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On a trail high up in the California Sierra, between heavy smooth white snowbanks, four people on cross-country skis form a straggling line. A man and three women: Graham, dark and good-looking, a San Francisco architect, who is originally from Georgia; Carol, his girlfriend, a gray-eyed blonde, a florist; Susannah, daughter of Graham, dark and fat and now living in Venice, California; and, quite a way behind Susannah, tall thin Rose, Susannah’s friend and lover. Susannah and Rose both have film-related jobs—Graham has never been quite sure what they do.

Graham and Carol both wear smart cross-country outfits: knickers and Norwegian wool stockings. The younger women are in jeans and heavy sweaters. And actually, despite the bright cold look of so much snow, this April day is warm, and the sky is a lovely spring blue, reflected in distant small lakes, just visible, at intervals.

Graham is by far the best skier of the four, a natural; he does anything athletic easily. He strides and glides along, hardly aware of what he is doing, except for a sense of physical well-being. However, just now he is cursing himself for having dreamed up this weekend, renting an unknown house in Alpine Meadows, near Lake Tahoe, even for bringing these women together. He had hoped for a diversion from a situation that could be tricky, difficult: a visit from Susannah, who was bringing Rose, whom he had previously been told about but had not met. Well, skiing was a diversion, but what in God’s name would they all do tonight? Or talk about? And why had he wanted to get them together anyway? He wasn’t all that serious about Carol (was he?); why introduce her to his daughter? And why did he have to meet Rose?

Carol is a fair skier, although she doesn’t like it much: it takes all her breath. At the moment, with the part of her mind that is not concentrated on skiing, she is thinking that although Graham is smarter than most of the men she knows, talented and successful, and really nice as well, she is tired of going out with men who don’t see her, don’t know who she is. That’s partly her fault, she knows; she lies about her age and dyes her hair, and she never mentions the daughter in Vallejo, put out for adoption when Carol was fifteen (she would be almost twenty now, almost as old as Graham’s girl, this unfriendly fat Susannah). But sometimes Carol would like to say to the men she knows, Look, I’m thirty-five, and in some ways my life has been terrible—being blond and pretty doesn’t save you from anything.

But, being more fair-minded than given to self-pity, next Carol thinks, Well, as far as that goes Graham didn’t tell me much about his girl, either, and for all I know mine is that way, too. So many of them are, these days.

How can he possibly be so dumb, Susannah is passionately thinking, of her father. And the fact that she has asked that question hundreds of times in her life does not diminish its intensity or the accompanying pain. He doesn’t understand anything, she wildly, silently screams. Stupid, straight blondes: a florist. Skiing. How could he think that I … that Rose …?

Then, thinking of Rose in a more immediate way, she remembers that Rose has hardly skied before—just a couple of times in Vermont, where she comes from. In the almost noon sun Susannah stops to wait for Rose, halfheartedly aware of the lakes, just now in view, and the smell of pines, as sweat collects under her heavy breasts, slides down her ribs.

Far behind them all, and terrified of everything, Rose moves along with stiffened desperation. Her ankles, her calves, her thighs, her lower back are all tight with dread. Snow is stuck to the bottoms of her skis, she knows—she can hardly move them—but she doesn’t dare stop. She will fall, break something, get lost. And everyone will hate her, even Susannah.

Suddenly, like a gift to a man in his time of need, just ahead of Graham there appears a lovely open glade, to one side of the trail. Two huge heavy trees have fallen there, at right angles to each other; at the far side of the open space runs a brook, darkly glistening over small smooth rocks. High overhead a wind sings through the pines, in the brilliant sunlight.

It is perfect, a perfect picnic place, and it is just now time for lunch. Graham is hungry; he decides that hunger is what has been unsettling him. He gets out of his skis in an instant, and he has just found a smooth, level stump for the knapsack, a natural table, when Carol skis up—out of breath, not looking happy.

But at the sight of that place she instantly smiles. She says, “Oh, how perfect! Graham, it’s beautiful.” Her gray eyes praise him, and the warmth of her voice. “Even benches to sit on. Graham, what a perfect Southern host you are.” She laughs in a pleased, cheered-up way, and bends to unclip her skis. But something is wrong, and they stick. Graham comes over to help. He gets her out easily; he takes her hand and lightly he kisses her mouth, and then they both go over and start removing food from the knapsack, spreading it out.

