The Usual Rules

by Joyce Maynard

  They didn’t even go home first. Rare for Garrett, he had the whole thing planned. He had bought a sleeping bag and warm clothes, a day pack, fleece gloves, hiking boots in her size, even. All the gear was in the back of his truck.

  It was late afternoon when they got out on the highway. The drive took hours. He put on a tape and handed her a stick of beef jerky. Somewhere along the way, she leaned her head back on the seat.

  You can put your head on my shoulder, he said.

  Now and then she’d wake up halfway, and when she did, she could hear the soft, laid-back voice of Bob Marley, the reggae beat. Mostly she slept.

  By the time they got to the park, the stars were out. The truck had pulled over at the gate. She could hear her father rolling down the window to talk to the ranger.

  Not a lot of people make it out here this time of year, he was saying. You two are going to have this place to yourselves pretty much.

  He started giving Garrett directions to the Yosemite Lodge, but Garrett said he had a little generator-run heater in the back. They’d camp in Lower Pines and sleep under the pop-top in back.

  They drove a little farther, along a stretch of road that wound through what her father called the valley floor.

  He found them a campsite—empty except for one old VW bus. He got out a flashlight to show her where the toilets were.

  We can get ourselves properly organized in the morning, he said. Main thing for now is to get a good night’s sleep, what’s left of it.

  She had put on the new hiking boots, for the snow, which came up to her ankles. You couldn’t make out much along the path, but she heard the sound of water moving over the rocks nearby. The moon was out, but the trees all around had mostly hidden it from view.

  When she’d finished in the bathroom, her father was waiting for her on the path. He took her hand and led her the rest of the way back to the truck.

  I don’t know why more people don’t come here this time of year, he said. Summer’s amazing, too, but then you’ve got the crowds to deal with. To me, winter’s the best time. I always feel like I’m entering this vast empty cathedral. If I was ever the type to go looking for a place of worship, this would be it.

  He had set up an air mattress in the back of the truck, with their sleeping bags on top, and a blanket on top of that. The generator was humming quietly. He had lit the Coleman lantern.

  I guess I never got us any dinner, did I? he said. We’ll just have to make up for it with breakfast.

  She slept so well the sun was already up when she woke, and she could hear the rushing of the water on the rocks. Her father had the Coleman stove going, and he’d set out cups and bowls. He must’ve stopped for provisions along the way the night before, while she was sleeping, because now he had hot chocolate ready, and a pot of oatmeal, a cup of orange juice, a banana and a bran muffin—set out on a picnic table, with his bandana for a cloth.

  She stepped outside the truck. The light on the snow was so brilliant, she had to shield her eyes for a second to adjust. She looked up. Even with her head all the way back, it was impossible to see the top of the rock face beside them. Across the field, though, she could make out plainly the tops of other peaks, encircling the valley floor. If she had landed on the moon in the middle of the night, the scene that met her in the daylight would have been no more foreign and mysterious.

  With her mother and Josh, Wendy had taken day hikes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, but she had never seen mountains like these—a landscape that seemed built on a whole other scale, its peaks stabbing so high into the sky they seemed to belong more to heaven than to earth. After her old familiar mountains of Washington and Jefferson back home, the peaks of Yosemite seemed savage and unapproachable—scary almost, but also more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen.

  He handed her the hot chocolate. She let the cup warm her hands first before taking a sip. She could feel the warmth of the liquid going down her throat. In this place, everything you took in—light, warmth, sound, taste, smell—seemed sharper and more deeply felt.

  The first time I ever came here was with your mother, he told her. We took a road trip cross-country a few months after we met. Ended up right here.

  I can’t picture her as the camping type, Wendy said.

  For starters, it wasn’t winter, he told her. Then you’ve got to factor in the fact that we were nuts about each other. People do all kinds of things they wouldn’t normally, when they’re in love.

  I don’t know if this is the type of thing a person’s supposed to tell his kid, he said. But your mother always said this was where you were conceived.

  After they cleaned up, she took out her new things, cut off the price tags, and dressed. Once the sun was out, the air was no longer stingingly cold, especially when you started moving. He handed her a couple of Cliff bars and a bag of trail mix, a water bottle for her pack.

  The trail wound, first, along a place called the Tenaya Lake, through the canyon. Looking up, she could see a strangely shaped peak—round on one side, sheer flat face on the other.

  That’s Half Dome, he told her. In the warm weather, you can hike up there. They’ve got metal spikes put into the sides of the rock, and cables set up to help people make it to the top, but in October, the park rangers take the cables down till spring. One day we’ll tackle that one.

  They hiked in silence, and that was fine. It wasn’t really silent anyway. Wendy would never have known there could be so much to listen to, with no one saying anything. There was wind and moving water and melting snow. It turned out there were birds even at this time of year, and Garrett knew all their names and recognized their songs: nuthatch and Steller’s jay, brown creeper, mountain chickadee, and, the night before, a great horned owl. He knew the trees, too, and pointed them out to her: lodgepole pine, California black oak, cottonwood, bay laurel, ponderosa, Jeffrey pine, incense cedar.

