I love this place, my grandparents’ land. When I was little, and far away, all I ever wanted was to come back here to stay. On the first map I ever drew of Rabbitbrush, a red-crayoned heart represents the house. It’s still the place I want to escape to whenever I feel down or lost or blue. The only animals still on the property are a pair of old draft horses, Sturm and Drang. They graze all day on the surrounding hills. It’s been a long time since they had any work to do, and apparently they miss the activity. If I were to take the time to run and get Grandpa, Sturm and Drang would follow me like a pair of dogs, their huge furry hooves plodding patiently behind me. The three of us would find my grandfather standing by the river, patiently casting with his own homemade flies and the rod his father gave him when he was twelve. It would make everyone so happy—the sight of me walking these hills like nothing had ever happened, those two huge, crazy horses lumbering behind me.
Grandma sits across the table waiting for my reply, her face full of hope. I know that she worries about me, and that she loves me, and I want to act, for her sake, like everything’s okay.
“Tressa,” Grandma says, and I can tell she’s going to say something I’m not ready to hear. I slide my hand out from under hers and hold out my palm like a crossing guard, hoping the halting gesture seems firm but not rude: Stop. No. Don’t say another word.
I don’t want to talk about the river.
( 4 )
LUKE
Tressa told me all about that day in New Mexico when she got in trouble for eating granola bars. Now I can see where her mother put her in time-out. Tressa just sits there by the water. I know that look, Tressa’s mad look. I guess she’s like five or six because she doesn’t have Carlo yet. She said this happened in summer but I can tell that’s wrong. The air feels kind of chilly. Soaking in hot water seems like a good idea. So maybe it’s March or April.
She and her mom and her mom’s latest boyfriend have been camping on the other side of the river. Tressa’s scared to death of that river and I don’t blame her. Every morning the boyfriend piggybacks her across. When the water hits her legs she grabs on to that guy so tight that sometimes he pretends he’s going to shrug her off. He’s kidding, but I still want to push him over, and if it weren’t for Tressa on his back I’d go ahead and do it.
I never met Tressa’s real father, never even saw a picture of him. She only met him herself a couple times. Generally it seemed like he didn’t really exist. Tressa says she thinks of all her mother’s boyfriends like one father that she never got to know. So it’s interesting to see this guy, one father in a long string of them, ending, I guess, with my dad.
At the hot springs Tressa sits on the rocks wearing a ratty bathing suit. Her white hair is crazy tangled. She looks like a little Tarzan girl, all bony and wild. Her eyes are kind of sunken in her face. I would hate seeing any kid this scrawny, and I get mad at Hannah. So does everyone else at the hot springs. Tressa rattles off the list of what her grandma would feed her. At this point she’s already lived in Ireland and Baja, plus a bunch of different states. She has this special kind of accent, likes she’s not from anywhere except everywhere. She sounds way too grown-up for a little kid.
I can tell the college girls are pissed that Tressa’s hungry. One of them shoots dirty looks at Hannah. The other one gets out of the hot springs and digs out a pear from her backpack. She hands it to Tressa. I can see Hannah’s watching but I can’t tell if she feels guilty because of her sunglasses and floppy straw hat.
Here’s how it goes. I stand there on the rocks a few feet from Tressa. It’s like watching a movie, but at the same time I’m part of the movie. I’m inside the picture. Then all of a sudden Tressa looks up from her sticky hands. She ate the whole pear, core and all. We look at each other. She smiles. Then she stands up and steps into the water. Hannah doesn’t say anything. Time-out must be over, or else she doesn’t care. Tressa floats on her back with her eyes closed. I realize I’ve been crouching, and I get up so I can soak in the hot springs too. The next thing I know, I’m climbing through Tressa’s window. I land in her room at my dad’s house. She sits up in bed, all grown-up and waiting for me.
“Tressa Gentle,” I say, and she smiles.
