The Possibilities: A Novel (22 page)

“Enough, sure,” Billy answered. We were at my house, my dad’s house. He kept looking at his watch and I imagined the fights he and his girlfriend (was her name Wanda?) must be having over me. He looked around at the house. “The same. My mom though, she gives things a newer touch.” I eyed the dark wood walls, the antique furniture, the countertops, brown and grainy like a bran muffin, knowing exactly what he was talking about. The homes with wives in them, with mothers—those were the ones with the nice countertops, with the painted walls and harmonious decor. I wanted a home like that one day.

I looked at the set of silver, the deep bands on the handle. “They’re usually not so generous,” Billy said. He picked up a fork. “Nice. No monograms. I swear my mom monograms everything.”

Of course it’s not monogrammed, I later realized. I was in a daze of new gifts, greedy and excited over things that I had never cared about before—onesies! blankets!—and I never thought at that moment how odd it was that they’d give me silver and wineglasses, wedding-like gifts. It was like they were arming me with everything I could need so that their son could be on his way. I thought he was the wild one, but in their eyes, it was me. Billy had gotten off the bus in the wilderness, but now he was back, ready to begin.

The sun has begun to sink a bit, giving Pikes Peak a cold blue tint. I look through the information catalog with images of the hotel, feigning interest in its histories and anecdotes, timelines, facts, and ghost stories. Feigned interest turns genuine. I learn that Julie and Spencer Penrose bought the hotel in 1916. Before that it was a casino and a school for girls. I look at Spencer Penrose in the book.
Hey there, Spence.
He loved a place. He built on it—little odes and anchors. I think of my ancestors, those hearty pioneers. My namesake, Sarah Rose Mather, dropping her anchor to run a dance hall. In her diaries it says, “Gambling, prostitution, and drinking are rampant in this town. I should think these people could use a place to dance.”

Cully was my anchor to a place. Now, I suppose, it’s my father. I imagine Kit’s parents flying in from the East Coast, loading me with stemware and baby gear, then waving goodbye. How would that all work out? What if they want the baby? Shouldn’t they be the first ones to choose?

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” I say. “I mean, if I do.”

I look over at Billy and he’s digging deep into his nose with his eyes closed.

“Being a mom of a baby today would be so different,” I say. “Actually, I’d be the same age as a lot of moms.”

“Yeah, they’re having them late now,” he says.

“I can’t imagine starting all over again.”

Billy strokes his chest. He does this unconsciously, pets his chest. I imagine him as a father again, a father with a baby in one of those things—the slings everyone wears now with their little infant strapped to their torsos, the baby looking at the world as if on a slow-moving zip line. I had a wire-framed backpack, the seat made out of a thin canvas. I look back and am proud of the way I got around with Cully—we’d hike in Blue River, we’d cross-country ski, go to the skating rink, the library on Mondays, get ice cream at the Crown. Little routines. I’m sure everything I owned has been recalled or discontinued. I think of strollers, diapers, BPA-free snack containers. Bottles, changing tables, pediatricians, high chairs. All the accoutrements of new life. Most mothers would be in their twenties and thirties—I’d have the exact opposite problem this time around.

“Could you?” I ask. “Do it again?”

“No, Sarah. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.”

He looks at me to make it clear.

I know this shouldn’t disappoint me, but it does. I feel cheated, used. It infuriates me as well, the lack of consequence, the easiness. Babies and children don’t necessarily change the course of men’s lives, and somehow his not wanting Kit’s baby doesn’t look bad, but for me, it would. Yet I can’t make a choice based on how it would look, how it would seem. I want to be done with those kinds of choices.

“It’s like another chance,” I say. “Our son never got the chance to be somebody else. Now he can.” I think of the adventure park in Frisco, the rec center, the toy store, Spring Fling concerts. Things are better now for children. People like them now. They’re allowed to be around.

I think of all the pictures Cully drew, his self-portrait from the back of his head, the school assembly where he played a folk song, “Four Strong Winds,” on the guitar and everyone watched, stunned.

“I didn’t know he could do that,” Suzanne had whispered next to me.

“Neither did I,” I said, taking picture after picture.

I also think of watching the clock, longing for his nap time, for his bedtime, for peace. I remember redirecting, scolding, putting in time-out, screaming, pushing him down sometimes. “No! Can’t you just be good?”
Is it five yet? Can I have a glass yet? Can I put him to bed yet? Dad, could you watch Cully for a sec while I . . .

Home videos, photographs—at times those were the only things that made me stop and love absolutely all of it. I smile now, at how crazed he could make me.

“You know?” Billy says. “I think Kit may have got caught up for a moment.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, still basking in something.

