What Was Left, page 8
‘No! Don’t come. I’m fine. Just call Peter, please. I can’t, yet. But I want to know that Lola…’ Rachel can’t finish her words. She doesn’t deserve to know. But Jen agrees, and writes down a number to call back on. Rachel feels a pang of guilt that she is asking her friend too much. Peter will worry. Jen will have to convince him not to come and drag her back. But if anyone can do it Jen can.
I, on the other hand, Rachel thinks, have never been able to say no to him. Since the moment they met, Peter has been the waterfall—rushing down from great heights—and she the stones, worn into channels of least resistance.
Rachel used to love to tell people the story of how she met Peter. It was a good story, one they had told hundreds of times at dinner parties, one that they embellished over the years, took turns with, drew out the punch lines. It was a story that they built around themselves, and over the years it became bigger than them.
At the time, it was her in a tollbooth and Peter in a dented white Dodge van at the entrance to Yosemite National Park. After college, Rachel had applied for a seasonal job with the National Park Service. She hoped for a tracking job or something in a nature centre, something that she could use her degree for. The parks she chose were the ones that would take her as far away as possible: Glacier in Montana; Yellowstone in Wyoming; Arches in Utah; Sequoia. Her friends were entering grad school or taking up entry-level jobs in non-profit organisations, schools and corporations. A few were moving back in with their parents. Some had jobs teaching English overseas. There was the Peace Corps, Americorps, Teach for America, but Rachel didn’t want any of their contracts, their one- or two-year or lifetime obligations. She wanted distance. Freedom to walk around in a place where nobody recognised her, where the history had nothing to do with her. Seasonal jobs with the NPS were popular, and Rachel got her application in late, just before the start of summer. They called her a few weeks later, saying that they could offer her a place at Yellowstone, but the job was not one of the ones she’d expressed an interest in.
‘Sounds great,’ Rachel said, still hung over. It was the end of an era, and each night she and her friends drank themselves incoherent rather than face the inevitable parting.
‘Don’t you want to know where you’ll be working?’ asked the woman on the other end.
‘Sure, where?’
‘The tollbooth on the way into the park. Not glamorous, but if you don’t want it, there will be twenty other people who do. If you work a summer there, and show you’re reliable, you get first dibs at the off-season jobs.’
It wasn’t what Rachel imagined, but she took it, desperate for a reason to leave. She drove cross-country two weeks later, sleeping at camping grounds by the highway in a tent beside her ’89 Corolla, which was filled with what remained of her life: books, clothes, CDs and old tapes, letters from ex-boyfriends, and the three photographs of Gunther, buried beneath it all.
The whole trip she heard a poem beneath the hum of the engine, the bone-rattling horns of the eighteen-wheelers, and the whistle of wind through the windows that wouldn’t quite shut. She heard snatches of ‘Song’, an Adrienne Rich poem she read years ago.
You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
The words echoed across the hills of Tennessee, the red dirt of Arkansas, the flat forever of Oklahoma and the white sands of New Mexico. They were with her as she drove through the saguaro-studded deserts of Arizona, where the skies opened up and stars multiplied all the way to San Diego. There, Rachel visited her grandmother Rose, drank martinis by the Pacific Ocean, and spent the night in Rose’s apartment, which smelled like butterscotch candies and antacid, before driving down Highway 1, with all of the RVs and Harley-riding retirees and European tourists in their rented Mustang convertibles. She listened to all of her old mix-tapes and sang along until she was hoarse and until, finally sick of them, she left them in a dumpster outside the Exxon station on the outskirts of Sacramento.
Judy was angry with Rachel for taking the job. The words she used—‘wasting your God-given talent’—made Rachel smirk.
‘Why do you have to move 750 miles to work in a tollbooth? There are thousands of tollbooths you can work in without leaving D.C.,’ Judy had said, and Rachel told her she was missing the point, the adventure of it.
