Mina, in the passenger seat, was lulled by the vibration of the car. Her skull knocked against the tempered glass in a not-unpleasant way. Her eyelids sank and darkened, then flicked open every few minutes. She saw exotic colors: swaths of glowing terra cotta, deep violet shadows, a sky so blue she only half recognized it. Then she dropped drop back into hypnagogia.
“Mina,” came Wayne’s voice. “Miiiina…” Wiggling fingers crept up the side of her neck. She flinched and opened her eyes. She turned to look in the back seat: both kids had fallen asleep. Their heads lolled at painful-looking angles.
“Why’d you wake me?” she said, with mock anguish.
“I lost the signal. You need to navigate. Plus, just look at this place!” Her husband swept a hand as though presenting the canyon to her. “I dub you Mina, Queen of the Carpathians!”
Mina smiled and took the paper map of the Utah park out of the side pocket of the rental car. Impossibly grand vistas gave way, one to another, as they rounded bends in the road. It felt like they were on a giant’s stage, weaving their way between set pieces. The looming rocks seemed to have personalities; they were definitely not inert. Mina could feel them looking at her.
The family had flown in on a red-eye from Boston. It was only a couple hours’ drive from the artifice of Las Vegas to this otherworldly place. Mina had planned the trip meticulously. A seven-day tour of the Southwest. She had booked stays in Zenith, Hale, Monolith Valley, Mesa Azul, and Archway. They would explore the majesty of nature together.
They pulled up to the park entrance. The kiosks were unmanned this time of year. Wayne drove under the low roof of the mid-century modern structure, and the park was theirs. Mina placed her finger on the map at the spot where they were. She picked the first green star along the route that indicated a trail and directed her driver to it.
Wayne swerved to the side of the mountain road and parked in a narrow gravel crescent that hugged the cliff edge much too intimately. They woke the kids and they all got out, groggy for their first hike. They were met with a burst of chilly air that brought the sweet smell of desert. Wayne and their teenage son, Liam, loped across the road. Mina clutched five-year-old Jamie’s hand, looked both ways, then followed. A rock wall faced her, and she looked up. She had to lean back to see the top of it, and she was hit by a wave of vertigo. She steadied herself with a hand against the rock and waited for her heartbeat to slow. A car zoomed by. She hurried Jamie to the trail, which was nearly vertical. The four of them went up sandstone steps, squeezing and releasing the steel handrails. The rails had thick dark rust all around, except for the top, which was worn smooth as a horse’s back, bright and silvery. The trail snaked up the bluff, which was dotted with a few tenacious juniper bushes. Mina was last in line, a human buffer between her child and certain death. She took a quick look behind her, at the earth dropped away, then clutched the railing, dizzy.
They reached a plateau and the handrails ended. Mina stopped to take a puff from her inhaler. Liam looked back at her.
“You good, Mama?
“Yes,” she said between labored breaths. “It’s the elevation.”
The trail continued along the side of a cliff with nothing to prevent a hiker from tumbling to their doom. Liam and Wayne went along without a care. They were both tall and lanky and had matching gaits. Wayne’s hair was graying; his curls spiraled wilder every year. Liam’s smooth skin stretched over his rapidly changing bone structure, perfect but for a spray of acne. He possessed the calmest nature of the four of them, a levelness, even at the top of a cliff. Jamie frisked and flailed, oblivious to the danger. When he started to follow his dad and brother, Mina called out, “Nope. Absolutely not.” She took him firmly by the hand. She yelled to Wayne, “You go ahead. We’ll hang out around here.”
“Come on,” he said. “It’s just a trail.” She shook her head. “Suit yourself,” said Wayne.
Mina steered Jamie back the way they had come. At the top of the stairs, they came upon a smooth patch of red sand. Jamie picked up a stick from the brush on the side of the trail.
“This is my drawing stick,” he said, looking up at her from under his own mop of curls. He squatted down and drew in the sand, a shaggy creature with fangs. “It costs a dollar to draw.”
She pressed an invisible coin into his palm. He handed her the stick, expectant, but she was too tired to make the effort.
