The Possibilities: A Novel (7 page)

“No, I need to go out,” she says. “I need action. And music. People! Poor Morgan. What am I going to tell her? I want to call her, but she’ll know something’s wrong.”

“My dad,” I say. “I need to get home. The room, going back to work—it was a big day.”

“Of course,” Suzanne says, and her mood shifts. “Big day for Sarah.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Suzanne,” I say. “Is there something you want to say? First you call me trashy—”

“What? I didn’t call you—”

“You said that girl looked like a television host and—”

“I wasn’t even thinking about you! I was thinking of those
Extra
,
E! News
, model girls. My God, don’t flatter yourself.”

There’s a solid, single knock on my window and we both jump.

“Jesus!” Suzanne says.

The pale-faced girl with the all-terrain backpack stands outside. I turn the ignition on to put the window down. A song plays on the stereo—
Doncha wish your girlfriend was hot like me
—and the girl hands me a piece of paper. Her arm is noosed up to her elbow with rope bracelets. I read the flyer. It basically says that Suzanne’s SUV is responsible for global warming, wars, and the massacre of thousands. I hand it to Suzanne.

“This car encourages the massacre of thousands?” she says.

“If not millions,” the girl says.

A scene flashes in my head: Cully at nine, or somewhere around there. The two of us sitting down to dinner, Cully telling me about the hoses that are jammed down the throats of geese, pumping their stomachs with feed. He had a teacher at the time, Mrs. Lamb, who would fill their minds with her politics. We had to stop going to restaurants that served “that liver thing.” Then came the dolphin and tuna problem. We absolutely could not have the stuff in our household even though I loved eating it right from the can. Now I wonder, Why didn’t anyone fight for the tuna? Why do we only protect some creatures? Why not eat dolphins?

This young girl is staring at me and I wonder if she has asked me a question. I take in her beak nose and slightly protruding eyeballs and wonder if she’d hand out these flyers if she were any prettier. That’s what happened to Cully, I think. He became cool and stopped fighting. Or he just slipped into the next of many stages.

“Just something to think about,” the girl says. “The earth your children will inherit.”

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Suzanne says. “This is just perfect. Listen, hippie—envy always comes to the ball dressed as self-righteousness and high moral standards.”

“Did you just make that up?” I whisper.

“No,” she says, her mouth unmoving like a ventriloquist’s, then louder to the girl, “Do you know how much money I’ve raised for charities? For people with cancer, for hobos and kids and elephants. I can do more for this world in a day than you can do in a lifetime, so don’t lecture me. Go do something with your life besides sticking slogans to your pitiful vehicle, a van, most likely, that probably can’t even pass an emissions test. God, I hate when people tell me what to do. Do I ask you to brush your hair?”

“Earth Trust is just asking you to reconsider what you drive,” the girl says.

“I won’t reconsider,” Suzanne says. “I do enough. I give, give, give. I could stab an endangered species if I wanted to. Everyone wants to save the earth at your age. Give it four years. You’ll want an Escalade. Then blood diamonds. Then you’ll want a coat that’s made out of bunnies and eagles or some crap.”

I begin to laugh but freeze when Suzanne says, “And her son has died. She has more important things to consider and reconsider, and doesn’t need some chick in shit-colored corduroys talking about what our children will inherit. My daughter’s inheriting a goddamn Bratz doll!”

The girl, a bit frightened, lowers her eyes, then walks toward a minivan and puts a flyer underneath the wiper.

“Minivans too?” Suzanne says. “No one’s safe.”

“You shouldn’t have said that,” I say. I’m gripping the steering wheel.

“Oh, she’s fine.”

“I meant, you shouldn’t have said anything about him. You shouldn’t use him to . . . to trump hippies.”

I glare at her, hoping I’m communicating my anger because nothing seems to be getting through.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she says. “I’m obviously a little worked up and upset about other things.” She gestures to the ice rink. Dickie stands with his arms crossed over his chest, a look of contentment not only on his face but rippling through his body.

“Can we please get out of here?” Suzanne says.

I make one of those juvenile scoffing sounds.

“What?” she says. “Let me have a moment, okay? One moment. Then we can go back to you.”

“Oh, please,” I say, but don’t know how to follow up. I start the car.

“This is hard for me,” Suzanne says. “I’m miserable, just so you know, and I need help too. I’m sorry, but I do. I’m going through this all alone. I can’t talk to you. I can’t talk to my other friends without them telling everyone they know. I can’t talk to Morgan and show her how much I need her. I can’t interrupt her life with my needs.”