  She caught sight of a group of deer, running across an open field and leaping over the brush back into the woods. Another time she felt the eyes of an animal on her and looked to the side. It was a coyote, off in the distance, staring right at her.

  You wouldn’t feel this so much in the warm weather, he told her, when the buses and the people are here. But right now, you get the feeling things have barely changed since the glaciers first made this place, eighty million years ago. It’s only been in the last hundred and fifty years that anyone besides the Indians set foot in this place.

  They were climbing now. Off to the west, she could see and hear the crashing waters of Yosemite Falls. See over there, he said. They call that one El Capitan. People actually climb down that one. It’s more than seven thousand feet from the top to the base. Every summer there’s always some crazy types to freefall parachute jump from the top, too. Me, I’d just as soon keep my feet on the ground.

  Studying the vast craggy granite face of El Capitan, the picture came to her of the Trade Towers as they’d been before September. Measured here, against the granite of the Sierra, even the tallest buildings in the world would have seemed small. She and her father, moving slowly along the trail to the lake, were only specks.

  They made their way steadily up. I figure we can stop to eat at Vernal Falls, he told her. This time of year, they’re really something.

  All these months, her grief had taken the form, in her mind, of rushing water, and now here it was, cascading down the face of the mountain with force enough to wear down granite. Force enough that when her father spoke to her here, it was hard to make his words out over the sound of the falls.

  When your mother and I drove out here back in ‘87, he said, we said how we’d come back one day. Neither one of us grew up in the kind of family that took their kids camping. We were going to do it differently.

  And I did come back plenty of times over the years, he said. Just not with her. Or you.

  But look, she told him. Here we are now.

  At the top of Vernal Falls, the rangers had strung a chain across the tr
ail with a sign, CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.

  They always put these things up, her father said, handing her a granola bar and an apple. I never pay attention to this stuff.

  Once Wendy would have. Now she just stepped over the chain.

  The trail was becoming rougher, and there were no footprints ahead of theirs.

  The snow was deeper here. Making her way up over the rocks, Wendy felt her foot slide a couple of times and caught herself on branches. One time, she fell. She thought of suggesting that they turn back, but from behind, she could hear Garrett’s voice. I love this, he said. Wait till you see the view from the top. You’ll think we’re in heaven.

  They were on a rock ledge now. On one side of the trail, the granite rose in a sheer, unclimbable face. On the other side, nothing. Wendy looked down, but only once. If you missed your step here, there would be nothing to catch your fall till you hit the rocks a hundred feet down, maybe more.

  How much farther? she asked. I wouldn’t want to try this in the dark.

  They rounded a sharp corner. Where the trail had been barely wide enough for her two boots before, it suddenly narrowed to almost nothing. Snow on the rocks, melting and then freezing again, had covered the path. When Wendy tried to set her foot down, she could feel the ground give way. I can’t get a foothold, she said. It’s sheer ice.

  Okay, Garrett said. Looks like we turn back here.

  There was no room to turn around, and nothing to hold on to but ice-covered rock. Below lay a canyon of stone.

  I can’t move, she said. There’s nowhere to go. Fear gripped her, then terror.

  From behind her, she could hear Garrett unzipping his pack. I have a pick in here somewhere, he said.

  I can’t move, she said again. If I reach back, I’ll fall. She had set her feet, one in front of the other, lined up as if she were walking a tightrope. Just in front of her, she could hear the sound of water rushing under the ice. Even the spot where she stood felt as though it might break away at any moment and send her shooting down into the canyon below.

  I’m coming up behind you, he said. I’ll hold on to you. All you have to do is step backward.

  I can’t see where I’m going, she said. I don’t dare turn my head to look back. If I step wrong, I’ll slip.

  Reach your hand behind you, he said. Hold on to me. But she knew there was nothing steady about the spot where he was standing, either, and he must have known it, too. She heard him cursing.

  I’m scared, she said. I feel like I could fall any second.

  I’ve got to admit, I’m not so thrilled myself, he told her.

  She thought about her mother on the eighty-seventh floor, standing at the windows, looking out as the offices of Mercer and Mercer filled with smoke. She thought of Josh wrapping his arms around her on the Tornado Coaster, singing “Love Me Do.” More than anyone, the person she would have liked to see here now was Josh. Though if it had been Josh with her instead of Garrett, she never would have found herself in this position in the first place.

  There was no going forward—that much was clear. Nothing for it but to step back, blind, and hope the ground held under her boot. She held her breath and backed up. One step, two. She was at a place where she could turn around, finally. She breathed again.

  For a minute there, I knew what a person would feel, if they thought they were about to die, she told him.

  I’m sorry, he said again. The second time in twenty-four hours he’d apologized. I’d hate it if you lost faith in me after this. A father’s supposed to be someone you can count on.

  Thirty-Two

  She hadn’t dreamed about her mother for a while, but then she did.

  It was the day the two of them had gone to see the matinee of Peter Pan. Wendy was six or seven, but they’d brought the show back, with a different actress playing Peter from the one who played him all those years ago when Wendy’s mother made the final cut to be Princess Tiger Lily. Tickets were expensive, but her mother had gotten them two in the orchestra anyway. That way, she said, when Peter flies, it’ll be right over our heads.

