Chapter 20 - Heather

Chapter 20

Heather

The Inca Trail, Peru

"You'd never know you grew up in Shitsville," Heather told Bon, as she took in their camping accommodations for the evening. The porters had erected three yellow and white octagonal tents in a grassy clearing by a cedar grove; the tents were tall enough to stand in, and each had a double bed on a raised platform. "This isn't really camping, is it?"

"It's glamping," Bon amended, heading straight for the middle tent.

Camp chairs had been set out by their tents, with thick blankets neatly folded on their seats. Heather sat herself down and pulled a blanket up over herself.

Mom groaned. "Don't you want to go to bed? Aren't you exhausted?"

"It's only seven thirty!"

"Yeah, but we've got to be up at five thirty." Mom sat in another chair, though, and wrapped herself in a cozy blanket. "And it's been one hell of a day."

"Bon," Heather patted the middle chair. "It's not a party without you." Heather was worried about her grandmother, who had been silent through dinner, and who was holding Junior close, as though for comfort.

"So, we're just going to pretend this morning didn't happen?" Mom said.

"Mom," Heather sighed, "can't we just look at the stars?"

"By all means, let's look at the stars and pretend Mom didn't drop a bombshell on us."

Bon pressed her lips together.

"You are the most infuriating person in the world," Mom said tightly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to hurt you."

"Well, I'm hurt." Mom was clenched. "I've spent my whole life thinking I wasn't good enough, that he didn't want me and I'd been abandoned. And now I find out it's not even true!"

"I did what I thought was best," Bon said stubbornly.

"Why does conversation have to be a contact sport in this family?" Heather sighed. "Why can't you both just admit that you're in pain?"

"Because life is a contact sport," Bon said, her voice sharp.

"As is love," Mom snapped.

And then they both went to bed, leaving Heather sitting alone in the camp chair, staring at stars that she couldn't name.

* * *

They'd barely set out after breakfast for the day's hiking, when they ran into a bear on the trail. It was black, with a brown patch across its face, and it was happily sitting in the sun right in the middle of the cobblestones.

"Just stay back," Pidru said calmly. He moved them back and squatted on the ancient road, to wait out the bear. "Glasses bear. It's not a big meat-eater, but you never know."

"Are we far enough back?" Mom asked, fascinated by the bear. She still wasn't talking to Bon, but she was in better spirits.

"The bear is lazy. We'll be fine."

Mom squatted down next to Pidru.

Bon hung back. She was still holding Junior closely, Heather noticed. Yesterday she'd mostly kept him in her backpack, so she could use her poles, but today she kept hold of him in the crook of one arm, holding both poles awkwardly in the other hand.

Eventually the bear made a soft growling noise, like a complaint, and ambled off, disappearing into the forest with a rustling of leaves.

"Well, that was something you don't see every day," Mom said as they set off again. The road unfurled implacably, the cobbles rolling over the mountainsides. Sometimes the ground fell away by their side, suspending them above the river, and sometimes they crossed narrow wooden bridges that were tethered together with agave twine. Heather heard Hulya gently scolding Bon and forcing her to put Junior's box away, so she could use her poles safely. Bon was looking down, her face drawn. She looked her age, Heather thought sadly. Older and sadder.

They walked for an hour or so through the cool forest, pausing to see the tumble of waterfalls and to admire the orchids, but after that first hour, things got hard. The rest of the day was more than four hours of challenging hiking up Warmiwa?usca, Dead Woman's Pass.

"I thought you said today would be easier," Mom huffed at Pidru.

"I was being gentle with the facts," he said, easily bringing up the rear. "I didn't want to discourage you."

"Oh my God, kill me now. This is so steep."

"You're doing better than me if you've got breath to complain," Heather managed to gasp out. She had to stop every dozen steps to catch her breath. The altitude was brutal.

Bon was completely silent, head down, slogging up the stairs. Heather kept her gaze fixed on Bon's muscular calves as she climbed. If Bon could do it, she could too. She was a fraction of her age, for heaven's sake.

"Which dead woman is this place named after?" Mom groaned. "And did she die trying to do this hike?"

Hulya laughed—how she had the breath or energy was beyond Heather—and shook her head. "It's called that because the mountain takes the form of a woman."

"A dead one?"

"Lying down."

"Dead." Mom was fixated on that bit. But she sounded in pretty good cheer. She was just enjoying being a pain in the ass.

They'd climbed well beyond the tree line, into the bare cordillera, and the wind was gusting; everything was rocks and dry shale and sheer drops. But the ancient cobblestoned road, worn smooth by centuries of travelers, kept climbing.

"Bon's a mountain goat," Heather groaned, having to take another break.

Hulya kept climbing with Bon, while Pidru stayed back to babysit Heather. He stood politely, looking annoyingly unstressed by the climb.