She begins to cry and I resent it. She has enviable problems, though I know that’s unfair to think. I’m sure there are people out there who’d envy my problems, who’d call them “first world.” I find that so hard to believe, but I know it’s true.

I drive out of the parking lot, passing the girl, who’s still putting flyers under people’s windshields, reminding them of yet another thing they’re doing wrong. What if I ran her over? What if some neurons snapped in my head and created this urge? Things happen in an instant. In five seconds the life that you know can be over. Five seconds, ten. The same amount of time it takes to shock green beans.

“Maybe we should skip the wine,” I say. “Maybe the whole pot and drinking combination doesn’t help.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge,” she says.

I turn on the blinker, summoning a calm I hope shames her. “Okay, that was rude,” I say. “I meant it’s not helping both of us. I wasn’t directing it toward you.”

“Your son sold pot, Sarah. And you had no clue. Don’t judge me. Just let me mourn too. I know it’s just a marriage, but let me.”

The words seem rehearsed.

I drive. I grip the steering wheel and I drive. My son sold pot. That can’t be the last word. There’s more than that. There is supposed to be much, much more than that. When he turns thirty I’ll be fifty-one. When he’s fifty I’ll be seventy-one. I’ve done the arithmetic, cringing at my age multiplying. Now I cringe at the cringing. How wonderful it would be to reach that age, to see him age with me, back behind yet parallel.

I drive through town as if in a trance, Suzanne crying silently beside me and the stupid stupid song playing,
Doncha wish your girlfriend was raw like me. Doncha.

Chapter
7

After I drop myself off and Suzanne speeds away wordlessly, I make a meal with things on the verge of ruin. Green onions, sour cream, half a lime, steak. I make tacos without a taco. My father is on the couch watching a young star on television insist that she’s just an average person. Why would anyone insist on being that?

I pour myself a glass of wine, then walk over with our dinners. I sit and curl my legs under me, then take a sip of wine and am ashamed by the relief it brings me. I’m a good drinker. I don’t get mean or emotional. If I do become weepy it’s because a shot of warmth and affection for humanity enters me unbidden. But now I think I could be entering shaky territory. I feel stupid and naive about Cully, and I hate getting into fights with Suzanne.

“I don’t feel like eating this anymore,” I say. “I want Cocoa Puffs.”

“You on drugs?” my dad asks.

“What?” I say. “No.”

“I can smell it.”

I put my plate down and keep the wine. “I took a hit of pot. I forgot.” I roll my head back and forth. “Then I fought with Suzanne. I’ve had a rough night.”

“What did you fight about?” my dad asks.

“Nothing, really. I take up too much space.”

“I think it’s the other way around. Your weight is probably the same as one of her kneecaps.”

“Dad, she’s not even that big. We need to stop.” As I say this I remember what I was thinking about in the car:

Her overdone foundation makes her look embalmed.

Her sapphire and diamond rings are giving her sausage fingers.

Her fur coat makes her look like she’s being attacked by a Kodiak.

“I’m just having fun,” he says. “Fat jokes are fun for everyone. Farts too. Always funny. In fact, I think she looks quite good.”

“I know,” I say. “She does. I should tell her that. I get so angry because she’s so self-absorbed, but that’s what makes me feel better at the same time. To have a friend who isn’t tippy-toeing around me.”

“This is good,” he says, nodding and chewing. “You always know when to take the meat off the heat. And you know to let it sit. It’s a good thing to know.”

“You taught me well,” I say, then lean over to reach my fork. I stab a piece of steak. “Good,” I say.

He looks out toward the deck, pondering something in the distance, then resumes his dinner.

“I hope I did that for you,” he says. “Teach you well. Been there for you. It must have been hard without a mother. I’ve tried . . .”

There are moments when his shoulders sort of sink a bit and I feel guilty for ever raising my voice at him, for being impatient, then further guilt for the guilt itself that stems from knowing a parent is going to die one day (when Cully is fifty-eight, I’ll be seventy-nine and my dad will be gone). Guilt and having to remind yourself to wait it out gracefully, to cherish their existence, not everyone has their parents, and so on. Oh life. Oh death. Why haven’t we all learned how to deal with it yet? The most basic thing in the world. Got to get life-trained. Death-certified.

“You did just fine,” I say. I remember him always checking in with me, to the point where it got tiresome. I was okay, and his attention made me feel bad about this.

My dad looks at my glass of wine. “Got some cork in there.”

I drink it.

On television a singer on a stage lit dark blue has his eyes rolled back, his body convulsing.

I get up to pour more wine. “Oh my God,” I say.