  They were sitting in their seats waiting for the houselights to dim. In the dream Wendy was wearing her plaid taffeta Broadway dress. Her mother was dressed up, too. So far the dream was totally how it had been in real life. The two of them studying the Playbill the way they always did. Her mother giving her a rundown of the highlights of the show. We definitely got the best seats, her mother said.

  Just then a man came out in front of the curtain. We have a terrible problem, he said. I hate to tell you this, but Cathy Rigby just got hit by a bicycle messenger crossing the street. There’s nobody to play Peter Pan. Unless someone out there thinks they could do it.

  My mom, Wendy called out. My mom can.

  Where is this person? he asked.

  Her mother had only hesitated a second before rising slowly from her seat. I guess that’s true, she said, smoothing her hair in that way she had. I know all the words.

  Not to mention the dances.

  They brought her backstage, but Wendy stayed in her seat.

  I’m named after the character, she whispered to the woman next to her. This is my mother’s favorite show.

  The houselights went out. The orchestra began to play pieces of all the familiar songs. The curtain went up. It was the scene where Wendy, John, and Michael’s parents were going out to a party and telling their kids good night. The dog, who was really an actor in a dog suit, was looking restless, sniffing under the beds as if something was there. Darkness. Then came the little flickering light that signaled Tinker Bell was in the room. Then a whooshing sound as a small, nearly weightless figure landed on the windowsill. Peter.

  Her mother’s hair was short already, so they hadn’t needed to cut it. She was wearing the green elf suit—green stockings, green slippers, a green cap. The way she moved through the air, it looked as if she’d been flying all her life. From where she sat in the orchestra, Wendy looked for the cables, but she couldn’t see any.

  I’ve lost my shadow, Tink, Peter said. What’U I do if I can’t get it back?

  In her seat in the fifth row, center, Wendy was whispering all the lines along with her mother. Now came the part where the children woke up. Now Peter Pan was telling Wendy his problem. Wendy was sewing the shadow back on, taking care of everyone, the way she always did. In a minute, they were all going to fly out the window together.

  The dream got fuzzier after that. Captain Hook was in there somewhere, and the Lost Boys, and Princess Tiger Lily. There was that moment when Tinker Bell drank the poison so Peter wouldn’t, and now she was dying. Peter stood on the edge of the stage, telling the audience that the only hope would be if they all closed their eyes and thought about how they believed in fairies. Slowly, Tinker Bell’s light grew brighter. She was going to be all right after all.

  It was the end of the show. The curtain calls: the audience cheering for them all, except for Captain Hook, who shook his hook hand at them when he came out, so everyone called out, Boo. Last came her mother, flying, but not just over the stage this time. She flew over the audience, too—right over the orchestra seats and up over the balcony, and then to the very highest, cheapest seats, the ones she and Wendy usually sat in on their matinee days.

  Wendy had never heard an audience clap so hard. More, they called out. Do it again. Her mother was spinning and dipping like the most amazing bird, swooping low sometimes, then ascending to the highest part of the theater. She touched down on the balcony railing once, more like a bird than a person. Then she was flying again, but higher this time, clear up to the golden ceiling, the glittering chandeliers.

  The woman in the seat next to Wendy leaned over to her. You must be so proud, she said. Even Mary Martin was never like that.

  Then everyone was puzzled. Her mother hadn’t flown offstage, but she wasn’t there anymore. Like the Blue Angels, disappearing into the clouds over the San Francisco Bay that day, she had flown up to the ceiling and kept on going. Only
she didn’t come back.

  That is some trick, a man said sitting in back of Wendy. I never even spotted the cables.

  It’s probably something to do with lasers, his wife said. What’ll they think of next?

  People were putting their coats on. Gathering up their Playbills. Heading to the lobby. Shaking their heads in amazement. Now it was only Wendy left alone in the theater, except for a man sweeping up candy wrappers.

  Time to go home, he said.

  I’m waiting for my mother, she told him. She was Peter Pan.

  She’s long gone, he said. Got to hand it to her. Not only could she dance. She could fly.

  She’s coming back, Wendy said. She wouldn’t just disappear like that. She had heard the phrase before—into thin air—but never understood how that could be.

  It happens, he said. There are no rules for these things.

  How am I supposed to manage without her? she asked. How am I supposed to get home?

  I guess that would be on your own two feet, he told her. Just like the rest of us.

  They were putting on Guys and Dolls at her school. Henry, from band, had invited her to go with him. Not go exactly but meet him there.

  He was standing outside the front of the school when her father dropped her off. He was wearing a dress shirt, tucked in, and a sport jacket. I guess this must be like a date, Garrett said when he saw Henry standing there. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t.

  What am I saying? he said. Never mind.

  You like musicals? Henry asked her.

  Yes, she said. She could have told him a lot more on that subject, but no need. Guys and Dolls is one of my favorites, she told him.

  I tried out for Nathan Detroit, he told her. But Ira always gets the leads, and I didn’t want a dorky part like Sky Masterson.