	RodMer Short Story Package NN Vermont Weekend
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Here is Short Story Package NN, a short story by Merike Lugus.

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VERMONT WEEKEND

Approximately 10,000 words

We've come here ostensibly to see the fall colours. But secretly, I've come because there is a mountain. A small one, sure, and not very steep. Worst of all, there's a paved road almost to the top. But never mind; I've been thinking of climbing a mountain. I've been thinking that climbing a mountain might be a cure for this hollowness, this paralysis in me. It's been going on too long.

When my marriage came to an end, so did the world. The great granite rock of marriage, which I had thought securely anchored the tower of my life, split in two. Now, as the dust from the resulting collapse is clearing, it seems there is nothing to keep the ghosts in their place. It is as though the underside of human life has been exposed: greed and cruelty; pain and suffering. I look around me and I see a world in which kindness has vanished.

And then there is Julia, refusing to lie down and be dead. In this emptiness she still roams. In death she still wears red. She keeps pace with me, injecting me with doubts. Without my rock, I have nowhere to put her, no way to keep her from touching, judging, taking what she wants. It's been over a year since Julia mysteriously came into my studio, ten months since she died, and ten months since I've done any work.

On the bright side, there's a new man in my bed. A new beginning or really bad timing? That's the trouble with ghosts. They have Z-ray vision: they zoom in on your insecurities and crank up the volume. In Julia's case, though, I must allow for her envy. Even so, I feel uneasy, as if I've outmaneuvered her this one time and she is not pleased.

This man, my man, he's tall with an aristocratic nose--looks a bit like the one who follows behind the Queen of England. I call him Duke and he doesn't mind. He bows his head in a most endearing way and smiles his complex smile, which suggests he is both pleased and impossible to please.

He says he fell in love with me in the classical way, the minute I entered the room, and that was because of my tragic air. Like a sacrificial virgin, I timidly entered the labyrinth of the minotaur. He was about to handle my divorce case, so he knew I'd be riddled with complications. It's called baggage. We're both intrigued by baggage. In that, maybe we're going against the trend. The looking-for-love ads in the papers seem to prefer carry-on relationships: defined boundaries, comprehensible emotions, up-front expectations. All that and passion too, of course.

But what's more intriguing than a hefty unopened suitcase? With key or without. What's more intriguing than a complex layering of history? Oh, look, before he became an office tower, here is evidence of a gothic cathedral! And deeper yet, here is the underground stream, the cause of the crumbling of the limestone!

I'm looking down at his peaceful sleeping face. He always falls asleep promptly. That's because he steers clear of innuendo and never reads between lines. That's how he navigates the world. I envy him his equanimity.

I ask myself, do I love him?

I believe in love.

Julia laughs.

We left Toronto yesterday noon and arrived in Stowe towards evening. A whiff of skunk hung faintly in the cool air as we lifted our suitcases, our camera and bags of food from the blue Datsun to the hotel room. We scarcely spoke during the trip. He accused me of not enjoying the drive, of not seeing the beauty we had set out to see. He accused me of being depressed. What kind of accusation is that?

The charge annoyed me. As if I had signed up to be a perfect travel companion. As if I had any control over it. And besides, it was emptiness, not depression. Or is that splitting hairs? Whatever, my work was suffering. My resolve had come to a screeching halt, and I was probably drinking too much. That was Duke's opinion.

"Ah, Jenna, Jenna, Jenna, I'm not being a judge," he said, feeling his way carefully around the words, "but it's been a long time now. I know death is a big number with you, but she wasn't really a friend. I mean, it's not as if you chose her."

"Big number," I say under my breath, then aloud, "I'll be good; I know what this place is costing you, prime time." He smiles at my sarcasm.

His dig about Julia not being a real friend was on the mean side. But he had a right to his perspective. And maybe she wasn't. Nevertheless, she was my half-sister, just three days younger than me. We shared the same father, a man I scarcely knew as I was growing up. That was because soon after I was born he followed the other woman to Sweden--or was it Denmark?--and disappeared from our lives, my mother's and mine. He reappeared with Julia as I was starting my first year of high-school. Not that he announced his return. The way it happened was that on the first day of school I found myself sitting next to a girl named Julia and discovered an amazing coincidence: we shared the same unusual surname, Appleyard. There was a second coincidence: both our fathers had been diplomats. What in the world had this man...this father...our father...this master of diplomacy...been thinking? Letting this bomb fall wherever, whenever...or not...? But that's another story.

I was just learning the flute. Julia was already quite advanced. Our father--it feels strange to call him that--told her he was pleased we'd found one another. It was not an accident that he had chosen this school for Julia. He had some fantasy that we would become best friends, like twins. He knew she was lonely, and he was guilty as hell. Julia thought his dream was all a big hoot. She wrinkled her nose when she said the word 'twins'. Except for our height and light bone-structure, neither of us looked like our father. Let's just say that while Julia was drop-dead stunning, my face was, well...interesting.

My father never told my mother that he was back in Canada, and I never told her either. I sometimes visited him with Julia, guiltily, but with a curiosity and a hunger for something that I never understood. My mother hadn't remarried, but there were lots men in her life and she was resolved never to settle on one or to become bitter. My father was dead to her and I always felt it would have destroyed her to know how much I sought out his love. That, too, is another story.

She was a well-known actress, I've been told. Julia's mother, I mean. But apparently she had not been prepared for raising children: Julia had grown up a very lonely child, lost in the whirl of her parents' social agendas in various countries. And then her mother disappeared. Eventually her--our--father was transferred back to Canada.

