Do-Overs (20 page)

-50-

Near Death? Why not.

I was at the top of the mountain looking down on my first black slope ever. What was I thinking? I was going to die, that was exactly what I was thinking.

“You take the lead, Lottie,” said the tempter who had led me to my fate. “I’m not used to this mountain, so I’ll follow you.” Then Al Dansby smiled and reminded me why I was in that predicament in the first place.

Al had arrived by lunch and by that point my father was resigned to having him there for the rest of the week. As predicted, my mother was elated that she would finally meet the great Al Dansby. Stina was simply relieved that she no longer had to feel guilty for spending our girl time with Jason. And the twins were miffed because they didn’t get to bring a friend and my quota had risen to two. No matter the age of siblings the battle over the slightest hint of parental favoritism always hovers around the preschool age mentality. But I made a definite attempt to be gracious about it and to quit doing the happy dance when they were in the room.

After all the hellos and showing Al where to put his luggage, my parents began the grand inquisition. I sat to the side mortified, but Al seemed completely content.

My dad began with all the typical questions. How was the drive from Aspen? Where exactly in California was he from? What was his major? What did he plan to do with it? What did his father do?

Before he asked his credit score, I knew I had to intervene.

“How was that fresh powder on the mountain this morning?” I interrupted my father as he started another round of confirmation hearings. “Don’t you want to get back out there before it all gets packed down?”

That was like waving a big, juicy, raw t-bone before a pack of pit-bulls. My whole family was grabbing skis and gear and muscling their way out the door. Of course my love life was important, but not in comparison to fresh powder on the mountain.

“You sure know how to clear a room,” Al laughed and then drew me into his arms for the kiss I had interrupted with my right hook from the day before. “Ouch, oh sorry. Be gentle,” he said pulling back and rubbing his jaw. “Strangest thing. I seem to have hurt my jaw yesterday, but I can’t for the life of me remember what I did.”

Before I started apologizing again, I thought I’d better change the subject. “Are you ready for some skiing?

At some point in all the time we had talked about my family’s annual ski trips, I had never seen the necessity to confess that I was a horrible skier. It was part of my don’t ask don’t tell policy. Ironically, due to my oversight in the facts department, Al was under the impression that I was actually an expert.

Getting to the mountain he turned to the lift for the blue and black slopes.

“Don’t you want to do the green slopes first?” I asked.

“It’s fine, Lottie. I’ve skied before. You don’t have to hold back on my account,” he said as he proceeded toward the lift.

Now, an intelligent and liberated woman would have stopped then and there to clarify the situation. But a hormonal, lovesick girl like me just followed along and hoped I lived to see the next day.

Seventeen times. That’s how many times I fell. Seventeen times Al asked if I was okay. Seventeen times I used my eraser. Seventeen times we were back on our way down the slippery slopes of death. Seventeen falls. Seventeen questions. Seventeen do-overs. Finally we were almost to the end of the black slope. Just one more turn and I would have skied a perfect run, if not counting the seventeen changes in reality.

It’s always the final turn that is our downfall. Right into the tree. Fortunately, I had on my shiny pink helmet so my head was fine. Unfortunately, there are no helmets for arms.

“Lottie, are you okay?” Al asked for the eighteenth time.

“My arm,” was all I could say. I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t going to. That salty water that was pouring down my face did not signify that I was crying. It was a simple reaction of dry eyes encountering the cold air.

I needed to do a do-over. But I couldn’t move my arm to reach my pocket. And Al’s recent encounter with my right hook showed that memories might change, but injuries remained. If I did it over would I have had an unexplainable broken arm?

If I ever write a book on skiing I would advise that if you’re going to get hurt, do it at the bottom of the hill. My saving grace in my ungraceful end of the ski run was that I didn’t have to be hauled down the mountain in a rescue sled for all the world to see.

