The Triangle Mountain

From our hotel balcony, my sister and I have a panoramic view of Sedona's towering red rock formations. One of the red rock faces appears as a simple plane figure, a triangle. It stands out to us because it's simple. The past decades have not been simple, for either of us.
 
In our otherworldly setting, we talk past and present, wisely leaving the future alone. We compare ravages of aging. "Look at my 90-year-old hands" says J. I laugh at the exaggeration. But even though she is only 15 months my elder, her hands look far older. Age spots, even a ropey vein or two. I try for a consolation "Well, look at my second toes" I say, angling my bare feet toward her. My pink toenails are the type of shade she wore for decades. On this trip, J's rocking a deep red. Don't try to tell me that doesn't mean anything. Color always means something.
 
"What about your toes?" she says, puzzled. "The bumps! Can't you see them? When I was having that miserable first year of teaching after I moved to Phoenix, I kept wearing these uncomfortable shoes that were rubbing against the top of my feet." I go for a different angle, and, yes, she sees. No big deal she shrugs, and I realize she's right. It's not like they've ruined a lucrative career as a foot model. Still feeling competitive, I roll up my shorts to expose a small constellation of veins on my upper right thigh. "Doesn't this look like blue paint?" Her can't- hide- it wince confirms that yes, it's gross. A three step Dermablend process covers it up in about two minutes, but it's never an exact match, mainly because the process should take about five minutes, and I don't have the patience.
 
At some point we touch on the topic of sex, even though it's always been a taboo topic with her. Many years before, when my first boyfriend and I became sexually active, J, always protective of me and practical, asked if S was using rue-bears. HUH? I said the first, and then a. second time. Finally she brought herself to say the word: rubbers. 
 
I mention that of all the men I've had sex with, if I had to do it all over again, I'd keep maybe six of them. I know she's wondering how many there have been. So am I. I just know it's a number some would consider excessive, but more would consider normal. Especially as far down the conveyer belt as I am in life.
 
And that's when her story comes. The story about when she was 19, and she and her fairytale fiancé were supposed to have an enchanted day Christmas shopping. Let me stop here and tell you what a great gift giver my sister is. She's an it's the gift that counts person, because, in her logic, of course you put serious thought into it. Because you care.
 
J's gifts are always at the confluence of something you can use and something you didn't know you wanted but end up unable to live without. She makes detailed lists, lovingly, perhaps using the gifting as an opportunity to show the caring she has difficulty expressing. In childhood, hugs made her flinch. She thinks it's because she was born more than two months premature and spent her first days in an incubator.
 
As J tells it, on that fateful morning, her great looking, athletic, five years older, future lawyer husband picked her up. List in hand and with a smile on her face, she got in the car with no reason to suspect the day wouldn't match her lovely holiday plans. But it didn't.
 
Instead of driving into the city, P drives to a "sleazy motel". It may have been a Ramada, or of that ilk, but sleazy is as sleazy does. In that generic or worse room, he fucks her, getting his rocks off, little concern for her well-being, her pleasure an afterthought at best.
 
The sexual revolution had already happened. But a barely 20-year-old bride being a virgin was not considered freakish back then. With a love for traditional, or old-fashioned ways, J had wanted to stay a virgin until their wedding, only a few months away. She'd never could have imagined the hotel scene, nor the abortion less than two months later. "I can still hear the whirring sound" J tells me. P was there with you, right? No. He was busy. She'd told my parents, and my dad made arrangements for her at his hospital- under a different name. "I can still hear them saying 'Are you doing okay, Melissa?'
 
And now, with the triangle mountain in front of us, J looks up at me with her big blue eyes and asks me the question I'd been dreading: Do you think I was raped?
 
Say yes, and she's a rape victim the rest of her life. I didn't want to be a rape victim when I was date raped, so I just pretended it was bad sex. Almost every woman has been raped at one time or another. Best to not think about it too much. I settle for a diluted truth: You were violated. J nods her head yes. Acknowledged, finally. No further harm done.
 
She was worse than raped. She was so innocent. She trusted him.
 
As the sun sets in this fairytale kingdom, I contemplate if I will ever again be able to regard P as I did before. I'd always liked him. He and I had always gotten along easily, more easily than my sister and I had until my sister's personality softened, later, after he'd left her for a leggy redhead he'd met while waiting to pick up Chinese food. She and I became close as I coached her through her initial bewilderment and agony, closer when all the tension of her marriage fell away. My father had put him through law school, thinking it would help ensure a stable future for his daughter. P was fired from not one, but every single firm he worked for. Never for incompetence. After every firing, yet another five-bedroom house would foreclose (Yes, of course we can afford it! You're my wife! You're supposed to believe in me!)
 
Divorce had never seriously occurred to J. She'd watched our mother stand by our father, even after his million-dollar a year career derailed. Even after he blew through not only all his own money, but the sizeable sum her parents had left her, refusing to step down their luxurious lifestyle. After P left, J worked harder in her health care career, rising to a management position. P, who was fired from his job as a park ranger, still begs for money from her on occasion. A year or so after the separation, they started talking again. Once the leggy redhead had left him, they became friends. I'm happy to report J hasn't given him a cent. 
 
"I never liked sex" J confesses. "I think it's because P was so...harsh." I silently contemplate if that's the right word, or if that word alone is enough. It's not. Definitely not.
 
J doesn't really care anymore. She has her career. Friends. Her baking, her gardening, her dog.  Trips to Hawaii to see her son and her grandchildren. Enough money, and no one to deter her from her sensible saving habits. She'd consider another relationship only if a man met her very high standards. Her dentist meets those standards, and she can tell he likes her, but alas, he is married. Off limits. Most likely, J will choose to spend the rest of her life alone.
 
It's a lot better than what she had
 
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