Live a Little

by Madeleine Reiss

  ‘We’ll stop here for some songs,’ Gilbert announced when they at last reached the bottom of the hill. Ahead were the crumbling turrets of a monolithic castle. He had wheeled his horse round and was sitting facing them. Although Lottie was extremely relieved that she had managed to get Summer to stop, she was deeply embarrassed by the thought of being sung to. She felt bad that Gilbert was obliged to provide them with the whole Native American experience just because he had been paid. Singing was most definitely something you had to feel like doing. She glanced at her sister, who was exhibiting no signs of discomfort, but instead sitting bolt upright on her horse, looking expectant. I should be more like her, Lottie thought. I would enjoy life more if I wasn’t so eternally self-conscious.

  Gilbert cleared his throat and launched himself into a song that he said was about happy horse riding, then another that was a lullaby and a third about herding cattle. He must have done the exact same thing with a hundred tourists, but nevertheless there was a ring of conviction in the way he sang and held himself that spoke of pride and a sense of ownership. Once she let herself properly listen, she found the songs had a sweet, melodic quality. After the recital, they dismounted and ate the dinner Gilbert produced from his saddlebag – corn dumplings as blue as a bruise, and some greasy bread that tasted of honey.

  ‘There’s no sign of Landing Rock,’ Tina said fretfully as they ate. ‘I’ve been looking for it all the way. We may have to find somewhere else.’

  ‘Why are you looking for this particular place?’ Gilbert asked.

  After a moment’s hesitation, they explained about the film and about Mia’s ashes. Gilbert’s naturally morose face assumed an even more lugubrious slant. He stood and took up a solemn position, looking out across the desert as if he was going to say something profound. Lottie steeled herself for the Navajo version of a motivational quote, perhaps something about listening to the wind or following a falling star or life being like a rainbow.

  ‘I need to pass water,’ he said and wandered off, leaving the horses’ reins under some heavy stones. The horses looked unlikely to bolt; they knew the drill as well as their master. If they remembered in their blood the fierce grip of proper riders, sitting astride them bareback, the memory had been eroded by years of bearing soft-bottomed, anxiously respectful visitors, laden down with turquoise jewellery and guilt.

  ‘I actually need to go myself,’ Lottie said after Gilbert had vanished.

  ‘Well, don’t go miles,’ Tina replied. ‘It’s not as if there are millions of people craning to catch a glimpse of your arse.’

  Lottie walked around the massive slabs of the castle. From the other side, it looked less like an ancient building and more like a crouching animal – a bear perhaps, or a lion. It was part of the wonder of this place that nothing was definite, but was open to many different interpretations, depending on the cast of the light or where you were standing or even what you chose to see. It was both rooted in the earth and as insubstantial as a dream. She found a spot hidden behind a patch of ragged shrubbery and squatted to pee, looking out into the middle distance as she did so, just in case there was another singing Navajo Indian and another group of transfixed, awkward tourists. In front of her was only empty space and a juniper tree with its lower branch hanging almost as far as the ground. Beyond that was a small incline topped with a thick, flat rock scalloped around its edges, as if some idle child had passed a few hours chipping away at it. Lottie stared. It was the rock on which Dove and Tache had discovered the abandoned baby – the place where their journey had taken a turn towards an unforeseen happiness. She zipped up her jeans quickly and rushed back to her sister. Gilbert had now returned and was standing beside her.

  ‘I’ve found it!’

  ‘Found what?’ Tina asked. ‘The meaning of life? A marble toilet with a flush and fluffy hand towels?’

  ‘No, you fool. Landing Rock.’

  And Lottie caught hold of Tina’s hand and pulled her back to the place, half expecting that in the short time she had been away it would have disappeared like the mirage of a dying cowboy.

  ‘It is the right place, isn’t it?’

  Tina was staring at the stone as if she couldn’t quite believe it. ‘I think it is,’ she murmured.

  Tina could almost hear the baby’s cry and see Tache’s big, dirty hands picking up the swaddled bundle, Dove still on his horse telling him to move on and leave well alone.

