Meet Me at the River (21 page)

“So will you at least think about it?” I say. “Letting me do this project? I’m going to read the books anyway. It might as well be under your supervision, right?”

“I suppose so,” he says. “But, Tressa. I hope you know that everybody—your parents, your teachers. Everybody. We just want what’s best for you. We may not always say exactly the right thing, but we’re rooting for you. We want you to be well.”

“You want me alive,” I say.

He smiles, but it’s a very wry smile, and his eyes suddenly look damp. “Yes,” he says quietly. “We want you alive.”

I reach out and touch his hand. “I know,” I say.

*   *   *

My mother doesn’t answer her phone, so I head back to my grandparents’. Passing the Burdicks’, I slow down, half hoping that Evie or H. J. will run out and wave me inside. I like the thought of being back in that living room. If I brought up their father’s death, H. J. would talk to me about it. He wouldn’t sugarcoat or pussyfoot. He would answer my questions, straight, no euphemisms or apologies.

Nobody emerges, and I actually stop the car and let it idle in the road for a minute. H. J.’s station wagon is gone. He and Evie must be off somewhere. I have a hard time getting my head around the story Luke told about their father last night. It seems so cruel, to leave two kids when they’ve just lost their mother. And then on top of that to take the dog along with him. I would never have hurt Carlo, would never have taken
anyone
else along with me. I think of Assia Wevill, who killed her four-year-old daughter when she gassed herself the same way Sylvia Plath did. This act seems so repulsive. No matter how I try, I simply can’t connect it with anything I have done, ever.

I feel the same way about Mr. Burdick, but at the same time I also feel a little jealous of him, a little outsmarted. Why didn’t I think of that, driving my car head-on into a stone wall? I remember something another patient at the hospital said, a boy who’d swallowed a bottle of Valium. He told me that wrist-slashing was a naive method of
suicide. It hardly ever worked because it had to be done so precisely. “Next time you should hang yourself,” he told me. “Do it right, and
SNAP
—there’s no time for intervention. That’s what I’m going to do.”

It’s not like hanging never occurred to me; it just seemed too heavy-handed, so blatantly an execution. Whereas Mr. Burdick was clever, original—engulfed in flames, instant escape, instant death, no window of time for park rangers and EMTs. For rescue.

*   *   *

When I get to my grandparents’, Grandma and Katie sit across from each other at the kitchen table, holding hands. Katie lifts her face and blinks at me, and I see tears running down her mottled face.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Katie wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. “Oh, I don’t want you to feel bad, Tressa.”

“What?” I say, my stomach clenching. “What happened now?”

“It’s Francine,” Grandma says, her voice an odd mix of sympathy and exasperation.

“What about her?” I say. “Is something wrong?” I hate to think of Francine, alone in that house, without anyone to take care of her. Luke used to heat up soup whenever she had a cold.

“Yeah, yes . . . ” Katie pauses, as if unsure about saying the next words, but then goes for it. “She’s in agony over Luke. And she won’t see me or speak to me. She hasn’t
been taking my calls, and when I went by the house, she asked me to leave. She said it was too painful. She said we’ve taken everything she ever had away from her.”

Katie starts crying again, and drops her face onto her arms. I look at Grandma, flummoxed. She reaches out and pats Katie’s head.

Katie gulps before continuing. “I can see why she’d feel that way about Dad and Hannah. I can even see why she’d feel that way about you, Tressa—I’m sorry, but I can. But what does that have to do with me? Why do I have to lose another mother?”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “It’s all my fault.”

Grandma and Katie both turn to look at me. I see that Grandma wants to say that it’s not my fault, but she doesn’t, waiting instead for Katie. Katie waits a minute and then, instead of contradicting me, wipes her eyes. She says, “H. J. Burdick called a little while ago. He said he invited you over there tonight.”

I shuffle my feet, not sure how to respond, and try to imagine the conversation Katie had with H. J. Maybe she had a moment of thinking he was calling for her, and then felt let down. Or maybe Jill’s teasing all those years ago was just that—teasing—and Katie never really had any feelings for him.

After a minute I say, “That’s true; he did invite me.”

“I don’t think you should go,” Katie says. Something suddenly hardens inside me. I’ve got my own resentments against my sister, who never supported Luke and
me. Once she even called our relationship incestuous. I get the sudden, familiar flash—of my family, working to stand between me and possible happiness.

