by Gayle Forman
“A few weeks ago CeCe was sick. She had a fever, was sluggish—that bug that’s been going around. I know a lot of us went through it.” There is some murmuring and tongue-clucking in the congregation. “Pedro didn’t have school that day, so he had to tag along with us to the doctor’s. CeCe doesn’t like doctors’ offices, having been to so many of them. So she was agitated and crying, and the longer we waited, the worse it got. And we were waiting awhile. An hour went by. Then an hour and a half. CeCe kept crying, and then she threw up. Mostly on me.” There’s sympathetic laughter.
“I’m still not sure if it was because of the virus, or because she had gotten herself so worked up about being at the doctor. Doesn’t matter. But this one mother sitting with her own daughter visibly flinched at CeCe’s mess. And then she chastised me for exposing all the other children to her.
“On some level, I got it. None of us wants our kids to be sick. But as a father, I was livid. In my head I said many unchristian things about that woman, to that woman. CeCe being sick was the point of our being in the pediatrician’s office in the first place, and this was not a Christian way to behave. The nurses were too busy to offer much help aside from giving us some wipes and sanitizer. All the while, CeCe kept crying.
“Eventually, I got her cleaned up and she fell asleep. Pedro found a puzzle, and with a few seconds to spare, I picked up a magazine. It was two years out of date, this being a doctor’s office. I opened to a random page. It was an article about forgiveness. Now, this wasn’t a religious publication. It was a medical journal, and the article was describing a study that had analyzed all the health benefits of forgiveness. Apparently, it lowers blood pressure, decreases anxiety, minimizes depression.
“I understood then that I’d been sent this article on purpose. As I read it, I thought of Colossians 3:13: Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
“And so I forgave everyone in that room: the woman for being so rude, the nurses for being too busy to help, the doctor for keeping us waiting, even CeCe for her histrionics. And then I forgave myself. As soon as I did, my worry over CeCe eased. I felt calm, peaceful, and full of love. And in that moment, I was reminded just why God wants us to forgive. Not simply because it’s the key to a better world, but because of what it does for ourselves. Forgiveness is God’s gift to us. Christ forgave us. He forgave our sins. That was his gift. But by allowing us to forgive each other, he opened us up to that divine love. The article had it right. Forgiveness: It’s a miracle drug. It’s God’s miracle drug.”
Jerry goes on, quoting more lines from scripture about forgiveness. But at the moment, I’m just not feeling it. Last night I went to bed first, leaving Ben and Richard around the fire. Those two barely tolerate each other, so I figured they’d call it a night soon after. But now, as Richard’s father goes on, I can see that’s not what happened. Tongues went wagging. So much for a sacred circle.
Jerry continues: “After we saw the doctor, I was settling up at the front desk and I ran into the angry mother again. All the rancor I’d felt was gone. There was no effort to rise above. It just vanished. I told her that I hoped her little girl was feeling better.
“She turned to look at me. I could now recognize how tired she was, like so many of us parents are. ‘She’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘The doctor said she’s healing well.’ I looked at the little girl and saw a small welt, red, still fresh, on her chin. I turned back to the mother and saw something much fresher there: anguish, not nearly so well healed. I wanted to ask her what happened, but Pedro and CeCe were yanking to go, and besides, it wasn’t my place. But I suppose she needed to unburden herself, because she told me how a few weeks earlier, she’d been rushing to get out the door in the morning, but her little girl had been dawdling by the flowers. She’d yanked her by the hand and the girl, still busy watching the bees dancing, had slammed into a gate. That’s how she’d gotten the cut. ‘She’ll always carry that scar,’ the mother told me in a voice pinched with agony. And then I understood her anger. Just who it was she hadn’t forgiven.
“‘She will, only if you do,’ I told her back. She looked at me, and I knew what I was asking her to do, what God asks us to do—what I’m asking you all to do—isn’t easy. To let our scars heal. To forgive. And hardest of all, sometimes, is to forgive ourselves. But if we don’t, we’re squandering one of God’s greatest gifts: his miracle cure.”
When the sermon ends, Richard turns to me, grinning almost. He seems so proud. Of his father, or himself, for orchestrating this public service announcement. “What’d you think?”
I don’t answer. I just push my way out of the pew.
“What’s wrong?” Ben asks.
What’s wrong is that Richard Zeller and his dad don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. They don’t know about the mornings when anger is the one thing—the only thing—to get you through the day. If they take that from me, I’m wide open: raw and gaping, and then I don’t stand a fucking chance.
