The Last Forever (3 page)

It’s bright on the other side of those heavy plastic motel curtains. I squint. The air smells like bacon cooking. I love that smell so much. Right there—the hope of bacon is a reason to love life. But Dad edges coins into the vending machine outside the motel office and down clunks a Reese’s and a Butterfinger and a Baby Ruth and M&M’s and a package of those orange crackers with something resembling peanut butter between them. He tosses them to me one at a
time and I catch. “Breakfast,” he says. “Just call me the B&B Gourmet.”
The B&B Gourmet
is a cooking show my mother loved to watch, hosted by Willa Hapstead, plump proprietress of Red Gate Inn.

The wrappers litter the floor of the truck. It’s a fifty-mile drive to the south rim, but the way Dad’s driving, we’ll be there in thirty-five minutes. “ ‘The length of the Grand Canyon is two hundred seventy-seven miles,’ ” I read from a pamphlet I found in the motel’s dresser drawer. “ ‘The average rim-to-rim distance is ten miles. The average depth is one mile.’ ”

Dad isn’t listening. “I wonder how many people have fallen in.”

*  *  *

Neither of us cares about the visitors center. Who wants to see an IMAX movie of the Grand Canyon when you’re at the Grand Canyon? The walk to the rim lookout is surprisingly cool. It’s dusty, though—my feet already feel gritty in my sandals. When we finally stand on the overhang of Mather Point—our first good view—I forget about the dust. All I can think is how it looks just like the pictures you see of the Grand Canyon. Then I try to remember to be awestruck. Dinosaurs walked there once. Once, the rock formed the bottom of a shallow sea.

“That is some big hole,” Dad says. He has his camera around his neck, same as everyone else, and he leans far over the top of the fence. Looking down makes my stomach flop. It’s crowded at the lookout. There are little kids and strollers and tourists.

“Tessie? Let’s get out of here, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s drive over to the trail. I can’t get the I’m-so-small-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things feeling when someone’s elbow is in my back.”

*  *  *

It’s fine at first, the trail along the rim. The beginning is paved, and there are waterspouts in case you get too hot or thirsty. There’s just the trail, though. No fence. I walk right up against the canyon wall because it’s scary. Dad’s happy. His camera is bouncing against his chest as he walks.

“Tessa Bessa, look at that!”

He stops, heads to the edge of the pavement, and steps down onto a jagged ridge of rock. “Dad! It says to stay on the path.”

“Yeah? And who’s listening?”

He’s right, really. People dot the cliffs. They crawl their way down stone ledges. One guy lays on a narrow, stone strip, his shirt off, hands cradling his head. “Dad, come on.” I hate seeing him there, at the edge of that rock.

He turns sideways, eases farther down. I can hear the skid of dirt under his shoe.

“God, Dad, what are you doing!”

“This is gonna be a kick-ass photo,” he says. He snaps a picture, uses a hand to balance himself on his way back up. We hike farther, and after a while, the pavement ends. There’s only the curve of dirt path, down, up, around, until it disappears.
The well is so deep, you can’t even see to the bottom. The trail is all earth and loose pebbles now. And narrow. Narrow enough to feel that plunge right there in your stomach. Narrow enough to feel yourself going down even though you aren’t. It does not seem a mile down, or two, or three. It’s ten thousand miles down, easy. More.

“Dad?”

He’s up ahead, but I’m ready to go back. I’m not good at this kind of thing. This is all seeming like a very, very bad idea. I should be in biology right now, watching some stupid movie because school’s almost out and there’s nothing else to do. It’s hard to see the beauty here; it’s hard to take in the red rock, the pink and brown layers, the magnitude, when I’m suddenly aware that all the other hikers have backpacks and water bottles and hiking boots.

“This is fucking majestic! This is
life
!” Dad shouts. His voice bounces around. He holds his arms out, as if to embrace every bit of it.

My feet are slipping on the loose rocks of the path. I try to grab at a clump of green brush on the cliff beside me.

“Look at that hawk!” Dad says.

I can’t take my eyes off of my own feet. “Can we go back?” I hear the panic in my voice.

