Shelter In Place: An Excerpt

Executive Summary 

The Electro-Magnetic Pulse generated by a high-altitude nuclear explosion is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. Virtually every aspect of American society is dependent on electronics. Electronics are used to control, communicate, compute, store, manage, and implement nearly every sector of United States (U.S.) civilian systems. When a nuclear explosion occurs at high altitude, the EMP signal it produces will result in long-term disruption of energy and power distribution, communications, shipping, and the flow of consumer goods. Air, rail, and travel by personal vehicle will be nearly impossible. The infrastructure necessary to address these problems will also be destroyed. The larger the affected region, the longer it will take to mitigate the damage. Power infrastructures may be lost for a year or more. 

Part I 

October 15 

My name is Aurora McKenzie Scott, and I have left two homes in six months, one by choice and the second under duress. Luckily, I was somewhat prepared for both situations, unlike most people, who were taken by surprise and are marooned in dwellings that provide nothing more than a roof. The first home I abandoned was the townhouse in Arlington, which I bought with my late husband, about five years before the cancer took him. The second was an offgrid cabin on the edge of the George Washington National Forest in western Virginia. But that home, too, became unsafe. My present home is a tiny, octagonal hut with a slanted roof, hidden by thick undergrowth a few miles back in the woods. Peter and I designed it as our second layer of “bug out,” a place to go if we had to give up the cabin he had so meticulously prepared. That was the plan before his death, just over a year ago. I have been in the woods for three months, since mid-July, when the strangers came, and I had to flee once more. 

You might wonder why I have only now decided to tell my story. It does seem presumptuous to think that the person who eventually finds these words, perhaps long after my demise, will be interested in my story the way people have eavesdropped on others through the ages. If this nightmare ever ends, everyone left will have a story of equal hardship or worse. But perhaps I have grown too cynical. Perhaps the forces that started us down this path will ultimately lose, and there will be a way to restart America from the ground up. But it is hard to think that way anymore, and I find myself caring less and less. 

So why? I can’t say I really know. Just that my existence here has become overwhelmingly tiresome, and I know that something must change. I am becoming forgetful and wasting more and more time in a sort of peaceful listlessness. Sometimes when I wake up, I don’t know where I am. I wonder why I don’t hear the students starting breakfast, and I lie in my sleeping bag straining my ears for familiar camp noises. I have taken the pistol from under the pillow and placed it where I see it immediately upon waking. Firearms weren’t allowed at the wilderness school where I worked. One look at the 9millimeter, semi-automatic, and I remember quickly why I am here. Though I can remember most of what Peter taught me, my memories of him are also fading. But maybe by looking back, I can make some sense of what has happened and regain some sense of focus. Oddly, if he hadn’t done so well preparing me, I wouldn’t have the luxury of thinking about more than where to find my next meal. But mere survival isn’t enough to keep me going anymore. So, I must look for another goal, another focus, an actual reason for living. 

October 20 

Chores have kept me too tired to write these last days, though I know that I should do better. But the snare I set on the west side of the mountain caught a young wild pig, and I have spent hours gutting, skinning, and cutting chunks of meat off the carcass. In early September, when I got my second deer, I set up a smoking area in a small cave a few miles from the hut. I don’t have much in the way of spices, but I sprinkled the meat with some salt and hung it in strips along a rope I strung across the width of the interior. Late in the afternoon, I started a fire in the back of the cave, hoping that dusk would help cover the smoke. I blocked off the front of the cave by dragging brush across the entrance and spent most of the night and next day feeding semi-dry sticks onto the coals. Short on storage, I wrapped most of the meat in pieces of nylon tarp and buried it in the woods. So now I have been repeating the process with the pig. I have wasted a lot by hacking off just as many big hunks of meat as I could in a short time, worried that a bear or other pigs would come to challenge me for the food. With the deer, I have a decent store, though it wouldn’t hurt to have more. Turkeys, squirrels, and other small animals I eat immediately, in order to postpone dipping into my winter supply for as long as possible. 

At night, I worry. I have made a map of all my hiding places, but suppose I lose it or ruin it somehow? What if I dig up the meat only to find that insects and worms have gotten to it, or it has just rotted away? This is the gamble I am taking. Some days, I go by all the sites to see if they have been disturbed. As fall has come, I’m amazed at how different the woods look. With each visit, I reinforce my memory of each location. If I am not worrying about the food, I torture myself with the question of whether I should go back to the cabin. I tell myself that I should at least find out whether the strangers stayed. Perhaps they just took what they could find and left. I know this is what I should do. I think of all the hiding places where we stashed provisions. Surely, they couldn’t have found them all. I know I should try, but the thought of seeing other people, and, worse, of being seen, is paralyzing. No one saw me leave that day, so no one knows there is anyone to look for back in these hills. My entire sense of security has come to depend on that. 

October 23 

Yesterday afternoon, the wind started to pick up. The skies had been overcast from the start, the morning air humid and close. Then the winds came careening through the tree branches, and by dusk rain was coming down in sheets. I lay in my sleeping bag listening and remembering backpack trips with Peter, before the cabin consumed our attention. I always felt safe with him, knowing that he had anchored the tent with the same methodical care with which he worked on the car or brushed his teeth. But for all his deliberation, he was far from predictable. On every trip, he would do something to surprise me, like hiding frozen steaks and beer in his pack when I was expecting freezedried camping meals or rigging up a hand line and catching a couple trout while I was off exploring. Without him, the roar of the wind took on a menacing tone, and I was struck again by the uncertainties of being totally cut off from the outside world. Was this a passing storm or the edge of a hurricane? I had no weather forecast to ease my mind. This morning the wind abated a bit, but the rain did not, so I’m prepared for a day inside, digging into my stores of instant coffee, reading from our store of books, and adding to this record. 

Where to begin? Five years ago, Peter and I were a somewhat atypical couple living in a townhouse in Arlington. I say “atypical” not because there was anything particularly strange about us, but because of our jobs—his at the NSA doing I’m not entirely sure what, and mine as a counselor for at-risk teens at a wilderness school in the Appalachian Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia. His job occasionally took him away for short stints of time, while mine required me to be away for periods of four to six weeks, with breaks of two to three weeks in between. We’d been married for about three years when Peter began to talk about buying or building a cabin. I was a bit surprised at first. Peter was a planner and somewhat frugal. Though we made enough money between us for a comfortable life, he had always emphasized saving over spending. So, for him to suggest laying out the cash to buy and maintain a second dwelling seemed out of character. But I was an easy sell, as I too frequently complained about the culture shock of coming home to the congestion of Arlington after several weeks in the woods. It would be a place where we could go to recharge, he said. 

At first, spending weekends on road trips exploring leads we got online seemed a lark. Often, we’d camp in state parks or stay at rustic motels, and our outings felt like adventures. But, as time went on, Peter became more and more specific about the land we looked at—the sun had to be just so, there had to be a creek on the site, or better yet, a spring. The nearest town must be several miles away, and the land had to be nearly surrounded by woods. Then he began using words like “off-grid” and “self-sufficient.” 

Over lunch that day in some West Virginia diner, I asked him why it was suddenly so important that we be off-grid and said that it seemed like a lot of trouble to go through for the occasional power outage. “I camp pretty off-grid all the time,” I reminded him. “I don’t mind having some amenities when I’m not working. Are you thinking we won’t be able to afford a little electricity?” 

I threw in the last question as a joke, but as he slowly stirred his chili, I knew he had something serious on his mind. 

“But it could be more than a little power outage,” he began. Our eyes met across the table. “It could be something much more drastic, and it could last a long time. Like months, maybe even years.” 

I glanced out the window beside the booth. It was early spring, and daffodils were nodding along the fence line at the edge of the parking lot. 

“Do you know something?” 

“Know? Nobody knows…But there are possibilities and capabilities that people have…we call them ‘unstable actors.’ Remember that cyberattack on Lehman Brothers? That’s nothing compared to what could happen.” 

“Is this classified stuff you’re telling me?” 

“No, no. Not at this level of detail.” 

His eyes were down in his chili again, but his mind seemed to be far away. 

“It just wouldn’t hurt to be prepared—shelter, food, water. A way to get more if it lasted very long.” 

“Hmm…so you want us to become preppers, like those crazy militia people.” 

“More like the Mormons…just some common sense readiness…and, if nothing major happens, we’ll still have a nice little getaway.” 

Not long after that, we found the place, a stalwart-looking, craftsmen-style cabin with deep front and back porches and wide dormers above each porch. The land was a thirty-acre plot surrounded by national forest with a driveway that was just an overgrown dirt track. Beyond our driveway, the forest service road climbed for a while and then dead-ended a couple more miles up the hollow. Built in the 1950s, the cabin had most recently been the retirement home of a couple from Martinsburg, West Virginia, but by the time they’d passed, their children were scattered too far to want to make use of it. 

“Just make an offer,” the real estate agent said. “The heirs have been squabbling for years over the property taxes, low as they are.” 

A couple months later, we arrived for a long weekend with cleaning supplies, an air mattress, and a few coolers of food. Peter had taken care of the nitty-gritty details of the house purchase while I was at work, and we’d just closed the day before. My school term had been complicated by a new student who came with more than the usual emotional baggage and who spent the first two weeks pitting the other girls against each other. Adding to everyone’s misery, the weather stayed cool and rainy for weeks. It took most of the threehour ride from Arlington to decompress, but by the time we drew close to the last turnoff, I was ready for our first weekend at the new retreat. I couldn’t wait to get rid of the old-person-shut-up-house smells, and Peter was anxious to see what needed to be done, first to make the place livable, and then to repurpose it for off-grid survival. 

We’d agreed to have the electricity turned on until the solar was up and running, but we hadn’t done it yet, so that first weekend was like indoor camping. The weather had finally turned warm, and I was happy to run around opening windows and peeking in closets. 

The cabin was laid out so that from the center of the front porch, you walked into the left end of the living room and opposite the doorway to the kitchen. A few feet from the doorway was a woodstove and brick chimney. Directly behind the wall, in the kitchen, was another wood-burning cook stove, a white and green porcelain model from back in the 1920s. There was a propane gas stove, too, but the wood stoves would be more than sufficient for heat. With a little cleaning up, they would both be in good working condition. The eat-in kitchen was the same size as the living room, with its own door to the back porch. To the left of the kitchen doorway, a hallway ran down the center of the house with a bath and small bedroom on the right, and a larger bedroom and the stairs on the left. Peter had pulled the car around back and was lugging in a cooler when I opened a door between the kitchen and bathroom. 

“Ah…a cellar,” I called. “Have you been down there? I thought it was a closet.” 

“Yeah, when I came for the inspection. It seemed pretty dry, no mold or anything.” He walked down the hall to look over my shoulder. “I think we should put a floor in here, though.” 

My blank look conveyed that I was not following him. 

“You see…if we make it into a closet and put in a trapdoor, we can cover the door with a rug or some old linoleum, and no one will know it’s a cellar. We can block off the cellar windows so that from the outside, it’ll just look like a crawl space. That way, if someone breaks in, they won’t take whatever we have down there. And, we can use the closet as more pantry space. Let me show you something else.” 

I couldn’t help smiling at his excitement as he led me through the kitchen and out the back door, grabbing two headlamps off the counter as he passed. One of the plusses of the house had been the weathered barn that was situated just a couple hundred feet to the back right of the yard. Peter headed straight for it. 

“Remember the root cellar under the barn?” 

He led me to a set of stone steps that was situated about halfway down the right wall. From a distance, the weeds hid them from view. 

“This entrance is pretty obvious, but if we filled it in, it wouldn’t take long for the weeds to take over and no one would know it was ever here. Then we could cut a trapdoor in the floor of the barn and park that old tractor on top of it. Presto! Hidden root cellar.” 

“Wow,” I said, “You’ve been giving this a lot of thought.” 

“Well, I had some time to spend after the inspection.” 

“And you really think that all this secrecy is necessary?” 

“Ay,” he said, using his pet name for me, “If we lose electricity for a long time, there will be no food shipments, and people will be desperate for their next meal. Even out here in the country.” 

He led me down the steps and pushed open the heavy, wooden door at the bottom. We pulled on our headlamps, and he picked up a broom he’d left by the door. Batting at cobwebs as we went, he showed me three separate rooms: a large outer room with waist-high bins that we figured were probably used for potatoes and other root crops, a smaller room to the right with a sand floor— maybe for crops that needed a drier environment—and a last room to the back left that was lined with deep shelves. I tried to imagine all that space filled with food. It would be enough to last a very long time. 

“We’ll need to buy a couple of thermometers and something to measure the humidity. Then we’ll know what we can store down here the best,” Peter said, peering into a corner. “I haven’t seen any mice droppings, so it must be sealed pretty well.” 

“Hmmm…So, now we need to become food storage experts,” I said, as we emerged into the warm sunshine. 

It was a relief to be out in the fresh air. While Peter fiddled around in the barn, I headed back into the house and started hauling our duffels, sleeping bags, and air mattress up the stairs. The second floor was more like an attic, a huge room that ran the length of the house, divided in the middle by just the chimney. I laid out the air mattress against the chimney on the front side, so we’d be able to see out the front dormer, and attached the air pump. While the pump whined behind me, I gazed out the window. Looking south, I could barely discern the break in the canopy made by the forest road. The town of Wagner was out of sight, far to the west. I imagined the woods and road crawling with desperate people looking for food. It was then that I realized that I’d been focusing much more on the idea of the cabin as a getaway, something I really needed, than as a survival home, something Peter seemed more and more convinced was necessary. 

That night, as we lay on the air mattress and basked in the moonlight falling through the window, I broached the subject. 

“You know, we talked about having this place as a retreat and a haven from catastrophe. But I’m not sure that it will ever be a place where I can relax if all we ever do while we’re here is prepare for some kind of Armageddon. Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid?” 

Snuggling up to my side, Peter reached an arm across my chest and pulled me closer. “Ay, if you knew what I knew…” he said. “I can’t tell you specifics, but there are countries that want to bring us down, even at unimaginable costs to their own people. But I promise, we’ll make this a place we can both enjoy, and I can do most of the work while you’re on your teaching stints. It’ll be a lot more fun than hanging around the townhouse by myself on the weekends. And if you want me to ease off on the project when you’re here, I can do that, too. You don’t have to do anything you don’t feel like doing.” 

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds better, even though it makes me look kind of lazy.” 

“Ay, you are anything but lazy, and you know it. Hey, let’s take a picnic lunch and explore up the creek tomorrow,” he suggested. 

And that’s what we did, and we had a great time, finding several waterfalls, a few frogs, and even a little snake that came swimming across a little pool toward us. And, of course, I didn’t even notice that while we were goofing off, Peter was probably thinking about where he would put this little hut. 

October 24 

After writing yesterday until my hand was too sore to go on, I reheated some oatmeal with dried apples that I gathered last month. Luckily, just about all of these hills were at some time farm land, so it’s not unusual to find overgrown orchards in seemingly unlikely places. Pigs and apples are the legacy of generations of hardy, Appalachian mountain farmers, and I’m thankful for all they’ve left me. Unfortunately, the wild blueberries and huckleberries that I gathered in July are sitting in tins in the root cellar back at the cabin. I usually gathered the apples at mid-day, hoping that the bears would be napping, and used my largest backpack to haul them back. I often saw deer scavenging the windfalls, and piles of bear scat everywhere, though I never actually saw one. Near the smoking cave are some large stone slabs where I spread the apple slices on tarps to dry. This was a tedious process, and sometimes the weather turned rainy or humid, and I had trouble getting them to dry. 

