The Possibilities: A Novel (5 page)

I feel a swell of adrenaline. “See what?”

“Something of Cully’s,” she says.

I wait on edge, as if what Suzanne has found may be able to bring him back.

I look at the coat draped on her arm and in her hand, something small and black along with a wad of bills. Money in a coat pocket. I love finding money in a pocket—it’s like a gift from yourself.

“Score,” I say, and immediately feel guilty about it. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Can’t go a day without it. After Cully died I felt guilty for singing in the car. That’s when I was still counting. Counting the days since he died. I don’t know what’s worse—doing that, or having lost track, to have stopped counting, which I have. I’ve rounded up to months. Three. Guilt came for feeling hungry, for having that sensation. It came from yawning, from putting on makeup, dressing nicely. It came when I felt sexual desire. I remember the first time this happened—some scene in a movie set me off and I nearly wept, feeling so awful that I had a response, that I still felt anything at all. The body just keeps going. It doesn’t care what you’re up to. I remember how guilty I felt for not buying him the most expensive urn.

“This is a lot of money,” Suzanne says. She spreads the money out like a fan.

“He was a valet. He always had a lot of bills everywhere.” I keep my distance, looking at it, quickly.

“These are hundreds.” She makes eye contact with me, but I can’t hold it.

“Okay,” I say. I take another sip, then point to the desk. “Your wine’s right there.”

“These are hundreds,” she says again. “There’s got to be about three grand here.”

“Well, he was working at the hotel since, what, June? June until December, so—”

“So he parked a lot of cars?” she asks. “He was extra cute and polite and got tipped in hundreds? This isn’t Vail.”

“What are you getting at?” I look at the money in her hand, then away again as if it’s something I’m not supposed to see.

“I’m not getting at anything.” She waves the money, like a fan. The bills look damp and old. “But you don’t think it’s weird these are hundred-dollar bills? We tip with ones and fives—well, you do. I tip with a twenty, but—”

“He probably exchanged the ones.”

“Why wouldn’t he put it in the bank?” She gives me a patronizing look that I can’t stand. I hate when her questions aren’t really questions but her superior alternatives.

“I don’t know!” I say. “What does it matter? Maybe he was going to buy something for himself. A car or a computer.”

“Okay, this is a scale,” she says, as if saving it if she couldn’t get through to me the first time.

She extends the black scale toward me, making me walk up to it. It looks like a calculator. I take it, turn it on, and am tempted to weigh something. “You’re like an attorney, springing evidence on me.” I look at this object in my hands and give it back to her.

“I’m not trying to do that,” she says.

“Then don’t!” I turn away because my heart is beating so fast I feel I must look panicked. I walk to the stereo and start to rummage through CDs. My hands shake. Obie Trice, the Roots, NOFX, Rolling Stones. I flip through them all.

“Don’t be defensive, Sarah. I’m trying to help. It’s okay. I mean, you can put it together, I’m sure. The baggies of pot, now this. He obviously . . . had a second job.”

“It can get busy at the Village,” I say, still not facing her. “And people used the valets even when they weren’t staying there. He did well. He worked hard. He worked all the time.”

I turn around, keeping my hands in fists by my side.

“Sweetie, I know. Look, it was probably just pot—at least not the hard stuff.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything!” The room is too small. I have nowhere to go. I walk to the door. I need to leave this room, this friend, this life. I touch my throat.

“I know I don’t know the specifics,” Suzanne says. “But I mean”—she laughs—“you kind of gotta consider the—”

“You should consider putting a beeping mechanism on your ass in case you back up!”

The CD begins to skip, a sound I can’t stand. I go back to the stereo, slam the button to make it stop, then look at Suzanne to see what I’ve done. Her eyebrows are raised in a way that says she is better than me and she will rise above my comment. She puts the cash on the bed, then raises her hands to indicate she tried, and now she’s done. The room has an angry hush, like the silence after a lovers’ quarrel.

“Whoops,” I say.

“Yeah, whoops,” she says. “I don’t even know how to respond to that. Oh right, I can’t! Because you’re in mourning!”

