The Mountain Story

by Lori Lansens

  “Don’t say lost. We can’t be more than a few miles from the ranger station. It’s not like we’re in the wilderness. Palm Springs is right there!”

  “No. Of course we’re not lost.”

  “What about all your friends from church and the condo and all the places you volunteer?” Bridget asked.

  “I told everyone they wouldn’t see me for a few days. I told them all that you were coming out from Golden Hills and we three were going to spend some time together. Do some day trips. That’s what we said we were going to do. Never mind. They must count the tram riders in a day and tally it up and know who came and went,” Nola said. “I’m sure they do that.”

  I knew for a fact they did not.

  “What about your boyfriend, Bridget?” I asked. “Won’t he be worried if he doesn’t hear from you?”

  Nola turned to Bridget in the dark. “Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing someone?”

  Bridget was silent.

  “The guy you told me about on the tram? The real estate agent?” I prompted. “Won’t he worry if he doesn’t hear from you?”

  “Not that idiot from Camarillo,” Nola said.

  Bridget dropped her head.

  “Does he know you went hiking?” I asked after a pause.

  “He’s in San Francisco,” Bridget said.

  “With his wife,” Vonn added.

  “Oh Bridget,” Nola said.

  “And baby,” Vonn added.

  “Stop,” Bridget hissed.

  Nola Devine draped her good hand over her eyes. “Girls, please,” she said.

  “Vonn,” I said, letting her name linger on my tongue. “Is anyone expecting you?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “What about that guy?” Bridget asked. “The biker from Tin Town?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Vonn said.

  I recalled hearing my aunt Kriket call my cousin Yago’s new girlfriend a “mix-race snot-face Malibu bitch” and also say that the girl had recently moved to the desert. I got it in my head that the girl was Vonn Devine.

  Yago was my oldest male cousin, one of the youngest thugs to govern Tin Town. He hated me. I feared him. If Yago was Vonn Devine’s boyfriend he would kill me for getting us lost. That seemed like just my luck.

  “If you have a boyfriend we should know,” Nola said. “And I’d like to meet him. Even if he’s a biker.”

  “No one is expecting me,” Vonn said.

  “Are you sure, Vonn?” Nola asked. “It’d be good if your boyfriend reported you lost.”

  “Don’t say lost,” Bridget said. “We’re not lost, lost. And Vonn, why did you even come? You were going to stay at the mountain centre, remember? You were going to stay there and get a book to read.”

  “I was going to, but I thought Mim seemed sad about me not coming along.”

  “She was sad that you didn’t bring sneakers.”

  “Because we were having the pedicures first. And I forgot.”

  “So you admit to being forgetful?”

  “Even here, even now, one of you is gas and the other is flame,” Nola complained.

  In the silence, there came the sound of metal clinking against rock. “That was my ring,” Nola said. “No one move.”

  “Didn’t I say you’ve lost weight since Pip died,” Bridget said.

  “Have I?”

  “You’re taking care of Mim, are you, Vonn?” Bridget asked. “You’re supposed to make sure she eats.”

  “She has that part-time job now,” Nola said in Vonn’s defence.

  Bridget found the ring in the dark. “Here it is.”

  “Thank God. Put it on, Bridge,” Nola said. And after a pause, “Happy anniversary, Patrick.”

  It was moments later—maybe an hour?—when the hooting owl pierced the silence. I thought about the series of shots Byrd and I had gotten of the horned owl in flight, and how we’d vowed to have the image of that owl tattooed on our biceps one day. After Byrd’s accident I’d gone to this place in Indio with a photograph and told the tattoo artist I wanted the owl on my chest. I didn’t want people to see it. I didn’t want anyone asking questions.

  “You have a car in the lot!” I blurted. “Eventually someone will notice. Eventually someone will check to see if there’s an overnight permit registered to that licence plate.”

  “We took a shuttle from the Rancho spa,” Bridget said thickly. “Someone lost the car keys.”

