How I Came to Sparkle Again (21 page)

*   *   *

Uncle Howard and Jill rode the chairlift in silence. He poured trail mix into his mouth. “You’re quiet,” he said.

“Lisa and I are driving back to Austin tomorrow. I’m dreading it. All of it. Seeing David again. Court. All of it,” Jill said.

“Did you find a lawyer?”

“Yeah,” Jill replied. “Wes Heusser. This hearing won’t really have much to do with the divorce. The judge is just going to make a ruling about how our finances should be handled until the divorce is final.”

He nodded. “Well, here’s what you’re going to do, Jill. You’re going to go and watch yourself participate in it. You’re going to think, Hmm, isn’t this interesting? But you’re not going to judge it. You’re just going to observe, and by doing so, you’ll be able to see the truth as you’ve never seen it before. It will give you peace. You’re going to imagine pink fluffy clouds around you in the courtroom. Negative words and intentions may come flying at you, but they’ll hit the pink fluffy clouds and lose their momentum. They’ll never touch you. No matter what comes flying at you, don’t catch it. Step aside and let it fly by. Think of all those words as if they were balls bouncing around the room, like dodgeball. If you don’t catch them and throw them back, they’ll all lose their energy and end up on the floor behind you. Go through the motions in the physical world, but don’t participate on an energetic level.”

Jill listened and nodded. “I’ll try,” she said.

He put his arm around her and gave her shoulder a little squeeze. Then he added, “And take some Sparkle water with you, too, so that if you start to wilt while you’re there, you can drink some Sparkle essence.”

“Okay,” Jill said as the chair reached the ramp. They put their skis on it. “See you later, Uncle Howard. I love you.” She stood and slid down the ramp.

He nodded and waved a pole at her as he glided off in the other direction. He loved her, too.

chapter sixteen

SNOW REPORT FOR JANUARY 19

Current temperature: 1F, high of 5F at 2
P.M.
, low of −7F at 5
A.M.

Snowing, no wind.

64" mid-mountain, 73" at the summit. 4" new in the last 24 hours. 5" of new in the last 48.

Lisa had sat in the courtroom the day before, watching lawyers trying to spin Jill’s life and state of mental health in different ways. She looked at David and seethed. Here was Jill, who always followed the rules; Jill, who had nothing but good intentions in her heart. And here was the man who screwed her. Lisa imagined all the vengeful things she wanted to do to him.

You’d have to be an idiot to get married,
Lisa thought.
It just sets you up to get screwed.
But then she reached up and touched the crucifix she wore around her neck, and wondered how she was going to rectify this.

In the end, the judge seemed to think Jill was a woman who had been through enough and ordered David to pay for everything until the divorce was final, as well as provide her with a thousand dollars a month to live on. It would help Jill, for sure. The judge also gave an order for Jill to be let in the house the following morning to get her things. Lisa had anticipated this. It was the reason she had come.

Now, as they approached the house, Lisa was stunned. She was in no way prepared for the opulence of Jill’s home. Still, she kept her focus and surveyed the yard until at last, she found what she was looking for.

David had already packed Jill’s things in boxes, which were stacked neatly by the door. Lisa didn’t trust him and walked through the house with Jill, trying to get her to take things that looked valuable, things she could pawn if she ever needed to. But Jill didn’t want any of them.

Upstairs, they walked down the hall. Lisa put her hand on a doorknob of the first room, but before she opened it, Jill stopped her. “That’s the baby’s room. I don’t need anything in there.”

“Sorry,” Lisa said, unsure of the right response.

They descended the stairs and surveyed the living room. Jill went to a shelf and opened a photo album. “I know that later on, I’ll wish I had some pictures of these last fifteen years. It’s just so hard to think about going back and looking at my marriage, at the good times…”

“Do you want me to go through them and pick out the ones where you look prettiest?” Lisa offered.

“No. But thanks,” Jill answered.

