The Speed of Light
Page 20
He slid off the lift chair and crouched slightly, gathering momentum for the turn to the ledge. An eggshell surface and powder just beneath. A good day to have closed the office. The mountain belonged to him. And to the truants on their snowboards. He grasped his poles and pushed off. A hole in his right mitten, his index finger growing numb. The trail slick where intermittent sunlight pressed it into water and then abandoned it to the wind. Harsh wind. It made his eyes tear at the plateau and he paused to adjust his goggles. Her eyes were watery with cold and her cheeks were crimson with it as she pressed forward, her hands buried in a fur muff. A fur muff that suited her so perfectly.…
A narrow trail off to the left. He could not recall the map. He’d see where it led. A long flat ribbon of fresh snow through the hemlocks. An ancient forest. Thick fragrant wood. Lew Perrin and Tilly Szabo slumped in redwood chairs beside the new tennis court, sipping iced tea. Sweet, ebullient Marian, how Lew delighted in her. Iced tea among the pear trees hung so low with fruit.
Before him, no trail. The back of the mountain, a bowl of sorts, undulating into the horizon. He would make painstaking, delicate work of it. In perfect form. Form counted for so much more than Tom could ever imagine. Fine dancerly labor, carving perfect esses down the mountain. Turning precisely where he chose to turn. Light pressure on the downhill ski. A tiny graze of the pole’s tip, exquisite rotations. His father could never understand.
Careful, studious work. The rhythmic, repetitive work of an orchardier. Muriel at her piano. Slim fingers of astonishing strength. She stood to play Lizst. The hourliness, the dailiness, the monthly, yearly, endlessness. The attentiveness opening into rapture. She had been possible. The impossibility had been in him.
An exhilarating run. He released his skis. A twinge in his chest as he bent to lift them to his shoulder. He’d need to hike around the base to find the chairlift again. That bowl, so surprising, so rewarding. He sat on a pile of sawn logs. A small rest. He pulled his turtle over his mouth. Breathe some warm air. Quiet the twinges.
And now, the chairlift in view.
“Found the little trail to the back side, eh?” The lift engineer was happy for conversation.
“Gorgeous spot,” Nathan said. “Not too many customers today, huh?”
“Slow, Wednesdays. End of the season. And cold, hey?”
“Beautiful, though. Worth putting up with the cold.”
“Beautiful it is,” the man agreed.
Nathan placed his skis on the ground and planted his boots in their bindings, snapping each lock forward.
“Better make this your last run,” the engineer said. “Not enough action to keep this thing grinding anymore.”
“Never say ‘last,’” Nathan said.
“Okay, pal.”
The sun was at mid-March four in the afternoon. Slanted columns of light sifting through the hemlocks. Sunbeams a child might grasp in his hand. Cylinders of windblown snow. Polka dots on organdy. And freckles on her back. He thought it was too much to know this. Once more at the ledge, he tucked his chin down to catch the warmth of this own body. Warm his throat, his chest. He pushed off.
The lining of his mitten had torn clear through. Cold fingers. Once he’d had no feeling at all in those fingers. Cut them to ribbons for want of feeling. Nitroglycerine in his zippered pocket. Just in case. Holding Alexandra’s chubby wrists above the harpsichord keys so her stout little fingers just touched them. The C-major Prelude and Fugue. She deserved a fine boyfriend, this curly-headed daughter. You deserve to be happy, she’d said. Tekiah! Teruah! he’d sung out to her. And Vera’s face behind the candle flames, long fingers beckoning the tallow smoke.
Promise me, Lisle, golden peach of a child, that you will never be older than seven! How extravagant, that wide winter sky! Bejewelled with Wittgenstein and Paul DeMan and Marguerite Duras. He was precluded. Such yearning! Enough to make a man’s heart ache. An ache like the door of a bank vault, closing against his chest. At the little trail off to the left, he would stop for nitroglycerine. He had been shorn. Shorn of his chest hair, shorn of his pubic hair. Shorn of all his colored leaves.
His fists tightened on the poles. Sunlight on the wane. He’d forgo the pills. The bowl just ahead. An easy waltz down the spill of white glaze. Stripes of hard-edged sunbeams and partway down a little stand of trees, a small dark island in the slick white sea. He had not noticed it before.
The door to the vault slammed into his chest, knocking him down, his head and shoulders shattering the icy crust. His right ski snapped loose and slid silently away. The left binding jammed and held its ski now scraping loudly alongside him, holding his left leg up almost perpendicular to his path of descent. He could not, he realized, snap his legs closed. He could not move his left leg, nor his left arm. They flailed, enervated, insensate, beside him. No longer him.
The little island of trees, he was bearing down on it now. He might try to pass it on his right, grab hold the birch at the tip of the island. If he could shake the mitten off … Open his hand and … the brightness gone.
Grey. The nurse had said he looked grey. The sky, the mountain too. Grey. Not the grey of vanishing sunbeams, not the grey of dusk. The grey of impossibility. His own grey impossibility. It was almost impossible to see.
The limp left leg with its clinging ski opened him to a vee as he careened toward the island of trees, its staunch birch standing watch. Impossible to draw his leg in. Impossible to shake the mitten, to steer his course. Impossibilities entirely within him.
All those things he wanted to tell her about how he had been then and at all times other than then. Things he might have told her had they had more time.
He could be impaled on the straight, watchful birch. At the uphill tip of the dark little island. Legs chevroned, sailing right into it. He hoped his heart would give out before then. Ischemia could keep him from feeling his testicles crush against the tree. Or perhaps the pain and its trauma would undo his heart’s wiring and set off violent ventricular fibrillations. He could not decide which order of things he preferred.
Better a testicle than an eye? Better an eye than a heart? Better a heart than a testicle? Where, he wondered, where does a man really live? A heart in a box of ice. I cannot imagine such a thing, they had said.
Carla would be fine. Doctor father. Doctor husband. Second doctor husband. A thoroughbred. He no longer heard his left ski strafing the ice. Silence.
Multifoliate ranunculae, musky blossoms, carmine and rose. And even now, he wanted to … yes, it might be his testicles first.
Where were those fibrillations? Those oscillations run amok? A dying star is no longer itself.
But, even now he wanted to
If only he could
If he could only smell
If
only
he
could
smell
her
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book emerged in the Ashwagh Hall Writers’ Group with the sure, knowing midwifery of Marijane Meaker. Her astute professional judgment and sturdy personal encouragement guided the writing, which was fun, and the long march toward publication, which certainly was not.
My colleagues in the group provided the patient listening and thoughtful feedback that can save a writer from solipsistic madness. The group itself, by its warmth and good fellowship, furnishes what is truly a spiritual home for its members.
Particular thanks to Stacey Donovan, vanguard and validator; to Vince Lardo for his unerring sense of narrative structure; to John Andrews for his imaginative musings on astronomy; and to Diana Peate Semlear who taught me about dancing.
Carolyn Krupp at International Management Group, by her unflailing enthusiasm and faith, urged me through the final, most difficult, stretch, and my editor, Judy Shepard, somehow guessed at all that had gone into this book and treated it with the intelligence and tender respect every writer hopes for.
Odd, to discover that what seemed for so long to be an utterly solitar
y process ends with gratitude to so many. Odd, but quite pleasurable.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Susan Pashman
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2481-5
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