The Possibility of Now

by Kim Culbertson

  “About living in the now?” He leans back and the lamplight flashes across his glasses, turning them opaque.

  “Yes.”

  “What type of notes?”

  “Some research.” I flip open the cover. “Okay, so I like to make lists and this is a list of things I can do while I’m in Tahoe to learn how to live in the now and not be so stressed out all the time.”

  “List making can be very helpful.” He leans in, his eyes warm. Is he laughing at me? No, maybe just the light again catching his glasses. Therapists aren’t allowed to laugh at you, right? At least not to your face. “So you think living in Tahoe can help you feel less stressed?”

  “Well, sure. I mean, it’s Tahoe.” I glance at Mom, who nods in agreement. If Mom’s version of Tahoe is even close to accurate, everyone here hangs out and skis and goes to parties and relaxes all day by the light of a roaring fire pit while contributing approximately nothing to the greater good of society. Now that I think of it, Mom’s version looks a lot like a beer commercial.

  Dr. Elliot cuts into my thoughts. “What does Tahoe mean to you?”

  I shrug. “People here are just more relaxed, right? I’m hoping it’s contagious.” Frowning, I realize I might have just insulted him. I mean, he’s working all day up here in this nice office. Not hanging out with a Heineken at one in the afternoon next to a chairlift. A spidery crack appears in Mom’s version of this place. Which I decide to ignore.

  But he doesn’t look offended. “Would you share an item from your list?”

  “Sure.” I scan the list. “Some of these I stole from Google searches, but a few of them I came up with on my own. And my stepdad, Will, and my friend Josie helped me.” I flush at #7, where Josie wrote, Kiss a cute snowboarder!! Won’t be sharing that one. #2 is Internet cleanse. I’m staying off the Internet and all social media while I’m here unless I need to research something for school. That one is from Dr. Clipboard in San Diego, but it seems boring, so I start at the beginning. “Okay, number one: Learn to ski.”

  Mom sits up suddenly. “Wait, no — that’s not part of the deal.”

  Dr. Elliot and I both stare at her sudden stricken look. “Mom, I’m in Tahoe. The first thing that came up when I Googled ‘things to do in Tahoe’ was skiing or snowboarding. Of course I should learn to ski. What else do people even do here?”

  This makes Dr. Elliot laugh out loud. Apparently, therapists do laugh at their clients. “Well, amazingly, there are people in Tahoe who don’t ski or snowboard,” he insists, but motions to my binder. “Okay, what else?”

  I scan the list. “Um, number four: Sleep until eight on a school day.” I look up at him. “I never get to do that. Unless I’m sick.” Uncapping my pen, I add when I’m not sick to #4.

  “Sounds good.” Dr. Elliot picks up his tea and takes a sip.

  Mom fiddles with her purse strap again. “I think, though, it’s important she keep a schedule while she’s here. Ranfield has enrolled her in their Home Hospital program, which lets her keep her scholarship, but she can’t slack off. She still has to do the work.” She looks seriously at me. “You aren’t here to ski all day.”

  “I need PE credits,” I argue feebly.

  Dr. Elliot chimes in before Mom can respond. “I think she can finish her schoolwork and manage to take a ski lesson and sleep in until eight.” He steeples his fingers in front of his face. “I’m curious, though, because you haven’t brought up your father. You’ll be staying with him while you’re here, right?”

  “With Trick, yes. My biological father.” My face flames. Why did I just say that as if Dr. Elliot needed a science lesson? He’s a doctor.

  “Where does he fit on that list?”

  He’s not on the list.

  “I don’t really know him at all.” The words hang heavy in the air.

  He glances at Mom. “And why is that?”

  We both freeze.

  Even with all the lists I’d written and research articles I’d printed out and organized in my binder about skiing and resting and Zen teachings and essential oils that help with relaxation, in each of my pages in the binder of ideas for living in the now, how did I not consider the fact that I don’t know anything about Trick McHale? Nothing. Except that he thinks naked mole rats are hilarious and he can smuggle a beer in his sock. Not the strongest basis for a roommate arrangement.

  “I, um, don’t know,” I finally say, my throat tight.

  Mom adds quietly, “He’s never really been a part of her life.”