“You draw one for me. I already paid.”
Jamie agreed. “Mama, I have a quiz for you. Which is the strongest, Dracula or the Wolf Man?”
“The Wolf Man,” said Mina.
“No, the answer is Dracula. Because he can fly.” Jamie drew a figure swooping down at the shaggy creature. “It’s Dracula versus the Wolf Man! Dracula attacks with Bloody Fingers and Wolf Man counters with Howling Wail, Oooooh ooooh! Dracula’s defense is lowered! He attacks with Frozen Fangs! Grrrrrrrrr. Wolf Man is now stunned!” Jamie stood frozen with a grimace on his face, then continued drawing. “Dracula attacks with Coffin Creep, but it’s not powerful enough. Wolf Man attacks with Claw Shot. Pew Pew Pew! But he forgot that that move does 50 percent damage in recoil! They’re both destroyed!” He brushed the images violently from the red sand.
“But I thought that Dracula was the strongest?” said Mina.
“Yep,” said Jamie.
They stood and listened to the wind wailing in the canyon.
“Can I play video games now?” said Jamie.
Mina looked back at the trail Wayne and Liam had disappeared into. It will probably be a while, she told herself, before they are back.
They made their way down the steps, Mina in front this time. The cars on the road below looked like toys, the roar of their engines muted. Partway down, Mina stopped. On the mountain face opposite them stood a deer. It was miraculously stable on the sheer slope, and from the angle where they stood it appeared to be floating.
“Look at the deer, Jamie!” Mina whispered. It seemed to be watching them. Jamie gaped at it.
“It’s an augur,” he said.
“What?” she said.
“It’s a kind of deer.”
“Okay. Let’s go down. Hold the railing tightly.”
*
Back at the parking area, they opened the glistening white doors of their rental car and climbed in. Mina tilted her seat back and gazed out the sunroof at the clouds going by. She dug a novel out of her carry-on. Jamie sat hunched in the passenger seat, playing his handheld video game. There was still no sign of Wayne and Liam.
Mina read two chapters, then got the feeling she’d forgotten something. She put the book away, and checked her bag for medicines, phone charger, first aid kit, inhaler, lip balm. It was all there. Jamie switched out his game cartridge for a different one.
Mina took off her bracelet and fidgeted with it. She slid the silver beads between her fingers in a rhythm that matched her breath. When she was very young and would go on long rides in her family’s Volkswagen bus, she had a favorite puzzle she played with. It was composed of sixteen sliding plastic tiles, pink and white, in a yellow frame. If you aligned them right you were rewarded with a picture of Bugs Bunny leaning nonchalantly on the shoulder of a cranky Daffy Duck. The tiles slid smoothly, with a satisfying amount of resistance, making a delicious SSHHH sound. She played with it for so many hours the bright pink color had worn off to white in places under her small thumbs. She always wanted so badly to match the tiles in the right order, to make a complete picture out of chaos. The only problem was, for the tiles to be able to slide, there had to be one missing.
Mina looked at her watch and was disoriented. Then she remembered the time zone change and set the hands back two hours. Too much time had passed. Something must have happened.
You’re imagining things, she thought. Don’t think about it.
She leaned back again and looked out the windows. The clouds settled across the sky in layers, straight and flat as the layers of rock in the bluffs around them. She composed a text to her husband, but it failed to send.
Another half-hour passed, and she invited Jamie to clamber into her lap. She interlocked her knuckles across his little belly as he battled the villains of the universe. His curly head leaned against her breastbone, behind which her heart beat frantically.
The sun was getting low in the sky when the back door opened and Liam flopped into the car. Mina gasped, then felt a wash of relief. Jamie climbed back into his booster seat. The passenger door opened and Wayne swiveled to fit his long legs in.
“You were gone quite a while,” Mina said. She was embarrassed to hear the quaver in her voice. “How was the hike?”
“The hike,” said Wayne. “Wow, yeah. It was really something.” He stared out the window. Reddish dust had settled on his cheekbones and eyebrows. And there was something strange about his face.
