Meet Me at the River (20 page)

It takes me a minute to remember. “Their mother went really fast,” I say. “It seemed like one day we heard she was sick, and the next day there was the funeral.”

“Did you go?”

“No. But Mom did, and so did your grandparents.”

“Then what happened?” Tressa asks.

I think for a second, trying to remember. “It was
about a year before you came back,” I say. “Mrs. Burdick had been gone a few months, and everyone said Mr. Burdick was taking it really hard. One night he went out drinking in Telluride, and on the way home, where he should have turned, he just kept driving. He drove straight into that rock wall. The whole car exploded.”

Tressa takes her head off my shoulder. She’s not smiling anymore. I shouldn’t have told her this story. She says, “He didn’t have a dog with him, did he?”

“He did, actually. Now that you say that I remember he did. It was some kind of shepherd. I think it went through the windshield.”

“Dogs don’t wear seat belts,” Tressa says quietly.

“It was sad.” A major understatement.

Tressa says something, but I can’t make out her words. I watch her for as long as I can stand it, but then I have to close my eyes. I wish she’d remember I can’t talk about now. For a minute there it felt so normal.

Then she says something I understand. “You’d think there would be lots of ghosts.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’d think,” Tressa says, “that you would run into other ghosts. That Mr. Burdick would be walking around here with Evie’s dog. You’d think you might run into each other now and then.”

“Ghosts,” I say. “Is that what you think I am?”

“No,” she says. “I never think that. Isn’t it odd?”

I kiss her wrist on the spot where she can feel it, but
I can’t shake the feeling that that’s how she thinks of me. Like a ghost. I pull back a little and the blanket falls off my shoulders. Tressa doesn’t reach out to fix it but closes it around herself. Why not? What do I need with any blanket? I’m a ghost. I don’t get cold.

Outside, toward the woods, the wind picks up. We look over at the swirl of snow. Carlo stands. I don’t hear a jingle, and for the first time I notice that his collar and tags are gone. He trots to the stairs. Down on the snow he stops and waits for me.

“Don’t go,” Tressa says. “I love you so much.”

I want to say
I love you, too
. But I can’t, my meter’s run out of time. I can’t say anything else. I stand and walk across the porch, catch up with the dog. We walk away, into the night. I can’t look back but I know that Tressa gets off the swing and walks to the edge of the porch. She holds the blanket around herself with one hand and rests the other one on the rail. I may be heading in the opposite direction but I can feel how much she loves me, and I know for sure I’ll be coming back.

School doesn’t start for another week, but Mr. Tynan, my English teacher, has agreed to meet me at the Rabbitbrush Café. I’m repeating his class this year because I like him so much, and he has rotated books so that I won’t get too bored. But next semester he needs to concentrate on Shakespeare, plays he covered last year, so we’ve decided to figure out an alternate, independent study for me. I’m sure Mr. Tynan will feel relieved not to have me in class. All year he has pointedly avoided tragic books; it can’t be easy to teach literature when you have to pretend life is cheerful.

The morning after soup and BLTs with H. J. and Evie—the morning after Luke tells me about their father—Grandpa has already left when I wake up. Grandma drives me to the trailhead where I left my mom’s Lexus.
Lately, with my mother essentially housebound, the car belongs to me. I turn the key and let it warm up a little. It’s a ridiculously luxurious vehicle, with a GPS screen that shows what’s behind me when I back out. The seats have a musky lavender scent. It’s my mom’s scent, and I like the way it predates Paul’s taming her. It dominates the spiffy leather interior, and I remember my mom from the old days, her restlessness and her tendency toward nervous, exuberant laughter. I remember all the ratty, rattly cars she’s owned, scented with just this same personal perfume. I wonder if it’s weird for her, cooped up in the house with a baby—the same house she fled more than two decades ago. I make a mental note to call her after I meet with Mr. Tynan, to see if she needs anything from civilization.

The day is increasingly bright. Downtown I pull into a parking space. The winter tableau of Rabbitbrush is fairly deserted. The main street gets plowed daily, but few cars make their way down the pristine pavement. Paul likes to say that dogs used to be able to sleep in the middle of Main Street, as if he’s trying to illustrate how much things have changed. But the truth is, a dog could still have a fairly good nap, as long as the occasional car was willing to maneuver around it.

