* * *
On the morning it happened, I figured I would eat breakfast and then head over to the Earnshaws’ like I’d done every day of the summer so far. Mom handed me a plate of scrambled eggs and said she wanted to drive into Telluride and hike up the Jud Wiebe Trail. I told her she had to be crazy. It’d been very hot, over a hundred degrees all week, and as far as I knew, that day would be the same. Not exactly my favorite hiking weather.
But Mom had made up her mind. “There’s so much shade on that trail,” she said. “And I feel like I’ve barely seen you this summer.” She’d just cut her hair short. It barely covered her ears. I couldn’t get used to the look of it and neither could she. She was always reaching up to push away hair that wasn’t there.
“Can Tressa come?” I asked. I started to get up so I could call. My dad came into the kitchen. I saw him frown at Mom.
“No,” she said. “Not this time. Today I want you to myself.”
Dad poured coffee into his thermos. This is almost the part I hate the most. None of us knew this was the last time things would ever be normal. Dad kissed the top of Mom’s head. “I’ll be home before dinner,” he said.
Mom and I hiked slowly. The day got hotter and hotter. We kept stopping to sip from our water bottles. At the top of the trail we barely took in the view. Instead we ducked below the treeline and walked downhill along the creek. We didn’t speak much on the drive home. Mom looked like she had something to cross off her to-do list. Quality time with her only son, check. When we got home, I didn’t even bother going inside. I just grabbed my bike, slid my water bottle into its cage, and yelled, “I’m going to the Earnshaws’!”
* * *
The house looked deserted, no cars in the driveway except for the old hay bale truck. Sturm and Drang weren’t around either, which meant Tressa could have been on a walk with them, or she could’ve gone somewhere with her grandparents. I went inside anyway. Nobody in Rabbitbrush locked their doors. I’m not sure the Earnshaws even owned a set of house keys. They kept car keys in the vehicles, either right in the ignition or on the floor of the driver’s seat.
I ran up the stairs toward Tressa’s room. I could picture her lying on her bed with a book from the summer reading list that I hadn’t even looked at yet. Just as that picture formed in my head, I got to the top of the stairs and heard a low groan.
For a second I thought I had made that sound. I stopped short, suddenly hoping Tressa wasn’t at home so she wouldn’t have heard me. Then I heard someone laugh, and whisper. Then another moan, plus a noise that sounded a little bit like someone crying.
Did I mention it was a hundred degrees outside? Now it felt like two hundred. I knew exactly who and what I was listening to, even though I’d never heard it before. The sound came from behind Hannah’s closed door. The polite thing to do was turn around, walk down the stairs, leave the house, and bike away. And after that, keep my mouth shut forever.
But it made me so mad. My dad. And Tressa’s mom. Just that morning I’d seen Dad kissing the top of my mom’s head. I wanted to yell, Seriously? Are you kidding me? But I didn’t yell. I just kicked Hannah’s door open and walked right into the worst and strangest moment of my entire life.
Hannah and my dad. Naked. It was hot so they were on top of the covers. When I came in, they jumped off opposite sides of the bed and grabbed at the quilt. There was this second or two where they had a little tug of war. Then my dad let her have it. What a gentleman! Once she covered herself up, he grabbed the sheet for himself, but by this time it was a little late.
“Luke,” he said when he got the sheet around his waist. “What are you doing here? You should have knocked.”
Like my rudeness was the problem with this situation. “Why?” I said. Mad as I was it took me by surprise, how loud I said it. “Why should I have knocked, Dad? So I wouldn’t see you fucking Hannah?”
Both of them sat back down on the bed. Hannah put the quilt over her face, and I thought I heard her say “Damn.” Dad reached out and kind of patted her like she was the one he needed to worry about. I looked around the room for something to throw at his head.
I didn’t have a chance, though, because Hannah took the quilt away from her face. “Luke,” she said. “You don’t have to tell Francine, you know. It would only hurt her.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not the one who’s hurting her.”
