Chapter Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
COOPER
A fter we plow the Fischer’s driveway, I ask Bruce if he has any neighbors who need their driveways plowed. He seems surprised by the question, but he directs me to a few of the houses in the neighborhood, including that of a sweet old widow and a family that’s out of town for the week. Fortunately, none of the driveways are as long as Bruce’s, so we’re done after only a couple of hours.
A couple of hours with Bruce Fischer, and I’m somehow still alive. And feeling lighter than I have in years.
“I used to make fun of Canada as much as the next guy,” Bruce says when we get into the house. He’s been talking about his wife—Claire—and somehow, that’s shifted to us talking about her home country. We shake off our hats, coats, and boots in the mudroom, and then Bruce takes my coat from me and hangs it on one of the hooks in his locker. “But anyone who hates poutine is trying too hard. It’s fries with gravy and melted cheese. How could that be bad?”
“I hear you. I get it every time we play in Toronto.”
“The food’s the best part about officiating there. I brought home boxes of Claire’s favorite chocolate and chips every time I worked a series in the MotherLand, as she called it.”
“Liese was telling me about her favorite Christmas snack being Canadian—nuts and bolts?”
Bruce looks at me like I’ve dropped a bombshell. “She talked to you about Christmas?”
“A lot, actually.”
His dark blue eyes seem to lighten a shade and he claps my back.
Honestly, it kind of hurts.
“I hope you’re as handy in the kitchen as you claim,” Bruce says. “We have some baking to do.”
He leaves the mudroom and almost runs smack into his daughter.
Liesel is folding her arms and tapping a slippered foot as she glares at her dad. “What did you do to him? He looks half frozen!”
“We had a chat,” Bruce says, giving his daughter a big hug. “And we came to an understanding.”
When he lets go, she eyes him. “Is that some kind of a threat?”
He chuckles and walks past her into the kitchen, while I smile and take her hand. I don’t bother looking at Bruce to see if this bugs him, because I imagine he’d do a pile driver on me if it did, and there’s nothing I could do to stop him. “We’re okay. We talked, and I apologized for being dumb, and he decided he approves?—”
“Doesn’t disapprove,” Bruce corrects me, opening one of several boxes of Canadian cereals sitting on the counter.
“He doesn’t disapprove,” I say to Liesel.
And that’s enough to make her break into a smile that steals my breath.
“What have you been up to?” she asks, her eyes searching mine. A small, disbelieving smile tugs at the corner of her lips. She’s not wearing any makeup, and she’s braided her hair, which is still damp from the shower a couple of hours ago.
I’ve never wanted to kiss her so badly.
“Snowplowing.”
“You and my dad?”
“Yup. And now we’re making nuts and bolts. You want to help?”
“I don’t trust my family with you, so yeah, I’m not letting you out of my sight.” She shifts her hand so our fingers are interlaced, and I immediately feel grounded. The rightness of holding her hand, of being here with her and her family on Christmas Eve when I can’t be home roots me in place.
But … it weighs on me that I can’t be home. No matter how right it feels to be here, there’s a hollow spot in my heart, a gnawing emptiness that can’t be filled without my mom’s smile or my dad’s teasing. There have been countless events in my life my mom couldn’t make, so Christmas has become sacrosanct. We’ve never been apart for the holidays.
“Are you okay?” Liesel asks. “And don’t do the fake smile. I can read it like a spreadsheet.”
“What fake smile?”
She pokes me in the stomach. “The one where your eyes crinkle. It’s so fake.”
“No it’s not! Smiles make everyone’s eyes crinkle.”
“Not yours. Your cocky smile is all teeth. Your fake smile is all eyes. Your real smile is your whole face.”
“Wow. How much have you studied me?” My mouth spreads, and I realize she’s right: my cocky smile is all teeth.
She swats my abs. “Coop. Be real.”
Bruce is busy dumping a box of “Shreddies” into a huge metal mixing bowl, and he doesn’t seem concerned with what we’re doing. I’m not sure if it’s an act or if our chat really did change things for him the way it did for me. Regardless, I don’t need an audience.
I pull Liesel back a few feet into the mudroom and sit on the bench. I tug her down to sit on my lap, and she puts her arms around my neck.
“I’m thinking about my parents. It’s hard imagining my mom cooped up in the house on Christmas without me.”
