The Possibilities: A Novel (3 page)

Chapter
4

When I come in my father is sitting on his spot on the sofa. Sometimes it seems he’s been sewn there. He moved in almost a year ago after he sold his house and I wanted him to take the time to find a perfect place. At first, real estate consumed us. We had fun looking at staged apartments and condos, collecting brochures. Then, there was less urgency. He was finding a routine with us. He and Cully went grocery shopping together. They’d snowboard on weekdays and play pool every night that Cully was home. They’d watch movies and their shows: sports, the Discovery Channel, and
Wheel of Fortune
. Neither of them had ever had another male in the house before and each other’s company seemed to complete something for both of them.

Before he moved in Cully would often go over to my dad’s on Ridge Street, but it was different having him actually live with us. From my bed I could hear them downstairs playing pool or laughing at a skit on
Saturday Night Live
. There was a safety in the clink of pool balls, a sound that I very much miss. I didn’t know how much I loved it until now.

After Cully’s death there were no attempts to find somewhere for him to live, and now I’m not sure if there will ever be.

I look at the television and sure enough he has it on channel two. He can’t seem to get enough of the QVC. Two women are on the television talking about a television.

“It comes into the room,” one of them says. She has tight curls and a large forehead. “It becomes a part of you.”

It’s like watching a revival—the other woman throws her arms up in the air. I remember her from yesterday, shaking her head to demonstrate the power of a scientifically advanced hair product.

I hang up my coat but keep my boots on. I look outside at the girl on the deck. I’ve armed her with a shovel and she’s looking at it like she’s never seen one before. She is not fit for this kind of chore.

“They are so damn passionate,” my dad says.

I look back at the television. “And animated,” I say. “It’s kind of astounding.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he says. “And they can keep going. They just keep at it—the same product, their glee unwavering!”

Their passion evidently inspires him so much that he has purchased many items including face-lift tape. After listening to seven testimonials my dad was convinced that not only would he look better, he would feel better. It would, as Cynthia the life coach testified, “Waken you, enliven you, and restore you to the person you really are.”

After placing the order he realized he had just bought masking tape for three installments of $29.50. When it arrived he tried it, of course. He latched one end of the tape to his brow, the other to his hairline. When I walked in he had only completed one side, and it had a Jekyll and Hyde effect. One side, gloomy. The other, well, a bit gay. One side, knowing. The other, full of wonder. He had never done this before retirement, and after Cully’s death his purchases doubled.

“How did it go today?” he asks.

“Okay,” I say, looking at the women, how they’re reminding me of me, what I do. “Actually, it went horribly.” I recall my attitude toward everyone, my irritability. I felt like a character out of a children’s book. A dragon who’s nice on the inside but ugly on the outside so no one wants to play with her.

“We had to talk about the new price for lift tickets. Dickie didn’t show up, but we—Katie—handled it.”

“What are they up to now?”

“One oh five.”

“Balls, that’s harsh. That’s wild.”

“I know.”

I walk into the kitchen. He has left dishes in the sink and I load them into the dishwasher.

“But alas,” he says, “no one should nor can complain. Balls, said the queen, if I had them I’d be king.”

Here’s where he will launch into something that will leave me bemused, yet interested.

“Complain about what, Dad?” I ask, paving the way.

“The increase in the price of lift tickets,” he says. “If they want prices to be like they were in the old days, tell ’em to hang on to a piece of twine and be towed like a roped calf. They can have my wood hickory skis with the bear trap bindings and my boots that were made out of seal skins. Ha! Can you imagine all the asswads in their, in their uh, black tights and their Atomic boots—can you imagine them wearing my seals?”

“No, I can’t imagine. Hey, so a girl is outside—”

“Tell your viewers—” He looks back at me from the couch to make sure I’m still listening. “Tell them ticket prices go up because this is the way people wanted it.” He is yelling, but there’s a glimmer of joy in his eyes. He loves this sort of thing. “Gentrification: creating a gentry—asserting upper-class credentials through ostentation and glut.”

I lean into the counter. “Glut?” I say.

