The Middle of Somewhere (15 page)

“We okay in here?”

“I think so. It's a strong little tent.”

They listened to the wind howling across the lake. The gust slammed into them, lifting the edge of the tent floor near their heads two inches off the ground.

“Whoa,” she said.

“I wonder how Brensen's doing in this. He's not very experienced.”

“True. He can't pitch a tent to save his life. Probably he's outside swearing at the wind.”

“You should try to sleep.” He checked his watch. Its face glowed turquoise. “It's only ten.”

She did, but to no avail. During lulls between gusts she heard Dante's soft snoring, which served to feed her growing frustration. Her body begged for sleep, but she could not supply it. Her mind was tuned to the wind, pointlessly tossing shreds of thoughts into her consciousness, spinning them around and around, then blowing them away again, into an unknowable space. She didn't want to think, if this could be called thinking. She wanted oblivion. The wind wouldn't let her have it.

For hours and hours, she lay not simply sleepless, but tormented by her sleeplessness. The more she strove to clear her mind, the more debris the gusts blew in. The tent was secure, holding them safe in their beds, but inside Liz was chaos. Snakes, Dante, missing stakes, Mike, Payton Root, Gabriel, wrenched knees, General Petraeus. Thunder. Lightning. Radishes.

Without sleep, she would go mad.

Facing away from Dante, she pulled her knees up to her chest and chewed her lip to stop from wailing along with the wind. She rocked herself in time to the pulsing bulge above her head. The pressure pushed against her heart.

A hand on her shoulder. “What's wrong?” He turned her over. She squeezed her eyes shut, afraid that in the moonlight she might see his pity for her. In a moment, he would want it back.

“I cheated on Gabriel! I cheated on him!”

He pulled his hand away. She opened her eyes. His lips were pursed with concern, but she couldn't see his eyes. He twisted away. “Oh, Liz.” It came out like the last air in a balloon. “Did he know?”

She pictured her husband's face on that sweltering night, his disbelief morphing into pain and anger. “Yes—”

“But his family doesn't know? You're still friends with them.”

“No one knows! No one!”

The wind bore down once again, as if to drown her out. She had the impulse to leave the tent to meet it, shout at it, run at it. Dare it to snatch her off this earth and take her away into darkness.

He was talking to the ceiling. “I don't see how you could do this. I know you were unhappy. I understand that now. But this?”

She sat up and threw her hands in the air. “I knew you'd react this way, because nothing's worse than cheating, right? In your little morality play, loyalty is everything! You don't get it!”

“What am I supposed to get? That you had your reasons? That he drove you to it?”

“No!” She stuck her fists against her temples. “I told him! I told him and he got up and he got in his car. He got in his car and he crashed it! I told him and then he died!”

She tucked her head to her knees and sobbed. The spasms, like the gasping wind, threatened to crush her. Dante put his arms around her. He held her until the spasms eased. She lifted her head to wipe her face and he zipped himself wordlessly into his bag. She lay down, and waited for the wind to scream across the lake and throw itself at the tent, at her, but it had steadied now, and howled in a single octave, not three. Shivering, she closed her eyes and pulled the bag over her face. She focused on the throbbing pain at her temples. In time, she slept. Her tears dried as frost.

T
he police came to the door the way they do in movies. A man and a woman, he with his hands crossed in front, she with her thumbs in her belt loops, both with serious, guarded expressions, as if showing sadness before delivering bad news was unprofessional. Information first, condolences after. You never know how people will react.

And, as in a movie, Liz knew why they were there as soon as she opened the door. Police don't stand on your doorstep, unhurried and grim, on the same hot August night your husband stormed out, for more than one reason.

“Is this the residence of Gabriel Pemberton?”

“Yes. I'm his wife.” She almost asked them what had happened—even though she knew—but went along with the script. They were in charge. They had Gabriel. Somewhere, he was lying on—what?—a stretcher, a gurney. There would be blood. His clothes would be torn. She tried to remember what he had been wearing, but couldn't. Maybe his arm, or his leg was the wrong shape, or detached. Maybe he was still in the car, pinned by the steering wheel, or upside down, hanging from the seat belt like a parachutist. No, they would have taken care of that first, before they came here.

Heat radiated off the concrete landing. She felt it go through her, and put a hand on the doorjamb to steady herself.

The officers glanced at each other. “Do you mind if we come in?”

She turned and lowered herself into the nearest chair. She never sat in that chair. From this new vantage the house appeared unfamiliar. The officers sat on the couch—her usual spot.

They told her what had happened. He'd lost control of the car on Central Boulevard. He might have been speeding. They weren't sure. They would know more tomorrow. He hit a retaining wall, flipped. They said he was “already gone” when the paramedics arrived on the scene and hadn't suffered. They offered their condolences.