“Cooped up without the Coop,” she says with a wry smile.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “I don’t know. Part of me wants to call Nate again and see if we can bend heaven and earth to make it to her. But the other part of me is …” I shake my head. “Resigned. But also tired. I would never ask her to push herself into a panic attack, but it’s hard. It’s been hard for a long time.” I rest my head on her shoulder. “I’ve already accepted all of this. Why is it resurfacing now?”
She runs her hand through my hair, and the sensation makes me shiver. “It sounds like you need to let yourself mourn.”
I shift my hands on her lower back. “What’s to mourn? My mom’s alive. I can see her in a few days.”
“Maybe that’s not the right word, because you’re so accepting. The stories you’ve told me make it sound like you went straight from being left in a parking lot to seeing your mom in the car and promising yourself you’d never be the reason she cried again. You jumped straight to acceptance, but you never let yourself process the other steps of grief.” She looks at her hand in my hair rather than my eyes, almost like she’s trying to let me process her words without an audience.
I’ve never processed anything without an audience.
“Mourning the loss of expectations doesn’t mean you don’t love your mom, only that you’re acknowledging that this wasn’t the way you thought things would go. It’s not a betrayal of her. It’s letting go of what might have been so you can better accept what is.”
I don’t know how I feel about what she’s saying. She kisses my forehead, and I close my eyes and melt into the feeling. Then she hops off of my lap, throws on a coat, and stomps into some boots.
I look at her quizzically.
“Come with me,” she says.
We’re standing outside in her large, winter wonderland of a backyard. Fat snowflakes fall lazily from the sky, and the world has gone quiet in that way only thick blankets of snow can accomplish. We’ve passed the gazebo and have stepped into a small copse of naked oak and willow trees. Liesel and I are holding hands in front of a willow tree. Its skinny tendril-like branches dangle down on us, tickling our faces.
She puts an arm around my waist and leans into me.
“What are we looking at?” I ask.
“Do you see the trunk?”
I look at the gray bark with its deep cracks and peeling strips. And then Liesel points out a part of the trunk that has been gouged out. “Yikes. It looks like someone took an axe to it.”
“Because they did. Lucas got in trouble for something he said to a teacher at school when we were nine or ten. He got really upset about it, took my dad’s axe out of his toolbox, and started wailing on the tree because he knew how much my mom loved it. The tree was a lot smaller then, and when Mom saw him through the kitchen window, she flipped. She ran out, took the axe, and grounded him. She was afraid he’d just killed the tree.”
“It’s a massive gouge. I’m surprised he didn’t .”
“I know.”
I kiss her forehead through her beanie. “What are you getting at here, Liese?”
“I’m a stats nerd. I have no idea what I’m getting at. But it feels significant, doesn’t it?”
“The tree isn’t mad at your brothers. It accepts what happened, marshaled its little tree resources, and moved on.”
“Yeah. That’s one of way of looking at it.”
“What’s the other?”
“Maybe if the tree could have told my brother it was hurting, something could have changed.”
I move my head back to look at her. “I’m not telling my mom I’m hurting to try to change her. That’s manipulation.”
She pulls away from me, looking horrified. “I would never suggest that. Ever.” Her eyebrows thread together. “But … Lucas was hurting when he attacked the tree. Our teacher was always putting him down and comparing him to me, and that hurt his feelings. He never told my mom about it, and I bet she’d have felt awful if she’d known what was really going on with him.”
“But I’m not attacking anything. I’m not lashing out. The pain stays with me.”
“What if you’re the one you’re hurting? What if not letting her know you’re disappointed is hurting you? What if it’s hurting her ?” Liesel looks at the tree, and I watch her eyes water. “I’ve stayed away from my family for the last two years, and I thought it was only hurting me. But I think it may have hurt all of us. Grieving alone is a lot more painful than grieving together. It’s not like she doesn’t know she’s sick. Maybe acting like nothing’s wrong is hard for her , too.”
I pull Liesel back into a hug and hold her close. I roll my lips together to keep back my frown. But no. I shouldn’t keep back my frown, should I? Isn’t that what Liesel’s saying? My eyes squeeze closed, and I think about the pivotal moments of my life—wins and losses, graduations and performances. I think about the smaller ones, too. Church parties. Haunted houses. Sledding down a hill the first time I ever saw snow in Las Cruces. Getting a milkshake with Dad. Getting to see a Spring Training game after one of my Little League tournaments in Phoenix.
And the tears roll down my cheeks.
“I miss my mom,” I whisper.
“Me too.”
“No hugging!” a voice yells from behind us.
And then a snowball pegs me in the back of the head.
Hard.