An imperfect plan a nove.., p.18
An Imperfect Plan: A Novel, page 18
When they arrived at their Mountainview 30 condo at Smugglers’ Notch, the boys immediately started running around and exploring. They went out onto the deck and started throwing snowballs at each other. Noticing colorful lights on the ski slope, Logan said, “Mom, Dad, there are, like, fireworks on the mountain.”
“Yes, they told me it’s called the Torchlight Parade. People ski while holding torches,” Greta replied.
“I want to ski with a torch,” Brayden said.
“Me too,” Logan chimed in. “I want the room with the king bed and a door to run away in the night,” he added, laughing and opening and closing the sliding glass door.
“There are four bedrooms, figure it out,” Patrick said.
“Did you sneak this old CB jacket into the car?” Greta laughed, pulling it from one of the bags. “You don’t like our matching ski coats?”
“They’re just so puffy! Sorry, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Gret.”
Greta wondered why she cared. It’s just a jacket, she told herself, wondering why she’d spent thousands on ski gear for them and the kids.
“Did you bring wine? I’ll make a fire.”
“Yes, there’s wine and I packed your beers,” Greta said, feeling smug.
Greta carried her bags up to the master bedroom and then unloaded the groceries she’d packed—something Lucia usually did.
“I brought cookies and brownies, and I picked up a lasagna from Joey’s for dinner tomorrow,” she commented, wanting Patrick to notice all her prep work for once. Still, she felt inadequate as she pictured stay-at-home mothers baking brownies from scratch instead of picking them up at the bakery.
“Wow, look!” Logan said, and then proceeded to jump off the second-story balcony into a pile of snow before hopping inside through the downstairs sliding glass door entry. “Brayden, are you chicken to jump?” Logan laughed.
“Stop! That’s dangerous,” Greta warned, worried about Logan’s recklessness. “Look, they have Scrabble, Patrick,” she said, pouring wine.
The boys ran downstairs and Logan yelled back up, “The condo has Wii guitars!”
“I thought we would get them off games while we were out here. Oh well, cheers!” Greta said, reminding herself that even though it wasn’t great for them, the kids were easier when they were gaming. She clinked her glass with Patrick’s beer bottle just as sounds of the boys arguing traveled up the stairs. Greta smiled at Patrick as she gulped her wine, in hopes it would block out their fighting again.
“Stop fighting! Wanna come play Scrabble?” Greta yelled down. “Or Brayden, I bought you that Diagon Alley Lego set you wanted. It’s in my suitcase.” Brayden was really good at Legos, which was counterintuitive, because he was so much more outgoing than Logan, who preferred to sit and draw over building anything. Greta thought it was cute that Logan would tell Brayden to build his when her parents bought them huge Lego sets and Brayden would do it for him for hours. She didn’t care that Logan didn’t like Legos; she’d never liked Barbies and Emily had loved them. She remembered trying to convince Emily to put the Barbies away and play with walkie-talkies and she’d pretend to be one of Charlie’s Angels or the Bionic Woman.
“No, I’m not in the mood to do Legos and Logan breaks them and I only like playing Mastermind with you, Mom, because he cheats.”
“But how about Scrabble?” she asked again.
“No, Logan only writes swear words when he plays Scrabble,” Brayden yelled back.
“It’s fine. Let them go play games and we can play Scrabble. Or we can watch tennis together,” Patrick said, sinking into the sofa and perusing the trail map as she joined him. They sat gazing into the fire, the flames lighting up the outside just enough for them to see that more snow was falling. She sensed that Patrick was happy, but something inside her still felt as if her own happiness was forced.
“Skiing tomorrow should be great. Let’s go right to Madonna,” Patrick said, smiling and pointing to the tallest mountain on the map.
The next morning, Greta was proud of her renewed decision to make her family a priority. She rubbed some sunscreen on her face, then carried the tube downstairs to make sure the boys put some on so they didn’t end up with windburn. They were already wolfing down waffles with Patrick and looked partially ready in their long underwear.
