Laura wasn’t convinced. “Believe me, Claire,” she said, grimacing, “it’s going to be some time before I manage to forget what a bad effect candy can have on your teeth.”
* * * *
“Look at us.” Claire marveled, staring into the mirror. “We look like bionic Barbie dolls.”
Studying their reflection, Laura had to agree with her. What set skiing apart from all other sports, she’d learned, was not the need for skill, balance, coordination, or even nerves of steel. It was owning a complete wardrobe specially designed to keep people warm and dry as they foolishly ventured outdoors where it was cold and wet.
To outfit themselves for trying on the persona of Frosty the Snowman, Laura and Claire had begged, borrowed, and shopped the sales at Ski Bum Warehouse. Julie, the experienced one, already owned two or three of each required garment. Now, inspecting the threesome one last time before heading out to the Bellinski Ski Tours bus, revving its motor in the parking lot right outside their window as it prepared to head for the slopes, Laura had to agree with Claire.
“It’s quite dramatic,” she said. “Me all in purple and green, Julie in navy blue—”
“And me in hot pink.” Claire groaned. “I look like the first forty-year-old snow bunny in history. Honestly, I don’t know how I ever let you talk me into buying this.”
“It was on sale, remember?” said Laura. “Seventy percent off is a
very
compelling argument.”
The one saving grace was that everyone else on the tour bus looked more or less the same. But Laura forgot all about how absurd she felt once they headed up the mountain, past some of the most dramatic scenery she’d ever seen. Everywhere she looked, the theme was ice. The mountain streams they passed were frozen over. Huge icicles, six, eight, ten feet long, hung down from cliffs menacingly. Of course, she couldn’t help wondering if the narrow road that meandered along a very steep drop was also covered with ice. Rather than contemplate that possibility, she concentrated on Kurt, moving about the bus distributing ski boots with the good cheer of a flight attendant.
“Okay,” he announced, once the bus had crept off the horrifying mountain road and into a parking lot that looked considerably more safe. “It’s now eight-forty. We’ll be leaving here promptly at four-thirty.”
“That’s eight hours away!” whimpered Claire, sitting beside Laura.
“It’ll speed right by,” Julie assured her. There was a glaze in her green eyes and a flush to her cheeks that scared Laura. She reminded Laura of the mad scientists in science-fiction films. “Once you get up to the top of the mountain—”
“Uh, you’re not going to rush right off, are you?” Laura asked nervously. “You did promise to give us a few pointers.”
Claire was nodding. ‘That’s right. Don’t forget that this was your idea. Yours ... and that patient of yours with the midlife crisis.”
“Just one more thing,” Kurt was saying. “The temperature outside is seven—”
“Seven?” Claire croaked. “Did he say seven?”
“With the wind chill, it’s way down below zero. You’ll notice frostbite warnings have been posted—”
“I
told
you we should have gone to one of those islands where they hate Americans!” hissed Claire.
“Just remain alert, folks. If you notice any numbness, any tingling sensation in your extremities, go inside and get warmed up.”
“No,” Claire shot back, “we’ll just stay outside until we turn into snow angels.”
“Oh, Claire,” chirped Julie, shooing Claire and Laura off the bus, “once you get moving, you won’t even notice the cold.”
“Right,” Laura muttered. “We’ll all be too busy trying not to slide down a five-hundred-foot mountain slope covered in six feet of ice.”
While Laura would never have admitted it to the cynical Claire, she was actually overcome with Christmas-morning excitement as she shuffled off the tour bus with the others. She was about to test herself in a way she’d never been tested before, to go one-on-one with Mother Nature, the most formidable opponent of all. The icy air blasting through the open door of the bus was her call to battle. The mountain beckoned, tall and proud and ready to be conquered.
It wasn’t until she tried climbing off the bus that she realized just how difficult it was going to be.
“How are you supposed to walk in these things?” she demanded. Not only did the ski boots weigh as much as the concrete shoes gangsters use for drowning their adversaries, but with her feet encased entirely in the hard, shiny synthetic material, they had no choice but to remain at ninety-degree angles to her shins.