There wasn’t much else to say, and I couldn’t stand being there anymore, like I was a part of this whole thing. So I turned around and ran down the steps, then jumped onto my bike and pedaled home. As far as I know my dad didn’t try to stop me.
And I may have been just a kid, but at that point I knew the score exactly. My dad wanted Hannah. He wanted her so bad that he didn’t care if I knew, or if I told Mom. In fact, he probably wanted me to tell Mom so she would pack up, get out of the way.
Which is just what she did. She moved out of his house and took me with her. What Dad didn’t bet on was Hannah, who had a lot more practice running away. She grabbed Tressa and left my dad, and me, and didn’t come back or send word for the longest four years in history. And I don’t think Dad ever forgave me for that any more than I forgave him. At least not till after that day at the river.
( 10 )
TRESSA
Silver Lake has frozen solid. Last week Mr. Zack drove his Land Cruiser straight across the ice, to the very middle, to prove to nervous mothers that it was safe to skate. So when I find the message written in the snow on my windowsill—Silver Lake is all it says—I know to throw my skates over my shoulder. I also bring two hockey sticks and a puck.
The lake is closer than the river; I only have to hike the back way through Paul’s property, barely half a mile down a steep incline. Coming home will be a little more difficult, but I don’t mind. And I’ll be quick. I don’t want the drama of getting caught or making anyone worry about me. But I have to go.
When Luke sees the hockey sticks, he laughs. I toss the puck onto the ice, and Carlo runs after it, sliding across the surface on his bare paws, trying to get his mouth around the slippery black disc. Luke already wears his hockey skates, the Stealth 15’s his mother bought him last Christmas. I have no way of knowing if the same skates still lie on the shelf of sports equipment in Francine’s garage, and it strikes me that I don’t know what she’s done with Luke’s things, if she’s sold everything on eBay, or given it to Goodwill, or kept everything in its same old place, as if he could one day come back and use it. Maybe that’s exactly what he did this evening—stole into his mother’s garage and took the skates, then brought them out here. I ask him, but he just looks perplexed, the question too tied to his death and everything afterward.
I sit down on the old pine log, take off my boots, and lace up my figure skates. I never got good enough for hockey skates. We don’t glide out onto the ice right away, but sit on the log for a while, Luke’s hand wrapped around my wrist. Every so often Luke lifts my hand and kisses me. It is huge and wonderful to feel him, but already I can’t stop myself wanting more than his lips on my wrist—like his lips on my lips, for example. Luke must want this too. He smiles and runs his fingertips over my hair, a phantom gesture, and right away I feel a knot in my stomach, a wish to feel his hands in my hair. Instead of making me grateful for feeling him at all, being able to feel him on that one spot makes me want every other spot. I know this is greedy, I know it, but I can’t help what I feel, and that’s the urge to tackle him right there in the snow and kiss him, kiss him, feeling every single molecule of his body against mine. The way I used to.
But that’s not possible, so we stand up and glide out onto the lake. At first we try to play hockey in earnest, but I can’t skate fast enough, and Luke beats me so easily every time that it hardly seems worth it. So after a while we just skate around and around, and then play keep-away with Carlo, who runs and slips and slides across the ice like a sleek black polar bear cub. I can hardly believe Carlo was ever this young, this full of movemen
t.
Sometimes in winter, during the day, Rabbitbrush seems very stark and bleak. The light goes flat and still, and if no snow has fallen for several days, the sky becomes gray and weary with the absence of moisture. Apart from the conifers, bare branches abound, everything sleeping too soundly beneath the soil.
Oddly, the night never feels bleak but—like Carlo—full of dark, pretty movement. I love this delicious air, the possibility that lurks around every corner. It’s so much better than the two of us sitting up in my room. It feels less safe, more like life. Perhaps, despite Mr. Zack’s efforts, the ice could crack beneath my skates. I imagine looking up from the frozen water, Luke kneeling above me, his hand placed flat on the ice, peering through.
