Painted Boots (11 page)

I want my mother
.  I want her I want her I want her.  I can’t breathe.  She’d help me, I know she would.  I call out, “Mom.  Mama,” but the words are too soft.  She’ll never hear.

A man
kneels next to me.  He covers me with a jacket, or a coat.  My head is suddenly cradled on softness.  It’s so noisy—yelling, shrieking, shouting; the robot-buzz of walkie-talkies.  Nearby, a girl sobs.  Someone touches my ankle and I scream, “No!”  The word is a gift, like the slapping of a baby’s bum.

“No,” I say again, pulling air into my lungs
.  “No.”

The man touches my hair. 
“Gently now,” he says.  “Gently.”  He rests the palm of his hand on my forehead, then smoothes my hair from my face.  I look up, squinting at the uniform, rectangular lights straddling the ceiling.  A little tear glistens on the man’s cheek.  I watch it fall.

“I know you,” I whisper.
  But I can’t find his name.

18

SNOW FALLS OUTSIDE
a large, square window.  The flakes align like a school of determined fish, orderly and perfect.  I watch the snow for a long time, feeling content.

After a while
I notice I’m someplace like snow—white walls and a white floor, a white, sound-absorbing ceiling.  Above me, dangling from a thin silver track, hangs a crescent moon of sheer white drapes.  I’m lying on my side in a bed with a white guard rail.  Layers of white flannel blankets cover me from shoulder to toe.  A clear, small plastic tube has been taped to the back of my hand with two thin strips of white.  Near the tape, the tube morphs into a needle.  My skin has swollen around the entry and turned slightly red.  I’m naked but for a white cotton gown peppered with small gray dots. 
Pin dots
, Mom called this pattern a long time ago.

Pin dots
.

Within reaching distance of
my bed there’s a little white stand.  On it is a clear plastic water pitcher, a clear plastic cup.  Stacked next to the cup are straws sealed tight in white paper wrappers.  Centered on the stand, like creamy frosting on a cupcake, is an explosion of white roses arranged in a stubby white hob-nail vase.  Next to that are Kyle’s boots.

His boots—my boots—look like I remember them
, the leather scratched and worn, the heels painted pale blue.  I painted them just yesterday, come to think of it.  Staring at them now, with snow bombarding the window behind, I realize the shade I selected doesn’t capture the feeling of winter like I thought it would.

For some reason,
I start to cry.

“
Aspen?”

“Daddy
?”  My voice is thin and frail, like it comes from someplace other than me.  I try shifting toward him, but I don’t get far.  My side aches and feels tight, both.  Dad touches my shoulder. “Don’t move, baby.  I’ll come around.”

H
e pushes the white curtain aside.  The little chains glide along their track, meeting with soft clinks, one by one.  I work my hand through the rungs of the railing and hold it there, palm up, as though I’m a child waiting on a treat.  Dad sits in a white fabric-covered chair, his head almost even with mine.  He touches my fingers.  He looks at me through tired, watery eyes.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Okay.  My side hurts.”

Dad
lifts his glasses and folds the arms, tucking them into his shirt pocket.  He wipes his tears with the heels of his hands.  “Ray Thacker saved you.  Do you remember?  He’d gone to pick up Kyle’s homework.  He heard screaming.  It took him a while to find the fight.  I guess a lot of girls were involved.  They were pushing at each other.  Arguing.  Yelling.  Ray and a few teachers started in, breaking things up.  When he saw you, Aspen, bloody and nearly naked, he almost lost it.  I . . . I’m grateful he was there, but I should have gone in to find you.  I . . . was waiting.  Outside.  I’m so sorry.”

Tears dribble
across the bridge of my nose, surprising and warm.  It’s impossible to picture myself, exposed and helpless, a victim, in the hall.  A part of me is glad Dad wasn’t there; that he didn’t see me like that.  But I remember Ray Thacker hovering over me, his hand gentle on my forehead.  I remember other things, too, though the memories are hazy.  An ambulance.  Doctors.  Nurses waking me a few times before now.  “I guess I was lucky,” I whisper.

“I guess you were.”  Dad cradles his head in his hand
s for a moment, working his fingers into his hair.  Then he squeezes both of his hands around mine.  “Kyle comes from good people.  And he means something to you, Aspen.  I know that.  But maybe, just for now, it’s best you two let things cool.  I’m thinking of taking you back.  To Portland.”