  The fountain burbles, suddenly intrusive, and Dr. Elliot seems to use it as his cue to stand. “Well, Mara, we’ll have plenty of time to get into all of that when you come back.”

  We thank him and hurry from the room.

  Outside, Truckee has faded into night. A chilly blast of air hits us as we push open the door to the street. It feels cold and remote but in a peaceful, yielding way. No billboards, no honking traffic, no newsfeed on the horrible state of the world. As Mom and I move carefully down the icy street toward the car, I hold my binder close to my chest, noticing my heartbeat steady, going quiet like the sky just beginning to blink with stars.

  We slip into the car, and Mom gets the heater going. “I think that went well,” she says, pulling out of the parking spot. As we drive down the street, the snow warm with lamplight, I flip open my binder and add #11 to the Now List: Get to know Trick McHale.

  Annoyed, Mom checks the door of Ethan’s Grill again for Trick. I think she mutters, “Typical,” under her breath, but when I ask her what she said, she says brightly, “Nothing!” She spins her watch around her wrist. I sip my Diet Coke and watch the hostess seat a couple of snowboarders my age near the window. #7: Kiss a cute snowboarder!! I look quickly away, scanning the menu again. Mom will want me to have something with veggies as my green intake has been slim today.

  “I’m sorry I can’t stay longer to help you settle in.” Mom pretends to read the menu for the tenth time, her eyes straying again to the door. “Will really can’t afford to take any time off from work right now, and the twins need me there.”

  “I know.” The mention of Liam and Seth sends a ripple of homesickness through me even though they can be super annoying sometimes (most of the time). People think it’s adorable that I have nine-year-old twin brothers. And it’s true. They are adorable. When they aren’t leaving their disgusting socks on the kitchen counter or making gross noises with their armpits or creating a mine field with their LEGO pieces in the hallway that makes every venture to the bathroom a firewalk. But they were sad about me leaving. They drew me a picture of a girl wearing a snow hat (me) with a big goofy smile. Of course, this smiling me is also being attacked by mutant robots. Cute. Mom and Will told them I was going away to a special camp, which was probably a mistake. Now they both also want to go to snow camp when they get to high school. Mom told them this particular snow camp was only for girls. Girls named Mara. I’m not sure they’re buying it.

  Mom takes a drink of her white wine, watching me over the glass. Sighing, she sets it down. “Mara, the important thing is you use this time to settle down and get your work done. You’ll see. It’s slow here. You’ll be bored in a week.” As she takes another sip of her wine, I sense a but coming. “But,” she continues (there it is), “I want you to be careful, stay aware. This place has a way of just creeping in.”

  Like Tahoe is a horror movie.

  Before I can respond, a photo text comes through from my stepdad: a group of seashells and smooth rocks spelling out BRAVE. Ever since I can remember, Will and I have collected seashells and cool-looking rocks and we leave our collection on a shelf in the living room. For the last couple of years, he arranges them each week into a word or phrase like DREAM or AIM HIGH. His Shells of Wisdom, he calls them. Once, he spelled out PERSPIRE, and I laughed for days. My stepdad works ridiculously long hours as a medical malpractice attorney, but he’s never failed to change the shells each week.

  He texts again: Btw: What’s a six-le
tter word for “ability to make good judgments, quick decisions, in a specific area”? Ends in “N.”

  Will and his crossword. Grinning, I text back: acumen.

  Will: Thx. That SAT prep class just paid for itself!

  I text back: yeah, and who knew SAT words could be so ironic?

  He resends the BRAVE shell picture.

  My chest tightens.

  Maybe Tahoe is a mistake.

  “Mom?” I start, but I’m stopped by the arrival of Trick pushing through the heavy wood door of the restaurant. He smiles at the hostess, who clearly knows him. She gives him a kiss on the cheek and laughs at something he says. Is my father funny? When he spots us, his smile falters, and motioning toward us, he crosses the room with the barest trace of a limp. He limps? I don’t remember a limp from the zoo trip.

  He slides into the seat across from me and next to Mom. “Hey,” he exhales, fumbling with the menu. “Can I get a Sierra Nevada, Maggie?” he says to the hostess, who nods and heads off toward the bar. He looks at Mom’s almost empty glass of Chardonnay. “You want another one?”