Inside the café a few scattered customers sit eating eggs and drinking coffee. A quick scan of the place tells me each of the ten or so customers is a local, including my stepfather and grandfather, in heated discussion at
a corner table. I wave to Mr. Tynan, who is already waiting for me on the other side of the room, then go over to say hi to Grandpa and Paul. I can’t exactly ignore them, even if they didn’t seem to notice me walk in.

When Grandpa sees me approaching, he rearranges his face into a smile and stands up. He’s so tall that he has to bend at the waist to kiss me. “Tressa,” he says. “My girl. What are you doing here? Did you sleep well?”

I nod and then say, “Hi, Paul.” He hasn’t bothered to rearrange his consternation and looks up at me, still scowling. Grandpa and he must be arguing about that stupid drive-in movie theater.

“Hi, Tressa,” Paul says. “What are you doing here? Are you all right?”

I wonder if everyone will always ask me this last question. My mother says that any time she phones her parents, the first thing they say is, “Where are you?” If I can’t blame them for that, I guess I also can’t blame anyone for that inevitable query directed at me.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m meeting with my English teacher to talk about a project for next term.”

Paul turns and looks across the room as if he needs to confirm my story. Being a former English teacher himself, Grandpa approves of this appointment. He pats my arm and says, “Good girl.” Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet.

“No, no,” Paul says, also reaching for his wallet. “I’ll get it.”

“I have money,” I tell them.

“Nonsense,” Grandpa says to me, gently, and then not so gently he snaps at Paul: “Put it away,” he says. “I’ll pay for her breakfast.”

Paul obediently puts his hand back on his coffee mug, and despite myself I feel sorry for him. Grandpa is a formidable opponent. He hands me two twenties, which at the Rabbitbrush Café is enough money to buy breakfast for me and five other people. I know the excess is partly due to generosity—he wants me over-loved, overfed—and partly to make a point to Paul.
We don’t need your money
, the “we” referring not only to us, the Earnshaws—including my mother—but also to Rabbitbrush itself, the town whose land has enabled the son of ranchers, an English teacher, to spontaneously bestow green upon his youngest granddaughter.

“Thanks,” I say to Grandpa. “I better not keep Mr. Tynan waiting.”

Grandpa smiles at me. He doesn’t sit back down but stands watching me as I cross the restaurant. When I reach Mr. Tynan’s table, I wave at Grandpa. He waves back, then takes his seat. Typically, he never takes his eyes off me until he knows I’m settled, just like when he drops me off at Paul’s, waiting in the car until he knows I’ve made it safely inside.

“Hi, Tressa,” Mr. Tynan says. “How’s your family?”

“Fine,” I say. “My mom just had a baby boy. His name is Matthew.”

“Yes, I heard,” he says. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. It’s funny how everyone says that to me. It’s not like I did anything.”

Mr. Tynan smiles. He’s younger than Paul and Mom by about ten years, and he’s not from Rabbitbrush originally. He says, “They’re congratulating you because babies bring happiness.”

I think of Matthew’s scrunched little face, and his tiny fists flying up above his head. The other day I went with my mother to the pediatrician and saw another newborn do exactly the same thing, raise his arms up over his head in a startled jerk. It turns out that’s called the Moro reflex. It bothered me to find out that all babies do this—the gesture had seemed so particularly Matthew’s, his own little expression of gusto and surprise.

The waitress comes to the table. She graduated from Rabbitbrush High the same year as my sisters, so of course she has to ask how they are before she fills my coffee cup and takes my order for oatmeal and fresh fruit. When she heads back toward the kitchen with my ticket, Mr. Tynan says, “So have you thought about what you want to focus on for your project?”

“Yes,” I say. “I want to write about Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill. And Ted Hughes, of course.”

Mr. Tynan doesn’t say anything. We look at each other across the table. He has curly light brown hair, just starting in on its first streaks of gray. He blinks several
times, then says, “Tressa. Do you think that’s a good idea? Two women who committed suicide?”

The waitress returns with our breakfast. I stare down at my oatmeal and bananas—what passes for fresh fruit in the dead of Colorado winter—wishing it were a plate of greasy fried eggs and over-buttered toast like Mr. Tynan’s. He watches my gaze and pushes his plate toward me.

