The Middle of Somewhere (4 page)

“I don't understand why you say that. Payton and Rodell were extremely friendly.”

“You're kidding me, right? About the names?”

“No. Payton and Rodell Root. From Arcata, wherever that is.”

“Northern California. Way, way north.”

“Maybe it's a regional thing. Anyway, they didn't name themselves.”

“I guess not.”

“They met some guys having a bocce game later. They invited us.”

“Later? When later?” She checked her watch. Nearly six already.

“Eight or so.”

“Eight or so, I'm asleep. We have to leave early tomorrow. Aren't you tired?” Stupid question, really. If there was a social activity, he was game. Always.

“No! My feet hurt, but I'm good.” He unpacked his haul: beer, cold cuts, bread, chocolate and ibuprofen. Dante's food pyramid.

“Dante, I'm serious about leaving early.”

He frowned. “What's the rush? I love it here.” He held up his phone. “I've got three bars!”

“You know what the rush is. We have to make it to Muir Trail Ranch, the halfway point, before they close for the season. Otherwise, we have no food for the last nine days. If we don't walk an average of fourteen miles a day, we won't make it. You know all this.”

“Okay, but I also know this is supposed to be a vacation. And so far it doesn't feel that way.”

“It is a vacation. A strenuous one.”

“That's a . . . what do you call it? An oxymormon.”

“That's a detergent popular in Utah. I believe you mean ‘oxymoron.'”

“Yes, a moron. Because only a moron would design such a vacation!”

She leaned toward him and met his gaze. “Is this you giving this your best shot? Because I'm distinctly underwhelmed. I didn't come here to play bocce. I didn't come here to drink beer, although I'll be having one in a minute. And, to be completely frank with you, I didn't come here to be your cheerleader, your butler or your mother.” She stood. “Do what you want. I'm leaving at seven thirty tomorrow.” She grabbed a beer and walked away.

She went to bed alone. As exhausted as she was, she didn't fall asleep for a long time. Someone setting up camp in a neighboring site repeatedly shone their flashlights on her tent. Then they spent ages talking loudly on their phones. Several times she thought about getting up and confronting them, but the freezing temperature kept her inside. Besides, she'd had enough confrontation for one day.

Dante woke her when he unzipped the tent and wriggled into his sleeping bag. He didn't say anything, nor did she. She checked her watch—it was one fifteen—but she was past caring.

She awoke at dawn and crawled over Dante to get out. He was a champion sleeper. He fell asleep the second he closed his eyes and slept through earthquakes, parties, fireworks, thunderstorms and, most impressively, the frantic high-pitched barking of their neighbor's dog. Usually she thought it indicated he had a clear conscience. Today she thought it indicated he was lazy.

When she retrieved the cans from the bear locker and placed them on the table, she saw Dante had left out his socks—the relatively dry ones. They had absorbed the dew and were primed to maximize blister potential. She shook her head and gathered what she needed to make coffee. Not long afterward, Dante surprised her by emerging from the tent of his own volition. He was no beacon of joy, but at least she didn't have to collapse the tent on him.

They left the campground and picked up the trail at the bottom of a gentle slope, Liz in the lead and Dante trailing behind. At the bridge spanning the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River, an older couple was poring over a map and sharing an apple. They exchanged greetings but Liz didn't stop to chat. She was chilled and wanted to keep moving. Today they were finally going to leave the developed part of Yosemite, and she was eager.

“You don't have to walk so fast,” Dante called after her.

She slowed a little. “I'm not walking fast. I'm just not hungover.”

He caught up to her with a hobbling step. “I'm not hungover either. I'm disabled.”

“Wet socks plus new boots equals unhappy feet. Isn't the moleskin helping?”

“I didn't have time to put it on. You were in such a hurry.”

She whipped around and stared at him. “So it's my fault? Dante, how have you survived thirty-two years?”

“By driving when I need to go ten miles, and occasionally taking public transportation.”

