Calling Out

by Rae Meadows

  Ember laughs and launches up the sloping trail with Ford at her heels.

  As we climb, the trail cuts through trees and then crosses back over a small open meadow at an easy rise. It is snow-covered and quiet, with only an occasional cry from a hawk and the muted padding of deer hooves scrambling and leaping through the snow in reaction to our appearance. None of us talk but we catch each other’s eyes and smile.

  When we get to the steep part of the trail, the last quarter mile before Summer Lake, it’s a struggle to find purchase on the snow-buried, gnarled tree roots and rocks. I pull myself up, foot by foot, muscling my way, using the young trees and smooth branches for leverage. Ford’s outdoorsman skills are an impressive sight; he looks like he belongs, maneuvering with confident grace, completely at ease out here. Unself-conscious among the elements. It makes me want to cry. I have wasted our time together, and now he is going away.

  By the time we make it to Summer Lake, my legs are rubbery-weak and I’m gulping for oxygen. Ember unhooks herself from her pack and collapses in a heap right into the snow. Ralf and Ford have fared much better and go straight for the whiskey before even making our little camp. After a silence, Ralf raises the bottle.

  “Farewell to our incomparable friend Ford,” he says and takes a long swallow from the bottle.

  “It’s not my funeral,” Ford says.

  I go for the tarp in my pack and spread it over a flat spot with a view of the small frozen lake through a cluster of pines. Ember has the sleeping bags, which puff up when she pulls them from their cases. Ford expertly sets up the stove while Ralf rights the various bottles to fashion a minibar. Ember reaches for the whiskey and plants it by her side.

  With the stove aflame, and the steaks hanging off the sides of the tiny grill, we angle our cocooned bodies like a pinwheel around the fire, with our heads in a center cluster.

  “It’s not like I’m moving to the moon,” Ford says. “Moab’s only four and half hours away.”

  “We’ll visit,” Ralf says. “Sometime.”

  Not happy with the turn of the conversation, Ember switches into hostess mode.

  “First, down the hatch. Everyone.”

  I finish my whiskey and my eyes water.

  “Okay. Now, Jane, tell us what Ford was like when you met him.”

  “He skateboarded to class,” I say. “And his hair was really long. To hit on girls he would use what he called the ring trick. ‘Hey, that’s a pretty ring,’ he’d say, fondling some poor girl’s finger, ‘Did your boyfriend give it to you?’”

  “It worked. On occasion,” Ford says.

  “Did it work on you?” Ember asks me.

  “No way, I knew his angle.”

  “Ford, tell us something about Jane,” Ember says.

  “Oh no,” I say.

  “Jane, shush,” she says.

  “We don’t have to play this game, do we?” Ralf asks meekly.

  Ember ruffles his hair.

  “She liked a swimmer dude on my hall,” Ford says. “She was aloof. In her flowy skirts and ankle bracelets. Didn’t give me the time of day.”

  “I was thinking more about when you two got hot and heavy,” Ember says.

  Ford hovers between his loyalties, torn between our history, Ember’s dare, and Ralf ’s sensitivity. Ember casts her expectant eyes toward Ford, and Ralf attempts a laugh to overcome his discomfort.

  “It took some time,” Ford says. I search out his eyes in the distorting blur above the fire.

  “Before you could get in her pants,” Ember cuts in.

  I glance over to Ralf who has turned a fierce shade of crimson.

  “No,” Ford says. “It took a while before we became friends. Before it stuck.” He is quiet in his sincerity.

  I try to smile. I don’t ask him if his opinion has changed over the years. I don’t ask him if he has ever been disappointed.

  “You guys are no fun,” Ember says.

  Ralf, relieved, snaps back to life and flips the steaks, moving the still-raw ones toward the middle. We pass a bottle. Within minutes, a light dusty snow begins to fall. Ember kisses Ford but it has a sad, loaded quality that makes me feel like a voyeur.

