Range of Light (2 page)

Chapter Two

Adele

Monday / Malga to the Sierra

MY BODY RETURNED GRADUALLY
as we followed the asphalt from the airport to Malga. Nonetheless, I was fairly wiped out. Perhaps Kath had been right to propose a night in the Bay Area. It was crazy to step off a cross-country flight and streak to the mountains. But I hadn't wanted to stay at her place on the first day: I preferred neutral territory. Terrifying to have a history of intimacy with someone you no longer knew. Besides, I needed to get to the mountains. If I had stayed overnight at the coast, I would have felt compelled to call Father.

So far the drive had
been more fun
than I had expected, refreshing in a way. Actually, when I'd agreed to join my friends, I had imagined being able to back out at the last minute, had thought that the cultural studies conference at Stanford would interfere with—rescue me from—my impetuous pact. But the meeting had been moved ahead a week, so I couldn't refuse. Nancy had been so eager—keeping in touch with all of us, making the site reservation, photocopying catalog pages about camping gear. Lou insisted I could never finish the bibliography this summer, attend the conference
and
go camping with old friends for God's sake without eating into our family fishing holiday in Maine. Go on ahead with Taylor and Simon, I said, and he was shocked at the prospect of opening the cottage without me—as if I were taking vows of chastity and antimaterialism, joining Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Calcutta or Bombay? I really needed to pay more attention when I read the paper. I thought Mother Teresa was a very bad thing regardless of where she was stationed, running around the world as a front woman for Catholic imperialism, but of course it did matter whether it was Bombay or Calcutta. When Lou heard about Nancy's cancer, he was sure I would withdraw because Paula had dropped out for a film project and Donna had disappeared years ago.

Now, Kath and I pulled into Malga, ingesting the scorched air. I tried to imprint on my brain the image of golden hills undulating against a brilliant sky. On the far end of town, the roadside stand we visited was crowded with melons, tomatoes, scallions, celery, pearly white corn, bok choy, endive. Covetously I compared the array of produce to that available in Cambridge. What insanity: a quarter century exile from this glory. My self-imposed exile.

“Oh, look,” Kath called in her high, clear voice.

I turned toward the lithe girl and instead found a handsome middle-aged woman waving two apple juice Popsicles.

“Remember these?” Kath was smiling broadly.

“Yes,” I laughed. “Let's get some of these, too.” From behind my back I flourished a plastic sack of succulent, dried apricots and I could already taste the rich sourness.

“Absolutely.” Kath tossed them into a red plastic grocery basket. “I'm sure they're deadly. It's the sulfur in the curing process.”

“If it's a choice between dying from chemicals or expiring from boredom, I'll take chemicals.” Why had I thought about dying twice in the last twenty minutes? In some ways I never believed that I would survive the twentieth century. Perhaps Nancy was on my mind; of course Nancy would be all right. She was relatively young—we all were—and she was a fighter.

As we carried the brown bags bulging with fruit to Kath's car, I wanted to drive. However I was so exhausted from the plane trip; look at the mess I had made of the windshield. Returning to my passenger seat, I unwrapped an apple juice Popsicle for Kath and another for myself, a gesture that marked me as both motherly and wifely. No, no family associations this week. I needed a break from Lou and the boys, literally and metaphorically, and they could probably use a little vacation from me.

Kath sucked noisily on her Popsicle, then navigated back to the highway.

We drove contentedly, silently, higher and higher toward our week together in the mountains.

“Vista Point.” Kath glanced at me. “Should we stop and get some perspective?”

“Sure.” I sat straighter and looked out the window. The idea behind this holiday was to camp outside my head for at least a short time.

Out by the guardrail, Kath did two deep knee bends. “Fresh air! Beautiful country—all these yellows and reds and browns—it's like the land turns
plaid
between Manteca and Priests Grade.”

“Yes.” I let California pour over me, avoiding a long look at the dammed water below. The sun was high, strong, hot, but already I felt cooler than in Malga.

Kath hopped over the guardrail and peered down a dry, grassy hillside. “Good drop,” she called over her shoulder.

I held my tongue but imagined phoning her parents from the hospital, a vaguely familiar yesteryear voice. Be careful, I prayed. Slowly I grew conscious of swimmers, waterskiers, houseboats.

