Meet Me at the River (24 page)

School has been back in session for nearly three weeks. Every day Evie and I sit together and eat lunch. It’s nice to have company, especially company that doesn’t insist on conversation. She doesn’t say anything when Kelly crosses the cafeteria holding hands with her new boyfriend and sits down two tables away. After Kelly empties out her brown bag, she looks over at me. I look back. We don’t wave, just like when we pass each other in the hall we don’t speak. We just watch each other, carefully, knowing there’s this same kind of sadness between us.

With Dr. Reisner’s approval, Mr. Tynan has given me the green light on my project. I haven’t said anything to Evie about it yet, but now I take the books out of my backpack and place them on the table, a confession. “So I have to admit,” I say to her, “I’m copying you.”

She nods, a little grave and also bemused—remnants of her brother in that expression. I watch her reach out and run her finger down the spine of each book, tapping the titles.

“Weird, isn’t it,” she says, “how reading this stuff doesn’t make you sad. At least not in a bad way.”

I think of all the possible bad ways, and how Evie has stayed immune to the worst of them. She doesn’t cut, or starve herself, or take drugs, or do anything to dull the pain of everything that’s happened to her. I wonder if befriending me represents, in a way, forgiving her father. Forgiveness, I think, is the business of survivors.

After my lunch of an apple and sliced cucumbers, I sit in the school library and work on my project. My stomach grumbles and complains. Mr. Tynan has excused me from class for the next few weeks. Sometimes I use the time to take notes; sometimes I just read. As I sit at the carrel, light outside dapples and shines like springtime even though it’s only the end of January. I can’t look at my books. I can only stare out at that bright sunshine, the trees and eaves dripping with melting ice, patches of grass and red dirt peeking through what’s left of the dirty snow. I understand that this only represents a brief preview of spring, that the snow will keep returning as late as May and sometimes—crazily—June. But in spite of that and long before, spring will make itself known—bringing with it the anniversary of that day by the river.

I slam my book shut and leave school through the library door. As a senior (second-year senior, no less) I am allowed to leave campus during the day. I have two more classes this afternoon, and I have never cut a class in my entire life. Probably I will be back, in an hour or so, in time for AP French. But right now I feel restless. Hungry. The skipped meals and the late-night exploring have been working, and today I’m wearing a pair of my old jeans. So I walk down Main Street and turn in at the Rabbitbrush Café, which serves breakfast all day. I remember Mr. Tynan’s meal, the one I coveted back when I first embarked on my project, and how good that one salty piece of bacon tasted.

I don’t do a survey of the place, just find myself a table in the corner and settle down with my books. With its huge glass windows the room is unnaturally bright. When the waitress comes by, I order eggs over easy, whole wheat toast, hash browns, and bacon.

“I’ll have the same,” a deep voice says, sliding into the chair across from me. I have to shield my eyes to see H. J., clean-shaven. He wears jeans and a thick cotton sweater—it’s warm enough that he hasn’t bothered with a jacket—and his hair is combed, looking neat enough that he may just have come from having it cut.

I close my book. “Hi,” I say. Except to occasionally wave to him when he’s on his front porch or in his yard when I’m on the way to my grandparents’, we haven’t interacted since that night after skiing with Evie. He
doesn’t make any reference to the time that has passed since we last spoke; he just pulls one of my books toward him and closes it to inspect the title:
Birthday Letters
by Ted Hughes.

“Ah,” he says. “You’ve inherited Evie’s obsession.”

“Obsession?”

“Well. ‘Interest’ would definitely be understating. Maybe ‘preoccupation’ would be more fair.”

“Can you blame her?” I say.

“No. I really can’t.” He pulls the next book toward him, a biography of Sylvia Plath. He taps the cover the same way Evie did. It’s a picture of Plath and her two children—a boy and a girl. Before sticking her head into the oven, Plath left them a tray with their breakfast. She also sealed off the cracks in their bedroom door so they’d be safe from the gas.

“He committed suicide, you know,” H. J. says. “Sylvia Plath’s son. Not too long ago.”

I hate this information. I hate that her careful sealing of the door has gone to waste. “How did he do it?” I ask.

