How I Came to Sparkle Again (5 page)

Jill nodded, ate her last two bites, and wondered what the odds were of her mind ever being empty enough for Uncle Howard’s level of clarity.

Uncle Howard packed up the rest of his food, his cutting board, and his pocketknife, looked at his watch, and said, “I have to get back up on the mountain to get ready for the storm that’s coming in tonight. But I’m just a phone call away if you need anything.”

Jill saw him to the door and gave him a hug. “I love you, Uncle Howard,” she said. “You’re my rock.”

“I love you, too. I’ll find you tomorrow,” he replied.

*   *   *

Lisa remembered making Jill toasted cheese sandwiches back in the day, not long after she first arrived in Sparkle years ago. Jill was the skinniest girl Lisa had ever seen, and not in a good way at all. After four months and a hundred toasted cheese sandwiches, Jill started to look somewhat normal, and being Italian, Lisa found that satisfying. Now, they resumed their old spots, Jill on the stool at the counter and Lisa in the kitchen slicing cheese. It was comforting.

“So I was thinking,” Lisa began, but a knock on the back door interrupted them, and without waiting for Lisa to answer, Eric and Hans stormed through the kitchen to the living room.

“Don’t mind us,” said Eric, the shorter of the two. He was by no means short—only in comparison with Hans, who was nearly six feet eight. Both had brown hair and mischievous smiles.

Hans went straight for the DVD player. “For my birthday, Eric got me some tasty new snow porn.”

“It’s possible Hans was under the influence last night and wondered what would come on TV if he put a Kraft Single in our DVD player,” Eric explained.

Hans corrected him. “No, dude. That was you. You thought it would reveal the secrets of plastic.”

“Eric, Hans, meet Jill,” Lisa said. “Jill, these are my trashy neighbors—”

“Hey! I resemble that!” Eric interrupted. Then he extended a hand to Jill and said, “Pleased to meet you,” in his most charming way.

“That’s Slick Eric, and the birthday boy is Hans.”

They flashed Jill sexy smiles.

“You actually used to babysit Hans,” Lisa said. “Remember the Sorenson kid?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jill replied, and smiled.

“My penis has grown since then,” Hans said.

“Super,” Jill replied.

“Eric is the head honcho of the cat crew. Hans drives cat, too. They groom slopes all night, but sometimes ski with us in the morning before they go home to get their beauty sleep. They live in the ugly trailer next door and got into this habit last year when they didn’t have their own TV,” Lisa explained.

“Not true,” Eric said. “We had a TV. We just liked yours better.”

“Size matters,” added Hans.

“Why aren’t you at work?” Lisa asked them.

“Big storm predicted, so we’re all pulling the late-late shift,” Eric said.

“Big storm…’” Hans said with a big smile, and rubbed his hands together.

Then Hans and Eric turned and walked into the living room. From the kitchen, Jill and Lisa could hear the music from their movie.

Lisa took out two cans of Health Valley soup and poured them into a pan. “Sorry. It’s not Campbell’s like we used to eat. Your uncle Howard caught me buying Campbell’s and made me switch brands,” she said. “Something about angry chickens.”

“Yeah, you can’t be eating angry, conventionally raised chickens.” Jill laughed. “What were you thinking?”

Just as Lisa put the sandwich on a plate in front of Jill, Jill’s phone beeped once. Jill picked it up and checked the text message. “Listen to this: ‘Jill, I don’t understand why you left. I see from Visa that you’ve purchased gasoline from here to Colorado. Please come home, Jill. Talk to me.’”

“Oh, poor David,” Lisa said, dripping with sarcasm. “He doesn’t understand why you left.”

Jill hit a few buttons and said, “There. I just sent him the picture. That should help clear it up for him. Hey, what’s your P.O. box? I’m going to ask him to send me a box of my stuff and some money.”

“One thirty-eight. Tell him to be generous.”

“I smell melted cheese!” Hans called out from the other room.

“Woman, where’s my supper?” Eric shouted.

“Eat shit, you guys!” Lisa shouted back. Although she shouted it in jest, her chest felt lighter, as if a pressure valve had just released some of the anger she was feeling toward Jill’s husband. She turned her attention back toward Jill. “So, I’ve been thinking about some of your choices,” she said as she poured the soup into two bowls.

