Range of Light (16 page)

Kath stared at the back of the guy's hat. Clearly she was itching to go. “I guess not,” she answered neutrally.

I started to demur. After all, there were those five pounds I needed to lose before the conference.

“I think I'll wait for you outside,” she said curtly. “To make sure the packs are safe.”

Chapter Sixteen

Kath

Thursday and Friday / Glen Aulin

I WATCHED THEM WALK
into the brilliant sunshine. He was a head taller than Adele and much more tanned, but they seemed to fit together like siblings reunited in a country distant from their birthplace.

“Sandy says he'll show us the best campsites.” Adele was talking rapidly. “And he has directions to Waterwheel Falls.”

I nodded. It would've sounded pompous to remind Adele, to tell Sandy, how often I had camped here. Pulling on my backpack, I adjusted the shoulder straps, disappointed at how sore I felt. What was wrong? Why did Adele have so much more energy?

Sandy smiled at me, congenial, distracted. He turned to Adele, who was comfortably slipping on her heavy pack. “The ground is great this time of year. Lots of pine needles, soft. Dry though. Lovely smell.”

I knew we were in trouble. Only your sensitive, liberated guys said “lovely.”

“You come to the Sierra often?” Adele asked.

I listened, impressed by her capacity for socializing. Of course she didn't care about this guy, she was just being polite. She'd ask a few more questions, that's what you did with men—ask them questions until they were on a roll and then they floated along a stream of self-revelation.

“How many days are you here?”

Had I been boring Adele? Maybe I hadn't been forthcoming enough. Of course I needed her to understand my life. I was a dyke. But I didn't want to have to tell her. Partially out of some weird Norwegian reserve. Partially because I resented how my life had to be explained while hers could just be assumed.

“Crazy really.” He was chatting in what I guessed was a Michigan accent. Maybe Illinois—one of those squeezed together midwestern voices. “Being an environmental lobbyist keeps me in a small office with one window forty-nine weeks a year. Or on airplanes between here—I mean San Francisco—and D.C. It's not what I expected. I should have joined the Park Service, where I'd actually get some fresh air.

Adele laughed.

I dropped back several steps to inspect a stand of mountain hemlock. Maybe I was being defensive, resisting Adele's curiosity about my life. Mom claimed it was like pulling teeth to get me to talk. But what more would Adele want to know about work, about Anita? Should I tell Adele this generous, vivacious woman had it all figured out—successful practice, good relationship with her parents, admirable community activism? The baby was the next stage in a model life. Should I tell her I wound up feeling part of Anita's whole, well-loved, yes, but also scared of suffocation? Already with Adele I was totally exposed, my conversational reserves depleted. Maybe Adele did need to talk with someone more stimulating.

“This way,” he was saying. “I'm afraid I took the best site—next to the river here.” He pointed to his neat navy blue nylon pup tent and backpack hung expertly out of bear range. The ground around his campsite was swept so clean I wondered if he did cocaine.

“But there's a nice spot back there.” He indicated a clearing ten feet away.

“And my favorite place is down the trail a bit,” I found myself adding. “I usually stop there. Shall we, Adele?” I hated my proprietary tone. And I loathed people who were more camperly than thou.

“Oh, right,” he said, gingerly. Disappointed but still cheerful, he persisted, “Maybe I'll see you as I walk down to the Falls.”

“Right.” Adele smiled. She observed carefully.

Setting up the tent calmed me. Conjuring the tent. Nothing one minute. Then, presto: a small lavender dome with room for two sleeping bags and most of the contents of our backpacks.

“Now for the bear rope,” I said. “Help me hoist it up between these two trees.”

After securing the rope, we practiced raising our packs into the tree-tops, then watched them sway next to each other like two old women battling their way along a windy sidewalk.

Sitting on a log, Adele surveyed our campsite. “Cozy. Home sweet home.” She was so much happier today. Buoyant.

“How about a little trail mix?” I offered, sitting down beside her on the small log, our hips almost touching.

“You know, you have such a California complexion,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, vivid. No matter how much time most Easterners spend outside, we never achieve the vitality of California complexions. My color is always so temporary.”

We heard the sound at the same time. Slosh. Slosh. Like a slow bear with a nasal condition.

