ON CHRISTMAS EVE, Sabine lacked her usual excitement about seeing her children’s happiness with their presents. She had knitted Finn a sweater with a Blizzardman snowflake on it. Tori had asked for Barbie dolls, and Sabine had gotten them for her, along with a Barbie boat to play with in the bathtub. Maria had asked for clothes and for beads to string. Sabine had also bought Finn a snowplow to play with outside and had gotten all the children some small metal skiers they could race down piles of snow. She’d bought Lucy a pale-blue fleece jacket she thought would look good with her sister’s coloring, and Greg a compass with inclinometer.
She’d chosen two books for Joe. Jonathan Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, because she had read it and liked it, Jennifer Jordan’s Savage Summit, about the first five women to summit K2, all of whom were now dead, climbing. The choice spoke of her own ambivalence. She wanted to inscribe those words about freedom from Me and Bobby McGee. Instead, she wrote nothing. Then, on Christmas Eve, she spontaneously went out and spent her entire share of a heavy-snow bonus from one of her shoveling contracts on the same model compass she’d bought Greg, the newest Tracker avalanche beacon and the fee for a January avalanche safety course, all for Joe. I’m in love with him, she thought almost desperately.
She wished she could turn off her love for Joe as easily as she could have if he’d shown interest in another woman. Another woman she would not have tolerated. But mountains?
It took longer than usual to get the children to sleep. Finn didn’t drop off until eleven and then simply because he could no longer keep his eyes open.
Joe was out working in the shop, and Sabine went ahead and arranged the presents, eager to get to sleep herself. Joe now slept on a futon in the attic. Sometimes late at night, Sabine joined him there. She had never invited him into her bed. In the past couple of days, she’d begun telling herself that this was a form of self-protection. If her bed remained the place she’d made love only with Victor, then she would never love Joe as much as she had loved Victor, and Joe’s disappearing into the mountains, to return or not, would bother her less.
He came inside just as she was turning off the living room light.
He said, “Plug in the tree.”
She almost told him she was going to bed but instead, she turned on the Christmas tree lights and went into the nook to sit on a pillow.
He had a stack of boxes with him, wrapped in pages torn from magazines, homemade wrapping paper.
He set the boxes around the tree, and Sabine saw that each was labeled. He kept out one small package and handed it to her.
She said, “You want me to open it now?”
“I have more for you for tomorrow.”
Wary without knowing why, she unwrapped the package. To her astonishment, it held a handcrafted wooden photo frame, with a photo inside.
They were young, Victor in his early twenties, Joe a child. They hung from the limbs of a sprawling oak tree, and both were grinning, Joe’s grin missing teeth.
“Thank you,” Sabine said. She didn’t know if it was strange for her to love two brothers, strange that Victor had been so much older, strange that he’d never told her of Joe’s existence or all of it equally strange. She asked, “Does this mean you’ve forgiven him?”
“I think I forgave him a long time ago.”
“But didn’t you still feel angry?”
“I’m not sure I’ll never not feel angry at that memory.”
“Teresa.”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “But it’s not my heart that felt hurt. Well, my heart was hurt by his choices. Mostly, it was pride.”
“He was disloyal to you,” Sabine said. “If I tried to make Greg, Lucy’s Greg, love me, that would be disloyalty. It would be an awful thing to do to my sister.” She realized what she was saying, that Victor had done an awful thing to Joe.
“But what if you fell in love with Greg? What if, by spending time with him because of her, you came to love him?”
Sabine said, “I’d think I was the unluckiest person in the world. But I’d turn my back on the situation.”
“Even if he didn’t want to be with your sister anymore and wanted to be with you?”
She considered that. “It’s impossible to really know, but I still think I’d pass. What happiness could he and I expect to have together by making Lucy unhappy?”
And what happiness had Victor expected? Hadn’t he cast off his brother, for all intents and purposes? Hadn’t he made clear that Teresa mattered to him more?
The thought chilled her. It wasn’t just that he’d hidden things from her. It was that this one hidden action suggested to her that she hadn’t known him at all.
“Fortunately,” Sabine said, “I’m not attracted to Greg, and he’s in love with Lucy.”