She picked up her pace. “If you have reception, try calling a cab.”

Complaining, Liz believed, was a matter of opportunity and practice, and Dante had had plenty of both. As the youngest of four children, and the only boy, he was routinely indulged. Had he contained an ounce of malice, he would have become a despot. His sweet nature and abundant charm guaranteed that when he did grouse about the fundamental unfairness of life, he would be forgiven. Because he was an optimist, he did not complain routinely. That, and because he never had it that bad.

Liz was the only child of an egocentric mother and an absentee father, and had lacked an audience for her grievances. Her practical nature also made her disinclined to complain. A problem could either be fixed (usually by her) or it couldn't, and confusing the two was a waste of time. She instead directed her efforts at improving what she could—hence her job providing limbs for people who needed them—rather than railing at an obviously flawed universe. Find a problem that matters, fix it and shut the hell up about the rest. Growing up, she kept her own counsel, eschewing the gossip and social maneuvering that drove other girls' relationships, and had few friends because of it. She never intended to be awkward, or to hide. It was simply who she was and how she was raised.

Eventually, as her world widened, her habit of not expressing her hopes, disappointments and desires tripped her up. Because a lie or, more accurately, the absence of truth, was akin to grit in an oyster. Once it had been covered with a silky crystalline coating, again and again, it didn't feel the same. No one could see it—it's not as though someone could pry her open—and the currents of time kept moving past her. But Liz could feel pearls of the lies and subverted desires inside her, lodged in her soul. They presented a problem she didn't know how to fix.

T
he trail up Lyell Canyon required little concentration. The base of the canyon was broad and flat, with golden meadows on either side of a winding river. The trail didn't do anything fancy, starting on the west side of the riverbank and continuing along for nine miles. After that, the map told her, the river narrowed to a rushing creek, and the trail climbed steeply to Donahue Pass. But for now, it was either easy going or monotonous, depending on how one looked at it. River on the left, forest on the right, and Potter Point and Amelia Earhart Peak dead ahead. The sky was clear, and the warming sun lifted the dew off the grass. A walk in the park.

Which was why Dante's silence worried her.

He was thinking hard about something, something serious enough to overwhelm his usual compulsion to talk. Normally she would welcome the quiet, content with the company of her own thoughts. But now her only thoughts were what Dante was contemplating as he took one step after another behind her. There was no point in asking him before he was ready, only a matter of how far up the canyon they would travel before he let her in.

It turned out to be six miles. She told him she was ready for a snack. She left the trail and set her pack down a few feet from the river's edge. He joined her and accepted the energy bar she offered. As she unwrapped hers, she scanned the water for trout. Within a few seconds, she spied a fish whose wriggling disrupted its camouflage against the mottled olive green riverbed. It darted under the shadow of rock and vanished.

“Liz,” Dante said from behind her. “I think I made a mistake.” She turned. His eyes were dark and a knot had formed between his eyebrows. “I shouldn't have come. I should have stayed home.”

“The blisters are bad, huh?” she said, knowing blisters weren't the issue.

“Yes, but that's not it.”

Her stomach twisted. All the frustration she had been swallowing over the last three days rose to the back of her throat, acrid. “It's hard! This hike is really hard. I tried to be realistic with you about it. I warned you.” The chastising tone of her voice made her wince. She coiled the wrapper of the energy bar around her finger, unfurled it and coiled it again.

“You're not understanding me. I didn't come because I was sure I could do it, and I'm not thinking about leaving because I can't.”

She bit her lower lip. It wasn't about the hike. Of course not. She just wanted it to be. “Why did you want to come then?”

He picked up her hand and held it between his. “Because I thought I would lose you if I didn't.” His voice dropped. “I thought you knew that.”

She did. She didn't.

She wasn't certain what she knew. She was angry with him, but was that fair? He'd acted out of desperation, fueled by fear and love. Why else would he have insisted on coming? It was so obvious she almost laughed at the audacity of her stubborn denial.

