Off the Cliff

Off the Cliff

a short story by Jeff Minton

Susan’s little white car toiled up the steep incline of the mountain road.  She drove in silence, hearing but not listening to the whine of the engine, the cabin air too dry from the overworked heater, beside her an urn and a black pleather purse overstuffed with bound stacks of cash.

Large snowflakes began falling and melting on the windshield. 

Susan cocked her head.  It was only November, unusual for it to snow this early in Tennessee.  She surveyed the sky.  Thin beams of sunlight pierced gray clouds high above, shining down like searchlights on the valleys and hills and outstretched plains beyond a clearing on the cliffside of the road.

Susan turned the wipers on low and glued her eyes to the lineless pavement.  She tried to resist bobbing her head to the screech-thump rhythm, entranced by falling snow and skeleton trees and trying not to think.  A vista of bluish peaks on the Smoky Mountain horizon flashed through gaps in the trees.  The green posts of the guardrail cut a solid line into her periphery.  She remembered those green posts from her childhood--staring out Mee-maw’s passenger window, striving in vain to visually separate them as they blurred passed.

Susan blinked hard and yawned.  The snow was thick in the air.  Sunbeams no longer shone through the dark cloud ceiling.  A faded brown sign stood up ahead.  Susan stopped and squinted to read.  Snowy, leafless branches blocked part of the sign.  The letters G-o-r-d and the number 10 stood out clearly.

She felt at once wakeful.  Ten miles to Gordman’s Bluff.  She flipped her trip-set from 196 back to 000.  “Just a bit longer, now, Mee-maw.”

You mind your tone, Simple Suzy.

A tune chirped out of Susan’s purse.  She reached over and brought out her vibrating phone and worked it open with one hand.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hey, chick.”  It was her husband, Chris.

“Hi, hon.”

“Are you all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . are you done . . . with everything . . . or . . .”

“Oh, no, I’m not there yet.”

“Oh.  Are you getting any snow? There’s a storm coming your way. I didn’t think to check before you left.  I just saw the radar.”

Susan glanced at the spotted sky then to the road flurried with windblown powder.

“A little,” she said.  “I can handle it.”

“You might want to think about a motel.  Aren’t there some cabins up by where you’re heading?”

“I’ll be fine.  I’ll call you if it gets bad.”

“Alright,” he said.  “Be safe.  How’s your nausea?”

“Okay.”

“Maybe you’re finally getting over it?”

“Yeah, could be.”

Warm static crackled in her ear.  Her husband clacked his fingernails to the galloping beat that filled his head when his mouth stopped working.

Susan caught herself thumping the same rhythm out on her padded steering wheel.

“Quite the conversation,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.  I’ll talk to you later, okay.  It was good hearing your voice.”

“Wait,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I’ve got some . . . bad news.”

“Spit it out.”

“You sure you don’t want to wait until you’re done with your Grandma?”

“Just tell me.”

“O-kay.  I just got off the phone with the lawyer guy, and . . . well . . . you were right.  Your grandmother gave everything to charity.  We’re not getting so much as a jewelry box from the woman.”

Susan closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“Suze? You there?”

“Yeah.  Just watching the road.”

“Sorry I didn’t believe you before.  I’m a little shocked, I gotta tell you.  What a wretched old hag.  I mean--”

“Chris . . . don’t, okay?  It’s fine.  I told you.  I don’t want anything from her.”

“Sorry,” he said.  “Just do what you gotta do and get back home.  Let’s be done with that bitch forever.  At least we’ll get that out of the deal.”

“I’ll be back before dark.”

Silence hissed.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too, baby,” he said.  “Oh yeah, I’ve got some good news, too.  I think I got a job lined up.  I’ll have to go to Seattle for a few weeks, but it’s a big one from the sound of it.  Should carry us for a couple of months.  And this guy said he got my name from Mark Switzer; remember the guy with the orange-juice business.  He put in a good word for me.”

“That’s great,” she said.

She heard commotion in the background: “But Daddy,” was all she could make out, then some high-pitched muffled whining.

“No, honey, just . . . hold on a sec, Daddy’ll be off . . . Emily . . .”  His voice came back to the phone.  “Hey, babe.  I gotta go.”

“Okay,” Susan answered.  “She needs a nap, hon.  It’s after noon.”

