“I don’t know how to live with what I’ve done to her life,” Cora said.
“It’s been years,” her mother said. “Look at her. She’s happy. Why must we keep having this conversation?”
Cora wanted to agree. It was what she said to herself on a daily basis. Look, she’s happy. Sometimes, she was able to almost wholly believe it. And then there were days like today. She didn’t know what caused the change. Weather, maybe. Old habits. The kind of corrosive fear that once it moved in, pitted your bones and stayed forever.
Seven years had passed since Cora had dragged Leni away from Alaska and brought her here, to this city poised on the water’s edge.
Cora saw how Leni had tried to put down roots into this rich, wet land, tried to flourish. But Seattle was a city of hundreds of thousands; it could never speak the rugged language of Leni’s pioneer soul.
Cora lit a cigarette, drew the smoke into her lungs, and let it linger there; instantly she was calmed by the familiar act. She exhaled and lifted her chin, trying to get comfortable on the camp chair. Her lower back ached from a night spent in the pseudo-wilderness sleeping in a tent; her breathing was ragged from a persistent cold.
Not far away, Leni stood at the river’s edge with a little boy on one side of her and an old man on the other. She cast her line out in a graceful, practiced arc, the line snapping and dancing in the air before it cascaded into the calm water. Late spring sunlight painted all of it gold; the water, the three mismatched figures, the nearby trees. Even as the sun shone down on them it began to rain, tiny droplets drawn from the damp air.
They were in the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the last refuges of pure wilderness in the populated western half of Washington State. They came here as often as they could and pitched their tents on campsites that offered both electricity and water. Here, away from the crowds, they could be who they really were. They didn’t have to worry about being seen together or making up stories or telling lies. It had been years since anyone had mentioned the Allbright family in Alaska or gone looking for any of them, but still, they were always on guard.
Leni said she could breathe in this wilderness, where the trees were as big around as Volkswagens and grew high enough to block out the recalcitrant sun. She said she had things to teach her son that were part of his heritage, lessons that couldn’t be taught where the world was paved and lit by streetlamps. Things his father would have taught him.
In the past few years, Cora’s father had become an avid fisherman—or maybe he was just an avid grandfather who did anything and everything to make Leni and MJ smile. He’d quit practicing law and had become a putterer around the house.
So they came camping out here as often as they could, regardless of the rain that greeted them ten times out of twelve, even in midsummer. They caught fish for dinner and fried it in cast-iron skillets over an open flame. At night, while they all sat around the campfire, Leni recited poems and told stories set in the wilderness of Alaska.
It wasn’t fun for Leni. It was something different. Vital. A way to release the pressure that built up all week as she walked among the hordes at the sprawling University of Washington campus, as she sold books to patrons at her part-time job at the giant Shorey’s Bookstore on First Avenue and took photography classes at night.
Leni came out here to re-find herself in nature, to recover whatever small piece of her Alaskan soul she could find, to connect her son to the father he didn’t know and the life that was his by birthright but not in fact. Alaska, the last frontier, the land that would always and forever be home to Leni. The place where she belonged.
“You can hear him laughing,” her mother said.
Cora nodded. It was true; even with the percussive drumbeat of the increasing rain, drops landing on nylon tents and plastic hoods and plate- sized leaves, she could hear her grandson’s laughter.
MJ was the happiest of kids—a boy who made friends easily and followed the rules and still held your hand when you walked down the sidewalk toward school. He cared about the usual things for a boy his age— action figures and cartoons and Popsicles in the summer. He was still young enough that he didn’t ask a lot of questions about his father, but that would come. They all knew it. Cora knew, too, that when MJ looked at his mother’s smile, he saw none of the shadows crouched behind it.
“Do you think she will forgive me someday?” she asked, staring out at Leni.
“Oh, for the love of Pete. For what? Saving her life? That girl loves you, Coraline.”
Cora took a long drag on her cigarette, exhaled. “I know she loves me. I have never doubted for a second that she loves me. But I let her grow up in a war zone. I let her see what no child should ever see. I let her know fear of a man who was supposed to love her, and then I killed him in front of her. And I ran and made her live life under an alias. Maybe if I’d been stronger, braver, I could have changed the law like Yvonne Wanrow.”
