“He was green. Look, Zoë, if you drive I can direct you.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” A thought struck her. “Can’t we just call him on his cell phone?”
“Of course!” Zoë fished her own phone out of her pocket and pressed his number. “Goddamn it, it went to voice mail.”
“Maybe he’s not getting reception because of the snow.” They looked up at the sky, which was the unsettling, blank white that presages a storm. “Zoë, we have to do this.”
“All right.” Zoë took a deep breath. “Maya, I hate to break this to you, but you’re going to stay with Rudy and visit his sick something or other.”
“But Mom!”
“I’m not even sure I can drive, it’s about to snow, and I don’t want you in the backseat. Now go!”
“You’ll be careful?”
Moira had hobbled into the barn and was now bringing an armful of blankets and a flashlight to her four-wheel-drive truck. “I’ll take good care of your mommy. Remember, I’m the one who taught Mack to drive.”
Maya gave Zoë one last beseeching look. “But now I’ll miss the big smoochy bit.”
“I’ll miss it, too, if you don’t run over to Rudy and tell him he’s babysitting you.”
“Good luck, Mommy,” Maya said, giving her mother a quick kiss. “I know you can do it.” Then she was running toward Rudy, singing the dun-dun-dun chase music from Mission: Impossible at the top of her lungs.
“Okay, Zoë,” said Moira, much more bracingly than Mack would have done, “you’re doing fine, but try not to grip the wheel so tightly. Your knuckles are white. Now check both ways before pulling out into the road. Good.”
“What now?” Zoë was too frightened to look at the other woman. She kept her eyes on the road, which looked narrower with snow banked on either side of it.
“Go straight until I tell you different.”
Zoë hesitantly held the car to a straight line, all too aware that there were no driver-side brakes, let alone dual steering. “How am I doing?”
“About twenty miles an hour. Zoë, we’re trying to catch him, not get there in time to wave good-bye to his carrier plane. Speed it up.”
Zoë forced herself to step on the gas. “How’s that?”
“The speed limit’s forty-five here. Most people do sixty. You are traveling at a mind-boggling thirty miles per hour.”
“Okay.” Zoë stepped a fraction more on the gas pedal. “There.”
“At this rate, we’ll get there in time to congratulate him on his new deployment.”
“I don’t want to die!”
“We’ll compromise. Forty miles, all right? That’s slower than a funeral procession.”
Zoë watched as the gauge moved up to forty. She tried not to imagine what a tree would feel like if encountered at this speed. “I’m doing it,” she breathed.
“Now don’t forget to turn with the road, that’s it…you need to brake a little, Zoë, brake!”
Zoë recovered the turn, but only barely. Shaking with nerves, she tried to keep going, albeit a little more slowly.
“Mack did teach you to slow down before taking sharp turns, I assume?”
Miserably, Zoë nodded.
“Okay, no harm, no foul, bet next time you’ll remember. Okay, now you’re going ten miles an hour. Zoë, you need to speed it up!” Moira glanced behind them. “Shoot, there’s a line of cars behind us. Pull over a little and let them pass.”
Zoë watched as four cars whipped past them, each looking as irritated as a car can look. “Oh, God, there’s no way we’re going to catch him.”
“Nonsense. Pull back onto the road and step it up to forty again. We have to make it, Zoë. And I don’t think Mack’s all that anxious to get to Kingston, anyway. Bet he’s not taking the short way. If we cut across the back roads we can make up time.”
“But it’s starting to snow.”
Moira reached over and flicked on the windshield wipers, then turned a knob at the end of the signal indicator. “There.”
“What’s that?”
“Just your headlights.”
“I haven’t learned headlights yet! Why the hell do they put them there?”
“Just concentrate on the road, Zoë.”
“You keep trying to reach Mack on the phone.” She saw what she thought was a squirrel, began to brake, and then realized it was a black plastic bag fluttering in the breeze.