  “Hey, Jane, let’s take a look at the lake,” Ralf says. “While lunch cooks.”

  We put on our shoes and he holds out his hand to help me up.

  Up on a small embankment above the frozen lake, I pull Ralf close with an arm around his middle.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi.”

  Heavy quiet fills the space between us.

  “In 1833, God gave a law of health to Joseph Smith. The Word of Wisdom. Physical and spiritual health by abstaining from tobacco, alcohol, coffee, tea, and illegal drugs. If it turns out to be true, we’re all pretty much doomed,” he says.

  There is another long pause.

  “I need to tell you something,” I say.

  Ralf looks at me.

  “I started escorting.”

  “Oh,” he says.

  He looks back over his shoulder at the lovebirds then back out at the lake.

  “I’m not just on the phone anymore. I go out—” “I get it. I don’t want to know the details.”

  He eases out of my grip and reaches for a rock, which he proceeds to chuck as far as he can out onto the lake, sending it skidding across the ice.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” I say.

  “Hey, it’s cool,” he says. “It’s cool.”

  I don’t know what to say. I feel like burrowing into the nearest foxhole.

  “Is it the money?” he asks, turning to me. “Is that it?”

  I let out a breath.

  “Yeah, partly,” I say. “I don’t know, Ralf.”

  His face is mottled and his eyes shift darker. It’s as if his whole face is being pulled down as I watch. His eyes droop, his mouth sags. I turn away and look down at small, oblong rabbit tracks that crisscross the top of the snow and head off under the sheltering pines.

  “Huh,” he says.

  “Are you mad?” I ask.

  “Mad? That’s a weird thing to ask.”

  I squat and reach for my own rock to throw. The first big snowflakes have begun to fall.

  “We’re still friends, right?” I ask him lamely. I throw the rock but it gets stuck in a pine branch.

  “Of course we are,” he says. “I’m fine, Jane. Really. It’s no problem.”

  But I can see from his retreating eyes that he is crushed. Ralf laces his fingers and rests them on his head, then lets his arms fall.

  “Tell me something Mormon,” I say quietly.

  His smile looks bitter now, one side tugging upward without the strength to pull up the other side.

  “How about we try to crack the ice with this one?” Ralf kicks a large chunk of granite submerged in snow and frozen earth. “What do you say? Do you think I can do it?”

  I smile and Ralf crouches down to wrench it free. He pulls up on the rock, discarding his gloves for a better grip, his knuckles white from strain. Like a weight lifter, he cleans-and-jerks it first to shoulder level, then above his head. With a few steps, he hurls it out onto the icedover lake, where it lands with a deadened thwack. I hear a long, chills-inducing squeak and pop before I see the crack shoot toward us from where the boulder hit. It tracks us all the way to the shore.

  “How about that,” he says.

  *

  “Hi Mom.”

  “Hi honey. Sorry I haven’t called you back. I’m making a coffee cake for brunch tomorrow at the Walters. But I can’t seem to find—oh there it is.”

  “Pecan or blueberry?”

  “Blueberry. Karen claims to be allergic to nuts.”

  A dish clatters.

  “I have some bad news,” I say.

  “Is everything okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, don’t worry. But I don’t think I can make it home for Christmas.”

  “What? Oh no, Jane, really? Why not? Your sister’s ar
riving tomorrow. The tree’s already up.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just a crazy season at work. I thought I’d be able to swing it but it’s not looking too promising.”

  Frost has taken up on the corners of the windows, glittering in the light from streetlamp.

  “I just don’t understand a job that won’t let you go home for Christmas.”

  “I think it will slow down in the new year. I’m sorry, Mom.”

  She sighs. “It’s the first Christmas we won’t all be together.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. “I know.”

  “I’d let you say hello to your father but he’s already asleep,” she says.

  I hear her open a cupboard door.

