Work Text:
The tea that sits in front of Tessa is growing stone cold as she flips through a new contract. The coffee shop she’s currently housing is laden with students and a fair amount of silence, save for the Bon Iver floating listlessly through the speakers. She’s going over social media negotiations when her phone rings, vibrating against the table.
“Hello,” she says as she picks up, making sure to lower her voice a considerable amount. She clutches the mug of tea in her hand and considers taking a sip, before thinking better of it and putting it back down.
“Hello, Tessa,” a clear voice says from the other line. “It’s Elaine. I was wondering if you were free sometime today to meet up for coffee?”
Tessa hides a smile behind her hand, thinking Elaine never was one for pleasantries. Always sharp and to the point, with kind eyes and a soul to match. “Today?”
“Today,” Elaine confirms, sounding crisp over the phone. “How about in an hour?”
Tessa gives her the name of the coffee shop she’s currently occupying, and returns to her contract, but her mind lingers on why her old professor would want to meet with her, today-today. Elaine had been her professor when she was twenty three, scared out of her wits about competing at another Olympic games, and trying to maintain some sense of normalcy in her psychology classes.
“Tessa,” Professor Kory had said, “I’d like to talk to you about your grades.” And Tessa, twenty three and terrified, had burst into tears and told her professor she was infinitely sorry she had received a C on her paper regarding strengths based perspectives when working with children, but her and Scott had only just began to really develop lifts for the season and if they didn’t focus on that then –
Professor Kory had handed her a lemon candy and a Kleenex, and ushered Tessa into her office, and from then on become one of Tessa’s most unlikely friend. “Call me Elaine,” she said when Tessa graduated, with a smile. “You’ve earned it.”
The bell tinkles on the shop door, and Tessa looks up from her contract to see Elaine enter through, grey hair pulled into a stylish ponytail, trench coat belted neatly at the waist. She orders a cappuccino before going to sit at Tessa’s table.
“Tessa,” she says with a warm smile, “how have you been?”
The thing about Elaine is that it isn’t easy to lie to her. As a professor of psychology, specializing in attachment theory, Elaine is a quick study of character, brisk in her analysis of people as she is with her research. Tessa tucks a lock of her dark hair behind her ear, meeting Elaine’s gaze head on.
“I’m fine,” she says, with a small smile. “Keeping busy, you know how it is.”
“Hm,” says Elaine.
Tessa shifts in her seat, growing uncomfortable under her gaze.
“Listen, Tessa,” Elaine says, “I won’t keep you long. I have a proposition for you.”
She takes a moment to sip from her cup, while Tessa fidgets with her fingers under the table, a nervous habit never quite kicked as she entered adulthood.
“I am taking a six month trip,” says Elaine, “as part of my field research. I need an assistant. I was wondering if you’d like to join me.”
Tessa eyes her for a moment, trying to decide if she’s serious or not. But Elaine’s mouth is set in a firm line, and there are no playful stars dancing around her eyes. She seems to be, for all accounts, serious. She reaches for the persona to put on when someone asks her to be a part of a research trip halfway around the world, and comes up empty.
“What – I – what? I don’t – I don’t understand.”
Elaine laughs, a light one that just barely hovers in the air before it disappears. “I’m sorry, this is probably overwhelming for you. But I’d like for you to join me, if you want to.”
“Where are you going?” Tessa asks, dumbfounded and still processing.
“Nepal and Malaysia,” says Elaine confidently, like she isn’t afraid Tessa will say no.
“I have work here,” says Tessa weakly, “and I’m not even qualified, I’ve only got an undergrad. Isn’t this work for a grad student?”
Elaine leans forward, coffee set aside. “Tessa, let me be frank. You’re not qualified for this position. I am not asking you based on your qualifications. I am asking you because you are a hard worker. I am asking you because I know your character. I want you with me while I do this research. I am asking you to come with on a trip that could be groundbreaking research in the field of attachment theory.”
“I have work,” Tessa responds, though not confidently. “I have contracts and obligations here – I’m in the process of being the face of a new brand for a Canadian company,” she trails off.
Elaine’s face does not change, but something in her expression turns Tessa to silence. Elaine reaches out and covers Tessa’s hand with her own, cool to the touch. “You don’t have to answer me right away. Take a few days. Think about it.”
