by Margot Early
Her mother said, “It’s an expeditionary school. Students go outdoors to learn firsthand about the environment.”
“Have I ever done one thing that made you think I’d be interested in that?”
“You’ve told me that you want to go camping with your dad.”
Elena breathed out in disgust and caught up her white woven handbag. “I wanted to spend time with him, and wanting to camp with my dad is different from going to an expeditionary school where I don’t know anyone. If you cared about me, Max would come live in Denver with us.”
“I care about you.”
“This was supposed to be my day,” Elena said bitterly, “to meet my grandfather and aunts and uncles and cousins. Now, it’s your engagement day.”
Her mother looked tired. “It’s no one’s day. Let’s just go meet your dad’s family.”
Elena pulled the pins from her hair. “I want to wear mine down,” she said, making plain the reason why: I don’t want to be anything like you.
“AND THIS IS ELENA.” Max drew his daughter forward to meet his father, then each of his sisters. He had first introduced Jen, her mother and her sister—the last two included because of the announcement to be made—and his family had said politely that they were pleased to meet them. Elena shook hands with his small nephew and two nieces, as Norman Rickman told her that he saw a resemblance between her and his own mother when she was young.
A white-jacketed host led them through an open dining room with big wide windows looking out on the golf course and the ocean beyond.
Jen found herself seated on Norman’s right, with Max’s sister Marina’s husband on her left. Max’s sister Misty sat across from Jen. A waiter came and left menus; then the wine waiter came and took a wine order. As he returned, Jen told Max’s younger sister, “I remember playing Ping-Pong with you at a barbecue here.”
“I remember, too,” Misty said with a friendly smile.
“Jen, now tell me about your work,” Norman said, offering and pouring wine into her glass.
Jen explained that she used to work for a news station in Denver but had quit and wasn’t sure what she planned to do next.
The retired surgeon’s mouth bowed down slightly.
Max said, “This is as good a time as any to make an announcement.”
Jen’s eyes shot uneasily toward Robin’s face. Her mother was straight-backed, beautiful and silently disapproving of everything around her except her own daughters and granddaughter, for which she took credit.
“Jen and I are going to be married. Monday,” he added.
Anger immediately covered Robin’s brief surprise. She shot a look of outrage at Jen. The look said, You might at least have told me. Or even, You might have cleared this with me.
Norman recovered first. “Congratulations, Max.” He stood and raised his glass. “To the bride-to-be. And to my granddaughter Elena.”
It was smoothly and graciously done, and Jen smiled her thanks around the table.
Seemingly seconds later, Max’s father, seated again, remarked to Jen, “Well, I suppose Max will be moving to Denver. Your family won’t be able to make ends meet on a ranger’s salary.” He sounded satisfied with what he saw as the inarguable rightness of his opinion.
“We plan to live in Leadville,” Jen replied, “and I’m sure we’ll manage just fine and that I’ll find something to do there.”
“It’s hard to find employment in those little mountain towns, and you’re bound to take a significant pay cut.”
“I think it’s great!” Misty said. “I’d love to live in the mountains, and Leadville’s a cool little town. Keith and I and the kids have visited Max there twice.”
Grateful, Jen said, “It will be fun when you come again, when we’re all there.”
It wasn’t until two hours later, when Robin, Teresa, Max, Elena and Jen had all arrived back at the firehouse, from where there was no escaping the haze of the Montecito Hills fire, that Robin said, her voice tight and angry, “I cannot believe you didn’t give me some warning. Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“Marrying the father of my child?” Jen answered. She’d had enough, between Dr. Rickman and her own mother. Max’s sisters had saved the day, Teresa retaining a shy silence that had annoyed Jen almost as much as her mother’s obvious displeasure at the news of her daughter’s coming marriage.
“So you want Elena and me just to show up on Monday and be pleased about this thing. Did you blind-side your daughter like you blindsided me?”
“I told her about it before the lunch, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And you’re moving out of my house.”
Oh, now Robin was calling it my house, which it most certainly was not. Jen ignored that. “We’re moving to Leadville.”
“Elena won’t go. You know that, don’t you? And if you try and make her, you’ll have more problems on your hands than you ever dreamed of.” They stood in the hallway outside Jen’s room, where Robin had followed her when they reached the house.
Jen heard footsteps on the stairs, and Max came around the corner of the open corridor.
Robin’s mouth tightened.
Jen said, “Mother. It’s decided.”
“You don’t even know what he’s after,” Robin hissed, “but I can assure you, I do.”
Max joined them. “Everything okay?”
Robin composed her features. “I’m astonished that either of you think Elena could possibly be happy in Leadville. She won’t be able to take dance lessons there. You’re only thinking of yourselves.”
“There is a dance studio there,” Jen said.
“But probably not a good one,” Robin responded.
Max listened silently, and Jen saw a movement at the end of the hall. Elena stood in the suddenly open doorway of her room.
“You know,” she said in a low but carrying voice, “it would be nice if anyone cared what I wanted. You’re no better than they are. You just want to keep your matriarchal dynasty together.”
