Katharine swayed toward the steps. Edward, bent over, headed down toward the cove.
“I'll come with you,” Julia said, giving up.
Why shouldn't they go down to the cove? This light, this view, the glittering air was why they were here. The light was beginning to redden toward sunset, flooding the landscape with carmine, as though beauty itself were a color. Her parents had nothing like this in Haver-ford, in their complex of big brick buildings, sidewalks, parking lots, Norway maples. Whatever lay ahead for them would be worse. Right now they should have the blowing pink grass, the shimmering blue water.
Edward moved steadily along, not looking back. He stepped carefully, feeling the ground as it sloped away. His feet were heavy and he had to lift them like objects. At the bottom of the meadow, the wind picked up, catching the water, and the surface began to fracture with tiny lapping waves, each catching the glinting light. Edward opened his mouth, to breathe more easily. He could feel this in his chest. He liked the struggle, the challenge, the salt breeze.
In college he had been a cross-country runner, and this, now, reminded him of that—the bright air, the openness and distance. During fall training, he used to run on a dirt road through the woods, scarlet leaves in great clouds overhead, the steady soft thudding of his feet. He remembered the exhilaration at being abroad in the country silence, drawing the cold air into his chest, his legs moving smoothly beneath him. The hushing sound of the leaves. He'd felt part of something large and golden and glowing.
Senior year, that was how he'd felt—as though he were running to meet the world. He couldn't wait for it: everything lay ahead. He remembered feeling certain of himself, and of how to do things. Feeling so capable physically: of running lightly and smoothly, the pleasure of springing off with each step against the dirt road. He'd felt he could run forever through that golden air, the hushing sound of the leaves.
Now, again, he was moving across the landscape, and again it was exhilarating, though this time he was only trying to stumble across an uneven meadow, his goal merely yards ahead, the irregular shoreline of this little cove. He was only struggling to stay ahead of his athletic, acerbic daughter. Still it was exhilarating.
He liked the challenge, and he liked knowing that here was his own hidden world at work: the neural pathways functioning, millions upon millions of axons flooding his system with signals, neurotransmitters galvanizing his muscles, the whole microscopic kingdom of circuitry working at unimaginable speed, coordinating everything—visual images, muscular memory, gyroscopic feats of balance, the control of temperature and breath and heartbeat, with the limbic system playing its mysterious harmonies on the emotions—here it was, the great neurological symphony, performed by the vast orchestral system of the body. Here was the world as we experience it through ourselves.
Edward paused in his headlong surge, negotiating a sudden dark opening in the meadow, a sinkhole, where the ground had been worn away underneath by the tides.
He didn't mind Julia's bossiness. He was actually rather proud of it, it gave him a feeling of kinship. He and Julia shared something, a stiff-necked, stubborn resistance to the world. He admired her refusal to submit, to placate. He admired it, though he wished it were not directed at him.
Katharine called him contentious, though this was not how Edward saw himself. He saw himself as helpful, offering assistance, trying to correct things. Other people were usually wrong, he found. He simply wanted to get things done, move forward. And he liked authority, liked being in charge: at the hospital he'd been head of neurosurgery for years. He'd always been in charge, it came naturally to him.
Later, the others had come to resent him, and there had been an uprising. It was painful, he didn't like thinking of it. They'd maneuvered him out of the department in a contemptible and underhanded way. They'd claimed he was losing his competence, that his eyesight was failing, his hands losing dexterity. Later, that had been true, but not then. They were wrong, Newt Preston, Lou Rosenberg, and the others. He remembered looking around the table and seeing the faces, all turned toward him. Newt Preston's peculiar expression—intent, contained—as he waited for Edward to understand. Edward's neck still swelled at the memory of that meeting. The door of the conference room had been partly open, and someone in a green dress stood just beyond it. His secretary, waiting: even she had known.
The blue water now stretched before him, Edward had reached the shoreline. He stood still, feeling the salt air in his chest. Down here, it was all different, the perspective low, the water vast and dominant. Along the far shore of the cove was a wall of firs, dense and dark. A motorboat, moored to a bright buoy, rocked on the running tide. To the right, around the point, was open water, the ocean. The swelling water pleated itself endlessly, glinting.
Satisfaction rose in him at the sight of the scarlet light, the golden water. He'd wanted to arrive first, unaided, and he had. He could hear his own breathing, deep and strong. He folded his arms on his chest. The wind blew against his bare head. He felt the spaciousness of the red-gold air, the soft lapping of the water against the ragged shore. Something rose in his throat, as though the spaciousness were entering him.
His life lay stretched behind him like a path, reaching neatly, like his shadow, exactly to his feet. Ahead of him lay the shifting blue water, cold and radiant.
“Almost there.” He heard Julia behind him. “You're doing great, Mum.”
“Just let me take it slowly,” said Katharine. “You know I used to run up Mount Washington, with my brothers.”
“We know that,” Julia said. “We know you raced them.”
“‘And won, she said modestly,’” added Katharine.
She moved carefully, poking with the tip of her cane among the grasses. She leaned forward, one arm linked in Julia's. She took a slow step, Julia taking a half-step beside her.
“Great!” Julia said again. “We're here.”
The three of them stood together at the shoreline. Katharine felt the sea breeze against her face. “Lovely.” She turned her head, looking at the red sunset light, the running of the tide.
Katharine thought of Mount Washington and her brothers. She remembered climbing the rocky part, near the summit, the empty sky beyond the peak. Being out of breath, and her oldest brother behind her, laughing, pretending he couldn't keep up with her. She'd been the youngest and the only girl, much petted by her brothers, by the whole family.
Julia pointed across the cove. “Great blue heron,” she said. “Do you see it?”
“Lovely,” Katharine said, peering. She couldn't make it out, but she knew how it looked, those long, skinny, lordly legs, the coiled serpentine neck, the needlelike beak. The slow, meditative steps.
It was her father who'd taught her to know the birds. She remembered him taking her hand, walking across a field, early spring. He crouched down quietly to point out a bird's nest on the ground.
“Kill deer,” he said in a low voice, and Katharine looked into his face, confused. She'd been young, four or five. “A killdeer's nest,” he said, and then she understood: it was a name.
There was the neat clutch of tiny speckled eggs nestled in a shallow concavity in the furrow. The eggs, flecked with the same colors and patterns as the broken stubble, were nearly impossible to see, coming magically into focus only once you understood how to look. Nearby, the frantic mother ran back and forth, dragging her wing as if it were broken, crying her own name over and over, trying to lure them away from the eggs.
“We must leave,” her father said quietly, in her ear. “We're causing the mother distress.” He was almost whispering. Katharine had tiptoed out of the field, her hand still in her father's. She'd turned her head, discreetly, so as not to cause more distress, watching the tiny mother bird skimming along the furrows, her narrow legs flickering as she ran.
Now Julia spoke. “I love this view. It's one reason we bought the house.”
“It's a good view,” Edward said,