Retribution (14 page)

My mother came to the window of the truck, her breath smoking in the air, and my father looked at her, raised his right hand, and said, “Scout's honor, Pam. We'll have him home, ready to go, by six.” He put his other arm around me as if to show that he had the goods in hand. My mother didn't look in Beaty's direction until Beaty spoke to her.

“Thanks for letting us have him for the afternoon,” she said.

When we pulled out of the driveway, Beaty sighed. “It's hard to be so polite all the time.”

“Let's not start with that,” my father said.

“It's Christmas,” she said. “I don't see why Pam thinks that she's the only—”

“Lay off it, Beaty,” my father said.

“Okay already,” she said. She was cheerful now, a trait that my father loved in people. He loved happy people. “All right, Malcolm, look at me and smile.”

“Come on,” I said. She was a dental hygienist and part of her act with me was to examine my teeth.

“Smile,” she said. “Crack a big old sunrise in my direction.” I finally did this and she said, “Stellar, kiddo. Both you and your father have nice teeth.” She touched my face and I pulled away from her a little.

“So what do you think of the new ski suit that your father bought me?” She stretched herself out in the crowded cab and smiled to show that she was an eager model. “Well,” she said, “what do you think?”

“I like it,” I said, lying. It was a bright yellow bodysuit that zipped up the front and had probably cost my father more than a few bucks.

“It's good to be with you, Malcolm,” she said. “You know that I enjoy your company, don't you?”

“Sure,” I said.

She pulled me into a hug that I didn't quite warm or soften to. “Too old for all this lovey stuff, aren't you?” I smiled at her without saying anything.

We stopped for gas at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon and my father got out and talked to the old man who ran the place while Beaty and I waited in the truck. The old man's parka was hunter's orange and so stuffed with down that his wrinkled body seemed to recede into its fluorescent depths. He smoked a cigarette, which didn't seem like a smart thing to do around gas pumps, and he was almost shouting at my father. I could just make out his words from inside the cab. “It's pretty damn tricky up there today.” My father just laughed, as if that were some sort of joke.

I looked at my watch; we had just over five hours, and I wasn't sure how we would get up and down in that amount of time with the snow still falling and the canyon roads covered. “Stop that,” Beaty said. “We have plenty of time. You're going to ruin our fun if you worry all day.”

I said, “I'm not worried.” The heater was blasting warm air, but the cab was chilly and the windows were covered in a wet skin of moisture, through which we could still see my father walking with the old man across the parking lot and gesturing up at the mountain. He stood a full head taller than the old man and had broad shoulders and an easy gait.

“I know your mother hates him,” Beaty said. “But I just hope you understand what a beautiful and generous man your father is. I hope you appreciate him.”

“I know that,” I said.

“He's kind of a loner,” she said. “He does things his own way. I like that about him.” Even though he had walked into the station and out of our view, Beaty still stared in his direction, and so did I.

“He hurts people,” I said, wishing right away that I hadn't said that.

“You're not in a very good mood today,” she said. She started tapping her painted nails against the dash. “Is that what your mother tells you about him?”

“No,” I said. “Nobody needs to tell me that.” But my mother had said this more than once, and, as far as I could see, it was true. He had hurt a lot of women after my mother, women who, in my opinion, were better than Beaty. His relationships lasted for maybe six months. Beaty had been with him for eight, so I figured she was about to get hers.

She tilted the rearview mirror in her direction, wiped the condensation away with her hand, and began to apply lipstick, stretching her lips into an
O
shape, then clamping them down. When she spoke to me now, her teeth seemed larger, more vividly white and distinct behind her bright red lips. “I've got a bulletin for you, kiddo. Ready for this one?” I looked away toward the whirling orange hood light of a snowplow dragging its noisy blade up the canyon road. “Malcolm,” she said in a commanding tone that meant I had to look at her again. My father had just exited the station and was walking toward the truck, waving in our direction. I looked back at Beaty. “Thank you,” she said. “Your father and I are talking about settling down. You know—tying the knot. I just thought you should know that. I thought you should have some time to think about it. Maybe you could start liking me. What do you think?”

