—an excerpt—
It is mid-November, when night descends early into this valley. Ashen clouds cling to the mountain tops, closing off the sky. I steer the rented Camry down the twilit street that appears to me as a double exposure photograph, a ghostly layer under the surface. Squat houses step down the incline, hiding behind huge fir trees, windows flashing with gaudy illumination from television screens. The buildings are older, smaller, wearier than in my memory. I roll the car to a stop, cranking the wheels to the curb in front of a bungalow with moss-covered roof, peeling paint, and overgrown shrubs threatening to swallow it.
Closing my eyes, I let my head fall back to the soft leather rest and take a moment to imagine the gleaming towers of Tokyo and the symposium from which I am absent.
There is no answer to my knock on the back door, so I push into the low-ceilinged kitchen, greeted by the smell of rotting vegetables and dust. Voices emanate from within the belly of the house. Dropping my carry-on to the worn linoleum, I take a calming breath before stepping through the kitchen toward the noise. The door off the living room is open, and I stop at its threshold—a narrow room, curtained window at one end and closet at the other, a double bed, dresser, and chest of drawers leaving a small space for a braided rug on the scarred wood floor. Two women with their backs to me bend over the bed, while an old man pushes a wheelchair toward the closet. He looks up, startled, and says in a gravelly voice, “Well, long time no see.”
My stepfather is much older than the last time I saw him, the heft of muscle gone, whiskery jowls hanging from his face, just a fringe of white hair ringing his head. I struggle to reconcile him with the younger man who navigated mountains, scrabbling over logs and roots, climbing giant firs and hemlocks, all while swinging a twenty-five-pound chainsaw.
“Hello, Pete.”
My sisters turn and stare. Barbara, the eldest, still fit with sleek hair, has smudgy crescents under her eyes. Karen is pudgier, red hair dulled with gray. As they straighten, the figure in the bed emerges, and my chin jerks back. It is my mother, eyes closed, pale, almost skeletal.
Barbara says tersely, “Well, Linda. Finally.” She pauses, pinning me with a steely glare. “She’s just had her medication. Let’s leave her to sleep.”
