Creek have long since gone to gold and shed themselves bare in the wind. The geese have flown south, and the nights have grown cold. I buy Jenny a warm sweater and say, “So come for Christmas this year, you and Amy. Bring your skis.” I can see something brighten in her and I drive south with a heavy heart.
I call Amy and Jenny to remind them of the Christmas invitation. They usually spend Christmas in Minnesota with their grandparents, but I beg and they agree. The promise of skiing at Snowbird helps tip the balance.
In preparation for their visit I retrieve a heavy wooden trunk that’s been stored in a friend’s basement and discover inside the treasures that have been hidden away all these years: the iris pottery oil lamp, the bird’s nest, photographs of my great-grandparents, a few small pieces of artwork, my grandmother’s gold bracelet, my arrowhead collection, the Italian slingback heels I can no longer wear. In other boxes I find the hand-blown tulip champagne glasses, the crystal dessert bowls, the Santa pitcher and mugs my mother had given me and the girls. While wind blows and slaps at the loose back gate, I wash the glassware and arrange it around the open kitchen shelves, remembering what it might feel like to have a home again.
In the hours before they arrive, I could wring their necks. They’re driving in over the pass in a snowstorm, but they haven’t returned phone calls and don’t even know for sure how to get to my house, and I can’t get off the mountain until mid-evening. After finishing my last massage I check my messages and hear their voices sparkling with excitement. They’re hanging out in a university coffee shop waiting for me to get home, not a care in the world.
Jenny has just turned seventeen, on December 11, and Amy twenty, in September. When we hug at the front door, I feel them to be young women, grown out of childhood in the eight weeks since my leaving. They’re loaded down with Jenny’s skis, Amy’s snowboard, coats and duffels with ribbons spilling out through the zippers.
We have a late dinner and tea, then I tuck them into my double bed and curl up in a sleeping bag on the futon next to the Christmas tree in the front room. In the morning I bring them coffee and sit on the bed with them sipping and visiting and soaking them up. These women before me, Amy, bright and shiny, and Jenny, with her shadowy, lidded eyes, now have larger lives in which I’m only a small part.
In the deep fresh powder on the mountain, falling hardly feels like falling at all, so Amy and I are reckless, tumbling happily on one turn after another while Jenny is cautious and slow. Amy gives her a hard time, “Come on, come on, let go and keep up with us. You’re too worried about falling.”
“Am not.”
“Are too!” When she finally catches up to us, she’s crusted head to toe in fine white powder, a little snow monster with a grin, and Amy yells, “Let’s hear it for Jenny and her very first fall ever!”
When I leave the slopes in the early afternoon to go to work at the lodge, they’re free to flirt with all the young boys they tell me about later. Young, cool, hip and so many of them, they say. I leave passes for them at the spa so they can hang out in the hot tub while I finish up my work.
During the days they spend under my wing, we ski and cook and have great meals and laugh. We buy underwear at Victoria’s Secret and go to chick flicks, You’ve Got Mail and Shakespeare in Love. When Amy and I tear up and laugh at ourselves over a sappy ending, Jenny rolls her eyes and says, “I don’t get all this love stuff.” Then we tease her mercilessly about her boyfriend, Jason, and make her blush. We do secret shopping and tuck packages under the scraggly Christmas tree; then we sit in the dark with the lights twinkling and drink hot chocolate from the Santa mugs and say this is the most beautiful tree ever.
It’s snowing when they leave, and I trot along behind, pushing to help the car up the slight incline of the driveway. Amy’s wheels catch the gravel at the road’s edge and pull up onto the pavement. They turn and wave, Amy beeping the horn a couple times as they turn away toward their adventure and pick music for the drive home over the pass.
“Be careful!” I yell, waving behind them. “Call me when you get home!”
I stand in the falling snow and watch them pull away up the hill. I’ve packed them a thermos and sandwiches but know they’ll likely stop anyway at the coffee shop by the university because that’s a city thing to do and because they’re young and delighted with themselves and their beauty. For a few minutes I can imagine clearly where they are and maybe even what they’re talking about, as if they’re still there under my wing.
As the hours pass I feel them gone. I pick through the photographs we took on Christmas morning with the self-timer, all three of us sitting in front of the tiny tree being silly with bright flowers and Grace staring intently into the sound of the whirring camera. I work through the photographs again and think, We are still a fam
ily, even though we aren’t related by blood and don’t live in the same house or half the time even in the same state. We are still family, and I will hold on tighter.