“It took years for that woman’s case to get to the Supreme Court. And you were in Alaska, not Washington. Who knew the law would finally recognize a battered woman defense? And your dad still says it rarely works. You have to let all of that go. She has. Look at her, down there with her son, teaching him how to fish. Your daughter is fine, Cora. Fine. She’s forgiven you. You need to forgive yourself.”
“She needs to go home.”
“Home? To the cabin with no plumbing or electricity? To the brain- damaged boy? To an accessory-after-the-fact charge? There’s that new blood test now. Something about DNA. So don’t be ridiculous, Cora.” She reached out, slid her arm around Cora’s shoulder. “Think of all that you’ve found here. Leni is getting an education and becoming a wonderful photographer. You like your job at the art gallery. Your home is always warm and you have a family you can count on.”
What she’d done to her daughter had been forgiven, it was true, and Leni’s forgiveness was as real and true as sunlight. But Cora, try as she had for all of these years, couldn’t forgive herself. It wasn’t the shooting that haunted her; Cora knew she would commit the same crime again in the same circumstances.
She couldn’t forgive herself for the years that came before, for what she allowed and accepted, for the definition of love she’d handed down to her daughter like a dark incantation.
Because of Cora, Leni had learned to be happy with half a life, pretending to be someone else, somewhere else.
Because of Cora, Leni could never see the man she loved or go home again. How was Cora supposed to forgive herself for that?
* * *
Smile.
You’re happy.
Leni didn’t know why she had to remind herself to smile and look happy on this bright day, when they were at the park to celebrate her graduation from college.
She was happy. Really.
Especially today. She was proud of herself. The first female in her family to graduate from college.
(It had taken a long time.)
Still. She was twenty-five years old, and a single mother, with—as of tomorrow—a college degree in visual arts. She had a loving family, the best kid in the world, and a warm place to live. She was never hungry or freezing or afraid for her mother’s life. Her only fears now were garden- variety parenting fears. Kids crossing the street alone, falling off swing sets, strangers appearing out of nowhere. She never fell asleep to the sound of screaming or crying and never woke to a floor strewn with broken glass.
She was happy.
It didn’t matter that she sometimes had days like today, where the past poked insistently into her view.
Of course she would think of Matthew today, on this day, which was one they’d talked about so often. How many times had a conversation between them begun with: When we finish college…?
Instinctively, she lifted her camera and minimized her view of the world. It was how she managed her memories, how she processed the world. In pictures. With a camera, she could crop and reframe her life.
Happy. Smile.
Click, click, click and she was herself again. She could see what mattered.
Unbroken blue sky, not a cloud in sight. People all around.
Sunshine called out to Seattleites in a language they understood, dragged them out of their hillside homes and encouraged them to put on expensive sneakers and enjoy the mountains and lakes and winding forest roads. After which they would stop by their local Thriftway Grocery Store for prepackaged steaks to put on their grills at weekend barbecues.
Life was soft here in Seattle. Safe and contained. Crosswalks and traffic lights and helmets and policemen on horses and bicycles.
As a mother, she appreciated all that protection, and she had tried to settle into this comfortable life. She never told anyone—not even Mama— how much she missed the howling of wolves or a day spent alone on the snow machine or the echoing crack of ice in the spring breakup. She bought her meat instead of hunting it; she turned on the faucet for water and flushed her toilet when she was finished. The salmon she grilled in the summer came already cleaned and filleted and washed, caught like strips of silver and pink silk behind cellophane canopies.
Today, all around her people were laughing, talking. Dogs were barking, jumping up to catch Frisbees. Teenage boys threw footballs back and forth.
“Look!” MJ said, pointing up at the pink Congratulations Graduate! balloon bobbing at the end of a yellow streamer. He had a half-eaten cupcake in one hand and wore a goatee of frosting.
Leni knew he was growing up fast (a first-grader now), so she had to snuggle and kiss him while he still allowed it. She scooped him into her arms. He gave her a sweaty, buttercream kiss and hugged her in that way of
his, all in, arms thrown around her neck as if he would drown without her. The truth was that she would drown without him.