Peter built this hut from a gazebo kit that he modified to suit our needs. It has a double floor with the bottom platform sealed to keep out moisture, insects, and rodents. Between the two floors, eight inches of storage space hold the majority of my food in airtight tins. Rice, beans, biscuit mix, instant milk, instant potatoes, Tang, sugar, coffee, honey, spices, tea bags, dried eggs, nuts, raisins, canned chicken and tuna, and some real luxuries—freeze dried meals that Peter made himself by cooking extra stews and crock pot meals and then drying them in a dehydrator. 

For the inside framing, Peter used two-by-eights, which left about four inches of exposed stud after he finished the interior walls. Between the studs, shelves at various levels provide more storage area. At eye level, an eight-inch window runs around most of the interior except for the few feet directly behind the woodstove. The window is coated with a non-reflective substance to make it harder to see from outside during the day, but I still feel like I’m in a fish bowl at night, so I close the blackout curtains and use as little light as possible. This hasn’t been a problem during the long days of summer, but I wonder if I will go a little stir crazy when the cold weather and short days set in. Two vents near the ceiling and two near the floor provide for cross ventilation and can be closed off in the winter. The bed platform is about two feet off the floor and stands against the wall opposite the woodstove with the area underneath providing yet more space for storage. 

You may be wondering how Peter got all this stuff up here. I helped him sometimes, but he often invited a friend or two when there was a lot of heavy lifting. The hut is about four miles from the cabin, behind the crests of two more hills, and maybe nine hundred feet higher in elevation. The forest road goes about halfway up, but then the route turns left up a hollow, over the ridge to the northeast, across the next hollow and halfway up another hill to a small knob. Peter hid the hut in a dense rhododendron thicket just over the crest of the hill. A spring-fed creek flows down the crease below the knob, about a five-minute walk downhill. Renovations around the cabin took about a year, but as we started our second summer there, Peter was already hauling up the building supplies for the hut. Though he camped here many times during the building process, by early fall it was enclosed and ready for our first night here together. 

Since Peter put the windows so high, I must stand to see out. Yesterday, as I was swallowing down my lukewarm oatmeal, the rain seemed to pick up and pounded against the walls with new ferocity. It came in waves from the southeast, unusual for this area where most of the weather comes from the southwest. When I rose to look out, the window was plastered with bits of leaf, twigs, and other debris that made it almost impossible to see through. Even on a good day, the thicket limits the view. Yesterday all I could see were the leathery leaves of the rhododendron, slapping against the glass. 

Curious beyond my better judgement, I pulled on my raincoat and pushed open the door. Heavy as it is, made of two by sixes, the wind nearly pulled the knob from my hand. I pushed myself out and closed the door behind me, holding onto the knob for support. With my other hand clamped to my head to secure my hood, I looked toward the top of the ridge, where an assortment of oaks, maples, hickories, and pines stuck out above the brush, waving wildly. They seemed to me like sentinels of the forest, warning of danger and calling, “Go back! Go back!” I stood, transfixed, rain pouring down my pants and into my boots, when a loud “CRACK!” sounded from behind me to the right, and I turned to see the upper third of an oak break and topple toward me. Its branches made a sound like bright static as they crashed into other trees on the way down. Damn! I thought, though I quickly realized that the crown of the tree would fall a good thirty feet short of me and the hut. As the tree came to rest, I looked around at the other trees in that direction. Though they continued to dance and gyrate, I didn’t think more than a couple of them were close enough to pose a threat. Glancing at the downed tree once more in disbelief, I pushed open the door and thrust myself back into the precarious safety of the hut. 

The wind and rain began to die down in the early evening, and I woke this morning to a light cloud cover that has been coursing over the mountains as though in slow motion. I emerged from the hut after breakfast to a world of downed branches and debris with a half-full chamber pot in hand, really a onegallon plastic paint can with a close-fitting lid. Periodically, I dig a trench near a fallen tree about a foot deep and a few feet long. The soil is soft, so it is more a matter of scraping than digging. This becomes my toilet until it is half full. Every time I add to it, I sprinkle on some of the leaf meal I’ve scraped away to cover the smell and help the excrement decay. After a week or so, I refill the hole and dig a new one. I rinse my bucket with plain urine or used water from my dish washing, but I’ve found that the lid is tight enough to keep in the stench, so I don’t attempt to sanitize it. 

After toilet duty, I took the water bladder to the creek for drinking water. The rain filled the rain bucket with a couple of gallons that I will use for cooking, but I prefer creek water for drinking. I’ve given up on purifying it since the source is so close, and it hasn’t made me sick yet, though sometimes on a sunny day I leave the bladder in the sun for a few hours to catch some ultraviolet rays. The container is as clear as any jar I have, so I’m confident that the sun can do its work. Filled to the brim, it weighs about twenty-four pounds, but I can fit it into my backpack and it still weighs less than the usual thirty-plus pounds I carry on backpacking trips. 

These daily chores are probably the reason that I have kept my sanity, such as it is. Though chaos may reign elsewhere, life in these woods is reduced to its simplest directives—get water, get food, maintain shelter. There is no thinking about when to repaint the townhouse, how much to put in the savings account, or whether it’s time to put new tires on the car. Procrastination affects my life immediately, so I do what needs to be done. No firewood—no cooking; no water—no beverages, cooking, or washing (though I do still put off the laundry sometimes). I basically have three changes of clothes, plus fleeces, a down jacket, a warm base layer, a rain suit, and a few extra pairs of panties. Just downstream from where I take my water is a little pool where I wash my clothes in a small, plastic tub, using just a few drops of biodegradable soap. I try to change my undies at least every other day, but I admit, it’s not much of a priority. Most of the time, I just string the wet clothes around the inside of the cabin; they seldom dry outside in one afternoon, and then I’d have to bring them in at dusk, anyway. 

My toilet and water chores were done by mid-morning, so I moved on to cooking, which has been my biggest challenge. During these hot months, starting a fire in the woodstove is pure torture, so I’ve made myself a little cooking area in a small clearing north of the hut. Although I know that someone could see the smoke, I tell myself that I have no choice. Though the air had dried out since the storm, the temperature was still mild for late October, so I hauled my Dutch oven full of soaked pinto beans to my cooking site and got a fire started under the grill, which we took off the Weber kettle grill we had on our porch in Arlington. I keep a little camp chair hidden under a tarp in the brush nearby, along with a small pot for heating water. Cooking beans is a long-term project, and I can’t walk off and leave them for more than a few minutes for fear that the fire will get out of control, so I brought my notebook, pen and sketch pad. By late afternoon, the beans were getting tender, and I added more water, some rice, and a few dehydrated carrots and peas. The final result wouldn’t win any awards, but it was tasty enough and would last through several reheatings. I finally dug in at around six, leaving myself just enough daylight to haul everything back to the hut. 

October 26 

Yesterday was a lost day. That is what I call the days when I let myself get caught up in a bout of malaise and melancholy. There must be an inner clock that regulates these moods because they usually come when I have nothing pressing to do, so they haven’t impinged upon my survival thus far. I worry that this may change, though, and that one day I’ll find myself unable to crawl out of my sleeping bag to do more than pee. I did manage to get up, though, and spent the day wandering in the woods, finally arriving at a certain rock a few miles along the ridge where I have gone before. I am amazed by how long I can just sit there and allow thoughts and feelings to wash over me. Most of the feelings center around Peter, images that come and go—his posture as he stood in front of the mirror to shave, the way he patted his pockets before going out the door, his smell when he kissed my neck. Inevitably, these images lead to more disturbing memories—IV lines sticking out of his arm, hospital gowns open in the back revealing an unfamiliar, emaciated body, a pale face against a pale pillow. But his eyes never changed, and I hold onto the memory of his gaze. I’ve learned that there is no point in trying to fight these moods. The most I can do is call a kind of truce, acknowledge them, and wait. Eventually, they recede enough for everyday life to break in, sometimes in the form of some necessary bodily function—hunger, thirst, exhaustion. After such an interlude, I’m likely to feel drained for as much as a day before I regain some energy. 

So, I am not feeling totally back to myself as I sit on the sleep platform against the wall and take up my pen. When I think about what to write next, I am overwhelmed by what I’ve yet to convey, little details and the big story of what it was like on the day everything ground to a halt. It’s odd how removed I feel from that person who suddenly realized that the big disaster was imminent. Looking back, she seems at the same time confident and naïve. Of course, we were all naïve to varying extents. But, at any rate, this is how I remember it. 

On the morning of April 1st, I had just stepped out of the shower in Arlington when the NPR news broadcast on the bedroom radio caught my attention. A cascade of computer glitches and irregularities had struck Wall Street just after the opening bell. Data simply disappeared from the computer systems of the major traders, and their operating systems were behaving erratically. At first, the industry suspected some sort of elaborate April Fools’ hoax, but efforts to identify and fix the problem had gone nowhere. Trading was suspended for the day, and trading houses were desperately trying to figure out what had happened. An anonymous spokesperson for one of the brokerage houses reported, “It’s as though someone took a magic eraser and wiped out all of our files.” Commerce Secretary Abraham was urging the public to remain calm. At the moment, everyday banking systems did not appear to be impacted; however, many banks were choosing to shut down their computer systems out of an “abundance of caution.” 

As I stood towel-drying my hair, I tried to digest the news and wondered what was going through the minds of millions of Americans. Would they panic? Start a run on the banks? If the bankers were smart, I thought, they’d all close their doors immediately. I pictured fist fights at ATMs and streets snarled with traffic. Perhaps people would just sit still and wait. Wall Street’s problems might seem far enough removed that middle America wouldn’t understand the possible ramifications of the announcement. Or they’d have blind faith that the problems could be easily fixed. 

You might think I’d have remained glued to the news, but speculation was the last thing I wanted to hear, so I switched over to the classical music station, knowing they would interrupt the program if there was an important update. To tell the truth, I felt a little detached, part of me just wanting to ignore what I was hearing and its possible implications. But in the back of my mind, I knew that this could be the start of something big, the big “it” that Peter and I had been preparing for since we’d bought the cabin. Without thinking, I started throwing clothes into a duffel—my favorite jeans, hiking boots and the fleeces that I kept with me most of the time. I was halfway through a two-week break, so I could afford to disappear for a few days. My electronics and chargers…What else? I’d been meaning to make a bug out list, but I’d gotten lazy since Peter’s death. 

Back in the bathroom, I was pulling all of the over-the-counter medications from the shelves and dumping them into my toiletry bag when I saw Peter’s aftershave. In the months since his death, I had left the little blue bottle right where he had left it, occasionally sprinkling some on my nightshirt. I dropped it in with the medicines and went back to the bedroom for the gun. 

In the kitchen I packed the bread and some food from the pantry into reusable bags and took them out to the pick-up. I brought in a cooler, dropped in some ice packs and all the ice from the ice maker. The milk, butter, cheese, some vegetables, a few condiments, and several packages of meat from the freezer came next. I looked around the refrigerator shelves at the containers of leftovers. I couldn’t take it all, but it would surely rot if the electricity went off. And if it went off for a long time, that would be the least of anyone’s problems, I thought. But, in spite of myself, I pulled them out, dumped them down the garbage disposal and tossed the containers into the dishwasher. I’d turned the downstairs radio to the same NPR station, and I could feel my own panic rising as the music lilted on. Then the music was interrupted by that high-pitched tone they use for testing the emergency broadcast system. 

“This is not a test,” a male voice began. In addition to the breakdown of the computer systems at Wall Street and several major financial institutions, there were reports of a major power outage on the west coast, affecting the grid from just north of San Francisco south to the Mexican border. The president had been briefed and was expected to make a statement within the hour. In the meantime, people were encouraged to remain calm, and if it was feasible, to return home. Metropolitan areas were being encouraged to follow storm evacuation procedures as though a winter storm or other natural disaster were imminent. The goal was to get workers and students home in as orderly a manner as possible. The term “abundance of caution” was repeated several times, but no details were provided about what the threat might be. 

Just go, I thought, as I turned the radio off and the dishwasher on. But what was I forgetting? Keys. Which to leave and which to take? I pulled both sets of truck keys from the kitchen drawer and dropped them in my purse. If you’ve ever tried to get new keys for an antique pick-up truck, a 1966 Ford F-250, to be exact, you can appreciate how carefully we kept track of those keys. I left the second set of my car keys in the drawer. My neighbor, Linda, already had a key to the house. In the garage I took three cases of powdered milk and set them in the back of the truck. Also, three empty gas cans, in the hope I could fill them on the way. I looked around. There was nothing left to take that we didn’t have at the cabin. I pulled the truck out of the garage and stopped it in the driveway. Up and down the street of townhouses, everything seemed quiet. 

Desert Drift

            Speed. Purpose. Movement. Margie enjoyed the burst of power as she pressed down on the accelerator and the car surged forward down the straightaway. Hemmed in by the purplish mass of the Tuzigot Canyon walls, there was only one way to go--forward. On the left, the canyon wall almost brushed the hardtop; on the right, scrub grass and cottonwoods clung to the edge of the creek, which in turn traced the right edge of the canyon floor with the carefree precision of an artist’s sketch. Soon the road started a long, gentle curve to the left, and Margie looked ahead to where it disappeared in the distance, perfectly centering the car in the lane.

Margie loved these few minutes before she arrived home to her rented house on Red Rim Ranch. For the space of almost an hour she was free of roles, no longer assistant manager of West of West Books, not yet mother of a young teenager. And for a while the momentum of her speeding car could almost convince her that she was actually going somewhere, that her life had a plan and a purpose instead of having unfolded as a haphazard set of circumstances, landing her in the Arizona desert with a child to raise and a basket full of unpaid bills.

A few minutes later, her dusty, blue Mazda emerged from the canyon, and Margie turned onto the dirt road that opened into the small valley where she lived. The canyon walls were replaced by a sloping terrain of saltbush and pinon pine, which led to two leftover ranch buildings at the far end of the valley. One was the renovated bunkhouse that she and Laura occupied; the other, the small shed where Laura kept her horse.

Margie had learned to ignore the dust that rose from the road and streamed out in tired clouds behind the car. The car was three years old, with over fifty thousand miles on it when she bought it, a real stretch on the meager salary she earned as assistant manager of the bookstore. Not that Sherry, her boss, was mean-spirited. Margie had learned soon after she and her ex-husband Scott arrived in the desert that it was a sparse place for everyone, desert rat and two-legged creature alike. She worried that she had been selfish in buying a car that she could actually depend on. Scott had taught her to live with sacrifice, so that it had become a habit to see owning more than the bare necessities as frivolous and wasteful.

Pulling up beside the babysitter’s red Mustang, Margie saw her daughter standing in the middle of the paddock, lead rope in hand, guiding Firefall, her stocky, buckskin pony around in circles. In jeans, T-shirt, and cowboy boots, Laura could have stepped right off the pages of the cowboy stories Margie had read in her school readers back home in Georgia in the sixties. Those stories were punctuated with pet “dogies” and peopled with Norman Rockwell characters who colorfully rode their horses to a happy ending in every plot. Every kid had a horse and every story an adventure. Somehow, in spite of the current age of multiculturalism and truer, bleaker tales, Laura seemed to have soaked up these myths of the West, believing that blue sky, a horse, and land to ride on were the only ingredients necessary for total bliss. Her long, auburn hair swayed across her back as she pivoted with the trotting horse, now toward the hills, then back toward Margie, then away again, taking no notice of her mother as she stood by the car.

In the house, Margie received a warmer reception from Luke, her babysitter’s four-year-old boy.

“Goody! Time to eat!” Luke chimed, jumping up from in front of the TV. “Mommy’s makin’ fittatta!”

“Soon, soon,” Charlotte answered, standing behind the breakfast bar, spatula in hand, tending to two large iron skillets. In one, a thick amalgamation of eggs and fried potatoes lay, simmering at the edges; in the other a mixture of scrambled hamburger, onions, and peppers sizzled under a generous coating of chili powder.

