Seventh Wonder

by Renae Kelleigh

  “Tell me,” John said, glancing up from his sketchbook to regard her with genuine interest.

  Meg nodded toward the canyon, where it extended from the tips of her toes toward infinity. “How it got here. How it was created.”

  She was surprised when he laid aside his book and pencil, granting her his undivided attention. “There are a few theories,” he said.

  “Do you know what they are?”

  He nodded slowly. “No one knows for sure how it happened or how it continues to happen, but there are some facts everyone seems to agree on.” He rose to his feet, then reached down to offer her his hand. “Come here,” he said softly.

  She grasped his wrist, and he pulled her up beside him. He let go of her and slid his hand around her waist to rest at the small of her back, urging her a few feet closer to the rim. “There, at the bottom,” he said, pointing toward the canyon’s unlit basement. “That’s granite. About two billion years ago, sediment and lava were deposited in these shallow, coastal plains and formed rocks - layer after layer.” He held up her hands, palms open and fingers splayed, and sandwiched them between his own: showing her. “Sandstone. Shale. Limestone. At some point, magma rose up into the rocks and morphed the sediment. The magma cooled and crystallized and compressed the layers into granite, which sort of welded all of that rock to the North American continent.” He pressed his hands together, flattening hers between them.

  “Then, a little over a billion years ago, pieces of the Earth’s crust shifted, lifting the layers up and tilting them.” Here he lifted the stack of their hands several feet into the air. “It formed this extensive plateau, thousands and thousands of feet above sea level - much higher than it is today. That’s when the river came through.” He dropped their hands and pointed farther south, in the direction of the Colorado. “Snowmelt from the Rockies fed the river and made it pretty violent. It carved a deep groove down through the rock. That happened pretty quickly - only took about four million years. As the river was downcutting, the land continued to rise up around it. At the same time, the canyon was also widening because of wind and water erosion.”

  His arm swept upward, extending toward the cliff faces and trapezoidal sections of rock near the canyon’s rim. “Some of the rocks are harder than others - more resistant to wear. That’s sandstone, and over there is limestone. They’ve worn away very little. The softer layers, like shale, kind of melted into these slopes.” He glanced back at her. “Erosion. That’s why the rims of the canyon are as far as eighteen miles apart.”

  He turned his body away from the canyon, fully facing Meg. “The incredible fact of it is that all of those forces are still at play. The plates keep shifting, the river keeps flowing, and the wind keeps blowing...”

  Meg looked at him as his voice trailed off, enthralled. “So, that would mean it keeps changing, right?” she asked. “If we could travel thousands of years into the future, it would look completely different than it does right now.”

  One corner of his mouth twitched. “Exactly. It’s an amazing thing - just like Mount Everest or the Great Barrier Reef or Parícutin, the cinder cone volcano down in Mexico. They’re all among the seven ancient, natural wonders of this world. This” - he held his hand out toward the canyon - “is the seventh.”

  “The seventh wonder,” she mused. Her lips slanted to form half a smile. “How do you know all this? Do they teach it in art school?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a crooked shrug. “I didn’t go to art school. I studied geology.”

  Meg raised her eyebrows. “I suppose that would explain your encyclopedic knowledge on the subject.”

  He grinned, gripping the back of his neck. “I don’t know about that. Grand Canyon topography is pretty much Geology 101. It’s kind of like this unbroken cross section of the Earth’s crust, served up to us on a platter. It’s attracted scientists for over a hundred years.”

  Meg tilted her head, studying his face. “But when you look at it, you don’t see it as a scientist would, do you?”

  John shook his head. “No. Not anymore.”

  “You see it the way you draw it,” Meg guessed. “Like an artist.”

  He dipped his head in agreement. “Like an artist,” he repeated with a smile.

  * * *

  The temperature had dropped along with the sun. Meg sat with her legs folded against her chest and her hands fastened around her knees, attempting to draw warmth from her own chilled body.

