Random Acts of Kindness (4 page)

Jenna said, “I’m sure the details are forthcoming.”

“Oh, it’s hardly anything.” Claire waved her hand in the air. “It’s a whim. You’re both going to think I’m making mountains out of anthills.”

Nicole lifted her fingers to her cheek in a contemplative way that made Jenna nervous, even though the intensity of Nicole’s stare wasn’t directed at her.

“This must be really good,” Nicole said, “if it makes you so uncomfortable.”

“I forgot that you actually get paid for this.” Claire spread her hands in surrender. “Do you remember the senior year trip?”

“Of course. The whole class rafted the rapids of the Hudson River Gorge.”

Claire said, “Well,
you
did, and Jenna did, and the rest of our class did. But I bailed out completely at Elephant Rock.”

Nicole splayed her fingers. “That’s it? You’re going back to Pine Lake just to ride the rapids?”

Claire’s grin grew slow and sly, and seeing it, Jenna felt a sinking sensation like the concrete of the walkway softening under her feet.

“Is it good enough,” Claire said, “to convince Nicole Renard Eriksen to drop everything to join us on a road trip?”

Salt Lake City, Utah

W
hen Claire had been ordained at Wat Ram Poeng eight years ago, she’d worn a pure white robe consisting of three parts. Under the three-tiered roof of the Siamese temple, she’d lit three sticks of incense and offered three fresh-cut flowers to the abbot. Her host mother had knelt to her right and her sponsor to her left as she’d publicly stated her wish to become a
maechi
, a Buddhist nun. Then, in old Pali, she’d recited three times the precepts of the triple gem.

In Buddhism, the number three was sacred.

Maybe that was why, while being mindful of Nicole at the wheel and Jenna in the backseat, Claire meditated in the passenger seat and experienced for the first time in too many years a rising euphoria, a sense of exhilaration and giddiness, a light-headed rapture, as if she were flying above the white moonscape of the Utah salt flats. What had begun as an impulsive act, hatched in a moment of desperation around her kitchen table, had led her to be part of an unexpected trinity.

It was about time she got some Karmic payback.

A nudge on her shoulder jerked her out of deep meditation. She blinked her eyes open to the sensory assault of the bustle and buildings and traffic of Salt Lake City. She glanced at the dashboard clock. She’d been meditating for a full ninety minutes.

“Sorry to wake you,” Nicole said, “but we’re only a couple of minutes away from Jin’s office.”

In a plummy British voice, the GPS announced a right turn in eight hundred feet. The GPS was one of Nicole’s many contributions to the road trip. Before Lars had kissed Nicole good-bye in the parking lot in Reno, she had transferred jumper cables, a pup tent, a medical kit, and an emergency radio to Jenna’s car. The radio was so cutting-edge that Claire wouldn’t be surprised if it could register cosmic microwave radiation.

Claire unfolded her legs and rolled her shoulders, willing herself to stay loose and relaxed, to not get nervous about entering the office of yet another oncologist.

“I’m glad we’re stopping,” Jenna said from the backseat. “Lucky just started giving me the yellow eye.”

Nicole turned into a parking lot. “Tell Lucky I see a tree with his name on it.”

Once they parked, Claire stepped out into searing ninety-plus-degree heat, realizing how far she’d traveled from the mossy shade of her little house in her uncle’s thirty-acre wood. The modern, glass-faced office building was set in the kind of fanatically clean place that made her wonder where all the green things were hidden. Inside, no amount of air-conditioning could mask the nauseating doctor’s-office scent of magazine ink and antiseptic.

Claire announced her arrival to the receptionist only to see Jin bound around the central desk, shouting her name.

The oncologist wrapped her in a hug and nearly poked one of Claire’s eyes out with the pencil tucked behind her ear. Jin was four foot nine tops, her hair so short it stuck up in straight, stiff pieces. Little Jin—everyone had called her that—had been the topper of the cheerleading squad at Pine Lake High, climbing up bodies to perch at the height of a human pyramid and then launching herself off to perform a split in midair. Now, as Jin greeted the three of them, she vibrated like a human hummingbird.

“Claire, so glad to see you looking so flush! And, Jenna, is that you? I remember you from last-semester Calculus. Without you, Mr. Walton and his vector functions would have crushed me. And look at you, Nicole.” She poked Nicole in the abdomen with the pencil. “Still fit as always. Are you still playing softball?”