  “Janie, are you okay? You’re so quiet.”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Well, all right, if you say so. Oh shoot, I knew I should have gotten more butter. Do you think I can substitute olive oil for some of it?”

  chapter 15

  Nikyla, fresh from her manager shift at the mall, is in a suit and her black hair is pulled neatly in a low ponytail. Despite my ten-year age advantage, I feel younger than she is as I settle next to her on the couch.

  “How long has it been for you here?” I ask.

  “Eight and a half months. Three and a half months to go,” she says.

  “So exact.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Do you ever think about the girls that quit? Like do you wonder what happens to them, or think you pass them in the street? They just seem to drop off the radar when they leave.”

  “I like to think they went on to do what they wanted. In a play on Broadway, maybe, or living in Paris, or married with two kids.” She smiles. “And if they can do it, so can I.”

  Mohammed wanders in from the back, working out the Christmas schedule on the side of an envelope.

  “Remember the one that started right after Thanksgiving. Pamela?” I ask. “I wonder about her. I wonder if her boyfriend came back or if she moved to Kansas or if she got a job in a doctor’s office. Who knows? She could be sailing around the world.”

  “She’s working over at Baby Dolls,” Nikyla says.

  “No way,” I say.

  “It is the truth,” Mohammed chimes in.

  “She was so devastated that first time she went out. She said she couldn’t do it anymore,” I say.

  “You give these girls too much credit,” he says.

  “Watch it. I’m one of ‘these girls,’” I say.

  Nikyla smiles.

  “So you are.” Mohammed rubs his chin.

  “She looks better,” Nikyla says. “Pamela. Or whatever her real name is. I ran into her at the mall a couple weeks ago. She didn’t know I worked there.”

  Mohammed looks down at the empty holiday schedule.

  “I can work Christmas Eve and Christmas,” I say.

  “You are volunteering?” he asks. “This is very peculiar.” He walks out of the office shaking his head.

  Nikyla pats my knee.

  “I have to go. One-year anniversary tonight. When Jezebel gets here will you tell her to call me on my cell?”

  A half hour later Jezebel comes in before going downtown to the Hyatt to meet her date, a semi-regular who comes into town every couple months and only wants blonds. It’s the first I’ve seen her since her arrest. She’s in a tame getup for her—black pants and tank top—beneath her puffy white coat.

  “Where’s Albee?” I ask.

  “My mom’s got him. I waited until she was drunk so I knew she’d say yes,” she says, slumping down into the couch. “You didn’t tell Mohammed, did you?” she asks.

  “Course not,” I say.

  Jezebel dangles her shoe on her sloppily painted pink toe and scowls.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I was sort of dating this guy, hooking up, whatever. Jared. Really cute. But he hasn’t called in, like, four days.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  She lowers her head and looks up at me.

  “What do you think?”

  “You told him?” I ask.

  “I didn’t think it would be a big deal. He was talking about how he dated a stripper once and he thought it was hot, so I told him.”

  Sunk in between the couch cushions and buried within the down fluff of her jacket, she looks swallowed up.

  “You’re just a kid, you know,” I say. “One day this will all just be some crazy thing you did when you were young. A shocking little story you’ll like to tell.”

  She snorts and takes an old issue of Vogue from the coffee table and stuffs it into her bag.

  “Roxanne, you need to stop watching so much Oprah,” she says, getting up. “Sometimes things just suck and there’s no explanation that makes it better. I’ll call when I get there.”

  When the door closes behind her, another flurry of brown pine needles blankets the carpet. I take the dead wreath down and set it outside the door. I’m frustrated by my inability to cheer Jezebel up. The colored lights on the Christmas tree blink on and off, and since I don’t know how to make them stop, I unplug the whole thing. To combat my heavy head, I turn on all the lights, straighten the cushions, crack the window to clear out some of the parched air, empty the ashtray, and wipe the crumbs from the table. But with the lights on, it looks sad and naked so I turn them all off again just in time to answer the phone, put McCallister on hold, and send Mimi on a date to the Marriott up near the university.

