“Must be this mountain air—makes me hungry,” he says, sniffing the air. “Do you smell the scent of a roasting turkey?”
She doesn’t, but she can imagine many ovens in town roasting their turkeys. Maybe at the next place they can have Thanksgiving lunch. She pulls out her cell and finds Bridgeport, the halfway point between Truckee and Bishop, their destination, just two and a half hours away. “Let’s see if we can make a reservation in Bridgeport.”
“Sounds good,” he says as they walk into the hotel dining room. “Maybe we can get a piece of pie here as a mid-breakfast.”
She nods. They walk into the place. It’s empty except for the wait staff setting up a buffet table. A woman in a black skirt and white blouse approaches, a red flower in her hair.
“Good morning! Happy Thanksgiving,” she says. “Do you have reservations?”
“Ahh, no, miss,” Zack says, looking hopeful.
“It’s still early, we don’t open for an hour.”
“Yes,” he says, “but I’d love a piece of pecan pie.” His gaze slides toward the dessert table, where several pies sit waiting.
“Do you mind sitting at the bar?” she asks.
Zack looks toward Lavinia, smiling, and gives her a thumbs-up. They follow the middle-aged hostess, who wears comfortable shoes, out of the formal dining room and through a door to a mahogany bar. After they’re seated, the woman takes their order.
“You already know I’m a nut for pecan pie,” he tells her.
“Well, you’re in luck then. Ice cream or whipped cream?”
“I’ll take whipped cream.”
“And for you, miss?” The waitress turns to Lavinia.
“I’ll have apple pie and a coffee, please. No ice cream.”
The woman leaves to get the desserts.
“I love this stuff. Since Elsa died I rarely eat pies,” Zack says.
“What do you eat?”
“I’m a tuna and saltines man. I keep it simple with an occasional beer. Sometimes a pizza. All easy stuff now. I don’t eat too much. And you, Lavinia?”
“I chew gum and have an occasional tequila.” She laughs.
“No kidding,” Zack says.
“If it weren’t for my friend Kinky, who brings me her mother’s tamales, enchiladas, and tacos, I’d starve. I don’t like to cook.”
“You’re like my daughter—not domestic.”
“No.” Lavinia runs her fingers along the edge of the smooth wooden bar top.
“Actually, of course you are,” he says, taking it back. “Sorry to speak out of hand, Lavinia. You lovingly do my laundry.”
“Thank you.” She blushes. “I want to be a teacher. I only have a semester left to go.” A spark of hope gnaws at her. It’s not too late to go back.
“Yes, I can see the teacher in you.”
Lavinia appreciates the compliment and, remembering her teacher training, feels a little pang for her profession. How did she get so off track? How did she let her history derail her so? For the first time, however, sitting here with Zack, she’s thinking about something other than her losses. It seems to her the jaws of time are relaxing their bite.
Zack accepts his pie and tucks in, humming after each bite. They eat their mid-morning desserts in silence.
When they’re done, the woman wearing the black skirt and white blouse returns to the bar with their check, and Zack settles the bill.
“So what’s next?” Lavinia grabs her hair and twirls it around her finger.
“We’ll bypass Reno,” Zack says.
“And the slots?” Her voice goes up a pitch.
He looks at her in anticipation. She figures he’d stop if she really wanted to. But she wants to focus on his dream, and she already knows that her own dreams have shifted to something much more important than gambling.
“Never mind,” she says.
“Okay!” he says, and she senses his relief. “We’ll take the fastest route to Bishop through Bridgeport, where we’ll stop and get that turkey lunch. It’s about two and a half hours away.”
They look at the map, making a plan to go through North Lake Tahoe without stopping, then south on 28, then east on 50 to reach South I-395 and Bishop, their destination for today.
“Good plan, lunch at one thirty,” she says. She checks the weather on her phone. “Forecast clear, sunny, cold.”
Zack makes their Bridgeport reservation on his cell. Lavinia hops into the driver’s seat once again, and they’re on the road.
