Chapter THIRTY-TWO
April almost wished they were back on the train, with its stale stink and busted air-conditioning, because at least there was shade. Out here, the sun beat down on them as if truly pissed at them for venturing onto the beach fully clothed, including shoes. Her grandfather was sweating like a horse and April started to worry that he’d keel over from heat exhaustion or a heart attack. She pulled her sticky shirt away from her body and tried to ventilate: bad luck to think things like that. She was glad she’d taken her uncle Mike’s suggestion to “stow”—his word—their luggage in one of the lockers at the train station, even though it had taken her nearly an hour to score the eight quarters. New list idea: Things I Will Do When I Am An Adult That Adults Usually Don’t Do. Like give money to beggars. Not all of them are drunks or drug addicts or just plain lazy. Some of them, like all of us, are just trying to get someplace.
“Where are we going?” her grandfather asked, stopping to pull a gross snot rag out of his pocket and mop it across his forehead. “You said you just wanted to see the water. There it is, for god’s sake.”
There it was, indeed. She was so glad she remembered the beach, the ocean-lake, and that Naperville was one of the stops on the California Zephyr. When her uncle Mike answered her mother’s phone and said they were all there together in Naperville, April’s plan fell into place as if it had been there all along.
“Just up ahead,” April said to her grandfather now, looking to her right at the skyscrapers that hugged the shore. She was relieved to see the huge sign for the Drake Hotel. The plan was to pick a spot somewhere directly in front of it. She saw a bench near the edge of the sand. She wondered if her uncle Mike knew about that bench. Whatever. The good news was that a bench was there; the bad news was that it was occupied by two guys sitting with their legs splayed open to make sure no one else could fit. They were eighteen or nineteen, April guessed, dressed in street clothes but shirtless—the better, apparently, to display their gross tattoos and flabby bellies on the incredibly remote chance they’d attract the attention of one of the bikinis jiggling by. One guy had a shaved head; the other wore a crew cut with some sort of lightning design shaved into the left temple area. April saw another bench farther down, but it was past the Drake; besides, she was afraid her grandfather wouldn’t make it.
“Excuse me,” April said when they reached the bench. “Could you make room for my grandfather, please?”
The two weren’t subtle about checking April out. Despite herself, April couldn’t help but think how gross she must look. She hadn’t combed her hair in days, her clothes were stained with tomato soup and coffee that her grandfather had spilled on her somewhere near Omaha, and her underwear was so sweaty and gross that she’d need surgical gloves to remove them.
“Don’t know about the old man,” the shaved head said, “but we could prolly make room for you.”
They laughed, opened their legs wider, and high-fived each other. April rolled her eyes. She felt her grandfather move closer and she waited for the explosion, but he just stood there, mopping the top of his head. April felt something rising up in herself. Was every encounter with men going to be like this: first, an inspection; second, a pass; third, condescension? April looked around her. It was the middle of the day. The beach was crowded. What could they do?
“I’ll bet if you gave up the space you’re using to show off your junk, space you don’t need by the way, you could fit half the beach on this bench.”
It took them a minute to get it. When they finally did, they looked at each other, hooted, and started laughing and slapping their knees as if they’d said it themselves.
“You a sassy little bitch, ain’t you,” the shaved one said, talking ghetto like some of the boys at her high school did when they were trying to be cool but only succeeded in being more annoying than usual. April knew he wasn’t angry. In fact, he and his lightning bug homeboy stood and made elaborate gestures for April and her grandfather to sit. They demanded she high-five them. Fortunately, they didn’t try the same with her grandfather. Then they walked away.
April double-checked that they were in front of the Drake as she and her grandfather settled on the bench. He was in another of his quiet funks, not having said a word during the entire encounter with the two losers. Now he was staring straight ahead—just as he had for hours at a time on the train.
It had been one of the longest trips of her life. She was afraid her grandfather would catch on that they were going in the wrong direction and would create a scene. She tensed for the inevitable question at every announcement of the next station stop, and it seemed that there were a gazillion of them. The first close call was a few minutes after the announcement for Fort Morgan. He straightened up, and April sensed that he was about to start talking. She was sure he was going to ask why they were back in Colorado. But instead he said, “For a long time, your mom and your uncles thought I was a drunk.”
It was about eleven o’clock, the people around them were quiet, and her grandfather’s voice seemed to fill the night.
“That was random,” April replied. “And a little too loud, Grandpa.”
“I guess today they call that a dependency problem of some sort,” he continued, a little more quietly, but not much. “An addiction. Well, they were right that I drank too much. No doubt. But I wasn’t addicted to alcohol.”
