“Caleb’s gone,” he said.
“What do you mean gone?” She gargled it.
“He left. Took another job, down the hill.”
She felt the blow. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said. “I have time.”
She put the water on, then had trouble separating a filter from the stack, her hand trembling from the fright. “Will you go too?”
“I’ll finish up here.” He still stood by the door, as if unwilling to enter. “We did a big push to finish everything I needed him for. The rest, and your folks’ house, I can manage. I haven’t slept more’n three hours since Sunday.”
“I was beginning to wonder…” Cress had made popcorn last night and the smell—the oil a little off—hung in the room. “I’m sorry,” she added. “You two were having such a good time.”
“For a while. Candy didn’t like him being up here. Out of her clutches.”
“And he knew,” Cress said. “He came up one night and saw us.”
“I wondered,” said Quinn. “He got pretty tight-jawed when I started back skiing with you.”
As if skiing was the issue.
Guilt drearied the air. “I’m sorry,” she said again. Quinn looked drawn, old, bruised under his eyes. Her own face, she thought, so wide and flat and never beautiful in the gentlest light, must seem starkly plain. She was self-conscious, too, about her work clothes, the ivory polo shirt and dull navy skirt, the rubber boots.
“I don’t want coffee,” said Quinn. “I have to get some sleep.”
He saw her to her car without touching her or kissing her goodbye.
Curling down the mountain to Beech Creek, she felt chastened and faintly ill with shame, as if she and Quinn had been on a long and merry drunk, then abruptly forced to sober up and see themselves in the harsh light of day. As Caleb saw them. Misbehaving. Incautious. Poised to cause real pain.
And she’d liked Caleb first, and more. He was sunnier, cleverer, so much closer to her age and sensibility. Whereas Quinn was like some sad old king who’d designated her for his own use.
She was glad then to be at the country club, to run for lemon slices and ice for the golf ladies, to tray out glass bowls of green sherbet that none of them would touch, to make and pour pot after pot of decaf coffee.
Heading back up the mountain through blue afternoon shadows, Cress was calmer and resigned. Love affairs, it seemed, had hidden components that, when removed, destabilized the whole. Caleb, she saw now, had served as an impediment; by being there, he’d limited the time they could spend together, which fueled their yearning but also kept them neatly in check. His defection had knocked the wind out of them; she doubted they could rally.
She trudged up her snow-choked driveway to find a folded note stuck on the glass door with blue masking tape: Come to trailer for pork chops.
* * *
Quinn had slept all day. He puttered at the stove, clattered pans, hummed. The word for him was chipper. She sat at the table and tried to catch up. But being in the trailer raised another specter: it was impossible not to think of Sylvia. The scanty, stiff brown-and-white gingham curtains might have been original to the trailer, but Sylvia had surely selected the Melmac plates, the flowered pillowcases, and maybe even the double-flannel sleeping bag. Who knew how many nights she’d slept encased in that crass American toile of pointing setters, gun-toting hunters, and flying mallards. Had Quinn spent so many nights alone here that he no longer registered Sylvia’s claim? Cress would not jeopardize his chipperness by asking.
He fed her chops and eggs, crusty potatoes, bourbon-spiked coffee. She presented the merganser miniature, which he propped up against the salt shaker so he could admire it all evening. They played cribbage with competitive intensity—she won by a full length; he was truly lousy at games. Victory, finally, made her chipper too. He showed her how to light the little propane lamp by the bed and crank the window, “or we’ll be found entwined and asphyxiated in the morning.”
Quinn rose when it was still dark. He turned on a shuddering little heater and brewed coffee in an aluminum drip pot, brought her a cup in bed. He fried bacon and made toast, hummed as he basted eggs, and called her to the table.
Such was their first full night together, and it became a favorite, often visited memory.
* * *
Late in January, snow fell a foot a day for a week. The webbed aluminum deck furniture—a chaise and two chairs—went from blanketed to overstuffed, and finally to wholly abstract, Brancusian. “Welcome to your first real Sierra dump,” Don Dare called to her from the new house.
They awoke one morning to find footprints on both of the A-frame’s porches; they looked almost human, but were larger and clawed. “Your bear.” Quinn crouched to examine the prints. “Big fella.” The bear had gone to every door, the sliders on the front and side porches, then around back to the never-opened door by the kitchen. He had paused, too, at each of the downstairs bedroom windows.
