Bridge To Happiness (16 page)

Our mountain home was and always has been a haven for us, and I never quite got rid of my urge to run out and burn every issue I could find. I never told Mike, but the day the magazine hit the stands I bought up every copy at the neighborhood market and tossed them in the recycler. (I think now I wish I had those magazines, just to see his hand on my shoulder again.)

But the truth is I’m just not a public person and never relished being in the spotlight. The artist in me is private and would prefer to be locked away in my garret.

My friend Ellie would say I’m an idiot. “Think of the exposure. It is perfect for company publicity.” Which was just my point; in my mind exposure is not a positive word. But then Ellie was
Bariella
Crocker
Hutcheonson
, pedigreed, driven and smart, and over the years she’d made solidifying her position as one of San Francisco’s leading socialites her own artistic endeavor.

On Saturday morning I was up early in the huge kitchen of the Tahoe house and making buckwheat pancakes for my brood, who gobbled down breakfast and went off to the mountain to watch the day’s qualifying runs. Renee had stayed home with the kids, who were all still asleep. Not long after my children took off, Miranda came downstairs in a flannel nightgown and bunny slippers and asked, “Is Daddy gone?”

“He just left,
Sweetpea
.”

“Tyler’s still asleep and Mama’s sick again.”

When Renee arrived the day before she looked gray and peaked, and she was quiet at dinner and went to bed right after the kids. So I set Miranda at the table with a Mickey Mouse shaped pancake, a bowl of berries to make his face, and a bottle of syrup and I went upstairs. Scott’s family took up the suite of rooms at the north end of the house, and I knocked quietly on their door, then opened it. “Renee?”

The bed was empty, the covers thrown back. I could hear her vomiting in the bathroom. She came out, and I was sitting on the bed. The expression on her face was resigned.

“Well,” I said, “that look tells me what I wanted to know. I was going to ask you if you wanted herb tea and toast, or ginger ale and crackers. I take it you want the ginger ale and crackers.” She had that gray morning-sickness pallor any woman who’s ever been pregnant can easily spot.

“Oh, God, Mom, I don’t dare eat anything. I’m so sick this time.” She was half crying.

I wanted to know the due date, but didn’t press her. Being a grandmother had unveiled to me another whole dimension to life. A new grandbaby. I could feel a warm happiness bloom inside of me, and I had to resist the urge to dance a jig.

Happiness, what a strange feeling it was.

Right then, I would have given anything to hold a new baby. Babies were all about the future and love and life, and lately my life had been all about death. A secret part of me wanted to shout it from the mountain, but poor Renee was in no state to be joyous or for me to be shouting. “I think with the boys I was sick the morning after conception. For months I could barely brush my teeth past my bicuspids without gagging.” I stood. “I’m sorry you’re going through this. But I’m so very happy about another baby.”

“The room is spinning.” She flopped down the bed and hugged the pillow to her chest, then moaned, “Right now I hate being pregnant.”

She’d get past it. My china doll of a daughter-in-law was breathtakingly beautiful the two times she’d been pregnant. I went into the bath and came out with a cool washrag for her forehead.

“Oh . . . bless you.” She flung her arm over her eyes and lay there. “I’ll just sleep a little bit longer.” Her voice began to drift off. “Then I’ll get Tyler up.”

“No. You stay there. I’ll take the kids today. We’ll go up on the mountain. You can have the whole place to yourself. Just get some sleep.”

I stood up to leave and she said, “Mom? Don’t tell
Keely
, okay? Last week she was so upset when she started her period.”

“I won’t say anything.” Phil and
Keely
had been trying to get pregnant again.

“I know I’ll have to tell her eventually, but I don’t want to kick her while she’s down. You know?”

“I understand you don’t want to hurt her, but I don’t think she’d want you tiptoeing around her about this either.”

“They’ve been trying for so long. She’s really stressed over it.”

“Maybe Scott should tell Phil and let him break the news.”

“That might be better, I guess, but please not this weekend. This weekend is about Mike. I’ll be better tomorrow. I want to be there with the family.”

So I spent the day on the lower slopes of the mountain with my grandkids, Tyler in my arms because he was still too young to put on a board and Miranda dressed in her
Pepto
Bismol
-pink jacket and board pants, silver glitter goggles over a beanie with earflaps and white fuzzy pompoms, and riding
the Miranda
, a board I’d designed with pink and purple graphics, yellow shooting stars and her favorite white, lop-eared bunnies riding snowboards.

We ate corn dogs and fries for lunch and came back to the house mid-afternoon with the kids ready for naps and me looking forward to a half an hour in the steam room in our master, followed by a long hot bath, a glass of wine and a night in front of a roaring fire with a novel.

Instead, the evening was taken over by my kids, who probably needed to blow off steam. Renee was her old self and had cabin fever, so I went along with their plan to eat out. Mickey wanted to stay home with the kids. His ego was on the line because Miranda was beating him on one of the latest X Box games.

After steaks at the casino restaurant, we had split up, the others going off to the lounge shows or a craps table. I stood outside the high-end hotel boutique, eyeing a red Balenciaga handbag in the window before I walked away (the place was closed) and I ended up at a lucky five dollar blackjack table where there were no smokers. Behind me was the constant, distant moaning of Aztec slot machines. I preferred the loud ringing bells and the whirring and spinning noises of those old handle slots. The new digital slots talked to you: they screamed like peacocks and sang surfing songs.