“Very fortunately,” Joe agreed.
They sat studying the picture. “I’m surprised,” she said, “that you chose to give me this.”
“It’s a copy.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He cracked a smile but made no comment.
It occurred to her that he wasn’t concerned anymore with whether she loved him as much as she’d loved Victor.
Odd how all the safety that had allowed her to love Victor so thoroughly was absent in Joe. She had known, when Teresa was dead and Victor showed interest in her, that he’d want to marry her. For all she knew, Joe Knoll didn’t believe in marriage—not for himself. And while she’d foreseen that Victor would be a devoted, attentive and practical husband, she could nearly guarantee that Joe would always love climbing more than her.
She used to cry for Victor’s return from the dead, but she no longer said that prayer.
Joe was an open door.
Unfortunately, the door led to the Death Zone.
She almost told him, then and there, that if he planned on going to K2 that spring, they should ease off on their relationship. But she’d never blackmail someone into quitting climbing. If she ended their relationship, it mustn’t be with any hope that he would change.
And she didn’t want to end their relationship. She felt as though part of her had died with Victor but was now reborn.
She would just have to be careful of her heart. She would have to measure her caring for him, not let it out of her control.
“I was wondering,” he said, “if on another mountain— The approach to K2 isn’t appropriate for it. But sometime, I’d like us all to be in the mountains together.”
“So would I,” she answered truthfully.
“I want to climb with you,” he said.
“I’m out of practice and out of shape. And I don’t think I’ll climb in the Himalayas again. At least not till my children are grown. But even then—” She didn’t finish.
“Do you think it’s self-serving?”
“Don’t you?” she demanded.
“Oh, yes.” He gazed into her eyes for a moment.
It shocked her, as it always shocked her, that he had admitted to a cruel selfishness, a selfishness that would not stop his slow suicide for love or money.
Somewhere, sometime, it would happen. He would die in the mountains.
Anger pulsed through her. Again, she nearly told him she didn’t want to be involved with him.
But she’d promised he could live in her house for a year.
Except for the days he’d be gone climbing K2?
She could tell him that his trip was a violation of the agreement they’d made. If she was insistent, it might save his life for another year.
But freedom was a sovereign right.
It trumped love.
And negated it.
She couldn’t say to herself with any conviction that if he loved her he wouldn’t go. Because he wasn’t wired that way. He had become wired to climb mountains no matter what.
He said, “Will you come up to the attic with me?”
“Yes.”
THEY MADE LOVE, and afterward she said, “Tell me about the book. The book you’re writing. Is it sold?”
“There’s some bidding going on.”
“Have you written part of it? What do you call that? A proposal?”
“Yes. The topic is why people climb, and it starts with a look at mountains as birthplaces of various religions. Then, indigenous attitudes toward different Himalayan peaks.” He caught Sabine’s suddenly closed expression. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking,” she said at last, “that I have no respect for the sport or the people who do it. I think it’s self-serving, yes. And most mountaineers I know become impressed with their own accomplishments to the extent of not noticing the basic human skills they haven’t mastered.”
She’d said it, and it was out. There was no taking it back, and she didn’t want to take it back.
“I’ve done it, too,” she continued. “It’s incredible. It’s hard, it’s amazing. You’re trying to do something in which dying is part of surviving. It’s a high like no other. The exhaustion, the thought that you really might not make it, the pain, the whole thing, all of it, I loved it. But it’s not life. It’s just not. It’s a way to keep from growing up.”
“You sound scared,” he said.
“Of what?” she snapped and sat up, then got to her feet and pulled on her clothes. “I have a life. Scared Lucy will die? Scared you will? Yes. It’s occurred to me. But I’m not telling anyone else how to live.”
“You just told me.”
“Merry Christmas,” she replied coldly, walked to the door, opened it and went down the stairs.
When she reached her own room, she shut her door and lay on the bed Victor had made for them and took his photo out of her nightstand.
Now it was easy to wish him back.
But she wondered whether, if Victor had not fallen in love with Teresa and married her, his younger brother would ever have climbed any mountain at all.
