Meet Me at the River (26 page)

But where I sit, in my room. It’s
this
life, here and now. My mother went away and came back, over and over again. Somewhere in the midst she went to Ireland, so I was born. She left room for Francine, so Luke was born. Luke and I fell in love as easily and
naturally and unavoidably as lightning or rain. I may have saved his life a hundred times until the time I didn’t.

One day Luke walked by a field of larkspur and picked a purple flower. Toward the edge of the trail he dropped it. Its seeds blew in a Chinook wind, and now another field waits beneath the snow to erupt in spring.

Beside my ear the kitten lives, it purrs. Every single step of my life led up to this moment. And so I will do as Luke wishes. I will stay alive, at least for one more day. Though the winter continues in pale, white loneliness, and he does not return for two long, cold, and endless months.

The world stays mostly frigid—fewer signs of spring and thaw than I have ever known in Colorado. I see Genevieve Cummings wearing a snowsuit at the Mercantile. She’s with her new babysitter, so I go over to say hello. “Genevieve,” I say, kneeling in front of her. She looks at me, her puffy down hood circling a red-cheeked face that shows zero recognition.

Soon word from colleges will arrive. This season is a strange mirror of last year, when Luke and I waited for letters from Boulder. We had a happy celebration the day we both received fat manila envelopes, suddenly tasting it, the time when we would be together, unimpeded, uninterrupted. This time waiting to hear, all I feel is vague curiosity. Katie has already found a house in Boulder with enough room for both of us. I figure I
can wait till the last possible moment to break the news that I want to stay in Rabbitbrush. Maybe I can go to one of those online colleges. It’s hard to imagine my mother objecting, since we’ve never been apart for very long. Even though I’m living with my grandparents now, I see her nearly every day because she always drops Matthew off with Grandma for a couple of hours.

It was the kitten that made me finally move out of Paul’s house for good. The morning she appeared, the first thing I did was carry her downstairs to the kitchen and open a can of tuna fish. I knelt beside her, stroking her tiny spine as she attacked the food. The softness of her fur made my heart expand, already falling in love.

“What’s this?”

Paul stood in the doorway, buttoning the cuffs of his shirt sleeves. He looked scowlish, angry, full of dislike—the look he would always have, regarding me, if there were no one else to see us together.

“It’s a kitten,” I said.

“I can see it’s a kitten. Where did it come from?”

I wondered what he would say if I told him the truth:
Luke gave her to me
. If ever there were a prototypical nonbeliever, it would be Paul. Then I remembered his faith in my mother, his belief that she might stay in this new life.

“She was crying outside last night, so I let her in. She would have frozen to death.”

Paul stepped over us and headed to the coffee
machine. “You can take your mother’s car to school,” he said, “and drop the kitten off at the shelter on the way.”

I didn’t look up, just kept petting the cat. “I was thinking of keeping her,” I told him.

“That’s not possible,” he said brusquely. “Not with everything we have going on here, with the baby. The cat will destroy the furniture.” I wasn’t sure how these two things were connected and almost said so, when Paul added, “Anyway, I’m allergic.”

This probably wasn’t true; he just wanted to present as many inarguable points as possible. The bowl of tuna empty, I scooped up the kitten and held her to my chest. Upstairs the baby woke, his cries filling the house. Paul and I both looked at the ceiling, waiting for my mother’s footsteps. The coffee machine hissed and dripped with dramatic, explosive exhalations. Matthew cried. No footsteps.

“Shit,” Paul said, and left the kitchen. I heard him take the stairs two at a time, impressively fit, impressively youthful. Still holding the kitten to my chest, I crossed the room and picked up the phone. My grandfather answered after two rings.

“I found a stray kitten,” I said. “Paul won’t let me keep her.”

“I’ll be right over,” Grandpa said, joy in his aged voice at a new pet for me and the opportunity to thwart Paul for him. Conceding the movie theater still rankled.

I named the kitten Emily and moved in with my
grandparents. A couple weeks later Grandpa bought himself a new truck and gave me his old one so I wouldn’t have to ride the school bus. But within a few days he decided he missed his old truck, shot muffler and all, so now I have a brand-new Toyota flatbed. It’s cherry red, and the color makes me think Grandpa meant to give it to me all along. He always drives blue trucks.

