My Dark Vanessa(122)
It keeps snowing. I do my best to dig out my car, drive the gravel road, but when I gun the engine to get up the hill and onto the highway, the tires just spin. I turn the car around and spend another night. While we watch TV, commercials for the Winter Olympics play, the spray of snow from a freestyle skier, a gleaming bobsled careening down an icy track, a figure skater launching her body into the air, arms crossed tight and eyes squeezed shut.
“Remember when you used to skate?” Mom asks.
I try to think: fuzzy memories of cracked white leather, the ache in my ankles after an hour of balancing on the blades.
“For a while, it was all you wanted to do,” she says. “We couldn’t get you to come inside, but I didn’t want you on the lake without me watching. I was too scared of you falling through. Dad went out with the hose and flooded the front yard. Do you remember that?”
Vaguely, I do—skating after dark, maneuvering around the tree roots that jutted through the rough ice, trying to work up the courage to attempt a jump.
“You weren’t scared of anything,” Mom says. “Everyone thinks that about their kid, but you really weren’t.”
We watch the skater glide across the rink. She turns on the tips of her blades, suddenly backward, arms outstretched, ponytail whipping across her face. Another change of direction and she’s on one leg, launching off into a tight spin, her arms stretched above her head now, her body seeming to grow longer the faster she spins.
In the morning, the sky is blue and the snow so bright it hurts our eyes. We sprinkle kitty litter and rock salt on the road and the tires are able to grab. At the top of the hill, I stop and watch Mom walk slowly home, pulling behind her a sled stacked with bags of litter and salt.
*
The air is sharp with ammonia as I walk through rows of kennels, the concrete floor painted gray and hospital green. One dog starts barking, setting off the rest of them, a range of voices echoing against cinder block. When I was a kid, Dad and I used to joke that when dogs bark all they’re saying is I’m a dog! I’m a dog! I’m a dog! But these barks are desperate and scared. They sound more like please please please.
I stop at a kennel holding a mutt with a blocky head and ghost-gray fur. The sign hanging on the kennel lists the breed as Pit bull, Weimaraner, ??? The dog’s rose ears pitch forward as I press my hand against the cage. She gives my palm a sniff, two licks. A cautious tail wag.
I name her Jolene after she tips back her head and howls along to Dolly Parton on her first night home. In the mornings, I take her out before I even brush my teeth, and we walk from one end of the peninsula to the other, ocean to ocean. When we wait at crosswalks, she leans into my legs and mouths my hand out of pure joy, her panting breaths clouding in the cold air.
We’re walking on Commercial Street, past the city pier, when I see Taylor emerge from a bakery doorway, coffee and wax paper bag in hand. It takes a moment for me to believe it’s truly her and not my brain’s wishful thinking.
She sees Jo first; her face lights up as Jo’s tail thumps against my legs. Then a double take when she notices me, as though to make sure her own mind isn’t playing tricks.
“Vanessa,” she says. “I didn’t know you had a dog.” She drops to her knees and holds her coffee above her head as Jo launches forward and licks her face.
“I just got her,” I say. “She comes on a little strong.”
“Oh, that’s ok.” Taylor laughs. “I can be intense, too.” In a singsongy voice she repeats, “That’s ok, that’s ok.” It makes Jo’s back arch, her entire body wriggle. Taylor smiles up at me, flashing small straight teeth. Her canines are pointy, like little fangs, same as mine.
“I know I failed you,” I say.
It’s the chance meeting that makes me say it, having her in front of me when I didn’t expect it, didn’t prepare. Taylor frowns but doesn’t look up at me. She keeps her eyes fixed on Jo, scratching behind her ears. For a moment, I wonder if she’ll ignore me, pretend I never said it.
“No,” she says, “you didn’t fail me. Or, if you did, then I did, too. I knew he’d hurt other girls and it still took me years to do anything about it.” She looks up at me then, her eyes two blue pools. “What could we have done? We were just girls.”
I know what she means—not that we were helpless by choice, but that the world forced us to be. Who would have believed us, who would have cared?
“I saw the article,” I say. “It was . . .”
“Disappointing?” Taylor rights herself, adjusts her purse. “Though maybe not for you.”
“I know you invested a lot in it.”
“Yeah, well. I thought it would bring me closure, but now I’m angrier than before.” She scrunches her nose, fiddles with the lid of her coffee cup. “Honestly, she was kind of sleazy. I should’ve known better.”
“That journalist?”
Taylor nods. “I don’t think she actually cared. She just wanted to ride the wave, get a good byline. Which I knew going into it, but I still thought it would make me feel empowered or whatever. Instead I feel taken advantage of all over again.” She smirks, scratches Jo behind the ears. “Been thinking about starting therapy. I tried it before and it didn’t really do much, but I need to do something.”