How I Came to Sparkle Again (4 page)

Even though technically Midland was her hometown and Austin was her home, she found herself thinking,
I’m home. I made it home.
She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.

To her left, two women, one in a fur coat and the other in large fur boots, walked into an art gallery. They were clearly guests at the historic lodge near the base of the mountain. Just beyond them, a man wearing ski pants patched with duct tape walked into the drugstore. He was a local. She smiled in spite of her circumstances, having forgotten how comical the polarity of Sparkle could be.

She crept past the three blocks of brick buildings in the historic downtown to see what had changed and what had stayed the same. There were several new cafés and bakeries. Woodall’s Hardware, Dick’s Barber Shop, and the Gold Pan Bar were still there. The brick downtown gave way to another two blocks of businesses in colorful old mining houses before Main Street became residential.

She drove past the little red house that Uncle Howard had rented for them during the two years that she had lived with him here. She had been so frail and thin when she’d first showed up. Uncle Howard had convinced her mom that if Jill moved to Sparkle, she would get interested in skiing and be motivated to eat. The truth was, he understood she needed to be away from her parents in order to feel good enough. Now, here she was again.

After she went off to college, Uncle Howard had moved back into his studio apartment under the lodge at the top of Sparkle Mountain. He was like a hermit or a sage up there, but one who measured the new snow, read the thermometer and wind gauge, made judgments about avalanche danger, and called it all in to be part of the day’s snow report. A short walk away from his apartment was a door that led to the generator room under the lift shack at the top of the Summit Chair, and inside were several shelves of carefully selected books, a table, and two chairs. Uncle Howard was both famous and notorious for this library. She wondered what he would pluck off his shelf and expect her to read this time. He prescribed books for people the way doctors prescribed medicine, and his equivalent of all-purpose aspirin was
Siddhartha
.

Jill needed sleep. There was no place for her to sleep in his studio and no place to sleep in his library, so she continued on to Lisa’s house. At least Lisa had a couch to offer.

She turned up the next block and stopped in front of the yellow Victorian where Lisa had grown up. Her father had been the head chef and manager of the fancy Italian restaurant at the Sparkle Lodge, but after he died a couple years ago, Lisa’s mother moved to Florida and sold the house to her. It hadn’t changed much, though the aspens in the yard had grown significantly. Next door, the old trailer Lisa always found to be such an eyesore looked to be in even greater disrepair, with even more additions built onto it, and an even greater number of vehicles parked in the front yard.

Before she got out of the car, Jill took her phone out of her purse and opened it. A long list of missed calls from David popped up. Jill’s twenty-four hours of not being a missing person were surely almost up, but she still didn’t want to talk to him. He had sent texts as well. She read the last one:

I’m calling the police now. The bank called to report some unusual credit card activity, so I canceled them. Someone used your card to buy a car! I’m so worried that you were mugged and abducted or killed. Please, Jill, if you get this message, please let me know you’re alive.

She wasn’t sure what to do. She figured if the police were going to be involved, she’d better set the record straight. She hit reply and texted, “The Lexus died. It’s in the shop. They should have called you yesterday. I bought the car with our credit card. I wasn’t mugged. I’m alive. I just needed to leave.”

She looked through her purse and found $48.43 in cash. She took her now worthless cards out of her wallet. There was no way to get replacements. Replacements could be sent only to her billing address. She wasn’t sure how she was going to work this problem. She would figure something out. For now, she called her supervisor at work and asked that her last paycheck be sent to Lisa’s in Colorado. It would have only three-quarters of a day’s worth of wages on it, but every penny counted now.

She took a big breath, stepped out of her car, and walked up the little sidewalk to Lisa’s porch. The sun had melted the sidewalk, thank goodness, because she had no boots—just her nurse’s shoes. A little clothesline stretched between two porch posts, and on it hung an unlikely combination of ugly gray wool socks and lacy thongs, all black except for one, which was magenta. She hesitated for a moment and peeked through the window in Lisa’s door. Walls were missing. Clothes were strewn all over furniture. It was dark. She wasn’t sure if Lisa was still sleeping or if she had already left for the day. She knocked quietly.

