Before
Frankie
“Hey there.”
When I look up, there’s Richard, silhouetted by the sun. My breath catches. I never would have expected this of myself—this dumb girlishness. And yet, here it is. Here I am.
I lift a hand to shield my eyes. “Oh, hi,” I say. Like we just stumbled upon each other.
Richard shifts so that his shadow—the shade—falls over me. “Is that better?”
My eyes blink in relief. “Thank you.”
I can see him clearly now. In his well-fitting polo shirt, salt-and-pepper hair neatly brushed, he looks so different than the last time I saw him, when he was so exhausted and shell-shocked.
He still looks sad, though. His eyes are puffy and red-rimmed like maybe he’s been crying recently. I get it. What happened was horrifying.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” He gestures in the vague direction of the seemingly fast-moving traffic. “It took a long time to get downtown…”
“Do you want to grab something?”
“Um.” He looks for a long moment, warily, toward the inside of the café. Rubs a hand over his face. Is he worried about being seen? Or am I inventing a situation here where none exists? Maybe Richard really does just need a friend.
He motions to the bench. “Can I sit?”
“Of course.” I scooch to the side. It’s an objectively small bench.
Richard sets his briefcase between his legs after he sits.
It’s expensive-looking, stylish. His wife probably bought it for him.
I wonder if he told her he had to go into the office on a Saturday.
If that’s where she thinks he is right now.
We stay silent for a moment, Richard staring off into the distance.
Once I think I see his eyes fill with tears.
I should say something comforting, but I’ve never had anyone I love die.
What do I know about comforting him right now?
I don’t even know him all that well, even though I somehow also feel like I know what he needs to hear.
“The service must have been so hard,” I begin. “He was so young, and it was all so sudden—I still feel like I’m in shock. I can’t imagine how all of you feel.”
Richard nods and his shoulders drop. “It’s crushing,” he says finally. “I should have made him turn around when he wasn’t feeling well.”
I want to put my hand on his back, but that feels like too much.
If I’m being honest, I want to wrap my arms around him.
I’ve never felt such a visceral desire to comfort someone physically.
And, in this situation, what else is there, really?
But I won’t do that, I can’t—not with the way I feel. I clasp my hands together instead.
“You can’t do that to yourself. I mean, I understand. I’d feel the same way. But Van made the decision to stay. We were all there.” I pause. “Have you thought about going to see someone?”
He turns to look at me, his blue eyes aglow. “Like a therapist?”
I shrug. “It was traumatic. A literal trauma,” I press on. “That kind of thing can get stuck in your brain, your body. There are a lot of specific approaches therapists use to help people process.”
“You sound like you’re talking from personal experience,” he says.
Of course I am, about the trauma. Not about the therapy. That’s all stuff I’ve picked up from Noah. I shrug. “In a way. I also have a close friend who’s a psychiatrist. He deals with a lot of trauma patients. He could give me some names if you want.”
“Thank you,” Richard says. He seems genuinely touched.
“I’m still having flashbacks, and I’m not sleeping. And it wasn’t one of my best friends who died.”
“Really?” Richard looks so relieved. “I thought I was going a little crazy. It’s like a—”
“Tape on a loop?”
“Exactly,” Richard says. “I keep seeing the exact same images, some are of the— Some are really haunting. Some are just of things I was looking at before, I think.”
“For me it’s the sounds,” I say. “Everything I heard right before.”
“It’s really fucking disturbing.”
“That’s for sure.”
“It already helps, just talking about it like this. Gretchen’s not…
” He’s quiet again, and I try to ignore the prickle of discomfort I feel at hearing her name.
“She’s not great with feelings. She’s an amazing person.
A truly good person, but she freezes up around big feelings.
It’s like she gets overwhelmed or something.
She’s very good at doing—you should have seen her at the gathering at Van’s house after the service.
She had her sleeves rolled up in the kitchen washing dishes.
She took care of the donation and ordered flowers.
She’s incredibly thoughtful. But she can’t just sit with you when you’re upset.
She could never bear when the children cried.
She always had to do something about it.
” He looks so confused. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I think a lot of people are like that. Feelings are uncomfortable. They can be too much—for people who feel too much and the ones who don’t feel enough. Maybe it’s just too painful for your wife.” I can’t bring myself to say her name, but I did take her side. And that’s something.