  “Someone gave someone the car keys,” Vonn said.

  “Because someone doesn’t carry a purse!”

  “All of this is my fault, really,” Nola said. “I was the one who wanted to go to Secret Lake.”

  “We took the hotel shuttle so we could get up here before it got too late in the day,” Bridget explained to me. “We figured the keys would probably be turned in by the time we got back.”

  “If the keys turn up, and you don’t, then someone will be looking for you,” I pointed out. “What about the shuttle driver?”

  Vonn dug her heels into my chest unintentionally as she reached into the compartments of her cargo pants, lifting up to check the rear pockets as if there was still a chance she had the keys. As if it mattered now.

  “If the same shuttle driver worked all day, I guess,” Vonn said. “If they only have one shuttle. I mean, we weren’t guests at the hotel.”

  “We’ll be able to get back in the morning, right?” Bridget asked.

  “We’re fine,” I said. “If there’s no fog it’ll be easy to get our bearings. We’ll climb back up the slope we fell down or find a different way,” I said.

  Nola asked, “What about you, Wolf? Do you have a car in the lot?”

  “I hitched from the tourist centre at the main road.”

  “You shouldn’t hitchhike.”

  I’d pictured the gentle elderly couple who’d stopped for me in their old white Monte Carlo the day I’d meant to kill myself. They dropped me off and drove away. I always wondered why they’d been on that road if not to go to the Desert Station too.

  Time passed. Time flew. Time marched on. I can’t remember an overriding feeling that first night. Rocks continued to tumble from on high to strike the pine trunks beyond the scree. I had to entertain the possibility that an even larger slide might follow the small one we’d caused. I tried not to dwell on negative thoughts, though, and was mostly anxious for morning light because I wanted to find my Tigers cap, and Bridget’s bag with the food and water.

  The wind drove hard and cold, and I was grateful for the modest shelter of the cave and for the silence of the Devine women, who I thought must have fallen asleep.

  “I have no insulation at all,” Bridget said, shattering the stillness. “Twenty-one percent body fat, which is very, very low for a woman.”

  “Oh my God,” croaked Vonn. “Why are we talking about your body fat?”

  “I don’t want to freeze to death, Vonn,” Bridget said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I told you before, no one’s going to freeze to death,” I said. “I promise.”

  “You can’t promise that. You can’t promise anything,” Nola piped up from behind her turtleneck. “When it’s your time it’s your time.”

  “It’s no one’s time,” I said.

  “You don’t know, Wolf. Pip looked fine. He turned on Bob Costas. I went to brush my teeth and then I came back to bed and he was gone. Without a kiss good night. Just like that. You just don’t know.” Nola sighed.

  “I’ll know,” Bridget said. “I think my sixth sense will kick in for that.”

  “Here we go,” Vonn muttered.

  “Why do you hate that I’m clairvoyant?”

  “You are not clairvoyant,” Vonn said.

  “Don’t take things for granted,” Nola interjected. “That was the point of what I was saying. You don’t want to leave with regrets. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “What do you have to regret, Mim?” Bridget asked. “What could you possibly hav
e to regret? You’re the perfect mother. Perfect wife. You volunteer. You give to charity. You go to church. You give free piano lessons to those kids from that place. You pick up other people’s litter.”

  “You sweep spiders onto the porch instead of stepping on them!” Vonn added.

  “There’s more to me than you know,” Nola said after a pause. “I have regrets.”

  “I regret I wore flip-flops,” Vonn said, and we couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I don’t believe in regrets,” Bridget said.

  “You believe in horoscopes and numerology,” Vonn said. “You believe in ghosts, you think you’re clairvoyant, but you draw the line at regrets?”

  Bridget didn’t answer. I found myself wondering about her experiences with ghosts.

  “You don’t regret that you had to raise me alone?”

  “If you’re asking me if you were a handful to manage as a single parent the answer is yes, Vonn,” Bridget returned.

  “You don’t regret that I missed out on having a father?”

