Chapter Twenty-One
They arrived in the Footloose parking lot a few minutes later, where Adrenaline had arranged to shoot the interview. As Adam pushed Robert toward the store, he saw Sky talking to the host, Bonnie Bickle. Adrenaline aired on Extreme TV and was one of several shows about young daredevils doing crazy things and living to tell about them. On the show, Adam had seen young people kite-sailing in a hurricane, wriggling through tunnels a mile below Earth, towed by Jet Skis into fifty-foot waves. It reminded him of when he was young. They had had the same crazed bravery, but less imagination. Or was it more imagination? Either way, he liked the show.
Sky waved and continued yapping with the host. Adam was getting a little tired now, but with help from Cynthia, he pushed the wheelchair toward the set. He had had a premonitory bad feeling about this interview and the feeling had grown stronger. Too late to get out of it now. Bonnie Bickle shouted and pointed his way, and a videographer hustled over for this human-interest moment, tracking three generations of Carsons as they rolled along. Finally, Sky came over, and Rialto, the director, got them seated, then clipped on the mikes. Someone moved the light towers closer, and Adam could feel the extra heat on this already hot day. He helped Cynthia get a cap emblazoned with MAMMOTH FREESKI TEAM onto Robert to shield his face from sunburn.
Bonnie introduced herself and shook their hands. She looked as on TV, but smaller and more serious. She had a quirky smile and large teeth. She knelt before the wheelchair and withdrew one of Robert’s hands from the blankets. “Robert, with all respect, thanks for doing this. Do you understand me?”
“Don’t underestimate him,” said Cynthia.
“I won’t.” Adam watched Bonnie look into Robert’s face as she pushed his hand back under the blankets. By the way that Robert was strapped upright in the chair, the way the new cap sat on his head, and the way that you could tell the eyes behind the sunglasses were seeing nothing, Adam realized that what he had hoped might be a dignified program about his family might well become something else. “Thanks to all of you for being here,” Bonnie said. “Sky, special thanks to you for pitching us this story. It’s going to be a good one. We’re calling it ‘The Carson Curse.’”
Adam’s heart dropped.
“That wasn’t my pitch at all,” said Sky.
“No worries,” said Bonnie. “It’s just a handle for the sponsors.”
“But this show is supposed to be about how we’re turning bad fortune around,” said Sky. “And me winning the Mammoth Cup for Robert.”
“Exactly. Rialto?”
Bonnie seated herself and Rialto arranged her mike, then got back to his camera and counted down. Adam looked at Robert’s serenely empty form, then at Sky’s dubious, eyebrows-arched assessment of Bonnie. She looked down, took two deep breaths, then turned to the camera with a smile and introduced the Carson clan.
Bonnie started with the beginning of skiing in the Sierras, when Dave McCoy envisioned the first ski lift here on Mammoth Mountain, and couldn’t get a business loan to buy one, so Dave and Adam had built one with their own hands from a car engine.
Adam’s mind shot back to the day that Dave had invited him to test-ride the first lift once again, after days and days of it failing — too fast, too slow, the ropes snapping, the cable threatening to decapitate someone — and Adam took hold of the crude handle and let it pull him five hundred feet up the mountain. Sitting here in the Footloose parking lot now, Adam didn’t feel the artificial light and the hot August sun, but, rather, the cold breeze in his hair as he gathered himself for that first run off the new lift. He felt the heft of the wooden skis and the cumbersome bindings and the eager thump of his heart. He saw Sandrine and Dave and Roma down the mountain, their small faces turned up to him. And again he felt that sweet drop of stomach as he launched.
“You’re best friends with Dave, aren’t you?”
“Yes. He was my best man.”
“And together you took Mammoth Mountain from just a mountain with snow on it to the third-most-visited ski resort in America.”
“Dave did that. I just helped.”
“Adam, you helped build a town that a lot of people think is paradise. You had children make the U.S. Olympic ski team. You made a lot of money. You have had a charmed life, haven’t you?”
“I always thought so.”
“Until tragedy struck for your son, Olympic downhill skier Richard Carson. Now, our viewers should know that this Adrenaline segment is the very first time that Cynthia Carson — Richard’s widow — has spoken publicly about that tragic night. Cynthia, welcome to the show. And I know this might be difficult, but can you tell us what happened?”
“Hey!” Sky called out. “Hey, Bonnie Bickle! This is fully uncool.”
“What is?”
“This story was supposed to be about the Gargantua Mammoth Cup and me against my rotten half brother!”
“We’ll get there, Sky. I’m backgrounding. Now, Cynthia Carson — tell us about that night here in Mammoth Lakes, in January of 1990. You were married to former U.S. Olympic downhill skier Richard Carson, you were thirty years old, a mother of two, and you were pregnant with Sky. You went to a party. Take us there...”
“Well. Don’t forget that I was an Olympic skier myself. I competed in Sarajevo, as did Richard. The downhill, slalom, giant slalom, and the combined. Neither of us made it to the podium, though I finished higher than he did.”
“Fantastic. Now take us back to that night.”
“Oh my gosh, where to start? There was this rich man’s house where all us racers went to have fun? Richard went there early, as he always did. I stayed home with the children, as usual. Andrea was four and Robbie was three. They finally went to sleep...”
“And you went to the party?”
Adam looked at Sky, flip-flops propped on the footrest of the director’s chair. He was looking down and kneading his right thumb into his left palm. “Leave her alone, Bonnie,” Sky said, cutting her a look.
“This is an interview, Sky.”
“The story is not that night!”
“I’m okay, son,” said Cynthia. “But thanks for your concern.”
“I can’t believe this shit,” he said.
“Say whatever you want, Sky,” Bonnie said cheerfully. “We’ll beep out the too-naughty stuff.”
“Okay, then — I can’t believe this fucking shit.”
“You’re funny, Sky Carson.”
“Mom, you don’t have to talk to this doorknob.”
Adam watched Sky consider Bonnie for a long moment; the boy’s coldness surprised him. Adam had never seen that look from his grandson. But he recognized it. It was Cynthia’s, when you thought she was going to fold up or go to pieces. When you thought she’d been defeated. Then, suddenly, she was absolutely certain and capable. As Sky was now.
“Let your mother continue,” said the host.
“I’m okay, Sky,” she said, but Adam heard the tiredness in her voice.
“Bonnie?” asked Sky. “Are you aware that you’re exploiting a family tragedy for entertainment and a paycheck? Can you formulate this concept in your small ornamental brain?”
“I’ll work on it,” said Bonnie. “So, Cynthia, Richard was at the party and you were home alone that night, and?”
“Oh, well, of course I got bored. So I called some friends to come sit with the children. I drove over and went in and got myself a diet soda from the fridge. Had some potato chips and pretzels—”
“And was your husband, Richard, there?”
Cynthia’s voice sounded thoroughly weary when she spoke again. Adam wondered if she’d be able to continue. “I thought I’d made that clear.”