An hour since I’d learned I’d been a father for twenty-one years, Lazaro sat on the couch with me, showing me his portfolio. He worked as an underwater photographer and videographer. “It’s second nature to me, being in the water,” he said. “Really it’s the ocean that raised me.”
“Looks like the ocean did a pretty good job,” I said.
He specialized in ultra-deep dives, descents into the bathyal region, which is the topmost stratum of the ocean’s aphotic zone: lightless, crushing, utterly hostile. There he had recorded a score of species new to science; he’d made his reputation before he could take a legal drink. His images were haunting and minimalist, the engulfing darkness defied only by the weak bioluminescence of the sea life and, of course, him. Off-camera, he shined like a sun, illumining the depths like the first day of creation.
“These are incredible,” I said. “You must he half fish.”
“Got that from Mom,” he said. And turned the page.
Rather than take a leave of absence from work to climb Everest, I retired early. Lost some money that way, but I had more than enough money to get to the summit, get back, and bury my son. After that, the future would take care of itself. Or go fuck itself. Either way.
I was old to climb the world’s tallest mountain, but not as old as some. The ascent from the Southeast ridge is by mountaineering standards fairly straightforward, especially with today’s technology. If you died it was because you were reckless, or bad weather surprised you, or your gave out and you probably should never have attempted it in the first place.
I was in reasonably good shape, but I needed work—strength-training, flexibility, cardio cardio cardio. And yoga: sixty years old, and I’d never learned to breathe. Guess it was time.
I learned to slow my heart. I learned efficiency, repose, elegance of movement. I learned to require less of everything: food, water, air, joy, meaning. I learned to sit.
I bought more gear than I could possibly use in ten ascents, watched every mountaineering video I could find, moved for a season to Colorado where I took a course on mountain climbing specifically geared toward seniors.
I finished top of the class. My instructor said he’d never seen anyone of any age so motivated. But he also said mountain climbing’s supposed to be fun. Why so grim? Why was I going to climb Everest if not to have one of the greatest experiences of my life?
I told him my son was lost on Everest and that I was going to find him, but of course it’d been months and I hadn’t heard any good news, so he was dead. But I’d be damned if I was going to let my son’s pose for eternity like a movie prop in Everest’s death zone so that overprivileged jetsetters could get an extra thrill off of him. I was climbing to claim my son’s body—if I could find him, if I could pick-axe his remains free from the mountainside—and bring him home.
But yeah, asshole, I’ll try to have grand old time all the way up.
Lazaro and I had five good years together, during which time he told me almost nothing about his life prior to our reconnecting. I didn’t take it personally. He wanted to sever himself from his childhood the way a lizard drops its tail to escape a predator. Whatever his past was, Lazaro wanted nothing to do with it.
I didn’t pry. I figured he would tell me when he was ready.
But he never became ready. Instead, he anchored his life to the present, to me. And that happened to be more or less exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t go back and be the father he’d never had growing up, but as consolation prizes go, this was the next best thing.
I’m a historian. I should have known better. Histories never stay severed. Like the tail of a lizard, they grow back.
There was exactly one guide who would attempt something as stupid as try to descend Everest with a dead in tow. He had a Nepalese name but a British accent. To dumb-ass tourists like me he went by Roger.
His main suggestion was that we needed as many Sherpas as I could afford to help search for Lazaro. I could sell all of my extra mountaineering equipment at Base Camp to the rich and underprepared. There’s where I’d get top dollar.
“I was hoping it’d just be you and me,” I told him. “I don’t really want a lot of people around.”
He sighed. “Imagine a needle in a haystack,” he said. “Now douse the haystack with water, and stick it in an industrial freezer until it’s a solid hump of ice. Now remove all the oxygen from the freezer. Now put fifty kilos of equipment on your back. Now go get that needle.”
Point taken. But what would I tell all those Sherpas? How could I instruct them what to look for without them thinking I was crazy?
But truly, what frightened me more was the prospect that they’d actually believe me. The Sherpa brand of Buddhism is animist enough that, when I told them what they were looking for, they might accept it as true. Accept it, and then get the fuck off Everest.
I was leaving for Lukla in four days. My equipment had already left. It was too soon for adrenaline but too late to think of anything else. I sat in my living room and didn’t read and didn’t watch TV and didn’t turn on the lights. My own little bathyal region.
Doorbell. I had ordered a pizza. I opened the door and it was Dolores.
She was twenty-five now, if that; there was nothing fifty-five about her. She was dressed for a Texas May: naked as the law allowed. Her was muscled and sleek, like a gazelle’s. Her hair was a corona. And that smile. That tilt of the head.
“Oh my,” she said. “It’s so good to see you, Enrique.”
She was so composed. She was waiting for me to digest what I was seeing. But there was mischief there too, that evil sense of humor, even at a time like this. It really was her.
When I didn’t speak, she said, “I told you I’d be back one day. So here I am, love. I’m back.”
I didn’t respond, and she watched me for a long time not responding. Her face drained of mirth. “In the note?” she said like a question. “You got my note, right?”
“I burned it on the stove,” I said.
“Ah.” Then she laughed. “Now was that any way to treat me, after what we shared? You wouldn’t even read my explanation?”
“Treat you? You left me, Dolores.”
“And I explained why in the note, love. It was quite necessary. That’s why I left it—so you would understand.”
“You’re the one who needs to understand. Seeing that Dear John on the pillow, it … it ruined me, Dolores. Until Lazaro came into my life I was in ruins.”
She came close, then hooked her arms around my neck, and I let her. Hers was not the my remembered. It fit foreignly against me.
“Have you been working out, love?” she asked, lips puckered puckishly.
“Apparently not as much as you,” I said. And then: “Lazaro. I assume you know?”
“That’s why I’m here, love. To help you. To save him.”
Oh. Oh no. I suddenly felt tired and old. Whatever my own feelings about seeing her again were, I couldn’t let her think her son was still alive, not after he’d been missing for months at the top of Everest. “Dolores, I’m not going to try to rescue Lazaro. I’m going to claim his body. Lazaro is dead.”
“No, love.”
“Dolores, listen—”
“—He’s not,” she interrupted. But her expression was not that of a mother in denial; she looked at me pityingly, her mouth sagging with remorse. “There’s so much I need to tell you.”