Kath was being uncharacteristically loquacious. “Picture living on those boats. Madonna beach towels. Dirty dishes. Sex on the soft, lapping water at night. Breakfast at the seasick restaurant.”

I closed my eyes and heard the long ago voice—flip, ironic, the short, sharp sentence fragments spitting from her tough wit.

“Can't you just imagine the soft hum of midnight radio over the shuffling of the pinochle deck? I mean, I could see enjoying the houseboat for a couple of days. Then I'd go bonkers from confinement. Know what I mean?”

“Yes.” I nodded.

We stared at the water together.

I was hurting from a deep, old loneliness for the friend who had disappeared and also frightened of our sudden closeness. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

“You OK?” Her arm reached over the guardrail for my shoulder.

“Just jet lag.”

“Right,” Kath answered dubiously, guiding me to the car. “Must have been a Boeing. They're notorious for lancing tear ducts.”

I sniffed and smiled.

“You could be feeling the altitude. I mean, we've climbed a couple of thousand feet.” She looked worried.

“It's so good to be in California,” I murmured.

“Nice to have you.”

In the car, I closed
my eyes,
hoping Kath wouldn't press further, not now. She had been a complicated, flinty girl who walked a fine line between bluster and delicacy. I seemed to be one of the few people who saw her fragility. With her gentle movements and an aureole of blond hair, she was by far the prettiest of us five. Often I was puzzled by my best friend, awestruck by her sureness and independence, perhaps a little scared too. Not that Kath would ever turn on me. The amorphous fear had always been about myself, perhaps that I would never measure up.

I remembered our first visit
in complete scenes—people talking, laughing, pondering with all the inspired, arrogant certainty of youth. I remembered one afternoon particularly, how rain showers drew forth seductive smells in sequoia needles and willow bark as well as the stronger, musty odors of moss, mushroom, lichen. I made my way through the woods tentatively at first, as if rain carried contagion. “Don't get your feet wet,” Mother had admonished a thousand times. But there was nothing to be scared of on a short jaunt to the lavatory. The temperature was in the high fifties, low sixties. The precipitation was soft, summery—for it was August and among the many things Mother did not distinguish between were summer and winter rains. I took a shower every day and I wasn't going to be afraid of sprinkles.

Drops, gems, sparkled in the bushes, despite the sleepy sky. Even in that fathomless gray, I savored the subtle play of shadow and light. In the lavatory, the cold concrete blocks felt like an igloo. I put paper on the seat, although Kath insisted you couldn't catch anything worth catching from a toilet. How did Kath know so much? How much did she invent? The seat was damp. I watched goose bumps rise on my thighs and I imagined that in a different stage of evolution, feathers or coarse dark fur might emerge from the bumps to warm me. Wind whistled through the ventilation holes in the eaves. I was alone in the bathroom. The other campers either had more disciplined bladders or used the piss pot technique, which Paula and Donna advocated but which Nancy had vetoed as too gross. Perhaps Kath had been wise to go for one last solitary hike, because she was probably a lot happier than the four of us in the tent.

I could hear Paula complaining as I turned into our campsite. Opening the tent flap, I located the source of irritation: our canvas chamber reeked of nail polish.

“Fingernails are one thing … ,” Paula argued.

“Actually, they're ten.” Nancy smiled, concentrating on shellacking her toenails purple.

Donna glanced up from
Travels with Charley.
“Who's going to admire your pudgy toes in the mountains anyway?” Donna usually sided with Paula, as I often found myself agreeing with Kath.

“You never know, romance has been found in stranger places.”

“What does romance have to do with toenails?” Paula suppressed her smile.

“Foot fetishism is a sign of enormous sophistication.” Nancy sniffed theatrically. Zasu Pitts doing
Marat/Sade.

Presumably the nail polish was the cause of Nancy's watery eyes. Donna and Paula were right, of course, this stink was an imposition in such a small place. Kath might find us all asphyxiated. If Kath were here, she would simply insist that Nancy complete her left foot outside, when the sun shone.

“How about it, Adele?” Paula leaned forward in her sleeping bag. “Three to one, right? Democracy requires that she cease and desist.”

