Range of Light (6 page)

Strange to have his map of life darting before my eyes now. It was as if I were preparing some kind of defense for Kath. Ludicrous to worry this way; so what if she didn't approve of all my choices? What did it matter?

Likewise … oh, shit—a truck cut in front of Lou's Saab. Damn, I was always more afraid of getting into an accident in his car. A chorus of honks erupted from the hot irritable drivers. My own horn blasting among them. Ugh, Massachusetts summers were so sticky and tempers short. Likewise … it had been a completely mutual decision when we chose Cambridge over Seattle to settle. I had to decline a tenure-track job at the University of Washington to take a temporary appointment near Lou. He was right that I would get a better post soon. Still, I did occasionally find myself reading articles here and there about the San Juan Islands. When I shopped, I still looked discerningly at raincoats.

Lou was sitting
at the
dining room table eating cold roast potatoes from last night's dinner, engrossed in the Sunday
New York Times.

“I put out your green parka. It was in a hall closet and I thought you might forget it.” He studied my hair. “Nice cut.”

I kissed the top of his lush, curly mane. “That's sweet of you.” The archetypal southern gallant, he never commented on my shifting hair color.

Now I sat beside this man who was affable, hardworking, socially engaged, able to juggle fourteen things at once and still have spare energy. One infidelity does not a marriage break. As he said, although Sonia was a younger woman, she wasn't a student but a colleague from a different department. No hint of sexual harassment or even inappropriateness unless you were running for president. I mean, how could a sixties woman get unstuck over a little sex? Sex, not infidelity. Infidelity was an arcane concept. That affair with Sonia was over last year and forgotten as far as he was concerned. Sure, I had a right to be pissed off. But it was just a blip in our long, steady marriage. Nevertheless, it reminded me how we had both changed over the last twenty years. We had grown a little bored with one another. Resting my elbows on the table, I told myself that compared to most marriages we were doing fine, emotionally, materially.

“The coat. That's very thoughtful of you, especially since you don't want me to go camping.” The irritation slipped out.

“It isn't that I ‘don't want' you to go. Rather the expedition strikes me as one more obligation in a life overcrowded with commitments.” He leaned back, stretching his muscular arms above his head. Dark hairs peeked from the sleeve of his white T-shirt. I could almost smell the familiar, arousing sweat and taste his salty skin.

We were on different planets. He didn't understand my tie to the West, to Kath. I didn't completely understand it either, but he couldn't even
see
it.

Lou continued, “I think you'll regret not working on the bibliography this week. I'm worried about you being exhausted by the time you get to the conference. And frankly, I think you got yourself into this thing on a sentimental whim. Since the others have backed out, you should feel free to cancel, too.”

“Nancy didn't
back out.
She has cancer surgery.”

“The others.” He addressed the magazine, which reeked from one of those deadly perfume ads.

“Kath is going.”

He was silent.

“And the fact is, you don't like Kath.”

He stroked his recently-trimmed black beard. “I met the woman briefly a lifetime ago. I don't like or dislike her. I hardly know her.
And the fact is,
neither do you.”

Furious, I held my temper because I had no emotional elasticity for a fight right now. I cleared the table of the boys' breakfast dishes, then drifted into the bedroom to continue packing.

My open suitcase yawned demandingly. The idea that I didn't know Kath! Was it “sentimental” to think I knew Kath better than anyone in my life? I felt a twinge of disloyalty, for I did, indeed, feel as if I understood Kath more completely than I knew Lou. Last night he had rented
The Third Man,
and we watched Holly's incredulity grow and diminish as Harry sold watered-down penicillin. (A classic story of friendship betrayed: is this why Lou had selected it at the video store?) We watched Holly killing his old pal. I could still hear the zither music. Was Kath Holly or Harry?

I folded a succession of T-shirts and placed them on the right side of the suitcase. This was the only way I could cope: one half for the Sierra, the other side for Stanford. Lou was partially right: I felt obliged. The trip was some kind of penance for not keeping in touch. Of course I hadn't heard a thing from Kath after Sari's death. Or after Mother's.

I was angry with Kath. I felt contrite. Lou understood my reasons for going on the trip were unformed. Perhaps it was some sort of foolish menopausal pilgrimage—back to the West, up to the mountains. Perhaps it was a way of returning to Kath, to myself. Perhaps it was a chance to think about the Berkeley job. An opportunity to assess who I was becoming before it was too late.

