Meet Me at the River

by de Gramont, Nina

  H. J. sits up on his elbow. Gently he pulls me from the waist, sliding my head down on the pillows, bringing me face-to-face with him. He moves his hand from my head to my cheek, still stroking. Then he says, “Tressa. Go to sleep.”

  My mind starts to fog, and I remind myself that all H. J. did was keep me alive. All I did was let him. Never mind how flatly affectionate it feels, this insistent stroking. I know that his attentions, and the way he cares, have to do with so much more than just me.

  What I wanted to do was go to Luke. Having failed, maybe I at least deserve a rest. Outside, snow might still be falling. But sunlight manages to filter in, brightening, and with it comes the deepest, most dreamless sleep.

  ( 29 )

  TRESSA

  Everything in Rabbitbrush stops. Power lines are down, phones don’t connect, roads need to be plowed. The day after the storm, late in the day—following a long sleep—I pull on my boots and coat and borrow H. J.’s scarf to hike back to my grandparents’. H. J. insists on coming with me. We trudge together up the unplowed road. He stands at the bottom of the porch steps until I have closed the door behind me. Through the window I watch him turn, hands in his pockets, and head down Arapahoe Road toward home.

  I spend the two days of canceled school in my room sifting through my biographies of Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill. I try to start writing the paper in a spiral notebook. Every time I think I have fueled my brain enough to come up with a thesis, an opening paragraph, something to say, I prove myself wrong. I can’t extract these stories from my own, and at the same time I don’t want to compare them.

  Out in the world the sun shines strongly, courting spring, but the snow piles high in thick, beautiful drifts. It doesn’t seem possible that May lurks around the corner. I can’t consider how these very drifts will feed the river. And after that I will turn nineteen, alone.

  * * *

  When school reopens, I drive my new red truck down icy roads, carefully, past the Burdick house. It occurs to me that I should stop and offer Evie a ride, but I don’t. I’m not ready to face any questions about H. J. and me. The place looks dark and quiet, as if no one has stirred. Maybe she’s staying home today.

  I pull into the parking lot at school a little early. Mostly teachers bundle from their cars into school; the buses haven’t shown up yet. At the far edge of the parking lot, between two empty spaces, I see my mother, sitting on the hood of her Lexus. I close my eyes, hoping I’m imagining things, but when I open them, there she still is, cross-legged and wearing the gray cashmere hat Francine gave me. An absurd thought goes through my head, that at least she has backed in, a nod to my grandfather, who always says it’s safest to leave a parking space facing forward.

  From beneath the hat her hair falls in bright, beautiful waves, and I wonder if she will be able to maintain those skillful highlights away from Paul and his fat bank accounts. Because I know. This is it. She’s leaving. I wait for my stomach to knot, the way it always used to on the morning of my mother’s flights. But now, seeing her, what I mostly feel is numb.

  I walk across the parking lot and stand in front of her car. She wears jeans, sneakers, and a light blue down vest. I peer around her into the backseat, looking for Matthew. But there’s no room for a baby; the seat is down, and the car’s piled high with suitcases and boxes.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hi.” I put my hands into my pockets. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “I’m going to start out in San Francisco,” she says, her voice light, easy, guilt free. “Isabelle got into Stanford. Did you hear? Hugo’s going to dock his boat in Sausalito for a while, while she gets settled. Not too close, not too far. He’s thinking of opening a bar there. I’m going to help him look for a space.”

  “So you’re getting back together with Hugo,” I say.

  She shrugs. “Not necessarily. I just need to go somewhere else for a bit. Hugo understands that impulse.”

  That impulse. Somehow that phrase breaks through my numbness. It infuriates me, the way she says it, like she’s talking about something normal or healthy or unavoidable. That impulse—the impulse to abandon children, and parents, and people who love her. People who trusted her to stay.

  “Jesus Christ, Mom,” I say, almost like I didn’t know this was coming.