We put on our heavy sweaters and walking shoes in silence and took the road that bordered on the golf course just behind Snowflake Inn. According to our map, it eventually led to one of the low mountains that encircled the vast basin of land. In the west, a white glow outlined the chain of rounded peaks. Wisps of dark clouds behind them seemed to give them wings. The man beside me was growing dimmer, stranger. Here in the unfamiliar quiet, sounds and gestures were left suspended, unabsorbed. As we turned a bend, the trail of skunk scent faded and the smell of wood smoke took over. A light from the window of a shadowy farmhouse flickered through a web of branches.

We stopped in the middle of the road and craned our necks to find stars. Duke pointed straight up. "There! he said. There's the first star." There was no trace of the earlier irritation left in his voice. His knack for pushing the 'renewal' button is one of his most endearing qualities. Like a dog, he seems incapable of carrying grudges. To date, he's never said 'I told you so'.

The twilight sky was actually brim-full of pale stars. I teased him about his myopia. He put his arm around my waist. All colour had disappeared and now the crickets and the smell of pine were the only reminders of the golf course. We were good together, quiet, our bodies close. It was only when we were apart that the howl of the desert encircled me.

I had bought myself a litre of Inglenook along the way and now I filled up a bathroom glass for myself, then sat by the edge of the bed and watched Duke sleep. He looked like an obedient child, his hands neatly crossed over his chest, his brown hair skimming over his forehead as if freshly combed. His long, faintly skewered nose bore witness to his litigious nature. Duke, who didn't believe in dreams, had slipped into one. I followed the rapid motion of his pupils under the delicate lids, feeling vaguely victorious: here was evidence that he, too, sometimes visited the underworld. I could tease him about his failure to pick up souvenirs.

A thought kept gnawing at me. Why did he have such contempt for Julia? He claimed he scarcely knew her--had met her at various social functions over the years long before he knew me. She had once been married to one of his wealthy clients, someone she then proceeded to, as he put it, 'take to the cleaners'. My role with her, in the end, he called social work. I called it friendship. Her appeal to my sympathy he called bloodsucking.

It surprised him to hear that Julia was responsible for our coming together in the first place. When my marriage ended, for the first time in my life I had turned to Julia for advice: she had considerable experience with lawyers. She had given me three names. I had started at the top of the list and that's what landed me in Duke's office. Other than that brief connecting, the circles we moved in drifted further and further until eventually our contact came down to notes she sent from various parts of the world. Sometimes a photo was enclosed, perhaps to prove to me that she mingled with the glitterati.

Maybe in some legal sense I had spent enough time mourning Julia. In Duke's critique of her he honed in only from the winning angles.

How do you feel when you're with her?

Shitty.

What does she give you?

Insomnia.

Can you trust her?

I'm on my toes, always.

I rest my case.

She hadn't presented me with an emotional crisis for years. This one was ill timed. It came at the end of last summer, just as Duke and I were moving into a house together. She arrived at my studio, unannounced, thin, her face smooth and shiny with make-up, a purplish rouge artfully blended and disappearing into a dark pulled-back hairline.

"You look marvelous, my dear, considering..." was the first thing she said.

I didn't take the bait, though this was one way she dangled me. Later I would be making guesses: Considering you haven't had a face lift? Considering the weight you've put on? Considering the clothes you're wearing?

The angularity of her movements brought back my old fascination. She moved towards my easel with the hunger and grace of a cheetah, her chin leading, her shoulders rolling. Duke called it prowling. Despite myself I started to tidy up loose sketches and tubes of paint.

"Oh, please don't bother, she insisted, looking around. This is just how I had imagined it. It's so...so real."

I understood what she meant. Sometimes I felt my studio was the most real thing about my life since my divorce. Sometime I stood at the doorway with a pair of binoculars, surveying in detail the tubes and jars and charcoal sketches and photographs, as if the piling up of minutiae would somehow increase my reality.

"Ah, who am I trying to kid," Julia said abruptly, then plopped into the one plush chair in the room and crossed one long leg over the other. "You always saw right through me. Didn't you used to say I married a house in Rosedale and one in Juan de Pines?"

"That would have been Peter," I said as I washed out two wine glasses. I filled them with sherry and offered her one. Peter was the husband I had divorced. He may or may not have had an affair with Julia. Given the rush of protests and denial by both parties at the time, given Julia's love of the chase, I know the answer, but, as Duke would put it, I have no evidence that would hold up in court.

"Well, I hear all sorts of things," she said, returning doggedly to the question of how I perceived her. "But you do think I'm shallow." It was a statement rather than a question.

I absorbed the oblique flattery...as if I were the guardian of the deep. But I remained wary. "I've sometimes envied you," I said.

She laughed and gulped down half her glass. We looked at each other, hoping perhaps the sherry would produce some convergence of mood. She bit her lip. I bit mine.

Cautiously I told her about the new love in my life. It seemed to me I detected a smirk on her face, but quite kindly and earnestly she warned me of relationships on the rebound. She questioned my emotional readiness to make binding decisions.

Then quite abruptly she stood up and looked down at me. "I know they think I'm faking," she said. She spread her arms, appealing, it seemed, to a higher being. I sensed a panic in her, as she had the look of someone quite stranded.

"What?" I said.

She sat down again, smoothed back her hair, re-crossed her legs and rummaged in her bag for a cigarette.

"Men don't believe women like me." The cigarette quaked between her lips as she tried to light it and talk at the same time.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"Neither do women, for that matter," she continued, dismissing me with a flutter of fingers.