He stopped. April knew he was in a chatty mood and that he’d stopped only so she could ask the question that would give him the excuse to ramble on and on.
“What were you addicted to, Grandpa?”
“You’re a lot like her, you know.”
April rolled her eyes. This was going to be one of those all-over-the-map conversations, impossible to follow. But she wasn’t in the mood at that hour. And she was tired of his telling her how much like her mother she was. She wasn’t anything like her mother. Hadn’t he at least learned that by now?
“God! She was so beautiful.”
Okay, April thought to herself. He was talking about her grandmother, not her mother. Next thing he’d say would probably be something about Korea, or one of his triumphant business deals. Could go anywhere from here.
“Are you listening to me?” her grandfather asked.
“I’m listening,” April said. “So you’re saying I’m beautiful?”
She blushed. Until she spoke the words, she hadn’t made the connection between what he’d said.
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying she had a first-class bullshit detector. She could smell a phony a mile away. And she didn’t suffer fools lightly. She knew how to keep people from riding too high in the saddle.”
“Like you?” April asked, flush with anger now. She pretended not to notice that he was trying to look her in the eye.
“Like me,” he said, quietly.
He turned and closed his eyes. April thought he had fallen asleep. She took out her pen and notepad. She listened to the rhythm of the tracks.
Riding riding riding
riding the rails.
Whatever happens
I will not fail.
Riding riding riding
riding the rails.
Listening to that lonely
oh so lonely wail.
She looked at the words, pencil poised to cross them all out. Another sucky song. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t cut out to be a singer. She wasn’t cut out to be a songwriter. She wasn’t cut out to be anything but another stupid fan of people who actually got out there and did something with their lives.
Still, she didn’t cross out the words. Not yet, she told herself.
“I feel sorry for the boys your age,” her grandfather suddenly said, not asleep, after all.
She looked over, closing her notepad quickly. “Why’s that, Grandpa?”
“Because, April, when you get to be a woman, you’re going to be beautiful. And when you combine knockout looks with that built-in BS detector of yours . . . well, there’s going to be an awful lot of disappointed young men.”
He reached over and patted her hand.
Ten minutes later, he asked how long before they’d see his mother.
It wasn’t until their second morning on the train, when he woke up and looked out the window, that April feared he’d caught on to her ruse.
“How come we’re going east?” he asked. April pretended to be absorbed by the Rolling Stone she’d lifted from the newsstand in Osceola.
A few minutes later, he said, “I know I’m going daffy, but I truly don’t believe that the earth has started spinning the other way.” He jabbed April’s shoulder and pointed out the window. “There’s the sun. We’re headed right at it. East.”
April recognized the signs of his growing irritation. He hunched forward and started looking for someone or something as if his life depended on it. In this case, April was pretty sure he was trying to find a conductor so he could confirm his hunch.
“You don’t always go directly west to get west, Grandpa,” April said, flipping pages nonchalantly. “It’s like sometimes when you’re driving on the highway and you’re coming to a big city and you want to avoid all the traffic. So you take another highway around it and you have to go in a different direction than the direction you’re taking, and you have to take that direction for a while before you get back to your original direction. Sometimes you have to go west to get east, east to get west. That’s all this is.”
Her grandfather stared at her. Then he sat back and, outside of a please or thank-you when April gave him something to eat, he barely said a word the rest of the trip. He didn’t even question all the Chicago signs in Union Station. April was ready with several explanations—this was where people heading to Chicago caught the train; those were advertisements for the Windy City—but lying was unnecessary. He’d followed her out of the station, down to Lake Shore Drive, and across the beach to this bench in front of the Drake Hotel. They’d been walking forever, it seemed. But she’d done it. They were here. Only one more thing to take care of before it was all over.
She checked her watch. It was time.
She stood and looked down at her grandfather. He looked very small on the bench, his shoulders slumped, sun beating down on the top of his head as if trying to melt him into the bench like a dropped ice cream cone. She removed the baseball cap she’d “found” in the food car on the train and put it on his head to protect it.
“Grandpa,” she said.
“So that’s it, huh?”
April’s heart stopped. Had he sensed this? How could he possibly have known?
“What’s it?” she asked.
He jutted his chin out toward the water. “The Pacific Ocean,” her grandfather said.
April nodded, her heart pounding in relief.
“Yeah. The Pacific.”
April looked around to make sure she wasn’t taking too long. She needed to get going.
“Remember our deal?” her grandfather said.
“What deal?”
