Wild Roses (24 page)

"It's just ... I don't know. Not exactly the
way to start things out with you. 'Hi, I'm Ian. My stepfather had a long illness
and didn't have insurance, and when he died he left us destitute for my mother's
lifetime unless I can do something about it. Oh, and by the way, the only reason
we've got a roof is my stepbrother's charity. So would you like to go for a
walk, because I haven't gone to the movies in three years and couldn't buy the
popcorn.'"

"Oh, Ian. Oh, I'm so sorry." I pictured again
Ian's mother with her chipped toenail polish. A man in a hospital bed with tubes
in his nose and arms. Sleeping in a car. Living in a car. The Ian that I loved.
The hurt of that squeezed my heart. My stomach felt sick. "It's you I care
about."

"Okay. Here it is. If I don't get into Curtis,
we don't have a chance of getting out of this mess. Number one, it's a full
scholarship. Number two, going there would give me what I need to get some good
paying performances.

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Good paying performances. Recording deals,
eventually. The works. We lived on my performance money when my stepdad was
sick, but now that I'm older I've got to be much better. I can't be just a cute
kid playing the violin."

"Oh, God, Ian." For the first time I clearly
saw the choice that sat in front of him. I didn't know what the answer was. I
could only sit there in that car, my body filled with the pain of his
decision.

"Giving up what you really want--it's not your
only option, is all I'm saying," Bunny said. "It's not your job to solve the
problem. You don't need to, you know, give up your whole life to do that," Bunny
said.

"So what are the other choices? She has her
wages garnished for the rest of her life? You feed us, and we live in your house
forever?"

"She can stay there till she's eighty, for all
I care," Bunny said.

"The average life expectancy is eighty-four,"
Chuck said.

"Ninety. A hundred. Her job is going well. We
deal with the hospital somehow. I don't know. The net will appear. The net
always appears if you leap," Bunny said.

"The charity hurts," Ian said. He was looking
out the window, his whole body turned away from me.

"Charity, bullshit. She took such good care of
my dad. This is family. That's what families do."

"You got it. Exactly. That's why I've got to
get into Curtis," Ian said.

"God damn it," Bunny said. "He's obstinate.
Hand me

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some Corn Nuts, Chuck, the kid is stressing me
out."

"I'd try some deep relaxation for you, but
you're driving," Chuck said.

I took Ian's hand. Brought it to my mouth and
held it there. He couldn't even look at me. That was the worst thing about
shame, I guess--its self-destructive power. The way it made you burn the bridges
of anyone coming your way to help.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"I love you," I whispered back.

"Money, number four," Chuck said.
"Communication, sex, child raising, and money."

"Ix-nay on the money-talk-fay," Bunny
said.

The car climbed and rose around mountain bends.
At first the snow was only scattered in the shady places, but gradually the
whiteness grew until the road was buffeted by full-fledged snowbanks, glittery
and bright in the sun. The tires crunched over sanded roads, though I could feel
the wheels slip a bit on the ice, and Bunny slowed his speed. I was glad to see
the summit and the lodge of Snoqualmie Pass, as the driving was getting a little
nerve-racking. Bunny must have been glad too--he let out a big sigh of relief as
he skidded sideways into a parking spot. The lot was nearly empty, except for a
couple of cars with skis still attached to the tops, and an abandoned snow-plow.
It was weird. Usually at this time of year the pass would be crawling with
people.

"Closed, I guess," Chuck said. "Shit, I've been
thinking about hot chocolate and lunch the whole way."

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"How can they close it? It's a beautiful day
and we need cheeseburgers," Bunny said. "Let's get out anyway."

"We can just look around," I said. "Eat lunch
in the car on the way home." After our talk, I felt anxious to get Ian back to
lessons on time. Either that, or have us both run away forever and never return
home again.

"No reason we can't play a little," Bunny said.
He leaned down, popped the trunk.

We got out of the car, stepped carefully onto
the icy ground. The cold air felt great, stinging and fresh. I breathed deeply,
as Chuck and Bunny pulled a pair of black inner tubes from the trunk.

"Guys, we got maybe twenty minutes, max," Ian
said.

"Enough for a couple trips down the sledding
hill," Chuck said. "Yee haw!" He gave the tube a shake over his head, his yee
haw blowing in a huge puff of white from his mouth.

Bunny slammed the trunk. We walked flat-footed
across the parking lot so as not to fall, then cut across the road past the
lodge.

Walking was tough. If you trudged in the deeper
snow you barely noticed the ice, but my pant legs were already getting soaked.
We huffed behind Chuck and Bunny, who could sure haul themselves around for big
guys. I was exhausted already, and realized why I'd never been a skier. Just the
trip from the parking lot would make me ready to rest for the day by the
fireplace in the lodge.

"I'm not sure this is such a great idea," Ian
said. "There's no one around."

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It was a little eerie, the lodge sitting solid
and empty, and the lifts deserted and still. It was impossible, though, to
really muster up any feeling of warning when the sun was so bright and cheery,
and when the snow was glistening like fairy dust in some hokey Disney movie. We
pulled ourselves up and up, walking in the deep snow, until I felt like I'd
accomplished an amazing Tight Thighs in Ten Minutes. My legs hurt, my butt
muscles hurt, my lungs were hot, and I didn't look up until we stopped at what
must have been the top of a ski hill. I pictured myself on skis, looking down
from this very spot, and realized I'd rather do a two-week punishing stint of
math statistics then to throw myself down on a pair of matchsticks from where we
stood. The hill was a sheet of ice going straight down, decorated with
evergreens that were plunked in death-defying places. I changed my mind about
the sledding right then and there.

"No way," I said.

