The Possibilities: A Novel (18 page)

“My parents are in the process of getting a divorce,” Kit says. “It’s hard to see my mom go through it. I’m sorry.”

Just like that, Suzanne is on her side. “Why are they divorcing?” she asks.

“My dad evidently met the love of his life,” Kit says. “I think she was once an exotic dancer. Now she’s a sales rep for Red Bull. I’m serious.”

“Last night Sarah and I saw Dickie with another woman,” Suzanne says. “She was black, not that that matters or anything. It just took me by surprise. You don’t see a lot of the blacks here—”

“Oh my God, Suzanne,” I say.

“Wish we did,” my dad says. “It’s part of the reason the ski business is experiencing losses. The generation today—what are they called? Whoever they are, they’re diverse, and skiing is the whitest pastime next to, I don’t know, antiquing, so unless we can get Lil Wayne in the half pipe, things aren’t looking good.”

“How the hell do you know who Lil Wayne is?” Suzanne says.

My dad doesn’t answer. I think of him watching shows with Cully downstairs, the clink of pool balls, the murmur of their voices, deep and happy. It’s become a memory of perfection.

We wind up Hoosier Pass, the mountains close, touchable.

“Anyway,” Suzanne says, “I’m very good friends with an African American couple so . . . ”

“Yes,” I say. “A senator from DC who names his children after expensive towns. Hampton and what’s the other one?”

“I forget,” she says. “Nantucket or something.”

“Probably not Greenwich,” Kit says.

“Look at you go,” Suzanne says.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” I say. “Your mom.”

“Yeah, she’s got a lot on her plate,” Kit says. “Probably couldn’t take much more.”

“She probably doesn’t have an entire town gawking,” Suzanne says.

“My dad’s the chief surgeon at the hospital nearby,” Kit says. “Small town. My mom forces herself to leave the house. Not that I’m trying to compare. It wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t high-profile. It’s still painful. She’s still mortified. The new girlfriend has breasts that look like cannonballs.”

“Of course,” Suzanne says. “They all do. But I apologize. I didn’t mean to compare.”

Suzanne is chastened and so am I. You can’t compare and rank heartache. Pain is pain is pain. There is no precise measurement. No quarter cup.

“This is beautiful,” Kit says, and everyone in the car seems to turn to their own thoughts as we descend from the pass, the mass of towering mountains regal and silent.

I slow down when we reach the dead town of Alma. Cully and I would play our I Spy game here—whoever saw any sign of life would win. The song on the stereo seems to be going on forever, in a luxurious, slow-cooked way. It finally comes to an end and something different comes on, a tune that’s folksy and full of catchy energy. I love Cully’s mixes—their blend of old and new, things I like and things I don’t. I like that there are songs I know and songs like this where he seems to be showing me something new.

“What is this?” I ask. “What are we listening to?”

“I don’t know,” Kit says, when she realizes I’m talking to her.

“It’s one of Cully’s CDs,” I say. “I thought you may have heard it before.”

“You knew Cully?” Suzanne asks, and I realize my mistake, and my mistake in keeping so much a secret in the first place. That seems to be why everything goes wrong, thinking people care about the same things you do. You get yourself stuck in a self-made maze.

I glance at her in the rearview mirror, nod my head.

“Yes,” Kit says. “I knew Cully.” A long pause and then she says, “He liked the smell of fuel.”

“Now that’s an odd recollection,” Suzanne says, giving me a look.

“I’m into . . . smells,” Kit says, and I see her touch her nose. “And I just remembered, that’s all. Something he said once.”

“What? What did he say?” I ask.

“We were going up Boreas Pass. It was in August, just after I moved here. We were trailing a guy on his dirt bike. He said that he liked the smell of—”

“Two-stroke exhaust,” Billy says.

“Yes, that’s right,” Kit says. “I couldn’t remember the name.”

I look at Billy in the rearview. He’s contemplative and comfortable. He meets my eyes.

“You got here in August, so you’ll leave in June?” Suzanne asks. “That’s what all you kids seem to do.”

