By Proxy (26 page)

I’m headed back to MT for New Year’s; I thought I’d head up to the Triple Peak, just like when we were kids. If you can believe it, I am actually considering a move out to Great Falls, even have an interview lined up for the day after tomorrow. I always missed Montana when I was away. Now that I literally can’t stand Chicago, maybe it’s time to trade in the concrete jungle for greener pastures.

Frankly, it just sucks to be anywhere she’s not. I thought I had to be in Chicago to be happy, but I think I could be happy a lot of places if she was with me. Not Gardiner, which, as you know, is a one-horse town at the end of the Earth. But, maybe we can find somewhere that works for both of us. Who knows?

That sounds a little too hopeful now that I’m re-reading it. I don’t even know if she’d give me the time of day at this point. I tried to make her choose between me and her family; I didn’t even consider offering her a compromise. I just thought if she wanted to give “us” a try,
she’d
make the sacrifice. I was a selfish bastard and I know it. Part of me feels like I hurt her enough and should just leave her alone. The other part? Well, between you and me, Kris? I love her. She’s it for me. I’d go the whole nine yards—rings, kids, a mortgage. If I ever get the chance to tell her, I’d never risk messing up things again. I’d never let her go.

I’ll say hey to the Northern Lights for you, cuz. I bet you ten bucks they show this year. You can pay me when you get home.

Stay safe,

Sam

Chapter 11

When Jenny lost her mother, the sorrow she felt had been overwhelming, paralyzing, even, and her only balm had been the company of her father and brothers. They had come together in unified sadness, negotiating their movements like severely sunburned people sharing a small space, careful not to touch one another, careful not to touch the awful red rawness of their blistered skin. They ate dinner together every night, occasionally in total silence, finding the only possible solace in the common, unspoken heartache that set them apart from the rest of the living, breathing, buzzing world. Being around other people unaffected by their visceral loss took such a lion’s share of their daily energy, it was a relief to be quiet with one another at the day’s end. Their fellowship of sorrow carried them through those first dark days.

Gradually, Jenny found, with relentless insistence, life demanded that those still living move forward. They spoke more, until they all laughed together one night—more than one of them feeling guilty over their giggles—remembering a silly family memory. Little by little, their shared sorrow became a shared life experience, and was woven, bit by bit into the tapestry of their family. Daily supper became twice-weekly supper as other commitments and obligations infringed on the family time that became less and less crucial and finally turned into a Sunday supper as regular life resumed. Red and raw was pink again, healing, and they were living and breathing and buzzing with the rest of the world again.

Silence was replaced by stories of their daily lives, bickering and teasing. The five lives that emerged covered with new skin were changed; they had survived the loss together, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were tougher for it. Fear could still permeate moments of Jenny’s quiet grief, however bearable now. Unbearable would be losing one of them again.

Sam wasn’t a member of her family, which had led her to believe losing him would be bearable.

She was wrong. Managing her sorrow was wearing her down on a daily basis.

When she lost her mother, she’d read, “Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.” Lewis was just as right now as he had been then, and the passage resonated with Jenny all over again. Every moment was surrendered to Sam’s absence.

The very worst thing about the week after the vows was Jenny didn’t have a fellowship of sorrow with whom to share her sadness and confusion. Her loneliness was exquisite, unparalleled in her life and thoroughly exhausting. Too much had been lost all at once: her simple, satisfying life, her romantic innocence, her sexual dormancy, saying wedding vows aloud, and all of these crucial life changes shared one vital, common element. The one person with whom she could have processed and grieved her losses was also the source and had left her behind.

Jenny wasn’t raised to be the sort of person to neglect her responsibilities merely because she was harboring personal heartache; she was at school an hour early every day to prepare her lessons and stayed an hour after school to straighten her desk and classroom.

She worked on the program for the annual concert and attended all of the rehearsals, helping the senior girls choose their carols, and helping the music teacher coach the freshman and sophomore choruses through their pieces, which included several solos and hand motions. She directed the janitor on how she wanted the risers arranged and brought in evergreens cut from a local area of woods to decorate the cafeteria, where they would hold the concert, festively.