"I agree," Ian said. "Too
dangerous."

Bunny sighed through his nose, two straight
shots of white locomotive steam. "I guess you guys are right. We'll go back to
the baby sledding hill."

"Damn," Chuck said.

And right then, right at that moment before the
word was even completely out of his mouth, his foot was yanked underneath him
sure as if someone had pulled it. "Whaaa . . ." he cried, and Chuck was suddenly
on the ground, a human toboggan, careening down the hill while still clutching
his tube in one hand, the black ring skidding

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and turning as if having the happiest free ride
of its little rubber life.

I grabbed Ian's coat sleeve. "Oh,
shit!"

"Hang on, Chuck!" Bunny called.

The crazy thing was, there was nothing we could
do. We just stood there, watched his limbs fly around until he landed at the
bottom.

He was silent for a moment. And still. And then
came his voice.

"Fuck," he said.

Bunny stepped forward to call out to him.
"Don't worry, Chu--" His voice was lost as he crashed to the ground. Fell on his
butt with a thud and whipped and whizzed down that hill like we'd just been
shown an instant replay. Bunny held his tube, too, but lost it about halfway
when it skidded from his grasp, bounced off one of the trees, then bumped the
rest of the way to the bottom until a part of it beaned Chuck on the skull and
bounced off.

"Fuck," Chuck said again.

Bunny slid to a stop beside him. His arms and
legs were all askew, a toy man tossed by a toddler. "Bun! Bun! Are you all
right?" Ian called. He lay flat for a moment, unmoving. "Ow," he
said.

"Can you guys move?" Ian said.

Bunny shifted around. "Yeah, everything's
working."

"Me too," Chuck said.

"Thank God," I said.

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"Do you need us to get you some help?" Ian
asked.

He was standing right beside me, right there,
and then, bam! He was gone. Upright, talking, and then down on his back, his
coat flying out behind him, riding down on the seat of his pants, sitting up as
if he'd planned it that way. You really would have thought he meant to do it, if
it weren't for the yelling he was doing along the way, if it weren't for the
crash he had at the bottom, his crying out in pain.

"Oh, God," he cried. He was crying there, in
the snow. "My arm. Jesus, my arm."

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Of course, I was still at the top of that hill.
I was helpless, afraid to move. All we needed was for me to go down with the
rest of them and then we'd really be in deep shit. I decided I'd better go for
some help, although the chances of finding anyone seemed nil after the looks of
that empty lodge. I was holding the real disaster at bay in my mind-- Ian's arm,
maybe broken, certainly injured, the audition, the way we might have just
changed the course of his and his mother's lives--and was trying to concentrate
on the more immediate one, namely, how to get three guys, two the size of
refrigerators, back into the car and safely home. I stepped back into the deep
snow to anchor myself, called down to them.

"I'm going for help!" I yelled, and was glad to
see that Chuck was attempting to get on his feet. I struggled back

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the way we came, a few steps at a time,
wondering what the hell I was going to do when I got there. I was beginning to
hate the sound of that crunching snow, hated the twinkling, beautiful white,
when I heard a roaring sound, a loud zipping roar, like a chain saw almost. It
turned out to be a snowmobile in the distance, and when the driver saw me, it
quickly headed in my direction. I waved my arms around, which was unnecessary,
as he had every intention of heading my way.

The guy was with the ski patrol and was pissed
we were out there, wondering how we missed the signs that the place was closed.
Apparently, in addition to the extremely icy conditions, there was also an
avalanche warning in effect. So, hey, look at the bright side.

I put my arms around the shaking Ian when we
were back in the car. I saw his wrist before the patrol guy wrapped it, the bone
sticking against his skin as if trying to make a getaway, the color turning
quickly to a dark purple. The patrol guy told us to get to a doctor right away
and have an X ray, but there was no doubt if you saw what I did that it was
broken. The bone wasn't the only thing that had been shattered. I felt the
devastation in his trembling; I listened to it in the silence on the car ride
home.

If our lives had been losing stitches up until
that point, they began a serious unraveling when we got home. I thought of the
time when I was a kid and I had pulled one enticing loop from the afghan Nannie
was crocheting. I

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knew I had done something awful and
irrevocable, but the more I tried to hold it together, the more it kept coming
undone, until the yarn sat in a wrinkled heap. Fragile things become undone at a
frightening speed.

I waited in the emergency room with Chuck.
Bunny, amazingly in one piece himself, went in with Ian to see the doctor. It
was evening before we got out of there. They dropped me off at home, so I wasn't
there for the moment that Ian walked into his mother's house with a cast on his
arm.

I had my own train wreck to deal with at my
house.

"Where in God's name have you been?" my mother
said as I walked in. "I've been worried sick."

I walked past her, went up to my room, and shut
the door. So what? What was a little more trouble? I couldn't stand to face
anyone. After what I'd done to Ian's life, I wanted to drop into a hole and
disappear. My own shame made powerful punishment seem certain--it was already
withering my insides until I felt I might throw up. I heard Dino in the kitchen.
It's that boy, I know it. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

I shut the door behind me, lay on my bed in my
quilt. I wrapped it so tight around me. I reached out for the bear in the snow
globe. I wanted to throw it against the wall, destroy it, but instead I put it
under the quilt with me, tucked it right inside that cocooned place.

"Cassie?"

Mom knocked, then came in. She sat down at the
edge of my bed. "Cass? What happened? Come on, talk to me."

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T can't." "Talk to me."

"It's awful. It's terrible." I started to cry.
Since I met Ian, I was as bad as the faucet Mom left on when she was washing her
sweater. Someone had turned on the emotion and now it wouldn't go
off.