The Possibility of Now

by Kim Culbertson

  Miraculously, we make it to a flat spot near a lift called Big Blue Express. Logan jams his poles into the snow so they hold, and skis over to me. “You did great! How’d that feel?”

  Like certain death was zooming around every corner, I want to tell him, but instead, I say, “I’m not really sure what to do with my poles.”

  “Keep your core pointed toward the downhill and use your poles to navigate.” He demonstrates a few short turns, his poles moving in sync beside his body. I attempt to follow, concentrating on copying his form, but my skis slip out from under me and I’m suddenly on my butt. By the way, falling on snow hurts. Logan skis back to me, showing me how to position my skis and use my poles to get up. Okay, so maybe I will need my poles.

  “Let’s grab the Big Blue and I can show you up on the run. It’s a really mellow little bunny hill.” He skis into line. Following him, I inch forward as the skiers fill the lift benches. When it’s our turn, Logan helps me get in place, showing me how to look back to meet the lift chair that comes trembling around the curve. “Don’t worry, they’re slow and easy,” Logan tells me, but it still catches me off guard and he has to practically yank me back onto the seat. Smooth. I will clearly not be impressing Logan Never today with my grace and skill. The lift lurches forward and my stomach drops as my skis leave the ground. But then, suddenly, I’m floating.

  It’s called a lift for a reason.

  As the hum of the Big Blue line fades behind us and we move through the cold air, everything stills. I can’t remember the last time I sat like this without doing something, without checking my phone or taking notes or reading a book or finishing an assignment or failing to meditate. Now, though, I just float.

  I breathe out, a long sigh, and Logan says, “Feels great, right?”

  Nodding, I look out to my right where ski runs disappear down the mountain, and much farther off, another building sits on a distant peak. “What’s that?”

  Logan leans into me, just slightly. “That’s High Camp. You can take a tram up there and they have food and a skating rink and a pool.”

  Up ahead, I notice the spot where we get off the lift and my stomach pitches at the sight of a sloping mound of snow. “How do I, um, get off?” Logan explains that I need to keep the tips of my skis up and then just stand. We raise the bar and moments later I feel the snow connecting with my skis.

  “Now.” Logan stands, giving me a little tug so I slide down next to him. Forgetting my snowplow, I crash at the bottom. Logan hurries to help me up as other people exit the lift around me. “Not bad.” Really? Not bad? I’m pretty sure I can add that to the list of the worst lift exits in skiing history. He motions to his right. “Here, follow me so we’re out of the way.”

  I snowplow after him and, looking up, find myself on the edge of the world. Everywhere I look, miles of snow and pine and mountains. People zoom by, heading to other runs or stopping to take pictures in front of the blue wedge of Lake Tahoe in the distance. Without warning, I tear up.

  “You okay?” Logan skis back over to me.

  “This view,” I say by way of explanation, glad for my goggles.

  He studies me closely. “It’s cool to watch someone see it for the first time.”

  “Let’s do this,” I tell him, motioning to the hill, trying to get quickly past the mushy moment. What is wrong with me?

  Logan guides me slowly down Big Blue and I continue to fall.

  And fall.

  And fall.

  At one point, halfway down, I throw my poles to the ground in frustration and sit, breathing hard. Logan skis over. “You want a break?”

  Yes. But, a little embarrassed by the pole throwing, I tell him, “No. I’m good.” I squint up at him. “Is it wrong that the ski lift is my favorite part of this process?”

  He offers me his pole and pulls me up. “Not for long. You’re catching on quick.”

  We finish the run.

  After an hour, every part of my body starts to ache. Even with all my tennis training, I apparently have millions of unknown muscles throughout my legs and back that have banded together to collectively scream at the top of their little muscle lungs.

  On our third run, Logan waits for me partway down Big Blue. “That looked better — no falls!” He holds his poles up in victory over his head.

  I snowplow to a stop. I’m an awkward wooden puppet next to his fluid, graceful turns, but he seems genuinely happy for me. “Thanks,” I tell him, still breathless. “That felt better.” And it did.

