What's Worth Keeping

by Kaya McLaren

  She could not say when exactly she had begun to think of this mountain as her grandfather—perhaps when she was seven or eight, about the time her real grandfather had died. This mountain had watched over her the way he had—quietly and ever present. Seeing the mountain up close again filled her with inexplicable relief, as if she could just fall into his arms again, rest her head on his shoulder, and tell him, I have been through something. And he, this mountain anthropomorphized with characteristics of her grandfather, would anchor her back down to the earth, inviting roots to grow from her feet so that she would stay with him this time, here in the home where a big part of her spirit had continued to dwell all of these years.

  Behind the block house her family had called home that summer had been a picnic area used from the thirties to the sixties. In the fifties and sixties, there had been some drive-in campsites neighboring it, and the picnic area had been used for campfire programs. A big outdoor fireplace with a chimney had been built, perhaps to keep the smoke from blowing in the eyes of the visitors who attended the programs. However, by the late seventies, the campsite and picnic area had been closed for enough years that trees had grown up around it and enclosed it, and those who had ever known about it had forgotten about it—except her dad. They used to follow a trail until it appeared to dead-end at a bunch of trees, and that was when they would slip into the secret place.

  Amy parked and searched for it. The fragment of trail they used to follow was gone now. Since it was so early in the morning and the Sunrise Lodge wouldn’t open for another week, Amy ignored the signs instructing visitors to stay on the trail, looked all around her, and then ran straight for the outstretched arms of the trees.

  She pushed her way through them as if they were a revolving bookcase on Scooby-Doo. Inside the secret world she had shared with her family, time had allowed the earth to reclaim more. Still, she found a spot near the old stone fireplace and lay down the way she used to. Inhaling deeply, she let the scent of alpine firs transport her the rest of the way back in time. She could almost feel a Nancy Drew book in her hand and the presence of her dad nearby.

  Nights had been the most magical of all here. When the moon was dark and new, stars shone so brightly at this high elevation—6,664 feet, to be exact. Free of light pollution from Seattle and particulates in the atmosphere, the starry sky had taken on dimension, as if she could really see which ones were closest, as if she could pick her way right through them to any star she wanted to visit. Her dad used to call in short-eared owls for them with a squeak that didn’t sound particularly owl-like, but invariably the owls would come, fluttering like big moths. Amy had soaked in the songs of the nocturnal birds on those nights, and on full-moon nights diurnal birds joined the choir, robins and sparrows tricked into singing by the brightness of the moon.

  Oh, this place. How could she have let so many years slip by without visiting this place? Rolling over onto her tender chest, she spread her arms wide and hugged the earth as she lay on it. She imagined her arms growing roots into the earth the way branches of subalpine firs did when they touched the ground … imagined lying there long enough to be reclaimed by the earth the way dead trees were. Baby trees and huckleberries would grow out of her back, mosses and lichens would cover the rest of her, and she would just lie there, content to be part of the way that nature takes broken things and makes them whole. The earth would take her pain and her memories of the hospital and compost them into life force.

  Overcome with the emotion of both being home and her keen awareness of the passage of time, she found herself watering the earth with her eyes, hoping the salt wouldn’t harm the small plants below her. If only her dad were nearby. If only she were still seven or eight and just beginning this life, fresh and whole and charged up with the energy of life like a brand-new battery. If only she could go back in time to those moments when she didn’t really know loneliness—not really, not like the loneliness she knew now.

  Growing increasingly uncomfortable on her chest, she rolled back over, and looked at the window of sky framed by fragrant firs. She had never brought Carly here, never shown her this magic. Perhaps if she had, Carly would have weathered last winter better. Perhaps she would know something deeper about the cycles of seasons. If, God forbid, Carly ever developed cancer, where would she go to heal? Stop it, stop it, stop it, Amy commanded her thoughts. I am breathing. I am healing. I am breathing. I am healing. I am breathing. I am healing, she recited in her mind, calming herself again, returning to a place where she was supported by the earth and lulled into peace by birdsongs. After all, it was true. She was still breathing, because that’s what living things did, and she was healing.