  “Too dark to draw anymore,” John said as he tucked his supplies back inside his rucksack. It wasn’t until he lowered himself to the ground next to Meg that he noticed her shiver. “Dammit,” he murmured. “You’re cold. I meant to bring a blanket.”

  “I’m fine,” she said quietly. Having him near was enough to warm her blood slightly.

  He reached for the thermos - she’d forgotten all about it. “It gets cold when the sun goes down,” he said as he unscrewed the top. “Coffee usually helps.” He poured some of the dark liquid into the cap and held it out to her. “Should still be warm.”

  Grateful, she took the cup. Usually she preferred her coffee with generous helpings of cream and sugar, but now she was able to overlook the bitter taste. She relished the warming effect of the hot liquid as it scorched down her throat.

  “Better?” he asked when she handed the empty cup back to him.

  “Much.”

  “More?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe later.”

  He poured some for himself and downed it in a single gulp before screwing the cap back on.

  They sat in peaceful silence for some length of time, watching the light drain from the sky. Meg was acutely aware of John’s every movement - every shift, every tic. His body mirrored hers from only inches away, so that if she leaned just slightly, her arm would brush against his.

  In the instant the sun slipped below the horizon, he turned his face to look at her. Meg closed her eyes, taking a brief moment to compose herself before returning his gaze. When I look at him, she thought, everything will change. She wasn’t sure yet precisely how - only that a part of her felt pressed to hurry, while the other part deigned to prolong this liminal moment for as long as possible.

  Now. Now she turned.

  Plates shifted. Rivers flowed. Winds blew.

  John bent toward her, and she met him in the middle of the space that had previously existed between them. His hand came up to cradle the side of her face. “Meg,” he whispered.

  Then he kissed her.

  His lips were yielding but firm as they pressed into hers. This kiss: every cleft and crater, every vacant space inside of her felt full of it. Behind all conscious thought, Meg pictured remaining this way for hours, even days. She was loath to break contact, because doing so might feel like a part of her was emptying. So she clung to him. She rested her hand against the side of his neck, where the muscles responsible for the movements of his head flowed into the ones accountable for the set of his shoulders. With her thumb she felt the strength of his jaw, while her fingers sifted through the hair at the nape of his neck.

  John made an involuntary noise deep in his throat, somewhere between a groan and a growl. He pulled back from her for only a percentage of a second so he could angle his body toward her. As he kissed her again, he held her head firmly between both of his hands.

  Meg dropped her hand from his neck and felt the warm skin just inside the collar of his shirt, her fingertips brushing over his collarbone. When she opened her mouth to pull his bottom lip into her mouth, he responded by grabbing her outside leg and swinging her around to place her bent legs over his lap. Her knees fell weakly against his hard stomach.

  Where their mouths were concerned, Meg was mostly unaware of the details. Her mind processed the shapes of things without breaking them apart into their constituent pieces: instead of fingers and lips, she felt weights and pressures. Hence, when their tongues met, it took her several heartbeats to understand the reason for John’s retreat.

>   His lips broke away, but his hands stayed buried in her hair, while his breaths came fast and deep. Their foreheads rested together. She wondered whether she had done something wrong.

  Meg withdrew her hands and leaned back far enough to look at him. Holding her gaze, John slowly extracted his fingers from her hair and pulled her against him. She turned her head to rest the side of her face against his chest and listened to the submarine thunk of his heart.

  “It’s nearly dark,” he said a moment later. “We should walk back.” His voice was rough like an open wound.

  They stood and gathered the rucksack and thermos without speaking. Cut apart from the nourishment of his body, Meg felt cool again. She moved quickly to keep the cold from settling into her bones.

  This time John led the way, since he knew the path better and could alert Meg to the odd root or stone that might trip her up. By some strange mixture of miracle and misfortune, the return trip seemed to go quicker than the hike to Cape Royal. Afterward, the drive back to the lodge was a blur of caustic wind and bouncing headlights.

  “Where are you staying?” asked John.

  Meg blinked, surprised to find they were back among the guest cabins. “That one,” she said, pointing.