“I mean, this whole offer. It was obviously a spontaneous idea. We’ve all gotten along pretty well, she got caught up, it’s like getting buzzed and planning trips.”

“She wasn’t buzzed and she wasn’t planning a trip,” I say.

“I think this is her way of not making a choice,” Billy says. “Or to feel good about herself, like she’s giving us something.”

“Giving
me
something,” I say. “Which she is. Which she would be.”

“What made you so angry then?” he asks.

I lift a leg out of the robe and sit up a bit. I was very angry.

“I wasn’t angry,” I say.

“You were pissed,” he says.

“I was overwhelmed.” I scratch my chest. “Fine, and a little angry.”

“Because?” Billy asks.

“Because it puts the responsibility on me,” I say. “Now it’s me saying what to do. And her gift, or what have you—it’s hard not to accept something like that.”

“What are you saying?” Billy says.

“I’m saying, how could I not?” I sit up fully, put my feet on the ground, and hold my robe together. “It’s Cully’s. It’s mine. How could I not? Maybe that’s why I’m mad, because I don’t have a choice at all. You have Sophie—you have . . . backup! It’s not the same.”

This is it, of course. I don’t have a choice, and while reminiscing about babyhood is wonderful, a little bile creeps up my throat when I think of changing diapers and being up all night and strolling, and talking to other moms. It would be different, of course. It would be my grandchild! But there’d be no one to return the baby to. It wouldn’t be different. It wouldn’t be a grandchild. I hear my voice shushing, singing, cooing, but also saying,
No! That’s not a good choice, can you find another option, can you share? Can’t you just be good? Dad, can you help for a sec while I . . . ?

I’ve done it. In some ways I have done enough, and I can see that one day I will be okay with just myself, that I am my own anchor, but isn’t a rejection of this child a rejection of him? Am I saying,
I don’t want what I had with you all over again
? Because that’s not the truth.

“Sophie isn’t backup,” Billy says. “She doesn’t lessen anything.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. It just came out that way.”

“It’s hard,” he says. “Seeing her. Not feeling . . . satisfied.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“So you’re going to keep it?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Even though I think I do know. How could I not let this happen?

“A baby.” I sigh. “This would be for my dad too. It would give him a purpose.”

Now we’d get the “Congratulations!” cards instead of the sympathy cards, those serious sentiments organized in three-part structures: 1. Life can be painful. 2. Love, love, love, and sorry about your life. 3. There’s a purpose here, which has yet to be revealed.

“Your dad has a purpose,” Billy says. “So do you.”

I wave his words away, lean against the chair sideways so that I’m still facing him. “Remember that bookshelf you bought?” I ask.

“What?” Billy says. He begins to call someone on his cell.

“The bookshelf. The really heavy oak one. You bought it when we started dating, or screwing, or whatever. It only fit short books, but you liked the way it looked. You didn’t need it. I don’t think you owned even one book. You just wanted something nice at the Blue River house, and I bet it surprised you—your desiring it. It’s not something you thought you’d ever want, but you grew up.”

“Extra olives,” he says.

“What?”

“One sec,” he says.

“Are you ordering a pizza? I’m trying to have a heart-to-heart and—”

“What room are we in?” he asks.

“Fuck!” I say.

He stands and walks inside, probably to check the room number. He comes back, puts his hands on my shoulders.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m starving. I looked at the room service menu and a hamburger is twenty-four dollars and a coke is six fifty, and I thought we could have a bite and talk this thing out some more. I know you like black olives. I got extra. We’ll have tons of olives. Did you want that bookshelf or something?”

•   •   •

NO, I DON’T
want the bookshelf. I just thought of it. I also thought of the vacuum I bought when I moved out of my dad’s and into my own place in the Silver King Condos on Boreas Pass. A red one. A cheap one. Dinky and in the end useless. When you’re young, you always go for the cheapest brand, not realizing it will have to be replaced with something better and that you’ll end up spending more in the long run.

I’m thinking about the big moments, the stages in a child’s life:

Kindergarten.

Sixteen.

Driver’s license.

Eighteen.

Graduation.

College.

Twenty-one.

Marriage.

The big ones. The rites of passage: one of them Cully and I have never attained. But what about a young girl or a young boy, going out to buy a vacuum or a bookshelf? Maybe this is when children really grow up—not when they go to college, but when they make this purchase, or one similar. Cleaning tools. Domestic things. Cully didn’t get to reach that stage.

I close my eyes and imagine his possibilities, the different hues of his self, what his face would look like in ten years, the kind of man he would be. He never had the chance to become himself. He never had the chance to be anyone else.