“You’re not supposed to walk in them,” Julie replied calmly. “You’re supposed to attach your skis to their bottoms and
ski
in them.”
“I’ll never again complain about new shoes,” Laura muttered. Steeling herself against possible disaster, she clomped around the parking lot. Keeping her balance was no easy task. Yet, moving with all the grace of a rhino in roller skates, she made her way to the side of the bus, where Kurt was patiently distributing skis to the members of the group.
* * * *
After an hour on the bunny slope, the nickname for the gentle incline where small children were taught the ups and downs of skiing, Julie pronounced Laura and Claire ready to try the real thing.
“But I haven’t even mastered the rope tow!” Claire protested. “If the attendant with the potbelly and the cigar comes over to help me up out of the snow one more time—”
“The rope tow is the hardest part of skiing,” Julie insisted. “No one should be subjected to it. You’ll find the T-bar much simpler.”
“Oo-o-o-o-oh ...”
Riding up the T-bar alone, Laura could hear Claire behind her. She tried to rise above her friend’s fear, preferring to side with Julie on this one. If Julie could do it, Laura reasoned, so could she. Of course, Julie’s job demanded a working knowledge of how every single part of the body functioned, something that was bound to be helpful while plunging down a mountain with nothing for protection except two skinny little ski poles and more waterproof layers than a fish.
Hopping off the T-bar, sliding down a little slope designed to put the fear of God into people about to descend the mountain, literally took Laura’s breath away. Still, she had to admit it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant experience. By giving in, letting it simply happen, she sensed, from somewhere deep inside, she would pull it off. As she waited for Julie and Claire to catch up, she was exhilarated over the prospect of her first ski run.
Claire apparently did not share her enthusiasm.
“You can’t be serious,” she said tartly. “This is all a cruel joke, right?”
“You’re going to love it,” Julie insisted. “The crisp white snow, stretching on as far as the eye can see, the sensation of icy air on your face—”
“Don’t forget all those cute, single guys out here on the ski slopes,” Laura reminded her.
‘True,” Claire admitted. “After all, I did notice that the parking lot back at the ski lodge looks like a Mercedes dealership.”
“There’s more to a man than his checkbook,” Julie retorted.
“Reading
Iron John
again?” Claire shot back.
“She doesn’t mean any of it,” Laura insisted to Julie, wanting to keep the peace. “Look, I think we need to stick together. Right now we’ve got a lot more to worry about than who’s taking us to the prom. We have to get from here ... to
there.”
Swallowing hard, Laura took her first real look at the ski trail ahead of her. Never before had she seen anything quite so long—or quite so steep.
“You’ve got a point.” Claire followed her gaze. “On second thought, I think I’ll take the lift back down. I don’t think I’ll look particularly attractive showing up at tonight’s happy hour in a body cast.”
“You can’t take the lift back down,” said Julie. “It only goes one way.”
“You’re joking, right?” Claire’s face was the same shade of hot pink as her bunny suit.
“No, Claire. Nobody rides down. The whole point is to ski down.”
Laura, who had been entertaining her own thoughts about following Claire to the down escalator, quickly realized that panicking wasn’t going to solve anything.
“Come on, Claire. We can do it. Kurt thought so.”
“Kurt’s probably so stoned he thinks we’re all capable of flying.” Cautiously Claire peered over at Laura. “Are you really going to do this?”
“We’ve come this far.” Laura was trying so hard to sound jovial that she reminded herself of a scout leader. “Come on, Claire. Race you to the bottom.”
“I’ll catch up with you two later.” Julie, finally losing patience, suddenly took off. She slid away with such ease that Laura and Claire simply stared, dumbfounded.
“We’re not going to let her show us up, are we?” Laura said. “One, two, three—”
Suddenly she felt herself moving. Through no conscious decision of her own, she had pushed off. She was sliding down the mountain, picking up speed.
She was skiing.
I’m doing it, she thought, both alarmed and astounded. I might end up with my face in the snow. Or my arm in a cast. But I’m really doing it!
Her adrenaline pumping as she recited the rules Julie had drummed into her, Laura moved smoothly down the side of the mountain. Surprisingly, she managed to remain upright. She even had some control over where she went—and how quickly she got there. Most remarkably, not once did she tumble into the snow, despite a few close calls when she felt herself losing her balance or picking up speed too quickly. Every time she managed to ward off disaster, instinctively knowing what to do.
