Manitowoc, Wisconsin, didn’t have any mountains.
It didn’t even have proper hills. It was right on Lake Michigan, and the city was as flat as any town at sea level. Rosemary drove west, through farmland, small towns, forest, irrationally itching for something to climb.
She didn’t know if it was legal for her to drive in America. She didn’t care. There was no traffic to speak of on the back roads, and it wasn’t difficult to point the car in a straight line and stick to the speed limit. What was the worst thing that could happen?
What could be worse than what had already happened?
She drove through nothing, shot down the highway until finally the land started to undulate and she began to feel hopeful that she would find something to throw her body against.
A brown state park sign. She pulled off where it told her to, parked in the lot, shoved keys and mobile in her pockets, and pointed herself down the trail that seemed most likely to head uphill.
She hiked as fast as she could push herself, counting her footsteps, one after the next. Sweat beaded at her hairline and bloomed under the arms of the button-up blouse she’d purchased on her Manhattan shopping excursion. Mud caked the sides of her supple leather flats, ruining them, but it was all ruined, wasn’t it? It didn’t make a difference if she ruined it some more.
Finally, the trail acquired a mild slope. She pushed herself harder, willing her muscles to burn, seeking the ache, the pain, the fatigue that would wipe her blank and let her drop away inside her head.
She didn’t want to think. She wanted to erase herself in exertion. She wanted to count.
The hilltop came too quickly. There was a concrete pad, a bench, and a picnic table. She crossed to the scenic overlook, her pulse beating in her fingers, which swelled when she hiked and had always ached on Everest, even at Base Camp.
The view gave her nothing but rolling green pastureland. Nothing threatening or intense, nothing to test herself against. Her hands curled into fists.
She hated this.
Rosemary hated that she’d walked out on her daughter, that she’d fought with her and failed her and left her and disappointed her.
She hated that she and Kal had broken up. That they’d careened right into the fight she’d been trying to avoid and found themselves in a place as bleak and impossible as she’d feared.
Most of all, she hated that she’d flung her body up this bump of soil in an attempt to obliterate herself, because it made it all too obvious—too stupidly obvious—that this was what she’d been doing from the beginning. She’d never had a hope of finding herself on Everest. Not when she’d been trying so hard to erase herself completely. She’d given herself a plan to follow so she didn’t have to make any decisions.
Her marriage had controlled her. She’d left it only to replace one kind of control with another. Anything to keep from having to authentically live her life.
It had literally taken an avalanche to shake her out of her tracks.
Rosemary sat on the picnic table. A robin perched atop the signpost at the end of the trail, singing its robin song to the world at large. It looked bedraggled, as though it had recently molted or would soon. It wanted a mate.
She wanted her daughter back. And Kal.
God, she wanted Kal.
She extracted her mobile from her pocket and stared at the screen. She’d like to phone him, but she didn’t know what they could possibly say. She’d left him mute and angry, stolen his mother’s car, stranded him with people he didn’t know, to wait for her to return.
She wanted to speak with someone, though. She didn’t think she could work her way out of this mess alone. Rosemary opened the contacts app on her phone. Allie had put her number in, but Rosemary didn’t want to speak with Allie.
Whose number did she know?
The only one she could think of besides Winston’s was her ex-mother-in-law Evita’s.
Evita would be home. She lived in a mansion with an old-fashioned telephone in every room, and she always picked up. She considered it unforgivably rude to deliberately let a call go to the answering machine.
She’d also been at odds with Rosemary throughout the entirety of her marriage, never approved of her, and manipulated her son into making mistakes that nearly destroyed his relationship with his brother.
Rosemary’s feelings about Evita were a complicated mixture of respect, disappointment, and admiration—none of which suggested that she would make a good confidante.
On the other hand, Evita had always had a way with Beatrice. She’d been happily married to Richard for decades. And Rosemary had no one else to phone.
She tapped in the numbers.
Evita picked up on the third ring, her “Hello?” so familiar that Rosemary immediately started to cry.
“Evita? It’s Rosemary.”
“Rosemary! What an unexpected pleasure.”
She swiped at her cheekbone with the back of her hand. “Where are you answering?”
“Pardon?”
“What room are you in?” She sounded wobbly. Needy.
“I’m dressing for dinner.” Evita spoke with a hint of censure, as usual. “Why do you ask?”
“I wanted to be able to imagine you.” She could, now. She could see Evita at her vanity, the dressing gown she wore in the late afternoon, lifting her eyebrows so that she could apply her evening makeup perfectly.
“Are you in trouble? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I’m having a difficult day.”
“Where are you phoning from?”
“Wisconsin.”
“You’re visiting Beatrice?”
“We had such an awful fight. And I’ve fallen in love with a man, only we’ve broken it off. Last night. I’m at my wit’s end, and I decided to phone you.”
“How’s Beatrice faring?”
“She seems happy here with her film project. You know about her film.”
“Richard and I are investors. Although I’m not sure ‘investment’ is the best way to describe our financial interest, since it’s difficult to believe we’ll ever see a return on our stake. Are you enjoying Wisconsin? We’ve been invited to visit, you know. Winston’s girlfriend, Allie, has suggested that Richard might enjoy seeing her collection of antiquities.”
