None of this Ever Really Happened (15 page)

Later there was even time to fish and canoe to some
nearby Indian pictographs. We read and wrote by the fire.
Someone shouted in celebration of a patch of blue sky. We ate
a huge, hearty, awful dinner of turkey supreme, green beans,
and pineapple cheesecake. The west was pink. I predicted the
next day would be wonderful.

Day Five, June 10:

Through the wet early days, we said many times, "At least it
isn't cold." The next morning it was raining, and it was cold.
It was easy now to understand why people who live outside
have often worshiped nature. At home if it rained, I
closed the door and turned on the tube. Here, so much depended
on the weather that was rolling across the sky. Everything.
If only because there was no place to escape it. It may
seem silly since it was nearly summer, but the question of
survival had already arisen. It did again this day.

We packed up and ate a cold, quick breakfast in near silence.
Then we paddled away. Our long portage was difficult,
sometimes through muck that was waist deep. It took most
of the morning. The long paddle that followed was just as
hard. The temperature was around fifty, and we were all wet.
Lake Kahshahpiwi was choppy, and it continued to rain.

We were looking for an abandoned fire watchtower high
on the hills above. Mike claimed that he did not know there
was an abandoned ranger station there as well, but in retrospect,
I was not so sure.

Anyway, we rounded a bend and someone said, "A house!"
We all repeated the word. It was a little white cottage. It had
been four days since we had seen a house, a car, any sign of
civilization but those we carried; anything but water, trees,
and rocks.

Mike approached tentatively, read something on the door,
turned the handle, and went in, was back in a second, shouting,
"Come on up!" We cheered and suddenly we were very
cold. We could barely grip the packs to carry them. Inside we
struggled awkwardly with knots and buttons.

There were three rooms, and right in the middle, a wood-burning
stove. Soon we had a fire blazing and clothes drying.
We cooked up chicken-noodle soup and a huge batch of
grilled-cheese sandwiches.

The sign on the door read, "Please replace what you use
with something else. Leave the place clean." It had many reciprocating
messages: "Saved from the rain. Dorth of the
North," "Replenished wood supply. Thanks, The Wassons,"
and, incongruously,
"Où est le boeuf?"

The rain stopped. By late afternoon there was a line of blue
across the northwest. Then slowly the clouds were rolled away
above us like the lid of a sardine tin, and it was lovely again.
Mike, I thought, felt a little guilty about staying over here. The
rest of us enjoyed it thoroughly. I tried not to think what we
would have done had this place not come around the bend.
We had made our long detour in search of fish, but it
was here that we found them. We were out in the canoes and
on the little dock until well after dark. One of us caught a
twenty-two–inch lake trout.

Day Six, June 11:

The day we had been waiting for. We were up early and were
instantly busy like the Seven Dwarves whistling, cooking,
sweeping, cleaning, sawing, and drying. We replenished the
cottage's wood box and its larder with macaroni and cheese,
dehydrated fruit, and some encouraging words.

Each of us polished off four pieces of French toast and
syrup, and then we were off into this cool morning of pure,
bright colors. I am a practical person. I do not consider billboards
the ultimate proof of society's decadence, nor moderate
air pollution a threat to my life. I am willing to put up
with some of the trade-offs that modern times demand. I
think that people who care more about baby seals and sperm
whales than other people are just a little warped. And if the
wilderness is sacred to me, it is so in the lower case. After
all, none of us will ever really live in it again unless all of
us do, and I know that we would not want that. Quetico is
a laboratory. Still, I should note that in six days, I had not
seen one discarded can or gum wrapper, one cigarette butt,
one old matchbook, used condom, or pop-top. And when
the sun shined, you had to blink your eyes because so much
beauty seemed impossible. And the whole country smelled
like Christmas.

We traveled all day through half a dozen lakes, across nine
portages. It never got hot, but the sun was warm. Finally there
were the McIntyre Falls, sharp, bubbling cascades, and the long,
winding McIntyre River, beaver territory with one dam after
another. We walked our canoes down it in sometimes-chest-deep
water, just like Bogart in
The African Queen,
and if the
setting wasn't as exotic, the mosquitoes were certainly as big.