Tessa opens her mouth and then closes it, like a fish out of water. She doesn’t know how to say no to her mentor, but she’s glad to have a few days to figure it out. Elaine presses a kiss to her cheek and is gone, leaving Tessa alone with her contract and her thoughts.
I am not going to Nepal, she thinks, as she picks up sushi for dinner and takes it home. I am not going to Malaysia, she thinks, as she flicks the lights on in her house and sets the bag on the island, removing her coat and shoes.
“I am not going,” she says, firmly, to nobody. The walls do not answer her, and she becomes irritated by them, wondering if they think she’s being a coward. She opens her Instagram app, scrolls through her timeline and makes a mental note to prepare to post tomorrow at 4pm. She is scrubbed clean on her profile, a shiny, happy person who has friends and thoughts and sparkle.
I am not going, she thinks, as she gets the urge as she often does, to hit the delete button on her profile and remove herself from the digital world. The world around her screams white, untarnished.
I am lonely, she thinks, and I want nobody around. I want to be dropped off in the middle of a forest surrounded by nothing but trees and sky.
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“Nepal?” Her mother asks, furrowing her eyebrow, “Malaysia?” Her mouth twists. “Tess, what will you even be researching? And you have work – is this some sort of middle aged crisis?”
Tessa sighs, burying her face her hands. “I don’t know, and I don’t know. Maybe. Who cares if it is? At least I’m not drinking. At least I’m not stumbling out of clubs at three am.”
“I’m just not… sold,” says Kate, warily. “I’m not sold.”
“You have three weeks to get on board.” Tessa says these words so solidly, with so much conviction, she is reminded of her thirteen year old self, all skinny legs and flashing eyes, telling her parents yes, she would be moving with Scott because she was going to skate, and she was going to be the best.
Elaine sends her piles of reading – piles and piles of it, and Tessa becomes familiar with attachment between mothers and their children, secure, and avoidant and disorganized, how brains learn love by what is reflected back to them when humans are just tiny babies. She learns that brains are shaped by affection, that mental health disorders can be solved through attachment therapy. She learns that the human race learns its worth in the image of others, that Elaine wants to study that cultural affects of attachment, traditions that lead to more secure attachment.
“We as a culture could learn,” she says empathetically, “in our little bubble of independent thinking and being our own person, we have forgotten we only exist to live to our fullest potential when we have been cared for by someone else. We are not solitary creatures. We are not created to be alone.”
Well, Tessa thinks, maybe some of us are, but she doesn’t correct her, and returns to her reading, highlighting journal articles in pink and yellow, studying theory and memorizing symptoms.
She contacts brands, and says she is very sorry but she will be completely inactive on social media for six months, as she is going around the world. They ask her to take pictures and turn her image into a travel warrior, and she almost says yes until she pictures Elaine’s face in her mind and says no, she’s very sorry, but she will return to her regular obligations once she’s returned, and she understands if the companies want to let her go.
None of them except for one let her go, and she’s surprised how easy it is to cut off strings.
“Have you spoken to Scott?” Her sister asks over the phone one night, days before Tessa is set to leave.
“No,” Tessa replies, “have you?”
“Tess,” her sister says.
“We have an event in Toronto two days after I get back. I’ll see him then.”
“Hm,” says Jordan. “You don’t even sound like you’re friends anymore.”
“Of course we are,” says Tessa, “just because we don’t spend every waking minute together any longer. Of course we’re still friends.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” replies Tessa.
Going to Nepal, she drafts in her message to him, and Malaysia. A research trip with Elaine. I hope you’re well. I’ll be in touch for our event in April.
A research what? Is his response. Tess, what?
A moment later, her phone lights up with his name, and she breathes deeply before answering. “Yes?”
“A research what?” He repeats, his voice laced with surprise. “What?”
So she explains, from the very beginning, how she wasn’t going to go, but then she was sitting alone with her house and its walls. “I don’t know,” she says, half-heartedly, “I don’t know how to explain myself.”
There is silence on the other end, but it is comfortable, and she’s not afraid of it. She hears him breathe before he speaks. “Tess,” he says, “you don’t have to explain yourself.”
“Well,” she replies, “the walls wouldn’t answer me.”
“I think this trip will be good for you, T, I really do,” Scott supplies, and she can hear the scratch of ice underneath his blade. She can picture him, black hoodie, phone pressed to his ear as he talks to her, turning lazy circles. “I really do.”
