The Last One(48)

She is dead.

I think the words, to see how they make me feel. They don’t have any effect I can discern. They should make me feel bad, I want them to, but they don’t. I remember when I got into Columbia and she lumbered all over town, bragging: It was her accomplishment, not mine. But anytime I fail—losing that derby when I was eight, not getting the Wildlife Conservation Society job two years ago—she gets this air about her like she knew I wouldn’t make it, like it was reckless of me even to try. And still I tried, for years I tried so hard. I remember my wedding day, how joyful I felt. How lucky. I remember my mother leaning in to kiss my cheek at the reception. “You look beautiful,” she said. “Just like me when I was young.” Her past: my present. Her present: my future. Like a curse. The worst part is I’ve seen the photos; I know she was happy once too.

My dad, though. That’s harder. We’re not close—somewhere in my adolescence we lost our ability to communicate, and I don’t think he understands why I worked so hard to get away from a place he loves so dearly. But I can’t think of him without a buzz of warm nostalgia, without imagining the sweet aroma of baking cinnamon and maple. Always maple.

“Is it possible to have a bad childhood memory about baking?” I wonder.

“What?” says Brennan.

“Never mind,” I say, and I think, These thoughts aren’t for you.

My dad and I shared eighteen years, but baking is pretty much all I remember. When I was little, I would help him in his shop before school. My specialty was mushing bananas for the maple banana bread. That, and sprinkling the maple sugar on top of the batter once it’d been poured into the loaf pans. I want to remember something else, something not about food, but all that comes to me is my fourth-grade birthday—whatever age that was. It was a dolphin-themed party, my favorite animal at the time, though I wouldn’t see one in person for years yet. My dad baked the cake, of course—dolphin-shaped, slathered in maple buttercream—and there was a pi?ata. Again, dolphin-shaped. Most of my class was there. David Moreau gave me a kite. We flew it together that weekend. Or was that fifth grade? I’m not sure. I remember my dad presenting the dolphin cake, and my mom gnawing on a thumbnail as she poured orange soda from a can into a clear plastic cup.

And then I have it—my dad cheering in the bleachers. It’s high school, a track meet my freshman year, long before I made captain. Was it my first meet? In my memory it has all the intensity of a first. I remember the gurgling nerves in my stomach, the slight pain as I stretched my hamstring. I remember my father yelling my name, waving. The meet wasn’t at our home track; it was in another town a half hour’s drive from my high school. Dad closed the shop early to come, to see me.

“Mae, I’m sorry.”

I blink. The race is gone; I don’t remember how I ran, if I placed.

“It’s hard to think about her,” says Brennan. “I miss her. And…and I just miss her.”

It takes me a moment to realize who he’s talking about.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m sure she’s watching.”

“I know,” he says. He crosses himself; the bag hanging from his arm thwaps his chest.

My cheeks immediately begin to sizzle. That’s not what I meant. Even if I believed his mother was dead I never would have meant it that way. What’s worse—now that he’s distorted my words they’ll probably air them. The thought of contributing, even mistakenly, to the meaningless spirituality that so pervades American media sickens me.

After a few more steps, Brennan starts rambling about his stupid fish, how he brought it to the church in its bowl, but then a neighbor’s cat ate it. He was in the bathroom filling water bottles when it happened.

“It was just a fish,” I blurt. “They’re meant to be eaten.”

“But—”

“Please, just—please stop talking for five minutes.”

He looks at me, bug-eyed, but doesn’t even last a minute before he starts telling me about his brother and the first time they rode the subway alone together. He yammers about all the rats they saw and how that must be what the entire subway system is now: rats. “I hate rats,” he says, and with this at least I can’t disagree. It’s part of my job to hold up rats, talk about how the stigma’s wrong—they’re actually very clean animals—and I do it. I smile to allay the class’s squirmy fears, but inside I’m cringing too; I’ve never been able to stand how their naked tails feel resting on the inside of my arm. So I just stand there, smiling, and pretend an open-mindedness I’ve never felt, hoping it will become true.

That night, after Brennan’s crawled into his rickety wind tunnel, I don’t even try to sleep. I keep the fire bright and sit in its quietly crackling company. My thoughts wind back to the first day of filming, after all the contracts were signed and our final phone calls home made—a slew of I-love-yous and good-lucks, all real but nothing new. I remember walking to the field where the first Challenge started and not being scared, not anymore. I was happy, excited; I know that’s how I felt, but the memory is like faded sweetness in the back of my throat—a reminder, not a taste. I want to feel that way again. I want to know I can feel that way again.

A great horned owl calls somewhere off in the dark. I close my eyes to listen. To me, the great horned owl has always sounded mildly aggressive, its call an almost guttural hur hur-hur hurrrrr hur-hur as opposed to the inquisitive hoo commonly attributed to its kin. I don’t think they look wise either. Vexed is more like it, what with their sharply turned-down brows and extended ear tufts.