Meet Me at the River (11 page)

“You can’t do this,” she says to me. “Not now. You can’t just disappear in the middle of the night and scare everyone to death. To death!” she yells, as if she finds it liberating, shrieking that taboo word right at me.

My body starts to shake. Not only do I feel sorry for my mother, but I have committed myself to staying alive, in this world, for her benefit. I love her. Really, I do. I love her second best of anyone in this entire world.

So it’s confusing to feel so guilty and at the same time so electric, so energized—like every raw nerve ending is exposed and open for business. All this drama, all this forbidding. All of it, so immediately familiar. It’s just like when Luke was alive. Which of course makes me feel that he
is
alive. And just like when he
was
. I will not let any sense of duty come between us.

It doesn’t matter what they want or what they expect. They can make me promise never to leave the house at night again. But I
will
leave the house at night, if leaving brings me to Luke. It is, all of it, the very least I can do for him. Because I know, absolutely, that
we
are alive—even if Luke is not.

A couple months before Tressa’s and my eighth birthday, Hannah came back to Rabbitbrush. She stayed with her parents a little while, then took off again. This time Tressa stayed behind, and that’s when she started showing me her maps. She’d already been drawing them for a while. Even the ones from when she was super little, like five or six, look like maps. They never look like just drawings. I can’t explain why. Something about the way she lays it out on the page. What Tressa would do was choose a place that meant something to her. It could be a room, or a whole building, or a town, or a state, or maybe just a view from a window. She would draw it in pencil, with funky little pictures for the things she liked best, and then she’d color them in with crayons. Later on she started using
those Cray-Pas kind of crayons, or sometimes she’d do watercolors.

But the first map I saw was colored in with crayon. It was Arapahoe Road. For the Burdick house she drew a big blue box with flowers all around it, and for her grandparents’ house she drew a giant yellow sun with a couple of huge horses standing next to it, plus a black dog and two kids that I could tell were her and me. The map had this line of butterflies streaming up the road toward the Earnshaws, and more butterflies flying all around us. Tressa colored in every single little detail, her blond hair, my black hair, plus every wing on every butterfly, every flower, and every piece of sky. I couldn’t believe I knew the person who’d made it. I reached out and ran my hand over it because I wanted to see what all that color would feel like. Tressa pulled it away from me like she thought I’d ruin it, then right away looked guilty for maybe hurting my feelings.

A few days after that we had our birthday together, the only time that ever happened when we were kids. Mrs. Earnshaw baked a cake in the shape of a heart and we decorated it. When Tressa leaned over to blow out the candles, I thought her hair would catch on fire, so I blew as hard as I could to keep that from happening. Afterward Tressa gave me the map of Arapahoe Road, rolled up in a little scroll with a ribbon tied around it.

That’s not the most important thing that ever happened, but I like watching it. If I have to live my whole
life over again in this weird way, I wish I could just stick to happy times. It’s interesting to watch the sad moments that I can’t remember, or that I wasn’t there to see, but the ones I
can
remember I try to avoid. It’s bad enough I had to live through them. But sometimes I can’t help myself, like picking off a scab, and I end up going back.

Take for instance the summer we were twelve. Hannah and Tressa showed up in late spring. This time Hannah said they were going to stay, but nobody got too excited because she’d said that before. The second I saw Tressa I knew something had changed. There’s not much point describing the way a twelve-year-old girl changes. You’ve seen it yourself. Not to mention a twelve-year-old boy.

I get it now, much more clearly than I did back then. One thing I don’t mind watching is Tressa, sitting on the porch of her grandparents’ house. She’s playing her guitar and singing. Given how her speaking voice is kind of musical you’d expect her to have a good singing voice but she doesn’t. It’s terrible, reedy and off-key. Still, I like listening to her. If she had a good voice it wouldn’t feel so private. By now she’s got brown hair and her arms and legs aren’t so skinny. I guess Hannah’s gotten smarter about the guys she chooses, figuring it’s better to go for the ones who can at least feed them.

I couldn’t have thought this when I was alive. I definitely couldn’t have thought it when I was twelve. Back
then I would’ve noticed things like her bra that I could see through her shirt. When did she start wearing a bra? I would’ve noticed the superlight hair on her arms, and the dark freckle on her throat.

