Halfway to the Sky

  “Oh, Dani!” Mom said. “Why didn't you say something?”

  “They didn't hurt that much,” I said.

  Mom shook her head. “They will.”

  “I couldn't help it,” I said.

  “Of course you couldn't, baby. Well, you'll have a day off now anyhow. I've got to call your father and have him come get us.”

  “Now?” I said.

  Mom looked exasperated. “It might as well be now. Have you looked at a map lately? We're only forty miles from home.”

  “We are?” The only maps I'd looked at were our Trail ones, precise, detailed renderings of mountains and valleys, with shelters marked clearly but hardly any towns.

  “Erwin,” Mom said.

  “Oh,” I said stupidly. “That Erwin.”

  “Oh, sugar,” Mom said, rubbing my neck lightly. “I can't believe I'm putting you through this.”

  “You're not putting me,” I said as I stood up, wincing. “I'm putting you, remember? This was my idea?”

  “But I knew,” she said. “I'm the mother. I'm so sorry about your toes.”

  A sympathetic doctor bathed my feet, rubbed them with antibiotic cream, and wrapped them in gauze (“We get a lot of hikers in here, you bet”). Vivi sat with me while Mom went in search of a pay phone.

  When she came back, she looked furious. “Why didn't you tell me you hadn't talked to him?”

  “You told me I had to,” I said. “I didn't want to.”

  “But if you'd told me the truth, I would have called him myself. I would have let him know we were okay.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. “He's been frantic. He didn't know where we were.”

  “Of course he did!” I said. “We were on the Trail. He could have come looking if he was so upset.” I thought of the Trail registers. “He could have found us. He just wants to fuss at us but not do anything himself. He gets to have everything his own way.”

  Mom shook her head. “He's your father.”

  I said, “Well, he's not a very good one.”

  “You're out here, aren't you?”

  “Because of you. Not because of him.”

  Mom didn't know what to say. Vivi gave Mom's shoulder a little squeeze. “Want to come off the Trail with us?” Mom asked her. “Free hot shower, rest a day? It shouldn't take more than one day.”

  I suddenly thought that I might stop breathing if we lost Vivi right now. I didn't know why. Maybe it showed on my face. Maybe that was why Vivi nodded slowly, and said, “Sure. That would be fine.”

  Dad kissed me when he saw me. His face was furrowed with an expression I didn't recognize, and as he looked me up and down the furrows grew deeper. “You look awful!” he said. “You must have grown two inches taller. How much weight have you lost? Your mother said you hurt your feet. How bad are they?”

  “Hi, Dad, nice to see you, too,” I said. “I've got ten blisters and bad B.O. How are you? How're Lisa and the baby?” It was nearly midnight now. Dad had come to get us straightaway.

  He smiled a fake smile. “I'm good. I'm fine. You should have called me.”

  “So Mom says.”

  He looked at Mom and Vivi. “This is Vivi,” Mom said. “She's coming with us. We'd like to be back here tomorrow or the next day.”

  “I thought maybe you'd be ready to call it quits,” Dad said. “You've got, how much, one week left?”

  Mom said, “Four.”

  Dad said, “I want Dani to stay with me and Lisa while you're home.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “I want to make sure you're all right.”

  “I'd rather be burned in oil,” I said. “I'd rather be set down naked and slathered with peanut butter in a field full of grizzly bears. I'd rather—”

  “That's enough, Dani!” My mother's eyes flashed dangerously. To my father she said, “She's adjusting, she's eating plenty, the blisters just happened today—”

  “You can't make me,” I said.

  Mom continued, almost pleading. “This has been good for her, for both of us.” To me she said, “You'll stay with your father. Period. And you'll behave.”

  Which was how I found myself at two in the morning in a bed with pink sheets in my father's new house. You've maybe heard stories about people who sleep in the woods for so long that when they come back to civilization, real beds feel too soft, too uncomfortable. Wrong. I didn't like my dad and I really hated Lisa, but their guest bedroom was heaven on earth. No smells. No thru-hikers grunting. No mice. No insects.