  “Hi,” I say, clicking back over to McCallister.

  “What did that guy want?”

  “‘Oriental.’ Fortunately I had Mimi available.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “How late are you working?”

  “Till ten.”

  “So how’s it going?”

  “McCallister, are you trying to work up to something? No need to beat around the bush.”

  “Okay, then, two things. One, I’m worried about you. You seem like you’re hiding something and you still seem depressed.”

  “You’re the one who seems depressed,” I say.

  “Jane, please. The other is Maria’s not moving in because she found out how often I talk to you.”

  “I figured Maria was going to find out eventually and then we’d have the we-can’t-talk-anymore-because-itmakes-her-uncomfortable talk. Is that what this is?”

  “It’s hardly that simple.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to call me anymore?” My anger is thinly disguised.

  “Let’s talk about the other issue first,” he says.

  “Issue?”

  “What is it with you? What’s going on? Have you become a drug addict or something? Are you going to put stones in your pockets and walk into the Great Salt Lake?”

  “Maybe it’s just that I’m living a new life and trying to distance myself from the old. Maybe I’ve met someone.”

  “Is that true?” he asks.

  “No. But it could be. Look, nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”

  “Are you with Ford?”

  “Figures you’d say that. Jesus. Ford is leaving for Moab tomorrow, so no. Ember’s staying here with me.”

  “That makes me feel a lot better.”

  “You broke up with me, remember?”

  “You’re my friend. I want you to be happy.”

  “You want me to be happy so you can feel less guilty.”

  “Jane.”

  “What.”

  “I can’t have this conversation over the phone.” “What conversation is that?”

  “This. Everything. Us.”

  “Us?”

  “I’m coming to see you,” he says.

  “I’m holding my breath.”

  “In a week.”

  “You’re not invited.” Two other lines ring but I let them go.

  “I don’t need to be invited. I need to work this out face-to-face.”

  “You need to work this out? You don’t get to pick. You don’t always get your way, McCal
lister. This is your problem, not mine. There’s nothing to work out. You don’t want to talk anymore? Fine. Don’t call me. It’s that simple. Have a great life with Maria. I’m giving you my blessing. Is that what you’re looking for? I’m not pining over you. I’m not waiting for you to come to your senses. I’ve moved on.”

  “Did Ford help you with that impassioned speech?”

  The red lights of the other lines have stopped flashing on the phone.

  “Enough. Please. I have to go.”

  “Because your madame job is so important to you now?”

  “Fuck you. I’m hanging up now.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” he says.

  “No you won’t. I’m telling you not to.”

  I slam the phone down.

  *

  When my shift ends at ten, I go to my car only to find Ford leaning against it.

  “Hey,” I say.

  I collapse a bit in his hug.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, his chin on my head.

  “Ralf hates my guts, McCallister is threatening to come here, and you’re leaving tomorrow. Where should I start?”

  “I’m leaving tonight,” he says. “I’m on my way.”

  I pull away to look at him in the alley lamplight.

  “The longer I wait, the worse it’ll be,” he says. “No use tacking on another night of trying to prepare to say goodbye. Ember acts like it’s some sort of betrayal that I’m going but she’s the one who’s changing the plans.”

  “What’s going to happen now with you guys?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll talk. We’ll visit a couple days here and there. She’ll find someone new. Move on. Leave without saying good-bye.”

  “That’s bleak.”

  “I’m not saying anything you don’t already know,” he says.

  “Then why leave?”

  “Because I don’t belong here,” he says. “The job’s over. I feel stuck. And I’ve always known it was up to her.”

  I hold his palms to my cheeks.

  “So what’s this about McCallister?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I forbade him but he says he’s coming to Salt Lake.”

  “I knew that guy would realize he’d made a mistake. Do you want my two cents? You’re better without him.”

  “I know.”

  “At least don’t do anything dumb like sleep with him.”