Bridge To Happiness (4 page)

He cut across the hill and flip-turned, then flew past his cousin. Rob tried the same maneuver and went down. “Ten bucks!” Mike hollered as he passed him, whipped down to the bottom and skidded to a stop right in front of March. Snow coated his lenses and he could only see part of her smile, so he raised his goggles and kissed her before she could speak, then lifted her off the ground, spinning around. “God . . . It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“Yes, it does. I need to be on that hill with you. Let’s go.” She picked up the other board and ran toward the tow ahead of him.

“March, wait!”

But all too fast she was on the board, hanging onto the rope and heading up the hill. About twenty feet up, he said, “Get off now and we’ll take a short test run first.”

“No guts, no glory!”

“Come on. Get off.”

She looked back at him, probably planning to flip him off again, but she lost her balance and slipped off the rope, swearing. So he stepped off and helped her up. “Let me tell you what to do.”

“There’s a man for you,” she said. “Always wanting to tell women what to do.” For just a moment she looked irritated.

“I don’t want to bring you home with a broken leg, Sunshine.”

“I’ve been skiing since I was three.”

“This is different than skiing. More like a skateboard. Have you ever ridden one?”

“Yes.” But the way she said it told him March and a skateboard weren’t close friends. Her stance was unyielding. “So come on, big man. Tell me what to do. Time’s a-wasting.”

“I’m waiting for you to tell me what happened on the skateboard.”

“This snow is a lot softer than concrete.”

“Break anything?”

“Nothing important.” She turned away and looked up the hill.

“I have all day.”

“Okay, okay. I only wore a cast on my wrist for six weeks. I can do this. Really. I can.” Then she relaxed long enough for him to tell her how to turn and most important: to dig in her heels to stop.

“You should be good at that,” he said.

“Funny man.” She patted him on the cheek.

“I’ll go first. You can follow, but not until after I stop at the bottom. Agreed?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes . . . come on.”

“Watch me and don’t go until I tell you. Got it?”

“Yes, master.”

Laughing, he took off down the short, flatter section of the run, stopped and turned back toward her.

“Can I go now, master? Please? Please?”

“Someday your mouth is going to get you in deep trouble.”

“It already has,” she called down to him. “Just ask my father. Although he’s not talking to me this week.” She took off.

To his complete amazement she made three perfect turns—not even a wobble—stopped a few feet from him grinning and cocky. Rob was at the top of the run, whistling loudly. Typically March, she made an exaggerated bow, her hand gesturing from her forehead like a Swami. But she bent too far, lost her balance and fell on her face in the powder.

It took a minute for her to look up at him, snow hiding her expression, her voice a little muffled, “
Now
will you let me go all the way to the top?”

The first thing out of Rob’s mouth when they came off the rope tow to the top of the run was, “Wow. She’s a natural.”

“Why do you men always talk about us as if we’re not here?”

“Sorry,” Rob said. “But hell, I skidded down the hill on my face the first time I tried this. Tell her, Mike. My nose was bleeding everywhere. Look. No blood. She went down that hill like she’d been doing this for years.”

Mike expected a smart comeback, but March wasn’t paying attention. She stood right at the edge of the run looking down. “You know if I had poles,” she said thoughtfully, “I could really shove off. Maybe get a little air.”

“You can get air. Just jump,” Rob said. “Like this.” He pulled his knees up and was off.

“No!” Mike reached for her. “Don’t.”

But it was too late. She was already in the air, board pulled up to her chest so tightly she looked like a big, dark human fist, sailing through the air, the fur-trimmed hood on her parka hanging behind her.

He stopped breathing until she landed on the steepest part of the hill. The board flew out from under her and she tumbled head over heels for a good ten feet. When he reached her, she was already sitting up, hands resting on her knees. All she said to him after she spit the snow from her mouth was, “I need poles.”

“No you don’t. It’s called balance,” he said and took off.

She cupped her hands and called out. “It’s called unfair advantage. Cheater!” She stepped back into the board and came after him full speed, yelling at him. He stopped at the bottom of the run, turned just as she sat down low on the board and came right at him.

She took him out, both of them tumbling together in the snow, her laughter muffled until they lay still, dusted in powder. She raised her head and said, “Gotcha. Master.”

“I hate surprises,” he spit snow.

“No, you don’t. What you hate is not knowing the surprise.”

“Funny.”

“I know,” she said.

“I don’t get it. Have you ever surfed?”

“No.”

“Slalom waterskied?”

“A few times. I wasn’t very good. Why?”

“How the hell did you come down that mountain so fast without falling?”

“Talent, my dear. My innate skill. The ability to learn on my feet. With my feet. Ha!” She picked up the board. “Besides, I’m a woman.” Then she began to sing a Maria
Muldaur
hit about all the things a woman could do.