“Ticket prices are high because people want life here to be unaffordable,” he says. “The best is only the best when others can’t buy it. And you can,” he says, speaking to the imagined public, “because you’re blessed. Because you’ve worked hard. You want to top your friend’s vacation to Lake Como. You want to buy a mountain home in Shock Hill. Donate it for a week at your kid’s silent auction. And it’s your right. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of second homes. Tell ’em that.”

“Wow, Dad, okay. Great points.” I smile, then resume my tasks, open the fridge. “Did you happen to go to the store? I didn’t go.”

“And don’t forget to emphasize Breckenridge’s motivation,” he says, “which is always sourced in environmental, social, or cultural concerns. A Philip Morris tactic, right? Make cigarettes while creating a foundation—for the kids!—that helps people quit smoking.”

“They got sued,” I say, “and you’re getting too worked up now. The fun is over.”

“Breckenridge can do the same thing—convince people they’re cutting down the forest and raising prices and this will somehow benefit our ecosystem, sick kids, and the arts. Anyway, you should say something like that.”

“Watch the next show,” I say. “Instead I’ll be talking about fur needs.”

“Create a formula,” he continues.

“Take your pulse,” I say.

“People feel safer when things cost more. They will elect a higher price because it speaks to their high standards. There are so many ways to suggest what one should desire.”

“Okay,” I say. “I suggest you desire going outside.” I walk out of the kitchen, glance out the window, then walk closer to him because I suspect he may be wearing the face-lift tape, but I don’t detect any. He just looks well rested. I sit down beside him. Though I have my complaints I don’t know what I would have done without my dad right there in my face every day following Cully’s death. He may feel the same way and I think our need degrades us a bit. We pretend it doesn’t exist through annoyance with one another’s habits, but without words we have forced each other to eat, get dressed, sweep the floor. There’s a decorum to our lives, some amount of decency. We eat meals versus cereal with a bottle of wine and some popcorn. We don’t pick our teeth and eat what we’ve picked. We don’t spend all day in our underwear. We put the garbage out. When I’m with him, watching
The
Biggest Loser
doesn’t make me feel like one. I could be in Betty Ford without him. I like my wine. For now it brings me a little contentment, or something on the ladder toward it. Sometimes I think the abstemious need more help than the indulgent.

“Hey, do you like those?” he asks.

I look at the television, where a woman cuffed in silver bracelets insists she can’t tell the difference between the David Yurman jewelry and its cheaper imitation, Yavid Durman.

“No,” I say. “Tell me you didn’t order them.”

“I didn’t order them,” he says.

“And you haven’t ordered anything lately, right?”

He doesn’t answer, which means he has. I stand and the world around me twinkles with black stars. My insides feel soggy and mashed like canned chutney and I’m almost jealous of my dad. He is always nicely dressed in jeans and his favorite hooded sweatshirt, or sometimes a collared shirt. He’s clean-shaven, clean-smelling, roughly handsome, somehow debonair, but I guess this is perfectly attainable for a man. By looking at him you’d never know he was a bit off, a bit down, unless you knew that most days he woke up and groomed himself only to sit at home alone.

“I hired a snow shoveler,” I say.

“Why would you pay someone to do what I can do?” my dad asks.

“I thought you could give her a hand.” I walk to the window.

“Her?”

“Yes. I felt sorry for her. Let her do it a few times. A lot of snow is coming tonight. She’s kind of here now.”

“What?”

“Come see.” I watch her jabbing the shovel into the stairs. I really should stop her, tell her to rest. “She’s scraping the stairs. Or trying to.”

He walks up behind me. “Jesus, Sarah. Tell her to go home. Your fat friend is here. Suzanne.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Just kidding around,” he says.

“She’s here? I didn’t see her car.”

“Well, she’s downstairs. Look at her sweater over there.” He tilts his head toward the kitchen. “The one smothering that bar stool.”

I look over at her salmon-colored sweater. “What about it?”

“It’s the size BW. Know what BW stands for? It’s in cursive on the tag: Bountiful Woman.”