“I know.  I got it.  Good luck with everything.  I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Susan said.  “Tell Emy I love her.”

“No no no, Emily.”  The line went silent.

Susan closed her phone and dropped it to her lap then grabbed it again, checked to make sure the previous call was disconnected, and dialed.

Her hand trembled as she raised the phone to her ear.

“Harthwright Law,” a female voice answered.  “How may I assist you?”

“Is Mr. Harthwright in?”  Susan’s voice shook with her hand.

“Whom may I ask is--“

“Susan Weathersbee.”

“One moment.”

Susan’s stomach ached.

“Afternoon, Susan,” came a man’s voice.  “Are we okay to talk?”

“Yeah, I’m alone.  So you talked to Chris?”

“Yes, Ma’am.  He took it like a man standing up, considering.”

“Sorry to ask you to lie like that.”

Mr. Harthwright laughed.  “I’m a lawyer, Susan.”

Susan smiled a little.  “So are we done?”

“I think we have everything about wrapped up.  As it stands, your rights to the estate and all of your grandmother’s assets have been signed over to the governor.  The safe deposit box is all taken care of.”

“Did you find out for sure about the tax situation?” Susan asked.

“Technically you never inherited any part of the property, so you can’t be taxed.  But remember, if you took out anything of value from that safety deposit box, IRS’ll want to know about it.  So, if you did, and--I don’t need to know about it--you be careful with any big spending.  That’s all I’m saying.  They’ll be watching.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Susan said.  “I want no part of that woman’s money.  Is there any other possible way Chris could find out?”

“It is between you, me, and the state, Susan, and none of us have reason to tell him.”

“And the state keeps all the money for the house?” she asked.

“A hundred percent.”

“No charities, right?”

“Everything of hers outside of that safe deposit box belongs to Tennessee now.”

Susan breathed deep and settled back into the worn form of the threadbare seat.  “Thank you, Bill . . . really.  I’m sorry to ask so much of you.”

“I wish I could say I did it out of the kindness of my heart, Susan.”

Susan glared down at the money in her purse.  “Still, thanks.”

“You take care of yourself, Suzy, and watch out for that mother of yours for me, would you?  You give her my best.  She out of the hospital?”

“She’s fine.”

“Alright then.  Oh, Susan, one more thing . . . I think it’s for the best we don’t do business in the future.  Avoid any uncomfortable situations.”

“Sure.  I understand.”

“Take care, Suzy.”

“You too.”

Susan closed her phone with a plastic snap and tossed it into her purse without looking.  She puffed her cheeks and let her air out slowly.  The plastic fingernails of her right hand scraped through her hair and across her scalp to the back of her neck.

She realized she was driving too fast on the snow-dusted road.  Her trip-set read 13, three miles past her mark.  “Agh!” she said, hitting her brakes.  The brakes locked and the car skidded before it stopped.  She looked for a place to turn around.  The road was too narrow. 

“Shit.  Shit.  Shit.”  She pummeled the top of her steering wheel with the base of her palm and leaned forward and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Get up.  Get out of bed.  You’re embarrassing me.

Susan inched the car forward.  There had to be a turnaround somewhere up here.  She drove up the middle of the road for another mile--the guardrail with the green posts to her right, rock wall to the left, fingering branches reaching out for her all along the way.  It was all squeezing in.  Soon she’d be up to the cabins atop the mountain.

She saw a wide spot in the road ahead--a small parking area overlooking a high cliff.  She started to pull in then slammed her brakes and stopped just short of sideswiping a parked vehicle camouflaged with snow.

A bundle of blankets jumped from the parked car and ran toward her.  A woman, pale as the snow around her, pounded on Susan’s window.  Susan cranked it down.

“Oh God! Thank God!” the woman said.  She was crying.

Susan found no immediate response, the gears of her mind grinding against this change.

The woman’s elated face withered in Susan’s silence.  “Can you give us a ride?” the woman asked.

“Who’s we?” Susan replied.

“Just me and my kids.  Two kids.”  Her lips quivered with such speed Susan paused for a moment to take it in.

“Please?” the woman said.

“Well, I, I don’t know, I really have--” Susan began.

“Oh God, please?  Please help us.  We’ve been sitting in a freezing car for three hours.  Just to the cabins up the road?”