As years before, I found myself becoming a spectator, totally absorbed, mentally assisting her as she chose each word, as she dragged on the cigarette. I remember thinking I would keep her away from Duke. There would be a natural antagonism between someone like her and someone like him. Two magnets repelling one another. The irresistible tension of resistance. I had a distinct memory of playing with magnets as a child, a fascination with the slippery repulsion between two circular discs, and then the quick flip and the strong bond that was almost impossible to pry loose.

"They can't find anything wrong with me. The next step is the loony bin." She waved off my interjections of concern. I poured her more sherry. She told me the whole story of the past two years. The mysterious pain in her head, the number of consultations with specialists. We pored over the labels on the prescription drugs she carried in her purse.

To look at her flawless face, one would never suspect pain, except for one small shadow between her brows which deepened from time to time.

"But enough of that," she said abruptly. "I didn't come here only to complain, though I am grateful to you for listening."

Carefully she placed her hands on the table in front of her. They were the only underdeveloped part of her body, small and childlike, though well looked after. I noticed a magnificent emerald ring on her right hand. I stifled my urge to ask if it was real. I'd never seen one before.

When I looked into her face I saw for the first time a very real desperation. Her eyes seemed to be pleading with me.

"I want you to find something beautiful in me," she said. Her eyes were moist and I knew this was the closest she would allow herself to come to tears.

"You are a very beautiful woman," I said, with genuine admiration.

She removed the ring and pushed it towards me. I pushed it back.

"I don't understand," I said.

"You're the only one I can trust," she said. Her voice was a half-whisper and her eyes came close to unlocking an aching love I had once felt for her. I found myself repeating an old equation: I lost a father, she lost a mother...therefore... Dimly I had believed that a sister was a treasure, if only I knew how to open it.

She pushed the ring back. "I want you to do a portrait of me," she said quickly. Suddenly she grabbed the ring and walked across the room to the wall where my tools hung from nails. She slipped the ring onto one holding a roll of masking tape. She tottered slightly on her high heels.

"I don't want any sittings," she said, cutting the air with her hand. "You're the master of metaphor, no? Well, look all you want now," she said and struck a pin-up pose, wrapping herself in her red cashmere cape, forming her lips into an O, a parody of Marilyn Monroe.

I smiled. "Is that how you think I see you?"

"I hope not or I wouldn't have come here." She sighed heavily as if a burden had been lifted from her. She pulled away the cape dramatically and dragged it behind her to the chair, swiveled abruptly and sat down. I remember thinking that the world was her runway.

We joked about our high-school days, discreetly avoiding the more painful years which came later. I reminded her of her habit of sucking on her fountain pen until the ink ran down her chin like a goatee and she'd be excused from class.

"Remember Miss MacDonald? She wouldn't let you go...said you'd done it on purpose."

"It was a Parker pen," Julia said.

"Yes, I remember it very well."

Indeed I did. She had made the Parker pen sound like it was worth a million dollars, easily worth the red jacket my mother had made for me. The beautiful red jacket so cleverly constructed as to suggest the waist line and hips that I so dearly wanted that first year of high school. But even more, I wanted the friendship of the fabulous Julia who arrived from somewhere overseas with an aura of celebrity because her father was a diplomat and her mother a famous actress. Her--our--father's postings at various embassies is what gave the illusion that she came from a place larger, more stupendous even than Europe. And nothing was more stupendous than her accent.

We toyed with the bond that still lay between us, each of us hesitating.

"Of course I will do your portrait," I said, making up my mind. Perhaps it was the sherry working on me. "I don't know what you expect, but I'll give it a try."

I decided to tell her of the strange coincidence that just the other night I had dreamt about her. It was the same dream I'd had several times over the years, the one about a secret loft. Julia was always ahead of me, just as in real life. I stumbled hopelessly through dark tunnels, and when finally I caught up, I saw her pink calves disappearing through an opening in the ceiling. A golden light emanated from above and I followed her eagerly to the place where unopened treasure chests lay along the rim of consciousness. Try as I may, I can never open the lids in my dreams. Yet, like a perennially hopeful child, I linger, waiting for something to be revealed.

Julia stared beyond me, a breathtaking sorrow in her eyes, making it clear that this time I could never follow.

"I envy you for that, Jenna," she said.

"For what?"

"Your dream. I have no place left to go."

"It was a happy dream," I reassured her. In one crazy moment I promised her that yes, of course, I would find the beauty in her. Yes, such things were possible, and surely it would not be difficult. She listened intently, her dark eyes darting from left to right, glancing at me and then away.

As she was leaving, she paused at the door and said, "Oh, I'll leave you the one in Juan de Pines."

"Excuse me?"

"You'll see." She winked at me and was gone.

Ten months later she was dead. I've taken her request as a holy mission. Before her death there were several false starts in my sketchbook, and now, I seem incapable of lifting a single piece of charcoal.

When her will was read, it turned out she was true to her word. A small villa in Juan de Pines was mine. The rest went to our father and to various foundations for the preservation of animals near extinction. She had apparently given some thought to the painting as well, which, having been paid for, she obviously expected to be completed. A small codicil instructed that it be placed over the fireplace in the house in France. I could see Duke trying to suppress a laugh when I told him about this. More proof of Julia's manipulations. I dug my heel into the toe of his shoe to make him stop.

Under the circumstances, I've never told Duke about the ring.

I sleep badly the first night at Snowflake Inn. The night is exceptionally black. My hand in front of my face is invisible, my breath warm against it. Every sound of shuffling in the hallway, or of Duke as he rolls over onto his side, wakes me as soon as I have dozed off. A small click near startles me--like a magnetic catch, metal on metal. Had I been dreaming after all?

"Duke?" I whisper.