He’d tried the basement door, as well, they discovered that afternoon when they went to put on their skis. Quinn said, “You know my mother once baited, killed, butchered, and canned a bear.”
“Your mom?” said Cress.
They snapped down their boot toes and moved off, into the trees toward the meadow. The snow was soft and deep.
The first time his family moved up to Noah Mountain, Quinn said, his father took a disaster relief job in Mississippi. Before he left, Lew cleaned out all the bank accounts, even the one his wife kept secret from him, for emergencies.
“But that’s criminal!” Cress said. “Robbing his own family!”
“He was going through Vegas. He thought he’d double or triple it.”
One night after dinner, Quinn said, his mother took the compost bucket and tossed food scraps into the yard. She loaded two deer slugs in the twelve-gauge, opened the kitchen window, and sat on the counter with her feet in the sink, the barrels resting on her knees.
Outside, an icy snow was falling.
The boys could sit at the kitchen table, she said, but they had to be completely quiet. Quinn was around twelve then, Caleb three. The kitchen was soon freezing from the open window. Quinn crept off and brought their hats and heavy coats and helped his brother bundle up.
They dozed and woke, dozed and woke, and each time found themselves still in the cold silent kitchen. And then Quinn opened his eyes just as his mother lifted her gun. Without making a sound, he stood on his chair, and Caleb did too. They didn’t see anything at first, then just a thickening in the sleet that grew darker and, coming into the barn light, became a bear.
This was an old trash-pillaging campsite marauder that Fish and Game had airlifted from Yosemite and deposited south of Mineral King. Eventually, his nose drew him to the small scattered community of Noah Mountain, where he resumed his old vocation. All summer, he’d raided smoke shacks, gardens, and henhouses.
In the cold mercury vapor glow, he glittered as if covered with glass beads. He entered the yard on all fours, but when he got twenty-five, thirty feet away, he rose up, stuck his blunt old snout in the air, sniffing and sniffing, his head in a bright cloud of steam from his own breath. They got a big whiff of him then—man! was he rank!—and Quinn’s mother fired both barrels.
It was like a bomb went off. In such close quarters, the sound blasts right through your bones. All the dishes in the cupboards jumped. Caleb started howling. Quinn’s ears rang so much he got dizzy and had to sit down. But his mother made him get up and help her drag the dead bear into the barn.
They could move him only a few inches at a time. Four hundred pounds of dead weight. He smelled sour and rotten, like week-old garbage. Quinn’s mother knew what to do, she was a librarian. She’d done research. She skinned him and dressed him out, hung him in the barn, and, after a couple days, butchered the whole carcass. She froze some meat, ground and canned the rest.
“Canned it? Canned bear? And you ate it?” said Cress.
“All year long.”
“What did it
taste like?”
Quinn shrugged. “Like meat in chili. Meat in spaghetti. Every so often I got a hint of that garbagey smell. Like with a pig raised on a small farm, you can sometimes taste barnyard in the meat? I could taste the trash scavenger in that bear. Or thought I could. Never had much taste for bear after that.”
“Who could blame you.”
Yeah. And maybe ten years after that night, Quinn said, he was in a hut up north of Whitney, with his dad and his uncle Evan. They were in bed and heard the door scrape open, and in came that same hot sour stink. His uncle Evan shone a torch on him—he already had his nose in their supplies. “I got him,” Quinn said, being the nearest, and the only one with a clear shot.
“I had this old Ruger pistol, and I shot six times at point-blank range and didn’t hit him once. Unconsciously, I think I never wanted to eat bear again. Old guy finally did get the hint and lumbered out. Took his time, though. I never lived it down. Bear comes in and all but asks to be shot, and I couldn’t oblige.”
* * *
Cress, browning onions and chunks of pork, answered the phone.
“Cress? It’s Julie, Julie Garsh. I’m wondering if I can stop by around eleven?”
They hadn’t spoken for at least two months. In her surprise, Cress feigned enthusiasm. “Come for lunch! I’m making posole.”
“No, no. I’ll only have a minute.”
