Everything You Want (14 page)

Nineteen

When I come through the gate at the airport both Mom and Dad look right through me, their eyes peeled for the person I used to be. I have on my black clothes, of course. Jeans and a big turtleneck, combat boots. Not to mention my haircut.

Then Mom does a double take. “Your hair,” she says, faintly.

“Jesus!” Dad says. “Emma.”

If they’re still pissed off at me, the shock makes them forget it—at least for the moment. Or maybe talking about what a disaster I am is just more than they can handle right now, considering how quickly it becomes obvious that they’re not doing so great either. They bicker the whole way back from the airport, which they hardly ever do. About where we should have dinner, whether snow is forecast for tomorrow, what kind of ski pass I should buy.

Who cares? I want to say.

The condo they’ve rented is all stone and glass, with high-beamed ceilings. The walls are white, hung with Navajo weavings. The carpet’s white. Butter-colored leather couches and easy chairs are gathered around the stone fireplace, or slanted toward the big antique armoire that hides the TV and stereo system. There’s a tall silk plant in one corner of the room, silk flower arrangements on the end tables, baskets full of magazines like
Architectural Digest, Town and Country, GQ.
Things
Mom and Dad would never read. In fact, the only clue they’re living here at all is the clutter of books on the coffee table—Mom’s art books, Dad’s detective novels—and Mom’s easel set up on the sun porch.

When they’ve given me the tour and agreed on a plan for dinner, Dad goes off skiing and Mom settles me into the extra room, with its king-size bed and full bath, its own TV and little balcony. Then she fixes some hot chocolate and we sit down by the fire in the living room.

I can see her easel from where we sit, and ask what she’s been working on.

“Oh, this and that—” She waves her hand vaguely. “But still nothing I can really care about. Mostly I sit and draw. Anything. Just to be moving my hand. But I’ll hit on something in time. I will. The thing is,” she says, “in a whole new place, a new life, really, you don’t realize what you’re seeing, what’s important, until later. Then suddenly you know what to do with it. You know where it belongs.”

But she doesn’t sound like she believes it.

“Mom, I’m sorry about—” I begin.

“Emma,
I’m
sorry,” she says. “We’re sorry—your dad and I, for not … ” She waves vaguely again. “Honey, I’m just glad you’re here. This stupid money. Really. It’s got us all out of whack.”

“It’s not the money,” I say. “I was miserable at school before the money.”

“You’d have stayed, though,” she said. “You’d have adjusted.”

“Maybe.” I shrug.

“You withdrew, right? Before … ”

Before I’d have failed all the classes I’d signed up for, she means—and is afraid to ask. I nod.

“Well, then … ” she says.

Oh boy. I see in her face that she’s going to go chirpy on me, which makes me feel worse than I already do because it means she’s wracked her brain and come up clueless about how to deal with the fact that dropping out of school is just the tip of the iceberg of what a wreck I am.

She smiles, takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “You’ve got plenty of time to decide what you want to do. You can go back to IU in the fall; you could transfer—out here, maybe. You could take some time off; maybe travel.” She reaches over, gives my arm a squeeze. “We’ll get this money stuff sorted out. All of us.”

I ought to feel relieved that she’s giving me a pass, at least for the time being. I mean, did I really want her to grill me about what I plan to do with my life when I have no plan and can’t even imagine anything other than holing up here, safe, for as long as I can get away with it? So why is it that her being so reasonable makes me feel even worse than I did before?

Late that afternoon, I sit out on my balcony with my laptop, reading e-mail after e-mail from the intrepid Tiffany, who kept being my friend, kept sending me e-mails at least once a week even though I hadn’t answered a single one of them—or even known they were there, waiting to be answered, until now.

I can’t help being cheered up a little by her familiar, over-excited voice reporting every bit of gossip she’s heard since I left.
I miss you so much,
one of the early e-mails concludes.
Our room seems so empty without you. You left your Pink
Try This
CD behind, and I play it all the time. I know I should send it back (especially since I STILL don’t like it all that much and Matt REALLY, REALLY hates it), but I’m not because when it’s playing, it’s like you’re here. Plus, I figure if I keep it you’ll have to come back and get it. You’re too poor to buy a new one, right? (Ha, ha.) Matt says hi, by the way. Love, Tiff.