They chatted for a few minutes while Claire tried not to notice the two patients lingering in the waiting room. One was an exhausted teenager sitting with his mouth open, a sure sign of chemo lesions. Across from him sat a young girl in pink jeans playing a video game, absently tugging on the Hello Kitty scarf wrapped around her head.

Claire was relieved when Jin finally cut the chatter short. The doctor directed Jenna and Nicole down the street to a French brasserie, where she’d promised to join them all for dinner after she had a chance to meet with Claire “in a more official capacity.”

Frying pan
, Claire thought.
Fire.

Jin’s office desk was swallowed by files, Styrofoam cups, framed photos of her twins, and an array of samples in brown tincture bottles. No sooner had Claire sat down before Jin strapped a blood-pressure cuff over her arm. Then Jin moved her face very close, the way she used to in high school. Claire used to think Jin was really nearsighted, until she realized Jin just had a completely different sense of personal space.

“It’s a good thing,” Jin said, blinking, “that you are doing this.”

Claire glanced at the cuff, confused. “Last time I was checked I was a healthy one-twenty-three over eight-two—”

“No, it’s good that you’re out of your house, away from the sickness and on an adventure.” Jin watched the gauge as she flicked the screw with practiced fingers. “It’s good that you’re with friends.”

Claire nodded, her feelings of Karmic alignment confirmed. “My six-year-old nephew spins like a top whenever he eats too many Pop Rocks. These past days, I’m starting to feel the same energy.”

“That’s the power of the mind.” Jin dropped the bulb and tapped her temple. “It’s almost as good as chemo against the cancer. Have you been doing your arm exercises?”

“In the mornings, yes.”

“I’m sure your oncologist warned you about l
ymphedema
—”

“I elevate, I check every day.”

“Good. Now you know my specialty is in pediatric oncology,” Jin said as she unstrapped the cuff, “so this visit is no substitute for continuing your regular care. You be sure to check in with your regular oncologist when you get home.”

“For the sake of Buddha, my sisters have mouthpieces everywhere.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. Paulina has already scheduled my next appointment.”

“Good.” Jin tossed the blood pressure monitor on the desk. “Did you ever get that shot of alpha lipoic acid like I suggested?”

Claire grimaced.

“Let me guess. Your Doctor I-do-things-by-the-book didn’t approve. And you let him talk you out of it.”

“That man never colored outside the lines in his life.”

“In med school, I tripped over guys like that every day.” Jin slipped the cold disk of the stethoscope under the stretched collar of Claire’s T-shirt, blithely riding over one of the scars as if it was the most natural thing in the world that Claire no longer had breasts. “Your doctor, he’s like a stubborn dog. You just have to pet him a little, and he’ll calm down.”

“Even if he were about thirty years younger—”

“I’m speaking metaphorically.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I’m not sure I could get past the ear hair.”

“Your Dr. Straitharn, he’s like a big general. He has big weapons, lots of military toys. He likes to make frontal assaults on the disease.”

Claire’s mind drifted to the space where her breasts once were. “Lots of collateral damage.”

“Mind, he’s
very
good in lots of ways. He’s working in a public hospital. A man like that could set up a cancer clinic and make a lot more money. He could take private clients who demand more than ten minutes at appointments.” Jin circled a finger in the air to her own clinic then leaned over Claire’s shoulder to slip the stethoscope down her back. “Still, his way—the usual way, strafing the enemy with the medical equivalent of napalm—is a great shock to the body. But just because you’re spraying napalm doesn’t mean you can’t sneak in a small special team. Now breathe in.”

Claire took a deep breath and noticed the crystal necklace swinging at the doctor’s throat. In high school, Jin was the cool science nerd who dressed like a manga heroine when only a small geek community indulged in Japanese comics. Jin volunteered in the hospital, pushing patients around in wheelchairs while wearing pigtails, microskirts, and stockings to her thighs. Now Claire’s gaze traveled over the diplomas on the wall, and she noticed the Yale undergraduate degree, the diploma from Johns Hopkins medical school, as well as several certifications. Claire smiled. Her Oregon oncologist had impressive diplomas, too, but no certifications for Reiki.