“Jesus,” Moira moaned, “she brakes for trash.”
“Your brother is much more encouraging.”
“Which is why you want him back. Okay, indicate right, we’re going to take Starling Road over to…get over, Zoë, it’s a blind corner and you have to keep to your side of the road. Yes. All right. Good.”
“I’m doing it,” said Zoë, amazed that she was still operating the vehicle. “I’m driving.” She tapped on the gas, speeding up without being told as the road straightened out.
“Yes, you are. Now just keep an eye out for hidden drives, there are a lot of them on this road. You don’t want someone charging out of their driveway and slamming right into you.”
And then the snow began to fall in fast, steady flurries that obscured the road. Just as Zoë was about to ask what they should do, another car came barreling out from the left, smashing right into them.
Something hissed and then the world went white as the air bag deployed with a force that knocked all thought out of Zoë’s mind.
A moment later, Zoë opened her eyes. “Oh my God, Moira,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” said Moira, sounding miserable as she gingerly examined her face with her hands. “Except my ribs ache, my fingers hurt, I’ve probably got two black eyes now, and we just lost any chance of getting to Mack in time.”
Zoë touched her own face, which felt as though it had been slapped. “What do we do now?”
“Make sure the other guy is fine, too.”
“I’m sorry, Moira.” She put her hand on the other woman’s arm.
Moira closed her eyes. “Me, too.”
They walked over to the second car, a black Ford pickup, and Moira said, “I don’t believe it.” They both peered in the window of the pickup to see Mack, pinching the bridge of his bloody nose. As always, he kept his window open, and a fair amount of snow had gusted in, dusting his shoulders and hair. Moira gestured that Zoë should have the pleasure of interrogation.
“Mack, my God, what are you doing here?”
“Bleeding.”
“Is your nose broken?”
“Probably.” He looked thinner and younger and more miserable than just two weeks earlier, and his shirt looked as if he’d slept in it at least once. He smelled faintly musty, too, and Zoë was torn between relief and irritation and some other emotion that was slowly bubbling up from deeper inside.
“I thought you were going to Kingston to reenlist. Why won’t you look me in the eye?”
“Because there are two of you, and I can barely handle one at the moment.”
“Oh, Jesus, Moira, we have to call for EMTs.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t be stupid, of course I dare. Moira, call. Mack, how about I start by telling you the reason I was driving into a goddamn snowstorm was to stop you from throwing your life away.”
Now Mack did look at her. “You were driving?”
“You were throwing your life away!”
He turned to his sister. “How’d she do?”
“Let me put it this way, she still needs your services.” His sister leaned in closer and said, “Also, she loves you.”
“The way you said that almost sounded Jewish,” said Zoë.
Mack looked back at Zoë, his eyes slightly crossed. “Well, this is a hit in the head.”
“That definitely sounded Jewish.” Zoë opened the driver-side door and stroked the snow off his hair. “Mack, how could you just leave like that?”
“Had a little crisis of faith. But I was coming back. That
’s why I smashed into you. I was turning around in the driveway.”
“But what took you so long? I thought you would have been way ahead?”
Mack shrugged, looking sheepish. “I stopped for a sandwich. And while I ate, I was rereading this.” He held up a school anthology of poetry, and then indicated which page: Rilke’s poem about Hermes, Orpheus, and Eurydice. “I got to the part where it says, ‘She was already root,’ and then I figured it out.”
“Figured what?”
“She was already dead. At least, in her mind.” Mack stopped pinching his nose, checked to make sure that no blood was still coming out, then looked at Zoë directly, his eyes now focused and clear. “It wasn’t Orpheus’s fault that Eurydice was lost. Even if he’d never looked back, even if he’d already brought her out and gotten her home and spent the next fifty years with her, she was already lost.”
Zoë tried to understand what Mack was saying. She had an idea, and didn’t think it boded well for their relationship. “Do you mean she already belonged someplace else?”