  Her eyebrows lift slightly. “No, thanks. I’m driving.”

  “And what about you?” He motions to my almost empty Diet Coke, grinning. “Shall we get you another round? A hearty IPA maybe?” Mom narrows her eyes and his smile wavers, a shadow of annoyance passing over his rough features. “Oh, relax, Lauren. I’m not going to actually get our kid a beer.”

  Our kid.

  “I should hope not,” she says, her voice clipped.

  Awkward Olympics. Round two.

  When Maggie returns with Trick’s beer, we order our pizzas. Then, Mom asks Trick generic questions that he answers like he’s at a job interview. Yes, he still likes working in the shop at Neverland. No, he’s not too worried about how terrible the snow’s been on and off the last few years; that’s just life in a ski town — bad years and good years. He seems surprised when she tells him she loves being a real estate agent.

  “You love it?” he echoes, his voice laced with doubt. He tries to hide it by taking a gulp of beer.

  “I do,” she responds coolly, sipping the last of her wine. “I don’t really expect you to understand.”

  He glances at me, clears his throat. “So I don’t know if she mentioned it, but your mom used to shred this mountain.”

  “You skied?” I’m shocked. Mom has never once mentioned skiing, and we almost never travel anywhere that doesn’t have palm trees, sand, and an endless stretch of blue water.

  “We should probably talk about Mara’s schedule.” She sidesteps my question and flips open her clock-faced notebook.

  I take a bite of the pizza Mom ordered, some pine-nut-spinach-goat-cheese concoction that seems more like a salad than a pizza, and Mom walks Trick through my schedule. Trick chews his own sausage-and-mushroom pizza as he listens. He needs to drive me to my therapy sessions with Dr. Elliot. He needs to know that I’m staying off all social media (Now List #2: done). And he should make sure I’m completing my Home Hospital assignments and submitting them properly to Ms. Raff, my supervising teacher, through Ranfield Academy’s online portal.

  “Sounds like military school. Sir, yes, sir!” He fake salutes me. I giggle but only until I catch the dark look on Mom’s face.

  She pauses over a page of my schedule. “Ranfield is a very prestigious private school. Mara won an academic scholarship that she has maintained since sixth grade that covers a huge part of her tuition.”

  “Sweet.” He nods at me. “Good job.”

  Blushing, I say, “Thanks.”

  “So tuition, huh? What’s that running you?” He signals Maggie for another beer as he downs the last of his.

  “We only pay fourteen thousand a year,” I tell him proudly, then shrink beneath Mom’s glower.

  Trick spits beer onto the table. “Fourteen grand a year?” He chokes, wiping his mouth and then mopping up the table with a napkin. “Are you serious?”

  Mom says evenly, “I would prefer to not discuss finances with you.”

  “Okay,” Trick mumbles into his pizza before adding, “but that’s practically what I live on each year.” The air crackles between them and we eat in silence for a minute. Finally, Trick wipes his hand on a paper napkin and plucks the schedule from the pile of paper. “So, okay, this is all online? She just logs in and submits all her work?”

  Mom looks relieved. “Yes, they have a portal, see.” She shows him on her phone. “Her subject teachers assign all the work she would normally be doing in their classes and she sends it all in to Alice Raff, who coordinates it.”

  Trick looks impressed. “Man, where was all this when I was in school?” He takes a long swallow of beer. “You’re a lucky kid.”

  Mom blinks at him. “Mara would rather be at school, Trick. She’d rather not be dealing with this whole thing at all. They’ve given her this quarter to recover from what happened to her, but then she has to come home or she loses her scholarship. It’s serious.”

  He flashes me an apologetic look. “Right, sure — sorry.”

  I pluck a stray bit of cheese from my plate, chewing it as Mom signals Maggie for the check. Mom’s right. It’s serious.

  Always so serious.

  After dinner, we follow Trick’s beat-up truck back through the shadowy valley, turning left on a road that winds up a hill. I take a minute to text Josie: getting settled — check out the snow! and send her a picture I took earlier in Truckee, the frosted pines, the purpling sky. She doesn’t text me back. They have a chem quiz already tomorrow, so she’s probably studying. Which is what I should be doing since I have to take it online. My stomach starts to knot.

