Fairy Tale Blues (22 page)

“Daniel.” He stuck his right hand out toward Dad.

Dad shook it and said, “Skip. And this is my daughter Annie Teague.” Dad didn't use my married name, never had.

I shook Daniel's hand, looked up at him, and I felt a brief sexual jolt at meeting his clean penetrating gaze. For a second it threw me completely off balance. Daniel nodded imperceptibly as if confirming the jolt. Then he directed his attention to my dad, who was bent over, checking out the engine on view inside the open hatch cover.

During their small talk I rearranged any trace of response lurking in my facial expression. It was as if this man had passed me a secret note, a small key, acknowledging with his nod that it was intended expressly for me. I'd felt a vibration in the center of my palm, sharp and brief. To ease the weight of my sudden self-consciousness, I worked to convince myself that it didn't happen.

Maybe he had one of those practical joke hand buzzers.

I greeted Daniel's dog, who had gotten up, stretched, then sauntered over to check us out. I petted the sleek black-and-white dog that Daniel said was named Jeter. Then he and Bijou sniffed each other.

In between his casual questions to my dad—Live around here? Do you fish?—Daniel answered enough questions of Dad's to make him feel comfortable—Don't guide much, used to fly cargo, been around Florida a few months. But through my father, Daniel gleaned more information than he offered, slowly and methodically, and with no help from me.

Then Dad said, “That fellow over there down the beach—he's watching you with his binoculars. Did you notice?” Dad directed our attention back toward the grassy park, where the picnic tables sat beneath the shade of Australian pines.

Daniel didn't glance over in the direction my dad indicated, but said, “Lots of tourists around, interested in boats.”

I turned to see, though.

I said, “He looks as much like a tourist as the Secret Service who accompany Vice President Cheney on his trips home to Jackson Hole.” Even from this distance you could see the sun reflecting off the smooth fabric of this man's dress pants, and though he didn't wear a tie, his shirt was collared with long sleeves. Back home the Secret Service started off wearing dark suits and ties, and when all the locals greeted them with questions about the weather in D.C., they switched to khakis and fishing vests, which handily concealed their guns and communication equipment. Whether they actually had the dry cleaners starch and press their fishing vests was uncertain, but somehow the way they wore them gave off that impression. We still asked about the weather in D.C.

I'm not sure why, but when Dad tried to pursue a discussion about the man with the binoculars, I conspired with Daniel to change the subject, as if I were in on the mystery and trying to protect it along with him. And there was a mystery. I didn't know who Daniel really was or why he was posing as a fishing guide or why the man in the pressed pants was watching him, but I wanted the mystery for myself; I didn't want to share it with my dad.

Luring Dad away from the topic, and then soon after away from Daniel's boat, set me firmly into an alliance with this stranger. Unless I chose not to come walking on the docks again, not to talk to Daniel again. Then, of course, no alliance could possibly exist. I suspected I would be back. I didn't know whether Daniel would stick around or not.

Jess

 

 

I
remembered how endearing AnnieLaurie looked on extremely cold skiing days when the baby fuzz along the hairline in front of her ears froze and the ice crystals sparkled like party glitter. Temperatures finally crawled stiffly into the lower single digits, so to hell with the business, I was downhill skiing all day long. As I poled into the lift line at Teewinot for my first run, I searched for that glitter on other women's faces. The darnedest thing was, it tended to look stupid on other women, even masculine. I never noticed before how many women had hairy faces. I swear, one woman had a heavy ice mustache and goatee. Looked like Sigmund Freud on skis.

The slopes were filled with a lot of unattractive women. Or so it seemed today. Other days all the women looked beautiful to me and reminded me of Annie in one way or another, as if the ski slopes were filled with her sisters taunting me out here.

The line was long, so I tucked my poles under one arm, pulled out my cell and called Annie. I hadn't decided yet whether to tell her about my session with Lola. The fact was, I didn't like thinking about it.

