Meet Me at the River (10 page)

Sometimes when you read articles about famous actors, it will say their parents were in the military, or academia, or some other profession that made them move a million times, and that’s what shaped them. They had to learn to be a class clown or a charmer or a chameleon, so that they could fit in quickly in different places. But that’s not what happened with me. I was shy, no good at acting, more comfortable in solitary pursuits. As a kid I always felt the need to observe the customs awhile before understanding them, and by the time I figured out that it wasn’t cool to wear your backpack over both shoulders—poof! We’d move again, and at the new school nobody but me would be carrying their bags lopsided, plus the black nail polish that had been de rigueur for my old classmates made all the new ones think I was a creepy Goth. So I stopped trying. My mom never connected to my sadness over my perpetual loner status. “What do you care what those kids think?” she would say with a wave of her hand. I wonder if she liked the way it heightened the sense of her and me being the only ones who mattered, and she never had to worry too much about yanking me away from a school where I didn’t have friends anyway. It didn’t matter—except when she grabbed me away from Luke.

Luke didn’t care how I wore my backpack or what color my nails were. From the very first second I ever
saw him, he just . . . liked me. That sounds so simple, but I don’t know how else to say it. With Luke, even as a tiny child, I felt an instant recognition. Oh,
there
you are, as if we’d been together before and I’d only been biding my time till we could be together again.

The summers my mother brought me back, or times I spent with my grandparents—Luke had all the friends I had ever wanted, but he had no problem leaving them behind for me. He would try to give me all the information I’d missed out on. He taught me how to ride a bike in the parking lot of Paul’s real estate office. We swam in the freezing community pool, and in the trout-stocked, man-made lake past the Mackenzies’ sheep farm, those fluffy white herds dotting the hills. Once as we hiked up the Franz Lubbock trail, a rattlesnake stopped us in our tracks. We reached out and grabbed hands, quietly backed up a few steps, and then turned and ran—screaming—down the path toward home. We would climb on top of Sturm and Drang and just sit there, hanging on to the horses’ manes and enjoying the improved view while they munched the grass with no intention of taking us for a ride. Luke and I knew every inch of my grandparents’ property, every square foot of this town, and we knew it together.

And then after the summer Luke and I were twelve, my mother didn’t want to come back to Rabbitbrush for a long while. I had a weird, uneasy feeling that it had to do with the way Luke’s and my feelings had
shifted—how we’d become aware of each other in a slightly different way but not knowing how to admit it. Until that summer our relationship had been defined—made special—by our inability to categorize it. We weren’t just best friends, because we were family, but at the same time we weren’t family—not siblings or even cousins. It felt to me like, when we got to see each other, we formed our own little bubble of family, away from all the others. The four years between twelve and sixteen, years that Luke and I didn’t see each other once, felt like both a waiting and a changing. Time apart in our separate cocoons.

When Mom and I came back to stay for good, Luke had changed, and I had changed. But I never felt the barest moment of awkwardness. We just looked at each other a long moment, and then we were off and running again. Everything felt more elemental that year. It’s true that I showed up at school stupidly hoping I might fit in. But when I didn’t, I had the best consolation, something I’d never had anywhere else. I had Luke.

The first time it snowed, he taught me how to cross-country ski. With snow falling all around us, we trudged through the forest, our breath coming out in happy, visible gusts. And then, when I attempted to go down a small hill too fast, and ended up crumpled at the bottom of it, Luke whizzed down behind me, intentionally falling on top of me, the two of us laughing and then—all of a sudden—kissing. We lay there in the
snow, the back of my head damp and freezing, layers of clothes preventing any kind of real contact. We just kissed and kissed and kissed until our bodies, unlike our lips, were too frozen to continue.

*   *   *

Now it’s after midnight. I tiptoe down the stairs, past Mom and Paul’s tightly closed bedroom door, past the old playroom, through the kitchen, and into the garage. I take my mom’s wax-less cross-country skis instead of my own; I don’t know the proper color wax to use. I haul the gear back through the house and out the front door—the electric garage door would make too much noise.