  He eased the Jeep to a stop several yards short of the cabin she’d indicated. She was both surprised and hopeful when he switched off the ignition. The dowsing of the headlights threw them into darkness.

  John’s hand fumbled along her arm before finding her hand. He intertwined their fingers and gave it a faint squeeze.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” he said quietly. Meg’s heart dropped into her stomach; she swallowed, fighting the ridiculous urge to cry. “I’ll only be gone a day,” he continued. “I’m coming back on Friday.” Meg could only just make out the dark shape of his profile, but she could feel his eyes trained on her. He hesitated momentarily before adding, “I’d like to see you again.”

  The first words she thought of were, “Of course.” She stopped herself before saying them though. Once again, her mouth held the sour taste of disappointment. “My friends... They’re planning a camping trip for this weekend. We won’t be back until Sunday.”

  He let go of her fingers to brush the back of his hand against her cheek. “Till Sunday, then.”

  She nodded, knowing he could feel it even if he couldn’t see it. “Sunday,” she agreed.

  He leaned forward and landed a soft kiss on her lips, which she greedily accepted. For three endless days, its memory would be all she had of him.

  Chapter 4

  Thursday passed at a slow march, as a disjointed series of awkward moments and wondering glances. Meg’s prevailing sense was one of jamais vous - that peculiar sensation of misremembering the formerly recognizable.

  She awoke early to the sight of Don climbing out of the bedroom window, his hair rumpled and his shirt haphazardly buttoned, while Faye looked on from the warmth of her bed. She managed to dodge an inquisition from her roommate by devoting extra time to her shower before they walked to breakfast.

  To fill in her morning and most of the afternoon, Meg wrote in her journal and watched a Navajo pottery demonstration. She read from a volume of Sylvia Plath poems and attended a lecture that contrasted ancestral Puebloan civilization with modern native culture. She also whiled away half an hour on the lodge’s back porch, watching a distant pillar of rain float across the canyon. All day long, she strived for but rarely achieved a level of activity sufficient to repress her thoughts of John.

  She wondered where to picture him. He had said only that he was leaving - she hadn’t thought to ask where. Had he driven somewhere, or was he on foot? Perhaps he’d journeyed to the bottom of the canyon. Or maybe he’d gone north, to the grassy flats south of Jacob Lake. The possibilities were as wide-ranging as the multitude of landscapes surrounding them.

  To Meg, the distraction of dinner was both unwelcome and necessary. She gave her halfhearted approval as Mary Ann rehashed the particulars of their camping trip; she nodded politely as Alan provided a detailed manifesto of Nixon’s shortcomings as Commander in Chief; she listened attentively to Paul’s description of a pink rattlesnake he’d encountered near the visitor center.

  By the time they retired for the evening, Meg felt utterly depleted.

  Two more days, she thought. Two more days.

  * * *

  “Meg. Rise and shine.”

  She opened her eyes to find Faye blinking down at her as she pulled a clean undershirt over her bare chest. “You’d better get up,” she grumbled. “Mary Ann will have your hide if she comes in here and finds you still in bed.”

  Meg sat up slowly and scrubbed at her eyelids, which felt bloated and tender from her night of fitful sleep. Outside, the sun hadn’t yet breached the horizon. Never had she felt less motivated to rise.

  “What time is it?” she asked Faye. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her parched mouth.

  “Five-o’-fucking-clock,” her roommate replied. “The first shuttle leaves at twenty after.”

  A thought was gathering in Meg’s mind, a swirling, inchoate wisp of an idea that slowly gained substance and definition. When Faye looked at her again a moment later, likely speculating about why she still hadn’t made any movement to stand, Meg said, “I’m not going.”

  Faye was unperturbed by this revelation. Rather than feign shock, she simply placed her hands on her hips and regarded Meg with an expression of knowing amusement. “Oh really.” Her tone couldn’t have possibly been more blasé.

  They both jumped a little when a succession of strident blows cracked against the door. “Are you gals ready to walk up to the lodge?” called Mary Ann.