“Portland?”
  I look past Dad, to the falling snow.  How could I ever be happy in the place where Mom still lives in my dreams?  What if I wandered from school, on auto pilot or something, and busted in on the strangers who bought the house I once called home?  It would ruin everything.  It would make Mom’s death too real.  I’m not ready for that.  I mean, in Portland I couldn’t turn around without being asked how I’m feeling or how I’m getting along.  Every day someone would ask if I miss my mother.  I’ve seen it before. I’m guilty of asking those stupid questions myself.  People mean well, but they don’t let you move on when they know all about what you’re trying to move on from.  Maybe that’s why I say, “I won’t go.”

Dad’s face twists into
something uncomfortable, like he’s stepped into murky, piranha-infested water.  “The choice isn’t exactly open to discussion,” he says.

“
I won’t go,” I say, louder this time.  My side erupts, as though it were ripping.

“
Careful there,” Dad says.  He pats my hand once.  Twice.  “What do you expect me to do?  You’ve been in the hospital since yesterday.  You have thirty-two stitches.  You have two bruised ribs and a twisted ankle.  I can’t just send you back to school and pretend everything’s fine.”

“
What happened with Em?”

“They suspended her.  She was arrested.  She’s out now, on bail, but she’ll have consequences.”

“So she won’t be back in school for a while.  Maybe ever.”

“Well yes, but—”

“Then for me, going back isn’t a problem.”

“It is a problem, honey.  I don’t feel good about sending you
there.  Not after this.”

“Then I’ll home school
.  I’ll find internet courses.”

Dad rolls his eyes and looks toward the door.  “I can’t leave you alone all day.  Em Harrelson is suspended.  Not in jail.”

“You give her too much credit,” I say.  “Or maybe you don’t give me enough.”

“This isn’t about credit
, Aspen.”

“
Well whatever it’s about, I’m not going back to Portland.  You can’t make me!” I close my eyes, waiting for the pain to pass.

“Baby.”
  Dad strokes my hair.  He pulls his chair closer and arranges my covers.  “It could be a good thing,” he says softly.  “You could be back with your friends.”

“
My friends are here.”  I roll away from him, moving quickly, as though I wasn’t injured.  Pain streaks in long barbed fingers around my body.  My skin feels tacked, like the firm stitching of a rag doll’s seam. I cry out.  I can’t help it.  In seconds Dad is on his feet, helping me settle onto my back.  As he fusses over me the door to my room swings open.

Kyle
walks in.

He stares at me
, unblinking.  My thoughts jump with how we’ve told each other ‘I love you,’ email style.  He called me ‘Aspen Thacker.’  He called me his girl.  I hear everything we wrote, every promise.  I hear it all so clearly it’s as if we’d spoken the words out loud.  And maybe, because my head is full of all our email, I can’t think of a thing to say.  I’m scared, a little.  I don’t see my feelings reflected on Kyle’s face.  His eyes are a complex universe—dark and fretful.  His skin is pale as moonlight.  His hair seems grooved, as though he’s run his fingers through it a zillion times.  Stubble covers his cheeks and chin and upper lip.

As he walks to my bedside,
my eyes fill with tears.  I want him to wrap his arms around me and hold me like he’ll never let me go, the way he did the day we danced together.  I want to hear his beautiful, tenor voice telling me everything will be all right, that his heart hasn’t changed.  But all he does is hunch over me, resting his forearms on the white railing between us.  When Kyle gathers my hand in his, Dad coughs and mumbles something.  Then Dad’s gone.

Maybe Kyle was waiting for Dad to go.  Maybe now he’ll pull off his boots and climb up next to me and settle by my side. 
I want to cradle my head on his shoulder while we talk and talk and talk.  I crave the warmth of his body.  I need the soothing sound of his voice.  But he just stands there.

Terrifying silence builds between us. 
He inspects my hand for a while, rubbing his thumb across my knuckles with careful, light strokes, his wheels turning.  I worry this is all too much for him, that knowing Em hurt me brings back too many bad memories of his own.  It’s possible that what she did to me scares him, like he’s next or something.  Maybe his demons are too strong, even stronger than all the intimate things we emailed back and forth: putting our bodies together and kissing and our future and stuff.