Mina looked back at Liam, “What did you see?” She tried to look him in the eye, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“We saw mountains,” he said.
“And?”
“Um, there were some deer on the side of a cliff.”
“We saw a deer too!” said Jamie. “It was an augur!”
Mina started the car, turned on the headlights, and had no choice but to keep going in the direction they were pointed. Into the dark passageways between mountains. Eventually she found a pull-off area large enough for her to turn the car around.
They exited the park and took the road to the village under a sweeping arch of sunset. They rounded a bend and saw the sign for their motel, The Desert Rose. Its low angled black roofs seemed to hover in midair. It was a moment before the buildings themselves came into focus. It was a trompe-l’oeil. The walls were stuccoed in sand and rust colors, tinted in layers to mimic the grand landscape in which the motel nested.
*
The kids entertained themselves, opening and closing the sliding glass patio door of the motel room to block each other’s entry, then racing around the building on the moat of pristine white gravel to do it again. After a few minutes Jamie slammed Liam’s hand in the door. Liam howled and swore, and Mina half-heartedly reprimanded Jamie. She was relieved it hadn’t been the other way around. They ate dinner in the motel restaurant, where they were the only customers. By then they were beyond exhausted, so they got into their pajamas as soon as they returned to the room. As they settled in for the night, Mina went over their schedule for the next day.
“We can hike for a few hours in the morning and have lunch. We should leave for Hale by two so we can drive in daylight.”
“I like it here,” said Wayne. “See if we can get this room for an extra night.”
Mina looked at him. “Okay,” she said, “If you really want to. But it’s too late to cancel the room at Hale.”
“Have them push it back a day. It’s the off season. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”
Mina frowned, but she made the calls. You had to pick your battles.
They took turns brushing their teeth. Three of them sprawled on the king bed, with Jamie curled up on Wayne’s lap. Liam sat in a chair in the corner, a remote look on his face.
“Let me tell you a tale,” said Wayne in a theatrical voice:
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“What the heck are you talking about?” said Jamie.
“You remember this one, right Liam?” said Wayne, raising and lowering his eyebrows maniacally.
“Yeah, I do,” said Liam quietly.
Beware the Jabberwock my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Wayne grabbed Jamie by the shoulders and tickled him fiercely. Jamie shrieked and kicked with delight. Mina looked over at Liam, who was softly reciting the rest of the verse:
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious
Bandersnatch.
*
After breakfast they began a hike, a leisurely stroll along a gorgeous sparkling stream. Jamie found some cholla cactus skeletons, called them magic wands and gave one to Liam. They wizard-battled as they bounded down the trail. Mina beamed, watching them interact. With the ten-year age gap and the difference in schedules, the two of them were usually like ships in the night.
The trail ended at a waterfall. It cascaded in a silver fringe right over the trail, which was kept dry by a rocky overhang. Moss and wild succulents hung down in tendrils. It was a miniature fairy-land in a secret nook of the desert. Mina found a dry rock several yards away, sat down and took granola bars out of her backpack. She watched the kids goofing under the waterfall and snapped some photos. They splashed each other viciously, squinting and laughing. Liam leaned out over the railing and doused his head.
“Snack?” said Mina, and held out a granola bar to Wayne. He sat next to her, looking in the opposite direction, where the mountains loomed.
“Not hungry, thanks,” he said. He drummed his fingers on his knees. His eyes darted across the landscape. His eyes looked gold. They had always been brown. Hadn’t they? Mina wondered. Do people’s eyes change color over time? Maybe Wayne’s had changed years ago and she had never noticed.
“I think I’m going to head to another trail,” he said. Mina felt the joy drain from her.
“But it’s so nice spending time as a family.”
“There’s plenty of time for that,” he said. “I want to challenge myself, do some serious hiking.”
“We can all go together. You can choose the trail.”
“I don’t think you’re up for it. No offense, but you would slow me down.”
Mina opened her mouth to respond, but her mind had gone blank. Wayne trotted off the way they had come, out of sight in just moments. He didn’t even say goodbye to the kids.
This is just like last June, she thought. She tried not to remember.