She was at church every Wednesday evening to organize the little ones for the pageant. She wiped runny noses, sorted out doves and baby angels, wise men and shepherds. She spent nights at home sewing new costumes until her fingers bled, making halos from wire, white ribbon and silver feathers with a leaky, angry glue gun that singed her fingers. She crate-trained Casey with a dogged tenacity until the small puppy was allowed to wander around Jenny’s apartment for limited amounts of time without having an accident. She spent all day Sunday with her father at his small house outside of town, making elaborate Sunday suppers, straightening his kitchen cabinets and folding his laundry.

She had never been so busy before, but to her frustration, nothing filled that gaping hole of aching loneliness in her life. At night, she drew her knees to her chest in bed, remembering Sam’s smile, seeing his face, hearing his voice, replaying his words, yearning for his warmth, his arms, his hands, his breath, his soft lips, his teasing grin, their easy banter. She would cross her arms over her chest and hold herself, remembering his eyes holding hers across the conference table at the courthouse, burning through her to brand her heart until it wasn’t hers anymore. And finally she would weep until she succumbed, mercifully, to sleep.

***

That first week she didn’t see anyone socially, except for one very tearful cappuccino with Maggie one night as she was closing. Maggie must have noticed Jenny swiping at her eyes as Jenny and Casey made their way back from their evening walk, because she had unlocked the door of the café, stuck her head out and called to Jenny before she could enter the door to her apartment. “Jen! Coffee!”

While Casey scampered joyfully around the empty, dimly lit café, Jenny sat at the coffee bar miserably as Maggie made them two after-hour cappuccinos. Maggie leaned on the counter and listened as Jenny spilled her heart out.

“Maggie, this just hurts so much,” she finally sniffled, wiping her eyes with a napkin.

“But, he wants you, Jen. You refuse to go to Chicago, but you’re miserable here. Maybe you should just go. Make it clear it’s a visit only, and you’d never consider movin’ there. Maybe you’d even like it. Who knows?”

“It wouldn’t be any good.” Jenny had stirred her coffee, watching the cheerful white foam dissolve into the depths of the cup until it was all a murky, uniform brown. “You know when you see two people on a reality show? And they’re thrown together in some unlikely circumstance on a deserted island or something, right? And you watch them fall in love, but it’s not real. When real life starts up again and the show’s over, they try to force each other into their old lives, and it all crumbles. All of the magic is somehow lost.”

“You don’t know for sure that would happen, Jen.”

“I do, Maggie. I can’t live that life. Dressing up for parties, drinking, living in an apartment, in a city. What would I even do there? I’d be frightened of the city, the crime and the strangeness. It would kill the magic.”

“Isn’t it possible that it’s better than
this
?” Maggie had asked, palms open in supplication, gesturing to Jenny’s life, her sadness, her longing.

“I couldn’t bear to kill it,” she whispered. “I’d rather have the memories. They’ll fade. Eventually they’ll fade. I just have to keep moving until then.”

Maggie had smiled at her then, covering Jenny’s hands with her own, the lilt of her soft accent comforting in Jenny’s ears. “Then how about a girls’ weekend? You and me? Great Falls?”

For the first time since Sam had left, Jenny smiled, grateful for Maggie. She nodded. “Okay.”

“Next weekend. You and me.”

***

It turned out a girls’ weekend didn’t solve all of her problems, but at least it distanced her from them. Maggie was good company on the drive north, changing the music, pointing at scenery out the window and making Jenny tell her all about the towns they traveled through. She didn’t ask about Sam, and Jenny was relieved not to talk about him. She couldn’t escape the near-constant sense of loss she felt, but at least she didn’t have to talk about it, too, which inevitably brought on more embarrassing, painful tears.

They checked into the Comfort Inn and Maggie decided to take a short nap before they headed to the Great Falls Symphony that evening to hear “Hallelujah Holidays,” which would include the city chorus singing parts of Handel’s “Messiah.” Feeling energized for the first time since Sam left her, Jenny couldn’t bear to stay cooped up in the hotel room. She bundled up to take a walk and told Maggie she’d be back later to grab some dinner before the concert.

