Range of Light (3 page)

“So many of us”—I laughed—“that we have to reserve a spot in the High Country a year ahead of time.”

What I remembered most about his place was the lunar quality: the sheer, silver rocks, ghost white boulders, daunting slabs of stone, reflecting, unforgiving sunlight. Cars, trucks, RVs, motorcycles sailed beside us, higher and higher into the altitude, along the ribboned road. To be alone was why I came here and not to be alone for one summer week. I wondered how many of the city habits of obsession, calculation, time hoarding, self-defense I could release in seven days.

“Welcome to Yosemite,” read the sign.

“Don't worry,” Kath said. “Most of these cars are going to the Valley. They don't even know there's a High Country.”

“Good.” I sensed she was nervous too and this relieved me.

Kath turned, attempting a smile. “We made it.”

Subdued by the caravan of cars, I smiled back. Of course it hadn't been this crowded all those years ago. I had brought a different range of emotions—more excitement then; more trepidation now. In any case, I loved these mountains. I longed for physical exercise. It was ludicrous to worry about Kath. Somehow during the last few decades I had grown less prepared for the mountains and for life. But it was too late to turn back.

Chapter Three

Kath

Sunday, the day before / Oakland

I SLEPT LATER
than
I meant to. Baffin was usually up by now, nibbling my ear or making a racket in the backyard. But it was 7:00 A.M
.
and my gray cat lay sound asleep beside me on the chenille bedspread, purring in her congested way.

“What a morning to fink out, Baffin. I've got hundreds of chores.” Running a hand over my head, I cursed myself for forgetting the haircut. How was I going to fit that in? I rushed into my miniature kitchen and put on the kettle. Then back to the bedroom to slip on running clothes. No sense skipping the run. The rest of the day wouldn't be worth a damn if I didn't exercise.

“Here, Baf, here you go.” I filled the cat's bowl with fresh kibble and canned fish. Disgusting smells. Amazing the sacrifices you make for love. Sixteen years of early morning tuna. “Come on, Baf, that's a girl. Breakfast.” I poured the coffee water through the filter, an elaborate contraption that my sister, Martha—who preferred those instant flavored coffees—laughed at. I listened to a couple of items on the radio. Still, my sweet cat didn't stir. She liked to sleep in sometimes; maybe she'd been roving last night. So much for my jogging companion. I loved the gaping stares of people who ran with Labrador retrievers and Irish bloodhounds. Your cat jogs? they shouted. Why not? I shrugged, gleefully stumping the dog chauvinists. But Baffin deserved her days off like anyone else.

This morning the West Ridg
e
Trail was cold,
damp. Dew dripped from the branches. Of course the fog would lift at noon; still I found the morning veil depressing. Although I'd lived my whole life in Oakland, I couldn't get used to gray summer mornings. Maybe what I loved most about the Sierra was the brightness right after dawn. Yes there was the occasional thunderstorm, but I could count on at least three crystal mornings each week.

Rushing through my stretches, I reminded myself that the point was to prepare for the day ahead. Meditate. I entered the trail. Slow down your mind. Speed up your legs. You do this routine every day. Gulping the clean, luxuriously moist air of the Oakland hills, I checked off the tasks: pick up tent and make sure patches are watertight. Stop for groceries. (Would Adele mind I was vegetarian?) Visit Martha to make sure everything's arranged for Mom and Dad. Fix Señora Castillo's refrigerator and remind her I'd be gone for a week. Pack food, camping gear, clothes. Call Nancy and wish her well on the surgery. Move the last remaining boxes from the office. Instruct Carter about feeding Baffin. The muscles in my thighs and calves stretched and contracted, stretched and contracted.

“Hi. Where's Tiger this morning?”

I looked up to find the nervous stockbroker who liked to chat me up during stretches.

“Sleeping in!” I called back, alarmed by my spontaneously friendly voice.

“Have a good one.” He grinned, heading back to his car.

Inhaling the eucalyptus-scented air, I began to run. Listening for jays, mourning doves, I felt lucky to live so near the trails. Why worry about starting a little late? Everything would get done. The golden hills had an eerie, winterish cast in this fog. Morning mist kept down fire danger.

Sweaty and relaxed, I climbed into my car. Might as well get around to moving the boxes from the office. I'd been ready for a week now, but couldn't bring myself to make the final transfer. There'd be a sentimental scene if I hauled them out during the day. And I'd been too exhausted all week to go in the evening. No one would be there on Sunday morning—at least not at 8:45. I switched on the radio to accompany the transition from outdoor paradise to urban disappointment.

