The Middle of Somewhere (19 page)

G
abriel had died on a Wednesday. The next day, Liz's mother stayed with her overnight, then returned to Santa Fe. “See you at the funeral. You can stay with me, if you want.” Later it struck Liz she had no choice, other than a hotel—or the Pembertons'.

It was months before she also realized no one had asked her where the funeral should be held. In fact, no one asked her anything during that time, except whether she would care for something to eat or drink. Almost always the answer was no.

She couldn't remember when the Pembertons showed up—had they overlapped with her mother?—or even in which order. They were a tide. She opened the door to them and that was it. She wasn't complaining, not even in retrospect. She had neither the will nor the expertise to manage her own feelings, much less the grieving process and necessary arrangements for the hordes of mourners the Pembertons assured her would arrive.

Their grief was genuine. Liz confronted the enormity and finality of Gabriel's death in their faces and gestures. Gabriel's mother, Eleanor, had worn a slightly contorted expression, even when she was resting or smiling in response to a child, or a joke. Her face was broken, like the twisted metal of the car in the newspaper photograph Claire had not been quick enough to hide, or like Gabriel himself. Liz had to turn away.

She turned away from a lot of things, retreating to her bedroom—their bedroom—to sit on the floor. She couldn't be on the bed. But the bedroom was not safe harbor either. The pastor entered in search of Gabriel's Bible, his sisters came to choose photos from the dresser to display at the service and, worst, his mother searched her out to see if Gabriel's good suit needed cleaning. Liz would never have thought of it.

Unseen hands set the funeral for Sunday. Liz moved with the Pemberton tide, out to the funeral home that would transfer her husband to Santa Fe, back to the house to deal with paperwork, and out to their local church, where pastor consoled pastor with such warmth and candor that she shrunk away in the shame of the weakness of her belief. After, she was ushered home once more, to choose something to wear. Normally she would have balked at the intrusion, but that day she opened her closet to Eleanor, docile. Gabriel's mother had many choices, because Liz favored black and gray. In high school it represented a reaction to her mother's zest for vivid colors, but later she adopted it as her style. She devoted little consideration to clothes and nothing went with black like black. Eleanor chose a narrow black skirt, a gray silk T-shirt and a black cardigan, “because sorrow makes us vulnerable to cold.” She was right. Outside the August sun baked the houses in the valley like pots in a kiln, and although the air-conditioning was no match for the weather, Liz needed a sweater. Eleanor understood all there was to know about the aftermath of death, as if she'd been rehearsing.

Then there was Gabriel's youngest brother, the one with Down's syndrome. Seventeen now, with a halfhearted moustache and a deepening voice, Daniel mentally hovered near five, and could not grasp Gabriel's passing. He got it in his head it was a joke, a protracted game of hide-and-seek, and searched for his brother tirelessly if not distracted by something else. On Saturday, Liz sat in the chair she never sat in, while all around her Pembertons prepared to escort her, and their dead son, to Santa Fe. Someone mentioned Gabriel by name. Daniel shouted, “I know where he is!” and flung himself at Liz's feet to search under the couch. She let out a scream—her first utterance of the day—and buried her face in her fists.

Everything she did during the run-up to the funeral—sitting on the floor, refusing food, allowing others to make decisions—was interpreted as grief. It was indeed grief, but mixed in equal parts with guilt and shame. She learned in those few days that either the signs are the same for all three, or the grief of others blinded them. The sympathy flowing over her was a salty sea biting into the wounds she had made in her own flesh.

On the hour-long journey to Santa Fe, she rode in the backseat with Gabriel's youngest sister. Her mother's ancient Land Rover wasn't in the drive when the Pembertons dropped her off. This concerned them, but she said she would be fine. They watched from the car while she approached the wooden burro by the front door, removed a spare key from under the kachina doll sitting on the burrow's back, and let herself in.

The adobe house was the same as always: a colorful, cluttered hodgepodge of Southwestern and Mexican furnishings, mixed with her mother's modernistic artwork. It was like walking into a peyote dream. The house was filled with elaborately painted animals in comic or menacing poses, vividly striped rugs and throws, ivory skulls with dried flowers in the eyes and mouths, giant pots fashioned from grasses and hides, and swirling canvases of orange, green and red—Claire's signature colors. Liz went straight to her room.

