by Ruthie Knox
“Sounds good. I’ve got to say hi to some people and then I’ll be over.”
Rosemary found a spot slightly behind the chanting group and knelt on the floor in her tight borrowed suit. She bowed her head. She couldn’t hear where the chant began and ended to pick up the litany, but her body relaxed into the sound of it.
She thought of the names she’d seen on the list this morning. Many of those who’d died were Sherpa, and there must be people here who’d known them, perhaps who’d loved and lost family and friends.
They would be saying words of peace, of blessing—the sorts of phrases shared among survivors to soothe and heal the raggedness in their hearts.
It felt good to be here, among people. To open her heart to bright colors and light, to healing.
Before the expedition, the Sherpa had held a puja, building an altar and stringing lines of prayer flags at Base Camp. Rosemary had attended.
The Sherpa called the mountain Chomolungma, and they believed a goddess inhabited the valley: Miyolangsangma, the Goddess of Inexhaustible Giving. She rode a tiger and bestowed jewels in the form of granted wishes. Miyolangsangma had given the Sherpa the bounty of foreign travelers and their economic resources—but as uninvited guests on her sacred landscape, they had to behave with special reverence and be careful of their motivations.
Risking life and death, many on the mountain became closer to their gods, even superstitious in their faith. Climbing, Rosemary had never felt any pull toward the God of her childhood, but in the tent after the avalanche, whispering the Lord’s Prayer, she’d felt connected to something larger than herself—both smaller and bigger, and part of the human project.
She felt that way now. She was glad she had come.
Kal settled onto the floor beside her with an oof. “Are you as stiff as I am?” he whispered.
“Worse, I imagine.”
“How’s the headache?”
“Disappeared with the coffee.”
“Good. So, my mom wants to meet you.”
Rosemary looked around. “She’s here?”
“Yeah, she’s the one with short hair by the wall, in the red shirt.”
Rosemary located her—a small woman with a deeply creased face and animated hands. “I’d be honored.”
“Just to warn you, she’s kind of bossy.”
“I can hold my own.”
Kal stood and extended his hand. When Rosemary took it, he lifted her to her feet, the assist so smooth and effortless that her entire body remembered, all at once, every detail of the night she’d spent in bed with him.
Sex with Kal had been exactly as easy and effortless as his hand lifting her from the floor, athletic and deeply physically satisfying. Her blush came fast and furious. She unbuttoned her jacket, smoothing her hands over her stomach. Crikey. Not the time or the place.
She very much hoped there would be a time and a place again, soon.
Rosemary followed Kal to the spot along the wall where his mother chatted with a group of people in what Rosemary assumed must be Sherpa, or Nepali. They stopped speaking as she drew close. Kal took her elbow, putting her in front of him and to his left, and made the introductions in order of age, identifying her to his uncle Dorjee; his mother, Yangchen; and his sister Sangmu.
“It’s good you came,” Yangchen said. Her eyes were warm when she shook Rosemary’s hand. Kal’s eyes. He had her chin, too, square and strong.
“I was pleased to be invited. It’s a lovely place.”
“It’s good for the community. There are a lot of Sherpa in New York, more than anywhere in the world outside Nepal. You’re English?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you go to university?”
“Cambridge.”
“My father went to Cambridge. Trinity College.”
“Oh, that’s an excellent college. I went to Girton. What did your father study?”
Yangchen smiled. It was Kal’s broad smile, although Yangchen didn’t have her son’s easygoing, laid-back vibe. She was more intense. A powerful woman.
Rosemary liked powerful women.
“He studied public policy. He wanted to study law, go into government, but his father died and he had to return to Nepal to run the business. My family are outfitters in the Khumbu for three generations. My brother”—she poked the man standing next to her in the flesh of his upper arm—“he took over, even though I knew the business better. I’m just a woman, my father thought, so I couldn’t run it. I told my brother what to do, he expanded it to four times the size when our father was alive. Right, Dorjee?”
“Right.”
“And then Mom made them sell it to a German guy for a boatload of money and moved here,” Kal’s sister interjected. “They got enough to start a grocery store and a restaurant.”
“Don’t boast,” Yangchen told her daughter. “It’s impolite.”
“You were boasting,” Sangmu shot back.
Yangchen shook her head. “I was telling family history. It’s not the same.”
“Yeah, but—”
Kal cleared his throat. His sister rolled her eyes. Yangchen’s mouth settled into a firm line, which Rosemary attempted to soften by saying, “Sometimes men are idiots.”
For a moment, no one responded, and she worried she’d been grotesquely insensitive, but then Yangchen let out a bark of laughter. Sangmu smiled, and even Dorjee looked amused. “Present company excepted, of course,” Rosemary added.
“My father was no idiot. He was old-fashioned, though,” Yangchen said. “I always wanted to do boy things, and he tried to make me do girl things. He said I had a boy’s spirit, maybe he’d named me too strong.”
“What does your name mean?”
“It means ‘sacred one.’ It’s not so strong a name—Dorjee means ‘thunderbolt,’ so I told my father I think maybe he got our names mixed up.”