Kyle’s
gaze shifts.  He’s so intent on wherever he’s looking that I follow his stare to the far white wall of the room.  A watercolor print hangs there, framed in cheap bleached wood, the flowery bouquet faded into tone-on-tone.  As I look at it, the image blurs into nothing.

I hate waiting on what
he’s going to say.  I don’t want to hear him grope around for a perfectly phrased good-bye.  Not now.  I draw one breath and turn to face him, determined to ask what he’s thinking.  It’s better just to know.  But before I can speak, his gaze shifts until his eyes are locked to mine.

“I
will never leave you again,” he whispers.  Like he’s sealing his words into a solemn promise, he presses the palm of my hand to his mouth.

Ignoring how much it hurts, I
reach for him.  He lowers the rail on my bed and gently gathers me into his arms.  I kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, until I’m sure.

We are
all right.

19

WYOMING WIND IS
fierce.  I clutch my pillow to my chest, fretting as gusts slam our house, again and again.  Above me, the roof rattles and pops.  I swear my window is about to blow—the glass is
creaking—
and though it’s double-paned, one of my shutters sways on its hinge.  But twenty minutes pass and nothing happens.

I
will myself up and stumble for the bathroom.

O
ur ‘temperature center,’ as Dad calls the gadget above my sink, reads fourteen degrees outside—the coldest it’s been since we moved to Gillette.  It’s probably sub-zero with the wind chill, but I don’t care.  It’s Thanksgiving, and the Thackers have invited us to dinner.

T
he thought of being in Kyle’s house—after too many tiring visits from a policeman named Bob and too many sensitive visits from a crisis counselor named Kathy and too little of seeing Kyle—has me in the kitchen by nine.  I shouldn’t push it.  I mean, I’m still sore, even though it’s been six days since Em attacked me.  My stitches tug with every move I make.  When I lift things, my bruised ribs twinge.  But I want today to be perfect.  So by the time Dad wanders downstairs I’m peeling apples, juicing oranges and lemon and mixing melted butter with cinnamon and sugar, oatmeal and flour.

“You go now,” he says
, heading for the coffee.

But I don’t go. 
I lean against the counter, ignoring the dull throb in my side, reading the recipe aloud as Dad finishes the two cobblers I started.  Turns out, baking is a lot like my biology lab work.  Just follow the directions.

With
the cobblers ready, Dad shoos me away to rest.  I down an Advil, snuggle under a quilt, and fall asleep on the couch while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  The TV is off when Dad touches my shoulder and pats my head.  “Time to shower, baby,” he says softly.

I
trudge upstairs.  I’ve avoided showering—the water feels like stone on my bruised skin—but I want to be my best today.  In the bathroom I strip off my clothes and, for the first time since coming home last Saturday, study my body in the mirror.

My entire right side
resembles a massive birthmark, the purple edges fringed in sickly yellow-green.  My breast looks like an inkwell topped by a small brown nipple.  A half-moon of black stitches curves over and between two of my ribs, poking from my skin like a monarch caterpillar’s spikes.  In the shower, I rest my forehead against the cool blue tiles and cry.

Around three-thirty i
n the afternoon Dad loads the unbaked cobblers into the Jeep.  He’s different today, in a pair of stone-washed jeans and a rust-colored cable sweater and fancy cowboy boots.  His hair’s grown long enough to brush the collar of his shirt.  He’s put in his contacts again.

As he helps me into the passenger seat I say
, “The old look has returned!”  He grins, ear to ear.  But our ride to the Thackers’ house is a quiet one.

W
e haven’t talked about Portland since I woke in the hospital.  I mean as far as I’m concerned we’re not going, but our unspoken feelings hang between us like a swinging blade.  I missed school this week and Dad stayed home from work, cooking my meals and helping me up and down the stairs and barely letting me out of his sight.  I’ll be home all next week, too.  I guess that’s when I’ll break the silence-barrier and tell him: once my stitches are out, I’m going back.  I have to.  If I don’t go back to school it’s as good as Em running me out of town.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Dad eases the Jeep onto the snow-swept gravel drive beside the Thackers’ house, taking us round back.  It’s the first time I’ve been here in daylight since my date, my so far one-and-only date, with Kyle.  But now I remember this place from last summer—the day of the yard sale.  His mother had strewn the lawn with old clothes.  Card tables piled with kitchen ware and garage tools were set-up near the road.  My boots were there, standing in a line-up with a lot of other boots, on a hen-and-chick-infested rock garden wall.  They had been the first thing I’d seen at the yard sale, and the only thing I’d bought.