  Lisa, late the next morning, reminded me of a mother bear out to defend her cubs. She curled her hand protectively over her little pregnant belly, and she looked at me only when she thought I wasn't looking at her. Dad served breakfast. Neither Lisa nor I spoke.

  “How're your feet?” Dad asked. He had made me a bacon sandwich, my favorite thing on earth for breakfast, and gave me a cup of tea with the right amount of sugar already in it. I took a sip and discovered the sweetness, and tears came to my eyes.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Dad sat down and looked at me earnestly. “Any signs of infection?”

  Lisa toyed with her piece of toast. “I think—”

  I cut her off. “There's no redness, there's no pus, the cracks are starting to make new skin. My boots fit. I've gotten a few blisters, but nothing like this so far. It was just because of Trailhead, because of pulling his pack downhill.” I spoke quietly. Dad leaned forward, listening.

  “Who's Trailhead?” he asked.

  I explained about Trailhead and how he'd wrecked his knee. Dad grimaced. Lisa said, “He teaches high school English and he calls himself Trailhead?”

  Dad took a sip of coffee. “It's a technical term,” he said. “The trailhead is the start of the trail.”

  I could see Lisa hadn't known that. “Do you like to hike?” I asked her.

  “I've never done it,” she said.

  “Well, Dad mostly likes to go alone,” I said. “So I don't suppose you have to worry.”

  Lisa cleared her throat. “I'm glad you're finished. Your father has been worried sick.”

  He looked perfectly healthy to me. “I'm not done,” I said. “We're going back tomorrow.” I looked at Dad, who nodded. He might be worried, but he was sticking with the plan.

  “So long as you promise to call me whenever you can from now on,” he said. “I want you to stay in touch.”

  “We aren't near phones very often,” I said.

  “I think this is ridiculous,” Lisa said. She set her fork down on her plate, and it made a hard, angry clink. “Why you are giving your own child permission to keep doing this, I just don't understand. She's twelve years old! You don't ask her if she'd like to try a beer, do you? You don't ask her if she feels like smoking a cigarette! Why are you letting her skip school, grunge around in the woods, and hurt herself ?” She put her hand to the little stupid swelling on her belly. She said, “When our baby is born, we're going to raise it right.”

  If I moved or spoke I would do something awful. I wanted to hurl plates at the wall, or smash Lisa's perfect nose into her petite bowl of non–puke-inducing cereal. I wanted to say something so mean she would never, ever, forget it. I figured I always had plenty of reason to hate Lisa, but until now I'd never realized that she hated me, too.

  I said nothing, did nothing.

  Dad said, very quietly, “Dani turned out all right. Though I'm not sure I can take the credit.”

  “Katahdin,” I whispered. Dad nodded.

  “You've got no right to criticize her,” he continued in the same low voice, as though he were speaking a foreign language, as though the words were difficult to say. “You weren't in our house, you don't know what it was like. Katahdin is my responsibility, and her mother's. Not yours.”

  Lisa didn't back down. “I've got some say in this house, I hope. If she's going to stay here—”

  I said, “I'm not going to stay here.”

  “You can stay here anytime you want,” said Dad. ??
?You can live here if you'd like to.” He said it like he meant it. A look of utter horror crossed Lisa's face, just for a moment. I saw it, Dad saw it, and I saw him see it. “You are my child,” he continued in a firmer tone. “You are my family. I will never forget that.”

  “Do you forget Springer?” I asked.

  “Never,” he said. “I never will.”

  Later Dad came into the guest room. I had taken a shower and changed into the cleanest of my clothes, and packed my gear and made the bed so that no one could tell I had been there. I bet Lisa would change the sheets anyhow, the moment I left.

  “I'm sorry,” Dad said. “She shouldn't have said those things. We all have to adapt. That includes Lisa, too. She's been under a lot of stress lately. It's a difficult time for her. She's worried about the baby.”

  “Duchenne muscular dystrophy is X-linked recessive,” I said. “The baby can't get it from you.”

