The Middle of Somewhere(55)

Liz returned to the museum most days after school. Each visit she would choose another painting, or let it choose her. Her hands dipped inside the cool velvet tunnel of a calla lily, and she lay at the foot of the round red hills and stroked their sides, which were sanded like the tongue of a cat. With her fingers she explored the openings in a coyote skull—weaving in and out of the nostrils and eyes—a skull she was certain had never belonged to a living animal, but had always been bare and exposed. In a painting entitled Above the Clouds I she stepped from one white puff to the next, the sky below as deep as the ocean.

She said nothing to her mother.

After several months, she could summon the paintings in her mind, and she returned to the museum only for new exhibitions. She kept a stack of postcards of her favorites in a drawer next to her bed, and entered an image before going to sleep, exploring and touching all the surfaces and their simple, beautiful meaning.

When she packed for UCLA, the postcards remained in her bedside table. They were emblematic of the odd, isolated childhood she trusted she could now leave behind. In any case, they lived inside her should she need them. And she managed without the skulls and mesas and morning glories until the night Gabriel died and she found herself sitting in the chair she never sat in, searching for O’Keeffes on her laptop. They got her through that first night.

Now she stared at the peaks surrounding her. It was utterly quiet, as quiet as her childhood bedroom before she fell asleep. These mountains were a far cry from Georgia O’Keeffe’s mesas and canyons, and yet the feeling they evoked in her was the same. The simplicity of the scene, combined with the enormity of its scale, evoked a sensual reverence in her. And curiosity. If she dipped the tip of her finger in the ink, could she write upon the sky?

This was why she had come. Not to think, or learn, or seek absolution. She had come to enter into a world of pure perception, to explore this canvas of gray and blue. It was a place beyond reckoning, beyond sin. If she could exist there, she could bear the weight of existence completely inside herself. This, she believed, was necessary for love. She feared the answer would be no, but, at the moment, the question was still alive.

During her marriage to Gabriel, she’d lost hold of the strength she’d taken for granted as a child, when she had calmly reached into her toolbox, aiming to take the world apart and discover how it worked. Courage lay within easy reach of a child who knew nothing of how easily understanding can unravel, leaving a set of rules that apply to nothing, and an empty heart.

Last night she’d delivered a truth to Dante, blown out of her by a windstorm. Today the trail was in front of her, and behind. Dante was there, following the same line, keeping his word. The high country, so simple, so beautiful, was indifferent to them both.





CHAPTER NINETEEN





Dante was waiting for her at Muir Hut, a stone shelter built by the Sierra Club in 1930. He smiled for the first time that day.

“Welcome to Muir Pass. I finally beat you to the top of something.”

She lowered her pack, pulled off her hat and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “Lack of oxygen seems to suit you.”

“I slept more than you did.”

“Your conscience is clearer.”

He took a step toward her. “I have things I’m sorry about. Everyone does.”

She wondered what he meant. Probably something innocuous. “Thanks, but let’s not have a sinning contest.”

He put a hand on her arm, and looked as if he had something to say, but changed his mind.

“What?”

He picked his water bottle off the ground. “Here. Drink. You lost a gallon in tears last night.” She accepted the bottle. “Oh, I forgot to tell you.” He reached into his shirt pocket. “Look what was sitting in front of the hut.”

A red tent stake.

They took a break from the long descent from the pass to eat lunch. Dante retrieved the tortillas, cream cheese and smoked salmon from his pack. Liz filtered two liters of water, and took a seat next to him on the grass.

“Someone’s messing with us, Dante.”

“Who would do that?”

“The Roots come to mind.”

“You think they’re behind everything. Rodell was injured, remember. They aren’t even hiking anymore.”

“So it seems.”

“Why would they fake an injury?”

“I have no clue. It doesn’t even work as a dare. ‘I dare you to fake a wrenched knee so we can get those two to hump your stuff downhill’?”