What Jonah Knew, page 16
“It’s amazing, the water is so loud the mind goes blank and you’re just there, part of it, which must be what heaven is like,” he told Helen and Mira with a look of rapture on his face after his last ascent. At which point Mira made him promise not to hike to the top of the falls ever again, at least not until the baby she was carrying graduated from college.
As if that would keep him safe.
And now, just after sunrise, Helen parked in the small lot at the foot of the trail. Hers was the only car there. Feeling slightly panicky, she opened the door for Charlie. “Oh well,” she said to the dog, as she adjusted the straps on Henry’s backpack over his old jeans jacket, then put on her wide-brimmed straw hat. “What’s the worst that can happen? We could die, so what? We’ve already been through worse, right, boy?” Charlie hung back, looking at her quizzically, then began trotting alongside her.
The first part of the trail, though steep with switchbacks, was fairly wide and hiker friendly. Helen admired the watery gorge flanked by sandstone cliffs dyed a rainbow of oranges and pinks by the rising sun. This isn’t so bad, she thought, until the path narrowed. Now, instead of enjoying the view of the cliffs from a safe distance, they were skirting the edge of a precipice, with only a rickety wooden railing between them and the crater below.
Was she a fool for attempting this climb by herself? Suicidal? Randy had wanted to fly in and go with her, especially after reading online about all the people who had lost their footing and died along the way. Helen was grateful for the offer but declined. Same with Abby, who had volunteered to be her guide. Abby was a seasoned hiker familiar with the trail. She was also a big talker, and Helen needed to go it alone. In silence, with only Charlie and the crashing din of the falls for company.
It took them forty-five minutes to get to the pool at the base of the first drop. Out of breath, Helen looked up at the even snakier trail that led to the upper falls. She smiled as she imagined her sure-footed son, with his long legs and nimble gait, dancing up the treacherous footpath like a billy goat.
“We’re no billy goats, are we, Charlie?” Cowering at her feet with his ears pressed to his head, it was pretty clear that the dog agreed. Henry had never taken him on this trail, and now Helen understood why. And though it may have been rash for her to set out on this mission alone, she wasn’t a complete idiot. Nor, in spite of everything, did she harbor a death wish. “I think this is the end of the line for us, kiddo,” she said, patting Charlie’s head.
The sun was up but it wasn’t yet hot when she began searching for a spot to bury the map. Other people honored their loved ones by burying their bodies or spreading their ashes under a favorite tree or tossing them into the sea. But Helen had no body. No ashes. No remains. Just love that pulsed with every heartbeat, along with the gap in her heart that had become as much a part of her as the organ itself. Still, she needed something to bury and had spent half the night trying to come up with a worthy object. She considered his first violin and his baseball mitt—but those things would be too cumbersome to stick in the ground. Nothing seemed quite right, until she hit upon the old map. The map they’d brought with them from Oregon that had decided their fate.
After giving Charlie some water in a paper cup and taking a swig from Henry’s Boy Scout canteen, Helen found a semi-level patch of dirt between the hemlock and spruce trees that bordered the path. She pulled a trowel from her backpack and set about digging a shallow hole. Then she opened the map and, with her finger, traced the route they’d taken from Sisters in Oregon through Laramie and on to Aurora Falls. She was probably off by a state or two because she couldn’t see very well through her tears, though when she got to the Mississippi she stopped and wondered what would have happened if instead of folding the map so that only the states east of the great river were visible, she’d folded it along the Mason-Dixon Line. Would they be living in Louisville now? North Carolina? Richmond, Virginia? Would her son be playing fiddle with a bluegrass band someplace down south and coming over to Helen’s with his wife and kids every Sunday for roast chicken and dumplings? The thought brought on another rush of tears and Charlie, whose head was burrowed in her lap, let out a few mournful yips of his own.
Hocus pocus abracadabra. Like an incantation, Helen said the words Danny had chanted as he’d waved his little finger around in circles before setting it down on Aurora Falls. She repeated the chant three times, then refolded the map and kissed it before placing it in the ground. A few shovelfuls of dirt later, the burial plot disappeared.