I looked down at my watch again. “Hey,” she said, “stop that.”

My father opened the door and sat down, a flurry of snow falling on his side of the seat. His hair and beard were white and crystallized from the cold and he flashed us a smile. “How the troops doing?”

“Malcolm keeps looking at his watch. He's going to be a worrywart,” she said.

“No I'm not,” I said.

“We have all the time in the world,” he said. “When I was your age, I wasn't half so excited about getting to church on time.”

I felt my stomach tighten and knew that I should defend myself and my mother then. I also knew that if I chose not to, I would probably lose the right to do it later that day. But the words didn't come, so I covered my watch with the sleeve of my parka and said nothing.

*   *   *

At the ski resort, we parked in an empty, snow-covered lot and got out and sat on the tailgate to put our boots on. We were in a fog. The visibility was about twenty feet and I could barely make out the red glow of somebody else's tailgate on the other side of the lot. “We drove into a cloud or something,” Beaty said. “How are we supposed to ski when we can't see?” The snowfall was still thick and cottony, but the wind had died and it was quiet. I could hear car doors slam now and somebody's voice say, “This is so weird,” and the hum of ski lifts somewhere above us.

But twenty minutes later, after we had taken three lifts up to the top of the mountain, we rose out of the haze a little and could see the hard gray sky and the narrow icy chain of the Wasatch Range breaking out of the crud lower down. The slopes were windblown and trackless with deep snow and the whiteness of the mountain hurt to look at. The red color of my father's parka gave me focus and balance, and I tried to keep it in sight as we skied. But he was a powerful skier and stayed ahead of us, rarely glancing back. Beaty was the more elegant skier, her shoulders always to the hill as she glided through turns and left a single track in her wake. I skied aggressively, even if that meant sloppy form, determined to stay a good stretch in front of Beaty's pretty, self-conscious skiing and as close to my father as I could. For a time, I trailed him, coming near enough to hear the swish and click of his poles and skies, but eventually I needed to rest and he didn't. He kept pumping down the mountain, sailing around a farther and farther bend, until I saw only the red of his parka in the haze, then not even that much. By the time Beaty and I met him at the bottom of the lift, he had rolled and smoked through half a cigarette. “It doesn't get any better than this,” he said.

“How about skiing with us next run?” Beaty said. “We're here, too.”

He stood up straight and gave her a military salute, and I laughed at this joke, but Beaty didn't. She was forceful and not at all afraid of him, and I could tell he liked her for that.

We took three more runs in fair-enough weather and in snow that my father kept insisting was as near perfect as snow ever got. The crowds were thin that day—the storm down in the valley had kept them away—and the mountain felt deserted, quiet, and a little lonely to me. I let Beaty and my father ride on the lifts together and sat in the chair behind them, listening to their talk and laughter. They laughed a lot, and I looked at my watch and thought of my mother setting the table—the green tablecloth and red candles and the centerpiece of pinecones—while some of the relatives from Kalispell and Helena arrived a few hours early.

But I tried to keep my mind off that and stay focused on the skiing, which got a lot more difficult later that afternoon when the snow fell in flurries so white and thick and spidery that we could barely see the tips of our skis. None of this bothered my father. “We like this,” he said happily as we stood on the cat track at the top of the lift and looked over the edge into the white blur of the slope below.

“We do?” Beaty said. She was wrapping herself up in a thick wool scarf.

“I do,” I said.

“Would you slow down this time, Bill? I'd feel better if you kept an eye out for us.”

He had taken the last three runs with his usual speed and power and didn't seem about to slow down now. “Sure,” he said.

“I'm fine,” I said. “You don't need to keep an eye out for me.”