“Smells wonderful.” Margie said, smiling at Charlotte. “Nothing beats coming home to a great dinner. Luke, how about going out and telling Laura that it’s time to put the horse away and come in for dinner? Don’t go in the corral, okay?”

Luke burst out the door, letting it slam behind him.

“She’s been with that horse every second since we got home.” Charlotte turned back toward the stove.

“I’m not surprised.” Margie reached into the cupboard beside Charlotte for plates. “This is going to be hard on her, but she’s had time to prepare.”

“Some things you can’t prepare for.”

“No, I guess not. But sometimes we just can’t have everything we want. In fact, sometimes I think I wouldn’t be able to manage at all if I didn’t have you to bring Laura home after school and cook us a decent meal a few times a week.

“Well, that works both ways. It’s good to have something to do while Greg’s at work. Now that we’ve run our lives around second shift for so long, I don’t know how we’ll adjust in the fall when Luke starts kindergarten. Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?”

“No. I think I’m waiting for a sign. Silly, huh? I’m afraid I’m taking the easy way out.”

Finished with the table, Margie pulled a platter out of the cupboard and held it while Charlotte slid the frittata out of the skillet and dished the hamburger mixture on top.

“Well, there’s easy and there’s sensible,” Charlotte countered as she pulled a narrow loaf of garlic bread from the oven, shutting the door with a flip of her foot. “Nobody would blame you for going back.”

“Nobody over thirty, you mean,” Margie responded as the kids’ footsteps sounded in the yard.

Hours later Margie took a cup of tea and slipped out the front door to sit on the steps in the cool, dry night. With the house at her back, not a man-made light could be seen, just the shadows of the hills sprawling like sleeping dogs around her. Ahead, the wide strip of night sky appeared frozen in motion, as though some great power had gathered up a fistful of stars and flung them full-force at the black sky, where they’d stuck fast, like buckshot. Margie never tired of listening to the quiet rustlings of the nights here, so different from the symphony of peepers and crickets she’d grown up with. Maybe nighttime anywhere can be peaceful, she thought, as long as you can get off to yourself.

Laura had gone back to the shed after supper, grooming Firefall and putting his tack in order until long after Charlotte and Luke had gone. Margie had waited to call her in, knowing that Laura would force her to go over the whole situation again, not because she didn’t understand, but to punish Margie for her decision.

Margie was folding a load of laundry she’d dumped onto the couch when Laura finally came in, smelling of horse sweat and dust.

“I just don’t understand why we suddenly can’t afford a horse,” Laura started, standing defiantly at the end of the breakfast bar, arms folded across her chest.

Margie took stock of her daughter, searching for the right words. She wondered why she always seemed to admire her most when she was being the most difficult. At thirteen, Laura had grown a full two inches and a couple of sizes just in the eighteen months since her father had left, and exuded a no-nonsense strength that Margie would have given anything for in her own timid, teenage years. She had her father’s angular build and Scottish complexion, nothing like Margie’s own dark softness.

Forcing her guilt deep into that compartment in her psyche labeled Things You Can’t Let Matter, she answered calmly, “Laura, you know we’ve been through this already. With the payments on the new car and the hike in the health insurance, the vet bills and the feeding bills are just too much for me to handle.”

“But the vet said you didn’t have to pay him right away, and Firefall’s leg is all healed now!”

“All bills have to be paid sooner or later. And what happens when he steps in another hole? I can’t let these bills pile up.” As she spoke, she continued folding the laundry, tossing bundles of socks into Laura’s basket with sure aim.

“Let Aunt Debra help you. She bought us the washer.”

“Yes, she did, but that was a necessity. And it’s not Aunt Debra’s job to take care of us. It’s mine.” Margie put the last fold into a pair of Laura’s jeans, bracing for a comeback.

“Are you getting ready to move back to Georgia?”

Surprised, Margie looked at her daughter sharply.

“Why do you think that?

“I hear you talking on the phone at night! I know that Grandma and Aunt Debra and Uncle Jeff want you to go home. Is that the real reason you’re getting rid of Firefall?”

“No, that has nothing to do with it. We need to pay our own bills, wherever we are. That’s all.”

Margie dropped the last pair of socks into Laura’s basket.

“Come get your laundry.”

Laura crossed the room but stopped before taking the basket from her mother.

“Can you at least talk to me about it before you decide? It’s my life too, you know.”

Hands still on her hips, looking her mother straight in the face, Laura was the picture of self-possession. Margie wondered how she had raised such a willful child. Resisting the urge to hug her, Margie handed the laundry basket to her daughter, replying in a business-like tone, “We’ll talk.”

Laura hoisted the laundry basket onto her hip and turned with a doubtful, “Humph.”

“And don’t forget to wake me up before the truck gets here,” she ordered as she strode down the short hallway to her room.

“I will. Goodnight,” Margie called after her.

But Laura had already entered her room and closed the door.

Looking back, the exchange had gone better than Margie had expected. No tears. No hysterics. No hateful words. Was Laura more grown-up than she realized? Or had worrying about the move already eclipsed the loss of her horse?

Margie set her teacup down and stretched her legs. The night had cooled considerably; she wouldn’t be surprised if the temperature dipped into the forties overnight. She lingered for a moment, tempted to fetch her sleeping bag and roll it out under the stars. But she knew she’d likely stay awake watching the constellations wheel slowly across the sky long into the night, and tomorrow was likely to be a trying day as it was, so she tramped up the step into the house and proceeded to close the windows against the night air.

When the alarm went off the next morning, Margie was already awake, watching the sky behind the eastern ridge turn bright through the curtainless window. This was the time of day that could almost inspire her with hope and promise. Margie snapped off the radio and began flexing her muscles underneath the comforter, tensing and releasing her thigh muscles and buttocks, enjoying the feel of the bedclothes brushing her legs. Moving her hands to her thighs, she massaged the morning stiffness out of them, alternately squeezing and releasing handfuls of flesh, working her way up from her knees. For thirty-five, she was in pretty good shape. With Laura’s high energy level and her own love of the outdoors, Margie found it easy to work in a few hours of hiking a week, which left her with firm thighs and a flat stomach with little effort. As her hands reached the tops of her thighs, she continued massaging in small circles, rubbing the insides of her hips, enjoying the feel of the hard bones below her flesh.

She closed her eyes, still picturing the light rising above the wild, dark ridge outside the window, and let her hand travel lightly down to her pelvis. She could feel the coarse circles of her pubic hair through the slippery nylon of her panties, making a natural cushion as her fingertips rubbed in a gentle circle above her clitoris. Mildly excited, she pictured herself lying on her back on a sleeping bag somewhere up on the ridge, out of sight of the house. The sky would be just like this, dazzling white-yellow, shimmering to blue, blocked only by the silhouette of the man who kneeled between her knees.

Her fantasies always broke down around this point, as her mind struggled to put a face on the lover who knelt there, tugging at the sides of her jeans, ready to enter her forcefully or with slow deliberation, depending on her mood. She’d been on few dates since Scott left and was amazed by how these men thought that she would throw herself at anyone with a steady job and enough cash to buy her dinner. They must have known better than she the paucity of available men around Sedona. So far, though, no one had made it through a whole meal without pissing her off or showing some repulsive habit.

The closest she came to any really eligible man was when, every few months, a customer would wander into the bookstore and unexpectedly catch her eye. Their eyes would meet and she’d be struck with the notion, now here’s someone who would fit. Usually that someone would be clean, neatly dressed but not fussy, intelligent looking but with a certain spark… and then the wife, or the child, or the wedding ring would jump out unexpectedly, and she’d be left blushing, averting her eyes as though her interest was written across her T-shirt in flaming script.

Rubbing harder, she strained to reconstruct the sensation of firm flesh against her bare breasts and the strengthening rhythm of groin against groin. Pressing her heels against the mattress, she tilted her pelvis upward and pushed against her fingers. The image of the man faded as she concentrated on the beauty of the rising sun, the feel of sand under her back, and her peaking excitement. A small gasp escaped her as she climaxed, and she clung to that moment, feeling the merging of sky, sand, and self. For a few moments she savored her pleasure and the image of being alone on the ridge, in perfect union with the desert. Then, with no one to kiss, stroke, or share in the afterglow of her lovemaking, she let her arched back relax onto the bedclothes, threw her legs over the edge of the bed, and headed for the bathroom.

Showered and dressed, Margie entered the kitchen a half an hour later to find that the automatic coffee maker had failed to begin brewing for the second time that week. So much for flea market bargains, she thought. Slapping the side of the water well, she was rewarded when the red brew light flickered on. At 6:30 she called to Laura from the bedroom door, and, before Laura had even emerged from her bathroom, she noted the stream of dust rising at the end of the road.

“Truck’s here!” she called, heading out the door.

The maroon pick- up with its small trailer stopped near the shed. A man dressed in blue denim hopped out and started toward Margie, and she recognized Dean Hawkins, long-time manager of Oak Creek Ranch. As he approached her, he reached up and pulled off his hat, revealing dark, straight bangs plastered against a wide forehead. His eyes were serious and his whole demeanor reminded Margie of someone paying respects at a funeral home.

“Hi, Margie. How are you all doing?”

Margie fought down the urge to reply, in funeral home style, as well as can be expected.

“Fine, Dean. How are you?”

“Doin’ good.”

“How about a cup of coffee?”

“Sure.”

Margie went into the house and returned with two thick mugs. Leaning their arms on the side of the truck bed, they watched Firefall as he nosed in the sand for scraps of hay.

“Well, that’s one beautiful horse we sold you.”

“Sold Scott, you mean,” Margie corrected. She thought of the times Scott had spent out on roundups or just wandering and camping with Dean. She’d always wondered if Scott had confided in Dean about his plans.

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I just get to wondering sometimes, you know, about Scott buying that horse for Laura so close to when he left. Like he was getting her the horse to make up for what he was about to do.”

“Yeah, I wondered about that, too. Do you hear from him much?”

“No, I guess Laura’s birthday was the last time, and that’s been ten months or so.”

“He was a good hand. He learned quick, was patient…”

“Yeah, he liked the work, but, I don’t know, seems like he was just one of those people; he just never could stay satisfied. It took me a while to catch on.”

Margie’s gaze darted from the paddock to Dean’s face. His expression was calm, matter-of-fact and without a trace of pity or guilt. She went on.

“Did he ever tell you about his parents?”

“No. He didn’t really talk much about himself.” Dean took a long sip of coffee.

“They owned a big peach orchard outside of Augusta. When Scott was about sixteen some orchard hands came to the door and said they were having car trouble and asked if Scott would come take a look. Even then he was doing a lot of the maintenance on his dad’s equipment. A couple of the hands stayed at the house, said they had to use the bathroom, while Scott went with the other one. When he got to their car, two more guys got out and jumped him. They tied him up and put him in the trunk. Meanwhile, back at the house, the others shot his father and mother and ransacked the house, looking for the orchard money. When they were through, they drove Scott out of town and left him on a road in the woods somewhere. He could hear them arguing the whole way about whether to shoot him, too. The guys in the car hadn’t wanted to shoot anyone, but the others didn’t want to leave any witnesses.  So, they dumped him, still tied, figuring that by the time he got loose, they’d be pretty far away. It worked. They never did catch them.”

“Wow. Rough story.” Dean’s gaze rested on the ridge beyond the horse shed, as though he was picturing the scene in his mind.

“Yeah. And according to Scott, people never did treat him the same. He felt like everyone pitied him behind his back. Some kind of survivor’s guilt, I guess they’d call it. He even turned it on me sometimes. How do you support someone who turns all your help into an insult? Anyway, that’s why we ended up out here. This was going to be Scott’s chance for a fresh start-- no orchard money and no one who knew his history.”

Margie looked at Dean, wondering how he was taking this outpouring. His brown face still held its stoic mask, as though he was used to hearing and accepting hard luck stories. She was sure now that he hadn’t had any more warning about Scott’s decision than she, and she hoped he hadn’t noticed her fishing for information.

“It must have been a shock when he took off,” Dean finally said.

“Actually…” Margie started, recalling the way Scott’s discontent had permeated their lives, “I was relieved. And, anyway, we’re surviving.”

As she spoke, Laura emerged from the house.

“Mom, can I load Firefall if it’s okay with Mr. Hawkins? He’ll be calmer with someone he knows.”

Margie looked at Dean.

“Sure,” he answered. “If you’re still as good with horses as you used to be, I should be hiring you.”

He smiled, and Laura grinned at the compliment and hoisted herself over the fence.

“She’s always had a real nice touch with animals,” he observed, walking around to the back of the trailer.

Margie held the gate and watched as Laura led Firefall to the trailer. Instead of using a bridle and bit, she’d merely looped a piece of rope through the horse’s halter. With a calm more suited to an old mare, Firefall followed docilely behind Laura, his hooves clopping methodically on the packed dirt and sending tiny puffs of dust into the air.

“Come on boy,” Laura spoke soothingly, holding the horse’s head close to her shoulder and laying her left hand on the area just above his nose. “You’re going back to your old friends.”

Dean stood by the end of the trailer, ready to fasten the chain behind the horse’s withers. Margie noticed the square set of his shoulders and the stark contrast between his sun-browned skin and the faded blue of his denim shirt. He held the chain patiently, but his eyes closely followed the movements of horse and girl.

“Atta girl, good job,” he praised as Firefall calmly followed Laura up the ramp.

Scrambling from the trailer, Laura remained business-like as she described Firefall’s feeding and exercise routine.

“I’ll go get the rest of his tack,” she finally volunteered, starting back to the shed.

“That’s some kid you’ve got there,” Dean commented as he slammed the ramp up against the back of the trailer.

“I try,” Margie answered, looking after Laura and feeling suddenly awkward.

Laura reappeared shortly, lugging Firefall’s blanket, saddle, and bridle, and swung them into the back of the truck.

“Come visit anytime,” Dean called as he stepped up into the cab. Then, in another cloud of dust, he was gone, leaving Margie and Laura standing in front of the glaringly empty paddock.

Mother and daughter stood rooted, like pine and sapling, until the dust cloud shrank to a mere wisp. Then Laura turned on her heel and retreated into the house.

The rest of the morning wore on at an almost imperceptible pace. When Margie went back inside, she dropped the blinds and closed them tightly against the growing heat, the blinding sun, and the lifeless corral. The door to Laura’s room stayed closed, the house as silent as the desert that surrounded it. Margie sat at the counter, sorting through some bills when the phone rang.

“Hey, Marg, how did it go?” her sister Debra’s voice greeted her.

“It just went. Quietly. Very quietly.”

“No tears?”

“No, just a mild confrontation last night and lots of silence today.”

“Ah, the punishment.”

“Yeah, maybe, or maybe she’s just given up. She’s figured out that I’m thinking of moving back.” The words of a Robert Frost poem echoed in her head as she spoke, Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in…

“Well, she’s not stupid. What did you tell her?”

“Not much. That I haven’t made up my mind, and that we couldn’t keep the horse either way.”

“But she could have one here. Did you tell her that? Mom’s still got the old barn just like when we had our horses. You know her, she never changes a thing.”

“Right. That’s part of what makes it so hard. I’m not going anywhere here, but I’m not real keen on going backward, either.”

“Hey, I stayed, and I’m not exactly oppressed, you know.”

“I know, I didn’t mean it like that. Besides you’re married, and you don’t have to see her every day. I can just see her rubbing my nose in every little bit of help I may need, and, if I’m going to go back to school, I’ll need some.”

“Well, you didn’t ask Scott to drag you out there and then leave you. It’s sure not your fault. Every way I look at it, you held up your end of the bargain.”