Jen was stunned at the sophistication of this remark and tried to think if she’d ever said anything like that in front of Elena. Not when I knew she was listening. But surely Elena had heard Teresa and her do enough talking about growing up with Robin’s anti-father tyranny. But still— Jen supposed she could have heard Teresa say that.
“Nobody,” Elena said, shoving arms into the sleeves of her windbreaker, which she pulled on over a crop top and white jeans, “has bothered to ask what I want. You,” she added, looking pointedly at her grandmother, “will be happy if they get divorced and spend the next six years fighting over me. Then you can give Mom lots of tips on running away to shelters and pretending she’s a battered wife.”
Elena, apologize to your grandmother. Jen couldn’t say it. Wasn’t it she who should apologize, for talking about the past where her daughter could possibly hear? I have no idea what to do.
Before she could say anything—or decide what to say—Elena announced, “I’m going for a walk,” and strode to the staircase.
It happened then.
In an instant.
Jen saw the toe of her daughter’s aerobics shoe catch on the tile stairs and her calf and ankle extend and twist, as Elena sank with a silent whitening, grasping for the wrought-iron rail and falling.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THEY SUMMONED Max’s father, who came at once, examined Elena’s foot—and a wrist he suspected was broken—and helped her to his car to take her to the emergency room. Jen and Max climbed in the back seat, and Robin, without asking if she was welcome, pushed Jen over and said, “I’m coming, too. I care about her more than both of you put together.”
“Would you stop fighting?” Elena exclaimed, tears on her face. “My life is ruined. Why do you have to fight now?”
“Your life is not ruined,” Jen said. “Get that out of your head right now. We’re all sorry you’re hurt, and we’re going to the hospital, and we’ll make certain you get excellent care.” Bu
t she knew that a tendon injury could be difficult—could possibly be impossible—to repair.
It was Norman Rickman who didn’t contribute an opinion. Did he know of Elena’s dreams of becoming a professional dancer?
She’ll never forgive us, Jen thought in despair. She’ll never forgive any of us.
Max leaned forward in his seat. “Holding up?” he asked Elena.
And she didn’t yell at him. He and his father were the ones she seemed not to blame. Of the three who’d been in the upper corridor, only Max was excluded from her animosity and resentment.
Was it growing up in an all-female household that had made Elena so angry now? Or simply that familiarity had bred contempt?
At the hospital, Max got a wheelchair for Elena and wheeled her into the emergency room.
They were at the hospital for four hours, learning that Elena’s wrist was broken and her ankle sprained and waiting while she received treatment from Dr. Rickman’s old partner.
“I can’t do my solo, now,” Elena whispered to Jen when no one else was near her bed.
“I know.” Jen squeezed her hand beneath the uninjured wrist.
“Can I stay here with you?” Elena said in a low frightened voice. “Instead of going back to Denver with Grandma?”
“Of course,” Jen exclaimed. “I would love that, though I’m so, so sorry, sweetie. So sorry this happened.”
“Are you sorry you’re going to marry my dad?”
Jen shook her head. “Though we’ll wait till you’re able to stand up. It’s very important you stay off your ankle so that it heals well.”
“I know. I feel stupid.”
“Why?”
“For thinking I could keep something like this from happening. I wanted to believe Grandma, but nothing is that predictable, is it?”
“Elena, all the physicians have said this sprain should heal just fine. Your wrist will heal well, too, especially if you do your physical therapy as you’re recovering.”
“I’m lucky my grandfather’s an orthopedist, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Jen agreed, “you are.”
“I’m sorry,” Elena said, inexplicably.
“For what?”
“For being so rude and bratty.”
“I think your anger’s pretty understandable.”
“If I really hate Leadville, will you let me go live with Grandma?”
“That’s up to her, too,” Jen pointed out.
“Oh, she’ll want me.”
Jen was sure her daughter was right.
“Probably,” Jen said. “But we’ll want you to give Leadville a good try, first. If you feel too anxious about downhill skiing or snowboarding, why don’t you try cross-country?”
“Maybe I’ll try snowboarding,” she said unexpectedly. “I’ve always been kind of a misfit because I don’t board or ski.”
“Elena,” her mother said, “you never have to be anyone different from who you are—for me or anyone else.”
Elena nodded unhappily, no doubt thinking about her solo.
MAX COULDN’T UNDERSTAND his mix of feelings. Part of him knew only happiness and excitement: He was marrying Jen Delazzeri, and she and Elena were coming to live with him, and it felt right, more definitely right than any other life events he could recall.
The film, too, was coming together successfully, and he didn’t like to try to narrow down the source of his dissatisfaction with the project. Whenever he did, he knew himself to be at least partly wrong. For thirteen years, he had blamed Richard Grass for Salma’s death. The unstated mission of the film—Max’s mission—was to make sure that everyone who saw the film knew who was to blame for Salma’s death.
But how much was Richard Grass to blame?
Not as much as Salma herself.
Max dismissed this thought. If the hotshot crew hadn’t been where it was, Salma wouldn’t have died. Period. If Salma had set up her fire shelter correctly, with her feet to the flames, she might have survived.