  No, wait. It didn’t just feel better. At one point, my skis had smoothed out, I’d felt balanced and strong, and it felt … like what? Like flying. But without worrying I might fall from the sky.

  “You’re nice to take me out here. This can’t be any fun for you at all.”

  “Are you kidding? I love introducing people to the sport.” He smiles at me, and for the smallest moment, it seems like we’re the only two people on the mountain. Whatever this weird energy is, he must sense it, too, because he clears his throat and leans heavily on his poles. “I wonder what happened to Isabel?” He pulls a glove off with his teeth and fishes his phone out of his pocket. “She’s going to meet us at Gold Coast.” Before I can respond, he skis off toward the funi building.

  I follow him over to the deck at the Gold Coast building, where we leave our skis and poles in a rack. He motions for me to grab a seat at an empty table and takes off his helmet, stuffing his gloves inside it. “Be right back,” he tells me, and I wait, setting my helmet and gloves next to his. He emerges a few minutes later with hot chocolates and a bottle of water. “Drink this first,” he says, handing me the water. “You should stay hydrated on the mountain.” I study his messy hair. Clearly, most of the bed head I’ve been noticing around the Village is more a by-product of the helmets these guys wear all day long than their morning grooming habits. Or probably a combination of both.

  Whatever the reason, messy works on Logan Never, and I can’t stop my mind from listing what else works on Logan Never:

  dark eyes

  great smile

  patience

  Stop it, I tell myself. It’s not like me to crush on another girl’s boyfriend. I drink half the water to avoid staring at him. “Thanks.” Then I stare at him some more:

  freckles

  easy laugh

  Ugh. Like always, when I start making it a list, it seems to take on a life of its own.

  Logan takes a sip of his hot chocolate. “So you’re getting your ski legs. Wait until you tell Trick. I mean, he doesn’t ski much anymore, but he’ll be stoked to hear you got some runs in.”

  “Why doesn’t he ski much anymore?” His limp doesn’t seem bad enough to keep him off the mountain.

  Logan looks uncomfortable. “I mean, he tools around and stuff, I guess, but, you know, the accident jacked up his leg.”

  Mom told me he’d had a bad skiing accident when I was little, but she’d never really elaborated. “Do you know what happened to him? With his accident?”

  Logan swirls his cocoa. “Only what my parents tell me. I mean, we weren’t even three when it happened. But it ended him.”

  The cocoa tastes too sweet in my mouth and I set it down on the table. “Ended him how?”

  “He couldn’t ski anymore. At least not like before. I mean, he was amazing. I’ve seen pictures, some old videos and stuff. He was incredible.” Logan waves at someone over my head. “Oh, hey — Iz!” he calls out, and I turn as Isabel makes her way toward us. In that movement across the deck, she reminds me of Josie, with her blue jacket and long legs in tight black ski pants and with her easy, athletic grace.

  “Sorry to miss your first day,” she says, sliding in next to Logan and taking a long drink of his hot chocolate. “How’d it go?”

  “She crushed it,” Logan says, his eyes slipping from me to Isabel, who leans in to casually flick some snow from his shoulder.

  Not crushing it now. Unless you count World’s Biggest Outsider.

&n
bsp; The next morning, Trick reads a ski magazine as he spoons huge bites of Fruity O’s into his mouth. Outside, falling snow dots the gray light, but inside, the fire crackles and the smell of coffee hangs in the room. “Morning,” he says, looking up, spoon halfway to his mouth. “There’s coffee.”

  “Thanks.” I pour some into a red mug, add lots of milk, and then grab some of his cereal. Putting the milk back in the fridge, I notice Trick has gone shopping; the fridge has actual food of the nonfrozen variety — some cold cuts, a loaf of bread, a sack of carrots. Three cans of chicken noodle soup sit on the counter near the stovetop, next to some apples and a box of Wheat Thins. I guess he finally noticed the half dozen Post-it lists I’d left on the fridge. And in the bathroom. And on his work boots.

