Mary Coin Read Online Free Page A

charade of this trip. Alice turns back to Isaac and says something Walker can’t hear, but he can tell by the way Isaac’s shoulders drop that she has nailed him for his enthusiasm or his outfit or both. Her brother’s lack of cynicism enrages her. Isaac continues to the car, struggling underneath the double burden of his camping equipment and his sister’s judgment. Walker reminds himself that despite the divorce and the move and a sister whose emotional vicissitudes dominate, Isaac is still a boy who bends toward happiness. And Alice, if he wants to relieve himself of the burden of guilt for a split second, is no different from who she was at two, when she seemed less child than highly reactive substance that Walker and Lisette handled gingerly, fearing unexpected explosions. He imagines that she has learned to playact apathy as a way of protecting against the crisis of feelings that attend her barely hidden anxieties.
    “Are we gonna stop for lunch?” Alice says when they have been driving for barely an hour.
    “I made sandwiches,” Walker says. “In the cooler.”
    He watches in the rearview as the kids find the food. Isaac takes a huge, trusting bite while Alice checks between the bread.
    “Nutella and bacon!” Isaac exclaims. It is a favorite combination that health-minded Lisette refuses to indulge.
    “On white bread!” Walker adds, and to his relief Alice gives him an ironic thumbs-up.
    He pulls off the road at Fortuna.
    “Why are we going here?” Isaac says.
    “Redwoods.”
    “Jesus. We’ve seen redwoods, Dad,” Alice says.
    “The coast redwood towers over all other trees in the world,”
Isaac intones as if he is quoting a science video from school.
“Exceptional trees can reach a height of three hundred and fifty feet or more.”
    “Oh, my God!” Alice groans. “The fucking redwood report!”
    In the mirror Walker sees her glance his way, wondering how he will react to her language. When he says nothing, he can’t tell if she is triumphant or disappointed. He remembers when each of his kids was in the fifth grade. Along with the report on the California missions, which required that he and Lisette spend weekends with saws and glue guns and boxes of sugar cubes, the redwood report was a rite of passage. Lisette, a Bostonian, objected to the entire curriculum. She could not understand why the children were learning about Father Junípero Serra and the Chumash Indians and redwoods instead of the Pilgrims and the Iroquois and the sorts of trees that might grow outside Emily Dickinson’s door.
    “California kids learn California history,” Walker told her.
    “If I’d known my kids were going to be Californians, I would never have married a bum like you,” she answered flirtatiously. “I guess I didn’t think it through.”
    No one thinks it through,
he muses now, as he drives into the state park. He imagines there must be some genetic predisposition to do the opposite, to be impulsive and unreasonable. Otherwise how would the race survive?
    •   •   •
     
    I t does not take them long to hike past the glut of visitors who cluster near the trailhead and to wander deep into the forest. The temperature drops. Modern noises cut out and are replaced by the sounds of birds and the crunch of leaves underfoot and the gentle sawing of branches scraping against one another. Neither child complains. Alice stops at one point and leans back in order to stare at the canopy of trees. Walker refrains from offering banal narration—
Isn’t this fantastic?
or
Wow, how beautiful!
—the parental equivalent of a sideline cheer. If Alice is having any sort of transfiguring moment, the last thing she wants is her father sharing it.
    Walker slides his pack off his back, unzips it, and pulls out a cardboard box. It was delivered two weeks after George died, and Walker has not yet had the heart to open it. He takes his apartment key from his pocket and uses the jagged edge to slice through the packing