Bitter Business

brought his mother very sharply to mind.
     
    “They seem like nice kids,” I said, once we’d taken our coffee cups into the living room. A fire burned merrily behind the grate, the flames reflected in the polished surface of the baby grand piano. On the low table in front of us was a spray of dendrobium orchids in a crystal vase and a plate of chocolates. I helped myself.
    “These are wonderful,” I said, taking a bite.
    “They’re from Belgium. I have a climbing friend who sends them to me.”
    “I can’t believe you’re really taking your nieces and nephew up Mount McKinley.”
    “Oh, I’m not worried about the kids. In some ways they’re better technical climbers than I am. They’re certainly in better shape. Of course, the sport’s changed so much since I was their age. Now they all go to the climbing gym and work out on the wall—they feel like they can climb anything. I’m just going along to slow them down.”
    “Claire seems like a neat kid. She looks like you.”
    “Do you really think so? I always imagine she looks like her dad.”
    “Where does he live?”
    “We’re not divorced. He died in a climbing accident before Claire was born.”
    “I’m surprised you still climb.”
    “I didn’t for a long time. When Claire was little I was afraid. But when she got older she got interested. She’s a lot like Jeremy, her dad, that way. I guess from time to time everybody has got to feed the rat.”
    “What’s feeding the rat?”
    “It’s a climbing expression. The rat is that voice inside your head that whispers, ‘Go for it. Take the risk.’ Claire hears the rat loud and clear, just like her dad. You know, there were times when we were climbing in Arizona this winter, when I’d look up the rope at her and swear I was seeing Jeremy. There’s something about their climbing styles that’s very similar.”
    “It must be nice to be able to remember him that way,” I said, feeling jealous.
    “Daniel told me that you’d lost your husband to cancer. Was it long ago?”
    “Four years this past November. We weren’t married very long.”
    “Any kids?”
    “No. There wasn’t any time. He got sick right after we were married. You know, when he was first diagnosed I ]0iew that it would be terrible—his illness, his death. In some ways these last years have been worse. At least during the crisis you have the crisis to deal with. I was completely unprepared for... the emptiness that followed.”
    “I understand completely. It was the same way after Jeremy died. A numbness sets in. I was five months pregnant when he died and everyone kept talking to me about the baby—telling me that that’s what I had to live for. They were right, of course. But at the time the baby was still an abstraction. Only my loss was real. I remember I used to go to the mailbox and there’d be mail for him— come-ons, solicitations, just junk. I’d stand there with grocery circulars in my hands and cry.”
    “I still wear Russell’s old shirts sometimes when I’m just bumming around at home. I know it’s crazy, but they’re all that’s left.”
    “Do you still keep in touch with his family?”
    “His mother and I go to the cemetery together every year. She’s this old Polish lady who doesn’t speak any English, but we go and lay flowers on his grave and cry together. I know it doesn’t do either of us any good, but we can’t stop going. Everybody tells me that I have to move on....”
    “You already are, you know. You don’t know it but you are. You take one breath and then another. You get up and you go to work. You eat and you sleep and you do what you have to do. It’s not the life you planned, but it’s a life. And in a while you’re going to look back and realize that it’s not so bad. It just takes time.”
    “And you never married again?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “Ever tempted?”
    “Not really. Well, maybe once—the Belgian who sends me the chocolates. We still climb together once or twice a year.”
    “But that’s it?”
    “I’ve gotten used to doing things my way, making my own decisions, having my freedom. I have my work, my house, my daughter.... I have enough family for four lifetimes. I couldn’t really see how I was going to be able to make a relationship work with a man who lives four thousand miles away in another country. In the end it turned out to be not as important as I thought.”
    “And are you happy?”
    Dagny thought a minute before