“You can investigate all you want, Mom,” said Sky. “But Wylie Welborn shoved me just past Conundrum. Where this happened...” He glanced at Robert, all he could endure.
“Oh, I believe he’s capable of that, son.” She looked up at him. “But what if it was your nerves kicking in?”
“It was a shove, Mom.”
“Your father never had the nerve for winning.”
“Not again, Mom. Please, not all that again.”
“He almost had the nerve.”
“That’s not what G-pa says. G-pa says Dad did have the nerve but—”
“Of course, nerve is what separates racers at the highest levels, don’t you think? My God, your father had everything else a racer could want.”
Sky dared another glance at Robert. He looked peaceful and utterly relaxed, and Sky wondered if there was any awareness in him at all. He had seen a news report recently about these newfangled scans that could show brain activity not detectable before. Although the doctors were quick to say that this didn’t necessarily mean the patients could improve.
“Robert had nerve,” she said. “And he had good racing judgment, too. That’s why this is a tragedy, not just an accident.” Cynthia rinsed and squeezed the sponge, then patted Robert’s temple with it. “I advise you against threats of any kind, Sky.”
“Too late. I asked for the apology and promised punishment if he does anything like that again. I’ve stated my terms.”
“You could forgive him.”
“Why should I forgive Wylie for running me off the course? That is not right.”
“My whole life, I’ve tried to explain to you the importance of consequence.”
The Queen of Consequence, he thought: a lifetime of damnation in exchange for one squeeze of a trigger. Well, five squeezes. Sky had often wondered what his life would have been like if his father had shot his mother, rather than the other way around. But really, what was the point of that? “You’ve explained that to me maybe a billion times, Mom.”
Sky looked out at the Sherwins. A snowplow clanked up Minaret toward the mountain. The top of the mountain was locked behind a white wall, which meant snow was falling there. In his mind Sky again replayed his race against Wylie the previous day, scrolled forward to Wylie ramming him on that high-speed, precarious turn. Wylie threw his shoulder, for sure. Why else would he have gone off-course? Nerves? No. There had been no pressure. It wasn’t even a real race.
“More important, if you’re going to beat Wylie in the cup, you’ll have to train much harder, Sky. Off-season, too. And cut the drinking way back. Of course that was—”
“One of my father’s weaknesses.”
“Yes, it was. Of my three children, though, you are the one who is the finest natural skier—”
“Though I lack discipline and nerve.”
“You’re a better skier than Wylie Welborn, but—”
“He’s a better racer.”
“When you train harder, and learn to control your nerves, you’ll be ready to beat him. For instance, you know you should be in Europe now, on the World Cup circuit, like you were last year and the year before that.”
“Robert needs me here,” he said absently.
“And you need to commit, Sky.”
“You’ve told me that a billion times, too.”
“Because you’ve never committed to anything that isn’t easy. The way you race. The way you drink and show off. The way you pledge yourself to people, then discard them. Especially women. You do what’s—”
“Easy. I only do what’s easy.”
“Very much like—”
“My father.”
“And yet the seeds of championship are in you. I was the hardest-working woman in my racing days. My body was very strong and sound. My commitment was never questioned. On your father’s side is God-given talent. No one had greater nerve and commitment than your grandfather Adam. And of course a perfect body. You have that body, too.”
He felt his blood heating up, that first tremble and bubble. “I can’t be like them, Mom.”
“But you can excel. I’ll help in any way I can. And Robert can help, too. He’s still here, in body and spirit, aren’t you, Robbie? Robbie is in the prison of his body, but he can emanate blessings and advice, though he cannot speak outright. You have roughly one year until the race, Sky. But very much to do if you want to win it.”
“I’m going to win the damned race and I’m not going to let Wylie run people off the mountain. If those are the first real commitments I actually stick to, fine. I admit my mistakes. I’m twenty-five years old.”
“Old enough to grow up.”
“I’m growing up, Mom. I’m growing up.”
She hummed softly, dabbing the sponge on Robert’s chin, as if he’d spilled a little formula on it. Sky glanced at the feeding tube that entered his brother through a round patch of gauze on his lower flank. It almost nauseated him. Made his blood feel sick. He looked at the little bank of monitors on the rolling table near the bed, the drip trolley backed into the corner for now. This is what Robert’s commitment got him, thought Sky. Robert’s reward. A hospital with no cute nurses. The only thing he hated more than hospitals were prisons.
Cynthia carried the buckets of bathing and rinse water into the bathroom. Still humming, then not. “Did you hear about April Holly coming to Mammoth?” she called out.
“Chip, chip,” he muttered.
“Did you?”
“Yes, Mom. Great.”
“Maybe our little town can learn from her,” she half-yelled from the bathroom.
“Learn what? How to be a self-obsessed Olympic celebrity?”
“You know what I heard from Brandon? April is engaged to be married to her longtime boy, but her camp thought she was falling in with the wrong kind of people in Aspen. So they brought her here.”
Sky found this to be very funny. “Wait ‘til she gets a load of me,” he said to Robert, smiling slightly.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing, Mom!” Sky summoned all of the determination that he so obviously lacked, according to his mother, and brushed a hand through his brother’s freshly washed hair. Even unconscious, Robert struck Sky as truly good and deserving of his deepest love. Deserving of a lot more than that, thought Sky. But what else could he give Robbie now but love? He reached out and lifted Robert’s left eyelid and looked into the clear blue emptiness. “I’ll win that race, Robert,” he said. “Mark. My. Words.”
As usual this time of evening, Sky hit Slocum’s restaurant for happy hour and ran into his group in the bar. The team skiers and boarders had claimed their high, round bar tables in the middle of the room. Thanks to them, the decibel level was very high. Johnny Teller and Greg Bretz and Tyler Wallasch were there, and so were Kelly Clark and Arielle Gold, which turned up the star power to eleven on a scale of ten. Local snowboard contenders Johnny Maines and Suzanna Scott were arguing loudly but with good humor. Sky joined the boisterous table talk. There was no better antidote than this to his mother and her dire pronouncements. Sky loved this part of being a racer, being in a room where every person knew who you were and what you’d accomplished and they just wanted to watch you being cool. And see exactly how you did it.