“Mommy, isn’t there a monster that, like, eats kids in Lake Champlain, right near here?” Brayden asked.
“No, it only eats girls,” Patrick said in jest.
Greta interjected, “No, that’s just a made-up legend.”
“Coffee, babe?” Patrick said, handing her a cup.
Greta walked over and stepped out onto the balcony in her long underwear and Ugg slippers.
“Isn’t it so big?” Logan said as he pointed at the same mountain they’d seen the night before in the dark.
She replied, “I know, that’s Mount Mansfield. Brayden, come look too.” She twisted, beckoning him over. “That’s Spruce Peak, and that’s Sterling Mountain, one of the mountains we’re going to ski on today!”
Brayden said, “No, Mommy, can we just go skiing already?” He began to pull on his orange-and-gray camo snow pants.
“Okay, come on. He’s going to get hot, let’s get out of here,” Patrick said, also pulling on his ski pants and helping the boys finish getting dressed. Greta convinced the twins to pose for a couple of photos, then she and Patrick leaned in close so she could take a selfie. They looked like a picture-perfect Smugglers’ Notch advertisement.
After a few hours of skiing, Greta’s feet already ached. But they were all having so much fun, so she ignored the pain. She and Patrick kissed as they rode the chairlift up to the top of Madonna.
“I’m going to get this picture,” Patrick said, lifting one leg and steadying his ski gloves as he pulled out his iPhone and snapped a photo of the backs of the twins’ heads.
“Be careful!” said Greta, worrying he’d drop a glove or his phone. She felt queasy as she gazed down at a sheet of thick ice and sharp rocks jutting out of the mountain ridge below.
Patrick’s carefree nature—one of the things that had first attracted her to him—now slightly irritated her. Was it really that important to take a picture of the backs of her sons’ heads? She tried not to dwell on it. Then she felt the chair shake. Was the lift stopping again, this high up?
“What the hell is happening?” Greta said, grabbing Patrick’s knee with one hand and trying to steady the swaying lift with her other, being careful not to drop her poles.
They both looked up, realizing at the same time that their own sons were the cause of the shaking. Logan sat in the middle of their lift and forcefully kicked both skis up and then back while Brayden was shifted all the way to the left side, causing the chair to lean.
“Stop!” Greta screamed at the top of her lungs. She’d seen her sons playing around, but this was different.
“Lower your voice,” Patrick chided. “The chairs aren’t going to fall off; my buddies and I used to roughhouse on the lift. They’ll stop when a ski patrol scolds them. Calm down.”
“Calm down? One of them is going to fall out.” She looked down at the treacherous rocks below and, ignoring Patrick, screamed again, this time even louder. “Logan! Stop it right now!”
Logan twisted around toward them, laughing. He pressed one pole up against his brother and began banging the other pole against the metal of the chairlift, making an ear-piercing noise that echoed off the mountain face.
“Knock it off,” Patrick finally said at the same time Logan retracted his poles and scooted to the right.
Now he was lifting the chair’s safety bar. It was way too early; they weren’t close enough to the top.
“What the fuck!” Greta screamed again. “Put the bar down!”
Skiers seated two chairs ahead twisted around, observing the boys’ dangerous game.
Brayden was holding on to the chair with both hands overlapping tightly and his poles gripped between his legs, with his jaw dropped and his eyes wide open in fear.
“Put the bar down, buddy, it’s not time yet,” Patrick yelled, but Greta feared his words were getting carried away in the wind.
“Put it down!” Greta screamed just as two consecutive signs appeared that read KEEP SKI TIPS UP and UNLOAD HERE with an image of a skier lifting the safety bar.
