Peter Heller - Celine

“Where were we?” Celine said. “Oh, I had an idea. We passed the library just a mile back. Looks like they’re having a cleanout. They would have old copies of National Geographic, don’t you think? Maybe we can even buy some.”

The Teton County Library was a long low building with log walls that looked a little like a ranch house. Don’t let that fool you, thought Celine. This was one of the richest counties in the country and the inside did not disappoint: the computer area, the children’s room, the Calder mobile hanging in the lobby would have been the envy of any city. It reminded them of the very fancy high schools on Fishers and North Haven: Where there are many rich folks “from away,” their property taxes have to go somewhere. In the courtyard in back, in the dappled shade of an aspen grove, were tables and tables of old books and taped paper signs that said $2 EACH. They passed them with barely a glance. The farthest folding tables, beside a venerable old blue spruce and not far from the chortle of a small creek, held stacks of donated magazines.

Many were so old the covers were marbled by wear. There were the expected Popular Mechanics and Better Homes and Gardens. The Modern Architecture s and Flyfish Journal s. Celine glided by them without a twinge of remorse, but had to make herself ignore the surprising edifice of Soldier of Fortune s. Well, actually she couldn’t. She stopped and pondered the issue on top with a picture of a commando in a floppy jungle hat and face paint emerging from a twilit river holding a camoed rifle with a double scope and the headline: NIGHT VISION LIKE NEVER BEFORE. Pete nudged her. “It’s a very small camper.” “But, Pete, just one?” His eyebrow did something minute, which was Pete’s version of a shrug, and she picked up the magazine. What they were looking for was in boxes on the grass. Boxes and boxes. Clearly, the local Brahmins were drowning in National Geographic s.

It took them all of ten minutes to locate the dozen years Paul Lamont was active, and to skim the tables of contents and pull out the issues in which he had stories. Celine decided it would be a good idea to jot down the dates of the ones in this period that they left behind. They grabbed a few more from later years for good measure and came away with an armful of thirty-one magazines, fifty cents apiece. The docent with the cash box by the glass doors wore almost as many gold bracelets as Celine. She looked up over her half-rim glasses and, recognizing one of her own, visibly relaxed, smiled, said, “Oh, don’t you just love these? We wallpapered the ski room with old covers. Five dollars will do, take as many as you like.” Absently she flipped through the old magazines and stopped cold at Soldier of Fortune. “Oh!” she peeped. “How did that get in here? I’m so sorry, I can put that one back if you’d like—”

“We’ll take it,” Celine said, smiling brightly. “You never know when you might need a nightscope.” She gathered up the magazines and they left.

They drove north along Jackson Lake, through the National Park. Blowdown wracked the banks, piles of tangled driftwood logs silvered in the sun. Pink fireweed flushed the meadows and the mountains stood above their own reflections in the dark water. Celine wondered again what it was about beauty, and what it had to do with love. She thought that she was probably as sensible to its intoxications as Lamont. Artists, as a tribe, tend to share this dangerous susceptibility. She could sympathize. She would have gone crazy, too. The man had roamed the earth bearing witness to beauty through the lens of his camera, and Amana was maybe the most exquisite thing he had ever beheld. More even than those two horses pawing the sky at sunrise. She was more glorious than his famous ship cresting what looked to be a tsunami. Easy to love someone that beautiful. Easy to be obsessed.

And when Amana was being pulled by the current out to sea, he turned his back on her and swept up his daughter and ran with her up the trail.

To Celine, that was the bravest act of true love. It might seem contrary, mightn’t it? She might have asked that of someone listening to her story. No, not to me, she would answer. Because he made himself an extension of his wife’s will. Counter to his every screaming instinct, he did what she would have wanted, insisted, he do. And he did it in a selfless instant, without hesitation. Celine could not think of an act more truly heroic.

What he did after: disappearing into drink, exiling his little daughter to her own planet, maybe abandoning her completely twelve years later. She almost forgave it. After seeing the photographs of his first wife and the quality of the attention he had given her, she understood.

Did he finally abandon Gabriela for good, on the border of Wyoming and Montana? Or was he hauled away by a bear? That’s what they had come to find out. Which was the worst outcome? Which would hurt the girl more? The revelations about the missing file pointed to a picture a bit more complicated than a bear attack. And she knew that simple death is sometimes the least painful form of absence.

That first summer, when the sisters were finally certain that their father really would not take the three-hour train ride from New York and the forty-five-minute New London ferry to visit them on the island, they began, in adult parlance, to act out. Bobby was the first to go to the hospital. Las Armas, Gaga’s house, was a Spanish villa brought over from the old country brick by brick by Grandfather Charles. It had a courtyard that opened to the sound and an upper gallery that ran around the entire second story and looked down on the central fountain and flower beds. The upper rooms were serviced by two inner staircases—one from the kitchen and service quarters, and one from the main entrance—and two outer sets of steps with heavy, varnished banisters.

Las Armas ran with a spare summer staff. It was more a matter of aesthetics than economy. Gaga brought with her to Fishers a butler, who functioned also as secretary and valet; a cook; a serving maid, who did housekeeping; and a laundress, a chauffeur, and a gardener. The heavy landscaping and gardening that took place before and after the family left for Manchester were contracted out to an island crew who took care of a number of houses. At home in Connecticut this skeleton staff would be beefed up considerably to a full complement that included two grooms; though they drove everywhere in their Rolls, no one could imagine a house without horses.

Bobby, being the eldest granddaughter, had her own bedroom on the upper floor, which overlooked the lawns that ran down to the beach. Celine and Mimi shared a bedroom down the hall that looked out on the crushed-seashell driveway and the front gardens.

The two younger sisters were, as a rule, the first up in the morning. They were two years apart, but like twins, they tended to wake at the same minute, their bare feet hit the maple floor in a four-beat tattoo, nighties were shed and shorts and shirts thrown on in a blur, the water tap in the adjacent bathroom ran for twenty-eight seconds, the toilet flushed twice, and they were ready. What would the morning bring? Not that they were “brought” anything. These were not passive creatures. The first order of business was to drag their older sister into the day.

Bobby was eleven, almost twelve. She was protective of her sisters and the three would circle the wagons in any society outside of family, but she was also a girl on the cusp, and as such she lived in and out of a realm that was remote to the younger girls, and mysterious, and a bit regal, and sort of awe-inspiring; and at times she had little patience for childish enthusiasms. Celine and Mimi sensed the imminent departure of their sister into the mists of womanhood and were determined to keep her in the land of the barefoot and the tomboy as long as they could. Their favorite pre-breakfast sport was to sneak into her room while she slept, approach their prey like two leopards, and pounce.