Gift of the Golden Mountain Read online

  "I'm not making it up. I didn't say he was French, I said he was a physicist I met in Paris. He's American, and I don't tell you everything. Which reminds me, who answered the phone?"

  Karin was not going to change the subject. "Listen, May, you've got to come on tonight. Everything's planned. Oh God, I should never have let you talk me into coming on ahead."

  "Have you found an apartment yet?" May cut in.

  "Yes!" Karin said, suddenly willing to shift subjects, "That's another reason you have to come now. It's not an apartment, it's a house. The couple who owns it are being transferred to Cleveland, and they've decided to rent it out. It's more than I budgeted, but there is something they call a mother-in-law cottage in the back that we can rent out, and that makes it just about the same as an apartment would be. You have to see it, May. It's beautiful—all wood inside, and beamed ceilings, a fireplace and window seats and a view of the Bay and within walking distance of the campus. But they won't hold it, they have to know and I said we would tell them for sure tomorrow."

  "Take it. If you like it, I will. You know that."

  "But I don't want to do it that way. I want you to come and look at it with me and decide together, if we're going to live here together. That was the deal."

  "Karin, take it. Call the people now and tell them. It sounds wonderful, it sounds perfect."

  Karin allowed a silence to grow. May waited; she knew Karin would break it.

  "You know what you're doing, don't you?" Karin finally said.

  "What is she doing?" the male voice called out from the background.

  "Who is that?" May asked again, insinuating a sternness she did not feel.

  "You're delaying, May, and you can't. Not any longer. It's time now, time for you to come home. I'm here. I promise, I'll be at the airport to meet you."

  May closed her eyes and tried for the right tone. "I suppose that person who keeps yelling in the phone will be with you?" But it was too arch, too obviously provoking.

  Karin's voice was gentle. "Don't do that, don't try to pick a fight with me. He's a guy who offered to drive me out to the airport to get you, that's all."

  "Does he have a name?"

  Karin was speaking carefully now, holding in, trying hard. May knew she would be twisting the small gold heart on the chain around her neck. She could see her hands, small and plump, fingernails bitten to the quick. (Bitten in her sleep, May knew that too. In school they had put Band-Aids on Karin's fingers at night, to keep her from biting them, and she had bitten through the Band-Aids.)

  "His name is Sam Nakamura," Karin said. "He's a graduate student in chemistry. He's been very helpful."

  "I'll just bet," May said.

  Karin sighed.

  "I'm sorry," May answered, and she was, but she couldn't get back on the plane. "Look, K, I'll call you tomorrow. I promise. I won't stay more than a day, two at the most . . ."

  "There's a big welcome home party for you tonight," Karin put in, her voice pleading now, "at Kit's."

  "Poor Kit," she answered, "maybe she should have informed the guest of honor."

  Karin's voice was full of reproach. "It was supposed to be a surprise party, May. The twins are here visiting Faith, and it was their idea. They've been decorating all day, and it's going to be an awful disappointment. . . ."

  Faith and Annie and Amos and Karin—all of them waiting for her. She bit her lip. "Listen, K—I can't talk anymore, there's a line of people waiting for this phone. I'll call you tomorrow, I promise." And she hung up.

  No one was waiting in line, she was all alone in the glaring white corridor, her stomach churning and her eyes blurred with tears, feeling sick as the clouds gathered outside the big plate-glass corridor. She was, she thought, being suffocated: the plane, the air-conditioned airport lounge, the corridor. She stood for a minute, looking at the dark clouds closing in, and she knew she had to get out and into the open.

  She made her way to the airline counter to ask that her luggage be held in San Francisco, then she found the car rental desk and calmed herself with the ritual filling out of forms.

  The girl at the counter had brightly lacquered fingernails which she flashed ostentatiously, lingering over the small x's where you signed on the line.

  "Destination?" she asked.

  May had to think a minute. "Batavia," she finally told her, "I think that's west of Chicago."

  "Here," the girl said, stabbing the map with a red forefinger, then drawing a few quick, deft lines with a green marking pen.