"If there's one thing your grandmother is good at, it's pain." Mom joined her for an impromptu break.

"You'd never know she was older than us. Look at her go." But while Bon might be ahead of them, she didn't look great.

"She's been in training longer than us, hiking everywhere with your Owen." But Mom's eyes had narrowed. She saw it too. Bon was shaky.

"Ready?" Pidru prodded them, gesturing at the road ahead. "Not much further."

"Are you being gentle with the truth again, Pidru?" Mom asked.

"You don't think she's having a heart attack or something?" Heather felt heavy with dread as she watched her grandmother up ahead. Now and then her pole slipped jerkily against the cobbles.

Mom didn't reply, but she picked up the pace, so she was closer to Bon.

They lapsed into pained silence for the rest of the climb. Heather could hear her breath rasping in her ears. The world narrowed to the uneven cobbles just in front of her feet, and the pain in her legs, and the weight of her body, which seemed to get heavier with every step. As she climbed, her mind grew still. There was nothing to think about, nothing to do, but climb.

Step, breath, step, breath. And nothing but pain.

Then she summited.

Collapsing on the ground, Heather tried to gather her breath, which was labored to the point she started to panic. The wheeze was so loud in her ears, it blocked out all other sound. Mom had rolled onto her back and was doing an impression of a beached fish, while Bon was still standing, but bent double, her hands on her knees and her poles sticking out behind her like the skeletal remains of wings.

"You did it," Pidru said, grinning at them and gesturing at the view. "You climbed nearly fourteen thousand feet!"

"Fourteen thousand!" Mom exhaled like an accordion, squeaking. "That's just sadistic."

"Bon! Mom!" Heather breathed, as she followed Pidru's gaze to the view beyond Dead Woman's Pass. "Look."

Falling away in front of them was a view unlike Heather had ever seen in her life. The summit wasn't a proper summit, as there were still mountainsides rising on either side of the pass, but it made Heather feel like she'd summited Everest. She felt closer to the sky than to the valley below. The centuries-old Incan road rolled through the pass and down, giddily dropping away. Ahead, beyond the dramatic dip of the valley, were ranges like an ocean of waves, their snowy peaks blazing white in the sun.

"Wow." Heather sat on the tussocky grass and stretched her legs out in front of her, feeling them scream in protest, and took in the grandeur. Now that the climb was over, she felt soaring elation, bordering on the transcendental. The meaning of everything was somehow wordlessly tangled up in that view before her.

"Oh." Mom had rolled into a sitting position too and was struck dumb by the view.

Bon straightened, poles still jutting. Her back was to Heather, but something about her rigidity gave Heather a pang.

"Hey, Bon," she called. "Come sit."

But Bon didn't move.

"Bon?" Heather frowned, worried. That was a brutal climb for a twenty-five-year-old. Imagine how it felt when you were seventy. She struggled to her feet to go check on her.

"Bon?" She shuffled over to her grandmother, only to find Bon staring across at the snowy mountains, crying. "Hey," Heather said, worried. Bon's face was like a mask. "Hey, are you okay?" It seemed a woefully insufficient question, because Bon was clearly not alright. "Mom! Come here."

Mom rushed toward them, looking stricken.

Heather put her arm around Bon, and Mom reached for Bon's wrist to take her pulse.

"Is it a heart attack?" Mom had forgotten her anger over Jimmy Keays, totally consumed with fear for Bon.

"Or a stroke?" Heather added.

Bon shook her head, still crying. Her whole face seemed to melt with grief, and she let out a wail that made Heather's blood run cold. She sagged, and Heather and her mom had to hold her up.

"Mom?" Sandy sounded scared.

But Bon wasn't capable of speaking. She closed her eyes and buried her chin in her chest, like an animal in pain. Her whole body shuddered with the force of the tears.

Heather shot Pidru and Hulya an alarmed look.

"We will leave you now," Pidru said tactfully.

"No," Heather protested. Bon was having a heart attack or something, how could they leave!

"It's okay," Hulya said gently, "we'll come back when she's done what she needs to do." She pointed over the crest. "We'll just be sitting over there." Her gaze drifted to Bon. "I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Jenkins."

"Mom," Heather's mom said shakily. "Is this about Junior?" But Bon still wasn't able to speak. They stood there in a huddle while she cried, the sound of her pain small in the vastness of the high cordillera. Heather felt tears welling in sympathy, and she saw Mom had started weeping too. Eventually Bon gave a deep, wracking sigh and looked up. She was shiny and sodden, the whites of her eyes networked with blazing red vessels.

"Mom, are we here to scatter Junior?" Sandy pulled away. "Is that what this whole crazy Peru trip is about? Is that why you're hauling him about with us? To say goodbye?"

Bon nodded jerkily, not quite able to speak yet.

"Honestly, why didn't you tell us?"