Susan thought about offering her cell phone, but she imagined those kids in that car shivering and instead said, “Fine . . . no problem.”

“Thank you.  Thank you so much.”  The woman turned and ran back to her car.

Susan tucked her purse safely under her legs.

The woman ran back toward Susan with a baby carrier and a kid at her side about the same age as Emily back home.

“You guys could probably all huddle in the back pretty cozy if you can squeeze through,” Susan said.

After a minute of rustling jackets the family settled in.  The cold air blowing in from the open passenger door bit at Susan’s bare arms.  She had to climb across the car to shut the door.  Susan sat back in her seat, clicked her seatbelt, and shifted into gear.

“Sorry for the hassle,” the woman said from the back.  “I’m sure you’ve got better things to do today.”

“No, it’s fine.  It’s only what, five miles or so?” Susan asked.

“I’m not sure really,” the woman said.  “Are you staying up at Yellow Lodge?”

“Nope,” Susan said.

“Oh.”

“I’m Susan,” Susan said, reaching back.

The woman shook Susan’s hand with an icy grip.

“Lauren,” she replied.

Susan checked the mirrors for traffic, backed up, and started forward again.  The tires spun before catching and the car fishtailed.  Susan gripped the wheel tighter.  She felt her palms begin to leak moisture into the cloth of the steering wheel cover.

Susan could hear teeth chattering and uneasy breathing coming from the back.  The baby was starting to fuss.  She adjusted the rearview mirror to get a look at the family.  The mother had cupped her hands around her face with her middle fingertips digging into the corners of her eyes.  The little boy sat whimpering, reaching for his mother.  He was probably three or four years old, cheeks bright red as they warmed.

“Take your toy!” the woman said in a sharp whisper.  She threw a fluffy yellow object at the kid.  The boy took it sheepishly.  “We’re okay now, alright.  Just be good.”

The boy settled down.  Susan kept an eye on him for the first few minutes of the trip.  He livened up as they drove.  His toy was dive bombing into his lap along with sound effects.  He began rocking back and forth whipping the nylon sleeves of his ski jacket against his body, delighted at the sounds it made.  Susan thought of the time Emily got a hold of the scissors and cut a gash into the couch cushion because she liked the way it talked when she did.

Susan smiled at the kid in the rearview but he wasn’t looking.

“You guys getting any heat back there?” Susan asked.

“We’re fine.  Thank you,” the woman said.

“Mommy . . . I’m fweezin’ my balls indo ice,” the kid said.

A laugh sputtered out of Susan’s lips.  She stifled it the best she could down to a compressed smile and a snort.

“Harvey!” Lauren said.  “I’m sorry.  God only knows what this kid learns from his father.”

“Don’t be,” Susan said.  “I can use a laugh.”

Susan saw the woman sit back a little more comfortably.  Their eyes met in the mirror, and Susan looked away.  Susan adjusted the mirror to its proper position.

“So, you all on vacation?” Susan asked.

“In theory,” Lauren said.

“Just you three?”

“Yeah . . . it’s been a rough year, you know what I’m saying.  Just us three now.  My mom sent us up here to get away or whatever.  We’re living with her now until . . . I’m sorry.  It doesn’t matter.  You don’t want to hear my shit.”

“Well, maybe things’ll turn around for you?” Susan said.  “Might as well have some fun while you’re up here.”

“Yeah,” the woman huffed.  “We came down to see the sunrise out over that cliff this morning.  Left the car on for heat and ran outta gas.  I wasn’t even paying attention.  I swear five people just drove right past us.  We’d’ve froze if we hadn’t brought the blankets from the cabin.”

“We fwoze our balls indo ice!” Harvey said, giggling.

Susan smiled and held her tongue while the mother snapped at her son.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said again.  “I’m not usually like this.”  Despair crept into her voice.  “We’re a good family.  I’m a good mother.  It’s just . . . how much can I take, you know.”

“You got any time left in the cabin?”

“We’re supposed to be out by noon.”

“Well, it looks like you’ll have another day.  You should try to make the most of it.”

“Yeah, right.  Now I get to deal with my fucking worthless car and explain this shit to my boss.”

The car went silent, leaving only that rattlebox hum of the engine to fill the void.  The kid stopped bouncing around.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said.  “Maybe it’s better if I just keep quiet until we get there.”

