The Great Alone

Really.

Especially today. She was proud of herself. The first female in her family to graduate from college.

(It had taken a long time.)

Still. She was twenty-five years old, and a single mother, with—as of tomorrow—a college degree in visual arts. She had a loving family, the best kid in the world, and a warm place to live. She was never hungry or freezing or afraid for her mother’s life. Her only fears now were garden-variety parenting fears. Kids crossing the street alone, falling off swing sets, strangers appearing out of nowhere. She never fell asleep to the sound of screaming or crying and never woke to a floor strewn with broken glass.

She was happy.

It didn’t matter that she sometimes had days like today, where the past poked insistently into her view.

Of course she would think of Matthew today, on this day, which was one they’d talked about so often. How many times had a conversation between them begun with: When we finish college…?

Instinctively, she lifted her camera and minimized her view of the world. It was how she managed her memories, how she processed the world. In pictures. With a camera, she could crop and reframe her life.

Happy. Smile.

Click, click, click and she was herself again. She could see what mattered.

Unbroken blue sky, not a cloud in sight. People all around.

Sunshine called out to Seattleites in a language they understood, dragged them out of their hillside homes and encouraged them to put on expensive sneakers and enjoy the mountains and lakes and winding forest roads. After which they would stop by their local Thriftway Grocery Store for prepackaged steaks to put on their grills at weekend barbecues.

Life was soft here in Seattle. Safe and contained. Crosswalks and traffic lights and helmets and policemen on horses and bicycles.

As a mother, she appreciated all that protection, and she had tried to settle into this comfortable life. She never told anyone—not even Mama—how much she missed the howling of wolves or a day spent alone on the snow machine or the echoing crack of ice in the spring breakup. She bought her meat instead of hunting it; she turned on the faucet for water and flushed her toilet when she was finished. The salmon she grilled in the summer came already cleaned and filleted and washed, caught like strips of silver and pink silk behind cellophane canopies.

Today, all around her people were laughing, talking. Dogs were barking, jumping up to catch Frisbees. Teenage boys threw footballs back and forth.

“Look!” MJ said, pointing up at the pink Congratulations Graduate! balloon bobbing at the end of a yellow streamer. He had a half-eaten cupcake in one hand and wore a goatee of frosting.

Leni knew he was growing up fast (a first-grader now), so she had to snuggle and kiss him while he still allowed it. She scooped him into her arms. He gave her a sweaty, buttercream kiss and hugged her in that way of his, all in, arms thrown around her neck as if he would drown without her. The truth was that she would drown without him.

“Who else is ready for dessert?” Grandma Golliher said from her place by the picnic table. She had just finished setting out Leni’s favorite dessert: akutaq. Eskimo ice cream made of snow, Crisco, blueberries, and sugar. Mama had saved clumps of winter snow in the freezer, just for this.

MJ sprang free, hands raised triumphantly (both hands, just to be sure he was seen). “Me! I want akutaq!”

Grandma came around the picnic table and stood beside Leni. Grandma had changed a lot in the past few years, softened, although she still dressed for the country club even on a picnic.

“I’m so proud of you, Leni,” Grandma said.

“I’m proud of me, too.”

“My friend Sondra from the club. She says there’s an opening for a photographer’s assistant at Sunset magazine. Should I have her make a call on behalf of Susan Grant?”

“Yeah,” Leni said. “I mean, yes, please.” She could never quite adjust to the way things were done down here. Life seemed to reward who you knew more than what you could do.

One thing she knew, though: she was loved. Grandma and Grandpa had welcomed them from the beginning. For the past few years, Leni and Mama and MJ had lived in a small rental home in Fremont and visited her grandparents on weekends. At first they’d been on guard constantly, afraid to make friends or talk to strangers, but in time, the Alaska police had stopped looking for them and the threat of discovery had faded into the background of their lives.

MJ made so much noise and had so much energy that the staid house on Queen Anne Hill had become a boisterous place. On their nights together, they gathered around the television to watch shows that made no sense to Leni. (She read, instead; she was on her third consecutive read of Interview with the Vampire.) MJ was the wheel; they were the spokes. Love for him united them. As long as MJ was happy, they were happy. And he was a very happy child. People remarked on it all the time.

Leni saw her mother, standing off by herself at the edge of the playground, smoking, a hand splayed across her lower back in a way that looked unnatural.

In profile, Leni could see how sharp her mother’s cheekbones were, how colorless her lips, how thin her face was. As usual, she wore no makeup and she was almost translucent. She had stopped dyeing her hair a year ago; now it was a washed out, gray-threaded blond.

“I want akutaq!” MJ yelled, tugging on Leni’s sleeve. His voice was sluggish from the stuffiness of his latest cold. Ever since he started at the private school near the house, he—and all of them, really—had battled colds.

“And how do we ask for that?” Leni asked.