Second Hand Heart (33 page)

I got up and let myself out of the back of the car, and let Jax out so he could pee. I tried to be as quiet as possible so I wouldn’t wake Victor up, and it worked. He just kept sleeping.

We were in this nice part of Arizona that’s not like a desert at all. It’s high up, almost like being in the mountains, but flatter, and there were woods on both sides of the road. Every now and then a car went by, but it was pretty quiet all in all.

Jax lifted his leg on the side of a tree for about an hour. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. For a long time. And then after he was done, I figured out that I was going to have to pee in the woods, too. I never did before, but it’s not like I had very much choice.

Then after that we just walked around a little. Well, I walked. Jax bounded.

And I felt happy. I felt like I was really out in the world. Not that I wasn’t before. I was out in the world in Baker, but I was hot, and worried about the car. Now I was out in the world happier, and figuring this was more how it should feel. You wake up and look around and walk around and think, Hmm. This is what it’s like in this new part of the country that I never saw before. It’s nice.

And then you pee and brush your teeth and whatever, and then that’s your life.

I felt like I actually had a life.

I got my toothbrush out of the trunk, which fortunately doesn’t lock. At least, sometimes it’s fortunate. Victor just holds it closed with a bungee cord. There were a couple of bottles of water back there, so I used a little to brush my teeth, and then I took my medication and fed Jax some kibble from the big bag in the trunk.

And I got to thinking about how it was my medication that was going to limit this trip. So I counted, and I have fifteen days’ worth left. Which means I need to be home and at the pharmacy in two weeks. Or less. This is not negotiable. This is life or death. I could reject the heart without them. And the medications are incredibly expensive, so don’t think for a second I could just get them myself out here on the road.

That put a damper on things.

Victor was still sleeping, so we walked down the road a little ways, and then back.

While we were walking back, that’s when I noticed that one of the tires on Victor’s car had less air in it than the others. The one in the front, on my side. Not the driver side. It wasn’t flat exactly. But it looked pretty droopy compared to the others.

Victor slept some more, so it gave me plenty of time to get caught up writing in this book.

About Slow Leaks

A
fter Victor woke up, he looked at the tire with me. He put his ear really close and listened. I just waited, because if I said anything, I might be talking over whatever he was trying to hear.

Then he straightened up.

So I asked. “What were you listening to, Victor?”

“I wanted to see if I could actually hear air leaking out.”

“Could you?”

“No.”

“So that’s good then, right?”

“Relatively speaking, yes.”

“Do you have a spare tire?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Good.”

“But I don’t have a tire iron or a jack.”

“Oh. I don’t know what those are.”

“They’re things you need to change a tire.”

“Oh.”

“So I guess we just go along as best we can. Maybe it’s a slow leak. Maybe it won’t change much as we drive. Maybe we’ll even see a gas station somewhere along the way.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. Because I wanted this day to still be a good one.

“I’m going to have to drive a lot slower, though. It wouldn’t be safe to do fifty-five on that.”

“OK,” I said. “Good thing we’re not in any hurry.”

•  •  •

We drove for what seemed like a really long time. Like pretty much all day. It felt more like five hundred miles, but probably just because we were going so slow.

The weather changed, and it got stormy and dark. Finally there was a gas station. There were two big tour buses stopped, with their engines running, which made it really noisy. Everybody there seemed busy.

I got out and walked Jax around on his leash, and then used their rest room, even though I had to wait in a long line, and while I was in there I washed my face.

When I got back to the car, Victor said the guy wanted twenty-five dollars to patch the leak and fifteen to change the tire. He wouldn’t just lend Victor a tire iron and a jack. And he wasn’t even sure how long it would take him to get to it.

So instead Victor just put more air in the tire, and we drove on. Medium-slow.

It rained like crazy. The wipers could hardly keep up.

On Finally Getting There

W
e drove all the way to the end of the road, which ends at the North Rim Lodge. We parked in their parking lot, and it stopped raining pretty much just in time. Victor got out and looked at the tire again. It had more air in it than it did right before he filled it. But less than it did right after.

I could tell he was worried about it, and that it was hard for him to think about anything else.

I was worried about something else entirely.

We started walking toward the rim. The three of us. We had Jax on leash so nobody would tell us he couldn’t go.

“You know,” I said. “If this is not it, then I’m really out of answers. If this isn’t it, then I don’t know what is.”

“I know,” he said.

I couldn’t tell much from the way he said it. I couldn’t tell how much it would bother him if this wasn’t it. I only knew how much it would bother me.

Which was bad enough.

“I wonder what time it is?” I asked out loud. I’m not sure why I thought Victor would know.