“Yeah, I guess. I just want to be sure I know what I’m bargaining for this time. I can’t seem to make a plan. You know, five years ago, I thought that I helped make the decision to move out here, but I guess I didn’t, or else why would I be so paralyzed now?”

“You aren’t hoping he’ll come back, are you?”

“God, no… I just can’t figure out who I was before I built my life around him.”

“Forget about that. Remember what we were talking about last week? You can get some kind of job as a receptionist or something, save a little money over the summer, and start at that technical school at night in the fall. Mom can watch Laura or she can stay with us at night. It’ll probably only be a couple nights a week. Once you get here and settle into a routine, you’ll feel a lot better, I’m sure. Mom offered to pay for your courses, right? And Laura can have a horse and be around family and all kinds of people. I swear, within a few months, she’ll have new friends and be thanking you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. And you know, Mom’s offer only stands if we move back. I hate giving in to her manipulations.”

“I know, but really, this could be a very positive change for you. And if you graduate as a paralegal, you can move anywhere, or maybe even go into law school.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Well, you know I’ve got a point. When are you going to decide?”

Gathering a stack of torn envelopes from the counter in front of her, Margie frowned. “Soon, I guess. We’ll get a check from the horse this week, and then I can pay a couple of bills and see what’s left. I’m hoping to start off the month as close to debt-free as I can.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. Call me after you talk to Laura. And be sure to mention the horse.”

“Right,” Margie replied as she hung up. As though any horse would do, she thought. As though Laura wasn’t smart enough to know when she was being bought off.

Hours later Margie once again settled onto the front step under a full night sky. After a day of silence, the inevitable show down had erupted over a dinner of frozen lasagna.

“I’ll hate Georgia, you know.”

“How do you know that?” Margie had braced herself as she drizzled vinegar on her salad.

“Easy. My horse is here, and the desert is here.”

“But you’ll be able to have a lot more friends. And Grandma will let you have a horse.”

“Oh, so now everything in my life will have to be okayed with you and Grandma? Besides, I have all the friends I want. I don’t need a bunch of prissy, bubble-headed, cheerleader friends to giggle with over bra sizes and boys.”

“Well, for a thirteen-year-old, you seem to have the world pretty neatly boxed in and figured out.”

“Hah! You know how people are in Atlanta. They think a BMW in every four-car garage is what life’s all about, and diversity is inviting their rich Nigerian gynecologist to their dinner parties.”

“Where did you get all that?”

“Listening to you and Aunt Debra talk about Grandma. And I do have eyes, you know.”

“Your grandmother may not be the most enlightened person, but she has good intentions. And, as a matter of fact, so do I. We are not making it on my salary. I’ve got to try something else. Can’t you understand that?”

“Can’t you try something that won’t ruin my life? I like it here. This is my home. Can’t you understand that?”

A waning moon rested just above the ghost-like ridge. Margie thought about the summer Georgia evenings, picturing herself rocking on her mother’s back porch, fending off mosquitoes and self-doubt. Laura could be right, she knew; movement for the sake of movement might not be progress at all.

As her thoughts skipped back and forth across the country, a stream of dust rose from the road. By the time the pick-up came into focus, Margie had guessed its occupant.

Dean hopped down from the cab, his hands hanging awkwardly. “I thought we might talk a little more about that horse of yours.”

Margie stood and dusted off her pants, for some reason not surprised at the visit. But the little wooden step was too small to accommodate two adults.

“Hold on. I think I stuck a couple of lawn chairs out in the shed.”

Dean motioned to the truck. “Or we could ride up on the ridge and sit in the back of the truck. It’s great for staying above the scorpions.”

“A scorpion here or there never bothered me, but ok. Let me write a note for Laura. I think she’s already asleep. Can I offer you a beer?”

“Sure, I’d appreciate it.”

Margie stepped into the house and looked down the hallway to Laura’s door. Silence. Pulling an envelope from the basket, she scrawled a note, “Gone up on the ridge. Back soon,” and left it on the counter before grabbing a six pack from the refrigerator.

Dean swung back into the cab, but instead of climbing into the passenger seat, Margie hopped into the bed of truck, letting her calves hang over the open gate. Dean took off slowly, zigzagging gently up the slope. Saltbush and pinon grabbed at the sides of the truck, making an odd squeaking sound, almost like a cry. Dean stopped the truck at the top, facing away from the valley, and jumped up beside her.

“I brought back your saddle and tack,” he said as he twisted the cap off of a beer. “We don’t need them, and maybe you’ll be able to get another horse someday, or you could sell them later.”

“Thanks.”

“How is Laura doing?”

“She’s upset, but she has a very quiet way of dealing with it. No tantrums, just scathing sarcasm and blunt reasoning. She hates the idea that we might move back to Georgia, and she’s not exactly ready to see things from my point of view.”

“Which is?”

“We’re barely scraping by out here with no improvement in sight. I’ll lose my babysitter this fall, and I’m afraid that Laura spends too much time alone. I know she seems responsible, but way out here there’s just no one to help if there’s an accident or an emergency.” She took a long drink and wedged the bottle between her knees. “And that’s just for starters. I’m not going anywhere, and what’s really scary is that sometimes I don’t even care. I feel like I could just walk into the desert and never come back. If it weren’t for Laura, maybe I would.”

“This landscape tends to have that effect on people.”

“Yes, but it can be deceiving, too. It accepts you on your own terms, no questions asked. But with such easy acceptance, you can lose your focus altogether. Maybe staying here and barely scraping by is just an escape from the pressure to actually do something with my life.”

“So, you’re trying to be a responsible mother, move back to civilization, and start a career… even if neither of you really wants it.”

“Something like that.”

Dean leaned against the side of the truck bed and studied her profile. “I believe you’re trying to be two people at once.”

“If I could narrow it down to two, that would be progress.”

“What makes you so sure that living in Georgia would be better for Laura?”

“She’d be around family, she could spend more time with people her age, maybe she’d see more options to life than ranching…”

“And all those options have made people there happier than the folks out here?” Dean had pulled his knees up to his chest and was squatting more than sitting on the tailgate, like some old, native shaman. “Is it worth cutting out the heart to give the brain more options?”

“I know Laura loves it here, and I know she doesn’t care about money or having a lot of nice things, but if this is all she knows, is that really a choice? I could float along here forever, but maybe she deserves a little broader horizon to choose from.”

As the words left her mouth, Margie knew she’d chosen the wrong metaphor. The moon climbed higher in the sky, and the layers of ridge and red-rock concealed and revealed each other until they ended their hide-and-seek in a field of stars like a meadow of tiny white blossoms. Along the ridge in front of them, ocotillo reached its long, slender fingers toward the stars, and the lumpy forms of Joshua trees stood hunched like burglars escaping across the sand.

“Yes, a broader horizon. I see…” Dean mimicked. “And have you thought about your own heart?  Or would that be too selfish?”

His words seemed suddenly very personal, and it occurred to Margie that he might have had more than Laura on his mind when he drove up the road. I followed my heart once, she thought, and look where it got me. She tried to flash through the snippets of information Scott had mentioned about his foreman. Didn’t he have an ex-wife somewhere in Flagstaff? Kids? None that she could remember. She could invent a reason to check on Laura and draw the conversation to a quick close, but she knew she didn’t want to. Not because she wanted something to happen; she was just enjoying being up on the ridge, away from the house and all the responsibilities it held. The desert was still except for the faint rustle of the breeze. Being up here in the middle of the night made her worries seem small and contrived.

Still squatting, with a bottle of beer on the tailgate between them, Dean continued to look out over the canyon, seeming to forget that he’d even asked a question, so she didn’t attempt an answer, just took another swallow of beer and watched the moon shadows quiver on the sand.

“The school bus stops at the ranch, you know. Laura could ride it after school and visit with Firefall. There’s enough to do that she could work in exchange for riding. And if you’re really set on going back to school, you could head up to Flagstaff a couple nights a week, or go to the community college. Laura could even go with you and do her homework. I’m not trying to talk you into anything, I’m just wondering whether you’ve thought about all the options. You know, there may be more choices out here than you think.”

Margie finished her beer and set the empty bottle down between them. She’d considered these options before—all the driving back and forth, dragging Laura with her, getting home late at night. The thought alone exhausted her. The beer was making her drowsy, and she wanted to forget her problems, not sift through them again and again. She stared across the canyon, idly following a jet trail as it sliced the field of stars in two. Either or, either or, the sky seemed to taunt her.

The moon hung just beyond the horizon, casting invisible rays of reflected light that illuminated exactly half of each cactus, pine, and bush with white light, and, in the face of its glaring brilliance, Margie thought that she’d gamble all of her and Laura’s meager belongings for just one sliver of that irreducible clarity.

Sheltering in Place: My Personal Take

“Shelter in Place.”

These are the last official instructions given by the U.S. government before an Electro-Magnetic Pulse attack darkens the North American continent. “Go home and prepare as though for a blizzard, hurricane, pandemic or…” But there is no further guidance. Prepare for what?

In my debut novel, this is the situation that propels Aurora to her off-grid cabin on the edge of the George Washington National Forest and eventually to a hut, miles into the woods, seemingly the safest place left. Find a shelter and stay there. Shelter in Place.

Shelter in Place was conceived and drafted before the Covid pandemic hatched and hurled itself around the world, changing forever our sense of personal safety and turning the simplest errand into a quest for survival. Don’t go out. It’s dangerous.

But for many people, myself included, “out” was the place we felt safest. Not out at Walmart or a restaurant, but out in fresh air that we hoped would disperse virus droplets and keep us safe. Out where other people were scarce. If we gathered at all, it was on decks and patios with well-spaced chairs and strong fans blowing. We brought our own cups and cutlery to picnics and didn’t share serving utensils. Or we camped, braving gas stations along the way for the opportunity to be farther and farther away from the risk of others, sheltering in the remotest of places.

As it came time to think about a theme for this web site, my thoughts turned toward my wayfaring lifestyle. Since the early 2000s and my first rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, I have sought opportunities to explore new places. I bought backpacking gear and section hiked hundreds of miles of the Appalachian Trail, kayaked on the New River and rafted on the Middle Fork of the Salmon and the Gauley. I camped on Cedar Mesa, in National Parks, in the southern Rockies, and near Native American ruins. I bought a second home in Flagstaff, Arizona, just to be near more unsettled places.

So why didn’t I choose a theme that reflects my unapologetically unrooted lifestyle? I did. I thought deeply about why I am always on the move, always seeking new places, and the answer was simple. For me “sheltering in place” doesn’t mean finding a single safe place and staying there, hunkered down, defenses raised, as Aurora is compelled to do in the novel. It is the act of finding peace and solace in all the special places I’ve discovered, like the floor of the Grand Canyon with the early sun spotlighting the high rims of the canyon walls. Or scrambling up steep slickrock to marvel at remnants of Ancestral Puebloan dwellings. Or merely sitting on a camp chair at the edge of the woods, watching the fireflies multiply at dusk. So, I feel that I have spent the majority of my life, indeed, sheltering in place. But, at the same time, I feel that I have only just begun.

Letting Go

    She was drifting, eyes open, coffee mug nestled in her lap, to all appearances conscious, but drifting nonetheless, her gaze fixed on the maple outside the window as its new leaves wafted to and fro, to and fro.  

    But everything she saw existed light years from where she lay, swaddled in multiple layers of brightly colored blankets. 

    She was in the milking parlor back in Wisconsin, standing in a wet, concrete pit between two rows of cows, the smell of manure pungent in her nostrils. The milking machine rumbled and pulsed as spurts of milk coursed through the plastic bubble below each udder and disappeared into a black hose. There was a great splat as the third cow on the right let loose a long stream of manure.  She reached for the flat-ended shovel and scraped the excrement into the gully that ran the length of the milking platform.  Replacing the shovel, she turned and caught her father’s grin as he watched with approval. The tips of his moustache hairs were brown with traces of the morning’s first chew of tobacco, and his smile was punctuated by a missing incisor. She returned his smile, and a glow of pride ran through her at the thought that she was really helping, and that her help was important. Then he turned and swung the lever that released the row of cows on the left and let in the next six. The cows crowded down the aisle, nose to tail, huffing clear, wet snot from their giant nostrils, anxious to get at their grain and be relieved of the pressure in their giant udders.

    A bird chirped outside the open window, “whet, whet, whet,” and pulled her back to the present. She raised her mug carefully to her lips. She couldn’t see the bird, but she knew it was there, a few branches above where the window frame cut off her view. From the chaise lounge on the porch, she’d spied its nest in the front oak. 

    Then she was gone again, flung like a droplet from a sprinkler, the kind that twirled round and round and that they had run through as kids on blistering summer days.

    This time she was with Paul, her college sweetheart.  It was late August and a heat wave had overwhelmed Boston. Their little apartment on the third floor along Com Ave had become unbearable. So they rode subway cars and busses, making their way north to Marblehead, lunch stuffed into backpacks that usually held thick textbooks. When they finally reached the beach, they giggled as they spread towels between boulders the size of dump trucks and lay themselves down to watch the clouds tumble by. Suddenly she could picture his face as clearly as if it had been yesterday, as clear as if she could turn her head right now and see his profile, straight nose, closely clipped beard, fair hair with a tinge of red, already thinning though he was all of twenty-three. His mouth turned up more on one side when he laughed, which he did now, mocking the cries of the seagulls as he turned to tickle her. She reached to stop him, sliding her hand along the surprisingly soft hair of his lower arm, catching up his hand and capturing it between her breasts.

    Where was he now? An osteopath, somewhere in the Mid-west… Chicago? She shivered. Who would choose to live in that cold, barren place? 

    Bruce had had hairy forearms, too. Hair thicker than Paul’s and not as soft, perhaps because he’d been dark-haired before the grey had taken over. The hands at the ends of those arms were small and squarish and might be taken for clumsy, but just picturing them brought back the feel of his fingers brushing gently down her back and over her buttocks, stroking her thighs and coaxing excitement even when she was sure that the well was dry. Sex with Bruce was the best she’d had, even though she was post-menopausal and all the commercials on TV should have convinced her that sex would be awkward and uncomfortable. But he had electrified her in a way that made every square centimeter of her vagina tingle with pleasure and filled her until all she could do was cling to him with her legs and let the orgasms wash over her.

    Again, she shivered, this time at the sheer intensity of her memory. But she’d let him go, too, a year into their relationship when he’d insisted that she marry him or at least move in, and she’d refused. It couldn’t have worked, she knew, would have tipped some delicate balance that allowed her to give herself freely. 

    She took another sip of now cold coffee and carefully set the mug on the nightstand. Rosa was fond of scolding her for dripping coffee on the sheets, and they’d switched to all white linens just so Rosa could bleach out her accidents.  She felt like she might need to pee, but she was comfortable, too comfortable to contemplate leaving her memories for the shock of pushing off the blankets.

    So, instead, she let her gaze fix on the painted border that ran along the top of the wall, yellow ducks on turquoise water punctuated by green reeds. The ducks had been there for decades now, faithfully paddling along, from the week she and Jim had assembled Olivia’s crib to the night she’d held his hand as he slipped away from her for the final time. But this time he wasn’t slipping away to rendezvous with his latest prodigy, one of which gave him and then, of course, her, a good dose of gonorrhea. No one had ever understood why she hadn’t thrown him out, not even Olivia, that it wasn’t because she forgave him or that he’d become ill before she’d had the chance. It wasn’t money or even the public disgrace of people knowing what he’d done, after all, he’d never been particularly discreet.  It was just that, after the initial shock, she’d reached a place where she wasn’t angry enough or hurt enough to want to control him in any way. Divorce was so inconvenient and, in the final analysis, she just hadn’t had the energy. 