*   *   *

Lisa woke up and for a moment wondered if Cody had returned, if he realized he wanted something more, if he had an epiphany about intimacy and his feelings for her. Immediately, she realized that was stupid girl thinking.

She got out of bed, descended the stairs, and approached the door. Slowly she began to recognize the face through her window. It was Jill. A small smile started on Lisa’s face and then turned to concern as she looked more closely. She opened the door.

Jill smiled uncomfortably. “Hey, girl,” she said as she held up Lisa’s letter. “I just drove out of hell.”

“You look like shit,” Lisa said tenderly, and gave her a big hug. She kept one arm around Jill and guided her in. “You came to the right place. I know just what you need.”

Lisa guided Jill past the gutted walls, explaining, “Yeah, I kind of ran out of money before the remodel was finished. Pardon the ugly chaos.”

Together, they walked into the kitchen. Since Jill had seen it last, Lisa had painted the ceiling turquoise and the walls yellow. A few pots of Christmas cactus with bright red buds ready to bloom sat on top of the cupboards.

Jill sat on a stool at the counter while Lisa reached in the fridge and brought out some celery stalks, which she washed, cut, and put on a little plate in front of Jill.

“So, what’s up, girl?” Lisa asked. She could guess; she’d never had a good feeling about David. “I mean, you’re dressed a little oddly for a trip to Colorado.”

“I … um … lost the baby six weeks ago.”

“Oh,” Lisa said, feeling the air leak out of her. “Oh, Jilly.” She crossed the kitchen to hug her old friend. “Oh, Jilly, I’m so, so sorry,” she said without letting go.

“And then yesterday, I found this,” she continued, and pulled out her camera phone. Lisa looked at the display. “You remember David. I don’t know who that is.”

Lisa studied the picture and then looked back at Jill. In an attempt to hide the full level of her disgust, she simply shook her head and put the kettle on for tea. “So what did you do?”

“I just snuck off. I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t deal with explanations or apologies. That wasn’t something he could explain. That wasn’t something he could just apologize for.” Jill took another deep breath. “I’ve been thinking maybe the best thing for both of us is to just let go and let each other start a new life.”

Lisa remembered overhearing her grandmother telling her mom that men were weak animals when it came to resisting temptation and that indiscretions must be forgiven—they were not uncommon. At the time, her mother had been sobbing. Although Lisa couldn’t remember exactly how old she was, she was old enough to vow never to sign on for that kind of suffering by getting married.

She walked behind Jill, put her arms around her, and said, “I love you.”

Jill put her hands on Lisa’s arms and shut her eyes. “Please help me,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“Of course, Jilly Bean,” Lisa assured her, and rocked her in her arms.

Jill opened her eyes and noticed a faded newspaper picture on the wall of the two of them, arms up, facing each other, jumping victoriously after some race their senior year, jubilant. “I can’t imagine ever feeling like that girl again,” she said, and pointed to it.

“No,” Lisa said. “But you won’t always feel this bad, either. The good times don’t last and the bad times don’t last.”

“You’ve been hanging out with Uncle Howard,” Jill said.

Lisa laughed a little. “Hey, listen, I’ve got to go teach the next generation of Olympians how not to fall down. We’ll figure out your life when I get home from work. Take a nap. You need sleep. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”

Jill followed Lisa back into the living room, where she pulled out the ancient hide-a-bed and then climbed the now exposed staircase to the linen closet for bedding. They made the bed together, and Jill crawled in. Lisa kissed her on the forehead.

“Thanks, Lisa,” Jill said.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Lisa assured her again, and then walked out the door.

*   *   *

When Jill woke from her nap, she found her uncle Howard sitting in the rocking chair on Lisa’s porch. She opened the door and he stood. “I heard you were back,” he said.

Jill looked up at him, at his gentle face, at the red Norwegian sweater he had been wearing for the last twenty years, and at the hat with the pom-pom on top that he’d picked up in Whistler sometime in the mid 1980s. His ever-present backpack sat at his feet. Aside from looking a little older, he hadn’t changed at all, and something about looking at him made Jill feel she’d made it to safety. She burst into tears.