“I don’t know when I’ll go,” Kit says.

I watch her gazing out the window and wonder what she’s remembering. “What were you doing?” I ask. “When you were with Cully.”

“Just going for a drive,” Kit says.

As we are now, I think to myself. I turn onto Highway 24. The road is flat, open—rolled out before me, syrupy black pavement and rippling oily air.

“So how did you know him?” Suzanne asks. “From work or . . . ”

“Yes, from work,” she says. “I was a waitress. He parked the car I borrow sometimes and—”

“Is ‘parking your car’ a euphemism for something?” She punches the air in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That was—”

“It’s okay,” I say.

Suzanne turns to face the back. “Did you know him well?” she asks.

“I would have liked to know him more,” Kit says.

“Then this will be nice for you tonight. My daughter’s putting on a party for Cully.”

“Oh,” Kit says. “I didn’t know.”

“They were best friends,” Suzanne says. “Grew up together, went to the same college . . . ”

When Morgan applied to CC, Cully was irritated, which was rare for him. He told me that when she got there, he sent the message that he had his own life there.

“You go to college to leave stuff behind,” he told me over the phone. “For her sake too. She needs her own life.”

Now she will always be his best friend, immortalized. I can picture Cully shaking his head, smiling.
Let her have it.
I try to see Kit’s reaction. She’s contemplative, if not slightly irritated, left out.

“If anyone’s hungry, I threw some sandwiches in a cooler,” my dad says.

“Can we stop?” Suzanne says. “I don’t like eating from a cooler. Makes me feel poor. I like gas station food.”

“I do too,” Kit says.

“Me too,” I say.

“I love Slim Jims,” Billy says, and I hold down a smile, feeling strange. I think I might be having fun and can’t see how this is at all possible. It’s the thrilling illegality. Sometimes I worry that my unhappiness will never end. But what’s more terrifying is the thought that it will. If happiness doesn’t last, then neither can its opposite.

“We could stop at that gas station next to the antique shop,” Suzanne says.

“Okay,” I say.

Suzanne’s phone makes a noise and she bends over to her purse. “Where is it?” Her voice comes close to trembling.

“It’s in the cup holder,” Kit says.

The phone stops ringing and she listens to the message. When she’s finished, she holds her phone on her lap.

“Just Dickie,” she says. “Said I could keep the cufflinks. I can’t believe I’ll see him tonight. God, I’m depressed.”

“We’ll be there soon,” I say. “You can go right to the spa. Get a massage. Maybe we all should.”

I feel guilty for my momentary sense of ease, considering where we’re headed. Kit must be so nervous and scared. Or might she be eager? I remember just wanting to get it out.

We drive in silence for a while and I get mesmerized by the road, the fields we pass, and abandoned tractors. I glance at Kit in the rearview, talking to my dad.

“ . . . and that’s why there’s a run called Goodbye Girl,” he says. “Twentieth Century Fox used to own the resort—”

“They invested after the success of
Star Wars
,” Kit says.

“Yes!” he says. “How did you know that?”

“I took the walking tour,” she says.

My father hits her thigh. “Kit,” he says, “that’s incredible.”

Chapter
15

There are two gas stations on either side of the highway. One is a Chevron, which is brightly lit like a grocery store. I’m surprised when Suzanne tells me to go to the less glossy one adjacent to the antique shop.

“They have a great soda fridge,” she says.

“When have you been here?” I ask. “And why?”

“Day trips,” she says. “Sunday drives.”

I imagine Dickie, Suzanne, and Morgan all together in the car. You can know people so well and still make discoveries about them as a family, but you’ll never know everything, the mundane day-to-day, the behaviors when the doors are closed. Families are all such elite clubs. I imagine a new woman in the car with Dickie, or on the back of his motorcycle, taking a Sunday drive. It seems worse than picturing her in his bed.

I pull into the gas station. Compared to the robust, shiny pumps across the street, these look skinny, bare, and inoperable. The store would look closed if it weren’t for the neon sign in the glass window that says YUM DONUTS©. I turn off the engine.

