Second Hand Heart (32 page)

She was long gone, so I never got to say thank you.

On the Night Before We Drove to the North Rim

W
e decided not to go all the way to the North Rim till Monday morning. Till the next day. Victor was too tired to go 220 miles all in that same night. So we just drove a little way Sunday night, until we got to a place that was outside the park and we could pull the car over and sleep in it, and maybe if we were lucky nobody would notice.

“What if it’s another twenty-five dollars to get into the North Rim?” Victor asked, while we were lying there trying to get to sleep.

“See what the receipt says.”

So he sat up and turned on the overhead light, and it was really glary, because it didn’t have one of those plastic covers to go over it. It was just a bare bulb. So I put one hand over my eyes.

Jax looked up to see what was going on, but he couldn’t get up to see, because I was lying on him. “Oh,” Victor said. “Good. This receipt says it’s good for both rims.”

“Well, there you go, then.”

That was two good breaks in one day. You have to at least be grateful for that.

It took me hours and hours, but I finally got to sleep. And I had that dream again. Just like before. Or almost just like before.

Only in this dream, Richard wasn’t young. He was just the regular age that he is now.

And, also, this time just as I was about to go talk to him I woke myself up. I’m not sure why. I just know Jax didn’t have anything to do with it at all.

What Life Is, Ultimately

O
n Monday morning, my back stiff and with a maddening crick in my neck, I got a coffee to go from the deli and found a seat.

Yes, on the sun porch. I just did.

Oddly, it didn’t hurt. Somehow my emotional vulnerability of the night before had given way to numbness. Sheer numbness. So I did it simply by putting one foot in front of the other and doing it.

I even took one of the double chairs.

As far as I could tell by feel, it meant little. If anything at all.

The canyon hadn’t changed, of course. Canyons never do. At least, not in nine years. Not in a human lifetime. But it looked different to me, so I knew I had changed. The red of the rock looked less vibrant, the striations of color less distinct. The way it had taken my breath away when I was a younger man seemed a distant memory at best.

I stayed there all morning. In the sun. After a time I began to feel my skin getting too toasty, so I left my outer shirt on the chair — so I wouldn’t return to find all the chairs taken, or even all the chairs closest to the rim — and bought a cheap hat and a tube of sunscreen from the gift shop.

Then I sat there all afternoon.

Hard to imagine I could sit there all those hours without getting bored. Even harder to imagine that I cannot, after the fact, quantify what I was thinking. I’m pretty sure I was not thinking. I’m pretty sure I just sat and stared.

Storm clouds gathered in the afternoon, as storm clouds so often do in the mountains. It felt good to get a break from the sun. Then the clouds let go, and rain splattered the sun porch, and happy couples ran screaming and laughing into the covered, windowed open lobby just to our right.

I stayed.

The rain soaked me through, but I wasn’t cold, so I didn’t care. I don’t know why I didn’t care. Normally I would have. But this time I didn’t. I just sat. I sat and felt rain soak through the open straw weave of my new hat, and soak my hair and run down my face. I watched it splatter loudly in puddles on the stone all around me, each drop hammering back up into the air like machine-gun fire. I watched webs of lightning crackle in the dark air, framed by their black-cloud background, touching down on the rim forty or fifty miles to the east.

Then, just as quickly as it had come, it blew through again.

First the clouds parted enough to show two or three patches of blue sky. Then it rained a little more but with the sun beating down, lighting up the drops of rain in that odd phenomenon of the sun shower. I hadn’t seen one in as long as I could remember. Then it blew away entirely, and people began to reemerge. To tip the water off chairs and look around for something to use to dry them off.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly six. The day was almost gone. I hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t even felt the empty crampiness of my stomach, though I felt it at that moment. In fact, my numbness dropped away entirely.

Vida hadn’t come. I must have missed her. Either that, or she didn’t know her way back here after all. I sat a while longer, wondering which explanation I preferred. But it was an unanswerable question. Two equally dismal options.

I folded my arms on the low stone wall and leaned forward, resting my head in that dark safety. I’m not sure how long I remained in that position before I felt a gentle hand on my back.

I jumped, and looked up. Expecting to see Vida. It was not Vida.

I looked up into the unusually blue eyes of an older woman. A stranger. She wore her gray hair stylishly short. Her silver earrings dangled nearly to her shoulders. I took her to be about seventy.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said. “Maybe it’s none of my business. But I felt I had to ask if you were OK.”

I sat up straighter. Drew in a breath. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt a tightening in my throat and a burning behind my eyes. But I didn’t let it get any farther than that.