There’s nothing about Gabe Parker in any I’ve read so far. She’s getting smarter, I guess. Or she’s just gone underground on the issue, biding her time. But her e-mails make me think about him anyway. I see him in my mind’s eye, sitting in the booth at the Daily Grind that day, waiting for me. The way he looked up and smiled at the sight of me. “Emma?” he said.

Oh, for God’s sake, he was not smiling at the sight of
you,
I remind myself. He was smiling because he thought you were going to give him a great story. No, let’s be totally honest here. He was smiling because he’s a nice person. Didn’t he follow you out to the street, trying to be nice even after you made a total fool of yourself in the café? Didn’t he even try to be nice during the Winnebago debacle?

Which, naturally, makes me think that Josh was nice that day, too. I remember how he followed us all up the steps, into the Winnebago, rather than hurt Gramps’ feelings. How he tried to call me when I left Bloomington and I deleted the message without even listening to it—not to mention the six e-mails he’d sent in that first week I was gone, which I deleted when I opened up my laptop an hour ago and saw them there. Probably, in one of them, he told me he’d brought the car back to Indianapolis and left it in the driveway, since he didn’t feel right about keeping it after what happened.

I put my laptop aside, partly because I’m afraid that if I keep reading Tiff’s e-mails there will be something about Gabe or Josh, partly because I just can’t face the fact that I can’t really go forward until I go back and figure out how to think about … everything. I was dumb to think I could. Even if things with Harp hadn’t worked out so badly, even if I had been able to make my own life in Michigan, all those bad feelings about Josh would still be there, inside me. Every single stupid thing I said or did when I was with Gabe Parker would still be looping through my mind.

I sit back, breathe in cold, sharp mountain air. The condo is slope-side, within easy walking distance of the main chair lift; and watching the skiers drift down the mountain like bright bits of confetti, I remember our first trip here, when I was six. The mountains seemed like a fairyland to me, as if I’d awakened into them from a dream; and it occurs to me that, even then, long before I knew how large and awkward the real world would ultimately make me feel, their vastness was a comfort to me, a promise of belonging. Now I sit in the last warmth of the winter sun and wait for that feeling to overtake me again.

The sun goes in, and it grows cold. But I stay out anyway, watching the twinkly white lights blink on along the walkways lined with shops and restaurants, and the skiers coming down from the mountain tired and content. The little balcony seems like the right place for me. Not on the slopes or in the bars or restaurants, where happy people entertain themselves; not inside the glitzy condo, one more place I don’t belong.

Twenty

As the days pass, the only thing that makes me feel grounded is skiing with Dad. He wakes me in the early morning, just like he did on Michigan Saturdays when I was a child; and for a little while each day there’s only the shush of the snow beneath my skis, the smell of pines, the feeling that any second I might lift off and soar into the bright blue sky. We ski tirelessly, like we used to, stopping only to grab a bite at lunchtime, maybe for hot chocolate if we get cold. In the afternoons, we race—NASTAR, the amateur racing program we did every winter weekend when Jules and I were kids. We don’t talk, except about skiing: the run we just took, our race times, whether the snow that’s starting to come down in big, fat flakes all around us is light enough to ensure powder in the morning.

Then one afternoon we’re reminiscing about racing up in Michigan, and get to watching this cute little girl on the course. She’s six or seven, all bundled up in a bright red ski outfit. So proud of the two bronze NASTAR medals pinned to her jacket.

Dad gets a kick out of that. “Two medals!” he says to her. “You must be pretty fast.”

She grins a toothless grin. “I got one for trying really hard,” she says. “Yesterday I almost won, so my dad gave me his medal. Then today, I really won. So I got another one.”

“That is so sweet,” I say afterward, going up on the chairlift.

“Are you kidding?” Dad says. “It’s bullshit! Why the hell would her dad give her a medal she didn’t earn?”

“To make her feel good?” I say. “To encourage her to keep trying? What’s so wrong about that?”

“It’s dishonest,” he says. “It makes both medals meaningless. Don’t you remember how you felt the first time you won a bronze medal, what a big deal it was?”

“Sure,” I say. “But maybe earning every goddamn little thing isn’t the most important thing in the world. Maybe once in a while it’s okay just to make your kid feel good.”

We get to the top right then, and I catapult myself off the chair and huff away. I’m so mad I fly through the gates and beat his time by three seconds.