He makes a slight disembodied groan. Then silence. I want to tell him that Julia is about, looking for something. Suddenly I feel on guard, as if nothing can be taken at face value. I stare into the dark, feel the presence of Duke's back turned against me, place my hand on it tentatively, half-expecting it to crumble under my touch. I am filled with dread. Perhaps it's possible just to snap out of it, this darkness.

In the morning Duke is like a heavy log, difficult to get rolling. I dress quickly in a black sweater and slim black skirt, feeling vaguely defiant. I feel a growing conviction that Duke and I are locked in an undefined battle. I arrange a paisley scarf around my neck and fasten it with a silver pin and slip out, leaving Duke to finish his sleep. The restaurant in the hotel is warm and buzzing with voices. Country music in the background. Some of the guests have already returned from early morning hikes. Ruddy and robust, they attack mounds of flapjacks and sausages drizzled with maple syrup.

I find a table near a window and ask for coffee. The door opens and a tall woman with upswept hair and a white fur coat enters, carrying a child swaddled in a pink blanket. The child's eyes look about tolerantly. Her head wobbles gently as her mother pushes and pulls tables and chairs until the blanket falls, revealing a pink knitted dress and white stockings.

Inexplicably I'm congested with sadness. Julia must have been like that child once, looking out at the world from the top of a fortress that was her mother's strong body. This perfect equanimity, this show of invincible grace was exactly what Julia had tried to hold on to long after the fortress vanished. I am at sea trying to understand her unhappiness and what more she wanted for herself. I feel I owe her her soul. The problem is, I'm not sure I have one myself. Still, I feel I must contest Duke's point of view: I cannot accept malice and greed as the foundation of a human being. I need to find the sweet smelling stream if I am to do her justice in my portrait of her.

I sip black coffee and feel my anxiety rise. I am a fraud, pretending to have access to greater depths.

When I return to our room, Duke is in the middle of it, stretching his leg like a hurdler, as he always does before jogging. His joyous energy hits me like an accusation, but I see he does not mean it this way: on his way out he catches me in his arms and swirls me about.

"Breakfast at nine," he says over his shoulder as he sprints out the door. At my own pace, I follow.

The golf course lies like a silver carpet, the dew unmarred by human contact. While Duke runs out of sight, I stay at the edges. Each of my steps leaves behind a bright green imprint in the dew. I discover the footprints of a lone golfer, and like a sleuth I follow, pausing where he had paused. I study the choreography of a little dance...from frustration or joy? In the distance a sharp crack slices through the air. My hands push deep into the pockets of my green army jacket, bracing for the long slope up ahead.

As I approach the top I hear voices. A familiar one says, "You have the whole course to yourself."

The other, deep and hoarse answers, "Yes, and I'm winning!" A crackling laugh is followed by a cough filled with sputum.

A few more steps and Duke's head appears, and then another head, one ridged with wisps of white. I back away and move towards the trees, not ready to hear the sound of my own voice, not just yet. The beauty of the caramel ferns, the deep cadmium leaves against smoky beech and the poison green of the conifers takes my breath away. In places the forest puts up barriers, the trees turn their backs on me but as I step over rotted branches and wade through thistles and grasses, suddenly I see where the trees open up, permitting access into a deep interior. Here and there I catch a glimpses of bright scarlet, as if Julia, wearing my red blazer, were moving about.

I think about the juggling act of Julia's life, evading her past, her feelings, moving from man to man, house to house, always managing to accumulate more. But to what end? The juggler never feels the object in the hand, never knows the texture, the warmth, the comfort of it. The juggler is always alert. To fall in love with one object is to forfeit the rest. To risk the forfeit--well, one must be very sure of how to love.

Is this not what I am doing with Duke? Taking the risk?

At the same time, Julia has been the object of other jugglers, grasped at briefly. All at once I understand what she was after when she came to me--just once to be grasped, fully, roundly; her smoothness, her roughness understood and grappled with. Coming to me, she had at least guessed right: I had a need to think about her.

The rest of the day I keep my promise to enjoy myself. Hand in hand, Duke and I examine the arts and crafts, buy maple sugar, more wine, eat ice cream, visit the Von Trapp Family Lodge, photograph cows. We stop at a pig farm that storekeepers have gossiped about: an entrepreneur's vengeance on the community that denied him permission to build the hotel of his dreams on his newly acquired property. He had hoped the stink of pigs would force a change in the zoning laws. In the evening we dine by the fireplace of a local inn. I coax Duke into trying the New England clam chowder. It has too much cream and no clams. He sends it back, spinning a theory about instant feed-back shaping the quality of service. He cannot hold back his energy and, to some extent, is successful in dragging me along.

That night Duke's long naked body is sprawled across the bedspread, his head resting in his hands, his carefully toned torso gleaming like silk. I'm pretending to read a book; he's listening to Steve Martin on earphones. Bursts of static leak through each time the microscopic audience applauds. I could plug in the second set of earphones, but I'm not in the mood. I'm barely managing to keep the emptiness at bay and I need human contact.

"How'm I doing?" I ask, faking cheerfulness, waving to catch his attention.

"What?" He lifts an orange foam disc from one ear and cocks his head.

"How'm I doing?" I force a smile.

He shrugs, looks puzzled.

I lean across and shut off the source of his sound. "I was just thinking about the difference between you and me," I say. "Did you think the pig-keeper was happy?"

"Yes, I'd say he was happy," Duke says, folding his hands over his stomach, perhaps sensing this will take longer than he'd hoped.

"In fact, he said he was happy. His precise words, if you remember, were: I hope the boss keeps me on after the pigs are gone."

"That just show's he's insecure," I say.

