How Did You Get This Number Read online

  But April really went to the museums and the book clubs and the black-and-white movies in the park. She painted her walls, stripped her floors, and drilled nails into the exposed brick. From these she hung matted photos of Alaska so green you got the sense the air quality was better in the space around the frame. Photos that looked like they were shot for the very purpose of selling picture frames. Whose mountains are so lush? Whose nieces so perfect and healthy? Perhaps those related to a woman who would regularly go into bodegas and inquire about the freshness of the clementines on display outside.

  She read in Time Out New York that it was possible to go down to a pier in Chelsea and go kayaking in the Hudson. As if this weren’t miraculous enough, she actually succeeded in getting me to do this with her. With the caveat that she would inoculate me with Purell beforehand and pay for a Turkish masseuse to scrub me down with steel wool if we capsized. While I eyed the slick rainbow bubbles on the water’s surface, she let her paddle rest on her lap and tilted her face up toward the sun. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “How much further do you think we can paddle out?”

  The time we drove upstate to visit the small, artsy town of Beacon, she seemed disappointed that it only took two hours to get there. She had rented a jeep. We ate French onion soup at a diner with cake plates on the counter. As we cleaned the cheese from the side of the bowl with our fingers, I asked April if there was anything she didn’t love about this Alaska of hers. She thought for a while. She was dismissive of Juneau and Fairbanks. She mentioned the people there wearing Carhartts all year round. When I said, “What are Carhartts?” I was told with exasperation, “They’re very Fairbanks.”

  As the day wound down, we ducked in and out of the crafts and antiques shops of the rainy Rockwellesque streets. April picked out a set of hand-painted mugs.

  “Look at this one.” She held a yellow striped mug by its handle. A three-dimensional porcelain bee stuck to the rim.

  “When are you going to use that in real life”

  “I just installed mug hooks in my kitchen,” she replied, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

  “And”—she sidled up to the antique cash register—“this is real life.”

  I was distraught when she moved back home, though my sadness was tempered by the shipping rates to Alaska that resulted in her unloading half her worldly possessions onto me. Among other things, I became the proud owner of three “decorative” ledges, a set of ice-cream bowls, and two egg coddlers—everyday objects that I couldn’t conceive being a part of my every day but that made me miss April each time I ate lo mein out of the ice-cream bowls or used the egg coddlers for bourbon.

  It was only six years later, as I arrived in Alaska just past midnight, that I understood how strange it was for her to be in New York in the first place. If you’re lucky enough to become truly close with a stranger in New York, there will still be a part of you and a part of them that’s reduced to novelty. You can know everything about them, every detail of their childhood—every name of every hamster—and there will always be something that you can’t help but view as an accessory. It’s difficult to parse out someone else’s formative moments from their trivial ones when you weren’t there to witness either. April’s being from Alaska was no different from her being my adopted friend or my actress friend or my friend who fact-checked at a magazine by day and stripped at Scores by night. Her Alaskanness was the piece of her framed on the wall. A point of entry taken for granted, no more a part of the room than the door frame.

  IN THE WEEKS BEFORE WE LEFT FOR THE WEDDING, the other members of the bridal party, now securely fastened in their heated SUV bucket seats, displayed the same level of casual awe and anticipation regarding our trip to the top of the planet. E-mail chains wound back and forth. This time next week, we’ll be in Anchorage: can you believe it!? I couldn’t. Alaska felt like a slightly exaggerated trip to the Northwest on one hand, and like Pluto, that forlornly demoted planet, on the other.

  As I laid out my long underwear, I took my globe down from a bookshelf and sat on my floor with my legs stretched out. It is a world in which one can still book a flight to Yugoslavia. A world in which there is a dotted line that curves down Germany in semi-fetal position, dividing it into East and West. I imagine the boardroom discussion about the globe, the now dated debate as to how to represent the Berlin Wall.

  GLOBE GUY #1: Let’s look at the Great Wall of China. What’d we do there?

