Melanie Gideon - Wife 22

You didn’t wake until late afternoon. You looked at your watch and knew immediately something was very wrong; it was a hike that should have taken me two hours, but I had been gone close to six and you had a pretty good idea why-I had gone off trail. I was always going off trail. You , on the other hand always stayed on the trail, but without you there walking beside me, I drifted, and became helplessly lost.

Now, this was a long time ago. Before AOL. Before cellphones. We were still years away from searching and clicking and browsing and friending. So you came after me the old-fashioned way. You rang your bear bell, you called out my name, and you ran. And at dusk, when you finally found me, sobbing at the base of a pine tree, you made me a promise I’ll never forget. No matter where I went, no matter how far I drifted, no matter how long I was gone, you would come after me and bring me home. It was the most romantic thing a man had ever said to me. Which makes it all the more difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that twenty years later we’ve drifted from one another again. Profligate drifting. Senseless drifting. As if we had all the daylight left in the world to make it to the top of Tuckerman.

If this sounds like a goodbye letter, I’m sorry. I’m not sure it’s goodbye. It’s more of a warning. You should probably look at your watch. You should probably say to yourself, Alice has been gone a very long time. You should probably come and find me. AB

I wake to the clatter of aluminum tent poles skittering over the hardwood floor.

“Where the hell is your mother?” I hear William shout from downstairs.

I just want to stay in bed. However, thanks to me, sleep will have to be shelved because we’re going camping in the Sierras. I made the reservation a few months ago. It sounded so idyllic then: sleeping under the stars surrounded by sugar pines and firs-a little family bonding. Caroline and Jampo will have the house to themselves for a few days.

“Goddammit!” William shouts. “Is there anybody here capable of packing a tent properly?”

I climb out of bed. Not nearly so idyllic a vision now.

An hour later we are on the road and our family bonding looks like this: William listening to the latest John le Carré novel on his iPhone (which, by the way, is exactly what I’m listening to on the car’s CD player, but William says he’s unable to concentrate unless he’s read to privately), Peter playing Angry Birds on his phone, every so often shouting bananas and dang it , and Zoe furiously texting-God knows to whom. It’s like this for two and a half hours until we begin driving over the pass and cell reception cuts out. Then it’s like they’ve awoken from a dream.

“Whoa, trees,” says Peter.

“Is that where those people ate those people?” asks Zoe, peering down at the lake.

“You mean the Donner Party,” says William.

“Breast or thigh, Zoe?” asks Peter.

“Hil-ar-ious, Pedro. How long is this camping trip anyway?” asks Zoe.

“Our reservation is for three nights,” I say. “And it’s not like it’s work. It’s car camping. Nobody has to do anything. We’re here to have fun and relax.”

“Yes, this morning was extremely relaxing, Alice,” says William, staring out the window. He’s as unenthusiastic as the children.

“Does this mean there’ll be no cell service?” asks Zoe.

“Nah, we’re just in a dead zone. Dad said there’d be Wi-Fi at the campground,” says Peter.

“Uh-he’s wrong, sorry. There’s no Wi-Fi,” I tell them.

I just found out this fact myself yesterday when I confirmed our reservation. Then I went into my bedroom and had a nice, private panic attack at the thought of being incommunicado with Researcher 101 for seventy-two hours. Now I’m resigned to it.

Gasps issue forth from the backseat.

“Alice, you didn’t tell me that,” says William.

“No, I didn’t tell any of you that because if I did, you wouldn’t have come.”

“I can’t believe you are going to unplug,” says Zoe to me.

“Well, believe it,” I say. I reach over William and pop my cellphone into the glove box. “Hand your phones over, kiddos. You, too, William.”

“What if there’s an emergency?” says William.

“I brought a first-aid kit.”

“An emergency of a different sort,” he says.

“Like what?”

“Like having to get in touch with somebody,” he says.

“That’s the whole point. To get in touch with each other,” I say. “IRL.”

“IRL?” asks William.

“In real life,” I say.

“It really disgusts me that you know that acronym,” says Zoe.

Fifteen minutes later, apparently incapable of doing anything-daydreaming, conversing, or having one original thought without the aid of their devices-the kids are asleep in the backseat. They stay asleep until we roll into the campground.

“Now what?” says Peter, after we finish setting up the campsite.

“Now what? This is what,” I say, spreading my arms wide. “Getting away from it all. The woods, the trees, the river.”

“The bears,” says Zoe. “I have my period. I’m staying in my tent. Blood is like catnip to them.”

“Disgusting,” says Peter.

“That’s an old wives’ tale,” says William.

“No, it’s not. They can smell it miles off,” says Zoe.

“I’m going to throw up now,” says Peter.

“Let’s play cards,” I say.

Zoe holds up a finger. “Too windy.”

“Charades,” I suggest.

“What? No! It’s not dark yet. People will be able to see us,” she says.

“Fine. How about we go find some firewood?” I ask.

“You look mad, Mom,” says Peter.

“I’m not mad, I’m thinking.”

“It’s strange how your thinking face looks like your mad face,” says Peter.

“I’m going to take a nap,” says Zoe.

“Me, too,” says Peter. “All this nature makes me sleepy.”

“I’m a little tired, too,” says William.

“Do what you want. I’m going down to the river,” I say.

“Take a compass,” says William.

“It’s fifty feet from here,” I say.

“Where?” asks Peter.

“Through the trees. There. See? Where all those people are swimming.”

“That’s a river? It looks like a stream,” says Zoe.

“Tucker, you are not allowed to do dead man’s float in the water!” we hear a woman scream.

“Why not?” a boy yells back.

“Because people will think you’re dead!” the woman screams back.

“We drove all this way so you could swim in a stream with hundreds of other people? We could have just gone to the town pool,” says Peter.

“You people are pathetic,” I huff, stomping off.

“When are you coming back, Alice?” William calls after me.

“Never!” I shout.

Two hours later, sunburned and happy, I pick up my shoes and head back. I’m exhausted, but it’s a good exhausted, the kind that comes from submersing yourself in a glacial river on a July afternoon. I walk slowly, not wanting to break the spell. Occasionally I have this sort of out-of-body experience where I feel all my previous incarnations simultaneously: the ten-year-old, the twenty-year-old, the thirty-year-old, and the forty-something-year-old-they’re all breathing and looking out of my eyes at the same time. The pine needle path crunches under my bare feet. The smell of hamburgers grilling makes my stomach growl. I hear the faint sounds of a radio-Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me”?

It feels strange not to have my phone with me. It feels even stranger not to be on constant alert, waiting for my next hit: an email or post from Researcher 101. What I feel instead is emptiness. Not a yearning emptiness, but a lovely, blissed-out emptiness that I know will be obliterated the moment I set foot in our campsite.