In an Instant

by Suzanne Redfearn

“Chloe, of course, was brilliant,” my mom goes on. “It was like she’d been driving her whole life. One lesson, and she was ready to drive across the country.” My competitive bone vibrates. That’s the thing about having two older sisters: they’ve always done it first, which means I feel like I have to do it better.

My stomach lurches around nervously as I stare expectantly at the screen for an instant reply, praying for and dreading his answer in equal measure; and time suddenly slows, each second taking at least twice as long as it did before the message was sent.

She hustles into the bathroom to change, and when she emerges, she looks like a New York runway model headed to a five-star restaurant rather than a teenager in Big Bear off to the local diner to have breakfast for dinner.

Even now, my mom doesn’t look at her son, avoiding him the way some people avoid their reflections, not wanting to see what the world does. The cruel joke is that Oz looks the most like her—light-golden skin and hazel eyes with long lashes. But like a fun house mirror, Oz is distorted, a grossly enlarged version of her, and since he was born, she has refused to face him.

I describe Oz as simple. Some would say he’s dumb, but it’s more than that. My brother’s mind works in a very rudimentary way, relying more on impulse than thought to get by. If he sees a cookie, he eats it. If he needs to go to the bathroom, he pulls down his pants and goes. His cognition does not extend to calculated thought or complex emotions such as compassion, empathy, or sympathy. He understands his own needs and acts on base instincts to fulfill them. This isn’t to say he doesn’t love or care. His heart is large as an elephant’s, but things need to be presented in a way he can understand.

For the first few hours this is how we remain, until, near midnight, the world gets impossibly colder, and the differences of how each suffers diminish until they all endure it in a uniform state of survival. No one fidgets or complains or cries anymore. All have their eyes closed, their chins tucked, their bodies balled tight as they pray for morning and for the endurance to bear the misery until then.

The distance between them has grown wide, Chloe losing ground with each step and Vance looking back less often.

For a long moment he stands there, looking at her through the veil of snow, and I feel the conflict within him, his hesitation and his fear. A hundred feet separate them: a virtual ocean for the amount of effort it would take to cross. Tears freeze on his blistered cheeks, until finally he wipes them with the back of his frozen hands, turns, and staggers away. And as much as I hate him, part of me also understands. He is only a boy, and he is lost in a blizzard, and he doesn’t want to die. And if he stays, that is what will happen. Both of them will die. And so he takes one step away and then another. After a dozen, he stops, and I watch as he realizes what he has done and his shame slams into him. He spins, his face a mask of panic as he squints into the swirling darkness, desperate to figure out the way back so he can undo it and reclaim the man he thought he was. But like so many things you wish you could undo, it is simply too late—his footprints are erased, and she is gone.

Kyle seems unaffected, or perhaps he just isn’t the type to complain. Stoically he marches forward, forging a path and looking back often to check on my mom. And the more I watch him, the more my admiration grows and the more I find myself wondering about him, about who he is, his family, his girlfriend, how he ended up living in Big Bear, what he’s thinking about, whether he’s scared. It seems so strange that he is part of this and that we know so little about him.

They make an oddly great team. Kyle has a good sense for climbing and for choosing forgiving paths, and my mom keeps them on course. They’ve spoken less than a dozen words since they started, yet a natural synergy has propelled them farther than either would have gotten alone.

How do you apologize for choosing to let someone die so you could save yourself?

His body was battered to a pulp, and he never said a word. My mom swallows. She had no idea. She never asked. A boy the same age as her daughter in a horrible accident, and she never even asked him if he was okay. I didn’t think of it either. Only in retrospect does it seem so incomprehensible. I want to tell her it’s okay, remind her of how much she was already dealing with. But I know that even if she could hear me, it wouldn’t matter.

I watch as Kyle disappears into the other ambulance and wonder if I will ever see him again. I doubt it. Like soldiers who fought beside each other, once the war is over, they return to their separate lives, their only bond a tragic shared memory all would rather forget.

I curl beside him and tell him I am here. I tell him about Chloe being found and that she is going to be okay. I tell him Dad is in the hospital and has been asking about him and that Bingo is safe. I tell him how good he did and that he was a big help. I tell him that thanks to him, Mom was found and that his trail led the rescuers to her. I tell him how special he is and how strong and brave. I tell him how much he is loved and how much he will be missed. I tell him about heaven and that it is a beautiful place with no rules and that no one gets mad at you if you make a mistake. I tell him he can put marshmallows on all his food, even steak if he wants, and that all the angels are as pretty as Mo and that they have beautiful gold wings and that they love to have water fights and build snowmen. I talk until the blackness lightens to gray and the horizon glows. I am still talking when his shivering stops, his death so quiet I almost don’t notice. His chest rises and falls one last time, and then his mouth drops open and he is still. I pray for his soul, asking God to carry him away quickly to a heaven like the one I promised him, a place that is kind and understanding, a place more tolerant and less confusing for a special boy like Oz.