Rosemary curled her body around the phone, her chin tucked. Tears dripped off her nose onto the seat of the picnic table. Evita’s blithe refusal to engage with her misery was somehow both frustrating and absolutely correct. “Wisconsin is horrible.”
“Perhaps that’s a hasty judgment,” Evita chided. “How long have you been visiting?”
“Can we…” Rosemary sucked in a breath. She’d forgotten about breathing. “Actually, I can’t do the polite chitchat thing. I think I really need you to get into the guts of something with me, because I’m so fucking confused, I’m going out of my mind.”
“Is the language necessary?”
“No. Yes, maybe. I think so. I just need to talk to somebody, and your number was the only one I knew by heart.”
“That’s flattering.”
“Sorry.”
“Never mind. Tell me what we’re getting into the guts of, darling. Transatlantic calls are expensive.”
“I’ve got bigger problems. I just figured out I wasted the last few years on a boneheaded plan because I was too afraid of what it might have felt like to actually live my life. I’ve ruined my relationship with Beatrice”—here, her voice broke—“driven away the man I love because I was selfish, and now I’m sitting on top of a picnic table on a hilltop in some unknown Wisconsin park, crying because I have no idea what’s next.”
“You’re sitting on top of a picnic table?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never seen you sit on top of a table.”
“I never would have let you see me sit on top of a table. You wouldn’t have liked it.”
“You were always so worried about what I liked,” Evita said dismissively. “How was I to know you wanted to sit atop tables? All those years you were married to Winston, I could never get you to tell me a single thing except what I wanted to hear. I’m glad you’re phoning me now you’re divorced. I’d like to get to know you a bit.”
It was such a disconcerting statement, Rosemary lifted her legs onto the table, spun, and laid down. “Evita?”
“Yes?”
“Was I a good mum?”
“Imagine you asking me that.”
“Whenever Beatrice spilled gravy at dinner or wore a dress you didn’t approve of, you criticized me. Did I do such a terrible job?”
“You did a fine job. Just look at Beatrice. She’s lovely.”
“She could be lovely in spite of me.”
“No.”
“It’s only that it always seemed easy for you to accept everything Beatrice did, forgive her every flaw. It was harder for me.”
“You’re her mother. If you’re interested in loving a child and having it be easy, try being a grandmother. Being a grandmother is delightful.”
Rosemary found it was better to weep flat on her back. The tears ran off into her hair and her ears. She felt appropriately prostrate with grief. “So you think I did all right?”
Evita made a clucking noise. “You did your best, and it worked out in the end. Anything that hasn’t worked out yet will in time. It’s not as though Winston and Neville have been thrilled with my performance every moment of their lives, but they still come around on the holidays, so that’s all right.”
“How do you know when you’re doing a good job and when you’re fu—messing it up?”
“You don’t.”
“That’s discouraging.”
“Darling, you’ve only ever gone wrong in one way,” Evita said. “You’re not so very creative. You and Winston didn’t love each other. You both looked for love outside your marriage. Winston had the office, and you had the house and charity work. You sought my approval because you didn’t know where else to look for it. That’s not how it is when a marriage is working. Richard and I love each other, and we find love and approval in our marriage. We do what we want to do in the world because we both know the love is there. Or look at Neville and Mary Catherine, or Winston with this Allie. They have the right idea.”
Rosemary dried her temple with her wrist. “That’s what I was doing with the climbing? Asking the world to love me?”
“Of course. What did you think you were doing?”
“Finding my best self.”
Evita made a noise, half choked, half laughing. “Honestly. If you’ve met someone you love, try not doing what you did last time. I think you’ll be pleased with the result.”
“That sounds like good advice.”
“I only give good advice.”
“I seem to remember you giving Winston bad advice on more than one occasion.”
“He’s my child, Rosemary. All a mother ever wants is for her children to be happy and thrive in the world. When we see our children suffering, that’s when we meddle and get ourselves into trouble. You want Beatrice to be happy. She wants to be happy, and to know you love her. When she needs you, she’ll tell you, and she’ll make it clear what you’re meant to do. Give her money, or maternal advice, or be her best friend or her mentor. It’s actually quite simple if you’re not determined to make it complicated.”
There was a rustling on the phone line, and then Evita’s voice, muffled. “That’s just Richard,” she said. “We need to head to dinner. I trust you can sort through the rest of this on your own?”
“I guess. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
A pause followed, the sort of pause in which Rosemary would have once felt obligated to tell Evita she loved her, although she’d never done so. She’d always let the guilty pause pass. “I love you, Evita.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rosemary, pull yourself together. Find a strong cup of tea. Call me in a week or so to let me know how things have turned out.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Ta.”
The call disconnected. Rosemary let her arm flop to the side. She laid on top of a picnic table soaking up the sunlight and thought about whether she’d made everything more complicated than it had to be.
Whether all she had to do was love her daughter, and love Kal, and let her love be the center of everything.
It sounded worth a shot.