“I need to work. The bank notified David of unusual account activity, so, thinking my wallet had been stolen by the person who must have kidnapped me, he canceled the card and changed our account information. I’ve got a little less than fifty dollars to live on while that gets straightened out, if it does.”

“So, how about a winter working on the mountain? Ski patrol?”

“You have to walk on water to get that job,” Jill said.

“Usually,” Lisa replied. “But a spot just opened up.”

“Well, my body still feels weak from everything it’s been through. I couldn’t do the skiing part for a while, but I’m definitely capable of wrapping knees and handing out bags of ice.”

Lisa walked over to the kitchen window and looked out. “Tom, the patrol director, lives with Slick Eric and Hans over there in the Kennel.…”

“The Kennel?”

“One-to-one human-to-dog ratio,” Lisa explained. “Promise me you’ll never go there.” She could just imagine Tom or Eric smelling Jill’s weakness and preying on it.

“Twist my arm,” Jill replied.

“You remember Tom? He was a senior when we were juniors? Blond hair … sort of looked like Shaggy on
Scooby-Doo
…?”

Jill nodded. “Oh, yeah, we looked for his tongue once when he thought he bit it off during a big wipeout, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Lisa laughed and poured herself a glass of water.

Just then, Hans walked into the kitchen on his way to the bathroom.

Lisa blocked the doorway. “Oh no, you don’t, sprinkler system. Go pee all over your own bathroom floor,” she said.

“Um, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hans replied.

“Seriously, the small lake you left in there last time—the lake so large I needed swim fins to cross it? Never again, pal. Go piss at your own house.”

Hans walked out the back door.

Lisa picked up the phone and dialed. “Tom Cat. Lisa. Do you copy? We’ve got a twenty-six in my kitchen. Over.” Then she hung up. “Watch this,” she said.

Lisa and Jill both looked out the window as Tom bolted out of the trailer in flip-flops, long underwear, a parka, and a hat, followed by Stout, his German shepherd, and ran to Lisa’s back door, which she opened so he could run in without breaking stride.

Jill sat on a stool rubbing her neck, which had been bothering her since she woke up on the pullout couch. Lisa greeted him by saying, “Twenty-six seconds. Excellent. Hence the name.” Then she turned to Jill. “Twenty-six is code for hot chick.”

Tom faked an expression of disbelief and looked at Jill. “She’s lying. It’s code for neck injury. Good call, Lisa. It’s always good to be on the safe side. Clearly she needs help.” He moved behind Jill and began to massage her neck.

Good God,
Lisa thought.
He wastes no time.

Stout turned circles on the mat next to the back door, lay down, and began to snore loudly. “Thomas, this is Jill, Howard’s niece. Remember her? She helped you look for your tongue that time you thought you bit it off. She raced with me.”

“Oh yeah!” He turned Jill’s stool gently to look at her. “I remember you!”

Lisa continued, “Well, you remember she used to be a pretty decent skier. She hasn’t skied in years—long story—and she recently had surgery, but she is a nurse. Could you stick her in the first-aid room? If she was there, the rest of you could get in extra turns.…”

Tom appeared to consider Lisa’s proposal and finally spoke. “Sure. I’m down a man. Travis is still in intensive care.”

Lisa explained, “He was doing some avalanche control work at the top of Super Bowl. He was ski cutting—you know, where they ski across the slope to start a slide? And anyway, he went down with it. Jason was with him, right?”

“Yeah, Jason dug him out while I got the sled, and then we got him down to the base where he could be airlifted. There was still some hangfire, so it was too sketchy to airlift him from the site.”

Jill looked confused.

“Hangfire is snow that’s left in place at the top of the slide path,” Lisa explained.

“Very unstable,” Tom added.

“Any updates on him?” Lisa asked.

“Just that he’s stable now,” Tom answered. He turned to Jill and said, “Yeah, he didn’t get completely buried. His skis popped off. But he got slammed into a rock. Broken ribs, punctured lung, compound fracture of his femur, fractured pelvis. So sure, you’re hired. Meet me at the FAR—the first-aid room—tomorrow at one.”

“Thanks,” Jill said.

Tom turned to Lisa. “Hey, are we all on for the usual Thanksgiving plan? Same time, same place?”

“We want turkey!” Eric shouted from the next room.

“Turkey!” Hans chimed in, too.

“Same time, same place,” Lisa answered.

“How’s your neck now?” Tom asked Jill.

“Better,” Jill admitted.

