The Great Alone

At first all she saw was lace. Not the cheap eyelet she was used to seeing at Goodwill; this was fine, almost like cobwebs strung together. Ivory lace curtains framed the windows. There was more ivory lace on the bedding and lampshades. On the floor, pale oatmeal-colored carpeting. Furniture that was ivory with gilt edges. A small kidney-shaped desk had an ivory-colored cushioned stool tucked up underneath.

The air felt stifling, unnatural, bathed in a false lavender scent.

She went to the window, lifted the heavy sash, and leaned out. The sweet night welcomed her, calmed her. The rain had stopped, leaving a glittering black night in its wake. Lights were on in all the houses up and down the street.

There was a small patch of wet roof in front of her. Below that, the well-tended yard, with an old maple tree tucked in close, its branches mostly bare, only a few red-gold leaves still hanging on.

Trees. Night air. Quiet.

Leni climbed out onto the shake-covered roof below her room. Although there were lights on in the house, and houses with lights on across the street, she felt safer out here. She smelled trees and greenery and even a distant tang of the sea.

The sky was unfamiliar. Black. In Alaska the night sky in winter was a deep velvet blue and when snow covered the ground and cloaked the trees, ambient light created a magical glow. And then, sometimes, the northern lights danced overhead. Still, she recognized the stars; they weren’t in the same place, but they were the same stars. The Big Dipper. Orion’s Belt. Constellations Matthew had shown her that night when they’d lain on the beach.

Her fingers closed around the heart necklace at her throat. She could wear it openly now and not worry about her father asking where she’d gotten it. She would never take it off again.

“You want some company?”

“Sure,” Leni said, scooting sideways.

Mama climbed through the open window and made her way onto the roof, then sat beside Leni, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I used to climb down that tree and sneak out on Saturday nights in high school to hang out with boys at Dick’s Drive-In on Aurora. Everything was about boys.” She sighed, dropped her chin into the valley between her knees.

Leni leaned against her mama, stared out at the house across the street. A blaze of wasteful lights. Through the windows, she saw at least three televisions flashing color.

“I’m sorry, Leni. I’ve made such a mess of your life.”

“We did it,” Leni said. “Together. Now we have to live with it.”

“There’s something wrong with me,” Mama said after a pause.

“No,” Leni said firmly. “There was something wrong with him.”

* * *

“IT’S THERE, believe me. Right there,” Mama said five days later, when their bruises had healed enough to be covered with makeup. They had spent almost a week huddled in the house, never venturing outside. They were both going a little stir-crazy.

Now, with Mama’s hair cut in a pixie and dyed brown, they finally left the house and took a bus into busy downtown Seattle, where they merged into the eclectic crowd of tourists, shoppers, and punk rockers.

Mama pointed up into the cloudless blue sky.

Leni didn’t care about The Mountain (that was what they called Rainier down here—The Mountain—as if it were the only one that mattered in the world) or the other landmarks Mama had pointed out with such pride, as if Leni had never seen them before. The bright neon PUBLIC MARKET sign that looked down on the fish market booth; the Space Needle, which looked like an alien spacecraft placed on pick-up sticks; the new aquarium that jutted defiantly out into the cold waters of Elliott Bay.

Seattle was beautiful on this sunny, warm November day; that was true. As green as she remembered, and bordered by water and covered in asphalt and concrete.

People crawled like ants over all of it. All noise and movement: honking horns, people crossing streets, buses puffing smoke and grinding gears on the hills that propped the city up. How could she ever be at home here, among all these people?

There was no silence in this place. For the last few nights, she’d lain in her new bed (which smelled of fabric softener and store-bought laundry soap), trying to get comfortable. Once an ambulance or police siren had blared all of a sudden, red light snapping on and off through the window, painting the lace bloodred.

Now she and Mama were north of the city. They had taken a cross-town bus, found seats among the sad-looking travelers out this early, and walked through the busy “Ave” and uphill to the sprawling University of Washington.

They stood at the edge of something called Red Square. For as far as Leni could see, the ground had been layered in red brick. A large red obelisk pointed up at the blue sky. More brick buildings created a perimeter.

There were literally hundreds of students moving through the square; they came and went in laughing, chattering waves. Off to her left, a group dressed all in black was holding up protest signs about nuclear power and weapons. Several demanded a shutdown of something called Hanford.

She was reminded of the college kids she’d seen in Homer every summer, clots of young adults in REI rain gear looking up at the jagged, snowcapped peaks as though they heard God calling their names. She would hear whispered conversations about how they were going to chuck it all and move off the grid and live more authentic lives. Back to the land, they’d said, as if it were biblical verse. Like the famous John Muir quote—The mountains are calling and I must go. People heard those kinds of voices in Alaska, dreamed new dreams. Most would never go, and of the few who did, the vast majority would leave before the end of their first winter, but Leni had always known they would be changed simply by the magnitude of the dream and the possibility they glimpsed in the distance.

Leni drifted through the crowd alongside her mother, clutching the small backpack she’d had since she was twelve years old. Her Alaska backpack. It felt totemic, the last durable remnant of a discarded life. She wished she’d been able to bring her Winnie the Pooh lunch box.

They arrived at their destination: a sugary pink Gothic building with sweeping arches and delicate spires and intricately scrolled windows.