“Who else is ready for dessert?” Grandma Golliher said from her place by the picnic table. She had just finished setting out Leni’s favorite dessert: akutaq. Eskimo ice cream made of snow, Crisco, blueberries, and sugar. Mama had saved clumps of winter snow in the freezer, just for this.
MJ sprang free, hands raised triumphantly (both hands, just to be sure he was seen). “Me! I want akutaq!”
Grandma came around the picnic table and stood beside Leni. Grandma had changed a lot in the past few years, softened, although she still dressed for the country club even on a picnic.
“I’m so proud of you, Leni,” Grandma said. “I’m proud of me, too.”
“My friend Sondra from the club. She says there’s an opening for a photographer’s assistant at Sunset magazine. Should I have her make a call on behalf of Susan Grant?”
“Yeah,” Leni said. “I mean, yes, please.” She could never quite adjust to the way things were done down here. Life seemed to reward who you knew more than what you could do.
One thing she knew, though: she was loved. Grandma and Grandpa had welcomed them from the beginning. For the past few years, Leni and Mama and MJ had lived in a small rental home in Fremont and visited her grandparents on weekends. At first they’d been on guard constantly, afraid to make friends or talk to strangers, but in time, the Alaska police had stopped looking for them and the threat of discovery had faded into the background of their lives.
MJ made so much noise and had so much energy that the staid house on Queen Anne Hill had become a boisterous place. On their nights together, they gathered around the television to watch shows that made no sense to Leni. (She read, instead; she was on her third consecutive read of Interview with the Vampire.) MJ was the wheel; they were the spokes. Love for him united them. As long as MJ was happy, they were happy. And he was a very happy child. People remarked on it all the time.
Leni saw her mother, standing off by herself at the edge of the playground, smoking, a hand splayed across her lower back in a way that looked unnatural.
In profile, Leni could see how sharp her mother’s cheekbones were, how colorless her lips, how thin her face was. As usual, she wore no makeup and she was almost translucent. She had stopped dyeing her hair a year ago; now it was a washed out, gray-threaded blond.
“I want akutaq!” MJ yelled, tugging on Leni’s sleeve. His voice was sluggish from the stuffiness of his latest cold. Ever since he started at the private school near the house, he—and all of them, really—had battled colds.
“And how do we ask for that?” Leni asked. “Pleeeease,” MJ said.
“Okay. Go get Grandma. Tell her to put out the dang cigarette and come to the table.”
He was off like a shot, scrawny white legs moving like egg beaters, his blond hair streaming back from his pale, pointed face.
Leni watched him drag Mama back to the picnic table, her face flushed with laughter.
Leni glanced sideways, turning her attention away for just a moment. She saw a man standing near the entrance gate to this public park. Blond hair.
It was him.
He’d found her.
No.
Leni sighed. She hadn’t called the rehabilitation center in years. She’d picked up the phone often but never dialed. It didn’t matter that the threat of discovery had lessened; it still existed. Besides, when she had called, all those years ago, his condition had always been the same: No change.
She knew he’d been irreparably damaged by the fall and that the boy she loved lived only in her dreams. Sometimes, at night, he whispered to her in her sleep, not always, not even often, but enough to sustain her. In her dreams, he was still the smiling boy who’d given her a camera and taught her that not all love was scary.
“Come on,” Grandma said, taking Leni by the arm.
“This is great,” Leni said. The words felt wooden at first. Perfunctory. But when MJ shot up and started clapping and yelled, “Yay, Mommy!” in that Mickey Mouse voice of his, she couldn’t help smiling.
The dark edges fell back again, receded until there was only here, only now. A sunlit day, a celebration, a family. Life was like that, full of quicksilver changes. Joy reappeared as unexpectedly as sunlight.
She was happy. She was.
* * *
“TELL ME ABOUT ALASKA, Mommy,” MJ said that night as he crawled into his bed and pulled up his comforter.
Leni brushed the fine white curls from her son’s forehead, thinking— again—how much he looked like his father. “Shove over,” she said.
Leni climbed in beside him. He rested his head on her shoulder.