Mina took her time regaining her composure. The kids were having so much fun they hadn’t noticed.
After a while the three of them headed back along the trail. The kids kept goofing off. Liam swung Jamie up over his shoulder, then pretended to throw him in the stream. Jamie screeched and Liam set him back down. Then Jamie stood stock still.
“Where’s Dada?” he said.
“Well,” said Mina, “he wanted to do a hike by himself.”
“Oh, okay!” said Jamie. Liam looked up at the tall mountains.
*
Back at the parking lot, they got in the car and Mina drove aimlessly. When they passed a field of deer, she slowed down to get a better look. Their ears were huge and alert, their noses dark. They had white bands of fur around their necks, which gave the impression that their heads were somehow detached from their bodies. Some of them loped, anxious about an unknown threat. Others stood still as statues, and watched them as they drove past, their heads turning in unison.
The road narrowed as it gained elevation, and Mina felt more and more ill at ease. Her chest tightened and her breathing strained. Every time they went around a bend, she imagined the road disappearing and their car pitching into nothingness. She searched for a place to take a break. She found a scenic pull-off and parked. The kids scrambled from the car, and Mina dug in her bag for her inhaler. Her nervous system calmed as her lungs absorbed the vapor. Her breath slowed, and in a couple of minutes she felt better. She walked to the edge of the parking lot and looked out at a huge flat sandstone plain. It turned out to be a perfect spot, with relatively little danger of plunging to one’s death.
The kids played a sloppy game of chase. They grabbed and yanked on each other’s sweatshirts. Liam swung Jamie around by the wrists, and even though it didn’t look safe, Mina let it go. She walked across the sandstone in a meditative state. The wind kicked up red dust in delicate eddies. Some of the fine powder settled into the gaps between her white shoelaces. It would stay there for months. Mina tugged her cardigan tighter around herself and took in the whole horizon. The jagged surfaces of the mountains stood out in sharp focus, astonishingly clear for such a far distance. It really was a stunning place.
The kids discovered the rocks were so soft that they could hurl them against the ground and watch them explode in a burst of sand. Liam, with his lithe, chiseled shoulders, was especially good at this. He flung them, he smashed them, he hucked them with a feral look in his eyes. After a couple minutes of that she told them to stop. She was sure it wasn’t good for the mountain. She walked to a sandstone wall whose surface appeared to be moving. She went closer and realized that grains of sand were spilling down the side in a slow and constant cascade, with no apparent catalyst. She held out her hand, palm up, as if she were coaxing a baby bird. The fine grains formed a pile in her hand and then spilled between her fingers. It crumbles if you fight it, she thought. It crumbles if you do nothing.
The kids were hungry again, so Mina drove them to the visitor’s center. Liam and Jamie scarfed veggie burgers with soggy pickles on the side. Mina got herself a yogurt parfait, but when she took off the plastic lid, she realized she couldn’t eat.
“Mama, I have a quiz for you,” said Jamie. “Who’s my favorite person in the world?”
“Umm…Liam!” she said.
“Nope!” said Jamie. Liam leaned toward him in mock indignation. They were all used to this.
“It’s Dada!” said Jamie. Liam’s face clouded into a scowl.
Mina felt her heart clench.
“Liam,” she said, “Is everything okay?”
“It’s like we don’t exist,” he said. “Like this whole trip is just for him.”
She had tried calling Wayne. She had tried texting him. What was she supposed to do?
The visitor’s center was closing, so she told the boys to put their trays away.
They piled wordlessly into the car and headed back in the direction of the motel. When they were almost there, Mina’s phone buzzed.
They backtracked and picked up Wayne on the side of the road. Jamie happily recounted the events of the day to his father. Mina was fuming. She thought about what she would say to him. But there was nowhere private where she would be able to talk to her husband. She didn’t want to upset the children.
As they were getting ready for bed, Wayne said, “Let’s stay another night. I like it here.”
Mina looked at him, weighing her words.
“We have to keep moving,” she said. “Don’t you want to see all the beautiful places we planned to see?”
“We can skip them,” he said. “This place is special.”