  GLOBE GUY # 2: That’s not a border.

  GLOBE GUY #1: Well, we can’t go around just doling out lines. If tomorrow I make a bay out of banana peels, do I get to have an estuary? No, I don’t.

  GLOBE GUY #2: But you can’t cross the wall without getting shot or paying someone not to shoot you. So, by the Mexican definition, they should get a line.

  GLOBE GUY #1: You’re fired.

  GLOBE GUY #3 (leaning on a stack of atlases in the corner, sporting a watch fob; he lights a cigarette): You could always make it ... dotted.

  Silence all around. GLOBE GUY #2: You know you can’t smoke in here.

  I rotated the globe east, my finger fixed on the latitude at the crown of the world. Printed in eight-point type were the dates explorers first set snowshoe on the North Pole. Except, because it’s my globe we’re talking about, the paper had been scratched away, and instead of reading Reached North Pole, it says ached North. I found this so amusing, I immediately e-mailed it to the one other bridesmaid who refers to Central Park as “the woods.”

  She responded: That’s hilarious! Are you bringing your own waders? Because I’ve been looking online and I think it might be unhygienic to rent them.

  But now, one week and four thousand miles later, it appears I have been duped into false camaraderie. I know these women call the urban centers of the Lower 48 “home.” I’ve witnessed some of them order brunch as if they’re competing to see whose food gets spat in first. But apparently they have also been camping in northern Michigan and skiing in Colorado. Voluntarily. All of a sudden it turns out they spent their childhoods spotting coyotes outside Jackson Hole or hiking the Appalachian Trail. I begin to suspect we share a different definition of “amateur” when it comes to the greatest of great outdoors. As they select fly-fishing rods without hesitation and brandish Clif bars at the slightest stomach growl, I realize these women are not kindred. They are nature’s pool sharks. A few days on a glorified Outward Bound excursion, and out come the hourly declarations of their need for fresh air, reveries of piney appreciation and mountain worship that peak with vows to chuck their mainland lives and move to Alaska at once. They are up for everything and I am down for the count, slipping on some rocks and falling ass-first into the Russian River wearing head-to-toe fleece. They have cameras with multiple lenses and a base tan of outdoorsy-ness that prevents them from asking inane questions about why ice melts. Whereas I am bright red with ignorance, my dilettante skin verbally peeling in the backseat with each mispronounced inlet.

  This could be part of a larger problem. If there is a line finer than my globe’s tiny stream of German dots, it is the line between acclimation and simulation. Between participation and sublimation. Basically: what’s being a good sport and what’s the plot of a bad romantic comedy? City gals don’t trek up glaciers in designer heels any more than country folk wander down dark alleys to ask gangbangers for directions. People tend to be more tofu-like, able to absorb whatever environment they’re dropped into. But where does the adaptability end and your actual personality begin? At the rehearsal dinner, someone will tell me I bear a striking resemblance to the Inputs, the only Inuit tribe legally allowed to hunt whale. I will be disproportionately flattered by this information, and intrigued by the possibility of decreasing my Con Ed bill by heating my apartment with blubber. I have what it takes to be part of the Alaskan fabric. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to go out and harpoon a humpback.

  I AM SATISFIED WITH JEFF’S DEFINITION OF “SCAT,” as it feels like what I have
come to refer to as Alaskan Logic. That is, something so fundamental it never occurred to me. If you’d like to be reminded of your mortality, go into any drugstore around Juneau. Next to the deodorant and the toothpaste are packages of windproof matches and water-purifying tablets. The “welcome basket” in our cabin included a bag of granola, socks, trail maps, and a giant bell labeled “bear bell.” I thought this was a joke. Just the way “seal be gone” spray or “anti-puffin” darts might have been a joke. But later, when April sat us down by the roaring fireplace in the middle of August and doled out a pre-hike lecture on bear safety, the bell seemed just a bit less funny.