“You don’t know what’s good for me anymore,” says Tessa, “you don’t.”
“I do,” says Scott softly.
I can’t scrub you from my skin, thinks Tessa, chewing on her bottom lip. I have tried since I was eight, and you are still here. I can’t scrub you from my skin and I am almost thirty five, and I know all the best ways to make you hurt.
“Yeah,” is what she answers instead, and then hangs up before she can say anything else. She doesn’t ask him about his job, or his new girlfriend, Amy. She doesn’t ask a thing because she doesn’t want to know.
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Nepal is hot.
Tessa’s braid sticks to her neck, her beige cutoff shorts sweating against her skin. She is scrubbed bare of makeup, and there is dirt underneath her fingertips for the first time in forever.
Elaine makes quick work of getting to know the village locals, settling herself, Tessa, and her research assistant, Matthew into the remote village as quickly as possible. Matthew is tall, and he seems to be completely unaware of Tessa Virtue, three time Olympic gold medallist in ice dance. But he’s nice, and he looks right at Tessa when he talks.
Their accomodations are plain, hardly anything to look at. Their furniture is made of sturdy wood, yellow paint peeling on the edges of the walls. Tessa has gotten used to fresh smelling hotel rooms and white linen, but she doesn’t say a thing. She smiles and puts her suitcase down on her floral bedspread, hoping she brought enough tshirts.
They spend hours observing mothers and children in the community, following them to hospitals and into their homes, watching them at their schools. Elaine takes direction from Ainsworth’s study of attachment in Uganda, and makes notes on the sly while interacting with the locals. They meet a nurse, a woman with a bright smile who leads them through the hospital to the maternity ward.
“You are beautiful,” a mother named Salmee says to Tessa with a calm manner. Her eyes are dark and lovely, and Tessa wishes for the first time that her eyes were brown as well. Tessa murmurs a thank you, hanging back while Elaine introduces herself to the new mothers.
They go back to the hospital every day to chat and observe, Elaine and Matthew making notes. It will be Tessa’s job to sort through the piles of notes when they get back and input the logs into a computer, to organize the information presented to her. She succeeds because this is what she is good at; organizing, analyzing, taking human emotion and boiling it down to statistics.
“Tell me,” says Salmee one day, her hand warm on Tessa’s knee, her last day in the hospital before she will be discharged home with her new baby, “tell me about your work. Your work in Canada.”
Tessa starts, and then stops. She doesn’t know how to describe herself to this woman from across the world. She looks at her hands, twists her fingers. Elaine is in the corner, taking notes and watching a newborn sleep on his mother, and Matthew is getting lunch for all three of them.
“I dance,” she says finally, “on ice. I danced on ice for a long, long time.”
Salmee tilts her head, curious. Her light brown face is smooth, but her eyes hold multitudes. Her baby fusses in her arms and with a few soft sounds Salmee gets her settled against her chest. The baby coos and closes her eyes, small hands moving underneath her blanket.
“Danced,” says Salmee, as though tasting the word on her tongue. “And what sort of dance can you do on ice?”
Her English is cracked around the edges and sometimes her words don’t come out fully formed, but Tessa loves the sound of Salmee’s voice.
“And we were good,” Tessa finishes, “we were good enough to go the Olympics.”
“Hm,” says Salmee, “it sounds like you are from a different world.”
Tessa laughs.
“And so many years together with one man,” Salmee says, “Did you ever love him?”
“Yes,” says Tessa, “of course I did. I just never knew what to do with it. I never knew what to do with all of that love, and so I danced with the love tied to my hands and my skates instead.” She takes a breath, her heart pounding in her chest. She can’t remember the last time honesty like this slipped past her mouth, and her ears are having trouble discerning what they’re hearing.
But Salmee looks at her calmly, steady on, child, her eyes seem to say. “He sounds wonderful.”
“He was, sometimes. And other times he wasn’t, same as me.” Tessa adjusts her body in her chair, and Salmee asks if she could hold her baby for a moment. Tessa takes the child, warm against her chest and turns her attention to Salmee and the story of her life, instead. She listens as Salmee tells of her stories of her own childhood, her words falling to the floor and filling the room like sawdust. Tessa listens intently, drawing herself into Salmee’s words and the sound of her voice, rich like toffee.