With that, Lisa went to work in the kitchen. She searched the cupboards for ingredients to some complete and simple dish. She opted for chili. Mexican spices could hide anything. She filled the Crock-Pot with beans, onion, hamburger, stewed tomatoes, and spices.

“What are you doing in there?” Jill called out from the other room.

“Oh, you know. It was so nice of David to pack all that stuff and save us all that time, so I just thought I’d make him a special dish of my mom’s to express our gratitude,” Lisa answered.

“That’s not like you,” Jill shouted back.

“I’m a Carlucci. We cook. That’s what we do when we don’t know what else to do.”

That explanation seemed to satisfy Jill, so Lisa put a plastic bag in her pocket and carried a box to the car so that she could discreetly get what she needed. When she returned, she finished the chili, dipped two bowls into it, emptied them, and stuck them in the sink so David would think they had eaten it.
Genius,
she thought to herself.

Then she loaded all of Jill’s belongings into the car, and when Jill came outside with a plastic sandwich bag full of photos, they drove away together and left everything else behind.

*   *   *

Pete, Mike, John, and Ben all served themselves big bowls of Ben’s chili and took them to the table.

Pete spoke first. “Magoo,” he said to Mike, “we’re concerned.”

Mike looked up, worried. Was he not doing his job well enough? Was he dropping the ball? Did the guys feel like they couldn’t count on him?

“It’s not healthy for a man to go this long without sex. How long has it been?” Pete continued.

Mike felt awkward but relieved. He shook his head. “I don’t know. A long time.”

“We’re not proposing you go out and find a new wife. We know you’re still healing. We just think you need to get laid,” John said.

“Fact,” Pete said. “Men who don’t have enough sex get prostate cancer.”

“You’re making that up,” Mike said.

“
Prevention
magazine, September twenty-eight, 2006. I showed Barb the headline and read her the first two sentences. I didn’t read her the part where it said no partner was necessary. And I’ve been getting it five times a week ever since. You know how Barb loves a good cause. God, I love that magazine,” Pete said.

“Do you at least have some good spankavision?” Ben asked.

Mike blushed. “I’ve got a kid in the house, so no, I don’t have any spankavision.”

“This is not good,” John said. “This is not good at all.”

“Look, do you really think Kate would want you to be celibate for the rest of your life?” Pete asked.

Mike shrugged.

“Look, Barb wants to fix you up with someone,” Pete said.

Mike shook his head. “No fixups,” he said. “If it’s meant to be, it will happen naturally.”

“How about the babysitter, Magoo?” Pete asked. “Why haven’t you nailed the babysitter?”

“Because I don’t want to have to find a new babysitter,” Mike said. “And she’s going through a divorce. She’s actually in Texas now. There was some hearing or something. Howard is covering for her.”

“Texas?” Pete asked.

“Texas,” Mike said.

“Well, that’s grounds for divorce right there,” Pete said.

Ben helped himself to another bowl of his chili and said, “Word on the street is that she found her husband in bed with another woman.”

“I didn’t know that—about her husband,” Mike said. “She lost a baby when she was seven months along last fall. I don’t think she’s in the mood for love.”

“Okay, so no babysitter,” Pete said, and wiped some chili out of his bushy mustache. “No babysitter and no fixups. That leaves hookups. Ben here is prepared to take you to the bar and help you find easy women.”

Mike laughed.

“If you want, Barb and I can come along, too. I’m sure she’d be happy to help pick you out an easy piece of ass for the sake of your prostate. Hey, I’d like to propose a toast. To
Prevention
magazine,” Pete said, and raised his glass of milk.

The other men raised their glasses, too, and clinked them together.

“I think this intervention went well,” Pete said. “Do you need to sleep at home tonight? We could hold down the fort without you.”

“Thanks. That would be good,” Mike replied.

*   *   *

“Did you like Jill’s husband?” Cassie asked Howard, who was preparing some coconut-curry lentils.

He shrugged.

“How come they’re getting divorced?” she asked.

Howard shrugged once more. “It’s really not my business.”

“Do you think she’ll get married again?”

Again, he shrugged. “Do you think your dad will get married again?”