My jaw tightens. I bite the inside of my lower lip and try to summon some control, some eloquence. “You can say whatever you want,” I say. “So what if he didn’t put his money in a bank. He was doing things his way. I know you didn’t approve—you’ve never approved of him—”

“Stop,” Suzanne says. “I loved him. I loved him so much. You know that. We all did.”

My composure is a farce and I let it go. “I know.” I sit on the bed, my hands shaking. There’s too much adrenaline running through me for me to cry.

“Look,” she says, “I know this must really suck.”

I give a quick laugh of agreement. Her observation was apt. She walks over to me and places her hand on my shoulder. Gives it a quick squeeze. I feel like a kid being forgiven.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

I can’t believe I just told her to put a beeping mechanism on her ass like she’s some kind of dump truck and she’s the one saying sorry. I look up at her, the word
Mom
entering my head. She’d scoff if I told her that. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe this is something she feels herself. She’s been a friend who’s lasted through all the trends of friendships. I love her, I need her, and I don’t have to tell her this. We don’t have heart-to-hearts. In my life I have never had such an easy and unexpected relationship with another woman, not having to pander, not having to dress the part. It can be bliss to be so ugly.

I met Suzanne when Cully was almost two. I knew who she was but didn’t think she knew who I was. We were going to the same playground by the rec center, our babies were eight months apart. She knew all the other moms there and seemed like the ringleader of the bunch. I remember always looking at everyone’s wedding rings. Just like it is with the opposite sex, I felt immediately attracted to her. That happens sometimes: a recognition, or something about someone’s face or mannerisms that make you suspect you’ll get along. I could tell she noticed me too on those days at the playground.

“He’s so big,” she said one day about Cully, and then, “Actually, I don’t know. I always say that to everyone.”

I laughed. “Breaking-the-ice talk,” I said.

“I know!” she said. “I hate it. What are the other mommy pickup lines—let’s see. ‘Do you like your stroller?’ Or ‘Is he eating solids?’ ”

“ ‘I love your burp cloth,’ ” I said, at ease with my brand of humor.

We made plans for the following afternoon and I went home as if I had been asked out on a date. I told her immediately I was a single mom, something I never told other moms. It was always so awkward, and I didn’t want to hear their responses because the responses usually made me think less of them and I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted friends. But the single status seemed to cause other moms to back up, then back off. It’s like when I was dating and would never consider guys who wore pleated pants or tie-dye. For them, my lack of husband was a deal breaker.

“Single?” Suzanne said when I told her. “Lucky.”

I stand up now and drape my arm over her shoulder and turn us to face the window. “Fuck,” I sigh.

“You can say that three times,” she says. “At least it’s pretty out.”

Shavings of snow float by and the flakes swirl in currents toward the ground, giving them a mood of anger. I used to fold the laundry in this room, watching Cully play outside. Who would have thought back then that this would happen to that baby? That big baby. It looks so barren here. I see a thin skin of ice hardened over the small, slow-moving stream.

“What now?” I ask. We separate.

“Well, I was going to take you out to dinner,” she says. “Now maybe he can take us out.”

She gets her wine from the desk. “I guess you need to see the humor in it,” she says.

“I don’t see it yet,” I say. “And I’m an imbecile. I don’t deserve dinner.”

“You’re not an imbecile,” she says. “It’s not like there were clues screaming at you. It’s not like it was something . . . I don’t know, that
changed
him.”

I trace back, seeing if she’s right, if there was something that should have alerted me, but all I can think of is my bad job, my poor parenting. I backed off of him about not doing anything after graduating from college. At first I was a pain, trying to make him feel lazy and ungrateful; I was always recounting things other kids we knew were doing—building irrigation systems in Patagonia, teaching English in China, going to law/med/business school. Then I eased up, remembering all the people who took a pause in life. Billy, for example. His slower evolution, his two-year stint as a ski bum dishwasher. I eventually warmed to Cully’s temporary job, understanding that in order to stay in a resort town, you needed to take what you could get. He found the job that would allow him to stay and I needed to endure his pace. He had time, something I didn’t have at his age. Time to want, to explore, time to be curious and to do nothing at all. I never thought Cully cut me off from what I wanted to do, he just redirected me. Reporting on the world’s affairs, reporting on day spas: I pretended there was no real difference.

