Woman on Top (28 page)

“I did it for charity with some other lawyers. We organized an eight person group to raise money for Alzheimer’s research.”

As he stood up, Ted threw me a supercilious look.

“I doubt you’d make it up Kilimanjaro. You don’t look terribly athletic or strong,” he said.

The memory of Len’s criticisms began ringing in my ears.

“Not quite the support I was hoping for.”

“Why don’t you come back to my apartment?” he asked as we walked out of the restaurant.

I turned my head to look at him with not a trace of warmth on my face. He glared back at me.

“You know when I was in Vietnam, we had a saying about the enemy. ‘If you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.’ Women should know that applies to men,” he said.

“Thank you for dinner.”

I quickly threw myself into a cab.

CHAPTER 34

May/June

A
ll that time craving the security of Len and now I was making plans to climb Kilimanjaro. Alone. Scheduled to leave for Tanzania on Friday July 3
^rd
, it became obvious I was on my own in this adventure. Chloe and Ben loved the idea for me but expressed no interest in coming along. Everyone in my life questioned why climb any mountain, let alone Kilimanjaro. Some even let out snippets of “It’s just plain nuts”.

“Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” one friend asked.

“No, but that’s never stopped me.”

•  •  •

The route required a seven day climb up and two day descent, all told about sixty miles. The focus turned to my body and how to turn it into mountain climbing material in the next eight weeks.

On the summit of Kilimanjaro, which is 19,340 feet, the amount of oxygen in the air is only half that at sea level. This causes altitude sickness in some people, but it’s not predictable who will succumb. Climbing Kili didn’t require technical skills or special equipment like ropes, so it really was all about getting in the best possible shape.

“Do I need to train on some mountain in Colorado or California?” I asked the trainer from the trekking company over the phone.

It didn’t make sense that people would prepare by climbing mountains in Colorado and I’d be walking the flat sidewalks of New York with designer clad women in sultry stilettos passing by.

“The workout regimen I’m planning will push you in the same way as climbing a mountain. The fact that you live at sea level is no problem,” he said.

Central Park quickly transformed into a training ground for several hours a day several days each week, squeezed in between my obligations to my work and caring for Ben. It felt idyllic at first, surrounded by joggers, children playing and endless trees smack in the center of Manhattan.

But by the second week, after walking the six mile route with twenty-five pound weights in my backpack twice around the Park for the third day in a row, I wondered if it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars by dialing 911 to have a couple of muscular guys carry me back to my apartment on a stretcher.

The phone rang at eleven at night and I must have answered it, but exhaustion clouded any conversation that took place.

“Why don’t you come over to my place and I’ll show you what I kept from Kilimanjaro. Might be some things you could use. Saturday. At four,” Ted said.

In a half conscious state, I agreed to the visit. Although, in the morning I wondered if the call even occurred and then tried to rationalize spending any more time with this man as a means to learn more about Kilimanjaro. Ted, the victim of his father, earned enormous compassion. But Ted, the man who appeared as crude and tough as his abusive, alcoholic father he had told so many stories about at our dinner, engendered none.

His apartment on the Upper East Side, the seduction den of a successful bachelor, seemed ready for a magazine spread. A masculine aesthetic pervaded the dark wood bookshelves lining one wall, the abstract art hung over the huge brown leather couch, and the large Tibetan beige silk rug trimmed with brown leather.

Ted had gathered some of the equipment from his climb. On the ottoman were some well-used hiking poles, binoculars, insulated gloves, and two thermal shirts.

“You can borrow these. They’ve already made it to the top and might bring you good luck.”

Ted handed me a bronze leather album. The photos inside chronicled the story of his trek along with several of Ted standing next to a tall, pretty woman, neither of them looking particularly happy. I thumbed through the various pictures.

On the last page a certificate with Ted’s name, the date and the words ‘Gilman’s Point’ was supposed to be the climax of the story. The signatures of Chief Park Warden of Kilimanjaro National Park and the Director General of Tanzania National Parks lined the bottom.

“Pretty impressive, don’t you think?” Ted said.

“Gilman’s Point isn’t the summit,” I blurted out.

His face contorted, probably like one of his clients on the stand caught in a lie by the prosecuting attorney. All those books I’d been reading told me that Ted needed to climb another two hours to get to Uhuru, the summit. In Ben’s world of Monday Night Football, Ted had made it maybe to the fifteen yard line. Not a touchdown.

“They mixed up the certificates when we got down,” Ted said.

But there was a picture of him with his group standing next to a Gilman’s Point sign. The summit picture is taken next to the Uhuru Peak sign.

Ted sat there silently. Embarrassed for him, second guessing if I should have blurted out the truth, I couldn’t look him in the eye. The tale he spun of making it to the summit hovered over us. He may have been accustomed to dealing with folks on the witness stand when they were lying, but I sat there speechless.

“You’re going to have to work a whole lot harder training if you think you’re getting to the top,” he said.

There was a harsh look on his face that he must have inherited from his father. At that moment, I knew that Ted would be my foil. The high profile attorney who lied about attaining the summit and tried to diminish me because he couldn’t make it. Another version of Len had truly come back to haunt me. Only this time things were going to work out differently, very differently.

“Thank you Ted. I’m getting to the top,” I said as I stood up to leave his apartment and him behind.

