by Laure Baudot
Marina put her legs on Josie’s lap, and that spot burned. Marina said, “You’re not like the others here, escaping real life. You’re solid. You know what you want. I like that.”
Josie felt an actual pain in her chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just wonder if it’s the right thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Keeping a straight path in life without considering any-thing outside of it. It’s kind of selling out, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t mean to say that I don’t want to veer off the path a little,” said Marina. Then she leaned over to kiss Josie.
Marina’s lips tasted like strawberry lip gloss. Her skin was dry and smelled of sea salt.
Josie thought she heard something and half-turned, but it was just some palm fronds blown across the tiled floor.
The rest of the day went on as it always did, with showers, then snapper fish tacos at their favourite food shack. When she spoke to Leo in the evening, he seemed the same as usual.
Underwater, Josie watches a lionfish with its stunning red, black, and white fireworks of spines, a show that belies its poisonous nature. Perhaps one eighth of her mind — and here she realizes how much Leo’s sense of the world in numbers has influenced her — is distracted. As she surfaces, she dreams of yesterday’s tacos as she treads water, waiting for Leo to emerge from the water. The fish in the tacos was so fresh that it lacked any kind of fishy smell; she almost didn’t recognize it as fish. And the avocados! Like butter!
The sunlight is dwindling and Leo is still nowhere to be found. She marvels at his breath-holding abilities. Josie plunges her head back into the water.
The sharks slither past, come close and leave, as if they have been thinking of engaging her, but keep changing their minds. In the fading light, she can no longer see the white on their fins. Something startles them, for they spin around all at once and swim away.
When she emerges and spits out the breathing tube, she locates the thing that has triggered them; the captain has turned on the engine to alert the snorkellers that it’s almost time to leave. She frowns. Has it already been an hour? Could she have lost track of time to such an extent? But then she realizes, from the swell of the waves, that the wind is picking up, and decides that they’re being called back early due to approaching inclement weather. A few metres away, Leo is already swimming toward the boat, obviously expecting her to follow.
She starts to go after him, her eyes trained on his head and on the tour boat in front of him, which through the waves alternates between disappearing and reappearing. Life jackets that are darkening in the fading light jut out from its trapezoidal roof.
She puts her head down into the water for a moment and notices that the whitetips are back, swimming under her, swerving, almost touching the top of her legs. When she looks up again, she sees Leo climb up the boat’s ladder and swing his right leg over the gunwale.
She’s fifty metres away from the boat when it begins to move. “Hey!” she shouts, and swallows some salt water. She tries to swim faster, but she’s tired and it’s getting harder to propel herself forward in the roughening waves.
After a minute or two she gets closer and realizes that the boat has stopped. Thank goodness. She sees the heads of people, just peeking over the railings.
Then, the motor’s roar returns, and the boat starts moving again.
Josie treads water in sheer disbelief. Her heart speeds up, her limbs stiff from her recent efforts. When she feels something rough brush against her thigh, her bladder seizes, warming the water around her middle. A breaker lulls, and she sees Leo looking out of the boat. A few, rogue rays of the setting sun cause a yellowish-red patch of his beard to glow.
The fisherman operating the tour, a black-haired man in flip-flops and an American football cap, switches the motor off and makes his way to the group of snorkellers who sit and lean against the sides of the ship in varying states of exhaustion. He performs a head count. “I have twenty-five written, and I see you are twenty-four.”
An American sitting nearby says, “After we boarded, I heard twenty-four.”
“Is that right?”
The woman with her hand on the man’s thigh says, “I think I heard that too.”
“Okay.” The tour operator turns back into the small room that houses the steering wheel. Soon, the motor starts again.
Leo and his double both hear and don’t hear the conversation. They are the only tourists still standing, peering out at the reef they’re leaving. They look out at the waters, empty save for the fins of sharks, tips that emerge like blemishes in an otherwise dark ocean.
Angels Landing
The sign at the trailhead read: Since 2006, 6 have died falling from cliffs on this route.
Paul, my husband, gazed at it. “Gotta love America, the land of lawsuits.”
“What’s a lawsuit?” asked my eight-year-old, Sam. She gazed up at the path, which wove upward through the canyons of Zion Park.
“Nothing.” I busied myself with my backpack, checking that I had included both water bottles. “You two go ahead,” I told Paul.
Last night, the hotel attendant had brought us extra blankets. “Cold, isn’t it?” he asked.
“That it is,” Paul said.
Sam was bouncing on the pullout bed. “We’re going to Angels Landing.”
The attendant, his eyes baggy and his hotel golf shirt half untucked, said, “Oh, honey, that’s not for kids.”
“Paul,” I said.
“Anna, we’ve talked about this.”
“Did you know only an angel can land on it?” Sam hiccupped between jumps, her white-blonde hair flying and settling.
The attendant swivelled back to Sam. “I have heard the story, yes.”
“Angels don’t exist,” she said.
“I hear there’s a chain up there for hikers to hold on to,” Paul said.
I said, “My husband is an adventurous kind of person.”
“From what I hear, there is a sort of handhold,” commented the attendant.