She gathered some stones and erected a cairn to mark the spot, then after one last hocus pocus abracadabra, started down the mountain with Charlie at her heels.
At first I thought it was just me. Stuck in this nowhere place. Like a waiting room, only it’s not a room. There are no walls or floors or ceiling. And I’m not alone, there are a whole lot of us here. Babies, old people, teenagers, just hanging around.
To tell you the truth, I’m getting pretty restless. Like, is this really it? Do I have to stay here forever? And I’m not the only one who feels this way. There are all kinds of opinions about why we can’t leave.
Some kid from Bolivia says he’s stuck here until his parents wash his clothes in the river, then burn them. Only every night his mother sleeps with the clothes he was wearing when he got stabbed and she refuses to wash them or set them on fire the way she’s supposed to.
And some wiseass from California just keeps saying over and over like a broken record, “It’s the bardo, stupid, get used to it.”
Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean?
It isn’t until this sweet old Japanese lady says what she thinks is going on that I start to get why I’m still here. In Japan, she says, people believe that the souls of children who die before their parents can’t cross the river to the afterlife as long as their parents are suffering.
Oh.
Now, I don’t know if this place is the bardo or if I have a soul or what river the Japanese lady is talking about, but this is the first thing I’ve heard since I got here that makes any sense.
Part Four
SUMMER 2010
Twenty-One
THE SUMMER WAS TURNING OUT TO BE EVEN BETTER THAN LUCIE had imagined—and they’d been in Aurora Falls only a few days. Though she was embarrassed by her extreme reaction to Jonah’s cries for his “real mom,” without her agita Matt might not have agreed to take a house up here. So maybe just this once her souped-up wiring was good for something, because she’d never seen Jonah happier, thanks in large part to Lola the Brave.
Looking out the window of the tiny alcove off the kitchen that she was using as a study, Lucie marveled as she watched Jonah and Lola playing down by the creek and wondered: Why do some people have instant chemistry, while others grate on each other’s nerves from the minute they meet? Pheromones? Some other mysterious mash-up of chemistry and attraction?
Maybe this was a story for the magazine, she thought, as outside Lola flapped her mermaid tail on the grass while Jonah awkwardly tried to follow suit with his merman fin—ordered online the day he met Lola. But what’s the angle? The science of friendship? Lucie would poke around to see if there were any interesting new studies. God forbid you should pitch an article to a women’s magazine that didn’t offer some sexy new scientific tidbit to transform the lucky reader’s life forever after.
“Now take off your flipper and be a pirate,” Lola ordered. “Pirates are scared of mermaids.”
“Why do I have to be the pirate?” complained Jonah. “You be the pirate.”
“I’m a mermaid in real life, so I can’t be the pirate!” Lola countered, hips jutting forward.
“Well, I’m a merman and neither can I!” Jonah flapped his fin extra hard.
“You’re a pirate just pretending to be a merman so I won’t steal your booty.”
“What’s booty?”
“You know, like gold and jewelry and stuff.”
“No way am I giving you my booty!” Jonah grabbed a few twigs and stones and clutched them to his chest.
“OMG, okay,” Lola muttered. “You can stay a merman and we’ll both steal the booty.”
Good for you, Jonah, standing up to that bossy girl, Lucie silently cheered. She could get used to this. Living in the country. Working from here. All this running around and fresh air were exactly what Jonah needed. What she needed, too. Being in Aurora Falls was taking Lucie right back to her childhood, the good parts. And though she knew it was a losing proposition, she wished Matt could see himself as a country doctor, because with each passing hour she felt the rocks in her neck and shoulders melt a little more.
The percussive sound of kitchen cabinets flying open, then being slammed shut, interrupted her bucolic fantasy. When she glanced over from her makeshift desk, Jonah was standing on the counter peering into one of the cabinets, and Lola had her head in the refrigerator.
“Careful, Jonah. Basta! Get down from there this minute,” Lucie called.
“I’m hungry,” whined Jonah, even though he and Lola had polished off cream-cheese-and-jelly sandwiches and half a watermelon a short time ago.