But Rachel questioned herself in those first days on the job. There was hardly any training, they just stuck her straight in a tollbooth to collect cash from the thousands of overheated tourists who had been sitting in traffic for hours to sit in more traffic while they drove the popular circuit of Yosemite, ninety-nine per cent of them getting out at the same lookouts to take the same pictures of the same view, the same tree, the same springs, the same tired old buffalo that kept hoping someone would ignore the signs posted everywhere and toss them a half-empty can of Pringles.
She slept in a tent with three other women in a tent village that housed most of the other seasonals. It was just like college all over again—the small groups that formed, the parties that went late into the night, the stories and bullshitting and practical jokes. It was like college minus the intellectual stimulation—instead of classes she spent her day collecting money and filling out the little passes that stuck to windscreens, leaning out of her hot, cramped booth, the left side of her face and left arm turning brown until she learned to wear more sunscreen on that side. She never quite corrected the imbalance though; she looked uneven all summer, split in half like a mime.
It was into this world that he drove his dinged Dodge. She leaned out as she always did, her smile generic, her words the same for everyone: ‘Welcome to Yosemite National Park. How long are you planning to stay?’
He leaned out of his window as well, pushing his sunglasses into his dark mop of hair, eyes squinting in the hot sun.
‘G’day. Bet it’s hotter in there than it is in here,’ he said.
She smiled, in spite of herself. ‘It’s not too bad, really.’ She pointed to her little fan, oscillating from side to side.
‘I take it back then, it’s hotter in here. My air-con bit the dust in Nevada.’ He grinned, and the skin of her calves prickled. He stretched out the middle ‘a’ of Nevada long and low and stuck an r on the end: Nevaaaahdar.
A glimpse at the line of cars snaking behind the van jolted her. ‘What kind of pass would you like?’ she said. ‘You here for a day, a week?’
He flashed the annual pass. ‘Been visiting all the parks,’ he said.
‘Great. Enjoy your stay. ‘ Her mouth tasted dry.
‘Wait, quick question. What should I see? I mean, not the usual shite you tell tourists, what would you do?’
Rachel smiled again. She was drawn to his accent, the way the words took time to process in her brain. Australian, she thought, but wasn’t sure. ‘You like hiking?’
He nodded.
Rachel leaned out a little further and passed him a map, pointing with her pinky to spots that she had hiked, places where you were likely, even in the middle of July, to find yourself alone. As she spoke she could sense the collective impatience of the line of cars behind them, and she leaned back into her booth. For the first time, she wished the park uniform wasn’t so baggy and beige.
‘Good luck. Enjoy it.’
‘We will. You stay cool, mate,’ he said, and drove off into the park.
The rest of the day slipped by in a haze of exhaust fumes and coins clattering against the cash register. Cars never stopped coming and the walls of her booth felt too close. As usual, it was a day of bored children whining in backseats, parents who spoke through gritted teeth, and silver-haired retirees who baulked at the cost of a pass. The friendliest ones were often the motorcyclists, perhaps because they weren’t separated by a box of steel. They were vulnerable to the environment. Rachel’s mum once mentioned that Gunther had ridden a motorbike. ‘He was so German—it was a BMW—how he could afford it…’ her voice trailed off, remembering. She had made him sell it when Rachel was born—you can’t take a baby on a motorbike. Sometimes, Rachel wondered how things might have been different if he’d been allowed to keep it. She couldn’t help but have more patience for the motorcyclists, even the rednecks with rat’s tails dangling from the backs of their helmets and T-shirts with American flags and the words ‘Love it or leave it’ and ‘I bleed red white and blue’.
Rachel had many small interactions with motorists during her days—snatches of conversations, flirtations, advice—but the Australian stuck in her head. In her journal that night she wrote about him. His smile, she wrote, made the day disappear. I don’t know why I’m writing this, I’ll never see him again. And I don’t know why I fall for everyone who looks at me sideways. I’m going to learn to be alone.