*   *   *

One Friday afternoon I drive home from school in bright sunlight that does nothing to penetrate the thick, crusted mounds of snow that line the side of the road. I slow down when I pass a young woman—lithe and graceful with a long, fair ponytail. As I pull up alongside her, I see that it is not a young woman at all but my mother, the tips of her ears bright red from the cold air.

I stop the truck and push down the passenger window with a sleek electric buzz. “Hey,” I call to her. “You should have worn a hat.”

She sticks her head through the window and reaches out her hand. “Hi,” she says. “Can I have yours?”

I hesitate for the barest fraction of a second. This particular hat was a gift from Francine. She gave it to me my first winter back in Rabbitbrush, before the nature of Luke and me made itself apparent. If I give the hat to my mother, there is a good chance I will never see it again. Still, my pause doesn’t last long before my natural obedience kicks in. I take it off my head and hand it over.

Mom pulls it over her ears, still looking unsettlingly
girlish. “Soft,” she says, approving, and then adds, “I can’t get used to seeing you in this truck.”

“It’s nice,” I agree.

“Dad bought me one, very similar, when I was your age.”

It’s easy to picture her driving off to college in her red truck, leaving town, hoping it was for good. These days every time I see her, I expect her to ask me to come home. But she hasn’t, not once. She’s barely even referenced my absence. If she’s mad at Paul for driving me away by not wanting the cat, I haven’t heard anything about it.

“Where’s Matthew?” I ask.

She narrows her eyes, weary of everybody asking this question. “I sold him to the Indians,” she says. Instantly realizing her mistake, she turns bright red.

“The gypsies,” I say. “It’s the gypsies, in that expression.”

“I realize that.” She looks away, down the road, toward the direction she’d been walking. She can’t wait for me to leave. I imagine Matthew, a squalling little bundle in a basket on Francine’s front stoop. A single flash of confusion would cross Francine’s face before she gathered up the basket and took the baby with an electric air of renewed purpose.

“Bye, Mom,” I say. I wait for her to ask me to come to dinner, or go for a walk. “Bye, Tressa,” she says instead.

I drive away. In the rearview mirror I can see my
mother, wearing my hat, her hands in her pockets, standing still, watching me go.

*   *   *

Heading home, as I pass the Burdick house, I see H. J. shoveling the walk to his front door. I wave, but he doesn’t see me. For a second I think about stopping but decide against it. Inside my grandparents’ house it smells like banana bread just out of the oven. There it is, cooling on the stove.

“Tressa,” Grandma says. “Sit down.” She slices the banana bread and butters a piece from the block of good, Irish cream butter she always keeps on her counter (covered these days, to protect it from Emily) and slides the plate in front of me. Emily jumps into my lap, her creaky little purr setting immediately to work. Grandma pours me a cold glass of milk—whole, of course—and puts it on the table with the food. These past weeks with her have destroyed all my dieting efforts, but how can I say no? The little girl who still lives inside me, who always wanted to come to Grandma’s and be fed, demands that I accept these offerings.

I close my eyes and bite into the warm, buttered bread. Heaven. Grandma sits down across from me. She takes an envelope out of her back pocket, unfolds it, and shows the front to me. It has an impressive collection of colorful stamps, a bust of the queen in their left-hand corner. I recognize my father’s slanted handwriting,
always faint—as if he doesn’t believe his words deserve the full pressure of his pen.

“It came yesterday,” Grandma admits. “I don’t know why I didn’t give it to you. I almost read it myself.”

“Why?” I ask, surprised. My father has never been considered a loaded topic. He’s barely ever been considered at all.

“I’m not sure myself,” Grandma says. She frowns, more thoughtful than displeased. “I suppose things have just been humming along so peacefully these last few weeks, with you here. I didn’t want anything unsettling to happen.”

Without thinking, I close my right hand around my left wrist. I hate the worry that I continue to cause my grandmother, who’s never been anything but kind to me.

“I won’t even read it, if you don’t want me to,” I say.

“Oh,” she tells me. “No. I don’t want to keep your father from you. He’s a harmless fellow, generally, isn’t he?” She looks relieved that I haven’t expressed any particular emotion, and hands over the letter. I scan it quickly, then fill her in.