Outside, I snap my boots into skis and pull my hat down over my ears. The night exists in dozens of still layers, most prominently three: the glaring blanket of snow, the twinkling ceiling of stars, and the glassy blackness in between. I move forward, my skis breaking through the perfect, untouched crust of snow. At first my body protests this activity after a day of downhill skiing. But then it succumbs to the hypnotic rhythm, the swoosh, swoosh of my skis drowning out whatever rustling wildlife watches my progression. I don’t feel cold at all. The pump of my blood keeps me warm, and although I am already sore from Telluride, I don’t mind this different movement, as if by stretching my muscles in another direction, I will reverse whatever strain occurred during the day.

I take the back way, through my grandparents’ woods.
I don’t care about safety, just that it’s faster and doesn’t involve going past the Burdicks’ house.

Now I can hear the river. I almost want to say,
Finally I can hear the river
, but that doesn’t reflect my feelings, not exactly. Since this afternoon in the ski lodge, I’ve been overcome with happiness. In this context—rushing toward Luke—happiness is entirely allowed.

The river sounds different, a more tentative rushing than last spring. The water has obstacles now—icy layers, fallen branches, its own frigid temperature. Still its sound is louder than anything else the night provides. I glide through the trees, into the opening glen, and I know I won’t have to wait. I can’t hear them, not the barest sound, but immediately there they are. Because it’s not just Luke. It’s Luke and Carlo, a hundred yards away from me, walking up the riverbank.

Carlo sees me first. He stops for a moment, his black fur gleaming in the wintery night. His ears perk up. And then he breaks into a run—the sort of young, unhindered run I haven’t seen from him in ages. He porpoises through the snow with the most gorgeous agility, and finally leaps through the air to place his paws on my shoulders and tackle me backward into a snowbank.

And I can feel him. I can feel him! I can feel his rough dog paws and their too-long nails on my neck. I can feel his tongue on my face and earlobe. As quickly as I can, I wrap my arms around his neck, and pet his chest. I can feel his fur and his corporeal thickness, his bones.
I plunge my fingers into the glorious, familiar softness.

In a minute Luke stands over us. He puts his hands into his pockets and stares down, smiling. He’s not dressed right for the weather, in jeans and a flannel shirt over long underwear, but of course he doesn’t look the slightest bit cold. His eyes are the kindest, widest, darkest color imaginable, and his cheekbones slope sharply. His lips always look like he just got done eating a pint of blackberries. Around his neck is a tiny silver peace sign with pearl inlay. He’s worn it on a leather string for almost as long as I can remember.

“Luke,” I say from underneath the quivering, overjoyed dog. I reach my left hand up to him. “Touch my wrist,” I say. “Touch the scars.”

His smile fades into solemnity and he sinks to his knees. I can’t feel the hand that he lays on my forehead. I can’t feel when he moves that hand beneath my elbow and raises my arm toward him. I can’t feel his fingers, peeling back the sleeve of my coat and sweater.

But his lips. When he presses his lips to the inside of my wrist and kisses the terrible scars—I can feel them. I feel their warmth, and their softness. I can see Luke’s eyes widen in happiness and relief, but he doesn’t draw his mouth away to speak. He just keeps pressing his lips to my wrist and kissing, kissing; just like that time, it seems a thousand years ago, when we kissed in the snow. And for the first time in six months and nine days, I am truly, completely, and happily alive.

*   *   *

We walk along the river. And I don’t feel sad! The heavy, aching cloud that has weighed me down for so long has vanished into thin air, and I can almost float. Luke has his hand closed around my left wrist—that’s where the most prominent scars are, because I slashed it with my stronger hand. That sounds morbid, I know, but it doesn’t feel morbid at all, because I can feel the warm inside of his palm, pressing against my wrecked skin. I think again about all those Mederma creams my mom keeps giving me, and I almost laugh out loud, so glad that they were useless.

Carlo runs beside and around us in happy circles. I have taken off my skis, and Luke carries them over his left shoulder. I carry my poles over my right. After a while we veer away from the riverbank and head toward Paul’s house. I don’t know for certain how far Luke will be able to accompany me, but it turns out to be a good long while. We take the road this time, and though by now dawn stirs with rustling bird wings and rays of light, I see nobody to witness our slow, sauntering progression—none of us particularly wanting to reach our destination, but only to stay as we are, walking together.

