In the Heart of the Canyon (19 page)

When Mark and the boys were out of earshot, Jill apologized to Peter and Amy. “He tends to overreact.”

“So did my father,” said Peter.

This was a first for Jill, one of her children getting drunk, and she was eager for advice. “Did he ever lighten up?”

“Well,” said Peter, digging in his ear, pausing, “actually, he died when I was sixteen, so no.”

Jill felt the color rise in her neck, for making such a faux pas. “I’m sorry.” Not knowing what else to say, she asked if his mother was still alive.

“Yup.”

“Is she well?”

Peter shrugged. “She has stomach ulcers and diabetes and high blood pressure, and she doesn’t wear her compression stockings and won’t even talk about selling the house, which has three floors and a huge garden out back full of peonies, which have to be watered daily, and guess whose job that is? Other than that, she’s well.”

Jill looked down to the water’s edge, where Mark had hold of both boys’ hands and was standing between them, ankle deep. A strong, solid man, flanked by two Gumbys.

“The thing is, my sisters kids go to a public school back east,” she said. “They’re sixteen and seventeen. My sister tells me stories. I worry that we’ve got some rough years ahead of us.”

Peter nodded knowingly. “Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.”

This did not comfort Jill.

“Is it like that at your school, Amy?” she asked.

Amy colored.

“She can’t say because her mother’s on the trip,” said Peter in a dramatic whisper.

Without a word, Amy turned and lumbered away.

“Hey! I was kidding!” Peter called after her. “Oops,” he said to Jill.

“Maybe it’s a sore point,” Jill offered. “I don’t imagine she goes out very much.” There was an odd way in which Amy was walking, Jill noticed, stiff and dragging, with one hand pressed against her lower back. How awful to be that heavy, she thought.

“I didn’t think she’d take it that way,” said Peter. “And actually, she’s kind of hinted she has a social life. But maybe you’re right; maybe it’s a sore point.”

Jill and Peter might have speculated a little more about Amy’s social life, but the discussion ended because Mark was calling her. Both boys were sitting in the wet sand, refusing to budge. Jill steeled herself and headed to the shoreline. Amy was Susan’s responsibility, not hers; she had her own kids to worry about at the moment. And she had to fix things with Mark too, so they wouldn’t be blaming each other for this.
You went off to shave. Well
you
went off and got drunk
. Things like that: they didn’t help in the short run or the long run.

But he really was being a total shit.

P
eter didn’t know what he had said to offend her. “I’m writing,” she told him.

“I brought you another margarita.”

“No thank you.”

Peter shrugged, and took a sip himself. “You eat yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not hungry. I’m trying to write,” she reminded him. She waved her notebook, but Peter sat down anyway.

“Oh my god, are you blind?”

Peter handed the mug to Amy. Amy set it on the sand and hugged her notebook to her chest, as though trying to prevent him from peeking. He kept forgetting she was only seventeen, and then she’d do something like this, like someone in fifth grade.

“So when are you going to put the moves on Dixie?” Amy said.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s
so
obvious.”

Peter snorted. “Dixie’s got a boyfriend.”

“So what?”

“Well, maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.”

“Are you scared? What, are you a virgin or something?”

“What do you think? Are
you?”
As soon as he said it, he kicked himself. Can of worms! Change the subject! Sure enough, Amy tucked her pen between the pages of her journal. She squinted at JT, who was working in his boat.

“Tell me about your first time,” she said. “How old were you?”

“Are you serious? I am definitely not having this discussion,” he said. “There are laws against this.”

“Did you like her?”

“Like I said. Not having this discussion.”

“I’ll ask Mitchell then,” said Amy, and she waved to Mitchell, who hesitated, unsure of the invitation.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Fine,” Peter said in a low voice. “It sucked.”

“Why?”

“She cried.”

“I was too drunk to cry,” she said. “Would you fuck a girl who was drunk?”

“Jesus!”

“Would you?”

“What do you
think?”

Amy was silent.

“You going to elaborate?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Good. Because I don’t want you to.”

“Good.”

“Then we’re in agreement.”

“We are.”

“Good.” Peter carried his plate over to the wash table, scraped it clean, dunked it through the series of buckets. Then, against his better judgment but motivated by some vague sense of brotherly concern that pissed him off yet couldn’t be ignored, he returned to the spot where Amy was sitting. He kept his voice low.

“You shouldn’t let yourself get drunk like that. Guys can be assholes, you know.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

He was definitely angry now—at himself, at Amy. He didn’t want to be hearing any of this, yet he couldn’t walk away.

“What got you in such a pissy mood back there with Jill?”

For the first time in all of this conversation, she turned and faced him. “Because you shouldn’t go telling people you know what high
school is like for me! You have no idea what high school is like for me!”

“And this has something to do with your getting drunk?”

“No clue at all,” she continued.

“Sorry.”

“Absolutely no clue.”

“Okay! Fine!”

Amy lay back on the sand. “I didn’t think I would like you, that first night, in the hotel.”

“Well, I didn’t think I’d like you, either.”

“Because I’m fat?”

“No. Because of your Jamba Juice T-shirt. Jamba Juice sucks.”

“It was because I’m fat. That’s okay. A lot of people do it. I’m used to it. Sometimes I think I should just walk into the river at night while everyone’s sleeping.”

“Oh, how goth.”

Amy sat up and glared at him, and he sensed he’d gone too far. But then, to his surprise, she burst out laughing. Peter felt like he had either just gotten away with something hugely significant or said something brilliant. He didn’t want to know which; he wanted to leave it at that, with a laugh the two of them could share, even if it might be for very different reasons.

