The Wishing Trees (11 page)

“New York City.”

“Really? You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”

Mattie nodded. “Can I . . . can I ask you a question?”

“Ask away.”

“Does it hurt to have your hair like that?”

Leslie vigorously shook her head, as if she were a dog stepping from a lake. “See that? Doesn’t hurt at all. It would only hurt if I tried to comb it.”

“And your mother, she doesn’t mind?”

“You know, she actually likes it,” Leslie replied, scooting closer to Mattie.

“I like it too.”

The bus rounded a corner, and Leslie reached forward to grab the bottom of Ian’s day pack. “Sorry about that,” she said.

“No worries,” he answered, smiling. “Thanks for keeping my daughter company. I think she’s a bit knackered of listening to me yammer away.”

The stranger extended her hand. “I’m Leslie.”

“Ian. A real pleasure.”

Leslie looked at Mattie. “What brings you to Nepal?”

“I want to . . . to draw something for my mother. And climb a tall mountain.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve been here fourteen months, and I’ve seen so many tall mountains that I don’t know what I’ll do without them.”

Mattie nodded, not wanting Leslie to turn away. “Do you go to school here?”

“School? No, I’m with the Peace Corps. And so are my friends. I’m stationed in a city called Pokhara. Tiffany works in the mountains, in a village. And Blake, she’s in Kathmandu.”

“And you all . . . what do you do here?”

“We’re here to help the Nepalese. I teach English. Tiffany helps villagers understand sustainable farming. Blake runs an AIDS-awareness campaign. We all started out together in Kathmandu, in our orientation program, and we’ve been friends ever since.”

“And you like living in Nepal?”

“I like it, and love it, and hate it. Totally depends when you ask. Back in Pokhara, I might as well live in a zoo. My apartment is full of bugs and geckos. Hundreds of them. And I miss my family. And, you know, the Nepalese can be frustrating. Really frustrating. But still, coming here was the best decision of my life. Makes up for a lot of bad ones.”

Mattie looked at Leslie’s necklaces, which swung to and fro as the bus continued to snake up the mountains. To Mattie’s surprise, a Nepalese woman sitting behind Leslie began to nurse her crying baby, holding the swaddled child against a swollen breast. Mattie lowered her gaze. “You miss your family . . . and you still like it here? Why?”

“Just a second,” Leslie replied, turning to her friends. She spoke to them and then twisted back to Mattie. “When you’re in the mountains, you’ll see why. Are you doing the Shivapuri trek?”

“I don’t know. Are we, Daddy?”

Ian, who had been listening to every word of the conversation, leaned forward. “That’s right, luv.”

Leslie nodded. “Want to trek with us? Sometimes it’s better to travel in a group, you know. In case something happens. It’s a lot safer.”

“What do you think, Roo?” Ian asked, gripping her arm as a turn approached. “You fancy doing a walkabout with these ladies?”

Mattie glanced up at her father, not wanting to hurt his feelings. “If it’s all right with you, I think it would be nice.”

“Then I reckon we’ve found our traveling companions.”

Leslie motioned for her friends to introduce themselves. Tiffany was slight, with an almost boyish body. Big-boned and tall, Blake held a guitar case on her lap. The women swayed to the contours of the road like palm trees in a strong wind.

The bus reached a summit. In the distance, much larger, snow-capped Himalayas rose to touch the sky. Mattie glimpsed the mountains, in awe of their proportions. Even as she smiled and said hello to Tiffany and Blake, her eyes wandered back to the peaks, and she wondered if her mother might be up there, atop one of them. Did her mother know that she was making new friends? That she would soon climb high so that they might sense each other?

Mattie hoped her mother knew the answer to such questions. She wanted her mother to see her, especially now, when she was trying to be brave, when so many parts of her were scared, when, despite the presence of her father and the three friendly women, she felt so alone.

IAN LAY IN THE DARKNESS, EYEING THE small room they had rented. The day’s first light crept into this space, illuminating stone walls that had been painted white. A faded poster of orange-robed monks studying a bronze Buddha was taped to the far wall. A frayed ornamental rug covered the cement floor. The room was otherwise unadorned.

Turning to his right, he faced the same direction as Mattie, who was about a foot away. He’d zipped together two sleeping bags that they had bought in Kathmandu, creating an oversized bag that they could share. For months Ian had wondered if they should still be sleeping in the same bed. He was sure that most people would say she was too old to share a bed with her father. But most people hadn’t seen their little girl lose her mother, and if sleeping with him kept Mattie from crying at night, from being scared, well, then he would gladly sleep with her. And, if truth be told, he enjoyed their nights together. He often read to her in bed, or made up a story. And when she rested her head on his chest and fell asleep, his sorrows were momentarily pushed away.

Mattie mumbled, still half asleep, instinctively reaching for him.
“Sssh,”
he whispered, easing closer to her, putting his arm over her shoulder. He thought she would go back to her dreams, but instead she turned to him, opening her eyes. For a few heartbeats she looked around the room, clearly confused. “No worries, luv,” he said, stroking her brow with his thumb. “We’re in Nepal, remember?”

She nodded, looking so young, far too innocent to have seen so much. He kissed a freckle on her nose. “Daddy,” she said, “your breath stinks.”

“Oh, sorry about that. Shall we get up and have a go at our teeth? Mine need a bath.”

“One of mine’s a teeny bit loose.”

“Really? Reckon the tooth fairy could find you up here?”

Mattie scratched at her scalp. “She couldn’t find me up here because she isn’t real. I’ve known that for two years.”

