Rain Shadow
A woman hikes up a mountain, oblivious to the dust whipping up and the unforgiving sun. What moisture there is evaporates at the crest. Hot, dry air travels back down the leeward side causing the desert-like conditions of the rain shadow. This year, drought has claimed fields of crops and most of the smaller streams, even taking a few old people. Animals and birds are scarce. The rain shadow is arid and still.
Scientists document a giant brown cloud hovering over Southeast Asia that might be the cause of this summer’s drought. Or it could be even more holes in the ozone layer. Grapes wither on the vine. Helen starts to cross a dried-up culvert, jumping along a network of uncovered rocks. Gnats swarm up from the hard-packed bank like smoke from a campfire.
She drove through the night and part of the next day until she came to a small town in the rain shadow of a high mountain. Maybe if she climbs long enough she can figure it out. Helen met Spencer through one of her students at the dance studio. Uncle Spencer often dropped his niece off for her class. Spencer was the guest director for the summer theater program. He’d be leaving at the end of the season.
He pursued her. Sophisticated, and different from other men she knew, Spencer had been everywhere. He shared stories of his travels over idyllic summer evenings, stroking her hair as they relaxed together in the hammock out back. Stories of travels to rice paper tea rooms and open markets where he once tasted smoked bat. Spencer told her of the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel and how he wept like a baby in front of the Pieta. He had touched the Pyramids and showed her a picture of crocodiles basking on the banks of the Nile. Like Scheherazade, Spencer captivated Helen with his stories and adventures.
When the season came to an end, Spencer asked Helen to marry him. She said yes without hesitation. She closed the dance studio to move to Stockbridge with Spencer. On the last day, the little ballerinas staged a farewell performance. In their effort to impress their teacher, they had never danced better. Now, marriage became Helen’s career and Spencer became her life. She settled into a routine, the home base a successful man like Spencer needs. Helen took his name, dreams, and desires for her own.
“Stupid!” Helen shouted into a whirling vortex of dust. Stupid- the mountain echoed back to her in her own voice.
Early morning at the base of the mountain, Helen starts to climb, her muscles sore from the day before. At least sore muscles take her attention away from the exhaustion. She can’t sleep. Her mind is dull like the fuzz on the TV at 4 am. White noise was meant to lull Helen into senselessness, not conjure up taunting visions of betrayal.
Spencer stopped loving Helen without telling her. If she suspected, she told herself that all marriages go through dry spells. Helen climbs higher, accompanied by an ever-present chorus of regret. She ignored it all, the shift in his desire for sex, his need for affection, the distant look in Spencer’s eyes. Thinking back, there was plenty of evidence of the infidelity. Long hours at the theater. Unexplained purchases on the credit cards. The awful absence of meaningful conversation. Their words became small, pared down to one or two, no more.
“Idiot!” she screams. She pulls at her hair in frustration. Nothing moves, nothing breathes. Idiot, the mountain agrees.
With the focus of a high-powered telescope, Helen tried to zoom in on it, to pinpoint the day, hour, and minute that Spencer stopped loving her, to map it in her memory. That’s not the way it happened.
Helen breaks from the trail, almost running. She keeps pushing, breaking through thickets and underbrush, sweat tingling on her upper lip. Brambles bite at her, catching at her skin but Helen moves on in relentless pursuit of a solution, an answer that doesn’t exist. A red scratch welts up on her thigh, speckled with blood. She doesn’t notice.
Standing alone in the dark hallway, she watched them together. She felt like she was suffocating, gulping for air when she remembered to breathe at all. They were so beautiful, like swans or fallen angels. The woman in her bed was the actress from Spencer’s new play. She recognized the expression she saw on Spencer’s face. He used to look at her that way.
“Liar!” Helen screams it, but there is a drought. No more tears will come. Liar echoes across the rain shadow.
The hallway to the bedroom receded. It felt like everything was moving backward, like she was standing in the surf feeling the pull of the waves. From the bedroom, their laughter got quieter, deeper, and more breathless. Helen can’t look away although she wants to, compulsion makes her watch them.
“I was blind!” she shouts, dust in her nostrils. Blind - the mountain reaffirms. A bird takes flight from a parched black branch.
Running like the day she left home, Helen loses her footing, stumbling and rolling before coming to a stop under a dying tree. She lies on her back, looking up at the pallid sky, filtered through sparse branches. In a drought year a tree ring is very thin, the living record of its yearning. Time stops. Her heart slows. Then, in the lonesomeness, Helen hears a voice.
“Who said that?” She sits up, and scans in every direction. Only stillness. Solitude. Empty mountain. Who said that, the mountain taunts her.
Helen gets up. Her ankle gives out and she loses balance, falling back down. She wants to go home. She loves Spencer. She hates Spencer. She misses Spencer. She hates herself. The tree reaches out its dry branches as if to help her back up. The dark sky shuts out the sun.
Sitting up, Helen pours what little water is left in her bottle into the dirt, mixing it with her finger. She paints angry stripes on her cheeks and forehead. She pulls off her shirt and bra, painting spirals on her arms and chest. She shimmies out of her shorts and sneakers, painting the tops of her feet with sunbursts. Rising carefully, turning in a slow circle, Helen looks at the forsaken landscape, surveying the rain shadow in every direction.
She sways, closing her eyes, listening to the earth. She hears insects chirp, dried grass rustle, and a rattlesnake rattle not far away. Clouds start to roll across the heavens, gathering power. She begins to dance, slow and careful at first, then faster as thunder echoes off the silent stones. Helen feels the approval of her audience, the thirst of the mountain urging her on. Dancing makes her pain recede, lose its grip on her.
First, a spatter of raindrops, then closer together. Then more. Helen tastes her tears mixed with the rain on her face. Raising her hands to the sky, healing raindrops fall through outstretched fingers.
Morning comes. More rain is expected that evening. Helen hikes the expert trail along Franklin Cobble. More than a mere hill, a cobble is a piece of the mountain that has detached, become separate. She feels a deep kinship, knowing what it takes to separate, to detach. Out here, it’s easy to wind up going in circles and never getting anywhere. A person could lose all sense of time and place. Helen makes a mark so as not to lose the trail. She will find her way back. She won’t get lost again.