Dorjee nodded, smiling. Rosemary wondered if Kal’s was one of those families that produced terrifying women and mild-mannered men.
Although she wouldn’t call Kal “mild-mannered,” precisely. Not considering the way he’d taken charge after the avalanche, or looked after her in Lukla. Not to mention how he’d smoothed over their morning after in the hotel room, or teased her on the airplane about her reaction to the flight attendant’s interruption…
The back of her neck got hot again. Not the place or the time.
“How long are you staying in New York?” Yangchen asked.
“Not long. I’d come to see my daughter, but it turns out she’s working on a film in Wisconsin. I have to figure out if I can lure her here or if I’ll need to travel there.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“Nineteen.”
“She makes movies?”
“She’s meant to be at NYU, but apparently she’s taken some time out to work on a documentary project.” Relaying this information irritated her just as much as learning about it from Winston had. They’d cut her out of the decision, and it left her uncertain of her place in Beatrice’s life.
Yangchen fluttered her hand at her son. “Kalden took some time off, never went back. All he has to do is take three more credits and finish his thesis, but he won’t.”
“What kind of thesis?” Rosemary asked Kal.
“Master’s in public administration.”
“Environmental policy,” his mother said.
Kal shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away. Rosemary tried Yangchen’s trick, poking him in the upper arm. “Why didn’t you finish?”
“My priorities changed.” He’d shuttered his expression; she recognized the look from the mountain. Pleasantly bland but completely impenetrable, like a rock in a stream.
“What are your priorities now?” she asked, testing that face.
“Yeah, Kal, what are your priorities?” his sister chimed in.
“Don’t bother,” Yangchen said. “He doesn’t know. He’s lost them.” Near the altar, a group of men with shaved heads and burgundy robes
had gathered. “They’re starting.” Yangchen looked at Rosemary. “We’ll talk again later. Now, we find a place to sit.”
It wasn’t a request so much as a command. Rosemary wasn’t surprised when Kal followed it. She trailed in the family’s wake, found a seat on the floor, and listened to the lead monk as he began to speak words she couldn’t understand.
She closed her eyes. She felt energized, her grief now turbulently intermingled with curiosity, frustration, and gratitude.
She would certainly make time to speak with Yangchen Beckett again. Rosemary wanted to know more of her history, her story, what had driven her up the slope of Everest so many times.
And if she had a chance to dig deeper and figure out the meaning behind Kal’s expression and Yangchen’s flat statement that her son had lost his priorities—well, she wouldn’t pass up the chance to learn more about that either.
Yangchen Beckett was a very interesting woman. But Kal was an interesting man, and Rosemary met far fewer of the latter than the former.
Chapter 12
They stepped out into the fresh midday sunshine. The sprouting grass around the community center was greener than green, the trees budding. Springtime in New York.
Fingers interlocked, Kal stretched his arms above his head. His shirttails pulled loose from his slacks, but it felt so good to release the tension in his muscles, he stretched as long and as hard as he wanted before letting his arms drop and lazily shoving his shirt back where it belonged.
When he turned around, Rosemary had drifted across the lawn to speak with a woman in a pantsuit, accompanied by a cameraman. The camera sported the logo for a local TV station.
They’d been here last time, too, capturing film for a story on the Everest avalanche and the devastation of the earthquake. His sister had sent him a link with the film clip. Kal hadn’t watched it until months later, when he was back home and he could think about the Khumbu without getting sick to his stomach.
And you were there? the woman asked Rosemary. You were actually in the avalanche?
I was, Rosemary said. She glanced at him.
Kal shook his head. He didn’t want anything to do with this.
Rosemary turned back to the woman. I wasn’t in its path. I was high up the mountain, at Camp Three, preparing to push for the summit.
Were you in any danger?
They always asked that question, because that was the story they wanted. The Everest disaster story. Wasn’t it bad enough that people gambled with their lives on the mountain, and every single season, without fail, some of them lost? Wasn’t it bad enough that there were bodies up there, unrecoverable, frozen and unchanging, too high for even the vultures to get to them?
It wasn’t, though. It was never bad enough. It could always be worse, and the worse it got, the more interested the world became.
What galled Kal was that it wasn’t the kind of interest you could do anything with. Try getting the same reporter to cover an initiative to increase Sherpa guides’ pay and give them life insurance. Kal had. Nobody cared.
There’s always danger when you’re climbing a mountain like Everest, Rosemary said, but the avalanche didn’t affect us. We were lucky.
And what brings you here today?
I wanted to pay my respects to the people who were lost. It’s difficult when you’re involved in this sort of thing to adjust to the reality of being on the mountain one moment, halfway around the world the next. I thought it might help to come here to be with people who understand that.
Did it help you find peace?
It did.
What’s next for you? the reporter asked. Will you go back to Everest now that you’ve come so close to disaster there?
Rosemary smiled, her teeth white and even, her posture perfect. I have to. I’m part of a British team, all women, and we’re going to climb the highest mountain on every continent. They call them the Seven Summits. Everest was meant to be the first. We’ll have to regroup now and come back to it in the future. But definitely, yes. We’ll make it to the top of that peak.