  “I think she's worried about other things,” Dad said.

  “Like what?”

  Dad shook his head. “I don't know. All pregnant women worry about their babies. But anyway, I'm sorry you had to hear all that.”

  She should be the one apologizing, not him.

  I tugged at the drawstring on my pack. “Can you take me home?”

  I wanted him to say no, stay here for the day. We'll work it out. I'll make Lisa behave. I wanted him to say, You're my daughter. You're important to me. “Sure,” he said. “You can tell Mom I'll take you all back to Erwin tonight if you want. I left the tax return on the counter with all her other mail: she'll just have to sign it.”

  He put his arm around my shoulder, a rare gesture. “I mean it about staying here. Anytime you want to, you can. We'll make it work out. I know it's been tough on you—but Lisa's a lovely person, she really is. You just need to get to know her.”

  Not in a hundred million years. I said, “I'll let you know.”

  At home Mom was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in the middle of Springer's bedroom. The air in the house was thick and choky; dust motes floated heavily in the air. Mom had her eyes shut. She looked like she was doing yoga. Mom never did yoga.

  “Where's Vivi?” I asked.

  “Bathtub,” said Mom. “I think she's been in there for half an hour.”

  I walked in and sat down on the floor beside her. She opened one eye and studied me. “I think we should sell this house,” she said.

  “Why? We're coming back.”

  Mom shrugged. “Are we, really? To this house? I don't know. I don't think I want to. Maybe you've got good memories here. I don't. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

  Here. Here in this house, eight years ago, Springer healthy, Mom happy, Dad laughing all the time. New flowered wallpaper in my bedroom—which got taken down when it became Springer's room, the only bedroom on the first floor, the only one a wheelchair could go into.

  I lay down and put my head in my mother's lap. I wanted to say, Remember my flowered wallpaper? But I couldn't. “When we get back, I mean,” Mom said. “When we're finished. Think about it. We don't have to stay here. We can go anywhere we want. Chicago. Wyoming. I could get a job somewhere interesting. Maybe I could even get an interesting job.”

  Dad doesn't live in Wyoming. I felt a stab of anger over Lisa and New Baby. Mom stroked my hair. “Where do you want to go?” she asked.

  “Erwin.”

  “Mmmm,” she said. “Good start.”

  April 12

  Stan Murray Shelter (Tennessee)

  Miles hiked today: 12

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 371

  Weather: sunny, warm

  We were three days back on the Trail before Mom asked me, as we were boiling noodles in front of the shelter at night, “Did you talk to any of your friends when we were home?”

  I took a deep breath. I knew this would come out sometime. “I don't have any friends.”

  Mom put down her spoon. She looked concerned. “Why not? What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Why didn't you call Tanner?”

  I didn't say anything.

  “Honey?” Mom said. “Why didn't you call Jane?” She came over to me. “Did something happen?”

  I looked at the ground. “When Springer died, Jane said she was sure I was sad but at least I wouldn't have to be embarrassed anymore.” Once I got started the words tumbled over each other in a rush. “I got mad and said nothing was embar- rassing about my brother, and she said, ‘You know, the way his feet were and everything.' ”

  As he grew older Springer's feet curled down and in. They looked small and helpless; they reminded me of baby rabbits. It was a side effect of his MD. He couldn't wear shoes.

  “And Tanner said … and Tanner said”—I had to stop and catch my breath, because Tanner had been my best friend— “she said, ‘Jane doesn't get it, but she's kind of right anyway, isn't she? Now your mom can pay attention to you.'

  “I was so angry, but I didn't know what to say to them, and after a while every time I was with them they were so careful not to talk about Springer that I hated it. And Jane started spending the night at Tanner's house, and I didn't want to be around them, I just didn't want to. And now the noodles are burning.”

  Mom jumped and grabbed the pot and turned off the stove. “This is why you started walking every day,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Not why, maybe, but when. I had to do something. I always felt better, walking. Can we talk about Springer sometimes? Nobody ever will.”