“Hey,” he said as he put his arms around her. “Hey, now. It’s going to be okay. You’re here now.”

Jill tried to tell him that she had lost the baby and that her husband was cheating on her, but all the sounds that came out of her were indecipherable.

“I know,” Uncle Howard said. “Lisa told me the story. I’m sorry.” He hugged her a little longer, until her sobs quieted, and then said, “Let’s go inside. I have something to make you strong.”

They walked into Lisa’s house and sat at the counter. Uncle Howard opened his backpack and took out a package of wild Alaskan smoked salmon. “To give you strength, determination, the ability to make it past any obstacle, and to affirm your homing device,” he said.

Uncle Howard believed that people ingested the energy from food as well as the nutrients. He had been a world-class mountain climber in the 1970s and had come across many cultures in his travels. Their belief systems had all blended into Uncle Howard’s unique set of truths.

Next, he pulled out some Jarlsberg cheese. “From Norway,” he explained. “Norwegians are unstoppable. I suspect this cheese is their secret to health and longevity.” Finally, he pulled out a whole-grain baguette. “Made here, in Sparkle, by Mari Wallace, yoga teacher extraordinaire. May it fill you with her sense of peace and her playful spirit.” He took a little cutting board out of his backpack as well as a pocketknife and began to slice the cheese.

They tore off pieces of bread and fish and assembled them with the cheese slices. As Jill ate hers, she thought of all of Uncle Howard’s good wishes. “Thank you,” she said.

“Are you drinking enough water?” Uncle Howard asked.

Jill shook her head.

“That’s the best way to get the energy and the strength of Sparkle back into you.” He stood, found a glass, and poured some tap water for Jill. “Plus, you can’t think clearly if you’re dehydrated.”

Jill smiled and drank the water.

“More?” he asked.

“No, thanks.” Guilt washed over her. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to visit all these years. It just was so hard to step out of daily life … my work, David’s work, building a life there in Austin. I never wanted to go to my parents’ house for Christmas, so on those rare years I didn’t have to work that day, we always went back east to visit his. I feel bad that I didn’t assert with him just how much you meant to me, how you were the dad I wished I had. But you know, I didn’t really want to bring him here. Isn’t that funny? I just knew he didn’t belong here. And it felt disloyal to go anywhere without him. I realize now that was stupid.”

“You know, Jill, the beauty of the uncle-niece relationship is overlooked in our cultural paradigm.” With Uncle Howard, she often had to ignore his words and just look at his expression to understand what he was trying to say. He was trying to say he forgave her. “And, you know, it’s not like I ever made it to Austin. I don’t know where all those years went.”

“You sent me a nice postcard from time to time, though. I always meant to answer, but it seemed I was always in a rush to work or to the store or to home. I feel bad about that.” She had kept all of his cards, each with a brief philosophical message written on it.

He smiled sweetly. “Hear from my sister lately?”

“Mom wrote a few weeks ago to tell me she knows how it feels to lose a child because when I left the Church it was a spiritual death to her and that she cries herself to sleep every night because I won’t be with them in heaven.”

He winced. “The good old Mormon Church, bringing comfort to the masses. I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t easy, you know, for us growing up. Your grandpa was a raging alcoholic. Your mom found that church because she wanted to spare you our experience. If you can, see her in the light of compassion. See her for her good intentions, for her resolve not to repeat the pattern. If that doesn’t work, see her for the bruised little girl she was. Just don’t for a minute let any part of you question your worth in God’s eyes.”

“It’s hard, you know, not to wonder what I did to deserve this,” Jill said.

“You didn’t do anything, Jill. You’re a good person. Don’t question that. Clear it. If you can, just believe that relationship served its purpose for a time, and then you outgrew it, so the universe helped move you out of there so you could authentically live the next chapter of your life.”

Jill knew she was supposed to be comforted, but the prospect of starting a brand-new chapter of her life terrified her. “Oh, my God, Uncle Howard, what am I going to do now?”

“Well, you’re going to stay here. You’re going to get strong. And then, when your mind is as empty as your glass, you’ll know what to do.”