Kal walked down the sidewalk to stand where he couldn’t hear her. He watched her finish the interview, the light playing through her hair, which hung over her shoulders and down her back, as straight and thick as the hair of one of the baby dolls Patricia used to get for her birthday or Christmas, zip-tied to a piece of pink cardboard behind thick plastic.
What the fuck was he doing?
What the fuck was he doing?
Rosemary Chamberlain was no pink-cardboard-and-plastic princess. She was a flesh-and-blood woman with plans that made it impossible—literally impossible—for the two of them to turn into anything.
She had her own stuff, her own interests, her own power, her own life. He liked that about her, liked that she listened and formed her own opinions, but he didn’t like that it meant she saw things. Rosemary wasn’t the kind of woman he could pick what he wanted to show her and not show her, hiding behind a nice-guy mask, ghosting her if he had to, telling her he was busy or had a lot going on in his life until she gave up and went away.
She’d looked right at him when his mom mentioned the degree he’d abandoned, had dug into the whys and hows of it when that was the last thing Kal wanted to talk about.
This morning, there’d been another voicemail from Brian and a couple emails from people who knew he’d been on the mountain and wanted to hear what he had to say about the avalanche.
What he wanted to say was he didn’t have anything to say. Not anymore.
But there was his mom chatting up Rosemary inside, playing her part as a neighborhood celebrity, the nice lady who’d climbed Everest seven times, and Rosemary practically vibrating with interest.
It would be smart to break it off with her. He could pretend they’d made it to the end of the path they were on, a journey that was only about Everest, rescue, and getting home. He could pretend he didn’t want to spend the rest of the day with her.
He wouldn’t, though.
He knew it even before she shook the reporter’s hand and walked away, gathering her hair into both hands and pulling it over one shoulder into a loose twist. He knew it when she came directly over to him afterward, knew it from how gratified he felt when she looked right at him, gave him her attention.
Kal wanted more of her. Wanted more from her.
He just wanted her, however stupid that made him.
“Lunch?” he asked.
She had her phone in her hand and was already thumbing at it, down by her hip. She glanced at the screen, then back at him. “Maybe? I’ve just texted this editor, and I’m not sure—” Her phone began to vibrate. Her smile became an apology, her body already turning away from him as she said, “I’ve just got to speak with him a moment.”
When she returned, she said, “Sorry, I can’t do lunch. I have to meet him in an hour somewhere called Lhasa Fast Food. He says it’s on Seventy-Fourth Street. Do you know it?”
“Yeah, it’s a five-minute walk that way.” He pointed. “The food’s good. I could show you the way, leave you to your meeting.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, I don’t imagine the meeting will take long, and we could do something afterward.” She glanced up the street. “I like this neighborhood. It looked like there were lots of shops and things from the taxi window. If you’re not busy, I’d be happy to see more of it with you.”
“Sure.”
Their eyes met. They stood in the sunlight in front of the steps, staring at each other, ignoring the rest of the world, the people moving around them, the cars in the street. Her eyes were the same blue as the sky, bright with her interest, her curiosity.
Where will you take me? What will you do to me?
Rosemary was dangerous, and Kal was exhausted with danger. But her kind of danger wasn’t death, it was life, and it felt like maybe he’d avoided death just to have a moment like this, with her.
Just to feel this alive.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you around.”
They walked slow, because her shoes made walking fast impractical, and because the sun made him feel stoned. Once they turned from Broadway onto Seventy-Fourth, he pointed out restaurants and shops that were good. The subway tracks ran over the street, and they moved into shadow and back out of it into the syrupy light that made him notice his body, how it moved and how good it felt to move it.
The streets were full of traffic, the sidewalks busy with people, street vendors selling tacos and dumplings and hot corn pancakes, bike delivery guys zipping past, kids with their moms and dads. Kal told Rosemary that Jackson Heights was maybe the most diverse place in the world. She said that was fantastic, and it was.
It was fantastic, walking through Jackson Heights with Rosemary Chamberlain beside him.
“So what’s this meeting?” he asked.
“I’m writing a book.” She glanced at him, shy. “I’m meant to be writing a book.”
“What’s it about?”
“Well, my big plan, I suppose. After I divorced Winston, I decided to do all the things I’d wanted to do before we married—mainly, to climb the Seven Summits, and also to become a published writer. So I pitched this book idea to an agent, that I would climb my way to the summits, and I’d write about my journey—you know, as a woman, spiritually, what it meant to be reclaiming myself through these climbs. That was the logline, at any rate.”
“What’s a logline?”
She tossed her hair off her shoulders, down her back. “Oh, like the first line of a movie trailer, or the description on the back of the novel. One woman’s inspiring journey, et cetera.”
“But you’ve gone off track?”
“The avalanche wasn’t a big help, but even before that, I’ve been having trouble finding the inspiring bits. Feeling inspired. It’s gotten rather plodding.”
“The writing, or the book?”
“Both, I think.”
She met his eyes, and he thought for a moment there was a question there, a hesitation, but he didn’t know what it meant. Something she wasn’t telling him?