“Why would you look at the size of her sweater? God, Dad, that’s like looking at the underside of someone’s china.”

“Just wanted to know what I was dealing with.”

I know he’s trying to make me laugh and annoy me at the same time. “I’m going to go down so we can clean up, make some room for you. Why don’t you go help this girl.”

I look to the stairs, but now she’s up here on the deck. “Oh,” I laugh, embarrassed, but then I realize she can’t see me.

My dad walks toward the door. “I’m going to tell her we don’t need her.”

“Don’t!” I say and duck down for some reason, then look out again. She looks so serious, like she’s the bearer of bad news.

“What if she’s on OxyContin?” my dad says. “The kids do that now. And cutting. And sexting. They lure in the pervs. What if she’s an axe murderer? A shovel murderer? She’s small, but so are ferrets, quick and sharp. Remember that roofer at my old place? Stole my sled and weed whacker though I guess I don’t do much sledding or whacking. That didn’t sound right,” he mumbles. “What do I care anyway? Steal my life.”

“Don’t be weird with her,” I say.

My dad opens the door, shields his eyes, and stands on the deck. “Hi there,” he says.

I walk up behind him.

“Hi,” the girl says.

“I’m Lyle,” he says, extending his hand. They shake. “I’m Kit,” she says.

I edge in next to my dad. “Kit here is going to help deice our steps and deck and—” I try to loosen some ice with the toe of my boot, as if helping.

“I can see gravel,” my dad says. “I don’t think we need any shoveling today. Besides, shouldn’t you be doing something else? You’re too attractive for manual labor. Go ahead and pay your taxes so people can do this stuff for you.”

I elbow him in the gut. Kit just smiles and takes a step back. She carries a black book.

“Actually there’s a lot of ice here,” I say. “You’ve been wanting to chip away at it. Kit could help you.”

Kit. Interesting name, one I don’t think I’ve ever heard before, except in books, perhaps, or that doll: Kit, the American Girl. Or Kit Carson. But he was a man.

They look at each other, then at the steps. It’s as though I’ve suggested something they both don’t want to do. I don’t feel ready to leave them alone.

“Can I get you any water?” I ask.

“No, thank you,” she says.

“How about a beer?” my dad asks.

I look over at him, but he just widens his eyes at me, then looks away.

“No, thanks,” she says.

“I always offer,” he says. “It’s a little test I give to day laborers. If they say yes and take a few sips and finish it over the course of their work, then they were raised well and have a strong work ethic. If they sit on their ass and drink the whole thing, then they’re lazy and taking advantage of you.”

“What does it mean if they say no?” she asks.

“It means they’re a woman,” my dad says.

I’m afraid this is the second sexist thing he has said within one minute.

“Sorry,” I say. “He’s a bit . . . nuts,” but she doesn’t seem to be thrown at all. She holds up her hand, showing us her palm.

“A callus,” she says. “From twisting caps off bottles of beer.”

Good girl,
I think.

“Ever heard of a bottle opener?” my dad asks.

She puts her hand back down by her side. “It’s gotten to the point where I want to maintain it,” she says.

My dad laughs and so do I. We both look at her carefully as if she is somebody new.

“The test continues,” my dad says, and I relax. “I see if they leave the can, ask for the trash, or ask for recycling. Nothing pisses me off more than you kids who don’t recycle. We are a virus and this earth is one sick body and we will kill our planet. It’s a sure thing. People need to stop breeding.”

She emits a sudden, hard cough.

“Would you prefer to work on your own?” I ask.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I could use some direction.” She smiles at my dad in a way that seems genuine and I can tell that he is won over. “I could use some muscle too,” she says. Sold.

And so I leave them to it, going back in with the feeling of sneaking away as if leaving my child with a new babysitter. When I get back inside I look out the window at the two of them. I’m comforted and maybe just a bit perplexed.

Chapter
5

I walk downstairs and into Cully’s room. It’s a fluid, rehearsed move—I don’t think about it. I don’t break down upon entering. I don’t even flinch. It’s a room that needs to be cleaned, that’s all.