She was relieved to find her mother had not repurposed it—not that she would have resented it—but today the simple, tidy room of her childhood was a haven once again. The dark wooden headboard and navy bedspread sharp against the stark white walls and wheat-colored sisal rug were as she had left them. She put down her bag, closed the door and crossed to the window seat. Here was where she had become herself, with the view of the garden and the privacy of her thoughts.

She had no idea how long she stayed at the window, her knees pulled up to her chest. The front door opened once, but no one came to her room. Claire, if nothing else, knew the value of solitude. Liz watched a hummingbird probe among the flowers, then alight on a thorny branch to dart its beak in and out of its wing like a needle through fabric. The sky at the horizon shifted from blue to lilac. She wondered if the hole for Gabriel had already been dug, and whether Daniel's game of hide-and-seek would end when his brother was lowered into it. She closed her eyes and requisitioned Gabriel's face from her memory, but it wouldn't come.

A knock at the door startled her awake. A voice said her name. Valerie. She got up and found her friend in front of her. For a split second, she knew she would tell Valerie everything, right then and there. She had to. She would confess to her unhappy marriage, to adultery, to deviousness, to complicity in Gabriel's death. She would expose the shame burning up through her grief and downward into her soul.

But she noticed changes in Valerie. Her red hair was shoulder-length, and layered—a more sophisticated look than her perennial longer style. And when she pulled Liz into her arms, she smelled of a citrusy perfume. They weren't much, but the changes made Liz hesitate, and the impulse to confess passed like the shadow of a ghost. There would be other similar opportunities in the years to come, but if Liz was honest, this was the only real one. And it passed.

“Your mom brought tamales from Enrico's,” Valerie said, her eyes brimming with tears. “Come to the kitchen and watch me eat them all.”

She told Liz she was cutting short her internship to take a job near San Francisco. She was heading there from Santa Fe to look at condos, and planned to put deposit money down.

“There are tons of device companies up there, you know,” she said. “I checked.”

“Tell me you didn't change your plans for me.” Valerie looked at her shoes, and Liz was certain her friend had done exactly that.

“Of course not,” Valerie said. “How could I know whether you wanted to leave Albuquerque? I just thought, as long as I'm going to be there . . .”

Liz hadn't thought about her plans at all, but the moment Valerie raised the idea, she knew she wanted to leave everything behind. “Thanks. Can I get back to you on that?”

She gave notice the Monday after the funeral. Her boss, Stacy Stratticon, was surprised to hear from her, having authorized time off when Liz had called the previous week; she wasn't expecting to lose her promising young protégé. She sounded miffed, then shifted gears.

“Sometimes stability is what a person needs after a tragedy,” Stratticon said.

Nice try, Strap-it-on.
Liz said she'd be in soon to collect her things and say good-bye.

•   •   •

She hadn't seen or contacted Mike since before Gabriel's accident, so he could not have known she'd admitted the affair to Gabriel, and used the past tense when she did. She hadn't consciously decided to arrive at her workplace at lunchtime. Mike was on his way outside and stopped short when he saw her. He motioned to the bench where they had often sat together. Liz nodded and followed him. Her limbs felt suspended on strings, like a marionette.

“I wanted to call,” he said.

“It's okay.”

“You look like shit, Liz.”

She met his gaze and held it. “I am shit.”

The words hit him hard, and he winced. “What can I say that would help?”

“It's not a situation for words. It's a situation for get-the-hell-out.”

He nodded. He wasn't going to bullshit her, and she was grateful. A pang of regret, in anticipation of missing him, shot through her, and was immediately and convincingly clobbered by a barrage of guilt.

He said, “Knowing you, you don't want to hear this—”

“I hate speeches that start that way.”

“But I might not get another chance. Or I might get one and not take it, so please listen.”

“Okay.”

His expression held her fast. “Don't give up. Promise me you won't give up.”

She stared at the ground and shook her head.

