“See? This is what I mean. The theory of opposites! Reorganizing the Master Universe Way! You couldn’t do it, so I did.”
—
Finally, I start breathing again. And then my brain starts working again. And next, naturally, the first thing I do is flee. Straight up the hill, straight past the ranger’s station, straight by a family with four kids who are in better shape than I am. I can hear Vanessa yelling:
“Wait! Stop!”
And then one of the kids from the family in my wake starts yelling over and over again: “Wait! Stop!”
And then everyone on the trail turns to look at me.
But no matter. I keep hauling uphill for a good two minutes more until I am certain I’m going to puke. There’s a reason that Shawn and I quit jogging on Sundays.
I stick my hands on my knees, my head between my thighs.
At least I got a jump on them, at least I’ll have a few minutes to formulate a plan
, I think. To tell Vanessa that she had
no right!
to meddle like this, even if I did agree to let her meddle but not
with this!
; to tell Theo that maybe he should take a goddamn hint and that when someone doesn’t accept your friend request, maybe it’s because she doesn’t want to be
friends.
But before I can figure out a way to resolve any of these questions, a pair of orange Nikes present themselves on the ground in front of me.
“Hey,” he says from above.
I gnaw on my lip and wish that I’d gotten more sleep, taken the time to maybe brush my hair, adjust my braid so it wasn’t tilted to the left side of my head.
“I thought I had a least five minutes on you.”
“I’m used to you running,” Theo offers. “So I was ready.”
—
“You’re supposed to be in New Orleans,” I say, once I have wearily made my way upright.
“Vanessa called, so I came home.”
“Just like that.”
“Why should it be any more complicated?” he says.
“Things usually are.”
Why is my life so goddamn complicated?
“Only if you make them more complicated,” he says. “At least, that’s what I’ve found.”
“Well…emailing your ex-girlfriend on Facebook to tell her about your revelation due to your testicular diagnosis tends to complicate things.”
“Touché.” He smiles.
“Whatever.”
“Vanessa said you wouldn’t write me back but that you wanted to.” He gazes across the landscape for a beat, then half-laughs. “God, that sounds so trite now that I say it out loud. I’d never tell my clients to hedge their bets on advice like that.”
“So I’m a bet?”
He waits a long time to answer. Then, finally, he shrugs and responds:
“No. But I think we’d both agree that you’re a bit of a gamble.”
—
Mount Rainier is an active volcano, though it hasn’t exploded in over 150 years. There are over twenty-six glaciers and thirty-six square miles of permanent snowfields, and on clear days, the mountain can be seen from as far away as Portland.
I learn all of this when I get stuck behind the family of six again; after my initial explosion of adrenaline that allowed me to flee and gave me the courage to forge small talk with Theo, I’ve gone soft and have slowed to what can only be described as an embarrassment of a tortoise’s pace, red-faced, huffy, sweat dripping down the backs of my ears. I’m too angry to speak with Vanessa, and too discombobulated to speak further with Theodore, so I’ve let them set the pace in front of me as we ascend a 7.2-mile trail on which I have at least a 50-50 chance of dying from cardiac arrest.
The mom of the family is cute, perky, and has more patience with the four children than I ever had with Alan Alverson, much less my own (imaginary) offspring. We reach a plateau on the peak, and the mom tucks the brochure from which she was reading into her fanny pack, which I very much covet right now. Blisters have formed on both of my big toes, and I might slay a man on the mountain for some moleskin. Why hadn’t I thought to bring a fanny pack? Be prepared! Why wasn’t I ever a Girl Scout? Why hadn’t my parents made me be a Girl Scout? Add that to my list of grievances:
Girl Scouts. Things could have all been so different.
“Come on, family picture!” the dad of the family booms, and then looks around to find a passerby to snap it. I avert my eyes, but he must not intuit that I am in the middle of a life crisis, and he beckons me over.
“Sure,” I beam. “Happy to! Everyone smile!”
The kids fidget and make weird faces, but the parents manage perfect grins, even while clenching their cheeks and imploring the children to
please just hold still for one moment! Owen, I swear, if you don’t smile normally, you will not get that Tootsie Pop I promised!