  "We have a brand-new Mustang for you today, Mr. Ford just sent it over, a bright shiny new red Mustang. Here," she went on, fingernails flashing over the map, "you are here, your car is here, make a left and a left and a right, keeping to the right, and that will take you onto 294 south. Here." She made a mark on the map. "Then you want to watch out for Highway 38, Roosevelt Road, west."

  May pushed hard on the doors and a tidal wave of heat washed over her, thick and choking and heavy, filling her lungs. A hot wind caressed her, moving up her skirt. She opened the car door and rolled down the window and waited for the heat to escape. Settling herself in the driver's seat, she pulled up her skirt, exposing long, slender brown legs. She rummaged in her purse until she found an elastic and caught up the mass of her hair, thick and jet black in the pale light. For an instant she smoothed her hands over her stomach, as if to allay the churning inside her.

  The slow throb of the motor steadied her. She needed to be behind the wheel, moving, traveling, in control. She could not sit, not wait in the heat. She swung around the turn, left and left again? She didn't remember but it didn't matter, she could see the highway, she could follow her instinct, feel her way.

  Driving helped, feeling the slow power of the engine beneath her helped, moving along a strange highway in an alien city helped; the windows were down and the wind was blowing, the clouds moved dark and ominous above and all of it helped.

  She turned on the radio but all she could get was static, so she turned it off again. She didn't need that sound, the wind blowing warm against her face was enough.

  The sign said Highway 38 and she turned, hoping she was turning west. She was moving now through small towns, one after another, all of them connected: Elmhurst and Villa Park and Lombard and Glen Ellyn, yellow and red flags snapping in the wind at used car dealers, a long cluttered stretch of A&W Root Beer stands, laundromats, auto parts stores. Then a sign for a town called Wheaton, and suddenly wide streets and great trees and houses set in an expanse of green, with porches all around, houses lived in for a hundred years, old houses from another time.

  She slowed and tried to think what it would have been to grow up in a town like this, on a hot afternoon in August, sitting on a front porch in white shorts, barefoot, with a hot wind rising. At the edge of town she stopped to let a tall boy cross the road. He loped along, not to hold her up, raising his hand in a small gesture of thanks.

  She should probably stop and call ahead. He could be away, be out of town, it could be a bad time for her to show up. She didn't stop because she knew it didn't matter if he was there or not. She had a name and an address and a phone number, she had an excuse, and it was all she needed.

  Then she was out of town and there was nothing but cornfields and an expanse of country that stretched out flat and forever, a country so wide that even the occasional farmhouse seemed only to emphasize its great emptiness.

  Road signs loomed, a light flashed a detour. She followed the arrows, swinging onto a narrow blacktop lane that cut straight into the wide green heart of the August land, a road narrow and slick and rimmed with cornfields rustling high, the earth plowed to the very lip of the roadway. There was no end to it, none at all, as far as she could see. She was alone in a red Mustang riding a country road into the heart of nowhere. She stepped hard on the gas, gulping in the air. It didn't matter how fast she went, she knew that she was never going to get there, never going to reach the other side.

  She glanced at h
er watch. It was one in the afternoon and suddenly it was dark. The clouds that had been threatening closed in, the wind was rising, blowing, she could feel it coming . . . something was coming. She slowed the car, waiting, listening as the wind raced flat and hard through the dry cornstalks, the sound a hollow rasping that echoed into the clouds and expanded, like the swelling song of some infernal choir.

  A crack of lightning shattered the sky and then the sound hit her full force, thunderous and bone-rocking, and she shook with the shuddering blow of it. The wind rattled through the cornstalks, seven feet high all around her, reaching a crescendo, but all she could see was the straight path of the road ahead. She felt the first drops on her arm, heard them as they hit the roof and splattered. She reached across the passenger's seat to close the window, just as a second flash of lightning pierced the sky ahead. She braced herself for the thunder roll, her skin went cold and she shivered. It was raining hard now, so hard she could barely make out the road, she squinted and leaned forward to peer through a small patch cleared by the windshield wipers. The rain flooded the windows, she could not see at all but she was afraid to stop, afraid to be still, afraid not to be in motion. The light and the sound surrounded her, crashed around her and drowned her in noise, in the staccato drumming of rain on the roof, in a long silver shriek. Was it her? Had she screamed?