•  •  •

With exactly one more month of training left, I was wiped and needed a day of rest. Feeling strong, trim, and firm, I had on heels rather than the boots I hiked in every day to break them in. For one day at least, New York could be savored and not simply endured on its endless sidewalks and pseudo trails.

But as I crossed 8
^th
Ave at 58th street, the heel of my shoe hit one of the countless New York City potholes and my foot turned under. It hurt like hell.

Not with Kili a month away. Limping along the street, the pain grew worse. I turned and headed back to my apartment. It couldn’t be broken, it just couldn’t be.

Three hours later, Dr. Craig, the orthopedist examined the X-ray.

“You fractured your fifth metatarsal. I’m going to give you a boot and you need to take a month off from your current training. You can schedule your climb for September.”

I felt so rattled it didn’t even occur to me that the climb might be rescheduled. After Jake died, my bottom line was that if it’s fixable, then there’s nothing to get upset about. A broken foot is fixable. I just never thought the day would come when I get the results of an X-ray showing a broken foot, not cancer, and I would flip out.

The training plan metamorphosed into swimming a mile three times a week and riding a stationary bike for an hour three times a week, while nursing my broken foot gave me the time to read more books. But now I wanted to know what compelled climbers to endure freezing temperatures, extreme physical exertion and sometimes risk their lives. Just the opposite of the life craved in the lush world of the Upper East Side.

Extreme climbers confessed to two attractions, reveling in nature and savoring the risks. But those didn’t resonate with me at all. Smitten with the idea that there were mountains that could teach me lessons, I felt compelled to climb. The hard labor of training felt just like the prelude to giving birth, but I had no clue this time what might be born out of all of this.

SUMMER 1998

CHAPTER 35

July /August

A
long summer of working out lay ahead once the heat settled into New York. While many of New York’s residents escaped to the beaches, certainly the Hamptons, training continued day after day. Some days the exercise seemed so hard and I felt so exhausted that even my bed felt like a mountain to climb in and out of.

But the thought of tapping into something in life greater than what we experienced everyday waited for me on Kilimanjaro. I kept going for two months and finally crossed a threshold where my body seemed to transform into a simple exercise machine.

•  •  •

As I was stretched out on the couch engrossed in another book about the Seven Summits, the phone rang. To hear Heather’s voice again shocked me.

“Did you see the Obituaries in the
Times
today?” she asked.

“No, but I’m getting the paper right now.”

I grabbed the newspaper on the glass coffee table in front of me and started flipping the pages.

“Look at Section D, page 7,” Heather said.

The page displayed a picture of Len from ten years ago. Len dead?

The Managing Directors of Duke Heller are deeply saddened by the passing of Leonard Miller, a member of the firm for over twenty-five years. Mr. Miller joined Duke Heller as a general partner and went on to lead the real estate investment banking services division as a Senior Director. Mr. Miller was the epitome of the Wall Street investment banker for all who knew and worked with him. He was a mentor, advisor, strategist and inspiration to all. We extend our deepest and heartfelt sympathy to his beloved wife, Peggy, and three children, Jennifer, Dale and Peter.

Heather broke the silence.

“Len was hit by a taxi. It happened about one in the morning. Five days ago.”

“One in the morning? Was he working late? Coming out of his office? I thought you said his wife is pregnant.”

“He was leaving an apartment building near the corner of 65th and 2
^nd
. A cab was trying to beat a yellow light, hit him and dragged him halfway down the block trapped under a tire. There was one witness who heard a screech and called for help. They rushed him to New York-Presbyterian where he died.”

Heather’s words seemed surreal. I almost felt sorry for Len for a moment.

“What was he doing in that building at that time of the night?”

“Turns out, Len was visiting a woman who has an apartment there.”

“Someone he works with? Maybe he was picking up documents.”

“She’s a saleswoman in the lingerie department at Saks.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I wish.”

Len’s picture evoked nothing other than enormous sadness for his family. All I could think about was that fate, or karma, or just bad luck had caught up with the powerful Wall Street man who had run over so many on his path of greed to secure and enjoy his many millions. He was run over by a cab driver hustling for a few extra bucks.

“I feel terribly for his kids, his pregnant wife. Can you imagine?” I said.

“What a mess he left.”

“I’m so sorry Heather.”

Len was dead. I was about to climb Africa’s tallest mountain. Go figure.

FALL 1998

CHAPTER 36

September

W
hen the day finally arrived for me to leave, Ben hugged me goodbye while the taxi driver waited impatiently after putting my duffle bag in the trunk. He kept twisting his head back to watch us and then turned on the meter to let me know I could linger as long as I’d like but it would cost me.

“Be good. Have fun. Don’t do anything stupid and I’ll try to do the same,” I said.

His face betrayed an understandable mix of worry and excitement. Chloe, already back at Brown, was so lost in her world that her parting words on the phone had been brief.

“Good luck Mom.”

The trekking company carried satellite phones on Kili so I knew if they needed to reach me or I needed to contact my children, it could happen. I wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

The taxi began to pull away from them and then my tears came. It felt so strange to be on my own. Was this the most boneheaded thing I’d ever planned? Leaving my children behind didn’t seem an auspicious beginning to an adventure like this.

The day before many friends called to wish me well. Janet, my constant source of wisdom, offered advice, “pay attention to your intention”. I didn’t pay much attention to her words until they resurfaced on the way to the airport.