In any case, he was most thankful to see Susan walking toward them, carrying two plates of something fruity and crumbly.

“She doesn’t know, by the way,” said Amy under her breath. “Hi, Mom,” she said brightly.

“I thought you’d want dessert,” Susan said, handing them the plates. Peter took his gratefully. The cherry filling was thick and gluey and probably came straight out of a can but tasted so, so fine, down here on the river. And when Susan told them that Ruth might have to be evacuated because of her leg, it barely registered, because between three margaritas and a plateful of cherry cobbler and whatever he’d eaten in between, Peter wasn’t feeling so very great himself.

Late that night, while others slept, Evelyn headed upriver in the dark to find a good place to pee. Most people at night simply waded into the shallow water by the boats, but Evelyn felt too self-conscious with the guides so close by. And she wasn’t going to punish herself over this anymore, either. She was who she was, and so what if she needed her privacy?

She didn’t want to go too far upriver, though, because she didn’t want to intrude upon the hikers’ camping space. What a bunch of women! Stripping down like that! Once she and Julian had gone skinny-dipping in the ocean up in Maine. The moon was out, and Julian’s little white rump bobbed in the surf. They were both afraid of getting caught, but it was early in their relationship, when they felt emboldened by love to commit risqué acts. The dark water pounded and tossed her around, but when she came up sputtering, Julian was right there.

Eventually, Evelyn reached a small cluster of rounded rocks, full of little pools and inlets. She was about to squat when she heard a woman sigh. Evelyn glanced up. Just beyond the rocks, away from the water’s edge, a form shifted on the sand. Two forms, actually, and Evelyn quickly looked away, but not before she saw the woman stretch her arms out to the sides, like a snow angel, as the man moved on top.

Evelyn felt her stomach flutter. She didn’t think they had heard her, but all the same, she had witnessed them. Which was all that mattered here, because it seeded in her a yearning she thought she had disposed of when she dropped the necklace off Navajo Bridge. She flashed back to that night in Maine. She and Julian had been too scared to make love on the beach that night. But down here …

For the rest of the trip, Evelyn kept imagining what it would be like, lying naked on the warm sand, with the sound of the river and a slight breeze and Julian between her legs, whispering terrible, lovely things in her ear.

D
uring breakfast the next morning, JT told everyone to look for Ruth’s pillbox, impressing on them the gravity of the situation. Ruth was no practicing Catholic, but she found herself saying a prayer to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things. She ate quickly and went back and ransacked their tent. She turned their sleeping bags inside out. She pawed through the plastic bag of dirty clothes. She searched through the pockets of all their pants and shorts. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. She was not, she was
not
going to let JT evacuate them.

But her search was to no avail, and soon she heard JT calling her. Reluctantly she climbed out of the tent and followed him to a clear space in the sand.

“Sure looks like flesh-eating strep to me,” she declared when he unwrapped the gauze. “In which case it won’t matter if you evacuate us because I’ll be dead by tonight. Might as well die down here where it’s beautiful.” She cringed at her sarcasm. She was acting like a sulky teenager. But she couldn’t help it.

“Lloyd will jump out of the helicopter if you try to evacuate us,” she informed him.

JT sat back. “Look, Ruth. I know it’s your job to think about Lloyd. But it’s my job to think about you and Lloyd and everyone else. I’ve got a trip to run. I’m liable for your health and safety.”

“I’ll sign a release.”

“Ruth
. I could lose my license over this. And do you really want to risk having your leg amputated? Who will take care of Lloyd if you’re stuck in a wheelchair?”

It seemed to Ruth that she had reached the very depths of despair,
hearing this. She was damned if she stayed and damned if she went. But JT was right. As a responsible adult, she should be thinking of the long-term consequences of her actions.

“I don’t know how I’ll tell Lloyd,” she said.

“If you want, I’ll tell him,” JT said. “I’ll tell him I called my boss, and it’s out of our control.”

“We’ll miss Crystal and Lava,” Ruth said.

JT squeezed warm water over her leg. “You get your leg healed up, and we’ll find you space on another trip this summer.”

He’d gone too far, here; he’d lost his credibility, for they both knew another trip would never happen. But before she could call him on this—and make him feel twice as bad—they looked up to see Susan hurrying toward them.

“It was under a towel in JT’s boat,” she said breathlessly, showing them the pillbox. “I got as many pills as I could find, but the rest were half dissolved. I don’t know what’s what.” She handed it to Ruth. It had been gnawed ragged, and the pills that remained were all mixed up in the various compartments. Ruth dumped everything into the palm of her hand. Greedily she poked through them, separating out four of the oval tablets.

“How many were there supposed to be?” JT asked her.

“Ten.”

“Go back and look some more,” JT ordered Susan. “Give me the pillbox. God damn it,” and he held the pillbox in front of the dog’s nose. The dog panted and wagged his tail.

“You bad dog,” JT said, “you bad, bad dog,” and in a moment of temper, he swatted the dog’s nose with the pillbox. Blender yelped and slunk away.

“God damn it,” said JT. He felt as close to wanting to punch something as he’d felt in a long, long time.

Meanwhile, Ruth had already uncapped her water bottle and taken one of the pills.

“You stop that, JT,” she said, wiping her mouth. “We found the pills. Don’t yell at the dog.”

“Four out of ten!”

“Enough to get me started.”

“You can’t just take half a course,” he said.