“Can you walk? Don’t worry about your skis. I’ll take care of them,” Al said scooping up our skis in one hand and holding on to me around the waist with the other. “It’s just a few feet to the first aid station. I can’t believe you fell. You made it down a black slope like a pro, never falling once and then right here at the end you crash. Was it my fault? I’m sorry, was I crowding too close?” He babbled on. But, I couldn’t answer. It hurt too bad. It wasn’t the first time in my klutzy life that I had broken a bone. But this time was worse because I didn’t want Al to see me ugly cry.

Within minutes Al had gotten me to the aid station and somehow miraculously had cell reception enough to contact my parents. Off to the hospital we went.

My mother was calm; she had raised four children and knew how to handle an emergency. My father on the other hand, was not.

“Lottie, what were you doing on a black slope? You have never been on a black slope in your life.” All of this was said by my dad not while looking at me, but glaring into the rearview mirror at Al. This was not good. In my dad’s point of view, Al had let his little girl get hurt.

Mom was trying to intercede. “Julius, she’ll be okay. It’s a broken arm. Thankfully, not something worse. It’s a good thing Al bought her a helmet so it wasn’t her head instead.” My mom flashed a smile back at Al. The die had already been cast. In my mother’s eyes Al could do no wrong, while to my father he was an irresponsible interloper preying on his precious sweet daughter. Exiting the Suburban became a clash of the testosterones. Al was trying to help me on one side while my dad was on the other.

“Ouch,” I said. Maybe a little more forcefully and with some colorful expletives. But I’ll remember it as simply saying, “Ouch,” when my father, in his over zealous attempt to help, bumped my injured arm.

Entering the emergency room Al turned and said, “We have to stop meeting like this.” He leaned over to kiss the top of my head. I think I saw actual smoke come out of my father’s ears and wondered if the doctors had a cure for that too.

-51-

Little Condo In The Woods

I had been told my whole life that good things come out of bad situations. I never really agreed with that philosophy, hence my strong desire and ultimate ability to redo the bad and the slightly bad and honestly anything that had the tiniest bit of awkwardness to it. However, a broken arm on a ski trip for me actually did become a good thing. I finally had a handy excuse for not skiing, and the next three glorious days to simply lounge around in our condo in the woods by the fire with the guy who was slowly stealing my heart.

All would have been perfect if Al hadn’t kept apologizing for my accident as if in some way it was his fault, and if he hadn’t kept reiterating how amazing it was that I could ski all the way down a black diamond slope without a single fall and then crash into a tree at the bottom. Oh well, I guess there must always be just a little bit of deception, even in paradise.

Deception? Where had that come from? I never thought of fixing my mistakes as a deception, rather a wonderful ability. Yet, maybe, ever so slightly, it was. Did it make people think I was something I wasn’t, like punctual and non-klutzy? I had to shake that feeling off. The only life that ever changed because of my do-overs was mine. It was my life. It was my right to make it the way I wanted. Still, that little word planted in the back of my mind started to fester. It was like the snake had entered the garden. Whereas before there was only perfection, slowly I started to notice how I might be manipulating others.

“Earth to Lottie.” Al reached over and touched my cheek. “Are you in there?”

We were spending the day sitting by the fire playing Scrabble. We had tried cards, but with one hand—and of course I broke my right arm—I couldn’t really hold on to my cards. We found Scrabble tiles easier to manipulate.

This was my kind of a game. Hey, I was an English major. Words were my stock and trade. So how come this lowly thespian was beating me like a dirty rug? I had to get my head in the game.

“Lottie Lambert, what a perfect name. You could be a movie star. Perfect moniker for a marquee. What’s your middle name?”

“You’re just saying that to distract me in this cut-throat game,” I laughed.

“You know my evil intentions little girl,” Al said with his best melodrama villain imitation, complete with a pantomimed twisting of a mustache. “No, really. I feel like I so completely know you and then I realize there are so many common knowledge facts about you that I don’t even know.”

“Elizabeth.”

That got me a shocked look. I thought it was rather an old fashioned but common enough name. It didn’t merit the look like I had said Rapunzel or Rumpelstiltskin.

“Sorry, just the name my mother liked,” I apologized, not sure why.

