How I Came to Sparkle Again (6 page)

Tom turned to Lisa and said, “Lisa baby, I’ve got your ten inches tonight.”

“Noted,” she said, and rolled her eyes.

“Well, my offer stands,” Tom said. “All right, everybody, I’m out.” Stout woke up when Tom opened the door and trotted behind Tom as he jogged back to the trailer.

“Hey, girl, thanks for lining me up with a job like that,” Jill said. “I mean, I know I can’t stay in Sparkle and hide forever, but it feels so good to stay here and hide for a while,”

“Mm,” Lisa replied, watching Tom and thinking of the candle lit in his window last night. What was that feeling in her gut? Contempt? Jealousy? It couldn’t be jealousy. She would never want to be that girl. And “girl” was undoubtedly the operative word. Finally she snapped out of it and said, “This is going to be the best winter you’ve had since you were twenty.”

chapter three

SNOW REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 22

Current temperature: 28, high of 31F at 3
P.M.
, low of 22F at 4
A.M.

Clear skies, winds out of the southwest at 15 mph with gusts of up to 20 mph.

28" mid-mountain, 35" at the summit. 0" new in the last 24 hours. 4" of new in the last 48.

The day before Thanksgiving, Cassie and Mr. Nelson sat in silence across his desk from each other in the counseling office at her school. His blond hair was graying, and he looked tired. His body was turned sideways, and he had one leg crossed over the other. One elbow rested on the table for a moment as he took his glasses off, rubbed his eyebrows, and put them back on. Cassie didn’t think he was particularly smart, but she did think he was big-hearted. Some kids said he was an alcoholic, which made Cassie wonder if he simply didn’t know what to say to her, or whether he was wishing he had a drink.

“So, Cassie, your teacher asked me to talk to you about this.” He pushed a paper across the desk to her.

Cassie didn’t touch the paper or even look at it. She knew what it was. It was her Thanksgiving essay. The topic was, of course, “What I Am Thankful For.” Across the top, she had written the heading with her name and date, and then the title, as Mrs. Campbell asked them to for all of their assignments. Under the title, she had simply written, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” in capital letters, underlined twice.

Mr. Nelson looked at her and waited for her to say something.

Cassie hoped he wouldn’t back her into a corner. She liked him and didn’t want to unleash all of her anger, but she was prepared to.
He can’t make me apologize,
she thought.
He can’t make me do anything.

“How about your dad? Are you thankful for your dad?” Mr. Nelson asked.

Should I have to be thankful for my dad?
Cassie wondered. She looked sour and said nothing.

“How about your health? Aren’t you thankful for that?” Mr. Nelson asked again.

She didn’t really care. Now that she didn’t have enough will to race, her health didn’t really matter to her anymore.
God, don’t let him talk about all the kids less fortunate than me,
she thought.
I don’t care. I’ve got my own problems.

Mr. Nelson changed his approach and reached for a picture of his father and him in hip waders and fishing vests, both holding up large trout. He handed it to her. “That is my dad. He died two years ago. I miss him like crazy. Whenever I catch a big fish, I wish he was there to see it.”

Cassie looked at the picture and softened. Then she looked up at the sadness in Mr. Nelson’s eyes and handed it back.

He looked at it again and smiled a heartbroken smile. “When we were together, I felt peaceful, like he just understood everything.”

Cassie listened sympathetically, but still, she did not speak. She couldn’t find the words even if she wanted to. She looked at the other pictures behind his desk—family, dogs, and more fish.

“Well, listen. It’s normal to be angry after a loss, and if you ever want to talk, I’m here. In the meantime, try to remember that your teacher cares about you and so does everybody else. We might not always know what to do or say to support you while you’re hurting this much, but we care, and we want to help.” Mr. Nelson looked sad.

Cassie took that as her cue to leave.