Bon removed her backpack and fumbled to open it. She was shaking. She pulled out Junior's wooden box and dropped her pack. She made a strangled noise. "I'm not ready yet," she said in a thick, wobbly voice. Then she went and sat down on the poncho Hulya had spread out for them. Pidru had left a thermos of sweet tea and a bag of trail mix for them.

"You told them?" Mom complained. "How come you can tell our tour guides, but not us?"

Bon ignored her. She made herself comfortable, with Junior's box cradled in her lap. Heather poured her a tea from the thermos.

"He wanted to be scattered to the winds," Bon said eventually, once she'd had a mugful of tea. Her lips trembled. "But I didn't want to let him go."

Mom sighed and sat down with a thud next to her. "You don't have to let go, Mom. You can hold on to him for as long as it takes."

Bon snorted. "I've come all this way, Sandra. I'm not backing out now. Have you got any idea what this trip is costing me?"

Heather felt a wave of relief. There was Bon. Sharp as knives still, despite the pain.

"Well, you could have told me. Hell, I might have been nicer to you if I'd known."

Bon snorted again. "You should have been nicer to me anyway. I'm a goddamn widow."

"Yeah, well, I'm a goddamn . . . what's the female version of a cuck?"

"A cuckquean," Heather supplied. She'd looked it up once.

"A cuck queen? Seriously?"

"I'm glad you came, Sandra," Bon said thinly. "I've missed you since I moved to Tucson."

Mom blinked, startled.

"Life isn't the same without you in it."

"Um. I missed you too," Mom said. She frowned. "Okay, what's going on? You bringing us all the way to Peru, the spilling of secrets . . . do you have cancer? Are you dying? Is this a situation where you're a widow and you're dying?"

Heather felt a stab of fear. "Oh God. Are you?"

Bon swore at them good-naturedly. "Is that the only reason you think I'd bring you here?"

"You have to admit, it's a dramatic gesture. Is this some kind of last-wish situation?"

"If I was dying, Sandra, listening to you bitch up and down hills would not be my last wish." Bon gave her a withering look. "If you must know, I didn't know how I was going to let Junior go. Because what's left, then? I'm old and alone and there's nothing to look forward to anymore. I wanted to run to something." She cleared her throat. "And you were part of what I wanted to run to."

Mom looked stunned. "Oh." She took a minute and blinked a lot, her eyes shiny with tears. "Don't tell Jacqui, or she'll pitch a fit. She thinks she's your favorite."

"Jacqui knows what I'm doing, I told her when I was in Phoenix."

"Oh. So she is your favorite."

"You and I grew up together," Bon said, steadfastly refusing to rise to Mom's bait. "I was just a baby when I had you, and during the worst of times it was the two of us against the world."

They were so similar, Heather thought. Headstrong, feisty, and vulnerable as hell on the inside.

"And you gave me a reason . . ." Bon's voice weakened. "You always gave me a reason. To keep going. To do better. To try harder. To forgive. To say yes, when all I wanted to do was say no. I know I made a mistake not telling you about Jimmy . . . your father . . . but as the years went on, I couldn't see how to un-make the mistake. And you loved Dale so much . . . your father. I didn't want you spending your childhood sitting at Jimmy's bedside, in that living hell of loving someone who was gone but not gone. And then I didn't want to tell you after he was gone, because of the living hell of knowing you never got to meet him and never got to say goodbye. Everything I did made a bad thing worse. I'm sorrier than I can ever tell you. I only ever wanted to keep you safe, and if I had my time over, knowing what I know now, I would tell you. I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart for not telling you. I know we don't do sentiment"—Bon swore softly—"and you better believe I feel like an ass for doing it now . . . but you're the best bit, Sandra. And when I run out of belief, you're the one I need."

Mom was chewing the inside of her cheek and trying not to blubber. Eventually she nodded and swallowed hard. "I don't know how I feel about it all, Mom, but I understand. And thank you, for apologizing." She rubbed at her eyes and tried to make a joke. "If I'm all you need, what's Heather here for, then? Understudy for the role?"

Bon got her sentiment under control. "No. Bait."

"Wait. What?" Heather scowled. "What do you mean, bait?"

"I knew you were blanking her, and I knew she would walk over hot coals to get your attention. So, I figured if you came, Sandra would come."

"So, I'm just Mom-bait?" Heather tried to sound disgusted, but she also felt oddly pleased. Because Mom would come all the way to Peru for her. "You disrupted my whole life to use me as bait?"

"It worked." Bon shrugged. "But you've got your charms too. I don't find you a chore."

"A chore!" Heather was insulted.

"I said I don't find you a chore. I don't know what you're so offended about. Besides, you bagged Owen, so you did okay out of the deal."

"See what I grew up with?" Mom sighed, but for the first time in a very long time, she sounded happy about it.