  Faye answered her: “Be right out.”

  She turned away from Meg to fasten her pack, then hefted it onto her shoulder. “Are you sure you’ll be OK alone?”

  “I’m sure,” Meg replied quickly. “Go ahead - I’ll be here when you get back.”

  Faye paused before walking out the door. “Have a nice weekend,” she whispered. She didn’t wink, but her voice contained all the smugness of that hackneyed gesture.

  Meg watched the door swing shut after Faye walked through it. “Meg’s not feeling well,” she heard her announce as she joined the other women.

  She lay back and smiled, paying silent thanks to her unexpected ally.

  * * *

  Journal Entry

  Friday, June 6, 1969

  Slept late this AM since I’ve slept poorly the past 2 nights (maybe I should say something to Faye about Don “sleeping over”?). Caused me to miss breakfast, so I made do with a cup of tea and a biscuit. Wrote post cards to Aunt Virginia and my venerable mentor, Prof. Houghton, then talked on the phone with Mother and Daddy. They filled me in on current events, since there aren’t any televisions here - apparently yesterday was the start of an international communist conference in Moscow, which Daddy acted very surly about. That’s his way when something’s really troubling him.

  The others have left on their weekend trip. It’s strange being left here all alone, but the solitude sort of agrees with me. It isn’t that I dislike any of my travel companions, exactly - I just feel sort of like an interloper. Not that it’s a new feeling for me. Growing up in southern CA, I became pretty familiar with the So-Cal mold, and I grew up with a healthy respect for the fact that I don’t fit it. Mouse brown hair vs. blonde, fair (embarrassingly blush-prone) skin vs. bronze, curvy vs. svelte, not to mention my tendency to favor books over parties. Still, I’ve made a point of never resenting anyone for pursuing whatever it is that drives their contentment, however it may differ from my own.

  In any case, it’s now past 2, and I’m sitting beneath a spruce tree at the overlook where John and I first met 4 days ago. He said he’d be back today - I only hope he finds me. He isn’t expecting to see me again until Sunday, so I don’t imagine he’ll come looking.

  A part of me wishes I could rationalize my feelings toward him. I suppose infatuation is an apt term
, but there’s more to it than that. Fascination. Enchantment. Lust (I can admit to it here, if nowhere else). I’ve never been great at discerning other people’s opinions of me, but I do think John returns at least some of my feelings, even if to a lesser degree. This is new for me - this faith in our shared attraction. Even with Michael, I was never sure of where I stood in his eyes. The night we met, I knew he wanted me physically, but my confidence in the depth of our emotional connection waxed and waned almost daily for the entire length of our affair.

  Now, when I think of this adventure with John, there’s both sadness and hope. Sadness because I know it will be short-lived. Hope because, for the first time, when faced with the sometimes temporary nature of happiness, I’m not afraid to chase it anyway.

  * * *

  “Meg?”

  John’s voice was like a thin knife sliding between two layers, with consciousness on one side and a dreamlike oblivion on the other. She was inclined to reach out for him, but she was caught in a hellish state of limbo, tunneling back toward wakefulness but not yet arrived.

  “Meg.” Firmer this time.

  She woke with a start. The back of her head was sore from resting against something hard and rough: the trunk of a tree.

  As she opened her eyes, a familiar face swam into focus. Dark, unshorn hair, bright eyes, strong jaw, a slight cleft to his chin and the stubbled suggestion of a beard. Was it possible he had grown even more handsome in the time he was away? Perhaps more to the point, was it possible she was dreaming still?

  When he crouched down before her, his face was creased with worry. “Are you all right?”

  How many times had he asked her that? Meg sat up, suddenly embarrassed. She hadn’t intended for him to find her like this. Looking down, she realized her journal lay open beside her, the breeze riffling its pages. What if he’d seen what she had written? She felt self-conscious and childish, like a schoolgirl who traces hearts and scribbles declarations of love in her well-inked primer.