Meet Me at the River (8 page)

My mom got married for all the normal reasons. Love, plus security, plus she wanted a houseful of kids. Thanks to my dad she had a head start on that last part. Katie and Jill went to another wedding. They walked down the aisle, two little blond kids dumping rose petals. As far as they were concerned my mom was their mom. She took them everywhere. They’d go with her to the grocery store and gas station and library. She drove them to school and summer camp. She fed them, tucked them into bed, helped them with their homework. All the usual mom things.

But back to the wedding, my mom and dad’s wedding. This friend of theirs read a poem. Probably it’s been read at a hundred other weddings, but this one line stood out to me.
Now there will be no more loneliness.
Mom’s face looked shiny. It looked young. I think she believed that was it for loneliness. She felt the way my dad probably felt when he married Hannah. Too bad it wouldn’t take him long to crush Mom the same way Hannah crushed him.

It makes me feel guilty, watching the wedding, because I feel like I should at least
want
to warn her. But I don’t. I stand back from the crowd with my hands in my pockets. Even though I know how this will turn out, I want it to happen.

Their groovy minister doesn’t bother with the speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace part of the ceremony. And even if I said something, no one would hear me. But I
wouldn’t
say anything, no matter what. For one, I can’t stand the idea of squashing all that happiness. Just because it won’t last doesn’t mean it isn’t worth something.

And another thing. I want to live.

*   *   *

I’ve watched the wedding a few times. It’s interesting, how everything I always heard turns out to be more or less true. And I like to see my dad trying, which is more than I would have expected. I can’t think of anything he could’ve done different in terms of Hannah, at least not at that point. He loved her, and she left him. He waited for her to change her mind and come back, but after a while he figured he couldn’t wait forever so he got a divorce. He found a new wife. He had me. Another kid. His only son.

*   *   *

And then, eight years after Hannah left, she came back. It was summer. Dad was at work. The twins were at school. I don’t know where I was, maybe upstairs in the playroom. Downstairs in the kitchen Mom wiped off the same table where Hannah had left her good-bye letter. I can almost see the shape it left behind, like an invisible scar on the table. My dad used to sit there and drum his fingers on that very spot.

When Hannah showed up she didn’t knock. She just walked through the back door, slamming the screen like she’d never left. Mom froze. She knew Hannah the second she saw her. Mom pulled herself together and stood up straight. She walked over to Hannah. I think she wanted to look confident. She wanted Hannah to see who belonged where. But when she held out her hand, her elbow looked too stiff, weirdly unbent.

“Hello. I’m Francine Kingsbury.” Her voice got a little louder on that last name.

Hannah didn’t look surprised. She just looked tired. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Hannah Earnshaw.” My mom relaxed a little. Hannah didn’t look like much of a threat. Her skin looked broken out and her eyes looked red. Her legs were bony and covered with scratches. She had her hair in a ponytail that looked tight enough to hurt.

My mom was so wrapped up in looking at Hannah that it took her a minute to notice the little girl, standing outside the screen door.

*   *   *

Sometimes I get tired, looking back. It takes so long for everything to happen. But that’s the day it starts again, and I can’t help watching. Me and Tressa standing in the backyard by the butterfly bush. My mom and Hannah watching the two of us like regular moms at a regular playdate. Like reasonable, civilized adults who won’t wreck each other’s lives.

And then my dad comes home. The sun’s very bright. I see him park his car in the driveway and get out slowly, slamming the door. He’s not in any kind of a hurry. I can tell from the way his shoulders slump that he’s had a long day. I watch him walk up the hill toward his wife and the woman he thinks is a stranger.

And then he recognizes her.

He recognizes her, and everything changes. He doesn’t look tired. He doesn’t move slow. He drops his briefcase and breaks into a run, until he realizes what he’s done and stops short. It’s too late. Mom’s face has fallen and won’t ever go back to normal. Hannah’s body relaxes. I think I even see her smile.

Don’t get me wrong. Nothing is official. Hannah’s still got plenty of disappearing left to do. But that’s the day my mom figures things out, and she’ll never forgive him. But you know what? I kind of do. Forgive him, that is. At least for that one second, when I see him run up the hill.