“You’ve never been?”
“Lord, no. I’m here for the seasonal.”
When the attendant left, Paul asked me, “Do you want to cancel?”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
“You always get like this.”
Worry is an enemy I know intimately, one I can never quite keep at bay. When Sam was little, I followed her around to the point that at parties, Paul would tell people that I climbed right up on the play structures with our daughter. My anxiety was such back then that I would often half-joke about taking something prescriptive. He would get irritatedand tell me that too many people already walk about drugged in this world.
Truth was, when it came to Angels Landing, I couldn’t distinguish between things I should be anxious about and things unworthy of my trepidation. I also didn’t want to disappoint him, especially because although the hike wasn’t my idea, I had eventually agreed to it. My pride was at stake, and maybe Paul’s affection for me as well. Whenever he went off alone on his wilderness trips, I was afraid of what kinds of thoughts he might be having, so far from us.
Sam had stopped jumping and was now climbing into Paul’s empty suitcase. “Daddy, can you zip me up?”
“Wow, you fit right in there,” I said.
“Can you believe that guy?” Paul said. “Surrounded by beauty he’s never seen!”
“It does seem crazy.”
“Sam, let that be a lesson to you. Do not be that guy.”
“I won’t.” Her voice was muffled from inside the suitcase.
The beginning of the trail was paved, and my feet hit the pavement with a hard clop. I could still taste the artificial waffle syrup from our chain hotel’s breakfast. As we hiked, I recognized the cottonwoods that our national park bus driver had pointed out as he dro
ve us to the trailhead. Pines filled the air with a green, coniferous scent. There was also another smell, rich and caramel, which compelled me to take deep, gulping breaths.
We walked up the switchbacks. To our left was the face of the Angels Landing formation, heating up in the sun. Sweat pooled in my armpits, so I took off my long-sleeved lightweight top. Paul and Sam — who had walked so far ahead I could only make out Sam’s red knapsack — suddenly spun around and made their way back toward me. As they approached, Sam called out, “We wanted to enjoy the view with you, Mom!”
The three of us gathered at the edge of the path, separated from the drop-off by a low stone wall. I could smell Paul’s two-day-old cologne; he never showered during hiking trips. He put his arm around my neck and I felt his warmth. Below us and to our right was the Virgin River, a ribbon of grey water with small foaming white crests. From up here, the cottonwoods looked like denuded broccoli bunches. Beyond the river rose rust-red cliffs covered with dark-green mossy foliage.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Mom?”
“Gorgeous.”
Paul shaded his eyes. “Peregrines. I had no idea they were around here.”
The Zion Park bird circled upward toward a cerulean sky, and our family of three watched it until it disappeared.
Ten years ago, Paul took me to the Bruce Trail. I had only known him for six weeks, but already I knew I could never go back to the solitariness of my life before meeting him, a life in which I hadn’t even realized how lonely I’d been. That day, we hiked up to a small cliff overlooking a sea of cedars and sugar maples. Over the tree tops, a bird of prey circled. Paul shaded his eyes with his hand then, too. “A peregrine, I think.”
“How do you know?”
“I give to the Peregrine Foundation.”
“You do?” He had an X-ray technician’s salary, which as far as I knew he saved for travel. I’d never met anyone with an appreciation of nature before, let alone someone who gave money to a cause.
“You need to actively preserve beauty when you see it.” Suddenly, Paul opened his arms wide, as if to embrace it. “The world is a fantastic place, isn’t it?” He then told me that, as a result of his father’s death at a young age, he had resolved to live life well.
I felt something new, a yearning to go beyond the confines of my life and embrace new experiences. I felt confidence in Paul, as if he could lead me through a new world safely. As if I could use his attitude like a tightrope across a dangerous landscape.
At noon, we stopped in the coolness of a canyon which, according to Paul’s trail map, was aptly named Refrigerator Canyon. There were a few puddles scattered among the boulders, and the air smelled damp. We sat on cold rocks and picnicked. Sam finished her lunch and ran away from us, bouncing from one wall of the canyon to the other like a moth trapped in a room. Once, she called us over to show us what she had found in a crevice in the wall: a grey exoskeleton the size of my thumb. Impossible to tell what kind of being it was, and whether it had crawled in the crevice to die or been killed because it had been too tightly wedged.
We made our way through the canyon, Sam ahead of us. At one point, she slipped off a rock and crashed on her bottom. Her cry echoed off the walls. “Owchees!”
“Hey, be careful up there!” My heart beat slightly faster.
“You okay, trooper?” Paul called out.
She dusted herself off. “I’m fine!”
When she was six, she had fallen from monkey bars. She screamed and showed a wild disarray of feelings I’d never before witnessed from her. I knelt beside her in the playground sand, saw that greyish bone had burst through her pink skin. All I could think of was what I’d been taught in a first aid course twenty years before, which was that in situations like that you were supposed to ask someone’s name.
After, I banned her from the monkey bars. Paul mildly pro-tested, and then let me have my way.
We exited the canyon into the searing sun. Again we stripped down to our T-shirts. The trail became steep. Crooked trees bent over an increasingly perilous chasm.
