Grandpa, who plays every string instrument there is, says, “So, now you can be not much good at ukulele. I’ll teach you. We’ll have fun.” He’s the one who taught me to play the guitar, and I loved taking lessons with him even though I never managed to learn more than five or six chords. Now I pluck a string of the ukulele, still in its case. The sound vibrates, startlingly cheerful and out of place—as if a palm tree just sprouted on the lawn next to the aspens and pines.
“You need a ride to school?” Grandpa asks.
“I guess I do. Since you sent the bus away.”
Grandpa reaches over and snaps the ukulele case shut. We stand up and walk to his truck. Grandpa doesn’t say good-bye to Mom. Lately his general annoyance with her is heightened by her giving that land to Paul.
As we pull away, I see her, watching us through the kitchen window. She waves to me, and I can tell she’s trying to look like she’s not crying. Carlo lived with her, too, all these years. I wave back, suddenly sorry I turned down her offer to stay home.
* * *
The day passes in a lonely fog until lunch, when Evie Burdick finds me in the cafeteria. Outside, a drizzling rain has started spitting against the windows. It might very well ease into the first real snowfall of the season. Here in Rabbitbrush it almost always snows by October, and this year is no exception. But there hasn’t yet been a real dumping, the sort to make everyone pile onto skis and snowshoes.
Evie slides her tray onto the table across from me. She wears faded jeans and a skimpy Johnny Cash T-shirt. I’m huddled in a thick wool sweater. I remember how cold I always got when I had zero body fat, and think that Evie must be freezing.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say back. “Aren’t you freezing?”
She laughs. “Everybody always asks me that. I never get cold.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
I usually make my own lunch, but this morning Mom made me a turkey sandwich and packed it into an insulated lunch box along with an ice pack. She also gave me a stick of string cheese, an apple, and a thermos of pomegranate-grape juice. I sip the juice and bite into the apple but try to avoid the rest of my lunch. My fingers have gotten so fat that the pearl ring Luke gave me digs into my skin, creating a cracked and itchy indentation. If I don’t start losing weight soon, they’ll have to cut the ring off me with metal pliers.
Evie’s tray is piled with food from the cafeteria: chicken nuggets, a slice of pizza, SunChips, a Diet Coke, and a package of little chocolate doughnuts. She slides her book onto the table. I try to peek at the title for a possible conversation opener, but she turns it over and dives into the pizza. Ordinarily I would make some excuse and clear away. Maybe I would bundle into my coat and sit under the awning outside, or just toss my lunch and hide out in the library until my next class.
But I remember the other day, when Evie asked about Carlo. Weird, but I find myself hoping that she’ll ask again. All day I have felt so sad. It seems, I don’t know, disrespectful, not to talk about him.
Evie doesn’t say anything; she just eats her food. I want to ask her how she managed, in those weeks after her parents died. Last spring I couldn’t stand living in this world anymore. I just couldn’t, I wasn’t capable. The impossibility of Luke being gone because of that one stupid moment. The very second that moment passed, it was too far away to ever make right. And the further away I got from it, the more impossible it would be to ever go back and fix it. The guilt and the loss were too huge. I couldn’t continue living, not even for Carlo or my mother. Not even for my grandparents. I understood that I ought to, but I just couldn’t.
Sitting across from one of the few people who might understand that feeling, I want to say something meaningful, or tell her about Carlo. Instead I find myself saying, “How was the corn chowder?”
She glances down at her tray, confused for a minute, and then remembers. “Oh, it was pretty good. H. J.’s a decent cook. He’s very into it these days. He stops at the grocery store on the way home from school, and as soon as he walks through the door, he just starts cooking. He even said something about culinary school, after I leave for college.”
She says this so nonchalantly, as if it hardly matters—the two orphans, living together. I glance at the back cover of her book and see the title, Lover of Unreason.
“Is that for school?” I ask.
She looks at me, then slides the book into her lap without glancing down at it. “No,” she says. “Just something I’m reading on my own.” I wait for further explanation, but she doesn’t offer any. Instead she says, “Hey. H. J. and I are going to ski in Telluride on Saturday. Do you want to come?”