  She slides off the hood and stands in front of me. I look at her face, still beautiful but more changed than she would probably like to admit from the face she owned more than twenty years ago, her original exit.

  “I thought I could make everything all right,” she says. “But it’s too much to atone for. The twins will never want a relationship with me. I have to accept that. It only insults them, my pretending to be their mother.”

  “You are their mother. It’s not pretending to be something you actually are. And what about Matthew? Were you just pretending to be his mother too?”

  Mom exhales and rolls her eyes, like I’m the one being difficult. It’s what she’s always counted on—other people, especially me, behaving reasonably in the face of her desertions.

  “It’s not like I don’t feel bad,” she says. “But what am I supposed to do.”

  This last has not been intoned like a question, because if it were, I have plenty of answers. You’re supposed to love him, I could say. You’re supposed to finish what you started. You’re supposed to be a mother to this baby you brought into the world. You’re supposed to keep your promises and stay put for once in your life.

  “Tressa,” Mom says, as if what she’s about to say will stop my being angry at her. “Do you want to come with me?”

  The question explodes in my head like a firecracker. There it is. The invitation that has shaped my entire life. The way she implicates me. Apparently she hasn’t noticed the expression on my face, because she adds, “We could swing by Mom and Dad’s, and you can pack a bag or two. You can even bring Emily. I left room in the passenger seat.” I can’t help looking into the car to see if this is true.

  “Mom,” I say. “I’m just a couple months away from graduating.” My hand flutters backward, indicating Rabbitbrush High. “The second time.”

  She puts her hands into her pockets. “That’s just a formality,” she says. “The only reason they didn’t let you graduate the first time . . . Well. You know.”

  I nod again. Mom says, “I’m not asking because I’m worried, or because I think I need to watch you. And I’m not asking because I expect you to say no. This is no hollow gesture. I’d really like you to come. It feels wrong, leaving without you. You’re my traveling buddy.”

  My traveling buddy. Maybe a better word would be “accomplice.” And I don’t want to be her accomplice anymore. “I was never your buddy,” I say, willing myself to ignore the way her face falls. “I was a little kid, and you dragged me all around the world. You wouldn’t give me a home. And now you’re deserting this little baby. He didn’t ask to come into this world. You made him come into it. And now you’re just leaving him, like you left Katie and Jill.”

  Finally I’ve accomplished it—making her angry. Mom’s eyebrows go into a V formation, and she takes a few steps back from me. “Make up your mind, Tressa,” she says. “Which is the bad thing? Leaving kids behind or taking them with me?”

  She crosses her arms, and I stare at her. Nothing I say will make her stay, or even admit to the damage she’s caused. But I can make my voice hard too. “Thanks for the invite, Mom. But I think I’d like to finish school, and find out about college. I think I’d like a normal life.”

  Mom nods. She’s mad at me still, I can tell that, but I can also tell she likes the sound of that last thing I said. I’d like a normal life. It makes her feel relieved to hear me saying I’d like any kind of life at all.

  “Bye, Mom,” I say, trying to sound like I couldn’t care less, and I wish I didn’t. I turn to walk away, but when she calls my name, I can’t help it. I stop and look at her.

  “I want to tell you something,” she says. Her face
looks flushed, like she’s letting me in on a secret. “That day before the snowstorm I went for a walk by the river. And for the longest time I could have sworn Luke was with me. I could feel him right next to me. I could almost swear I heard him laugh.”

  Every inch of my body turns to airless, weightless pixels. I don’t dare say a word, and I can’t help the tears that pop into my eyes. Mom holds out her arms so I can hug her. And I can’t help myself. I step forward. “Good-bye, Mom,” I say into her shoulder. “Safe travels.”

  She moves back, away from me. She takes off the gray hat and places it on top of my head. She keeps her hands there for a moment, staring into my face. Then she looks down and takes my hands in hers. She stares at them for a moment, then closes her hands around my wrists. “Never again,” she says without looking up. “Okay, Tressa? Never again.”