Because I understand. I know exactly how he feels. I can’t stand to watch. I want to live.

For three nights in a row I open my window to find the same message written in the snow. It looks to me like an accusation, which can’t possibly be how Luke means it. Never once, in all the times he has visited, has he shown any sign that he blames me for anything. But tonight when I push my window open to face the cold air instead of his warm presence, I feel angry. Angry at Luke for the first time since he died. How could he ask me to go to the river, when I am trying so hard to stay alive?

Once again I sweep the message away. The snow falls to the ground below with a shuffling whoosh. Then I lean out the window and yell, “Don’t you get it? I can’t go there!”

It feels weirdly like the same kind of fight we used to
have, and the second the words are out of my mouth, I regret them. Not because Luke might stop coming back. I know him, and the two of us, and a few angry words won’t separate us when even death can’t.

But my mother—she’ll have heard, and she’ll come running, endangering her baby by taking those steep steps too fast, and she’ll fling open the door and I’ll be caught. I’ll have to find new ways to convince her that I’m okay. That I’ll never do any of it again. I jump back into bed, pull the covers to my chin, and stare at the ceiling. I wait for her frantic footsteps, and after a while I guess she hasn’t heard.

It takes a long time for me to get back to sleep, so when I do hear Mom climb the stairs, it’s to wake me in still-dark, early morning. H. J. and Evie have arrived to take me skiing. I sit up in bed, startled. Evie wasn’t at school on Thursday and Friday, and neither was H. J. When I walked past the classroom where H. J. usually teaches freshman English, I saw Mr. Tynan through the window, waving
Lord of the Flies
in his left hand. Later that day, after my English class, I stopped to ask Mr. Tynan, trying to sound disinterested: “Where’s Mr. Burdick today?”

“On leave,” Mr. Tynan said, his voice stern and final with its withholding of detail. I could tell, though, that H. J. had probably been fired for his
massively inappropriate
actions, and I assumed in the wake of this mishap that he and Evie would forget all about our plans to ski.

Mom goes downstairs to tell them I’m getting ready, and I can hear H. J. talking to her. His voice sounds deep and thoughtful—grown-up. Probably after everything he’s been through, losing a job doesn’t seem like a big deal. I root through my drawers for glove liners and wonder again how he and Evie could have endured so much, and not have it show in their every word and movement.

“Sorry I’m late,” I say, walking into the kitchen. H. J. sits at the table, his coat off, a mug of steaming coffee in front of him. Evie slumps in the doorway, coat still zipped, apparently not the sort of girl who rejoices in conversations with adults. My mom takes my ski jacket from under her arm and holds it out to me.

“Honey,” she says. “Here’s your coat. Paul’s putting your skis on their car.”

“We already got your boots,” H. J. says. Whereas Evie looks even paler than usual, with dark circles under her eyes, H. J. seems downright breezy. He stands up and puts on his coat, thanks Mom for the coffee, and then sidles past Evie out the door.

“Here,” Mom says. She thrusts an oversize plastic baggie into my hand. It’s stuffed with PowerBars, an apple, and the kind of aluminum juice bag you would give a three-year-old. I look up to say
Thank you
, and see that she is looking at my face with more than the usual worry and concern.

I place my hand on her belly and say, “Thanks, Mom.”

“Have fun, sweetie!” she says, and I promise her that I will.

*   *   *

“Your mom’s a hottie,” H. J. says as his ancient, wood-paneled station wagon rumbles through the dusky, snow-covered morning. People have been telling me some version of this statement my whole life, and I never know what I’m supposed to say. Thank you? Luckily, Evie rescues me.

“H. J.,” she says in a shaky voice, as if she can’t stand another second of embarrassment at his hands. “That is not an appropriate remark.”

“Sorry,” H. J. says, though he doesn’t sound sorry at all. He is driving, while Evie rides shotgun. I sit in the back, eating a PowerBar. I’d like some juice, too, but would feel too silly sipping from that babyish straw.

“Do you know your mom and our mom were friends?” H. J. asks.