But now instead of all that, the physical stuff, I watch Tressa play guitar and I have this strong sense of both our lives. Tressa used to be younger. She used to be a little kid. Before long she’ll be a teenager. And then I think about everything that will happen without me, all the years I’ll miss. Tressa at college. Tressa as a mother. Tressa as an old woman.

It drives me crazy that I won’t be there to see all that. Even if I can stay in the after-Luke, I won’t be able to hear a word Tressa says about her new life. I won’t see the new maps. And what if she leaves Rabbitbrush? What if the way she looks changes so much that I won’t be able to see her?

She must worry too, but we can’t talk about it. Just like when we were twelve and couldn’t admit anything had changed. Instead we hung out the way we always had, running around Rabbitbrush. We rode our bikes, and hiked around her grandparents’ property with those huge horses following us like dogs. Tressa spent a month at Rabbitbrush middle school. She didn’t have much luck making friends, but I thought maybe that would get better in the fall. When school got out, we went swimming at Silver Lake. We went for walks along the river. We pretended everything was just exactly the same.

*   *   *

On the morning it happened, I figured I would eat breakfast and then head over to the Earnshaws’ like I’d done every day of the summer so far. Mom handed me a plate of scrambled eggs and said she wanted to drive into Telluride and hike up the Jud Wiebe Trail. I told her she had to be crazy. It’d been very hot, over a hundred degrees all week, and as far as I knew, that day would be the same. Not exactly my favorite hiking weather.

But Mom had made up her mind. “There’s so much shade on that trail,” she said. “And I feel like I’ve barely seen you this summer.” She’d just cut her hair short. It barely covered her ears. I couldn’t get used to the look of it and neither could she. She was always reaching up to push away hair that wasn’t there.

“Can Tressa come?” I asked. I started to get up so I could call. My dad came into the kitchen. I saw him frown at Mom.

“No,” she said. “Not this time. Today I want you to myself.”

Dad poured coffee into his thermos. This is almost the part I hate the most. None of us knew this was the last time things would ever be normal. Dad kissed the top of Mom’s head. “I’ll be home before dinner,” he said.

Mom and I hiked slowly. The day got hotter and hotter. We kept stopping to sip from our water bottles. At the top of the trail we barely took in the view. Instead we ducked below the treeline and walked downhill
along the creek. We didn’t speak much on the drive home. Mom looked like she had something to cross off her to-do list. Quality time with her only son, check. When we got home, I didn’t even bother going inside. I just grabbed my bike, slid my water bottle into its cage, and yelled, “I’m going to the Earnshaws’!”

*   *   *

The house looked deserted, no cars in the driveway except for the old hay bale truck. Sturm and Drang weren’t around either, which meant Tressa could have been on a walk with them, or she could’ve gone somewhere with her grandparents. I went inside anyway. Nobody in Rabbitbrush locked their doors. I’m not sure the Earnshaws even owned a set of house keys. They kept car keys in the vehicles, either right in the ignition or on the floor of the driver’s seat.

I ran up the stairs toward Tressa’s room. I could picture her lying on her bed with a book from the summer reading list that I hadn’t even looked at yet. Just as that picture formed in my head, I got to the top of the stairs and heard a low groan.

For a second I thought I had made that sound. I stopped short, suddenly hoping Tressa
wasn’t
at home so she wouldn’t have heard me. Then I heard someone laugh, and whisper. Then another moan, plus a noise that sounded a little bit like someone crying.

Did I mention it was a hundred degrees outside? Now it felt like two hundred. I knew exactly who and
what I was listening to, even though I’d never heard it before. The sound came from behind Hannah’s closed door. The polite thing to do was turn around, walk down the stairs, leave the house, and bike away. And after that, keep my mouth shut forever.

But it made me so mad. My
dad
. And Tressa’s
mom
. Just that morning I’d seen Dad kissing the top of my mom’s head. I wanted to yell,
Seriously? Are you
kidding
me?
But I didn’t yell. I just kicked Hannah’s door open and walked right into the worst and strangest moment of my entire life.