TORI HOVERED over her as she unwrapped the large flat box that was marked, “Love, Joe and Tori.” Mindful of her daughter’s obvious excitement and trying to keep last night’s spat with Joe from hurting this day and this moment, Sabine carefully separated tape from sky-blue tissue paper. From within, she drew out a stretch-lace dress in cloudy shades of gray and blue, and a long white hooded sweater-coat of woven raw silk.
“Now you can have a date!” Tori said. “Like Barbie.”
Sabine laughed as she hugged her youngest daughter.
Joe’s hand settled on the back of Sabine’s neck. “Tori said that if you and I were dating, you’d need pretty clothes.” His lips brushed the top of her head.
I can’t help it. I can’t help it. I love him. Loved him. Wanted him. Couldn’t stop—or change—her feelings.
Besides the clothes, he’d give her fiber—raw merino and more exotic fibers. As she opened each package—and there were many—she saw that he understood and respected what she most loved to do. While she refused him a reciprocal understanding.
He’d made things of wood for all the children—something Victor also used to do, though she wasn’t sure whether or not Joe knew that. For Tori, he had crafted a closet for Barbie doll clothes, for Maria a jewelry box and for Finn a wooden tank that shot wooden balls and which was Finn’s favorite present. He shot balls at Tori’s Barbie dolls, and when Tori then made the dolls lie down and rest, to recover from being hit, Finn joined in and made sure they had blankets on them.
But Joe had gone the extra mile. He had helped the children make gifts for Sabine. Maria had done her own. With the sense of responsibility of the oldest child, she had, on her own initiative, knit a scarf for her mother out of a wool the same blue as Sabine’s eyes. Finn had made a totem pole, of sorts, for Sabine and painted it with acrylic paints. Tori’s gift—besides the clothing, which Sabine would always think of as her Barbie date outfit—was a drawing.
“Karen wanted to help us make presents,” Tori said, “but I wanted Daddy to do it.”
“He’s not Daddy!” shouted Finn. “He’s Joe.”
“I can call him Daddy if I want,” Tori said.
“You’re stupid,” Finn told her. “You’re the stupidest one in Colorado.”
Joe said, “No good, buddy. You need to apologize.”
“No, I don’t!” Finn shrieked.
Joe took Finn upstairs for time-out, and Sabine asked Tori, “Why can’t you call him Joe? Daddy is a special word, and he’s not your daddy.”
Tori fell mulishly silent.
Maria abruptly said, “I miss Daddy.”
Sabine didn’t respond, not convinced that Maria really remembered anything about Victor.
“He used to take me to town whenever he went. He always took me on sleds. He always walked with me. He always wanted to be with me.”
She did remember.
“I like to be with you, too,” Sabine told her. She sat down beside Maria, on the pillows at the foot of the tree, and put her arm around her oldest child. “I miss him, too,” she said. “Do you want to go to the cemetery with me and visit his grave?”
Maria shrugged.
Only as Sabine hugged her did she notice that Joe had returned. How long had he been standing there?
“Daddy,” Tori said defiantly and ran to him, as though making a statement.
Joe picked her up. “Tori,” he said, “I don’t mind your calling me that, but only if it’s okay with your mom.”
K2, thought Sabine. A daddy who climbs mountains and might not come home….
“It’s okay,” she said.
Women did tie their lives to mountaineers. Women bore their children. Loved them. Waited for them.
Couldn’t she?
But Joe might not want that. Their relationship was still new, still untested.
Later, while the children were immersed in The Incredibles, Sabine began combing some of the wool Joe had given her, preparing it to spin into worsted.
Joe came and stretched out beside her, his long legs in blue jeans reaching alongside the tree.
He was her lover, and she felt tenderness toward him and too much love, too much for the risks he was willing to take.
He said, “It’s really okay with you if Tori—”
“Yes. Victor never even knew she was alive in me. Anyway, that’s not relevant. It’s fine. You need to realize that people will begin assuming things. You’re living here, my daughter calls you Daddy.”
“Is what they’re assuming true?”
She lay back against one of the pillows, still combing wool. “You tell me. Really, we haven’t known each other very long.”
“I love you,” he said.
He had never said it before. Not in the throes of their lovemaking. Never.
“And I you,” she answered.
