The Melting Season (4 page)

“So we’ll see you around noon, then,” said Mr. Sunny Day. “Come in and get yourself a nice lunch up at the lodge. Do yourself a favor and try their Black Angus burgers. Big as your head.”

But Thomas was not hearing a thing. He was already off dreaming on the water, it was just a matter of catching the right wind. I sat and looked at him, my belly and breasts pressed up against the life vest. It was hard to breathe for a second. Mr. Sunny Day stood on the dock watching us, his hands on his hips, a weird grin on his face. His legs were skinny and hairless at the top, I noticed that. And his shorts were too short for a man his age. Out on the water the two boys kayaking started splashing each other with their paddles until one of them yelled, “Quit it!”

Thomas got on the boat and it rocked a bit. I thought for sure we were going down. I closed my eyes and sucked in my breath and prayed for my husband to be strong, out on the water, out in the world. And then I opened my eyes and we were sailing! We were floating so free, me and him, Moonie and Thomas, stars, sun, moon, water, mountain, trees, bees, birds, him and me.

We floated around for an hour like that, not saying much, just beaming at each other. I allowed myself to lie back and take off my life vest and T-shirt, my new pink-striped bikini underneath. Thomas had not seen it yet and his eyes got big and he let out a dirty little laugh. My hair was up in a ponytail and Thomas told me to take it down so I did, and the wind blew it back around me. I felt famous.

“You are gorgeous,” said Thomas.

“Thanks, sailor,” I said.

We made our way around the lake and looked at all the other log cabins. We waved to some little kids messing around at the shore, building little castles out of empty beer cans. Near the quieter end I could see a deer standing at the edge of some trees. I got excited. I had seen deer before but never while sitting on a yellow sailboat being steered by my new husband.

I started thinking about how we could make sailing our new hobby. Maybe someday we would be able to afford our own sailboat. Maybe we could come back here every year on our anniversary. It was not the worst thing in the world, leaving home every so often. And the way the air felt on that lake, brushing all over my bare skin. The way Thomas looked at me. It was love. I was not yet twenty years old.

As we sailed back toward the dock, Mr. Sunny Day, and all his sailboats, I felt calm. I closed my eyes and listened to the rush of the water, the smooth lap against the bottom of the boat. Thomas was sailing faster. I could hear the wind beating against the sail. We were in a race with something. I sat up and looked at Thomas, his face set like stone, his short legs flexing and folding as he wrestled with the sail. He had gotten a crew cut for the wedding, so he even looked like a sailor. The wind picked up a little more and Thomas howled at it. He was just a boy becoming a man. That is all he was trying to be, was a man.

I wanted to reach out toward him and touch his face and hands and chest, but he was busy with the sail. I looked back toward the shore. We were coming up fast.

“Thomas,” I said. “Slow it down.”

“I’m trying,” he said.

Mr. Sunny Day was on the dock, waving his arms at us. Then, as he saw how fast we were coming in, he sped up his arms, as if waving them faster could somehow make us go slower. Then he started motioning us to the right, away from the dock. I felt the tickle of a laugh in my throat. I mean it was funny, wasn’t it? That we were about to fuck up this boat. And then I got afraid real fast.

“Tommy, should I jump?” I do not know why I called him “Tommy” just then. I guess I felt like I was a little girl and he was a little boy.

“I don’t know,” said Thomas. He was frantically grabbing at the sail, trying to turn it in any direction other than the one it was going in, but the sail was not having it. We raced toward the dock. I was frozen: stay or jump, where should I go? What should I do? I should stay with Thomas. I will stay with my husband.

The boat hit the dock in three places, on the front, then it bounced back and hit the side and the sail, which came tumbling down almost on top of Mr. Sunny Day, but he ran off at the last minute. The sound the body of the boat made was kind of awesome. It was a serious crunch, and it rippled through the whole boat, and then it stopped, everything stopped. The sail was dangling over our heads, the boat was dented in pretty serious in the front, and Thomas and I were just sitting there wondering what to do next. I could hear Mr. Sunny Day cursing from the land. “You son of a bitch,” he yelled.