Her perfect life, her perfect best friend, her perfect fingers and toes. Her fearlessness, her blessed ignorance, her indomitable spirit. Her belief in goodness and optimism and right and wrong. Her belief in herself and how she saw herself. All of it obliterated into a million razor-edged shards that make no sense and paralyze her to move beyond this.

“You’re a lucky man,” he says when he finishes. I’m not certain my dad agrees. My dad holds his emotions tight but trembles with the effort. He is not listening as the doctor tells him that he no longer has a spleen, that his leg will take four to six months to heal, that he will have a permanent limp, that he will be in the hospital for another two weeks and confined to a wheelchair for five, that he will need physical therapy several times a week for at least a year.

Don’t just try to be happy when you think of me—be happy. Look at the ocean and smile. Inhale the scent and celebrate. Remember me. Remember that I was never sad for more than a day, rarely for more than an hour. Remember the amazing times we had and what a goofball I was. Remember that I was scared of anything with more than four legs but fearless of adventure. Remember. Carry me inside you as a light that brightens your world and makes everything better. I don’t want to be a void, a hole, a shadow. REMEMBER ME!

Chloe’s single precious memory of me is one I don’t actually remember myself. It’s strange and wonderful, the things we do that we don’t realize we’ve done.

Like a time traveler thrown into a post-Armageddon world, she is aware of the tragedy but also oblivious to it, unaltered and therefore impervious to the fact that everyone around her has mutated into strange new creatures, alien beings teetering on the brink of destruction.

“This,” she says, holding up her half-pinky hand, “is nothing. I’d give up all ten fingers and all ten toes for someone I love. The problem is loving someone that much and discovering they don’t love you back.”

Mo is brilliant, brilliant and beautiful, and I was very lucky to have had her as my best friend. Her greatest talent is knowing people, an amazing ability to suss out a person’s core like a hunting dog. While the rest of the world saw what they wanted to see when they looked at Chloe, Mo saw the truth, and then, more importantly, she concocted the perfect plan to save her.

Karen does not sit idle. Karen is never idle. Since her return from the mountains, she never stops. She avoids thought through maniacal busyness and avoidance, relying on regimens of activity and obligations that allow no time for reflection. If there is a report of snow on the news, she changes the channel. If there is a car accident on the freeway, she exits and takes side streets home. Her coping mechanism seems to be based on the theory that the past can only hurt you if you let it, only if you stop long enough to consider it. Best not to dwell on things, even better if you don’t think about them at all, pretend nothing happened, and live in denial that anything has changed.

her mind refuses to recognize the truth. She polishes and dusts and straightens. She freshens her makeup and vacuums. She sorts through the bills on her desk. She purges her emails. She polishes and dusts and straightens again.

Is goodness only true if it is at a personal cost? Anyone can be generous when they are rich; anyone can be selfless when they have plenty. My mom is not known as overly compassionate—some might even say she’s a bitch—yet using her bare hands, she closed the window of the camper. She undressed her dead daughter and didn’t keep a shred of warmth for herself.

no matter how busy you keep yourself, no matter how much you refuse to talk about the past or face it, no matter how many times you change the channel if the weatherman is predicting snow, there are moments, inevitable lapses and gaps in time, when the past floods into the present with such fury it sucks the wind from your lungs and knocks you off your feet. Crumbling to the floor, she curls into a ball and sobs.

she is stumbling forward, one foot in front of the other, not always in the right direction but staggering on just the same.

All day at her job, she holds herself tight as a Victorian corset, but as soon as she returns home, she ties on her sneakers and explodes onto the street.

Karen and my mom had one of those remarkable friendships—a sisterhood that anyone who knew them believed would persist into old age. And now, over a pair of old boots, it is gone.

I inherited my dad’s musical gene, which means I don’t have one.

“How do I get past it?” she mumbles, not necessarily to him. Hate. Hurt. Guilt. And grief. So much of it that I feel its thickness and its weight, like she is drowning and can’t breathe. “A single step at a time,” the man says, speaking from some profound experience of his own and with deep understanding, making me wonder if all pain might be the same regardless of its origin. “You’re still here,” he goes on. “So there’s not really a choice. An inch, a foot, not necessarily in the right direction, but onward nonetheless.” My mom shudders a deep breath, looks up at him. “Until eventually,” he says, “the present becomes the past, and you are somewhere else altogether, hopefully in a better place than you are today.”

Every journey begins with a single step. Clear your mind of can’t. Fear is what stops you; courage is what keeps you going.”

The kittens are old enough to drink on their own, so today Chloe and Finn will say goodbye to Brutus and his sisters, whom Chloe has aptly named Lindsay and Britney for their continual poor decision-making. The two kittens each have used up at least three of their nine lives.

Vance and my dad are faced off in the kitchen, both of them looking so slovenly I realize why God created women.

A man without a woman is a disoriented and pathetic creature.

the thing about a boy like Oz is no matter how much you love him, you also hate what he does to your life, the way he sucks the energy from it and uses up all the air, so relentless and demanding it’s like sometimes you can’t breathe. None of us admitted it when he was alive, but we all felt it.