  I stand there with her, feeling the pressure through my sleeves, not quite knowing whether my skin itself responds to her touch. I think of my mother’s promises, to Paul, to the baby, and I won’t make it. No more promises.

  “I’ll do my best,” I say. “Every day I will do my best.”

  “I need better than that,” she says, not looking up.

  “Don’t we all.”

  She looks at me then, a little frightened, not wanting to deal with any more of my anger.

  “Did you at least tell him?” I ask.

  “He knows,” she says, which doesn’t answer my question. She looks away from the expression on my face, then says, “I left my cell phone. I’ll let you know when I get a new number.”

  “Okay.”

  She hugs me again, then gets into her car. I stand in the parking lot and watch her drive away. I’m tired of being the one who forgives her, who makes her feel like she’s not so bad.

  Students have started arriving, and almost immediately someone takes the spot she vacated. My mother’s car glides down the snowy street, then disappears. Suddenly school does not seem like the best idea. So I dig into my backpack for my phone and press the only number on speed dial, the one he himself programmed a few days ago, before we walked back to my grandparents’.

  “Hey,” I say. “It’s me. Do you feel like skiing?”

  “Sure,” H. J. says immediately. From the tone of his voice I can tell he has already risen to his feet, he is already on his way. Within half an hour the two of us are driving to Telluride. When we make the turn his father intentionally missed, coming from the opposite direction, H. J. doesn’t look toward the wall. He doesn’t register any kind of recognition or emotion, though I know for him this longitude and latitude holds every bit as much weight as a certain curve in the Sustantivo River does for me.

  * * *

  It turns into the perfect day for playing hooky, the post-storm snow powdery and deep, the sun bright and warm on the backs of our necks. H. J. talks me into trying out the black diamond runs and stays with me around every mogul, guiding me, instructing me, impressing me with his vigilance. We don’t bother stopping for lunch; we ride the chairlift over and over again, our legs weighted down and swinging. For the first time ever I think that maybe one day, years from now, skiing is something I’ll be halfway decent at. That phrase—years from now—trails me, foreign and inviting.

  For the last run of the day we decide to take it easy. I find myself back at the top of See Forever, looking out across the San Juans, and farther south toward the Sangre de Cristos. Above it all, the sky does not hold a single cloud. Everything looks so clear and blue that I appreciate the trail’s corny name. But of course I can’t really see forever, no one can, because nothing really is forever. Not even these snowy peaks, towering everywhere around me and everywhere off in the distance. The seemingly endless range of the Rocky Mountains will not stand permanent, but one day will crumble and fall, or be subsumed by the rising ocean. Somewhere out there, at the four corners of these states or the four corners of the world, my mother journeys away—the one pattern on which I can rely, her inconstancy strangely constant.

  “All my life,” I say to H. J., picking up a conversation we must have started at some point, “I felt like I could never be sure of anything. When the truth is, that’s how everybody lives. Nothing can be certain, ever, not for a single second. You could set out on a nice vacation and end up skiing into a tree. Or pose for a picture on a high cliff and fall before the shutter even snaps.”

  “Or,” H. J. says, “you could go for a walk by the river and your dog could fall in. Your boyfriend could drown trying to save him.”

  I stare out at the layers of sky and mountain. Then I say, “Your mother could get cancer and die. Your father could get so sad that he drives into a wall and kills himself. He might even take your sister’s dog with him.”

  “Bad things happen,” H. J. says.

  “Terrible things. There’s no way to be sure about anything, ever.”

  “No way at all,” H. J. agrees. He walks sideways, stepping his skis closer and leans toward me, pressing his shoulder against mine.

  Nowhere on the planet can the sun be as bright as it is over our heads, the world continuing below us, barreling downward for nearly twelve thousand feet. At the top of See Forever the whole world stretches its wide, wide wings below us, and the future refuses to make a single promise. The only thing we have is the sunlit height of the present tense—immediate and fine and ever so fleetingly sure.

