that what she would have chosen?
The rage … it’s as if embers have leaped out of the fireplace and set me alight. My body is smoldering, my brittle hair a torch.
“Elaine?” Josh’s voice pierces my concentration. For a moment I wonder if I’ve actually burst into flame. But he’s just telling me they’ve finished filming. Apparently Barbara has called a halt to the interview.
“Gram, no way!” Jen is protesting. “You know, they have to film for hours to get five minutes they can use.”
“That’s plenty, isn’t it, Josh?” Barbara says.
“Your grandma’s a natural,” Josh tells Jen. “It’ll be fine. I’ll let you all know if the funding comes through for me to finish it.”
“Lynn’s got lunch for us,” Jen says. “I’ll go tell her we’re ready.”
“We just filled up on cinnamon rolls,” Barbara says. She’s drained and anxious to get rid of us. I’m every bit as anxious to go, to be alone with this fury. I’m afraid that if I try to speak, venom will shoot out of my mouth.
“It’s beef barley soup,” Jen says.
“They’ve got to get going if they want to get back to Cody before dark.”
But Jen is a girl who sticks to her guns. “They’ll have time. And I promised Josh a snowmobile ride.”
“Couldn’t you have done that earlier?” Barbara snaps.
“We could have if we’d known you two were going to be talking for hours!” Jen turns away for a minute, helping Josh pack his gear. Then, with a coaxing voice that takes me back seventy-five years, she says, “Come with us, Gram?”
Barbara rolls her eyes. “Elaine, do you mind hanging out for half an hour? You can have some soup.”
“I …” I look outside. The pale northern sunlight glitters on the snow. “I want to go snowmobiling, too.”
“Have you ever driven a snowmobile?”
“Sure,” I lie.
Jen finds me snow gear that more or less fits. I suit up like a chartreuse Michelin Man to match Barbara’s electric blue and listen impatiently to Jen’s lesson on how to start, accelerate (by pressing a lever), stop, and turn.
Finally we’re moving. Slowly at first, making our way through trees, but then we hit an open field. “Take it easy,” Jen cautions, but Barbara shouts, “Yahoo!” and presses the accelerator. So do I, yelling at the top of my lungs.
Icy air smacks my face. Deeper than anger, I feel the sting of an ancient wound—my earliest, infant awareness of the intense bond between my mother and my sister, the magic circle from which I was excluded. That was the real twinship in our family, Mama’s and Barbara’s twin souls. And me standing at that bright window, gazing at my mercurial, sparkling mother and sister, longing to be let in.
Tears half blind my eyes. Still, I squeeze the accelerator, relishing the speed, the risk. I hear yells, and suddenly a stand of trees rises ahead of me. I’m shooting straight at them.
For one more split second, I hurtle toward the trees. Then a small jerk on the handlebars and I’m back in the open, slowing down and waving in response to the panicky shouts behind me. Is this how Mama felt when she walked out of the ocean in her sodden clothes? Shaken and exhilarated? And suddenly clear?
Jen races up to me on her snowmobile. “Are you all right?” She looks terrified.
“I’m fine. Sorry I gave you a scare.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’ve never driven one of these before, have you?”
“No, but I drive on the Los Angeles freeways. I figured, how hard could it be?”
“You and my grandmother! The two of you must have raised hell back in the day. Do you want to go back to the house? I’ll go with you.”
“Are you kidding? Now that I’ve finally figured out the controls? I’m fine. Really,” I say. And I am.
Snowcapped peaks rise ahead of me, Barbara’s mountain paradise. But what I’m seeing is the landscape of my life, the breathtaking vista in the photographs I brought with me—pictures of Mama and Papa holding my kids on their laps, lounging in my yard on a sunny afternoon, sipping drinks out of coconuts on a family vacation to Hawaii. Papa looks as if he finds this last activity undignified but nonetheless delightful. And the smile he’s giving Mama … Did she keep Barbara’s secret even from him, or did she tell him? How can I know what went on in their private moments, what their story was, when I was so mistaken about my own?
My envy of Barbara’s bond with