Hannah and my dad. Naked. It was hot so they were on top of the covers. When I came in, they jumped off opposite sides of the bed and grabbed at the quilt. There was this second or two where they had a little tug of war. Then my dad let her have it. What a gentleman! Once she covered herself up, he grabbed the sheet for himself, but by this time it was a little late.

“Luke,” he said when he got the sheet around his waist. “What are you doing here? You should have knocked.”

Like my rudeness was the problem with this situation. “Why?” I said. Mad as I was it took me by surprise, how loud I said it. “Why should I have knocked, Dad? So I wouldn’t see you fucking Hannah?”

Both of them sat back down on the bed. Hannah put the quilt over her face, and I thought I heard her say “Damn.” Dad reached out and kind of patted her like
she
was the one he needed to worry about. I looked around the room for something to throw at his head.

I didn’t have a chance, though, because Hannah took the quilt away from her face. “Luke,” she said. “You don’t have to tell Francine, you know. It would only hurt her.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not the one who’s hurting her.”

There wasn’t much else to say, and I couldn’t stand being there anymore, like I was a part of this whole thing. So I turned around and ran down the steps, then jumped onto my bike and pedaled home. As far as I know my dad didn’t try to stop me.

And I may have been just a kid, but at that point I knew the score exactly. My dad wanted Hannah. He wanted her so bad that he didn’t care if I knew, or if I told Mom. In fact, he probably
wanted
me to tell Mom so she would pack up, get out of the way.

Which is just what she did. She moved out of his house and took me with her. What Dad didn’t bet on was Hannah, who had a lot more practice running away. She grabbed Tressa and left my dad, and me, and didn’t come back or send word for the longest four years in history. And I don’t think Dad ever forgave me for that any more than I forgave him. At least not till after that day at the river.

Silver Lake has frozen solid. Last week Mr. Zack drove his Land Cruiser straight across the ice, to the very middle, to prove to nervous mothers that it was safe to skate. So when I find the message written in the snow on my windowsill—
Silver Lake
is all it says—I know to throw my skates over my shoulder. I also bring two hockey sticks and a puck.

The lake is closer than the river; I only have to hike the back way through Paul’s property, barely half a mile down a steep incline. Coming home will be a little more difficult, but I don’t mind. And I’ll be quick. I don’t want the drama of getting caught or making anyone worry about me. But I have to go.

When Luke sees the hockey sticks, he laughs. I toss the puck onto the ice, and Carlo runs after it, sliding across
the surface on his bare paws, trying to get his mouth around the slippery black disc. Luke already wears his hockey skates, the Stealth 15’s his mother bought him last Christmas. I have no way of knowing if the same skates still lie on the shelf of sports equipment in Francine’s garage, and it strikes me that I don’t know what she’s done with Luke’s things, if she’s sold everything on eBay, or given it to Goodwill, or kept everything in its same old place, as if he could one day come back and use it. Maybe that’s exactly what he did this evening—stole into his mother’s garage and took the skates, then brought them out here. I ask him, but he just looks perplexed, the question too tied to his death and everything afterward.

I sit down on the old pine log, take off my boots, and lace up my figure skates. I never got good enough for hockey skates. We don’t glide out onto the ice right away, but sit on the log for a while, Luke’s hand wrapped around my wrist. Every so often Luke lifts my hand and kisses me. It is huge and wonderful to feel him, but already I can’t stop myself wanting more than his lips on my wrist—like his lips on my lips, for example. Luke must want this too. He smiles and runs his fingertips over my hair, a phantom gesture, and right away I feel a knot in my stomach, a wish to
feel
his hands in my hair. Instead of making me grateful for feeling him at all, being able to feel him on that one spot makes me want every other spot. I know this is greedy, I know it, but I can’t help what I feel, and that’s the urge to tackle him
right there in the snow and kiss him, kiss him, feeling every single molecule of his body against mine. The way I used to.

But that’s not possible, so we stand up and glide out onto the lake. At first we try to play hockey in earnest, but I can’t skate fast enough, and Luke beats me so easily every time that it hardly seems worth it. So after a while we just skate around and around, and then play keep-away with Carlo, who runs and slips and slides across the ice like a sleek black polar bear cub. I can hardly believe Carlo was ever this
young
, this full of movement.