But by evening, the sky had clouded. It began to rain as
we fixed dinner, and we went to bed feeling fairly defeated,
despite the day.

Day Seven, June 12:

Rain again. It had rained each day. We found it tiresome and
oppressive, but I would have thought it impossible. It was
not. It was only uncomfortable.

Like most people, I make fun of weather forecasters. It
was only in the absence of their prognostications that I realized
how much attention I paid to them. There were times
this week when a good forecast would have given us much-needed
hope, and a bad one would have crushed us.

In addition to weather forecasts, we had now spent a full
week without each of these for almost the first time in our
lives: any broadcast, any recorded message, a newspaper, a
phone call, a shower, any electrical appliance except for flashlights
and cameras, a toilet, a mirror, a letter, a roof (save one),
and a spigot. Around midday we passed two fishermen and
paused to exchange a few words. They were the first people
other than ourselves whom we had seen in over four days.

We had become fairly competent paddlers. Today we
glided single file and in near silence down the wooded, grassy
Tuck River hoping to surprise a moose. There was a great
crash in the bush that may have been one, but no one saw it.
Nonetheless, we felt proud and serious about our quest.

Evenings had become our best times. Most had been clear
and peaceful. Tonight we camped above Basswood Falls, the
prototype for rapids everywhere. We swam and washed, ate
more mush and pretty good lemon pie, watching the clouds
lighten and finally flee. There was a seagull nesting on a rock
just out in our lake, and one of us went off to photograph it.
Two other canoes drifted about on the still water carrying
solitary readers and writers. Others of us fished up and down
the rapids. And all of us watched the huge moon coming
up and adding its bright yellow reflection to the deepening
colors of the dusk. If it were always like this, I would never
go home.

Day Eight, June 13:

Some time after midnight, I'll be damned if there wasn't a
violent thunderstorm. There was suddenly so much water
in the tent that we almost needed snorkels. It was evidence
of our fatigue and resignation that no one even bothered to
get up. When the lightning passed, we went back to sleep in
puddles.

I had been intending to write a cute little piece about all
the wildlife I had
not
seen on this trip, but today ruined it.
Coming down Pipestone Bay, we spotted two black-bear cubs
on the shore. Then just beside us there was a loud confrontation
between a giant seagull and a bald eagle. Interestingly,
the seagull was the aggressor with many swoops, dives, and
squawks. In truth we had seen half a dozen eagles, though
none as close. And we had seen various hawks, many elegant
and dignified blue herons, and always the loon, which
seemed so much more at home beneath the water than above
it, and whose self-pitying warble is Quetico's sound track.

Again we had a long paddle on a cold gray day, and again
the sky cleared late in the afternoon. Our campsite was beside
Pipestone Falls in thick woods. We made blueberry pancakes
and laid our bags and ourselves out on the grass to dry.
A couple of us fell sound asleep.

Later I crossed the bay to walk beside the rapids. I turned
a corner and was close enough to a beautiful big doe to touch
her. I started, she bolted. But moments later I saw her again
and froze. She was fifty feet away, and when she saw me, she
came as close as thirty feet. She pawed the ground as a bull
might and even feinted in my direction once or twice. Perhaps
she had a fawn nearby. This lasted half a minute, and
then she was gone noiselessly into the heavy bush.

I had seen, touched, even hand-fed many deer in zoos
and parks, but it was thrilling to meet one where it was at
home, and I was not.

Day Nine, June 14:

We came back to base camp, to beds, saunas, and late-night
glasses of Drambuie with new friends, people who do the remarkable
routinely. Someone offered me a cigarette and, at
least for the moment, I didn't want it.

Sometime that summer some other men-children and I
would make our annual visit to Great America to ride the
roller coasters. We would dare and tempt each other. We
would keep track of the rides we went on as if they were accomplishments.
We would pretend that the danger was not
illusionary, that there were not backup systems on backup
systems, that someone's finger was not always on the stop
button.

I realized now that the only reason we paddled off three
days from anything was to find a place where we couldn't
dial 911, signal time-out, or cry uncle, where the only backup
systems were within ourselves. Back in the city, several
people would ask, "Did you have a good time?" They did not
know—as I did not know before—that the question was irrelevant.
In fact, I think I asked it of Tom Maury not so many
weeks ago. And now I understood his answer: "It's the only
thing I've ever done that wasn't overrated."