The woman said, “Can I get you something? A glass of water?”

She shook her head, eyes on the jute rug at her feet, following the pattern of the weave. Over, under, over, under.

The man said, “We need to ask you a couple of questions, if that's all right.”

She nodded once.

“When was your husband last here?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Had he been drinking?”

“We each had a beer at dinner. The last two.” She felt a drop of water on her bare leg. She put a hand to her face. It was wet.

The man said, “We can do this later.”

She looked up. “What else do you have to ask?”

“Was your husband depressed?”

“No.”

“Then he went out because . . .” He leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them, making it easier for her to toss the answer.

“We ran out of beer.”

The officers stayed while she made a phone call. She called Valerie, and kept it short.

“Okay,” the woman officer said. “Someone's on the way?”

“Yes.” But she neglected to say Valerie lived in Paris.

Valerie wasn't just the first person Liz wanted to tell about Gabriel; she was the only person. She did call the Pembertons that night, because there was no escaping it. She had killed their son. Her hands shook so much it took three tries to get the number right. Pastor Thomas Pemberton answered. She told him the bare bones of the story because that was all she could manage. A man used to dealing with death, he took the news calmly, or calmly enough, even asking Liz to confirm someone would be looking after her. Yes, of course. He said they would speak the next day, to make arrangements. At first she misunderstood what he meant. She thought it bizarre he would suggest arranging flowers when his son had just died, then the word locked into its context. Arrangements for the transition to the next world. For the pastor it was heaven; for Liz it was tomorrow, and all the days afterward, absent of Gabriel because of her.

She hung up and imagined the ripple of shock and sorrow as it passed from the pastor to his wife, to their other children (four now, only four), and to other relatives and friends, outward through their many branches of kinship, love and support, connections they tended with care. The community of people the Pembertons had nourished would now nourish them. They would all say, in their messages, that losing a child was the greatest loss of all, and wish them strength. Liz was the domino that fell, knocking Gabriel flat on his back, and starting the wave that set the Pembertons and their world in tragic motion.

She did not call her mother.

Valerie was ignorant of Mike. She barely knew anything about the problems between Liz and Gabriel. Or, more accurately, the problem Liz had with Gabriel, because he never acknowledged anything was wrong.

Valerie was her best friend. She knew her better than anyone else, but that didn't mean she knew Liz well. They met in college, not long before Liz met Gabriel, so Valerie knew only the Liz who was loved by Gabriel. She hadn't met the marginalized high school Liz or the Liz who played alone on her bedroom floor, tinkering with the guts of some machine. Liz in love with Gabriel was so much more acceptable than any previous versions—or that's how it seemed to Liz—so she filed her other selves away, and referred to them infrequently. She did so out of habit, not concerted effort. Liz believed she would always have Gabriel as he was during their courtship, so her life before him was irrelevant to Valerie, and to herself.

When Gabriel began pulling away, Liz talked to Valerie about it. Her friend laughed and said not to worry. He loved her madly, anyone could see it, she said. It was probably nothing more than the inevitable mellowing even the most romantic relationship experiences. Normal life. Had she used that phrase? Now Liz wasn't certain.

More than a year ago, Valerie moved to Paris to study at an art institute, and there never seemed to be a right time to talk since she'd left. Liz was reluctant to complain about Gabriel across such a distance, and the differences in their schedules discouraged her further. Morning in Albuquerque was dinnertime in Paris, when Valerie was either out, tired or on the wrong side of a bottle of wine. If Liz called during her evening, her friend would be groggy with sleep or impatient to start her day. It was too difficult, so she kept her own counsel more and more.

Valerie, and the rest of the world, never learned about Mike. For so long, there was nothing to say. She imagined the conversation.

“I eat lunch with a guy at work.”

“Are you attracted to him?”

“No.”

“Does he flirt with you?”

“No.”

“Then why do I care about it?”

By the time she realized there was a reason for Valerie to care, she was too ashamed to tell, and too worried she might lose her best friend.

Liz hadn't planned to keep secrets from Valerie and she hadn't planned to lie to the police. The story about the beer came out of her mouth unbidden. She might have been subconsciously covering herself, so everyone would believe she was the tragic widow, instead of the cheating woman who'd shocked her husband and let him run out the door angry. Let him kill himself. Of course she was relieved she wouldn't have to get into it with everyone, to explain how Gabriel had ignored her, and how it made her feel. To explain Mike. How could she do that anyway? Her understanding of her marriage, her choices, her goals—everything—had collapsed. She didn't have anyone she could trust to help her figure it out—her go-to resource had always been herself—so she had buried the truth and let everyone think what they would.