The baby stirs in her arms, and looks up at Tessa with dark eyes fringed by long eyelashes. She doesn’t cry, simply stares at Tessa like she knows all the secrets in her head. Tessa trails a finger down the side of the newborn’s face, gentle as a butterfly’s wings.
“It’s a big world out there,” Tessa whispers to the child, “it’s a big world out there. And I don’t have any answers for you.”
Salmee regards her daughter quietly. “She is the most wonderful thing I have ever loved.”
From across the room, Tessa notices Elaine watching them silently, scratching words into her notebook.
When it’s time to go, Salmee leaves Tessa with a kiss and a warm touch to her face. “Little dancer,” she says, “it has been a pleasure to hear from you today.”
Tessa’s eyes fill inexplicably with tears, and she is surprised she lets them fall. “No,” she says, “the pleasure is all mine.”
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When they have been in Nepal for two and a half months and Tessa’s skin has browned considerably, despite her never thinking that was possible, a Tuesday afternoon off finds Tessa and Matthew lying in an open field underneath a tree.
“I’m dying for a milkshake,” Matthew says. “A good, proper one, with whipped cream and a cherry on top.”
Tessa laughs, sitting up against the worn tree. “I’d like a hot bath – a really hot bath, with candles and bubbles.”
“A bar,” says Matthew, grinning and playing along, “with curly fries.”
“I’d love a shopping trip,” Tessa replies wistfully, her eyes on the bright blue sky. “I want to buy a new t-shirt.”
“Just one?” Matthew asks, laughing.
“Or two,” Tessa flashes back, her lips curling around the edges the way it does when she knows she’s said something funny.
“This is my Everest,” Matthew complains, throwing himself back on the warm grass, and Tessa laughs, a full bellied laugh as she joins him.
This becomes their mantra for the rest of their trip; whenever anything becomes difficult (“Tess, seriously, I can’t cook with these ingredients. I don’t know what I’m doing. I want a pizza), or challenging, (“This is my Everest,” Tessa cries out as the computer crashes while she’s inputting data for the evening), or seems too hard to face, (“I think I’ve sweat through all my tshirts, Tessa"). It becomes their reminder that what they are facing is hard, but Everest has been conquered.
“Let’s climb it,” Matthew says one night while the three of them are sitting outside on the porch, drinking cheap wine under the stars. “Tomorrow. Let’s climb Everest.”
Tessa scoffs, taking a sip. “Listen, buddy. My whole life has been one giant climb up Everest. I don’t need the satisfaction of the literal climb.”
Matthew laughs. “Fancy dancing is that soul crushing?”
“Something like that,” Tessa replies, looking out at the indigo sky, the stars poking through the velvet blanket.
“When I was younger,” Elaine says, taking a sip of wine, “my mother used to tell me the sky was silver, and the darkness of the sky was just a blanket filled with holes. If you pulled it back, the real colour of the sky was silver.”
There is silence after she speaks, and Tessa thinks about how she was just thinking the same thing, how that hasn’t happened since she was twenty nine and she was training for an Olympic gold medal with Scott.
“She was an incredible lady,” Elaine whispers softly, “I owe her my life.”
“It’s funny,” says Matthew, “how the people we love and who love us end up shaping everything that we are.”
There is silence again, before Elaine turns to Matthew with a smile. “At least we know you’re in the right field,” she grins.
“Sometimes,” Tessa says carefully, “sometimes it feels like the people that I love are kept so close to me that I can’t see where I begin and where they end. Sometimes this makes them hurt me. Sometimes it makes me hurt them.” Sometimes, she thinks but doesn’t say, sometimes I can’t find myself anymore. Sometimes I want to be left so alone, but I can’t because they won’t go away.
“Tessa,” says Elaine gently, “our ability to feel and think is our humanity. If we close ourselves to hurt, we close ourselves to everything else.”
Tessa remains silent. It isn’t anything she hasn’t heard before.
She feels Elaine weigh her words before speaking again.
“We know who we are best when we learn who we are, reflected back to us in the love of others.”
Tessa remains silent again, sifting Elaine’s words carefully. Matthew drowns the last of his wine. “Ladies,” he grins, “I think the stars have heard too many of our secrets tonight.” He stands to collect the glasses and put them into kitchen, bidding them goodnight. Elaine follows shortly after, leaving Tessa alone.