Wayne loomed over her, and behind him on the wall his colossal shadow quivered. Mina was a small person, smaller than their fifteen-year-old son. Wayne was six-foot-three, wiry but strong like a coiled spring. He weighed almost double what she did. This had never seemed like a major concern, but all of a sudden, she was afraid.
She canceled the room in Monolith Valley, forfeiting the deposit, and pushed back the room at Hale one more day.
In the middle of the night Mina moved up against Wayne’s back and put her arm across his ribcage. He did not wake. She felt a subtle vibration from his body. Maybe it was the half-dream state that she was in, but Mina felt like her husband had shed his gravity. Like if she took her arm away, he would hover above the bed.
*
The next morning when Mina woke, Wayne was already dressed.
“I’m getting an early start hiking today,” he said.
“What?” said Mina. “What about us?”
“You can do your own thing. You’ll have fun.”
“We want to spend time with you. The whole family, together. Wayne, I’m trying to fix things!” A series of images appeared unbidden in her mind: she and Wayne as a young couple, playing Scrabble and laughing with a group of friends in their shabby apartment; Wayne sleeping on the couch with baby Liam on his chest, his large hand resting gently on the baby’s red onesie-clad back; herself in heels and a cocktail dress, standing at the top of the basement stairs, speechless, looking down at Wayne in his bathrobe, grin on his face, whiskey glass in hand; a shiny rental car not unlike the one they had now, Wayne in the driver’s seat, pealing around a corner and grazing the guardrail as she stood clutching the kids on the side of the road, dizzy from the heights under the June sun.
“There’s nothing to fix,” he said. “Everything’s fine.” He grinned at her with his gold eyes.
Mina sighed. “Well, we have to at least set up a meeting plan.”
“Visitor center at four,” he said.
Mina nodded, and Wayne was out the door.
Mina scoped out another hike. The kids didn’t have the same vigor as the day before. Liam’s shoulders hunched forward and he looked at the ground. They stopped at a river, where the kids halfheartedly threw pebbles.
Feeling like she owed them a new experience, Mina took them to the visitor’s center gift shop. The objects for sale were so appealing with their saturated illustrations and sleek graphic design. Mina let them each pick out a fridge magnet, little portraits of the majestic canyon they were trapped in. Jamie couldn’t decide, so she let him pick two. Months later, procrastinating dinner, Mina would stand and slide the magnets around on the refrigerator. She would slide them apart and back together, switching up their order. Their earthy pull would bring her back down to the ground, and she would feel a heaviness in her chest. She would slide and slide them and wonder what went wrong.
They stayed until the gift shop closed at five, and Wayne never showed. They drove back to the motel in silence.
Wayne called while they were finishing up dinner. They piled back in the car and found him waiting at the visitor’s center, standing in the shadows. Mina quivered with rage.
Mina said quietly, “We’re leaving at nine tomorrow.”
“Mmm,” said Wayne.
That night, Mina’s sleep was strained and sweaty. The covers felt like wet bandages, and the room smelled of vinegar. She wavered in and out of consciousness, waking sometimes to the white noise of her family breathing. Once or twice, she heard muffled yelling from the bathroom. Wayne was next to her, sleeping right through it. Liam’s voice was deep, and his rage was raw.
*
Mina woke when it was still dark. She had a sense that she had to go outside right that second. She slipped silently behind the heavy curtain and slid open the glass patio door.
The gravel was cold and sharp under her bare feet. She felt ill in her stomach. It was like how she would feel when, as a teenager, she would make herself eat an apple at 4:30 a.m. before early swim practice. She looked up at the dark, sequined sky. Along the ridge of the mountain glowed a crackle of ruby that grew as she watched, and melted into sugared tangerine, and then gold, which dissipated into the soft beige of dawn. It happened in a matter of seconds. And she knew.
She packed her own bag, then Jamie’s bag. She gently woke Liam. There was an artificial glow from the corner of the room where Jamie was already up and hunched over his video game. The three of them got dressed quietly so as not to wake Wayne, and went up to the lodge for breakfast. The kids wolfed down their plates, and went back for seconds. Mina sat and gripped her coffee mug. She breathed in the steam and hoped the porcelain would warm her hands. She tipped in a container of cream and watched it swirl before it dissolved. Looking at her kids, she had never felt so lonely.