  “That’s in your regrets pile. He made his choices.”

  “You never told him about me,” Vonn said.

  “Why would I let a man like that ruin your life?” Bridget countered. “I was protecting you. That’s what mothers do.”

  “Do you have regrets, Wolf?” Nola asked, by way of calling for a time out between her daughter and granddaughter. “Or are you too young for regrets?”

  “I do have a regret, Mrs. Devine,” I said. “A big one.”

  “What do you regret?” Nola asked.

  “Tell us, Wolf,” Bridget said.

  “You can tell us,” Vonn said.

  I wondered then, and have had reason to wonder since, if there are few things so satisfying to a feminine ear as the sound of a man expressing regret.

  “I think one Devine is one too many and I regret the hell out of getting lost with all three of you!”

  I’d thought they’d laugh. They didn’t.

  “Don’t say lost,” Bridget said.

  We were all quiet for a time, listening to the wind batter the pines.

  “I’m hungry,” Bridget said. “I wasn’t before, but now I’m starving.”

  “You’re not starving,” I said.

  “I’m a grazer. I eat small meals every few hours. Especially when I’m in training. How long can you go without food?” Bridget asked.

  “I knew this girl in high school who went nine days on apple juice,” Vonn said.

  “There’s this rule of three,” I said, picturing Byrd walking ahead of me on the trail, telling me about the rule.

  “Bad things happen in threes?” Nola said, frowning. “I think we should stay optimistic.”

  “Not that rule of three. The survival rule of three. There’s room on either side, but generally people say you can survive three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without air.”

  “Three seconds without faith,” Nola said without a pause.

  The tension between Vonn and her mother didn’t keep us from crowding one another for warmth in the little cave. I accidentally kneed Nola’s broken wrist. “Sorry!” she said, before I could.

  “Why are you apologizing, Mim?” Bridget said.

  “It’s just a thing people say, Bridget.”

  “You apologize for everything.”

  “I do not.”

  “When the guy bumped you with his cart at the supermarket? When the dry cleaner ruined that jacket? When that woman splashed you with her bike. It’s your generation.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You wouldn’t ask for a spoon for your soup!”

  “He felt so bad about the lemonade mix-up,” Nola said. “Besides it was a very thick soup.”

  “I’m just saying you don’t have to apologize for other people’s mistakes. You’re overly sorry.”

  “You’re underly sorry,” Vonn muttered.

  “Let it go, Vonn.” Bridget sighed.

  “How can you say you have no regrets?” Vonn asked. “Every person has regrets.”

  “I don’t.”

  “In your whole life?”

  “None.”

  “This isn’t the time or the place, girls,” Nola said wearily.

  “You don’t regret having the procedure?”

  “No,” Bridget said.

  Vonn leaned toward me. “My mother had elective surgery on a body part that will be retired, like crossing guard–retired, in a few years, using money she borrowed from me. Then she couldn’t pay it back and I couldn’t go on my graduation trip last spring.”

  “It was a cash flow thing,” Bridget said in her own defence.

  “You can honestly say you don’t regret that?” Vonn asked.

  “That one is in your regrets pile too, Vonn. You could have gone on that trip. You should have.”

  “You didn’t pay me back,” Vonn protested.

  “But you lost out. Mim and Pip were happy to loan you the money. You cut off your nose, Vonn.”

  “We would’ve been happy to loan you money,” Nola said. “It’s true. You should have gone.”

  “You don’t get off that easy, Bridget! She doesn’t get off that easy!” Vonn shouted.

  “But she did,” Nola said.

  Vonn trembled, and I could feel she was fighting tears. “So you are really going to sit there and say you have not one regret?” Her doggedness would serve us well.

  “None.”

  Nola cleared her throat and said, “Well, I have regrets.”

  “Mim, please.”

  “I do. Lots of them.”

  Bridget and Vonn shared a skeptical look. “Perfect wife. Perfect mother. Perfect grandmother. Name one thing that you seriously regret,” Bridget said.