“No, I don’t want the bookshelf back,” I say to Billy. I stand up. “I was going to tell a story, I had a metaphor about . . . about things. But never mind. It’s ruined. You miss him too. What’s wrong with me wanting to have this baby? What’s wrong with
you
?”

Billy walks past me, heading to the door.

I follow him and he stops in the hallway. “I miss
him
,” he says. He holds my shoulders firmly, though his voice is calm. “I loved him. This isn’t a reincarnation. This isn’t a redo or a tribute or a chance—I don’t know. That’s how I feel.”

I avoid his eyes, something Cully would do when I bent down to tell him not to do something. He’d glance to the right.

Billy shakes his head, takes his hands off me, heads to the door.

I make to speak but can’t, overwhelmed by a physical and painful kind of grief. I am burning with it, afraid of it.
I need you!
I want to yell.
I need all of you.

Billy pauses with his hand on the doorknob but doesn’t look back, and then he goes, and I yell at the closed door, realizing it isn’t just grief that’s making me burn, but an anger with myself for treating him that way.

He was right to go, and now I’m glad he did, not trusting what would have come out of my mouth. I take some deep breaths, letting his words in, letting him have a voice and, yes, a choice. Without guilt. Something I want myself.

When I have fully calmed down I think of calling his and my dad’s room to apologize for having ruined something here that was vulnerable and honest. I’m about to call his cell, since I don’t know their room number, when my room phone rings.

I answer and Billy asks, “Did that pizza ever come?” and I smile, one of those big ones you can make when you’re alone and talking on the phone. I get that old thrill that came whenever he called, happy and light, and loving it all. Loving him.

Chapter
19

I shower for a long time, my hands against the tile. I watch the water run off me and disappear into the drain. I imagine the other people in rooms alongside, boxes of us showering, lying on beds, eating green apples.

I get dressed for the event tonight. I purposefully picked color over black so I wouldn’t look somber. Morgan had better not wear black. I go to gather the group, but I keep thinking that Kit should eat something and that even though she said she didn’t want to come, she should. I don’t want her to be alone and feel like I’m neglecting her because I know she’s waiting for my move. She’s the kind of girl who has to be directly invited to something so I walk toward the door, decided, then stop and go back to grab the shopping bag.

I walk down the hall to her room. I knock on 314. I’m nervous, as if embarking on a date.

She opens the door and a feeling comes over me that is strongly maternal. I want to tuck her hair behind her ear. I want to lick my finger and rub off that speck of something below her brow bone. She’s wearing black sweatpants and a beige tank top. Her arms are long and thin, shoulders square and strong.

“Wow,” she says. “You look nice.”

I look down at my tangerine dress, forgetting. “I know,” I say. “It’s nice. That sounded bad. I meant that it feels good to get done up. Affects your interior somehow.”

“I’m sorry about the antique store,” she says. “For some reason I thought you’d be happy. Just immediately happy. It’s a lot to take in and I’m sorry. I didn’t think it through.”

“It is a lot,” I say. “And I am happy. Or, I’m something. That was just my reaction then. I need to think. I have thought. I am thinking. But right now . . . I’m not going to.”

I gauge her reaction: her shoulders, lower. Her face, solemn.

“I’m going to go downstairs,” I say. “I need to let things rest.”

“Good idea,” she says. “I hope it goes well tonight.”

“Come with me,” I say. “Here.” I hand her the shopping bag.

She peeks in, pulls away the tissue. “What’s this?”

“It’s a dress,” I say.

“You bought me a dress?”

“I was going to give it to Morgan as a gift,” I say. “You should put it on, let things rest with me. They’ll have food and we can sit together, okay?”

She takes the dress out of the bag. It’s short, emerald green, simple and comfortable and quietly sexy.

“I can’t wear this,” she says.

“You can’t wear what you’re wearing.”

She looks at the tag. “It’s expensive,” she says. “I could keep the tags on and not spill, but I guess she’d see me in it.”

“She has enough dresses,” I say. “Just put it on. And some makeup. Affect your interior.”

She holds the dress against her body and I can tell she is pleased. She gets to be a girl tonight.

•   •   •

I WAIT WHILE
she goes to the bathroom to get ready. I walk in a slow, directionless way around her small room, thinking about what to do and at the same time not being able to think, to reel in my thoughts. My mind feels like rough seas where I need a still, moonlit lake. I’ve had sex, wine, and chocolate. Aren’t these things supposed to help calm me? I walk back to the other side of the room. Her floral wallpaper and her bedspread are different from mine. She doesn’t have a balcony, but she has a good view. The mountains are more approachable here than in Breckenridge. They’re low and close, and you can see the details, the pines, scars, and rock ledges.