He squeezed her hand. “Say something. Please.”

This was the moment in which she should explain everything. Valerie's voice spoke in her head, telling her not to be such a pussy and spit it out. Liz could tell him about the pregnancy and how confused and scared she had been, and how sharing the news with him (clearly the right thing to do in retrospect) had been impossible because she was certain he'd want to have the baby. He was Catholic and had a moral streak as wide as Lyell Canyon. She, on the other hand, maintained she had nothing against religion but was holding out for one that revered the periodic table. Unfortunately, as much as humor helped her cope with the mistakes she'd made, it appeared useless in preventing them. If only she could graft a simplifying moral structure into her brain using the technology she designed for artificial limbs.

Telling Dante she'd been pregnant would lead to confessing to the abortion. During her interior rehearsals, this was where she forgot her lines. That confession, however worded, would inevitably lead to owning up to her ambivalence about living with him. Except for fleeting moments when she forgot her own painful history and she was simply happy, she hadn't found level footing, the graceful certainty she'd done the right thing by moving in.

If she somehow managed to admit to the abortion (highly unlikely), and if Dante was still listening (inconceivable), she would have no choice but to explain why her actions had nothing to do with him. He would be relieved, and possibly encouraged, because it meant they'd have a chance after all—assuming he suffered an episode of amnesia regarding the abortion. But his relief would be misguided. And to explain why, she would have to voice something she had never told anyone, not even Valerie. When he heard that story, he would leave and never come back.

Which, from the look of things, might happen anyway.

She took her hand away on the pretense of pushing her bangs from her eyes.

“I wanted to do this hike alone. I wasn't leaving you.”

He shook his head. “But you've been distant for a while. Like you're making plans without me.”

“I was. I was planning this trip. And then you started having an issue with it.”

“Only because it seemed so . . . so, I don't know,
necessary
to you.”

“And your problem with that is what? I'm too independent?”

He frowned deeply. She could see the answer was “yes.” She felt sorry for him, because her “independence” was, in part, a product of all the things he didn't know about her. She kept truths from him because he wouldn't love her otherwise, and she wanted his love. Her secrets were wrapped in a cloak of self-sufficiency she could both hide behind and hold up as a virtue. Independence was a flag American women waved proudly, and Liz knew Dante was drawn to this in her. His mother was a highly emotional woman who could do little more than breathe on her own, and his entire family had suffered because of it.

“Too independent? Of course not,” he said.

“Look, Dante, I was actually fine with you coming along if you really wanted to. And if you respected the way I wanted it to be.” Not entirely true, but true enough to state with conviction.

He regarded her with skepticism. “I think you were testing me. And I failed.”

“Now you're feeling sorry for yourself. Why couldn't you just have let me go? It could have been that simple.”

“Simple for you, Liz. Not so simple for me. Not when I don't understand what's going on with us!” He took a couple of steps back, turned away from her and threw his hands in the air. “Shit!”

She pulled a bottle from the outside pocket of her pack, unscrewed the lid and drank. She watched as Dante opened his pack and began unloading it. She knew what was happening but said nothing. They'd pretty much covered it, at least what they were willing to say. Dante lifted out his bear can and placed it next to the pack. He leaned on it with one hand and dropped his chin to his chest.

“You were right about the boots. They destroyed my feet. I probably wouldn't be able to continue anyway.”

“I'm sorry about your feet. And everything else.” The truth, in its entirety.

“Let's go through all the gear. I don't want you to be missing anything you need.”

They emptied the backpacks and bear cans and spread everything out on the grass. It reminded Liz, and probably Dante, of a similar array on their dining table the night before they left for the mountains.

