CHAPTER XII
A CONNOISSEUR OF LIGHT
"I'll be back in a few moments," Julia told the driver as she climbed out of the back of the green and white City cab. They were in the parking lot of Steve Quinn's veterinary clinic on La Brea Avenue near Melrose. Steve rumbled into the parking lot in his pick-up right after the cab.
It was early in the morning, December 22.
Julia was lugging a cat carrier toward the entrance. Buckley was inside the carrier. Buckley, Julia's Manx, resembled a big brown and black striped watermelon with legs. Otherwise healthy, he had an eating disorder. Every time he was inadvertently allowed to binge, he got plugged. An enema was required to unplug him. Because of that, whenever Julia traveled, she couldn't leave him in her helpful neighbor's care with the rest of her cat family.
In the bed of the pick-up, Julia saw a Christmas tree. For the clinic waiting room, she knew. The bouquet of the tree, so pungent and sweet, immediately brought back the memory of all the good Christmases she had shared with her family, and in recent years, with Paco and his. She experienced a completely unexpected and altogether too fleeting moment of light-hearted Christmas cheer, which ended almost before it began.
Part of that good moment, of course, was seeing Steve, even if now it was almost as though they didn't know each other. She missed him so much, she felt a sudden impulse to go to him and to say or do whatever it might take to make things right with him. If she did that, then she might also give in to the temptation, the luxury of, unburdening herself to him. If he learned the truth about her, she feared she might lose his good opinion forever.
"Who you gggot in there? Steve wanted to know as he got out of the truck.
"Buckley . . . But just for boarding," Julia said.
Julia was well aware that Steve's stammer emerged only when he was around people he wasn't sure of himself with. And Steve, Julia knew, wasn't at all comfortable or sure of himself with her anymore.
At the reception desk, Julia handed Buckley over to Sandy. Just as Steve came in with the Christmas tree, his partner Liz came out from one of the treatment rooms and into the waiting room.
"Stay and help us decorate, Jules," Liz urged.
"Yyyes," Steve said, "Sssstay."
"I can't," Julia said, although there was probably time for that before Jay was meeting her at the house and they were driving to the airport.
"I'm flying home for Christmas, but Jay gave me the number of your hotel. Mmmaybe I'll give you a call CCChristmas Day," Steve said.
"Sure," Julia said, hoping he wouldn't.
"HHhow's it going in grief therapy?" he asked her. She didn't answer. "Well, I hope you'll gggive it a chance," he said.
Julia turned quickly away. Steve hurried from the waiting room and disappeared up the corridor. She was still upset with him for his part in railroading her into therapy, far more upset than she was with her with Jay. But she felt relieved, too. Steve's role in the "conspiracy" had presented her with the justification she had been looking for to withdraw from him, the way she had from everyone else.
As Julia left the clinic that morning, a woman with a pair of piebald Great Danes on red nylon leashes was just coming in through the door. The dogs must have picked up the scent of cats on Julia's clothes. Although the woman tried to restrain them, she resembled a kite on dual strings as the slavering dogs bounded at Julia and managed to wrap their leashes around her lower legs so tightly she nearly fell over. She lost the hold she had on her purse. A disorganized jumble of loose cash, change, make-up oddments, and credit cards fell in a spray across the floor. While trying to subdue the Danes, the apologetic woman did what she could to help Julia retrieve her things.
***
Julia happened to be looking in the right direction when Jay Russo came stomping back down Bright Angel trail. He abruptly stopped when he spotted her, but thirty yards short of where she was perched on a rock that was more comfortable than it looked. Her right hiking boot and sock were off. Julia could tell Jay wasn't thrilled about coming back for her. "Everyone else is way up the trail," he announced. (A messenger with an important dispatch from the front.) "What's the hold up this time?"
"Pebble in my boot," she said.
Julia, Jay and four of Jay's friends, whom Julia didn't really know at all, were spending the holidays at the Grand Canyon. Although Jay's friends consisted of two men and two women, they weren't couples; just people like Jay, and Julia herself now, too, who didn't have a place to be, or people they particularly wanted to be with, at the holidays and had, therefore, decided to come here.