She’s not scrawny anymore. Her hair’s dark and not tangled. But something’s wrong. Something’s missing and I can tell she’s been crying. Not only that, something’s changed in a way that makes it hard to stay. The room goes blurry like it wants to disappear. This is the after-Luke. I’m not supposed to be here.
But Tressa says, “Don’t go.” It takes all my strength to walk over to the bed. We sit there looking at each other. I see her mouth move but I can’t understand the words.
Tressa takes a deep breath. I know that look on her face. I know it so well that maybe I can stay. From the way she raises her eyebrows I know she’s asking a question. She wants me to do something for her. I can hardly stand it, how much I want to understand.
“Never mind,” she says after a while, and this time the words come through. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
I can’t speak just yet. If I could, I’d say, Where else would I be? The only place I can ever be anymore is with her. Tressa does something she hasn’t done in a long time. She puts her hand on top of mine. I want to feel her skin but all I feel is air.
“It’s so frustrating sometimes,” she says. “I want to feel you.”
I move my hand like I’m pushing her hair off her forehead, but I don’t actually touch skin. She smiles then does the same with me.
“Remember that day,” she says, “at your mother’s house the summer before last? You were supposed to go with her to the bluegrass festival in Telluride, but you told her you were sick.”
“She didn’t believe me.”
“But she went anyway. Even though she probably knew exactly what we would do.”
Back in the day, Dad didn’t want Tressa and me to be together. But Mom didn’t really care. She thought he went about the whole thing wrong. “He’s turning them into Romeo and Juliet,” I heard her tell a friend. Mom didn’t want us sleeping together, obviously, but she didn’t mind if we hung out. On that particular day Tressa and I knew she would be in Telluride for hours, so we could do more than hang out, we could do anything we wanted. And what we wanted, surprise, surprise, was to lie naked on top of my bed. Which, as I recall, was pretty painful in its own way.
“But I stopped you,” Tressa says, reading my mind as usual. “I always stopped you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I tell her. Even though it did kind of drive me crazy, I’m being totally honest. It doesn’t matter. Kelly never stopped me. And even though I liked her, maybe even loved her a little, I’m not showing up in Kelly’s room. I don’t want to be with anyone except Tressa.
I remember that day when my mom went to Telluride. I may have pushed a little too far, and Tressa got mad at me. So we put our clothes back on, and while I worked on calming down, Tressa drew a map of the trees outside my window. I closed my eyes and listened to her pencil scraping on the paper. It sounded confident, like she knew exactly what she was doing.
“You can look now,” she said, and when I opened my eyes, there was this whole gray and white world, these crazy shapes I saw every day of my life but never noticed before. I wanted her to color them in but she liked the picture the way it was. I taped it on the wall next to the window. I wonder if it’s still there.
Now Tressa leans back on her pillows. Out of nowhere she grabs her nightgown and pulls it over her head. She pulls her legs out from under the covers and stretches them next to me. So she’s lying there naked. There’s just enough light for me to see her clearly. It’s almost worse, seeing all that skin and knowing I can’t feel it. I want to take my clothes off too, but I know I can’t. In a weird way it’s so much like it used to be, and at the same time it’s so different that I want to laugh. Or cry.
“You can try,” she whispers. I know she doesn’t mean my clothes but her skin. To touch it, f
eel it.
I shake my head. “I can’t. I know I can’t. It hurts too much to try.”
She leans back against her pillows again. I lie down next to her. Face-to-face we stare at each other. Obviously, Tressa being naked distracts me. But I can’t shake the feeling that something important has gone missing. Something should be sitting on the floor next to the bed. I can see Tressa’s lips moving, but the sound of her voice won’t turn into words.
But then for a second, even though I can’t hear what she’s saying, I get it. Like a flash going off on a camera. I see what’s supposed to be here, I see what’s gone, and I understand exactly what she wants me to do.
* * *
When Hannah and my dad got married again, Hannah wanted to turn into my mom. That’s what Tressa said, anyway. She said her mother was sick of being a hippy and wanted to be a normal, carpooling mom. The sad thing is that my mom always wished she were a free spirit, which is what people used to call Hannah, which seriously irritated my sisters. According to Jill, “free spirit” is a nicer way of saying “deadbeat.”