“Back in Woodlake? The one where we’re always straight with each other?”
Now April’s heart threatened to punch its way up and out of her throat.
“I’m being straight with you, Grandpa.”
“Yeah?” Her grandfather looked at her. “You sure? Well, I got news for you, smarty-pants. That’s not the Pacific.”
Great. Of all the times to be lucid. April tried to think of how she was going to respond to this one. Actually, Grandpa, they relocated the Sears Tower. You didn’t know that?
“Grandpa—”
“THAT,” he shouted, pointing ahead, “is Puget Bay!” He broke into laughter.
Some people sunning themselves nearby looked over, and April veered between laughing and crying out in relief.
She looked at her watch. She kneeled in front of her grandfather. “Grandpa, I gotta go to the bathroom. You stay here, okay?”
“Most people don’t know that it’s a bay. The ocean stops at the whatchamacallit bridge. Golden Gate. Did I say Puget? I meant—whatever . . .”
April waited. But her grandfather’s eyes started to get that filmy look.
“Grandpa, you have to stay here, okay? You can’t move. I won’t be gone long.” Her voice caught as she realized that when she saw him again, even if in just a few minutes, everything would be changed.
“We had fun, didn’t we, Grandpa? You know, getting here. All the way from Ohio. It was cool, wasn’t it?”
Her grandfather didn’t respond.
“Grandpa?”
“I should have kicked him in the balls,” he said. “That would have taken care of everything.”
April stared at him for a moment. It occurred to her that this was one of the few times she’d looked directly into his eyes, into the very center of them. But she could tell that he wasn’t seeing her. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
“Smack dab in the scrotum,” he answered.
April walked to a sidewalk kiosk renting Rollerblades and bicycles. Just as her uncle Mike had told her, she could still see her grandfather, but she would also be able to see the three of them approaching, which he’d promised would be from the opposite direction. She had insisted on keeping her grandfather in sight. And she told him that she’d disappear if all three of them weren’t there.
“It’s what he wants,” she told Uncle Mike, even if as she said it she realized her grandfather probably didn’t even know that anymore.
“I notice that you’ve made all these preconditions after you obtained my credit card number,” Uncle Mike had said. Then he laughed. “My father’s been in good hands,” he said. “Thank you, April.”
Those words, and the way he’d said her name—bothered to say her name—stuck with her on the train. She kept chewing them, digesting them. No matter what kind of person this uncle of hers was or turned out to be, April would always consider him an all-right kind of guy.
And suddenly, they were there. A bit far off, but April recognized her mother’s walk, and then the way her hair bounced off her shoulders stiffly. She almost ran out then and there, but remembered the plan. She recognized Uncle Nick’s easy gait. She had no real memory of her uncle Mike but was surprised for some reason to see that he was taller than Nick, more solid. Not fat, but not as skinny as Nick. April was holding her breath. She had to grab the side of the kiosk to keep herself from running out.
It was her mother who started running. At first, April thought she was running toward her. But she had spotted her father on the bench. April watched as she ran to him, leaned over, and embraced him. But as she did so, she was looking around. Finally, she let go of him and crouched down to look him in the eye. April knew exactly what was happening. In fact, she could practically hear her mother saying, Where’s April? Where’s April?
Suddenly, her mother turned and faced Uncle Mike. April guessed that this was the part where Mike delivered on his promise to April that he’d tell her mother, after all three were with her grandfather, that she—April—was nearby. April didn’t want her mom going psycho. But she didn’t want to show herself immediately. She wanted her grandfather to have time with his three children. It’s what he had wanted.
Nick had taken a seat next to his father and was talking to him—or trying to. Her grandfather was looking at Nick, and while April was too far away to see it, she was sure her grandfather had that quietly desperate look on his face, as if trying to remember where he’d left his keys or his glasses. His head moved; he was looking away from Nick and at the other two. Did he recognize them? April fought off tears and resisted the urge to help her grandfather by shouting out their names. They’re here, Grandpa! Mike, Marcy, Nick. All three are here! But her cries would only confuse him. All she could do was hope that, even if for only a second, her grandfather understood.
Meanwhile—and of course—her mother wasn’t cooperating with the plan. April was sure she could hear snatches of her mother’s voice punching their way through the sounds of collapsing waves and shrieking children. She was standing close to Mike now, arms akimbo. April smiled. She recognized her mother’s ready-to-pounce stance.
And so she started walking toward them, quickly now, knowing that if she didn’t make herself visible to them pretty soon, like in another second or two, her mother would start beating the crap out of Uncle Mike.