Then Claire’s attention was snagged by a different frame, of Jin leaning over the bed of a young patient. “Wow. Is that really you?”

Jin glanced over her shoulder. “That’s me and Jamahl. Don’t I look like one hot rocking mama?”

“You make a better-looking bald woman than I ever did.”

“Jamahl was one of my first real patients, a baseball fanatic suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia. When that picture was taken, he was between phases of treatment, just like you. He still had chemo ahead of him.”

“At least you got to keep your eyebrows. Shaving your head didn’t scare the hell out of him?”

“It made him laugh.” Jin pulled the stethoscope out of her ears, slipped it around her shoulders, and then ruffled her own hair. “I did it a couple of times as a resident until my superiors asked me to stop. They said I was getting too emotionally involved with my patients.”

Claire looked more closely at the photo. The boy’s chin jutted out as he smiled. He was horsing around, grinning by pulling his lips back as if he were showing off his teeth.

“After the treatment,” Jin said, “when he was feeling better, Jamahl went on a road trip, like you. His family spent two weeks in Florida. He did Disney World, Universal Studios, Sea World, the whole place.” Jin’s smile softened. “For weeks, I got minute-by-minute updates, texts, photos.”

Claire didn’t need to hear the rest of the story. It shimmered in the room, a sad, hungry ghost.

Jin said, “Let’s get you some meds, huh?”

She turned her attention to the brown bottles on her desk, twisting them to read the labels, until she found what she wanted. Then Jin tore the paper covering a fresh syringe. Cancer had long turned Claire into a human pincushion, so she just held out her arm and let Jin swipe it with an alcohol wipe.

“So,” Claire said, “what’s this stuff again?”

“Alpha lipoic acid. It’s an antioxidant. I’d give you mistletoe extract, but some people are allergic.”

The familiar sharp pinch, the cold wash under the skin.

“You still have to keep up the usual vigilance over the next few weeks.” Jin pressed a cotton swab over the pinprick and leaned back to toss the needle in a sharps container. “You know the drill. Take antioxidants, drink carrot juice, maintain a macrobiotic diet, drink lots of green tea.”

Claire thought of the Cheez Doodle wrapper she’d left in the car and the Snickers bar melting in her purse. “You know, they don’t sell a lot of macrobiotic foods at gas station convenience stores.”

“Do your best. You’re not going to keel over in the next two weeks. Not unless Jenna and Nicole ply you with too many banana daiquiris.”

“I like banana daiquiris.”

“I’m officially prescribing you some then. Are you taking Interstate 80 straight through?”

“Not if I have my way.” She’d have to confront Nicole about their route plans soon enough. “I’m hoping to visit Sydney in Denver. Then maybe Maya, if she’s still at that archaeological dig in South Dakota. And rumor has it that Lu is back in Pine Lake.”

“Consider me envious.” Jin’s gaze drifted to the closest photo, of two boys about six or seven, so identical they even had the same gap in their front teeth. “In another situation, I’d be climbing right into that car with you.”

“The twins are keeping you busy.”

“Little monsters. You’ll meet them later.”

“You know we’re going to Pine Lake.”

“You mentioned that.” Jin pulled a paper bag out from a pile and stood up to poke through the samples on a nearby shelf. “My parents moved away years ago. New York City has a bigger Vietnamese community. I haven’t been back to Pine Lake in years and years and years.”

“Well, my plan is to ride the white water on the Hudson Valley Gorge.”

Jin paused and raised her brows. “Like senior year?”

“Exactly.”

“After that trip, it took about six years for my ass to thaw.” Jen slipped a couple of bottles into a paper bag. “It’s a funny thing, though. I remember that day. Clear as a bell.”

“The icy rain or the spandex wetsuits?”

“Neither.” Jin held out the brown bag of homeopathic remedies. “It was at Elephant Rock when I first saw Claire Petrenko quit something.”

Cheyenne, Wyoming

N
icole stood in the Union Pacific Depot staring out the arched window at a square in Cheyenne, waiting for a tumbleweed to bounce through. On one side of the plaza stood a vintage steam engine, on the other stood a ten-foot, sandstone-pink cowboy boot painted with peacock feathers. She pressed her forehead against the warm glass, looking from the nineteenth-century train to the funky boot, struggling to draw some thematic line between the two displays. Cheyenne’s mix of old and new, classic and kitschy, was only adding to her sense of fractured dislocation.