JENNY
For the first seven miles straight east out of town, she could have closed her eyes and floated off the road into a flat sea of sage. The bitter-smelling stems would have scraped against metal and wakened her to the jolt of hard ground, the pollen rising up around her in a cloud. She could have leaned her head and rested the surprising weight of her seventeen years into the window glass and fallen back to sleep while the car’s engine ticked itself cool in the night air. Someone would have come by in the night and taken her home, holding an arm around her shoulder as they knocked at her father’s door and raised a call into the darkened house.
Instead, seven miles east of Greybull, the road bore gently to the south and there—I imagine her perfect eyes closed, already dreaming—she and her little brown Toyota stayed the eastern course toward the mountains, crossing the middle line and tumbling end over end down into the only forty-foot embankment in all the fifteen miles of her journey home.
What I discover is this: everyone has their losses.
On that first day of May, my flight from Salt Lake to San Francisco had left at dawn, and I didn’t hear the news until I landed in California. In the twenty-four hours before her death, I had emptied my apartment in Salt Lake and loaded everything into the back of my truck and a small U-Haul trailer, then cleaned behind me, erasing all traces of my living there. From those stark rooms, I called Jenny at her dad’s and left a message to pass on to Amy, saying I was going to the coast for the weekend and would see them soon. My phone was disconnected at midnight of the last day of April, less than three hours before her accident and four and a half hours before someone driving the highway noticed headlights shining up from the draw.
While our plane descended through the clouds, my friend Paul and I were talking about earthquakes. Circling out over the water, we came back toward the runway so low that the tall marsh grasses beneath us were flattened. Leaning into the window, I thought, The earth’s right there, but we’re suspended above it. I said, “What if we looked down and saw everything shaking, the ground splitting wide open and falling into the ocean. Just think; right now we could pull up and just keep flying.”
That day had been spent in Gini and Peter’s home, receiving calls from family across the country and piecing together the story of a Friday night party in town and her drive home alone in the early-morning hours. I sat in the stupor of news that didn’t make sense and worried for Amy, longing to speak with her. I called her house, her friends, her father, but couldn’t find her anywhere. At one point I looked up and three kind faces were looking at me, asking what I needed and did I want to fly back to Salt Lake tonight, head up to Wyoming in the morning? I shook my head and said I couldn’t bear the thought of being suspended in air, elbow to elbow with strangers. I wanted to stay the night and hold hands with my friends, then begin the journey in the morning.
When the phone rang, Peter answered and handed it to me, saying softly, “This must be Amy.” She must have said the words to ask for me, but I heard nothing after that. I took the phone into the darkened bedroom and spoke to her silence, this precious young woman who’d lost her mother and now her sister. There were no words from her across all the dark miles, and so I spoke as though mine were arms that could gather her up and hold her to me. I heard great gasps of air escaping and moans. I spoke in sounds that had no meaning, only like trees swaying, sounds I would’ve made to a frightened animal because I didn’t know how else to pour out my love.
For our return trip, Gini and Peter pack for us a small cooler with salami, cheeses, roasted tomatoes, hard bread and a branch of rosemary from their garden, then drop us off at the airport. We hug good-bye, lingering, and walk into the airport, into the buzz and fluorescent lighting and flashing digital displays, and there are hundreds, thousands of people milling around in lines that snake back and forth through the Delta ticket terminal. In the face of this mass I find myself unable to move; I’m a person without skin, an open wound. “I’ll wait in line,” Paul says. “Why don’t you sit down?” I shake my head, the tears coming again now, and move blindly past them all. I find an empty space of counter and lean into it, my head down and one hand over my face and my ticket held out before me in the other. When a man walks by saying, “Ma’am, you’ll need to …” a hoarse voice says, “My daughter’s dead and I need to go home,” and he slows, comes back and stands in front of my tears. He gently takes the tickets from my hand and some time later returns them, telling me the gate and the time. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “Thank you,” I whisper, and we walk away.
Paul drives north with me while I stare out the window. We make it as far as Riverton that night and, after a bruised sleep, begin again in the morning. In Basin, we stop at the funeral home, and I go inside carrying a pair of shoes. I’d been told she was being buried in the black dress I’d bought her for homecoming the fall before. For that occasion she had borrowed these black slides with tall, chunky heels, and I wanted her to wear them again. I wanted to imagine her striding through a spirit world with my shoes on her feet. I wanted to do something for her, to give her one last thing.