Sandy Archer appeared before us, canteen slopping against his thigh, his straw hat askew to the left. Around his neck was a different camera.

“Thought this is where you'd settle. Pretty good site. A close second to the one by the river.”

I felt like he'd walked into my bedroom.

Adele stood, opening her hands hospitably. “We don't have much to offer. Some trail mix?”

I stared at her, realizing this welcome was something she couldn't help: a dinner party hostess syndrome inherited from her mother. Still, I was pissed. With her. With him. With the way the two of them behaved together.

“No thanks.” Sandy smiled. “I can't hang out if I'm going to Waterwheel Falls and back before dinner. Just stopped by to show off my other camera. Sounds like the one you have at home.” He peeled a leather case from the sleek black instrument.

“Pretty nifty collection for someone who complains about people ‘hiding behind the lens.' ” I walked over to the tree and tightened the bear rope.

“Well.” He grinned. “I brought it by way of apology. I mean, to show I was kidding back there. I'm sorry. As a ploy for meeting you, it
was
fairly obnoxious.”

I checked the other side of the rope.

Adele stood next to him now, holding the camera. “Pretty good range,” she said approvingly.

As the two talked photography, I wondered why I was surprised by Adele's expertise about lenses. She'd always been good at art.

Sandy noticed my silence. “Better get going.”

I managed a pleasant farewell nod.

“And I was wondering if you—both—would like to join me.” He was still talking. “I'd say it's four hours max there and back. You'd return in plenty of time for supper.”

Adele turned to me.

I did my best to look noncommittal. Surely between the two of us we'd come up with a line to brush him off.

We both spoke at once.

“It's been a long day.”

“That sounds great.”

We turned to each other and asked in unison, “What do you think?”

I shrugged.

Adele stared at the ground. “Well, maybe you're right. We kind of overdid it yesterday.”

Sandy shuffled anxiously. “No problem. A friendly, casual invitation.”

“No.” I took a deep breath. I was being petty. Adele had been raving about that Smithsonian article on Waterwheel Falls since I picked her up at the airport. “We can each do what we want here. I'm wiped out, so I'd rather stay in camp and read. But, Adele, you're all revved up, you should go.”

Adele stood very still.

I continued, “You and Sandy. You'll make it back by 6:30. In plenty of time for dinner.”

Adele betrayed a small smile, pleasure at being released or amusement at my tone, I don't know. Jesus, I felt I was sending her off on a first date, giving them a curfew.

Clearly she was torn. “Maybe I should rest too.”

Sandy shifted his feet and fingered the braided rainbow camera strap.

I squatted to collect a couple of sticks for kindling. “Listen, you want to see the Falls. Go ahead. I'll make supper.”

“No,” Adele protested. “It's my turn.”

“Don't worry,” I said agreeably. My pride insisted she go now. I wasn't possessive. Wasn't threatened by this gangly guy. I could use some quiet time for myself.

“No, really,” she said.

“You can do the dishes.”

“All right, if you're sure you'll feel secure here without me to protect you from the bears.”

“I'll dial 911 if there's any trouble.” I bent down for a few more sticks.

Sandy laughed.

Adele waved.

They were off.

I putzed around the campsite, gathering wood, moving a small boulder in front of a log for a makeshift table. The perfect place to spend a solitary afternoon reading, thinking, writing in my journal. But I was overcome with fatigue. Yes, maybe this was why I'd lost my cool about Sandy. Really he was harmless enough. It was nice to have a photo of Adele and me on top of the dome. He was just a little lonely and didn't know how to meet people. I was completely overreacting. What was wrong? I'd lost the meditative attitude with which I usually traveled these mountains. I always appreciated quiet afternoons like this after a long hike, to reflect on the day, the year.

Each year the land reminded me about balance. Here, for a short time, I felt part of nature and refrained from judging myself in that panicky, urban way. I remembered that our task is to continue. To contribute to each other's continuing. To thrive insofar as we don't obstruct others' continuing. Each year walking through the wilderness I also felt, in a small way, like the land was a companion. And I couldn't get enough of it.