Three days driving east on Interstate 80 and the images of this trip fluttered through her mind like stills on the hand-cranked Kinematoscope standing by the gumball machine, the one you could turn for twenty-five cents.

They’d been driving since seven thirty that morning, Jenna’s Chevy wheezing up and over the Rockies. Now in Wyoming, they’d crossed the Continental Divide once before driving through the high desert of the Great Basin Divide to cross the Continental Divide again. Claire and Jenna had taken plenty of photos of those white jagged peaks, sweeping red vistas, and soaring eagles. Nicole had just leaned against the Chevy until the heat of the hood sizzled through her jeans, watching Lucky do his best to water both the west and east sides of the country.

A squeak of rubber soles against the depot’s black-and-white tiles announced Claire’s approach.

“Do you see our waterlogged Seattle rat out there?” Claire adjusted her newly purchased pink-straw cowboy hat and gestured toward Jenna, who stood outside in the plaza with her arms outstretched, worshipping the High Plains sun. “How long should we let her dry out?”

“As long as she needs, I guess.”

“There’s a railroad museum on the other side of this building.” Claire dipped her hand into a wrinkled paper bag, pulled out a little blue pill, and popped it in her mouth. “But it’s only open for another hour.”

“Let’s give her a few more minutes.” Nicole watched as Claire rooted through the bag. Nicole knew those questionable meds had come from Jin’s office—Jin, who spent dinner that evening exhorting the therapeutic benefits of legal marijuana. “Shouldn’t you be more discreet about that?”

“These? They’re just herbal supplements.”

“I’m sure police officers have never heard that excuse.”

“Honey, I’d be disappointed if we didn’t have at least one run-in with the police before this vacation is over.”

“Well, just assure me that none of those pills are contraindicated with your meds.”

“They’re harmless, Paulina.”

Above the lip of the water bottle, Claire’s brown eyes danced, but Nicole sensed the rising of high, thick walls. “It’s not like you just recovered from a tonsillectomy. All these miles we’ve traveled and you haven’t once talked about your surgery or your treatment.”

“Believe me, I’m taking pity on my captive audience.” Claire dropped the bag and the water bottle back into the canvas tote that served as her purse. “Once you get me started, I’ll be spilling things you don’t want to know. Like how my extended simple mastectomy started with a cut just above the nipples and how they removed my lymph nodes like a trail of stringed grapes all the way up both arms—”

“Wow. What were you saying about a museum?”

Claire laughed as she pulled out her phone and checked for a signal. She waved in elaborate figure eights in the sunlight pouring through the glass, stopping periodically to check the face.

Nicole swayed back so she wouldn’t get hit. “You know that’s a myth, right? Waving your phone like that is not going to help you get a cell phone signal.”

Claire
tsk
ed. “Oh ye of little faith.”

“Did you check your map for reception before you left?”

“No, but clearly we’re in a dead spot or something.”

“So, what are you going to try next? Incantations? Killing a squirrel?”

“All right, I give up.” Claire dropped her phone in her purse and held out her palm to Nicole. “Hand me your interstellar communicator, Captain. It’s the only way I can call our good friend Sydney again.”

Nicole made no move toward her smartphone, which was tucked neatly in her back pocket. She had hoped Claire had given up on this idea. Visiting Jin had been a smart move because the good doctor had been on the direct route of their travel. But Sydney was a two-hundred-mile detour and thus one more way to delay their arrival at Pine Lake.

“Claire,” she said, “we’ve already left Sydney a voice message. And two texts.”

“So let’s call again.”

“There’s this unwritten rule: if she got the messages and was able to host us, she would have called right back.”

Maybe it was because Claire was unmarried and childless, but she just didn’t seem to understand that people had complicated lives, things they needed to do, responsibilities they can’t rearrange on a dime when a friend called from out of the blue asking for a bed—or three. Yes, Nicole knew Claire’s financial situation wasn’t so great. The new pink cowboy hat was a moment of minor extravagance, but Nicole had watched Claire refill her water bottle at public taps, perk up at the sight of a roadside cantina, and joke about sleeping roadside in Nicole’s pup tent. But driving two or three hundred miles round-trip for a free bed didn’t even make financial sense.

