“I don’t know what those things are—”
“Exactly,” she said. “That’s why we all should travel. Live a bigger life.”
“So you’re not coming home? Can I stay at the house, then?”
She felt an arch of surprise lift through her body. “Uh, well, sure. Why? What’s wrong with where you’re living?”
“Nothing. Well. Everything. It’s hard. Rent. Roommates. Dudes are slobs. I’m sorry I was such a slob. You never complained. You just picked up all my shit. And now I feel sorry about that. I’ll never leave towels on the floor again. So I can move back in? And where have you been staying this whole time?”
She decided to tell him a part truth. “I sleep in my car sometimes.” She pushed through his surprised noise. “Then I stayed in a cabin in Colorado, then a little trailer, and now I’m at a little rustic resort in a place called Cave Valley.”
There was a pause. “What? The car? What? That sounds uncomfortable. I mean, for you, Mom…”
She found herself barking out a genuine laugh. “Tell me about it. But actually, I am feeling quite comfortable. I miss your dad, of course. Of course we both miss him. It hurts that he’s dead. Death is stupid! But I’ve been so busy my whole life, Powell. Working, raising you, keeping the house, which I was very happy to do. I was efficient and fast because I had to be. But for once, I have learned to move through time differently. I still go fast sometimes, but then I go slow. I sit around and watch birds.”
There was a pause. “Huh. That’s like me when I smoke weed. I’m able to sit still and be at peace with it.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, let’s smoke together sometime, Mom.”
She felt her eyebrows shoot up. “Um, okay? Maybe?”
He made a surprised noise himself. “Plot twist in my life! The very idea of smoking weed with my mom…But also, if you sleep in your car, aren’t you cold? You hate being cold. Are you safe?”
“The Grey Goose feels very safe, and I know how to stay warm.”
“The Grey Goose?”
“That’s the car’s name. Was the car’s name.”
“The old gray Subaru has a name?”
“Of course it does! Doesn’t yours?”
“No.”
“Maybe work on that. What are you up to?”
He laughed. “This is really surprising. This doesn’t sound like you at all. None of it. My life? Mom, I know you don’t approve, but, er, my weed plants are doing great. I named them all after philosophers. Sartre. Bertrand. Arendt. I’m building a greenhouse and everything.”
“Don’t wreck up your brain. But otherwise, I’m proud. What about the woman?”
He sighed, sadly. “Didn’t work out.”
“Sorry, Powell. I am. I’m glad you’re trying. It’s worth it.” Then, because there was silence, she said, “Wanna hear the names of the ecosystems here?” and without waiting for an answer, she ticked them off. “Desert scrub, desert grassland, oak savannah, chaparral pine-oak woodland, pine forest, mixed-conifer forest.”
“Good to know,” he said, clearly smiling on the other side of the phone. Then, “I sometimes feel weird or uncool for saying this, but what I want most is a girlfriend. Am I allowed to feel that? Is that wrong? A real girlfriend. It’s kinda lonely, and I know about being independent and all but jesus, it’s harder than you think.”
She let out a cascade of laughter and told him she could not agree more. Then she told him about the snowstorm, and how her new theory was that three-fourths of the year, the planet felt as if it was trying to shrug everyone off. She told him about the audiobooks she’d listened to. She told him she was most interested now in what contemporary writers were saying about how to live, about living well on Planet Earth, which, she had decided, was the foundation of the next phase of her life. Her and Mama Earth. She reminded him of his namesake, John Wesley Powell, and how Vincent had always been enamored with his adventures.
By his questions, she could tell he did not want to get off the phone. He was actually enjoying the conversation, she thought, and they ended by sharing favorite memories of Vincent’s past birthdays. When she hung up, she cried a few tears that needed release. She missed Powell, she missed her home. Homesick, that was the word. But mainly, she cried in relief because Powell had wanted to talk to her in a way he hadn’t for a long time.
She looked at the dripping icicles hanging from the library roof and turned off her phone. All had been taken care of. At the end of each conversation, she’d clarified that she’d now be out of touch for some time. It was time to adventure again.