But today I wasn't only too tired to go to the Falls, I couldn't stay awake to think, to read. I found myself surrendering, crawling into the tent and settling in for a nap. Closing my eyes, I breathed in and out the fragrant aroma of mint. Behind my lids, I saw red fir, white fir … . I thought of Baffin, missing her, musing that Adele hadn't ever met my long-lived cat … . Jeffrey pine, lodgepole pine, sugar pine …

The thunder woke me.
Bolting
upright, I lifted a tent flap. Clear blue sky. Thunder, it had sounded like thunder. A roar of some kind. Fear ringed my solar plexus. Adele. I'd been having a dream about her. There were bells. She was wearing a red scarf. Some dream. I felt so wiped out. Couldn't reassemble the pieces. Did I have the flu? I shook my head, sat up and leaned back on my elbows.

Pulling out my journal, I
thought it was about time to write something. After a minute or two, I was surprised by what poured forth.

“For some reason, Tom's been hovering this week, maybe because being with Adele reminds me I have a past, a past that isn't closed the way I pretend. Even when Tom is old or dead (drinking, living on the streets, he could be dead now), he'll always be part of me and I don't understand how people who have been one can separate. Can completely detach themselves in time and space. Does this capacity mean humans really are completely autonomous? Does it mean we develop shells around ourselves between relationships? And can those shells be melted or cracked?”

I was writing down what I couldn't tell Adele yet. Funny, over the years, I often imagined my journal as a letter to Adele. The Adele of my memory, my fantasy. A different Adele from the one I was hiking with? Definitely a less demanding one. An Adele I felt safer with.

“For sure, Tom had grown some kind of shell—more a thin, oozing scab—by the time he came back from Vietnam. The first few weeks, his mood swings were mostly up—at our bodies being inside and beside one another again, at long, fragrant walks in Tilden Park, at hanging out with his old buddies from the garage. But as the months passed, a wild, raging dissatisfaction developed with what he called his ‘dead-end job,' the ‘asshole president' and me. He slept fitfully, waking with screams and night sweats. Only a six-pack would put him in a good mood. And by the time he smashed his hand at work, I
had
expected some kind of accident. We did our best, joking that the disability money was a scholarship. A chance, maybe, to go back to school. But he spent it on booze. His nerves got thinner and thinner. I tried to find him help. Then I was the enemy and he started knocking me around. It wasn't his fault. He couldn't control himself. I could be rigid, overly rational, demanding. I wondered how much was my fault. So I stayed. Maybe I was afraid that if I lost him, if I left him the way Adele had left me, there'd never be anyone to love again.

“I stayed with him until he brought home the gun. And then I had to get out. San Francisco wasn't far—but it was far enough and big enough if you laid low. Within twelve months I had metamorphosed from college coed to fugitive. For years I lived in terror he would find me. Eventually rumors drifted back about him being in one detox center, then another, then on the street. I knew he had become harmless, except to himself. And that he had started a gradual, if relentless, disintegration.

“I guess I'm a real fool to admit it's only been in the last couple of years that I noticed Dad's violence to Mom. OK, it was less dramatic than Tom's. Maybe in its slow way of building, more terrifying. But obviously Dad didn't start knocking Mom around just since he became senile. Now he was less self-conscious about his temper. And Mom had fewer resources to hide the bruises and bumps and broken bones. Sad, humiliating to think of her as a battery victim. My own mother.

“Then, does this mean I was programmed, like Anita'd say, to grow up and mate with a brute? Was it genes? Environment? Bad luck? There had to be some route out. I was grateful I left before Tom did more harm to himself or to me. Before we had kids. The silence, the covert escape, had been crucial then. As crucial as avoiding silence now.

“These were the lessons I learned while Adele was getting her Ph.D. I didn't know how to talk to her about them. Didn't know if she'd want to talk with me. Time passed. When I got back from Canada and heard of Sari's death, I was a coward and let yet more time pass. Time was my drug. If it didn't erase problems, at least it dimmed anxiety. Now, on this trip, I've realized time is a temporary sedative. Adele's still on my mind, in my bloodstream, so's Tom. You can't be cured of the people in your heart. They simply relocate to another part of your body, only to appear under stimulus. Tom will always be with me. This awareness brings comfort, shame, terror, resignation and a painful, old desire for intimacy.”