“Hey,” Susan said, “I understand.”

Lauren paused then spoke in a low voice: “Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” Susan said.

“Do you ever feel like you just . . . can’t do it?  I mean . . . everyone’s got a job to do.  They got expectations and responsibilities and people to please.  So what if you just can’t do it.  Or if you just don’t want to.”

“Sure . . .” Susan said, thinking about it.  “I’ve felt like that.  It doesn’t help, though.  You have to get over it, or . . . you keep feeling helpless and miserable.  You can’t live like that.  How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was twenty-eight before I started to make any sense out of my life.  And I’m still working on it, believe me.”

“What changed?” Lauren asked.

“I don’t know.  I just stopped whining about everything.  I kind of had to.  I had a kid.  I was out of college.  I needed to move on.  More than anything I think I just let go of some things, you know?”

“Not really.”

“You do what you gotta do, and don’t think too hard about it.  Just do it.  Like Nike says.”

The sound of gravel crackling under tires stole Susan’s attention.

There in front of her was that old yellow sign.  The paint was chipping.  An inch of snow sat caked on top of the weathered wood as if it were posing for a rustic postcard.  Susan remembered staring at it for hours from the porch swing of the cabin just ahead after Mee-maw locked her on the porch for the night.

This bed’s plenty big enough for us both, so you’re too good to sleep with me, you can sleep outside.  Simple as that. 

Susan gazed at the front door of Cabin A-1 at the crest of the circle drive, and she saw in her memory that cabin door shut in her face, cut in half with moonlight, and she heard the deadbolt click into place.

“We’re just ahead.  Cabin A-One.  First one on the right.”

Susan rolled the car up to the cabin and stopped.  “Well, this is it, I suppose.”

Susan leaned over and pushed the door open.  The wind caught the door like a sail and nearly ripped it from its hinges.  It felt thirty degrees colder than ten minutes before.  Susan clutched her shoulders with her hands and shivered.

Lauren climbed out and reached back in to grab her things.  Harvey snatched one of the blankets covering the baby carrier and handed it to Susan.

“Doan fweeze indo ice, Wady,” he said.

Susan pushed the blanket back, smiling.  “It’s okay; you give it to your little brother instead.  I’ll be fine.”

“Umm, hehdo, Wady.  He gots a bagina,” Harvey said.

Susan grinned.  “Excuse me . . . give it to your sister, okay?”

“Harvey, come on it’s freezing!”

Susan heard him say “Are you go fweeze you balls in--“ before the wind carried away his voice.

The woman reached back and grabbed her baby, smiled up front to Susan, and said, “Thanks a million.”

“Take care,” Susan said.  “Best of luck.”

Lauren grunted and wrestled the door shut against the wind while keeping the baby carrier from spilling over.

Susan watched the family enter their cabin.  Lauren yelled at Harvey to get inside.  Susan knew the look on Lauren’s face.  She was the mom; she had two precious lives in her hands, and she was failing.

That porch swing rocked with the wind--cold, empty, small, just like Susan remembered.  She stared forward at a salted grove of trees across a now entirely white field.  The snowflakes fell smaller and faster.  Susan thought about taking up in one of these cabins and waiting for sunshine, but the thought of spending a night up here with Mee-maw made her stomach turn.

“You ready?” she asked the urn.

Susan drove slow and made a point to focus on the snow-swept road instead of the stuff in her head.  She imagined herself skidding off the edge and the look on her husband’s and daughter’s faces when they found out Mommy was gone--and all because of Mee-maw.

Susan imagined Mee-maw up there or maybe down below praying that Susan did fly off the road.  She could see the backwards smile Mee-maw wore--perfect fake teeth and wrinkles frowning all around her mouth.  You got a world to learn before you make a family, Simple Suzy.  It ain’t like in those movies you’re always watchin’.  Life’s hard.  Look at your Mom.  You got her wanderlust.  I see it in your eyes.  You get all excited and think you know what’s best and bed the first man comes your way, and you ‘fore you know it you got someone else to care for when you can’t even care for yourself.  And you know what you’ll do.  You’ll run off on ‘em just like your mom ran off on you.  You ain’t any different.  And there won’t be any Mee-maws come along and sweep ‘em up like you had.  No Ma’am.  You mind my words, Suzy.  You mind my words.