There was some arguing after that and I walked back to the cabin by myself because I did not want to see my new husband be crushed like a stubborn hard-backed beetle under Mr. Sunny Day’s foot, over and over until he was broken down. I sat in the living room of our log cabin and looked up all around at the paintings of the lakes on the walls, little price tags in the corners, the humming ceiling fan we had not minded the night before but that now seemed louder than an airplane overhead, the well-worn quilt with blocks of stars, the chocolate roses, the empty bottle of champagne, and our suitcases, still halfway packed. I memorized my honeymoon suite because I knew we would be leaving before the day was done. Out in the world, my husband crashed the first thing he touched. But at home, he would be in control and we would be safe, and I wanted more than anything to be safe in my new husband’s arms.

We will just stay put, then, I thought at the time. And so we did.

S
alt Lake City was seventy miles away, and suddenly it was forty, and then it was ten, and there were signs for Cedar City and Las Vegas, too. There were mountains all around, biggest things I had ever seen, clawing their way up to the sky. Then in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the earth, was a huge stretch of highways that circled the city, and tall buildings sparkling in the blinding light of the winter sun. For a while, I let my eyes wander through the city, and then there they were again in the distance, even more mountains, choked with blue at the base, and white caps on top spreading down to the middle. I felt a little pull in my throat. I had seen natural beauty in the past but it had been so long since I had stopped to consider it. I saw things the way Thomas did, or we talked about them together and came to the same conclusion. Now I had to figure it all out on my own. The mountains were alive and changing all the time and getting older but still starting things brand-new. The rocks and the dirt and the earth had been there forever, but the snow had probably fallen just that morning. No one judged those mountains for a thing, I thought. However they changed, in however many years or if it were in an instant, people would still find them beautiful.

I decided to push through to Las Vegas. I was being chased. I was chasing something. I could not get out of the car.

As I drove, the land changed again. It was cold and there was snow for a long time, and then it all started to thin out, and then soon enough I was in the desert. There was sand and sage and wide skies and every corner I turned, the earth just seemed to get prettier, until I found myself smiling. It was the first time I had smiled without faking it in what seemed like months. Maybe I was going to be okay, I thought.

And then there I was, in Las Vegas. I drove down the main strip slowly. I did not think it would be possible to ever go fast there. The streets were clogged with taxis mostly, but also buses and vans and cars with license plates from all over the country, though most of all from California. I will admit to being shocked by it all, though I felt dumb for it. How many times had I seen Las Vegas on TV in my life? I should have known by then what to expect.

Still Las Vegas looked like nonsense to me, a cartoon version of a real town. I knew buildings came from somewhere, that they did not just pop up out of thin air. But it seemed like Las Vegas was made from scratch. There was nothing all around for miles, and then all of a sudden there were these huge towers that were imitations of real places. There was a circus, and there was ancient Rome, and there was the Eiffel Tower. Somebody built these, I kept thinking. Where I came from all the buildings were small and made sense. They served a purpose. This seemed almost immoral. But I could not say I minded it either. Everything new I saw made me feel like I was on the way to figuring myself out.

It was just before the sunset when I arrived. I moved with the traffic, slowly jerking forward. On the sidewalks all around people walked slowly, like it was summertime, and they were taking their evening stroll. A car behind me started honking and I covered my outside ear with one hand. I did not know where to stop. I opened the window and it was cool, but the sun felt nice on my skin. The air felt still and clean. This is one reason people came here to get away from it all, I thought. Sunshine in December, God Bless America.