Paul stayed beside me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“Do your mantra.”
In times of stress, I would repeat a mantra — a recommendation from my psychiatrist, who I was seeing regularly on Paul’s advice. The idea was to block out negative thoughts by bombarding them with positive ones.
“I know. I just need a little space.”
We stopped to catch our breaths under the umbrage of the cliff. Sam, who didn’t look tired at all, leaned against the rock face. On her left calf was a streak of red dirt. Her baseball cap hid some of her face, so that it showed only the delicate line of her lips and half a flushed cheek. Leaning there, so insouciant, she looked older than her eight years.
A woman with a baby in a carrier on her back came up the trail behind us. Her baby, fat and healthy-looking, wore a blue sun hat with a tiny piece of fabric that hung down over his neck. The woman, in her mid-thirties with blonde hair tucked under a wide-brimmed hat, wore her socks folded over her sturdy hiking boots.
I had had a carrier like that for Sam, but never wore it. I didn’t like that I couldn’t see her face, nor could I bear to see her precariously balanced on Paul’s shoulders.
“Good for you,” Paul called out to the hiker as she passed.
She half turned. “Gotta take him with me, right?”
“Absolutely!”
She continued striding uphill from us, her calves freckled and brown.
In July of last year, the wife of one of Paul’s friends had put on a garden party. I’d gone inside to get a drink while Paul mingled in the backyard, and when I came back, he was talking to a woman in cut-offs and hiking sandals.
“That sounds great!” Paul was saying.
“What?” I smiled at them and handed Paul a beer.
The woman said, “A four-day bike trip, through Quebec.” She was makeup-less and her brown hair hung uncombed to her shoulders.
“With her whole family.”
“One kid on his own, one on a trailer with my husband, and one on my bike.”
“Three?” I asked. “How do you keep from dying of worry?”
She gave a short laugh. “I try to keep the demons at bay by ignoring them.”
“We’re going to do a midwestern American trip this sum-mer,” Paul said.
“The Grand Canyon?”
“Zion National Park, in Utah.”
“I’ve had my eye on that part of the world.”
“I’m trying to persuade my wife to do Angels Landing.”
“Is that the one with the chain? I’ve heard it’s incredible.”
“Oh, we’ll do it,” I said.
Paul stared at me. “We are?”
“Oh yes. Absolutely.” I took his arm, the one with which he held the beer, and felt his bicep pulsing. I smiled at her.
Another woman sidled up to us. “Is Summer telling you about her bike trip? I just love you parents who don’t let children get in the way of adventure.”
“That bike trip sounds crazy good,” Paul said.
“Oh, you two,” said the woman. I didn’t know whether she was referring to Summer and her husband, or to me and Paul, or to Summer and Paul. “You put us to shame.”
Looking back, I’m pretty sure that nothing was going on then between Summer and Paul — that he, like me, had met Summer for the first time that day. They weren’t together then. They must have reconnected much later, sometime after Angels Landing. And I have only myself to blame.
After five hours, we arrived at Scout’s Lookout, a salmon-coloured, sandy saddle overlooking a canyon. A few denuded pines and thorny bushes grew here and there. Pinkish slabs of rock led up to the lookout. Scattered families picnicked and took photos. I recognized another family of three we saw on the bus. They sat on the sand, plas
tic sandwich bags spread out at their feet.
We climbed up the rough-hewn steps and made for the edge overlooking the chasm. Directly in front of us was Angels Landing, a jagged, undulating red snake whose head was turned away from us. On top grew a few pine trees, barer than the ones on Scout’s Lookout. On both sides of the jut-ting rock were deep chasms, and down below were masses of green trees. It was the angel’s territory.
I had a sudden vision of an angel standing on the head of the snake, wrestling with Sam. In my mind’s eye, I saw Sam slipping over the edge.
Paul turned to me. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The dad from the other family came up behind us. He was a large man with a goofy grin and sweat on his upper lip. “Do you mind taking a picture of us?”
I moved away from the cliff. “Against the view?”
“Helen! Come take a photo!”
His wife and daughter, both slightly chubby, gathered in front of the canyon. The little girl’s forehead had a band of pink on it from her sunhat, which hung around her neck. Her smile was forced.
The dad nodded to me. “Thanks. You want one too?”
“Good idea!” Paul said. He put his arms around Sam and me, and squeezed our shoulders. “I’ve got both of you.”
I tried not to think of the drop behind us.
Paul looked at the man’s daughter. “How’re you enjoying the mountain?”
“It’s okay,” the girl said.
“She’s tired,” her mother said.
“She did great.” The man gave me back my camera and addressed Paul. “Not doing Angels Landing, are ya?”
“Sure are.”
A look of longing came over the man’s face.
His wife rolled her eyes at me, before looking directly at her husband. “Don’t get ideas!”
“What’s your strategy with your young lady?” the man asked.
“I’m gonna hitch her to me.”
“They’ve got ropes, Helen,” the man explained.
“Good, honey. You can plan for next time.”
“Have you noticed that kids have no fear?” Paul said.