When the casino lounge show started up, I could hear some cowboy singer performing a song about Texas that was popular years back, and I tapped my toes on the stool rail while I sat there wasting time I didn’t care about, winning several hundred dollars from a dealer who loved me because I kept tipping her half my winnings.

Watching her reaction and the pit boss eying the tips stack up gave me more of a thrill than beating the house odds. I really hated blackjack. Close to eleven P.M., I was sipping a gimlet and had just split a pair of aces when the dealer paused. I felt someone standing behind me, then his hands on my shoulders, which was Phillip’s normal way of getting my attention. I was long past ready to go home. I set the drink down, turned around, and came face to face with Spider Olsen.

Going to the Calgary Olympics
in 1988 had been a first for us. A lifetime of watching the games on TV had not prepared me for how the games actually worked. Television cameras and satellite transmissions made it easy to flash back and forth between venues, so at home you sat there with a bowl of popcorn in your lap and watched the world’s top athletes compete. I was spoiled, because the drama and anticipation were brought straight into my living room. But I had no idea of the actual logistics, of the massive distances between events, the transportation nightmares, the individual planning and hours wasted trying to get from one event to another.

And if I was frustrated, Mike was ten times worse. It was hell, so everyone blew off steam at night in the Olympic Village bars. Mike and I were still young enough then to party late into the night, and the business was growing fast, the sport spreading like wildfire, so we had something to celebrate. While snowboarding remained an outlaw sport to some, many were finally acknowledging and embracing it. When Mike and I were alone, and sometimes after a little too much to drink, we talked then about our dreams: that maybe someday there would be an Olympic boarding event.

At night, the crowds in the bars were wild, an international mix of revelers celebrating, drinking, and dancing—line-dancing, since the music was top country hits. You would have thought you were in Texas, not Canada.

I’m not a Spider Olsen type. Back then, he was in his late twenties, and I wasn’t. But he’d come on to me twice that night and Mike had jokingly told him to check out another run. But Spider kept drinking, and after a while the bar filled with rowdy, elated and drunk Italians. The gold medalist, Alberto
Tomba
, was gorgeous, but he was young and his ego was on par with Spider’s. It was pretty ugly in that bar that night. I’ve always felt that the reason Mike and Spider came to blows was because Spider didn’t take losing well or having his nose rubbed in it by
Tomba’s
crowd. He’d already lost to
Tomba
in the World Cup prior to the Olympics. But putting his hand down the back pocket of my jeans while Mike’s back was turned wasn’t smart. I pushed him away, but Mike saw it and decked him. That was the last time I saw Olsen in person until Mike’s memorial, which was a day I can barely remember and walked through zombie-like only because I had to.

“March,” Spider said. “I was looking for you.”

“Why?” It just slipped from my mouth.

He laughed and winked at the dealer, who was in the throes of being
starstruck
. Spider had a way of connecting with you, a look, that for me was unsettling and too intense. You weren’t quite sure if he was really interested in talking to you or coming on to you, and he was helped by Nordic good looks and his reputation: famous or infamous, depending on how you chose to look at his lifestyle.

As a woman of a certain age, I was fairly unimpressed with the type of men that dated women half their age. “I meant why would you even know I was here or be looking for me?”

“I was sent on a mission,” he said confidently and waved to someone, his hand above me and pointing at my head. I looked across the casino and decided I was going to kill my son. Phillip and
Keely
were walking toward me.

“Hey, Mom, look who we ran into.”

“We came to find you, because we’ve had a change of plans,”
Keely
said. “We’re holding tables in the lounge so all of us can go to the next show.”

My son and daughter-in-law were wide awake, smiling and obviously having a great time. My mind flashed back to Renee that morning, almost begging me not to tell them she was pregnant. I loved my children and wanted their lives to be easier than mine. They needed a night out. But I knew I couldn’t sit through a show. “You all go ahead.” I made a point of turning to Spider. “My grandchildren wore me out today.”

“Grandkids can be a handful,” he said easily. “I’ve got two myself.”

“You all go on,” I said. “I can take a cab home.”

“No cab,” Spider said. “I’ll take you.”

“That would be great,” Phil said.

“No.” I put my hand on Spider’s arm. “Really. You go to the show.” I turned and pushed my stacks of chips toward the dealer and told her I wanted to cash in.

“I was at the earlier show already. I’ll take you home. I insist. My car’s in valet. After all, your company is paying me well enough that I can be your taxi for one night.”

Great. Nice a way to remind me we had an important business relationship, one
Keely
and Phil worked hard for and needed. What had Mike given up for that contract? I felt sick to my stomach, and suddenly, I had no energy left in me to argue. I just wanted to go home.

Five minutes later I was in a large silver SUV that smelled like lemon air freshener, and we were spiraling up the mountain road and away from the Stateline casinos.

“I had an ulterior motive for wanting to drive you home tonight. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay,” I said. The fact that he wanted to talk to me gave me mixed emotions. Good business or bad business or some other business.

“I’m not certain how you’ll take it or whether you feel like discussing this.”