“Why?” I say, surprised at sounding so defiant when I feel so sincerely contrite about Francine’s rejecting her, which really
is
my fault.

“H. J. is a grown man. Who was just fired for impropriety with a high school girl.”

“You’re making it sound like something different. It’s not like he made a pass at her.”

“Got the story from the horse’s mouth, did you?”

“Girls,” Grandma says quietly.

My first impulse, to say that I’m eighteen and that H. J.’s not
that
much older, sounds in my head like the wrong line of defense. So I say to Katie, “It’s not like a date, going to the Burdicks’. Mostly I’ve been hanging out with Evie. She and I are friends.”

“We’re awfully glad for Tressa to have a friend,” Grandma says. Her voice sounds so strained and hopeful.

“Still,” Katie says. “I don’t feel good about it. If Evie’s your friend, why did H. J. call? I want you to call him, Tressa, and tell him you can’t go.”

I pause for a moment, remembering that cozy, smoke-scented house. Then for some reason I can’t name—maybe loyalty, or simple tiredness—I nod. Katie narrows her eyes at the obvious reluctance of that movement.

“Seriously, Tressa,” she says, her voice softening.
I think about how everyone wanted me to stay away from Luke. How they discouraged and dissuaded and finally forbade. Katie and Grandma stare at me, and I know they’re sharing this odd sort of déjà vu.

“Fine,” I say, giving in. “I won’t go to the Burdicks’. And I’m sorry about Francine, Katie. I truly am.”

“It’s not your fault, Tressa,” she says, but the words sound tired and weary, a mantra she’s had to recite her whole life and never for one second actually meant. Then she stands up and crosses the room. She picks up a brown paper bag from the counter and hands it to me.

“Here,” she says. “Before I left, I asked Francine if I could have something of his. She gave me this. I want you to have it.”

I peer into the bag and recognize the garment instantly—a black turtleneck sweater that Luke used to wear with jeans when he wanted to dress up. Forgetting that Katie and Grandma are watching me, I stick my head into the bag as if trying to recover from hyperventilating, and breathe in the long-ago scent of sandalwood, snow, Luke.

“Thank you,” I tell my sister. “Thank you.”

*   *   *

I leave a message on H. J. and Evie’s answering machine, saying that I can’t come over. When I hang up, I can’t help thinking that if I’d been this obedient last May, Luke wouldn’t have been at the river.

For a long time I lie awake in my bedroom at my
grandparents’, wearing Luke’s sweater, staring at the ceiling. I don’t change into my nightgown or read a book. I don’t do anything but lie here, trying to imagine what the experience of nothingness might be, how total stillness would feel. I might be a tree, or a rock. I would enter a state of permanent semi-dreams, aware of the world around me only in terms of weather, a chill wind, a sideways rain, the hot sun beating down.

I’m not sure what time it is when I hear barking outside. The night has gone completely dark, and it has been a while since I heard Grandpa’s and Grandma’s quiet movements around the house. I get off my bed and peer out the window without opening it. It takes me a minute to register the dog, my dog, standing down there by himself. At the sight of me his tail wags ferociously, and he barks again.

When I come out the front door, Carlo doesn’t run up the steps but barks again, so I go down to him. He trembles with happiness at the sight of me. I sit on the damp, snowy ground and cross my legs. He manages to wind his seventy-five pounds into an awkward circle and rest there in my lap, his head pressed up beneath my chin, just like he used to when we were both alive.

But you
are
alive
, says a voice from somewhere, anywhere. Maybe it originates inside my head. Maybe not.

I am alive but Carlo is not. I know this despite how surely I can feel his fur, his warm doggy breath, his damp nose. I know it despite the clear, good smell that
clings to him, like the dirt Grandpa tills in his south field, the one flat enough for corn. Carlo’s fur contains the scent of each turn my life has taken, every place I’ve ever drawn a map of. It smells like Rabbitbrush, of course, and also the red clay of New Mexico, and the pineapple saltiness of the South Pacific, and the mulchy, mosquito-filled air of Marin County. Everywhere I’ve been exists and stands firmly within this dog.