  * * *

  “Hey, Amy,” said Aunt Rae, who picked up on the first ring.

  “Hi, Aunt Rae. How are things going?”

  “Well, your daughter’s doing a great job. We had a family with some real brats last week, so she got to take a look in the mirror. I believe she was feeling pretty sorry about what happened before, but having to tolerate the brats turned the volume way up on that. She’s been trying to write you a letter, but having trouble finding the words. I was asking her about it and she said she feels like she let it sit too long and now that’s a whole other offense. She didn’t use those words, but that’s what she was trying to say. She seems to think it has permanence.”

  “Oh.” Amy sighed. “I really do understand.”

  “Well, check the Packwood Post Office in a few days in case she gets one done tonight. She might not. I don’t know. But I know she loves you very much. And this is good news—she and Paul had a civil breakfast this morning. Even warm.”

  “Really?” That was a shocker.

  “Well, Carly felt sorry for him. He was pretty shook up. A tree fell on the house during a storm. It rocked him. Reminded him of the bombing. I found him in my driveway in the rain kind of disoriented or out of it … traumatized, I guess. He was traumatized.”

  “Oh my God, is he okay?”

  “I think so. I helped him patch the roof this morning, so he could go back to work. His work situation’s apparently been cleared up.”

  She considered asking for details about it but then realized she really didn’t want to know. Whatever it was, was fine now. “Oh. Well, that’s good.”

  “I thought he’d be happier about it, but he wasn’t really himself.”

  “Geez, it sounds like I should come home.”

  “I’d say no. Oklahoma City is full of therapists and you’re not one of them. Paul will bounce back regardless. Carly’s on a good trajectory. Your voice sounds good. I can hear your strength coming back. I think you can help everyone best if you just keep healing out there.”

  “It’s been so good to be here. It really has.”

  She told Aunt Rae about her hikes and about rediscovering the secret place today—not because there was any chance Aunt Rae could picture it but because it just felt so good to be connected for the length of their conversation. It was so nice to hear a friendly, loving voice—her voice. Sometimes it sounded a little bit like her mother’s.

  Carly

  Carly brought down the package of pink stationery to the laundry room, where Great-Aunt Rae was folding clothes. “I don’t mean to be rude or ungrateful, but Mom and I hate pink so much. It reminds me of breast cancer every time I see it. I thought maybe you could use it or give it to someone else.”

  “Oh. Okay. Yeah, I can do that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you write to her?”

  Carly shook her head. “I just sit there with the pen in my hand.”

  Great-Aunt Rae pursed her lips and nodded. “Can you tell me about what happened? Maybe I can help. I mean, what started it all? What changed?”

  “I couldn’t figure out why she needed the second surgery so I asked and then she told me about the gene mutation and I started putting two and two together and I completely freaked out and told her that I was nothing like her.”

  “Well,
I bet she understood.”

  Carly shrugged and looked at the ground. “Maybe. But then it just went on too long. I was busy being mad at the whole world and the argument never got resolved—as if mean words like that can get resolved, you know? I mean, once they’re out there, they’re kind of out there. You can’t really take them back.”

  “Want to take a walk or a drive-by to see your parents’ house? Your dad patched the roof this morning. Sometimes a walk clears the mind.”

  “No,” she said. The very last thing she wanted to think about was how she almost lost her mom last winter and she almost lost her dad yesterday. The world was an unfathomably uncertain place. It was too much.

  * * *

  Carly tried to sleep but couldn’t. She turned on the bedside lamp, sat up, and tried one more time. This time, the words came. Regret and remorse poured out of her heart through her hand and onto the paper, and when she was done, her heart felt empty in a good way, like her stomach after a night of the flu.

