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“It wasn’t obvious to them,” Jigme said. “I had lied about being qualified.”
“You only lied because you saw no other way to have what you wanted,” Yangchen said.
“I wanted to go to the top.” Jigme’s voice was wistful. “I think it must be very beautiful there. I used to dream that it would be like a meadow, with golden and blue flowers.”
“It’s windy and cold,” Yangchen said. “The view is poor.”
“I’m not stupid. But I wanted to see for myself.” Jigme turned back to Rosemary. “I have a nephew who has been to the summit. He was lost in the avalanche. Not this one, the one before. I minded him as a baby alongside my daughter, nursed him when his mother had to travel to another village for work. So I think, at least some part of me has been to the top of the mountain.”
“I’m sorry you lost your nephew.”
Jigme sipped her tea. “It’s dangerous work.”
Kal shifted on the sofa. Rosemary wondered why he’d decided to keep himself apart. Was it anger over their desire to climb? Only megalomaniacs and the wounded climbed Everest—that’s what he’d told her. Did he think his aunt was a megalomaniac, too? That Rosemary was? Or wounded, like his mother?
Rosemary didn’t feel mentally ill, and she didn’t believe she’d lost her mind on the mountain—at least, not any more than the other climbers had. Jigme and Yangchen seemed perfectly rational. Jigme had her reason for climbing, just as Rosemary did.
“Do you have a recorder?” Yangchen asked.
“I have an app on my phone.” Rosemary tapped the app open and showed it to Yangchen.
Yangchen took the phone and examined the app’s display. She pressed the record button. The milliseconds began whirring by, preserving the sounds of Jigme measuring sugar into her cup as a jet passed by overhead, of tea being poured, of silence.
“Merlin climbed Everest three times,” Yangchen said. “They gave him endorsement money selling carabiners and water bottles. Never mind that I knew Jigme, she’d been up and down the side of the mountain ten or fifteen times in one season. She didn’t go to the top only because she was a woman. They want to look at the men, even when the women do the work.”
Yangchen looked at Rosemary. She nodded.
Go on.
“So Merlin, he starts his own guide service, fully booked. Forty-five thousand dollars a person. Merlin didn’t know how to outfit climbers. He had me in charge of buying oxygen, regulators, hiring his Sherpa team. I took the phone calls, bought permits, everything. But everyone looked at him. They looked at him so hard, and they saw nothing. They didn’t see him shouting, getting angry all the time, so I have to manage his feelings like he is a small child. They didn’t see him hit me. They looked away from the bruises on my face and my arms.”
She stared at the recorder.
Rosemary felt the silence move across her skin, knew that Kal was listening, unmoving, in the other room.
“He pushed me to the ground at Base Camp in front of a dozen men, but no one saw it. He was still Merlin Beckett, legendary Everest climber. He hit my children, broke Kalden’s arm, cut open Tenzing’s eyebrow when he was only a baby and I had to take him to the emergency room by myself, with no health insurance. Somehow, nobody saw.” She sighed. “I told myself, you have to get away from this man. I went to the legal aid, learned how to fill out the divorce papers. I asked for custody of the children, and Merlin told them I was crazy and didn’t speak English, that I couldn’t take care of them and he should have my children.
“We went to court. Kalden spoke for me. I testified also. Merlin was so angry, he tried to choke me in front of the judge. He screamed at the judge. They arrested him. I got my divorce. I thought, this should be the end of him now, in jail, everybody saw him. I can go to Everest and climb, myself, all the way to the top. It’s my turn.”
Yangchen looked at Rosemary. Not the walking wounded. A woman who knew exactly what she wanted.
“I was wrong,” Yangchen said. “That spring, there was Merlin at Base Camp, with a dozen climbers who paid him fifty thousand dollars to lead them. I’m supposed to go to the summit the next morning. Merlin is arguing with my group leader, his people should go, not my people. The Sherpa tell me, maybe you should go home. Maybe it isn’t your time to go to the top.”
A plane flew overhead, forcing Yangchen to pause. Rosemary heard the words as a refrain. Maybe it isn’t your time.
You wanted to go to the top. You thought it was your turn, you did everything you could to make it happen, but maybe not. Because you’re a woman.
Her fury was clean, white-hot and satisfying.
“Then Kalden is at my tent, he’s moping, he said something to make his father angry. I told him to stay away from Merlin, but he couldn’t stop himself from poking the tiger, and I leave to go to Merlin’s tent, because it’s what I have always done, for many years. I think it’s my job to fix Merlin so he won’t be angry with Kalden. But Merlin isn’t himself. He’s angry, that’s normal, but he doesn’t make any sense. He grabs a fistful of his shirt, again and again, pulls his clothes away from his neck. I think, I know what that is. He’s sick. His lungs aren’t working right. Maybe he got a virus in the Khumbu, that happens, and he came to the mountain with his lungs weak, but he didn’t know it. Or something else.
“I tell him he needs to see the doctor. He attacks me, holds me down with his hands on my throat, hits me, and I think I’m going to die, finally he’s going to kill me. Then he grabs at his shirt again and I get away, run out of the tent. He comes after me. Nobody sees. No one is there, this big camp always full of people, but I’m alone with Merlin, running, and I realize he’s not behind me anymore. He’s nowhere. I go back to look. He’s fallen, tripped on a rock and hit his head. It’s broken. I know there’s no way to save him, and I don’t try. I watch him. I feel nothing, watching him, but relief.”
Yangchen crossed her arms and looked into the room where Kal was sitting, though she couldn’t see him from her position.
Rosemary imagined Kal as a young man, waiting at Base Camp for his mother to return.
She imagined Beatrice at home, angry and confused as to why her mother had needed to leave.