But Lisa was cautious. “Jill, whatever you do, do not look directly into the snake charmers’ eyes. Tom, Hans, and Slick Eric have long philosophical discussions about who went home with the biggest boobs at the bar the night before.”

“Lisa,” Tom said with offense, “honestly, these vicious lies really hurt.” For a moment, Jill believed him.

“Oh?” Lisa began. “Vicious lies?” She opened the door to the broom closet. On the inside of the door hung game boards for Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders that had been there ever since Lisa could remember. “Look, Jill, Exhibit A of our arrested development. We’ve been playing this game for how long now?” she asked Tom.

“Since I moved in about fifteen years ago,” Tom answered. He turned to Jill and explained further, “I was running low on funds and Lisa took pity on me and was feeding me. The trade-off was that I had to listen to her stories about all these guys who had a better shot at her than me. I was having trouble keeping all of Lisa’s suitors straight, so she dug her childhood games out of a closet to accommodate my inclination toward being more of a visual learner.”

“Shall we catch up, Tom Cat? Here is Ranger Mark.” She pointed to a picture of Ranger Mark’s face that she had cut out of a photograph, peeled it off the board, moved him to the final destination of Candy Land, and stuck him back on the board with gummy tack. “Mark got a whole lot of shugga in Candy Land this summer. Mmm! And Medium Dan called yesterday. Move one.” She pinched another face off the starting point on the board and moved him to the first spot.

“Medium Dan?” Tom asked.

“Yeah. Remember how I dated Big Dan and Little Danny? So this one is just Medium Dan. Don’t ever let him know I call him that.” Then she moved a face back to the starting line and off to the side. “This is Good Randy. He blabbed to all his friends about sleeping with me last spring. He’s out. And Bad Randy massaged my shoulders in the hot pool last week. He has very nice hands. Move ahead one. And here’s you. You haven’t even got off the starting line.” She left Cody at the starting line, thinking it best to just keep that a secret.

She knew how to play the part. She knew how to make light of it all, how to make it sound as if her love life was full of fabulous possibilities. But it wasn’t. Every single man on her Candy Land board was limited in some very basic ways.

Tom walked over to the closet door next. Tom never took photographs of any of the women in his life. It led women to believe they were way more important or more permanent than they really were, he said. So rather than cutouts of actual people (with the exception of Lisa), his Chutes and Ladders game was covered with faces cut out of magazines that represented real women in his life. Usually, the real woman and the celebrity had the same first name, but occasionally he picked a celebrity that resembled the real woman. He had also cut out a bed from a Sleep Country advertisement and affixed it to his finish line. Twenty-five or thirty faces were stuck on or below the bed. Several waited at the starting line. His board spoke volumes about the quantity of women in his life and his complete lack of ability to have any kind of true intimacy. Lisa hoped Jill saw it for the damning piece of evidence it was.

As Tom unstuck a face and walked her up a ladder, he said, “Jen wants me to meet her family.” He picked up another face and walked her up a ladder, too. “Jan wants to know where we’re going with—you know—
us,
” he said with exaggerated hand motions gesturing back and forth, imitating Jan. “Angie told me I was lookin’ good.” He moved a picture of Angelina Jolie forward one. “Sarah’s ape ex-boyfriend threatened to kick my ass if he saw me within a quarter-mile radius of her.” He moved another picture up a ladder. “And a girl with big boobs I met at the bar slept with me last night.” He moved one of the starting-line Pamela Andersons to his bed and stuck a cutout picture of a beer next to her. “Linda. Or Tracy. Stacy. No, Tracy. It was Tracy, I’m pretty sure.”

“Good God, Tom Cat,” Lisa said, “you’re such a mimbo. Hey, I’m sure Jill will be able to help you identify any unusual genital rashes you may develop this year, too. Bonus.”

Jill shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “No.”

Lisa shut the closet door, happy not to look at her game board anymore. A part of her wanted to rip it off the door violently and throw it across the room or, better yet, out the back door, but the bigger part of her didn’t want that kind of attention, didn’t want to explain. Maybe she would just quietly take her game board down at some point.

“All right,” Tom said. “I’m out. Jill, it was a pleasure. See you at the FAR tomorrow at one. I’ll orient you.”

“Take her out for some turns tomorrow!” Eric shouted from the other room. “National Weather Service says ten inches possible tonight!”

Lisa’s face lit up. “Yeah!” she shouted.