Mack shook his head, then winced. “No, I mean, she’d already signed off on life. She wasn’t yearning for hubby anymore, she was longing to go back to deathsville. And that’s what I’ve been doing, more or less.” He smiled at his sister. “You nailed it, back at Thanksgiving. I mean, Bill did, when he repeated what you’d said about the way I was acting.”
Moira gave a little huff of embarrassed laughter.
Zoë gave them a moment before asking her question. “What made you realize that you wanted to come back to the world of the living?”
“Fear.”
Zoë tried not to show her surprise. She’d half been expecting some big romantic declaration, half been expecting to hear something that would spell the end of their affair. “What do you mean, fear?”
“For the first time, I was scared shitless to go back over there. And you know what? Fear’s not always such a bad thing. I mean, some kinds of fear you have to fight to overcome, just like you said to Maya. But other kinds of fear, like the fear of getting blown up in a war that seems to be making less sense every day, well, maybe that’s not the monster under the bed.”
“Or maybe the monster isn’t always a bad monster.”
They paused for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes. “So, you drove, huh?”
“I did. And you came back. Were you going to call me?”
“No.” He reached for her hand. “I was going to come for you.”
“That’s good, because it looks like I’m stuck here for at least another year.”
“Stuck, huh?”
She leaned in and kissed him, blood and all. “Maybe that’s not exactly the right word.”
Epilogue
W hen I said I missed walking, Mack, I meant to stores and people’s homes. Not up a mountain.”
“Quit complaining,” said Mack, who was already two yards ahead of her. When she wasn’t scrabbling for handholds, she was admiring her lover’s rear view.
“Come on, Mommy,” Maya yelled from farther up the trail. “We want to get to the top before noon.”
“Couldn’t we have waited until it was actually spring before attempting a vertical climb? There are still pockets of ice and snow.”
“Are you kidding? It’s a gorgeous April day, nearly sixty degrees.” Mack held out his hand and helped Zoë over an icy patch. “All this is melting. And you’ve made it. We’re almost at the top.”
“Are we?” Zoë paused, opening her canteen and taking a drink. The truth was, it was a lovely day, and despite the fact that the ground was still crusted with frost in places, it was thick with mud in others, and almost all the trees were budded with green. Because the trees hadn’t actually leafed up yet, she could see the town of Arcadia below, spread out in a patchwork of fields and houses, picturesque even in the soggy early spring, doubtless breathtaking in full flower. If only the developers could see this, she thought. So far, their little group had been successful in stopping any actual bull-dozing, and there was a moratorium on any real decision making until the new town board, headed by Pete Grell’s wife, had agreed on a zoning plan.
As editor of the Register Herald, Zoë had plenty of opportunity to speak with the new town supervisor, who was, in typical incestuous country fashion, also the former editor. As for Pete, Edna said he was doing much better after his stroke, and although he no longer drove, he did sit with his old boss in the driving school, complaining about Mack and weekenders and how city folks were changing the way things were done in the old town. Neither Moroney nor Mack had seen the inside of a jail, which was half fair, thought Zoë. And half fair was a lot better than you often got in this life.
“Nice view, huh?” Mack had come up behind her, resting his hands on her waist.
“Yeah.” Zoë glanced up at Mack, and he leaned in to kiss her.
“Salty,” he said.
“Sweaty.”
“Will you guys get a move on?” Maya was standing atop a log, looking a little like Robin Hood with her hands on her hips. “As I recall, folks, we have a ton of people coming over for a Passover dinner tonight.”
“Don’t remind me,” said Zoë, starting to climb again. Once she’d accepted that they were, in fact, going to be living in Arcadia for a while, she’d found herself gradually warming to the idea of making the ritual spring feast. In the past, she and Maya had gone to friends’ houses for the holiday, and Zoë had grumbled about how she would rather just ignore the whole thing. But this year she realized that she wanted to celebrate the ancient festival of freedom and spring.
