Meet Me at the River (19 page)

“H. J. can give you a ride back to your car,” Evie says, remembering that I left it back at the trailhead.

“He doesn’t have to. I can stay at my grandparents’ tonight.” I realize as I speak that this will require me skiing another half mile, and my heart sinks. As if bolstering myself, I add, “It’ll be nice to sleep somewhere quiet for a change.”

“Oh, right,” Evie says. “The baby. I forgot to say congratulations.”

We hear a rattling from a back window and look toward the house. H. J. is banging, beckoning us inside. “Want to come in?” Evie asks. I hesitate a moment. Above our heads the light, pushing toward late afternoon, already dims into dusk. I can see a fire flickering inside their house. Through the window the kitchen looks bright and cozy. We glide around to the front of the house and stick our skis into the snow by the porch steps. H. J. opens the front door before we get there. He wears a thick wool sweater and battered army pants. His hair is tied into a ponytail with a piece of white string.

“That’s an interesting look,” Evie says as she sidles past him.

“Why, thank you,” H. J. says. Then to me, “Poor Evie heaps all the teenage embarrassment that should belong to our parents onto me.”

I don’t know what to say to this. H. J. moves aside so that I don’t have to brush by him.

“You girls have a nice ski?” he asks when I’ve made it through the door. He follows me into the front hallway.

“Fine,” Evie yells, I guess from the kitchen. She has left her snow-crusted coat, scarf, mittens, and hat on a wooden bench in the hallway, and H. J. immediately gathers them up. He hangs her coat in a hall closet and drapes the wet wool items over a metal coatrack by the door. I take off my gear and hang it beside Evie’s.

“Come on into the kitchen,” he says.

The Burdick house is dark and close and appealingly
messy. The walls smell just as I guessed they would, of wood smoke and exotic spices from H. J.’s cooking experiments. Evie sits at the kitchen table, a thick, wide slab of gnarled wood with benches on either side. A fire crackles in a woodstove in one corner, and a huge cast-iron pot steams on the gas stove, beside an empty skillet, also steaming. Against one wall stands a battered, cozy-looking couch. H. J. sees me staring at it.

“Evie and I dragged that in here last winter,” he said. “In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses there was always a couch in the kitchen. They spent so much time in here. We decided it seemed like a good idea.”

At the moment it strikes me as such a good idea that I sink right down into it. The springs let out a little whoosh, like a welcoming but slightly put-upon sigh. I think I’d like to draw a map of this kitchen, and I decide to do exactly that when I get home. I can give it to Evie as a present.

H. J. starts to lay thick slices of bacon into the cast-iron skillet. They sizzle on contact.

“I’m making BLTs and tomato soup,” he says.

“Like I told you,” Evie says. “He’s very into soup.”

“It’s winter,” says H. J. “What’s better than soup in winter?”

“Nothing,” I have to admit.

“Well,” he says. “There is one thing. Mulled wine. I’ve had a hankering lately for mulled wine. Will you come back tomorrow, Tressa, and help me make some?”

“Sure,” I say, though I have no idea in the world what mulled wine is. The bacon happily sizzling, H. J. picks up a platter of cheese and crackers and offers it to me. I realize in that moment that I’m ravenous from the day skiing.

“How’s life with the new baby?” he asks.

“Loud,” I say after crunching into a rye-cracker-and-cheddar-cheese sandwich.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I remember that from when this one was born.” He points at Evie with his thumb. “I didn’t sleep between the age of seven and nine.”

“Oh, please,” Evie says. “As if you were involved.”

“Who needed to be involved? I lived in the same house. You were not a happy infant, take my word.”

My eyes roam around the kitchen, looking for a picture of the Burdick family. I try to imagine the house as it should be, inhabited by twice as many people, two of them bona fide adults. The two of them refer so easily to their parents, as if all that grief is in the past. I nod toward a crooked bookshelf, crammed tight with cookbooks and paperback novels.

“Is your palm-reading book in there?” I ask.

“Oh, that,” H. J. said. “I’ve given that up. Moving on to secular humanism now.”

I laugh.

“I ran into your sister Katie at the Mercantile this afternoon,” H. J. goes on. “I was buying bacon. She seemed surprised that I know you.”

“Really? What did you tell her about me?”