Dad
skids to a stop near the detached garage. He turns the key and the engine sputters into silence.  He unlatches his seat belt, but he doesn’t open the door.  “There’s something I should tell you,” he says.

I brace myself because really, I don’t know what else to do. 
I haven’t been out of the house since Dad brought me home from the hospital.  I didn’t know one fifteen minute car ride would make my body feel like I’ve been dragged over rocks.  Maybe I should have saved a pain pill for today but they made me sick, so on Monday I handed them over to Bob the cop.  I wish I hadn’t.  My side throbs in rhythm with my heartbeat.

Dad
says, “Ray Thacker invited a . . . friend.”

“And?”

“She’s someone I’ve had coffee with.  A few times.”

As I shift in my seat,
pain does a hara-kiri through my guts.  “You have a girlfriend?”

“
No,” Dad says, touching my hair.  “Not a girlfriend.”

“But you like her
, right? You’re all dressed up.”

Dad looks away from me
, watching in the rear-view mirror as Kyle exits the kitchen door.  I watch Kyle, too.  He walks toward our Jeep with his hands shoved into the pockets of a really cool duster.  His hair dances with the wind, forward and back.  “Her name is Jesse Madsen,” Dad says, and I jump.  “Ray invited her to coffee with us.  I had breakfast with her last Friday.”

“
Wait.  You were breakfasting with this Jesse girl when Em attacked me?”

“She’s a woman, honey.  And
we had breakfast in the morning.  Not.  Not, you know.”  Dad’s face reddens.  He pulls at his collar.  “Ray invited her today and I haven’t known how to tell you.  I’m sorry to spring it on you.  It’s just.  Well.  I didn’t know how you’d take it.”

Dad opens his door
then, leaving me to take it with my mouth hanging open.  Cold air gusts into the Jeep and I shiver, which makes my side ache more.  He leaves the door ajar, of course, while he intercepts Kyle near the rear bumper.  I hear “We’ll be a minute” and “Will you take the cobblers in?” but the rest ebbs with the wind.  Then Dad opens the back hatch.

Kyle
says, “Hey, beautiful girl.”

I have the overwhelming urge to scream for him to
forget the cobblers and carry me into the house instead.  But I just look at him, and smile.

Back in the Jeep, Dad rests his
arm across the steering wheel and studies me.  The interior is cold now and our breath floats up, little puffs of tulle void of talk.  I stare toward the barn.  Wind has blown the snow into glass-smooth dunes and soon, I think, more snow will fall.  “It’s your life,” I finally say.  “If you’re over Mom, well, it’s okay.  You deserve to be happy.”

“I appreciate that.”  Dad pulls his fingers through his hair. 
He hasn’t blinked once since returning to the Jeep, at least not that I’ve noticed.  He’s looking at me so intently it’s like he’s Superman, capable of probing my thoughts with alien, x-ray eyes.

“What?” I
ask.

Dad frowns. 
“I will never be over your mother, Aspen. Never. But I don’t expect you to understand that.  She was the love of my life.  Until you’ve lived that experience, until you’ve built a life with your soul-mate, how can you comprehend the depth there, or the sacrifice?  Something in me went with her the day she died and that part of me is gone, for good.  Your mom and I used to talk about what we’d do if we found ourselves alone.  We created vibrant, wishful fantasies.  We wanted the other to be happy.”

“So it’s like you have permission,” I say
to the side-view mirror.  I don’t want Dad to see the hot tears creeping into my eyes.

“
Back then it was a game, honey.  Something lovers do when they think about the impossible reality that one day they’ll find themselves alone.  In practice it’s not been like that at all.  I’m walking wounded.  If I’m not battling depression, I’m battling guilt.  Then I met Jesse and began to feel, well, better.  Am I’m wrong, to want to love again?”

“Don’t know,” I say.
  With my pinkie finger, I draw little waves on the foggy passenger window.

Dad touches my
shoulder.  “I don’t know either.  I want to be happy, even though I know it won’t be like it was before.  And now this crap with Em.  Am I over-reacting to want to take you back to Portland?”

