Cherries - LEAVING 4/15

Ch 2. The Calm Before

It is the quiet before the Hollywood storm lands, and the girls and I are sharing the best hot chocolates in the contiguous U.S. Hot chocolates were a major part of my father's plan to convert me into a powder fiend, from toddler sledding sessions capped with marshmallow cocoas through post-competition victory chocolates with mountains of whipped cream.

His plan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and perhaps enough that he regrets it somewhat. But while I may not have my father's same madness, I don't mind adopting his methods.

Alice Bonnefoy called me this morning, panicked to an extent I've never before heard. I could almost see wisps of her honey-brown hair escaping her usually tidy chignon as I listened to her plead that I keep Kierney and Mara busy for the day, while she and her husband took a last minute meeting with their realtor.

"We have a potential buyer for our house, and we need to move fast," she explained, and I felt my heart sink. The Bonnefoys were not only leaving me this winter season, they might be leaving Park City for good. I told her I'd be happy to spend the day with the girls, and her voice dripped with gratitude. Like if she could give me another pass to Sundance, she would.

"You're a life saver. They'll meet you at their usual spot, yes?" And with that I met the girls for a morning on the mountain, after which I took mercy on them and brought them to a coffee-and-used-book shop on Main Street, to warm their hands on mugs of red velvet hot chocolate.

We sip at our cocoa, somehow both exhausted and invigorated by this bluebird day. It is a crime to be off the mountain and in town, but I don't mind the punishment, I think, as I lick a spot of whipped cream off my upper lip. The hot cocoa has spread its warmth through my bones, and I sit at the table like a contented Buddha, pleased to be fully mobile and out of my clunky ski boots. I turn my right ankle in small circles, working away an old, dull ache.

"You promise you'll keep up with your skiing while you're gone?" I ask the girls, breaking out of my sugar-induced reverie. 

Mara, who is one half an uncanny reflection of her mother and one half the whirlwind of emotions only a thirteen-year-old can juggle at once, nods with the same look I imagine she'll use when sitting on the Supreme Court a few decades from now.

"Mom says that our cousin Marie will take us, so we don't get bored when they're busy. But Marie probably doesn't know as much as you do."

"Oh, I don't know," I say diplomatically, and with a twinge of jealousy, as I think of the record snowfall the Alps have seen this year. "Switzerland has some amazing mountains. I think you'll have a great time with your cousin. You'll have to tell me about it next year."

"Have you skied there?" Kierney asks. She looks up from a book that she picked off one of the shelves lining the café, and which has engrossed her for the last ten minutes.  She's been reading it while Mara updates me, in the same tones that one would give a deposition, on her latest crush, and why he is "a statistical improvement" on the last boy she liked. 

Kierney taps the book on the table, and I see that she has somehow chosen to read a well-worn copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

What is an eleven-year-old getting from that, I wonder, staring at the book cover and its image of a hazy, sun-drenched lake, mountains in the background fading into fog. 

"Space case," Kierney teases, pulling me back into the moment and looking pleased as goddamn punch. "Did you gooooo?"

She reads Walt Whitman, but she's still a preteen, thank god. As much as I love them, some days their mental acuity makes me wonder if the Bonnefoy sisters are top-of-the-line robots.