“No—I never said that! I might take the semester off, just so I can catch up. And we’ve got a major appraisal coming up at Yorick’s….”
“Jess …”
“I was actually making a serious point.”
“And I was asking a serious question.”
“I’m not talking about graduate school. I’m talking about how you can come out here and know your place in the universe.”
“And what would that be?”
“Very small. Very tangential,” Jess said cheerfully.
“You’re so bright,” said Emily.
“I thought we said no hectoring.”
“It’s not hectoring—it’s my … I just want you to do well.”
“I would rather be well than do well,” Jess said beatifically, and laughed at her sister’s yelp of frustration.
“You actually seek out platitudes.”
“I only do it to annoy.”
“But you believe that stuff.”
“Yeah, that’s the disturbing part, isn’t it?” Jess said wickedly.
Emily folded her arms across her chest. “When are you going to embark on a career?”
“Don’t you think,” Jess asked, with just the slightest edge in her voice, “that you have enough career for both of us?”
“I worry about you.”
“Well, I worry about you,” Jess countered. “You’re in this crazy industry where people eat each other alive. No, wait”—she stopped Emily from interrupting—“it’s in all the newspapers and the chat groups. Microsoft taking out Netscape. Veritech suing Janus.”
“You heard about that?” Frankly, Emily was surprised to hear that Jess followed any news at all.
“Yeah, I read this whole article—did you see it? Anything you can do I can do better: Janus takes on the storage sector. Veritech fights back. It’s online, on The Motley Fool.”
“You read The Motley Fool?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” Jess asked. “Actually,” she confessed, “Dad sent me the link. Are you really suing Janus for eighty million dollars? Isn’t that, like, an expensive thing to do?”
“It’s just part of doing business,” said Emily, affecting a calm she didn’t feel. Lawsuits, particularly the big one against Janus, were a huge drag on Veritech’s finances and corporate energy. “We can afford the legal fees, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That’s not what I mean. There you are, getting and spending, and you’re with this guy who’s in the thick of it—but you’re not really with him, because he’s so careerist he won’t come out here to be with you.”
Emily started walking, brisk and purposeful, as though they had to complete the trail loop. “I don’t think you should bring boyfriends into this. I don’t think you should talk about Jonathan—who actually works—when you’re with someone with no visible source of income or direction….”
“Direction! Leon travels for his beliefs. Jonathan travels for his share price. There’s a difference, don’t you think? Leon has a cause. Jonathan is just another greedy, techno-freak gazillionaire.”
They waited on a wooden bridge for a Japanese family taking pictures. A couple sauntered along, with hands in each other’s back pockets. A small girl, only three or four years old, sprinted past in a green hooded sweater, and her little feet beat against the wood planks as she raced away, to hide, to fly. Her parents called after her nervously, “Wait for us, honey. Not so fast!” Now Emily stood perfectly still, and she said nothing, and Jess knew by her silence that she was truly angry.
“You worry about me,” Jess ventured nervously, “so why can’t I worry about you?”
Emily said nothing.
“You know Mom would have hated both of them,” Jess cajoled.
“She would have hated Leon,” Emily said, with feeling. “She would have despised him.”
“She’d have hated Jonathan too.”
“How do you know that? You don’t know that.”
“Find someone musical,” Jess quoted, for she was not above citing Gillian’s letters in a pinch, and she knew Jonathan could not carry a tune. “Find someone giving. Find someone who will sacrifice for you.”
“You do look at the letters,” Emily said.
“Every once in a while.”
“And what do you think?”
Jess watched a thick, yellow banana slug squirm at her feet. “I think, probably, we aren’t turning out the way that she intended.”
“You could change that.”
“I could? How about you?”
“I’m going to marry him.”
“You keep saying that.” Jess glanced at Emily’s sparkling ring. “Do you have a date?”
Emily shook her head. “I can’t—”
“Good for you!”
“Shh!”
Jess couldn’t help smiling at the way Emily shushed her, even in front of trees.
“I meant we can’t set a date right now.” Neither she nor Jonathan could move cross-country yet. Not at this moment in their companies’ young lives. “We’re not ready.”
“This is true,” said Jess. “This is more than true. Jonathan will never be ready for you.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know enough. I’ve known him for three years! And I told you—I read about him in the papers, taking down Green Knight….”
“The stuff in the papers isn’t true.”
“Couldn’t you just meet someone else?” Jess asked winsomely.
“You know, Jess,” Emily exploded, “I’m supposed to sit by while you drop out of school and move in with your tree lover, and it seems to me that, for someone who demands so much unconditional support, you are strangely judgmental. You stand here talking about the natural world, and how humanity is insignificant, and then you have the nerve to tell me what to do. How do you intend to change your life? Just what exactly is your plan?”
Jess thought for a moment. “All right,” she said. “You be my witness.”
With a sinking feeling Emily watched her sister place her right hand on Robert Frost. “This year,” Jess vowed, “I swear I will overcome my fear of climbing.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. I swear on …” Jess opened her book at random and looked inside. “I swear on a dimpled spider, fat and white, that I will climb this year.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“This year,” Jess said, “I’m going to climb Galadriel.”
“You need a job,” Emily told her.
“I have a job.”
“You need a regular income. And health insurance! What if something happens to you? What if, for example, you fall out of a redwood?”
“I’d just die,” said Jess dramatically, “so I wouldn’t need medical care.” When she saw the look on Emily’s face she amended. “Sorry.”
“Please don’t face your fears.”
“I want to.” Jess looked up at the forest canopy.
“Jess, I’m serious. You’re making a huge mistake. You’re afraid of heights for a reason. You of all people should not be climbing in Wood Rose Glen. And don’t think you’re going to impress Leon.”
“This has nothing to do with him!” Jess retorted. “This is just for me.”
“Oh, God.”
“It might sound New Ageist, but I don’t want to live like a coward on the ground.”
“I don’t want you to crack your head open.”
“Since when are you so risk averse?” Jess asked. “Wasn’t coming out to California a risk? Wasn’t founding Veritech a risk?”
“I never risked my life,” said Emily.
“Okay, granted, technically you risk other people’s money, but you put your life into the company, right? You invest yourself. Isn’t that true? In Veritech, in the stock market, in Jonathan.”
Emily looked at Jess as if to say: Where do you come from? Her analogies were so fanciful. “Yes, I’m sure every choice involves some kind of risk—but tree climbing is life-and-death.”
Jess stood on the wood bridge and saw birds flying in the forest light. She saw herself flying upward, ascending to the treetops in the clouds.
But Emily interrupted, “You fall from a tree like this, that’s it. You don’t get another chance.”