Nevada Barr - The Rope

Having them gone was more of a relief than Anna would have expected. As she ran and worked out on weights with Jim, joked with Gil, Dennis, and Jenny as they shared their cocktail hour at the picnic tables on their porches, she sensed the others were relieved as well. No one said anything; it was the subtle relief of a constant noise finally going silent or a small splinter finally working itself out of the ball of one’s thumb.

When, three weeks after Bethy had been screaming, Anna stepped out onto her porch on her day off, with her first cup of coffee, and found Bethy waiting, the surprise wasn’t entirely pleasant. Any bruising resulting from Regis punching her was gone. She looked calm and rested, her soft brown hair framing her face in a pixie cut that was more becoming than the thin ponytail into which she’d formerly dragged her hair.

Bethy wasn’t in uniform. She wore old, threadbare canvas trousers, sneakers without socks, and a red tank top. Her bare arms were well muscled, and she had lost more weight since Anna had last seen her.

“What are you doing here? Wednesday isn’t your lieu day,” Anna said ungraciously before she recovered from the shock of seeing her. Hurt shadowed Bethy’s eyes and was as quickly gone.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Anna apologized. “I love your hair,” she added as she took her accustomed place on the picnic table, feet on the bench in unconscious imitation of Jenny.

“Regis always liked it better short,” Bethy said, sounding almost shy. “I don’t know why I got the bug to grow it out.”

“You look great,” Anna said honestly. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Bethy looked away, squinting her eyes against the early light cresting the canyon rim to the east. She nibbled on her lower lip with child-sized teeth. Anna hadn’t noticed the small teeth before. Perhaps because Bethy seldom smiled.

“Are you still mad at me?” Bethy asked without looking at Anna. “You know, because I … well, you know.”

“I was never mad,” Anna said truthfully. “Just confused. Then, when I figured out Regis was beating you, worried.”

Bethy’s eyes flashed. She looked away quickly, but not before Anna felt the white-hot glare of anger. Whether it was at Regis for doing it, or her for noticing, she couldn’t decide.

“I don’t know where you got that idea,” Bethy said carefully, still not looking at her. “I fell down. People do, you know. Regis would never hurt me. We love each other too much.”

Rehearsed, Anna thought. “Okay,” she said. There was nothing she or anyone could do until Bethy reported it. Or Regis finally killed her.

“Anyway,” Bethy said, heaving a great sigh of relief at leaving the topic of domestic violence behind, “I didn’t come here to talk about that. I came here because I’m leaving Page tomorrow and will be gone for a while. I wanted to tell you I was sorry I did that thing on Lover’s Leap.” She looked at Anna shyly. “I just wanted you to like me is all.”

This last was said in the voice of a wistful child. Anna couldn’t help but be affected.

“I like you, Bethy,” Anna told her. “You don’t need to try so hard. Why are you leaving Glen Canyon? Your season isn’t up until the end of September.”

“I quit three weeks ago. Regis comes from money. His grandfather is, like, real rich. Regis can’t have it till he’s thirty or worse and jumps through hoops and stuff, but he gets some now, and I’ve always wanted to study cooking, you know, like a real chef school? Like in Paris? Regis wants me to have that, so … off I go to do it,” she finished with a shrug. “Regis is like that, you know, with me? He’s always doing things just to make me happy.”

And a bright, bright smile. Anna didn’t even have to work at it to see the brittle edges.

Bethy’s smile slipped, then vanished. The dream vacation smacked more of an exile. Maybe Regis had thrown her out. Maybe he was sending her off to rehab for one addiction or another. Maybe he “needed space” and Bethy was going home to Mom until he came to his senses. Whatever it was, Anna doubted the Parisians would be introduced to hash brown casserole anytime soon.

“I brought some food and gear and stuff,” Bethy said. Anna was relieved she’d returned to real-world subjects. “I was hoping we could do another canyon together so you’d remember me different, not like the total spaz I was last time?” Her voice went up at the end in a question. The look on her face was so beseeching it reminded Anna of a ham actor—but a very fine singer—in a production of My Fair Lady she’d stage-managed. When he sang “On the Street Where You Live,” his mugging made him resemble a particularly needy dog.

That same look was all over Bethy’s face.

Anna caved without even a token struggle. “Sounds like fun. Let me get my shoes.”

Hugging the canyon walls, Bethy piloted the Zodiac uplake, then turned into the mouth of Panther Canyon. There were several good slot canyons in Panther. It surprised Anna when Bethy passed them up to nose the Zodiac into the blocked slot where Anna and Jenny nearly lost their lives, and the college boys did.

“Isn’t this a little macabre?” Anna asked as Bethy sprang to the sandstone step at the base of the obstruction and began looping the bow line around a rock.

“What’s ‘macabre’?” Bethy asked as she finished and started up the giant’s stairsteps.

Nothing else to do, Anna followed her. “Creepy. Gruesome. Grim. Horrible. Ghastly.”

“Why is it all those things?” Bethy asked, stopping on the top, hands on hips.

Anna joined her, not in the least winded, and remembered how short of breath the climb left her the last time. “Believe it or not, Bethy, some people think corpses and near-death experiences are off-putting,” she said.

In the morning light, the rectangle of water and the narrow slot beyond—grown terrifying in Anna’s memory—didn’t look all that sinister.

“I guess,” Bethy said, sounding unconvinced, “but that was just then and this is a real cool climb. I thought you’d like to, you know, do it because last time … you know. Like you’re supposed to get back on the horse? Come on,” Bethy said, maybe realizing choosing this particular canyon wasn’t in the best of taste. “I got another idea. Way easier and prettier. We can do it in a couple of hours.” She started down the steps, sitting down on the lip of each and then hopping to the next.

Anna stayed where she was.

The water, black as squid ink, cold, and bottomless in her mind, was turquoise in the sunlight and unbelievably clear. Gold sandstone walls shimmered beneath the surface, water acting as a magnifying glass, until the drowned canyon seemed more real and inviting than that above the lake. Canyon walls, leaning, waiting to snap shut like the jaws of a hungry alligator on the edge of her dreams, soared in the varied hues of a sepia rainbow to a ribbon of achingly blue sky. At the far end of the crystalline pool, the crooked narrow slot Anna remembered as a torture chamber worthy of the Spanish Inquisition was a shadowed lane of water that drifted from turquoise to teal as it meandered deeper into the rock.

It was morning, not evening. They had the entire day before them. Anna’s shoulder was healed, and she was stronger than she’d ever been.

“I do want to get back on the horse,” she said to Bethy, who was standing below, near the bow of the Zodiac.

“Goody,” Bethy said. “It’ll be cool. You’ll see.” She snatched a bulky daypack and a coil of climbing rope with carabiners affixed to either end out of the inflatable boat and brought them along with Anna’s pack to the top of the sandstone blocks.