  “He's the elephant in our room,” Mom said. She looked so sad that I hugged her.

  “Why is he an elephant?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “It was a poem I read once, about how when a person dies, no one will talk about them—if you loved the person that died, you feel like there's an elephant in the room but everyone is pretending it's not there. It takes up all the extra room and bumps into the furniture, and everyone just pretends it's not there.”

  “You didn't talk about him, either,” I said.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “I was thinking about him so much I felt like I was talking about him all the time.” She handed me a spoon. “Better eat while it's hot.” I started eating.

  Mom leaned back against a tree. “We'll talk about him, I promise. I'll tell you a good memory now. Okay?”

  Vivi came back from the spring. It was slow-running even though the weather hadn't been especially dry. “We're telling good stories,” Mom told her. “I'm telling about the day Springer was born.” Vivi settled herself on the ground. Mom kept talking.

  “It was late spring, a few days before he was due. I had had some pains the night before, and I'd even thought that maybe the baby was coming, but I wasn't sure, and it didn't hurt so badly that I couldn't sleep, so I went to sleep. Then I woke up at three A.M. and I knew I was really in labor.

  “I started walking around the bedroom. Your dad and I had a tiny apartment then, just four small rooms. I walked to the end of the bed, turned around, and walked back. Your dad didn't wake up. Outside it was black dark, but when I stopped to open the window, a rush of air came into the room, and it smelled like pine trees and flowers. It smelled like spring had on the Appalachian Trail. We had only been off the Trail seven months and we talked about it all the time, so the smell seemed like a good omen for the day.

  “After a bit your dad woke up. He watched the clock and helped me time a few contractions. He wanted to go to the hospital right away, but I said I wasn't ready. So then he said I shouldn't skip breakfast. He got out of bed and got dressed, and went into the kitchen and made pancakes.”

  “Pancakes?” I said. A faint memory came back—me standing beside Springer on a chair pulled close to the stove, the smell of bacon frying, the heat coming off the brown griddle. Daddy making pancakes, long ago.

  “It was my favorite breakfast,” Mom said. “Pancakes and a pot of tea, and a plate of fresh sliced oranges. I ate for half an hour.
r />   “Then we did go to the hospital. By then there were a few cars on the road, and the sky had that inky look it gets right before a clear dawn. I looked inside every car we passed, trying to get a glimpse of the people. I had this weird feeling that for all of them, for most of the people everywhere, that day was just another plain, ordinary, boring day.

  “But for me it was the most astonishing day of my life. Springer was born by midafternoon. He had the most wide-open blue eyes and the darkest black hair. He didn't look like anyone I'd ever seen before. He was perfect.”

  Except for the fatal genetic flaw. “And you were happy,” I said.

  Mom paused and set her lips together. “Know what? I wasn't really. My mom and dad died when I was in college, you knew that. After I saw Springer all I could think of was them, and how happy they would have been, and how much I missed them. I was so happy to have Springer, but I felt sad.”

  “I'm never having children,” I said.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Also, I'm sorry, but I ate all the noodles. Even yours.”

  Mom shook her head and laughed in a tired way. “Go rinse the pan,” she said. “I'll cook more.”

  “It wasn't an ordinary day for everybody, though,” I said.

  “What's that?”

  “When you were looking in those cars. You didn't really know what was happening in people's lives. Maybe most of them were having an ordinary day, but some of them were having their best day ever.”

  “I suppose so,” said Mom.

  “And some of them,” I said, “were having their worst.”

  April 14

  Moreland Gap Shelter (Tennessee)

  Miles hiked today: 15

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 395

  Weather: hotter than blazes hot hot hot

  We climbed the steps to the shelter and took our packs off inside. Mom threw herself onto one of the bunks. I bent to take off my boots. Sweat, sweat, nothing but sweat. Even in the shade of the woods, even high on the mountaintops, the sun was hot and the air thick and muggy. We'd had some warm days, but this was by far the hottest yet, and I'd been in a full-body sweat since nine A.M.