The day before had turned out to be survive and advance. Ethan had not wanted to leave the park in Homer’s Den, and it took everything we had—threats, bribes—to finally get him off the swing. But things got worse back in the van, and we were forced to make an endless number of stops: at another park, a rest station, a Cracker Barrel, and a Walmart, before arriving in Asheville an exhausted and jangled pile of nerves.
Despite all that, Mindy had gotten up early, taken Ethan to breakfast at the Renaissance Hotel where we were staying (a Marriott property: thirty-five thousand points), and was now with him at the pool. This reprieve allowed me some much-needed alone time to think, strategize, and, of course, worry.
I put the time to good use. We would be in Charleston later that day, and a lot was waiting for me there—a lot. So I paced the room, checked my voice mail, listened to message after message from friends and relatives expressing surprise and shock over the wedding, deleted all of those messages, turned the TV on, turned it off, then, even though I had given up any hope of ever reaching her, called Karen.
She answered on the first ring.
“Hello?”
I stopped pacing. “Karen? Oh, hi, baby. It’s me, Dad.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“How are you?”
I never heard her response. Instead I thought I heard Mindy screaming in the hall.
“Come in here now! Now! Move! Move! Move it, mister!”
It was definitely Mindy’s voice, and she was definitely screaming.
“I’ll call you back.” I raced over and opened the door. There, as I feared, was Mindy trying to drag Ethan into the room. He was on his back, crying, his pale skinny body still wet from the pool.
“He didn’t want to leave,” she said. “I tried everything.”
“You should have called! Come on, Ethan.” I took his other arm.
“No!”
“Come on!”
“No!” He swatted at both of us. Mindy jumped away. “He pinched me in the elevator so hard, I thought I was going to bleed.”
“I got him. Just let go! Take the key, open the door. Here, go on. Open it!” I knelt down. “Come on, Ethan. Stinky Bear is in the room. He wants to talk to you.”
“You are so bad, Ethan!” Mindy yelled.
“Mindy, watch your voice, please!” It was then that I noticed she was soaking wet. “Did you fall in?”
“He pulled me in!” She opened the door wide. “Get up, Ethan!”
“No! Shut. Up. Idiot!”
“Come on, Ethan,” I pleaded. “We’ll call Mom if you get inside. We’ll have a Sprite. We’ll look at your photo album. All the pictures. We haven’t looked at that yet.”
“Don’t bribe him. You bribe him too much! That’s the problem!”
“I’m just trying to get him into the room, okay?”
Ethan was still on his back, so, with no other recourse, I grabbed both his wrists and dragged him inside the room. “Now, get up. I’m going to count to three. If you don’t get up, we won’t have a Sprite. One, two.”
I felt his body go limp as his rage, and worry, dissipated. He stood slowly, crying, then reached out to hug me. I pressed his wet body against mine and ran my hand through his wet hair. I could feel his heart beating fast against my chest.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I said over and over and over.
*
Back on the interstate an hour later, the world scotch-taped back together, Bing crooning “Little Drummer Boy,” a Starbucks resting between my thighs, Ethan making calls on his old cell phone, Mindy wheeled on me.
“What’s going to happen to him?” she asked.
(Note: Mindy’s green eyes were fiercely beautiful, and when she decided to use their full power, max them out, she was capable of seeing through walls, pushing back tides. I felt those eyes on me now, felt them boring down, locking in.) “Dad?”
I had sidestepped this at the park. I wasn’t sure I could do it again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, where’s he going to end up? He can’t live by himself. Who’s going to take care of him later on, when you and Mom are too old?”
I paused before saying, “He’ll be okay.”
“He won’t be okay forever.”
“Why do you keep asking this?”
“Because I see what it’s like. Plus, I remember.”
“Everything will be fine.”
“I’m, you know, worried, that’s all.”
“We’ll be okay. Just a bad morning. This trip is rough on him.”
I suspected this wouldn’t do, and I was right. “I don’t know, Dad. We need to start thinking about this now. I mean, we need a plan, an overall plan.”
I drove onto the shoulder when she said that.
“Watch it!”
I swallowed, glanced in the mirror at Ethan, glanced over at Mindy, then let out one very big breath. I hadn’t planned on doing this until Charleston. I had every intention of telling Mary first, but Mindy had opened the door about as wide as it could go, so I decided to walk through. I had kept this to myself for as long as I could.
“Well, actually, I do have a plan, kind of an Overall Plan. I’m taking him to a place. A home. It’s in Maine.”
I turned and watched Mindy’s eyes grow large, and in that moment, in her red sneakers and black hoodie sweat shirt, I saw her as the little girl she will always be to me, my little buddy.