“You're not going to promise? Then try this. Promise me you will remember that I asked you not to give up.” He leaned down to see her face. “Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I promise.”

Valerie wanted to share her two-bedroom condo in Mountain View, but Liz declined in favor of a one-bedroom rental in the same complex. Her friend was right about the prevalence of medical device companies in the area. Liz applied for five openings and was offered three. She decided on Paradynamics because it afforded the best chance to develop her skills and improve the lives of amputees. Several months in, a pharmaceutical giant gobbled up the company. Liz began spending more time in meetings than at the bench, so she moved to Kinesia Labs, where she headed up her own research unit.

She'd been working there a year before she met Dante. Over the next eighteen months, they went from regular weekend dates to seeing each other three times a week. She left a few things at Dante's house, as a practicality. In January, shortly after they returned from Oaxaca and the radish festival, the owner of Liz's condo put it on the market. Before she could decide whether to rent or buy, Dante asked her to move in. He had plenty of room, he said, holding her hand in his. Too much for one person. He must have seen fear flash across her face, because he added, “And I love you very much.” Her hand jerked from his grasp, then paused in midair. She remembered her promise to Mike.

A
t Palisade Lake frost coated the tent and a skin of ice had formed on the water bottles they'd left outside. Liz hopped from one foot to the other waiting for the water to boil. The rustle of nylon against nylon from the tent told her Dante was awake and getting dressed.

Paul came from behind the stand of trees dividing the campsite. “Knock, knock.”

She waved him over. He informed Liz that he and Linda would be continuing on at least as far as the junction with the trail to Kearsarge Pass, two days from here. Another trail led out of the Sierra before the Kearsarge trail, he said, but it was very steep and not well maintained, and ended at an obscure trailhead. If Linda couldn't complete the trip, they'd go over Kearsarge and catch a ride into Independence.

“It's sad to think you might not finish,” she said.

“We promised each other when we started that we wouldn't endanger ourselves. It's the journey, right?”

“Absolutely.”

Liz and Dante left first, having told the McCartneys they'd meet at Lake Marjorie, just shy of Pinchot Pass, if not before. Dante led. The trail followed the shape of the lake, on a high traverse. Liz's legs were chilled, and stiff from yesterday's ascent of the Golden Staircase. She thought of Linda, imagined her stitches would pull as she walked, but doubted it would slow her down much. Was there something in Linda's history that had made her so determined? And in Paul's, to be so daring in his love for her? Perhaps it was simply their personalities, and not life that had sculpted the McCartneys along the way. Who was to say she herself would have turned out differently if she'd been blessed with a doting mother, a devoted father and a houseful of siblings? At nearly thirty, she wasn't sure the answer mattered. Whatever the admixture of nature and nurture, it was her life, and her mess. She could bemoan the lack of scaffolding she'd been provided in building her life, but it was immaterial. She focused her attention on the trail at her feet.

Before long, Upper Palisade Lake was in sight. As they climbed toward the pass, they could finally see the entire Palisade Range that had loomed over their campsite. The massive peaks, all over fourteen thousand feet, dwarfed everything in the vicinity. The lakes were puddles, and Linda and Paul, now visible along the margin of the lower lake, were ants.

Liz and Dante came over a rise, and he stopped short, pointing with his pole at two figures resting on a boulder a hundred yards ahead. The Root brothers. “We'll just go past them, okay, Liz?”

She chewed on her lip and said nothing.

The Roots watched them approach. She had the feeling they'd been waiting for them.

“Good morning,” Rodell said, lifting a piece of jerky in the air.

Dante offered a muted hello. Liz nodded.

Payton got up, blocking the trail. “Chilly this morning, isn't it?”

Dante said, “Not too bad once you're moving.”

“Well, you're not moving now, are you,
hombre
?”

Dante stood straighter. “What is your motivation, Payton? Do you and your brother find sport in coming to this beautiful place”—he gestured at the mountains and sky—“with the goal of bothering people?”

The large man shook his head slowly. “Now, I really did like you. You're cute. Like those little dogs. What do you call them, Rodell?”

“Chihuahuas.”