  Like everything that has been long imagined, the reality of it was different – smaller perhaps, or just more ordinary, than she had expected. Looking at the unremarkable stone Tina had the panicked feeling that it wasn’t at all what she wanted it to be. She had expected to be relieved when they found Landing Rock, but all she felt was distress. They had been tricked by soaring music and a clever manipulation of the light into believing that this was a special place. They had brought Mia to what amounted to a piece of scrubland and a disintegrating tree. It didn’t feel like a destination. It wasn’t grand enough, solemn enough, even beautiful enough. It just wasn’t enough.

  ‘Shall we do it then?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘No,’ Tina said. ‘We need to find somewhere better.’

  ‘But this is where she wanted to be!’ Lottie said. ‘This is what we’ve been looking for. I’m going to go and get the rucksack. I’ll tell Gilbert to wait for us.’

  Gilbert was squatting on the ground and he got up as Lottie hastily explained what was happening.

  ‘We shouldn’t be too long, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You must take your time to lay her to rest,’ he said, ‘or she will follow you home. I’m in no hurry.’

  *

  ‘It’s not what I expected,’ Tina said to Lottie when she got back. ‘I thought it would feel right, but it doesn’t. We can’t leave her here.’

  ‘It’s where she wanted to be,’ Lottie said again, pulling the urn out and laying it on the ground between them. ‘Look, the Three Sisters!’ she said, and tried to smile. She found instead that she was crying. Now that it was time to leave Mia, she didn’t feel ready.

  ‘She asked me to come to her the night she was killed,’ Tina said suddenly. She put her hands over her face.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She rang me up when I was at a party and I couldn’t be bothered to listen to her properly. While I was getting pissed and having a shag, Rick was stabbing her to death.’

  Lottie put her arms around her sister and held her. Tina’s whole body was shaking hard.

  ‘You weren’t to know. How could you have known?’ Lottie stroked her sister’s bent head. All the anger and betrayal she had felt only a few hours before seemed to soften and spread, until it was nothing more than a little blown dust.

  ‘I could’ve stopped him.’

  ‘If it hadn’t happened that night,’ Lottie said, ‘it would have happened on another.’

  ‘The thing is, we’ll never know.’ Tina broke into loud, sobbing tears. She sounded just as she had as a child, when fury and regret for what she had done or what had been done to her finally broke through her defences. She had been a stout-hearted girl, not given to crying, so when she had shown her sorrow it had always been surprising. It was the same now. Tina was weeping with great, ragged exhalations. It sounded to Lottie as if her sister was releasing all the tears she had kept dammed up for years.

  ‘I told Mia that I was never going to see her again if she didn’t get rid of Rick,’ said Lottie, in a small voice. Tina raised her head to look at her. ‘So she didn’t even ring me when she needed help. I made her choose between us and she chose him, so I left her to it. I hadn’t spoken to her for at least a month before she was killed.’

  ‘You did what you thought was right,’ Tina said, rubbing at her face with her sleeve. ‘How were you to know that she would be so fatally stubborn?’

  ‘I thought I was being firm. I thought I would make her see what needed to be done, but all I did was abandon her when she needed me the most.’ Tears ran down
her face. She didn’t think she would ever be able to stop crying.

  ‘Oh Lottie, we both let her down!’

  Lottie nodded. She felt the weight of Tina’s words, and yet at the same time a kind of easing and shifting of pain. They could share it now in a way they never had before.

  ‘She knew we loved her though,’ said Lottie. ‘I know she did. And she loved us back. She was so full of love. It made her and unmade her.’

  In the distance, they heard Gilbert singing. He might have been singing about anything, about grinding corn to pollen or catching antelope, but the song sounded solemn, as though it were his contribution to their ceremony. They were grateful for the melancholy strains winding their way across the cowboy plains. Along with their confessions, his song seemed to have transformed this small monument into a suitable resting place after all. They made a little dip at the base of the tree and took turns scooping handfuls of their sister into the ground.

  ‘She’s been dead for three years, but I’ll miss her forever,’ Tina said when they had smoothed away their footprints so that the earth looked as it had before.

  ‘She’ll always be here,’ Lottie said. ‘She’ll always be with us and wherever we want her to be.’