Broadway, downtown Oakland, looked deserted under this still, milky sky. Three buses snuffled together at the transit shelter. Outside Capwell's Department Store, a cop car idled. Two ragged men—one black, one white—picked up cans from the trash bin at the BART stop. On the corner, a clutter of ageless, sexless people huddled under blankets and newspapers. I drove with my gaze ahead, as if avoiding eye contact would make me invisible.

I had heard Tom was living on the streets again, and this made me sad and scared. Sure the remorse was way out of proportion. We'd been a sixties romance, only a few years together. I'd cherished him for who he was hoping to become, his boy's hands filling into man's hands, working magic at the garage, with his guitar, in bed. In fact, Tom became someone unimaginable after the war. Surly. Brutal. Hard to believe this sweet, ironic guy could turn that violent and angry. His playful face had grown tight and his eyes darted anxiously. Hard to believe I stayed with him after a dislocated jaw and broken arm. These were accidents, I told myself, he didn't know his strength. But the accidents continued, and despite a dozen attempts to get him into a rehab program, despite all the years between then and now, I still felt sorry, responsible, still kept a spare twenty dollars in my pocket in case I saw him on the streets.

The office parking lot seemed creepy this empty, this early. Conjuring reassuring weekday noises of squealing tires and honking horns, I parked a yard from the door. Once inside the multilocked office, I'd be fine. I'd dump my boxes on a dolly and be away in two or three trips.

Opening the glass door to the third-floor office, I flipped on overhead fluorescence. The light buzzed loudly, filling the vacant room with loss. I'd miss my friends here, people I'd spent all day—sometimes evenings—with for two years. Did they count as “relationships”? There should be songs and poems about losing people on your job. My stomach clenched as I passed Verna's desk. Verna, who laughed at all my jokes and brought cookies for the office every Wednesday morning. And Carter—whose foul music was always seeping out of those faulty headphones. Carter, who had sat with me in the hospital after Dad knocked Mom down the first time.

And the kids. Slowly, I removed photos from the board over my desk and put them one at a time into the manila envelope. Marcie and Yolanda and Dina and Hortense and Clarice and Esperansa and Samantha and Amy. “The Miss Pregnant Teen Gallery,” Carter used to laugh. I'd miss these kids and their kids. And the ones who'd have followed if funding hadn't evaporated.

Our office was permeated with that funny Monday morning odor of disinfectant and floor wax. The fluorescent light had hit high soprano now. I pulled pens and pencils from the top desk drawer, puzzling about the familiarity of this packing ritual. All my life I'd hobbled from one job to the next. Each of them funded on soft money. Each of them sinking into a lava of extinguishing ideals. Head Start. Inner-city tutoring. Environmental lobbying. The free clinic. And the last decade, counseling and educational programs for teenage girls. All the jobs had been useful; most had been quixotic. At each of them, people who were less experienced than I rated promotions and better pay because of their degrees.

Three times I started back to college, even though I knew I wouldn't learn much. And three times I quit in frustration with academic games. What a ruse—to get a degree to find a better job. Like medieval Christians buying indulgences to enter Heaven quicker. Clearly my intelligence and hard work were more important than initials after a name. But in the end, it was always the same: soft money. Short-term jobs. Packed boxes. Now I grabbed three more NorCal cartons from the storage room, the same blue and white cartons I had brought here two years before. The same goddamned boxes. It was so quiet I could hear the clicking furnace and the buses rumbling outside. What was alive and irritating and hilarious as an office during the week was a square room with four walls, shabby cubicles and filthy windows on Sunday morning.

One by one I'd watched my friends lift off, with their houses, kids, cottages in the country and now—this was hard to fathom—their retirement portfolios. Maybe I was, as Martha kept instructing me, just not facing reality. For such a smart person, she said, I didn't show much foresight. Was I always going to rent a one-bedroom apartment at the back of an ancient widow's house? Well, Señora Castillo was eighty-seven and doing fine. I smiled. Probably I wouldn't get evicted any time soon.