The Sierra side of my suitcase filled, I got up and stretched, catching a glimpse of my dark hair in the mirror. Shame and relief: I always felt a mixture of the two when I had my hair done. How easy it was to ignore my principles for vanity. While I didn't think I was sexually objectifying myself, I probably was age objectifying. No, that wasn't fair either. These political terms were so sterile and judgmental. Perhaps I was just trying to look as young and competent and able as I felt. What was I supposed to do—refrain from jogging? Surrender to middle-age paunch? Stop tweezing the tiny hairs sprouting from my chin? Let myself go gray? All in the name of natural aging. What was a little masquerade in this era of constructed identity? I was simply dressing to fit the part of the vital, imaginative scholar I was. I had achieved the crest of what I hoped would be a long, wide, productive plateau. I was just coming into my own as a thinker and teacher, so I wanted to dress as the self I knew. Career posed enough uncertainties. I wanted to recognize this person in the mirror.

The Stanford side of my suitcase I packed with crushable skirts and a cotton dress. I tossed in a couple of sweaters for the necessary layering, although I suspected it would be consistently hot and dry on the Peninsula. And I would carry a trench coat over my arm. On the dresser, my eye caught sight of the Midnight Sparkle nail polish I had bought to send Nancy. I would mail it with a priority stamp this afternoon. A silly hospital present, an alms, an insurance policy.

I zipped the bag and checked the bedside clock. One o'clock. Never in my life had I finished packing for a trip eighteen hours before takeoff. I supposed this was good, because the missing items might rise to my consciousness between now and tomorrow morning. Was I metamorphosizing into an efficient person? Or was I simply frantic? Well, I had time for a jog. The boys wouldn't be home for another three hours.

“Going for a run?” Lou glanced up from his magazine. “Good. Shake off some of that tension. You'll sleep better tonight.”

I shot him an irritated glance and said, “Sometimes you can be a patronizing ass.”

He feigned affront, then shrugged. “Well, admirable people need fatal flaws in order to remain sympathetic.”

Always the last word.

In spite of myself, I called, “Cheerio!”

He waved almost shyly. So I had hurt his feelings.

I donned my Camp Wildriver headband, a birthday gift from the boys, and set off. Outside, the Cambridge streets were muggy. The stink of dog shit rose from the pavement. Traffic was loud, congested, and the air thickened with exhaust. Spring in Cambridge can be vibrant, but by mid-August every living thing is bedraggled, defeated by humidity. Would my lungs explode from all the fresh air in the Sierra? I found the hill to the park pleasantly easy, and sooner than I expected, I was completing my first lap.

I felt more like thirty-five than forty-four. Maybe even thirty. It was as if in the last ten years my muscles hadn't aged but rather found their stride. The vehicle was in good condition but low on fuel. Was it possible for a whole life to evaporate while one wasn't looking? My spirit was dormant, in a jar somewhere. Perhaps that was the nature of aging: one's nerve endings died, one learned to compromise sensibility as well as principle. Ten years ago I would have been horrified at the way I was now able to finesse a response to a politically volatile question. What I said and felt had less and less in common. Hardly ever did I answer anyone directly because I never knew what would get back to whom. I talked this way for the administration, that way for my women's studies colleagues. I spent so much time guarding against misrepresentation that occasionally I even forgot what I thought. And I wound up in the most surprising places. Downhill now, I was halfway through my run, sweating profusely but not puffing. I'd be OK in the mountains.

How had I wound up in the still male-centered culture of academia? Here I was, so determined to escape my mother's experience as benumbed chatelaine. Propelled by feminist principles to carve out an independent life of social contribution, of professional and domestic satisfaction, here I was surrounded by men. Abandoned by Sari and Mother and Kath. Left with my father, husband and sons. To some degree—conscious­ and unconscious—that was my choice. I was naturally better at being close to men because you couldn't get too close, couldn't merge as you did with women, because the men in my life hadn't deserted me. Anyway, the eighties had flashed by and I looked up to find myself with the boys. A privileged, coveted place. But lonely.

Dinner was my favorite:
pasta
primavera. Lou had bought a special bottle of Chianti.

“Boys, do you know how sweet your father is?” I caught myself absentmindedly peeling the familiar label off the bottle.

Simon and Taylor were competing to see who could get more spaghetti on a fork at one time.