  As they walked past the castle, or the bear, shadowed now along one of its great flanks, Lottie thought she could hear its heart beating.

  Chapter 35

  ‘IF YOU WERE AN ITEM of jewellery, what would you be?’ Lottie asked. She was back in her cowboy hat and in the driving seat. It was a beautiful evening, and John Denver was singing about Colorado. They had left the roof of the car down to enjoy the last of the sun.

  ‘Easy,’ Tina replied. ‘I’d be a turquoise and silver ring.’

  ‘So would I,’ Lottie said. The sisters held up their matching knuckleduster bands, bought from a stall in Monument Valley owned by Gilbert’s cousin. She’d had the same dark eyes and downward-slanting mouth that Gilbert had, and had taken their dollars with such charm that they hadn’t minded.

  Gilbert had seen them back to the visitor centre with a grave solicitude that had touched them.

  ‘You have been my very favourite riders,’ he said when they parted, with such sincerity that they almost believed he didn’t say that to everyone. ‘I hope you will soon stop feeling sad.’

  They had been on the road for most of the day, and were now searching for a lodge just outside Moab, where Tina had decided they were to spend the night. Lottie had pointed out several possible motels along the way, but Tina was adamant that they should continue until they found this particular place.

  ‘Apparently it has a great view,’ she said, and so Lottie buttoned her lip and kept on driving, ignoring the fact that she was longing for a cold beer and a place to be stationary for a while. After their time in Monument Valley and a further day spent hiking in the weird landscape of the Arches National Park, she wanted to rest before the last stretch of driving to Park City and the flight home. The road passed through the mountains, alongside a khaki-coloured river. The light was greenish and, for a fleeting moment, just as the sun was beginning to set, the earth became the shade of vermilion found in frescoes and in the shining insides of Chinese bowls.

  ‘We’ve seen so much on this trip,’ Lottie said. ‘I feel full up to the brim.’

  ‘There it is!’ Tina said, indicating a ranch-style building, which suffered from a surfeit of pine. Inside, their room was cool. It did indeed have a great view of the massy, fast-flowing Colorado River. All around, holding them in, were great slices of earth, looking as if they had been smoothed to a shine by the cut of a giant knife.

  ‘Now, I don’t want you to overreact,’ said Tina ominously, as she fiddled with her sponge bag in the bathroom, ‘but Dean is in the bar waiting for you.’

  ‘What?’ Lottie sat bolt upright on the bed she had thrown herself down on minutes before.

  ‘I said, don’t overreact.’

  ‘What do you mean, Dean’s in the bar?’

  ‘I’ve been phoning him since we last saw him at the canyon. He wouldn’t take my calls for ages, but he finally cracked when I got stern with him.’

  ‘I thought he’d gone back to the UK.’

  ‘No. He’s been trekking in the canyon for the last couple of days. He says it has helped him think. Boy does that man set store by thinking! It’s a wonder he gets anything done.’

  ‘He’s really downstairs?’

  ‘Yes. He texted me fifteen minutes ago to say he was.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like him!’

  ‘I know you do,’ Tina answered, looking pleased with herself.

  ‘God, I don’t know if I can bear to see him. I feel really nervous.’

  ‘Don’t go getting your hopes up. He still seems fairly intractable, but at least he’s prepared to talk.’

  ‘It was kind of you to do this for me,’ Lottie said, crossing the room and embracing her sister.

  Tina wriggled away from Lottie’s grateful clutches. ‘Since I made the mess, the least I can do is try and clean it up,’ she said. ‘We’ve got ten minutes to make you look presentable.’ She surveyed Lottie’s crumpled linen trousers and shirt. Her sister’s attempts to make an effort with her appearance earlier on in the trip had been abandoned in favour of comfortable practicality.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ Lottie protested, as Tina started throwing clothes out of her suitcase and spreading them all over the bed. ‘I’d prefer it if he just sees me as I am.’

  ‘Now let me see, what have I got left that’s still clean?’ Tina said, ignoring her sister. ‘I’m not letting you go down there in one of your droopy smocks. Ah yes! This is perfect!’