    Whatever, she said to herself, mimicking her grandson’s favorite expression. She hadn’t meant to open up that memory. But it was funny how long she could sit and let her mind turn. Like a revolving door, it spun erratically, and memories spilled out like patrons from the big department store downtown.

    She closed her eyes and took two deep breaths to dispel the bad memory. When she opened them, she heard the front door open and close downstairs.  A car started in the driveway, her son-in-law Max leaving for his job at the pharmacy. When Olivia had informed her of their intention to move back to Catawba, she’d been full of fear. They wanted to live with her until Max could find a job. It would be easier for all of them, Olivia claimed. But after so many years of living alone, how could she cope with someone else being there all the time, not just Olivia, but Max and their teenage son, Jamie? Would her house be overrun with teenagers and that music that pounded out from car stereos passing on the street? Would she be expected to visit politely in the evening instead of keeping to her own routines? They might watch annoying TV shows and rearrange her stuff. Or, worst of all, they might grow tired of her, and then she’d catch them rolling their eyes at each other when they thought she wouldn’t notice. Ironically, when she’d finally given in, she’d insisted that Olivia and Max take the big bedroom and allowed her things to be moved down the hall to Olivia’s old room. “After all,” she told Olivia, “It’s not like that bedroom has so many great memories.” 

    “Hey, watch what you say,” Olivia retorted, “that’s where you made me.”

    They’d put Jamie in the game room above the garage, and things had really gone quite well. And wasn’t that how things happened? How many nagging fears had she wasted energy on over the years that had really amounted to nothing?  Even the ones that had come true hadn’t been the tragedies she’d expected. The day her gynecologist had told her that her annual exam had turned up positive for gonorrhea, she’d almost been relieved.  She knew then that she wasn’t the neurotic, suspicious shrew that Jim accused her of being. The vindication was almost worth having to go through the humiliation of having an STD.

    It was amazing, really, how twenty-five years of marriage had faded into memory, with just a few snapshots that always stood out. Though it made her feel a bit like Scarlett O’Hara, she’d always gone out of her way not to replay bad memories if she could help it. Sometimes she pretended that her mind really was a file cabinet and she could just put away disturbing images, like the way Jim’s body changed as he succumbed to the cancer or Olivia’s panicked cries that day, twenty-some years ago, when the car slid off the ice on Route 311, and they were both pinned in place for the eternity that it took the rescue vehicles to arrive. Since she’d been staying in this room, she’d found comfort in sitting in the rocking chair by the corner window, remembering instead the nights she’d opened her nightshirt to nurse, feeling that delicious pain as Olivia’s little mouth latched on and her milk let down. Most nights, she hadn’t even needed to turn on the light, but just rocked the baby gently in the moonlight, watching the shadows move across her face.

    Outside the window, orange diamonds of light glinted through the leaves.  Car wheels crunched on the gravel driveway; the front door again opened and closed.  Was it Rosa or Amy? What day was it, anyway? She just couldn’t keep track any more. She looked over at the cell phone lying on the nightstand, just a bit out of the reach of her good right arm. Darn, she really had to pee now. She leaned toward the nightstand, but as she did, the door opened and Olivia walked in. 

    “Sorry, Mom, I started cleaning off the stovetop and got carried away. Do you need to use the potty?”

    She opened her mouth as though to answer, then nodded and tried to muster a grateful smile.

    “Here we go. “

    Olivia came around the left side of the bed, pulled the blankets down and inserted an arm behind her back. With her other hand, Olivia pulled her legs around so they dangled just above the floor. 

    “Okay.  One, two, three,” Olivia counted as she stood her mother up, turned her around, pulled down her pajama bottoms and set her on the potty chair in one smooth motion.

    “Amy’s here. She’ll be up in a minute. Then we’ll do your meds, get you all freshened up and change your sheets. Do you want to sit in the rocking chair or out on the porch? It’s a beautiful day.”

    She brought her lips together and managed to push out a puff of air as she pointed toward the front of the house. 

    “Porch it is,” Olivia acknowledged. 

    She smiled again. A year ago, she would have thought this type of existence intolerable, depending on others, especially her lovely daughter who truly deserved to have a life of her own, to take care of her every need. And she never, under any conditions, would have chosen it. But when they’d brought her home from the hospital, she soon realized that fighting it just made things harder for everyone. So, she’d gathered all the grace she had left in her graceless existence to acquiesce. 

    Amy appeared at the door.

    “Good morning, Miss Veronica,” she greeted her. “Would you like a tub bath or sponge this morning?”

    Veronica raised her right arm and squeezed her hand closed.

    “Sponge. Very good. I’ll be right back with the basin and your meds.”

An hour later, she sat on the second-floor porch in her favorite wicker chair, a sweater clipped around her shoulders, her breakfast tray pushed off to one side. At least, with her good right arm, she could still feed herself, as long as the food was cut small. This morning there had been scrambled eggs with diced tomatoes, ham and feta, rye toast, well-done, and a little glass of cranberry juice. Olivia would be pleased because she’d been hungry and eaten almost every scrap. Through the slats in the porch rail, she’s watched her neighbor, Julie, across the street, transferring geraniums into planters, as she’d done every spring for so many years. The mail truck turned the corner and made its way down the lane. Within reach on the breakfast tray was her Kindle, loaded with the audio version of Anne Tyler’s latest novel. When she got tired of watching the coming and goings of her neighbors, she would switch it on and close her eyes, maybe even get through a chapter without dozing.

    The screen door opened, and Olivia poked her head out of the house.

    “Mom, I’m going to run to the store. Do you need anything?”

    She turned toward Olivia and shook her head.

    “Amy’s ordering your refills, but she’ll be up to check on you soon. Are you sure you don’t need anything?

    She mustered a half-smile and mouthed the words, “No, nothing,” and it was true.

Heel, Toe, Push — A Backpacker’s Journey | Part One

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” -Henry David Thoreau

In the middle of March, 2010, I awoke just before dawn in my two-person tent, alone in the middle of the Mountain Lake Wilderness near Blacksburg, Virginia. My feet were cold, and I was far from rested, having spent much of the night rubbing them together for warmth and listening to numerous squawks, calls and rustlings from the dark tangle of brush outside my tent. When I crept out to find a spot to pee, I found myself in a thick fog that reflected the light from my headlamp back at me. My German Shepherd, Zoey, greeted me with a curious sniff, as though to ask if all was well. Within an hour, I’d packed my sodden tent and was back on the trail, forsaking my usual hot oatmeal and coffee for the need to get moving and get warm. As I trudged through an inch or more of old snow, I fantasized about stopping to make coffee at the Bailey Shelter, around three miles south on that stretch of the Appalachian Trail. 

An hour later, I stood on a rock the size of a desk top in a wind-driven mist, peering into the fog ahead for another trail marker. I knew from a previous day-hike that the trail would run for about one and a half miles over a veritable rock garden, so there was no conspicuous dip in the ground to follow, and the signature white painted blazes that mark the trail were hidden in the fog. It was perhaps the closest I’d ever come to being lost. I started off in the most likely direction and was relieved when a patch of snow offered up an old footprint. In this halting fashion, I proceeded down the trail, making record slow time and encouraged only by the stubborn idea that if Appalachian Trail thru-hikers can survive the snows of the Smokies, I could surely make it down Salt Pond Mountain to my car in a near-freezing fog.

I did, although I was so late that I met my husband Jack’s truck on Big Stony Creek Road soon after I started home. When I hadn’t called on time, he’d come out to look for me. But even the creepy squawks, cold feet and nerve-wracking descent of that sixth outing didn’t deter me. I was determined to change my life.

Why does a forty-nine year-old woman decide she’d rather sleep alone in a tent in the woods than in her warm, comfortable bed with her loving husband?  When I took up backpacking, my children, Frances Lindsay and Matthew were twenty, nineteen and eighteen. I no longer had to be on hand to ferry them from place to place. I was teaching general education and English courses at Radford University part time, and spent much of the rest of my days running a home dialysis machine so that Jack, my second husband, could dialyze in the comfort of our home. At the beginning of my backpacking, we used a Fresenius machine and dialyzed four days a week. Later, we switched to a portable machine and five days a week, usually skipping Saturdays and either Tuesday or Wednesday. The machine worked by running Jack’s blood through an artificial kidney, pulling out the excess potassium, phosphorous and liquid that builds up in your body if you don’t produce urine. Once the machine was readied and the needles were in place, I could do other things, just checking on Jack periodically and recording his vital signs. Afterward, Jack would go off to work, and I would grade papers. Sometimes we’d do the treatment in the afternoon after I was finished teaching for the day or in the evening if our schedules were busy. 

When we’d married in 1995, Jack was forty-nine, and he could still do mild hikes. A few years later, he began to get winded easily and was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. He could still golf, but strenuous exercise was impossible. At the same time, I’d returned to school for my Master’s in English and started reading environmental literature and nature writing. I joined the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment and went on a Grand Canyon rafting trip sponsored by the group, leaving Jack to dialyze in the dialysis center for two weeks.

“That trip really changed you,” Jack said on more than one occasion afterward. And he was right. Although I was already day-hiking regularly with Zoey, two weeks of sleeping under the stars and consorting with people who’d rather brave the primitive lifestyle of a Grand Canyon trip than pamper themselves at a resort both convinced and inspired me. I could be at home in the outdoors, too.

Why Bother?

If you have had too much of politics, philosophy, and religion or perhaps of just plain serious thinking, you may want to skip this thread of the website. Here you will find my thoughts and reactions concerning the crazy world we confront every day. You’ll find out what I think is wrong with the state of affairs in the United States and what would have to happen to fix it. I hope to approach these topics not from the standpoint of trying to convince, but of addressing the errors of thinking that have gotten us here. In doing so, I will definitely use examples from controversial issues, but I will analyze them from the standpoint of critical thinking and ethical philosophies, drawing on my experience teaching critical thinking and ethics at Radford University. On occasion, I’ll just reflect on my personal experiences and wanderings. If you choose to delve into this section, my sincere hope is that you might look at something in our world with a slightly changed perspective.

Critical Thinking

Every time election season comes around, I find myself shuddering at the over-the-top rhetoric employed by the candidates. Having taught critical thinking for almost ten years, I wonder whether any of my students are using the tools we made available to them in their adult lives. Luckily, my partner Stoney and I tape almost everything we watch on TV, so we skip through all of the political ads. But a lot of people don’t. And politicians know that if a person hears an exaggeration, lie, or lapse of logic enough times, they’ll believe it. It’s funny how everyone seems to agree that we should teach critical thinking, but most adults don’t have any idea what it is. More on this later…

“Just the Facts, Ma’am”

Folks of a certain age will remember this quotation from the television crime show Dragnet. On arriving at a crime scene, Joe Friday would use it to get to the heart of the situation quickly.

Facts. Before the internet, entertainment news stations, talk radio, social media, and endless tweeting, people had better access to actual facts and less to far out conspiracy theories. And before Donald Trump, most politicians and leaders would acknowledge verifiable facts. Not so today. Donald Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election. No investigation, even in the reddest of states, has turned up any evidence of widespread fraud. What we do have is evidence that Trump planned to deny a loss as early as July. We have his closest aides testifying that he understood that he’d lost. And we have an orchestrated plot to illegally overturn the election and retain power. That’s called a coup, something we associate with third world countries. But in spite of these facts, a significant swath of the electorate and many current politicians and current candidates refuse to acknowledge this loss. States are electing attorneys general and representatives whose agenda is to attack voting rights and make it possible to overturn elections if they don’t like the results. Electing U.S. house representatives that deny the basic fact that Trump lost will be devastating to our democracy. Politicians may disagree on how to fix particular problems, but they need to start by recognizing and accepting facts. Otherwise, there is no hope for our democracy.

But with so much disinformation floating around, how can anyone know what to believe?

First, they need to get their news from the most objective sources they can find. The New York Times: the Washington Post: the major news networks NBC, CBS, and ABC. Did you know that Fox News is registered with FCC as an entertainment show? That gives them a lot of leeway to spread falsehoods.

They need to fact check what they hear. Politifact.org and Factcheck.org do extensive research to verify news stories and conspiracy theories. They rate the truthfulness of claims and give the relevant background. When an outrageous claim comes up on my Facebook feed, I Google it to get the facts. When some “expert” is quoted, I check to see if that person’s view is representative of others in their field. A small-town doctor in Texas that tells the world to use horse medicine to treat or prevent Covid is way out in left field compared to hundreds of thousands of his peers. An “expert” who goes against the tide of their peers is most likely a quack.

What does the preponderance of the available evidence say? Is that person really an expert? Those are the answers people should be looking for.

Shiny Things

It was an old story, and, really, what could Tamara say? So, she kept her eyes on the road, driving with exaggerated concentration as dusk trickled down through the woods and curtained the valley off to her left, and beside her JoAnn went on and on, detailing her ex-husband’s indiscretions. They were three hours out of Boston, en route to JoAnn’s condo in northern New Hampshire for the weekend, and Tamara had spent most of the drive keeping a studiously controlled expression, presenting what she hoped was the right mixture of sympathy and concern. As a rule, she avoided unfiltered emotion, not because she hoped to hide from the seedier sides of human nature, but because she expected others to be hardier and more pragmatic.  JoAnn’s sudden neediness made her feel as though she was skirting a pool of quicksand, and a wrong step might suck her in. But the women had been friends since high school, and Tamara knew that JoAnn deserved more from her than detached platitudes. But, really, what could she say?

She glanced at JoAnn, whose lap was littered with damp tissues that sent hair-tiny white fibers into the air.  They drifted in the current from the heating vents and eventually settled like dandruff on JoAnn’s black wool coat. Here was her best friend, a successful middle-aged woman, red-eyed and pitiful. How could she have been so naïve? When Kevin and JoAnn had split up, JoAnn had believed the “We’ve just grown apart” and “I just don’t love you any more” excuses that Kevin had offered, hurtful enough as they were, until the divorce came through and his past lovers began to ooze out of the woodwork like nagging ghosts to haunt her.

    “And did I tell you what happened just last month? I stopped at Filene’s after work, and then I went to that Irish pub on the Common for something to eat. So, I’m sitting at the bar, and that barmaid, you know, the one with the frizzy red hair, tells me how I did the right thing, dumping Kevin (as though I’d had the pleasure), because ‘guys like that never change.’ Can you believe it? The fucking barmaid knew that he was fucking around!”

    Tamara squinted into the darkness.

    “This is the road coming up on the right, isn’t it? Windy Ridge?”

    “Yeah, that’s it. Count five driveways. See that third house on the right? That’s Avery and Pam’s. We’re due there for dinner at seven. Go past their place two more driveways and pull in on the right.”

    JoAnn blew her nose once more and gathered the tissues together.

    “I’m so glad you came. It’s pretty lonely up here without company. When I told Avery that I was thinking of selling, he invited us to dinner right away. I don’t know whether he wants to talk me out of it or just wants to handle the sale.”

    The steps to the side door were clear but wet and freezing around the edges. They lugged their bags through the door and across the kitchen linoleum, and JoAnn headed for the shower. Deciding that her khakis and sweater would be fine for dinner, Tamara put away their groceries and then fixed herself a drink and walked into the dark living room. Through the picture window, she could see the lights from several tiers of houses falling away down the slope. The streetlights gave off a glaring light that made the outside air seem brittle; Tamara imagined that she could reach out into their glow and break off a piece. After a while she drew the curtains and crossed to the fireplace, fiddling with the pilot until a bright flame spread under the ceramic logs and jumped to life. JoAnn’s muffled voice, singing, floated into the room. 