The sky becomes her friend the longer Tessa stays out on the porch. She watches the stars carefully, and her mind, for the first time in a long time, becomes blissfully blank. She’s scared to move from the porch, to break the spell that is peace come over her, so she sits on the porch chair until she falls asleep.
She wakes just as the sun is about to rise, pinks and oranges spreading across the sky like watercolour on a canvas, tendrils of colour spreading through the sky like food colouring in water glass. For the first time in a long time, she hears Scott’s voice in her head, knowing exactly what he would say if he was here.
“That’s a beauty of a sunrise,” she can hear, as if he were sitting right next to her, and Tessa smiles, a small smile.
“It really is,” she whispers.
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Their time in Nepal comes to a close, and Tessa says goodbye to Salmee, and the yellow paint, and the floral bedspread, to the rolling fields and to Everest.
Matthew laughs when she says so. “Tess,” he says to her, “I think there will be plenty more Everests for us in Malaysia, don’t you worry.” He slings his rucksack over his shoulder, crammed with notes and water bottles, and she follows him to the car that will take them to the airport.
Their flight is bearable, but Tessa’s had practice on planes so they don’t really bother her too much. She shares a row with Matthew, snagging the window seat, while Elaine sits three rows back.
Over Coke and small packages of peanuts, Matthew tells her about Maria. “We met in college,” he says. “You’d like her. Her family is from Italy; they make the best pizza I’ve ever tasted.”
“An Italian named Maria,” Tessa smiles, sipping her Coke. “I like her already.”
Matthew tells her about her dark hair, and her love for playing the cello. “She studied music,” he relays, “but now she’s not sure what she wants to do with it. It’s a hard field.”
“I always admired artists,” Tessa comments. “I always admired people who believe in their art and who do anything to bring it into the world.”
“Me too,” says Matthew, “the trouble is, I can’t draw for shit.” Tessa laughs.
“She’s the safest person I have ever loved,” Matthew says quietly after a beat, shifting. “You know?”
Tessa opens her mouth to respond, then thinks better of it. She collects her thoughts, silently lining her words inside her head.
“I don’t think I’ve felt that yet,” she says. “I think we tried. I really think we did – but sometimes, we were each other’s only safe place. And it made us crazy, when there was all of that pressure on us. And I think we just boiled and boiled until we burst.”
She blows out a sigh through her nose. “Sometimes I wonder if we would have made it, if it weren’t for the skating.”
Scott, she thinks, did I skate with you because I loved you? Or did I love you because I skated with you?
She shakes her head. “I don’t know, Matthew. Maybe we knew each other too well to be each other’s safety.”
“Maybe,” says Matthew, “nobody will ever know but the two of you.”
The sky darkens outside her window as the plane comes to a descent, and Tessa wishes, as she has almost every time she has been on a plane, that its wheels won’t touch the ground and they’ll be stuck flying circles through the air forever.
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Malaysia is just as hot, if not hotter, than Nepal. Tessa’s tshirts become soaked through nearly every day, the sun beating down on them as if punishing them for all of their sins.
“This is truly my Everest,” says Tessa, moaning as the sun blazes on afternoon. “I can’t breathe.”
Sweat drips down Matthew’s forehead. “Same, girl. I think this is probably how I die.”
Elaine turns to them from her view in the passenger’s seat of the car. “Do I have two whiny students in the backseat?”
“No,” say Tessa and Matthew simultaneously, looking for all the world like little kids caught in a candy store with sugar on their faces. Elaine smiles, and pushes her sunglasses higher up on her nose.
“This placement is different from Nepal,” she explains, “we’ll be spending most of our time at a women’s shelter. We’ll jump to hospitals and homes as well, but I have a feeling most of our time will be spent here.” The driver car turns into a large looking building, and the three of them make their way out.
There are women in the common room, and women sitting outside in the sun. And there are children, everywhere. Running around, laughing, playing tag. Tessa becomes overwhelmed for a moment; she is not used to so many people in one place.
Their days fall into routine in Malaysia. In this new place, they each get an apartment to themselves, equipped with a small kitchen. It’s different than the yellow and the floral, and Tessa finds herself surprised to miss it.