“Hi, there,” I say to Suzanne. She looks great as always, boot-cut slacks and a cream shirt with leather patches on the elbows. Her short brown hair looks like it’s just been done, her bangs expertly sloping over the side of her face. “Hello, dear,” she says. “You look great.”

She has put on one of his CDs. The rapper says, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” I walk to the stereo and lower the volume, then change my mind and turn it back up. Life
is
a bitch and then you die. It’s the truest thing I’ve heard all day.

“Hope it’s okay that I got started,” she says.

“Of course,” I say. “Thank you. God,
you
look great.” I touch the ends of her hair. “I like it.”

“Thanks. Just highlights. Upkeep.” She takes a shirt off the bed and holds it over her torso. “Love this,” she says. “Hog’s Breath Saloon.” She looks down at the hairy, globular hog on her chest. I look around to see what she’s done but don’t notice anything except for the clothes on the bed. I go to the chest of drawers to get more shirts. When Cully was young he thought they were called Chester drawers. I get a handful that don’t look clean. Cully would just stuff his clothes back in. They’re faded and soft and I bring one up to my face.

“It took me a while just to go through his wallet,” I say. “This really helps.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Suzanne says. “You don’t necessarily need to do this now.”

“I want to,” I say. “I feel good about it. Cully never liked
stuff
, you know?” I take a look around while we refold the shirts. It’s a childhood room vacated, then returned to as a resting stop. A bed, two side tables, his desk and computer, a stack of books from college, mainly geology texts. In his walk-in closet are the things I kept for him—old report cards and art projects, painted handprints, pictures of us, his life curated by me.

“Did you notice I parked half a block away?” Suzanne says. “Part of my fitness routine.”

Suzanne is seven years older than me, and while we never really knew each other growing up, our shared experiences make it feel like we’ve grown up together. We went to the same school, we both lived near the post office, our dads had similar jobs, and yet we yielded different results. She was popular in high school, went to college in New York, moved to Vail when her new husband was recruited there, and then moved here when she was pregnant with Morgan. We never would have been friends if it weren’t for our kids, but that seems to be how your social life is constructed post-children. You can’t imagine that girl with the red Land Cruiser who smokes cigarettes and ties her T-shirts in knots below her breasts will one day be your closest friend.

I go to the drawers for his shorts and pants and take a glance at her BW body. My dad’s right. Suzanne has always been pretty “well-rounded,” but she’s gained much more weight in these past six months or so. I don’t know what to do about her, my very best friend. Sometimes she’s the person I imagine myself growing old with. She can make light of tragedy, expelling despair with a monologue, a joke, a few sound words—she sends it flying like a dead fish. She’s fun to talk with, see movies with, drink wine with, but lately I find myself feeling annoyed every time she opens her mouth or puts something in it.

I’ve been narrowing in to things—the way she eats her vanilla low-fat yogurt, licking the foil top, her hand lotion that smells like deodorized feminine napkins, the way she stands too close. She’s a personal space invader and sometimes one of her breasts will graze my arm, making me feel like I’m being hit with a warm bag of porridge. The list of annoyances, once minute, has become noteworthy, and now her daughter has joined my queue. I think she feels the same way about me, tallying up my quirks and trying her best to ignore them. Sometimes friends are so unfriendly to each other.

I put the boxers straight into the trash bag by the door, which gives me a feeling of guilt but also accomplishment.

“This shirt smells like . . . girl,” Suzanne says, pressing one of the shirts to her nose. “Perfume. Smell.” She holds the shirt near my face. I get a brief whiff of strawberries, or a makeup manufacturer’s interpretation of strawberries. It’s the smell of childhood and boredom and it takes me to junior high, to the bench by Keystone Hall where the popular girls would sit, where she would sit.

