Range of Light (18 page)

Old Lou had everything figured out. He had transcended the values of his southern aristocrat parents: “Of course we have to progress from the position of someone like my father, who would say …” However, he was simply the next predictable generation of semienlightened gentleman. Nancy and I had known, under our nervous snickers, that we were losing Adele to this man and his well-ordered life on the other coast. I think we knew this long before Adele did. Why? Perhaps because Adele had always been the most idealistic of us—believing that all her options remained alive. She regarded life as a string of possibilities while I faced it as a series of consecutive sentences.

To be candid, I'd never forgive Lou for stealing my dearest friend. Rather, for holding the door open to her. Surely I had to admit that Adele had left willingly. What gave me any claim on her? Maybe, in fact, she was trying to escape me. Maybe my intensity had driven Adele away. For years I let myself twist this particular knife in my gut. But clearly Adele's leaving had to do with something larger and deeper.

Our afternoon ascent to the Meadows was gradual, easy, a pleasurable tug on the muscles. Soon we'd come up Curry Stables Trail. I could smell the sweet horseshit from here. Adele didn't seem to be having trouble balancing her way across the creeks this afternoon. And I had found my mountain legs—yesterday's fatigue vanished—once more at home in the High Country.

Chapter Seventeen

Adele

Friday / Tuolumne Meadows

BLUE SKY. BRIGHT BLUE.
Olive green shrubs. Gray out­croppings crunching down to white slabs. Beached dolphins. Bleached dolphins. I felt so light, suspended in well-being. Kath also seemed to be finding the walk easier today. High Country summer was joyous wakefulness and the rest of the year just hibernation. Perhaps, I thought, I should give up my vainglorious intellectuality and look for a job in the Sierra waiting on tables. Simon and Taylor would be a lot healthier here than cooped up in Cambridge. I could get an early shift doing breakfasts and lunches at some café and have every afternoon to climb mountains with the boys after school.

Kath paused on the trail, handing me the open water bottle.

Greedily I drank. “Thanks.” I rested my hand on her forearm.

She took a long breath, then drew away slightly. “I think we should indulge tonight and have dinner at the lodge. We could get showers first. It's been a long couple of days. We deserve a treat. And we could call Nancy from the lodge phone.”

I concealed my disappointment. Perhaps Kath was more tired. But I'd been looking forward to cooking my mushroom-veggie stroganoff for her tonight. It had always been a hit with Lou and the boys and was easy enough to make over a campfire. I could get all the ingredients at the park store. Tonight was the only time left, for we weren't going to backpack burgundy, sour cream and onions up to Vogelsang tomorrow, and after that we were headed down to Palo Alto. I hoped Kath would agree; I wanted to do something for her.

I tried a lighthearted voice: “Yes, let's call Nancy. And take the showers—even though half my tan will wash off. But I feel like cooking, it's my turn.”

“You really want to?”

I nodded, surprised by how much I needed to fix Kath a meal.

“Fine.” She sounded doubtful. “It's not every day someone is begging to cook for me.”

“This would give me great pleasure,” I said definitively as I strapped on the water bottle.

The late afternoon sun lit up the Meadows during this last leg of our trip. “If only we could camp
here
,
on this wide, fragrant lap of land beneath the stars.”

“But hikers have eroded it so much as is,” Kath responded in her irritating, earnest way. “Can you imagine what'd happen if people pounded in tent stakes and made campfires …”

“Hold on, John Muir!” I reached out to massage Kath's rigid neck. “It's just a whim. A notion. I promise to be an ecologically appropriate camping partner.”

Kath grinned self-consciously.

I stirred stroganoff,
enjoying the
scents and evening sounds: jays squawking, squirrels yipping, leaves rustling. We had been lucky to get this secluded campsite and lucky the person registered next to us hadn't shown. The evening light softened the edges of distant mountains, the companionable trees and Kath's serious profile as she sat at the picnic table, book open, eyes straight ahead, in a trance.

Sensing my attention, she looked up. “So what's in this mess?”

“Guess.”

“Cloves?” She sniffed.

“No, you'll never figure it out.” I stirred.

“Cinnamon?”

“Cinnamon!”

“Well, you said I'd never figure it out.”

I laughed, attending to the scrape, scrape, scrape of my wooden spoon through the softening vegetables. From the dense woods behind us came an argumentative caw, caw. I closed my eyes and wondered if this were perfect happiness.