And the lie, as it happened, worked out better for Gabriel. When she confessed to the affair, and used the past tense, she removed Mike from inside their marriage, where he never should have been. She hadn't meant to put him there, but he was there nevertheless. And because Mike was now out, he had to stay out, and she would stay out of his marriage as well. That couldn't transpire if the police—and perhaps Mike's wife and Valerie and the Pembertons—all knew about her affair. He would be everywhere in Gabriel's life, in the memories people carried of him. Gabriel hadn't deserved that.

After she called Gabriel's parents, she returned to the chair she never sat in. The reality of her situation began to sink in. Gabriel was gone, and this part of her life was over. The longer she sat, the more she realized the lie was irrelevant. She hadn't gotten away with a thing.

S
he woke at dawn to silence. Her head ached, and her mouth felt lined with parchment. The confines of the tent threatened to smother her—she couldn't face Dante in there—so she grabbed her jacket and pants and crept outside.

The cold air was sharp in her nose. She walked up a small rise and faced east. The landscape stood immobile. She could not detect the slightest sign anything had happened during the night. The mountains remained stolid and mute above the lake, a sheet of midnight blue glass. The stunted trees held their resolute needles.

She returned to the camp, unpacked the cookware and stove, and set the water to boil. Dante squirmed out of the tent and regarded her as she spooned coffee mix into the cups.

“You been up long?”

“A few minutes.”

She filled the cups with water, stirred, and handed Dante his. “What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you'd be going back.”

He stared out at the lake. His cheekbones were red where they'd caught yesterday's sun. The short beard he'd grown since Red's Meadow—which she had thought sexy—now made him appear to be transforming into someone she might not know. Her throat closed and the skin on her palms tightened. She sipped her coffee to stop from crying. She didn't want him to go. She wanted him to want her. He didn't need to forgive her (her transgression wasn't his to forgive), or understand. Wanting her was enough. It had to be.

“No, Liz, I'm not going back. I promised I would do this hike with you, and that's what I'm going to do.”

Because he, at least, knew the meaning of a promise.

They ate their breakfast without speaking. Liz carried the dishes to the lake, scooped water into the bowls and mugs, rubbed them clean with her fingers and walked away from the edge to toss out the water. She wiped the dishes dry, stacked them on the ground and stuffed her hands into her pockets to warm them. The tips of the peaks on the western shore, a pair of isosceles triangles, burned orange. The lake surface captured them, every detail of shadowed and sunlit stone painted upon the water, the far shore an uncertain demarcation.

She watched until her fingers regained feeling, then gathered the dishes and climbed to the campsite. Dante was bent over his pack, his back to her.

“How far are we going today?” he said without looking up.

“Le Conte Canyon would be great. So, thirteen miles?” She began storing the dishes and cookware in her pack.

“Okay.” He clicked the straps shut. “I'm almost ready, so maybe I'll see you at the pass, or later.”

Her hands stilled. She should've expected he might not want to walk with her this morning, but the break in their routine unsettled her. He didn't seem angry, though, and probably only wanted time to himself. Her mind was so foggy she doubted she could manage a conversation anyway. “Sounds good,” she said.

She heard feet on gravel and lifted her head to see the McCartneys crossing the gulley between their camps. Liz wondered if they'd heard her screaming last night and felt her cheeks flush. The couple smiled and waved as they approached.

Paul said, “Good morning. We wanted to make sure you didn't get blown away.”

“No, we're still here,” Dante said, his tone tinged with regret.

Paul and Linda exchanged concerned looks. Liz changed the subject. “Thanks again for the stakes. I'm not sure the tent would've held up without them.” She scanned the piles of gear in front of her and peered inside her empty pack. “I didn't give you guys a fuel canister last night, did I?”

“No,” Linda said. “You said you'd conserve, which was nice of you.”

“That's what I thought. But I was so tired, I thought maybe I forgot.” She began rummaging through Dante's pack.

“Is something wrong?” Linda asked.

“Yeah. Our extra fuel has spontaneously combusted, too.”

They all looked at one another.

“What the hell is going on?” Paul asked.

Linda said, “Someone could have gone through our packs at Muir Ranch. Everyone has dinner at the same time, and our cabin was next to yours. Nothing's locked.”

Dante shook his head. “Stealing a camera, or a nice knife, I could see. But fuel? Even at the ranch they were only charging eight dollars a can.”

Linda said, “Eight bucks is eight bucks. Some people depend on other hikers' leftover food instead of resupplying. They end up with a free vacation if they steal fuel.”

“I guess,” Liz said, although she doubted the theory.

Paul said, “If we hike into Le Conte Canyon tonight—and that's our plan—we'll be low enough to make a fire.”

Dante said, “Another primitive skill to add to my resume.”

“That's the thing about primitive skills,” Liz said. “You never know when you might need them.”

The McCartneys returned to their camp. Dante swung his pack onto his back and adjusted his cap. “See you later.”

“Have a nice walk.”