The last day paddling home, the sky was clear, and the
sun was warm. There was no threat of rain.

I
N A CHILI'S IN DULUTH
, squeezed into a booth with a
bunch of fart-joke-telling, elbow-wielding teenagers,
I ate a rib-eye steak, mashed potatoes, and a Caesar
salad, and I drank a tall, cold Weissbier with a slice of lemon.
This was one of the three or four best meals of my life. It was,
in fact, so good that it seemed to demand a cigarette afterward,
and I stood for a long time looking at packs of them in
a convenience store before not buying any.

I got back on the bus, reclined my seat, and slept through
the rest of Minnesota and a good bit of Wisconsin. When I
woke up, there was a videotaped movie on the monitor above
my head. I watched it drowsily; it was shot in Chicago. A
car pulled up and the driver talked to a man on a bicycle.
The shot was over the bicyclist's shoulder framing the driver's
face in the open window. Lisa Kim was sitting in the passenger
seat. She said, "We're going to be late." Good God. For
the first time, I felt that I couldn't escape this woman even if
I wanted to. Later there was an interior shot. Two girls were
talking in the foreground, and Lisa Kim was sitting on the
couch painting her toenails in the background. She leaned
over one raised knee to do it. She seemed oblivious to the
conversation and to the camera. I watched the credits at the
end of the movie: Third roommate—Lisa Kim.

Out in the wilderness, I had thought a good bit about
Lisa Kim's death and my own; it's an easy thing to do when
you are two or three days' paddle from a phone and another
half day from an emergency room.

I looked out the bus window and thought about the Mallory
and Irvine story Gene had told me. I liked it. I enjoy
subtle lessons in direction and misdirection; sailing west to
go east, the kid who looked at the ground while everyone else
was looking at the sky. But if we were looking in the wrong
place, where in the world could the right place be? Perhaps
this wasn't about Lisa Kim at all; perhaps it had nothing to do
with her. Maybe it was about Lydia and me and how we may
have wasted our lives waiting for something that might never
happen. Or had happened and wasn't much to write home
about. It was difficult to believe that this person who had
been the human being I felt closest to for most of twelve years
might one day stop speaking to me, at least in an unguarded
way, might never whisper in my ear or laugh spontaneously
at something I said. Or maybe it was all about me: early-onset
midlife crisis. There had been times in the last year or
two when I could not make my job
not
boring. Or maybe it
was about my father's death; I
had
been thinking about him
a lot. Or maybe Lisa Kim was like a grain of something that
gets in your eye and scratches it, and feels like it's still there,
so that you think you have to rub it long after it's been teared
away or flushed out.

"How are things with Lydia?" asked Gene.

"I haven't talked to her."

"Why not?"

I told him that when I went by to pick up the dogs, she
wasn't there, and I was relieved. I was no longer as angry, but
I thought I might be feeling guilty.

"Is guilt a feeling you've had often before?"

"Sure. I believe in guilt. I think it's good in small doses.
Reminds me of the consequences of the stupid things I do."

"Tell me about one of the stupid things you've done. Tell
me about one you've felt guilty about for a long time."

I told him about a kid who showed up on the beach one
summer whom we called Joe Cavalier. He was nerdy, but we
treated him like he was the most popular kid around. It was a
conspiracy, and I knew it was wrong, but I was a sheep. I went
along with it. And then one day he figured it out, and he went
in his aunt's cottage and didn't come out again the whole rest
of the summer. I'd always felt bad about that.

I told him about a quiet girl who had a crush on me. She
asked me to dance out of the blue and then pressed against
me real hard. I took her under the bleachers and felt her up.
She let me. She wanted me to. Afterward I lied and said I had
to go home right away because I didn't know what to do with
her, or maybe I was embarrassed to be seen with her when
they turned the lights on. Later I was with a bunch of guys on
a street corner, and she went by in her father's car. I'd always
remembered the look on her face.

"Did you ever apologize to her?" he asked.

"No, I never said anything."