  I slip into the other folding chair at the table, smoothing out some wrinkles in the tablecloth I bought in the Village yesterday. Dark blue with tiny white snowflakes. Trick hasn’t seemed to notice it. “So I went skiing yesterday.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Trick looks up from the magazine.

  “Logan took me.” I take a bite of cereal, working up my nerve. “Actually, he mentioned that accident you had when we were little.” I try to sound casual.

  Trick fiddles with the magazine. “That was a long time ago. I’m sure your mom filled you in.”

  “Not really.”

  “No?”

  I pick at my cereal, trying to figure out how to say, I don’t really know anything about you without adding too much more to the sudden change in atmosphere. “She hasn’t really told me much. About you. About that time in her life. Just that you were a competitive racer.”

  “Freeskier,” he says. “Not a racer.”

  Like Beck. “Right, okay, but then you crashed and, well, stopped. And you two … didn’t, um, work out.”

  Trick rests his elbows on the table, folding his hands in front of his chin. “That about covers it, then.”

  I don’t tell him she has also said, more than once, that he just wasn’t into being a dad. Anytime he’d send a card for my birthday a couple of weeks late, she would say it in a sort of offhand way. The way you might say someone’s just not that into eating sushi. Or hiking. My heart hammers and I’m certain he can hear it. Maybe he hears it asking, Why didn’t you tell me all this yourself? “Do you still ski?”

  “I get up there sometimes, soak in the mountain. But it’s hard … with the knee, with this bum leg.” The quaver in his voice makes me think the knee isn’t the hardest part.

  “Would you take me up sometime?” My heart thrums and I imagine he can hear it pushing the blood through my vessels.

  He stands, clearing his bowl and turning to the small sink. “Sure, though I’m not a great teacher. Logan’s a better teacher. You’re really better off with someone else.”

  I’ve spooked him. Obviously, #11 on the Now List is going to be harder than I thought. “Right, okay. I just thought it might be fun to, you know, do something together.” I’ve had math tests that weren’t this painful. And, with my history, that’s saying something.

  He runs the bowl under the faucet for longer than he needs to, and I see the tips of his ears turn pink. He sets the dish carefully in the metal dish rack. “Sure, yeah, also we could grab dinner sometime.”

  I swirl my spoon in the colored milk left behind. “Yeah, dinner sounds nice.”

  He runs his hand nervously through his hair. “I better get to work. You need a ride into the Village?” He wipes his hands on a lemon-yellow dish towel. It’s new, too; its tag still attached. He’d definitely seen the grocery list I stuck to the fridge:

  dish towel

  soup

  milk

  something resembling a vegetable

  “I’m going to stay here. You know, mellow Sunday by the fire. Maybe I’ll read a book or something. Cross a few things off the Now List.”

  “Of course,” he says, visibly relieved to be at the end of this particular conversation. He pulls on his coat and beanie and, in leaving, lets in a swirl of snow. Sipping the rest of my coffee, I watch it melt into small pools on the mat.

  Which totally counts as meditation.

  I spend Monday at the cottage doing schoolwork: English, history, chemistry, calculus. On Home Hospital, I still have to do all the same assignments as my regular classes and there are some online lectures for me to watch. Still, this doesn’t translate into a full school day — the lunch breaks, the passing periods, the after-school commitments, the classroom lecture time (where, if I’m honest, I sometimes just space out). In a typical school day, there’s a lot of time occupied with the anatomy of those other parts. Teachers take attendance, we go to assemblies, spend time doing group projects or listening to guest speakers or researching things in the library. So, right now, it definitely takes less time to do the actual curriculum.

  At this rate, I’ll finish everything by midweek.

  So much spare time makes me feel strange and defensive, like one of those puffer fish that blow up when they’re threatened. I find myself sorting my socks and refolding my clothes, even getting a jump on assignments not due for another two weeks. I’m not good with downtime. It makes me feel unproductive and I’ve been raised to see unproductivity as a sort of disorder.

