Stars Go Blue (19 page)

It's still cold, quite cold, and so we've all lugged out enough lumber to have a bonfire, which is where I'm sitting now, feeding the fire and being mesmerized by the flames, as all people for all time have been. I have on my jeans and a black sweater and I have painted my fingernails orange, because this was the color that my mother had painted my nails, and hers, the very day she died. It's a tribute to her, and to Grandpa Ben, who liked the willows. It's a prayer, even, that perhaps my mother is welcoming my grandfather and maybe even my stepfather into the Great Mysterious Beyond or whatever comes next.

I watch. It's true that I am the final record keeper of this family. That is my job. And when Renny asks what I'm going to make of my life, I'll tell her I don't know, but that it will ebb and flow, and at the very least, that I do know I am the record keeper, and that this is a true story, and it goes like this:

The individuals here matter very much.

For example. There is Ruben. Pausing for a breath, and, I know, trying to come out from underneath both his guilt and his relief. Ben pulled it off, which is what Ruben knows Ben wanted. He'd thought the pink juice was for Ben only, hadn't envisioned this other possibility, and wonders if he would have turned away and pretended not to notice had he known otherwise. He supposes he would have, truth be told. He supposes he's happy that Ben took Ray. Ray being the sort of person that frequently hit a child named Jess, and this Jess is now turning into a woman, and who is too young, and whom he is
thus working hard not to love. Although. It's an odd thing to do to love. He didn't go asking for this emotion, and it annoys him it just arrived. He needs to expel it. Or, at the very least, maneuver it so that the place it occupies inside is comfortable, or if not comfortable, then bearable. He does not know yet. I'll tell him on my birthday, the day I become less of a girl and more of a woman, and it still won't be quite right, but perhaps in a few years it will be. I'll let him know that I know. That I love him back. He and his way with animals. His calm healing. His sharp eyes. He is, of course, beautiful, and although I have no faith in the longevity of love or have any silly notions of needing to be saved, I would, in fact, not mind growing up with him for a while. I will also tell him that I know of the pink juice. Because Ben told me. Told me that Ruben looked away, on purpose, and that they caught one another's eye. And because he shouldn't have to live alone with that secret forever.

There is Anton. Being Anton, he has the volunteer fire truck tank parked in the field, because although it's spring it's still gusty. While it's likely that any spark would dissolve into the cold wetness (like a soul, burning bright and then dampened and dead) there is the possibility that the opposite will happen. Colorado has already had too many wildfires, and will continue to burn. You also understand that he is just now processing what he knows. That he had been making inquiries on behalf of Renny and Ben and because he once loved Rachel, back when they were in high school, and still felt a certain duty. You understand that these inquires led him to understand that a certain Ray Steele had been in communication with a man named Luce. Money was needed, after all, to start life anew. Money from meth. It was only a hunch. And now he knows that Luce was on that same bus. Later arrested for stealing a gun. For possession of meth. Arrested because Anton had been
following the story of Ray, which led him to Luce, which led the police to Luce. That Luce will soon be heading to the same prison that once housed Ray.

There's Billy. Walking toward Ruben in an offer to help with the last of the firewood. There's also Del. And Leanne and Jack, my stepsiblings, or my cousins, depending on how you view it. When I saw them, Jack immediately put me in a headlock and gave me a head rub, and I punched him back and leaned into his arms for a while because Jack has always been like that, willing to let me communicate in that roughhouse way. He seems to need fewer words.

There's Violet, Eddie, the folks from the Alzheimer's Association, including Esme, who is nice, and a guy named Zach who seems to put his arm around Renny a lot in a protective kind of gesture. His wife, I hear, has just moved into assisted care.

There's the pregnant lady. The waitress at the place where we got stopped in the snowstorm. She'd read the story in the paper, about Ben and Ray, and she asked if she could be there when Ben was buried.

There are the ranchers. The people from the Presbyterian church. The Stitch Club ladies, who are the women who have been meeting since forever to make quilts and gossip. There are a lot of people, really, that one individual life touches.

There is Carolyn. The mother that raised me. Not knowing that I know. Thinking that she carries this burden herself.