“Two bottles of wine. Lord, we’ll all get plastered.” Carol laughs again, as she sets up the tall green bottles in a deep patch of snow.

Graham laughs, too, just then very happy with her, although he is also feeling the familiar apprehension that any approach of his daughter brings on: will Susannah like what he has done, will she approve of him, ever? He looks at his watch and he says to Carol, “I wonder if they’re okay. Rose is pretty new on skis. I wonder …”

But there they are, Susannah and Rose. They have both taken off their skis and are walking along the side of the trail, carrying the skis on their shoulders, Susannah’s neatly together, Rose’s at a clumsy, difficult angle. There are snowflakes in Susannah’s dark-brown hair—hair like Graham’s. Rose’s hair is light, dirty blond; she is not even pretty, Graham has unkindly thought. At the moment they both look exhausted and miserable.

In a slow, tired way, not speaking, the two girls lean their skis and poles against a tree; they turn toward Graham and Carol, and then, seemingly on a single impulse, they stop and look around. And with a wide smile Susannah says, “Christ, Dad, it’s just beautiful. It’s great.”

Rose looks toward the spread of food. “Oh, roast chicken. That’s my favorite thing.” These are the first nice words she has said to Graham. (Good manners are not a strong suit of Rose’s, he has observed, in an interior, Southern voice.)

He has indeed provided a superior lunch, as well as the lovely place—his discovery. Besides the chicken, there are cherry tomatoes (called love apples where Graham comes from, in Georgia), cheese (Jack and cheddar), Triscuits and oranges and chocolate. And the nice cold dry white wine. They all eat and drink a lot, and they talk eagerly about how good it all is, how beautiful the place where they are. The sky, the trees, the running brook.

Susannah even asks Carol about her work, in a polite, interested way that Graham has not heard from her for years. “Do you have to get up early and go to the flower mart every morning?” Susannah asks.

“No, but I used to, and really that was more fun—getting out so early, all those nice fresh smells. Now there’s a boy I hire to do all that, and I’m pretty busy making arrangements.”

“Oh, arrangements,” says Rose, disparagingly.

Carol laughs. “Me, too, I hate them. I just try to make them as nice as I can, and the money I get is really good.”

Both Rose and Susannah regard Carol in an agreeing, respectful way. For a moment Graham is surprised: these kids respecting money? Then he remembers that this is the seventies: women are supposed to earn money, it’s good for them.

The main thing, though, is what a good time they all have together. Graham even finds Rose looking at him with a small, shy smile. He offers her more wine, which she accepts—another smile as he pours it out for her. And he thinks, Well, of course it’s tough on her, too, meeting me. Poor girl, I’m sure she’s doing the best she can.

“You all really like it down there in Hollywood?” he asks the two girls, and he notes that his voice is much more Southern than usual; maybe the wine.

“Universal City,” Susannah corrects him, but she gives a serious answer. “I love it. There’s this neat woman in the cutting room, and she knows I’m interested, so she lets me come in and look at the rushes, and hear them talk about what has to go. I’m really learning. It’s great.”

And Rose: “There’s so many really exciting people around.”

At that moment they both look so young, so enviably involved in their work, so happy, that Graham thinks, Well, really, why not?

Occasionally the wind will move a branch from a nearby tree and some snow will sift down, through sunlight. The sky seems a deeper blue than when they first came to this glade, a pure azure. The brook gurgles more loudly, and the sun is very hot.

And then they are all through with lunch; they have finished off the wine, and it is time to go.

They put on their skis, and they set off again, in the same order in which they began the day.