They had arrived earlier in the day. After they checked in to the old El Tovar Hotel, then had lunch, someone suggested that a brief hike down Bright Angel trail to Three-Mile Point would be a wonderful way to spend the balance of the warm and sunny afternoon. Tomorrow (December 23rd), bright and early, they would all be hiking the more arduous South Kaibab trail with backpacks, descending as far as the shortened daylight hours would allow and still return to the hotel before dark.
"Great way to spend Christmas." Jay had said in August when he proposed the trip.
Yeah, great.
The Grand Canyon or any other place in Arizona was the last place Julia wanted to spend her first Christmas without Paco. She had put her foot down and told Jay she wasn't going several times over the fall, twice yesterday as she made arrangements for the neighbors to feed her cats while she was away, and even once that morning on the way to the airport. Then in the terminal, it had, for a brief time, seemed like she wouldn't be allowed to make the trip. With increased security measures, it took a lot of fast talking on Jay's part, and five pieces of other ID (checkbook, credit cards, library card) to prove she was, indeed, Julia Morton Berelli, when it turned out her drivers license was missing (Probably still somewhere on the floor at Steve's clinic, she suspected). In those uncertain moments, she had panicked a little at the prospect of spending the holidays alone and she was somewhat embarrassed by the amount of relief she felt as she trudged after Jay through the jetway and onto the plane.
So here Julia was. Jay might have chosen Aspen, or Jamaica, or London or even Albania as a likely spot for a holiday vacation. Why the Grand Canyon? At the time, Julia had thought his choice--considering what he knew Paco's feelings about the place to be--was faintly blockheaded.
With exaggerated motions, stalling, she massaged the ball of her foot. Frankly, she was sorry to see Jay, because when she had figured out she could give him and the others the slip by simply traveling at about half the pace they had set, she finally began--in a grim way--to enjoy the great crevasse.
She noticed how the crags, cliffs and bluffs around her were undergoing a paint job. With the sun disappearing behind the canyon's western rim, the mauves, purples and slate-blues of early afternoon were now throbbing tangerine and terra cotta. The first sample of air refrigerated by the shadows was still twanging her tastebuds, and she could feel it creeping down the collar of her old suede blazer. She heard the sound of rocks falling from somewhere down the trail below her like popcorn popping, and she could smell the juniper and pinon and the pine. Above her, an eagle soared in languid circles.
For ages, no matter where Julia was, she was never where she wanted to be. But she liked it here, and it occurred to her that it wouldn't be a complete waste of time if she remained perched where she was for the age it would take to familiarize herself with every nuance of light on the cliffs before her; if she stayed right here until she could call herself a connoisseur of light.
Propelled by a downdraft, the eagle dropped to twenty feet above her head. Julia watched its progress until she lost it in the light.
"You coming, or what?" Jay wanted to know.
"I think I'll rest here for a few more minutes." She flapped her sock against the rock. "Don't wait."
"I went to a lot of trouble to put this trip together."
Julia knew that actually it had been Jay's assistant at the Studio who made all the arrangements.
"Can't you at least make an effort?"
Whether he believed it or not, she was making one.
"Is there something else wrong besides the usual?"
"Not a thing. I'm fine. Really."
He pulled off the ball cap he was wearing. His hair stood up in damp spikes. "I hate it when you're like this--when I can't do a thing with you, you know?"
She slowly pulled on her sock. She knew.
The eagle dropped lower. It was now no more than fifteen feet above her head. She could see the downy, white and mottled thickness of the feathers of its under-wings and belly, the way its talons tucked under its body
Why is it dropping in so close?
She almost called to Jay to walk down and take a look, but when she focused her gaze up the trail, she saw that he was already trudging back up and around the bend away from her.
She scanned the sky for the bird but it had vanished. She pulled on her hiking boot and tied it.
Suddenly the eagle plummeted straight down before her and shrieked in her face. The sound reverberated through the solid silence of the Bright Angel atmosphere.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF SALVATORE BERELLI
October 3, 1960
Juanita's puppy sits in perpetual vigil outside the lean-to, waiting for Juanita's period of seclusion to end, and her subsequent reappearance. At night I can hear him whimpering. She speaks soothingly to him through a splintered slat. I understand exactly the longing he feels.
I wish I had decamped a week ago. I seem to be paralyzed. Perhaps watching the process as Juanita and Dewey are inexorably joined in marriage is the exact punishment I deserve.
(to be continued)
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