The clock said 2:57, so she didn’t go back to class. Instead, she went directly to the lobby of the school and waited with the kindergartners, who were always dismissed a little before the bell so they could find their parents or get the front seats on the bus without all the chaos. They filed by Cassie, holding little paper turkeys made from tracing their hands on brown construction paper. Cassie imagined the kids giving their mothers the turkeys and their mothers fussing over them and enthusiastically hanging them on the refrigerator or in a window.
You have no idea how lucky you are,
Cassie wanted to tell each of them, but she didn’t. She quietly walked out the door and headed home.

When she got there, the house was silent. Socks trotted partway down the stairs to greet her. Cassie tiptoed up the stairs to the door of her parents’ bedroom. Her dad was sleeping, as he often did after a twenty-four-hour shift with a lot of calls. On the floor by his bed was a basket of laundry. Cassie recognized a few items of her mother’s in the basket. He did that. He put some of Kate’s old clothes in the laundry when he did a load. She didn’t know why.

Cassie went to her own room, crawled into her unmade bed, and clung to her mom’s bathrobe. Socks jumped up on the bed and joined her. Cassie closed her eyes and felt the fuzzy fabric on her cheek, breathed in her mother, and let herself fall asleep. Sometimes, she found, it was just easier not to be awake.

*   *   *

Cassie and Mike woke in the early evening and watched a sitcom neither of them particularly liked while Mike fried up pork chops and potatoes and warmed some peas in a pan on the stove. Sometimes it was nice just to have noise in the house without the pressure of talking all the time. Mike knew he should talk to her about the phone call he got from her teacher today, but in his gut, he thought it best to give her space. Holidays had indeed intensified the fact that everything had changed.

They sat for a bit, eating their dinners and watching the stupid sitcom with the canned laughter, and from time to time he’d look over at her to see if she was okay, but she didn’t look back. He wondered how to really tell the difference between when someone just needed space and when you were actually losing them. When they were done, he took their plates to the kitchen and cleaned up, while she went upstairs and took a bath. And when she was out, he kissed her good night and tucked her in. It was a routine they could both do on autopilot.

He retired to his own bed but didn’t stay there long. Missing Kate was bad enough, but missing her where they had expressed tenderness and passion, where they had lain entwined … it was unbearable.

So he got out of the too-empty and too-cold bed and went downstairs to stoke the fire. In the wood box was junk mail they had always burned, but now it meant something different. Credit card companies were still sending Kate offers. He burned them. Publishers Clearing House announced she may have won a million dollars. He burned that, too. Catalogs kept coming in her name. He wondered what he would do with her mail next summer when it was too hot to burn it. Maybe he’d build a fire pit so he could burn it outside. Or maybe he’d fill out her credit card applications and list her address as heaven and see if they got the point.

He went to the kitchen, poured himself some Scotch, and sipped it while he read a self-help book about grief. The only thing the book really seemed to accomplish was giving him the sense that he wasn’t the only one experiencing this hideous level of despair. He wasn’t the only one hanging on mostly for his child. He wasn’t the only one who could no longer imagine ever being okay again. He wasn’t the only one with regrets.

They should have gone to visit her parents after they had moved. He should have made that happen. He should have taken time off from work and taken her places. She had always wanted to learn to windsurf. He should have taken her to the symphony. She loved Vivaldi. She said his music sounded like snow. When he listened to her Vivaldi CDs now, he could hear it. Why hadn’t he been able to hear it before? Why had he been so quick to dismiss something that had meant so much to her? He knew. It was because he’d thought he had time. He’d thought he had so much time. In fact, he’d thought he had so incredibly much time that if he budged on what he wanted or liked, it could mean a lifetime of misery. A lifetime of expensive vacations. A lifetime of Vivaldi. Stupid.

chapter four

SNOW REPORT FOR NOVEMBER 23

Current temperature: 29F, high of 33F at 3
P.M.,
low of 22F at 4
A.M.

Snow showers off and on, winds out of the southwest at 10 mph.

31" mid-mountain, 37" at the summit. 6" new in the last 24 hours. 12" of new in the last 48.

When Cassie woke up on Thanksgiving morning, she couldn’t tolerate spending her first Thanksgiving without her mother with Nancy. Her father had already left for another twenty-four-hour shift. He couldn’t help it, she knew that.