For no good reason, as he glides along, striding through snow in the early California afternoon, the heat, Graham is suddenly, sharply visited by a painful memory of the childhood of Susannah. He remembers a ferociously hot summer night in Atlanta, when he and his former wife, mother of Susannah, had quarreled all through suppertime, and had finally got Susannah off to bed; she must have been about two. But she kept getting up again, screaming for her bottle, her Teddy bear, a sandwich. Her mother and Graham took turns going in to her, and then finally, about three in the morning, Graham picked her up and smacked her bottom, very hard; he can remember the sting on his hand—and good Christ, what a thing to do to a little baby. No wonder she is as she is; he probably frightened her right then, for good. Not to mention all the other times he got mad and just yelled at her—or his love affairs, the move to San Francisco, the divorce, more love affairs.

If only she were two right now, he desperately thinks, he could change everything; he could give her a stable, loving father. Now he has a nice house on Russian Hill; he is a successful man; he could give her—anything.

Then his mind painfully reverses itself and he thinks, But I was a loving father, most of the time. Susannah’s got no real cause to be the way she is. Lots of girls—most girls—come out all right. At that overheated moment he feels that his heart will truly break. It is more than I can stand, he thinks; why do I have to?

Carol’s problem is simply a physical one: a headache. But she never has headaches, and this one is especially severe; for the first time she knows exactly what her mother meant by “splitting headache.” Is she going to get more and more like her mother as she herself ages? Could she be having an early menopause, beginning with migraines? She could die, the pain is so sharp. She could die, and would anyone care much, really? She’s lonely.

Susannah is absorbed in the problem of Rose, who keeps falling down. Almost every time Susannah looks back, there is Rose, fallen in the snow. Susannah smiles at her encouragingly, and sometimes she calls back, “You’re okay?” She knows that Rose would not like it if she actually skied back to her and helped her up; Rose has that ferocious Vermont Yankee pride, difficult in a fragile frightened woman.

It is breezier now than earlier in the morning, and somewhat cooler. Whenever Susannah stops, stands still and waits for Rose, she is aware of her own wind-chilled sweat, and she worries, thinking of Rose, of wet and cold. Last winter Rose had a terrible, prolonged bout of flu, a racking cough.

Talking over their “relationship,” at times Susannah and Rose have (somewhat jokingly) concluded that there certainly are elements of mothering within it; in many ways Susannah takes care of Rose. She is stronger—that is simply true. Now for the first time it occurs to Susannah (wryly, her style is wry) that she is somewhat fatherly with Rose, too: the sometimes stern guardian, the protector. And she thinks, Actually, Graham wasn’t all that bad with me; I’ve been rough on him. Look at the example he set me: I work hard, and I care about my work, the way he does. And he taught me to ski, come to think of it. I should thank him, sometime, somehow, for some of it.

Rose is falling, falling, again and again, and oh Christ, how much she hates it—hates her helplessness, hates the horrible snow, the cold wet. Drinking all that wine at lunchtime, in the pretty glade, the sunlight, she had thought that wine would make her brave; she knows her main problem to be fear—no confidence and hence no balance. But the wine, and the sun, and sheer fatigue have destroyed whatever equilibrium she had, so that all she can do is fall, fall miserably, and each time the snow is colder and it is harder for her to get up.

Therefore, they are all extremely glad when, finally, they are out of their skis and off the trail and at last back in their house, in Alpine Meadows. It is small—two tiny, juxtaposed bedrooms—but the living room is pleasant: it looks out to steeply wooded, snowy slopes. Even more pleasant at the moment is the fact that the hot-water supply is vast; there is enough for deep baths for everyone, and then they will all have much-needed before-dinner naps.

Carol gets the first bath, and then, in turn, the two younger women. Graham last. All three women have left a tidy room, a clean tub, he happily notices, and the steamy air smells vaguely sweet, of something perfumed, feminine. Luxuriating in his own full, hot tub, he thinks tenderly, in a general way, of women, how warm and sexual they are, more often than not, how frequently intelligent and kind. And then he wonders what he has not quite, ever, put into words before: what is it that women do, women together? What ever could they do that they couldn’t do with men, and why?

However, these questions are much less urgent and less painful than most of his musings along those lines; he simply wonders.

In their bedroom, disappointingly, Carol is already fast asleep. He has not seen her actually sleeping before; she is always first awake when he stays over at her place. Now she looks so drained, so entirely exhausted, with one hand protectively across her eyes, that he is touched. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he slips in beside her, and in minutes he, too, is sound asleep.