My parents had come here once in the winter. It was one of Dad’s pharmaceutical conferences. They did not travel much. My father was like most everyone else in town, just like I was. Not much in a hurry to go anywhere. Simply content. My mother was mixed, and I was always confused by it. Sometimes she was herky-jerky all over the place, wishing she was anywhere but our town. She had had big dreams once. She had been to France once, she would have you know. That’s right. France. In Europe. But as I got older, and especially after Jenny was born, she pushed all of that down, deep down. The balance shifted somewhere along the way, and she just became our mother and not much more than that. She had her reasons, even if it was not always clear to us what they were. Whatever else she had imagined she would do with her life seemed to be gone forever, or at least hidden so far away none of us ever saw it.

Still she liked her trips when she got them, and Las Vegas was a knockout, as far as she was concerned. I was in high school, and they left me in charge of Jenny. I sat in the room while my mother packed, and she told me she was taking her “dancing shoes.” I remember listening to her, and being happy for her, but in the back of my mind I was happier for Thomas. I knew he would be glad they were going away. He wanted to sleep in my bed with me, like a real man. He could spend the night at last. We had tickled each other in the mornings and paid Jenny twenty bucks to keep her mouth shut. I made blueberry pancakes and sausage for everyone. My parents came back two days later tired but still hungry for each other’s kisses. My father stroked the back of my mother’s neck at dinner. It was one of the few times I can remember bliss in that house. Everyone was happy all at once. I prayed Las Vegas might have some healing powers for me, but I could not imagine sleeping in any one of these buildings.

My phone rang as I was stopped in front of a giant Statue of Liberty, so close you could almost walk right up to it. It was my mother. I sent it to voice mail. It rang again. It was my sister. I was sure my mother was somewhere nearby, but I picked it up anyway. I knew Jenny would never hand over the phone to my mother. She would rather dangle it in front of her that she was the only one who could get through to me. I decided to make her day.

“Where you at?” she said. She was always tough on the phone now. All of her friends were like that.

“I am driving,” I said. Across the street a pregnant woman posed for a picture in front of Lady Liberty with a set of twin toddler boys and a baby in a carriage. Her breasts were enormous. She licked the palms of her hands and smoothed down the hair of her sons, then arranged them on either side of the carriage.

“Duh. Where are you?” said Jenny.

“I cannot tell you. Where are you?”

“I’m in the garage.” I pictured her in there, huddling near my dad’s fishing poles, and the extra refrigerator my mom used to stash beer. She looked just like I did at her age, everyone said so. You could hold my yearbook photo up to her face and never tell the two apart. We were twins, only years apart. Of course I had just been that girl on Thomas’s arm, and she was something special.

“Where is Mom?” I said.

“Inside, having herself a shit fit. I think she’s kind of loving all of this though. At least something is
happening
in her life.”

I did not like that my mother was enjoying it, but there was nothing I could do about it. I could not turn around now.

“Will you come back?” said Jenny.

“I do not know,” I said, and that was the truth. Was it possible I would never see my hometown again?

“I need you.”

“When have you ever needed me?” I said. I laughed. Jenny did not laugh back.

I squinted for a second. I pictured her again. She was not wearing any makeup at all and her hair was all around her in a beautiful golden mess. She was squatting on the ground. Her knees were touching her chin. Her eyes were closed. She held the phone with one hand, with the other she traced the shape of a heart on the ground, like she was feeling her way toward love. Air came out of her mouth slowly. She inflated. She deflated.

“Does Mom know?” I said.

“No. Now will you tell me where you are?”

“No,” I said. I did not see how her knowing would help her any, even if she felt like she needed a little power right about then.

“Bitch,” she said.

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” I said. “And you got enough to worry about, sister.”

I heard wild laughter, two almost identical voices, high and girlie, and I turned my head. In the backseat of the cab next to me two red-eyed women wearing wigs—one pink and one blue—were laughing so hard they were crying. What was so funny? I wanted to know. They saw me look at them, and they laughed harder.

“Do you know who the dad is, Jenny?”

The million-dollar question. She was the million-dollar question, and I was the $178,000 question.

“It’s one of three people,” she said. “There was that one guy, and then there was a party the next night that got a little out of hand.”