“He wants me to come to Wales next year. He says I can stay with him, and maybe apply to the university in Swansea.”

“Swansea,” Grandma says, horrified. “So far away? That won’t do. We just got you back!”

I think of all the various places from where she’s got
me back. “Don’t worry, Grandma. I’m not going anywhere.”
Not even to Boulder,
I don’t say.

At that moment we hear a car rumble up the driveway—not Grandpa’s truck, which announces itself all too clearly with its broken muffler. Grandma rolls her eyes. “It’s your mother, coming to hand over the baby.” She doesn’t fool me with her reluctance. I know that Grandma is happiest when she has a crying baby to soothe or a small child to feed. She once told me her greatest sadness was having had only one child instead of a whole houseful. Who could have predicted that one wayward daughter would provide her with a lifelong stream of little children?

“It’s not Mom,” I say. “I ran into her earlier. She was taking a walk.”

Grandma gets up and looks through the storm door. I hear a car door slam. “It’s Paul,” Grandma says. “Now what could
he
want?” I hear another door slam. “He has the baby,” she says. She glances back at me worriedly. Every one of us, I realize, has been standing poised, waiting for the day Mom takes off.

“I just saw her,” I say again, referencing but not directly stating the unspoken, shared fear. “She was on foot, just taking a walk.”

“In this cold,” Grandma says. As if summoning the temperatures to prove her point, she opens the door, letting in a chilling gust. Paul strides past her, the baby over one shoulder.

“Is she here?” he asks.

We tell him no, and I say again that I just saw her, she was going for a walk. The repetition sounds like too much protesting, but Paul’s hearing it for the first time, so he heaves a sigh of almost-relief and sinks down into a chair. Grandma steps forward to collect the baby, but Paul doesn’t want to relinquish him. He holds him close to his chest, absentmindedly patting him every few seconds.

“I came home,” he says, “and she had left the baby with some stranger, a girl from the café.”

Grandma and I look at each other. Any other mother in the world could hire a babysitter without making anyone bat an eyelash. But with
my
mother, it sets off abandonment bells in everyone’s head. I feel a stab of sympathy. Mom would have to be perfect to the nth degree to stop everyone from worrying. I guess Grandma has the same reaction, because she says, “Maybe it’s good for her to feel like she can get out of the house now and then.”

Paul looks over at me. “Tressa,” he says. “I was thinking maybe you should come home. You could help her take care of the baby. You could give her another reason, you know. To be there.” He won’t come out and say that he knows she’s in the crouching position, ready to run. Grandma’s face darkens.

“Tressa will stay here,” she says. “This is what works best. It’s not her job to keep your wife happy.”

Paul looks over at me, his face pleading. I consider
what his face means to me, what it should mean and what it doesn’t. It’s not like he never abandoned anybody.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I think I’m better over here.”

“You can bring the cat,” he says, his voice desperate.

I feel badly for Paul, I do. But there’s nothing I can do about my mother. There never has been. So I say, “I’m sorry. But I need to stay here right now.”

A dark cloud passes over his face, changing it from pleading to angry. The thing is, and we both know it, having me at the house wouldn’t make her more likely to do anything but take me with her when she leaves. Paul stands up, thumps the baby again. As a father he has a mixed track record—devoted and frazzled with the twins, distant and angry with Luke. Who will he be to this baby, this boy, Luke’s brother? And will he be that person on his own, or with my mom, or with someone else?

Paul leaves, ducking through the cold to his car. Grandma and I stand together and watch him through the door. He buckles Matthew into the backward car seat and hustles around, rubbing his hands together before he starts the engine. Even Paul’s fancy new SUV sputters in protest at the freezing air.

“If she has to leave,” Grandma says, “I wish she’d just come here.”

“When has she ever done that?” I say. My voice sounds harder then I meant it to.

“Maybe we’re just jumpy,” Grandma says. “Maybe this time will be different.”

Her voice cracks on that last word, and I feel a rush of anger, not only toward Mom for always doing this but at all of us, too, for always believing things will be different. Maybe the only ones who have it right are the twins, who completely gave up on her years ago.