Leaving
the waves unfinished, I look at Dad.  “Yes,” I say.  “Definitely.”

He draws
a long, deep breath.  “I’ve always wanted the best for us, baby.  But now you’re older.  You have ideas for your own life.  You have the right to define yourself, just like I did.  Like your mother did.  I don’t know what ‘the best for us’ means anymore.”

“Maybe what’s best for you and what’s best for me
isn’t the same thing.”

“Maybe.
  But you’re my child and always will be and I will always, always do all I can for you.  Being in Gillette has helped both of us figure out how to go on, but what happened to you has me backsliding.  I’ve been living the nightmare of your mother all over again, only this time I see the violence coming and I hate it.  I’m not dealing with it well.  I tell myself you’re okay, that you’re almost grown, that even if we stay here you’ll be all right.  I’ve done what I can to make sure of that.  I went to the school and documented everything.  I filed a police report.  For god’s sake, I’ve let the cops come into my home and talk to you whenever they’ve asked.  But I’ve been following Em’s path into the system.  It’s her first time offense, and her family is connected.  She won’t pay a heavy price.  She’ll come back to school in the next few months.  Maybe even the next few weeks.”

“People can change,” I say.

Dad huffs.  “People
can
change, Aspen.  But they rarely do.  We are who we are.  Em is a mean girl who will likely grow into a meaner woman.  I’m not in the front row of whatever’s going on with her, but I’d say she’s not aware of how bad her behavior is.  I’d say she’s sorry she was caught.  Not sorry she hurt you.  That’s a huge difference.  I don’t like you being anywhere that girl can get to you.”

“
Then I’ll avoid her, you know?  I’ll make sure I’m never alone.  She’s just mad ‘cause Kyle dumped her.  She took it out on me but now that’s done.  She’ll get over it and life’ll go on.  You’ll see.”  I pause, swallowing at the urge to whine. “I want to stay.”

Dad shakes his head. 
“I have good things happening here, too.  But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take you back to Oregon in a heartbeat if it seemed the right thing to do.  It would only be until you graduate.  Six months.  I don’t get your stubbornness.  You could stay in touch with Kyle.  I’m not asking you to let go of your friendship with him.  Why not go back, for just a while?”

I
look away from Dad.  I could explain myself.  Maybe.  But I don’t want to tell him how I’ve turned Portland into my personal shrine.  He’ll laugh at me.  He’ll think I’m being childish.  He won’t understand that going back means allowing the Portland I knew with my mother to be defiled by whatever Portland has become without her.  He doesn’t seem to get that going back is backwards.

Smoke
streams from the two stone chimneys of Kyle’s house, blending with the brooding clouds above.  Angella stands at the sink, rinsing something, the window a snapshot of cheery yellow.  Then she moves away.  The view is a Christmas card, a perfect wintry vision.  And framed in the kitchen doorway is Kyle, watching me watching him, the palm of his hand pressed flat against the glass inset of the storm door.

My heart
becomes a firework.

“
This is going to sound crazy,” I say, facing Dad again.  “I mean, maybe it’s an only-child thing.  But I’ve always had a part of me by my side.  Does that make sense?  Growing up, it was Mom.  She helped me navigate the world.  She was my compass.  She knew me.  She was an amazing comfort I didn’t even realize existed outside of me until she was gone.”

“Honey—”

I hold up my hand, like a stop sign.  “Then I met Kyle.  I’d seen him in class and stuff, yeah.  But the day I actually met him, a girl had me cornered in the parking lot.  She wanted a pin I was wearing—I guess it had belonged to her aunt.  She was fighting me for it, and winning.  Kyle rescued me.  We sat in his truck for a while after that, talking about school and everything.  I told him about Mom.  I cried like a baby in his arms and he just held me, like it was the most normal thing in the world for him to do.  Like he was born for that moment, you know?  Then he brought me home.  It was the day I called you and said I had a headache.”

Dad looks
away, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel.  Wind gusts buffet the Jeep, pelting the windows with ice crystals.  “You should have told me this before,” he says.

I roll my eyes. 
“Yeah.  Maybe.  But I’m starting to get that we all have our private things.  That day is precious to me.  It’s sacred, or something.  You have memories like that, right?  With Mom?  Since that day all I think about is Kyle.  It’s like I don’t know where he ends and I begin.”