  I had a flash of April’s expression back in New York when I relayed my distilled version of the polar bear story. A moat full of teenage-boy blood swirled around in my imagination.

  As recently as last week and as close as a mile away, a woman was on her front porch and was mauled by a bear. She had startled the bear by leaning down to pick a flower. She was without a bell. The fact that she was reaching not for a half-used cigarette butt but for a flower—one of God’s little sprinkles!—made the story exponentially worse. Unlike the legend of the polar bears, this one was far more real. Perhaps it’s just because I’m not a big swimmer, but I do like to pick a nice wildflower.

  The other women dispersed to their neatly organized canvas totes and quilted duffel bags. A tinny chime set off as each bell made contact with its owner. I stood there, smiling into the middle distance between me and the fire, trying to recall if I had kept the bear bell or if I threw it away with the gift wrapping. April waved her hand to unglaze my face.

  “Sloane.”

  “Yes? Present.”

  “Do you have your bear bell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to go get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “The bear bell.”

  “Get the bear bell?”

  “Yes, get the bear bell.”

  “Sure, I’ll go get the bear bell.”

  I ransack my luggage, removing most of the items from my suitcase until it is light enough for me to lift and shake. I listen closely, as if it were an enormous cell phone. I am filled with gratitude when I hear a faint ringing in one of the outside pockets. Clap if you believe in keeping your limbs, Tink! When I return to the fire, everyone is already at the bottom of the driveway, packing themselves into a big van. Most have their hair in high ponytails, with their respective bells tucked into their swinging manes.

  Usually I am hesitant about wearing my hair in a high ponytail. I didn’t cheerlead for a reason. Also, I once heard that rapists prey on women with ponytails, pulling them like handles. But now that my pinnacle danger has been transferred to getting scalped by a fucking bear, I am only too quick to loop the ribbon around the tight elastic. I join the chorus of chiming initiated by every sharp turn the SUV takes. Safety first.

  It’s ten-thirty p.m., and the sun is finally beginning to set. The sun itself isn’t directly visible from the backseat, but its presence is acknowledged by the snowcaps on each peak. These turn a deep pink when the clouds break above them. Jeff lowers his visor to avoid direct eye contact with the sudden flashes of light that bounce off the road. Meanwhile, the rivers we pass are an incongruously bright tropical blue, largely because they are not rivers. They are glacial runoffs, surging with the purest water on the planet. Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel and Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics. The gutters swell with spring water. The streets are paved with Swiss chard.

  As we round a bend in the road, we come upon a field of my favorite and only distinctly unhealthy Alaskan specialty, the Ghost Forest. In the past week, I have seen twelve sea lions, four otters, three moose, one bald eagle, and a crazed puffin with a seagull vendetta. But nothing reminds me I’m in Alaska like the Ghost Forests.

  “Those are freaky-looking,” says one of the bridesmaids in dismissive disgust. As a policy, she oohs and aahs only at things with paws. Maybe I should get out of the car and slap some oven mitts on the branches.

  But she’s right. They are freaky-looking. In 1964, a massive 9.2 earthquake devastated southcentral Alaska. It was by far the most powerful in U.S. history, and one of the largest recorded of all time. It created a lethal tsunami that reached as far as the Hawaiian islands and pinballed between them. Back in Alaska, there were aftershocks—disguised as 6.0 full-blown earthquakes—for an entire year. I imagine the Alaskan terrain itself looking down at California and thinking, My earthquake eats your earthquake for breakfast. When the plates shifted, the land not only cracked but actually dropped toward the earth’s core. This happened so quickly that the root systems of whole forests were exposed, flooded, and destroyed. But the wood itself was preserved from the inside out by salt water. Refusing to rot like normal dead trees, the Ghost Forests remain to this day, the wet dream of Edward Gorey’s landscape architect. They are vegetative vampires—so pale they glow at night, branches sharp like fangs, not dead but frozen. As the car speeds along, I try to pick out one tree from the blur on which to focus, following it from the front of the window to the back.