As a teenager and in her early twenties, Rachel had fallen in what she imagined to be love once a week. Her friends were just looking for someone they liked, but Rachel could find a reason to love nearly anyone – anyone who was a little bit sensitive, who liked hiking or had a dog or didn’t keep Playboys piled up beside his bed. It was the falling that drew her in—the first nights you spend with a person, where you hardly sleep, and in the morning your mouth is raw from kissing. That rush of discovery when the world is wide open and your future together could be anything you imagine. It is anything but boring to immerse yourself in another person’s life so wholly and learn about them by inhabiting their skin.
What is boring is the next bit, once you are both sleeping again at night. When you learn about his ex-girlfriend Melinda who calls at 11 p.m. every night just to check that he’s home. When you find his dirty socks tangled in your sheets. When he falls asleep with his arm under your neck and you don’t know how to move it without waking him. It becomes boring when he wants you to come to all of his band’s shows, even if you have an 8 o’clock chemistry class the next morning and they’re not coming on until midnight. When he reads you the love poem he has written and you’re forced to pretend that you like it.
It is boring; Rachel was often bored. Then the sex would begin to irritate her as well. The way he touched, or kissed with a wide-open mouth; the way he expected her to go down on him. The way he always asked if it was okay. No, she wanted to say, but never did. She lied to all of them. No, she could have said, but she never did.
And just like her mind wandered during sex, her eyes would begin to wander as well. There would be the guy with blond eyelashes who gave her change for the washing machines in the laundromat one afternoon. Or the roommate’s ex-boyfriend who was sleeping on the living room couch, who was still asleep each morning while Rachel made her coffee, and who looked so vulnerable she wanted to lie down beside him. Or the friend’s older brother who worked at Subway and had three dimples when he smiled—two on his left cheek and one on his right—and gave her the six-inch vegie sub for free.
Rachel would stop returning calls. She wouldn’t say where she had been the night before. She’d be gone before the band came on. She’d send short, dry replies to emails where he poured his heart out. Sometimes things weren’t even over when she began again with someone new. Friends and housemates would lie for her, but when she came home they shook their heads.
‘You have to tell him the truth, Rachel. You have to tell him you’re with someone else now.’
Occasionally she did, then, but most of the time silence would carry her message. She was good at disappearing. Once or twice it got ugly: pounding on her door late at night; her car with a long, thin gauge from his key; a message on the answering machine that just sounded like ‘bitch’. Guilt flickered and then was extinguished by someone else to obsess over. Her love was shallow, but it covered a lot of ground.
Then, suddenly, Rachel would swear off men. She would go out more, remember how much fun she had with just her friends. She would go to a movie by herself, and not have to share popcorn. She would read books in bed until they were finished, even if it meant staying up until two in the morning. Or she would just leave it all behind, drive across the country alone. Not, she told herself, lonely.
Her roommates jostled in front of the only, tiny mirror, applying mascara and talking over each other. One of them, Stacy, looked at Rachel sprawled across her camp bed, writing. ‘You coming out?’
‘Where?’
Stacy sighed. Rachel knew she had a reputation for being aloof among her tent-mates, like she was better than the rest of them.
‘Two-for-one pint night at the tavern. Come—it’ll be fun. We’ve got a park van. Jim’s going to be our designated driver.’
Rachel shut her journal; she had been writing about being alone. She needed to stop pining. ‘I could use a beer.’
‘Or twelve,’ Stacy giggled, and Rachel changed into the only dress she owned.
She hadn’t planned on getting wasted, but it was hard to stay sober with that crowd. Lines of coke in the bathrooms, and pills everywhere. Rachel stuck to beer, but they kept getting thrust at her—the bartender lived a few tents over and seemed to be giving them four for the price of one. It was hard to remember, at times, that they were still in a national park, but the tavern was right in the heart of the tourist village, right next to the burger stand and the gift shop where you could buy stuffed buffalo and snow globes made in China. Stacy shouted to Rachel at one point: ‘I bet I’ve cleaned toilets for half the people here.’. There weren’t many jobs at Yosemite that sounded worse than Rachel’s but Stacy’s was one of them: cleaning toilets and making people’s beds; emptying their rubbish; and sweeping up their crap. But Stacy had a sense of humour about it all. She was half-drunk and telling her stories of how she scammed the system, like finishing her rooms early and then lying back on a guest’s bed to watch The Bold and The Beautiful, helping herself to a bag of Sun Chips that lay open on the dresser. She knew how to get the best tips too.