I take two pictures just to be nice.
“I bet this thing is going to explode any day now,” Owen says to me afterward, gesturing to the mountain, apropos of nothing, as if we’re old friends, like he should talk to strangers.
“Oh, I doubt that.”
“Doubt it all you want. But you can’t keep something in forever. Like, eventually —
BOOM!
— it has to erupt.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I deflect, trying to make my exit, though I’m really in no rush to catch Theo and Vanessa.
“Please, lady, this thing is going to kaboom. Everything does eventually. The only thing you can do is hope that when it does, you’re no place near it.”
I nod my head and start running again. He may actually be right — what do I know? — and I’ve never been one to place myself in the eye of disaster.
—
A good hour later, Owen passes me for the second or third time. I’m hunched against the railing, willing my insides to calm the hell down, the cramp in my side having evolved into a tornado of spasms. My lungs are on fire, my cheeks are sunburned and my big toes would be less painful if they were actually surgically removed. Right at the moment when I am thinking that death would be a more welcome reprieve than hiking the remaining two miles, Owen rolls past and yells:
“Come on, lady! You can’t be that old!”
But I am that old. I’m thirty-two years old! And my husband no longer loves me! And I am barren and childless! And I lost my job because I can’t think of a decent campaign for adult diapers. And my father has taken a lover.
So that’s it. I quit.
“Tell my friends they can find my rotting carcass here on this rock!” I yell back to him. There’s a rather pitiful-looking boulder to my left, and I pitifully join it.
“Suit yourself!” he shouts over his shoulder, already around the bend.
I will suit myself,
I think, though I have no idea what this means. That’s the sticky part about the weight of my dad’s psychology: what’s the point of suiting yourself, of being yourself, of honoring what you want out of life when it’s all leading to a certain inevitability that’s entirely out of your control? The Master Universe Way! You can’t outrun God’s plan because…it’s God’s plan, for God’s sake! So why not embrace it? Love it? Enjoy it?
I stare out onto the horizon. Shawn is out there somewhere, and he’s suiting himself.
I nudge the dirt with my toe and check my phone, like maybe Shawn’s reconsidered and has emailed, but I don’t have cell service up here in the thin air, which figures. I start typing a note to Nicky anyway — maybe he’ll tell Shawn that I’m in Seattle, and Shawn will remember that Theo lives here and be driven mad with jealousy — but then I realize that Shawn has never been jealous of anyone because why would he be, and besides, I don’t think he even remembers that I dated Theo. I once saw an article in the Sunday
Times
about him, and I casually slid it over to Shawn’s side of the table while we were eating our eggs. Shawn scanned the piece and bounced his shoulders and said, “Eh, I sort of think that guy’s thing is a gimmick. Like, if you need someone to tell you how to say yes or no to something, how smart could you be?”
I just slid the paper right back next to my placemat, and didn’t say:
he used to tell me how to say yes or no to everything all the time
.
The sun is so goddamn bright up here on this godforsaken mountain. I thought it always rained in Seattle.
Why isn’t it raining today in Seattle?
I shield my face with my hand as Owen’s mom makes her way into my sight line, then kneels down and offers me some GORP.
I wave her off. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure? You don’t look so great.”
I nod, so she stands and takes in the view, which I’d like to appreciate if I weren’t in such agony.
“Well, this gives you perspective,” she says, exhaling. Then she adds, “I’m sorry Owen has such a smart mouth.”
“No worries.”
She hands me some Wet-Naps, as if this is an apology for her nine-year-old’s rebellion, and zips up her fanny pack.
“You know how kids are,” she says, starting on her way.
Why does everyone keep saying that? Like I should know how kids are?
“Sure,” I say because that’s what you reply to statements like this.
I don’t know how kids are!
I know how Nicky is, I guess. But he never really had a chance at normal. So I only know how
he
is, which is decidedly screwed because that’s what happens when your dad is obliterated into dust in a terrorist attack while you’re still gestating in the safety of your mother’s womb.