How the woman would love to sit up on her cloud with her little Suzy by her side and point down at Susan’s husband when he was all alone and miserable with his child and say, “Look there Suzers, and see if I didn’t tell you so.”

Susan did not miss the sign this time: Gordman’s Bluff, painted in white letters on an old plank, swinging in the strong wind.  She turned onto a dirt road with patches of brown still showing under the protective canopies of giant trees with tangled branches.  The road ended and gave way to a flat outcrop of rock and a hundred miles of Tennessee countryside.

“Welp . . . here we are,” Susan said, upturning her palm to the view, inviting Mee-maw to look.

Susan reached back to the floor behind her seat and grabbed a bundle of wool.  She twisted herself into her coat, pulled her stocking cap over her ears, slid her hand into one glove, and patted around for the other one.  She looked back and searched the floor to find it and saw a fluffy yellow guy lying on his side in the middle of the back seat.  Harvey’s plush Pikachu toy.

“Ah damnit,” she said, just as her hand found the other glove. 

She put the toy out of her mind.  The wind fought with her as she pushed the door open.  The cold bit at her nose and stung her eyes.  She grabbed her purse, walked around to the passenger door, gathered up a cardboard box on the passenger floor and the urn, and made out for the cliff.  Her feet crept forward, testing each step until she made it to the edge.

She sat dangling her legs off the cliff, looking out at the only thing she could remember that ever shut Mee-maw’s flapping mouth for any length of time.  This view.  There was something here that got to Mee-maw, loosened her face.  Last time Susan was here she was nine.  She had sat with Mee-maw for half-an-hour just staring down at the waiting world in silence.  It was nice, but it was Mee-maw’s nice, and it was over the second they got back to the car.

Sheets of snow tumbled across the sky by the acre.  Hills of trees rippled out in diminishing waves that eventually flattened and came to a hazy point at the end of the world.  There was something lonely out there as well.  Something sad and horrible, like every foot of land was more dismal than the foot before, and Susan could see the world wasting away.

The wind blew at Susan from her left, and that eye was watering up.  She had to squint to favor her right.  Her cheeks burned.  She sniffled.

Susan set the box down to her left, the urn to her right, and kept the purse in her lap.  She twisted the urn into the ground until the half-inch of snow formed a lip around the base to help keep it in place.  The wind howled a continuous note that rose and fell, rose and fell.

“This is it, Margret,” Susan yelled out.  Her voice was tiny in the wind.

Susan dumped the contents of the box onto the rock.  This was all the crap she could find in her own house that Mee-maw had given her over the years.  She grabbed three porcelain plates.  On each was written a word, etched finely in golden calligraphy: Father, Son, Holy Ghost.  They were Mee-maw’s wedding present to Susan, sent through the mail.

“Remember these?” Susan said, holding the plates for Mee-maw to see.

She tossed them into the snowy sky.

She threw porcelain angels and Christmas ornaments and a whole crochet kit and a raggedy old doll and half-a-dozen framed pictures and some other junk over the ledge.  When she ran out of stuff to throw, she put her hands on her purse and closed her eyes. 

Her purse held the contents of Mee-maw’s safety deposit box: nine stacks of hundred-dollar bills, each bound with a purple paper strip.  Ninety-thousand dollars after the funeral expenses and the five thousand two hundred sixty-four dollars Susan paid to Mr. Harthwright to round it off.  Ninety-thousand dollars.

“One last thing,” Susan said, staring into her open purse.

The cold left her in that moment.  The wind quieted.  The blackness of her mind filled with her husband’s beautiful stubbly face and goofy crooked-tooth smile.  She hoped she could look at him again without cowering.  She breathed sharp cold.

She took out the stacks of money and placed them neatly on her lap.  This was Mee-maw’s poison.  This was greed and cruelty and malice.  This was Mee-maw’s father’s money, and his father’s before that, and backward.  This was Susan’s great-great-great grandfather’s money that he reaped from slaving-out labor on his tobacco farm in southern Tennessee.  This is what empowered them.  This is all they were.

Susan held the money firmly in place with her forearm to make sure it didn’t blow away--not yet, not until she said so.