“Well,” I continued to my imaginary audience, with the uncertainty I often had in the classroom: anyone listening? Lou was listening. I was saying this for Lou and myself.

“This is the same wine we drank on our wedding night.”

Simon nudged Taylor. “That was before us.”

I laughed.

“Yes, it was the convention then.” Lou took a gulp of wine. “Children came after the wedding.”

“‘Convention.' Mom, what's ‘convention'?” demanded earnest Taylor.

“Ask your father. It's his word.”

Lou missed a beat. Only one. He had been drinking too much, and I realized how distressed he was about my trip. “Look it up in the dictionary. And let us know what you think I meant. It has several connotations.”

“Taylor,” I said. “Tell us more about the kayak race, sweetie. Were you scared out there by yourself?”

Chapter Seven

Kath

Tuesday Morning / Gaylor Lakes

THE WOODS SMELLED RIPE
from fungus and decaying bark. An ambitious hawk sailed above, scrutinizing us. Adele shivered in the early morning damp. We were both well enough covered. She wore a parka over her cotton turtleneck and Scottish sweater. I had a flannel jacket and two layers of T-shirt. I hoped Adele hadn't noticed the holes in my left hiking sock this morning. I had meant to get a new pair before leaving town. Jesus, I was getting self-conscious. Concentrate on the real, the practical, the present. She carried our lunch in the fanny pack. I carried a canteen of water, glad that she wasn't squeamish about sharing the same bottle, pleased by this small intimacy. The hawk circled lower, lower.

Adele trudged up the steep trail without a break, taking it too fast, as if she had something to prove. Still, she seemed OK. I turned my attention to the wildflowers, profuse for this late in the season: Gray's lovage, daisies. You had to look closely. Subalpine terrain was like ocean or desert the way grandeur could obscure subtlety. And you had to be careful not to take grandeur at face value. There was an intricacy in the dimension of those mountains. Just as there was compressed power in flowers like the fairy lanterns. A third of the way up. So far so good. We were adding 800 feet in elevation as we climbed from road to ridge.

Two yards ahead of me now, Adele finally paused. I caught up with her, and together, inhaling the dry lodgepole scent, we looked out on Mount Dana, Mount Gibbs and Mammoth Peak. Closer, just below us, the white boulders scattered across Dana Meadows made that flat, grassy expanse look like a haphazard cemetery.

“Wonder what it would have been like to be an Indian here three hundred years ago?” I said, flinching as a sudden wind froze sweat to my skin. “OK to summer in the High Country, but come late September, early October snow, I'd want to be on a raft, off to visit my cousins at the coast.”

“Yes.” Adele smiled. “My fantasies are set in Victorian London, and I'd adore the long dresses, but not the outdoor plumbing.”

I laughed, nervous about how she was going to enjoy backpacking in a few days if she was fussy about toilets.

“I never imagine myself as the maid ironing dresses or the Indian woman tending a newborn, gathering food and pounding acorns all day.” Adele removed the parka but hesitated at the sweater.

I passed her the canteen, then took a sip myself. We headed higher. Steeper now. Harder to breathe. Soon we'd reach the saddle and it would be joyfully downhill. Each year I was struck by my all-consuming awareness of the trail, of the hours involved in getting from one place to the next. Of how the route and the map temporarily overwhelmed everything else, even your most serious worries. Hiking forced an urban speed freak into the present. This was so much more immediate than writing a grant for your salary to be skimmed by bored government bureaucrats. Hiking was a form of meditation. But you could grow obsessed with the route itself. That was no more transcendent than obsessing about work. Soon the walking would be flat, unless we visited the mine we'd explored as kids. Kids, I fought the label then, and it seemed crucial now.

At the ridge, Adele waited again. We faced the elegant giants: Unicorn, Coxcomb, Cathedral Peaks. I wasn't big on churches, but the spired architecture of Cathedral Peak always made me feel kind of reverent. Wind here was tight, strong. The sun warmed my shoulder muscles. Suddenly I was twirling in a pirouette.

Adele watched me, fiddling nervously with her long, black ponytail.

“I do this every year. A three-hundred-sixty-degree turn. Gives me a sense of hope, a reference point for the next twelve months. I mean, there I am at some infuriating board meeting and I tell myself, ‘Just look at that view inside your head—Unicorn, Coxcomb, Cathedral—keep some perspective on these assholes.' It helps.”

Adele sipped from the canteen.