She drives the 117-mile route to the Bridgeport Inn while Zack rests. Soon after they are underway, she hears him snoring softly beside her in the passenger seat.
North Lake Tahoe is beautiful. She rolls down the window and smells the fresh pine air. She wonders what it would have been like if she’d been raised in the country. The miles of national forest enchant her. The two-hour ride is smooth and peacefully nurturing.
As soon as she pulls up and stops the car at Bridgeport Inn, Zack wakes up. He looks around and then at his watch. “Why, we’re already here for our Thanksgiving brunch, and with a half hour to spare.”
They climb out of the car, and Zack recommends a short walk around the place. Lavinia can’t get enough of the natural beauty of the eastern slopes of the Sierras.
“Zack, this is truly beautiful. Thank you,” she says as they stroll through the pines.
“I thought you’d like it. Let’s eat, shall we?” He takes her hand.
They enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, brown gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and more. Though this type of food is not part of Lavinia’s Thanksgiving tradition, she loves the way the creamy potatoes slide down so easily, the tangy taste of cranberry sparks on her tongue. She feels a part of an American tradition. Rosa always refused to cook a turkey, insisting instead on an escarole soup with tiny meatballs, a simple pasta, and a small roasted chicken with potatoes. But Lavinia feels happy about this now. There’s no Thanksgiving traditions for her to miss, just new ones to be formed.
After they eat, Lavinia gets back in the driver’s seat to begin the last hundred-mile segment of the desert drive to Bishop. The blue skies are softening to dusk, and the snow-covered sentinels are smiling in the distance. Zack, too, is smiling, no doubt as moved by the silent landscape as she is.
Chapter 32:
SWEET ARE THE USES OF ADVERSITY
Lavinia wakes up early in a strange bed. How far did they drive yesterday? Four hundred miles? Did she really drive six or seven hours to reach Bishop? The last daylight stop she remembers before Bishop was outside of Bridgeport.
The dark sky casts a silver light across her bed. Shadows of tall, heavy furniture seem to assail her as she pulls the blanket over her head, listening to an old heater chug along like a steam engine. She hides, holding herself under the wooly blankets, not ready to face any more lonely mountain roads on the Eastern Sierra desert highways.
Last night they checked into the Best Western after sunset and got two adjoining rooms. She slept soundly until now. She gets up and uses the restroom and then puts her ear to the opposite door. She hears the old man snore with his characteristic hum. His breathing is deep and slow, a steady buzz. He’s still asleep.
Cold, she runs back to her bed and rubs her hands on her new, soft pajamas, grateful she had sense enough to jump into them last night. She wishes Mario were here. Silently, she waits in the dark room.
When Zack begins moving, it’s predawn, the blue hour, when a deep blue hue floods the room. She gets up and starts to move about, getting dressed.
“Look, Lavinia. Come see!” he calls to her.
When she enters his room, he’s standing by the window, peeking through an opening in the curtain.
“Look,” he says, fingering his bracelet, “a deep blue sky with a hint of orange toward the east. A new day.” He pulls the curtain and she stands beside him. “Let’s go! Methuselah is waiting.”
“Who is Methuselah?” she asks, looking at the li
ght.
“Methuselah lived to be 969 years old. The oldest person recorded.”
“Is that for real?” Lavinia asks, never having heard of Methuselah before. “Is it a legend?”
“Yes, based on a biblical figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He was supposed to have the most longevity of any figure in the Bible. And the tree we’re looking for is named after him.”
“Let’s go get a coffee,” she says, satisfied with the explanation.
“Good idea. The Erick Schat Bakery is less than a mile from here and opens at six o’clock. Let’s walk.”
In a flash they’re dressed and outside with eyes cast toward the changing sky. At Erick Schat’s, Zack selects a loaf of sheepherder’s bread from stacks of thousands of loaves—the labels read, “Fennel,” “Golden Raisin,” “Pinto Bean Bread,” and “Cranberry Chocolate Chip.” Lavinia grabs a raisin bread to have with a steaming cup of coffee. They eat at a table crowded among the thousands of loaves.