‘The management has all these rules—like, don’t let people into their rooms til 3 p.m., but if the guests show up early, they let them come have a look. So when they come in, I act all harried and say, listen, you seem like nice folks, and you’ve been travelling all day. I’ll hurry up and get your room cleaned so you can move your stuff straight in. And then I do a half-assed clean of the room and splash my face with water so it looks like I’ve been sweating. And they’re just waiting when I come out, busting their little khaki shorts to get to move in early and with a five or ten or sometimes even twenty for my trouble.’
‘What about you Rachel,’ Stacy said. She paused for breath. ‘See anyone you recognise?’
Rachel turned on her bar stool and scanned the faces. They all blurred into one another—all but one, by the pool tables, a head taller than the rest.
‘Hey, that one definitely,’ Rachel pointed him out to Stacy.
‘Damn, I wouldn’t forget him either, girl.’
‘Aussie. You should hear the accent.’
Stacy got up and started in his direction. She didn’t even look back to see Rachel shaking her head, shouting, ‘No! Stacy!’
Rachel turned back towards the bar, her heart working twice as fast. She would look over in a minute, as soon as her face returned to a normal colour.
‘G’day, queen of the tollbooths. We meet again.’
He grabbed the stool beside her, one leg stretched out, the heel of his boot on the ground. He introduced himself as Peter, and told her that he had tried one of the day hikes she mentioned and loved it. He told her about his road trip and soon had her laughing so hard there were tears. Peter was meant to be delivering someone else’s van from the east coast to the west, only it kept breaking down. It was supposed to be in San Francisco a week ago, minus the body damage—he was having a little trouble learning to drive a manual on the wrong side of the road.
He sat beside her for another hour, just the two of them talking, and she found herself telling him about her drive across country, and how ever since being there, at Yosemite, her life had felt disconnected.
‘The seasonals are all here to party, and it is so at odds with the place – how fucking beautiful it is. And look at me—stuck in a tiny booth most days. I shouldn’t complain though. I have a day off tomorrow.’
Which was how, the next day, they found themselves at Young Lakes, a good twenty-kilometre round trip. Rachel had insisted Peter meet her at dawn. The heat and the mosquitos, Rachel said, when Peter asked why they had to leave so early.
She watched his long legs ahead of her on the trail, his voice floating back as they climbed through lodge pole pines and glacier-scraped granite. She memorised the way his ankles rose out of his boots, the tendons in sharp relief to the bone.
They covered themselves in insect repellent, but still, the mosquitos at the lakes didn’t let them linger. They stood at the shore of the lower lake with Ragged Peak towering above them, its edges reflected in the still water. In June, Rachel said, the mosquitos hadn’t been there. She had skinny-dipped in the lake, and the cold had numbed her legs to a tingle.
‘Mozzies,’ Peter said. ‘They’ve got a lot to answer for.’
He made her laugh harder than she could remember laughing. He had a way of saying things, just raising an eyebrow, pretending that he wasn’t kidding but completely pulling her leg.
She pointed out western junipers and whitebark pine. As they walked the downward slope, Peter became serious when he started talking about his work as an architect, how it was the only thing he had ever wanted to be. He was absolute—so different from her. Rachel hadn’t thought much about success because she didn’t expect it, but she admired the way that Peter did. It was pure, and he was willing to work for it. As they lost elevation, the oaks began to proliferate. As did other hikers, not so much the recreational walkers, but the Camelbak-wearing, pole-carrying types, with geometrically-shaped daypacks and muscular calves. Rachel and Peter walked in silence for a while, with just the sound of sticks breaking beneath their feet, and their boots slipping down granite.