Even though their apartments are separate, the computer is in Matthew’s apartment, and Tessa finds herself there almost every day with Elaine. The three of them have gotten used to each other’s presence, and normally Tessa would hole herself up in her own space, especially when traveling, but she finds herself comfortable. It’s not unlike her days of touring, when her space was sacred, but so was Scott’s, and his presence was steadying.
“Do you want alone time tonight?” Scott would whisper, knowing she liked it and needed it. She would nod her head. “As long as you’ll stay with me,” she replied
“That sort of defeats the purpose of alone time, Tessa,” he’d grin.
“But I like you best,” she’d respond, and he’d grin even bigger.
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She makes a friend under the Malaysian sky, on her second week in. She’s a small girl, maybe three or four years old, all rough and tumble limbs and bright eyes.
“I’m Nina,” the little girl says, confidently, and with two teeth missing. “Will you be my friend?”
Tessa has never turned down a little girl who asks to be her friend, and she’s not about to start, and so she takes her hand and lets her lead. She finds out that Nina’s dad was hurtful to her mother, and that why they are here, in a shelter. They have been here for one month, and Tessa’s heart breaks for the small girl.
They spend their days colouring and playing tag. Nina becomes a permanent fixture on Tessa’s hip, and she loves her like she hasn’t loved someone in a long, long time. Nina grips Tessa faces in her small hands and presses her forehead to hers, making her eyes big and wide to make Tessa laugh.
Her mother is a collected woman, who rarely speaks. Elaine forms a good relationship with her, and observes when Nina comes running to her and when she goes running to Tessa. She watches them carefully, especially when Nina’s mother remarks that Nina was ill as a newborn.
“Tessa!” Nina cries one morning, two days after they’ve met, as Tessa steps through the doors. “Come play!”
Tessa follows Nina through the shelter into the backyard. Nina is already out there and laughing her loud, sunshine laugh. A boy is with her, little legs pumping to keep up, and the two children fall onto the grass in a heap, still giggling.
“Get up, Nina,” says the little boy, offering her his hand, “get up.” The two children help each other up and Nina drags him towards Tessa. “This is my friend, Z. I can’t say his name good.”
Z smiles up at Tessa, a look of mischief on his features. “Hello, little guy,” Tessa says, “good to meet you.” Z looks shyly up at her, a strange woman in his home.
“He’s my best friend!” Nina proclaims this loudly, like everything she does. She grabs Z close and the children cling to each other, giggling. Z drags her back out into field where there is a small playground, and they tumble through it together.
And Tessa, for the second time on her trip, begins to cry. Her shoulders heave as she presses a hand to her mouth, tears falling unwillingly from her eyes. Every time she pauses, a fresh wave overtakes her. Her hair slips from its ponytail and she stands and cries until Elaine comes to her and puts her arm around her.
“Shh, Tess,” Elaine soothes, her hands still cool despite the heat, “Tessa, Tessa.”
She doesn’t say another word, and Tessa cries.
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The three of them take a hike one day on a day off, backpacks secured and running shoes laced. The path is lush, and the trees hear more secrets than the stars in Nepal.
“Did you marry young?” Matthew asks Elaine, “or when you were older?”
“Older,” smiles Elaine, walking and talking. “I waited until I was twenty seven, which was fairly late, back in my day. But I made the right choice. He’s a good man.”
A good man Tessa thinks, what an old turn of phrase. The men her friends talk about these days, they’re charming or ambitious or confident – never good.
“What makes him good?” Tessa asks, as she brushes a leaf away from her face, taking a sip from her water bottle.
“He always runs to the grocery store,” says Elaine confidently. “I hate doing it. I hate grocery shopping. And he always does it.”
“How did you meet?” Matthew asks, taking a swig from his own water bottle.
Elaine laughs. “Actually, at a bus stop. I was going to take a bus, and he another. My bus was full when it arrived, so I ended up walking to the stop over, where fate would have it, he was there. His bus was full too.” She shrugs. “Thank God for full busses.”
Tessa smiles. “I love that story, Elaine.”
“I forget about it, sometimes, until someone asks. It’s easy to forget your own story when you’re so busy living it.”
“This is my Everest,” Matthew yells as they reach the summit, though it’s a small day hike and nowhere near Everest caliber. Tessa stands beside him and cups her hands around her mouth. “This is my Everest,” she shouts, just as loud, to the valley below them, sprawling green underneath their feet, and blue sky rolling above them.
