Second Hand Heart (30 page)

And under that was her phone number.

I quickly hit reply. Maybe it was better that I didn’t have a lot of time to over-think my response.

From:
Richard Bailey
To:
Connie Matsuko

People who allow themselves to be vulnerable always amaze me. I don’t know how they/you do it. It’s perplexing, but admirable. That’s what I think of you.

Then I hit send and got myself out the door.

On Calling Richard from Tusayan

W
e left Sunday morning, and drove for a while, and then I asked Victor if we could stop in Tusayan so I could make a phone call. That’s sort of the last stop before the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. He got sulky and quiet and didn’t ask any questions, so I guess he figured out who I needed to call.

I’d promised Richard, though. I promised him that when I figured it out, he’d be the second to know.

So we stopped at a gas station, and I gathered up all the change from the ashtray in Victor’s car, pretending not to see that he was giving me hurt looks.

I looked at all the change and knew I would have to talk fast.

But in the end it didn’t really matter, because Richard wasn’t even home.

I left a message on his machine.

I said, “OK, I figured it out now. I’m going back to where I met you. I mean, to where she met you. Because if I can find the place where she met you, then you have to believe me.” Then I almost hung up, but right before I did, I said, “Oh. This is Vida. In case you didn’t know.”

The Meadow in Question

N
ot too far north of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim is southern Utah. The red-rock desert of Utah. I don’t mean to make it sound like it’s just a few miles away. Only that there’s nothing much in-between. You’re in Kanab, Utah, and you head south, and suddenly you’re over the border into Arizona. Then there’s a little town called Fredonia, and an even smaller one called Jacob Lake, which is hardly even a town by any reasonable standard. Then you’re in the Kaibab National Forest, which is closely connected with the North Rim Grand Canyon, but doesn’t resemble it in any way.

It all happens very fast.

Why am I bothering to write this down?

Because it was an area full of emotional difficulty for me. Or … well, an area full of emotions, let’s say. Let’s not try to pin down the difficulty of them. Some of them were difficult, others felt welcome. The vast majority seemed to be a combination of the two, leaving me in a state of emotional whiplash.

Here’s the issue: it was only the second time I’d ever been to this area. Which caused me to see the two trips as something like a set of bookends, neatly encapsulating the Lorrie era of my life. I came here once just before I met her. Now I’m here again just after losing her. If that’s not a set of bookends, what is?

Plain, no-longer-used bookends. Nothing left in between.

After you get off Route 89A, you have to pick up the little Route 67, which is also called the Grand Canyon Highway. I guess because that’s the only place it goes. It starts at the 89A, goes to the North Rim, and ends.

The first time I saw the scenery along this Route 67, I was mainly struck by the extent to which it was not at all what I’d expected.

It’s at a very high elevation, parts of it even higher than the rim itself, and it’s all green forest. It doesn’t resemble the red rock of the canyon, and it doesn’t look anything like the image a brain would conjure up to match Arizona landscape. It’s just trees. A very green, seemingly endless forest, dotted with these truly lovely high mountain meadows that line the route.

One of these meadows was special. And I was looking for it. Would I know one meadow from another nine years later? I hoped so. Yet I knew in my heart there was guesswork involved.

I pulled off the road and parked at the first one I saw. I remembered the low split-rail fence. Or did they all have that?

I decided I would only drive myself crazy if I tried to find the right meadow all these years later. I should just get out of the car, lie in the meadow at hand, and assume this was either it or close enough.

The sun was nearly down by this time, the weather warm, the sky cloudless. A perfect summer evening. I stretched out on my back in the grass and allowed myself to replay the moment.

After I met Lorrie on the patio of the North Rim Lodge, we talked for a long time, and she told me she’d hiked from the South Rim. Cross-canyon, rim-to-rim, in three days.

“How are you getting back?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’re going to hike it back?”

“No, I’m taking the shuttle,” she said. “Staying here tonight, and then tomorrow I catch the shuttle that goes around the long way to the South Rim. Back to my car.”

It was an interesting way to put it. The long way to the South Rim. By vehicle it was the only way. The short way, I had to guess, was the way she had just come.

That’s when I lied.

“I’m going to the South Rim tomorrow. Why don’t you let me drive you? The shuttle’s kind of expensive.” I’d looked into the shuttle myself. Thinking it would be cool to keep hiking until I got to the South Rim. But when I found out the price of the ride, I decided I’d spent enough on this little vacation already, and opted instead to just hike down and back. Simpler. Cheaper. I hadn’t exactly had money coming out of my ears back then. And I’d been hoping she didn’t, either. Because I couldn’t think of any other reason for her to say yes. “That seems like asking a lot,” she said. “Since you don’t even know me.”

But I think she already knew I wanted to know her. “I’m going right to it anyway,” I said. “How can it be any trouble?”

And she agreed. And since I’m pretty sure she knew by then that I was trying to get to know her, I could only conclude that she must have wanted me to, and I was elated.

I drove from the campground to the lodge at seven o’clock the following morning and she was waiting outside for me, her enormous backpack lying on the tarmac at her feet.