“See, they’re fine,” Patrick said, patting Greta’s knee as she exhaled shakily and fumbled to lift their own bar up. She grasped her two poles with trembling hands and skied down the exit ramp and to the left, where Logan was laughing at Brayden, who was in tears next to him. Greta wasn’t sure if the cold wind or her son’s behavior was what was really chilling her.
Angrily, Brayden grabbed Logan’s neck with an iron grip.
“Let go, Bray, two wrongs don’t make a right,” Greta said, wanting to cry herself. What had she done wrong as a mother to raise kids like this? She thought about the conversation she’d had with Patrick on the car ride up. Numbers came to her naturally, but disciplining her sons did not.
“What was that? You scared the hell out of me, and look at your brother. What’s the matter with you? You could have pushed your brother off or fallen off yourself!” she said sternly as she looked right at Logan.
Greta didn’t know if she was madder at Logan for acting like a crazy person or at Patrick for not backing her up. Her blood boiled as she yelled at her son, “That’s it! We’re going back to the condo. You don’t deserve to ski the rest of the day!”
“That’s a bit dramatic, Gret,” Patrick said. “Let’s just have a do-over.”
“Yeah, Mom, it’s fine,” Brayden said, wiping away tears. “I’ll just ride up with you next time.”
“Well, you are not riding on this lift with your brother ever again!”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Logan said, seeming remorseful.
“Come on, Gret, let’s ski down Drifter and grab some lunch in the lodge. Maybe he’s just antsy because he’s hungry.”
Greta was tired of Patrick always making excuses for them.
Logan pulled Brayden up with his pole and Brayden smiled, already recovered from his earlier fright. Patrick took off down the mountain and the boys followed as she grabbed her poles and hesitantly pushed off, still trying to catch her breath. The scene of her family in front of her looked like a winter postcard, but something didn’t sit well with her. She wasn’t convinced that Logan’s internal thoughts and expressed emotions 100 percent aligned.
Maybe this was her fault. Maybe she needed a parenting class, or maybe this was because she wasn’t home enough, or maybe they were just too spoiled. She had no idea what to do next. She tried deep breathing to calm herself. She pushed her breath from her throat down to her stomach purposefully. Her beautiful house of cards felt susceptible to the wind.
Chapter Sixteen
COLETTE
2016
Colette’s hands were shaking as she unbuttoned her work blazer before sitting down in the metal folding chair that was set up in a semicircle in the musty church basement. She reached to massage the back of her neck, trying to release the stresses of her workday and shift gears.
Vic’s large frame sank into the chair next to her with a thud, and he leaned toward Colette to give her a peck on the cheek, the scruff of his chin tickling her. Sweat glistened on his brow, and he pulled off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his dark hair and placed the hat back on.
“Sorry I’m late, got stuck on a job. How was court today?” he asked as he took her hand.
She looked down and noticed that dried cement laced the inside of his palm, and specks of white plaster were stuck to his wedding band.
“Court went well,” Colette said, relieved that the day was behind her and that Vic, her husband of six years, was now here, sitting beside her. As soon as he’d arrived, a sense of calm had washed over her.
Although her new career as a medical paralegal was fulfilling, her days were long and often extremely stressful. Even still, she wouldn’t trade it for her long, hard days in the hospital or at the bar, where she knew she would never be able to stay sober.
It was a miracle that her luck had finally turned. She owed everything to Aunt Lisa for not giving up on her. After getting out of rehab for the second time, with no money, no friends, and very little hope, Colette had found a job opening at the state’s attorney’s office, where Frank Marciano, Bunny’s boyfriend from the Branch, was a prosecutor. It had almost seemed too good to be true. She’d wanted the job so badly, and though she hadn’t been sure she was qualified, she decided to try anyway. She had nothing to lose at that point in her life.
Whenever she thought back to that day, her stomach always did an uncomfortable little flip. It was one of the many events in her life that was fuzzy; she couldn’t quite put the pieces together. It had happened all the time when she was still using, but it occurred even when she was sober with alarming frequency.