We all get out of the car. Kit stretches her arms overhead.

“I’ll pump,” Billy says.

“Yeah you will,” Suzanne says. She pats his back, then heads into the store. Their relationship has always been easy. When Billy came to town, mainly for birthdays or around holidays, Suzanne and Dickie always wanted to see him too. Dickie ended up becoming a client. Billy was always so hard to explain to people. With the moms I’d meet I’d find myself defending him—
we just went our own ways, he’s a nice guy
—and I’d catch their pitying looks. Suzanne and Dickie always understood that we were all okay without me having to explain or defend him.

“I can’t wait to see the facilities in this place,” my dad says. “Will you get me some sort of sandwich that doesn’t involve egg or tuna?”

“So, what then, turkey?” I say.

“Strike that. I’ve got the sandwiches. I will take a Tiger’s Milk bar, a yogurt, and some beef jerky.”

“Billy?” I ask. “Your order.”

“I’ll have a large bag of Funyuns, a Coke, and a muffin. Oh, and a Slim Jim.”

“Kit, do you need money?” my dad asks.

“No,” she says. He hands her a twenty anyway. “Go nuts.”

He walks toward the bathroom, shaking his right leg as he goes.

The air is dry and windy. Suzanne opens the door for me and a little bell rings. Kit and I wander down the same small aisle. I collect the bar and the chips, then scan the shelf for myself. Every choice is a loss of some other opportunity. I weigh my options, then choose the bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Kit chooses the Sno Balls.

“Is it what you craved?” I ask. “Do you have cravings?”

“I have aversions more than cravings,” she says.

“Ha,” I say. “So do I.”

She looks toward the window at Billy outside, filling up the gas tank. “So you guys never married?” she asks.

“No, we broke up before he knew I was pregnant. He was a fling, but we’ve remained friends.” One of the easiest friendships I’ve ever had, I think.

“You guys would make a good couple,” she says.

I laugh, quickly but maybe with too much effort.

“You doing okay?” I ask. “This must be very strange for you.”

“And for you,” she says.

Yes, and yet I have to really focus on it, remind myself. I’m almost comfortable in this discomfort. It’s like being on an airplane and standing up. A relief. But I’m still on a plane.

“I think I’m okay,” I say.

Strange things seem to become normal very quickly, I’ve noticed. You just adapt. It’s like there’s some mechanism in us that converts maelstroms and foreign objects into something usable, like yen into dollar bills. Or maybe in my case, it’s just my mind, unwilling to fully comprehend that she is pregnant with Cully’s child and soon she won’t be. What should I be feeling? How should I be behaving?

“I hope this wasn’t a mistake for me to come with you guys,” she says. “I didn’t know about tonight. Seems like a family thing.”

“Oh, I think you’ve earned the right to be there,” I say. “To mourn him or celebrate him.” I lower my voice. “We’re sort of just doing this because we have to. Morgan does these things. Even his birthdays she’d organize. I’d have birthday dinners for him, or graduation dinners, including all of us, and she’d have to do one too. It’s how it’s always been.”

“But it will be nice,” Kit says.

“None of his friends even go to school there anymore,” I say.

“I probably shouldn’t go though,” she says. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

We continue down the aisle, looking at all the packaged goods. I get Dad and Billy’s jerky.

“Do you get tired?” I ask, remembering my fatigue with my very first pregnancy and feeling like I didn’t deserve it since there wouldn’t be an end result.

“Just nauseous,” she says, “as you know.”

“That could also be from drinking,” I say. “Have you been drinking a lot? This whole time?”

“No,” she says. “Haven’t wanted to, really, until I found out about you. I know it’s bad, but I guess I knew it wouldn’t matter. That must sound horrible.”

“Some people drink throughout the entire pregnancy. I’m sure you’re fine. Or you would be. Not that it matters.”