  That’s when it happens.

  My seat belt tears tight across my chest. My stomach lurches, gravitating toward my lungs. My neck bends forward and returns upright. The car swerves and the tires screech and I hear Jeff scream, “Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” with unmitigated panic. Thoughts are corralled into half-seconds. My head is on fire, my synapses cast in the role of hero and trying to get every image out of the back of my mind and up front to safety. I wonder if we are careening off a cliff. I think, No, it’s August—what’s there to glide on? Are we even on a cliff? I see ice. People can careen off ice. Am I going to die like this? Will I drown? And is that so bad? There’s more glory in smacking proactively into an iceberg than being smacked into by a taxicab. I try to remember what happens when you drown. Is it as merciful a situation as dying in a fire, where you pass out from smoke inhalation before you’re burned alive?

  The car stops. We are propelled forward again, and then flopped against our seatbacks, and then... nothing.

  No glass shattering. No explosion. I feel my face, checking off features with my fingertips. As I drop my hand and stare forward, I realize that our car is not the problem. The problem is the pickup truck ahead of us, which has flung itself from a side road and is ahead of us. Its driver is clearly drunk and swerving wildly. If anyone needs to be having half-second death fantasies, it’s this guy.

  A baby brown bear comes ambling out of the woods. As Jeff’s cursing echoes in my head, my newly acquired vocabulary kicks in, momentarily translating “shit” to “scat.” But after the word zips around, it lands on my primary definition of “scat.” I think: Run, little bear, run.

  But there’s no time. The truck plows straight into the cub. The driver speeds off in the same direction he approached (i.e., a sampling of all of them). The noise of the bear being hit is actually not so bad. But the visual isn’t doing my denial any favors. The bear rolls next to our car and goes limp, a mound of fetal fur moving up and down, but barely. We gasp in unison, the sound of our warning bells banging against our necks. As we crane to see if the bear is still breathing, April and Jeff spring out of the car. Even for them, this scene is unusual. They flank the bear on either side, preparing to hail oncoming traffic to prevent it from getting hit twice. But no traffic comes. Jeff calls the park service, and we wait. There’s no telling how long it will take them to get out here. The animal attempts to distance itself from a widening puddle of blood, leaning on one arm for a moment before collapsing in exhaustion. He can’t seem to grasp why the bones and cartilage and muscle that were working so well a moment ago will no longer hold. The blood is growing darker, so that it looks like a flat extension of his fur. It is easily the most upsetting thing I have ever seen.

  “I hit a moose in Montana once,” one of the bridesmaids says, trying to help.


  Everyone turns to look at her. She starts to speak again but doesn’t. There’s nothing to say. A moose is worse for one’s car, but it’s ultimately much less cute.

  Oh, no.

  I seek out the cuddly paw fanatic, and sure enough, her bottom lip is trembling. She can’t hold back. She starts crying.

  “It’ll be okay,” says the moose killer.

  No, it won’t.

  The girl becomes hysterical. But in the wrong direction. She worries that the bear will cryogenically heal and become rabid. Having seen her apply a similar level of concern over an egg omelet with cheese on top, which was supposed to be an egg-white omelet with cheese on the side, I assume her panic will subside at any moment. Instead, her words become increasingly nonsensical, a mixed bag of ranting and dramatic gasps that hack away at my sympathy for the bear. “It’s not that big a deal,” I want to yell. Except that it is that big a deal. My resentment is rising. I am trying to absorb the situation and would like to do my absorption in peace. In general, I prefer to record all traumas and save them for later, playing them over and over so they can haunt me for a disproportionate number of weeks to come. It’s very healthy.

  I turn away from her and try to concentrate on the bear, who has now put his baby snout flat to the pavement, his eyes and nose forming a trinity of black spots that look up, searching for a spot on which to fixate. This is more nature than we bargained for, to be sure. Exactly how much more? I find myself longing for yesterday, when I was intimidated by trail mix.