32
A Brawling Woman in a Wide House
When I next returned to Buck’s Peak, it was autumn and Grandma-down-the-
hill was dying. For nine years she had battled the cancer in her bone marrow;
now the contest was ending. I had just learned that I’d won a place at
Cambridge to study for a PhD when Mother wrote to me. “Grandma is in the
hospital again,” she said. “Come quick. I think this will be the last time.”
When I landed in Salt Lake, Grandma was drifting in and out of
consciousness. Drew met me at the airport. We were more than friends by
then, and Drew said he would drive me to Idaho, to the hospital in town.
I hadn’t been back there since I’d taken Shawn years before, and as I
walked down its white, antiseptic hallway, it was difficult not to think of him.
We found Grandma’s room. Grandpa was seated at her bedside, holding her
speckled hand. Her eyes were open and she looked at me. “It’s my little Tara,
come all the way from England,” she said, then her eyes closed. Grandpa
squeezed her hand but she was asleep. A nurse told us she would likely sleep
for hours.
Drew said he would drive me to Buck’s Peak. I agreed, and it wasn’t until
the mountain came into view that I wondered whether I’d made a mistake.
Drew had heard my stories, but still there was a risk in bringing him here:
this was not a story, and I doubted whether anyone would play the part I had
written for them.
The house was in chaos. There were women everywhere, some taking
orders over the phone, others mixing oils or straining tinctures. There was a
new annex on the south side of the house, where younger women were filling
bottles and packaging orders for shipment. I left Drew in the living room and
went to the bathroom, which was the only room in the house that still looked
the way I remembered it. When I came out I walked straight into a thin old
woman with wiry hair and large, square glasses.