“What’s wrong, sport?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Just got a little off balance.” I hold the wine bottle upside down over my glass and give it a shake.

“Maybe ease up a little,” he says.

I think of his past purchases: mops that can clean hard-to-reach places, a robotic vacuum, a fork/spoon/knife (all in one), an ab roller, ab stretcher, ab vibrator, knives that can cut through walls, all those books.

“You ease up,” I say, “on buying crap.”

I go back and sit down aggressively, making his plate bounce.

“Some things are clever,” he says. “They’d be good gifts. Better than some of the things you put on your show. It’s a sham you have to pay to be featured. Other places could use more help, seeing they’re being charged up the ass for property tax—you know that it’s more per square inch on Main than a shop on Fifth Avenue in New York City? I should go in and—”

“Dad, shut up about all that already. You don’t work there anymore! No one cares!”

I don’t dare look at him. Why is it that when a child feels sad or ashamed, they’re mean to their parents? Do we do it from age two to their deaths? My tear ducts get to work. They never fail to work after I’ve been cruel to him.

The couch shifts as he gets up. I was perfectly situated and now it’s ruined. I adapt and move to the right, sighing extra audibly. I hear him walk down the stairs to his room.

I get up and busy myself by sorting through the mail on the counter. Cully keeps getting random things—offers for free oil changes, catalogs from
Motor Trend
, requests from Easter Seals, and I never get around to making any of it stop. Maybe I won’t. I remember we’d still get mom’s catalogs in the mail, flyers and things that are easier to keep getting than to make them stop coming. I think we both liked it anyway. My hands are shaking as I pick up the mail, pretending to be busy, but just thinking of my dad alone in his little room, so much like Cully’s room with its lack of expression. I give in, walk down.

He must think about my mom at times like these. He never shares his experience with death to help me, and I guess I’m grateful. He must know the need to feel alone and slighted, like no one has ever felt the same way before. I remember not running to my dad when my mom died. I was home from kindergarten. I heard him talking on the phone in the kitchen and knew what was happening, knew what he was being told. He called to me. I told him I was busy. I was watching an animated Japanese film. I continued to watch it. I remember refusing to stop. The memory I have of how I felt at the time is stilted, and maybe this isn’t a memory but the way I actually felt at the time—the emotions pounded out flatly and loudly as if on a drum:

The movie was scary.

I had to watch it.

I had to be brave.

Everything was going to be different in good ways and bad.

My mom isn’t sick anymore. She isn’t alive.

She won’t be there to read to me as I eat my cereal in the morning.

She won’t drive me to ballet and give me the thumbs-up from the bench.

She won’t kiss the top of my head and tell me that I smell so good or that I need a bath.

I won’t have to mind her. I can be loud and careless.

The movie is scary; it’s making me cry, the movie.

The cancer is dead, but it died with her, like a friend.

This was the thought that finally made me sob like the child I was, and the sobs turned into wails at the sight of my dad, head down, coming to tell me what I already knew.

•   •   •

I STAND IN
front of my dad’s closed door and feel like an apology is due but am not sure whom the apology should be from. We all have so many problems. Sometimes you just have to fend for yourself.

“Dad?” I say before opening the door.

“Come in, champ.”

His back is toward me. He adjusts a painting on the wall near his bed.

“I heard you stomping down the steps,” he says. “You don’t have to warn me. I’m not masturbating or anything.”

I scan his room and it reminds me of Cully’s. There’s more me in here than him. “Putting up your pictures?”

“May as well.”

The paintings used to hang in his office, images of the Old West and the old town. I feel that he too is a framed sepia photograph, something from old Breckenridge that the company put up because he looked good in their corner. A local kid with deep roots, rising up from ski patrol to VP of operations. I had no right to belittle him that way. The picture is an oil painting of an Indian crouched on his galloping horse, arrow poised to slay a boxy buffalo. Its title:
Circle of Life
. I laugh.

“What?” he says.

“That painting.” I point to the shaggy buffalo sniffing the prairie land, the skinny Indian, ass in the air like a jockey at Churchill Downs. “It’s a riot.”

“You’re a riot,” he says.

“I was thinking,” I say. I walk into the room and place my hand on the wall. “We could knock this down and connect to the other room. It could be a great space. It could be like a condo down here.”

He looks at the wall separating his room from Cully’s and squints. He’s never been one for remodeling; everything is fine as it is, or can be.

“I see,” he says. “That would really transform things.”

I nod, eager, ready to pick up a club and start whaling. Then, once again, I feel guilty. Am I too eager to demolish and eradicate? No, I tell myself. You’re adapting, you’re surviving. Something like that. You’re trying to get to that elusive other side.