Telluride is only fifty miles north of us, so the weather is pretty much the same, but for opening day the snow cannons will be working overtime. I almost say no to Evie’s invitation. Then I remember my mother peering out the window this morning, how I should have stayed with her, and in a flash I see a way to make up for it. She would be over the moon about me accepting this invitation, a normal social activity. Still, I can’t quite bring myself to say yes. “You guys probably won’t want to ski with me,” I say instead. “I just learned a couple years ago, when I came back.”
“I don’t mind,” Evie says. “And H. J. loves to ski with beginners.”
I have a hard time believing this. Even with Luke, who taught me how to ski and couldn’t have been more patient, I could feel him longing to abandon me for the black diamond slopes.
But Evie shrugs. “He says it’s more interesting skiing with someone who has something to learn. He gets tired of the whole shredding culture. He says all anyone talks about in this town is ski equipment and snow conditions.”
I nod, knowing exactly how H. J. feels.
“He’ll probably move away at some point,” Evie goes on. “But he says it’s sunny here three hundred days a year, and he already knows everyone’s name. And he has his job. And, you know, he has to wait till I’m done with high school.”
Evie looks back down at her plate, and I wonder if this is my moment to tell her that I’m sorry about her parents. I try to remember the details of her father’s suicide, how he did it, and I realize suddenly that this is something I can talk to Luke about. I can ask him about Evie and H. J., because Luke knew them when he was alive.
Outside, the rain turns to snow before our eyes. It falls halfway to the ground as droplets, then morphs into clusters of stars. Growing up, I didn’t see snow until I was six. Even when we first started coming back to Rabbitbrush, it was always in the summer. I can remember not completely believing in snow, the way I didn’t completely believe in dinosaurs, or Santa Claus. I hoped it was real but couldn’t be entirely convinced. It still seems like magic to me, in the first moments it begins to fall.
“Hey,” I say. I know what I’m about to tell her will feel out of the blue. At the same time, I think that probably Evie will understand. “My dog died last night.”
Her face rearranges itself in three quick, visible phases—shock, memory, then sympathy. “Oh, God, Tressa,” she says. “I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you,” I say. My eyes fill up with tears, but I realize that’s okay. Dr. Reisner would say it’s appropriate.
“Listen,” she says. “Come with us on Saturday, promise? It can’t make it better, I know. But at least it will take your mind off it.”
“Sure,” I tell Evie. “I’d love to go skiing with you guys.”
We clear our lunches and say good-bye a little awkwardly. I head to my locker to collect my books for French, and it must just be a Burdick kind of day, because I see H. J. and Mr. Tynan standing outside Mr. Tynan’s classroom. I am the only student in the hallway, and they don’t notice me, not at first. I wonder if I should wave or say something about Evie inviting me to ski on Saturday. But Mr. Tynan’s voice is uncharacteristically stern and sharp. Usually he moves gently, wearing a wry smile. But talking to H. J., his face looks drawn and angry. I hear the word “inapprop
riate.” “Massively inappropriate,” Mr. Tynan says.
I open my locker, and the two of them turn their heads at the metallic ping of the latch. I expect H. J.’s face to look penitent. But it doesn’t, only calm and composed.
“Hi, Mr. Burdick,” I say, though in my head I call him by his first name. Before H. J. has a chance to answer, Mr. Tynan grabs him by the shoulder and propels him inside his classroom, looking back over his shoulder, still frowning—as if he means to protect me.
* * *
A couple nights a week I can get away with eating at my grandparents’ house. The rest of the time, unless Mom and Paul go out (and my mother is still too committed to keeping a close eye on me to go out very often), I have to conform to this temporary family unit—Paul, my mother, me—at least until the baby comes, and I leave, and the future finally takes the shape Paul always dreamed of.