“Need a hand?” Mack was crouched on a rock, watching her with an amused glint in his eyes.
“No, I do not need any assistance. Just turn around and leave me alone or I will stop right here.”
“You’ll have a lot of hungry guests.”
“I said, Turn around, Laughing Boy.” With a salute, he obeyed.
Of course, she and Maya would be the only two actual Jews at the seder, but that was all right. The way Zoë interpreted it, they were all celebrating some form of emancipation.
Moira was looking forward to finalizing her divorce from Bill and getting ready to adopt a baby from China. Gretchen and Frances, who were now openly calling themselves a couple, were also considering having a child, and Skeeter had surprised everyone by falling in love with a Manhattan lawyer named Ursula who rode a vintage Harley. Bronwyn, on the other hand, had been unable to come to the seder. Brian, it seemed, was still working long hours and one of the twins had an ear infection.
As for Maya, she was loving school, enjoying books, and dreaming of a career training horses.
“Hurry up! You’re almost there, Mom!”
Too out of breath to speak, Zoë just concentrated on not losing her footing on the loose stones. She reached up, grabbing the limb of a small sapling as a handhold, and then cursed as it broke off. She cursed again when she scraped her knee, but Mack and Maya were already at the top, out of earshot.
Brushing herself off, Zoë scrambled up the last rise and there she was, at the top of Amimi Mountain. She reached her arms over her head to stretch out her shoulders, and thought about how the spring was different in the country. In Manhattan, April was an occasion for light fabrics and alfresco lunches, and there was a gentle sense of general happiness at the change in the weather. But here, Zoë felt as though she had emerged from the long, dark tunnel of winter into light and warmth and the surging possibility of new things growing up all around.
Of course, she still wanted to get back to Manhattan. And Mack had sworn he would come with her next time, despite his uneasiness with crowds.
“So,” said Maya, slipping beside her mother. “What do you think? Are you ready to climb the fire tower?” She indicated the rickety structure of open stairs that culminated in a tiny lookout.
“I’m not sure about that.”
“Of course you are,” said Mack. “You’re going first. I have to write our names up there,
remember?”
Zoë put her foot on the first step. “It doesn’t look terribly safe.”
“It is unless you plan on flinging yourself over the side.”
“I don’t like seeing that much air between my feet and the ground. What’s my incentive for doing this again?”
Mack slipped something metallic into her hand. “Why, you get to drive home, of course.”
Zoë didn’t know whether or not she wanted to live in Arcadia forever, and even if Mack hinted at wanting to get married, she was too much of a cynic to trust that what they had would last for a lifetime. Still, learning to take pleasure in something that had previously been a source of frustration and anxiety made her a bit more optimistic.
Trying not to think about falling, she kept going up.
Acknowledgments
I owe a debt of gratitude (and a preemptive apology for any mistakes I made) to my research sources: Dominic Calabro of Factory Lane Automotive for helping me understand the finer parts (and some of the rusty ones) of automobilia; April Brown of Stanfordville Fire and Rescue for walking me through all the things a country medic needs to know; Sandy Charlap and Francine Borden of the Kildonan School for teaching me a new way of looking at reading, writing, and learning; and John Henry and Constanza Low for financial information. I am grateful to be working with the hard-working Atria team—Judith Curr, Isolde Sauer, Hannah Morrill, and special thanks to Greer Hendricks, my editor, for all her wisdom and support. Holly Harrison, I owe you big for catching my mistakes when you had fires of your own to put out. Jennifer Crusie, thanks for all the many kindnesses, and for the really good chocolate. As always, I am beholden to my husband, Mark, my kids, Matthew and Elinor, and my mother, Ziva, for putting up with the weirdness of a writer on deadline. And last but not least, a huge thanks to my agent, Meg Ruley, for all the tangible reasons, and the intangibles, too.
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