Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (15 page)

Damn it.
She had to do this. Every last item was going to be checked off that bucket list or it wouldn’t be done right—she might as
well not do it at all. She tightened the muscles in her shoulders and blindly felt for the hanging rope, drawing it up to
her hip. She leaned her weight back. She lifted the rope like she’d been taught and a half foot of it slid through her left
hand, tilting her into the void, her feet skidding a few inches down the wall face.

She stared wildly beyond Henrick, to the safety of the clearing, to the camera trained on her, to Judy behind that camera,
trying in vain to keep her face stony as she waved good-bye.

Her guts in knots, she tried it again.

Becky’s voice came lively from below. “There you go, Monie. A few more drops and you’ll be even with me.”

Don’t look down.

She stared at the cliff face just above her braced feet. She fixed her gaze on the bits of lichen growing in the cracks and
on the infinite shades of the rock striations, while in her mind spun the vision of the valley below. The tips of her fingers
went numb from the steady wind that smelled sharp with snow.

She lifted the guide rope, felt the loosening of the carbineer, and did a jerky dip farther down the cliff, stopping so suddenly
that the harness dug into her butt.

“Loosen up, Monie.” Becky’s voice, closer now. “I’ve never seen your butt so tight, even kickboxing.”

“Shut up.” She tried the drop more slowly this time.

“Isn’t this incredible? The air is so sharp and clear here, I can practically see to Italy.”

“It’s because it’s so freaking
cold
.”

 “I can even see the colors of the jackets of those people below. After yesterday in the catacombs, I was convinced I’d never
see right ever again.”

Monique dared a glance at Becky who was sitting in her harness, idly twisting one ankle, doing a slow spin in midair.

“Put your effing feet on the cliff, Beck.”

Becky tapped the cliff with a toe to make another twirl. “I’m glad you and Judy guilt-tripped me into this.”

“The rope is going to fray if you keep doing that.”

“The rope can hold three of me, even if it’s cut halfway through. Hey, weren’t you Ms. Hike-and-Mountain-Bike girl out at
Colorado U?”

“Yeah, we
avoided
cliffs.” The Swiss air did taste a lot like October in Boulder. If she weren’t a bundle of nerves, she’d indulge herself in
memories of weekend mountain-biking with pals on rough, rocky trails. “There were plenty of crazy, free-climbing nuts at CU.
I got to know them only after they cracked their crazy heads open and showed up in my ER.”

Becky casually lifted the rope and slid down another few feet. “I just figured that must be why Lenny picked this for the
bucket list—to remind you of your Colorado U days.”

Monique flexed her fingers and managed another jerky descent. “No, he originally wanted to go canyoning. It was supposed to
be a summer thing, shooting through natural rock slides into crystalline pools.” She and Lenny had bantered about it while
waiting to talk to the oncologist. Knowing that they had to banter because the news they were about to get wasn’t going to
be good. “I nixed that idea right away. No way I was squeezing into one of those wetsuits and then diving into frigid snowmelt.”

“Island girl. So how’d that turn into abseiling?”

“He said it was too beautiful a place to pass up, so if I wasn’t going to canyon, then I had to parasail, ice-climb, or abseil.”
Monique loosened the rope a little to experiment with a slower slide. “Abseiling just looked the least fatal.” Her breath
hitched as she glimpsed, for a moment, the valley below. “At least it did at the time.”

“Once again Lenny baffles me with his choices.”

“We were dreaming, Beck.”

“It’s not just about abseiling, or the catacombs, or the London Eye, either.” Becky hung suspended, waiting for Monique to
catch up. “I’m talking about the entire bucket list thing.”

She was beginning to get the hang of this, beginning to be able to control the rate of her descent by the pressure on the
rope in her left hand, if she could just stop sweating long enough to feel like she had a real grip. “It’s just a list of
wishes, Beck.”

“From a man who was dying.”

“We weren’t sure he was dying, at least not when we started it.”

Monique worked her way over a jut in the stone, trying not to think about that day in the office when the oncologist finally
told them that there was no more reason for chemo, no more reason to consider any exotic treatments, no more reason, really,
to put Lenny through any more diagnostic tests. She remembered feeling an odd sense of relief that they were signing him up
for hospice. The days and weeks would no longer be full of long drives to specialized facilities, endless waits for medication
or appointments, drawn-out hours in hospital facilities, bouts of terrible nausea, and frustrating phone calls to medical
insurance.