Since the descent could be a little tricky, I struck out ahead of her. The trail down to the water would be shorter. Middle Gaylor Lake was at a higher elevation than Tioga Pass Road. The route down was scattered with scrubby, gnarled trees. What different trips we must be making—Adele comparing the temperature, humidity, foot traffic to a quarter century ago and me making comparisons with last year and the year before. One July first, I couldn't make it to the mine shaft because of the snow.

At the base of the hill, Middle Gaylor Lake was a deep blue. On the far side walked a solitary hiker in a red windbreaker. If it hadn't been for Adele's sleeping in, we would have arrived ahead of the Red Wind-breaker. Disgusting competitiveness. There was a difference between experiencing the land and owning it. I had to remind myself of this each year as I returned from the city. The Red Windbreaker had a right. The mountains didn't belong to me. If I was lucky, I'd reach a state where I belonged to them. I glanced back to watch Adele gingerly climbing downhill. I proceeded in a careful side step to protect against slipping. Behind us, the hill grew taller. Dana Meadows had disappeared.

Standing in the spacious valley, I thought of those lakes hidden to the south. Would Adele remember?

“The Miner's Hill,” she said breathlessly. “Up there, to the right, isn't it?”

I nodded. Side by side we walked, and I imagined Nancy, Paula and Donna hiking behind. No snow this year, but it hadn't melted long ago. The new, spongy grass made me uneasy.

Adele grabbed my elbow, pointing.

About eight feet away, a large marmot observed us. The gray and brown creature stood her ground, staring ahead defiantly. Like the idea of us gave her a migraine.

“Not so welcoming.” I grunted. Her clan had probably survived the Ice Age, fortified by all that fur and tenacity.

We waved to the animal and walked up the hill toward a disintegrating black cabin. Looking back, I saw the marmot holding her ground, as if defending young. Or maybe she was simply put out by two more trespassers this morning. Mountain summer was short—just enough time for most animals to mate, reproduce and start raising offspring. Too bad for them this was also the season of thunder-footed, Velcro invaders.

Adele stepped into the dark, moldy structure. Hesitantly, I followed. Moisture shined on the walls.

“Did the miner die in this fire or do you suppose he reached that saddle above Middle Gaylor Lake to find his home in flames?”

I was alternately charmed and irritated that she thought I had answers to such questions. Shrugging, I watched her imagination accelerate.

“Did he have a wife? Kids?” Adele asked as she ran her hand along a wet beam in what might have been the kitchen.

“A mining company, I think I read,” I offered. “Probably a couple of guys here. Maybe it wasn't a house but some kind of shop? Who knows when it burned? Maybe after they left?”

“No family.” Adele surveyed the view through the doorway. “No, I feel more a solitary spirit. Perhaps someone who traveled across the country looking for gold and silver. The optimism of that. The hubris.”

I watched her carefully.

Adele held on to the doorframe.

Awkwardly, I extended the canteen. “Fire can make a person parched.”

She gulped the water.

“How about going to the lower lakes?”

Adele nodded, although I suspected she wanted to stay longer and summon dead miners. Was there any silver left in the veins under Tioga Hill?

“This way,” I called, directing Adele cross-country. Reluctant to meet the marmot's gaze, I skirted the trail. We bounced over springy grass and scrambled around boulders. Here and there were bouquets of white columbine. Every twenty yards, I glanced over my shoulder to check on Adele.

“Wouldn't this be a cozy place for a bear and her cubs, shaded by these enormous rocks, with rivulets of water?” she asked in a light, amused voice.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Perfect place.”

Turning, I watched her flinch as she realized I wasn't kidding. She swallowed, then quickly recovered equilibrium.

For some reason, I thought about when I taught Adele basketball in the fifth grade. Weeks and weeks passed, and she couldn't grasp the concept of guarding. It seemed rude to her, standing in someone's way, waving your arms about, when the game should properly be a test of who was the most skillful at shooting baskets. Finally, it occurred to her that guarding is a different kind of skill. And she became better at it than I was. Our exchange was more than fair. That spring, Adele gave me my first diary, and over the years maintaining a journal had kept me sane. Martha had never liked Adele, and it took years before I understood she saw how Adele was pulling me away from the family. Martha, who lost touch with all her school friends even though most had stayed in the Bay Area, always viewed friendship as some sort of threat to the family center. And I was the opposite. I saw friendship, especially Adele's, as an escape hatch from family entrapment. Friendship seemed more profound because you chose which friends to love and they could leave you, as Adele had left me. Concentrate on the land, I scolded myself for the tenth time today.