“Yes,” I say, sitting up. “I remember that.” The car winds its way through Ophir, heading down into the Telluride valley. When we pass the road that leads to Alta, I expect to want to look away, but I find myself staring up the snowy path. Luke and I used to park at the bottom, cross-country ski up to the deserted mining camp, and commune with ghosts in the abandoned cabins. Cross-country skiing was something I could do well enough—you didn’t have to start when you were three to become moderately proficient. You didn’t have
to be a native. I used to love drawing maps of Alta—guessing at the significance of different buildings—but I threw them all away after Luke died.

I glance in the rearview mirror and catch H. J. looking back at me. Behind his glasses his eyes crinkle a little bit in a sort of smile. The kindness surprises me enough to make me smile back, though I don’t know why it should. Surprise me, that is. Maybe because I’ve only ever seen him from a distance, and he always seemed like such a shaggy and preoccupied presence.

“How are Jill and Katie?” H. J. asks.

“They’re fine,” I say. “Katie’s in LA trying to get into movies.”

“Is she having any luck?”

“A couple horror films. She won’t let us see them.”

H. J. laughs. “Cool,” he says. “Good for her.”

I remember suddenly that one summer a good ways back, H. J. and Katie were both counselors at the Youth Center drama camp. Katie complained about him so much that Jill accused her of having a crush on him. It didn’t help that the previous spring, Katie had kissed H. J. in the school’s production of
Dead End
, possibly the first kiss of her life. “I do
not
have a crush on H. J.,” she promised Jill. “He stands too close and he
looks
too hard. It’s not comfortable.”

H. J. drives with his shoulders slightly hunched—bundled up in his parka, occasionally clearing the fog off his glasses with the butt of his palm. I think about
him acting in that play and wonder if he would have gone to California too, or New York, if his parents hadn’t died.

Out of nowhere H. J. says to Evie, “It looks like your friend is too polite to ask why I’m on leave.”

“Oh, H. J.,” Evie says. She sounds more exasperated than anguished, and I step in quickly to try to help her out.

“It’s okay,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Come on,” H. J. says. “Aren’t you curious?”

“No,” I lie. “I’m really not.”

Evie turns around in her seat and faces me. The look on her face makes me feel guilty, as if she can read my morbid curiosity through my protests. “If you must know . . . ,” Evie begins.

“I mustn’t,” I say, and H. J. laughs again. “I mean,” I correct myself, “you don’t have to tell me.”

“It’s about Kelly Boynton,” Evie says. For a moment my blood stops pumping. I’ve been thinking about Kelly so much lately that the mention of her name feels like a weird invasion of privacy. My bite of PowerBar goes down painfully, sharp and cardboardy.

“Well,” Evie goes on. “It turns out she’s a cutter. And do you know who she decided to tell about this cutting? My brother. She showed him the scars on her poor little arms. And you know what he said, my brilliant brother? Instead of sending her straight to Mrs. Kingsbury, like any normal human being?”

This time Evie realizes she has lobbed a hand grenade of a name. She flushes slightly, and stops. H. J. takes over for her. “I told her to just cut a little bit,” he says.

This is so contrary to what I expected that I burst out laughing, even though I know it’s not funny at all. I picture poor Kelly, her tortured and tear-streaked face. I wonder if H. J.’s advice surprised her as much as it does me. I wish I could ask her about it.

Evie frowns at me, then turns back around in her seat. “I’m sorry,” I say to the back of her head. “I don’t know why I laughed. It’s definitely not funny.” I can see Evie’s face in the side-view mirror, staring out the window. She looks earnest and very young, little wisps of hair escaping from her wool cap.

I sit forward and place my hands on the back of Evie’s seat. She and H. J. ride silently, as if an argument to be continued later has been put on temporary hold. But I don’t want it to be on hold. I want to know, urgently, if Kelly told H. J.
why
she cut herself, if it had something to do with Luke. Did she start cutting when she and Luke broke up? Or when Luke started going out with me? After he died? Or maybe she started cutting for reasons completely un-Luke?

I think of Evie’s description, “poor little arms,” and I want to take the tubes of Mederma my mother keeps buying me and slather the lotion on Kelly. When I was at the hospital, Dr. Reisner told me that a lot of mental health professionals didn’t take wrist-slashers seriously
as suicidal personalities. They saw it as just a bid for attention, not an honest attempt at death. “Especially now,” Dr. Reisner said, “with all the teenage cutters.”