The sudden scream of a ringtone made Nicole jump. Jenna wandered toward them clutching a handful of pamphlets. Lucky trailed on a leash in her wake. The shower music from the movie
Psycho
screeched from Jenna’s purse.

Nicole’s chest tightened. It was none of her business why Jenna had chosen such a ringtone—or for whom.

“Hey, there’s a bison ranch nearby,” Jenna said, ignoring the ring as she perused a pamphlet. “They’ll actually drive you out into the pasture and let you feed them from the flatbed.”

“A bison ranch.” Nicole heard Jenna’s call beep mercifully to voice mail. “That sounds like a lot more fun than driving to Denver, doesn’t it, Claire?”

“We can feed bison all over these plains, but if we leave soon, we could be knocking on Sydney’s door by six.”

“I’m sure our Sydney would
love
that,” Nicole said. “Six in the evening is always such a tranquil time in a working woman’s house.”

Claire waved away the objection. “It’s a hundred-mile detour, Nicole. Embrace it. Unleash your inner gypsy.”

“My inner gypsy is exhausted from hauling the caravan.”

Claire gave Nicole a squinty-eyed look. “You’ve got it all mapped out in your head, don’t you? You’ve made up some one-shot route, arrow straight all the way to Pine Lake.”

Nicole tried not to look sheepish. Yeah, so she’d planned an efficient route already. Next stop Lincoln, Nebraska, then Iowa City, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Pine Lake. She liked knowing where she was going. Mapping out her little pins on her phone app was like cleaning the dishwasher trap or oiling the closet hinges. It made her feel like she had some kind of control.

And, honestly, she couldn’t get to Pine Lake soon enough.

“Wow, look at this.” Jenna held up another pamphlet. “There’s a bar here called the Outlaw Saloon. It has sawdust floors and a mechanical bull.”

Nicole raised her brows. “Did you hear that, Claire? We can’t possibly leave Cheyenne without riding a mechanical bull.”

Claire swiveled one arm with a dramatic wince. “I suspect mechanical bulls go against doctor’s orders.”

“But two-stepping in sawdust doesn’t,” Nicole countered. “Personally, I think we should stay here tonight and enjoy everything Cheyenne has to offer. We can hole up in the Plains Hotel there, that lovely building right across the square. I’ve already made a reservation on my phone. It’s historic, reasonably priced, and it’ll even allow us to bring in Lucky for a small fee.”

A strange emotion rippled across Claire’s face, an expression that passed so quickly Nicole couldn’t get a bead on it. Once, she would have read the flicker of an eye or the jump of a muscle in a jaw with the skill and confidence of a major-league pitcher reading the body language of the hitter before hurling a slider. It was a terrible thing to lose faith in one’s own judgment.

She turned her face back to the window. How had she let Lars talk her into this, anyway? When she’d shown him Jenna’s abandoned phone, he’d actually packed her suitcase
for
her. He’d even mimicked her life coach philosophy, talking about the importance of getting perspective, of retreating from everyday existence for a while so when she returned she could see it more objectively.

Well, she knew Lars right down to his fallen arches, but only after all these hours in a car with these women was she getting an inkling of what he’d been trying to do. He wanted to kick-start her back into the former, energetic, happy Nicole. Not the new Nicole who slept late every morning and avoided phone calls and visitors and spent hours painting the chips on the moldings so she wouldn’t have to think about the unthinkable.

As if sending her off with the owner of an incontinent dog and a Buddhist with a junk-food habit could bring about any real change.

“Well,” Claire said, “I suppose I can’t really say no to two-stepping if there’s beer involved. But”—she raised the face of the phone toward Nicole—“I still have a call in to Maya Wheeler. Rumor has it that she’s at an archaeological dig somewhere in South Dakota. So don’t you get it into your head, darling, that we’re going to get in the car and make it to Omaha by tomorrow, you got that?”

“First round is on me.” Nicole swiveled on one heel, taking some grudging pleasure in the small victory. “Now, how about we check out that museum?”