"Are you still feeling guilty about Lisa Kim?"

I told Gene that what I was feeling was more like anxiety.
It was more like there was something I still had to do, but I
didn't know what it was. When I woke up in the morning, I
knew right away that I had to do it. I'd be in the middle of
something, completely absorbed, and I'd know suddenly that
there was something I had to do. It was like a dream in which
you know you're supposed to be somewhere or do something,
take a test or do something important, and you just can't get
there and do it. You're missing a class, and the semester's going
by day after day; you know you have to go, and you can't.
You never do. You always remember too late. You never get
there, and you just keep getting in deeper and deeper shit.
"It's like that," I said, "but in this case I don't know what it is
I'm supposed to do. Can anxiety drive you crazy?"

"Well, anxiety can be a foundation for some compulsions.
And so can guilt." Gene smiled at me as if he were admitting
something. "Which is why we've been talking about guilt."

"Do I have a compulsion?"

"You are compelled, but I don't think you're exhibiting
enough symptoms to qualify as a full-blown case of OCD.
Sorry." He smiled again. "And yet something is still bothering
you, something that we haven't been able to uncover."
We both smiled. I was beginning to feel that we were regular
smiling fools that day.

"Do you still think hypnosis might help us find this
thing?" I asked.

"I don't know. It could."

I had expected to have time to myself on the canoe trip, but of
course I didn't; when you are in real wilderness, you huddle
together for safety and warmth. If you do go away for a
moment's solitude, you hurry right back. Where I finally
found myself alone was, not surprisingly, in the middle of
the city, in Carolyn's bright, airy condo that occupied the top
floor of a brownstone three-flat. It had skylights, a big bed, a
comfortable couch, and a little back deck with flowerpots on
which I sat in the mornings with the dogs to read the paper
or write and sometimes in the evenings to think, drink a beer,
listen to the crowd noises, and look at the lights from Wrigley
Field two blocks away. Her home became a place where I
didn't feel anxious, where I made all the rules and decisions,
and I made good ones. I didn't eat out of cans over the sink, I
did my dishes before going to bed, at least at first, and I never
got very drunk. I planned meals, grilled lots of chicken and
fish, used Tidy Bowl and bed linens, and when I got lonely
I called someone, but never after nine.

I'd never really lived alone, except on the road. Some
years before I'd begun traveling alone sometimes simply because
I'd get assignments or opportunities when Lydia or my
other friends weren't free. I dreaded the first of these trips,
but was pleasantly surprised to discover that I enjoyed my
own company. Now I have a whole catalog of memories that
I share with no one: bullfights, public baths in Budapest, riding
a bike along the Danube River or beside the North Sea in
Zeeland, a particularly tasty meal of ginger crab and Tiger
beer in an open-air restaurant on a rickety pier at the end of
a Star Ferry run in Hong Kong. The truth is, if you want to
write anything, you can't mind being alone, and I was writing
a lot. I was writing the story of Lisa Kim that I had started in
the spring. I was just getting caught up to the moment, and I
was about to have a lot more to write.

"I want you to hold out your arm in front of you," Gene said.
"Make a circle with your thumb and index finger. Now I want
you to relax. Your arm is going to begin to tire. You can probably
feel it tiring already, feel it getting heavier. As it does, let
it slowly sink toward your lap. Getting tired. When it touches
your lap, then you'll be completely relaxed. You'll be very,
very relaxed. You'll be aware of your own breathing. Feel
your breathing. Your arm's getting more and more tired. It's
heavier and heavier. It's sinking. Your eyes are closing. There.
Now, as I ask you questions, it may be that your subconscious
will remember something that your conscious doesn't. If that
happens, if that were to happen, your right index finger will
rise, will go up. And if that happens, then I'll try to help you
go back and find out what your subconscious wants you to
know. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Let's try something a little different," he said. "Let's begin
with the accident and work backward. See if we uncover anything
backing up."

"From the moment she hits the lamppost?" I asked.

"Yes. Start there. We can always go forward if we need to."

"I'm watching. It seems as if I'm watching from back at
the light, but I couldn't be. It's too far, and people would have
been honking, so I'm driving; but she whizzes out in front of
me; she hits the curb on the right once, I think, and doesn't
even attempt to turn into the curve, doesn't even try. Maybe
she is passed out already. Who knows."

