Completely

by Ruthie Knox

  “I haven’t been to a nightclub since I was my daughter’s age.” She wiggled her feet. “You should take me out dancing.”

  His phone pinged with an incoming text. Kal glanced at it, then swiped through the password screen to read what Sangmu had to say.

  Where are you?

  Everybody’s been hanging out at the restaurant since the prayer thing.

  Mom wants us to have a big family dinner.

  She says you have to come and are you bringing the girl?

  Kal set Rosemary’s foot down in his lap and texted back, Her name is Rosemary.

  Sangmu texted him the emoji for black Santa, followed by a thumbs-up, followed by a birthday cake. He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, which was standard operating procedure with Sangmu on text.

  “Who is it?”

  “My sister. She says the family’s having dinner, and my mom wants you to come.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know. Hang on.”

  He texted his sister, and when she responded he relayed to Rosemary, “Seven o’clock.”

  “I’d love to come.”

  Kal tried to tell himself he wasn’t pleased to hear it. He succeeded not at all.

  He was such a moron.

  Kal understood that Rosemary had lost some part of herself in her marriage and motherhood, that she was trying to get it back. Still, only two kinds of people climbed Everest. His mom had climbed it seven times. She was the walking wounded, fucked up from all the years she’d been married to a man who hit her and threatened her and manipulated her. Merlin died, maybe Mom killed him, maybe not—and what did she do but head straight up the mountain?

  She did it over and over again. It was a penance.

  Rosemary came along, and she wanted to tell Yangchen Beckett’s story the right way. Open up a vein, make the world take notice of the woman who was strong enough to climb Everest but hadn’t been strong enough to keep her husband from ruining her life. What did that make Rosemary? She was the walking wounded or she was a megalomaniac.

  Just because Kal liked her didn’t make her not a megalomaniac. It just meant he liked megalomania. He’d met a lot of people obsessed with their own power. On the whole, they were some charismatic motherfuckers.

  “What time is it now?” she asked.

  “Four-thirty.”

  “That leaves us with two and a half hours of rubbish time.”

  “Rubbish time?”

  “Rubbish time, garbage time, you know—those slices of time you don’t quite know what to do with, but you’re stuck with them. Twenty minutes, or forty-five, or whatever amount of time isn’t long enough to really focus and get anything done, but too long to just throw away. I renovated a manor home on rubbish time, not to mention volunteered for charities, earned an advanced degree, started a career writing pieces for different journals and magazines, built up a press file—”

  “What’s your advanced degree?”

  “Oh. I did more than one, actually. One in interior design, one in historical preservation, and then a couple certificate programs, project management and marketing. I have the kind of brain that doesn’t do well with idleness. I used to have a friend who said I reinvented myself every three years, like clockwork.” Rosemary frowned. “I’m glad we’re not friends anymore. She kept saying it, and it drove me mad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The way I see it, I’ve never reinvented myself. I’ve only ever been me. It’s the circumstances of my life, my marriage, being a mother, that forced me to make all of these compromises.”

  “Because of rubbish time.”

  “I’ve never reinvented who I am. I’ve simply pursued whatever I could, whichever slice of myself was available to me, when I’ve had the opportunity. This woman sees Rosemary who is interested in interior design one day and historical preservation the next, and then climbing mountains, as though a woman can’t be interested in more than one thing at a time.”

  The way she frowned as she lectured him—he didn’t want to take her home to his mom. He wanted to take her somewhere quiet, and private, with a soft mattress and room service.

  “Hey, Kal?”

  “Hmm?” It would be enjoyable to peel that tight suit skirt off her, unbutton that uptight blouse one button at a time, kiss his way down her stomach…

  “Kal.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I need to speak with your mother tonight about my idea for the book.”

  “Okay.”

  “But first I need something else to wear. I propose we separate for a few hours.”

  “You don’t want to take me shopping?”