“For two years? No, not that long. A year, tops.”

“For that long, Daddy. For at least that long.”

He stretched his legs, enjoying the cool fabric of the sleeping bags. “Well, anyway, I disagree. About her being real, that is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your mum and I always slipped you a dollar, putting it under your pillow and taking your tooth. Just because we didn’t have wings doesn’t mean that we weren’t fairies. A few times your mum even sprinkled a bit of glitter on the floor, leaving her magical dust. So if she wasn’t the tooth fairy, I reckon I don’t know who could be.”

Mattie smiled. “Do you think Leslie is awake? Let’s go have breakfast with her.”

“You fancy that lass, don’t you?”

“She’s nice. And I like her hair.”

He twisted Mattie’s locks around his finger. “You want hair like that?”

“Would you let me?”

Sitting up, he pulled the sleeping bag down from his chest. “Well, dreadlocks aren’t exactly my bowl of rice, but I want you to be whoever you want to be. Whoever makes you happy. You know, my mum and dad weren’t too keen on me leaving Australia. And we fought about that. Fought like three cats in a sack. They’re still quite vexed about it, actually. So I’m not going to tell you how to walk in your own shoes.”

“But you don’t like her hair?”

Ian smiled. “I think she’s a beaut of a person, Roo. And because of that, yeah, I fancy her hair.” He reached for his toothbrush. “Now, how about cleaning up, and getting a bit of chow so that we can start looking for our mountain?”

THE PEAKS THAT IAN HAD BEEN THINKING about loomed large above them. He’d climbed the Himalayas once, following Kate as she summited the highest pass in the world. That day remained vivid in his mind. He remembered singing marching songs to kill time as they rose higher and higher, into air that didn’t seem to fill their lungs. A time came when they weren’t able to sing, or even talk. And so he stepped where she stepped, their shadows merging when their voices could not. The world fell away beneath them as they climbed into the sky.

The trek with Mattie was far different from his last journey through the Himalayas. Now he followed her footsteps, and Kate was gone. And these mountains bore little resemblance to the barren peaks that had encircled the pass. The world he saw now was lush, as if grown in an infinite greenhouse. Deciduous trees of every shape and size bordered the trail, which skirted the contours of a large valley. Flowering azaleas grew in clumps around boulders and next to streams. The flowers were red and violet, and Ian knew that Mattie would have paused to sketch them had she not been beside Leslie and Blake. Tiffany walked alone, behind Ian, at the end of the column. The women all carried large backpacks and used worn walking sticks that Ian was sure had accompanied them on other treks. Tiffany and Blake wore bandannas over their hair. Blake had tied her guitar case to the back of her pack. Mattie was dressed in a khaki-colored hiking outfit that Ian had purchased in Kathmandu. He wore shorts, a T-shirt, and an olive-colored nylon and mesh traveling hat.

Mattie had been talking with Leslie and Blake for almost an hour and had been able to keep up with them surprisingly well. Ian wasn’t used to staying silent around her but was glad to do so. Since Kate had died, he’d often worried that Mattie didn’t spend sufficient time with women. He knew enough about fatherhood to understand that, try as he might, there were some things he couldn’t teach her. And the closer she got to being a teenager, the more he worried about failing to provide her with a balanced childhood. The fact that she seemed so eager to talk with Leslie confirmed his suspicions.

Though Tiffany walked right behind him, and sometimes next to him, Ian hadn’t spoken much with her. She seemed forlorn, unlike the previous day when she was first reacquainted with her friends. Ian was certain that something troubled her, but he didn’t want to ask. And so he simply kept near her, sometimes glancing at her face, which was soft and unlined. Her sun-bleached hair was barely visible beneath the bandanna.

When Mattie started to laugh alongside Leslie and Blake, Ian felt awkward walking in silence beside Tiffany, who seemed smaller than her pack. As she came to an immense log that had fallen on the trail, he extended his hand, which she took until crossing the barrier. “It’s lovely here, isn’t it?” he asked, breathing in the scent of the mountain flowers.

She nodded, her walking stick in constant, practiced motion. “Usually.”

“Leslie said that you live in the mountains. Is that right?”

“For more than a year.”

“How’s that going?”

She waved to a boy in the distance, who sat on the roof of a stone home. “It’s going okay. The Nepalese are good people. And they live in a beautiful place. But life’s hard here. Really hard. It’s still winter in my village. The pile of firewood on top of my roof, which was six feet deep, is almost gone.”

“Crikey.”

“What?”

“Oh, sorry. ‘Wow’ is what you would say.”

The trace of a smile alighted on Tiffany’s lips. “This beautiful place makes for a hard life. That’s what a local once told me, when I first got here. And he was right. And a hard life leads to some terrible things.”

“Like what?”

“You don’t want to hear about it. Trust me. Better to look around and enjoy the day.”

“I can do both. Three things would be a real stretch for me, I reckon. But I can manage two.”

Tiffany glanced up at him and adjusted her bandanna. “A couple of months ago, a woman in my village, who I was friends with, got married. And then her family didn’t pay her dowry. And so her husband . . . he killed her. With oil and fire. And I . . . I was by her side when she died. And that was as ugly as these mountains are beautiful.”

Ian looked again at her face, thinking that, like Mattie, she was too young to carry such a burden. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s bloody awful.”

“It was. It is.”

“Did you think about going home?”

“More than half of our original group already has. A lot of people can’t take . . . certain things. Just a few weeks ago, a girl from Atlanta was found naked and screaming in a tree. Her parents came and took her home.”