In the funeral home I hand them to the director, a kind man and an EMT who’d taught us first aid one winter in the Shell Hall. “Can I see her?” I ask. He shakes his head slightly and pauses. “She’s not ready.” He disappears through a door and returns a few minutes later with Jenny’s black flats, the low heels worn to nubs and the toes scuffed. I take them away with me, holding them in my lap as Paul drives me on to Greybull.
On the marquee in front of Greybull High School, spelled out in square black letters: WE WILL MISS YOU JENNIFER LITTLE. The words seem certain, final, confirmation that this hasn’t all been a gross mistake. I had planned to be here in March for Jenny’s induction into the National Honor Society, an eight-hour drive up and then back between shifts, but a spring snowstorm blew in, and instead I’d sent a dozen roses. Congratulations! I’m so proud of you. I’ll see you soon.
We turn down the street toward the trailer where Amy lives with her boyfriend and park among the cars and trucks under the bare trees. We walk past an old wooden table out front, covered with candle wax melted in pools and a scattering of beer cans, and metal folding chairs clustered as though the bodies that filled them had only just gotten up and walked away. Paul squeezes my hand and says, “I’ll just hang out here for a while, unless you need me.” And I step up onto the rickety porch and knock.
When she opens the door, I see a ghost, a shell. I wrap my arms around her but cannot find her; she’s beyond tears, beyond words, all vacant eyes and wisps of hair. She turns away and asks, “Do you want coffee?” The kitchen counter’s littered with dishes, casseroles, plates of cookies, a ham, beer cans, coffee cups.
“Yes, I’ll get it,” but she’s already pouring. A handful of her close-knit friends are gathered around the small living room, and they stand and come to me. I feel the flush of my cheek on theirs, the fabric of their shirts under my hands, their clothing covering bodies filled with muscle and heat and blood, still moving, still living. Amy hands me a cup, and we all sit back down as if waiting for something. In the empty space next to her in this uneven circle, I place my hand on her back, looking into her ashen face, and feel her flinch and pull away, and my heart drops into a canyon. Across these miles I have wanted only to be with her, but now that I’m here there’s the feeling of conversations already passed among friends, among those who have been at her side. I keep rubbing her back while she stares at the floor because it’s all I know to do for her, so far beyond my reach.
There’s a knock at the door, and I rise, glad for a job, and let the minister in, a kind-looking man in flannel and boots whose son is already here. He leans to give Amy a hug and whispers in her ear, and I see tears gather behind the strands of hair in her face. He talks about the service t
he following day, giving us a sense of how the day will go. We nod, following his directions, and when he leaves, I move to the door and motion Paul inside. We wash dishes, sweep the floors, fill trash bags, wipe counters, heat and set out food, trying to be helpful.
The viewing is held in the late afternoon on a side street in Greybull in a small white house surrounded by homes with sidewalks and big cottonwood trees just leafing out. Joe’s older brother from San Antonio stands quietly against the wall in the front room, a presence there with her body. Joe’s mother comes up and squeezes my hand and speaks to me in a hushed voice, her deep Texas accent. “We found a corduroy jacket for her little arms—they couldn’t fix them—and I think it’s okay with the dress.” This last part tentative, almost a question, and I look into her pleading face and say, “Yes, I’m sure it is. I’m so glad you were here to do this for her.”
I remain at the entrance to the small room that holds her coffin, the walls and carpet all cream and light, waiting to feel my feet settle on the ground and my heart catch up to this place, this day, this moment. But it never comes, that feeling, and so I move up to see her laid out there as though only briefly gone, perhaps asleep, an ill moment she hopes to nap away before a special evening. I want to reach out and run my fingers along the smooth olive of her skin, but I do not, cannot. I study her closed eyes, her eyebrows delicate and feathered above, the blush of her cheeks, the pale-rose gloss on her lips. But in her presence my tears have disappeared. I’m a dried-up spring, a river gone underground. I stifle an urge to turn back to the room and laugh, Isn’t this the craziest thing you have ever seen? but then find myself looking for her feet, the shoes. Her lower half is covered in white satin and she’s in her black dress, the one I’d taken from the rack at Whippy Bird in Lander and tried on to see if it fit because we’re so much the same size and then brought to her and tied the back sash and said “Oh my god, you are one lovely girl,” and she’d turned and swirled the skirt around her, so pleased with what she could see in the tall mirror propped against my bedroom wall. I reach out and touch the corduroy of her jacket, black with brass snaps and some good measure of West in it, and I think, Well, yes, this was a good choice to cover her little arms, and wonder what it is beneath the sleeves, what it is that couldn’t be fixed from her flying through the window, her seat belt dangling limp behind her.
