“Are you feeling good?” I asked Stefan.
“What you mean is, am I feeling suicidal? I’m not feeling suicidal. I’m feeling tired. Ordinary tired, Mom. The way people get who work all the time.”
Finally, one day, I forced myself to go outside for a long walk with Julie. A new dusting of pristine snow refreshed the evil-looking plowed-up foothills that sat behind stores and dumpsters. Swaddled in fleece, we were powering to Lava Java when Julie said, “Thea, you’re miles away. When I say you look like shit, I don’t mean you’ve lost too much weight, although you have. I mean, you look weary.”
“I never thought I would mind hearing I’d lost too much weight.”
But it was more than weight. I’d stopped paying attention. These days, a pair of sweatpants with an old UW–Whitewater jersey was what constituted getting dressed. Not getting dressed was leaving my pajamas on, with a UW–Whitewater jersey. The day before, as if to provide me with a double handful of nothing, the nice young officer from the Portland Police called to say that there hadn’t been a whisper about who’d burned up our car, though she said she’d expected some gossip, “this being a small town.”
The universe doesn’t exist to send you messages, I told myself. Things just happen. They’re part of a pattern, but sometimes, you never get to see the pattern.
“You could try getting away from all this a little bit. You could go skiing with Jep,” Julie said.
“We’re just making it,” I told Julie. “I mean, we’re fine but no extras right now…”
This wasn’t really true. We could afford a nice trip. My comment was just meant to break the chain of the conversation: People always seemed cautious about arguing with a financial motive. Even to my closest friend, I couldn’t admit the truth. What if we came back to a tragedy? What if we were to be punished for relaxing our vigilance? The ineluctable urge I felt to watch Stefan like a newborn, to put the metaphoric mirror to his lips, was stronger than ever.
Jep and Stefan were going away, in fact, to a game in Utah. Since he would be with his father, Stefan applied for and received an exemption from his parole officer: He’d filed a travel plan and created a schedule to check in by phone every day. They would do some real skiing, as there was already plenty of snow in Utah, and a bonus was that Jep’s travel costs were covered by the team budget.
Julie was no fool and she was no stranger to magical thinking.
“So if he goes away, that’s okay but if you go away, that’s dereliction of duty?”
“He won’t be away from Jep,” I said. “That’s what makes it okay.”
“And that’s all there is to it?”
“Okay! Even if I could get away, I can’t get really away. I carry this burden around, like a turtle carries its shell. You were right. I don’t really know about Stefan’s life in Black Creek. And I don’t really even know the full story of that night. Okay, of course, it’s too late for this to make any difference. But there’s this sense, I feel like I let him down by just accepting whatever everybody said, even if Stefan accepted what everybody said. I need to find out the whole truth. I’m obsessed. It’s like a reflex now.” I sighed, feeling my rebellious outer thighs clench as we hit the steep part of the street. Hadn’t I used to bound up this hill like a gazelle? Well, not like a gazelle; I’d never done anything in my life like a gazelle. But I had gone up this hill many times like…like a golden retriever. And not that long ago. Creaky middle age seemed to have swamped me in record time.
Julie said, “Sweetie, you will never be able to know the whole truth. You weren’t there. Stefan can’t tell you the whole truth either. You’re chasing a ghost. It would make anyone feel weighed down.”
“I thought when Stefan got out of prison, we would be able to move on. Our family. Instead, there’s a sense of, I don’t know, of menace. More intense than ever. When he was in prison, all I had to do was to focus on keeping his spirits up so he’d survive it. Looking back, it seems so easy compared to now. Now, this girl…”
“What girl?”
“This girl caller that keeps getting in touch with me and dropping hints about that night.”
“You never told me about any girl. And you didn’t tell me ahead of time that you were going back up there.”
“I’m sorry. Jules, I’m sorry. I never keep anything from you. But I feel like this is a stain, and if I tell you, it will get on you, too.”