“That’s rude,” Foderman said.
“Seymour,” I said, “what the hell’s the matter with you? She made a fool of you last night.”
“I didn’t feel foolish.”
“Then you are a fool,” Sandy said.
“It was a joke. What’s everybody getting so excited about?”
“You want to hear my appraisal of the situation?” Mary Margaret asked.
“No, not particularly,” Sandy said.
“I would like to hear it,” Foderman said.
“Good, then hear it,” Sandy said, and got to her feet. She picked up her parka, brushed snow from it, put it on, and was zipping it up when Mary Margaret said, “Is that the one you stole?”
“Yep,” Sandy said. “Coming, guys?”
“It seems to me,” Foderman said, “that you can at least allow her the courtesy...”
“No, let her go,” Mary Margaret said. “She’s afraid, can’t you see that?”
“Afraid of what?” Foderman said, bewildered.
“Afraid of me.”
The two girls were facing each other now, Mary Margaret still sitting on the ground, her face tilted, her eyes squinted against the sun, Sandy looking down at her. The exchange that followed was deadly and dangerous, a bitchy, catlike dialogue that I was sure would end in one of those hair-pulling, rolling-on-the-ground, spitting, biting, clawing contests that were all the vogue in grade-B movies before women began burning their bras and punching each other like mere men.
“Now, why would I be afraid of you?” Sandy asked sweetly. “You’re a lovely gentle person...”
“I am.”
“With beautiful delicate hands...”
“Then why don’t you like me?”
“Don’t force me to be blunt.”
“Oh? Were you being subtle until now?”
“Okay, Mary Margaret. I don’t like you because you’re a sadistic anti-Semite with a perverse sense of humor, okay? I think you’re out to hurt Seymour. I don’t want to be around when you do it. Now fuck off.”
“But that’s not why you’re afraid of me,” Mary Margaret said, and smiled. “Why won’t you admit the real reason?”
“You don’t listen, do you?”
“I listen. I listen very hard. Why are you afraid of me?”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then, why won’t you ski with me?”
“I don’t like you.”
“Why not?”
“For the sake of the deaf, dumb, and blind,” Sandy said, “I’ll repeat what I said three minutes ago. You’re an anti-Semite, you’ve got a perverse...”
“Seymour doesn’t think I’m an anti-Semite.”
“Seymour wouldn’t know an anti-Semite from an Arabian pony.”
“We were just kidding around last night. Seymour knows that.”
“I don’t think you were kidding around.”
“Come on, Sandy, it was all a big joke.”
“I didn’t find it comical.”
“Then, maybe you’re right. Maybe you haven’t got a sense of humor.”
“Right, I haven’t.”
“Except for jokes that originate in your tight little corporation.”
“Right. You finished? I don’t want to miss the big race.”
“Why are you putting down the race? Because you’re not in it?”
“David? Peter? Let’s go.”
“Sure, call your dogs.”
“Don’t press your luck, Mary.”
“It’s Mary Margaret.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not. That was another put-down. Get my name wrong, and you reduce me in importance. That’s what you’re afraid of, Sandy.”
“Your name?”
“No. The fact that you can’t reduce me in importance. I don’t want to join your exclusive little country club, and you know it.”
“You haven’t been invited to join.”
“Of course not. There are only three members, and they run the admissions committee. You can’t let anybody else in, because they’re liable to find out you don’t have a swimming pool or tennis courts or lockers or anything but mirrors. It’s all a trick with mirrors, Sandy.”
“Then, why do you want to ski with us?”
“I don’t. The truth is you want to ski with me.”
“Sure. You go right on believing that.”
“And you’re afraid to. That’s the truth.”
“There’s nothing on the north face...”
“Never mind the north face. We’re not talking about Seymour now. You’re afraid of me, not the mountain. And it isn’t because you think I’m going to hurt Seymour. It’s because you think I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to get inside that phony little club of yours and bust all the mirrors.”
“Not a chance,” Sandy said.
“Try me,” Mary Margaret said, and smiled.
It seemed to me that Sandy had lost the argument. I had never before that moment felt any need to feel sorry for Sandy, but Mary Margaret had just shredded her to ribbons, and I sat on the ground with the sun on my face and looked up at Sandy and knew that if she grabbed for the bait Mary Margaret had just offered, she would only be admitting defeat. I saw this knowledge on Sandy’s face as well, and wanted to kiss both her cheeks and hug her close and comfort her. I waited for her answer, knowing what the answer would be, knowing Mary Margaret had left no choice but to accept the challenge, to prove to her for all of us that what we shared was not so fragile as to be shattered by a freckle-faced twirp with pretty hands. Sandy was trapped, we were all trapped; Mary Margaret had forced us into a position the way she had forced Foderman to climb that hill.
“We’ll meet you on the summit after the race,” Sandy said quietly.
“Fine,” Mary Margaret said.
The north face was cold and bleak and forbidding.
We stood on the level stretch of ground to the left of the unloading platform, waiting for Foderman and Mary Margaret to arrive at the summit, cursing the absence of a warming hut, shivering as each new fierce gust of wind blew snow ghosts into our faces. Lulled by the sunshine and balmy breezes on the other side of the mountain, we were unprepared for such a frigid assault, and improperly dressed for it. This was Vermont weather, ten below at the top, frostbite lurking if you stood still for more than a minute. Back East, we’d have worn a woolen shirt and two sweaters over our thermal underwear. We’d have zipped the linings into our parkas, put on wet pants over our regular garden variety ski pants, pulled slitted suede masks over our faces. Here in the glorious West, we trembled in our lightweight parkas, did windmill exercises with our arms, jumped up and down on our skis, blew on our hands, and decided that if Foderman and Mary Margaret did not show within the next two minutes, we were heading down without them. They arrived thirty seconds short of the deadline. The chair ride up had numbed them to the marrow, and we waited another five minutes for them to go through the same warming-up exercises we had just performed, while we grew colder and colder and more and more irritable.
It is dangerous to ski when you are cold.
Aside from the obvious physical disadvantage of tight muscles and aching toes and fingertips, there is a psychological disadvantage as well. When the temperature drops below zero and the wind adds its ferocity to the already biting cold, there is an urgent need to get down to where it is warmer. A skier who is cold skis faster than he normally would, takes reckless chances he would otherwise avoid, all in an attempt to escape those howling wolves chasing the troika. He knows only that if he remains where he is, he will freeze solid to the side of the mountain. So he will run over helpless babes and mewling kittens in his desperate headlong plunge down the mountain in search of warmth. None of which excuses Mary Margaret for deliberately breaking Foderman’s leg. She was cold, we all were cold. But she was an expert skier and could have avoided the accident.