“Hi. It's me. I miss you.”

“Hi, Jess. I miss you, too.”

“Yeah, but I
really
miss you. I'm skiing this morning, and all I can think about is how much I wish you were skiing with me.” I glided my skis up the line as it moved, trying to keep my poles from poking someone's eyes out behind me.

“But I hardly ever skied with you. I was usually in the office working.”

“I just miss you a lot, Annie, and I'm anxious for us to be together again.” I didn't call to bring up how much she worked and I played.

“Well, I'm getting a little annoyed with that line, Jess.” She took a big breath and let it out. “Mushy talk about missing me and how much you want me home is your avoidance scheme. You're beginning to sound like a broken record.”

“That's the love of my heart, insulting me when I say nice things.” I looked around to see who might be listening and smiled at the strangers surrounding me. The tricky part of getting into the chairlift with poles in one hand, phone in the other was approaching. Should have thought this out. “Just a second, Annie.” I decided I better give this up, especially if the conversation was going to get difficult. I maneuvered under the rope that kept the lift line in place, held the phone up to my ear again. “I'm back.” Without using my poles, I slid down the gentle slope toward a bench in the sunlight. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. ‘Broken record.' ”

She said, “More like a broken record that thinks it's endearing in that condition.”

I rested my poles against the bench. “Shit, Annie.” I guessed this was going to take a while, so I worked out of my skis in order to sit comfortably.

“You're in denial, Jess. And grasping for the innocent position—missing me, telling me you love me. Staying firmly in the same spot that you've always clung to—blind, blameless, refusing to see reality.”

I sighed audibly into the phone. Leave it to Annie to turn a genuine sentiment of mine into a fault I should feel guilty about.

“Move it along, Jess. We're having problems. Let's work on them.”

Maybe this was the time to tell her about seeing Lola. But then this conversation would really get uncomfortable. I changed the subject with her instead, said, “Okay . . . so what's up with school?”

She allowed a long pause, then gave in and answered me. “I love school, Jess. I want to go for a degree, do something with this education I'm getting.”

Her voice sounded as if her face were all aglow, eyes lit, cheeks lifted in a soft smile—the way she used to sound and look while talking about us. “A degree in what?” Here it comes.

“Creativity.”

Again I sighed into the phone. But I kept quiet, let her talk. I leaned against the back of the bench and stretched out my legs. From here the entire mountain range spread out before me, and it made my heart buzz to see the peaks all lined up, glimmering in the bright morning light against the sky. The drainages were folded in between the slopes and crowded with the spires of dark pines. The sun felt great. I'd missed some of what Annie was saying. I tuned back in.

“I just think people must honor one another's creativity,” Annie said.

“Not if it's crap, we don't.”

“Jess, you're such a severe critic.”

A woman coming off Apres Vous skied into my line of vision, and stopped to wipe the fog off her goggles before getting in the lift line again. I checked how the frost had decorated this woman's face and she had a long, icy chin hair. I bet she would have died if she knew that hair was even growing on her face. And here it was frosted, catching sunbeams and flashing them over the mountain like SOS signals. I didn't respond to Annie, so she went on.

“You're harshly judgmental toward other people's creative pursuits and the reason may be because you're not creating much yourself.”

I still didn't respond.

“Maybe if you'd completed any of your projects or stood ready to back them up as the best that you could do—”

I interrupted, “Then I'd miraculously have low enough standards and crummy enough taste to applaud everybody else's efforts. Great theory.”

“I'm just saying, Jess, that you're as severe with yourself as you are with others. It's as if you're privately sneering yourself into immobility in the creativity department.”

“I hate that damn word ‘creativity.' ” I stood up and took a few steps in a small circle before the bench. “I have a degree in design. I know good work when I see it. And I don't see it often.” I sat back down. People settled for junk these days. They were too lazy to hold out for good work, either making it or buying it.