Nancy also had to work her day job on the holiday, though, so after Cassie got dressed and ate a bowl of cereal, Nancy brought her to work. The first stop was the home of a very large man who had partial paralysis from a stroke. His wife was too small and weak to be of much help. Nancy came over daily to help him get in and out of the bathtub, where his wife bathed him.

Cassie knew this would be her moment. Everything was in her locker at the lodge. She sneaked out the back door of the man’s house and tore off toward the resort. She figured she had about ten minutes before Nancy had the man in the tub, and even if Nancy emerged from the bathroom to check on her and discovered she was gone, she wouldn’t be able to look for her until the man’s bath was over. Even then, she wouldn’t be able to spend much time at it because other elderly people were counting on her. Cassie believed she had it made but wanted to be on the chairlift before word got out.

At her locker, she put on her extra layers, boots, ski pass, transceiver, and helmet. The clock said 9:37. She grabbed her skis and poles and rushed outside to the nearest chair. Scooter was working at the base of it. His face was pierced in several places, so Cassie thought he would probably respect her need to rebel. She stepped into her bindings and slid up to the loading line.

“Hey, Cassie. How’s tricks?” Scooter asked. He tried to sound as casual as he was with everyone else, but Cassie heard it. She heard the tenderness and pity slip through. No one treated her the same since her mother died. She hated that. But she also would have hated it if they had treated her as if nothing happened.

“Hey, Scooter,” she said. “You didn’t see me.”

“I didn’t?” he asked.

“I escaped the babysitter,” she confessed. “Please don’t let them make me go back.”

He smiled approvingly. “I’m glad you have your priorities in order on a powder day like this. It’s good to see you on the mountain again, kid. I don’t see you up here much anymore.”

Cassie winced, but the chair whisked her away before she had to respond. As she rode the chair, she closed her eyes and imagined her mother sitting next to her. “Hi, Mom,” she said quietly so that the people on the chair in front of her wouldn’t hear her talking to herself. “I’m sorry for scaring Nancy, but I just needed to ski with you today.”

At the top of the chair, she didn’t know what to do. She had intended to ski the Southback, where she could be alone with her mother, but now she felt deflated, as if there were lead in her chest where her heart used to be. She looked toward the Southback but skied over to the top of a tree run instead. Her dad had forbidden her to ski trees alone, but no one would see her in there, and it would dump her near the racing shack, where she could hide, since she had now lost her urge to ski. She pushed off the little lip, dropped, and turned. She snaked her way through the trees, but not in the way she usually attacked it. Her reflexes felt entirely too slow and her body off balance. Her heart just wasn’t in it. She fell, fortunately not in a tree well, and just stayed there for a long time, feeling defeated and hopeless. She looked up at the blue sky that peeked through between the treetops and wondered if her mother could see her now. She thought that if she could, it would make her sad, so Cassie got up and pretended to be all right.

At the end of the tree run, her feet hit the cat track below. She felt relieved to be out of the trees and coasted over to the top of Victory, the racing run. She traversed all the way over to the racing shack, where the flags and poles for the course were kept, found the key on a nail under the eve, unlocked the padlock, and went inside. She took the lock with her so that no one would see it unlocked and lock her inside. She hoped no one would notice the missing lock at all.

Inside, under the poles and flags and netting, were a little bench and a stool where the timekeeper sat and looked out the window on cold and windy race days. On the bench was a copy of
Siddhartha
. She flipped through it, but many words were unfamiliar, and soon the meaning was lost. She only got something about a river laughing. She rested her head on the counter and imagined her mother’s hand on her back. Then she closed her eyes and surrendered again to the feeling that life would be more manageable if she was not awake.

*   *   *

Mike was still thinking about it, about the woman who was about the same age as Kate had been, who had driven off a cliff while drunk and who looked as if she were going to make it. He wanted to know why that more or less nonfunctional person got to live when his wife did not. He wanted someone to explain that to him. Instead of saying it out loud, he drove the engine back to the station in silence.