“Heya, Jen,” started Maggie getting under the covers and turning away from Jenny to start her nap. “I thought of somethin’. Life is about gray areas. Black and white is more comfortable, but gray is more realistic. Visitin’ Sam doesn’t have to mean leadin’ him on. You don’t have to promise anythin’. You could see him and come back. Just visit.” She yawned loudly, pulling the covers up to her neck and snuggling under.

Jenny zipped up her coat and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Maggie, what good would it do? We’d fall for each other harder and then I’d have to leave and we’d be exactly where we were before I visited. Exactly where we are now but worse. In that way, I think it
would
be leading him on, Maggie. Unless I was prepared to stay.”

She turned to face Jenny. “It’s not leadin’ him on if you’re up-front. ‘I would never move here, but I came here to see you.’ I guess what bothers me is, by not goin’ at all, you’re sayin’ it’s over. And we both know it’s not over. You can let it die, Jenny. It’ll die eventually. But why wouldn’t you give it a chance? A weekend?”

Jenny stared at Maggie for a moment then looked down her feet in thought.

“Can I say one more thing?”

Jenny looked up and nodded.

“I think maybe you’re just scared of leavin’. You say it’s about losin’ the magic. I don’t think that’s all of it. You came home to yer sick mum. And maybe you’re just holdin’ on to yer Da and the boys a wee too tightly, Jen. Maybe you think sayin’ good-bye to them is worse than sayin’ good-bye to Sam. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I think it’s worth a look.”

Maggie flipped back over then and pulled the comforter over her head. Jenny stood frozen in the same spot for a good few minutes before she turned and walked out the door, closing it gingerly behind her.

***

Exiting the front of the hotel onto 10th Avenue, Jenny realized the University of Great Falls was only a short, straight thirty-minute walk down the street. At an unhurried pace, she enjoyed the activity of the small city. What a difference from Gardiner, which only had a handful of shops. Everywhere she turned there was something else to see, much of it new in the three short years since she had attended college here. A new Target, Hastings Entertainment, Riddle’s Jewelry. She looked in the shop windows, most of them decorated merrily for Christmas with fake buffalo snow and cheerful lights.

By virtue of its location, three hours from Glacier National Park and five hours from Yellowstone, Great Falls wasn’t reliant on tourism. This excepted Great Falls from pandering to tourists like many cities in Montana and meant that it had the stores and amenities it needed for its citizens rather than transient visitors. It gave Great Falls a solid, year-round feeling that Gardiner frankly lacked with its heavy reliance on the mostly summer tourist trade. She passed a Starbucks and treated herself to a pumpkin spice latte, then kept walking, her thoughts naturally turning to Sam as they always did lately.

How could she have known that the moment he walked into the Livingston Courthouse would be one of the most important moments of her life? She thought of him, so handsome and slick in the little lobby. She’d been so angry at him and he’d teased her back into a good mood, treating her with such care and kindness when her car skidded off the road, taking her to dinner, staying in Gardiner. She thought of the omelet debacle and how gracious he had been—merry, even, and understanding. She remembered him sitting on the bench at school looking out at the football field, looking so dejected. Jenny smiled. That’s when she knew with certainty he liked her as much as she liked him. It had been a revelation.

The cold wind whipped into her face, and she quickened her pace toward the university. Unbidden, her mind turned to his face when she'd opened her apartment door to him the night of the Stroll. He had looked her up and down hungrily and kissed her a few minutes later. She had wanted him to, but the shivers of pleasure she felt at the time had been new to her in every way, surprising and addictive.

She smiled to herself, thinking of his warm hands laced through hers at the Stroll and his stunned dismay when he realized he had blurted out that he wanted to have children with her someday. She hugged herself as she walked along, remembering his wide eyes as he was backpedaling like crazy. Even visiting Yellowstone with him, despite how the day ended, had been magical, she thought, remembering their easy conversation and the story of how his parents fell in love.