He stands with his hands on his hips, maybe imagining the transformation. “I think it’s a good idea. Whether I stay or go, it’s a good idea, a good change. Here. I have something for you.”

He walks to his shelf, then hands me a knife. It has a black rubber handle that’s comfortable to hold. On the handle is a switch.

“Turn it on,” he says.

I do as I’m told and a light turns red. “I’ve seen the infomercial for this,” I say, remembering the man having a terrible time spreading peanut butter onto a slice of bread. He would slab it on with an ordinary knife, but the knife would stick and tear the bread apart. He made subsequent attempts, each time failing, while a sympathetic voice-over narrated his aggravation. His kids, grumpy and ugly, stood there waiting for him, exchanging bratty glances.

“It’s got a special warming agent,” my dad says. “It will soften your peanut butter so it can glide on easily. I thought you could use it since you make me all those sandwiches. I know it’s a pain in the ass.”

He sits down on the bed. The last shot in the infomercial shows the father using the new knife to slice into a stick of hard butter. He does so easily, then spreads it on the bread without ripping it apart. His children are proud, and when he drops them off at school with their sack lunches, mothers look at him lustily. “Thanks,” I say.

He shrugs.

Next to his bed on the wall-sized storage shelf I see more boxes, most with pictures of the box’s contents. There’s an air ionizer, a five-speed back massager that looks like a small intestine, a Robotic Floor Vac with remote and wall mount, Christmas ornaments that change color at your touch, an embroidery machine. Next to the embroidery machine is an old pillowcase that I assume my father has tried, and failed, to embroider. He almost completed a letter: an
S
, perhaps, but gave up. The design looks shaky and manic, an art project by a person in some kind of recovery program. All the objects. It crosses my mind that I will inherit them one day. One of the saddest parts about a parent’s death must be feeling burdened by a lot of things they left behind. The thought makes me want to get rid of all my bad underwear.

He follows my gaze, looks back at the shelf. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I know.”

“No, it’s okay. We all need different things.” I try to look at him like the children whose father finally made them a sandwich.

“I’m going to go try this out,” I say, but I don’t leave. I lean against the door frame, feeling the weight of fatigue. I’m down here to show that I’m sorry, but I also need him. This knowledge I have of Cully won’t make sense until I share it with him. I hesitate, but then think that whenever my kids confided in me, I felt soothed and proud, necessary. “Dad?”

“Yeah, sport.” He starts to unbutton his shirt.

“Cully was a drug dealer.”

“Oh?” he says, his hands pausing on a button.

“Pot. He sold pot.”

My dad nods and squints as if trying to make a decision.

“I didn’t know this,” I say. “And maybe there’s more I don’t know. Maybe he was out of control. I failed. I failed to keep him safe. I think that’s what people think. Maybe everyone thought he was a bad kid and I didn’t know this.” I am gripping the knife; the red button comes on and I press it off.

“I’m so embarrassed,” I say. “I just feel stupid.” I want to slump down to the floor, but I hold myself up. I wait for his judgment.

My dad stays on his bed with his shirt partly undone. His torso is concave, the hair on his chest a gray black.

“Well,” he says.

I wonder if he’s just as ashamed and disappointed. He must be.

“It’s too late.” He scratches his jaw. “Nothing you can do about it now.”

I look up at the painting over him, then back down. He’s still pensive, trying to figure this out. I am rooting for him to solve it.

“Torture yourself if you want,” he says. “But know that even if he were alive, even if he was doing something completely different, you’d still have those thoughts. I’d think all the time how I was messing you up. No mother, no siblings, and I didn’t invest all my money in the resort like some of my friends. Then I’d see other families—they’d do everything right, and you know what? Most of their kids were still idiots. Cully loved you and he felt loved by you. He made both good and bad decisions. He was a happy boy. That’s all. Besides.”

He gets up and walks to his closet to hang up his shirt, turning his back to me. Sometimes I think he cries when I’m not looking. I’ve always imagined him doing it while hanging up his clothes or putting things away. It would be too indulgent to cry without accomplishing anything else.

“Besides what?” I ask.

“Besides, you don’t know what you’ve done. He didn’t have the chance to become himself, or to become a man. We’re very different from the people we were in our twenties. At that age I was a very different person. So were you.”

I think of that self, on the verge of becoming another self. Then having Cully at twenty-one, right when I wanted nothing to do with motherhood. It was a beautiful mistake. Would his mistakes have one day been beautiful?

“We’ve got a lot of lives in this lifetime,” he says, and I’m almost certain he’s thinking about his life with and without my mom.