  She glimpsed something through the water that coursed down the windshield, blinding her, something dark and massive across the roadway . . . Branches? A tree? She pulled hard at the wheel, the car spun, turning and sliding. She felt it slip into the soft mud and stop. The water coursed down the windows so that she could not see out. She was trapped, caught, and the noise of the storm filled her head. Shaking, she put her hands over her ears and longed to cry for help but she couldn't think who to cry out to.

  Not mother, not father. No one.

  Karin and Faith and the twins were waiting for her at Kit's apartment, waiting for her with streamers and balloons and a banner that said "Welcome Home." She put her head on the steering wheel and sobbed, she emptied herself of tears too long stored, and then, exhausted, she sat with her arms wrapped around herself and waited. The rain would seem to let up for a time, but then it came throbbing down again, even more ferocious.

  She sensed it before she heard the noise, a rattling. Something was rattling the door handle. She turned her head and saw, through the water, a blur of red, a hand. Swollen, gnarled, pawing at the window. And then a face—misshapen, grotesque, and a mouth, black and yawing open, open and shut.

  "Oh God," she whispered, "Dear God."

  She turned away, hid her face, covered her ears. When she had the courage to turn back, it was gone.

  She sat until the rain spent itself, until it grew steady and then stopped altogether. She waited until the sky grew light, until finally it was bright. And then she stepped out into the world and breathed in the freshness of the earth after a summer's hard rain. She felt tired and drained and quiet. She was alive, and alone in the middle of a never-ending road in the midst of a great empty land. She stood alongside the mud-spattered Mustang which had spun around to face in the direction from which she had come before it sank to its hubcaps in the mud of the great plains. In the other direction a giant sycamore, felled by a lightning bolt, lay across the road.

  The air moved only enough to sound a soft rustling through the corn rows, other than that the silence was complete. At first she thought it was nothing, that her eyes were playing tricks. Then she saw that it was moving toward her, moving down the middle of the road. Five minutes more and she could make it out: a tractor. Another five minutes and she could hail the old man driving it, a big thick man in a red rain slicker and a baseball cap. He raised a gnarled old hand in greeting:

  "Took me a spell to get back, but then I figured you wouldn't be going noplace." He grinned then, and his big horned face rearranged itself into kind folds.

  "You frightened me," she said, and was surprised to hear her voice crack. If he heard she couldn't tell, he was already attaching a chain to the Mustang.

  When he had pulled it back on the road he took off his hat, retrieved a big blue handkerchief from its crown, wiped his face, and asked her where she was heading.

  "Home," she said, her voice strong now, "I'm going home."

  TWO

  KARIN PERCHED ON the window seat in the dining room, hugging her legs to her and resting her chin on her knees. For a time she scanned the wide view of San Francisco Bay offered from the window, then she turned to survey the living room with its high beamed ceiling. The morning light streamed through the French doors to illuminate the fireplace, and the acrid scent of fresh ashes lingered in the air from last night's fire.

  "I can't believe how lucky we were to find this place," she said, turning back to the sweeping view of the Bay, dotted now with hundreds of sailboats.

  May sat at the dining table, several forms spread out before her, and toyed absently with a fountain pen while she studied her friend. She was thinking of the contradictions that existed between them, of how opposite they really were. Karin was small and soft, curvaceous and warm, with large breasts while May was tall and dark and cool, and not quite flat-chested. Karin's mop of blond hair curled out of control, while hers was straight as a stick and black. Karin was pink and pretty in the Scandinavian way; she was olive-skinned and unusual looking, people guessed she was Mediterranean. Karin was sweet-tempered and easygoing while she could be moody and intense. She sometimes wondered how they could have become such good friends. . . .

