Range of Light (4 page)

“No.” I brought my empty plate to the sink. “I'm going with Adele.”

“Adele?” Martha said blankly, wiping the pristine counter with a two-toned blue sponge.

“Adele. You remember. My best friend in school.”

“Oh, yeah, that girl with the pompous mother.” She kept her voice neutral. “The girl who left for college back East. Whatever happened to her?”

“She became a professor—of art history, film history.”

“A professor of movies?”

“Not exactly.” I laughed.

Martha frowned, studying me. “How long is this trip?” She set aside the sponge and stood with her hands on her aproned hips.

“A week,” I answered warily.

Again, she looked perplexed. This time for real. “What on earth will you talk about?”

During the drive back to
Oakland
, I tried to keep my mind on Mrs. Castillo's errands. Martha had a point. What
would
Adele and I talk about? I could tell her about my career as a failed hippie in the Haight. About my series of dramatic roommates in the Castro. About my 101 jobs. About what happened to Tom. About the five years with Anita. What would Adele talk about? Her trips to Europe. Her sons' hockey team. What a fool I was to have agreed to this damn trip. Well, I could get sick. Adele wasn't leaving Cambridge until tomorrow morning. I could phone with a bad case of the flu.

No, this was my one week in the mountains. As much as I was nervous about talking with Adele, I'd be more resentful of her for stealing my precious High Country vacation. There was no other time this summer. No other time when I could get Carter to take care of Baffin and Martha to look in on Mom and Dad. Besides, I
had
to start job hunting soon. Martha had almost exited my mind when I stopped at Whole Earth Access to pick up the door latch and batteries for Mrs. Castillo.

Although it was 12:30
by
the time I fixed the fridge and I needed to start packing, Mrs. C. insisted I eat an enormous sandwich. Of course, since I was going to be away for a whole week, we had to sit down for a chat. During each of the last eight summers, I'd sent my landlady a postcard from the Sierra, and she now looked forward to the stories.

“You are not afraid of bears?” Mrs. C. shifted her bulky form on the creaking kitchen chair. She wore a pale cornflower blue dress with red roses on the cuffs and open collar.

“No, Señora. We leave each other alone.”

“You brave to go by yourself—a girl by herself.”

I laughed, for Mrs. C. voiced this same doubtful admiration every year. And next to Mrs. C. I did feel like a girl.

“This year I'm going with a friend.”

She watched me closely.

I noticed that the always-on TV set in the living room was showing M*A*S*H. What did Mrs. C. make of Klinger?

“Adele,” I filled in. “A woman friend.” I paused. Well, I could hardly say, “my former best friend.”

Mrs. C. nodded approvingly.

Nine years ago, when Mrs. C. had interviewed me for the apartment, her only condition was “No mens overnight.” I never knew what Mrs. C. thought of Anita. Maybe she, herself, was a dyke at heart. Certainly Señora Castillo had had no mens in her life since César died in World War II. There were many things Mrs. C. and I didn't talk about. Still, we seemed to talk enough. She took comfort in my presence nearby and in our brief chats. I took comfort in her daily salute: “Take it easy!”

“Adela. Is a nice name.”

“Yes.” I nodded hopefully. “A nice person.” Staring at the crucifix over the spotless sink, I tried out these sounds on my tongue, “My oldest friend.”

I shook my head as I walked back to the cottage, marveling how I always felt so much better after being with Mrs. C.—certainly better than after those expensive visits to the shrink Anita had sent me to.

Something was wrong.
I could
tell the minute I opened the door. Baffin was sprawled on the rag rug next to my bureau, jerking slightly. Mewing softly. I lay next to my friend, caressing her head. Jesus. My eyes flooded. Instinctively, I knew there was nothing to do. Some kind of stroke? Part of me said, Call the vet, it could be food poisoning, but I knew this was the end. I sat down petting the dying cat, whose eyes were filled with longing, shaped by hardness. Why had I been gone so long today? Why didn't I notice she was sick this morning? If I hadn't been so preoccupied with this damn trip, with damn Adele … I stroked the cat. Sixteen years was a substantial life. Baffin's pulse had stopped. Still, I talked to her—about our runs and our long Sundays in bed and about all the good times we had since my roommate Gerard had won her as a consolation prize in a drag queen contest. “A female feline,” Gerard had reported with mock distaste. “Much more up your alley than mine.” Baffin and I became inseparable. Now I reminded her that I hadn't traveled much, but when I could I always took her with me—even camping in Canada and Mexico, savoring the subterfuge of smuggling her across international borders. Maybe Baffin understood I had to leave her home this time. What else could I do? Adele had always been allergic to cats. No, this wasn't my fault. Baffin had lived a long life and now it was simply her time to go. Something Mom would say. I was turning into my mother. Slowly. Indiscernibly. Irrefutably.