We reach the end of the aisle and stand in front of the soda fridge. This is much easier. That line of conversation was too hard for me, but this soda fridge is inconsequential and neat and Suzanne was right: it’s a good one. It has the latest drinks as well as vintage cans of Sunkist. I pull on the glass door, which is decorated with a poster of a woman in a silver, one-piece bathing suit riding an energy drink called Galaxy into space. I get Billy’s Coke, then choose a root beer for myself, the plastic bottle, because it now has twenty percent more. Kit chooses a Snapple and I’m unreasonably pleased—like this is a good, healthy choice. Something obvious then occurs to me.

“How far along are you?”

“I must have conceived the night before he . . . or a few days before. Or that week before. One of those.”

“Oh,” I say, realizing what she’s recalling. “And it’s been confirmed, of course. By a doctor.”

“Yes,” she says. She looks at me worriedly, like she’s explaining death to a small child.

I count back the weeks—all of January, all of February, half of March.

“So it’s still just a thing, a speck,” I say. “A mung bean.”

“I’d have to look up mung bean.”

For some reason this makes me snort-laugh, but then I say, “It’s not too late?”

“No,” she says. She looks me in the eye.

“Sorry,” I say. “The mother in me,” and then I’m reminded that I’m not one anymore. We walk to the outskirt of the store so I can get Dad’s yogurt.

“These are so good,” Suzanne says. She’s walking down the aisle of Chapstick, miniature packets of pills, gardening gloves, and nuts, and eating from a bag of sour cream pork rinds. “This was all I ate on Atkins.” She looks at what Kit’s holding.

“Very cool. I had my doubts about you. Thought you’d be one of those almond-and-cheese-stick types. That’s what Sarah always gets, but look at you—pink balls tarred in coconut. Think of the fun we can have with those. Enough balls jokes to get us to Wyoming.” She sighs as if we’ve all accomplished something, then walks toward the counter in that slow, open way that suggests you follow. We do. “Only at a gas station are you allowed to buy things like this,” she says, nostalgic. “I’ve had some good times here.”

We reach the counter, where there’s a pleasant aroma of hot dogs and the interior of a new car. I pick out a single-package banana nut muffin.

“Is this all together?” the clerk asks. He’s a lanky boy with hair so stiff from gel you’d think it would make a sound if knocked upon. We put our things on the counter. Kit reaches in her bag for money.

“Don’t bother,” I say.

“We have a trickle-down friendship,” Suzanne says. “This too.” She moves four shrink-wrapped brownies toward him and hands over her card. “Hopefully they’re laced with something.”

He runs the card, with his tongue poking assertively through severely chapped lips.
Chapstick, aisle two
.

“Did you find everything you’re looking for?” he asks, belatedly. He bags our things in a way I’d say is overly tender.

“Nope,” Suzanne says. She takes her open bag of chips out of the plastic bag.

“Would you like to make a donation to the Eagle County Charter Academy soccer team?” he asks.

“Never heard of ’em,” Suzanne says.

She walks out and we follow, the bell sounding its bright chirp.

“Chapstick, aisle two,” I say.

“Ha!” Suzanne says. She looks at Kit, still trying to figure her out. “Your balls look so good,” she says to her. “I bet you’ll eat both of them.”

“You’re so trippy,” Kit says.

“Trippy? Never heard that one before.” Suzanne puts her arm around Kit and squeezes her like a fellow frat boy. She holds her other hand out in front of them. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Four,” Kit says.

“Your eyes are fine,” she says, and I remember we told her we’re taking her to the eye doctor.

“I’m going to go next door real quick,” I say, needing a moment alone.

I walk on the dry gravel to the shop next door and look at the fields with crooked gates and tamped-down golden grass. I think about Cully’s fondness for the smell of fuel. Two-stroke exhaust.

A crow caws and I smile to myself. That December morning when I walked away from his body, a crow released a forlorn cry, my shoes against the snow made it sound like I was walking on ice cubes, and I could smell the resin on the trees. I thought,
I can’t go outside again because of that fuckin’ bird and the sound of my shoes and the smell of sap. Every time I come out here, I’ll hear and smell his death.

But look at me now. I’m walking and the crows can caw their little hearts out.