  Josie texts me as I’m settling down for some quality time with my SAT Hot Words list:

  how’s the break?

  My hackles go up.

  what break? been buried in work all day.

  A second later:

  u r supposed to be kissing a cute snowboarder.

  Me:

  no boys — u know the rules.

  Josie and I agreed freshman year that we’d watched too many of our classmates fall into the boyfriend trap. Smart, focused girls who morphed into lovesick idiots because of some boy. Getting into the right college is hard enough without the distraction of all that ridiculous Ooooh does he like me what did he mean when he said that? drama.

  She texts:

  those rules only apply in certain zip codes.

  I smile.

  yeah, the zip code of my life — i’m working!!

  Her text smiles back.

  deep thoughts … work shmurk. more kissing!

  I miss her.

  Around one, my stomach starts rumbling and I make a sandwich. Ham, slices of cheddar cheese, white bread. It’s like the food Will bought last year when we rented an RV and went camping at the beach. Come to think of it, Trick’s whole world seems this way, like he’s camping in his own life.

  After I eat, I wander around the cottage, snooping. Trick takes minimalist to a new level, so the cottage itself is pretty empty — a couple of Warren Miller movies, a Burton sweatshirt draped over the dusty TV, and a VCR that looks like it might have voted for Bill Clinton. I find most of his things tucked onto shelving in the small closet by the front door. A down parka, two pairs of jeans, a pair of hiking boots, some long underwear, three fleece pullovers, four T-shirts, four rolls of ski socks, and, embarrassingly, five pairs of folded white underwear. Making a face, I start to close the closet door but catch a glimpse of pale yellow tucked beneath the short stack of fleece pullovers. A picture book.

  Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed

  At the sight of it, tears sting my eyes. I pull it out, careful not to upset the stack of fleece, and read the inscription I’d written to him in blue ink on the title page.

  Hi, Trick. I saw this and thought of our trip to the zoo! XO, Mara

  Inside, he has also tucked two of my school pictures. My ten-year-old one with a big smile and some unfortunate bangs. And the one from freshman year of high school. Same smile. Slightly better bangs. Mom must have sent them. I quickly slip them back inside and return the book to its place on the shelf, my hands shaking.

  In the bathroom, I find a couple of ancient-looking cleaners beneath the sink because, for some reason, I’d rather scrub the toilet than sit around wondering why he never wrote me back about the book.

  That evening, Trick knocks on the doo
r of my room even though it’s only partially closed. “Come in.”

  His arms are full of ski gear. A helmet, some pants, boots, a jacket. “Um, I got you some stuff today. And I’ve set some skis aside for you at Neverland. They’re used but in great shape.” He comes in and dumps everything on the bed. One boot falls to the floor with a heavy thud. He grabs at it. “Or, you know, you can use this as a weapon.” He mimes hurling it across the room.

  I run my hand over the soft fabric of the gray jacket. “Wow, thanks.”

  He clears his throat and backs up a step toward the door. “It’s better up there with your own gear. You’ll see. Just let me know if anything doesn’t fit. Matt helped me pick stuff out. Logan’s older sister is about your size.”

  I hold up a pair of ski socks with flames running up and down their sides. There are visible chew marks on the label. “Um?”

  He grins. “Oh, right. Piper chewed on those, but I checked. No holes in the socks. Matt said you could have them.”

  “Cool, nothing like slobber socks to get a girl going on the mountain.” I start peeling off the gnarled label. “Are you sure you don’t want to take me up?” But I don’t know if he heard me because he’s ducked from the room, and soon I hear him rustling with wood for the fire. I go to the bathroom mirror and try on the silvery helmet, smiling at how silly and round it looks on my head, the smile wobbling a bit when I realize it’s the first real gift he’s ever given me.

  The next two mornings, I wake right at 8:05. #4 on the Now List has clearly become a regular thing. I can’t believe how much sleep I’m getting in Tahoe. I’m like a bear. I hurry to catch Trick so he can drive me to the Village.