  She slipped the letter into an envelope, addressed it to General Delivery, Packwood, WA 98361, just like Great-Aunt Rae had written down for her, and then took it downstairs, wishing she could slip it in the mail tonight. It felt good to get it out of her room, at least.

  Violet descended the stairs, the nails on her paws clicking on each step, to check on Carly and tried to herd her back up to the second floor where she belonged, but the summer night beckoned to Carly, so Violet had no choice but to surrender and follow her outside. Carly found a spot at the edge of the porch and sat down, mesmerized at how clear the stars were so far from the city and at this elevation. A person could get lost in the depth of all those stars. Violet turned a circle and then sat down and leaned into Carly. From the corral, one of the horses nickered. Carly wanted to imagine that it was T. Rex telling her to stay.

  She was supposed to want to go to college. That had been the goal. But she didn’t feel ready for all of that, for being around all of those people, for having her thoughts occupied with things on a syllabus. This was what she wanted. This space. Space in her physical environment. Space in her mind. Horses and a dog and stars.

  Amy

  Driving to Sunrise in the dark and missing all the anticipatory views the next morning was a price to pay for watching the sunrise from the top of Sourdough Ridge. There was a reason this place was named for this event. Relaxed and enjoying the blessed warmth of the car heater, she let her mind drift back to the early summer mornings when her dad would gently wake her and Alicia.

  “It’s going to be a good one,” he would say if the sky was clear or mostly clear. On cloudy days, their parents let them catch up on sleep, enjoying the silence and stillness.

  It had always been a struggle to get out of bed on the mornings her dad had summoned them, but the two times she had lost the battle her first summer there, she had to listen to her sister and her dad talk about how utterly magnificent it had been for the rest of the day and, in the case of one, even months and years later. During her second summer there, she made herself get up each and every time. She did not want to miss a single one.

  On this day, she was the first guest to arrive. Since no camping was allowed at Sunrise, it felt as if she had the park to herself. After zipping her coat all the way up and donning a scarf and hat, she slipped her backpack on. Setting off, she walked behind the majestic old lodge, four stories high and covered with shingles, a sloping roofline over the giant dormer that took up a third of the roof on each side. Then she started up the ridge on the exact same path she and her family had walked long ago.

  Her body felt so different now from the way it had then, no longer light and springy and not used to the altitude either. She remembered what she used to think about to distract her from this uphill climb back when she was seven and eight—wanting a mystery to solve like Nancy Drew. Somehow the park would be jeopardized by greedy developers disguised as park officials, but by virtue of her own sleuthing skills, she alone would expose their sinister plan and save the park. The plot was vague and changed with the “clues” she would find as she went about her day. When she found tracks, she imagined tracking the evil developers to the spot they intended to build a hotel on. Once, she found a pen someone had dropped and imagined the villains had used it to formulate their evil plan. Amy smiled now, wondering whether all children created stories like that.

  She paused to think about her writing career and how unfortunate it was that she could not imagine writing one more book, because once she was divorced, she would probably need to work. Either way, she just didn’t have it in her. Didn’t have the mental clarity, didn’t have the drive or desire. Words seemed like clutter now. Like litter. Like all of it was the opposite of what she wanted now.

  Looking down toward the massive meadows called Yakima Park, she remembered, too, being fascinated with the Native Americans who used to convene in this very place to pick berries and trade with other tribes. Now, she had an even deeper appreciation for how these gatherings had been a convergence of Plains tribes and Coast Salish tribes—people of the wind and people of the water.

  Oh, it’s going to be a good one! her dad’s voice echoed in her head, and she imagined him and Alicia walking in front of her now, the anticipation on his face as he turned around, motivating them to keep the pace up so they would reach the top of the ridge before the big moment.

  * * *

  “Let’s climb Mt. Rainier when I’m sixteen,” she had said to her sister, afraid that if she waited longer than that, her sister would be entangled in the world in a way in which she could not free herself for such an endeavor.