But the ice stays firm. After a long while we skate to the edge of the lake. We both change into boots. I hadn’t noticed his Sorels, waiting with mine by the makeshift bench. We both tie our skates together and drape them over our shoulders.
“I guess I have to go,” he says, his voice deep and wistful.
“I wonder what would happen,” I say, “if I tried to come with you.”
He stares at me a long moment, as if what I said has not computed. Then he takes my wrist, and we both stand. We walk through the woods together, Carlo at our side. I recognize the path where we’re headed—the river—and I know I will find myself alone at that shore. That there will be one definite way to follow him, and it won’t be simply walking by his side. I try to imagine what that transition would look like, how long it would take for me to travel—like my dog—from damaged to dead to perfect, wandering this mountain range not only with Luke and Carlo but as one of them. I can’t picture it, though, without picturing Luke—his floating body, his funeral, the sorrow left in his wake and then my own. I shake my head sharply, and we both stop at the same time, Luke and I, still managing to operate as one person, the same instincts, the same reactions. Still holding on to me, Luke says, “I wish I could keep you safe.”
We both know I will have to walk home through the snow—by myself, in the dark, among too many nocturnal creatures to name. I say, “I don’t care about being safe.” Luke looks troubled by this. My eyes close for the barest second—just a blink, I could swear. When I open them, he and Carlo are gone.
The long trudge toward the place I’m supposed to call home takes a good, long while. My complete lack of fear makes me feel eerily close to the end of this place, this world. It’s the kind of feeling Dr. Reisner would call a warning sign, and I try to remind myself how I made a promise with the best and sincerest intentions.
But I can’t stop the voice in my head. Come out, come out, it calls—to the mountain lion that prowls these hundred acres. To the black bear that overturns my grandparents’ garbage. Come and find me. I imagine my own white bones, the remnants of this body finally left behind so that the rest of me can go where it belongs—where I belong, with Luke.
* * *
Last year, when Mom and Paul decided Luke would corrupt my purity and ruin my future, they installed an alarm system. This was ridiculous and embarrassing in a town where nobody even bothered to lock front doors. At night, when the alarm system was engaged, if any door or window opened, it would sound a siren that connected directly to the police department. During the day, when the sirens were turned off, the alarm spoke in a tinny mechanical voice whenever we opened a door. “Front. Door,” the alarm would announce through speakers on the first and second floors, and most notably in Mom and Paul’s bedroom. A sultry but urgent female voice alerting us. “Kitchen. Door.” “Garage. Door.” It annoyed even my mother and Paul. After Luke died, they had it disconnected.
The afternoon after skating with Luke at Silver Lake, the security system truck is in our driveway when I get off the bus. I have to step around the uniformed alarm guy to walk into the kitchen. Mom stands at the refrigerator, staring into its contents like there’s some code she needs to break. When I say “Hi,” she jumps a little.
“Oh, hi,” she says, and then gestures a little too dramatically at the refrigerator. “I’m starving, but there’s nothing I can stand to eat.”
She closes the door slowly, like maybe something will jump out and catch her eye at the last second. Then she turns toward me. Her belly seems to get bigger on a daily basis, and sometimes it shifts. Today it looks weirdly pointed toward the left, and she’ll probably have to do another round of maternity clothes shopping. Her popped-out belly button is visible through the strained front of her turtleneck sweater.
“What’s with the alarm?” I say.
She crosses her arms over her stomach and says, “What do you think?” She’s been a little less careful with me since the incident with Officer Sincero. Dr. Reisner would probably call this a healthy sign. Maybe she’s not quite so scared I’ll jump ship. I worry for a second that she knows I went out last night. But then, the alarm guy has to come all the way from Durango, so it probably took a few days to get the appointment.
“Well,” I say, trying to sound lightly sarcastic. “It’ll feel like old times having that lady back. Telling us which door is open.”
“I chose a male voice this time,” Mom says, the sternness completely shed from her voice. She’s always had that quality, the ability to abandon discomfit and become cheerful in an instant. “He gave me a whole list of options, and I picked a male voice with an Australian accent.”