Maybe it was a girl, her head against Cully’s chest, leaving her scent like a business card. Her perfume outlived him. It could outlive all of us. I imagine Shay, all cleavage and lipstick. She’d saunter around the house, her lips parted. It was like watching a beer commercial, and I’m sure she engaged in all of the things beer commercials subliminally promise. Maybe it’s her. But not Gonorrhea—they weren’t his type. Cecilia—I hope not. She wore ninety-dollar T-shirts and called cigarettes “fags.” She once told me that she thought Marc Jacobs clothes looked pulled from the children’s section of thrift stores. She and Cully would watch these movies that were supposedly highly acclaimed. Mostly the films were about people sitting around and saying witty things or about robbers saying witty things. They were unbearable and I know she thought she was really deep for watching them, and that I was an idiot for not getting it, for not understanding the symbolism.

“He didn’t have a girlfriend,” Suzanne says. “Morgan would have known.”

Morgan would have wanted that role for herself, I think. “She didn’t know everything, I’m sure.” I try to say this lightly. “And I’d know if he had a girlfriend. He didn’t, though I’m sure there were girls.” Phone always ringing, activity always encircling, Cully calm in the middle, the eye of a hurricane. I go to the closet to carry out my dad’s books.

“You sure you’re not smelling yourself?” I ask, and we both smile. Suzanne is always in a cloud of heavy perfume and she has a different scented lotion for every part of her body. They’re nice, though—her lotions and makeup that often make their way to me. She is the most generous person I know, and when I think back, the generosity to myself and others is always free of stipulations and expectations.

I didn’t really notice before, but her scents always give me immediate comfort. It’s something familiar, soothing, and maternal, and I wonder if our friendship fulfills that mother role I never thought I missed or needed. I look at her hands, going through the books—books and movies about dead boys—and I’m mildly embarrassed by the recognition, the idea that this may be true. We even argue like mother and daughter, and maybe that’s why despite my annoyance with her, it’s supposed to be this way.

“What is all this?” she asks.

“Just books,” I say. “I don’t know where half of them came from.”

My dad has begun to amass all this depressing literature, secretly storing them like nuts for some future hunger. I want them out, which is okay with him. He says they didn’t help, which makes me feel bad for him and his thinking that they ever could.

I place the box on the bed and mumble, “I can’t believe how many of these there are, all on the same subject.” I pick one out:
Boy, Interrupted
. Then another:
The Son Rises
. Good God. “And they’re all about boys,” I say.

Are they more interesting than dead girls? The thought leaves me chilled, and so does the thought of people across America going to a store or shopping online driven by their need for these books. It makes me want to cry, for both the need and the courage to look for help.

The books seem to be making her uncomfortable. She busies herself with the clothes again.

“In the books girls seem to be murdered,” I say. “Boys are killed when they’re being adventurous. Sailing the rough seas or slaying an Arab or shooting a lion.” Or outrunning an avalanche, I don’t say.

I believe my theory is sound. The boys are conquering nature: a wave, a mountain, a volcano, an animal, a storm of some sort, all of which are a stand-in for some vague ideal. What is the ideal? What are they trying to do? What does that lion mean? Can’t boys just observe the lion from a distance? How about a game of chess? It doesn’t pain me as much to think of them this way—a vague everyboy, a character.

“We’d better be more adventurous so we can avoid being murdered,” Suzanne says.

“That makes no sense,” I say.

“I know, I—” She picks up a book called
Understanding Your Grieving Soul after an Adult Child’s Death
. Such a long, exclusive title. Makes me think of those movies on Lifetime I find my dad watching:
She Met Him in November
.
Claire’s Too Young to Be a Mother
. So specific.

“These can be really helpful, you know,” Suzanne says. “They’ve helped me a lot with Dickie. The anger, the sadness, the letting go. We all go through these stages. Divorce is a kind of death, and—”

Okay, blow me.

“—there are stages of grief. I find it comforting that we’re not alone. Big tragedies, small ones—”

So we’re all predictable. Our DNA is practically identical to an orangutan’s. That’s just not comforting at all, nor is the thought of Suzanne and me going through similar stages. Divorce and the death of a child? I should at least be assigned different steps. But I know she’s just trying to be helpful.