Al smiled a melancholy smile. “It’s a beautiful name. It is one of my two favorite names in the world. It was my mother’s name. Only we always called her Lizzie.” As always when he mentioned his mother there was that sadness in his voice. I contemplated redoing the conversation. I had had no idea that simply telling Al my middle name would result in causing him pain. I could redo it all and lie about my middle name. And then somehow convince my parents that I had to have it legally changed to Betty or Veronica or Sally or Matilda. Anything to keep from constantly dredging up sad memories for Al. I started to get up to find my eraser when Al’s melancholy smile spread into a delighted grin as he said, “Like I said, it is my favorite name and now I know that it belongs to my two favorite women in the entire world.”

Favorite. He had said I was one of his two favorite women in the world. I could live with that.

“What’s your middle name?” I countered trying to bring back the lighthearted feeling that we had been enjoying before. “In fact, is Al all there is? Is it short for Albert?” He shook his head no. “Alfred?” Please say no, I thought and he did. “Albercombie?”

“That’s not a name. No beautiful, it’s Alistair. Just like my dad.”

“Alistair. Alistair Dansby. Now that’s a movie star name if ever I heard one.” That got me a startled laugh. “It’s an awesome name. So regal. Why don’t you go by Alistair instead of just plan Al?”

“It’s too confusing, with my dad that is. Same name thing.”

“Middle name. Alistair. Give it to me now.”

“Drew.”

“Alistair Drew Dansby.” I said it a couple of times with different accents. It sounded best with an English accent. But then, doesn’t everything? “I like that. Actually I love it. I love,” had I almost said you? “it.” I caught myself. But I knew for sure right there on the floor by the coffee table in that little condo in the woods that I, Charlotte Elizabeth Lambert truly loved Alistair Drew Dansby.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Who knew what look had crossed my face.

I tried to regain my composure. “Um, yeah. I just. Well. I was just trying to figure out what word I could spell to kick your butt at this game.”

Al laughed and smiled and the room was spinning for me. He reached in his pile of tiles and then laid a word on the board. “There it is—infatuation. How many points do I get for that?” Al asked. He already knew. He just wanted to point out to me how brilliant he was. It worked. He wasn’t just handsome he was smart too. And funny. And kind. And—whoa was I drooling on myself again? I so needed to stay in the real world more.

“Plenty,” I grumbled and wrote down his score. “I can’t do much. I just have ‘crush.’”

“You only have a crush? I thought we had much more than that,” Al teased.

“You only had an infatuation,” I countered.

Al studied his tiles and then put down ‘adore’ without a word.

I pulled more tiles from the pile. I was liking that game. ‘Cherish,’ I placed. It got me a smile, but no words. Instead Al began rearranging his tiles again, pulling a few off the board, but by this point I couldn’t care less how much he cheated. ‘Sweetheart,’ came next. ‘Boyfriend,’ I countered. ‘Passion,’ he placed and I blushed. ‘Desire,’ I put too embarrassed to look up. ‘Truelove,’ came the last word of the game.

“I guess I never really thought I’d have to spell it out for you,” Al joked and then became completely serious. “I love you, Charlotte Lottie Elizabeth Lambert.” The world was perfect. And then it got even better as he sealed his pronouncement with a kiss. And another and another. And then a clearing of his throat. Wait. What? That wasn’t Al’s throat clearing. That sounded just like my dad when he was miffed and wanted my attention. Oh crap!

We quickly sat up. When had we gotten on the rug on the floor? I had no memory. My first thought was my dad is going to kill us. My second was I should do this over quickly before my dad kills us. My third was I’d rather die than change any second of the most beautiful moment of my life.

“You two have missed a great day skiing. But it looks like you’ve been finding other ways to occupy your time,” my dad chuckled as he went into the kitchen to get some coffee.

There are a lot of strange things that happen that year. Something big and unbelievable like a magic eraser I easily accepted as reality. But, my dad’s calm reaction to finding me mid-makeout on the rug in our ski condo was truly a life-altering event.