    Crying one minute, singing the next, she thought. And that was how she knew that JoAnn would eventually be alright. Her friend had always been a master of the art of compartmentalization. Through Homecoming court, sorority rush, six years of college, and fifteen years of managing a business and the health care of her ailing mother, JoAnn had always been able to put down or pick up a project at a moment’s notice.  She poured her energy into groups and committees as if they were jars of preserves, neatly labeled and distinct, and she went from jar to jar as necessary, never seeing that each container kept the boundaries of her life unnaturally ordered. Now that the container of her marriage had lost its seal and spoiled, JoAnn would clean up the mess adeptly, isolating the emotional damage and never letting it spill over into any other area of her life, just as she had signed the papers to buy out a competitor on the very day she buried her mother in Watertown, tearful at the graveside, gracious at the wake, and off to the closing by three. 

 Tamara hadn’t been surprised to hear of Kevin’s infidelity. She’d always been unnerved to find him watching her at odd times with intent, slate-grey eyes that made her think of a coyote whose attention has been caught by a rustling in the brush. But JoAnn had always believed she had a “good” marriage, and didn’t look for rust around the lid. The same mistake she had made herself, really, with Sam, relaxing her guard, letting her feet drift off the ground.

    More than five years had passed since Tamara had met Sam in the USAirways lounge at Logan airport.  He had just flown in from Las Vegas that day in late May, and she was preparing to fly to Miami to enjoy a perk of her travel agency job, the career she’d turned to when she couldn’t find a decent job remotely related to her major in archaeology. She was in a period of high hopes and optimism, enjoying the new turn of her life but with her usual pre-flight butterflies when she stopped into the lounge for a drink.

    The room was dim and crowded, with low-hanging brass globes suspended above polished oak tables. Tamara sidled up to the bar and waited a few minutes for the bartender’s attention before securing a double rum and Coke. Looking for a seat, she saw that the only vacant spaces were odd seats at high tables or in groups of circled armchairs. She spotted an arrangement with a single occupant, a man of slight build in a pilot’s uniform, sitting with his head back and his eyes closed.  She stooped to slip into the opposite chair but caught her foot on the carpet and landed heavily in the seat. A splash of Coke hit her below one eye, and an automatic “Damn!’ jumped from her lips as she set the drink down too hard, and it splashed again onto the table.

    “Hello to you, too,” Pilot-man said, regarding her with dark eyes that seemed suddenly wide awake.

    “Sorry. You can go back to sleep. I’ll try to be more graceful when I leave.” She dabbed at her face with her cocktail napkin.

    “I don’t know. I might miss something amusing. Just kidding. I’m Sam, friendly skies co-pilot. No, ‘friendly skies’ is United, I must be something else. Addled, maybe, addled and a little too exhausted to drive.”

    Tamara briefly shook the hand he offered, which felt warm and squishy.

    “Tamara Condorino, travel agent and vacationer. And, no offense, but I’m glad you’re not flying my plane.”

    “No, addled only comes after I step off my last flight. Otherwise, I’m in total control. I’m off until Monday, so now I’m allowed to collapse. Pleased to meet you.”

    Caught off guard by his self-deprecating manner, Tamara felt like a spectator as the conversation took off and led effortlessly to a date, and then another, and another, until she found herself in a “relationship” that seemed just too perfect. She should have been more suspicious. They had too much in common—hating George H. W. Bush and his whiny voice, loving to ride the subway on Sunday mornings to a late brunch, collecting Impressionist prints, and avoiding the starkness and incoherence of post-modernism. They soon discovered that they’d grown up in neighboring towns on the outskirts of the city and had probably attended some of the same basketball games in high school. And on her first visit to his townhouse, she was amazed to find that they both owned complete collections of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. It all seemed so serendipitous that somehow Tamara had glided past that all-important turning point that marks a relationship as “serious.”  They were together whenever he was in town, he called religiously when he was flying, and Tamara forgot, just really forgot, to ever ask whether he was seeing anyone else.

    Months passed. They watched the students return to the city and the crew boats glide, arrow-straight, on the Charles. Customers clogged the phone lines at the travel agency, making holiday travel plans. After a murderous week at work, Tamara turned her key in the door of Sam’s brownstone and was instantly soothed by the gleam of the polished cherry floor of the entranceway. She dropped her duffel at the foot of the stairs and walked to the kitchen for a drink. Sam would fly in early in the evening; they had a reservation at Salvadore’s for a late dinner in the North End. She’d taken to coming early to his place on weekends; being away from her own clutter felt like a vacation. She’d curl up with a cup of tea in his study, swathed in the subtle masculinity of his books and music, the model airplanes that hung in the corner, the smell of the cracked leather recliner.

    She opened the dishwasher for a clean cup and saw the card lying on top of a bowl of opened mail. She wouldn’t have noticed it particularly if not for the picture, Monet’s Regattas in Argenteuil, the same print that hung in a heavy black frame opposite the bed in Sam’s bedroom. Tamara stared at the card, and the coincidence of the print swelled like a tumor in her chest until she had to put down the cup, close the dishwasher, and reach for it.

        Dear Sam,

        Thanks so much for fixing Aaron’s bike. You’re becoming quite a hero to             him. Every time he plays with the airplane out in the field, he comes in             talking about all the places he’s going to fly when he grows up. Maybe I’ll         take him out of school next Wednesday for a trip to the space museum.             Seeing it with you will mean a lot to him. We can talk about it when you             call.

        Love, 

        Cheryl

    The note seemed almost innocent. It could have been written by a sister or a cousin or even an old friend. But Sam had two brothers, no sister, and had never mentioned any Cheryl or that he’d visited anyone on his mid-week layovers. When she asked, he said he spent his time reading, lounging by the hotel pool.  If the visits were innocent, wouldn’t he have mentioned them? And there was one last thing. On the inside of the card, on the back of the picture, an arrow was drawn, aimed at the edge of the paper, and a short phrase, punctuated with a heart, completed the tale:  My new favorite picture. She’d been here.

    Tamara wanted to throw up, but instead she placed the card on the counter, found its envelope, postmarked Houston, and wrote on the back: It seems that we are not sharing the relationship I thought we had. Your head and heart are somewhere else altogether. Don’t call. 

And he hadn’t.

    The lump in Tamara’s chest grew into an abscess that oozed and festered for weeks as she poked and prodded it with unanswerable questions and slabs of blame, heaping helpings for both of them. Sam had had the curse of near-perfection.  So he’d been just a bit over fastidious, and he had that odd habit of always washing his face after they made love that made her feel as if she was somehow yucky by comparison. But there was a quality to his voice when he spoke to her, as though she were an old and trusted friend, that drew her in. He told her stories of growing up in New Bedford with his alcoholic father and two brothers, and how the experience had convinced him that he didn’t want to risk having children that he might end up letting down in some way. He’d confided in her and lied to her at the same time. Yet, no amount of sifting through every moment and every conversation could reveal a warning sign that she might have purposely overlooked in her infatuation. His duplicity defied logic.

    After months of self-recrimination, Tamara finally decided--because she had to decide something in order to move on--that intimacy is a lie and an illusion that forces you to believe that you are sharing a moment, a week, or  a lifetime with someone who sees things just the way you do, feels exactly as you feel, and can be trusted to continue feeling that way, when the harsh truth is that two people are always two, never one, and while you are feeling the exhilaration of total surrender, your partner is likely thinking about picking up the dry cleaning or fantasizing about the girl who sells coffee at Haymarket Square, and, in any event, is always seeing the view from the other side of the bed. And when even the illusion of intimacy wears off, there’s nothing more left to a relationship than a lifetime of negotiation, or, in a few lucky cases, amiable companionship. So, Tamara concluded, the whole mess really was her fault for having slipped so easily back into the fairy tale of believing there was such a thing as “Mr. Right.” She should have known better.

    JoAnn and Tamara arrived at the neighbors’ doorstep promptly at seven. The door opened and a burst of warmth and steam and the aroma of tomato sauce spilled over them. Avery Nester, the realtor who’d sold Kevin and JoAnn their unit, took their coats and launched into an apology.

    “Pam called an hour or so ago to say that she’d be late. There was a wreck on Route 5 near Gorham, and they needed extra nurses for some emergency surgeries. She’s hoping to make it for dessert, but she said not to wait. What can I fix you to drink?”

    He led them to the living room and motioned for them to sit down. Tamara glanced around the room and experienced the off-balance sensation of deja vu. The fire in the fireplace and the fireplace itself were duplicates of the one they’d just left. All of the bookshelves and doorways and windows were in the same places, and the furniture was arranged in the same patterns. Tamara thought that this was odd, considering Avery and Pam lived in their place year-round--had they received a deal on the decorating as a perk? Maybe they just weren’t very creative. She thought that a person might be able to wake up in the middle of the night in any one of the condominiums and find their way around without running into anything. The only obvious difference between JoAnn’s unit and the Nesters’ was the western theme of the décor, introduced by a huge picture of the Rocky Mountains over the fireplace and continued in the rough-hewn style of the furnishings. 

    “Ah, real mountains,” Avery sighed as he caught her eyeing the picture. “I spent some time ski-bumming after college, and we would have moved out there if I could have convinced Pam to live that far from her folks.  Maybe someday. Scotch, rum, gin?”

    “Do you have any wine?”

         “Red or white?”

    “Red would be great.”

    “The same for me,” JoAnn volunteered, as she and Tamara settled themselves on opposite loveseats.

    As they sat, Tamara noticed that JoAnn’s suede skirt, which rose just above her knees and pulled drum-tight across her thighs, looked a little constricting, but her black, scooped-necked sweater balanced her figure, and a brown and tan medallion with matching earrings combined to create an exotic look. It occurred to Tamara that, with her business success, sense of style, and wide range of acquaintances, JoAnn wouldn’t lack long for companionship. 

    “Is there something we can help you with?” Tamara asked when Avery appeared with their drinks and a tray of cheese and crackers.

    “No, I’ve got it all under control.”

    “Avery’s always been the cook of the house,” JoAnn commented. “When he showed Kevin and me the condo, I was very impressed by how well he knew his way around a kitchen.”

    “Pam grew up cooking for her brothers and sister—her mother worked at the Timberland factory, and her father built docks for people around the lake. She says that with seven in the family, someone was always complaining about her cooking, so she swore that when she moved out, she’d never cook for anyone again.” He laughed, “And, by God, that’s one promise she’s stuck to!”

    He took a long gulp from his drink, the ice clinking loudly like broken glass, and they all laughed. JoAnn turned the subject to the real estate market, which was booming so much that Avery hoped he’d be able to retire by the time the market started to cool, as long as he worked hard and saved carefully for a couple more years.

    “At least, that’s the plan. It’s always good to have a plan…” Avery’s voice faded as he excused himself to check on dinner.

    “Isn’t he nice?” JoAnn murmured. “Not a bit snobby, like some realtors. Kevin and I had them over after the closing. Turns out he’s from a very monied old family, but he hasn’t taken a penny from them since college.”

    “Okay, ladies,” Avery called, “if you don’t mind serving yourselves from the counter on your way to the dining room, I’ll bring the wine, and we can eat.”

    They piled their plates with generous portions of chicken marsala, salad, roasted asparagus, and crusty bread, and the conversation turned back to Avery’s retirement plans. He’d never been more than an intermediate skier, he confessed, and had been pretty shaken up when a friend had a serious accident and cracked a vertebra in his neck the previous winter.

    “I ski like an old man now, but I’m doing more snowmobiling. Have you ever been?”

    Tamara shook her head.

    “You’re kidding! You really ought to try it! JoAnn will tell you—it feels as much like flying as skiing, only you’ve got more protection.”

    “But, actually, I’m afraid of flying.”

    “Okay, wrong comparison. How about sailing? It’s like sailing—the wind in your face, the landscape flowing by…”

    “I’ve never sailed either, but it sounds like fun. So, you don’t have any snowmobile horror stories?”

    “Not unless you’re afraid of crows!”

    Tamara’s mind became gauzy with too much food and wine and the warmth of the room that steamed the windows and made her sweat. Avery recounted a long tale about being stranded four miles into the woods when he lost the key to his snowmobile.

    “I ate my lunch and threw out the leftovers, and the crows were everywhere; I don’t know what’s happening; they don’t even seem to migrate anymore, and they steal everything. I think they’re reincarnated sociopaths. So anyway, I walked off the path a ways to have a little visit with nature, if you know what I mean, and when I got back to the snowmobile, my keys were gone. The damn birds took them right out of the ignition! I searched for about an hour in case they’d dropped them nearby, but by then it was getting late, so I finally took out my flashlight and walked back to the house. I’d forgotten my cell phone, and Pam wasn’t too happy when she got home and didn’t have a clue where I was.”

    The phone rang, and Avery went to the kitchen to answer it. As the women started to stack the dinner plates to one side, they could hear Avery’s end of the conversation clearly.

    “Again? … No, of course I don’t want you to fall asleep on the road… Alright, whatever. Say ‘hi’ to Julie. How about we eat out tomorrow night? I’ll make a reservation at the Lonely Elk… Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

    “Pam,” he explained, setting a pie and a carton of ice cream on the table. “I’m afraid of skiing, and now she’s afraid of driving these roads at night. She’s decided to stay over with a nurse friend since she has to work the 7 to 3 shift tomorrow anyway. And, by the way, she sends her greetings.”

    “What are her retirement plans?” JoAnn asked.

    “She doesn’t have any really. She says she loves her job, and she’s afraid she’ll get bored. Once in a while she talks about going overseas to work with a relief agency, something like Doctors without Borders. I keep telling her, there are plenty of free clinics here in the states. Damn, some of these little towns up here don’t have half the health services they really need. She doesn’t have to go to a third world country to help somebody. But I guess that’s not romantic enough for her.”

    He plopped a scoop of ice cream onto his pie and shrugged, reminding Tamara, not for the first time, of an abandoned puppy. His “Again?” echoed in her mind, and she wondered how often Pam wasn’t making it home at night. To divert her suspicious mind, she asked, “So what do you do for entertainment around here? The nearest movie theatre must be about, what, fifty miles?”

    “Ah, you’ve come to the right person for that answer. Remember, I’ve got to convince people to spend time here. Condo owners usually ski up the road at Deer Run, but if you head in the other direction, it’s only fifteen miles or so to the Timber Lake Resort. They have an indoor pool, bowling, a full gym and spa, three restaurants—they’re like a mini village. And non-guests can pay a fee to use their facilities. I guess JoAnn hasn’t been doing much bragging about our great location.”

    “Actually, I’ve never been there myself,” JoAnn confessed. “Kevin and I split up just a couple years after we bought, and then everything was in legal limbo for awhile. I’ve only managed to get up here a couple times since.”

    “Well, ladies, the night is still young. Why don’t we head over for an after dinner drink?”

    “You’re kidding,” Tamara said. “You’ll be up all night cleaning up this mess.”

    “Nah, I’ll just throw everything in the sink to soak and take care of it tomorrow.”

    “Sounds like fun,” JoAnn said, “We’re here to have a good time. Why not?”

    “Sure.” Tamara acquiesced, as her plans to curl up in front of the fire with the latest Inspector Gamache mystery faded. But there was no doubt that JoAnn could use some cheering up. Who was she to put a damper on the evening?

    A short time later, the trio emerged from Avery’s red Jeep and entered the immense stone lodge. After stopping at the desk for a resort map and a handful of brochures for JoAnn, Avery led them across the lobby toward the entrance to the restaurant, which was flanked by two carved wooden bears, standing in a perpetual bow and smirking a welcome under a yellow neon sign that read “The Lair of the Bear.” The loud twang of electric guitar engulfed them as they entered, like the defensive line of a football team, forceful and insistent. They found a table near the fireplace and turned toward the singer, a short pot-bellied man in a tent-sized grey sweatshirt, who stood alone on a slightly raised platform holding the microphone in both hands like a freshly formed snowball.

    “Karaoke night!” Avery called across the table.