Graham has planned and shopped for their dinner, which he intends to cook. He likes to cook, and does it well, but in his bachelor life he has done it less and less, perhaps because he and most of the women he meets tend to shy off from such domestic encounters. Somehow the implication of cooking for anyone has become alarming, more so than making love to them. But tonight Graham happily prepares to make pork chops with milk gravy and mashed potatoes, green peas, an apple-and-nut salad and cherry pie (from a bakery, to be heated). A down-home meal, for his girlfriend, and his daughter, and her friend.

From the kitchen, which is at one end of the living room, he can hear the pleasant sounds of the three women’s voices, in amiable conversation, as he blends butter and flour in the pan in which he has browned the chops, and begins to add hot milk. And then he notices a change in the tone of those voices: what was gentle and soft has gone shrill, strident—the sounds of a quarrel. He hates the thought of women fighting; it is almost frightening, and, of course, he is anxious for this particular group to get along, if only for the weekend.

He had meant, at just that moment, to go in and see if anyone wanted another glass of wine; dinner is almost ready. And so, reluctantly he does; he gets into the living room just in time to hear Rose say, in a shakily loud voice, “No one who hasn’t actually experienced rape can have the least idea what it’s like.”

Such a desperately serious sentence could have sounded ludicrous, but it does not. Graham is horrified; he thinks, Ah, poor girl, poor Rose. Jesus, raped. It is a crime that he absolutely cannot imagine.

In a calm, conciliatory way, Susannah says to Carol, “You see, Rose actually was raped, when she was very young, and it was terrible for her—”

Surprisingly, Carol reacts almost with anger. “Of course it’s terrible, but you kids think you’re the only ones things happen to. I got pregnant when I was fifteen, and I had it, a girl, and I put her out for adoption.” Seeming to have just now noticed Graham, she addresses him in a low, defiant, scolding voice. “And I’m not thirty. I’m thirty-five.”

Graham has no idea, really, of what to do, but he is aware of strong feelings that lead him to Carol. He goes over and puts his arms around her. Behind him he hears the gentle voice of Susannah, who is saying, “Oh Carol, that’s terrible. God, that’s awful.”

Carol’s large eyes are teary, but in a friendly way she disengages herself from Graham; she even smiles as she says, “Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. But you see? You really can’t tell what’s happened to anyone.”

And Susannah: “Oh, you’re right, of course you are.…”

And Rose: “It’s true, we do get arrogant.…”

Graham says that he thinks they should eat. The food is hot; they must be hungry. He brings the dinner to them at the table, and he serves out hot food onto the heated plates.

Carol and Rose are talking about the towns they came from: Vallejo, California, and Manchester, Vermont.

“It’s thirty miles from San Francisco,” Carol says. “And that’s all we talked about. The City. How to get there, and what was going on there. Vallejo was just a place we ignored, dirt under our feet.”

“All the kids in Manchester wanted to make it to New York,” Rose says. “All but me, and I was fixated on Cambridge. Not getting into Radcliffe was terrible for me—it’s why I never went to college at all.”

“I didn’t either,” Carol says, with a slight irony that Graham thinks may have been lost on Rose: Carol would not have expected to go to college, probably—it wasn’t what high-school kids from Vallejo did. But how does he know this?

“I went to work instead,” says Rose, a little priggishly (thinks Graham).

“Me too,” Carol says, with a small laugh.

Susannah breaks in. “Dad, this is absolutely the greatest dinner. You’re still the best cook I know. It’s good I don’t have your dinners more often.”

“I’m glad you like it. I haven’t cooked a lot lately.”

And Rose, and Carol: “It’s super. It’s great.”

Warmed by praise, and just then wanting to be nice to Rose (partly because he has to admit to himself that he doesn’t much like her), Graham says to her, “Cambridge was where I wanted to go to school, too. The Harvard School of Design. Chicago seemed second-best. But I guess it’s all worked out.”

“I guess.” Rose smiles.

She looks almost pretty at that moment, but not quite; looking at her, Graham thinks again, If it had to be another girl, why her? But he knows this to be unfair, and, as far as that goes, why anyone for anyone, when you come to think of it? Any pairing is basically mysterious.