This time, she shrugged.

“Kind of hard to think about right now, isn’t it? I think Jill feels the same as that. Too soon to tell,” he said.

“Did you ever get married?”

“Nope,” he said. “Here, stir this while I chop more onion.”

She took the wooden spoon from him. “Why not?”

“Marriage isn’t for everybody. I know all the Disney movies end with people getting married, and that’s what kids think a happy ending looks like, but it’s not that simple.”

“Did you ever meet anyone you wanted to marry?”

“Nope. Did you?” He somehow managed to keep a straight face.

“No! I’m just a kid!”

Howard shrugged again and chopped another onion.

“Is Jill sad about her divorce?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Take a spoon and taste that. What do you think?”

She took a spoon from the silverware drawer, dipped it in the pot, and tasted it. “Good.” She paused for a moment and then asked, “Do you think my mom watches when Jill is here?”

Howard shrugged. “Do you?”

“Sometimes,” she answered.

“Do you get the feeling it’s okay with her?”

Cassie shrugged just like him. “I think so. I mean, people probably don’t get jealous in heaven, and she’d probably be pretty glad someone is taking care of me so I can stay here with Dad, right?”

Howard nodded. “Do you ever see her?”

Cassie shook her head. “Sometimes I think I hear her, though.”

“Yeah? What does she say?” he asked.

“She helps me find special rocks.”

“Hm. Does she ever visit you in dreams?”

“I don’t know. I only remember the bad ones,” she said.

“After my mom died, she would visit me in dreams. We’d talk about stuff—not always important stuff or anything, but boy, it was so nice to see her and so hard to wake up and miss her,” he said.

“I never thought about you having a mother. I mean, of course you did, but I just never thought about it before.”

He laughed a little. “My father died when I was in high school and my mother never married again. She somehow raised us by herself. She was a waitress at the soda fountain down at the drugstore. On Fridays, my sister and I would go there after school and she’d treat us to a milkshake.”

“Do you wish she had? You know, remarried?” Cassie asked.

“I guess it would have depended on the person. There were times when I knew she was lonely and sad, and I knew it was that special kind of lonely that a kid couldn’t fix.”

“You never wish you had a wife?”

“No, I never wish I had a wife. Sometimes I wish I had a love, though.”

“I hope you fall in love,” she said.

“I hope you fall in love, too,” he replied.

She laughed and rolled her eyes.

chapter seventeen

SNOW REPORT FOR JANUARY 22

Current temperature: 18F, high of 18F at 7
A.M.
, low of 12 at 12
A.M.

Light snow, no wind.

75" mid-mountain, 84" at the summit. 1" new in the last 24 hours. 1" of new in the last 48.

Snow used to just be snow. This was what Mike thought about as he walked home in the morning. He missed looking at snow like a child or a tourist. When he was little, snow was opportunity, or even the freedom of a snow day. It was fun. And now, as he watched it fall, he could see its graceful beauty, the dance each flake did as it tumbled to earth. But it took effort. His first thought when he looked at snow was always,
Accidents
. What used to be magical, elegant, and pure, was now simply the predecessor to carnage.

And it struck him that it wasn’t so different with women. Since Kate died, his first thought when he looked at a woman was simply that he never wanted to feel this way again.

Walking up the sidewalk, though, he could see Jill in the kitchen window, and as with snow, he felt the conflict of recognizing her beauty and the dread of the inevitable disaster that beauty surely hid. She looked up, caught him gazing, and smiled. His first thought was,
Nothing lasts
. With some effort, he could remember how it was when he was a teenager, that moment when the girl he liked finally smiled at him.… What victory! What a miracle! But now, he simply knew too much. He knew the realities of marriage. He was not so foolish as to believe that any couple escaped the bad times. It was part of the deal. And he knew now about the parting—about the untold misery and suffering of the parting.

The blue jays jumped from branch to branch in the bare cottonwood trees that lined the street. There was so much beauty all around him, yet every day he walked right by it thinking about all the ugliness and tragedy in his world.