Range of Light (19 page)

“I've got a telescope at home. Not that you can see much in Oakland, with all the city lights. But sometimes.”

I laughed. “A telescope. You do amaze me.”

Kath made a long face. “You've always said that.”

I swirled the dregs of wine in my glass, smirking.

“So tell me more about this job at Berkeley,” she said abruptly. “Would it be good for you? For your career? Would you like it?”

As Kath asked these questions, I shivered again at how little we knew about each other's worlds.

“Sure, it's a stimulating place. I'd love to work with graduate students. The program at Berkeley would give me more research flexibility. It'd be great to be back in the Bay Area.”

“But …”

“But, my father—”

“Right. Your father. I get it.”

“And Lou.”

“Couldn't he find something at Berkeley? Or San Francisco State?”

I gave a short laugh. “I don't think he would consider State. But actually, there's a good possibility for him at Stanford if this particular guy retires soon.”

“So?”

“So, he's happy where he is. And anything after Harvard—except
perhaps
Heaven—is a step down.”

“I see.”

“Besides,” I said.

“Besides?”

“Besides, I'm not so sure I want him to come.”

Kath waited.

“At least not the first year. I mean, we could use some space apart. Plenty of couples commute.”

“Across the country?”

“Across the Atlantic!”

“Well.” Kath hesitated.

“What I do worry about is the boys. But they keep saying they want to spend more time in the Wild West. It might be good for them. Shake them out of that East Coast provincialism.”

“Sounds like you have it all worked out,” Kath said. “What are the big doubts?”

“Father, really. He does loom large.”

“Adele,” she spluttered, then modulated her voice. “I know your dad has been difficult in the past. But I have a hard time believing someone who's been around the world, around several worlds, can be so intimidated by an old man.”

I shrugged.

“You're a mother. A big professor. You've published—what?—two books.”

“Three,” I answered, instantly embarrassed by my pride. Or was it my attachment to precision?

“Three books. Two kids. Great job. You're just remembering who he was to you as a little girl. He's a ghost, Adele.”

“No!” I swallowed the remaining wine in one gulp, wishing I had bought two bottles. “No, Kath,” I said deliberately. “Sari and Mother are the ghosts. Sari and Mother are the dead ones. Father and I are left dueling.”

I thought about the gathering after Mother's funeral. The same scene as when Sari died: everyone collected in the house for subdued conversation and airbrushed memories. Everyone a little older: grayer, stouter Father leaning more heavily against the mantel, but standing in the same place, talking to the same people; Lou, model husband, assisting in the kitchen. This time the boys were there, being reverently appreciated as if their existence were some compensation for Mother's death.

“Can't you refuse to fight? The duel isn't obligatory.”

“It's pre-obligation. Instinct.”

“Oh, right.”

“What do you know about it?” I glared into the speckled night. “You think that just because we have some money all our difficulties are abstract. Listen, Kath—my mother and sister are
dead.
For all our problems, there was some hope of reconciliation while they were alive. Some hope.”

Kath reached across the weather-warped wooden table for my hand.

I felt the warm, rough texture of her fingers. My shoulders relaxed and I was on the verge of tears, in danger of melting altogether.

“I don't know what got into me.” Her voice swelled with regret, embarrassment. “I don't butt into other people's lives. You don't need an outsider telling you what's what.”

“You're not an outsider.” I gripped Kath's hand.

“I mean, I'm not a relative.” She shifted back on the bench. “I'm not—”

I interrupted, whispering ferociously, “You're not an
outsider
.”

“I'm not related by blood or anything.” She blushed.

“Oh, I think there's quite enough blood spilled between us.”

She pulled back her hand. “Is that good or bad?” She looked at me directly.

“Both good and bad.” I held her gaze. “And the stains are indelible, so in that way, we're related, marked for life.”

She nodded. I detected a slight smile.

Suddenly my mouth was filled with a metallic taste: too much wine, sour cream, pasta. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but I absolutely must brush my teeth.”

“Hey,” Kath laughed, “I bow to absolutes of
any
kind.”

As I pulled out my toothbrush, I could hear Kath busily collecting the plates. We both needed a break.

“Look. In the sky.”
Her
voice startled me. “Shooting star.”

“Oh, damn.” I finished putting away the toothpaste and brush. “Missed it. Let's sit down and wait for another one.”

“Think I'll take care of these first,” Kath said, still clearing the table.

“No, we'll do those together later.”

“Unfair. You did the cooking. I do the washing.”

“Just sit with me and watch the shooting stars,” I pleaded. “We can argue afterward.”

Kath accepted a place on the bench and looked up at the moonless night.