He looked up at the sun, which seemed to be on a long slant. The biggest part of the day was definitely gone.

“Maybe five thirty,” he said. “Maybe even six or six thirty. Look. There’s a sign that says “Sun Porch.” With an arrow. What you’re looking for is sort of a porch. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

So we went around the building and came out standing on this little grassy hill, and then all of a sudden there it was. The canyon view, and the stone patio, and the low stone wall to keep people from falling in. The chairs were not just exactly the way I saw them in my dream — more wicker and less wood slats — but I knew they must’ve gotten new chairs in the past few years, because this was definitely it.

It took me a minute to be able to talk.

“This is it,” I said to Victor. It came out kind of breathy. Like a whisper. I meant to say it in the same loud voice I’d say anything else. But that was all I could manage. “I found it, Victor. This is what I was looking for, and I found it.”

We stood and stared a while longer. I felt like I had something big inside me, something that stretched me out, so I had to be bigger than just my actual body to hold it all. I don’t guess that makes much sense, but I’m explaining it as best I can.

“So,” Victor said. “Now that you found it, now what?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“You want to go sit out there a while?”

But there were lots of people. In fact, there was only one empty seat, a double, and there was stuff on it, so obviously someone was holding it until they came back.

“I don’t think there’s a place.”

“We could come back later.”

“Yeah. That would be good.”

“Let’s go see if we can find a place in the campground. Probably not, but we can ask.”

“OK,” I said. “In a minute. I just want to look for one more minute. Look, Victor, somebody left a red rose on that chair.”

“Where?”

“Right there on that empty seat. The one with a shirt on the back. And then there’s a straw hat on the seat, see that? And it has a rose on it tied with a ribbon.”

“Oh. Yeah. What about it?”

“I don’t know. I just thought it looked nice.”

I could tell he had stuff on his mind and wanted to go.

After a while, he said, “What did you think you would do when you found it?”

“Do you want me to answer that even if I know you won’t like the answer?”

“I guess so. Yeah.”

“I think I sort of had this idea that if Richard knew I was coming here, he would drop everything and come here, too. But I really think that was stupid of me now. But anyway, that’s the truth.”

Victor didn’t say anything. But it was the way he didn’t say anything. Not good.

So I said, “You want to go look at your tire again, huh?”

“I was thinking maybe somebody at the campground might loan me a jack.”

“OK,” I said. “We’ll go see about that.”

We got another nice little break about the campground.

There weren’t any spaces. But this nice middle-aged couple who were just checking in heard us asking about one, and they let us set up our tent on part of theirs. They said they came every year, so they knew the campsites were really big, and they were in a little motor home, so really all they needed was just the part of the camping space where you park your motor home.

They were very nice and said if we were quiet we could park behind them and set up our tent on the other side of their picnic table.

I think it’s because they liked Jax. They kept fussing over him and saying he looked just like their Casey, who’s gone now.

See? Told you the dog was a plus.

They even loaned Victor a great big wrench — which I guess is something like a tire iron — and a jack, and he changed the tire. Which was good. Because then he could start thinking about something else.

“I think I want to go back there now,” I said.

“Ok,” he said. “Just let me wash my hands.” They were still dirty from changing the tire.

“Um. Don’t take this the wrong way, OK? But I think I just need to do this by myself.”

He took it the wrong way. I could tell. “In case Richard is there?”

“I don’t think he will be. I think that was a stupid idea of mine. But even so. It’s the place I remember, and I think I just need to go be alone with it.”

“Fine,” he said. Like it was a cuss word. “Do whatever you want.”

•  •  •

It was a much longer walk than I realized. And I was out of breath from being so high up in the mountains. And I couldn’t go back and ask Victor to drive me because he was pissed off at me. And it was almost sunset, so I would have to walk back to the campground in the dark.

But I did it anyway.

I had to stop and rest a lot. But it was important. I just knew it was important. I mean, if it hadn’t been important, I wouldn’t have come such a long way to do this. Right?

Whatever “this” turned out to be.

Sunset

“E
xcuse me. Is this seat taken?”

I knew before I looked up. I recognized her voice. I was surprised and not surprised all at the same time.

I looked up into her face, shielding my eyes from the low-angle sun.

“I’ve been saving it for you,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. And sat down.

Somewhere in my gut, or in some other cellular location, which might have been every cell in my body for all I knew, I had always believed in at least the chance of Vida’s ability to remember. I knew that now, in that retroactive type of knowing that confirms you’ve known all the time. Only whether or not I wanted to believe it — was willing to believe it — had ever been genuinely in question.