She groups together a pair of white socks with gray toes. Then she folds his ski pants—the black ones patched with duct tape. I remember the sound they’d make when he walked. It was probably the most familiar sound in the world, the hiss of his snow clothes, or in the summers, the rolling sound of his skateboard on the ramp outside my bedroom window, the ramp I had removed. Suzanne pulls something out of the pants’ pocket, looks at it, then puts it in the garbage bag next to her.

“What was that?”

“A ticket stub,” she says. “For a movie.”

“What movie?” I walk around the boxes and fish it out of the trash, stopping myself from looking at everything in there, like my father used to do in our kitchen trash.
This tissue paper can be saved for Christmas presents! These bones can be used for soup!
I learned his frugality was sourced in his love of shopping. We saved the bones and bought a pizza oven.

“I asked you to put everything on the bed,” I say.

“I didn’t know you meant things like that,” Suzanne says.

“It’s exactly the kind of thing I meant.” I hold the ticket.
The Other One
. Cully once saw a movie called
The Other One
. He was at Storyteller Cinema, watching a movie. He put the ticket in his pocket. He wore his ski pants to a movie. How funny. How odd. How wonderful. “This is significant,” I say. “This is interesting to me.”

“Sorry,” Suzanne says. She is folding clothes rapidly as if in a factory line. If they were Morgan’s clothes she’d take the time to look at each item, relating the back story.

“I should know better,” she says. “I’ve been doing the same thing with all of Dickie’s stuff.”

“Not the same,” I mumble.

“But I’m realizing that a ticket stub is a ticket stub, a tie is a tie, not an embodiment of Dickie, right? If we weren’t getting a divorce, I wouldn’t give a rip about any of the crap he owns.”

Here we go.

“You’d think a man in his position would throw away his boxers when they got holes in them, but no—he just lets it all hang out. He may as well be wearing a skirt.”

I’m a bad friend and I tune out. I listen to the music instead, which is oddly comforting, as if the rapper and I are in on something.
That’s why we puff lye ’cause you never know when you’re going to go.
What is “lye”? The street name for crack? For ice? Are those the same thing? Or is he saying,
That’s why we puff live
? Why the hell can’t these kids enunciate?

I slide the box of books with my foot to the door, where a filled bag sits like a bouncer.

Suzanne waves a receipt. “Mi Casa,” she says.

I nod and she tosses. I consider retrieving it when she isn’t looking, but I won’t because that would be stupid. Stupid, stupid, dumb. I suppose I wouldn’t obsess over the little things if there were more of them. His room has so few clues. One poster on the wall—Never Summer Snowboards—not too many clothes in the closet, CDs, one motocross magazine, desk debris. I didn’t notice the sparseness when he was here, but now all I see is what little is left.

I notice the smells of detergent and Cully’s deodorant. I run my hand down his hanging clothes. I find the navy-blue jacket I can’t bring myself to get rid of.

“I’ll keep this for my dad,” I say.

“That’s nice,” Suzanne says. She unfolds the Hog’s Breath shirt. “Can I give this to Morgan? She’d love it. Unless you—”

“Go ahead,” I say, looking at the shirt, regretting it. I can’t believe how quickly this is going.

“The other night she called,” Suzanne says. “It was really late. She was walking home from some party. She was so upset.”

“About Cully or the divorce?” I ask, feeling cold that I’m struggling to care.

“Both,” Suzanne says. “But it’s weird because I enjoyed it. I was happy that she was sad.”

“That’s normal,” I say. “You felt needed and happy you could be there for her.”

“But it’s so rare,” Suzanne says. “You know Morgan—so mature, always capable. For the most part she’s coping. She’s thriving as always.”

Or more so, I think. Sometimes I think Cully’s death has made her feel more important, but I understand what Suzanne’s problem really is because I share it. She wants company down here. Her daughter has bypassed those initial stages of grief or did a crash course in them and now she’s soaring in her stage of acceptance. She is now the daughter of divorce. She is a girl who will remember her dead friend. She is Morgan!

I was five when my mother died of lung cancer. I know what it’s like to be young and to move on. For the first time I wonder how my dad felt—to see his child mourn the loss of her mother, then the next day want to play with her friends.