“I don’t need you,” Susan said, to Mee-maw, to the money.  She scowled and repeated through grit teeth.  “I don’t need you.  I don’t want you.”

She held her breath on the exhale.  The world stopped spinning.  All the animals in the forest below looked up at Susan in waiting.  The snow froze in the air.  This was her moment.  This was it.  Fuck you, Mee-maw.

Then Susan’s hands betrayed her.  They clutched instead of threw.  Her window of glory slammed shut in her face, and through its impenetrable glass she saw the most peculiar thing, that fluffy yellow Pikachu toy.

Fucking Pikachu.

That image led Susan to think of the woman and her two kids.  She imagined the woman calling her boss and explaining how her car broke down and she didn’t have the money to fix it, and how it might be a couple days before she could get back to work.  She imagined the woman calling her mother for help.

Susan shivered against the shrill wind.  She scrambled backward, still sitting, feet slipping over the wet rocks as she pumped her legs, afraid suddenly of falling off.  One shoe accidently kicked the urn over the edge.  She clenched the money with both arms against her chest.  She hooked a foot through her purse strap and retrieved it.  She carefully placed each stack of bills inside.  She rolled to her belly, careful not to stress the embryo inside her, then rose on her knees and crawled until she felt dirt.  She stood and ran to the car.

Susan drove back toward the cabins.  Her car fishtailed.  Her tires spun and caught.  Patches of road appeared occasionally from beneath the snow.  Susan aimed her wheels at the drier spots.

Just before the road became the entrance to the Yellow Lodge cabins, Susan’s car slid gently off the road.  Her right rear tire entrenched itself in dirt, cutting sideways with the pull of gravity as it spun.  The rear bumper knocked against the guardrail.

Susan let off the gas, killed the car, grabbed her purse and Pikachu, and stepped out. 

As she walked, she imagined the look on the woman’s face--Susan thought to remember her name . . . Lauren--the look on Lauren’s face when she found a purse on her doorstep with ninety thousand dollars inside.  Susan imagined how happy she would be if some mysterious person left a bag like that on her own doorstep.  Susan thought how she wished she could be that stranger for herself.

Susan knelt down and emptied out her purse onto the ground.  She picked up her wallet and her mace and a case of lipstick and a compact and her cell phone and three handfuls of loose papers and gum wrappers and trash, and she shoved it all into her coat pockets.

She put the money back into her purse along with the Pikachu toy.  She stood.  The cold numbed her face.  A film of water shielded her eyes against the biting wind.

We fwoze our balls indo ice, Susan thought, and she smiled, and then laughed until she choked on the cold as she walked to the cabins.

She eyed Cabin A-1 as she went around the drive in the opposite direction.  She walked down a small hill to a stone cottage with lit windows and smoke billowing from its rooftop.

Inside was warmth and welcome.  A vaguely familiar old man sat on a couch in the lounge watching a Woody Allen movie.  He wore an orange stocking cap and a plaid woolen jacket and tan boots even indoors.  He wore a gray mustache and wire glasses on his bony face loose with skin.

The man jumped up when she entered.  He approached her.

         “Oh, good God,” he said.  “Ma’am, are you just comin’ in in this?”

         “Yeah.  I need a place to stay for the night.”

         He brushed snow from Susan’s sleeves and felt each of her cheeks with the back of his rough hand.

         “You’re an icicle.  You must be some kinda crazy to come here in this weather.  Here--”  He helped her out of her coat.  “--let me take this.”  He hung the coat on an old wooden rack near the door.

         “Come, have a seat,” he said, leading her to the recliner he had been sitting in.  He sat her down and gave her a blanket.  Susan held her purse underneath.

         “Do you like tea, or cocoa . . . coffee?”

         “Cocoa,” Susan said, surprised at her answer.  She couldn’t remember the last time she had it.

         “You bet,” he said.

         Susan rocked in the chair, holding her purse, staring at the uneven pattern of roundish stones and grouted lines that made up the wall around the blazing fireplace.

         The man returned with a steaming cup and a folding TV tray.  He set up the tray next to the chair and placed the cup on top.

         “Ma’am . . . are you all right?”

         Susan looked up at him and smiled.  “Yeah, I’m okay.  I just . . . need a minute to warm up.”

         The man smiled back, nodded, and walked away.