In the backyard,
next to
the flaming bougainvillea, I dug a small grave and buried my old pal. I wanted to take a long walk, had a yen to go out to Point Reyes, one of Baffin's favorite spots. But there was no time. A more spontaneous person, a more passionate person, would have driven to Marin and held a memorial or something. I could hear Anita complaining about my reserve as if I were practicing for a diploma in rigidity. God knows I loved Anita and tried to change. But Baffin would understand. I knew this as I dug her grave. Baffin didn't need a schmaltzy send-off. She knew how much she meant to me. That's why we had lasted sixteen years together.

Christ, suddenly it was 4:00 P.M. I had to pick up the mended tent, borrow Carter's cooler, shop for groceries … And I did accomplish all this plus a call to Nancy, who acted plucky about the second operation and giggled about the pleasures of being off chemo for a while. Pleasures: eating, sleeping, keeping your hair in your head. Nancy was what Mom would call “a brick.” Did this passing of words and phrases always occur automatically as one generation slipped to the next? Was Mom slipping, would she die soon?

Sitting down with a plate
of pasta,
I switched on the TV. Maybe I observed the evening news the same way people observe mass, dutifully at the outset, yet increasingly distracted. Usually I already knew all the stories from the afternoon papers and radio. But TV was company. I put down my plate and reached to pat Baffin, then felt a dull, heavy stab in my chest.

After dinner, I sat out on the back step enjoying the perfumes of five different tomato plants. Summer evenings in the backyard were my favorite retreat. Jasmine and honeysuckle in the air. This year I had planted basil among the tomatoes. And mint and lavender by the side of the house. I liked to detect each scent individually, then enjoy the aromas mingling together. Now looking out at Baffin's grave, I began to sob.

In order to pull mysel
f
together,
I thought about the next evening, when Adele and I would be in the mountains. Did Adele have a garden? Did she watch the evening news faithfully? What
would
we talk about? If a cat had nine lives, how many rounds did a friendship have?

Face it: we'd become close when life was more promising. All you did in those days was choose. And now, well, sometimes I felt I was choosing to stay alive. No, it was simpler. I was choosing not to die. I closed my eyes and thought about those walks Adele and I took home from school, arriving an hour after the bus would have deposited us. Dad thought I was crazy. Good exercise, Mom said, even though she worried about our walking in winter darkness. But we didn't notice time or exertion as we planned jaunts across Europe—where Adele would be writing on the Adriatic Sea, on the exotic, Yugoslav, coast. Rides across the Sahara—where I'd be working as an aid officer. Maybe as a nurse.

That first summer out of high school we had made a lot of plans too—about husbands and babies and vacations together in the country. Then so much happened: my abortion, Tom's craziness, Adele's sister Sari's suicide, Mrs. Ward's death. It was easier to think of it in a list like this—as if one grief canceled or at least assuaged another. Somehow, then, neither of us had been able to reach out. What lunatics we were to plan a week together in the mountains now. I walked over to Baffin's grave, said good night, farewell, and went to bed.

Of course I couldn't sleep. Instead, I lay there, thinking that the roads had separated, my car going one way and Adele's another. I rolled over, trying for comfort in the enormous bed. We'd both lived through the same social events, if at different edges of the continent. The War. The women's movement. Ten years of Republican cutbacks. The roller coaster of nuclear armament and disarmament. In Massachusetts, Adele had probably also taken meditation and yoga. I wondered if we'd talk about these accessories and interruptions to the lives we had planned. If we could congratulate or blame or console each other. If we could forgive. I pictured this trip—insofar as we had each agreed to continue after the others dropped out—as an attempt at a truce. It was too bad that treaties weren't usually signed until bodies were piled high. Well, middle-aged frailty was more susceptible to forgiveness than youthful immortality. I reached over for Baffin.