    A waitress in a University of Maine t-shirt that stopped three inches shy of her low-slung jeans took their order. Tamara shivered at the sight of so much exposed skin in January.  The girl tossed back her sleek brown hair as she turned and headed for the bar, and Tamara caught sight of a small heart-shaped tattoo whose tip grazed the dark crevice of the girl’s butt. Feeling old, Tamara looked away and inadvertently noticed Avery’s gaze following the waitress’s firm rear end as it disappeared around the end of the bar. Turning further in her chair, she let her own gaze wander around the room. The worn wooden floor and shuttered windows provided a casual warmth, reinforced by glinting copper oil lamps on each table. The crowd was older than Tamara expected, poised on the younger edge of middle age, but still a few years younger than she and JoAnn. The men seemed to prefer a uniform of jeans, hiking boots and denim or plaid shirts, while the women seemed fearless of the season in tight, sleeveless tops and dresses. They leaned across tables toward the men and laughed loudly or planted a hand on their partners’ thighs. Did these women have any idea how desperate they looked? This place was a few levels more racy than the classy resort bar she’d envisioned. The waitress returned with their drinks, and Tamara caught JoAnn’s eye and raised her eyebrows. With a slight shrug, JoAnn raised her glass and turned back toward the stage.

    Tamara took a sip of Kahlua. It swirled, icy and sweet on her tongue, and then evaporated in a flash of heat in her throat. The performer held his last note long and loud and then threw his head forward in an energetic bow. He was quickly replaced by a pair of women, a blond whose thighs and breasts strained against her shiny velvet pantsuit, and a more petite woman in a sequined blazer and black stretch pants. Their music started, and the duo launched into a wailing rendition of “Stand by Your Man.” At the next table, a skinny woman with heavy make-up and garishly drawn eyebrows sat herself in the lap of her companion, threw her arms around his neck and began singing into his ear, too loudly, Tamara guessed by the way the man pivoted his face away from her mouth.

    “Interesting crowd,” she yelled. “I expected more preppy types.”

    “Yeah, well, this karaoke night attracts more locals. The resort guests go for the live band in the other club. On Saturday night there’re more skiers in here, but the singing is a lot worse. By this age, most people won’t go up unless they know they can carry a tune. A lot of these folks practice during the week, too, like they’re getting ready for a paid gig.”

    The duet finished to another round of applause. Someone yelled, “Go Lisa!” and a woman in an Indian print skirt and a tight leotard took the microphone. She swayed in a slow, easy rhythm as her music welled up.

    “So, you come here pretty often? Do you sing?” JoAnn asked.

    Avery looked sheepishly into his drink. “It gives me something to do on winter nights when Pam is working. And I do a number once in a while. But I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”  

    “Well, no one would expect you to sit home alone all the time.” JoAnn said. “We’d love to hear you sing, right Tam? Go on. It’ll be fun.”

    Tamara nodded, downed the last of her Kahlua, and excused herself to the restroom. 

    “If the waitress comes back, do you want another?” JoAnn asked.

    Avery seemed to be nursing his drink slowly, so Tamara nodded.

 The restroom was chilly and smoky. Tamara sat on the cold toilet seat and studied the square grey tiles. How did I get here, she wondered as the floor undulated gently below her. Avery seemed a decent enough guy, but she had the feeling that the evening was getting beyond her. The shrill singing, pounding music, and drunken pick-up scene wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she accepted JoAnn’s invitation to the mountains. She thought of the cozy living room back at the condo and wished she were curled up on the big, leather chair in front of the fire. She decided to down her new drink quickly and try to draw the evening to a graceful close. When she returned to the table, there was a fresh drink waiting, but JoAnn was alone.

    “Avery’s gone to put himself in the line-up. He should come up in about a half an hour. He’s going to sing “Summer Time.” JoAnn laughed, and her earrings shook gaily. “This is kind of fun, don’t you think?”

Tamara sipped her Kahlua and then switched to coffee. By the time Avery’s song came up, an hour had passed as she tried to stifle yawns and look mildly interested in the story Avery was telling. Something about a moose that wandered into a gift shop, or maybe it was a grocery store…

 She started when the DJ called Avery’s name and the possibility that the night would finally end brought her to full attention. When Avery took the stage, Tamara was surprised to find that his singing wasn’t half bad, if not a bit tentative, but by the time he wove his way back to the table, she was already pulling her coat from the back of her chair. 

Both of the women complimented Avery on his performance, which led to a long session of small talk about chorus tryouts and school performances that lasted for the entire thirty-minute ride home. Having never sung in a choir, Tamara was spared the task of joining in, save for the occasional monosyllabic reaction. 

Avery dropped them off with an offer of a snowmobiling outing the next day, and Tamara was relieved when JoAnn said that they really needed a day to just sit around and relax. 

“Thanks,” she said to JoAnn as they mounted the stairs. “That is so true.”

 Wide awake and sober, Tamara slipped into her nightgown and brought the gas logs back to life. As she settled into the recliner, JoAnn came into the room, make-up removed and hair pulled into the low bun she’d slept in for as long as Tamara had known her. She curled up in one of the loveseats. 

“I would have died for a bed an hour ago, but now I’m wide awake. The cold air must have woken me up,” she said. “Avery’s nice, isn’t he? But he seems a little sad.”

    “He looked like he was enjoying himself tonight,” Tamara answered. “And so did you.”

    “What do you mean? Weren’t you?”

    “Yes, of course. I didn’t mean anything. You’re right, though, he does seem sad. It’s a shame that he and Pam don’t spend more time together. I think he’s the type of person who really needs to be around people. Like you.”

    “Hmm. I’ve never thought of myself that way.”

    “Really? Look at all of your committees and charities. Whenever I call you, it’s a couple of weeks before you can even squeeze in a lunch date.”

    “Well, someone has to do that stuff. Besides, it’s good for business. And you could be just as busy if you wanted to be.”

    “Right. That’s my point. I don’t want to be. I like people better from a distance.”

    “Well, I guess that works for you. At least you’ve saved yourself the pain of recovering from dumped wife syndrome. Do you even date at all anymore?”

    Tamara stared into the fire, reluctant to have the conversation turn to her personal life.

“Once in a while. But I gave up looking for Prince Charming a long time ago. Really, look at you and Avery. He’s married but facing a retirement where he’ll probably end up alone anyway, and Kevin took all your trust and plans and pulled the rug right out from under you. I sometimes think that marriage is just a big bait and switch. No one seems to end up with the partner they originally fell in love with. So, I’ve trained myself not to let my happiness depend on anyone. Do you think that’s pitiful?”

    “I don’t know,” JoAnn shrugged. “But still, some people manage to stay together. It can’t be impossible. Look at our parents.”

    “I wonder about that, too. But they were raised in a time with so many more rules. They didn’t think they had a choice, and they didn’t grow up worshipping the god of personal fulfillment. Besides, I don’t think men had fewer affairs back then. There was just a lot more compromising. And I refuse to compromise.” 

    “For someone who’s never been married, you sound like you’ve been there. Did I miss some great affair in your life?”

    Tamara shifted uncomfortably in her chair. There didn’t seem to be any way to keep this conversation from coming back to her.

“Well, I was going to tell you.  It all happened that summer when you were caught up in opening those stores in western Mass, and I was just getting started at the agency. By the time we saw each other that Christmas, I didn’t want to think about him anymore.  It just seemed easier to bury the whole thing. Over and done with.”

    “Or over but never done with, you mean. Part of me will never, ever, forgive Kevin. What was his name?”

    “Sam,” Tamara said, and the pool of quicksand she had so carefully skirted on the ride up appeared before her. The mere act of speaking his name made her stomach queasy, but there was no turning back now. She took a deep breath and, in a matter-of-fact tone, summarized the events up until her last, brief visit to Sam’s brownstone.

“… When I got back to my apartment it seemed so empty. All that excitement I had when I was packing for the weekend just seemed to hang in the air.”

She’d thrown her duffel on the bed on top of several outfits she’d rejected and flopped into a chair. Scene by scene, she’d replayed her arrival at Sam’s apartment as though she could pinpoint a moment where she’d fallen asleep and dreamed this nightmare. Then she’d imagined his return, touching down on the runway, pulling his suitcase through the garage, ascending the granite stoop to his door. How long would it take him to find her note? She’d had him fixed in her mind, key in the door, when she remembered that she still had the key he’d given her. She reached into her purse and pulled it out, still on its USAir keychain. She slipped it off and threw the keychain in the waste basket, vowing to boycott USAir for the rest of her life. But what about the key? It shone with a clean brassiness in her hand. She could mail it to him, but he’d know she’d gone through that much effort to show a decency he didn’t deserve. Unresolved, she’d stuck it out of sight in the space in her wallet behind her checkbook, where it stayed for weeks while he didn’t call, didn’t show up at her doorstep, and made no excuses. She thought that, perhaps, his silence was the ultimate admission of guilt, an acknowledgement that he had no right to expect forgiveness, but, of course, she knew it could just be that he didn’t care enough to even try to explain.

    Thanksgiving had come and gone, and Tamara remembered plans they’d made to put a fresh-cut Christmas tree in the corner of his living room, where the lights would show through to the street. She avoided his neighborhood. Then, on the Saturday before Christmas, as she’d made her way along one of the sidewalks that cut across the Commons, her gloved fingers threaded through the handles of several shopping bags, she spotted a small evergreen surrounded by birds. The tree’s branches were adorned with pinecones slathered in peanut butter and birdseed, ropes of cranberries and colored popcorn, and foil-wrapped cardboard shapes. A sign hanging from a piece of wire near the top read, “Mrs. Holcomb’s Class, Grade Three.” 

Tamara set her packages on the nearest bench and watched the birds, a pair of cardinals and some chickadees, as they attacked the children’s offerings. Reaching into one of her bags, she pulled out a roll of shiny, red ribbon. With the nail scissors she kept in her purse, she cut off a short length. Then she opened her wallet and retrieved the key. Looping the ribbon through the hole at the top, she knotted it tightly. The bright brass of the key and the red ribbon looked appropriately festive. Satisfied, she crossed the dead winter grass to the tree, hung the key on the highest branch she could reach, stood back, and watched it shine in the pale winter sun. It seemed at home among the dark berries, gold popcorn, and shiny ornaments. Feeling relieved, Tamara gathered her packages and headed for the subway.

    “So you never heard from him again.”

    “Right.”

    “What if he had a good excuse?”

    “I might have talked myself into believing him. There is no good excuse.”

    “Maybe he just wasn’t ready to commit.”

    “Either way, he was lying to two women who trusted him.”

    “You’re right, I guess.” JoAnn stretched her stockinged legs, wiggled her toes, and then gathered them under her again. “So here we are—two single old women, facing a solitary old age.”

    “Yes, I suppose. But, all in all, I’m not unhappy. I think I made the right choice, not spending my life chasing after fairy tales. And there are worse fates.”

    She looked to her friend for agreement, and was surprised when JoAnn averted her eyes and stared into the fire. Tamara tried to read her expression…sadness… and something that took Tamara a moment to place. Pity? Was it pity? Was JoAnn now pitying her?

Making Plans

If you saw me today, strolling across the campus here at LeMoyne, you’d say, “Amy, your eyes. They haven’t changed. Still that sea-glass green. Still amazing.” You wouldn’t comment on my other parts, but you’d notice that I’ve managed to stay in pretty good shape for—how many years? Twenty-five? Twenty-five years, oh my God. Think of it. Our baby would be all grown up. I think about that sometimes. Do you?

I don’t know what else you’d say. Everything I remember of you is tangled in a labyrinth of hopes, and dreams, and our teenage sense of predestination. Are you a lawyer? A writer? A professor in an ivory tower? You always loved the ambiance of academia, were always intent on proving how smart you were. But I can’t picture you grounded, practical, paying a mortgage, filing taxes, surviving the mind-numbing sameness of adult life. Your dreams had an all-or-nothing quality. How have you managed to compromise?

You paid me so many surprise visits during my undergrad years in Boston, I got used to turning corners and suddenly finding you there. For years I expected you to turn up at any time, convinced that you’d always be back. But in my senior year, the visits (“guilt trips” I called them to myself) suddenly stopped. Had you finally found a place that you didn’t need to escape from? A reality that you could live with interminably? Maybe you’ve become ensconced in a proper New England neighborhood, in an old Victorian house with black shutters and a porch. Did you have children? And do they look like the perfect images people show off on their Christmas cards? This one at Harvard, another sporting a 4.5 at the local high school? Or has our questionable karma come back to haunt you, as it has me, with children like Serena, who are as intractable as they are odd, out of step and challenging all paths?

Serena, who came to me during graduate school in Chicago, will graduate from high school in this little town outside of Syracuse in the spring. When she was born, her name occurred to me in a flash as I bore down so hard that I was sure my face would burst. My housemate Polly peered at me over the sheets repeating over and over, “You’re almost there, you’re almost there.” Serenity was what I wanted most at that moment—a place away from the struggle for both her and myself. And it’s what I still want, especially now that she fights me at every turn.

 Those months after she was born were such grey and heady days, sharing child care duties with Polly and Mason, who themselves managed to produce two babies in two years while at law school at the University of Chicago. We lived in a three-bedroom apartment in a house a couple blocks from the university, all ancient wood floors and high windows. You would have approved of our bohemian lifestyle, the debating of Bush Sr.’s war until 3 a.m. while diapers dried on the shower rod and radiators, and Polly and I pureed baby food in the blender. Serena, the first of the babies, was passed from lap to lap so often around the formica table in the kitchen, it’s no wonder she grew to regard me as the least inspiring of her influences—the one who had to say “no” the most and was the most pensive. Her life since seems to have been one long campaign to push me off and run as fast as she can in any direction, so long as it’s away from me.

Where was her father? Suffice it to say that he wasn’t available, although he must have suspected, as he saw me waddle past his office in those last weeks, whose baby was slowing my gait. But he never asked, and I kept as far away as I could in spite of having my sociology classes just down the hall. She’s got his brains, though, I can tell you that. I just couldn’t say good-bye to another baby after ours, but, once again, I couldn’t see the benefit of ruining his life, too. As for Serena, I told her that it happened at a party and that I wasn’t even sure who the father was, a lie I use shamelessly to warn her about mixing drugs and alcohol and being too trusting of acquaintances. She retorts that she couldn’t possibly be that stupid. I hold my tongue and let her believe that I was naïve in all the usual ways, not more complicated ways that would be harder to explain.

I remember the last time you showed up on the campus at Northeastern. I was walking back from breakfast in a cold April wind, and you were just there, walking backward on the path in front of me in an absurdly thick parka and furry earmuffs, so that I had to laugh. It was the day of the Boston Marathon, and you talked me into skipping classes and riding the subway to Kenmore Square to cheer the runners by. While we waited, we caught up between sips of coffee at the Mug N‘ Muffin, mine black and yours doused with more cream and sugar than most desserts. You were supposed to graduate from UMass that spring, but you were vague about your plans, and I didn’t press you, willing to trade the truth for your company. Around noon, the bulk of the runners coursed by, so close we could see the taut cords of muscles straining in their necks and the slick sweat glistening on their bodies. “I’m going to do that someday,” you said, and I didn’t doubt it. When we got back to my stop on Mass. Ave., you hugged me so hard, I thought I’d miss the stop. But the number you gave me didn’t work, and then you disappeared for good.