"It means he's happy working for his boss."

"His gums were inflamed," I say. It's true, his gums were alarmingly red and he lived alone in a small shack with a black dog named Dog, and a big ghetto-blaster. "And his glasses were thick as bottle bottoms," I add.

"That's a problem for Medicare, or whatever it is they have down here. Why can't he just be happy if he says he is?"

"Because that's how people have to preface everything. It's a code. Otherwise no one listens to you."

Duke stares thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Would you say the pigs were happy?" he asks.

"You just want to ridicule me." I'm beginning to enjoy this.

"No, seriously, what do you think?"

"You think I'm emotionally feeble."

Duke is smiling.

"I don't know about pigs," I continue, feeling my way to I know not what, "but its lucky for us they have silly snouts and ugly pig eyes with white lashes that come straight down so you can't see into them."

"What about the one with brown eyes you pointed out. I'll bet she put you off bacon!"

"The one with eyes like yours? Her eyes were terribly human weren't they? If there were such thing as piggy brothels, she'd be saved from the slaughterhouse."

If Duke feels himself vaguely accused, he doesn't let on. For sure it's unfair insinuating that his kind of people are responsible for all the misery and destruction that comes from the profit motive. Periodically I savour a sort of artistic license to burden him with the pollution and violence in the world, even though I know that at least half the dark forces lay in the dominion that I claim to understand. I never take the full advantage of my profession to lash out against the Philistines, but when I do, he does pretend to listen.

The first time we met, he was sitting behind a huge walnut desk piled with books and folders, eating his lunch from a brown paper bag. He was to advise me on my divorce proceedings. It may have been love at first sight for me, too. It's hard to tell when you're on your guard, protecting yourself from more losses than absolutely necessary.

On my forms, under "occupation" it read: "artist; self-employed".

I'll never forget his comment because it was, well, quaint, though I think the real reason it cheered me was the slant of his eyes when he looked up at me.

"Interesting," he said. "I once dabbled into that side of life." Those were his precise words. I hadn't thought people talked like that so late into the twentieth century. I didn't comment because I thought it was important to maintain a certain gravity under my shaky circumstances. But later, my heart aflutter, I remembered his voice and his words. I amused myself thinking of him as a wary speculator who had heard some rumours about dancing in the grass. So he decided to take out futures in Dionysus. Sometimes I think I am one of his speculations as well. Divorce can make you paranoid but I think I'm getting over that part.

"What's your point?" Duke asks, getting back to the brown-eyed pig.

Ah, he has lost the gist of the case he was going to build, I think. Things are going in my favour.

"The point is I'm coming to terms with this world. I'm learning to distract myself." I don't say how thin the ground is under me, how perpetually close to tears I am.

"I'll tell you what your problem is," he says, staring at his thumbs, which are stroking one another. Pretentiously, I think, and relish this bit of contempt as if it balances the feeling that I'm about to come undone.

"Thank you," I say.

"No, really, you take things too close to heart. It's quite possible to put things in different parts of your mind. Spread out the pain. Keep above it." He looks up at the ceiling, a smile spreading on his face. "Like the principle of snowshoes, you know?"

"That's interesting," I say after a moment's reflection. "However, I have my own solution."

"More kindness to others?"

Something like that.

"So you're beginning with me?" He's smiling. "Your salvation or mine?"

"Mine," I say. "How do you get yours?"

"Never think about it. That's one of your words." He yawns and stretches all his limbs rather elaborately, making sure I don't miss the point. "I take care of myself," he says, burrowing under the blankets. He frees one arm and grips my hand, squeezes it on and off as if pumping me full of fuel.

He's making a big mistake if he thinks he can humour me out of this. Mentally I dare him to say: I'm a survivor, because then I'll puke for sure. I feel abandoned, as if I've been left to do difficult work which he pretends is elementary. I glare at his face, which lies in semi-darkness, outside the circle of light. As his eyes close, the panic comes again.

"My god, that boar had big testicles didn't he?" I say into his ear, resurrecting the undeclared war.

His voice is muffled by the blanket and feigned sleepiness. "Well, he did weigh four hundred pounds."

"So you think his balls were proportionally about right?"

"Absolutely."

"But I think proportionally he had much bigger balls than a bull, for example." I'm surrounded by blackness now and can't keep my voice steady. Duke tosses his blankets aside and sits up.

"What is it, Jenna?" He starts out angry, but he says my name in the softest way.

"Do you know what my last words to her were," I wail.

"Who are we talking about? Julia again?"

My whole frame begins to tremble, and through sobs I tell him. "The very last time I spoke to her she was in so much pain and no one believed her...she was hysterical...grabbed me like she was drowning...and...and do you know what I said?" The last words rise shrilly. Duke is by my side, holding me, his body rock-solid while mine shudders against it.

"What?" he asks softly, stroking my hair. But I can't answer because my insides have collapsed. I'm gagging with misery, gasping for air. The ghosts are all lined up now. They come from all countries, skeletal figures with outstretched arms. Mothers with babies, old men with bloodshot eyes that have witnessed every form of misery on earth. People in hospitals wandering down corridors speaking gibberish, pulling at my arm. There is no way out. I can't shake it, can't resist the pull. I'm overwhelmed by the sadness of existence.

"Jenna! Jenna!" Duke is shaking me. "Jenna, pull yourself together!"

When my voice finally comes back, it's a long a wail. "That's exactly what I said: Julia, pull yourself together! Oh! I said it with such authority!"

"You didn't know, Jenna."

"That's just it. Do we always have to wait for the autopsy? In the end she went through it all alone. I failed her...miserably."