She stood above him, dancing, singing, and grinning as if the world were hers. He rested his arms on his knees. “What does being a woman have to do with it?”

“Old Russian proverb. Women can do everything; men can do the rest.” She held out her hand. “Get up, pokey. Let’s do it again.”

So that was how Mike spent only an hour teaching March to board, instead of the whole weekend he’d expected. When he thought about it later, driving to his cousin’s cabin near Tahoe City to drop off their stuff, exhausted, high on the day and her, he realized he shouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing about March was expected. How nuts it was that she wanted to be special and thought she was ordinary. She was better than one of his father expensive wines, better any than hundred year old Scotch.

Sunshine. The name just came out of his mouth at the Fillmore that night, along with everything else he was thinking and feeling. Enter brain, exit mouth. He’d spilled his guts, said exactly what he thought then, all the while he expected her to turn and run. But here she was, now the brightest part of his life. His luckiest hunch.

At dinner that evening with his cousin over draft beer and thick sirloin burgers covered in onion rings, served in red plastic baskets at his favorite place, a small shack near the water packed with locals every night, they sat on metal chairs and ate on old, miss-matched dinette tables in front of a huge fire. She quizzed him about everything, how he made the boards, where his idea for them had come from.

“It all started with a sled you could stand on and slide down the hill, a
Snurfer
. But before I ever saw one, I’d spent plenty of years on a skateboard. And Brad and I surfed summers in Santa Cruz.”

“We all got
Snurfers
one year for Christmas from our grandfather,” Rob told her. “Gramps said they reminded him of when he was a kid and they used to sled down hills standing on barrel slats tied together with clothesline.” Rob nodded at Mike. “Genius here was the one who after one
Snurfing
season wanted to improve the design.”

“I got tired of face-planting.”

“You always were an over-achieving asshole.”

“Better than just being an asshole.”

“You’re jealous because Gramps liked me best.”

“No. He worried about you the most. It was that IQ test you failed.”

“Screw you, Mike.” Rob laughed, finishing off his beer.

Rob and Mike were the same age, personality and shared the same fire in the heart, both forced to survive in a conservative family run by men who demanded they be anything but what they were. In each other they found the strength to hang onto their fire when others kept trying to extinguish it.

“We had to do a project in my shop class,” Mike went on. “I figured I could combine the idea of a
Snurfer
with something like a skateboard, a surfboard and skis. That first
skiboard
was made out of wood and a piece of carpet and aluminum.”

“Man, was it fast.” Rob shook his head. “If you could stay on and if you could control it, you could book-it down a hill.”

“We started racing each other on those.” Mike pulled out his wallet to pay the bill. “I’m still trying to find the right material for the board’s bottom. The aluminum facing isn’t right. Still, these boards are so much more controllable than last year’s. But there’s got to be something better.”

March had one of those contemplative looks on her face again, and for a tough, doubtful moment he wondered if she was thinking like his dad. He worried that he’d just bored her senseless talking about board construction. Rob was right. He was a weird geek.

She tapped the tabletop. “Have you thought about this stuff? Formica? I remember seeing my dad install it in our kitchen. Don’t you laminate it onto a wood base?”

Mike exchanged a look with Rob, who was shaking his head. It was so simple.

“What?” she asked, looking back and forth between them. “You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

“Sunshine . . . it’s the perfect idea.”

By the time they were scraping the snow off the car, she was talking to him about how he needed to apply for a patent. Back at the cabin they walked inside and she turned around, walking backwards, her hands moving in time with her mouth. “I think you should try to sell your boards, Mike.”

With those few words from her, everything his father had said to him evaporated. March Randolph was the smartest girl he’d ever known and she believed in him. Until then, he hadn’t actually admitted to himself how badly he wanted to be important in her eyes.

Later that night, after they were lying in the dark, legs tangled, March in the crook of his arm, he told her how proud he was when she came down that hill. That he was surprised. Amazed. And his cousin was right. She was a natural.

She told him she loved him and was quiet for a long time, but awake, fiddling with his chest hair. He was almost asleep when she asked, “Mike? Are you awake?”

He looked over at her. Something about her tone said trouble. “Yeah. Why?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“What?”

“When I was about thirteen?” She paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t admit this.” Her voice gave her away. She was trying not to laugh.

He rolled over with her and pinned her to the bed. “Spill it.”

“My dad bought me a
Snurfer
for Christmas.”

After a heartbeat of silence, he was the one laughing. And he knew then he wanted to live the rest of his life drinking only milk.

“Sweetheart?
Can’t you and Mike just have a normal wedding? In a church?”