“Yeah, them. But maybe I'm changing my mind.”

Liz felt Dante tense beside her. Her eyes fell to one of the Roots' backpacks. A string of clawed feet, with dried blood and tufts of fur, hung from a strap. She examined what Rodell was holding at his side. It wasn't jerky at all, but a small charred leg. Her stomach turned and bile rose at the back of her throat. She scanned for a detour around these men, but the slope was steep and clogged with large boulders.

“Let's drop it,” she said. “We don't need to like one another. It's a big place.”

Payton grinned at her and ran a palm along his thigh. A shiver skittered down her spine. “It's big, all right, but the trail is just a skinny little thing. Doesn't take much to create an inconvenience, as you can see.”

“Speaking of which,” Dante said, “when were you on the Golden Staircase yesterday?”

“Yesterday? Can't remember. Do you remember, Rodell?”

He rubbed his whiskers theatrically. “No, no, can't say as I do.”

“Mr. Hollywood was there, though, wasn't he?”

“Yes, he sure was. Swearing a blue streak the whole way up.”

Payton frowned. “Took the Lord's name in vain on multiple occasions.”

“We don't approve, do we Payton?”

“No, we certainly don't.”

“Daddy used to swear a blue streak. Even on the Lord's day.”

“He did indeed.”

“Poor Mama. Every swearword was a knife through her heart.” The younger brother pinched the corners of his eyes with dirty fingers. “All that swearing and drinking. And raising a hand to her! Knocked two teeth out once, remember?” Payton rested a hand on his brother's shoulder. Rodell exhaled and shook his head slowly. “Came in the door and there she was. Lying on the floor, bleeding and moaning.”

They stood in silent reflection, oblivious to their audience. Liz held her breath. All around, the granite waited.

“That was a good dare,” Payton whispered. “We fixed him, didn't we, Rodell?”

Rodell patted his brother's hand and looked up at him. A grin spread like oil across his face. “There'll be no more swearing from Daddy.”

Payton's eyes shone with affection. “That was the best dare you ever gave me.”

“So far, Payton. So far.”

Payton had moved toward his brother, leaving a narrow gap, but Liz's legs were locked solid. Dante reached for her hand, and their poles, which dangled from their wrists, tapped. The sharp clinking sound in the empty morning released her. She tugged Dante's hand as a signal, then let go and darted forward, squeezing past Payton, brushing his shoulder. Dante was right behind her. Liz hurried up the trail, head down, her breath loud in her ears. She didn't look back until they were nearly at the pass.

•   •   •

As they ascended the switchbacks below Mather Pass, they discussed whether to talk to a ranger about the Roots. The next station was at Bench Lake, about a mile before Lake Marjorie—that evening's destination. The problem lay, they agreed, in what to say. The Roots had made no direct threats, nor had they behaved illegally. Even collecting marmot feet was within the bounds of the law, if outside the bounds of good taste.

“What do you think happened to their father?” Dante said.

Liz pictured a desiccated souvenir—an ear, or a finger—then chased the image from her mind. Her imagination was running ahead of the evidence, and beyond common sense. “They could have scared him off, or turned him in. For some reason, they want us to think the worst.”

“It's working.”

They removed their packs at the top of the pass and had a quick drink and a snack. Looking north the way they'd come, they were relieved to see the McCartneys a good distance ahead of the Roots who, having run out of passersby, had abandoned their troll-like position on the trail.

Liz said, “Let's camp well off the trail tonight.”

“To hide from them?”

“Yes. As a precaution.”

“What about Paul and Linda?”

“They'll be fine. The Roots don't seem interested in them.”

Dante frowned. “You think that boulder was meant for us?”

“Maybe.”

He paused, considering. “I suppose it wouldn't hurt to be cautious.” He stashed his water bottle and put on his pack. “Shall we?”

•   •   •

To the south lay a surreal vista. A barren basin spread a thousand feet below, two miles wide and long, dotted with small blue-green lakes and nothing else. Liz and Dante began the descent along switchbacks carved in a vertical wall. With each turn, the desolate floor grew nearer, but no less foreign. A miniature lake, as green as an emerald, appeared at the base of the wall. The angle of the light created sparkles floating above the surface like hovering dragonflies. The scene was stunningly beautiful, but haunting in its lifelessness. Aside from the path, whatever humans had undertaken here had left no trace.