I wind my arms around Carlo and hold him tight, burying my face in his fur and breathing in deep. Somehow I know that he has come to say good-bye. And I understand that I mustn’t beg him to stay, even though I can’t bear the thought of his leaving. My good, loyal, and obedient dog loved me more than life, and now he loves me more than death. If I asked him to stay, he would listen. Now is my chance to do it over, to make it right—the way I couldn’t let him die when he needed to. A cold wind gusts over us, dusting both our heads with snow. As much as I love Carlo, as much as his absence will pain me, I understand that keeping him here would be wrong. It’s time to let him go.

“Good-bye, my dog,” I whisper. “Good-bye, my friend. Thank you for everything you gave me. I love you.”

Carlo jerks his head from beneath my chin and licks my face. Then he gets out of my lap, takes two long lopes away from me. He pauses, quivering, then turns and comes back. He leaps through the air, lands with his paws on my shoulders, and knocks me backward. He
licks my face and rubs his head against my chest as if he wants to leave his scent.

I hug him again, holding his body against me. When I let go, he bounds out of my arms. He runs down the hill, toward the river. He looks so happy, and so young. This time he doesn’t turn back, he doesn’t even turn his head for one last glance. When finally his sylphlike darkness has disappeared forever, and I know he can’t hear me, won’t ever hear me again, I whisper to him.

“I’ll miss you my whole life,” I say. Again the wind, cold and wet, mists me with icy, insistent snow. Winter at eight thousand feet.

How can I describe what I feel? Never mind knowing that I’ve done the right thing. This grief bubbles up inside me, so hot and liquid that I don’t dare cry. My ribs feel like they might crack under the pressure, and I climb the porch stairs hobbled over, cramped and desperate.

Back in my room I lie across the bed. Staring at the ceiling as my chest rises and falls, I think of Carlo. I think of Luke, his too-big sweater draping my shoulders. All I want to do is sleep. It seems so unfair, how hard life is, just getting through every day. It’s hard enough without these endless good-byes. Every sixteen hours the living have to close our eyes, all night long, just so we can recover.

I’m ten. School just let out for the summer. The Sustantivo River is full of runoff from the mountains and we can hear it all over town. Every day I ride my bike to the Earnshaw’s. I pedal up to their door and ask, “Is Tressa here yet?”

“Still no word, young man,” Mr. Earnshaw says. “We’re hoping to see her too.”

To improve my mood I ride home no-handed. At the bottom of the driveway I pedal faster, picking up speed and heading down Arapahoe Road. When I think I’m balanced I lift my hands in the air. The bike starts wobbling. I don’t make it a single yard before my body hits the ground.

I try five times, twenty, thirty. I can’t do it. It’s hot outside. I’ve been out here on the road for hours but I
haven’t seen a single car. Maybe the next one that drives up the road will be Hannah and Tressa. I picture Tressa’s face looking out the car window. The next thing I know my hands come off the handlebars and the bike stays steady. I’m riding down the hill with my arms out at my sides.

About two weeks later Hannah brings her back. Tressa and I take one of the twins’ old bikes from the garage and ride to the top of Arapahoe Road so I can teach her how to ride no-handed. She falls off her bike once, twice, ten times. Finally her knees are bloody and she wants to quit. But I’m not ready to let her just yet. I walk down past the Burdicks’ while Tressa walks the bike up to the Earnshaws’ driveway. Then I yell to her. “Look at me, Tressa. Think of me!”

The next thing I know she’s barreling toward me, her arms outstretched, her bike balanced. She rides no-handed, her hair flying behind her like some crazy, rippling flag.

I wake to the sound of Matthew crying, and the noise enters my brain before I can open my eyes. When I do open them, I’m surprised to be at my grandparents’ house. I pull the covers over my head and recite the names of my family members. Katie Kingsbury. Jill Kingsbury. Now finally, again, after all these years: Hannah Kingsbury. Matthew Kingsbury. I love them all, but I just don’t belong over there with the Kingsbury clan. I am an Earnshaw. I want to stay here.

Downstairs I find Grandma walking back and forth in the living room with the wailing baby. Matthew’s face is contorted, red, and screaming. He looks like he might explode. My grandmother holds him to her chest, walking with a strange lift in her feet. She bends and rises, chanting, like she’s doing the Indian dance
from the Peter Pan movie. All her effort does little good. Matthew just cries and cries.