“Hanging.”

“Oh,” I say, remembering that boy’s advice at the hospital. Then I say, “Not a naive method.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I can tell by H. J.’s steady, knowing gaze, the bemused rise and fall of his brow, he has already made the connection.

The waitress slides our plates in front of us. She’s a
new girl, not from around here, so we are spared the usual chitchat. H. J. picks up his fork and breaks into his eggs. The yolk runs slowly across the plate, and he grabs a piece of toast and dips it in. This is exactly what I had planned to do, but I don’t want to look like I’m mimicking him. I realize the idiocy of that as I think it, but just the same I take a bite of my hash browns instead. They taste crunchy, greasy. Perfect diner food. My stomach, long-deprived, does an unaccustomed little churn of happiness.

“It runs in families, you know,” H. J. says. “Suicide.”

“Really?” I say. For the first time I wish that he could occasionally find his way to talking about the weather, or reality TV, instead of always going immediately to the most loaded topic possible.

“Would you like to know how I feel about suicide?” he asks.

I sigh, and break open my egg. They’ve cooked a little longer than H. J.’s, so it doesn’t ooze quite as perfectly, but I don’t have the heart to send it back. I dip my toast in and must look disappointed, because H. J. says, “Here. Take mine. I’ve only had one bite.”

Because I think it may lead to a change in conversation, and because I really want those runny eggs, I agree. We trade plates, then sit for a long time, H. J. letting his question go, the two of us eating in silence. It feels natural and companionable, not unlike lunch with Evie. When the check comes, H. J. pays, to my protests.

“I want to,” he says. “What about you? What do you want? A little walk in the high-altitude sunshine, perhaps?”

“I should get back to school.”

“Come on,” he says. “It’s all a rerun for you anyway, right? Play hooky. I’ll carry your books.”

“I have a backpack,” I point out.

“I’ll carry your backpack.”

*   *   *

We walk down the street together, my pack slung over H. J.’s left shoulder. Before handing it to him, I’d stuffed my jacket inside so I can feel a nice cold breeze through my long-sleeved T-shirt. We stop by the construction site where Paul is having the field torn up for his drive-in movie theater. Trees have already been cut down, and carpenters work on a snack shack. In front of it all stands a sign that reads
COMING SOON! A THEATER NEAR YOU.
When Mom and I got back from Durango, Grandpa told me that Paul was going to win. The property belonged to him by way of marriage, and the zoning was legitimate. Grandpa said he was tired of fighting with him, but for the past few days he’s been scowling and muttering as if each lost blade of grass is a personal affront to him.

“The truth is,” H. J. says, though I haven’t said anything about the battle, “it’ll probably be a lot of fun, having this theater.” I think of warm summer nights, buttered popcorn, and first-run movies, the last of
which we now have to drive to Cortez or Telluride to see.

“It might be,” I admit. “But don’t say that to my grandfather.”

“I won’t,” H. J. promises. We start walking again, past town, and in a minute we find ourselves on one of the flatter, more winding nature trails. We’ve barely walked a hundred feet before H. J. says, “Here’s what I think about suicide.”

I sigh. “I was wondering when you’d get back to that.”

“Don’t you want to know what I think?”

I stop walking and look at him. I can hear the Sustantivo River, its slow and meandering winter pace, not far ahead. I’m surprised it doesn’t bother me, walking in this direction without Luke, maybe because this spot is so far away from the accident. I decide that if H. J. insists on broaching loaded, personal topics, I will no longer respond with tentative politeness.

“Don’t you worry about it?” I say. “After what happened with your dad. If it really runs in families, don’t you worry about yourself, or Evie?”

He doesn’t react facially. Instead he gives the back of my shoulder a little push, propelling me onward, and we continue walking toward the water. Our sneakers squish over melting snow and slush.

“Evie is a survivor,” he says. “I never worry about her committing suicide. And I don’t worry about it myself particularly. The way I feel about suicide is, I like
knowing it’s there. I like having it as an option. Because if I’m going to kill myself, then nothing really matters, so I might as well stick around for one more day. Just to see what happens. Out of curiosity. If I’m going die anyway, then nothing is of particular consequence, so why not see what happens next? That way all I have to do is live until tomorrow. I know I can always handle one more day.”