Chapter Four

Adele

Monday / Tenaya Lake to Tuolumne Meadows

TENAYA LAKE SHIMMERED
in
a basin of silver boulders: a mystery, not a lake, in its clear, blue darkness. The water was guarded by trees and hemmed with a thread of beige sand. An impulse to touch the surface, to enter the mystery in some small way, surprised me.

Kath's voice: “How about here for a picnic?”

Getting out of the car was the last thing I wanted. I could continue sailing for hours in this thin air. We were two balloons released from our strings, bobbing into one another as we spiraled higher and higher, far from the gravity of our daily responsibilities. Of course we should rest. Kath must be depleted from driving and I should really eat something to orient my body to West Coast time.

Out on the suddenly choppy lake, wind teased waves toward the deck of a lone boat. Weather was so changeable up here: hot, cold, misty, dry. An emotional barometer for our friendship. The spirit of this breeze had succeeded in claiming the water from a half-dozen people who had scuttled back to shore and were busily packing their campers and cars. But two parkaed boaters—male? female?—bloody arrogant human beings—persisted as ticks on the neck of a bear. Good for them.

Tenaya Lake. One of the most Indian-feeling places in the Sierra. The name of course—Tenaya, chief of the Yosemites. The size of the lake—large enough to actually sustain people. The glorious location—you could imagine humans living there, on the side of a great mountain, on the shore of that vast, rocking water. You could imagine but not see. The Indians had to be removed before you could imagine. Depending on who you were. Tenaya Lake. Blue, deep, clear, reflecting the sequoias from one side and the sheer white rock from the other.

Together we spread a dark green plastic garbage bag on the sand and huddled under ancient yellow and orange afghans made by Kath's older sister, Martha, who always, unfathomably, hated me. Proceeding wordlessly, automatically, Kath sliced tomatoes and cheese while I poured steaming milky coffee in red tin mugs. Closing her eyes, Kath exhaled the highway fatigue.

I zipped my sweatshirt tight and pulled the VIVE QUEBEC­ scarf closer over my ears. Cold. No, chilly. In Massachusetts, I had discovered wet cold, ice cold. This was cool. A luscious, cool mountain retreat. Lifting my left hip, I flicked away a stone and sank back on the crackling plastic. Yes, moist, fresh air. Yes, the plane had landed. Oakland, Castro Valley, hot, hotter, Manteca, Stanislaus Forest. Cooler. Welcome to Tenaya Lake. Cold. I was here, safe with Kath, despite the prickle of apprehension along my neck, safe with my oldest friend.

“Mustard, lots of it, right?” Kath spoke with that California slowness that I found both trying and seductive. “And just a taste of mayo?”

I nodded, touched yet unnerved by her retentive memory. Had I changed so little in a quarter century? How well did this other person know me? How important were mustard and mayo? Here I was allowing Kath to do the navigating, driving, feeding. Well, I would revive with this lunch and insist she sit back as I drove the remaining distance.

“Do you have any plans?” Kath asked as I bit into my sandwich.

“Plans?” I paused, reluctantly, between chews. Plans were what I had come to escape for one week.

Kath bit her lip. “About where you'd like to hike?”

“Oh, yes.” The food was clearing my head. Now for the dried apricots. I wanted to lose five pounds before Stanford, but a little fruit was harmless. We would be doing a lot of walking up here. “Yes, I'd like to go back to Lyell Fork. And Gaylor Lakes and—what's that—yes, Mono Pass.”

Kath nodded, swallowed. “That's what I thought, too”—her voice rushed ahead—“we can do the backpacking near the end, once we've built up a little stamina.”

“Backpacking.” I gulped, then realized she wasn't thinking in heroic proportions. We had discussed this on the phone and I had seen the modest packs in the trunk. If nothing else, backpacking would help me slim down.

“Yes, just some mild hikes—maybe up to Vogelsang and down to Glen Aulin.”

“Sure.” I tried for confidence. “The High Sierra Camps. Nancy sent me a flyer.”

Kath nodded, satisfied.

