Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [61]
Hazarding the appearance of one who had at least mildly lost her mind, she passed the rest of that day showing the snapshot to others around the village. No one recognized their faces. Up where the road to Taos wishboned, a woman in the weavers’ shop remarked, with a kindly inflection that could have been misconstrued as optimism but wasn’t, that unless Ariel happened upon someone who’d been a childhood friend, she probably wasn’t going to succeed in finding this boy all these years later.
Kip’s daughter looked down at the rough plank floors of the weaving shop. The close smell of wool hung in this room filled with ponchos, blankets, sweaters.
“You need find somebody who know the name. This photo not help you too good. People get look different when they older. I know too well.”
That was fair. More than fair—a courtesy.
As afternoon shadows began to engulf the valley, Ariel sat in the deepening silence of her car, having tucked the image back into the Calder notebook. How could she have failed to foresee the weaver’s obvious point? Should she merely write it off to inexperience, fallibility, blindness, or had she come all this distance not to find Kip Calder but merely to weigh in with the apparent effort so she could feel she had completed the circle he’d begun here, in Chimayó? Pretty damn long distance to travel with the underlying goal of not arriving somewhere. She frowned, turned the car around in the stony lot, got onto the paved road, and headed back toward Pojoaque and Los Alamos, whose towers shimmered way off to the west under the dusking sun.
She suddenly realized she hadn’t been to the Hill—Los álamos, that home of poplars—for how long? Had unconsciously boycotted the place since Brice came home with his news of Kip. And hadn’t been here even for a couple of years before that. What did she think, her grandmother was going to live forever? Life proposed changes, constants, and the uneasy middles between. While her pursuit of Kip seemed doomed to failure, at least it could prompt a reunion with this woman she loved. It was always worth running the gauntlet of mixed feelings she had about the nuclear lab in order to visit Granna. She knew about the research that proceeded down at the ends of these numerous service roads she saw on her way up the mesa, disappearing behind chain-link fences with official signs that read No Trespassing Danger Live Explosives. Yet most everyone she loved best in this world either came from here or had some hand in building it.
She guessed her way to Pear Street, parked beside the cottage, and rested her head against the steering wheel for a moment before gathering herself to start up the walk. Lights burned welcomingly in the windows of the house. She knocked on the door. Brice’s mother in her arms seemed thinner than ever—ethereal, somehow. Ariel apologized for not phoning ahead to let her know she was coming, but Granna would have none of it.
“This is your house,” she said, and once inside, Ariel knew she was right. For the first time in days a sudden ordinary calm settled over her. As if she’d been delivered onto solid ground from a world that was wildly whirling. “What brings you to New Mexico?”
“Everything and nothing.”
“Well, that’s exact if vague.”
“You look radiant as ever.”
“Mountain air and faith—you know me.”
“Doesn’t get better than that, does it?” She smiled, noticing her grandmother had let her off the hook.
“Have you eaten?”
“I’m famished.”
“Well, let’s do something about it.”
Ariel sat with her kin for several hours, catching her up on news from back east, though leaving out for the time being all the most salient points.
Next morning the air