“Here we are!” Dad says. “The perfect spot. Wait till you see. Your mother would love this.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about. I can’t even think about what he’s saying right then. My mother wouldn’t love
any of this. She wasn’t a hiking, outdoorsy person. She’d been camping only once. She’d be worried about us on this frightening path. This is how far apart my father and I are, right here.
This
is how we’re struggling. It’s hot, and my shoulders feel like they’re getting burnt. My mouth is dry, and the gravel is so loose, and there is only down, down, down. I see a flash of yellow, Dad’s T-shirt. He’s climbing the craggy notches of the wall again, to another boulder perch, farther out.

“Dad!”

I need so much from him, I do. I need him to hear me calling his name, for starters. But this is apparently what
he
needs. He drops to his knees and sits. He fishes around in one of the side pockets of his cargo shorts. I creep down, grabbing at branches. “Tessa Bessa, check it out!”

He is holding something to his mouth. I say a prayer, even if God is apparently on a coffee break. If that something Dad is holding is a joint, I don’t know what I’ll do. But it isn’t a joint—it’s something bright. A pink bottle? And then there is a sudden release of bubbles as he blows, the luminescent blue-green-pink globes that lift and float and crash against the rocks.

I feel the roll of gravel beneath the slick surface of my shoe, and I scream as I fall. I grab for a branch, for a handful of desert scrub, but there is nothing. My feet skitter out from under me, and there is the
tick-ping
of pebbles tumbling down. I land hard on my knees, my palms, and my heart is thudding. I open my eyes and see the red ground beneath me, and just
beyond, the drop-off, the endless layers of rock to the bottom. Gravel burns under my skin, and there’s the warmth of blood. I want to sob, but no sound comes out. My chest just heaves, and I won’t turn my head to look. No, I grip the ground and keep my eyes fixed, because if I look, I will see a space so vast and immeasurable you could be lost within it forever. I want so much to feel as if I’m not falling. I need this most of all.

“Tess! What are you doing down there?” my father says. “Christ, you missed it. You missed the best part.”

*  *  *

By the time evening arrives, there are ten messages on my phone, split evenly between Meg and Dillon. They begin somewhere around lunchtime. Meg has gone over to my house. They are both sure something is terribly wrong. This speaks either to my usual reliability or to my current fragile state, I have no idea which.

In the film version, I am an outlaw on the run. I am riding a satiny black horse that gallops away, and I have no ties to anyone. In real life, though, horses kind of scare me. Those big teeth. Meg sounds near tears—that’s how worried she is—and Dillon has taken on the firm, no-nonsense voice of his father. I text them both.
Sorry to worry you. Dad decided we needed a road trip. I’m fine. More soon!
The exclamation point seems overly cheery.
Sorry
, I type again.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh, you can pile on as many as you want, but the guilt is still there, like that pea under all those mattresses.

We stay at the Piney Woods Lodge. The name makes you think of stone fireplaces and stuffed elk heads and downy beds, but it is actually one of those two-level motels you see in movies where someone always OD’s. No one ever OD’s in a La Quinta in the movies. It’s always these places with windows looking out onto a parking lot and gold room numbers on the doors.

Well, of course it smells like cigarettes in there. Not a recent cigarette, but one that was smoked sometime in the 1970s. I think about sleeping in my clothes. I once read an article that said the bedspreads in motels harbor more disgusting stuff than just about any other object on earth, and my mind is now unraveling all of the sordid possibilities.

This can’t get any worse. (Be careful saying stuff like that.)

“We’ve got to go to Las Vegas since we’re so close,” my father says. “Don’t you think?” He is flipping channels on the television, which doesn’t take long, because there are maybe three whole stations.

“I’m not really a Las Vegas kind of person.” I’m still pissed at him for what happened on the trail. And he’s still clueless about it.

“What kind of person is a Las Vegas kind of person?”

This is too obvious to deserve an answer. The pixiebell is a little limp from all that time in the hot car, so I water it and set it on the laminated table by the window. It looks so innocent there. It’s as out of place as a virgin on the Las Vegas Strip.

“Don’t jump to conclusions before you’ve even been there.”

This doesn’t deserve a response either.

“Come on, Tess. Don’t be like this.”

“Like what?” I say, but of course I know.

“This is supposed to be . . .”

“Supposed to be
what
?”