“C’mon, Professor Kody,” Matthew gestures, “your turn.”
Elaine grins, before screaming into the void of Earth.
THIS IS MY EVEREST.
“Another thing he does,” Elaine says on their way back, “is he always saves me the green candies, because those ones are my favourites.”
Tessa grins. “It was the red ones for me,” she supplies, “but he gave them to me because once when I was nine, I almost ripped his head for stealing the red candies from my hands. I think he was scared, after that,” and Elaine and Matthew laugh.
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On their last day, Nina clings to her and sobs, heaving ones that wrack her whole body, and Tessa cries with her.
“Oh little bean,” she whispers, “I’ll never forget you.”
Nina clutches Tessa’s face in her hands, and makes her eye big and wide to make Tessa laugh. Her brown eyes are glittering with tears, but Tessa still giggles softly, running a hand through her unruly curls.
“One last butterfly kiss,” whispers Tessa, and Nina’s eyelashes are the lightest touch on her face.
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Her home feels big and white.
Her home feels big and white. Canada is so cold. Tessa had forgotten. She scrubs the dirt out from under her nails, and applies eyeliner with a shaky hand, hardly recognizing the girl in the mirror. She feels out of place, wondering when Elaine and Matthew are going to barge through the door and take her on a plane back.
She goes outside one night, and the stars look the same. They are the stars that hold her secrets, and she hugs her cardigan close to her as she admires them.
Elaine calls her to tell her how her research is coming together. “One thing I have learned,” she says, voice tinny over the phone, “is that everybody needs somebody to hold an umbrella open for them when it rains.” Tessa is brought back to a poem from long ago, about mothers and children, and relays it to Elaine, who cries when she hears it.
“Elaine,” she says, “thank you.”
There is a pause on the other end of the phone. “I asked you to come with me for a million more reasons than I gave you, Tessa, reasons I still won’t say. Remember that you contain multitudes. Remember that we are fragile creatures. Remember that we need one another.”
Tessa calls her mother after hanging up with Elaine, reading her the poem.
“You are my greatest gift,” is what her mother replies.
My god, I thought, my whole life I have been under her raincoat, thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.
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She calls Scott, but he doesn’t answer. She calls his mother, who does answer, and asks about her trip. Tessa says it was wonderful. His mother says Amy is no longer part of the picture.
She calls Scott, but he doesn’t answer, so the next morning she sets out for the rink he’s working out of. It’s early in the morning, and she knows he’s generally the first one there every day.
She laces her skates and relishes in the time to create lines alone, little dancer is what she hears in Salmee’s voice. She hears rather than sees Scott’s presence, and he’s skating fast towards her at a quarter past seven, scooping her in a hug.
“I’m so happy to see you,” she says, grinning, and if he looks taken aback because she’s not one for verbal expression, she chooses to ignore it.
“Tell me all about,” Scott says, taking her hand as they circle the rink, children of eight and ten. Tessa words are on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t find the right feeling of them, can’t express yellow paint and floral bedpreads, can’t quantify the mountains and the beating sun. She tells him about Nina, tripping over her words, but Scott’s a good listener after many years of practice.
They come to stop along the boards, and Tessa fidgets with her fingers. “Scott, I need to tell you something, and I need you to just listen.” She’s too afraid to meet his gaze, so she doesn’t.
“My whole life – my whole life, you were my Everest. And we tried so hard, to pretzel ourselves into being what the other needed. And I know you, and you know me – I know you here,” she presses a hand to her heart, “so deeply that it scares me, and makes me push everyone else away for fear that they’ll hurt me for knowing me.
“And I have been mean to you because of it. And I’m sorry. Because before you were anything else – before you were my skating partner – you were my friend.”
Scott presses his forehead to hers, eyes big and wide, and she’d laugh at the resemblance to Nina if she didn’t feel like crying.
“Tessa,” he whispers, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She loops her arms around his neck, feels his heartbeat in her chest. “I want to be the safest person you have ever loved.”
---------
“So, I think, if I swing you up by grabbing your leg, I’ll secure you better when you’re in the air," fifteen year old Scott says, hands gripping her waist.
“Sure,” replies Tessa easily, “I trust you.”
“Up and away, kiddo – time to let you fly.”
And it works, and she is.