Range of Light by Valerie Miner Read Free Book Online Page B

the sky in hopes—dashed—of shooting stars, waiting, waiting for the courage to crawl back into the tent with an all-too-familiar person. The fear was ridiculous. We were grown women, with separate lives. Adele beamed the lantern, and the tent became a lavender firefly poised in the cool mountain darkness.
    She didn’t look up as I entered. I saw she was reading Lantern Slides by Edna O’Brien, and I felt excluded, but also relieved because I was surprisingly shy about undressing. Finally in my sleeping bag, I got fixated on Edna crashing our party.
    â€œI hope Nancy’s OK,” I said. “Pretty scared, I guess.”
    â€œSure.” Adele set aside the book. “I’m sure she’s terrified. Still, she has a lot of confidence in that surgeon. And the girls are there.”
    â€œAll four of them?”
    â€œYes, Clare flew in from Panama.”
    â€œI bet Nancy was—is—a great mother. Maybe also a little overwhelming.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Adele’s voice stung back.
    â€œI mean she doesn’t let go. You know the way she stayed in touch with us all these years.”
    â€œI think that was nice.”
    â€œOh, I do, too.” I couldn’t help but consider that I would be enjoying a restoring, solitary mountain retreat if Nancy had been less persistent. “I admire it. I don’t know. I just don’t see where she found the time—the energy—to phone, write postcards and send those annual Christmas letters. In comparison, I’m a complete hermit.”
    Adele laughed, a deep, lying down, gurgling laugh. “You are a recluse.”
    That felt all right. It was true.
    â€œBut don’t you see, Nancy enjoyed it. Remember how her family always had those big New Year’s parties.”
    â€œI remember Mr. Decker, fetal position under the piano, purring like a cat.” I grimaced at the memory of silly Mr. Decker, who at the time seemed a happy contrast to our overserious fathers.
    â€œAnd to Nancy, our friendship meant a lot.”
    I felt the wind exit my lungs. “Are you saying”—I was on edge—“that it didn’t mean a lot to me?”
    â€œNo,” Adele responded quietly. “No, I don’t think I’m saying that.”
    I lay there in silence, aware of Adele’s soft breathing, of the scents of her herbal shampoo and sandalwood soap, my eyes closed.
    â€œI’m just saying that Nancy was intent on celebrating friendship—through letters, at the reunion, with this trip. In contrast to family events, like weddings and anniversaries, there aren’t many rituals for friendship.”
    My lids opened. “Yeah, family always comes before friendship.”
    â€œSo do lovers. I mean, friendships are women-women things, or between men. They lack the commodification of sex appeal.” Adele backtracked nervously. “Of course there are nonromantic friendships between men and women and romantic single-sex relationships, if you know what I mean …”
    â€œI know what you mean.”
    â€œSo friendship is a kind of accessory to life.” She stared at the nylon ceiling.
    â€œThe detachable sidecar,” I said, approaching danger.
    â€œYes.” Abruptly, she diverted us. “And Nancy knew—she always had a talent for friendship—that self could be constructed beyond family.”
    From the next campsite: the sound of our neighbor unzipping his compact tent. I felt a twinge of envy about his uncomplicated, independent camping trip.
    â€œNo, not without a sense of family,” Adele continued. “I suppose her father’s incest, well, shaped her irrevocably.”
    â€œSo friends were a safe port.”
    â€œMore like a raft. Because she went on to create her own family. And those girls, they really have become the center of her life.”
    â€œHope it’s a long one.”
    â€œYes.” She was subdued,