“So you’re telling me that our salt-of-the-earth Lenny, our beloved and respected
radiologist
,” Becky said, as she twirled the guide rope around her hand, “was in complete denial about his condition?”

“No, Lenny knew exactly what the prognosis was, every single step of the way.”

“See, that’s what makes it twisted.” Becky tugged her snagged ponytail until it was fully threaded through the cutout at the
back of the helmet. “Why make a list of dreams just at the point when it’s no longer possible to reach them?”

Monique wished Becky would stop chattering so she could concentrate on not getting killed. “Dying is a strange thing, Beck.
The last thing that dies is hope.”

She had held on to it, even while they were signing the papers to have Lenny put in hospice care. She had grasped it when
the oncologist told them that should any new treatment come around, should any promising drug trial open up, he would let
them know immediately. And even she, who’d been a nurse so long that she probably should have known better, believed right
to the end that a medical miracle might intervene.

“Well, Monie, I may be going blind eventually,” Becky said, “but clearly, right now, you’re the one who can’t see straight.”

“Stop.” Monique loosened her grip too much and slid down too fast. She jerked up on the guide rope and felt the harness cut
into her thighs. “Can we focus on this descent? Because your chatter is distracting me and I’d rather not splatter my bones
on the valley floor.”

Becky, using her toe as a spring, bobbed against the cliff. “Isn’t one of the next things on your list something to do with
motorcycles?”

“I’m speaking English, right? Or didn’t you hear me because of the howling of this alpine wind?”

“I remember you wanted a motorcycle once, while you were living in the city.”

“Feel free to go right on ahead of me. I’ll catch up.”

“I remember Lenny called motorcycles ‘donorcycles.’”

 “Crazy people drive scooters too.”

“And you used to bike the Rockies when you were in college, before you and Lenny got married.”

“Will you please stop spinning? You’re making me dizzy.”

“And you loooove horror movies, and he didn’t.”

“It’s too bad that your panic attack yesterday didn’t completely erase your memory.”

“And when you were a little girl you used to go fishing with your grandfather in Trinidad.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“Open water, open air, open sea. You and your grandfather pulling in the nets, and not a bit of seasickness.”

“Oh, for goodness sake.”

“Monie, my old friend, I’m honestly surprised you haven’t figured this out.”

“What’s there to figure out, Nancy Drew?” Monique flattened her sneakers against the cliff. “That Lenny loved me and wanted
to make both of us happy?”

“Lenny loved you, all right.” Becky swung over, stretching her arm out so she could give Monique a gentle punch on the calf.
“Lenny made the first half of that list for one reason: To give you back everything that you gave up when you married him.”

J
udy leaned over the railing as much as she dared. Risking the camera, she stretched her arm over the chasm in order to film
the sight of Becky and Monique descending the cliff. She hazarded a glance to the scruffy valley, fifteen or sixteen stories
below. When little black spots swam in her vision she jerked herself away from the rail.

Thank the stars that Becky had agreed not only to come to Zurich, but also to stick around for one more item on the bucket
list. When it came to abseiling, Judy would have let Monique down, big time. No way—
no way—
would she have dared trust all one-hundred-and-mumble-mumble-pounds of her pure Jersey cheesecake to one of those filets of
Swiss dental floss.

She fixed her concentration on the viewfinder until Monique and Becky disappeared below the slant of a ridge. Then Judy clicked
the video camera off and tucked it away. She slipped by two tall, Nordic-looking young men in black Lycra strapping harnesses
around their greyhound-lean waists. She marched past the signs—in German, French, and English—prohibiting the untrained and
the pregnant, people with bad backs or heart conditions, and anyone who’d been imbibing alcohol, from enjoying the great sport
of abseiling.

Then, gently straightening her left knee, she sank onto an empty concrete bench. She would wait here for the shuttle bus that
would bring her down to the landing spot so she could meet up with her vacation mates. In the meantime she supposed she’d
make herself useful by perusing the guidebook to Interlaken she’d picked up at a kiosk this morning. Since Monique was otherwise
occupied, Judy figured she may as well take on the responsibility of determining what they should do with their single day
in the picturesque village. Hopefully her friends would be so wired on adrenaline when they reached the valley they’d be ecstatic
to spend the rest of the day planted in a bar sampling Swiss winter wine.