It was the second week in August, and Max knew they’d be ready for a first screening of the documentary by the end of the month. But the question of Salma’s death nagged him more and more, and he found himself running away from the answer.
Max himself had urged Salma Garcia to become a Santa Inez Hotshot. He’d spent two summers fighting wildfire. In his final class as an undergraduate, an upper-level environmental chemistry class, he’d seen a beautiful woman with thick black hair. Salma. In their early days of dating, he’d told her about the excitement and satisfaction involved in fighting wildfires.
On the night before the rescheduled wedding, Max accepted a beer with Pete and Bob, then went upstairs and knocked on Jen’s door. Though they hadn’t spent a night apart since he’d asked her to marry him, she still kept her own room in the firehouse and sometimes retreated there when she wanted to spend some time alone. “Want to go for a ride?” he asked when she answered.
The wedding was to be a fairly casual affair on the beach in front of Max’s family’s home, with a minister who was a friend of his father’s presiding. Robin’s departure after the announcement of Max and Jen’s engagement, and after Elena’s injury and refusal to return with her to Colorado, had been a stormy scene. But she’d agreed, rather grudgingly, to attend the wedding and had flown back to California for it.
Now, Jen gave Max her grin and said, “On the eve of our wedding?”
“Of course.”
They rode on his motorcycle to a stretch of beach a mile from where they would be married the next day.
As they sat on the sand together in the dark, watching the glistening, changing shape of foam on each breaker, Max said, “I persuaded Salma to become a hotshot. She was terrified of fire, and I told her she’d feel better if she faced her fear.”
“I remember that,” Jen said, though she hadn’t remembered until he mentioned it. “It helped. I remember her talking about how it helped. You know, various people talked about that a bit when she died, that she’d been afraid of fire and then killed by fire.”
Max’s eyes showed sorrow. “Teresa told me she’ll never forget Salma’s screams. She says it was an inhuman sound. But later she wasn’t complaining any more. Then they realized what bad shape she was in, as we all did when we showed up.”
“Teresa has burn scars herself.”
“I know. Does she seem different to you since she’s been out here?”
“She seems much better,” Jen admitted. “She’s thinking about going back to school and studying sociology. Or something. She’s done that before. It’s possible that my mother encourages her—unconsciously, I’m sure—to be dependent on her, on my mom. She likes to control things. She calls it ‘keeping her little nest together.’ This is hard for her, our marrying. I don’t think she ever really wanted any of us to leave home. It would have been the same with Elena.”
“Do you get what I was saying?” Max asked.
“You think it’s your fault, somehow, that Salma died?” Jen had wondered for some time if something like this might lie behind his determination to punish Richard Grass. The Montecito Hills fire was long since under control, and Richard had acquitted himself brilliantly, by all reports. But he claimed to be too busy to be filmed again. He knew that Jen wanted to ask him why no lookouts were posted. She would have been more aggravated by his stalling were it not for Elena’s injury and her own upcoming marriage to Max.
“Basically. If she’d never become a hotshot, she’d be alive now.”
That was true. “She liked being a hotshot, Max. She said it gave her more self-confidence than anything she’d ever done.”
“Really? How do you know that?”
“She told me when I signed on.” Jen studied his profile in the starlight.
He turned to her, touched the side of her face, and pulled her down in the sand beside him. “I’m glad I’m marrying you,” he said.
And she thought—or imagined—that what he meant was he was glad to be marrying her.
Not someone else.
“IT’S VERY EASY to get married,” Robin said that evening, as she, Jen and Teresa were closeted in Jen’s room. Elena was downstairs playing Ping-Pong with Max. She smoothed the dress Jen had bought for the wedding. Robin had not been part of that shopping excursion—she’d been in Denver at the time—so Elena and Teresa had comprised the rest of the fashion committee. The result was a flowing white gown, sleeveless, with lots of filmy fabric, and a delicate wreath of white flowers for a headdress. Elena insisted that the whole effect made her mother look like a Greek goddess. “It’s a lot more effort,” Robin concluded, “to get divorced. So you better be sure. And his parental rights will be stronger if you’ve been married.”
Jen sank down on the edge of her bed. She gazed at her mother, whose face remained surprisingly unlined for someone her age, her eyes dark, intense and burning with a curious charisma that had always attracted friends and acquaintances. “Mom, I really need to say this: Please stop fighting me about Max. Please stop trying to interfere with his relationship with Elena—and with me, for that matter.”
“I’m not trying to interfere. I’m just urging you to be cautious. You don’t know how helpless you can feel when you’re trying to protect your child from influences you could never have guessed were there when you were first getting to know someone.”
Teresa, whose blond hair had grown during her stay in California, and who’d lost ten pounds and been hiking every day, spoke. “Just what influences were you trying to protect Jen and me from? What was so bad about Dad?”
“You don’t understand anything about that situation,” Robin said tensely. “He was with a nineteen-year-old girl when you were children. She even got pregnant, but she miscarried or had an abortion or something. You can’t expect…”