As we waited for the sky to explode, I felt the warmth from her body—three inches away.

“Peppermint toothpaste,” she broke the spell.

“There's the Big Dipper,” I declared.

“And the G.E. satellite!” We laughed.

I searched for spaces between the stars. Night in the wilderness could be the most lonesome, most intimate of times.

Quietly, Kath unwrapped the Toblerone we had been saving for dessert. Her movements were slow, stealthy, as if she didn't want to disturb her fellow concertgoers. But it was her very deliberateness that made the foil crackle like lightning. She broke me off a piece of the dark chocolate. We sat, letting the bittersweetness melt on our tongues. Suddenly a shooting star streamed light diagonally across the sky.

I nudged Kath with my elbow.

She laughed. “I saw it. Yes!”

Scooting closer, I felt our hips touch.

“Another!” Kath declared.

I could scarcely breathe. To distract myself from Kath's warm softness, I took another piece of chocolate, which tasted as dark and mysterious as the night between the stars.

Chapter Eighteen

Kath

1965 / May Lake

SLOWLY, THROUGH SOFT RAIN
,
we were climbing the trail to May Lake. Of course it would shower the day we cajoled Nancy into an uphill hike. Still, she didn't seem very bothered by the rain or the ascent. She and Paula chatted nonstop at the tail end of our parade. Ahead of them, behind me, were Adele and Donna studying trees: red fir, silver pine, hemlock.

Grayness had seized the sky like an occupying army. Maybe yesterday's blue had been imaginary. Or a blessing we no longer deserved. Wetness weighted fragile tufts of grass down to the ground. Beside our trail, bright green moss on a log. Rocks glistened with moisture. I'd promised myself not to think about the fact that we had only two more days left before we scattered to different colleges. After all, we'd agreed to return here together next summer. And we were a pretty reliable crew.

I liked the protected feeling of these giant shoulders all around us. So often in the Bay Area I was aware there was nowhere to go but out to sea. Now I understood these peaks were California, too. A safer, more welcoming California. Somehow—despite the bears and snakes and coyotes—these were mountains you could lean on, aspire to. They were a kind of spine oozing nourishment—the fertilizing snowmelt—to the rest of the state. Not recognizing the Sierra as California was like disinheriting your ancestors. In fact, in a strange way, I felt I'd finally located home after living in this state for seventeen years.

I walked faster, out of range from Nancy and Paula's buzz. I wondered where they
found
all these words. What a different experience you had if you set aside the talk and thinking and simply
observed.
The sandy trail had turned to a pleasant, sticky mud. The rain was subsiding now, gradually, like sighs of laughter. I listened for silence between drops. Even Nancy and Paula had grown quiet. And then the soft pit, spit, dregs of shower, like waves after an earthquake.

The trail widened onto some slick, granite slabs.

Out of a stand of lodgepole pines appeared a tall, dark woman carrying a pink flowered umbrella.

“Where is it, the Snow Flat?”

Uncomprehending, I stared at this vibrant apparition of cosmopolitan fashion.

Adele to the rescue. “Can we help you?”

At that point, the husband walked toward us, brushing off his spotless white slacks and shirt. His crown was a beige safari hat.

“
Buon giorno
.”

Nancy and Paula had caught up. Nancy looked truly interested for the first time since our hike began.

“Snow Flat,” the woman persisted.

“The trailhead?”

“
Si.
”

“Down there. Just follow the path.”

“The path,
si
!”
The signora happily nodded her umbrella.

Her husband grinned at us and headed downhill. “
Grazie
,”
he called.

“You're welcome,” I said.

“
Prego
!”
shouted Paula. Something she learned from her Italian pen pal.

Noticing the rain had ceased, the woman collapsed the umbrella and catching up with him, hit her husband on the shoulder. “I told you so. I told you so!” she declared in ringing, accented English like someone accustomed to audiences.

We stood, tittering together for a moment, then regrouped in our original formation. I lost sight of Nancy and Paula on the steep slope but knew they would catch up. What great views of Cathedral Peak, Mount Clark and Half Dome.

Nancy was ready for lunch the moment we reached the shore of gloriously clean May Lake. The gray had lifted from the sky, and the whole world seemed blue again. We spread our raingear on a quiet part of the shore away from tents and anglers. Paula distributed peanut butter sandwiches she'd made that morning. I hated peanut butter, the way it stuck to my teeth and landed like a rock in my stomach, but this trip was teaching me flexibility. Teaching me that if I didn't develop some pliancy soon, I'd turn into a crank by the time I was thirty. A sunny spray of buttercups made me think how these flowers had different designs in order to attract bees, beetles, flies, hummingbirds.