She repacked her bear can with enough food to last until Red's Meadow, where she would pick up the first of two resupply buckets they had shipped. Red's was four days away. The second resupply would be waiting at Muir Trail Ranch, fifty miles farther south. The tent and cooking gear went on her pile as well, in addition to the rudimentary medical kit and the Ziploc bag containing an assortment of safety items: nylon cord, an extra tent stake, a flare, waterproof matches, zip ties, replacement shock cord for the tent pole, and a patch kit for the tent. Her pack would gain a few pounds; two can live almost as lightly as one.

She placed the water filter among his belongings. He gave her a questioning look.

“Trying to save a pound. I'm going to use the Aquamira.” The purification tablets were backup. They killed everything they needed to, but not immediately. And if the source water contained sediment, it would stay cloudy.

“There aren't enough.”

“I'll get more at Red's.”

“I thought you preferred the filter.”

She shrugged. Dante bent his head in apology. The choices she would have made at home in preparation for a solo trip were different from the ones she faced now. She'd have brought a smaller tent, for starters. The one she'd purchased when she thought she'd be alone was narrow and low to the ground, shaped like a chrysalis.

The process of divvying up their gear and supplies was what she imagined happened when cohabiting couples broke up: her stuff from before, his stuff from before and, the sticky part, the stuff they had bought together in the buoyant hope they'd never see this day. But instead of books, serving dishes and throw pillows, these were tools of survival. She picked up the compass—a dial set in a rectangle of clear, hard plastic—and closed her fingers over it. She squeezed and the sharp corners dug into her palm.

Dante contemplated his pile of clothing. “Why don't you take my gloves? They're warmer than yours.” His eyes asked her to confirm they still shared a life.
Mis cosas son tus cosas.

“They're too big. I'd fumble with everything.” She handed him the car keys. “You might not catch the shuttle to the Valley in time.”

He stared at the keys as if they were runes. “I'll figure something out.”

Liz placed her fingers lightly on his forearm. “It's up to you about Muesli. Valerie's expecting to have him the whole time, so either way.”

He exhaled loudly and stuffed the rest of his belongings into his pack. For now, the cat offering had been enough. He could tell himself that if he had the cat, she would probably follow. He was rushing to leave now. Ripping the Band-Aid off.

She methodically reloaded her pack, working with all the deliberation Dante no longer needed. She positioned each item with care, the heaviest things close to her center of gravity, the lighter things wherever they would fit. The business of getting it right soothed her. She paused to scan the skies. A few innocent puffs of cloud had appeared above Mount Lyell, cloaked in a glacier. She laid her waterproof jacket on top of the bear can, next to her snacks, where she could readily find it.

Dante hoisted his pack onto one shoulder, then leaned to the side and wriggled the other arm under the strap. He clicked the hip belt buckle and straightened his cap.

“You sure you don't want my phone?” This was tantamount to offering his leg.

She shook her head.

“I'm going to worry about you.”

She could see he meant it. “Don't. It's only a walk.” She stepped closer and kissed him. His lips were so warm and tasted of salt. Heat rushed through her body. She stepped back to stop from giving in to it.

Dante's expression had changed. A moment ago he had been ready to leave without a scene. Now he appeared frozen in place and crushed, and she regretted the kiss.

He said, “Was that our last kiss?”

“I thought you were leaving.”

“I am. But before I go, I want to know.”

“Why is it up to me to say?”

“Because you seem to be making all the choices.”

“It's a hike, Dante.”

They stood at arm's length, eyes locked. The river murmured beside them, the only sound.

“Liz,” Dante said softly, his hands on her arms. “Was that our last kiss?”

She spun free. “How the hell should I know?” Turning away from him, she pulled tight the toggle on the main compartment of her pack, tucked in the strings and strapped the top section securely in place. She stuffed two Nalgene bottles into the side pockets and checked her pants' pockets for her map, pocketknife and lip balm. After she scanned the ground for anything she might have overlooked, she lifted the pack onto her shoulders, clipped the hip belt and slipped her hands through the straps of her trekking poles.

Liz cut diagonally across the meadow. As she rejoined the trail, she looked the way they had come. The trail was empty. She was, at last, alone.