  “I have no use for men when I’m shopping.” He could think of a few uses for himself. “I only have a few hours, and it’s going to take me twenty minutes to get my feet back into these shoes. You head on to wherever you go when you’re not with me. I’ll text you later.” She extracted her phone from her jacket pocket.

  “I actually do have stuff to do.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Sure.”

  “I’ve got old ladies to drive, you know. Grocery orders to supervise. Phone calls to return.”

  It was true, but mostly he just said it to sound hopeless and pathetic so she would laugh with him some more, because the truth was he didn’t especially want to leave her. Which made him feel the slightest bit hopeless and pathetic.

  Kal compensated by invading her personal space so she had to look up from her phone, and then look up some more, and then dropped his head to kiss her neck and whisper in her ear, “Hey, princess?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Get yourself a decent pair of shoes and clothes you can dance in. After we get through this dinner, we have a date.”

  “You’re going to take me to a nightclub?”

  “I am. If you can still walk.”

  “My feet have seen much worse than Queens.”

  “I can believe that. C’mere.”

  She tipped her head back. He kissed the smile off her face, holding her head in the palm of his hand, and when she giggled at the soft pressure of his lips brushing over the corner of her mouth, he licked right up her cheek in a slow, wet stroke to hear her squeal.

  Rosemary Chamberlain didn’t bore him.

  Not even close.

  Chapter 14

  The taxi dropped Rosemary off at the address Kal had given her with ten minutes to spare.

  Her shoes felt like heaven. She had no idea how this was possible. The gentleman who’d sold them to her had sworn they would never hurt, no matter what she did in them, and also that they made her arse look like a million bucks.

  Rosemary texted Kal that she’d arrived.

  Hang on a sec.

  She put her phone away. From the sidewalk, she could see through the glass into Kal’s family’s restaurant. It was crowded, every table full, with waiting diners lining the walls. She didn’t see any faces she recognized.

  A door opened in a recessed space she hadn’t noticed to one side of the restaurant. The animated face of a small girl appeared. “You’re Rosemary.”

  “I am. Are you Patricia?”

  “Yes! Kal says to take you upstairs.”

  “Excellent.”

  The girl turned and began walking up the steps, leaving Rosemary to work out closing and locking the door to the street behind them.

  “I like your purse,” Patricia said.

  “Thank you.” It was small and sparkly, and had cost the earth.

  “I like your shoes, too.”

  “They’re the very best shoes I have ever put on my feet.”

  The girl turned and hunched down by Rosemary’s feet. “They’re all…like, the way the bottoms are?”

  “The soles.”

  “Yeah, they’re so tall. What’s that called?” She looked up, her brown eyes wide and interested.

  “I believe they call it a wedge heel.”

  “I want some shoes like that.”

  “I hope you get som
e.”

  “Thanks!” She skipped to a landing, then stopped abruptly and whirled toward Rosemary again. “Kal says you were at Everest. Did you summit?”

  “No. I wasn’t able to because of the avalanche.”

  “My mom has been to the summit seven times.”

  “I’d heard that. I’d like to talk to your mom about it, actually.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, I’m a writer as well as a mountain climber. I’d like to write your mother’s story.” It was premature, perhaps, to mention this to Yangchen’s youngest daughter before she’d mentioned it to Yangchen, but Rosemary had already told Nikil and Kal, and at any rate she needed to begin rehearsing her pitch.

  “Will she be famous?”

  “In some circles, I should think.”

  “Will she be on TV?”

  “I don’t know. If she’d like to be, that could be arranged, I imagine. I would begin with a magazine article and go from there.”

  “Will I get to be in the magazine?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to take a closer look at your qualifications when the time comes.”

  “I’m going to summit more times than Mom,” Patricia said. “I’m going to summit more times than anybody. Don’t tell Kal, though. He doesn’t like it when people talk about going to the summit. He hasn’t been. He says he doesn’t want to, but I think it’s just because he isn’t strong enough.”