Then, “Oh, no!”

“Are you OK?” Kath turned.

“Fine”—I shook my head—“but you know what we forgot to do after the showers?”

“Jesus. You're right. Nancy.”

“As soon as we get back from Vogelsang, we'll call her, before we do anything else.”

“Right,” Kath agreed, staring at me as if about to say something else. Instead, she returned to her trance.

“Remember that song Nancy wrote when we were here?” I asked.

“About the lumberjack with plaid socks.”

“And the two left thumbs.” I laughed.

“Yeah, that part was gross.” She shook her head, grinning.

“A lot about Nancy was gross.”

Kath waited.

“I mean, she wasn't afraid to be outrageous. The best most of us monotonously good girls could manage was silly, but Nancy had that admirable, perverse streak.”

“Yeah”—Kath rocked back and forth—“like when she tried out for cheerleader in that nun's outfit. I mean, she knew people would be offended. But it was
so
funny. I still laugh about it.”

Filled with seriousness, sadness for Nancy, I said, “With that kind of panache and humor, I wonder why she didn't do better.”

“Do better?” Kath asked.

“Well, you know, she had those three broken marriages and the drinking and the weight.”

Kath shook her head. “And lots of good times in between. I don't know, Nancy wasn't the kind of person to take a straight path. I mean, she wasn't going anywhere. She was simply being. And enjoying it a lot.”

“You think it's my bourgeois construction that she could have had a more fulfilling life.”

“Whatever.” Kath sounded annoyed.

“No, really.”

“Of course, the breakdown and the alcoholism and the cancer haven't been any fun, but—”

“But what?” I demanded, feeling stupid and desperately wanting a happier interpretation.

“But who's to say she hasn't lived more intensely in a
positive
way too? I mean, she has a great capacity for love—writing­ to us all these years, continuing to reach out. She has four devoted daughters. She has an original, wild sense of humor. She's always lived more largely than anyone I know.”

“You think she's had a happy life?” I asked, still puzzled, still wanting to make it OK.

“I didn't say that. Who has a happy life?”

I turned back to the stroganoff.

Kath resumed reading.

“Voilà,” I declared. “You can turn around now.”

Kath swiveled to find two plastic cups of red wine next to plates of steaming vegetarian stroganoff.

I fidgeted. “Only a cup of wine for the recipe. We might as well have a toast. Wouldn't want to waste the rest of the bottle.”

“No, we wouldn't want to do that.” Kath raised her glass. “Here's to conversation.”

“Here's to loving friendship.” I floated in the fragrance of drink and dinner, conscious of a happy flush rising in my cheeks. Perhaps what I needed all these years wasn't a lover but a good friend.

“You know in the dark like this—under the lantern light, starlight, you look like you did in high school,” I blurted, “all the wrinkles disappear and—”

“Wrinkles? Me, wrinkles?”

I laughed, then lifted a fork of stroganoff to my mouth. It was too hot, and I blew on the steaming food. “How much do you think we
have
changed since those days? They say people basically stay the same—or become more like themselves.”

Kath snorted. “I've never trusted ‘they.' ” She swallowed the hot food with a long drink of burgundy. “You think we haven't changed?”

“You think we have?”

“In some ways. I hope so,” she answered cautiously, then concentrated on her dinner. “Say, this is terrific.”

I shook my fork at her. “Evading the topic is something you've always excelled at.”

“See.” Kath grinned. “Another longstanding talent. But really, this
is
a great meal. And
you've
never been good at accepting compliments.”

“Thank you.” I bowed my head. “I'll work on that. Always room for improvement.”

“That's the only thing that keeps me going.”

“So, how have you
improved
with age?” I persisted. One of the things I loved about being with Kath was our unapologetically sincere conversations. During the last couple of days I'd been delighted to discover I hadn't lost the knack. Nostalgic for our idealistic girlhoods, regretful about the subsequent years of cool, smooth, small talk, I asked, “Really, tell me how you've changed.”

Kath took another drink. “Well, I hope I'm a hell of a lot less naive about the world. I know about pregnancy tests, about abortions, about post-traumatic stress syndrome, about drugs, AIDS, Alzheimer's, death, survival.”

I envied Kath's certainty. “How has that
changed
you?”

She frowned.

“Aside from wisdom accumulating. How has your
behavior
changed?”

“I don't know. You were always one for those cosmic conclusions.”