  “I dug two graves,” Nola said darkly.

  “You dug two graves,” I repeated, confused.

  “JFK said those who seek vengeance dig two graves,” Nola said.

  “I don’t think JFK said that,” Bridget said.

  “You’re obviously not saying you killed anyone,” Vonn said. “Right?”

  “I made a very big mistake that changed the lives of a lot of people.”

  “What did you do?” I asked, eager for the distraction of Nola’s confession.

  “Mim?”

  “I hated Laura Dorrie,” Nola said into the darkness. “She was my classmate in senior year, the year we moved from Wisconsin to Toledo.”

  “Where you fell in love with Pip.”

  “Laura Dorrie thought she had dibs,” Nola said.

  “So you hated her?”

  “I like to think she hated me first,” she said. “But yes. On the first day of senior year at Harding High I fell head over heels for Patrick Devine. He was a two-sport athlete. We said ‘hunk’ back then. He was a major hunk. All the girls had a crush on him. He sang with the band and no one thought that was weird. He was a crooner. Just loved all that Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett stuff.”

  Nola was there, walking in slow motion down the halls of high school, starring in her own memory. “He looked just like Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass. I nearly quit orchestra for Cheer that first week just so I could get closer to him. First time I loved anyone more than my violin.”

  “Violin? I didn’t know you played violin, Mim,” Bridget said. “I thought you played piano.”

  “I was a prodigy,” Nola said matter-of-factly.

  “You were a violin prodigy? I never once saw you play violin.”

  “Did Pip make you stop?” Vonn asked. “Did you give up violin for Pip?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Nola said.

  “So what about Laura Dorrie?” I asked.

  “Laura’s father owned Dorrie’s Steak House downtown, not far from the townhome where we lived. The Dorries were very wealthy.”

  “So you killed him?” I asked.

  Nola ignored me. “Laura had the nicest clothes. Little sweater sets and silk blouses and gor
geous wool skirts.”

  “You were jealous? That’s your regret?”

  “Laura played violin, too,” Nola continued. “Before school even started that fall I auditioned for the senior orchestra leader and was told I was going to replace her as first chair. There was a whole to-do about it and her father was supposed to talk with the school principal but he missed the meeting. Everything was made worse by the fact that Laura Dorrie’s father had just hired my father as a line cook at his restaurant.”

  “You said your father was a piano teacher.”

  “He was also a line cook. His English wasn’t good. He had a thick Hungarian accent.”

  “And you were a violin prodigy,” Bridget said. “Why didn’t you tell us any of this before?”

  “Why would I want to remember painful things?” Nola said.

  “But never to mention that you were a prodigy?” Vonn said.

  “When I was playing the violin it was the most important thing. When I stopped playing it wasn’t. I had Pip. And Bridget. And then you, Vonn.”

  “Laura Dorrie?” I prompted again.

  “Right. That first day of school Laura was assigned as my student guide because we both played violin and she introduced me to the whole graduating class as the new girl whose Hungarian father washed the dishes at her father’s restaurant. When I told Laura that my father was a cook, not a dishwasher, she just said, ‘Tomato tomahto,’ then she said that she’d kill me if I didn’t stay away from Patrick Devine.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I didn’t. And when it got around that Patrick had asked me on a date Laura Dorrie showed up at my locker, grabbed my wrist, breaking the clasp on my bracelet, which had belonged to my grandmother in Europe so it was very special to me, and she told me that I was going to be ‘sorry’ for what I did.”

  “She broke your bracelet?” Vonn asked.

  “Yes, and she didn’t even apologize. She just said, ‘I don’t like thieves.’ ”

  “So?”

  “So I fixed the bracelet but I couldn’t sleep that night. I knew something awful was going to happen.”

  “Another clairvoyant,” Vonn said.

  “Laura didn’t say boo all week long but I could see in her eyes she was planning something. When the final school bell rang I was relieved the week was done.”

  “You had a date with Pip that night?”