Samantha. Amy. Hortense. One by one. Photos for my album. Another job, another album. This was a perfectly reasonable record of a life. A perfectly reasonable life. And yet, as Martha would ask, what was I waiting for? The lottery? The Virgin of Guadalupe? What had I expected? Here, this is what I'd expected: that if I worked hard, proceeded with conscience, I would make progress. A modest presumption. Progress. Not success. Just perceptible change. OK, I had seen
that.
I should be grateful I had more choices than my parents. An easier—if not better—life. Mom, who had been so proud of my scholarship, had never understood why I dropped out of college. Ever since, she'd fretted about my measly prospects: no husband, kids, steady job. Great, I'd given my mother twenty years of worry. Maybe I didn't know how to organize my life. But I could organize boxes. Look at this. Four cartons on the dolly in the first load. I'd be out of here in no time.

The drive to Martha's house
in Pinole wasn't long, yet I only made the trip two or three times a year, taking Mom and Dad out at Christmas, Easter, a birthday. I had reasons for staying away, hated this stretch of Highway 80; I'd seen too many mangled cars on the shoulder. And my heart seized up whenever I drove this deep into the suburbs. Martha would ask, “What's wrong that you don't want to be with family?” For years I tried to answer this question. I tried to explain that while I liked people individually, I felt suffocated when the whole family converged. Martha would have none of this. “You work in an itty-bitty office two feet from the same people all day. Don't talk to me about claustrophobia.” (It was no small source of satisfaction to her that, despite two years of college, I had less job status. She was now assistant manager at the salon.) Only in the past year had I come up with a clearer answer to her question. Finally, I understood that what Martha meant by family was her
own
family—herself, Bob and the kids, and since they had grown up,
their
spouses and kids. The more I tried to explain my phobia about large gatherings, the more upset Martha became. I knew I should, as Mom would say, leave well enough alone.

I'd managed to obsess about Martha all the way from Oakland to Pinole—a good eighteen miles and twenty minutes. Parking the car, I lectured myself: Martha was a good person who worked hard, did volunteer work, got and gave pleasure with her embroidery and singing. She'd made a lot of her life. She was a decent sister.

At the door, I drew a long breath and knocked.

Martha answered in seconds. “There you are. We were wondering when you'd show up.”

“Are you going out?” I was confused because Martha had said to drop by anytime Sunday.

“I wish. No, Bob's plugged himself into TV sports for the next six hours.”

“I'm not late or anything?”

“Who said you were late?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“I bet you haven't eaten. I've saved some pancakes. Come back to the kitchen.”

I sat at the counter staring at the stack of blueberry buckwheat pancakes made from scratch. On the wall above the counter, she'd hung a new embroidery: a spray of glistening California poppies. No doubt about who inherited the artistic genes.

“Syrup or jam?”

“They smell terrific, Marth, but …”

“Come on, one won't hurt. You look more like an adolescent beanstalk than a mature woman.”

“One, then.” I grinned. As I ate, Martha caught me up on all the news about Kirsten and Sam and the grandchildren. This was fun. One relative at a time. I felt comfortable, involved. Admiring Martha's layered haircut and the new frost job, I knew I should have worn a scarf over my own rangy mop.

“Mom and Dad,” I began.

“You were going to bring Dad's pills or something.”

“Yeah, here's the refill. He knows how to take them …”

“I guess he does.” Martha played with a manicured pink thumbnail.

I took a breath and continued. “And this is Hilary's number. The friend who works at Elder Services.”

Martha pretended to be confused, to cover her annoyance.

“In case—as I told you—Dad gets out of hand again.”

She stiffened.

Martha hated it when I talked about Dad knocking Mom around. She insisted that Mom just lost her balance once in a while. This was important, so I pressed. “I told Hilary about things, and she's more than willing to help if you need her.”

“You mean you told a stranger about private family troubles—”

“Hilary's not a stranger. She's a close friend.”

“Kath, you floor me.” Martha picked at the grooves in the counter tile. A good way to ruin her manicure, but she was beside herself. “Don't you have any dignity? Even if you're right about Dad—and I think your ideas are very farfetched—you keep these things in a family. Where's your sense of loyalty?”

Loyalty! I held back. This was Martha talking, Martha who never had time to visit our parents but proclaimed that they were fine where they were, that they didn't need a residential facility, that Dad was not knocking Mom around. It was selfish, a betrayal, Martha said, to “deposit them in a nursing home.” Maybe Martha had too many conflicts here in this house to see what was going on between Dad and Mom.

I explained once again that I wasn't suggesting a nursing home but some kind of comfortable senior residence with activities, medical care, supervision. Martha would have none of it. Mom and Dad had a right to live out their lives in their own home—just as she and Bob intended to do.

Abruptly, Martha began to empty the dishwasher, clattering knives and forks into a drawer. “So you're off on your vacation alone again this year?”