The room was mostly dark, illuminated only by a small Star Wars bedside lamp. Unlike Leni, her son was growing up as a child of commercial America. After the picnic at the park and all the fun they’d had today, she knew that MJ was exhausted, but he wouldn’t sleep without a story.
“The girl who loved Alaska…”
It was his favorite story. Leni had begun it years ago and expanded it over time. She’d imagined a society living in the turquoise, glacial-cold waters of an Alaskan fjord, in buildings that had been downed when the mighty Mount Aku erupted. These people—the Raven clan—wanted desperately to rise into the light again, to walk in the sunshine, but a curse made by the eldest son of the Eagle clan had condemned them to remain in the icy water forever—until a whisperer could call them back. Katyaaq was the whisperess. A foreign girl of pure heart and quiet strength.
The story had unfolded week by week, with Leni telling just enough each night to lull her son to sleep. She’d created Katyaaq from the native Alaskan myths she’d read as a girl, and from the harsh, beautiful land itself.
Uki, the boy Katyaaq loved—the landwalker—had called to her from the shore.
There was no doubt in Leni’s mind who the lovers were, or why the story felt so tragic to her.
“Katyaaq defied the gods and dared to swim to the shore. She shouldn’t have been able to do it, but her love for Uki gave her a special power. She kicked and kicked and finally broke out of the waves, felt sunlight on her face.
“Uki plunged into the ice-cold water, calling out her name. She saw his eyes—as green as the calm waters of the bay which had once been her people’s home, his hair the color of sunlight. ‘Kat,’ he said, ‘take my hand.’”
Leni saw that MJ had fallen asleep. She leaned over to kiss him and eased out of bed.
The small, single-story house was quiet. Mama was probably in the living room, watching Dynasty. Leni walked down the narrow hallway of their rented house, the walls on either side of her decorated with Leni’s photographs and MJ’s artwork. The claustrophobia that had once assailed her in this fake-wood-paneled, dimly lit hallway had disappeared long ago.
She had tamed the wildness within her as determinedly as she’d once tamed the wilderness itself. She’d learned to navigate in crowds, to live with walls, to stop for traffic. She’d learned to watch for robins instead of eagles, to buy her fish at Safeway, and to pay money for new clothes at Frederick & Nelson. She’d learned to blow-dry and condition her layered, shoulder-length hair and to care that her clothes matched. These days she plucked her eyebrows and shaved her legs and armpits.
Camouflage. She learned to fit in.
She went into her room and flicked on the light. In the years they’d lived here, she’d changed nothing in this room and bought almost nothing to decorate it. She saw no point. It was bare and ordinary, filled with the garage-sale furniture they’d collected over the years. The only real sign of Leni herself was the photography equipment—lenses and cameras and bright yellow rolls of film. Stacks of pictures and collections of photograph albums. A single album was filled with her pictures of Matthew and Alaska.
The rest were more current. Tucked into the corner of the vanity mirror was the picture of Matthew’s grandparents. THIS COULD BE US. Beside it was the first picture she’d taken of him with her Polaroid.
She opened the door that led out onto the small cedar-planked deck that ran the length of the house. In the backyard, Mama had cultivated a large vegetable garden. Leni stepped out onto the deck and sat in one of the two Adirondack chairs that had been here when they moved in. Overhead, the star-spangled sky looked limitless. A solid cedar fence outlined their small lot. She could smell the distant aroma of the first summer barbecues and hear the jangle of kids’ bikes being put away for the night. Dogs barked. A crow scolded something in a sharp little caw-caw-caw.
She leaned back in the chair, stared up, and tried to lose herself in the vastness of the sky.
“Hey,” Mama said from behind her. “You want some company?” “’Course.”
Mama sat down in the second chair, positioned close enough that they could hold hands as they sat here. It had become their place over the years, a narrow deck that jutted out into some dimension that was neither past nor present. Sometimes, especially this time of year, the air smelled of roses.
“I’d give anything to see the northern lights,” Leni said. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Together they stared up at the immense night sky. Neither of them spoke; they didn’t need to. Leni knew they were both thinking of the loves that had once been theirs.
“But we have MJ,” Mama said. Leni held her mother’s hand.
MJ. Their joy, their love, their saving grace.