“Thank you,” I said. Careful to keep my lip from quivering. Suddenly I understood that old expression about the stiff upper lip. Although it was my lower lip that seemed to need the most supervision. Still, you have to be careful at a time like that. “That’s very nice of you to ask. I’m … Well, I’m not, really. I’m not OK. But I don’t really have a problem that anyone can help me with. But thank you, anyway, for asking. I’m just going through a time in my life that’s very … confusing.”

She sat beside me in the double chair, her eyes soft. One hand on my shoulder. “You’re sure there’s nothing you need?”

“Food, actually,” I said. “I haven’t eaten all day. I think I should just get myself up and go over to the deli and get a sandwich or something. Maybe I can just leave my outer shirt here, and maybe my hat on the chair, and then nobody will take my seat. If I ate something maybe I’d be a little more able to cope.”

“I hope so,” she said, and rose, touching my shoulder one last time. “Be well.”

I watched her walk away.

•  •  •

While waiting inside for my sandwich to be made, my cell phone rang.

I pulled it out of my pocket, suddenly aware that I had let it get drenched. I was lucky it even still worked.

I opened it, and said hello.

“Mr. Bailey?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” said a young voice. “We just had a couple check out three days early. The altitude was getting to the wife. Still looking for a cabin?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“How many nights do you want it for? All three?”

“Um … Is it OK if I don’t know right now?”

“How about you come to the desk and we can set you up for the three nights, and then if you need to cancel, we can be flexible about the standard notice, seeing as we already have six more people on a wait list behind you.”

So, there was my miracle. Just when I was sure it was too late to matter. Just when I figured I no longer wanted or needed it.

•  •  •

When I got back to the sun porch with my reservation and my room key and my tuna sandwich and chips and bottle of water, my double seat was still open. On the back was still my wet outer shirt, and on the seat my wet hat. On my wet hat was a single red rose.

I set my sandwich down on the low stone wall and picked up the rose. Someone had carefully wrapped a square of lodge stationery around its stem, and tied it in place with a thin red ribbon. I untied the ribbon and unwound the note.

In amazingly practiced and formal script, it said: “Life is often confusing, but ultimately worth it.”

I poured a little of my water into the morning’s empty coffee cup and placed the stem of the rose in that, so it wouldn’t wilt. There was no place to buy flowers at the North Rim, I was fairly sure of that. Had she had flowers with her when she arrived?

One of those mysteries I knew I would never solve. I flattened and then folded the note, and held it in my hand for a time because I had no dry place to put it. Then I set it on the plastic lid of my takeout container as I ate my sandwich.

I watched the light as it gradually slanted and reddened the red of the red-rock canyon, and I did feel a little better as a result of eating.

I even entertained the notion that I might give Vida one more day.

Probably a waste of time, but I had come so far already.

My mind wouldn’t quite settle, though, and I found myself bouncing back and forth between staying another day or giving up and going home. Could I really bear another day of this? Maybe it was time for this whole ordeal to be over. Maybe it was time to move on.

The best I could manage as far as a decision was this: I would go back to my cabin, get a good sleep, and decide in the morning. Maybe in the morning everything would feel clearer.

I rose to go.

I gathered up the leavings of my meal. Rescued my little note. I tucked it into the pocket of my outer shirt, which was now almost completely dry. Then I changed my mind, opened it, and read it again.

“Life is often confusing, but ultimately worth it.”

I decided I was spending too much time in the confusing part and not enough time in the part that’s worth it. So I sat back down, determined to at least watch the sun set over the Grand Canyon one more time.

On Having a Real Life

I
t’s Monday morning. (I mention this because I’m starting to pride myself on always knowing what day it is, because we had lost track so completely for so long.) Victor is sleeping really late.

I didn’t have the heart to wake him, because I know it’s really, really hard for him to sleep in the car. Even though he doesn’t have to share his seat with Jax, like I do. But, then again, I’m not six foot five. So he probably didn’t sleep for most of the night. So when I woke up and it was pretty well into morning, I just let him keep going. It’s not like we’re in any special hurry.

I guess for a while there, I felt like I was. Because I had this big, stupid fantasy that Richard would come looking for me. Like he’d get my phone message and come racing to the place Lorrie met him, and then we’d see each other there, and it would be something really special.

But I’m trying to be more realistic. So now I have no idea why I thought that.

Richard didn’t even want me around when I was around. He didn’t even come see me again when I was in the hospital in San Francisco. Which is less than an hour away from his house. And I could always hear this sort of invisible sigh when I called him on the phone. And even that one time I showed up at his door I knew he didn’t really want me there.

So I’m figuring it’s time to let that one go.

It’s sad. But I guess it’s not as sad as holding on to something that was never even true.