He nodded as if this was exactly what he had in mind. “You, too.”

She watched him go. He cut diagonally across the hill to meet the trail at the shore and turned south. After a few hundred yards he followed the trail away from the water, and began ascending a ledge at the base of Mount Darwin. Dante was tiny now, an ant moving slowly and steadily, significant in its being and in its purpose, and insignificant otherwise. If she took her eyes off him, she might not find him again.

He reached the top of the ledge and stopped. He might have turned to admire the view, or to see where she was, but it was impossible to tell. In a moment she would lose sight of him in any case, so she made her final preparations and set off. She had become chilled and walked rapidly, relieved to be on her way.

She left Evolution Lake behind and passed a series of lakes, each the same deep blue. Wanda Lake was the largest, lying in a basin a mile below Muir Pass and nearly divided in two by a peninsula. The trail came within an arm's length of the shore. As she skirted it, the surface danced, bejeweled by the early-morning sun.

She stopped to rest midway along the final climb to the pass and looked down upon Wanda Lake, a pool of indigo ink. In this treeless expanse was only ink, stone and sky. The granite basin held the pool within its rugged curves. Beyond the lake, the western slopes of the jagged peaks plummeted into an unseen valley where she guessed another measure of ink had spilled.

The vista reminded her of her first weekend in Santa Fe, when her mother had taken her to lunch at Coyote Café, and to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. She'd been dragged through countless museums during her twelve years—some a dozen times or more—and had never been inspired. Museums and galleries and studios were her mother's world. Claire was an authority, so Liz felt her mother automatically experienced more in the face of art than she herself ever would. Depending on her mood, Claire might offer commentary but she was usually lost in private reflection or engrossed in sketching in the notebook she always had with her. Liz was relieved when an audio guide was available to assuage her boredom, although she did admire line drawings, especially preliminary sketches, and the museum buildings themselves.

At the O'Keeffe museum she had left her mother's side and proceeded, as if called, to a canvas in the far corner the size of a large window. She stood a step away and peered through an ivory hole into an impossibly blue sky, where a faint moon hung. Her gaze slid to the bottom corner of the painting and a second ivory hole revealing again an ellipse of sky. She realized the ivory was bone and had the sensation of lifting out of her shoes. Her eyes were drawn through the hole in the bone. She felt if she were to lean forward, she would feel the bone's dry smoothness on her forehead. She was in the painting, and the moon was more real than she.

Liz returned to the museum most days after school. Each visit she would choose another painting, or let it choose her. Her hands dipped inside the cool velvet tunnel of a calla lily, and she lay at the foot of the round red hills and stroked their sides, which were sanded like the tongue of a cat. With her fingers she explored the openings in a coyote skull—weaving in and out of the nostrils and eyes—a skull she was certain had never belonged to a living animal, but had always been bare and exposed. In a painting entitled
Above the Clouds I
she stepped from one white puff to the next, the sky below as deep as the ocean.

She said nothing to her mother.

After several months, she could summon the paintings in her mind, and she returned to the museum only for new exhibitions. She kept a stack of postcards of her favorites in a drawer next to her bed, and entered an image before going to sleep, exploring and touching all the surfaces and their simple, beautiful meaning.

When she packed for UCLA, the postcards remained in her bedside table. They were emblematic of the odd, isolated childhood she trusted she could now leave behind. In any case, they lived inside her should she need them. And she managed without the skulls and mesas and morning glories until the night Gabriel died and she found herself sitting in the chair she never sat in, searching for O'Keeffes on her laptop. They got her through that first night.

Now she stared at the peaks surrounding her. It was utterly quiet, as quiet as her childhood bedroom before she fell asleep. These mountains were a far cry from Georgia O'Keeffe's mesas and canyons, and yet the feeling they evoked in her was the same. The simplicity of the scene, combined with the enormity of its scale, evoked a sensual reverence in her. And curiosity. If she dipped the tip of her finger in the ink, could she write upon the sky?

This was why she had come. Not to think, or learn, or seek absolution. She had come to enter into a world of pure perception, to explore this canvas of gray and blue. It was a place beyond reckoning, beyond sin. If she could exist there, she could bear the weight of existence completely inside herself. This, she believed, was necessary for love. She feared the answer would be no, but, at the moment, the question was still alive.

During her marriage to Gabriel, she'd lost hold of the strength she'd taken for granted as a child, when she had calmly reached into her toolbox, aiming to take the world apart and discover how it worked. Courage lay within easy reach of a child who knew nothing of how easily understanding can unravel, leaving a set of rules that apply to nothing, and an empty heart.

Last night she'd delivered a truth to Dante, blown out of her by a windstorm. Today the trail was in front of her, and behind. Dante was there, following the same line, keeping his word. The high country, so simple, so beautiful, was indifferent to them both.