Second Hand Heart (31 page)

That would have been this October. We were going to do this together. The very thing I was about to do now. Step on to the sun porch at the North Rim Lodge. We were going to do that. Together. Less than three months from now. That had been the plan.

I even had lodge reservations, which I had never thought to cancel.

And, of course, while making these plans, it never once occurred to either one of us that either one of us wouldn’t have that long to live. I guess I shouldn’t speak for Lorrie. But if she had any prescience of what was to come, she didn’t share it with me. I guess it’s not the type of thing one shares.

I stood in the grass on the hill just over the sun porch and took in the view in the moonlight. Both the canyon view and the view of the patio itself. Many of the chairs were doubles, like little outdoor love seats for two. And all of the star gazers were couples.

There were no single gazers. There was no Vida.

There was an empty single chair, but I didn’t take it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to go down there.

I sank on to my haunches in the grass, overwhelmed with a sudden fear. Maybe I had missed Vida. Maybe she had already come and gone. Or maybe I was an idiot, and she was never headed in this direction at all.

I rose and walked back to my car, which I’d purposely parked in the more sparsely traveled far end of the parking lot, and curled up in the back seat for the best night’s sleep I could manage.

On Getting to the South Rim

V
ictor and Jax and I got stuck in a real long line of cars waiting to get into the park. You had to stop at these little buildings about the size of a toll booth, and the cars got pretty backed up.

It was already getting warm, so we rolled down all the windows. Lucky we just came from days and days in the desert, so whatever kind of warm the Grand Canyon had to throw at us, it was going to be pretty much nothing to us now.

One car moved through and we pulled up a little, and I heard Victor take a big deep breath.

“Holy shit,” he said.

And I said, “What?”

“It costs twenty-five dollars to get in.”

“Twenty-five dollars? That seems like a lot. Are you sure?”

“Look for yourself.”

So I grabbed hold of the steering wheel and leaned way over his lap, and then I could read the signs. Jax sat up in the back seat and he looked, too. Like he wanted to know what everybody thought was so interesting.

“Yup,” I said. “Twenty-five dollars. That’s a lot.”

“You can say that again.”

“Do we have that much?”

“Barely. After that last tank of gas we have thirty-seven and a little change. No, wait. You used all the change to call that Richard guy. We have thirty-seven.”

“So we have enough.”

“Yeah, and when we get in we’ll be down to twelve dollars and a quarter of a tank of gas.”

“Good thing I know this is the place.”

“We still have to get home, you know.”

“Yeah. That’s true.” But the extra twenty-five dollars wouldn’t get us home.

By now we were up to the little kiosk, and Victor took all of our money out of his pocket and counted out the twenty-five dollars. You could tell it hurt him to do it. There was a nice friendly looking woman in a uniform waiting in the booth, and she took nearly the last of our money, even though I guess she didn’t know it was nearly the last, and she smiled at us.

She gave us a nice color brochure about the whole Grand Canyon, and a little park newspaper about the South Rim, and a printed receipt with tape on it to put on the inside of our windshield. She said it was good for a week.

Then we had to do a lot more driving to actually get from the entrance station to the South Rim, and I started to worry a little about gas.

“Thank you,” I said to Victor while we were driving.

“For what?”

“For bringing me here, and for spending almost your last twenty-five dollars so we could get in.”

See, I shouldn’t have said he took our money out of his pocket. It was really Victor’s money. Some of it he had at the start, and some of it he earned working for Eddie. I didn’t start out with anything, and I didn’t do any work along the way.

“Oh. That’s OK. I’m just not sure what we’re going to do now.”

“Me neither,” I said. “So that’s why I thought it was even more important to say thank you.”

•  •  •

I spent the whole rest of the day looking for the patio from my dream, and Victor spent the whole rest of the day trying to panhandle for gas money.

Well, Victor did two things, actually. He also hiked a little way down into the canyon to see if there was a sign like the one I thought I remembered. That’s the only part of the day that worked out. I didn’t do so good finding the patio, and he didn’t do so good panhandling gas money.

I couldn’t walk as far as a person would have to walk to check the whole South Rim. But there was a free shuttle bus. So I took it from one spot to another. And every time I got off, I’d walk right to the rim and just look out. And every time I looked out I made that noise, like when you pull in your breath because something literally takes your breath away. But there was no one standing near me to hear. I mean, there were always lots of tourists. But they kept to themselves and I don’t think they heard.

I knew when I looked into the canyon that I was right. This was the place. I could feel it. I could tell. But the rim part of it was all wrong.

There was this paved trail, called the Rim Trail, and it went all the way along the South Rim. So there was no big hotel with a big outdoor patio that went right up to the rim, because then it would interrupt the Rim Trail. It would get in the way.

I kept looking at the map in my little color brochure, and it seemed pretty clear that the Rim Trail went all the way from one end of the civilized part of the South Rim to the other. No breaks for patios.

But it was important, so I rode the shuttle bus to every single stop and looked for myself. But it was just like the map said.

The place in my dream didn’t exist. Not here, anyway.

By the time I got back to where Victor had parked the car, I was pretty tired, and also discouraged and sad. Victor was sitting on a bench near the visitor center with Jax. He didn’t look any better than I felt. I walked over and sat down near him, and Jax started kissing my hands. Like he thought he’d never see me again or something. Or maybe like he didn’t want me to be sad. But I was anyway.

Victor took out his digital camera and brought up a photo of the sign and showed it to me on the little screen.

I said, “Yup. That’s the sign all right.”