“Well …” I didn't see how five more toes—I studied Nancy—four more toes—would make much difference. I shrugged, then concentrated on finding my page in
The Song of the Lark.
Nancy waited until Paula returned to her letter. Paula was always writing to friends in France and Japan and Australia. Mother said Paula had “a lot of energy” as if she suffered from a disfiguring disease.

Drip, drip, the rain persisted. Nothing to be afraid of, I told myself. Just a benign drip, drip. And the occasional very distant roll of thunder. Kath would be fine. Her ugly black boots had impermeable soles. Kath was, of course, completely prepared for the outdoors in her cheap and hideous army surplus gear. Nancy had brought clothes for sunbathing. Donna, in her own distracted way, had packed nothing but her normal Saturday jeans, T-shirts and loafers. Not even tennis shoes. Paula and I had shopped together at Magnin's sportswear and while we were stylish, we were also getting much wetter than Kath. I began to doze, waking occasionally to find the afternoon proceeding in a luscious, slow, lazy way with Paula writing, Donna reading, and Nancy primping for her long, lost lumberjack.

“What's going on?” Kath opened the flap. The cool, fresh air made me realize how sleepy I was. She looked like a yellow gentian in her nylon raingear. Her cheeks were rosy and her blue eyes wide with amazement.

“Smells like someone has been experimenting with toxic gases. What is this—a wax museum?” Kath caught sight of Nancy, who had fallen asleep with her feet propped up on the ice chest. “Oh, I get it, the Queen of Sheba!” Laughing, she tied open the other front flap of the tent.

Nancy sat up.

“I'm starving,” Kath declared. “And I did the last quarter mile smelling coq au vin. Must've been the neighbors. What's for dinner, guys?”

Donna leaned forward with a finger in her book. Nancy set down her mirror. I ran my hand over the pleasantly rough texture of my sleeping bag, waiting. Paula spoke up. Brave girl. “We all found it a bit
froid
and wet for gourmet preparations, so we thought we'd drive over to the grill for hamburgers.”

I smiled at Kath's astonished face, then teased, “Or perhaps you were planning to trap a few squirrels for us?”

We settled on beans and franks. Each of us took turns tending our fire in the light evening drizzle and everyone except Nancy agreed it wasn't so cold outside after all. She made her social contributions in the form of the fudge, cookies and cream soda her mother had tucked into her care package. And she promised that when dark came, she would prove to us beyond a doubt that her killer nail polish truly was iridescent.

Often I questioned my attachment
to those six long ago sylvan days. All the same, at night when I was anxious, I would deliberately recall moments from the vacation to calm me down, to help me fall asleep. Of course the memory, like the body, adapts over years. And the past survives in pieces. Remembering is like looking at a stained glass window; already constructed in shards, the image shifts with light and time. What shards had Kath preserved? Did we feel the same about the other girls—particularly about our admiration of and fears for Nancy?—or perhaps we were more distant than I had imagined. I really shouldn't have been so surprised and hurt by our separation in college. Yet I chafed over that rift, ashamed about some unseen transgression on my part, angry at the way Kath abandoned me in painful times, confused about whether I was making too much of it. Lou, hardly a defender of Kath, nevertheless always said I exaggerated her desertion. Yet if the separation had not been that much of a trauma, if we had always been wholly autonomous individuals, why did I continue to dream about her?

As Kath and I passed through Big Oak Flat, elevation 2,803 feet, where the saloons are not
nouveaux
but have been around forever, I thought how much I enjoyed old Western towns. People drank hard liquor and real beer, none of this sissy wine cooler stuff. As we moved from the village into the dark forest, I had this ridiculous impulse to name the greens—chartreuse, kelly, lime, logan, emerald. Was this desire a perverse academic symptom—naming as prelude to owning—or was it simply a tentative, urban-bound approach to understanding? Such hectic cerebration reminded me that I needed to slow down, that within twenty minutes I would be landing on the moon.

“Funny,” Kath said, reading my mind, “how the Europeans raced across this continent, turning countryside into city, and now we zip back again, hoping to catch a glimpse of some spot our ancestors left untouched.”