Now I realize how clueless I had been, that I took the wrong approach. I shouldn’t have backed down. What mother is content that her son parks cars after graduating with a degree in geology and a minor in environmental science? What does parking cars have to do with these things?

Suzanne clinks my glass. “It’s okay,” she says. I’m embarrassed that she knows about all of this, about his and my failure. Morgan has always done everything right.

“He was young and free,” she says.

“He wasn’t though,” I say, but I won’t go on to defend him. I keep my thoughts to myself, knowing she’ll pity me further. I thought that Cully was on the precipice of action. Every morning we’d read the paper together, on the couch, side by side, trading sections. He was always so serious when he read the paper, as if searching it for ideas on what he could do, who he could be. His dark brows would be furrowed, his jaw flexed, and I realize now that I had been given glimpses of him as a man.

“I want to work for the resort,” he said one morning while reading the business section. “I’m ready.”

“Yeah?” I said, putting down the arts section. “Doing what?”

He hesitated, and I related to the hesitation, reminded of the dread of telling adults what I wanted to do and feeling their slight condescendence.

“Anything at first,” he said. “To get my foot in the door. Like Grandpa did.”

“Sounds good,” I said, trying to measure my next responses. “He started out running the ski school.”

Cully laughed. “That would be classic. If I ran a ski school.” He went back to the paper, but I could tell he wasn’t focusing on it. “My degree helps, like—I think it’s something they would want. I mean, it could apply to their business. And Gramps—he’s a good reference, obviously.”

He had put thought into this. I wanted to hug him but played it cool. He looked over his paper at me and played it cool as well.

That night he spoke to my dad at dinner, and again, I sat back, trying not to ask too much, to encourage or take away. I listened to him creep into the adult world, amused by his passion, which I hadn’t seen before.

“The resort needs to be more green,” he said. “I feel like they’re just catching up. In Aspen they use biodiesel fuel in snowcats, they—”

“So do we,” my dad said. “Have for some time—”

“They have efficient snowmaking equipment, low-energy snow guns.”

“Move to Aspen then,” my dad said. “Go find Hunter Thompson and trip out.”

“He’s dead,” Cully said.

“Well, scratch that,” my dad said.

I could tell Cully was going down some kind of checklist in his head and wanted to tell my dad to back off a bit, but maybe this was good, like an initiation.

“No, you’re right,” my dad said, “even though really the equipment only cuts a few million gallons of water. Say four million off of one hundred and sixty, a public-pleasing policy. Good, but it doesn’t have much impact.”

“That’s what I mean,” Cully said, his elbows on the table, his hands alive. “It’s just a stamp to put on things. It’s easy. But if you do more, it all accumulates and saves the resort money in the long run.”

My dad nodded. “I agree. Absolutely. I’ll leave it to you.”

“Sounds like you’re ready to work,” I said.

“So, what else do you do all day?” Cully asked. “Or what did you do?”

“We found policy numbers and other things.” My dad smiled. Cully was beginning to get impatient. He wanted details. He wanted to be taken seriously.

“Like what other things? Shit, it’s like pulling teeth.” His fork clanged against the plate, and I thought he was angry, but he said, “Whoops,” and laughed.

“I did a lot of damage control,” my dad said. “Read the news. Stayed on top of how the public felt about us, then responded. I also wrote propositions. Development ideas. Then I’d sort of try to sell the ideas, these dreams to the public without them thinking they were being sold anything. It’s an honor to be here . . . We’re doing you a favor by letting you spend money here . . . That’s the message. What else, what else . . . ”

“Dad, come on,” I said, even though we were all having a good time.

“Were you proud of your work?” Cully asked.

My dad considered the question, and instead of giving a jokey answer, he sounded serious when he said, “Oftentimes. Yes. I was.”

I had to look down at my lap to not give anything away. All my life he had wavered back and forth between loving and hating his job. Through all the resort’s acquisitions and expansions he’d complain about the company clearing more acreage, appalled that the forest service would actually agree there was a need, only to come home from a day of skiing on that same acreage, declaring it beautiful, talking about the land as if he was a pioneer trying to sell off plots, and of course, everything that happened, he had approved it in the end. Only at home could he be the local.