“Are you sure I should go down there?” she asks from the bathroom. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“Oh, it’s right,” I say. “I have a feeling it will be filled with people Cully never even knew.”

“And will there be speeches or . . . ”

“No,” I say. “Morgan claims it will be a party, just a celebration.”

“So Morgan and Cully were best friends?” she asks.

“Yeah, when they were six,” I yell, and feel funny standing by myself. “Are you decent?” I ask. “Can I—”

“Yeah, yeah, come in.”

I stop in the doorway of the bathroom. She has a towel around her and is putting mascara on her lashes. She glances briefly at me in the mirror.

“She and Cully did a lot together when they were young,” I say. “And you know—family friends. We did everything together so they had to too.” I think about family friends. You can go a long time without seeing them but have this link, almost a secret knowledge. You know how the other started.

“They’re very different,” I say, “but have a shared history.”

“Sure,” she says. She applies some pencil to her brows, which surprises me. In fact, makeup surprises me, and her ability with it. She’s like a girl girl, like a Morgan girl. I laugh.

“What?” she says, her chin tilted up.

“Nothing,” I say, but then I think of a story about Morgan. “When they were around thirteen Morgan took some kind of mining class. Modern prospectors. She was convinced Cully had gold in his backyard, the hillside, and she insisted he help her find it since he may have inherited some sort of gene—my great-great-grandfather was basically the father of gold dredging—”

“Revett St. John!” she yells, and turns. “I didn’t even put that together.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t really expect you to put that together, or for anyone to put that together. It’s not like he—”

“He introduced Breckenridge to dredge boats,” she says, then faces the mirror again to talk to me. “He bought his home through a Sears catalog. Four hundred seventy bucks plus fifty in shipping.”

“Right,” I say. “The walking tour.”
Kit, you are incredible.
“You really absorb information.”

“Told you,” she says.

I leave my post and walk to the bathroom counter. I pick up a square compact and open it to two swaths of shadow, tempted to try some. I imagine her on the walking tour, taking notes, as someone from the Heritage Society leads her through town.

“What were you saying?” she asks. “About Morgan.”

I watch her in the mirror, brushing her hair, seeing her through Cully’s eyes. “Our house is built on an old mining drift.” I pull my hair to one side, over my shoulder. “After her little mining meetings, which, by the way were filled with people over seventy, she’d come and dig in our backyard for her very own pay dirt.”

“Pay dirt,” Kit says, as if committing it to memory.

“So I’d sit on the deck sometimes and watch with Suzanne. Cully would heckle her, but she was determined. She has always been determined in this annoying way you can’t really articulate or fault her for.”

Kit laughs, which makes me want to make her laugh more. I feel like I’m talking with a girlfriend. I’m happy, being with her, and maybe it’s because of her link to Cully that I don’t feel guilty for this happiness.

“Anyway,” I say, “she dug. She found nothing, just her very own gravel. Then one night, Cully and I were at Suzanne’s for dinner. Cully went through Suzanne’s jewelry drawers, took a ruby ring. He gave it to Morgan and told her to dig in her own backyard.”

Kit shakes her head as if I’ve said something incredible. “That’s great,” she says. “I love that. That’s so him.”

We look at each other’s reflections. It is so him.

“I’ll let you get dressed,” I say.

I walk out to the room and sit on her bed. I smooth my dress, adjust my bra. Her interest in my story about Cully made me realize how little of him she knows. We are her portal into all of those unknown spaces.

How will our relationship continue after this? If I keep this baby, will she call to check in? Will she visit? Will she want it back? Or will she slowly back away, as Billy’s parents did so that their presence was awkward and, in the end, not wanted.

She walks out of the bathroom, dressed now. The dress fits perfectly across the chest and down her torso. Her skin is smooth, a chestnut tint. A light scattering of freckles on her shoulders.

“I only brought my boots,” she says.

“You look stunning,” I say.

She touches her nose. “Oh, gosh, thanks.”

She walks to the foot of the bed and puts on her black boots. She presents herself, holding her arms up as if there’s nothing else she can do. The boots don’t go with the dress, but she makes it all look right.

She slides her room card off the desk. “I can’t believe you’ve been here so long,” she says.

“In the room?”

“No, I mean in Breckenridge. Revett St. John.”

“Oh, yeah, no,” I say. I stand, get my purse, make sure her windows are closed. “For a while the town went dead, so I’m not sure what happened to us—my people. I know one of my ancestors ran a dance hall, but then that family went to a neighboring town where there was work.”

“Was Lyle born in Breck?”

“No,” I say, “Denver, but then he and his parents moved to Vail, when it was just getting started as a resort town. My dad worked as a ski instructor, but also for a lumber company.”