Of course it messed with Jill’s and Katie’s heads, the way Hannah left them behind but took Tressa along with her. It didn’t make any sense. Tressa’s father wasn’t in the picture, but Hannah could have left her with the Earnshaws. In fact, a couple of times she did. But then, after a month or so, she’d come back for her. She never took the twins with her, not one single time, but she took Tressa over and over again. She had three kids living in Rabbitbrush and she only ever left with one of them. Tressa says it’s because she was the only one who never complained, and it’s true that she never did. Not until they told her that she couldn’t see me.
* * *
When Hannah left the first time, her letter said she was gone for good, but nobody really believed her, at least not at first. My dad and her parents figured she’d get in touch.
She never did. She didn’t write or call, she didn’t even send a postcard. Obviously she didn’t e-mail. I’m not sure there even was e-mail back then. The point is, nobody knew if she was alive except my father. He knew she was alive and that one day she’d come back. He used to tell my mother this before they got together, when she was just the twins’ babysitter. Mom had just gotten her graduate degree in Social Work but she didn’t have a real job yet. Dad paid her at first. “And then he married me,” Mom used to say.
You can see for yourself how everything lined up. My mom fell in love with my dad and then she married him. My dad married her, he maybe even loved her, but at the same time he still thought about Hannah. He still wanted Hannah to come back.
I feel bad for him. But I’m not sorry Hannah ran away. Otherwise I wouldn’t’ve been born. Neither would Tressa. Everyone knew about me from the beginning, but no one knew about Tressa until four years later, when the thing everybody more or less gave up on happened, and Hannah came back to Rabbitbrush.
( 5 )
TRESSA
I want to tell Luke so badly that Carlo died. When I see him come through the window, I feel too sad to smile back. I try my best to tell him the whole terrible story—how I refused to let the vet put my dog to sleep.
“He’s in a lot of pain,” Dr. Hill said. I knew this was true. I knew it. Carlo lay on the metal table, the small room smelling of ammonia from both urine and cleaners, along with that very particular scent that frightened animals emit. I ran my hands over and over his still-glossy fur, hating the ragged rise and fall of his chest, and the glaze over his eyes. I also hated the way Dr. Hill already brandished his syringe full of death, confident of changing my mind. Grandma stood behind him, watching me, her eyes full of tears. I wished she would make the decision, and at the same time I understood it was my responsibility. He was my dog. And how could I say, Yes, go ahead, plunge that needle into Carlo—who is a person to me, a beloved person. How could I be an accomplice to killing my dog?
By the time we headed home, I already knew the decision was entirely wrong and selfish. Carlo lay on a red Indian blanket in the back of Grandma’s car. She had folded the seats down so I could lie next to him, my faced pressed into his neck. At Paul’s house we each had to take an end of the blanket and carry him out to the grass. I wanted him to feel the sunlight.
That’s how we sat for the longest time. Poor Carlo, not caring at all about the sunlight, just finished, just wanting to be gone. I sat next to him, my hand on his head, watching his breath get shallower and shallower. Watching him fight for those last moments—going the hard way instead of the peaceful one Dr. Hill had offered. Stupid, selfish girl.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Carlo. I leaned over him, listening to his last breaths. “I’m so sorry.”
Carlo closed his eyes—lovely white, furless lids. I guess I expected to feel relief when his breathing finally stopped and his pain ended along with the ordeal of watching him die. By now I should have figured out that death never brings any kind of relief. It just brings sorrow, and guilt, and the insane, maddening, screaming wish that you could redo the one single moment in time that might possibly change everything.
* * *
In the morning I run downstairs, expecting Carlo to still be in the grass where I left him. To anyone else it might seem morbid, but I want to stroke his fur one last time.
“I’m so sorry,” Mom tells me. “Paul already took him back to Dr. Hill’s.” I don’t ask what for. Probably to be cremated.