We were so naïve back in high school, thinking that everything would work itself out if we just hoped hard enough. But it wasn’t our fault that everything went bad. The timing was wrong. I had barely begun to suspect that I was pregnant when Dad walked into the house that night and announced that the Navy was sending him from the Norfolk shipyard to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We had from November to January to be ready to move. He stared us down around the dinner table with that tempered-carbon gaze of his, daring us to complain. Of course, Danny didn’t care; he loved that nomadic lifestyle, being a latchkey kid and never having anyone looking over his shoulder. But, I tell you, even if it hadn’t been for us, the thought of packing everything up and moving again made me feel so old. You and I hadn’t begun to sort out the “what ifs” of my condition, and then we had the move thrown at us. Who could think straight under that pressure? I don’t know whether I ever told you what Dad said to me later that night while I was packing lunches and he was paying bills at the kitchen table, sorting the receipts into neat piles and licking and applying stamps with surgical precision. He came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, and rested his chin on the top of my head. It was so strange to feel his touch—I bet I can count on one hand the times he’d shown me any affection since Mom died. “I know it’ll be hard on you. You’re a real trooper,” he said.

That was the beginning of my big freeze and the end of us. I think I knew it already as I stood staring into the enamel sink, my eyes fixed on a few scraps of soggy lettuce caught in the strainer. I knew that I would have to make decisions, do things that might hurt Dad and us. I had to find the compromise with the lowest common denominator of pain, to box up and put away all of my own feelings, to make this come out right, even if that right wasn’t necessarily the way that we would want it. I didn’t know the risk I was taking, that boxing everything away could become a chronic condition. I was just trying to find a way to survive. That’s why I called Aunt Diane that night.

I still wonder what might have happened if she had gone along with my plan. I’ve never lost the image of us married, living with her in her Baltimore rowhouse, wheeling a stroller past the concrete stoops. But then reality breaks in, and I see us ten years later, divorced, handing our child back and forth, hating the ties we still had and maybe hating each other, too.  I just couldn’t bring myself to trap you in my life that way. And that’s how Diane, deep set in her feminist ways, saw it, too. We mustn’t ruin our futures, she said. We couldn’t let one mistake determine our lives. We had to go to college. We had to stick to our original life plans. All she would offer was confidentiality, a small sum of cash, and her signature on the papers. And finally, you agreed. Were we wrong?

I look at Serena and I can’t help comparing her to us at seventeen. How is it that she has been exposed to so much more and knows so much less than we did? She takes nothing seriously, barely does her homework, still needs to be reminded to brush her teeth. If I wasn’t there every morning, shoving it in her hand as she rushes out the door, she’d forget to take her pill. A scary thought. Her boyfriend of the month is a sophomore at SUNY-Syracuse who she refuses to bring to the house. “You hover too much,” she accuses. “You want to talk politics. You just don’t know what teenagers are like today.” But if I keep quiet, she can’t stand the awkward silences or even my insistence on serving vegetables, as though their mere presence on the table is so offensive that no boy would want to come back. I wonder what it is about him that she doesn’t want me to see. She warns me that she’ll be out the door as soon as she graduates and into a cheap rental with her friends. Or she may even head down to the city. I retaliate by taking the apartment ads from the Sunday papers and circling the rents. “Good luck” I wrote on the post-it note that I attached to the ads and left on her pillow last week. I worry—how far down would she let herself go before she’d admit her plan won’t work? Or would she ever?

We were so much more grounded at her age. And after the abortion, so careful. In those weeks before the move, it was as though a long kiss could bring disaster. We tiptoed around what we had done, our feelings, our plans. Life had become a delicate Ukrainian Easter egg, too fragile to handle. We sank under the pressure, so that it seemed inevitable that we would eventually let our relationship falter under the weight of 600 miles and 600 pounds of guilt. I could already feel the difference as we walked up the hill to the bus stop after the procedure. You held my hand and asked over and over, “Are you sure you’re okay?” 

What could I answer? The truth would have been too much—No, I’m sore and sick, and I can’t believe what we just did; I feel like all our dreams were just sucked down a black hole. I couldn’t tell you about the fat nurse with the red hair who prodded me every five minutes in the recovery room, trying to get her precious bed vacated for the next patient, or the black nurse who picked up the chart at the end of the bed and said, “Another D and C? Umm, umm! Lordy, lordy!” Every time I opened my eyes, I thought I was going to puke. And I couldn’t tell you any of it, you, the one who held all my secrets. So I just squeezed your hand and pushed back the tears. “It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m just tired,” I said. And when we slid into our seats, I closed my eyes and leaned on you until the No. 27 meandered across town to Highland Park.

I still remember the good times, though, the times before the pregnancy that I wouldn’t trade even if it would fix all the pain and wondering and loneliness that came later. Remember that fall, how we were saving every penny for Homecoming, so we’d spend Friday and Saturday nights just wandering around Virginia Beach? And the night I closed my eyes and let you lead me around as though I was blind? I never doubted you for a minute—I felt as safe as I could ever be. You led me through heavy traffic, down alleys, turning and turning until I couldn’t possibly guess where we were. Then my feet felt wooden planks, and I knew we were on the boardwalk. “Step down, now sit,” you directed, and I did. And when I opened my eyes, it was to a pristine autumn sky with crisp stars divided eerily into quadrants by the jet trails of the Navy planes from Norfolk. We held hands and talked about our dreams, mine to live in a cottage in the woods near the ocean with lots of dogs, yours to practice labor law in a big city. “Why so many dogs?” you asked. “So I won’t be scared to be alone,” I answered. “There are cities near the ocean. I can be there to keep you safe,” you said.

Remember Homecoming? It seemed truly magical, not because of the dance or the music, or my father letting us borrow his real pride and joy, the MG, but because of the way we looked. I could see it in my father’s eyes as he snapped the pictures, me in a red satin gown that barely caressed the floor and my hair pinned up except for a couple of trailing curls, you in that black tux with the red satin vest and a bow tie. We looked so sophisticated, so poised, so old! Dad suddenly seemed awkward, uncertain, and I know he was suddenly seeing me as grown and married, leaving him for good. At the restaurant, we ordered scampi and cut our pasta in little bites so we wouldn’t slurp it onto our clothes. The waiter bowed and said “Sir” and “Ma’am,” and suddenly we could see ourselves in ten years, a handsome and established couple, envied by our friends, the ones to emulate.

After that night, we felt so settled that it was as if nothing could touch our faith in each other. As the weather turned and it got too cold to walk around town, we’d sit in each other’s houses until eleven or so and then say a long good-bye. Whose idea was it that night when every last kiss just wasn’t enough and we couldn’t stand to pull apart? I can’t remember. All I can recall are the feelings I had later that night of daring and excitement and anticipation as I sat in bed listening to a soft rain needling the window and watched the clock until Dad and Danny were sound asleep. Finally, the numbers on the clock radio flipped to 2:00, and I slipped out of bed and down to the basement door. Through the window you looked the part of a burglar, dressed all in black with your hood over your head. I opened the door a scant foot, and you slipped in, throwing off your hood like a gallant knight from medieval days. You were shivering from the rain, so you pulled off your wet sweatshirt, and I laid it on the drying rack in the laundry room. 

We had a good contingency plan, I thought. If we heard Dad stirring, you would hide in the dark corner of the laundry room behind the water heater, and if Dad came down, I would say I couldn’t sleep so I came downstairs to do some laundry. I always kept a book open and face down on the end table and a load of wet laundry in the washer. But we didn’t have to use our plan, even though that first night you stayed chilled for so long I thought you’d shake the house trying to keep your teeth from chattering. I smuggled a large mug of hot chocolate down from the kitchen, and we wrapped ourselves in an afghan on the couch, delighting in the feel of our bodies pressed so close. The success of that first night led to others, and as the weeks went by, we gradually discarded more and more items of clothing, as though playing a slow-motion game of strip poker. What can compare to the rapture of those first nights before reality and consequences came crashing in, and we learned that good intentions don’t ward off unintended results? We felt holy, untouchable, chosen for bliss. 

After the abortion and the move, it all changed, so fast and slow it was like the first time I ever fell skiing, my feet slipping sideways on crusty snow, my body tipping bit by bit, knowing I was going down, yet seeming to have all the time in the world to watch the ground come up to meet me. We held onto the idea that we could keep things going with long letters and carefully timed weekly phone calls—no unlimited long distance back in those days! But I could feel you being swept up with graduation and college acceptance letters and then plans to work with your uncle all summer for tuition money. All of these plans that didn’t, couldn’t include me, stuck in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with another year of high school to finish and a weekly allowance of $15. 

When summer came, Dad let me get a job at Dunkin’ Donuts since there wasn’t any studying to do, and that was when you did your first appearing act, standing in line at the donut counter in the middle of my morning shift that July day. You beamed, and I was so flustered by your presence, my fingers trembled on the keys of the cash register, and I had to void two charges in a row. You already looked different. Your polo shirt and jeans were immaculate, and you had a new jauntiness about you, an offhand kind of confidence, not your usual measured calm. But your eyes told a different story, unable to hold my gaze for long, shifting around the store. 

We agreed to meet after I got off. I remember changing into my street clothes in the restroom, splashing water on my face and arms, trying to rid them of their coating of sugar and fat. You teased me anyway, calling me “Honey-dip” as I slid into the passenger seat of one of your uncle’s pick-up trucks. We drove out to Odiorne Pointe and sat at a picnic table overlooking the rocky shore, watching kids and dogs playing in the tide pools under vigilant adult eyes. But before we sat down, you grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me, pressing me back against the end of the picnic table. Your lips were the same, soft on the surface and firm underneath, the same kiss, the same feeling of longing that I’d been mentally reliving for six months. The day was hot but breezy, full of the dank smell of seaweed drying in the sun. A sticky sweat rushed to the surface of my skin, but was immediately dried by the wind, and I remember feeling alternately hot and chilled. “God, I’ve missed you,” you said into my hairline as we stood and gently rocked each other.

Then we sat down, leaning against each other and looking out over the water. We tried to talk about our lives, exchanging questions and brief answers, but we’d kept up with the basic facts through our letters, and we carefully skirted the topics that mattered, like who we were now and how we could go on. Finally, you told me that you’d gotten your acceptance to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“That’s wonderful!” I said, and I hugged you, truly delighted that you’d been accepted at your first-choice school and one that was a scant two hours from Portsmouth. “But you must have known for a while. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

You shrugged, fixed your gaze out over the water, and didn’t answer until I pressed you.

“Well?”

“I don’t know whether this is working,” you said. “These months… they’ve been so hard. Everyone else was so happy, making plans… Graduation and prom—they’re supposed to be good times. I felt so apart from everyone. Like my life was on hold. No, like I’ve been holding myself back, afraid to join in, like it wouldn’t be right to enjoy myself without you. It’s just been so hard. I don’t think I can keep doing it. Do you know what I mean?”

You looked at me then, and I read the expression in your eyes, that you’d already made your decision, and it made me mad—mad that I’d somehow gone from prize to liability in six short months. I saw that you were ready to launch off into an exciting new life, while I would be stuck in a place where I still hadn’t made a friend and had nothing to look forward to because the future I’d been planning had just been pulled out from under me.

Then I started to cry, and you looked away, so that when I answered I could only address your profile, not your eyes that couldn’t face what you were doing to me. “No. I don’t know what you mean. Do you think it’s been any easier for me? I have no friends, nothing. Just you. What am I supposed to do now?”

As I raised the back of my hand to wipe my cheeks, you finally turned and wrapped your arms around me, but it was the hug of a parent with a child who’s fallen down and scraped a knee. Not like your kiss, not like before.

“Amy, Amy, Amy,” you said and held me to your chest. “I’ll still be in your life. I promise. We just need more space. Who knows what might happen when we’re both in college and we can make more of our own decisions. This just isn’t right for us now. I’m trying to be honest and fair to both of us.”

“Right,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice, or avoid the realization that I had already given up so much more than you that the balance could never be fair. Later that night, after we’d spent the rest of the day together and you were well on your way back to Virginia Beach, I counted back the months, as I had counted them at least once a week since November. Assuming I’d gotten pregnant somewhere around the third week of October, the third week of July would make nine months. But instead of you or a baby or a plan, I had nothing.

If you saw me today, you might think it sad that I never married, another reason to pity me, the poor, loyal girl that you had to leave behind. But it’s not like that at all. I taught sociology at two other colleges before settling here at Le Moyne, and I’ve had many good friends and long, intimate relationships. I’ve travelled a lot for pleasure, run study abroad programs, and relocated for whole semesters on sabbatical for research projects. It’s been a satisfying life, even with the challenges of bringing up Serena. In the end, I suppose I’ve always trusted statistics more than the vagaries of the human heart. I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of women I know who’ve been dumped in mid-life by men they trusted unconditionally. Then there are the ones who start marriages keeping their spouse at an arm’s length with prenups and jaded attitudes that create marriages that are anything but. And, perhaps, I’ve come to realize that you really were right that day, more right than I was willing to admit because all I could see then was your thinly disguised self-interest. I like having choices and the space for big changes in my life. In less than a year, Serena will be off on her own, one way or the other. I’m due for another sabbatical, and I’ve already outlined a paper that could easily grow into another book. I feel settled, but not anchored, and I like it.

So why are you suddenly back on my mind? And why has the urge to look for you over my shoulder returned after so many years? It was that NPR feature I was listening to in my office last week that took me back. A minister, a psychologist, and some writer were talking about the long-term effects of abortion, and the host was encouraging listeners who had had one to “call and join in the conversation.” But the wrong people were calling in, or at least the balance seemed off. Some women called to express regret for the abortions they’d had. Of these, it seemed like most had been pushed into their decisions against their will. But the majority of the calls were from mothers who had decided against aborting, voicing the usual holier-than-thou attitudes. “I just know that I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant if God didn’t want me to have that baby,” one woman declared. Yeah, like he wants thousands of babies to be born to mothers with AIDS and into poverty, I thought, as I watched herds of undergrads course along the sidewalk outside my 3rd floor window. 

“Where are the women who are content with their decision to have an abortion?” the host asked, in his reasonable, everyday voice, as though they were discussing ice cream flavors. I could tell him—they’re hiding from the stigma that society still puts on their decision and the necessity of keeping a secret that they still haven’t been able to tell their parents or their aunts and uncles, or their own children. I could tell him that we had the right to choose an abortion, but not the right to be proud of a decision that has saved thousands of children from deprived and erratic childhoods. (I did tell Serena about our abortion when she was around fifteen, just the scantest details, but open to answering all questions. I never even mentioned your name. For a while, it seemed to bridge the gap between us, but in the end, it was just another way for her to feel smarter than me because, as she put it, she’d NEVER get herself into THAT situation.) 

I thought of lots of things I could tell that host, and I scrawled the call-in number on my desk ledger, but then I got distracted by the photo of Serena that I keep on my desk. She’s about three, and I’d taken her to visit Polly and Mason for Christmas about a year after they’d taken jobs at the same Chicago law firm. On Christmas Eve, we took turns helping the kids make a snowman and dress him up as Santa, and we posed them in front of the final product, with its too-small Santa hat, stuck on with nails, and its lumpy snow beard. In the picture, Serena stands between Sarah and Max and they are all so bundled up in snowsuits and scarves and knit hats, it’s hard to tell who’s who, except that I could never not recognize Serena’s serious, dark eyes, squinting against the glare. 

I don’t know why that picture stopped me, but my mind started to wander back over the years and the shock I felt when I called Polly back in the summer and she had to give the phone to Mason to tell me that Max had run away, and they hadn’t heard from him in weeks. And they were good parents, more patient than I ever was. I looked at the picture and Serena’s squinting eyes and thought about her lifetime of flinching away from my rules, my advice, even my hugs. What is a right decision, a good plan? After all these years, I still don’t know. Do you judge it by the intentions or the results? I never called in to the show. Instead, I turned off the radio, opened my window, and sat in my armchair with my head back and my eyes closed. Outside the window, I could hear the banter of the students as they strolled by, calling greetings, shouting into cell phones, making plans.