When they got back to the room, Wayne was brushing his teeth. He wore a white motel bathrobe over his underwear.
“We need to go now,” Mina said. “It’s a four-hour drive to Hale.”
He gargled and rinsed his mouth. “I think we’ll stay here a few more days.”
He turned his head but did not make eye contact. He doesn’t see me, thought Mina. He will never see me again.
She hustled Jamie across the cold parking lot and got him into his booster seat. She opened the trunk for Liam to load a suitcase. He stopped and looked at her with what she recognized as fear. “Why isn’t Dada coming?” he said.
Mina’s chest tightened. “I don’t know,” she said.
Liam’s eyes went wide. He spoke softly, “It’s the cave, isn’t it?”
“What cave?”
“He told me not to tell you.”
“I won’t tell him you told me. Of course I won’t,” she said.
Liam grimaced, bent his head forward and grabbed fistfulls of his hair. He walked a few steps away, then turned and came back. Regained his posture and took a breath.
“Okay,” he said. “We hiked for a while after we left you, and we got to the top of the mesa. I was looking out at the view, enjoying it. Then Dada called me over.”
Mina’s heart pounded. “We have to load up the car,” she said. “Keep talking.” They crossed the parking lot together. The sun had risen higher since breakfast, and threw dramatic purple shadows on the mountains.
“I followed his voice. I went around this pile of boulders, and Dada was on his hands and knees in front of this hole in the rock. He said we should check it out, and he crawled in.” Mina held her breath as she opened the door open for Liam, and they walked through the maze of motel corridors. The tessellated pattern on the carpet gave Mina a wave of nausea. She caught Liam’s arm and clung to it.
“He called me from in there. I said I didn’t want to go in, I have claustrophobia. I thought he would come out in a minute, because how big could the cave possibly be?”
“Hold on,” Mina whispered, bringing a finger to her lips as she opened the door of their room. They gathered up the dregs of their belongings. The door to the bathroom was closed. They stepped back into the hallway and the door clicked shut behind them.
“I couldn’t tell how long it had been,” Liam said, “but it felt like forever. I was getting scared. But I was not going in there. That place had really bad vibes. So I yelled into the cave. I kept yelling and yelling, and finally he came back. When he came out, he had this weird look on his face. But he was smiling, with his teeth all showing. It was so weird. So weird. Then he looked right at me and said, ‘It’s the Gateway.’”
Mina couldn’t speak.
“He just stood there in front of the cave. If I hadn’t been there, I don’t know if he would have left. I told him we had to get back to you and Jamie. He said something I couldn’t understand; he started mumbling. But then he snapped out of it. We hiked back. When we were almost at the car, he told me not to say anything to you about it.”
“Oh, no,” said Mina.
“I think he’s been going back there,” said Liam.
A chill shook Mina’s body. “Thank you for telling me,” she said, and hugged him tight.
She closed the trunk. Liam got into the back next to Jamie, leaving the passenger seat vacant for his dad. Vibrating with fear, Mina walked back across the parking lot, through the maze of hallways, and checked the room one last time. The bathroom door was open, and the room was empty. She walked back to the car in a daze. She got in and turned on the engine.
“Where’s Dada?” said Jamie.
Mina closed her eyes and spoke carefully, “Dada decided he’s going to meet us in Colorado, honey.”
She took a moment to breathe; to force her sadness into a nook in the back of her mind. She laid out the map on the seat next to her. She made sure her phone and sunglasses were handy. She checked that the kids were buckled, and she looked out the window at the motel. Her eyes widened at what she saw. There was a figure in a white robe standing on the dark, low-angled roof. He stood, with his arms outstretched, looking up at the mountains.
Mina put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot. Slowly, deliberately, like a puzzle piece sliding into place. She couldn’t help looking in the rear-view mirror. In the reflection she saw her husband, face tipped back, rising off the roof of the motel, into the vault of the sky.