Nancy sat, cross-legged, telling some silly joke, a smile of unqualified delight radiating from her pretty face. I suppose this is what Mom called “joie de vivre.” Whatever it was, Nancy won us all over with her infectious carnality. This passion was why we forgave the lateness, the hecticness, the sloppiness. She was, in some grand, inexplicable way, a source of light.

“When I see older people, you know, in their fifties, carrying books out of the library, I wonder why they bother,” Nancy declared.

Had I heard her right?

“What do you mean?” Adele leaned forward in that long, graceful way. She selected an apple and polished it on her jeans.

“I mean, I guess, I see reading as kind of utilitarian—reading­ to catch up on something, to learn, to develop a skill.”

“And?” Donna asked with the amused disbelief with which she often faced Nancy.

“And, I mean, what's the point when you're that old? It's all determined by then, anyway.”

“What?” Even Paula had lost her patience. She started gathering the lunch litter in a bag and shoved it into her pack.

“Life.” Nancy shrugged. She handed around her mother's homemade trail mix.

“Tolstoy didn't publish some of his best stuff until he was almost sixty.” Adele entered the game.

“What kind of writer will you be, Adele?” Paula asked. “Novelist? Poet?”

Silence.

“She's going to be an artist!” I declared, immediately embarrassed by my vehemence. In a more neutral, informative tone, I said, “Botanical prints. Watercolor landscapes.”

Adele smiled. “Oh, maybe that—as it fits into raising kids. What I'd like most,” she said, a glimmer of discovery in her eyes, “is to have a happy family.”

“And you, Kath, what about you?”

This inquisitiveness was not my favorite part of Nancy's personality. How could I admit I couldn't imagine living to fifty? I knew something horrible would happen long before then, and I didn't want to be around to suffer the consequences. But Adele and I had made a pact to raise our kids together, so I said, “Fifty, guess I'll be a grandmother by then.” And to gain some ironic distance from that fate, “With a gray bun at the back of my head, leaning on a cane.”

“Hardly.” Adele laughed. “The girl with the highest IQ in school shriveling into the old woman in the shoe! Fifty is young.”

“Young?” Nancy demanded.

“Really, Kath?” Paula asked. “The highest—even higher than Bob Thornton?”

I glared at Adele. She had promised not to tell.

My best friend glanced down to the lake.

“Do you think you'll be yourself in, let's see, fifty is thirty-three years from now?” Nancy asked, leaning back against a tree.

“Come again?” said Donna, stupefied.

“I mean, are you always the same person? Or do you become someone else when you get older?”

“That's ridiculous,” I said.

“Yes,” Adele spoke. “Of course you become someone else.”

“No,” I declared fiercely. “Of course you're the same person. You grow, you develop, you learn. But you're the same.”

“Fascinating.” Donna pursed her lips in her sardonic, world-weary way.

“What?” Nancy asked, eager not to miss anything.

“The Bobbsey Twins over here, arguing with each other.”

“It's just a disagreement,” explained Nancy, who hated bad feelings. She was a nice person—loving, inclusive, peacemaking—too nice for her own good.

“We better get going,” said Paula, “if we plan to hike back, fix dinner and still have a decent walk in the Meadows tonight.”

She and Nancy led the way down.

In the sunlight, this was a different path. Wildflowers had sprung back to life. Silver pines gleamed. Squirrels chased one another over the slopes—their feathery tails undulating in mountain grasses. Behind us, I heard a woodpecker tap, tap, tapping, and some other, unrecognizable, bird singing. The High Country had transformed from a pale, heavy rainworld to a festival of light.

At the trailhead, the parking lot was filled with the vehicles of other day hikers. As I unlocked the car door, an older woman called us over.

“Excuse me.” Her voice was urgent, nervous.

“Yes?” I walked toward her. The others were unloading packs and canteens in the trunk.

She was a hefty person, with a row of painful-looking pimples along her graying temple. “Have you been on the May Lake Trail?”

“Yes.”

“Well, have you seen a man wearing jeans, a purple sweater and a Giants baseball cap?”

By then, the others had gathered around.

“No.”

“No,” we all agreed.

Her mouth puckered. Silently she peered at the trail through her windshield.

“Has he been gone long?” Adele asked.

“Eight hours.” She sniffed.

I looked at Adele.

“He's my husband.” She shook her head helplessly. “He left at 7:30 this morning.”

“He'll be back.” Nancy smiled kindly. “People lose track of time on these beautiful trails. There's so much distraction.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, still staring ahead through the front window.

“No, don't worry,” Nancy said. “I'm sure it'll be fine.”