         Susan freed an arm from the blanket to grab the cocoa.  She breathed in the steam at first and then sipped it, closing her eyes as it warmed her throat and chest.  The leather of her half-frozen purse against her other arm kept her cold.

         She tried to think how she was going to do it.  Would she just leave the money on the doorstep?  What if Lauren missed it?  Would she hang it from the doorknob?  Would she knock and run away?  What if Lauren saw her?

         She drew a longer sip from her cup now that it was cooling a bit.  She tried to picture Lauren’s face when she saw the money.  Shock? Jubilance? Confusion? Shame?  Would she even take the money?  Would she be frightened?  Would she watch over her shoulder for the next few years like she owed something to someone who could at any time come to collect?  Would she call the police and trace the money back to Susan?  Would Chris find out?

         She replayed the scene on the cliff.  It had gone all wrong.  She was supposed to throw the money away.  It was paper.  It was nothing.  It was ruined.  But she couldn’t do it.  Why?  Because of Lauren?  Because Susan was still telling herself that she would give the money away?  That she was still strong enough to do it?

         But she was still clutching the money to her chest.

         Susan considered it for the first time, really considered it.  She imagined the look on Chris’s face, on her own face as they wiped their debt clean.  She imagined herself leading a salesman on at the car dealership and then, when he proved himself unworthy of her business, taking twenty-grand out of her pocket, slapping it in her hand so he could see, and then shaking her head “no” as she pocketed it again and walked out.  She imagined a college fund for Emily, something she budgeted for every year but that never saw a dime.  She imagined her next baby coming into a world without hardship.

         Susan chugged the last half of her drink.

         She could start working with Chris and put Emily in daycare.  She was an artist, too.  They had graduated together.

         And all the time Mee-maw would be watching, smiling with one cheek, reminding Susan just how generous her grandmother was, how she was always having to come rescue Susan from herself.

         “Would you like some more?” the man said from across the room.  He was sitting behind an unfinished pine countertop, watching the movie and chuckling now and then under his breath.

         “Thank you, but I should probably get on my way,” Susan said.

         “Sure thing,” he said.  “What can I do for you then?”

         Susan stood up and walked to the counter.  Inscribed on a plastic nameplate were the words Donald Mansfield, Groundskeeper.

         “Donald,” Susan said to herself.  Donald Duck.  She remembered this man.  That’s the name she gave him as a child.

         “Yes?”

         “No, I’m sorry, I was just thinking out loud.”

“Have we met before?” Donald asked.

         “I was a kid.  Me and my grandmother came up here.”

         “What was her name?”

         “It was twenty years ago.”

         “Try me.  This is what I do.”

         “Margret Gentry,” Susan said.

         The man gave a wide smile.  “You’d be Susan, then, I suppose.  I didn’t expect I’d ever see you again.”

         “You remember?”

         “Well, not exactly.  Your grandma’s been up here quite often the past ten years or so.  She’s a good friend.  We sit over there on that couch and talk and talk.”

         Susan stared at him.

         “Is something wrong?”

         “Huh,” Susan said.  “I’m just a little surprised.  I haven’t talked to her in so long.  I . . . I mean I just kind of imagined her sitting around the house all the time.”

         “Oh, no.  She’s always going somewhere.  She’ll give you an earful.  Marge’s been all over the world.  It’s her favorite thing to talk about, except maybe you.”

         “Me?”

         “Oh yeah.  She’s always telling me about your little girl, and how you . . . well, about you.”

         “Like what about me?” Susan said.

         “I . . . ’m not sure she’d want me to tell you this.  Why don’t you give her a call.  This is really between you two.”

         Susan’s face flushed.  “Oh . . . I’m sorry.  I should’ve said something.  Grandma died a few days ago.  She had a stroke . . . I’m sorry.”

         Donald sat on a bar stool just behind him.  His whole body sagged.  His mouth opened as if to say something but no sound came out.

         “That was really inconsiderate of me to go on like that,” Susan said.  “I really am sorry.”

         “Damn,” Donald said.

         “You’ve been very nice,” Susan said.  “Thank you.  I just need a cabin, and I’ll leave you alone.”

         Donald absently took a key from a hanger and handed it to Susan. “She was coming up for Thanksgiving,” Donald said.  “She already paid.”