I walk outside and sit down next to the spot where Carlo should still be. The blanket’s gone too; the grass underneath is bent sideways in his shape, and I run my hand over the blades again and again, deepening the indentation.
Mom walks outside and stands over me. I don’t have to look up to see the worry on her face. “You can stay home today if you want,” she says. “We can go for a drive or something. Go for a hike. Or just hang out. Anything you want.”
I think about going for a drive with my mother. I think about the two of us, getting into a car and driving for a thousand miles and never coming back. Knowing this isn’t a possibility, I say, “No. Thanks. I want to stay busy.”
Her fear—that I won’t be able to handle this—makes me even sadder. But then so does everything else—the memory of Carlo’s painful last breaths, the inability to tell Luke about it, the worry I constantly cause, and the image of Luke’s last moments, which I’ve been able to push aside since he started coming back. I give the grass one last, smoothing pat, then go inside and get ready for school. When I walk out the kitchen door, my mother is close behind me, holding it open. I know she’ll stand there until she sees me get on the bus. I know what she really wants is to walk two steps behind me, all day every day, so she can see for herself that I haven’t done anything to hurt myself.
At the top of the driveway, my grandfather’s truck putters up right at the same moment as the school bus. “Oh, look,” I hear Mom call. “It’s Dad.”
Grandpa rolls down his window and waves the bus driver away. Then he pulls into the driveway and gets out carrying a small guitar-shaped case. “Tressa,” he says, striding toward me on long legs. From a distance he hasn’t changed much since he first gave Carlo to me. But as he gets closer, I see all the years that have passed. He holds his arms out to hug me, but instead of walking into them I sit down on the stoop. Grandpa seems to understand that if I let him hold me, I’ll fall apart. He sits down next to me, and my mother closes the door as if to give us privacy. I hear her step lightly, back into the kitchen, but I know she’s hovering close enough to hear our conversation through the open window.
Grandpa puts his broad hand on my knee. I know it’s meant to be a reassuring gesture, but even though he is solid and strong, that hand looks old to me. It looks craggy and liver-spotted, and I find myself looking ahead to another loss that I simply won’t be able to bear. I suck in my breath, which sounds wet and shaky with tears. The thing about deciding to live, even if you’re determined not to be happy—your body goes ahead and battles sorrow without you.
“You know,” Grandpa says, “one thing I’ve been thinking about Hannah is that it took almost losing you to turn her into a real mother.”
Grandpa says this kind of loudly, like he wants Mom to hear. Inside, something bangs a little too hard into the sink. Her parents will never forgive her for all those years she went away. But while Mom hasn’t exactly been Francine, she has had her moments—her own peculiar strengths—and I don’t like to hear these digs.
“She’s always been a real mother,” I say, hoping she’ll hear that, too. Then, to apologize for disagreeing with him, I put my hand on top of the little guitar case.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“It’s a ukulele,” Grandpa says. “For you.”
“A ukulele?” The word coming out of my mouth sounds so ridiculous that I laugh.
“You never play your guitar anymore. I thought maybe you’d like to try something new.”
He slides it into my lap, and I unlatch the case. Inside is a yellow ukulele. It looks much too cheerful. “It’s yellow,” I say.
“Isn’t that your favorite color?”
“Sure.” When I was ten, I don’t say.
Grandpa moves his hand from my knee to the top of my head. “I miss hearing you play guitar,” he says. He’s the one who gave me the guitar, for my eighth birthday. An old Martin, much too nice for a little kid. My mother hated having to drag it around with us. But she did it, for me. I feel like pointing this out to Grandpa but don’t want him to answer by putting her down.
So I just say, “I don’t know why you’d miss hearing me play. I was never much good at it.” If Grandpa contradicts this universal truth, I will know I am a lost cause. The only time I ever sounded halfway decent on guitar was when Luke or Grandpa played with me, drowning out my clumsy strumming.
Meet Me at the River Page 4