Colette remembered being in her aunt’s house perusing job listings in her pajamas, chewing violently on her cuticles until they bled, chugging cup after cup of coffee, and sucking the blood from her fingers as she weighed her options. Two hours later, arriving in the lobby of Frank’s office, her palms had been sweating and her heart racing. Yet she couldn’t remember the ride there. She had already been feeling frantic, as she was nervous about this prospect of a brand-new career and potentially working for Frank, who knew her from her unsavory past. The fact that she had zoned out on the entire ride there unsettled her further. Looking back, she was proud of her tenacity that day, under such duress; she was able to take a deep breath and secure a job that meant so much to her.
The receptionist in the first-floor lobby had told her that Frank was busy all day and wouldn’t be able to see her. She panicked, considered going straight home, thought that she couldn’t do it, couldn’t get the job. But something made her stay and fight.
Muscles had twitched and she ground her teeth before mimicking the receptionist’s smile. Keeping her tone as even as she could, she’d told the woman she would wait in the lobby until his meetings were done for the day.
Another call was placed while she’d stood her ground, and she’d wondered if he assumed she was still an addict, just there to blackmail him for drug money. Though she wouldn’t be blackmailing him, she had planned to gently remind him that she had never told a soul, namely his wife, about his affair with Bunny. She would do what she had to—she could not go back to the bar, and the thought of getting a new nursing job didn’t appeal to her. She had lost what little passion she had for a medical career, and she didn’t want to be tempted working in a building filled with meds. But she could use her degree to do something that she was very interested in. She’d practiced her speech in her head: I’m a fast learner, a trained nurse, and willing to take any additional training to succeed as a medical paralegal. I need this job.
Her next memory of that day was her facing Frank where he sat at a huge mahogany desk that probably cost more than Colette had made in the last three years but looked right in the luxurious office with floor-to-ceiling windows. He’d pulled a toothpick out from where it rested between his teeth, tossed it in a nearby garbage can, grabbed a gold cigarette case out of a drawer, and gestured toward the door.
“Let’s take a walk outside,” he said.
“I need your help getting a job, doll.” Her voice was firm.
“What kind of job, Colette? We don’t have a bar here.” He chuckled while offering her a cigarette.
She couldn’t remember the exact details of the rest of the conversation, but it had obviously turned out in her favor. She had been so nervous, her whole life riding on that one interaction. She remembered Frank standing nervously, stubbing out a cigarette under his black loafer and shaking her hand. She had what was left of a lit cigarette in her other hand, and she had stared at it curiously and stubbed it out as well. His palm had been damp and the air was smoky.
“Don’t make me sorry I’m giving you a chance,” he’d said before she’d turned to leave.
Those words had rung in her ears almost every day since.
She had zoned out, and Vic was nudging her. “It’s time for you to speak.”
Colette swallowed hard to soften the lump in her throat. She wasn’t sure what she was nervous about; she had done this before, but it never seemed to get any easier. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before walking up to the podium. She gripped a piece of paper in one hand and her seven-year chip in the other as she turned to face the small crowd of Narcotics Anonymous members. She introduced herself to the crowd as she unfolded the paper.
“Even though many of you know me and might think that I seem to have it all together, I am here to share my story today, because getting this far has been a struggle. I have a great job, and I am happily married to the love of my life, but every single day, I think about my sobriety. A lot of hard work, two stints in rehab, and the support of all of you and this program have led to this day that I am receiving my chip to signify seven years of sobriety.”
Colette shared some of the details of her childhood, her marriage to Rob, and her spiral into addiction after a routine surgery.
“I put what little family I had through hell, and I lost pretty much everything. I realized when I spent my thirty-first birthday in an inpatient rehab facility that I wanted so badly to feel like my old self or, at the very least, to feel normal. I wanted a good job, a relationship, a family of my own. I realized that these things that I wanted more than anything were slipping away because I spent so much time in my addiction.”