What I liked best about Granite Lake was how so much of it was obscured during the long walk across the valley. Suddenly the water appeared, startling me as much as it had when we were girls. Did Adele remember that initial surprise—Paula saying, “It must be around here,” and then, “Voilà!”

“Whoa!” Adele cried with pleasure at the lake's precise reflection of mountains and sky. Stubby clouds floating on deep waters. “Whew,” she said, removing her fanny pack, absorbing the beauty.

Adele had always had this talent for savoring. Oh, I enjoyed the glory of this place, but I couldn't chew on it as Adele could, couldn't roll it around on my tongue in front of someone. Not even in front of Adele. Maybe especially not in front of Adele.

She edged toward the lake to rinse her hands. “Ooooooh.” She pulled back. “Now that's
glacier
melt. Forget snowmelt.”

I walked forward, knelt beside her and felt compelled to keep my hands in longer than Adele had. What was going on, why was I behaving so macha? I needed the protection of a clear line between us. I should live in the pleasure of this rediscovered closeness, but even stronger than this pleasure was my grief about lost pleasures of twenty-three years' estrangement. How long could we pussyfoot around before we confronted the hurt we both felt? Maybe we could avoid it for the whole week. A deep, cowardly part of me hoped so. I'd rather tackle a bear than “deal with” the anger and grief between us. On the other hand, I needed to know, at least, that Adele felt this pain too.

Adele didn't seem to notice my icy hands display. She had opened the fanny pack. “Cheese sandwiches are intact.” The tomato was whole, sweating sweetness into her palm. And the orange we'd brought for extra moisture oozed tropical fragrance.

A chill sliced down the back of my neck. What was the marmot doing? Certainly not worrying about us.

“Good sandwich,” I said between bites. “It's nice of you to humor my vegetarianism. But I don't mind if you pack a meat sandwich.”

“No, I'm fine with cheese.” Adele smiled. “And I saw all the luscious avocado and sprouts and tofu in your cooler. How could baloney compete?”

I stretched out on the rocks. “I mean, if meat's what you're used to …”

“No, in fact meat's what Lou and the boys like, and it's crazy for me to fix separate meals for myself. I'm sure your diet is much healthier, more principled.”

Too early in the day, in our trip, to start talking principles. Urgently needing to keep the conversation light, I said, “The Indians ate acorns, pine nuts and manzanita berries.” I contrasted the discomfort of the boulder and the pleasure of the sun soaking into my skin. “Also wild cherries and Sierra plum. Now
that's
healthy.”

“Sounds good to me,” Adele said. I could hear her tearing the skin from the orange, splitting the globe in two. She handed me half. Closing my eyes, I sucked the golden juice.

“I remember from school, how your mom used to cut your oranges in half,” Adele said.

“You remember that?” I turned my head and stared into the dark pool of Granite Lake, wishing it was swimming temperature.

She laughed. “And I remember your mom always made you Velveeta sandwiches on white bread with mustard. Mustard with horseradish.”

“Del, Del.” I sat up, pulling my knees to my chest and smiling at the old nickname.

Adele cocked an amused eyebrow.

“Del, what else do you remember?”

“I remember Katherine Peterson planned to go around the world with UNESCO. Or the Red Cross.”

“You used to tease me, call me a missionary.”

“I was jealous.”

“
You
jealous?” I objected. “Miss Success, who could draw like—what's her name?—Mary Cassatt. Miss Success, who won all the school writing prizes.”

“Yeah. You were the one who was going to change the world.”

So it had always been a problem, I thought. “Ambition! You wanted to become a writer. The next Willa Cather, they said at graduation breakfast.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember a lot about you.”

Blushing, she approached the water, knelt down and splashed her face. Adele was a shapely, graceful woman, even in hiking gear. In comparison I was a gawky adolescent. Martha was right on that.

“The only trouble”—she paused and moved toward me, frowning—“is that I didn't have anything to write about. I didn't know anywhere the way Cather knew Nebraska.”

“You knew California.” Surprised by my volume, I softened my voice. “And you found plenty to write about.”

“Art history. Criticism,” Adele demurred. “Theory. It's not the same thing as real writing.”

“That's stupid.” My father's anger. I could feel my jaw jutting out. My father's style.