The Middle of Somewhere(58)

“Brensen’s normal is already strange.”

“I know what you mean, but we think he might have a concussion. He seemed a little unsteady on his feet and twice he couldn’t find where he was on the map.”

“Sounds like me,” Dante said.

Liz smiled at him indulgently.

Linda sighed. “We followed him all day because we were afraid he’d fall, or get lost.”

“So what happened?”

“Paul got fed up. I can’t blame him. Brensen wouldn’t admit there was anything wrong. He kept yelling at us to stop babysitting him. Said we were ruining his preparation for his role.” Her eyebrows flashed upward in disbelief. She peered into the pot again. “Harold has completed his work. Paul! In two minutes I’m eating yours!”

They all ate dinner, cleaned up and headed off to bed. Liz and Dante were in their sleeping bags, drifting off, when a light swept across their tent. Someone swore under his breath. Light beams broke the darkness several more times, accompanied by the rustle of nylon and the clatter of gear falling to the ground.

Liz could hear Paul whispering nearby in his tent, but she couldn’t make out the words.

“No, I got it!” Brensen said. “I can take care of my own tent!”

Paul hissed, “I’m not offering to help out of charity, you pompous idiot. I just want your lights off so we can sleep.”

“So there’s a curfew out here?”

“Sadly, no, but perhaps wilderness permits should require mental health screening. Good night.”

Liz stuck her face into her pillow to stifle her laughter. Dante, suppressing a laugh as well, kissed the top of her head and wished her a good night.

She slept, then, a dreamless sleep, which lasted unbroken until dawn. She awoke, warm in her bag, and gazed at the tent ceiling, a few feet away, as it slowly changed from dark amber to yellow. Outside, a chipmunk, or a squirrel, sprinted in hesitant bouts: feet scuttling, silence, more scuttling, silence.

Yesterday had been revelatory—twice. In the wee hours, with the howling wind as her orchestra, she had screamed her confession to Dante, and survived. She supposed she’d always known she would survive it—that was simply rational—but had feared the emotional fallout from exposing her secrets. She had been a coward. The way she had chosen to move forward, to live her life, was to push away her culpability and guilt. Until yesterday, she had chosen to be a fraud and hide behind the unassailable veneer of a tragically dead husband.

But everything that keeps you comfortable keeps you from being known. And Dante said he wanted to know her. Finally, she wanted that, too, for better or for worse. He was struggling to understand what had happened in her marriage, as was she. He would judge her according to whatever principles he chose to apply. She had no control over it.

Indeed, her shame burned hotter reflected in Dante’s eyes. And the disappointment in his voice when she revealed her affair—she hadn’t figured on the pain from that. Maybe in telling the truth she had only traded one variety of emotional anguish for another. Time would tell. Or it wouldn’t.

At least Dante still loved her enough to stay by her side on this journey. And on this September morning, at the bottom of a canyon, sunk deep in the stony wilderness, that was enough.

The other source of revelation occurred below Muir Pass when she entered the landscape as she had entered paintings years before. The experience didn’t leave her more connected with the mountains and the sky. Their scale and impassiveness prohibited it. Rather, Liz came away more rooted in herself. These discoveries were hers, and defined her even if she couldn’t say precisely how. When she was young, naive and unbridled, she had found her love for tinkering and, later, engineering. Her upbringing may have left her in the dark about relationships, but she never shied from her instincts (what else did she have, as a child?) nor relied on others unnecessarily. To be alone, curious and calm, is to be free. Even while she ached with feelings she could not name for the socially enmeshed lives of others, she understood they came at a cost.

Gabriel, she now suspected, had arrived at college with the hope of experiencing a modicum of the freedom she had routinely enjoyed, and suffered under. To him, she was the kite already loose in the sky, and he was enthralled. But after college, the routines of work and marriage bore down on him. Liz pursued her dreams as if she were a child building a tower of blocks on a sunny rug. He took the job he knew he should take and flailed at his dreams in the off hours. Both were employed in their chosen fields, but only Liz had had the clarity to choose wisely, with her heart. Gabriel’s family was consumed with doing for others, and doing it together, so he never found his wings, much less spread them. He might have been depressed, but more likely he was frustrated and emotionally unprepared to summon the courage to change his life.