In my stepfather’s house, upstairs on the third floor, my room retains something of the spirit of our old life, my mom’s and mine. The eaves slant, the floorboards sway a bit. My maps are tacked onto the walls, and the furniture is a hodgepodge of relics from my grandparents’. I still use the old farm quilt I’ve been hauling around since we first came back to visit. I think that Francine may have actually given it to me, back when I was just a little kid and she hadn’t quite admitted my mother was a threat. My upstairs room is not fancy but frayed and worn in a cozy and familiar way.
Downstairs, on the other hand. The downstairs at Paul’s is modern and luxurious. It’s not ostentatious unless you know how much they spent on that sideboard in the dining room, or the brand-new energy efficient washer-dryer in the laundry room. When I was a kid, my mother used to haul our laundry around in old pillowcases. I have seen her stand on the street in front of Laundromats, begging strangers for quarters. Now she shuffles her pregnant self with surprising grace around a state-of-the-art kitchen. She bastes a roast chicken. Biscuits made from scratch wait patiently in the warming oven. Paul walks in and starts setting the table, and Mom asks me to toss the already prepared salad. I watch Paul lay out three wineglasses, and wonder if he will pour me a glass or if that third is just a nod to symmetry.
Paul tries to smile at me as he pulls a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and I pick up the wooden salad spoons. “This is a perfect winter dinner,” he says to my mother, or me, or both of us. The last, I think. Paul rarely says anything directly to me. It is not just since Luke and I fell in love that things have been awkward between us, and it is not just since Luke died. Ever since Paul first discovered my existence, I have been his chief competition and an unavoidable remnant of my mother’s escape. If it weren’t for me, he could pretend that she had always lived here with him, playing Barbie to his Ken in their mountain Dreamhouse.
It may seem like I hate Paul, but I don’t, not exactly. I respect the love that he and my mother have. Although I don’t see much of Luke in him (in looks and mannerisms Luke seems almost entirely Francine’s), I recognize pieces of Luke and me in Paul and my mother. There is something about their rapport that indicates a long, intense, and destined-to-be-repeated history.
My theory about Paul is that his good looks have ruined him. Born beautiful and athletic, he never had to develop much of a personality or make an effort to charm anyone. I guess the same could be said of my mother if it weren’t for all that nervous energy. Mom is too self-conscious to be believable as Barbie. She’s too fluttery and—in her heart at least—too much of a flake.
Paul, on the other hand, fits Ken perfectly. Like a plastic doll, he barely feels the need to speak at all. He just pulls his good-looking sweaters over his good-looking head and lets them hang from his good-looking shoulders. His good-looking face has weathered in a good-looking way, and there is good-looking gray at his good-looking temples. He never needs to pick up the phone to call the world, because he knows the world will call him. The only thing in Paul’s entire life that ever eluded him now bustles around his kitchen, domestic and pregnant and basting chicken.
I carry the salad to the table as Paul fills his glass with wine, then pours spring water for both my mother and me. Of course. He is not the sort to give liquor to the pregnant or the underage. I have searched his eyes for some sort of twinkle, some sort of spark, and have never found any. The only things extraordinary about Paul are his bank balances and my mother. And of course Luke.
I take a sip of water and say, “I got invited to ski in Telluride on Saturday.”
“Oh, honey, that’s great,” my mother says immediately.
At the same time Paul asks, “Who with?” Their voices meld together, one bright and overexcited, the other suspicious and thrown off its game.
“Evie and H. J. Burdick,” I say, and both Paul and Mom stop their movements for a moment.
The first words out of my mother’s mouth are, “The poor Burdicks.” And then she says, “The boy, too?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Both of them.”
My mother scoots past Paul to take her seat. He shoots her a good-looking frown as he begins to carve the chicken. “H. J.,” Paul says. “Wasn’t he in Jill and Katie’s class?”
Mom nods, but really, how would she know? Then she fesses up, saying, “I haven’t seen H. J. since he was a little boy. He used to look so much like Jenny. Remember, Paul?”