"Tomorrow we're going up the mountain," he whispers, rocking me in his arms. He undresses me and tucks me in and presses himself against my back to warm me up. I hadn't realized how cold I was.

Quietly, as if talking in my sleep, I relate to him my last visit with Julia. She had been in her bedroom. Her maid had led me in. Even from the front door I had heard the rhythmic sound, thunk...thunk...thunk, as if something heavy were hitting up against a wall. Julia was sitting up in bed, her satin pajamas drenched with sweat. One instant her head was down, her hair falling to her chest. The next she heaved it back with all her force, hitting the back of her head against the wooden headboard. Mascara, tears, snot streamed down her face. I sat down on the bed close to her before she noticed me. Before even opening her eyes she reached for my hand and held on to it so tight that my ring cut into my bone.

"I'm glad you came," she said, barely managing a smile. "They won't give me morphine. They say I'm crazy."

I looked at her worn-out figure, half thinking that they might be right; and then I was horrified by my thoughts. The maid brought in a wet towel on a bed of ice and I wiped Julia's face with it. She had started to cry and once started, she couldn't stop. Her body shook convulsively against me as I held her. Hysterically she began to rant and rave, to curse every aspect of the medical system, every doctor whose name she could remember. That was when I had interjected with the immortal words: Julia! pull yourself together!

So much state-of-the-art equipment in the best hospitals under the best of care, and nothing, no one had detected the cancer, like grains of rice, imbedded just under her skull.

Duke holds me until my sobbing subsides. The scent of him so close is oddly reassuring. It comes, as if through a crack, between his world and mine. As I cling to the arm around me, it strikes me that the mountain has been his idea all along. Does he need to resolve something too, or does the metaphor simply amuse him, as I feel I sometimes amuse him? I fall asleep absolutely depleted.

In the morning we follow the same routine. Duke runs up and down the hills while I poke about investigating the sweet smells. I think back on that first year in high-school when I first met Julia. We were all fresh, equally strangers to the new school, but Julia had an advantage. Her exotic accent didn't hurt, but beyond that, she had a charisma that made people want to do things for her. We literally lined up to do her favours, me included, even though some thought I had some leverage in being her half-sister, which, actually, I didn't, until much later.

And then one week she chose me. For one solid sweet week she was entirely enthralled by me. It happened to be the very week when "The Group" decided to invite her to join them. It was a cluster of popular girls who had already been an entity since grade eight in another school. Those girls made a point of confronting Julia and me on the way home from school, turning their backs on me and singling her out, offering her the opportunity to become one of them. Without missing a beat, Julia thanked them but told them she was going home with me. The leader of the group assessed me from the corner of her eye. After a short huddle they made the offer to both of us. It was my first taste of politics and I didn't like it. Julia and I looked at each other and almost in unison started to giggle. We had to be home by five.

It was a long way home. Julia took every opportunity to flirt with the boys in private school uniforms. All her impulses were opposite to mine. She leaped out, I held back. How I admired her! In her presence I seesawed between feelings of absolute omnipotence and utter infancy. But for one whole week we lashed out together at what we hated and claimed what we loved.

The stark truth of the matter was that on the Friday of that week, Julia went home wearing my red blazer, my best, my newest and only blazer, while I had Julia's Parker pen in my hand. The word 'trade' was never used, but neither was there a time limit set on our exchange. I can't claim the barest sophistication: the manipulation went undetected by me and I even resented my mother's insinuations about my "foreign" friend. I came close to telling mom who Julia really was, but for some reason I kept my promise to my father never to tell. I felt personally proud of the compliments Julia received. And it was true, the effect of the red together with a white shirt and her dark shiny pageboy, was stunning.

After that, she moved beyond me. I was not hurt. I had sensed my limitations from the beginning. That is, I knew I couldn't initiate the sort of outrageous behaviour that she fed on. In that area, I was an admirer, a spectator. She never did acquire a "best" friend. Also, I felt relieved that she never did join The Group. When it came to friendship, we were both freelancers. That's perhaps another reason why we renewed our friendship from time to time in the years that followed. That and a hunger for sisterhood.

After our morning outing I wait for Duke to shower so we can have breakfast together. I remember the emerald ring, feel around in the zippered compartment of my purse and find the familiar lump of the velvet pouch I had made for it. Carefully I transfer it to the breast pocket of my jacket. After breakfast we buy fresh bread and cheese and wine and take the road to Mount Mansfield.

Duke drives. He's in rare spirits, full of praise for the countryside, and excited, as though we were nearing the real purpose of our trip. I lean back and listen to the celestial sounds of a Mozart concerto written for the glass harmonica. Duke's ability to compartmentalize has its advantages and I'm relieved to let the performance of the previous night go. Grateful too for Duke's simple acceptance for things as they are. I could not, and do not have to explain to him the imbalance in our relationship, which he does not feel. I see how that could work in my favour. He is giving me ample time to get to know him, and more importantly, myself.

"Old Huxley wasn't a fool!" he laughs as he squints and leans into the steering wheel. He has taken his glasses off to test out something he'd read by 'old Aldus': a theory that the wearing of glasses weakens the eyes.

"Myopics of the world unite!" he says under his breath. "You have nothing to lose but your glasses!"

"Or your lives," I say, gripping my seat as the car swerves widely, missing an oncoming car by inches. It occurs to me I love him best when he jeopardizes our lives, as along the suicide stretch by the cliffs in Corsica a summer ago. The crosses along the curves should have tipped him off about the workable speed.