Finally she reached the bottom. She was slowing down; gravity no longer grabbed at her quite so greedily now that the slope had leveled off.
I did it! she thought, wrapped in a glorious euphoria, feeling more alive than she had in months. I came down the mountain!
Blinking in the bright sunlight reflecting off the white fields of snow, Laura looked around for her friends. Julie was way ahead of her, already in line for her next ski-lift ride. But Claire was still halfway up the mountain, trying without much success to pull herself out of a snowbank. She looked like a giant pink turtle that had landed on its back.
Laura was thrilled she’d done so well. Not as well as Julie, but certainly better than Claire. She’d survived. She’d had her doubts, experienced fear ... but gone ahead and, in the end, triumphed.
Pausing only a moment to catch her breath, she headed toward the ski lift, ready for more, awed by the discovery that she was capable of things that she’d never dreamed of.
Chapter Eight
Laura pushed the back door open
slowly, afraid of what she might find—or what she
wouldn’t
find. Her worst fantasy was that she’d come home from her weekend of picking icicles out of her collar and cuffs to find that her house had been stripped bare, her microwave, the doors of the kitchen cabinets, and even the switch plates carted off like booty from the Crusades.
So she was greatly relieved when she turned on the light and saw that not only was the switch plate firmly in place but that the kitchen was precisely as she’d left it. Her coffee cup from breakfast two days before sat in the sink, half-filled with murky water. The dish towel she’d dropped on me counter was still wadded up into a ball. The microwave and ail the other accoutrements of her well-stocked kitchen appeared to have spent the weekend unmolested.
Even so, Laura held her breath as she went into the dining room. There, she began to see subtle signs of her husband having moved out. One of the ceramic hurricane lamps was gone. Half the wineglasses, displayed in a wooden case with sliding-glass doors, had vanished. The only sign of the hand-painted pitcher from Mexico, a wedding present from Roger’s best friend from college, was a space on the shelf where it used to be.
Growing more and more uneasy, Laura stepped into the living room. Books were missing from shelves, leaving behind gaping holes. The swivel chair was gone. The TV and the VCR were still in place, but where the stereo had once been there was nothing but a bare rectangle outlined by dust.
She sank onto the couch, suddenly overwhelmed by the fact that Roger was gone. She felt his absence as strongly as she had once felt his presence. She was once again struck by the momentousness of what was happening. Everything in her life was changing. Elements that had once been stable were suddenly shifting, moving under her feet like the ground during an earthquake.
She told herself it was for the best. That it had to be this way.
As she leaned her head back, she hit the hard edge of the couch, instead of the pillows. She closed her eyes, partly to fight the tears that threatened to fall, but even more to concentrate on a vision that was pushing its way up from her unconscious. Suddenly it was clear, a memory that had been tucked away for more than three decades, a moment that had once meant so much to her that it had burned itself indelibly into her brain.
She was just a girl, no more than ten or twelve, walking home from a friend’s house. It was the beginning of December, just as it was now; early evening, probably not much later than five o’clock, but darkness had already fallen. Hurrying down the street where she lived, Laura peered into the windows of the brightly lit houses she passed.
Sneaking peeks into other people’s lives was a game she’d invented. She enjoyed imagining the scenes inside. That night she conjured up jovial fathers, just home from work, relieved to finally be home. She pictured safe, secure children, freshly bathed, well fed, swathed in contentment as comfortable as their soft flannel pajamas.
Most of all, she imagined the mothers. The women who were at the core of each household, the soul of the family. She remembered musing about how good it must feel to be in the center, surrounded by a loving family, a cozy house, the feeling that everything was just as it should be: fresh-smelling sheets and towels folded neatly in the linen closet, scented soap in the bathrooms, cookies still warm from the oven spread out on a plate.
How desperately she wished that one day she’d be a woman like that! Laura experienced a yearning so great it manifested itself in the form of a pain, a tightness near her heart. She could see herself in that role. She needed to believe that one day she would be that woman.