Liz crossed this rocky void, propelled from behind by her memory of the hostile stances and dark whisperings of the Root brothers, and pulled by the empty trail ahead of her, as if a gigantic winch sat atop Mount Whitney, reeling her in, ever southward. She felt the pull in her belly, and lower, as a cramp. An unseen knuckle pressed and twisted, releasing an ache that pulsed like a small beating heart.

She stumbled.

The tip of her pole screeched across a flat rock. Her arm collapsed and her knee hit the ground. The pack slid sideways and she toppled backward onto it.

She regarded the empty sky. That Color.

Dante appeared above her. “You okay?”

She nodded, but wasn't certain. She unclasped her pack and wriggled free. Dante pulled her to standing.

“What happened?” he asked, scanning the area for clues as to how she could have fallen on level terrain.

“A moment's inattention.” She brushed off her knees. “Doesn't take long to be careless.”

•   •   •

She'd gone to the doctor to confirm the results of the home pregnancy test, but she hadn't thought through what she would say at her appointment. Each day since the home test, she expected her period. She was due to start the John Muir Trail in three weeks. Her plans were set. Her menstrual cycle would resume, she would marvel at her lucky break and walk into the wilderness.

A nurse appeared holding a clipboard and called her name. As Liz set the magazine on the side table, she imagined the doctor watching her for a reaction to the news that was not news, but a denial of her denial. She could not anticipate her own reaction. Either she or the doctor would glance at her ringless hand.

She put on the gown and folded her clothes neatly upon the chair. The nurse returned, took her blood pressure and checked her pulse. The word “procedure” winked on and off in Liz's consciousness, helped along by the tray of metal tools beside the sink and bare stirrups at the end of the exam table. Intellectually she knew the scene was identical whether you welcomed the baby or not, but her history in such rooms (and they were all the same) was only ever about preventing pregnancy and sexual diseases. On the wall to her left, an innocuous painting of a house among windswept dunes evoked nothing.

Naked under thin cotton, she felt more child than woman. “Mother” she could not imagine. Her own mother came vaguely to mind, then wandered off, distracted.

She could not swell with life. Much of the time she barely managed to blow warmth to the edges of her own existence. She hadn't given up on love—not yet—but neither could she support another life. She would cave.

The doctor knocked and entered. Liz remembered Dante had business in Atlanta the following week. By the time the doctor returned the speculum to the tray and asked her to sit up, she knew what she would do.

Leave no trace.

•   •   •

At Lake Marjorie they searched for twenty minutes before locating a campsite hidden from the trail, a hundred feet above the lake, tucked behind boulders the size of trucks. Their first chore was to fill all their water containers—including the cooking pot—so they wouldn't have to venture down to the exposed shore until they set out the next morning. They worked quickly and in silence, taking turns pumping the filter. They washed their faces and hands in the icy water, and scurried up the slope without bothering to dry off.

While Liz erected the tent, Dante set up the kitchen and inflated the mattresses. Every few minutes he climbed atop the boulders and peered over the edge to scout for Paul and Linda, calling himself Tonto.

“What are you planning to do when you see them?” Liz asked. “There's no space for them to camp up here.”

“I want to make sure Linda's all right.”

“I've been concerned about her, too. But it's only four o'clock. Even if they don't get here for another two hours, it'll still be light. They'll make camp by the lake.”

A half hour later, he waved her up to his perch. “Look who's here.”

She flattened her body on the sun-warmed stone. Payton and Rodell strode along the lake margin, heads down. “They don't seem to be looking for a site. Maybe they're going up over the pass.”

“Another one? This late in the day?”

“Probably another dare in contention for a Darwin Award.”

“They don't know where we are, so you can relax.”

A small reprieve.

A while later the evening breeze carried voices from below. The McCartneys had arrived and ditched their packs. Linda sat on a log while Paul inspected the two campsites visible from the trail.