"Remember Yosemite" by Megan Trihey

Remember Yosemite

          The kids thought I needed closure, and the doctors told them I had hours to get it. Grant said I’d regret not seeing you one more time, but I see you enough, that goddamn carousel of flashbacks and night sweats I can’t get off. Remember Yosemite? That half-tent, half-cabin thing, the shitty mattress we flattened into a pancake. Missing the first sunrise by a less than a minute, our skin fused together, glued to the warm, sweaty sheets. Not the honeymoon I pictured, but that’s how things went with you. “Freebird, baby,” you’d say. “You. Me. Pismo. Right now. Joey has a board you can borrow.”
          Or that time you showed up outside my office with our bags packed, said, “Birdie, there’s snow on the mountain. Quick.” Like it’d melt before we made the two-hour drive.
          Of course our honeymoon would be just as wild. I’ve done the math, and I’m sure Grant was conceived on that pine needle floor where we stripped bare in the morning, our sleeping bag gritty with splinters. I wanted a girl.
          “No one wants a girl,” you said.
          But I did. An onery one. They’d call her a brat at first. She’d get on our nerves, too, but grow up to be the coolest, most capable chick no one saw coming because she looked so cute in pigtails.
          Remember those Yosemite nights? Rangers shooting firecrackers at black bears while we craned our necks out the canvas, keeping our deliciousness hidden from animals that might see us as snacks already unwrapped. But for years, I only saw the hike up those switchbacks above the rapids. The rocks slipping from under my boot, what felt like a solid five seconds of freefall, though I know it happened in a flash. That was the word I used, said life flashed before my eyes.
          But it wasn’t my life. It was the one I wanted, a glimpse into the future, all the things I’d miss if a careless step cost it all.
          You were so good that day, pulling me up by the pack, holding me against your chest until I stopped shaking.
          “Oh, Birdie, you’re okay,” you said, stroking my hair. “We’re okay. We can fly, remember?”
          With you, those first few months, the visions continued, a big family, a loud, messy handful who repaid my effort with love. I knew I’d be good at managing a household, especially with you at the head. I’d paid attention at your sister’s, the way you held your niece when she got glass stuck in her knee. Kissed her forehead. Made her laugh.
          I felt it again the next day, a new nag in the back of my head when you jumped off the rocks into the river. I’d never been nervous about it before. The cliffs in Cabo, the river in Oregon. Damn, I was right behind you, watching you fly over the edge. I leaned over, suddenly petrified, waiting for the water to spit you up. I’ve wondered if Grant was already growing in me, weeks away from the size of a pea. 
          Then came Kristin and Ellis, those years before I realized you wouldn’t be caught dead giving me a smile. Rigid, you called me. But how else does one manage a family of five? I saw it wear on you, noticed the extra shifts, how often you rolled your eyes. Couldn’t understand why I wasn’t free as a bird with a baby on my boob, another growing inside of me, scraping the inside of my stomach, creeping me out. No more Freebird chasing extremes by your side.
          But those kids lived to catch a glimpse of you. I don’t know how their obsession didn’t send you over the moon. The girls put up with me, but swooned like you were God’s gift. Why weren’t you satisfied with that? They planned that camping trip to the Sierras for your birthday. I wish you could’ve seen the panic on Ellis’s face when you didn’t show.
          “Something must be wrong,” Kristin said. “Daddy wouldn’t forget.”
          How could I look at her sitting cross-legged on your rolled up sleeping bag and tell her the truth? Even Grant, who was old enough to know, gave you the benefit of the doubt.
          “Maybe his tire is flat,” he said. “We should look for him.”
          That’s how we spent your birthday, Don. Piling into the van with our camping gear, rolling around town looking for your broke down car.
          But you never missed any of your solo camping trips, did you? So reliably gone on the weekends, ‘reconnecting with nature.’ You must’ve thought I was the densest woman on the planet, planting welcome home kisses on your pale face, dismissing the whiffs of vanilla. Once, I pulled out our old box of pictures and camping permits, picked one of me turned to the side in cutoffs and a bikini top, sticking out my butt, blowing you a kiss. I took the picture downstairs and slipped it in the folds of your rolled-up bag.
          Your next trip fell on the same weekend we hosted ten of Kristen’s friends from Girl Scouts, each one louder and pitchier than the last.
          “Let’s see who can scream the longest,” yelled a redhead in a yellow nightgown.
          I was no match. I let Grant go to a buddy’s, and took Ellis to the master bedroom, the only door with a lock. When you got home the next afternoon, house returned to normal, you didn’t mention the Polaroid. I found it later still stuck in the folds, bag never unrolled.
          But the days were full of bottomless need. Sticky, messy mornings, afternoons of homework, practicing, pushing, keeping up with stains, dinner always looming, all piling into a towering mosaic of moments I couldn’t tell apart, but couldn’t live without. You were part of the big picture. A piece of my puzzle, and I couldn’t be whole if something happened to you. Same for our children. So I’ve been careful. Yes, I’ve been rigid. The cement in the family structure, keeping it together and steeling myself against the disdain of my children, the distance of my husband. Even when you sauntered in and tried to pass off your suspension as a surprise vacation, what did I do? Stab you? Slap you? Raise my voice?
          No, I said, “I just read about a rodeo in Paso Robles,” and the kids lit up. I helped them pack, folded your underwear and shirts into your suitcase, everyone ready to go except me, no one willing to wait.
          You had to know it would only take a couple calls to find out about all the complaints on your route, the incessant ogling and ass-grazes. I never thought of leaving you, but I started to think the kids would be better off without you for a dad. The example you set for Grant. The thin, useless love you taught Kristin and Ellis to expect from men. I should’ve cut you out before you got your claws in them, twisted their perceptions and forced them to choose.
          And then you left, moved in with the only receptionist who fell for it. Grant went to college. Then Kristin. Ellis would rather live in a cracker box apartment than with me in our big, empty home. What was I supposed to do with all the lists in my brain? The schedules, the practical rush of a bustling unit, phone numbers memorized after years of slumber parties and carpools. The dates of their shots, plays, appointments. I could set the table for five with my eyes closed. What was I supposed to do with four empty seats at the table, Donny?
          “Birdie,” you said that night in Yosemite. “We’re sneaking into the hot springs. You won’t need a suit.”
          You led me down the dark trail, grass trampled by other adventurous couples. Pulled off my clothes and held my hand while we stepped into the warm water. I laid with my back against your chest. You wrapped your arms around me and burrowed your face into my neck. I leaned my head on your shoulder, eyes drifting to the patch of stars between shadowy branches. “My husband,” I said.
          You nuzzled closer. “Until death do us part.”
          You’d said it the week before, inside your mother’s church. But it felt different in the water, like you’d seen the future, too, us tied by history and hate, together until the steady beep flattened. Ellis said she can hear the machines from the parking lot. I’ve spent a lot of time on the front porch with a martini these last few nights. From the edge of a dusty Adirondack, I lean into the wind, listen for your final heartbeat, for the moment I can be wide-winged and wild again like those nights in our half-tent, half-cabin thing beneath a canopy of sequoias, fireworks blasting away the worst of our worries.

Megan Trihey

Megan Trihey writes about coming to terms with leaving things behind. She worked as a television producer for two decades before earning an MFA from Pacific University, where she completed a short story collection. Her stories are forthcoming in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine and Pattern.

Headshot: Megan Trihey

Photo Credit: Haley Villegas