  ‘I’m not wearing that!’ Lottie looked in alarm at the tiny yellow dress Tina was holding up, but she could see that her sister was in no mood to be thwarted, so she gave in and pulled it over her head with a sigh.

  ‘You can practically see my breasts,’ she moaned, tugging at it as she stood in front of the mirror.

  ‘That’s kind of the idea,’ Tina answered, pulling Lottie’s hair from its scrunchie and shaking it out.

  ‘Dean’s not that impressed with women who rely on their physical attributes,’ she said, as she reluctantly allowed Tina to smear her mouth with some raspberry-flavoured concoction.

  ‘I know, I know. It’s your mind and soul he admires – but it doesn’t do any harm to help him value what’s inside you by making the outside of you equally attractive.’

  Lottie laughed. ‘You’ll never change, will you?’

  ‘Not in this respect, but maybe in others.’ Tina suddenly looked a little sad, and so Lottie bore without further complaint the addition of some teetering wedged espadrilles and a squirt of perfume.

  ‘Go down there and knock him dead,’ Tina said, when she was finally satisfied. ‘You look utterly beautiful, and if he doesn’t instantly forgive you and fall into your arms, the man truly is a fool.’

  *

  Lottie licked the gloss off her lips as she walked down the corridor towards the bar. This meeting was going to be hard enough without looking as if she was dribbling. She almost went over on one of her shoes and cursed inwardly. She really needed to develop some backbone, instead of always giving in to her sister’s ideas. Yet when she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror as she passed, she was surprised by how good she looked. She straightened her back. She was wearing the kind of dress that required attitude, so the best thing to do was pretend that she had some.

  The bar was decked out like a western saloon with orange, varnished wood and a long bar made for sliding shot glasses down. She couldn’t see Dean anywhere. She felt her heart sink. It was crowded, and she didn’t trust her ability not to fall over in her shoes, so she ordered a drink and sat down at one of the tables. Perhaps he had changed his mind and decided that he didn’t want to meet her after all.

  ‘Hello, Lottie,’ he said, appearing suddenly in front of her. He had a newly ruddy look and a slightly peeling nose and was wearing unfami
liar boots. Her heart jumped at the sight of him.

  ‘I gather you’ve been talking to Tina,’ she said, trying to calm down. Women in dresses like the one she was wearing had to look as if they were in command of themselves.

  ‘Yes, your sister has been very persistent.’ He smiled slightly, although she could see no real humour in his face.

  ‘Why did you decide to stay?’ she asked.

  He looked at her for what seemed like a long time before answering. ‘I couldn’t quite bear to go,’ he said finally. ‘I knew that if I went home it would really all be over.’

  ‘And is it over?’ she said, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ he said. ‘Although you don’t look like yourself.’

  ‘Who do I look like?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘I would say Tina, because it’s the sort of dress she would wear,’ he answered; ‘but that’s not quite true. You look like a new version of you.’

  ‘Is that a bad thing?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, and his mouth twisted slightly as if he was trying out a new taste. ‘I liked the old version of you very much.’ He was scratching the surface of the table with his thumbnail and one of his legs was doing a kind of juddering dance. She had never seen him this stressed, even when he had thirty-three essays to mark and a breakfast meeting. Walking in the canyon didn’t seem to have calmed him down much.

  ‘It’s just a dress.’ She wanted to reach out and touch him, but knew it was too soon.

  He lowered his eyes as if he didn’t want to betray his feelings too much. ‘But it isn’t just a dress, is it?’

  ‘People don’t change in a couple of weeks – not fundamentally, anyway.’

  ‘So you will admit you’ve changed to a certain extent?’ Dean asked.

  ‘I think perhaps being away made me feel less certain about things.’

  ‘By “things”, I take it you mean me?’

  ‘I know it seems like that, but it’s really not.’ Lottie bit her lip. She was struggling to explain what had happened in a way that would not hurt him and yet would be truthful. ‘I thought I was just going away, rather inconveniently as it happens, to spend time with Tina and find somewhere to lay Mia to rest, but at some point I felt a kind of shift. I can’t think of another way to describe it.’