She felt as though she’d known him longer, as though in some way she’d known him the whole time she’d known Victor and been without Victor and longer than that.
“I’m a very monogamous person,” he said.
She didn’t say anything. Having mountains for a mistress… Was that monogamy?
He tried again. “You said some heartfelt things last night.”
Yes, and she couldn’t take them back, couldn’t deny that she still believed and felt those things. Except— “I do respect you,” she told him. “You’re a good person. And I understand the lure of—what you do. But…I don’t think I can handle it with much grace, Joe. It isn’t something anyone with a family should do. But I guess we’re not your family.”
“I think you are.”
She sighed. “My daughter calls you Daddy. Can you imagine me explaining to her that you died because you were climbing mountains?”
“My grandma and grandpa died climbing mountains.”
Neither she nor Joe had noticed Maria approaching. She often appeared silently, a shadow. Something in her face reminded Sabine of Victor, and now she longed for the person whose genes had mingled with hers, the person who had been a true husband, who’d been willing to make the required sacrifices.
But Victor never wanted to climb K2.
Sabine reached for her daughter and hugged her. Maria stared at Joe. “You’re a mountain climber, aren’t you?” she said.
Joe nodded. “Your mother is, too. Did you know that?”
“My mother doesn’t do anything dangerous,” Maria answered. “She knows we need her, so nothing’s going to happen to her.”
Joe studied Maria, wondering why she was telling him this. Because you called Sabine a mountain climber, why else? Maria was saying that it wasn’t true—that Sabine was her mother, a mother who wouldn’t climb mountains at the risk of her life.
A striking contrast to Joe Knoll.
He abruptly found himself in the position of other climbers he’d known, who left children, pregnant wives, girlfriends, loved ones behind, who climbed mountains despite the suffering of those people. He had understood the anguish of his colleagues, partners and friends. He had understood what made them do it anyhow.
Now it had happened to him. He had a girlfriend, and she had three children, children related to him, his brother’s, his blood. He was enmeshed in their lives and wanted to become more so. Yet he still wanted the freedom to go, to climb and to die in the mountains.
It was a selfish urge, and he didn’t know by what right he felt justified in yielding to it.
It’s just who I am. I climb mountains. That’s what I do.
But didn’t he make sleds as well?
“Are you going to die in the mountains?” asked Maria.
This girl did not love him, did not care about him. But what if she began to do so? How could he say to a child that he might die in the mountains? He didn’t know how to answer. Even to say I hope not would not be precisely true. Where would he prefer to die?
In Sabine’s arms?
That was how he was supposed to feel, and he suddenly doubted that he was the man for her.
Why, then, did he feel contentment at the idea of growing old with her, perhaps having more children or just raising those she’d had with Victor?
“I don’t plan to die in the mountains,” he said.
Sabine didn’t say anything.
She didn’t say, No one ever plans that.
Joe wished he could know her thoughts, then realized he probably already did. The dangers were inherent, and there was nothing to say about them.
If he continued to climb, there was a good chance that, someday, one of his expedition partners or a wife of someone he was climbing with would come to her door to tell her he’d died.
And in the spring Lucy, too, would head for the Himalayas.
Nepal, not Pakistan. It was unlikely their paths would cross in Asia.
What had happened to him that he could no longer feel, with certainty, that he had an inalienable right to climb high and dangerous mountains, to go into the Death Zone?
He had become Sabine’s lover, but he had taken other lovers in the past, and they had not affected his feelings about climbing.
She was Victor’s widow, but that, too, seemed immaterial.
In the short time he’d known her and begun to help her, with shoveling, with Finn, with the details of daily life, ever since he’d begun living in the house—in that time, he seemed to have stretched and grown. He found himself becoming someone new.
And isn’t that really why you came to Oro?
But he still wanted K2.
Maria asked if she could spin, and Sabine helped her begin on the wheel Victor had made.
If Sabine ever said to him that Victor wouldn’t have left her to climb K2, Joe would point out what Victor had proven himself capable of.
Marrying his brother’s fiancée.
Neglecting to mention to his second wife that he even had a brother.
Saint Victor.
Well, Joe was no candidate for sainthood, and this summer he intended to climb the second-highest mountain in the world.