The car has difficulty getting off the shoulder. The crunch of gravel interferes with the fine harmonies in the music. Traction, purchase, that's what is needed in order to gain serene balance. The virtuoso on the glass harmonica knows that. The Datsun is back on the asphalt, the music hums through my head like a beam of green light, hypnotic, expansive. Yet, through the sound, barely detectable, is a faint grating of fingers touching the fragile rims of crystal revolving on fine spindles. Invisibly they seem to pull out the fine filament of sound.

On the mirror on the passenger side a message reads: objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. I am very far away indeed, strangely abstracted by double glass and layers of reflections. Tops of trees whiz backwards in a endless stream behind my face. Speed is multiplied. Only a band of blue moves steadily along with me. Momentarily my face disappears, is replaced by a mass of yellow, then reappears as a double exposure.

A metaphor for Julia, a paintable image is no closer than before, and the exhaustion of the previous night returns. Perhaps I'm straining too hard. How, after all, can you force an insight? I resolve to give myself more time, absorb more slowly. Ten months is nothing. I have read somewhere that a sponge absorbs tons of water for every ounce of nutrients. The poetry in that is clear. The simple act of breathing will get me somewhere, eventually.

On the other hand, I feel that my mind alone is keeping Julia from dissolving, and therefore I have to obsess. The road turns and places me in direct line with the sun. I lower the sunshield and it throws a shadow across the top half of my face. My mouth is firmly set, the muscles in my neck highlighted. The music has moved on to Vivaldi's Gloria and the voices fill my head, draw me to the tops of the speeding maples and at once my hopes take an enormous leap as if there were a road, as if the sun had chosen to lead the way.

Ah, Julia!

At last we reach the gate at the paved foothill of the mountain. A man with white hair and a green and black checkered jacket comes running from a house nearby. Duke rolls down the window.

"Not much to see today!" the old man shouts. "'Fraid the clouds are rollin' in up there," he says more quietly as he peers into our car. Duke and I look up at the sun and debate whether or not to take our chances.

Thinking perhaps we have no yardstick for making a decision, the man offers us the incentive of letting us go at half-price. We take it.

Half-priced. Half-hearted.

And half-assed. Isn't that the whole problem? I, who have never set foot into a church except to admire its architecture, I, for whom the existence of God has been irrelevant, what right do I have to expect to find anything at the top of a mountain? What right do I have to claim such an ancient metaphor? Yet what can I do? It seems the ache inside is very old indeed.

Divided in my thoughts, I feel caught in an uncomfortable compromise which perhaps embodies the fundamental chasm between Duke and me. It isn't that it's such a small mountain. Nor is it the potential for banality, should either of us say the wrong thing. Rather, I feel that for an old metaphor one should use old methods. Would it not be more authentic if we went on foot?

On the other hand, if we have no right to allude to anything grand, going up by car is perhaps an act that confesses to our uncertainty that we will ever find what we are looking for. Better then to cover more ground more quickly, allowing speed to divert us from the depth of our failure. In the recesses of my mind I see the Datsun as a symbol of what has gone wrong. Should we not drag it along rather than give in to the comfort it offers?

The foothills are covered mostly by scarlet maples and ochre beeches. A little higher up birches introduce a clear yellow that soon replaces all that's red. Higher still, the birches are joined by spruce and hemlock. By the six mile mark the birches bear signs of exhaustion. The ones that have survived are stubbier, tougher and bear fewer leaves. Their bark glows pink and mauve, and seems painfully cramped between heavier, denser black markings. Increasingly the conifers creep into dominance. Where the mountain has been sliced to make way for the road, the ridge is crowded with overhanging moss and ferns the colour of Mars yellow straight from the tube. Itzhak Perlman's violin raises a tremulous question in Berg's violin concerto. The radio station has selected music as though it knows that every moment someone is going up the mountain.

Duke has fallen into silence. I notice he has put his glasses back on and is concentrating on the sharp turns. For him the car creates no problem at all. If for me it is the albatross around our necks, for him it is the wings of Hermes.

The man at the gate proves to be right. By the time we reach the gravel parking area near the top, the sky is clouded over. A narrow trail pocked with puddles and edged with delicate moss takes us to the rock edge. Beyond, as far as the eye can see, multiple layers of lower mountain ridges fade progressively into the mist. The colours of autumn are now only mutely discernible, as is the echo of a requiem in the music.

It's cold up here. I button my jacket but that doesn't keep me from trembling. Side by side we lie down on a flat rock just short of the precipitous cliff. The wind hurls itself up the mountainside and pale wisps of cloud speed past our faces, visible against the dark and massive strata beyond. Any evidence of valleys and ridges is rapidly disappearing. Only the sphere immediately around us is clear. The wind carries with it the sigh of stranded birches, the sound of my own depletion. Faithfully I return my thoughts to Julia.

I sit up and take the velvet pouch from my pocket. It feels like the appropriate moment to explain to Duke the full weight of my responsibility and my dilemma. As I tell him of our bargain, about the ring and my promise, I feel his eyes on me. I unfold the pouch in my lap, and when the last flap opens, I take out the splendid green stone and hold it close to Duke's face as if to say, see? Here is the knot, the source of my paralysis.

He refuses to be impressed. He refuses even to look at it. "It's only a stone," he says,

"Can't you see? I owe her the equivalent!" I shout into the wind. I must make him feel the weight. I take his hand, place the jewel in his palm. "Feel it," I say.

He bobs it up and down in his hand a few times. His face is close to mine. His mouth curls into an expression that I've never before seen, one of bitterness anguish, anger. Before I understand what he's doing, before I can lift a hand to stop him, he whips his arm and hurls the stone into the mist beyond. I am stunned. We wait for what seems an interminable time, as if expecting to hear it land, though the wind is howling about our ears.