  “I don’t know, he’s quite strong. He didn’t have any trouble getting to the highest camp, where I was. And you have to be strong to do the work he was doing with the ice doctors.”

  “I guess.” Patricia began climbing again. “But I still don’t get why he doesn’t want to go all the way to the top. I mean, what’s the point of climbing most of the way to the top of a mountain? The top is, like, right there.”

  “You make a good point.”

  “I know.” She skipped to the top of the stairs and pulled open the door. “Kal! Your girlfriend is here!”

  Rosemary understood immediately after this announcement was made what it meant to have gratitude for the talents of an excellent personal shopper. The woman, Celestine, had been recommended by Allie, who passed on the recommendation from her sister, May, who guaranteed the results. Celestine insisted that since Rosemary planned to attend a family dinner, she required something contemporary and tasteful to wear over her nightclub clothes to tone down the effect. They’d selected a white cotton jacket with a yoke embroidered in flowers, and Rosemary clutched it closed as she counted the number of eyes that had turned to look at her.

  Eight…ten…twelve…

  Eighteen…twenty…twenty-two.

  Eleven people were staring at her.

  Thankfully, one of them was Kal. He beckoned her over. “Everybody, this is Rosemary. Rosemary, this is everybody. You met Patricia and Sangmu and Mom. This is Tenzing and Tashi, my brothers, you know my uncle Dorjee already, that’s his wife, Mala, and then there’s Auntie Choden, Auntie Dawa, and New York Auntie Jigme—not to be confused with Milwaukee Auntie Jigme. None of them are actually my aunties, but it’s too complicated to explain how they’re related, so I try not to.” He grinned. “I like the shoes.”

  “They’re very comfortable.”

  “They’re hot.” He said this under his breath, no longer addressing the entire room. His relatives had resumed their conversations, the introductions completed.

  “Not the time or the place,” Rosemary reminded him.

  Kal smiled. “How would you know? You just got here. What’s in the bag?”

  “I brought a gift for your mother.”

  “What is it?”

  “Perfume.”

  “That’s really nice, but she’s not exactly a perfume kind of person.”

  “Kal, she’s a woman. This perfume is exquisite, and if you think your mother won’t like it, you’re an idiot. Yangchen!” Rosemary greeted Kal’s mother over his shoulder with a smile. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “You’re welcome. For me?” Rosemary handed her the wrapped box.

  “Just a little something.”

  Patricia and Sangmu crowded around as Yangchen opened the box, Patricia asking, “What is it? What did she get you? Did she bring something for me?” and Sangmu shushing her but unable to keep from leaning over her mother’s shoulder.

  Yangchen seemed not to notice. She unwrapped the box slowly, with care, and examined the perfume box on both sides.

  “It’s one of my favorite scents,” Rosemary told her.

  “It’s very expensive.”

  “I saw it and thought of you.”

  “I’ve done the tester from magazines.” Yangchen beamed. “Come, let me introduce you to some people.”

  As she walked away, Rosemary met Kal’s eye and shot him with an imaginary gun. Pow. Told you so.

  He shrugged, smiling.

  After that came a whirlwind of people and food and questions. Kal’s family members wanted to know her story—where she’d come from, why she was in New York, what had taken her to Everest, where she would go next. Rosemary enjoyed telling them, and enjoyed the experience of being dropped inside Kal’s family, alternately feted and ignored, worldly and ignorant, important and irrelevant.

  When dinner was served—an eclectic collection of take-out favorites from an Indian restaurant—she ate until her stomach felt tight, listening to the conversation and watching Kal across the table from her. Everyone seemed to think very highly of him. His opinion was frequently solicited, his involvement in every aspect of family life apparent even to an outsider.

  She hoped to find a private moment to speak with Yangchen and perhaps broach the subject of her story, but the right moment didn’t present itself until dessert was served, and then it didn’t so much present itself as fall into the middle of the conversation like a brick dropped from the sky.