We headed north, up the little Route 67, chatting about something I don’t specifically recall. It might have had something to do with a status report on our legs, especially our quadriceps and Achilles tendons. It’s a reasonable enough guess, anyway. People who’ve just hiked the canyon have a tendency to talk about the muscles in their legs. It comes with the territory. Literally.

Then we got to one of those lovely Alpine-type meadows.

“You know,” I said. “On the way in, I was really tempted to stop and lie spread-eagle in the grass on one of these meadows, like little kids do in the fresh snow. You know. When they’re about to make a snow angel.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I guess it seemed silly.”

“Stop the car,” she said.

“I don’t really want to. It was just a crazy thought.”

“I do, though. I want to. Stop the car.”

“Too late. We’re past it now.”

“So? Back up. There’s nobody behind us.”

I braked. Looked in the rear-view mirror. She was right. There wasn’t a soul on the road apart from us.

I put my tiny old car in reverse and pulled back several yards and off on to the shoulder, and before I had even come to a full stop she was out of the car and dashing through the grass like a happy little kid.

I followed her, jumping over the low rail fence the way she had, and lying down beside her, close enough that we could talk, but not close enough to make her edgy. After all, we were relative strangers.

It was cold. So cold that the grass was still a little frosty.

“You’re not spread-eagle,” she said.

“Oh. Right.” I corrected my mistake. “I’m not sure why I didn’t do this when I first thought of it.”

“Neither am I,” she said. “Do you usually need a little help being spontaneous?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No. Not at all. I usually need a huge amount of help being spontaneous.”

She laughed — giggled actually — and in that laugh was the happy and welcome answer to the question that had rattled in my mind since meeting her. She liked me. I could tell by the laugh. It was overly amused, more so than the situation really called for. Halfway to flirty, though she probably hadn’t consciously planned it that way.

Who knows? Who really knows what’s going on in somebody else’s head? I sure waste a lot of time wondering and worrying about it, though.

We just lay like that for a while. I was watching our breath puff out in steamy clouds, liking the way the morning breeze made the clouds of her breath chase the clouds of mine.

“I have a confession to make,” I said. My lips felt numb, and the words sounded poorly articulated as I spoke them.

“Oh, damn. I knew it. I just knew it. You’re a serial murderer. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? There’s no such thing as a free ride.”

“I’m not a serial murderer.”

“OK, what, then?”

“I wasn’t really going to the South Rim. Before I found out you were going there, I was headed home. My original plan was just to go home.”

A long silence.

“Well then, it’s a good thing we started all the way down at serial murderer. Because, from that vantage point, ‘little white lie teller’ doesn’t sound so bad in comparison.”

“OK,” I said. “Thanks. I think.”

More time lying there in silence. Maybe a second or two. Maybe three.

Then she said, “Do you honestly think I didn’t know that already?”

It’s possible that I knew, in that moment, that I would spend my life with her. It’s also possible that I only knew I wanted to.

I definitely didn’t know that the time I’d be given to share with her wouldn’t nearly match the length of my life.

I got up and drove on. Both then and now.

Only, this time I drove on alone.

I arrived at the front desk of the Grand Canyon Lodge at nearly half past nine Sunday evening.

A very young woman staffed the desk. Very young. She looked about twelve.

“I’m the guy who called three times from the road,” I said.

“I sensed that,” she said. “So, here’s what I have for news. Good news and bad news. The good news is, we got one cancellation. And the really good news for you is that we called all five parties on the wait list, and only one still wanted it. The rest’ve moved on. So, that’s the good news. You’re now suddenly number one on the list for a cancellation.”

“And the bad news is, there are no more cancellations.”

“Not at this time, no.”

“And I’m sure the campground is full.”

“I’m sure they have an even longer wait list than we do,” she said.

“OK, thanks. I gave you my cell number, right?”

“Three times. I absolutely promise you, if we get something, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Thanks.”

I’m not sure why I had anticipated a miracle as I was driving. Felt one coming, almost. But maybe being number one on the waiting list — at the only lodging on the North Rim, in the middle of the summer — was miracle enough.

In any case, it would have to do for now. It was all I was going to get.

I almost told myself it was too late to go out on the sun porch. Why, I’m not sure. Because it was dark? Yeah. Maybe. Who wants to sit out there in the pitch dark with no view of the canyon?

But then I stepped out the front door of the lodge into the barely cool late evening, and looked up to see a huge, bright crescent of a waning moon.

Who wouldn’t want to sit out there and look at the canyon by moonlight?

But maybe it closed at dark.

Then again, maybe not. Probably not. How could the lodge management justify kicking people off the outdoor patio half an hour or an hour after the canyon by sunset morphed into the canyon by moonlight?

No. It must be accessible all night.

I walked around the outside of the lodge toward the rim, fresh out of excuses. The only excuse I had left was the real one. The God’s honest truth.

This was going to hurt.

Lorrie and I had originally planned to come to this lodge, to this sun porch, several years ago to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the day we met. But it was also our wedding anniversary, and Myra surprised us with cruise tickets. Then the year after that Lorrie couldn’t get away from her teaching for that long, so, for reasons I could no longer recreate, we decided to postpone it for the tenth anniversary of the day, which would have been our eighth wedding anniversary.