I stretch my neck to the side and wonder if maybe all of my negative pregnancy tests were actually the universe’s way of telling me that my husband was going to leave me, and that being a parent (now? ever?) really wasn’t the best idea in the world. Maybe this was God’s plan, the Master Universe Way. I close my eyes and wish that I had the muscle strength to catch up to Vanessa who would tell me that I’m an idiot for thinking this.
I check my phone again, but it’s working no better than it was thirty seconds earlier, so I tuck it into my back pocket and chew on some almonds and yogurt-covered raisins, which have partially melted and aren’t as good as I anticipated. I spit one out and think about Nicky. I wonder how he is staying busy with Shawn, hoping that Shawn has some downtime to nurture him, though I know that for all of Shawn’s faults, his loyalty toward his nephew should never be questioned. And then I realize that I’ve never really thought of Shawn’s faults. That until recently — with his stupid leather jacket and his rediscovered use of mousse and his oppressive need to “find himself” — I never found much fault in him at all. He was loving (if recently distant), he was sexy (though lately has been too tired for sex), he was cerebral (if bordering on snobby).
I slip my phone back into my palm and start typing:
SHAWN’S FAULTS:
1. Bedroom could use spicing up.
2. Not spontaneous. (See: eggs every Sunday.)
3. Loves coding more than he loves humans.
4. Newly-discovered sense of terrible fashion. (Leather jacket???)
It wasn’t much, but it was something. A slow chip into Shilla. He was a good man, my husband — this short list of faults was proof. Most wives could offer a list of twenty things that annoyed them about their husbands. But I had only four. Five if you counted the mousse. Six if you counted his new use of “dude.”
My back starts to ache from sitting on the boulder, so I ease to the ground, which really doesn’t help. I pull off my sneaker, then my sock, and examine the gargantuan blister that appears to have eaten the entirety of my big toe.
A metaphor,
I think, though I know I’m being dramatic. One minute your toe is perfectly fine, the next, it’s drowning in anguish. All because of a little friction. Shawn and I never had friction. Obvious case in point: I’d never even considered his list of faults until stranded on the middle of Mount Rainier with my best friend and ex-boyfriend two miles ahead of me, with only Wet-Naps and GORP for survival.
Raina once told me that she thought there was something seriously wrong with us because Shawn and I never argued.
“You’re avoiding something,” she said over sushi one night two years ago. “Healthy couples disagree on things.”
“Says your therapist?” I reached over and took one of her spicy tuna rolls.
“Well….yes! Says my therapist. But that doesn’t make it less true. And PS, I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world if you make an appointment too.”
I lean forward and try to pop the blister with my fingernail. It just puffs up like a balloon and then throbs more painfully to let me know that it’s angry. I rest my head back against the boulder, the sun charring my cheeks. I should have worn a hat. I should have remembered sunscreen. I should have invested in better sneakers. I should have joined the Girl Scouts. I should have told Vanessa that no good can come from climbing a stupid mountain. I should have fought harder for Shawn. Or Theo.
This last thought startles me. But before I can consider it, he’s there, standing above me.
I see his shadow first, then squint upward.
“That kid told us we’d find you here. You okay?”
He offers a hand to help me up.
“I’m okay,” I say, remaining planted to the ground.
I hear Vanessa before I see her:
“So you quit? You didn’t even try to make it to the top?”
“I tried. I just didn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” she says.
Theodore’s hand is still outstretched. He wiggles it and says softly, “Come on.”
So I reach for it and feel the weight of him pull me up.
He steps toward me and folds his body over mine into an embrace. Theo was always a good hugger, never afraid to lean in, let you feel it. I linger for a beat, then place my palms on his chest, pushing him away.
“So were you trying to kill me?” I turn to Vanessa.
“No,” she says. “Don’t be overdramatic. That would make it a pretty short book.”
15
Missed Calls: 17
Voicemails: 3
Voicemail from Raina Chandler-Farley
Willa? Where are you? I’ve been calling you for the past hour! Do you not check your phone now? Is this part of your thing? Listen, call me. There’s been a…setback.