“I said that you were friends with my sister. That seemed to make her happy. That you had a friend, I mean.”

“My family is always overjoyed at any indication I might be normal,” I say.

“Because your brother died?”

“H. J.,” Evie moans, her mouth full of crackers and cheese.

“He’s not my brother,” I say, shifting on the couch.

“Sorry,” H. J. amends. “Your boyfriend, I mean.”

I know that I should be offended by this flippancy, his making light not only of Luke’s death but his relation to me. It’s weird, how H. J.’s attitude doesn’t infuriate me. It’s a refreshing break from almost everybody else’s refusal to discuss Luke at all.

“I think it predates that,” I tell H. J. “My mother was such a flake, dragging me all over the country, and out of the country.”

“You sound bitter,” H. J. says. This surprises me. In my head I think of myself as Mom’s defender. H. J. turns bacon with dark metal tongs. “Evie,” he says, interrupting himself. “Will you slice that bread, please?” A loaf of homemade brown bread stands cooling on the wide table.

“I’m not bitter,” I say. The words between us sound like confrontational banter, but I don’t feel confrontational at all. I feel euphoric and matter-of-fact, liking
that H. J. feels I can take it, these prodding statements of his.

Evie has made no move to slice the bread, so I stand up and walk to the table. I pick up a long serrated knife and start sawing into the loaf. “It’s just that my life was very disjointed, very unusual,” I try to explain. “And now it’s kind of weird that my mom has decided to be all classic and normal just in time for me to grow up and move away.”

H. J. covers a dinner plate with paper towels and lays slices of crispy bacon on top of it. “One day,” he says, “that baby will grow up and be jealous as hell that he got the mom who went to PTA meetings while you got the mom who sailed around Tortuga.”

“It was the Marquesas,” I say. H. J. laughs, so I add, “I know I’m lucky in a lot of ways. But sometimes I kind of feel like I missed out on a normal childhood.”

“Normal childhoods are overrated.” H. J. carries the plate of bacon over to the table, then moves around the kitchen collecting dinner plates, then a head of lettuce from the fridge. Evie has finally started to help, slicing thick red tomatoes.

“This seems like a summery sandwich,” she says, as if she hasn’t been listening to our conversation at all.

“Praise jet planes and hothouses,” H. J. says.

Evie hands him a plate full of the sliced tomatoes and proves she’s been listening to us after all. “At least you have a mom,” she says, her tone light.

The room falls silent except for the fire, crackling invisibly in the woodstove. The silence isn’t awkward, just resonant. H. J. reaches over and touches his fingers to the top of Evie’s head. It’s a light and thoughtful touch, fond and connecting. Wanting to reach out to her also, I say, “You’re right, Evie. I’m lucky. I know I am.”

H. J. says, “Speaking of which, why don’t you give her a call and let her know where you are? I’ll get these sandwiches together.”

He points me to the living room. Although I could easily dig my cell phone from my pack, for some reason I obey him and take the old-fashioned route. The Burdick living room is a low space crowded with furniture and dark wood beams overhead. It has a broad fireplace where an untended fire smolders dimly behind a brass fire screen shaped like a fan. I sit down in a red and white easy chair and place my hand on top of the telephone. On the mantel is the family photograph I’ve been looking for. Their father had brown eyes behind glasses, and hair the walnut color Evie’s would be if she didn’t dye it black. Their mother was dark-haired and blue-eyed. She had a deep, round cleft in her chin, and looking at her picture, I realize that both H. J. and Evie have that same dimple. Definitely she looks familiar to me, maybe because of memory, maybe because I’ve been spending time with her children. In the picture the four of them sit on the front porch, Evie little enough to perch on her mother’s lap, H. J. around ten or so, with
the same far-off, bemused expression he so often wears now. I imagine his mother’s relief if she could know that these last few years have not erased that quality in him, the ability to find life odd and funny.

Here in this house I sense a kind of peace with grief that I can’t imagine ever making myself. And then, out of nowhere, it hits me. They are my friends. H. J. and Evie. They like me, and I like them. I have managed to make friends, two of them, all on my own.

I pick up the phone and dial home. I know the house will be in disarray as Mom harkens to the endless cries of the baby. Absorbing and consuming though this may be, all the while she tends Matthew she will have one eye on the clock, thinking about where I might be. I know that whatever she’s doing, when the phone rings, she will find a way to get to it before the machine picks up—as long as there’s any chance that it might be me.