“I couldn’t handle one more day.” We step through a small stand of pine trees, and the river comes into view. “I couldn’t even handle one more hour.”

“Ah, but you have. Just look at you. All those days and hours since last spring.”

I pick up my pace, toward an outcropping of large gray rocks. I climb up and perch on the very top, staring out at the river, which looks and sounds gentle, companionable—as if it’s trying to make peace. H. J. takes a seat next to me.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” I say after a little while.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m sorry too.” I wonder why I’m able to talk about these things to H. J. when I haven’t succeeded with Evie.

“Do you ever wish you’d done something differently?” I ask him. “With your dad, I mean. Some key thing, something that might have changed everything?”

“Of course I do,” he says. “That’s what grief is, right? Wishing things were different? Wishing it so hard, you think you might break open. Or die.”

I nod, I guess a little too vehemently, because H. J. says, “What could you possibly have done differently? It was an accident, what happened to Luke Kingsbury. You didn’t do anything to cause it.”

Actually I did a million things to cause it, from being born to getting drunk to keeping him all to myself, but for the sake of this conversation I stick to that day. “He was at the river because of me. I dropped my dog’s leash, and he fell into the river. Luke was trying to save my dog. If it hadn’t been for me, he would still be alive.”

“If that’s how life works,” H. J. says, “then maybe you saved him a hundred times before that without even knowing it. Maybe one day you two were heading somewhere and you realized you forgot your keys and had to turn back, when if you’d kept going, you would have been hit by a truck. Maybe one day you twisted your ankle on the Ethel White trail, so you and Luke never ran into the mountain lion up around the bend. Maybe one day when you wanted to stop skiing early and get some hot cocoa, he would have skied into a tree. You could have saved his life over and over, right up until that day last spring. There’s just no way of knowing.”

I think about this awhile, staring out at the river. I have to admit, I love the idea that in some alternate universe of other decisions, other actions, without me Luke might never have survived as long as he did.

Then I say, “Luke and I saw somebody die once, after
hitting a tree. We were in the infirmary at Mountain Village. I had hurt my knee. This guy came in. He was completely blue, and his wife kept yelling at him for going too fast and ruining their vacation. Then he lay down on the table next to me, and within, like, five minutes he was dead.”

“Think how his wife must have felt afterward,” H. J. says. “Think how she must still feel.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know how many times she saved his life before that.”

H. J. smiles without showing his teeth or looking at me, glad this possibility has sunk in. For the first time in a long time, I think about taking someone’s picture. I would like to photograph H. J., the exact expression on his face in this moment. Maybe instead I’ll draw a map, these woods, this rock—a picture of H. J. to mark this rock.

We sit quietly again, listening to the river. After a minute H. J. says, “You know the main thing I wish? I wish he hadn’t taken Evie’s dog. It seems weird to wish that most, when my father died, when he killed himself, which was bad enough—abandoning us like that. But taking Evie’s dog just felt so mean. Like he didn’t care at all, about anything. It makes me angry enough to hate him, and I hate hating him. He’s my dad. The poor guy lost his wife, and now he’s dead.”

I think of Assia Wevill and that little girl. “You don’t have to hate him,” I say. “He couldn’t help it. He was just in so much pain.”

“He could help it,” H. J. disagrees quickly. “And pain is no excuse. Not for suicide, and certainly not for murder.”

I feel my face go red. I don’t like to hear those two words in the same breath, as if they’re comparable. “The thing is,” I say, “it’s hard to explain. But when you’re in it? You don’t think it’s going to hurt anybody else. You think just the opposite, that everyone else will be better off once you’re gone.”

H. J. thumps my back with the flat of his palm, and I wonder when he got so comfortable touching me. “Hey,” he says. “I don’t mean to make you feel bad. But I’m guessing you’ve figured out that nobody would be better off with you gone. Which is why I mean to keep you alive.”

This last statement feels alarmingly personal, so I say, “That’s really not your responsibility.”

“I know it’s not. It’s my want-ability. I want to do it. I want you alive.”

“Just till tomorrow?”