But when she dug into her belly pack to fetch the guidebook, her fingers curled around her cell phone instead. She lifted
it up. Roaming, roaming…three bars. She raised her brows in surprise and then glanced through the pines to the peaks around
her. Somewhere close there must be a cell phone tower.

Thank God for the efficiency of the Swiss. She punched in the international calling code for the States and then her own number.

Bob answered on the second ring. “So did you get arrested yet?”

His voice sounded low and rumbly, like he’d just woken up. Judy felt warmth that had nothing to do with three layers of clothing
and a well-wrapped scarf. “Oh, Bob, it’s all a terrible misunderstanding.”

“I warned you. Never slip a flash drive to a Russian.”

“He was Bulgarian. But I’ll try to remember that after you bail me out.”

The laughter bubbled up inside her. When they first met in New York she worked for the Children’s Fund of the United Nations
and he was a cub reporter for the
Post
. Twenty-seven years into the marriage and he still persisted on calling her his secret source for international intrigue.

“It’s Saturday,” he said, “are you still in Paris?”

“Switzerland.” Her belly still roiled with bad airline peanuts and a soggy sandwich from a train café. “Try to keep up, big
boy.”

“Hold on.” Beyond the static came the rustling of papers, probably a copy of the itinerary she’d pinned to the kitchen corkboard.
“Interlaken?”

“Bingo. Right now I’m sitting in the shadow of the Alps watching a beer-bellied biker get strapped into a climbing harness.
He’s got two bells plaited in his beard, and he’s about to take a step backward over a cliff.” As she watched the biker reached
over and took a swig of beer out of a friend’s bottle before returning it. “So much for prohibiting the drunks from the sport.”

“Wait.” Bob rustled some more papers. “Abseiling?”

“Here, I’ll paint you a picture: Monique and Becky are in helmets, harnesses, and rope, clinging to the sheer side of a cliff.
Me, I’m playing the part of the cheering buddy, freezing my ass on the sidelines.”

“Sounds safe,” he said. “And sensible.”

The word plucked at her. Judy winced. The young girl within her shifted in her restless sleep, and Judy willed her still.
The truth was, in her mothering years she’d always enjoyed sitting on the sidelines. She liked being the one who cheered others
on, perched on a bench pillow, a warm thermos clutched in her mittens, watching Michael play lacrosse or Audrey and Maddy
row or Robert play hockey or Jake debate in forensics team competitions. She’d never craved being on the field or the stage.
She took joy in egging others to excel and took a heaping dose of pride in their accomplishments.

That’s what mothers did, damn it.

“Here’s the real news,” she said. “Becky’s going home early.”

“That can’t be good.”

“She had a panic attack in the Parisian catacombs.” Judy still couldn’t bring herself to talk about Brian and Brianna. That
was a conversation that deserved low voices and a quiet room, not the chaotic scene unfolding before her with a dozen bikers
leaning on the leather seats. “Becky’s fine but frantic. Tomorrow morning we’re all climbing back on the train to Zurich,
to put her on an afternoon plane home.”

“Poor kid.”

“Monique and I will take a train to Munich. It’ll just be the two of us. And she still has six more things on Lenny’s bucket
list.”

Judy tucked her chin deeper into the folds of her cotton scarf as Bob filled her in on what was going on with his job. The
air was frosty, but here the wind had been broken by a brace of pines. The bikers razzed each other in slangy German. The
sound of the language made her perk up because after the Rhine trip and the day in Cochem, her ears were tuning into it more
easily, like an old radio fixed on static finally tweaking clear. She understood enough of their ribbing to know there was
a bet involved, and someone was losing it today.

It couldn’t possibly be that elderly woman in the center of all the talk. She was a skinny thing, whittled down to the gristle,
her face drawn with lines. As she strapped a helmet under her wattle, she leaned over to suck on an offered cigarette, drawing
the smoke in so hard that her cheeks went hollow. It was then, with a start, that Judy noticed the harness around the woman’s
hips.

During a pause in Bob’s recitation she blurted, “You know, I really hate those commercials for arthritis medicine.”

The silence that met her comment was longer than the usual pause, the one due to the length of time it took for the signal
to bounce off a satellite and then back to her phone.

“You know the ones I’m talking about?” she asked. “The ones with the grinning grannies power-walking over bridges? The ones
with middle-aged women twisting themselves into pretzels on yoga mats?”

“O-kay.”