—
The flight was bucking-bronc-bumpy and reminded her of driving the dirt road to Dart, except it was a rutted road in the sky. To calm herself—she hadn’t done much flying in her life, and didn’t like it much—she thought of hugging Rita and Rex and Lady goodbye. She thought of the notes she dropped in the mail to Dan and Lulu and Apricot and Mari and Powell. She thought of the ride to the airport with Rex, who did not press her about her missing car. She thought of her first nights in the car and driving through Nebraska trying to comb her hair with a fork. She thought of all the nights she was so cold she couldn’t move well. She thought of the Colorado cabin and the stars and the hot baths. She thought of the nights in Dart, bleeding and cramping in a cramped space, and she thought of the night walking with her cut head. She thought of Kit and the soft kiss. She thought of Dan and the other kind of kiss. She thought of Levi, whom she’d kissed hundreds of times in her mind. She thought of her New Keys—the three women who had taught her something on her heroine’s journey. Kat an elder, Lulu a child, Rita a peer.
She thought of her homes in Colorado and Cave Valley, how she’d now think of them as refugia, which were places creatures could live during cataclysmic events. And the next refugium would be the most glorious of all. But as she looked down at the vast ocean, she could see that Planet Earth was the only refugium humans had, and as the plane bumped up and down and shifted sideways in unsettling ways, she hoped that she’d found her own code of ethics to live by, which was to create refugia wherever she went.
PART III THE THIRD KEY SEA AND GLASS
CHAPTER 16
A shack. With spunk. A spunky shack. She knew she’d find the battered place tucked deeply in the bush, a mile from the sea. She knew too that the gray weathered wood rectangle was separated from the line of homes on the other side of the beach not only by distance but by elevation, it being higher up in the jungle, and sitting in a large swath of private land. That meant the house was surrounded by an enormous expanse of berserk greenery and rendered invisible from Google Maps and the human eye, and although Ammalie could recognize the pohutukawa trees from photos, the rest of the green mash was a mysterious jumble of angles and circles, soft and spiky, light green and deep green. Surrounded by such lushness, this home would be invisible in the very opposite way Dart had been.
But she was not there yet. She’d be there soon. As she walked down the beach in a light rain, the backpack pressing heavy on her shoulders, her stinging eyes scanned the scattered homes and rising hill through the mist. What if she couldn’t find it or recognize it? She knew it from photos only, knew it to be humble. The artwork around it would be quirky and stunning, though, since the artists who used it for a residency each left one piece of work in an act of reciprocity. Carved statues placed in trees and bushes, stone figures hidden in rocks, glazed bowls that served as birdbaths, wind chimes made of shells and sticks.
Below this shack, and closer to the beach, she knew there was a much fancier glass-walled building for the artists-in-residence to work in, and which also served as a community center of sorts during the summer months, January through April, when the town bloomed in size, though that was relative. Ki was a small town, the smallest beach town in New Zealand, in fact. It had a limited number of houses because of limited space in the cove, and it was too far off the beaten path for most day visitors from Auckland, who had easier places from which to view the roaring Tasman Sea.
And it was truly devoid of human-made noises. In the drizzle, there was only one man walking in the very far distance and one couple walking hand in hand in the opposite direction. “Cheers, Vincent, it is gorgeous, and I made it,” she said, and was struck by a wave of something akin to déjà vu. In an alternate universe, perhaps they would have made it here as a couple for their anniversary as planned.
Early December meant it was still rainy and blustery and damp—summer was just now coming to this half of the globe. The humidity was intense, thus the chill. But mainly, it was just so green. She kept repeating so green because she was stunned. After fall in Chicago and Colorado and Arizona, her eyes had felt starved for color. As she gazed over at the bush, she felt as if the greens were lighting up new filaments in her irises, as if a new part of her brain were being moisturized. Her eyes seemed to vibrate with life in their effort to take in all this life.
She did a little jig in the wet sand. She felt full of spit and vinegar. She was alive and off the airplane—which she’d felt she had to hold up with her mind the entire time—and on terra firma and in New Zealand. She swung her arms, both to feel the air and to warm up. “Ammalie, brava, brave one, you hate flying, you are here, you did it!”