Since it was the first week in February, Cress thought, her father must be contesting the latest invoice and Julie probably wanted to talk about that. The last time he was up, Sam Hartley had seen plans for Rick’s next custom home, and although it lacked the Hartleys’ glassed-in porch and there was a slight difference in scale, the two floor plans were identical. “I paid him a full architect’s fee and not for a set of rescalable plans,” Sam said and, for the first time, used the word lawsuit. Perhaps Julie wanted to talk about that, too.
In Sparkville, Cress had bought yellow and purple hominy and chipotle peppers from the Mexican grocery. The posole was simmering when Julie came in huffing from her climb up the driveway. “Sure I can’t interest you?” Cress lifted the lid, loosing a cloud of meaty steam.
Julie seemed startled. “I have to feed Rick lunch. I can only stay a sec.”
“At least sit.” Cress motioned to the love seat and pulled out a chair from the kitchen table for herself.
Neither sat. Julie had gained weight, her chin was now farther adrift in her softening neck—fond of her own cooking, as Jakey once said. Not enough time spent stretching her legs in God’s grandeur. “How are you?” said Cress.
“Rick’s got three more houses starting in the spring, so I’m up to my ears getting plans to the county.” Julie gazed out the front window, where Shale Mountain presided over the whitened world. “This really is the best view…,” she said. “You know, Rick and I were so glad when you moved here, Cress. We were really hoping to be friends. We were as disappointed as you were that things didn’t work out with you and Jakey…”
“No great tragedy,” said Cress. “Considering—”
“And I can see that you were probably pretty lonely then—”
“Not so bad. But if anyone else you know falls for Jakey, you might warn her that he’s a compulsive—”
“I can’t speak to that—”
“I can,” said Cress. “Take my word for it. He’s got ’em coming and—”
Julie’s voice rose. “I am not here to talk about Jakey, Cress.”
“Oh. Okay.” Cress waited.
Julie drew herself up and looked at Cress for the first time. “I just can’t sit by while you destroy another woman’s life.”
Cress’s mind went white, even before she fully grasped what Julie meant.
“Sylvia Morrow doesn’t deserve this,” Julie added.
“Sylvia who?” Cress decided on the spot to deny everything.
“Rick and I saw you two. And you’re out every day, over hill and dale.”
“I have no idea what you think is going on, but you are way off the mark.” Cress’s heart and thoughts thumped: Over hill over dale we will hit the dusty trail …
“I called her once already, way back before Christmas. I told her, I said, Sylvia, if you want to hold on to your marriage, you’d better hightail it up here.”
“You what?”
“She was here the very next day. I’ll call her again if I have to. And this time, I’ll name names.”
“Call her! Why should I care? She knows we’re friends.”
Julie’s mouth snapped shut. Cress’s heart was banging so hard, the whole high room pulsed and contracted.
Oh, right. The night the wives showed up with the pie and the panties.
“Rick won’t stand for this behavior,” Julie went on. “Clearly Caleb couldn’t, either. His leaving put us behind schedule on two jobs. If your parents complain, I’ll have to tell them why their construction is taking a month longer.”
Cress’s lips twitched and pressure bulged in her sinuses; she was about to cry. But she’d never give Julie the satisfaction.
“Rick and I sometimes wish we’d never met any of you Hartleys.” Julie lifted her coat off the hook. “But as someone who was once your friend, Cress, let me give you some advice. You should get into therapy ASAP.”
“I’ve been in therapy.”
“Then think about going back. You’re—you’re out of control!” Julie slid open the door. “Rick and I will be civil to you,” she said. “Obviously, you have free run of your parents’ place. But you are not to set foot on our other jobsites.”
When the door shut, fat drops sprang from Cress’s eyes. She disliked rebuke—who doesn’t? Yes, yes, there was something wrong with her: she was insufficiently moved by—in fact, oddly impervious to—Sylvia Morrow’s plight. But why should she be, when Sylvia was the one protected, the one in perpetual ascendance, whose rights and needs would always trump hers. Cress, in fact, had no rights! No protection!
How had she given the Garshes the benefit of the doubt? They’d repelled her from the start: Rick’s finicky eating, fussy fires, and sly swindles; Julie’s fringe and feathers, her too-rich cooking and sidling, peremptory intimacy.