  “Okay. And then let’s hike the Wonderland Trail,” her sister had said.

  Amy supposed they had been seven and nine when this conversation had taken place, the last summer before her sister began to grow into a really big girl and then a young woman, leaving Amy behind for a few years. That summer, they had been particularly fascinated with the Wonderland Trail hikers who came through Sunrise and into the lodge for a meal. At one point, their mom even carved backpack frames for them out of an old box with a box knife, and the girls had tied their pillows to them with twine and then hiked around the area nearest the employee housing with exaggerated fatigue.

  * * *

  The fabric of her shirt rubbing against her chest made her feel as if she were wearing a shirt full of fiberglass slivers and leaning against a low-current electric fence, and she wondered how long it would be before all of these freshly cut nerves would calm down. A stabbing pain on the left side jolted her the rest of the way out of her memory and back into the present, but she kept walking, one foot in front of the other, because that was all she could do in this moment—just walk through it.

  She wished Alicia could be here with her and that things could be as simple as they were when they were kids, back before Alicia became an AMA conspiracy theory zealot. How nice it would be to simply take this hike with her sister and reminisce together, maybe even remember things they had forgotten. Amy missed her. Now the likelihood of Alicia saying the wrong thing was somewhere between very high and certain, and Amy didn’t want to invite disaster. Wanting to preserve this relationship until she was less likely to overreact and destroy it, Amy thought it best to step back and hope that one day Alicia’s ignorant suggestions and conspiracy theories wouldn’t rile her at all. She loved her sister so much. She did. And she was grateful for how Alicia had been there for her when it counted, going not just the extra mile but many extra miles—literally.

  * * *

  In the days that followed each chemo infusion, Alicia brought food to Amy’s house, hoping something would sound good. Chicken soup. Vegetable soup. Scalloped potatoes. Mac and cheese. Fettuccine Alfredo. As time went on, the food became plainer and plainer. Rice Krispies. Steamed potatoes. White rice. Canned peaches. Lemons to squeeze in water.

  The things that worked when she had the flu didn’t work with chemo. “You know the smell of the ink in a ballpoint pen?” Amy
asked her. “It’s like my belly is full of that ink. I just keep burping it up.”

  Neither of them knew what to do.

  Day four, the third day after infusion day, was the worst, the day Amy would wake up and cry, feverish and nauseated, her skin in an itchy rash, her feet burning and blistered, the extremely tender skin on her cold, bald head unable to tolerate anything but the softest fleece hat, her tongue so swollen it seemed to barely fit in her painful, sore mouth. Sometimes Alicia would cry with her.

  “I hate this,” said Amy.

  “I know,” replied her sister, lying next to her in bed, only on top of the covers, a look of such deep concern and empathy in her eyes.

  And so, after the first round, Alicia drove eight hours to a pot shop in Trinidad, Colorado, to buy something to help her sister. The woman who worked there was very helpful, explaining the difference between indica and sativa, Alicia told Amy. Indica, she joked, was short for “in the couch,” the kind of effect it had on people—a deep, relaxing body high. Sativa was more of the head high people thought of when they thought of pot. Both, she said, would help with appetite. Alicia left with indica ginger candies, indica chocolates, indica-blend mints, and two packages of tiny indica-blend raspberry-lemon drops, which she suspected would be the winner. While Paul was at work, Alicia offered them all to Amy. Ginger and chocolate had been unthinkable with her nausea, despite the fact that ginger was supposed to help with that. And mint had been unthinkable with her sore mouth. But the lemon drops were a miracle. As per the saleslady’s suggestion, Amy sucked on only one—just a half dose. And although she never felt high, her stomach relaxed, and the ink smell in her belly reduced to something manageable. She stopped crying, ate some fettuccine and a little salad, watched TV, and shouted out Jeopardy! answers with Alicia. And after that, she had fallen into a blissful sleep.