  ( 30 )

  TRESSA

  I don’t see Paul at all over the next few weeks, but Grandma goes over every day to help take care of Matthew. Grandpa stops grumbling about the drive-in movie theater. Suddenly that victory seems like the least thing he can give to Paul, after everything his daughter has taken from him.

  That night Mom left, after I got home from skiing with H. J., Grandma and Grandpa sat me down in the living room. “Do you know where she is, Tressa?” Grandpa asked. His rugged, sunburned face looked stern.

  “No,” I admitted. “But I know where she’s going.” Not wanting to aid or abet in any way, I told them everything I knew about her plans to go to California, but the information didn’t help much. And even if we knew where she was, what could Paul do? Go out to Sausalito with a net and wrestle her back here? Mom had left, again. Paul’s only hope was to wait until the wish for her return subsided.

  * * *

  Finally Paul calls. The phone’s ringing as I walk in the door, home from school, and I pick it up blindly. My grandparents have no use for such modern inventions as caller ID.

  “Tressa,” he says. I realize that I expected him to sound angry the first time I spoke with him, but he doesn’t, just sad, maybe defeated.

  “Hi, Paul,” I say. “Just a second. I’ll get Grandma.”

  “I’m calling for you, actually,” he says. I can hear Matthew crying in the background. “I hoped you could come over and help me out with something.”

  The last thing I want to do is go back to Paul’s house and be alone with him. I know his primary goal is not help with the baby but information about my mother. Still, I hear Matthew wailing. Probably Paul wants to wail right along with him. I remember those brutal, terrible first days—the ones that followed losing the person I loved best in the world.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  * * *

  The scene I find is more organized than I expected. There’s a girl taking care of Matthew. I recognize her as the new waitress from the Rabbitbrush Café, which surprises me, because I assumed Paul wanted me to babysit. But when I walk into the kitchen, the girl picks up Matthew and gets ready to leave the room. Paul takes a bottle that has been warming in a pot of hot water on the stove and hands it to her. She carries the baby away.

  “He’s taking formula now?” I say.

  Paul looks at me without answering, then opens the freezer. I see it’s stuffed with bags of frozen breast milk, what looks like tens of them, all neatly dated with black ink.

  “These were in here when she left,” he said. “I guess s
he’d been stockpiling them, maybe in the freezer in the garage. Then yesterday I got a package from FedEx, addressed to Matthew. More little packets of breast milk, packed on dry ice.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “I guess she plans to keep sending them, who knows for how long.”

  Paul must have stayed home from work today. He’s wearing jeans and a gray hoodie. He actually looks a little more relaxed than he did in the weeks leading up to Mom’s departure. As if reading my mind, he says, “It’s really almost a relief to have her gone. I thought I would go crazy that last month waiting to see what she’d do.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “It’s not your fault.” He says this quickly, and his voice sounds hard, not quite convinced.

  “I wasn’t apologizing,” I say. “I was sympathizing.”

  Paul frowns. He has not softened toward me. In fact, I see that he has hardened in general, the one point of softness he retained—his weakness for my mother—finally freezing over, the middle of the lake. Mr. Zack could park a Mack truck on what used to be Paul’s devotion to my mother, now covered by a thick layer of ice, buried too deep for any spring thaw to ever reach it again.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Paul says, “about several things.” He walks into the living room, and I follow him, noticing as I pass the hall table that all photographs of my mother are gone, though he has left a couple of me, and of Carlo. In the spot where he kept a photograph from their original wedding, he now has a picture of Luke at around eight years old, sitting on somebody’s horse and smiling at the camera. I stop for a minute and touch the frame, then go and sit down on the red velvet love seat. Paul sits on the couch across from me.

  “Do you want coffee, anything?” he asks.

  “No, thanks.”

  I place my hands in my lap and wait for him to speak. After a moment of awkward silence, Paul says, “I’m wondering if you’ve heard from any colleges yet.”