Julie would never dare browbeat Ondine Streeter for cheating on Tom.
And this alleged solidarity of married people—did it extend only to wives? Did Julie scold Jakey about the husbands he cuckolded? Did she threaten to tell his parents? And hey—wasn’t Rick married when Julie met him? Hadn’t Julie demanded a divorce lawyer before their first date?
Hypocrisy always surprised Cress. Its transparency, its guilelessness. As if no one would ever notice.
* * *
“Julie says she’ll call Sylvia about us.”
“She wouldn’t dare,” said Quinn. “She knows I’d quit. Rick’s already months behind and the Rodingers are in a swivet.”
Fifteen
Once the sky cleared and the plow pushed through, the berms rose high as hedgerows and the development was newly devoid of landmarks. Houses, now windowed white humps, had lost all distinguishing characteristics. Distance became elastic. Walking from the lodge, Cress thought she was almost home, only to find herself on the main highway, which she recognized by the few yards of broken yellow line scraped clear. Kevin, passing by in his truck, picked her up and, after numerous wrong turns, finally dropped her off at the A-frame. Jakey himself walked to check on a cabin and ended up at the Orlisses’, two miles northwest of his destination.
Marvelous, this reconfigured, swallowed-up world: the cold, the glowing snow, the deep planetary blues of twilight. Stars, reflected, shed enough ancient light to ski by. The full moon made night as bright as an overcast day. Snow muffled and absorbed all sound, except for wind soughing through trees and the occasional rumbling crash, more felt than heard, as great loads slid from high branches to the ground.
“Snow weighs nineteen pounds a square foot,” Don Dare called to Cress as he shoveled off the roof of the new house. “Twenty-four po
unds when it turns to ice. I now spend half my life raking it off the tent fly.”
She and Quinn skied out to the Crags, and to Globe Rock, where they ran into Tom Streeter hunting rabbits with a crossbow and surveying the snowy ridges through his huge Nikon binoculars, which he offered to Cress. “Saw a big old bear a few minutes ago. Probably the same one as strews trash down my slope. I’d like to make a rug out of him.”
Cress raised the binoculars. The near ridge jumped at her; trees bristled with fine needles, she saw the thorn tips of pinecones—those inwardly curved, she now knew, were ponderosas; outwardly, Jeffreys—and the jigsaw of bark. Tom was an optician, of course he’d have good binoculars.
No telling what else he’d seen with them.
Once out of earshot, Cress murmured to Quinn, “Let’s hope he doesn’t make a rug out of Jakey!”
* * *
He thought of her all day, he said. He loved to recall her slender fingers and long, strong neck. How happy she was when skiing. Her energy. Her strength. He had never seen a woman’s back as well muscled.
Her soul, that long, dry lakebed, slowly filled, and in all the years afterward, she prized her fingers, neck, and strong back because he had.
Quinn drove down to the pay phone at the lodge and called home every night. Cress said, “Oh, just call from here,” but he shook his head, and she didn’t insist; why overhear endearments to the others? He went home every Friday afternoon in February and came back Sunday nights—ostensibly to get a head start on Monday mornings—straight to the A-frame.
A fire, a tumbler of bourbon, a lover’s company. This was the heaven of her life.
* * *
Work was slow at Beech Creek; she was lucky to get a shift or two a week. She got out her dissertation again, but whole days passed when she didn’t make it to the typewriter. Or easel. How much more gratifying it was to cut butter into flour, peel apples, pinch crust into pleasing points, and fill the A-frame with the aroma of baking sugar and cinnamon while Glenn Gould played the Goldberg Variations with his clear, chiming precision, or Lefty Frizzell sang his jaunty love-gone-wrong ballads. The pie cooled, and on the narrow window seat, Cress read New Yorkers from the 1970s, and waited for Quinn to stamp on the deck, rap on the thick glass. He’d offer to take her to the lodge, or to Hapsaw or Cloud Slope, so she wouldn’t have to make dinner, but she liked the easy creativity of cooking, the immediate results. So he brought her bacon, steaks, and chops from his meat locker, and gave her money for beer or a bottle, then refused the change. She’d wonder, years down the road, what it was like for him, living in someone else’s home with their directionless daughter playing housewife.
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