There were a few extra words about the rim in the sentence, but the drawing of the tired guy and the different languages and all were right on the money. First I was all excited, but then I didn’t know what else to say about that.

“How’d you do finding the patio?” Victor asked.

“I didn’t find it.”

We just sat quiet for a while. Then I said, “How’d you do?”

“Pretty bad. I only got six dollars.”

“Maybe it’s the economy,” I said. Because I hated to think that people wouldn’t be any more helpful than that. “Maybe they spent all their money on this vacation.”

“Right,” he said. Like he didn’t figure that was it.

“Maybe they didn’t know it costs twenty-five dollars to get in, either.”

“Maybe you need to do this,” he said. “Maybe people would give money to a sweet-looking girl who weighs about as much as a hummingbird. Maybe they don’t like to give money to a six-foot-five Goth guy with a ring in his nose and in his eyebrow. And with a big dog.”

“I would think Jax would be a plus,” I said.

“I think you need to try.”

“I’m not sure I could ask people for money.”

“Well, then I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“Are we just giving up and going home?”

“I have no idea, Vida. You tell me.”

He was really tired. I could tell. We both were. It was almost dark, too. It was almost Sunday night. I really thought by now I would have found what I was looking for. I hadn’t seen this part coming.

“I still think it’s the Grand Canyon. Maybe just some other part of the canyon.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I took out the brochure again. While I was unfolding it, I remembered how Eddie said there was a North Rim, too, and it was higher. “Maybe there are some more hotels on the North Rim.”

“Maybe,” he said.

But I looked at the brochure, and there was only one. The North Rim Lodge. Just that one. Other than that and a campground, there wasn’t much up there.

“There’s only one,” I said.

“We can try it if you want.”

I felt something squirrely and scared in my stomach, because I only had that one chance left, and if it wasn’t there, then I was wrong. Just plain wrong. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe that dream didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just a dream. Maybe my new heart didn’t remember anything. Maybe it was just my old brain playing tricks on me.

Maybe we should just give up and go home. Except I was right about the sign.

So I said, “I’ll look and see how far it is to drive there.” And I started digging around in the brochure, and in the newspaper. I found what I was looking for, too. It even had a little map. “Holy shit,” I said. Even though I don’t usually swear. I guess that’s twice, though.

“What?”

“It’s 220 miles. It takes five and a half hours to drive there.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s about ten miles rim to rim. Shortest distance as the crow flies. We could get there in just ten miles if we could fly.”

“But we can’t,” he said. “And we don’t have that much gas.”

We just sat like that for a long time. I was feeling the sense of something dark hanging on us. Like it was something I could pick up and put on a scale. If I had a scale. I bet it weighed a lot.

Then after a time, I said, “I guess I’ll have to try it. I’ll have to be able to bring myself to ask people for money.”

“Better hurry up,” he said. “It’s almost dark.”

“You and Jax go wait in the car, OK? I don’t want anybody watching this. This is weird enough as it is. OK?”

So they went back to the car and left me alone.

I walked back out to the rim. It’s a little longer walk near the visitor center. The rim is not right there. You have to walk a ways. And I was getting pretty tired.

When I got to the rim, the canyon looked redder because the light was on a slant. So I sucked in my breath, even though I’d seen it ten times already today.

It really never looks exactly the same way twice.

I walked along the rim trail for a little while, and I saw lots and lots of people, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of them for money.

There were some boulders between the paved trail and the rim, and I sat down with my back against one and started to cry. It felt really good. Turned out I’d been holding it in all day. It was a relief to finally let it go. I didn’t have any tissues, though, so I had to keep wiping my nose on my sleeve, which I realize is really disgusting. But I don’t know what else I was supposed to do.

I saw and felt this sort of shadow, like someone was standing over me, and I looked up and saw this older lady squatting down close. She looked nice.

“You OK, honey?” she asked.

“Kind of sad,” I said.

“Yes, I can see that. What’s wrong?”

Now, would you please like to tell me how I was supposed to explain all of this to her?

“It’s really nice of you to ask,” I said. “But it’s complicated.”

“I’m not in a hurry.”

“Really complicated,” I said.

She sat down right near me and rummaged around in her big fabric bag and took out a little packet of tissues. And gave me three.

“That’s very nice,” I said. “Thank you.” And I blew my nose, and it was louder than I meant for it to be.

“Anything else I can do that would help?”

“Not unless you’re going to the North Rim and can give me a ride.”

“Sorry, no. I’m not. There’s a shuttle, though.”

“A free shuttle?”

“No. That one’s not free.”

“We have a car,” I said. “We just don’t have money for gas. Or for a shuttle. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. Because I probably wouldn’t find what I was looking for there, either. I was so sure it was here, and I was wrong. I’m probably just going to be wrong again. It’s probably just as well that we don’t have money for gas because it would probably just be a great big waste of a trip.”

Except the back of my head said, The sign. Don’t forget the sign. But I pushed it away again, because I was sad, and that’s what I wanted to be right then.

She didn’t say anything, so I looked up to see if she was still there. She was. She was digging around in her purse again. I blew my nose one more time, quieter this time, and wiped my eyes on a clean tissue.

“Go try,” she said. And closed my hand around some more tissues. “Go see.”

Then she got up and walked away.

I sat there for a long time, trying to pull myself together. Then I needed to blow my nose again, so I opened my hand. And I came really, really close to blowing my nose on a fifty-dollar bill. In with the two tissues, she’d left a fifty-dollar bill in my hand.