“She’s doing her best,” he says, then looks over at me intently. “We’re all just doing our best.”
“I don’t mind listening,” I say. “If you just want to talk. About being sad. Or feeling guilty. Or maybe about what Van was like back when you met him. The good times.”
He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely together. I know from the trip that he sits that way whenever he’s considering something seriously. He was in the same position when he asked me what it felt like to paint.
It was day six. We had been sitting at Arrow Glacier Camp, altitude 16,076 feet, watching the sun disappear behind the clouds in a kaleidoscope of orange, clutching cups of tea with our knit hats pulled low.
“Why?” I replied. “Do you think you could be an artist?”
It came out a little snide, but so many people think they could easily paint abstract modern art, that a child could.
Richard laughed. “I wish. As you heard earlier from the guys, I gave it a try once upon a time, but I eventually realized there probably wasn’t much of a modern market for mediocre sketches of fruit bowls. I think I could have made a great art dealer, though, or a curator.”
“What stopped you?”
He shrugged. “I grew up,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t have that kind of creativity in me. But I have always wondered what it feels like.”
No man had ever inquired about what it felt like to be me. Because not a single one had ever given a shit? Because they already thought they knew? Because I’d purposely never had the right men around me? Maybe all those things were true.
I don’t remember what we said after that, only the way my pulse quickened. The way everything suddenly existed in such sharp relief—the colors, the textures. Like someone had just fine-tuned the settings on the world.
It’s the way the world feels right now. Magnified.
“Yeah,” Richard says finally. “Talking would help, I think. If you don’t mind.”
“I’d be happy to listen.”
* * *
To mark the official beginning of the expedition, Bakari took a group photo of all of us standing behind the Mercedes jeep, the colorful True Altitude logo displayed prominently on its back tire cover.
I was so much shorter than all of them except Brooks.
And I was still shorter than him. It was not going to be easy, ignoring my differentness, even though it was obviously the only way forward.
“Frankie sits there,” Bakari instructed as we climbed inside, pointing to one of two prime, freestanding seats behind the driver.
I felt annoyed about being singled out because I was the only woman, but maybe there was no pretending I didn’t have special status.
“I’m sure this isn’t exactly what you signed up for, a bunch of old friends,” Richard said to me quietly after everyone was in the car.
“I tried not to have any expectations.”
He smiled. He was in the other freestanding seat across from me, his friends chattering loudly in the row behind. “Don’t worry. We know how to hold space for newcomers.”
There was something almost uncomfortably intimate about the moment—maybe because of the warmth in Richard’s blue eyes, only partially visible in the dark. But he wore a wedding ring. They all did. Not that I was there looking for anything other than myself. That was the whole point.
“Thanks.” I nodded and looked back toward the window and the darkness beyond.
I certainly had not come all the way to Africa to arrive back at the beginning—with a man who did not belong to me.
—
Luckily, the rest of the long drive to base camp was consumed by the boisterous conversation of the men.
This is exactly like Peru. Don’t you dare eat goat like in Bhutan if I’m going to be trapped in a tent with you.
Evidently, they’d been taking trips together like this for years and they took turns planning. This trip had been on Brooks.
Scotty and Brooks were the talkers, nearly nonstop for the whole hour-and-forty-five-minute drive.
Most of it was good-natured ribbing, trying to one-up each other.
Richard seemed to be the benevolent leader, Scotty the affable comedian (often at his own expense), and Van the group’s warm, soft heart.
Brooks was a little harder to figure out.
Nice enough and obviously very smart, maybe even smarter than the rest of them, but also a little awkward and guarded. The nerd of the group, for sure.
“This is my wife, Hilary,” Scotty offered at one point, handing me his phone to look at photos, carefully watching my expression.
His wife was way out of his league. Scotty wasn’t unattractive, but he wasn’t as fit as Van or as charismatic as Richard.
Even Brooks had a certain magnetism. Scotty was just a friendly average Joe.
“Scotty’s most remarkable quality is Hilary,” Richard said.
“She’s gorgeous,” I said as Scotty stared at me expectantly.