“Who made all these breads?” she asks.
“The early-morning bread elves,” Zack says, his eyes twinkling.
They retrieve their luggage from the room, and by seven o’clock they’re in the car with Lavinia driving again, heading south from Bishop on I-395 toward Big Pine. Zack sits with the hunk of bread at his side. The road opens up with acres of puffy sage fields against a dark, looming mountain. Lavinia’s eyes follow the white line while Zack munches on the end of the sheepherder’s bread like a contented grazer.
“Four thousand feet elevation,” he says, looking toward yellow cornflowers that seem to smile back at him in the light of the setting moon.
Lavinia resumes looking at the white line where tall electric poles stand. Then she counts the poles, preferring to think of them as windmills. Behind the lower dark mountains rise the white peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with lines of snow encrusted in the ridges like ribbons in time. “New or old snow?” she asks.
“Maybe a little of both. Glacial,” he answers.
She begins to slow down as the trees lining the road grow taller; she feels as if she’s entering an enchanted forest. In the field she sees a low hump, which turns out to be a sleeping cow under a tree. She follows the signs to make what seems like a sharp left at Big Pine, leaving I-395.
“We’re almost there, Lavinia,” Zack says, his feet tapping a little tune, making her consider what he must have been like as a kid. “Follow this road heading northeast, and we’ll be there in a jiff.”
They are cruising toward the White Mountains and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.
“What’s that?” she asks, looking at a sign for Scotty’s Castle.
“It’s in Death Valley. Have you ever been there?”
“No. But to me this looks like Death Valley, with this vast bowl of desert.”
“A bowl of sage, Lavinia,” he says as the car climbs higher and higher.
She likes his reframe but feels caught in the sagebrush, a small child in a tiny car in a vast sky of desert carpet. A chill runs up her spine. Is it the vastness that makes her feel so small? Her back muscles tense up. She wants to hide, to curl herself into a ball with her knees touching her chin, but she drives on, letting Zack’s humming and foot tapping soothe her. She looks at him and then returns to viewing the curvy road, narrowing in its ascent. Suddenly she feels lulled by the delicious smell of desert sage, sweet and earthy like Aunt Rose’s pasta with burnt salvia and butter.
“What’s the color you see, Lavinia?” He is asking about the changing hue of the desert floor, which seemed purplish just minutes ago.
“The color is butterscotch,” she answers.
He laughs. “You don’t really see butterscotch, do you?”
“No, but I smell spice and sugar in this dusty earth.” She looks out, sees sage plants growing next to an orange brush like a checkerboard. The new sunlight has given them a life, reminding her of candy in a crinkly package.
“God’s country,” Zack says, rolling down the window and inhaling.
Now tall canyon walls with their rocky outcrops bar the rising sun. Stratified layers of rock make her feel heavy, as if she’s entering downwards. When they move out of the narrow gorge, the sky lightens and she begins to see pines. Smells like the redwood grove in Golden Gate Park, where she danced in the fairy circle with Mario.
“Are these your trees?” she asks. “We should be near now, according to that sign.” She points to a sign announcing, “The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest Reserve.”
“No, no,” Zack says, “these are piñons!”
Ten minutes later the road picks up again, passing open fields of small trees. As they approach a scenic overlook, Zack suggests that they stop the car for a stretch. Lavinia pulls off the road and they get out.
“Listen to that silence, Lavinia.” He walks to the overlook.
But the silence is deafening to her ears. How can silence be so loud?
Back in the car, they pass the 7,340 feet elevation mark at a ranger kiosk. When Lavinia sees no one in the booth, she feels disheartened, fearing the park is closed for the season. Two shiny ravens soar in front of them, orange sun glinting on their bodies.
“Do you think we’re the only ones here?” Suddenly, she feels like a lone piñon in a dusty plain.
“It’s not tourist season,” he says.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she confesses.
“Up the mountain there’s a rest stop,” he assures her.