"Let it go," he says, his voice breaking.

"That was mine," I gasp. "She gave it to me!" I all but shriek the last word. I start to pound him with my fists. He scarcely shields himself.

"And I gave it to her," he says, the words thumped out of him. "You don't owe her anything."

I completely lose it.

"I owe it to her," I wail. The words come in a gummy stream. "You have no right...you can't tell me when to get over something...you have no right..."

At the same time, what he just said is square in my mind. And I gave it to her. Perhaps I don't want to know. Perhaps I should. My nose is drying up.

"You've been dragging yourself around like a wounded cat," he says. "Where do you think I've been?" I imagine his lower jaw thrust forward, but I refuse to look at him.

"Where have you been?" I say. I stop sniffling, expecting the worst. Sober as a judge. Listening. Weighing.

"Didn't you ever wonder about the timing of her reappearance?" he asks.

"She's my sister. She needed me," I flash.

"Sister," he says. "Yes, maybe she needed you. And then, there was a new man in your life."

"What do you mean, a new man?" The mist is thickening. When I look, his features are vague.

"Me."

"So she seduced you, too," I say coldly.

"That was long before I met you," he says. "This time she just came to have a look, maybe a last fling. She knew she was dying. She thought I couldn't resist. Or, at least, like you, that I would grant her her last wish."

"And you did?"

"I'm not crazy. What we have, you and I, is solid. At least, I thought so. Can you believe that? I can't stand seeing you so indebted when all she did was use you. It wasn't enough to have you worry about her. She was practically gloating when she told me the whole dramatic story about you and the ring: how she hung the ring on a nail. How impressed you were.

"No!" I shout. "She needed me!"

"It was you she hung up on the nail. You're still hanging."

"Then why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me--"

"I thought it would all be over after she died. Besides, you...you were so sincerely involved--"

"You should have--" I said. A vision of the ring on the nail appears clearly in my mind. "When did you give it to her," I demand.

"A long time ago. You'll have to believe me."

"How long?"

He grabs my face and looks me in the eye. Two inches away, his eyes are something to behold, so full of tenderness. When--how will I ever reach that place where nothing hurts?

"Jenna, I thought the whole reason for coming up here was to put an end to something. Julia is gone. You owe her nothing. It's just you and me. Period. There is no more."

"All this time you've been watching me, knowing something, but--"

"I thought you might work it out. To tell you the truth, I was pulled into it too. I've been wondering what you'd come up with, what you'd paint."

This is the first thing he's said that puts my anger on hold.

"Was that a real emerald?" I say suddenly.

"Yes. You don't want to know about it."

"When?"

He puts his arm around me. I push it away.

"Don't touch me right now, please."

"I'll wait for you in the car until you're ready," he whispers. I nod my head gratefully. Duke's hand has found its way to my cheek. Except for his touch, he is now invisible to me, and I turn my head away, not yet having perspective enough to know what distance to keep him at. I can't hear or see him get up but in the distance is the unmistakable, if faint, slam of a car door.

I flatten myself against the mountain and close my eyes. The wind and mist swirl about me. I am too stirred up to work out all the repercussions of this new information both backwards and forwards in time. But I do feel a weight lift from me. Just as the spirit that holds the trees in harmony is already moving on, so I must move on. I have failed to grasp Julia. I have not found her sweet stream, and that is the final answer. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist, as Duke would have it. I refuse to go that far. It's simply that I haven't found it. The wink she gave me goes through my mind as she leads me off to nowhere.

Far below are places with names like Smuggler's Cove, Top Notch. Somewhere else is the congested road, the bottleneck into Stowe, the Shell station where we filled up with gas, the pig keeper listening to country music. Down there all the trees grow tall together. Up here only the mountain is tall. It's a kind of hubris to think that I could somehow resurrect her, infuse her with substance. It's not for me to fabricate.

I want to get back to Toronto, to my studio and long neglected friends. And Duke?

Back in my studio, after I stopped thinking about it, it came to me very quickly: Julia had a power. Aside from her obvious beauty, there was a reason why we had all stood around waiting for her next move. She was the only one of us with any certainty about what was desirable. Even if it were true that during our week together her mind had been occupied with the logistics of shifting my red blazer from my body to hers, she had changed me in a fundamental way. When Julia wanted something, we all paid attention and saw it, whether an object or an experience, with new eyes. I think back on that woolly, starry time when she pointed at me, and for one full week she had shown me how it felt to be at the centre of the universe.

My jacket had never been so red or so desirable as when I caught a glimpse of it disappearing behind a corner. Or, as in my new painting, as it disappears into a glorious autumn forest of maples and beeches.

The villa turns out to be a steady source of income for me. Rarely does it sit empty. I like to think of strangers sitting in front of the fireplace idly examining the swirl of colours and eventually stumbling onto the small figure in red looking over her shoulder back at them.

At the moment it is Duke and I who are the visitors here. The Mediterranean is inky blue at night. The breeze is warm and soft. Duke's arm is around me as we sit on the honey-coloured leather couch picked out, undoubtedly, by Julia to go with the d�cor here. The place reminds me of the dream in which she led me up to the treasure. Here is morning light in perpetuity. Here is paradox: the melting away just as you grasp it.

"You loved her, didn't you?" I ask Duke.

He shrugs and smiles sheepishly.

"It's O.K.," I say. "Who didn't?"

"Ironic, isn't it," he said, looking up at the painting. "She managed to find a way into our lives after all."

We've made our peace with her. We had, after all, both been singled out as subjects for her appetite. The problem with Julia was that the only thing she could not point to was herself.