I hook my thumbs in the straps of my backpack, and follow her down the stone steps to the parking lot. “Could we do Mexican instead?”
“Honestly, I don’t really care what we eat so long as we do it soon.” She pushes a dyed curl out of her face. “Izzie’s starving. Which reminds me, we’ll probably have to split up the trip—half today, half tomorrow. I get tired quick these days.”
Kathy rubs her stomach, and again, I wonder if my sister can feel her mother’s touch. I hope so. And I hope she knows that kind of love is not nothing. It’s a huge something, maybe the biggest of all. It’s a mini-golf kind of love, the kind of love people like Claire and Caleb never experienced. Maybe those two never really got a fair shake. Maybe if they had fathers who let them win at meaningless games—or mothers who rubbed their pregnant bellies, reassuring Fetus Claire and Fetus Caleb that yes, even though the world was fucked up beyond measure, there was beauty to be had and it was waiting for them—maybe then, Claire and Caleb would’ve turned out differently.
I watch Kathy walk toward the car, and I think about Dad—how his sister and first wife were both incredibly complicated women prone to topics of substance and despair. No wonder he wanted me to avoid those particular subjects with Baby Isabel. And no wonder he ended up with Kathy Sherone-Malone, she of the Grand Slam breakfast and glue-on nails, a wholly uncomplicated woman prone to topics of pop-culture and cheer.
From the passenger-side door, I look at Kathy over the top of the PT Cruiser. “So this is why you didn’t want me to call her,” I say. “And why she stopped writing. This is why Dad moved us cross-country. So I wouldn’t have to see her like this. So we could all have a . . . whatever . . . a fresh start.”
“Maybe. But then, we wanted you to visit, so . . .” She puts her keys in the door, pauses. “Let’s not do this, okay?”
“Do what?”
“This. This thing where we talk the hell out of it until there’s nothing left to just . . . think about, you know?”
The funny thing is, I do know. I know exactly.
Inside the car, Kathy turns on the radio. Wonder of wonders, it’s Stevie effing Wonder, telling all of us why he called.
“Sorry,” says Kathy, blushing. She turns the dial.
Against every bone in my body, I switch the station back to Stevie. Then, pulling Kathy’s Hills Bros. can from my bag, I hand it over. “Here. Also, sorry. Also, I’ll pay you back.”
She takes the can, shrugs, tosses it in the back seat. “You teach me how to cut hair like that, and we’ll call it even.”
“Deal.”
“Listen, Mim”—her head tilts and she sighs, and I know, whatever she was going to say, she just decided not to say it—“you ready to go home?” she asks.
A montage rolls through my head, and like a curtain call, the characters of my trip take a bow . . .
Carl is driving a Greyhound to Anywhere, USA, summoning extra Carlness as a semi passes in the pouring rain. Arlene’s tombstone, a shining beacon of hope in the Land of Autonomy reads Here lies Arlene, a Grande Dame from the Old School, if ever there was one. Claire is frowning a new frown, pouring herself a glass of lemonade in her appropriately apathetic townhouse. Ahab and the Pale Whale are pumping gas, kicking ass, swimming and sunbathing. Officer Randy, like Doctor Wilson before him, is inventing new ways to furrow, wrinkle, shake, sigh, and doubt. Dr. Michelle Clark, with her blood, bows, and perfect teeth, would like to say hello.
The villains of this odyssey—Poncho Man and Caleb (aka “Shadow Kid”)—are humming a sad song behind bars, staring ten to twenty in the face. And though it is a well-deserved end, I am reminded of a certain Amazon Blonde being helped through the wreckage of a bus by the unlikeliest of hands. And I am reminded of two distinct voices in the woods, one of which might even be considered sadly sympathetic. And I wonder at the virtues of the villain.
And what of the heroes? My dearest Walt, Rubik’s Cube aficionado and doer of the Dew, is sitting in the passenger seat of the beloved Uncle Phil, laughing a laugh for the ages. And Beck, my Knight in Navy Nylon, with that smell (everything good in the world), that smile (ditto), and those deep green eyes, rolls down the window and lets the wind hit him in the face. And though it is a well-deserved end, I am reminded of a certain someone’s inclination toward the theft of shiny things. And I am reminded of a firework-infused confession of dishonesty. And I wonder at the faults of the hero.
Maybe there is some black and white, though. In our choices. In my choices.
Smiling, I add Our Heroine to the curtain call. She is riding with Beck and Walt, laughing at some singular, lovely thing Walt said, and now we’re discussing the Cubs, and New Beginnings, and oh my God, is it Opening Day yet?
I miss them beyond belief. Way, way beyond.
“Mim?”