Perhaps Lou was right
about
the journey being sentimental, but I could hardly withdraw as the trip had initially been my own impulsive, drunken suggestion. I had been unhinged by seeing my classmates after all those years. I might have missed them altogether if Father's seventieth birthday hadn't guilt-tripped me back to California. During that long, “festive” week, the class reunion provided one of the few legitimate excuses to escape his house. I was so happy for the break from Father that I forgot to guard against the consequences of time travel.

What a macabre scene: the class of 1965 convening at Father's country club in 1990. Closed to Blacks and Jews when we were in school, the Lazy Hills Country Club now boasted a late-twentieth-century foyer mural celebrating California multiculturalism. In the dining room, bright lights buzzed off garish purple and gold crepe paper decorations. At first I was startled by how fit people seemed. A number, myself included, I trust, looked better than we had in high school. Our faces had settled into individuality and reflected some degree of personal history rather than the mindless optimism or terrified panic of our adolescent years. Generally the women looked younger than the men, and it took me a while to realize this was because most women didn't go bald and most men usually didn't dye their hair, wear tummy-suck panty hose or use makeup. I marveled about my own vehement protest against makeup in graduate school. Ah, for the return of that fresh-faced certitude.

Nancy, who had gained fifty pounds, recognized me the minute I entered the glittering, ethnic mosaic vestibule. A member of the organizing committee, she knew that Kath and Paula also had made reservations. No one had heard from Donna in years. Nancy had saved a table for the gang and filled me in on her life in Tucson as we waited for the others. Paula arrived next, her classy black suit draped in gold jewelry. She was a consumer reporter for a network affiliate in L.A. Not exactly the
60 Minutes
job she had targeted, but very high-powered. Nancy told Paula she'd seen her on the motel TV when she'd taken her four daughters to Disneyland. She had thought about phoning but felt embarrassed by the twenty pounds she had acquired. She hoped maybe they would meet at the fifteenth reunion but didn't attend because she had gained another ten pounds. She had missed the twentieth for the same reason and decided she had better go to the twenty-fifth while she could still fit through the door. We laughed with her. Nancy had always been a good sport.

Over our tediously inoffensive chicken and rice dinners, Nancy and Paula and I exchanged news and photographs of parents, siblings, husbands, children. I was unabashedly pleased by their admiration of Simon and Taylor—the snapshot where they were clowning in their hockey outfits. Jesus, I had contracted the my-kids-are-cuter-than-your-kids virus. Pathetic, although old friendships do make for the best rivalries. We waved across the room to eerily grown-up versions of our classmates and drank too many glasses of chardonnay. All evening I kept wondering what had happened to Kath. Together with Paula and Nancy, I watched with mild, petty disappointment as the prizes were awarded for “most changed,” “least changed,” “farthest traveled,” “longest married.” Just as in high school, we were not part of the winning circle.

After dinner Paula left to talk to Mr. Barth, the lecherous drama teacher who now looked long past any danger. Nancy and I watched the couples dancing to Bobby Darin and Beatles and Beach Boy songs. I was glad Lou hadn't come—he never flew to California anymore—because he would have been visibly bored, whispering snarky comments. Nancy was drinking a lot and telling me about her year with the Moonies, her breakdown, her return to the Church. Her recovery from the Church, library school …

I spotted a woman twisting with Michael Bagley and—his boyfriend?—Stephen West. Suddenly it dawned on me why Michael had been so tense and distant all those years before. I had an impulse to tell Michael about my article on homoeroticism in
Film Noir
but settled for smiling at my earnest desire to persuade him how cool I was. Gold crepe paper was sagging lower and lower, artificial rays from the fluorescent lights melting down the walls. The room pulsed with the hot noise of second-rate music and fermented conversation.

Surely the woman was Kath. You could tell, even from the back like this. Something about the way she held her shoulders and the good time she was having with Michael and Stephen, oblivious to the rest of us. The old hurt welled up. Why hadn't she come looking for me? How long had she been at the reunion? Did she plan to leave without saying hello?

Enough wounded pride.
The Lazy
Hills Country Club was never a backdrop for healthy memories. And after all, a year had passed, we were at Tenaya Lake together. Carefully I packed up the lunch things. “Why not let me drive the rest of the way?” I suggested.

Kath looked doubtful.

“I'm refreshed now.” I sat taller.

“No, it's OK, I'll keep going.”