There is Renny. Thinking, I know, of the hospital. The same one where she'd given birth to Carolyn and then Rachel. And where Carolyn gave birth to her two. And where Rachel was taken before they declared her dead. And where Ben and Ray were brought for autopsy. She's thinking of me visiting her there. Arriving as soon as the Greyhound got me back into town. The first on the scene. Holding her hand as she came
to. Her trying to shake my hand away, me refusing to let it go. Me delighted to see her reduced to calm and reasonable behavior. Even if by drugs. How she slapped my hand away, but how I took it back up again, which is a simple motion that Ben used to do. How Renny had said to me:
Two for two. Ben kept saying that. I thought he meant that he was dying twice. First his mind, then his body. But he meant two births—his two daughters—and two deaths—Ray and himself. I didn't know that that's what he meant.

I did,
I told her.
I did.

And she said:
You were with him?

And I said:
Yes. I could feel him going, and it was peaceful. We'll have to keep remembering that. We'll have to put it in the remembering room of our heads. You have hypothermia. Your bones and joints will hurt. Your skin will hurt. But you will recover.

And when I left, I placed the journal on her stomach.
THE SAD STORY OF RENNY AND BEN
. And when I came back to get her from the hospital, one word had been crossed out. It now read
THE DAMN INTERESTING STORY OF RENNY AND BEN
.

Here we all are, in this story of ours.

Such events, of course, bring out a certain type of honest hope and honest fear. I hear it in the chatter all around me. If I close my eyes and focus, I can hear a little symphony of parts:

       
Generous thoughts are hard to come by today, when it comes to Ray—

       
I'd much rather complain than count my blessings—

       
This wind better die down—

       
Speaking of, there was a man in Mexico selling these kites . . .

       
—I think it's a myth that Eskimo elders put themselves out on ice floes—

       
I can't make it through this funeral without a better coat—

       
It's pigeon disease, the horses get it from the dirt—

       
—No, he didn't lose his vet license, it's under investigation, I hope they let him off, him being so young and all. He's just got to keep his meds locked up—

       
—The Alzheimer's Association's official stance is that anonymous testing should be available. We've argued that—

       
She's going to end up pregnant and on drugs—

       
Now, Renny, it's possible she's tuned
in
—

       
—Well,
look
at her, all quiet like that. Where
is
she? In her mind, I mean? Although, maybe. You never know.

       
Tell me again, Renny—

       
—I think we all learn not to feel loneliness anymore. We get distracted. We distract our whole lives away.

       
—Occasionally one is wise to the ways of the universe. Gut instinct, intuition, sixth sense. I now know, for instance, that I was being saved at the exact same time Ben was dying. I almost felt—I can't really say this, can I? It makes me sound like a woo-woo nutcase, that I felt his arms around me, heaving me out of the snow, pulling me toward warmth, a voice saying
there now, hang on
. Sounds like a bunch of New Agey hippie crap, doesn't it? And yet.

       
It's been proven that mountain views are good for the brain.

       
But mountains don't pay taxes. This community needs—

       
Some towns don't
want
to be developed—

       
—So Renny is going to move back to the cabin? Del and Carolyn are inheriting?—

       
—And Anton is buying that southern edge? To pay the taxes?

       
—It's a good solution. Estate taxes . . .

       
I just never would have thought—

       
I'll be damned, something called a contemplative dying movement?

       
—They said she looked dead—

       
That can be common. Frozen folks can look dead, even for hours, and still come alive. There's that rewarming adage: “They aren't dead until they are
warm
and dead.”

       
—It's a lucky thing, for sure.

       
—I sure like what he used to say about hope. His brain wouldn't have gotten better. He knew that. He knew that it's wrong to hope for what isn't going to happen.

       
—She just quit talking after Rachel died. And it got worse when Ray was let out of prison—

       
—Poor Rachel. This funeral makes me miss her all over again.

       
We need to focus on the living—

       
We need to focus on the planet.

       
It must have been an ugly death for Ray. Ben got him in the liver. Agonal breathing—

       
Ben had got himself in the heart. Quick, peaceful.

       
—Just like an animal that doesn't get put down quite right. If it had been one of their animals, Ben would have followed up with a gun; he hated to see things suffer.

       
Ben wouldn't have done
that
on purpose—

       
Oh, I know.

       
He would have tried—

       
I know it.

       
It's not an easy thing—

       
Oh, I know it—

       
She's not allowing any paper plates or Lipton tea. Says it's all crap. Warm and dead, eh? I like that. Plenty of people are cold-hearted and alive.

       
—Oh, that Renny. One can try to prepare for her, but one will fail.