“I mean, who
are
those people? And why should every postmenopausal woman be expected to push her physical limits beyond a point that would
make most sensible twenty-five-year-olds balk?”

The rumbling sound of an oncoming bus distracted her. She glanced to the road to see a white vehicle lumbering around the
bend. She hoped it was the van to the valley. The sooner she got away from this place and all the overachievers, the better.
She was about to stand up from the bench when she realized that the large bus pulling into the clearing wasn’t the little
blue shuttle she’d been told to expect.

“Jude,” Bob said, through a sudden crackle in the line, “are there televisions on all those trains?”

Judy watched as the bus stopped and the doors creaked open. A young woman bounced out and headed toward the abseiling instructor.
“No, no, there are no TVs on European trains. Why?”

“Because I can’t imagine you’ve had much time to watch TV unless you’re doing it while traveling.”

“Bob, what are you talking about?”

“Arthritis commercials?”

Judy didn’t answer. Her heart was sinking with slow, drooping dread as she watched a bevy of excited kids pour out of the
bus. Average age, she estimated, was ten years old.

She muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’m just trying to make a connection here, Judy. Help me out.”

“This would probably be illegal in the States. I mean, who lets their ten-year-old rappel down sixteen stories?”

Judy breathed a frustrated sigh. She scanned the clearing, seeking sanity. Her gaze settled on a young biker sprawled in a
sidecar, his muscular arms hanging over the edge. He looked fit and red-cheeked, probably from riding in the cold. He didn’t
have a beard like the rest of the bikers. His hair was close-cropped to his head. He was broad in the chest, rounded in the
shoulders, and shouting jokes louder than all the rest of them.

There, she thought. Not everyone here was an adrenaline junkie. That hunk of young man couldn’t possibly have a bum knee or
a bad back, yet he wasn’t spider-dancing down the cliff.

“So,” Bob said, a hesitant note in his voice, “what I think is happening is that lots of people of many different ages are
abseiling.”

“And I’m sitting here letting this stone bench steal the heat from my ass.”

“I think I’ve got this pinned.” He spoke as if he were checking things off a list. “Arthritis commercials. Your friends are
abseiling. A bunch of kids are getting strapped in. You’re feeling pressured by your own and other people’s unrealistic expectations.
Here’s my verdict, hon—don’t go down that cliff.”

“I already told you there’s
no way
I’m going down this cliff.”

“The last time I heard that tone in your voice, you threatened to take a sledgehammer to the wall between the kitchen and
the dining room.”

“It would open up the floor plan. I still think it’s a good idea.”

“It’s a better idea than you risking those lovely knees in the Alps.”

Just then another biker approached the young man in the sidecar. The biker seized the boy under the arms and yanked him up.
Judy expected the boy to fight but the kid just grinned and let the guy manhandle him. It wasn’t until the biker had deposited
the young man on the leather seat of the motorcycle that Judy realized why the boy hadn’t complained.

The boy didn’t have a bum knee…because the boy had no knees.

“Oh, fuck me.”

Laughter rumbled over the phone line. “As soon as you get home, Jude. As soon as you get home.”

She watched as the biker pulled two prosthetic legs out of the inside of the sidecar and fixed them on the stumps of the boy’s
legs. The boy wiggled himself off the bicycle to test his balance and then made a jerky walk toward the abseiling instructor.

Judy glared up at the blue, blue Swiss sky. She knew, deep in her heart, that there was nothing wrong with knowing one’s limitations.
She knew that there was no shame in reaching the point in one’s life when one accepts that not all things are physically possible.
But Judy also knew that once Becky flew back to the States, Monique would need Judy as a friend more than ever, and Monique
would need her willing and absolutely fearless.

Judy wasn’t going to disappoint her best friend.

“I have to go, Bob.”

“Judy, don’t go down that cliff—”

“I’ll call you later.”

She slipped the cell phone back in her belly pack. She sucked in a lungful of frosty air. She reminded herself that she’d
once been a very silly young woman, but she’d had bravado. She’d lived day-by-day on sheer nerve. That same courage had sustained
her when she’d taken the plunge with Bob. And if raising five kids had taught her anything, it was that there was more than
one way to face one’s fears, and not all of them were as loud and flashy and physical as dangling from a rope off some cliff.

Blood coursed to her head, a sudden plunger-rush of adrenaline. She narrowed her eyes on all those bikers.

Then Judy took her heart in her hands and stood up from the bench.