“I’m hungry and bored,” Lola said, slamming the refrigerator door. “And hot.”
“Yeah, I’m bored and hungry and hot,” echoed Jonah. He was crouched on the counter, glaring defiantly at Lucie.
She tried to hide her amusement. Seeing him with Lola was like watching a tadpole turn into a bullfrog: behavior that was so different from the quiet intensity with which he played Legos with Jeremy or video games with Mickey. Or practiced his violin. Well, past tense on that, since he kept insisting he’d never play again. Matt and Lucie didn’t believe him but were careful not to make a big deal out of it, as Dr. Zager had suggested.
“I want to see Oma. We can walk from here. I know the way. C’mon,” Lola said, tugging on Jonah’s shirt. “She’ll give us good stuff. You know, cupcakes and cookies and whatev.”
Jonah hopped down from the counter and was trailing Lola to the front door when Lucie stopped them.
“Hold on, you two, you can go to the bakery, but I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have to. I know the way.” Lola flashed Lucie a big fake smile, a look of cunning in her eyes.
“I’m sure you do, but as long as you’re our guest, I’m in charge. Anyhow, I’d like to see your grandma, too.” Lucie wasn’t used to having her authority challenged and supposed it had to do with the difference between boys and girls—at least her usually sweet, agreeable boy and this headstrong girl. She was also aware that the headstrong girl had her reasons for trying to exert control, including having a father she pined for vanish right before she was born. Lucie could identify.
“Sunscreen, people,” she said. Jonah was used to being slathered and submitted without a fight. At first Lola pouted when Lucie turned to her with the tube of creamy white goop, but seconds later she held out her arms and legs. Then Lucie handed each child a hat: Mets for Jonah, her old Cal Bears cap for Lola. Putting on her own big straw hat, she said, “Hats, check. Sunscreen, check.” She opened the front door and was slammed by a wall of scorched air.
It was only a ten-minute walk from the cottage to the Queen of Hearts, but by the time they made it to the village green, they were drenched in sweat. Waves of heat rippled up from the sidewalk and the sky had turned a blistering, cloudless white. Lucie’s feet were so damp, her leather sandals had turned into slip ’n slides and she nearly tripped. She couldn’t wait to be inside the air-conditioned bakery, but Jonah stood stiffly on the sidewalk staring at the building and refused to budge, even after Lola went racing right in.
“Come on, Bear, let’s go inside and get some nice cold lemonade,” Lucie said, her hand gently prodding the back of his sticky I went to spring training! blue tee with the orange Mets logo. “It’s too hot to stay out here.”
Jonah gave a little shrug.
“Well, I’m going in, are you coming or not?” She held the door open for him. “One, two . . .” On three he reluctantly shuffled inside, but stuck close to the back windows.
“What’s up, Jonah?” Lucie couldn’t imagine what was causing her son, who minutes ago had been a pushy merman, to grow suddenly quiet and withdrawn.
Again he didn’t answer, but after looking around the bakery, he seemed to be watching Lola, who was parked behind the glassed-in pastry counter as if she owned the place. Lucie wondered if Jonah felt more comfortable having her in his space than being with her at the Queen of Hearts, where clearly she was the reigning princess.
“Where’s Oma?” Lola asked the Goth-looking teenager behind the counter. The girl was ringing up a loaf of bread for an elderly woman who was painstakingly counting out pennies.
“Why isn’t Oma here?” Lola whined.
“She had an appointment, honey. She’ll be back soon. What can I get you and your friends in the meantime?”
“We’ll take three lemonades and three of your fabulous chocolate chip cookies,” Lucie told the Goth girl when it was her turn at the counter. But when she took out her wallet, the young woman, who introduced herself as Izzy, refused to let her pay. “Helen would chop my head off,” she said, gagging, then pretending to slit her throat. Her tongue had a silver stud punched through its moist, pink center.
Lucie dropped her hat and backpack on one of the empty tables, then collected the cookies and drinks. Jonah shambled over a few minutes later, while Lola hung back behind the counter, frowning.