* * *

"I guess we should do this thing before I lose my nerve," Bon said, after they'd finished crying, and had drunk the tea and eaten the trail mix.

"Why didn't you pack tissues if you knew we were doing this," Mom complained, fishing through her backpack for something to wipe her nose on.

Heather got to her feet and helped Bon up. Her legs were still like jelly after the climb up Dead Woman's Pass. "Where shall we do it?" she asked, glancing around. "Where do you think Junior would like to be scattered?"

Heather didn't think she'd like to be left at the top of a mountain in a foreign country, herself.

"Oh, I'm not scattering him," Bon protested. "That wouldn't be fair to his daughter Holly, would it? First, I wouldn't do it without her, and second, I wouldn't leave him somewhere she couldn't visit. Besides, Junior wanted to be scattered with his wife, Sarah." Bon stretched and yawned.

"Are you telling me you've been hauling an empty box around this whole time?" Mom said, exasperated. "I thought we were here to let him go?"

"It's not empty. And we are here to let him go."

"Why do you always talk in riddles?" Mom grunted as she got to her feet. "Are we here to scatter him or not?"

"Not." Bon walked to the edge of the clearing, where the ground fell away into a ravine. "He's already been scattered. Holly and I did it before I left. He and Sarah are at his beloved golf course—we donated a bench, with a plaque to him and Sarah, so Holly and her children can sit and visit with them. They're not far from my back fence."

Mom swore. "So why did we climb almost fourteen thousand feet, then?"

"To say goodbye." Bon opened the box.

Heather inched closer, burning with curiosity to see what was inside.

Bon removed two gold bands.

"You've been carrying your wedding rings around?" Heather said softly.

Bon nodded. She took a breath and stared out at the expanse of the cordillera. "Junior loved traveling. Did you know he'd visited every continent, even Antarctica?" She sighed. "But we never got around to traveling together." She looked down at the rings. "Until now. What did you think of Peru, Junior?" She muttered under her breath. "He never answers anymore."

"I think you'll find that's because he's dead," Mom said dryly.

"No, it's because of the damn golf course. Can you think of anything worse than spending eternity by the seventh hole?"

"Spending eternity alone," Mom said honestly.

Bon nodded. "Yeah."

"You're not alone. I'm here," Heather consoled them.

They both snorted, sounding eerily alike.

"Until Owen turns up." Mom gently elbowed her. "And then you'll be off living your best life. As you should."

"So, find yourself an Owen," Heather suggested. She had a warm, melting feeling as she said his name.

"Sure, so one day I can scatter his ashes on a golf course."

"Mom!"

"What!"

Heather couldn't believe she could be so insensitive to Bon.

"It's true," Bon said philosophically. "They up and die on you."

"Or cheat on you," Mom sighed.

Heather felt a wave of bleakness. What was the point of it all, then?

"But God, it feels good until they do," Bon told Heather wistfully, reading her mind.

"Doesn't it," Mom sighed. "I hope I feel it again before I die."

"Me too." Bon looked down at the rings in her palm. "Don't be jealous, Junior. You're off with Sarah now, so I think you can suck it up if I find a fourth husband."

"And who knows, maybe next time you'll die before he does," Mom said blithely, putting her arm around Bon. "And you'll never be a widow again."

"You two are sick," Heather complained. "It's no wonder I'm in therapy."

"You're ruining my moment," Bon warned. She shook Mom's arm off. "Come on, now, pull yourselves together. This is serious."

"Right."

Mom and Heather stood respectfully by Bon's side. Heather removed her hat and sunglasses and Mom followed suit, wincing at the glare of the sun at altitude.

"Junior," Bon said, holding up the rings, and addressing them as if they were a person. "You were nothing but good to me. No man ever treated me like an equal before I met you."

"What about Dad?" Mom interrupted, offended.

"Which one?"

Mom frowned. "Well, both of them, I guess."

"Jimmy treated me like a goddess to be worshipped, and Dale treated me like a treasure to be hoarded. It was Junior who showed me I could be an equal."

That mollified Mom, although Heather didn't think either goddess or treasure sounded great.

"They were immature loves. Junior was my first mature love."

First, Heather noted. But maybe not the last.

"I miss you, Junior, every single day," Bon said fervently. "And I love you, enough to know that Sarah was the great love of your life. And because I love you, I wish you happiness together in eternity." She turned and whispered an aside to Heather, "And better her than me, spending her afterlife on a golf course."

Bon lifted the rings to her lips and kissed them. "These are the rings we exchanged, and it doesn't seem right to separate them. I don't need to keep part of our marriage, when I carry the whole thing with me, always."

"That's nice, Bon," Heather said, her throat tight with sadness.

"You gave me a new love, Junior, now I'm giving you what we never had: travel. Together." Gently, Bon placed the rings on a rocky outcrop, where they glinted in the sun.