In the museum, she stared at some paintings of boxcar graffiti art while Claire wandered about, chattering over the display cases. Jenna disappeared into the gift shop long enough to purchase another postcard. Now Jenna sat at one of the benches, her pen poised, pulling faces as she tried to choose her words. This would be the second postcard Jenna had written to her daughter today; she had purchased the last one at a gas station some miles over the Continental Divide.

Not that Nicole was paying any attention to the difficulty Jenna was having communicating with her daughter. Nope, she wasn’t paying any attention to the fact that Jenna was refusing to answer her phone. And she certainly wasn’t dwelling on the fact that this morning while Jenna had been in the shower, Nicole had glimpsed on the face of Jenna’s smartphone an all-too-familiar application entitled myinstantCOACH.

Who needs a real life coach when there’s an app for that?

Then an image popped in her mind of Norman Bates knifing a blonde in a shower as Nicole heard that ringtone again.

“Oh, look, there’s a second floor,” Nicole said, gliding away. “I’m going to see what’s up there.”

She climbed the creaking stairs. She reminded herself that Pine Lake was at the end of this road trip. She imagined herself diving from the end of the pier into the soft waters of Bay Roberts, plunging deep into the dark green silence, burrowing as far as she could until she touched the powdery silt at the bottom of the lake. She imagined lingering there weightless, where the sounds of the outside world were muffled to nothing, lingering until her lungs screamed from the pressure.

“Wow,” Claire said, coming up the stairs behind her, “my nephews would never leave this room.”

Nicole rose up from her reverie. She found herself in a room with an elaborate elevated model railroad. Claire poked at a switch, and a train idling by a dusty shingled depot lurched into action. The train swept through papier-mâché hills and a copse of furry pines, past sheds that read
Feed and Seed
and side rails full of wooden boxcars.

A mournful electric whistle filled the room. In that moment, Nicole was transported back to a Christmas when Noah was four years old. Lars, in a moment of fatherly exuberance, had bought a railroad set that he couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to set up. Noah had squealed and raced around the house in his excitement, knocking over the boxes of ornaments, bouncing off the walls in his exuberance, pausing only to hover by Lars to “help” assemble the pieces. On subsequent Christmases, Noah had taken over the task, learning the names of each piece, jealously guarding the sections from the curiosity of his brother, Christian, and, later, his sister, Julia, assembling the ever-growing set in precise order and with frightening efficiency. She’d been so proud of his skills, so happy he’d found a passion. She imagined him as a future engineer.

Now she remembered that volcanic enthusiasm and wondered if that was just another sign that she’d missed.

“This is unbelievable.” Jenna emerged at the top of the stairs, her face buried in a Cheyenne penny saver. “I could afford to buy thirty acres of land outside of Cheyenne for half my current mortgage.”

“Jenna.” Nicole pressed her teeth together but not quick enough to stop the question. “Are you ever going to answer that phone?”

Jenna lifted her head, dazed, then she fumbled in her purse to flick the phone onto vibrate. “Sorry about that. I was keeping tally of the rings.”

“Three times,” Nicole said. “In about fifteen minutes.”

“Actually,” Jenna said, glancing at the face of her phone, “it’s been about seven times in the last hour.”

Don’t ask. Don’t ask.
“Are you sure there isn’t some kind of emergency?”

“No emergency.”

Not your business.
“You mentioned that Zoe is at Camp Paskagamak.”

“Fifth year.”

“So if nothing has changed since we went there, then Zoe’s under lock and key. No Internet, no cell phone, no off-camp calls allowed, no parental interference at all. Except,” Nicole added, “in an
emergency
.”

“I know it’s not Zoe.”

“How?”

“Because of the ringtone. If there was an emergency with Zoe, my mother would call,” Jenna said, “and her theme is the Wicked Witch.”

Nicole waited for more of an explanation, but Jenna just bent down and swept Lucky into her arms, running her hand over his back as she pressed her lips to his head. The sight gave Nicole a sharp, unexpected pang. Jenna shielded herself by hiding behind the clipped, ragged, chewed-up ears of her rescue dog. Noah’s shield was his oversize hoodies and pants that sagged halfway to his knees, and the hair he’d grown long over his eyes. His shield was to turn his face away at the simplest of questions, slam the door on her curiosity, drown out the world in deafening music, pretend that nothing was really wrong even as she stood outside his door willing him to communicate, willing him to crack himself open so she could dig into his mind and fix what was wrong.