“You two just want to be heroes,” Beaty said. “I'm cold and I want somebody to ski with me. I don't want heroes.”

“You got me,” my father said.

For a while, he skied off to the side, from where he tried to coach me out of my wide, sloppy turns. “You're too sideways, kid,” he shouted. “Point your skis downhill and go.”

“I can't see the ground in this crud,” I said.

“It's still there,” he said. “Now point yourself downhill and ski.”

But I wasn't skiing so hot. I had begun to feel the cold in my fingers and toes. My legs were sore and rubbery. He kept telling me I was skiing shy and to put some speed, some guts, into it, and I tried, but tumbled forward and lost my ski. Beaty came to a stop above me and laughed. “He's trying too hard,” she said. “Why don't you just let him ski his way, Bill?”

We were down lower on the mountain now and the wind had calmed. The snowfall was weightless, soft as ash. My father was waiting below Beaty and me, half in the haze, so that we could just see his red outline. “Like this, kid!” he shouted. I watched him as he pointed his skis downhill and lunged into the burned-out air and was gone.

It was just Beaty and me then. She lay down in the snow above me while I dug for my ski, frustrated and hating my father for doing the same as he always did, for saying one thing and doing another. But it wasn't the first time I had hated him, and it never lasted long.

“He's predictable, isn't he?” Beaty said.

“You don't have to wait for me,” I said with a little too much meanness. “You can go if you want.”

She laughed at me then. “You're angry,” she said. “You're angry at him.” I had found my ski and was now struggling to get my boot into the binding.

“Has your father always been like this?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Never mind. I don't want to be inappropriate.” My ski snapped into place. “You know, a player. Has he always been a player?”

“What's a player?”

“You like to act dumb, don't you?” I didn't say anything. But it was true. I knew, or thought I knew, what she meant and didn't want to let on because her ideas seemed dangerous for reasons that I didn't understand so well. “A player is someone who tricks you into wanting them more than they deserve to be wanted. That's what your father's done to us.”

I was beginning to wish she wasn't saying these things. “He hasn't tricked me,” I said. “And I'm not the one who wants him so much.”

“Boys want their fathers,” she said, “especially when their fathers ski down the mountain without looking back. That's his trick.”

I showed her that my ski was on. “We can go now.”

“First,” she said, “I've got a little confession to make.” Above us, a skier in a bright blue bodysuit appeared out of the haze, lunged through the deep snow to our right, leaving a wake of powder and screaming crazily just before he disappeared into the cottony air again. “Hotdogger,” Beaty said. Then she looked at me and smiled. “Maybe your father only hurts some people.”

“What's your confession?” I asked.

Beaty laughed. “Well,” she said, “I was doing a little dreaming earlier today when I told you about your father and me tying the knot. We're not going to marry, Malcolm.”

“That's not dreaming,” I said. “That's lying.”

“Okay,” she said. She looked away then and I heard something like shame in her voice, which caught me off guard because I had seen a lot of things in adults—anger and hate and envy and even disgust—but I had not seen shame. I had not seen an adult look away from me the way Beaty had just done. “I lied. I wanted to try it out. But now I'm telling the truth. I thought I'd better tell you before you mentioned it to him. You won't mention it to him, will you?”

“I don't like to be lied to,” I said. She didn't say anything, and we sat there for some time with the snow coming down and the white silence of the mountain all around us. I knew then that Beaty must be losing him, and I felt relieved. But I also felt—and this surprised me—bad for her. I felt bad that she had lied, that she had wanted him enough to shame herself in front of me. I had seen other women want my father, too. And I knew that once my mother had wanted him, needed him, and could not have him, which was why she waited for me at home right now, angry and alone. Finally I knew what Beaty did not know or maybe just did not want to know. He did hurt people.

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, I won't mention it to him.” Then I said, “Why are you always asking me about him?” I wasn't angry. I just wanted to know.

“I thought you might help me know him a little better. That's all.”