that Chris and Julie had broken up the same way everyone else did—through the grapevine. It never occurred to me to ask him if he was upset. He was my big brother, my strength, and of course he was okay. He was always okay. The only time I ever saw frailty in him was when we were kids after a long day on the beach. He was maybe ten years old and had just finished a long run. Racing now against the sunset, he was so determined to finish a sand mountain by himself—sandcastles were far too formal for his taste—that even though he was getting cold, he stayed there, shivering, piling the sand higher and higher until he was satisfied with its stature. The image of him shaking remains so vivid: He wore a navy-blue bathing suit with white trim and a puka shell necklace. He didn’t complain about being cold, but I saw his teeth chattering and the ache in his eyes. It made me uneasy to see any weakness in him. I hated it. I hated knowing that he was uncomfortable, and that I couldn’t fix it for him.
I’D STARTED A COUNTDOWN. Three more weeks of Chris, then two, then graduation and a final family trip to Colorado, this time for Stacy’s wedding.
When our siblings were older and stopped coming to Virginia as often, my parents would take Chris and me out to Colorado for visits and often took several of us to the mountains for weeklong stays at upscale ski resorts. For a couple of seasons, Shawna and Shelly lived and worked in a ski town called Keystone, cleaning condos and time-shares in between guests. Shawna was dating a minister’s son named Jim, whom I thought was cute with his short sun-bleached blond hair and dark mustache. One day Shannon, Chris, Quinn, and I hit the slopes with Jim. My brothers and I had all learned to ski at an early age and had spent enough time on these particular slopes to let our overconfidence get us into trouble, and Chris liked having brothers around to be rowdy with for a change. The boys loved to find fresh powder by cutting through the wider expanses of trees from one trail to another, and although it felt like my heart jumped into my throat when I tried to keep up with them, I wanted to hang tough, so I followed behind, always holding my breath until I popped out to find them waiting for me on the other side of a tall line of pine and aspen. Jim came up behind after making sure we had all made it through okay. He moved like an expert skier, and I loved to watch the rhythm of his effortless movements carving the snow. At one point when we were all stopped and discussing where to go next, Jim noticed a new rise in the slope at a steep edge where we all knew the trail wound back around beneath it. There weren’t a lot of people on the mountain, and Jim bet us that he could make the jump.
He told the boys to continue downhill to check things out and make sure the trail was clear. When they motioned for Jim to come on, he dug in his poles and hopped away, then shoved his skis side to side a few times to gain momentum and flew down the slope. He hit the jump at top speed and soared through the air with an impressive hang time, but then I heard a horrendous scream that didn’t sound anything to me like excitement. I couldn’t see where Jim had landed, and I also didn’t see him continuing down the hill. Quinn and Chris both yelled out, “Oh shit!”
Shannon looked over at Quinn and Chris, then up the mountain to me and announced in the quite matter-of-fact way that boys handle such situations, “He’s not moving. I think he’s dead.” I couldn’t see Shannon’s eyes through his goggles to tell if he was serious or not, but Chris and Quinn quickly aimed their skis downhill and raced to where Jim was. “Oh crap! We’ve killed Shawna’s boyfriend!” came out of my mouth as I started down the mountain.
By the time we got to him, Jim was sitting up and laughing, although through accusations that we were trying to kill him to keep him away from our sister. We all agreed that it had been a very notable jump, probably some kind of a record. A few years later at Jim and Shawna’s wedding, we all concurred that we were glad Jim had survived.
ON STACY’S BIG DAY, Marcia’s father invited Mom and Dad out for a drink before the ceremony. His invitation seemed innocent, but once they were all seated, he led Dad on a scornful trip down memory lane. The reminders of Dad’s history with Marcia infuriated Mom, and by the time they arrived at the church, Mom and Dad were in a huge fight.
Stacy was beaming and beautiful as she faced her bridegroom, Rob, at the altar. He was a very smart college student and seemed a bit geeky to me as a fifteen-year-old, but I could see that he would be strong and steady. His full and gentle heart was a good match for Stacy’s wounded one. He was always sweet and attentive to her, and he noticed the subtleties that could dim her otherwise prolific smile.
With such a large and complex brood hovering in the aisle, Rob held Stacy’s hand and kept looking into her eyes as the perplexed photographer asked her questions about who goes where during the progression of family photographs. Rob’s hand lifted to her waist and pulled her close as the traditional photograph with the parents was attempted.
Tension pressed at the seams of the wedding, but Stacy rose above it all and didn’t let it ruin her day. Dad yelled at Chris to sing for the guests, but Chris had no interest in performing for our parents that day. Mom sulked, still angry about the meeting with Marcia’s dad.
These types of full-on family events were predictably poised for discomfort. Wanting to keep the mood light, Sam snuck a bottle of tequila into the reception, which my older siblings passed back and forth between jaunts to the dance floor to do the polka. I loved to see Marcia’s kids all having fun and laughing together. As I watched them tease each other, I wondered a lot about what they thought of me. With Chris, I was less self-conscious. I could be wholly and completely myself with him. As the reception wound down and I watched Stacy and Rob say good-bye to their guests, all I could think about was my brother’s looming departure.
As soon as we returned from Colorado, Chris headed out of town for his summer adventure in the Datsun. He said he would be back just in time to repack and get to college at Emory. When we said good-bye, he hugged me for a long time before looking me in the eyes.
“Be careful,” he said. Then he drove away.
CHRIS’S ABSENCE WAS SURREAL AT FIRST. When I walked in the front door after he’d left, everything looked just the same. The couch pillows were still set up just so, and Buck still dozed in the same corner. But everything felt different. A dynamic had shifted between me and my parents, and the change was as palpable to me as if all the walls and furniture had been painted red. But at least I had Jimmy—and I didn’t have to worry about Chris’s annoying jokes about how I’d fallen in love too fast or his skepticism about what Jimmy wanted to gain out of the relationship.
Jimmy was a motorhead. A smart one. He drove a black 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo that he had been restoring himself. My dad—who had a love of cars himself, having owned an old GTO convertible when we were younger—appreciated Jimmy’s industriousness as a mechanic. But he warned me repeatedly that I would never have a successful life if I did not marry a man of a proper profession that earned him a large paycheck. During one of his cool-dad moments, though, my father helped Jimmy and me finance a project that we all took on together.
Jimmy had found a 1969 Stingray convertible suffering inside a ramshackle shed, and we came together as its savior. It was cheap to obtain the Corvette because it didn’t run and needed excessive body-and paintwork. Jimmy and I worked on the car every day during the summer, in the garage at his house, disassembling and rejuvenating her 350 engine, rebuilding her 411 rear end and four-speed transmission. He tested me on the parts, taught me how they went together, and thought I was a cool chick for wanting to get my hands dirty. While my interest in cars began as a way to spend time with him, as we got further into restoring the ’vette, I fell in love with the process of taking something that had been broken and abused and making it come to life again. And the actual mechanics of it just seemed to click for me. Watching a machine be put together was like my two favorite subjects in school—math and music—joining together in tangible form.
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