Chapter 33
What a Man
Knox
Paisley is trembling even though she changed back into her Baymax outfit. I turn up the heat and turn on the seat warmers, too.
She lets out a sigh of pleasure and snuggles into the leather as it warms up.
“I can’t feel my feet,” she says as I start the motor and turn onto the road leading away from Buttermilk Mountain.
She stretches out her legs in the footwell and moves her boots back and forth. “I’m telling you, it’s meningitis.”
“I’m not aware of any sources naming cold as the cause for any kind of meningitis,” I say, adjusting the heater to make sure it’s blowing out onto her feet, and cast Paisley a sidelong glance. She seems surprised, and I’ve got to laugh. “Come on, tell me.”
“What should I say?”
I turn the wheel and drive left, downtown. The road markings are no longer visible, and the traffic lights are hidden by the heavy snowfall. The falling flakes turn red, then green, and I drive on.
“It’s amazing that you even know what meningitis is, Knox.
” I mimic her voice, a bit over-the-top, a bit too much surprise in my voice, to get her to laugh.
It works, and the sound warms me more than the heated seats ever could.
Then the sound fades until all we can hear are our soft breaths and the heater.
Paisley is picking at the cuticle of her ring finger. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course. I’ll give you all the answers you want. Where should I start? Baby spiders are known as spiderlings. Banging your head against the wall burns one hundred fifty calories. Hmm, what else? In some countries a woman can get divorced if her husband doesn’t serve her coffee.”
“Can you stay serious for a single second? You always have to—wait, what? For real? When her husband doesn’t serve her coffee?”
“I find that totally legitimate.”
“That go for cappuccino, too?”
“No. Just straight coffee.”
“How unfair. What if I don’t like straight coffee?”
“You’re American.”
“But if I was in that country, could I get rid of my husband if he didn’t serve me cappuccino?”
“No.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Well, think of the effort. There’s a difference between simply lifting up a coffeepot and pouring and making a coffee, steaming some milk, and pouring.”
“I am sure that there are fully automatic machines there, too.”
“Shhh. You’re spoiling the theory.”
“Knox?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you be serious for a sec?”
“Only as an exception, Snow Queen.”
“You said that you applied for the psychology program and were accepted.”
Shit. I would’ve preferred sticking to theories about coffee. Two heartbeats pass before I nod. “Correct.”
Paisley looks at me. “And you said you didn’t want to be a star snowboarder.”
That dumb game. A truth for a truth. Who even came up with the idea? Oh, right. That’d be me.
I sigh. “Also true.”
“So, your goals are pretty clear. You’re just not pursuing them. Would you like to tell me why you feel trapped?”
“What, you a hobby psychologist now?”
Paisley flinches, and, naturally, I realize that I’m an absolute idiot. I bite the inside of my cheek and put my hand on her upper thigh. “Sorry. It’s just…the subject’s not all that easy for me.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, Knox. Really. But don’t be mean.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry,” I repeat, running my fingers across her jeans and gathering up all my strength to climb over my walls.
They’re taller than they look from down below, but I’ve always been athletic.
“When I was younger, I played hockey with Wyatt. I was really good, seriously. In middle school my teachers thought, if I kept it up, I’d easily get a scholarship. That was my dream. I loved hockey.”
“But then your mom died,” Paisley says. Her voice is soft, but her words bury into my guts and echo through my head. I hate those words. I hate them.
I nod. “After her death I wanted to spend every second out on the ice because that was always the one thing that made me forget everything. But pulling on my skates a few days after the funeral and making my way out onto the ice, I thought I would die. It was absolute hell, Paisley. I heard Mom, but not how I’d wanted to hear her, but that sound, the breaking of her skull bone and her scream, over and over her scream.
I broke down and vomited. Wyatt was there, and he helped me, picked me up off the ice and all, after that I managed more or less okay, but I couldn’t go out on the ice anymore. ”
Paisley swallows. She places her delicate fingers over mine. Our trembling hands find each other and quiet down, as if all they needed was each other.
“Ever since, you’ve been a snowboarder.”
I stop beneath a tall pine tree next to a big pile of snow.
“Snowboarding had always been Dad’s dream.
He wanted to get out there himself as a kid, but, when things got serious, my grandparents were against it.
‘Do something sensible,’ they said. That’s why I started snowboarding after Mom died.
Well, that and for something to replace hockey.
It was fun. And it made me happy seeing Dad coming out of his cocoon more and more.
He said, ‘Knox, you’re so talented, live it up.
’ It made me so proud. And he had that shine in his eye that he usually only had when he saw Mom, and I just knew I couldn’t say no.
I simply couldn’t. And so I said, ‘Sure, Dad, let’s do that,’ and from there on it was a steep climb. ”
Paisley is looking out the window at the mound of snow. There’s a cardinal hopping about, leaving delicate traces of its feet. When she speaks, the window fogs up.
“I understand that. But, you know, I think that if you live a life that is any less than the one you’d actually like to be leading, your mom’s screams will never go away.”
My mouth goes dry. “What do you mean?”
The cardinal takes off, a red shimmer in between the white snowflakes.
“I think the screams are following you because you aren’t moving forward.
This isn’t your life, Knox. It’s one you chose to make your father happy, so that he could go on living.
You accepted standing still in order to make him happy.
That’s altruistic of you, but I think it’s high time for you to choose yourself.
I think it’s time for you to leave that moment at Silver Lake behind and to move on. ”
She turns her head to look at me, with the sea in her eyes, the sky, and that great, all-embracing hopefulness she makes me feel but that she shouldn’t.
Paisley’s right. Of course she’s right. But I can’t tell her that, if I did, I’d have to be able to give her a reason why I won’t change, and I can’t even explain that to myself.
It simply doesn’t work. Dad is counting on me, my sponsors are counting on me, the whole world of sports is counting on me.
I wonder what Paisley would say if I told her about the steroids.
If she knew that the reason I shoot anabolic steroids daily has to do with how badly I want to make Dad’s dream come true, how badly I want to make him happy, how badly I don’t want to think about Mom.
I couldn’t quit all that easily, even if I wanted to.
Paisley opens the glove box and pulls out The Best of Disney. Her eyes scan the song titles on the back, then she slides the CD in, clicks forward, forward, forward, on past track six, before stopping at eight. Then she clicks the case shut and leans back. She looks at me and smiles. Waits.
I’m waiting, too, but I know what song’s about to come on. I know this list by heart, but right now everything feels different because this moment is giving the song a different meaning.
Phil Collins’s voice fills the car and my heart.
I’m listening to the song with my eyes shut because this is one of those moments that’s just too much, full of too many emotions.
His voice fades. I turn off the motor, touch Paisley’s chin, and kiss her. Warm lips. An electrifying tingle. The smell of snow along with something else, no idea what exactly, maybe love, maybe longing. Maybe something in between.
I pull away, run my finger over her ears, then push the button that opens the trunk. Cold air blasts inside like a relentless current that wants to carry me away.
“Come on.”
“What are you planning to do?”
I grin. “Something date-like.”