I narrow my eyes. It’s the kind of joke she would have made in the old days, and I wonder if my escape the other night somehow jolted her back to the person she used to be.
“I’m totally serious,” Mom says. The alarm guy, hearing our conversation, types a code into the panel, closes and opens the kitchen door. A male voice says, “Kitchen door is open,” with a nice Australian accent, like after we close it, he’ll invite us over for shrimp on the barbie. Mom and I crack up. The alarm guy tells her everything is set, and she signs a work order form so he can leave.
“Listen,” she says when he’s gone, making a sweeping gesture with her arm as if pushing the laughter aside. “This was Paul’s idea, hooking the alarm back up.”
This kind of statement—passing the buck to Paul—also seems very pre-them-getting-back-together. From out of nowhere I get this memory of the two of us, Mom and me, riding in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of other people, new friends she’d just acquired. One of the warmer states, probably in the West. The dirt road was very steep. I must have been pretty young, because I sat in Mom’s lap, her arms tight around my middle. Every time we hit a bump, the two of us flew up a little and screamed, her breath right beside my ear. I knew it was dangerous, but I also knew she wouldn’t let go. If we flew out of the truck, we’d go together.
A part of me wants to tell Mom there’s no point in reinstalling the alarm system, because I’m a total expert in circumventing it. When Luke was alive, all I had to do was unlock Carlo’s dog door and shimmy through on my belly. I may not be quite down to my original weight, but I’m close, and I don’t think I’ll have any problem getting out as much as I need to—which proves as much as anything that I’m my mother’s daughter.
“Hey,” I say, suddenly wanting to do something for her. “Is there anything you do feel like eating? I could go out and get it for you.”
Mom glances over to the hook beside the door where she keeps her car keys. I see her thinking, weighing how she feels about me behind the wheel of a car.
“Let’s go together,” she says. I dump my backpack onto a kitchen chair, and we head out. “Kitchen door is open,” the mechanical Aussie tells us, and we’re still laughing as we buckle up. Except for the heated leather seats, my mom’s pregnant belly, and the fact that we’re bothering with seat belts, it feels like old times—the two of us laughing, driving away together. I tell myself that in this instance it’s all right to feel happy, away from Luke, because I’m doing it for Mom.
( 11 )
LUKE
After everything blew up with Dad and Hannah, Mom and I moved into a t
wo-bedroom house not far from the high school. At first she rented it and then when she got her divorce settlement she bought it. The two of us ripped up the carpet and installed white oak floors she ordered from Lumber Liquidators. We did our best, but I was just a kid and she was no kind of handyman. Walking across that floor in bare feet you could feel how the boards were uneven. Every crumb and mud flake settled between the cracks.
Jill and Katie went to college pretty much right after Mom and I left. I guess they wouldn’t have lived with us anyway. But the way things timed out they didn’t have to take sides. We went from a family of five to just Mom and me. Our entire house could’ve fit into Dad’s first floor.
Dad didn’t bother to act sorry that Mom and I’d left. All he cared about was Hannah, and guess why she was gone? Because of me. That’s what his warped mind figured, anyway. When the time came for lawyers I said I didn’t want any kind of visitation, not even once-a-week dinners. Mom tried to talk me out of it. “He’s your father,” she said. But Dad said fine. No problem. I imagined him walking around his empty house. Daughters, gone. Son, gone. Wife, gone. Worst of all, True Love. Gone, gone, gone.
Sometimes I’d see him around town. He looked sad, and not because he missed Mom and me. His shoulders slumped. He didn’t have to pretend not to see me because he wasn’t looking around at anyone—just down at the sidewalk, scowling.
* * *
Screw them all, I decided, the summer I turned thirteen. My mother said that I fell in with the wrong crowd and she was half joking, but I guess I kind of did. I went to parties where I drank beer and smoked some pot. Nothing major or extreme, nothing that didn’t get boring very fast. Like I said before, sometimes I think about life, I watch it all happen, and I get very tired. It looks tiring.
Meet Me at the River Page 9