  "It's what they call an 'old Berkeley house,'" Karin broke in, "meaning brown shingle with lots of wood inside, and tiles and beamed ceilings and such, sort of a civilized rustic. A copy of a Maybeck, or a Julia Morgan. In case you don't know, they were architects who designed houses in these hills in the early part of the century. I've learned quite a lot about West Coast architecture in these past weeks. The people who own this house spent two solid years fixing it up, 'returning it to its 1920s glory,' is the way Kit put it."

  At mention of Kit, May looked up. "Has she seen the house?" she asked.

  Karin read the note of disapproval in her voice and answered carefully. "No. That's just how it was described to her."

  "Who described it?" May probed.

  "The people who told her it was for rent. Kit heard about it, and thought we might be interested."

  "Then it wasn't luck," May said in a flat voice, making a show of turning her attention back to the papers, "Cousin Kit never leaves anything to luck. She likes to control things, haven't you noticed? I should have known she would have a hand in this."

  May could taste the bitterness welling within her, and she was dismayed by it. She had come back because she was convinced she could put it behind her, the old hurt, that it didn't matter so much any more. She knew she could never forgive Kit—the damage had been done, and it was done forever. But she thought she could keep her anger under control, that she could maintain a civil attitude toward the woman who was her guardian. Now, suddenly, all the old anger had flooded back. Part of it was that the others had always been so taken in by Kit—her dad and Sara when they were alive, and Faith and Emilie and Phinney and even the twins. She found Karin's studied neutrality especially annoying.

  Karin had turned back to the window, to the wide sweep of the San Francisco skyline. She knew it would not do to come to Kit's defense. May was too soon back, too tense, too quick to anger.

  "We've got to decide what to do about renting out the in-law cottage," May said in an effort to restore the earlier, easier mood.

  "I know," Karin answered without turning, "Sam wants it but he can't afford the rent. He's hoping to find someone to share it."

  May frowned. "Do you think it has enough privacy for two men? I thought maybe we could find a couple—and that we might let them have it in exchange for housework and taking care of the grounds."

  Karin turned, her face registering distress.

  "I thought we ag
reed," she began, forcefully for Karin, "I thought it was all decided, that in return for my part of the rent I would do the housework and the cooking. And I was really looking forward to the gardening. I know how . . ."

  "I know you do," May interrupted, smiling in an effort to ease the tension that was building. "You can still do all the cooking because you know how badly I cook. But when we made that agreement I was thinking in terms of a nice modem apartment which would require little work. Instead we have a huge old two-story house with grounds to match. You can't handle graduate school and all of this too, nobody could. I certainly can't, and I can see what's going to happen—you'll be working yourself silly, and I'll feel like I have to pitch in and help. I can't have you waiting on me, for crying out loud—we'll both get tired and bitchy."

  Karin's chin was set. "I can't be your guest. Besides, I was the one who found this big old house—I got us into it. It's the most beautiful house I've ever lived in. I love everything about it—the fireplace, and the view and the funny old plumbing in the bathrooms and the redwood trees out back. I won't complain, May. . . ."

  May looked at her, and smiled as the familiar flood of affection rose inside her. She sighed. "I know you won't complain, K. You never do—and I was wrong about both of us getting bitchy. You never do that, either. Sometimes I think there's something wrong with you, that you just go along with that wonderful calmness . . ." May lifted her shoulders in the slightest of shrugs. "But please hear me out," she said, her tone warm and intimate, "it seems so crazy to me, that I should have plenty of money from Sara's trust, and very soon I am going to be richer than almost anybody either of us knows—richer even than Kit, I'm told—and I haven't done a thing for it. I don't deserve it any more than you do. My dad wouldn't have anything to do with the family money, did I ever tell you that? Sometimes I think that I shouldn't either, except . . ." She stopped herself from veering off the subject. Pulling up short, she said, "But I was talking about you and me and the money. I don't see why it has to change anything between us, why we can't just use it, and yet you refuse to share it with me, or to have anything to do with that part of me, that struggle . . ."