Partly as a diversion from such unsettling thoughts, and also from real curiosity, he asks Carol, “But was it worth it when you got to the city?”

She laughs, in her low, self-depreciating way. “Oh, I thought so. I really liked it. My first job was with a florist on Union Street. It was nice there then, before it got all junked up with body shops and stuff. I had a good time.”

Some memory of that era has put a younger, musing look on Carol’s face, and Graham wonders if she is thinking of a love affair; jealously he wonders, Who? Who did you know, back then?

“I was working for this really nice older man,” says Carol, in a higher than usual voice (as Graham thinks, Ah). “He taught me all he could. I was pretty dumb, at first. About marketing, arranging, keeping stuff fresh, all that. He lived by himself. A lonely person, I guess. He was—uh—gay, and then he died, and it turned out he’d left the store to me.” For the second time that night tears have come to her eyes. “I was so touched, and it was too late to thank him, or anything.” Then, the tears gone, her voice returns to its usual depth as she sums it up, “Well, that’s how I got my start in the business world.”

These sudden shifts in mood, along with her absolute refusal to see herself as an object of pity, are strongly, newly attractive to Graham; he has the sense of being with an unknown, exciting woman.

And then, in a quick, clairvoyant way, he gets a picture of Carol as a twenty-year-old girl, new in town: tall and a little awkward, working in the florist shop and worrying about her hands, her fingers scratched up from stems and wires; worrying about her darkening blond hair and then, deciding, what the hell, better dye it; worrying about money, and men, and her parents back in Vallejo—and should she have put the baby out for adoption? He feels an unfamiliar tenderness for this new Carol.

“You guys are making me feel very boring,” says Susannah. “I always wanted to go to Berkeley, and I did, and I wanted to go to L.A. and work in films.”

“I think you’re just more direct,” amends Rose, affectionate admiration in her voice, and in her eyes. “You just know what you’re doing. I fall into things.”

Susannah laughs. “Well, you do all right, you’ve got to admit.” And, to Graham and Carol: “She’s only moved up twice since January. At this rate she’ll be casting something in August.”

What Graham had earlier named discomfort he now recognizes as envy: Susannah is closer to Rose than she is to him; they are closer to each other than he is to anyone. He says, “Well, Rose, that’s really swell. That’s swell.”

Carol glances at Graham for an instant before she says, “Well, I’ll bet your father didn’t even tell you about his most recent prize.” And she tells them about an award from the A.I.A., which Graham had indeed not mentioned to Susannah, but which had pleased him at the time of its announcement (immoderately, he told himself).

And now Susannah and Rose join Carol in congratulations, saying how terrific, really great.

*  *  *  *  *

Dinner is over, and in a rather disorganized way they all clear the table and load the dishwasher.

They go into the living room, where Graham lights the fire, and the three women sit down—or, rather, sprawl—Rose and Susannah at either end of the sofa, Carol in an easy chair. For dinner Carol put on velvet pants and a red silk shirt. In the bright hot firelight her gray eyes shine, and the fine line under her chin, that first age line, is just barely visible. She is very beautiful at that moment—probably more so now than she was fifteen years ago, Graham decides.

Susannah, in clean, faded, too tight Levi’s, stretches her legs out stiffly before her. “Oh, I’m really going to feel that skiing in the morning!”

And Carol: “Me too. I haven’t had that much exercise forever.”

Rose says, “If I could just not fall.”

“Oh, you won’t; tomorrow you’ll see. Tomorrow …” says everyone.

They are all exhausted. Silly to stay up late. And so as the fire dies down, Graham covers it and they all four go off to bed, in the two separate rooms.

Outside a strong wind has come up, creaking the walls and rattling windowpanes.

In the middle of the night, in what has become a storm—lashing snow and violent wind—Rose wakes up, terrified. From the depths of bad dreams, she has no idea where she is, what time it is, what day. With whom she is. She struggles for clues, her wide eyes scouring the dark, her tentative hands reaching out, encountering Susannah’s familiar, fleshy back. Everything comes into focus for her; she knows where she is. She breathes out softly, “Oh, thank God it’s you,” moving closer to her friend.