I swear, we’re an old married couple. The sound of our toothbrushing contains barely suppressed rage. I keep on with my high-pitched, cool
I’m fine
-ness, and Dad keeps on with his pissed-but-not-pissed, ignoring-me-but-not-ignoring-me act until the next morning, when we are back in the truck. Then I just go for the silent treatment—always a classic—and stare out the window on the way to Las Vegas.

We check into a place called the Flamingo. Dad says it’s a splurge. The bedspread is actually nice. You don’t think of bodily fluids when you look at it. There’s a pool with a slide. We explore the city. There are lights and crowds and the constant
bing-jing
sound of casinos. I feel like I’m inside a pinball machine. There is a fake rainstorm in one hotel and fake canals of Venice in another, and there are guys on every corner handing out flyers to strip shows. There are slabs of prime rib bigger than your head, though I have to admit, I sort of like those. I like the ceiling of blown-glass flowers in that one hotel too, although I don’t tell Dad that.

“I can’t eat another bite,” I said, eating another bite. Banana cream pie. The meringue on top is tall enough to go on the rides at Disneyland. Everything here is oversized, and I do mean everything.

My mood is just starting to improve when, through a bite of pie, my father says, “Portland.”

“What do you mean, ‘Portland’?” I’m afraid to ask. I’m done, more than done, with this trip. I am ready to go home. It hasn’t quite been the life-changing shake-up I was hoping for. Nothing has become more solid or connected; nothing has become more understood. I’ve had to erase several new follow-up messages from Meg and Dillon, who both now sound pissed off, and my father is becoming more of an alien the more time we spend together. Basically, he’s driving me crazy. If you think a road trip is a good idea, just remember that strained family relationships plus long car rides equals homicidal impulses.

“I mean, let’s go to Portland.”

“Oregon?”

“Of course Oregon.”

“Why Oregon? What’s in Oregon?”

“I went to school in Oregon. I’ve got friends there.”

“Since when?” You get to thinking you know everything about your parents. You have to think that. It’s too unsettling otherwise.

“Since forever.”

“I don’t want to go to Portland.” Summer is about to start, and my mind neatly erases all the loneliness and distance I’ve felt for the last three months and starts playing the shiny, green-grass and blue-sky film version—Dillon and me holding hands while leaping in the ocean, Meg and me playing volleyball on a beach. And wait, there’s Jessa Winters, too, spiking
the ball in her tiny bikini, though I hate sports, and volleyball makes my palms sting, and Jessa Winters isn’t even our friend. This is some bad teen movie where a shark’s about to appear and turn the water bloody.

“You never want to go anywhere. You always do this.”

“Always-never statements,” I say. “One of the Ten Communication Killers.” I read that in one of Mom’s magazines.

“What do you want from me, Tess? I’m doing everything I can here!” Dad’s voice is getting loud. Two women diners in shiny tank tops look over at us.

“When you talk to me in a raised voice, I feel frustrated.” Always use
I
statements.

“Are you implying I can’t communicate? Is that what you’re saying? I’m an excellent communicator!” he yells.

Now we’re that couple fighting in the restaurant. My father runs his hand through his hair. I sigh and study the saltshaker. People are looking away. The waitress glances over nervously. Pretty soon one of us is going to get up and stomp off, leaving the other with the check. I want a divorce.

I wonder how often my mother felt this way. This is why you’re supposed to have a mother
and
a father. Parental failings are more easily swallowed when diluted.

We are sitting in the Paradise Garden Café of the Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, geographical coordinates: 36.1161° N, 115.1706° W. I know just where we are. But it’s quite clear that my father and I are lost.

chapter four

Proboscidea
: devil’s claw. The seeds of the devil’s claw were adapted to hook onto the legs of large mammals, thereby spreading seeds over miles as the animal walked. Eleven to fifteen inches long, with a grip as firm as a fishing lure, the devil’s claw is the largest and most obstinate hitchhiking seed ever.

I tie the last pixiebell back into my mother’s shoe as we leave for Portland. I hope it’ll be okay after all this moving and driving in the heat and sliding around on the floor of my father’s truck. If it isn’t, I don’t know what I’m going to do, because keeping it alive is the one important job I have right now. It’s my simplest and clearest mission, and that’s the one thing I’m sure of.