  I stare out the window at the dark houses. Every so often, we pass the lit windows of houses with chimneys releasing a curl of smoke, but most of the houses we pass sit in shadow. “Why do so many of these houses seem empty?”

  “Many are second homes,” Mom explains, turning into a long driveway, Trick’s taillights glowing up ahead. His truck crawls past an enormous glass-and-wood alpine house and around the back of it until we reach a tiny bungalow tucked against a dense grove of trees. A single porch light glows next to its front door. During our drive up this morning, Mom told me that Trick works as a caretaker for a vacation home, helps maintain the house in exchange for living rent-free in their backyard cottage. The squat rectangular box in front of me isn’t what I’d imagined when she said cottage. This looks more like a storage container.

  Trick unlocks the door and waits for us to follow him inside. He snaps on a light, revealing a narrow space much like the inside of a motor home. To the left, a kitchenette runs the length of the wall — a counter with a hot plate, a sink, and a mini-fridge. The rest of the room seems divided into an eating area — a small black card table and two folding chairs with ratty seat cushions — and a living room, a threadbare overstuffed chair that might be trying to be a love seat and an old TV perched on a board resting on cinder blocks. When Mom told me about Trick’s cottage, I’d imagined a cozy storybook type of place — a roaring fire, a warm kitchen. Not furniture that looks like someone left it by the side of the road. My brain immediately starts listing improvements:

  new couch

  new kitchen table with real chairs

  some curtains on the bare windows

  “So, have you, uh, lived here a while?” I lick my lips, hoping that he actually moved in yesterday and is planning to replace the décor because the last resident was a nearsighted frat boy.

  “Eight years,” he says, looking around. “The Stones — that’s the family I caretake for — are only here, like, three or four times a year. It’s free and it’s warm. Can’t beat that.” He nods affectionately at the woodstove nestled in the corner behind the card table, the source of the soft warmth in the room. “And here” — he motions to a door — “the bedroom. I thought you could have it.”

  I peek through the open door. The room holds a full-size bed heaped with blankets, and another woodsto
ve gives off an orange glow in the corner. There’s no room for much else. I glance at Trick. “Where will you sleep?”

  “The couch pulls out into a twin bed.” It’s generous of him to call it a couch.

  Mom’s face constricts. “I thought you said you had room for her.”

  Trick frowns. “I do.”

  “So you’re just going to sleep there” — she motions to the chair-couch, her voice pinched and tight — “for the next two months?”

  He shrugs, scratching his head through his beanie. “When have I ever minded sleeping on a couch?” He winks at me, partly settling the tremor of nerves bubbling in my stomach. “Feel free to decorate.”

  Later, I sit cross-legged on the bed, watching Mom brush her hair in the cracked and spotted mirror that hangs over the empty bookcase where Trick told me I could stack my clothes. Probably to give us a little privacy in the minuscule bathroom, Trick went out to fetch some more wood. I hear him rustling around outside. Mom catches my eye in the mirror. “You still liking your plan?”

  I tug the sleeves of my pajamas over my hands. “If you were selling this place, you could call it cozy ski-bum chic in the ad.” I nod at the posters of skiers all over the walls. LEGENDS OF SQUAW VALLEY, they say. JONNY MOSELEY. TAMARA MCKINNEY. MARCO SULLIVAN. The names don’t mean much to me.

  She glances around. “Warm and cozy ski-bum chic,” she agrees. She sets the brush down on top of the bookshelf and pulls back the covers of the bed. “Scooch over.” I make room for her as I crawl under the blankets. She wrinkles her nose, mumbling, “Ugh, does he ever wash these sheets?” and leans to click off the switch for the overhead light. I can still make out her face in the pale glow of the woodstove.

  The room smells musty but also warm and woodsy. I like it. “Don’t worry about me, okay? Number six on my Now List is to simplify and downsize. I’d say I can cross number six off my list just by living here.” We both giggle into the dark.

  She huddles close to me in bed, both of us willing the cold sheets to soak in the heat of our bodies. After a moment, she whispers, “Honey, I know you keep saying not to worry, but I can’t help it. After everything that happened … why would you choose to come here?”