She said, “We don't go around judging the quality of people's prayers, and so we shouldn't be doing that to creative efforts. Just as with prayer, we should stand reverent in the face of it, whatever it is.”

She was on a soapbox now. I leaned up, propped my arms on my knees and held my head in my hand.

“Art, no matter how it's judged by the contemporary world,” she continued, “is the reach toward the sacred, that which is larger than ourselves.” She paused. “Being creative is a way to experience the divine.”

Oh, geez. Good art is good art. Not much of it in the world and no use trying to squirm around the fact. I won't hurrah someone just because they got their crayons out and tried to draw a barn.

I said, “Write it for your term paper.” I meant,
And spare me.
But that just encouraged her.

“I'm finding out for myself that it's a path to self-knowledge, a kind of education that enlarges my awareness. This is important to me, Jess. Creative energy feels like medicine to me, a way to heal myself, and I want to learn to offer that to others.”

That was it. I got mad. I stood up, turned my back to the skiers going past and tried to keep my voice low.

“Annie, you are no goddamn good at drawing a fig tree, you can't sing ‘Happy Birthday' with a bunch of off-key five-year-olds and you dance with the rhythm of a wombat. You're just looking for an excuse to elevate these facts into something else. Stick with the ledgers.”

Long silence.

“Thanks for the support, Jess.” Her voice cracked. “Maybe I'll follow your suggestion. Come back home to the ledgers . . . and release you to the ski slopes. That what you had in mind?”

“Oh, shit, Annie. I'm sorry.” I don't know what sets me off when art gets into the picture. I hear this passion in her voice . . . I see my mother on the road, her painting tools lying in blood. I said, “I got to go.”

I pocketed my cell, snapped back into my bindings and poled off to stand in the lift line. I'd have to apologize again for all those insults—not that they weren't the naked-ass truth, except for the wombat part. Even Annie once admitted she couldn't draw a happy face. “But,” Annie had followed, “that isn't what matters.” And, of course, we knew what mattered. All together now: “It's the big C.”

I slid onto the chair, a double that I was sharing with a woman I didn't know. Not interested in chitchat, so I just said, “Nice day,” and turned my head away to admire the slopes laid out in the sunlight below to my left.

The chair reached the top of Teewinot, and the woman and I slid off, skied across each other's path. She skied toward the left to go down the short slope and I skied toward the right to stand in line for the Apres Vous lift that went to the top.

The snow was hard high up, too cold to have softened, but it felt great to be out. When I was outdoors skiing and hiking, I didn't think about a thing other than the beauty of being in the mountains and working my body. There was nothing in the world better than that, unless it was at the end of a day full of outdoor activity when that great sense of well-being nested in my chest. Let's hear it for endorphins.

I skied fast, hit the bottom, got in line again. After I warmed up on Apres Vous, I rode the tram to see how things looked on Rendezvous. With the inversion, it was warmer.

I'd kept my head down that morning to avoid eye contact, but Annie and I had lived here too long for me not to have run into a dozen people I knew in the first hour of skiing. Hey, Jess. Hi, Jess. How ya doin', Jess? I responded and moved right along. Not in the mood, sorry.

Annie went so far once as to call creativity a psychic orgasm. I mean, that girl left no area untouched by this philosophy.

When our sons were little, they used to plead, “Draw us a bunny, Momma” and Annie was stumped. Big circle, small circle, add ears. That was all the little guys wanted.

I'd say, “Ask for a snake, boys.” Just joking, but Annie would shoot daggers at me, because—who'd believe it—she didn't know how to draw a snake. I'd do a wavy line in the air with my finger. She'd get a purposeful look on her face and carefully draw a squiggle. “Put a cat by it,” Saddler would say and Annie was stumped again. Now wasn't this the perfect person to make a big to-do about the creative urge
and
be dismissive about its outcome?

After lunch at Casper Bowl, I decided to ski down to base and call her back. Apologize again for all my insults. The phone rang four times. Maybe she was thinking about whether to answer or not.