? ? ?
We are now first in line for takeoff. Stuart Little has driven off in his shiny little sports car to find Margalo, the bird. Henry is taking the family to their ski house in Jackson Hole on their Gulfstream IV and Bruce is sleeping with his mouth open in coach and snoring very softly. Owen has removed the old woman’s headphones and she’s actually playing with him. I begin to talk to her and find she’s a sweet French grandmother who doesn’t laugh at my terrible French. I feel an overpowering love at that moment for United Airlines and their ability to finally get things moving, for my kids, who still seem to like me despite myself, for my imperfect situation, and for my imperfect family that somehow suits me very well.
CHAPTER 36
Crash
A LARGE BLOCK of snow has found its way into the top of my boot. I feel it melting, sliding down over my ankle and surprising my foot. Why am I wearing bulky, suede, and impractical UGGs on a tiny portion of the majestic Mont Blanc? I’m the equivalent of the North Dakota tourist showing up in Times Square wearing five-inch stilettos to fit in with the presumed natives, only to discover that New York is a walking city and that her shoes start squinching her toes five blocks into walking and nobody is noticing her fabulously chic footwear. Not a soul admires my fat boots, not even the ladies in their fur-trimmed ski jackets, making their way toward the Aiguille du Midi, the main ski lift, wearing gold-rimmed sunglasses and speaking Russian. Only Russian women get away with walking uphill in thousand-dollar ski outfits while puffing on a cigarette.
I’m currently the helmswoman on a handmade toboggan that looks like it belongs in a sledding museum. My focus is solely on victory. My team consists of Brigid, Kevin, and myself and we’ve been having trouble steering this alpine artifact. My sister’s kids are regular lugers and we city people have been eating their snow all afternoon. Repeatedly they whiz by us and some sibling competitive feeling that exists between Carron and me roars, and I’m answering the call.
I need a strategy to win and I need a team behind me. I turn to my now eight-year-old.
“Kev, I’m the heaviest and I should be in the back,” I say. He’s wearing a ski helmet that Bruce made him put on.
“But I need to be in the back,” he says, hovering between earnestness and whining.
“Why do you need to be in the back?”
“It makes me feel safe to hold on to you,” he whispers.
“No. I need to be in the back,” I respond firmly. “We can’t let these pseudo-French dropouts beat us.”
Kevin looks puzzled and tries to understand whatever it is that I’ve just said. I turn to Brigid, who is now off the sled, making snow angels and really burning my rubber.
“Come on, Brig, I want to beat them just once.”
“Mommy is whining,” she says, and points her finger to an imaginary friend in the sky, making certain that supreme beings know this about her mother.
“Get on the sled,” I say firmly. “And stop that dreaming stuff.”
My sister rolls her eyes at me and points to Kevin, who seems to have adhered his backside to the last seat in the toboggan, also known as my seat. His snow pants are sodden and heavy and his lips appear bruised, having turned a purplish shade of blue. We’re riding that thin line between having fun and not having any fun.
“Don’t you want to win?” I practically beg of my kid while wondering to myself, what sort of a kid doesn’t want to win?
Kevin also looks upward toward the crystal-blue sky with round, thoughtful eyes. He appears to really consider the question before turning his gaze toward me to say, “No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’?” I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want to win, have I?
“Isn’t he his father’s son?” My sister laughs as she straddles herself onto the last seat of their extended Flexible Flyer, pulling her long legs in with the ease of a teenager. Their team shoves off and showers us with shredded shards of snow.
For the past three days this form of transportation has consumed my children. Bruce usually opts to stay indoors doing planks and watching Owen nap while my sister and I take the six other children out on the mountain. I love seeing their cheeks get red and their bodies winded, something that doesn’t happen often in New York.