At Paul’s silence my mother looks toward me and tilts her head to one side and then the other, as if considering, as if this is something she needs to weigh before granting or denying permission. Probably they are both wishing I could go skiing with some normal kids, not people sullied by tragedy like me.
“Mom,” I say. “I don’t have to go, if you don’t want me to.”
She reaches out and touches my hand. “No,” she says. “Of course I want you to go. But it’s a mom’s job to worry, right?”
She tilts her head, and I tilt mine in the opposite direction. I like it when she asks this sort of question, her tone ironic enough to admit she knows her current persona is partly an act. Over the summer I had enough therapy to understand the unfairness of my disliking her attempts at Happy Homemaker, when while I was growing up, that was all I ever wanted from her. I know Mom wants me to rediscover the joy in life (thereby continuing to live). But she’s also visualizing me skiing into a tree, on purpose, at full speed.
For no particular reason I think of H. J. in the hall at school with Mr. Tynan. Massively inappropriate. I feel as if I’ve heard that phrase before, possibly in connection with me and Luke. “Tressa,” Jill once complained. “He’s my brother.”
“But he’s not mine,” I told her—compliant in every other area of my life, but defiant in that one.
Paul passes out plates laden with chicken and potatoes. He takes a sip of wine. “Well,” he says, as if after briefly considering he has come to a decision. “I think that will be fine, for you to go skiing with the Burdick kids.”
My mother moves her hand from mine to touch Paul. They smile at each other, so pleased in their joint parenting that for a second I want to tell them that I’ve changed my mind and won’t go skiing after all.
* * *
After dinner I take my time. I clean up the kitchen while my mother gets off her feet and Paul answers e-mail in his study. Instead of going upstairs to my own desk, I spread my books across the dining room table and work there. I do my homework carefully, double-checking, studying much longer than I need to for tomorrow’s Human Behavior quiz.
When my finished work is stored in my backpack, I take out a fresh piece of paper and draw a map of the kitchen. Drawing maps is the one thing I haven’t been able to stop doing. Something about visualizing the place where I am, and not just drawing it but charting it—the process stops my brain from worrying. It calms me down. You couldn’t use my maps to find your way anywhere. I’m no cartographer, and they’re not exactly to scale, or even anything like accurate. But drawing them makes me feel like I know where I am. When I was little, I used to love imitating those maps at malls, with t
he little arrow. YOU ARE HERE. Even in the hospital I couldn’t stop myself. I drew maps of my room, the courtyard, the cafeteria. The mountains that I could see through my window but never got to explore.
Now I let my pencil flutter over the page. It’s almost like I’m using a Ouija board, just letting the pencil guide me. My oil pastels are upstairs, so for now I content myself with this sketch. A chicken on the table. A spatula represents my mother, standing at the stove—I draw dollar signs for its burners.
About thirty minutes later I make myself a cup of tea and head upstairs to the “kids” room—where Jill and Katie used to play, and after that, Luke. Where the new baby will play. I sit down with my map at the old art table and run my hand over a black Sharpie mark. Maybe Luke is the one who left it there. This makes me picture him standing outside, staring through my window as if he’s the outsider. I wish, for the thousandth or millionth time, that we could trade places. Then I color in my map of the kitchen with chalky whites and steel gray.
As I work, I think about Evie, and after a while I put the map aside and turn on the computer. The only people who e-mail me are my old friend Isabelle and my sisters—Jill from Denver and Katie from LA—so I don’t bother checking e-mail. Instead I do something I haven’t done in a million years, not since I first got home from the hospital. I log on to Facebook. It’s not exactly something that brings me back to glory days. It probably sounds crazy, but I never even had an e-mail account until I was sixteen, and I’ve never been in the running for a popularity contest. In fact, I have exactly three Facebook friends, the same people who send me e-mail. Mostly I used my account to store photos, as a backup to my computer files. Luke and I were never friends on Facebook, because our mothers monitored our accounts—a pretty easy task, in my case, though I imagine Luke had plenty of traffic on his page. I wonder how his wall must look now. I imagine all the notes people must have posted after he died.
Meet Me at the River Page 5