“But you must be wiped out.”

“If you're sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Still reluctant, Kath handed me the keys.

Higher and higher we climbed in the old Chevy. The shimmering boulders reflected sunlight and transfigured trees, grass, dirt, pine needles. 8,6oo feet: the sign for Tuolumne Meadows. I had prepared myself, but who could be ready for this vast expanse of field—so richly earthy after the silvery lunar rocks—for this warm lap of land hugged by highway and shouldered by snowy peaks? I was pleased by Kath's abrupt gasp.

We held silence until I turned our car into the campground.

“Crowded,” Kath apologized.

I shrugged. “We have a reservation, we have a place to sleep, and tomorrow we can strike out on our own.” On our own, I reconsidered; I was spending a week alone with Kath. Scarier than spending time with a stranger because she knew all my early vulnerabilities and none of the complexities of recent years. How much could I tell her about Lou's sleeping around? I really did believe him that the affair was over—and one affair is not “sleeping around”—so it was pointless even to think about it. Perhaps she would be curious about the boys. I wouldn't deluge her with all the pictures at once, just show her one or two and then the rest if she looked genuinely interested. Nothing more boring than the oblivious matriarch flashing a prodigious photo album. Still, I wanted Kath to appreciate my metamorphosis. No one else was quite as able to see through the pretense; she could tell me whether the changes had truly taken.

What different ways campers had of colonizing these sites. Some spots were modestly settled with pup tents and cars. Others were civilized with several large tents, plus another screened contraption for groceries. Laundry hung from ropes strung between trees. Every site had a night food locker and a charcoal pit. Kids played Frisbee or listened to the radio. Adults gossiped around early campfires. Decompress, I warned myself. See the people relaxing, you can do it. We unpacked and prepared dinner—a quick pesto fusilli that was slightly too al dente for both of us.

Then, still caught up in the freeway's momentum, we drove over to Tuolumne Lodge, where Kath showed me how to sneak into the showers. After washing off the sweat and dust of our long trip, I rang home to say I had arrived safely, to make sure Lou and the boys were well. Lou could have talked on and on, but I kept the call brief. Expensive, I explained. Sipping a glass of cabernet from the lodge, I waited for Kath outside on the warm boulders by Miller Cascade. Brown and green and foamy water coursed downstream over gradually diminishing rocks. If I sat here for a millennium, this handsome stone might turn to sand filtering downstream to the ocean. Perhaps I was being drugged by the high altitude. I wished the name didn't remind me of a beer commercial.

The sky edged from coral to pink, but the rocks by Miller Cascade were still warm. It wasn't cold enough for the heavy green sweater that Lou had bought me on the Isle of Harris the previous year, but I loved its fuzzy security. He was right, why get upset about one indiscretion. It happened in “the best of families.” Everyone had been tempted. I sniffed the deep red wine and listened to water coursing over rocks. I wanted to think it was snowmelt, but this was too late in the season. Rather the stream was the remains of the storm Kath had mentioned. Water rushed through fallen branches, spitting into the warm evening. Lou had noticed that storm front on the Weather Channel. Oh, don't worry, I said, remembering the apparition of Kath as a nylon gentian years before, I was perfectly capable of wearing a poncho. After all, skin was waterproof. Not chillproof, he parried, tucking the Harris pullover in with the jeans and turtlenecks. Hugging my sweater now, I inhaled the luscious lanolin scent. I hoped my woolly benefactor continued to bleat in a misty pasture with a new coat of her own.

“Hey, look,” Kath called. Then a high-pitched squeak next to my knee. I glanced down at the small, striped creature and could hear Lou's hyper warning, “Watch out for the rodents. Even the cute ones carry rabies.”

“Belding ground squirrel,” said Kath. “He's a tame little guy.”

I grinned at Kath's wet, sleeked back hair, which looked almost brown. Her fresh face shone; she had so few wrinkles it was hard to believe we were the same age.

“But”—Lou's scrupulous, engaged voice emerged from my mouth—“why do you call the squirrel ‘he'? Could be female. We always do that to animals.” I paused, musingly, to take the sting from my criticism. “Call them ‘he.' ”

Kath pursed her lips. “Except spiders.”

Sipping the wine, I glanced curiously from the squirrel to Kath and back again.