         Susan looked down.  She opened her purse to get her wallet but found instead the stacks of money and the Pikachu toy.  She closed her purse tightly, breathed in, breathed out, and then dug in her pocket for her wallet.

         “I’ll only need the place one night.”

         Donald nodded.  He was looking right through Susan. 

         “Your grandma told me how she wasn’t very good to you when you were growing up,” Donald said.

         Susan’s breath stopped in her throat.

“And how you never talk to her anymore.  She said she knew you had every right to feel the way you do; she just wished she could be there for you without making it worse.  She told me how she wasn’t any good at raising kids, how she messed up with your mom so bad and she didn’t want you to wind up the same way, but she ended up messing up with you in a whole different way.  And she said she was scared to get involved with your life now because of your little girl, and how she didn’t know how to be a grandma to her.  That was what she said, more or less.”

         Susan felt her eyes burning.  She looked down and accidently read A-2 ¬on the key-ring she was holding.

         She sniffled and looked up at Donald.  “Can I have a different cabin?  Something way back in the woods?”

         Donald nodded slowly.  “Anything you like.”  He gave her a different key.

         “How much?” Susan said.

         “Nothing, please.  Compliments to your Grandmother.”

         Susan nodded.  “Thank you.”

         “Sure.  If you need anything . . .”

         Susan nodded and waved thanks.  He looked so sad.  She grabbed her coat and left.

         Outside, she squinted against the brightness.  The afternoon sun shone white through thinning clouds.  Heavy snowflakes fell vertically with little wind to sway them.  The cabins stood peacefully along the mountaintop, dressed in thick coats of white that spilled down all along the ground.

         Susan tramped footprints along the circle drive.  She snuck around the side of cabin A-1 and peeked through a window that had its blinds raised.  Lauren was sleeping with her two kids in the bed--the baby at her breast under covers.  Harvey lay with his head at the foot of the bed, still in his coat, his feet on Lauren’s midsection. 

Susan didn’t know if she was silently apologizing to Lauren for running off or working up the courage to leave the money.

         She walked around front and sat on the porch swing of Lauren’s cabin.  She heard Chris’s voice tell her to do what she needed to do and get back here.

         Susan felt no anger.  She felt no sense of purpose.  She felt spent.  Exhausted.  Lonely.  Tired of struggling.  Homesick.

         She set the purse on Lauren’s doorstep, and she stared at it.  She felt like she might cry.  She couldn’t walk away.  There was nothing but a residual feeling that she no longer understood telling her to leave the money.  Some wall in her mind broke down and her want for the money washed over her.  She needed it.  Maybe she even deserved it.

         She took Pikachu from her purse, placed him on the snow-dusted welcome mat, and looped her purse along with the money around her shoulder.  The tightness in her chest released.  She felt light--a feeling she had possibly never known.  Susan began to cry.  She nodded to the door, wishing Laura the best, apologizing, and she turned to leave.  She paused and looked back at Pikachu, so small and alone, and she took out one of the stacks of money and placed it in Pikachu’s lap.  Susan grabbed a pen from her pocket and a napkin, and, careful not to let her tears fall on the paper, she wrote: Take it.  Don’t ask, ever.  Just take it.  She put the napkin beneath the money.  Then, afraid the wind would take the money and the toy before Lauren found it, she removed her glove and knocked fiercely on the door.

         Susan ran down the steps of the porch and to her cabin at the far end of the campground without looking back.  She entered the small room and collapsed on the bed--her purse still tight between her arm and her side.  She grabbed the old corded phone from the nightstand, placed the base on her chest, the cold handset to her ear.  Her finger hovered over the 1-button.  She thought of Mee-maw twenty years ago lying like this in a bed in these cabins while her granddaughter cursed her on the porch outside.  She thought of Mee-maw imprisoned in her urn, blind at the bottom of her mountain.  She thought of the eighty-thousand dollars in her purse, and how meaningless that money was to Mee-maw, how it sat in a box for years throughout all Susan’s struggles.  She thought of Donald, and how she wished she could bring Mee-maw back to life just to cure his sadness.  She thought of Chris’s reaction when she told him about the money, and she smiled and started crying again.

         The dial tone became a busy signal.  Susan pushed the hang-up button with her finger, released it, took a breath, and dialed home.