Mary Daheim - The Alpine Journey

By Mary Daheim

Published by Ballantine Books:

THE ALPINE ADVOCATE
THE ALPINE BETRAYAL
THE ALPINE CHRISTMAS
THE ALPINE DECOY
THE ALPINE ESCAPE
THE ALPINE FURY
THE ALPINE GAMBLE
THE ALPINE HERO
THE ALPINE ICON
THE ALPINE JOURNEY
THE ALPINE KINDRED
THE ALPINE LEGACY
THE ALPINE NEMESIS
THE ALPINE OBITUARY
THE ALPINE PURSUIT

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VIDA LEFT HER hat. Leo Walsh twirled the maroon pillbox on his fingers and eyed me with wonder.

I stared. Vida went out?

My ad manager nodded.

Without her hat, I said, equally awestruck. Vida Runkel never went anywhere, except perhaps to bed, without one of her eclectic pieces of headgear.

What gives? Leo asked, placing the hat on his lap and sitting down in one of the two visitor's chairs in my tiny editorial office. She's been kind of strange lately, don't you think?

In the concentrated energy required by The Alpine Advocate's special edition to celebrate the opening of Skykomish Community College, I hadn't had much time to observe my staff's vagaries. But Leo was right. Our House & Home editor definitely had not been herself for the last few weeks.

Is it that retired air-force guy? Leo asked when I didn't have a ready answer. You knowhe made kissing soundsheart trouble?

I shook my head. Vida had been seeing Buck Bardeen for over a year. It appeared to be a comfortable, companionable relationship based on shared interests. Since Vida and Buck were both in their sixties, I had assumed that unbridled passion played no part. But of course I could be wrong.

She doesn't complain about him, I remarked. She hasn't been to see Doc Dewey lately, so I don't think it's her health.

It can't be, Leo said with an off-center grin that made his weathered face almost attractive. Our ad manager is a few years older than I am, and is from Los Angeles, a designation that carries with it a patina of sophistication for rural Pacific Northwestern natives. Leo has known the mean streets of alcoholism and the lean years of small newspapers. He appears to have come to rest in Alpine, settling in among the mountains and evergreens and gray days like an old dog hiding behind the stove. The Duchess is invincible, Leo added, using the nickname that Vida despised.

Vida seemed invincible. She is a big woman, with unlimited energy and boundless curiosity. If it were family, I mused, she would have said something.

God, yes. Balancing the hat in his lap, Leo lighted a cigarette. The match flared dangerously close to the pillbox. All those damned relatives would drive me nuts. But then I'm not exactly a family man, am I?

Leo had more or less surrendered his role as husband and father a few years back when his wife left him and his three grown children stopped speaking to him. In recent months, relations with the kids had warmed; it also sounded as if he and his ex could speak via long distance without blistering the telephone wires.

But it wasn't my ad manager's behavior that puzzled me. Vida is usually so outspoken, I said, trying not to inhale secondhand, lest I create an urge to try smoking firsthand. Again. I suppose I could ask.

You could, Leo said, getting up. I wouldn't. She'd take my head off.

Vida might. While she was quick with opinions, Vida retained a private core that I was reluctant to probe even after seven years as her employer and friend. If she had something on her mind, she'd tell us eventually.

The same thing apparently occurred to Leo. It'll come out. Vida can't keep anything under wraps forever. That big bazoom of hers would burst. With a chuckle and another twirl for the pillbox, he left my cubbyhole.

I sat back in my chair, pondering the morning mail. Most of the letters addressed to Emma Lord, Editor and Publisher, were junk that could be thrown out without opening. But on this Wednesday in October, I found a letter I'd been waiting for: Mavis Marley Fulkerston, my old friend and former colleague on The Oregonian, had sent me directions on how to get to her new home in Portland.

I had been to Mavis's house in suburban Tigard many times when I lived in Portland, but she and her husband had recently bought a condo on the Willamette River. While I knew the city like the back of my hand, it seemed that there were always changes in street directions and new traffic islands and other innovative sources of confusion in my old stomping ground. Studying the hand-drawn map, I smiled. If you get lostget lost! My instructions are flawless! Mavis's big scrawl careened across the bottom of the map, almost obliterating one of the street numbers.

I was tucking the map into my handbag when Vida came into the newsroom and headed straight for my office. She was hatless, breathless, and scowling.

Carta is not to be the only person who has access to the college faculty, my House & Home editor declared. How dare they!

How dare they what? I inquired, blinking rather fast.

Looming over my desk, Vida didn't deign to sit. The president, Ignatz whatever his name may be, and that dean of studentshe also has a peculiar name. Tail-feathers, or some such. Really, Emma, can't these people call themselves something normal, like Holmgren or Skylstad?

It wasn't like Vida to be so picky about non-Alpinewhich translated as non-Northern Europeansurnames. The president is Ignacio Cardenas, I said calmly. He prefers to be called Nat. And the dean of students is Ryan Talliaferro. We've certainly run enough stories about both of them lately.

Vida snorted. Carta's stories have run, you mean. She's hogged the entire college coverage from the day construction began. Now that classes have finally started, all I wanted to do was a story on Mrs. Cardenas and Mrs. Talliaferro. It turns out there is no Mrs. Talliaferro, and President Cardenas's secretarywho is Siamese and chews guminforms me that Mrs. Cardenas doesn't care to be interviewed. With an emphatic gesture, Vida folded her arms across her impressive bust.

Maybe Mrs. Cardenas is shy, I suggested. I'd met her only once, at an open house the week before fall quarter began. Justine Cardenas was pretty in a faded sort of middle-aged way, a too-thin blonde with nervous mannerisms. Carla isn't trying to freeze you out of the new campus, Vida. Is that what's been bothering you?