When the sun begins to rise in earnest—its burgeoning curve above the eastern slope—Luke stops. “This is as far as I can go,” he tells me. Reluctantly, one finger at a time, he releases his grasp from my wrist and drops my
skis by the side of the road. I kneel down and hug Carlo, then stand and face Luke. He brings my wrist to his lips and kisses me one last time, then turns and walks away, into the woods. Carlo follows him, and I stand and watch the two of them go, graceful boy and graceful dog, until the trees behind them are too thick and they disappear down a snowy rise—or perhaps just into mist.

I step back into my skis and climb the last bit of road before Paul’s house. From the end of the driveway, I see a police car parked in front, its red and yellow lights silently whirring. My stomach seizes up, terrified that something has happened to my mother and her baby. I pick up speed, climbing up the driveway, and to my relief I see my mother and Paul, wearing heavy coats over their pajamas, talking to a police officer. My mother looks past them and sees me. The transition in her face cuts me in half. I see her movement from desperate hysteria to profound relief to sheer rage.

“Tressa,” she yells. She pushes past the police officer and marches over to where I now stand. She grabs both of my shoulders, as if making sure I’m really there, really whole. Then she looks down at my feet, and back into my face, and shakes me—hard.

“Skiing?” she says. “You were
skiing
? Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?”

I don’t know how to react. The thing about my mother—she doesn’t get angry, not like this. Not at me. Paul and the police officer—Officer Sincero, whom I unfortunately
know by name—step forward to intervene. As Officer Sincero steps between us, Paul puts both arms around my mother and pulls her close.

“I’m sorry,” I say, peering around the policeman. From the car his radio chatters, its staticky conversation making everything seem too serious, too dire. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“You couldn’t sleep!” my mother shrieks. “You couldn’t sleep.” She tries to step out of Paul’s grip, and I duck back behind Officer Sincero, certain she’ll hit me if she breaks loose, even though she’s never so much as raised her voice to me, not once in her entire life.

“Here,” Officer Sincero says, taking me firmly by the arm. “Let’s get you inside while your mother calms down.”

*   *   *

Thirty minutes later the four of us sit around the kitchen table. It feels bizarre, the lack of coffee or food, but my mother is too shell-shocked to offer. Paul glowers at me across the table.
Haven’t you done enough,
his eyes accuse. I hate the way Paul tries to act like he knows my mother better than I do, or cares about her more, and I can’t help but feel that he looks slightly happy, a tiny smile twisting below the look of concern. As if this one moment of anger could ever separate my mom and me. Distinct from how I feel about the way Paul treated Luke—the way he came between Luke and me—is the persistent little-girl feeling that I’ve always had toward
my mother’s boyfriends:
You may think she’s yours, but I know she’s mine.

Because she
is
mine, the main reason I’m still here, and I hate seeing her so angry and upset. We sit there, staring at each other across the table, neither of us actually hearing the gentle lecture delivered by Officer Sincero, about how I need to be careful with my parents, and myself, and remember how everybody worries about me. For no particular reason I remember a time in family therapy when Mom told Dr. Reisner she’d never felt like the twins were really hers. “Maybe it was because I was so much younger, but I just felt so distant from them, like they had nothing to do with me. By the time Tressa was born, her father was already out of the picture. She always had everything to do with me, and only me. I always knew that she was mine.” Mom wept at this admission, and Dr. Reisner handed her a box of Kleenex.

“Do you think,” he said, “that after the twins you may have been suffering from postpartum depression?”

Mom shrugged this idea away. She never liked unromantic explanations. As incriminating as it may have sounded, she preferred to think that it had to do with me, some special bond between the two of us.

From the way she and I stare at each other across the table, Officer Sincero probably realizes we haven’t been listening to a word he’s saying. He stands to go.

“Now, you call me if you need anything,” he says to Paul and my mother.

We sit there quietly while the door closes behind him. His car door slams and the engine starts. Then tires pick up speed over snow-covered gravel. My mother leans forward. Her hair looks too blond, almost white. Artificial. Her face looks craggy and pale. She lifts one finger and points it at me.