They drive to ten thousand feet and pull into a rest stop where a woman is standing by her car door, ready to get in. Lavinia breathes a sigh of relief to see another car. They won’t be totally alone in the park. She rolls down her window. “Is there a bathroom around here?” But the woman can’t hear her; she’s already in her car. She drives off with a wave.
Lavinia worries she won’t make it.
They get out and Lavinia finds the toilet door is locked. She finds a place to go next to a piñon. She hears the soft flow of urine against the dry earth and wonders if her caffeine-filled pee will hurt this tree. She hopes not.
She reads info on a board near the rest area. “Bristlecone pines live on precipitation alone, moisture from snow, hail, and rain. Their roots are shallow and spread out in search of moisture. They have no taproot.” Learning this, she feels assured of her pee contribution.
A small plane buzzes overhead, reminding her of civilization. It feels to her like a miracle to be in this high desert with Zack.
They get back in and head toward Schulman Grove, where the old trees live.
“Almost there, then Ely tomorrow,” Zack says, sniffing the air from his open window.
Ely, Nevada, miles further on, where they’ll see the place where the 10,000-year clock will be entombed in the limestone mountains. Zack is looking ahead, chin nodding.
“Maybe from this higher elevation you’ll see across the horizon to your mountain?” Lavinia suggests.
“You mean so we won’t need to go there after all.” He laughs, looking across to the top of the mountains in the direction of Ely.
Lavinia hopes this first stop will suffice. Another 287 miles of high desert driving sounds dreadful to her.
He chuckles. “You’d rather not drive those three hundred miles tomorrow?”
“I’d rather not,” she says, sighing, looking over to the last stretch of barren White Mountains, which look more like an ocean of wavy green lines. She can’t imagine the route from here.
The parking lot at Schulman Grove is empty. They get out, gather their gear, and walk up to the information at the trailhead.
“We have a choice to make here,” he says, looking at her. “The Patriarch Grove, twelve miles farther on a dirt road, or Methuselah—right here.”
She hears “Patricide Grove,” though she knows that’s not what he said. Her chest jumps and heaves. “I choose Methuselah, right here.” She looks toward the trail.
“Best not to drive another twelve miles. Anyway
, that grove always makes me sad.” He looks down. “That’s where Prometheus, the old tree that was cut down, grew.”
She shakes her head. “So awful.”
“Methuselah, it is! And the oldest living tree is here in this forest. It’s 4,848 years old, and besides, it’s wonderful to have the place to ourselves.” Zack hefts his small but heavy backpack to his shoulders and starts walking—but when he glances at her, he stops.
“You’re crying, Lavinia,” he touches her shoulder.
“I’m thinking about fathers.” Her heart wants to jump out of its protective sleeve. Her throat constricts and more tears come.
“Your father?” he asks.
“Yes, him too. But more about what my grandfather did to my mother.” She struggles to tell Zack about the joint deaths. “You know . . . what happened to Nina and Don White?” she reminds him.
He stops. “The suicide-murder?”
“Yes. . . something like that happened to my mother.” She stifles her cry.
Zack faces her, reaches for her pack, as if to ease her burden.
“You know, it was my mother who gave me my love of doing laundry.”
“Bless her,” he says.
Then she tells him about how she died. “I was four, and she never came back from buying my shoes for the trip,” she says, her eyes filling. “My nonno, in a fit of rage, killed her and himself so that she wouldn’t leave him.” Seeing Zack’s attentiveness gives her permission to feel her sadness. “Nonno pushed her and then somehow in the scuffle they both got hit by a trolley.”
He lifts his eyebrows in surprise, his jaw falls open. “No wonder Nina and Don’s deaths hurt you so, Lavinia.”
She buries her face in her hands.
“You know you’re not responsible for these crimes. This is not your fault. This is not your story,” he says tenderly.
“How could it not be?”
“Listen to me, Lavinia. You don’t deserve that legacy. You have to find your own beautiful story inside you.” He puts both their packs down, takes out a hanky, and gives it to her. She wipes her eyes, yet her tears fall. They wait.
The Laundress Page 23