“Come on.”

“Well, I used to believe that if you leaned on a problem—just kept your shoulder against an obstacle—it would move. Now, maybe I've developed a little finesse. If the idea is to get beyond the boulder, I think about walking around it. Or over it. For a long time that was compromise.”

“If it's not compromise, what is it?”

“Humility.” An immediate answer.

I tapped the fork against my tin plate. “But—”

“Eat, Adele, eat. It's delicious and it's getting cold. Or maybe you really do subsist on words and ideas.”

In our silence, in the dark, the night sounds amplified: roar from the highway; wind in overhead branches; clatters from the woods. Bear? No, I felt utterly remote from menace. Our night sky grew brighter with stars and satellites and planets while here below the atmosphere was murky from too many campfires.

My plate was empty. “So how does this humility work for you now? The other day you said you were laid off, that you could probably get a secure job if you went back to school, but you refuse to apply.”

Kath shifted uneasily. Perhaps she was still hungry. I should have cooked more.

“Ego,” I tried.

“I'm too ancient to sit in a classroom with eighteen-year-olds.”

“Awww. There are plenty of returning students, particularly women.”

“And I have all this family shit to deal with. Finding a retirement home for my parents. Martha's daughter needs spine surgery, and I really should be around for that. Besides, I'd have to get a loan for tuition and find a part-time job to eat. And my family would flip out if I went back to school at forty-four. They thought college was weird enough when I was eighteen.”

“They did? Everyone was going to college.”

“Not everybody. I keep telling you. Gloria Delgado didn't. Not Steve Dixon. Or Sammy Woods or Wilson Holmes. All those guys went to Vietnam. And Wilson didn't come back.”

“I was really sorry about Wilson. I liked him. But, Kath, we're talking about you and you're changing the story.”

“I'm
not.
That's what you can't see. These people
are
my story. In some ways I was a lot closer to them. I mean more similar to them—than I was to you.”

I winced. “Class. Yes, well, of course, I know. We've talked about that. But you were
smart
,
Kath. And interested in ideas.”

“I passed. Passed as a college preppie, but I didn't belong in your club.”

This stung as it was meant to; however, I wasn't going to let her divert me. “You have a right to finish college.”

“And a right not to.”

I was being rash; this evening I couldn't hold back. “What are you afraid of?”

“Oh, don't be stupid.” She turned away.

Unable to conceal my frustration, I said slowly, “It's as if you've been in a holding pattern all these years.”

“In comparison to what?” She flared. “Your life? I could ask you what you've been running away from!”

I nodded.

“But it's also possible to see our lives apart from one another, to use separate gauges. OK? Try—I exist apart from you and you apart from me.

Her cold matter-of-factness was scary.

Overhead a helicopter whirred.

“Late for that,” Kath observed. “Must be some kind of emergency.”

“Emergency?” A chill blew down my neck. “Oh, I guess like twisted ankles. Heart attacks. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah, they've got a hospital in the Valley. But it would be a pretty bumpy ride down there.”

“Count your lucky stars, as Mother would say.”

“Which are those?” Kath looked up.

“As I said before, one way you haven't changed is that you've always been brilliant at shifting the subject, when the subject is you.”

“Wrong. I have changed,” she insisted. “I'm much
better
at it.”

“Improvement, yes, I see.” I laughed, happy to shelve this particular disagreement. I split the rest of the burgundy between us.

“There's Scorpio,” declared Kath.

“Where?” I asked.

“See, there.” Kath pulled out her flashlight and traced the long tail in the sky.

I nodded. “I do see. You know, I've never been able to find that before. The enormity of it makes me feel so small. Of course everyone says that, still, do you feel that, too?”

“No,” Kath said. “I guess I don't. When I look at the sky hanging there, the Milky Way blurring in and out of the closer, brighter stars, I guess I don't think of myself in proportion to them, so much as in relation to them. I don't mean I'm a star, but part of the universe.”

“But they're so huge, sending all that light from miles, years, away.”

She looked at me blankly.

I couldn't tell how I was being unclear. “Like the mountains; doesn't the hugeness of Half Dome or Mount Dana make you feel small?”

“No,” she mused, “no. Maybe I don't feel all that large to begin with.”

I stared hard at the sky.

“There's Sagittarius.”

“Yes.” I pointed the flashlight. “Hey, you're pretty good at this stuff.”