“You know I’m right,” he says, back on the chairlift. “You know there’s no point in having a medal you didn’t earn. Tell me that gold medal you just won wasn’t all the better because you kicked my butt doing it?”

“Who cares about a gold medal,” I say. “Who cares about winning a million medals? I’d ten times rather feel like I wasn’t such a loser all the time.”

Dad looks pained. “For Christ’s sake, Emma, you’re not a loser. You’re just going through a tough time. You need to lighten up a little. Enjoy yourself.”

“Lighten up,” I say. “Okay. I’ll get right on that.”

Furious, I ski away from him, away from the race hill, and slam down through the first mogul field I can find. Once in the middle of it, I feel pure, like a machine. I don’t think about anything. My body knows what to do and it does it again and again the whole way down. My legs are burning by the time I get to the bottom. I stop, bend over, breathing hard.

Dad slides to a stop beside me. “Great run, Emma,” he says. “I mean it. That was a great run. You were unconscious!”

But I ski away from him again, all the way down to the base. Then I take my skis off, heft them onto my shoulder, and head for the condo.

“I’m sorry,” Dad says, catching up to me. “Really. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I shrug.

“You’re not speaking to me?”

“Why bother, when you have no idea what I’m trying to say?”

“Fine,” he says. “Fuck it. Be miserable.”

“What’s wrong with you two?” Mom says when we stomp in. “What happened?”

I just sink into one of the ridiculous leather couches, fold my arms across my chest, and watch Dad get pissed all over again telling Mom about the little girl’s medals.

“It’s not about the stupid medals,” I say. “Okay?”

“Then what is it about?” Dad asks. “For Christ’s sake, we win fifty million dollars and suddenly everyone’s depressed? You’re right. I don’t have a fucking clue.”

Mom and I sit there, mute, until he leaves, slamming the door behind him.

“I know what you mean about the medals,” she says after a while.

“Yeah, well, do you know how Dad can be so incredibly obtuse?”

“Actually,” she says, “I think I do. The thing is, Emma, he’s so—himself. He’s so comfortable in his own skin. It’s a wonderful way to be—”

“Maybe,” I say. “But he thinks everyone should be that way. He thinks you can just decide to feel good about yourself. That I can decide that.”

“I know,” Mom says. “He thinks I can, too—though, God knows, I’ve spent the better part of a lifetime trying to disabuse him of the idea. But Emma, you know how you can understand something in your head, how you can absolutely believe it, and no matter how hard you try you keep on acting, thinking in the same old ways?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, I have no problem whatsoever with that concept.”

“Well, there you go,” Mom says. “Your dad’s not perfect, either. And ever since we got the money, he’s been like a kid in a candy store. But he’ll come down from it. He can’t ski forever. Eventually, he’ll have to figure out what to do with himself, just like the rest of us.”

She means to make me feel better, saying that. But as much as Dad drives me crazy sometimes, I count on his relentless enthusiasm. It scares me to think of him being any other way. “The thing is, he was right about the medals,” I say. “That’s what made me so mad.”

“Maybe,” Mom says. “But you were also mad because he wasn’t listening to you. Fine. He’s right about earning your own way. But feeling good about yourself helps you be able to do that—and feeling good about yourself doesn’t automatically happen just because you’re competent. Which is basically what you were trying to say to him, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you were right, too, weren’t you? He should have done a better job of letting you know how proud he was of you, growing up. We both should have. Emma—” Her voice wobbles. “Dad and I both think you’re wonderful. You know that, don’t you? You know how much we love you?”

Then we’re both crying.

“I know you and Dad love me,” I say, when I can get my breath. “
I
don’t love me. It’s
my
problem.” I let her put her arms around me and hold me, like she did when I was a little girl.

I should tell her about Harp now. Try to explain what happened between us and how it made me feel worse about myself than I ever have. But it seems like such a long story, so stupid and confusing, that I can’t think how to begin.

Trouble is, I can’t think how to stop thinking about it. For days, I swing back and forth between believing that maybe I really am a perfectly okay person like Harp said, just confused (maybe even a person Gabe Parker could
like), and replaying my failures with Harp—and Josh, too—certain that they’re just the first two of however many heartbreaks I’m bound to suffer until I finally wise up and accept that I’m destined to spend the rest of my life living all alone with my competent, out-of-it, dilettante self.

