Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [91]
He took me by the shoulders and pulled me to him, my hair in the way of his mouth. He brushed it back, and with his hands tangled there, I heard him say he had missed the end of summer with me. I heard him say that he was still mine.
In the morning, we smelled of smoke. He was up before me and had the water started on the tiny camp stove. He was crouched over what was left of the fire from the night before, stirring the ashes intently with a charred broken stick. When he saw me through the tent flap, he called me a sleepyhead and handed me a mug of tea.
We didn’t talk about reuniting then, or about any of the things we said we would. Not that day. We packed up the camp after breakfast, and we walked. And when we crossed over the small river, the trail began to veer straight up from the valley.
I can almost see him now, just above me, scrambling on the granite ledge, pointing out the best handholds, the surest footholds. The sky was overcast when he turned back, and I squinted to look up. He asked what I thought my best and worst qualities were and the same for him. And he wanted to know what three things I loved best about him. “You’re fishing,” I teased. He frowned, but because it was his question, he went first. “Your hands. The place where your collarbone meets your neck. The curve of your hip when you lie on your side. When you read to me at night. And your letters, I love your letters.”
“That’s more than three.”
“I know,” he said, and kept climbing.
They weren’t the things I’d imagined he would say. They were sweeter, more considered. The letters especially surprised me. I’d always written to him, and there were many that year—cajoling, seducing, longing, analyzing, pleading, scolding. Long letters that I’d thought had no effect. He shook his head. I save them, he said. They make me think.
Right then, I couldn’t go any farther. The new boots he’d bought had given me blisters. He propped me on a flat rock, threw down his pack, dug out the first aid kit, and covered my foot with moleskin and white tape. It’ll last, he said, handing me the canteen. We sat for a while looking over the narrow valley, and when we were ready, he took up my pack as well as his. I watched for a moment as he made it over the crest, the rolled neon sleeping bags bobbing off the metal frames.
That is what I love, I will think later, remembering you with both our packs easy on your shoulders. That and the animal way you move on rocks. Your arm around me as we sleep. When you point to the constant stars—Orion, your favorite: hero and hunter. That you ask me this question. And that the mystery of the cord that ties us—even through this last year, through pain and heartache and the attentions of a beautiful woman—remains, whatever we choose when we leave this trail.
It is what I would say to him now.
On the drive to the airport and our flights in opposite directions, I asked him about Daryl, if it was over. He didn’t answer right away. His eyes were on the country road, his hands on the wheel of the white convertible he’d rented for the weekend. It had been a fantasy, he said, a way to deal with his fears of commitment. “She took on the fears of us.” He’d begun therapy a few months before, and it had changed the way he spoke. “I was enamored, but not any longer.”
I both believed and doubted him. We had decided nothing in the Blue Ridge wilderness, but at the gate, before my flight to Chicago, we agreed to keep talking.
The film wrapped two weeks later. I went to LA but didn’t stay long, and when I returned to New York, John took me to a benefit at the Plaza. We left early, and as we stood outside on the red-carpeted landing, the fog was so dense, we thought a cloud had descended on Fifth Avenue. He loosened his tie and slipped his tuxedo jacket over my bare shoulders, and I held the silk gown to one side as we walked. By the Saint-Gaudens statue, a row of hansom cabs waited. “Let’s do it,” he said. I was glad to see him happy. He’d found out he’d failed the bar exam weeks before, and the effects were defeating.