She is focused on me, as if I have a better point to make or what I’m saying is actually interesting, and so I continue. “The lumber company came to Breckenridge for a job and saw the potential. They were inspired by the area, by Vail’s success.” I laugh. “My dad will tell you he gave them the idea to build lifts on Peak Eight, thereby starting it all.” I open my arms, displaying it all. “My dad—”

“Trygve Berge and Sigurd Rockne,” Kit says, pronouncing their names correctly. Whenever she speaks, I feel a surge of pride in Cully, for his taste.

“Right,” I say, “the Norwegians who got the credit, as they should. Though my dad did help plan out those initial trails and runs—and eventually ran the first ski school, or helped run it. But the sons of Norway were in charge.”

She shrugs as if this is of no importance. She’ll take Lyle’s myth.

I walk toward the door. “You sure paid attention on that walking tour.”
You should go and be somebody
, I almost say. I feel it.
Look at you in those boots, look at that polished skin, go and walk around some more
.
Go and take more tours.
Go find that valet, Chip.
Thinking all this feels like a betrayal, but only somewhat. I imagine Cully rooting her on.

I want to tell her how much she reminds me of myself before I got pregnant, but I don’t, either because I don’t want it to come off as self-congratulatory or I don’t want her to think it an insult. But she does remind me of myself back then—that greedy yearning for knowledge and off-the-map experience, that good-girl responsibility edged with a thirst for detours, all for the sake of collection. I remember the feeling of being in Billy’s GTO, the pride I felt, the coolness he leant me, something I felt to be latent within me. I also remember being in that car, noting his expressions to save for later, to make them my own when I was away from the source. I was both living and noting. I see her doing it too, living and noting, collecting things before going back on track.

“We should probably be talking about other things,” I say.

“But this all matters,” Kit says. “It’s all so interesting.” She takes one more look at herself in the mirror above the desk. “How things come about. How things set.”

“Yeah,” I say, believing it. “It is.”
How did you come about?
I wonder.

“Plus you wanted to let things rest,” she says. As does she, I bet, probably terrified to hear my answer.

I look at her stomach, then at her face. Her lashes are long, her eyes large, slanted slightly and dark green like swamp lilies. I think of the combining genes exercise from high school, something I loved to do in my head, using boys I liked to figure out the traits our children would have. I can’t remember everything. Punnett square and Mendel, the monk with the peas.

She walks toward me, standing by the door.

“I didn’t notice you had dimples before,” I say.

“Just one,” she says. She touches the dimple. “Right side.”

I look down at her boots.

“Are they awful?” she asks.

“No, I was just . . . Are you flat-footed or do you have high arches?”

“Arches.”

“How tall are you?”

“Five five.”

“Your eyes are green. Cully’s were blue.”

“Blue genes,” she says. “Ha, get it? Blue jeans. Oh, and I can roll my tongue.”

“You knew what I was doing?” I automatically roll my tongue. “Of course you did.”

What happens to the recessive gene?
I wonder.
Where does it go? Does it get masked by the dominant gene but still travel unchanged?
I’d like to think that everything surfaces eventually, everything gets its due.

I’m thinking of Seth for some reason. I wonder where he is now. I’d like to think that he’s a good man; that moment shouldn’t define him.

“Was he good to you?” I ask.

She looks back at me with a secret sort of smile. “He was.”

“But you didn’t love him,” I say. “It didn’t get to that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “I felt like I did, but you know—endorphins, oxytocin.”

“Sure,” I say, not knowing exactly what she’s talking about but getting it. She’s talking about being caught in the moment, that web of chemicals, drugging you into thinking that what you have is cosmic. I flew with Billy, absolutely flew.

“But now you’ll always love him,” I say.

She looks confused, then seems to understand. He is frozen in time now. He can do no wrong. He will always be easy to love.

“I will,” she says, and I wonder if it’s for my benefit. After my mom died, my dad would check in with me, always assuming I was quiet because I was thinking about her. Most of the time I wasn’t, but for his benefit I’d pretend my thoughts were on her. I wanted him to stop checking in with me, stop assuming I was unhappy. It made me feel guilty that I wasn’t.

A surprise spring of tears floods my vision. My mom, Cully—this loss of life, this beautiful hotel, this beautiful girl. None of it makes sense. Part of me wants to jump off the balcony. Part of me wants to sing from it. I love and hate this life.

“You don’t want to do this.” I place my hand in the middle of my chest. “Offer me this. I was such a bad mother. I didn’t keep him safe. That’s all I had to do. I didn’t do anything right.” I fan my face, shake it off.