"What did you say?"

"When she hit the lamppost? I think I said, 'Oh sweet
Jesus! Oh my God!' I pulled into someone's driveway and put
on my flashers. I started to run to the house, but someone
had already opened the door. I yelled to call the police."

"Let's work backward."

"From the light? Okay. I'm watching her. I know she's in
trouble. I never decide what to do. It's not as if I had decided,
and then she pulled away, and I was too late; I hadn't decided.
But before we get to the light, I'm hoping for the chance. I'm
hoping that we both have to stop, and then I'll be able to do
something, but we're half a block away when the light turns
red, so we have to slow down, we have to stop, and it's a short
light, anyway. There just isn't time."

"Go back," he said.

"I'm following her; she's easy to keep track of because she
has a broken taillight. I'm following at a distance because
I'm afraid she'll veer into oncoming traffic and someone will
swerve and hit me. I'm desperately looking for a cop. I'm
thinking, 'how do I signal a cop if he's coming toward me?'"

"What are you feeling?"

"Fear. Butterflies."

"When do you start feeling afraid?"

"When she hits the curb. She just bounces off the curb,
and I know she's fucked up."

"What are you feeling before that?"

"Annoyance, I guess. She's driving fast and recklessly, and
it pisses me off. First she's behind me following too closely,
changing lanes, so I slow down, pull over, let her pass, but
then she hits that curb . . ."

"When are you first aware of her?"

"She has her brights on in my mirror—"

"Go back before that."

"Let's see," I said. "I'm not . . . I don't know. I don't remember
before that."

"Okay. That's okay. Just keep going back until you do remember
something."

"Well, let's see. That would probably be all the way back
to school."

"Okay, go there. What time is it?"

"It's almost six. It's quarter to six. I can see the clock on
my classroom wall. I'm late."

"What are you late for?"

"We're supposed to go out to dinner with Lydia's boss,
Don, and I'm cutting it close. I'm trying to grade one last paper,
and I just can't concentrate on it. I finally get it done and
look up. It's quarter to six. I remember our date. I say, 'Oh,
shit.' I call home and leave a message. 'Sorry. Change the time
if you can.' I put all the papers I have to grade in my briefcase.
I lock the room. I get into my car. It's dark. It's cold. Not real
cold, but damp cold. It's rained some. The streets are wet. I'm
not sure beyond that."

"Do you make any stops?"

"Actually, I do. I'm on Green Bay. I pull into Sunset Foods
in Highland Park. I buy a bottle of wine because I'm late.
Jacob's
Creek Cabernet. I buy something else. Tums. Oh yeah,
I've got acid. I've been burping all afternoon. Terry in the
cafeteria made ham salad, so I have it for lunch with a bowl
of split-pea soup. Too rich. I'm burping. Then about five, I
impulsively eat the sandwich I'd brought for lunch. Now I'm
really burping, and I'm mad at myself. I'm not hungry, I have
a tension headache, I'm late and I have to go out with Don,
who has two beers and starts telling bad wife jokes in front
of his wife. God. Traffic's bad. Oh Jesus. I almost have an accident.
That's right."

"What happens?"

"I'm still on Green Bay, but in Glencoe now. I'm trying to
open the Tums with one hand, you know, work my thumbnail
between two tablets through the paper. I look down for a
nanosecond and almost hit the stopped car in front of me. I
hit my brakes, honk, the guy behind me hits his, almost slides
into me. I hold my breath. Pull around her. Then—"

"Your finger's up," Gene said.

"What?"

"You've raised your finger."

"Really?" We both look at my finger.

"Go back to the almost accident. Describe it again." I do.
"Okay, what kind of car was it?"

"It's raining. It's dark."

"Try."

I tilt my head back against the chair. My eyes are as
heavy as ball bearings. I let them sink toward the middle of
my head. "Small. Black. Japanese. The right taillight is out."

We sit a long time. It is quiet in Gene's room. "It's Lisa Kim,"
I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Well, it's either her or an identical car.
Her
taillight is
out, too."