I also think about something I read about karma in a book Harp lent me: that you choose your troubles based on lessons you need to learn. Could that be right, too? Could I actually be choosing to be screwed up, choosing to be a human pinball machine of emotion? Choosing not to be loved? I run that one by Mom, who looks at me with that expression she gets when she’s standing at her easel, paintbrush in her hand, trying to decide where to make the next stroke.

“Well, take a look at yourself,” she says carefully. “Your clothes, your hair. You look great, but so—extreme.”

“Yeah?” I say.

Mom shrugs. “You’re always talking about not being pretty, yet you refuse to make any effort to look pretty. You cut off all your beautiful hair. You dress in black—”

“I did it to simplify my life,” I say. “I told you that. And anyway, why should I spend all my time trying to look pretty just to attract some stupid boy? I hate that. If boys don’t notice me, if they don’t like me the way I am, screw them. Who needs them?”

“Emma,” Mom says. “I hate to tell you this, but the way you look now absolutely screams for attention. Personally, I think you look wonderful. You know, very chic. But to most boys, you probably look, well, a little alarming. Why would you want to alarm them?”

“I don’t want to alarm them,” I say. “I just don’t want to bother with them if they can’t handle the real me.”

“Okay,” she says. “I can see that. But don’t you think you might be putting off a lot of perfectly nice guys in the process, guys who’d like you just fine if they felt comfortable taking the chance to get to know you? It’s hard for them, too, you know. Dating isn’t only hard for girls. And think about this: trying to look avant-garde is ultimately no different from trying to look conventionally pretty. You do realize that, don’t you? That it’s the same impulse at work? The same extreme attention to appearance?”

My heart sinks: I hadn’t, till this moment.

“Bullshit,” I say nonetheless. “I look the way I do because I like looking this way. I can’t believe you think I should dress to make boys happy.”

Mom looks pained. “I didn’t say you should dress to make boys happy, Emma. You know me better than that. I’m saying, be honest with yourself. That’s all. It’s not easy, I know. And I know we went overboard making such a big deal about you and Julie being smart and independent. We should have made sure you knew we thought you were pretty, too.”

“But Jules
is
pretty. And smart. It’s not like it turned out to be a problem for her.”

“Julie has her own problems,” Mom says. “We all do. And for God’s sake, Emma, you’re pretty too. Don’t you realize that there are probably a million girls out there not nearly as pretty as you are who think they’re gorgeous because their parents made a big deal of telling them so? They’re probably upset about how nobody ever told them they were smart.”

Well, I’m too tired to think about that, too tired to think about anything. In fact, I’m suddenly so completely exhausted that I fall asleep right there where I sit. When I wake up, it’s night, and I can hear the low murmur of my parents talking in the kitchen.

“ … pack up, get a few hour’s sleep,” Mom says. “If we leave early and drive straight through, we’ll get there about as quick as we could by flying...”

I can’t make out the next words, so I get up and go toward them. Dad’s sitting on the edge of his chair, bent over, his forearms crossed on his knees. Mom’s pulled another chair beside him. Still half-asleep, I look at them and feel relieved to see them close, her hand on his knee, their heads bent in earnest conversation.

“At least he made it back from Florida,” Mom says.

“Christ, who knows when someone would have found him in that damn Winnebago if it had happened on the road.”

I thud fully awake then. “Gramps?” I ask.

They both look toward the doorway, where I stand.

“Margaret called a while ago,” Mom says. “She thinks he may have had a heart attack.”

“Gramps?” I say again.

“He’s okay now,” Mom says quickly. “Of course, he wouldn’t let Margaret call an ambulance, wouldn’t go to the doctor—so we’re a little concerned. But you know Margaret: such a worrywart. He’s probably perfectly fine.”

Margaret’s a worrywart, all right. But I’m not fooled. Margaret or no Margaret, I know Mom always believes the worst thing will happen: her pretending that Gramps is fine is absolute testimony to how certain she is that something’s terribly wrong with him. I look at Dad and know he doesn’t think Gramps is fine either.

I turn and walk back into the dark living room. I look at the rumpled afghan on the chair, at my boots that Mom placed neatly side-by-side. I go to the window and press my forehead against the cold glass. Beyond it there’s only the dark mountain, snowflakes swirling. I close my eyes. My life has been on a skid-path ever since we got rich, and now this. Gramps had a heart attack.

As if those two things were equal, I think.

As if winning fifty million dollars was a tragic event.