“Here,” he says. “Take a slice of bacon.”

“No, thanks,” I say.

“Come on,” he says. “It will show evidence of wanting to live.”

“Not if you consider the cholesterol.”

He laughs and pulls his plate back toward him. “Touché,” he says, and dips a toast tip into the runny egg yolk.

“Look,” I say. “I know that I’m supposed to act like I don’t even know suicide exists. I know everyone wants me to pretend life is rosy and never-ending. But truthfully, suicide’s what I’m thinking about. Not in terms of committing it, but as a student. That’s what interests me right now, that’s what’s on my mind.”

Mr. Tynan doesn’t look up from his plate. One of the reasons I like him is that he assigns work outside of the standard high school English canon. He doesn’t shy away from books chock-full of profanity and sex. In his class last year we read
Written on the Body
by Jeanette Winterson and
Rabbit Redux
by John Updike. He assigns Tom Robbins and Dave Eggers. On the first day of class
he always tells us that he doesn’t grade on class participation. “I understand what it feels like to be a shy student,” he’ll say. “And I’m as likely as the rest of you to think,
I wish that asshole would shut up
when someone goes on too long.” Mr. Tynan keeps a pair of old, battered couches in the classroom. Whoever gets to class early enough can sit on one of the couches instead of at a desk. He sometimes stops class discussion to play a relevant song on his CD player—anything from Gregorian chants to Lady Gaga.

I thought if anyone in the world would let me write a paper about Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill, it would be him. So my heart drops in disappointment when he says, “I’m sorry, Tressa. I don’t feel good about this.”

I stick my spoon into my oatmeal and move it around without lifting it.

“It doesn’t seem healthy,” Mr. Tynan continues, “to dwell like that. I’d love to see you study something more . . . life affirming.”

“Life affirming,” I repeat.

He looks up from his eggs. His eyes look darker now. They won’t quite rest as he tries to focus his gaze on me, and I recognize guilt in the way they shift. It occurs to me that Mr. Tynan himself would not have a problem with my doing this project. He might even think it’s a good idea. But then what if I end up slashing my wrists again? Or what if I swallow a bottle of sleeping pills, and they find me dead on my bed surrounded by
copies of
The Bell Jar
,
Ariel
,
Birthday Letters
, and
Lover of Unreason
? Mr. Tynan could lose his job.

He’s thinking of H. J., I realize. I remember the two of them, standing in the hallway at school, the uncharacteristic sternness on Mr. Tynan’s face. And I say out loud, almost before I can stop myself, “Just do it a little bit.”

Mr. Tynan blinks again, startled. “What did you say?”

“It wasn’t the worst advice in the world,” I say, not just out of a renegade impulse to defend H. J., but because I believe it. I take a bite of oatmeal. Mr. Tynan puts down his fork.

“Tressa,” he says. “I think you should make an appointment with . . . ” He trails off, and I know that he was about to say, out of reflex,
Mrs. Kingsbury
. Instead he picks his fork back up and halfheartedly pokes at his eggs. I slide a piece of bacon off his plate in an attempt to convince him I’m willing to affirm life, even if our only school counselor can’t humanely be expected to counsel me.

“Tressa,” he says, trying again. “I hope you’re still talking to someone. It’s so much to go through. I really think you should have ongoing care. Of course it’s not my place to say any of that. Or this. I hope you’re not spending time with H. J. Burdick.”

“Evie is a friend of mine.” I say this sentence slowly, enjoying the way the words sound. “A friend of mine.”

“Okay,” Mr. Tynan says. “That’s great. Evie’s great. I’m glad. But the thing about cutting a little bit? That
was
bad advice. And I don’t want him advising you similarly.”

I wonder how H. J. could possibly do this. What would he say? Just kill yourself a little bit? Mr. Tynan looks across the restaurant toward Paul. He and Grandpa lean toward each other across the table. They almost look like a married couple, in the midst of a heated argument they don’t want anyone else to hear.

“Look.” I try to make my voice sound as calm and self-aware as possible. “The last thing I want to do is alarm anyone. This isn’t a cry for help. I just don’t want to pretend all that didn’t happen, that it doesn’t matter. That wouldn’t be healthy either, would it?”

“I guess not,” Mr. Tynan says, but he doesn’t look convinced.