  “Rosemary’s going to make Mom famous,” Patricia announced to the whole table. “They’re going to be on TV and everything, talking about Everest. That’s why she gave her expensive perfume.”

  Eleven pairs of eyes turned to watch as her cheeks heated and she fumbled for the right response.

  Bugger.

  Yangchen’s expressionless face perfectly matched Kal’s. The whole family had gone blank, in fact. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

  “The perfume was a gift,” was all she could think to say.

  “It’s very nice,” Yangchen said.

  “I would like to interview you. If you’re willing. I haven’t—I mean, it isn’t such an elaborate and evil plan as it might have sounded, just now, the way Patricia so colorfully described it, it’s only we were speaking on the stairs, and I’d mentioned my interest in interviewing you, which is quite keen.”

  Yangchen inclined her head, the barest hint of a nod.

  “I know you haven’t given interviews previously, and I don’t know whether you’d like to be interviewed formally or to share some memories, you know, informal recollections, but my hope was to write a piece about you that might offer an alternative perspective to what’s already out there. I’m meant to be writing a book, you see, about my expedition, and what it’s like as a woman to undertake this sort of thing.”

  “She needs someone to write about.” Kal popped a forkful of food into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and sipped from his water glass before adding, “With her summit attempt canceled and all.”

  Rosemary wasn’t sure this was an entirely helpful observation.

  On the other hand, she wasn’t sure what would be helpful with Yangchen, or if anything she’d said had been correct. The table had gone so quiet, she could hear the ticking of the wall clock and feel her heart beating in the bottoms of her wedge-heel-clad feet.

  She wanted this.

  She wanted Yangchen to say yes.

  She wanted it more than she could remember wanting to reach the peak of Everest, which didn’t make any sort of sense, but this was where Rosemary found herself—gathered around a fami
ly’s table in Elmhurst, New York, eating Indian food and praying with her whole body to be granted the opportunity to tell Yangchen Beckett’s story.

  She didn’t understand how the avalanche had brought her to this moment, or why, but she understood that what she felt in her body, in her heartbeat, was hope.

  Hope had become unfamiliar.

  Whatever she’d been doing on Everest, and planning to climb the Seven Summits—what she’d spent the last few years engaged in, night and day, to the exclusion of everything else—hadn’t made her feel a fraction as hopeful, or as interested, as she felt right now.

  Yangchen cleared her throat. “When are you leaving?”

  “New York?”

  Yangchen nodded.

  “Tomorrow,” Rosemary said. “I have to go to Wisconsin to see my daughter, and then I’m flying to London right after, to put the pieces of my expedition back together.”

  “We have no time.”

  “Not on this trip, no, but I thought we could video chat, or speak on the phone”—Yangchen’s mouth had begun to turn down at the corners—“or if you like, I can come back to New York as soon as I’m able and we can work together in person.” Even as she said it, Rosemary doubted it would be possible. The article needed to be written soon if it was to be written at all. Since she concluded the meeting with Nikil, he’d already talked to her editor in England, who’d asked to see new pages, an outline, a definitive plan. Unless Rosemary put off her return to London—but Indira had made it clear she was needed in London—

  “I’ll go to Wisconsin,” Yangchen said.

  “What?” Kal asked.

  “I’ll go to Wisconsin,” Yangchen repeated. “Kal can drive us. We’ll have time to talk. It’s the best plan.”

  “You would do that?” Rosemary asked. She was already shuffling travel plans in her head. Kal had said it would take two days to drive to Wisconsin, but if she rebooked her London flight through a different airport she could see Beatrice quickly and still make it to the meeting with Indira. Just. “That would be absolutely—”

  “Nuts,” Kal interrupted. “That would be nuts. She’s flying to see her kid, not embarking on the Beckett family road trip. I don’t think—”

  “Kalden.”

  Kal went instantly, completely silent. He and his mother stared at each other.