“Mama, when was I here?” Jonah asked.
“You were never here, Bear, this is your first time. Well, technically you were here, the day you were born. But you were still in my tummy then, so you couldn’t see anything.”
“I was so here. I can tell by the smell. Don’t you remember?”
“Maybe we went to a different bakery that smelled like this one, and that’s what you remember. Sometimes our memories play tricks on us and we get places mixed up.” Lucie knew of many excellent studies proving that fetuses form memories in utero, but she’d never seen any research that showed them having visual or olfactory memories of the world outside the womb before birth. That would be physically impossible.
Jonah yanked his ear until it turned bright red, then said, “Where’s the dog? I need to see the dog.”
“Dog? There’s no dog here, sweetie. Dogs aren’t allowed in places where they serve food. It’s against the law, unless it’s a guide dog for a blind person.”
“It’s not that kind of dog.” He shoved his untouched cookie across the table.
Just then an attractive fiftyish woman sporting a spiky silver pixie cut came into the bakery. It was midafternoon and only a few tables were occupied, but the conversation in the room stopped and all heads turned toward the newcomer. It took Lucie several seconds before she recognized her. Jonah just stared.
“Oma!” Lola shrieked, breaking the silence and running out from behind the counter into her grandmother’s arms. “Where is he? Where’s Papa? I knew he would come for me. Oma, I knew it!”
Twenty-Two
ONE OF LIFE’S GREAT IRONIES IS THAT THE THINGS YOU DO TO save yourself almost always hurt someone else. And when that someone is your grandchild, the person you love most in the world, how can you ever forgive yourself? If only Helen had told Lola about her haircut ahead of time. If only she hadn’t been so caught up in what she needed to do for herself.
If only . . .
Still in bed at the scandalously late hour of seven a.m. the day after the haircut, she didn’t think she’d slept all night. Thank God she’d trained Katy and Geo to manage the four thirty bake without her, though the point had been to lighten her load, not make it possible to lounge around in bed tormenting herself.
“Oh, Charlie,” Helen mumbled to her bedfellow, who glanced at her sideways with his sleepy brown eyes. “Whatever was I thinking?”
She hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem. All these years she’d made such a big deal about not cutting her hair until Henry came home. How did she expect Lola to react? Helen was glad the dog couldn’t talk.
She’d been in a daze when she left the salon, her head feeling as weightless as air. Stopping to study her reflection in the window of the variety store, she wouldn’t have recognized herself if she hadn’t known who it was staring back. For a second, she panicked and thought: What have I done? What if my son doesn’t recognize me?
As soon as she walked into the bakery and saw Lola, she realized exactly what she’d done. Helen scooped her granddaughter into her arms and somehow managed to cart her up the stairs to the house without falling and breaking either of their necks. She apologized over and over, then had to explain that the haircut didn’t mean her papa was coming back.
“But you said, Oma, you promised. No haircut until Papa comes home. You promised,” Lola choked between sobs. “You lied to me. I hate you!” She ran into her old room and slammed the door so hard a tremor like an earthquake rattled the house.
Helen’s worst crime, worse than lying to herself all these years that her son might yet return, was letting her granddaughter believe it, too. She stood in the hallway outside the closed door, tallying up all the half-truths and outright lies she’d told Lola about her father. It didn’t matter that they were spun from love. Or rather, equal parts love and delusion—a deadly combination. Mira had understood years ago what until very recently Helen couldn’t acknowledge. Henry was never coming back. But because of her willful blindness, grandmother and granddaughter had been stranded in the unmarked territory between hope and grief. So much better for the child simply to have been allowed to grieve.
Helen opened the door a crack. Lola was curled up in the beanbag chair in the far corner of the room, a shuddering pretzel, her skinny arms and legs twisted around herself. Helen dropped to the floor and sat silently beside her until, with her hair masking her face, Lola inched closer, then crawled into her grandmother’s lap. Helen rocked her and sang “All the Pretty Little Horses,” as she’d done when Lola was a baby. They stayed that way until Mira came to pick her daughter up and take her home.