I won’t go away.

It should be easier with Carlo around. Less lonely. But he’s starting to make me feel like maybe I shouldn’t be here. The dog gets super happy when he sees Tressa but when we’re not with her I can tell he wants to leave. Sometimes out of nowhere he’ll just take off the same way he ran after that rabbit. Then he turns around like he wants me to come with him. He’ll do that crouching thing dogs do, with his front legs flat and his butt way up in the air. Then he runs in the other direction, stops short, and looks back at me. Like he’s waiting. I know he wants me to follow him but I can’t. Tressa needs me.

I know she needs me, even though lately I can’t seem to get to the house. Something’s changed over there.
Carlo and I walk to the edge of my dad’s property. We circle through the woods. Sometimes I can hear Tressa’s voice. “Come back to me.” But I can’t get to her. The only thing I
can
do is stand in the woods with my hands in my pockets and stare at her window.

Carlo nips at my pants leg and I push him away. Dogs are supposed to be loyal. Especially this dog. I can’t see why he’d want to leave. He must know how she’s wanting us to stay.

Carlo and I walk past Silver Lake. We head up Arapahoe Road. In some houses I can see lights on. Every now and then a car drives by. I recognize Mr. Zack’s truck and for a second I get this picture in my head of him pulling over and stopping.
Kingsbury,
he’d say.
What are you doing out here so late?
Half the people who drive by are people I’ve known my whole life. But nobody sees me so nobody stops.

Before I know it I’m on my way to the Earnshaws’. It happens this way a lot. I don’t have to walk, I just picture the place and suddenly I’m there, standing in front of the house. It won’t snow tonight; the sky’s too clear. I touch Carlo’s head. We look up, toward this other window of Tressa’s.

I can feel her wake up. Even though I can’t see her I know when her eyes open, and when she pushes off the blankets. She walks over to the window, slides it open, and leans out. When she sees us she smiles. Then she waves and closes the window.

I walk around to the front porch. Carlo and I climb the five steps and I sit down on the porch swing. I don’t bother sweeping off the snow. Tressa opens the front door. She’s got a down comforter over her shoulders and her grandpa’s guitar in one hand. She’s wearing sweatpants and sheepskin slippers. I brush the swing off next to me, clearing a spot for her. She can still feel the cold even if I can’t.

She walks over and hands me the guitar. Carlo thumps his tail, and she scratches his ears and kisses the top of his head. Then she sits down next to me. I haven’t held a guitar in a long time, and I strum one chord, then another. Before I know it, I’m playing a Neil Young song, “Four Strong Winds,” and Tressa starts singing. I do what I always do when Tressa sings. I start in myself to drown her out. “Four strong winds that blow lonely, seven seas that run high. All the things that don’t change come what may.”

I could go on singing like this for days, but by the time we finish the song Tressa’s shivering. So I put the guitar on the ground and wrap the down comforter around both of us. I can feel the blanket but not Tressa. I think of how it used to be different, back when I could feel her. How crazy it drove me sometimes. It makes me almost like it this way, without the whole physical thing to distract me.

“I wonder if we woke your grandparents up.”

“I wish they would wake up. They could come outside, and everyone could sit around listening to us
sing.” She puts her hand in my lap, and I close my hand around her wrist. “Hey,” she says. “You’ve been gone awhile.” I close my hand a little tighter. “I missed you,” Tressa says. She touches my peace sign. I wonder if she can feel the metal.

“I always miss you,” I say. She moves a little closer and puts her head on my shoulder. I wish I could feel her hair on my chin. We sit there, kicking the swing back and forth.

After a while, she says. “Do you remember the Burdicks?”

“Sure,” I say. “H. J. and Evie. Known them my whole life.” Tressa doesn’t flinch when I say “life,” but as soon as it’s out of my mouth, I wish I hadn’t said it.

“I remember their mother died of breast cancer,” she says carefully. “And then their dad—”

“Yeah,” I interrupt. Not sure why, but I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want anyone to say the word. It took me so long to get here. I don’t want to have to leave.

Tressa doesn’t look at me. We swing back and forth a few times more. And then she says, “How did he do it?”