The Ascent (36 page)

Out in the foyer the door to my apartment stood open. Dull, greenish light spilled in from the communal hallway. My breath catching in my throat, I glimpsed a slight shadow easing along the wall outside.

I followed the shape into the hallway, but the hallway was empty.

I hurried down the flights of steps to the lobby in time to see the lobby door closing. Beyond the doors, a smoky mist had overtaken the parking lot. It was impossible to see anything beyond the apartment building’s black canvas awning.

My palms left twin imprints on the glass as I pushed the lobby door open and staggered out into the fog. The air was thick, humid.

Breathing in was like inhaling ghostly vapors. I could hear the tide coming in at the beach but could see nothing until I went around the side of the building, the wet grass turning to sand beneath my feet.

At the foot of the bay, the fog seemed to sail over the water, where it slowly dissipated. Revealed by the clearing of the fog and aglow in moonlight, Hannah’s ghost stood on the beach. The foaming surf lapped at her bare feet. She was once again in her willowy, flowing white gown—the gown of an angel—and her hair was the short, sculpted hair she’d had the last time I saw her at our Georgetown home before she ran off to Italy.

“Hannah,” I whispered, my voice seeming to carry forever over the dark water.

She smiled warmly and turned. I watched her walk along the surf and down the moonlit beach.

After a moment, I began to follow. My heels dug divots in the wet sand, my feet quickly growing numb.

Hannah disappeared around a bend in the coast, briefly masked by a dark veil of trees swaying in the wind.

I rounded the trees, crossing through the freezing bay water to do so, and materialized on the other side of the beach. It was a stretch of beach I’d been on hundreds of times before, but suddenly it was all completely new to me. The way the moonlight played off the contours of the black stones that rose like giant glossy fingers from the sand, glistening like living creatures, reflecting the countless dazzle of diamond stars …

It was breathtaking. Helpless, I collapsed in the sand, my arms quivering. My breath was coming in steady gasps now. My face was beginning to burn.

“It’s … beautiful,” I managed, my voice hitching. To my own amazement, I felt a laugh threaten my throat.

Hannah continued walking down the beach, one hand running along the shimmering, glossy stones along the breakwater, never oncepausing to look back. Somewhere farther up the beach, her image began to fade. By the time she reached the next outcrop of shuddering trees, she had vanished completely.

5

WHETHER IT WAS A DREAM. A HALLUCINATION. OR

something else, I may never know for sure. But in the morning I awoke in a fetal position in the sand, the surf lapping at my legs, dressed in nothing but running shorts. Peering over my shoulder, I could discern my footprints in the sand from the night before—only my footprints, though, and no one else’s.

Later that day, I carried a hammer and a chisel to the black stones along the beach, I started sculpting again. I sculpted for myself. Beneath the burn of a midday sun, I sculpted the rocks that lined the breakwater of the Chesapeake Bay. I carved, leaving in my wake things of sudden and unmistakable awe, of spiritual beauty. I sculpted for John Petras who was so close but never got to see the Canyon of Souls. I sculpted for Hannah, my Hannah, who had returned to me my ability to create artistic paradise, to bring Shangri-la to the world.

And I would show it to the world. I would do it for Hannah, my
dakini
, and I would do it for myself—finally,
myself
, letting go, forgiving myself—because it was what she wanted and what she had been trying to tell me all along. It was a gift of forgiveness.

Finished, hours or days or weeks or years later, I dropped my tools in the surf and wiped the tears from my eyes with shaking, gritty hands. Numb, my body trembling, I began to climb up the beach, pausing at the summit of the embankment to glance over my shoulder at the carved black stones, the white band of beach, and the glistening shimmer of the endless bay.

The view from the top was nothing short of breathtaking.