I go to the lobby, holding back tears of rage. Richard is right behind me.
“Couldn’t take the rev anymore?” he jokes, but there’s worry in his eyes.
“You told him. You said you wouldn’t and you told him. You lied.”
“I didn’t even see my dad until breakfast, and you were right there.”
“Then how’d he know? How’d he have such a perfect sermon waiting?”
Richard glances toward the sanctuary, where the singing has started up again. “For the record, Cody, he works on his sermons for weeks in advance; he doesn’t pull them out of his ass. Also for the record, you’re not the only one with a chip on her shoulder and some crap to forgive, but if, like the rev says, the magazine opens to the right page—”
“Are you stoned?” I interrupt.
This makes him laugh. “I didn’t tell the rev about your trip. If you want to know the truth, I had to talk McCallister out of turning around. You’ve got bigger balls than him, no surprise there.” The singing ends. Richard nods toward the pulpit. “Come on back. It’s almost over. . . . Please.”
I follow Richard back to our row right as Jerry is offering up blessings for the congregation, for the sick and the grieving, for those getting married, expecting babies. Right at the very end, he says: “And may God bless and guide Cody and Ben. May they find not just what they’re looking for, but what they need.” I look at Richard again. I’m not entirely sure that he’s telling the truth about not saying something to his father. But right now, the betrayal, if there was one, feels less important than the benediction.
33
Outside the church, Ben tosses me the keys, like he knows that I need to drive. At Twin Falls we cut off the interstate onto Highway 93. Ben starts yawning, his eyes drooping. He camped on the floor of Richard and Gary’s room, and he says between Richard’s snoring and Gary talking in his sleep, he didn’t get much rest.
“Why don’t you take a nap?” I suggest.
He shakes his head. “Goes against the code.”
“What code?”
“Touring code. Someone always has to stay up with the driver.”
“That makes sense if there’s a bunch of you, but there’s only two of us, and you’re tired.”
He looks at me, considering.
“Look,” I go on. “We can just make up a new code.”
He continues to look at me. But then he gives in. He turns his face toward the window and falls asleep, staying that way for the next three hours.
There’s something nourishing about seeing him sleep. Maybe it’s the sun, or maybe my imagination, but the bluish tinge from underneath his eyes seems to fade a bit. He sleeps until the highway ends and I pull into a gas station to fill up the tank. Inside the station there’s a big map with a red circle denoting where we are: the junction of Highway
93 and Interstate 80. To get to Laughlin, we jog east on 80 until we go south on Interstate 15 near Salt Lake City. But if we were to go west, the interstate would take us into California, dipping above Lake Tahoe.
After Harry had gotten back to me with the address, I’d looked at the lake for hours. Though the town where he lived wasn’t on the lake, it was near it. The lake looked so pretty, the water so clear and blue.
“How far is Truckee, California, from here?” I ask the guy behind the counter.
He shrugs. But a trucker in a Peterbilt hat tells me it’s about three hundred miles.
“Do you know how far it is from Truckee to Laughlin, Nevada? I mean, how far of a detour is it?”
The trucker rubs his beard. “You’re probably adding three hundred miles to the trip. It’s about five or six hundred miles from Truckee, and about five hundred miles from here. Either way, you got a ways to go.”
I thank the trucker, buy $40 worth of gas, a California map, a couple of burritos, and a liter of Dr Pepper. Then I go back to the car, where Ben is digging around for his sunglasses.
“Think we’ll make Laughlin tonight?” he asks me.
“We’d be pushing it. We got off to a late start, so we wouldn’t get there till midnight.” I start to pump the gas.
Ben gets out of the car and starts squegeeing the windows. “We might as well push through. I’m all caught up on my sleep now. How long was I out for?”
“Two hundred and fifty miles.”
“So we can make it by tonight. I’ll take over.”
I stop squeezing. The pump goes silent.
“What?” Ben asks. He glances at the California map in my other hand. “Did you change your mind?”
I shake my head. I didn’t. I haven’t. I still need to do this. To see it through. But we’re close. I mean, we’re not that close. We’re three hundred miles away. And this might not be the right address, or the current one. Harry said he’d moved around a lot. But three hundred miles away is as close as I’ve been in a long time.
“When do you have to be back by?” I ask.
Ben scrapes a moth off the windshield, then shrugs.
“I might want to take a detour.”
“Detour? Where to?”
“Truckee. It’s in California, near Reno.”
“What’s in Truckee?”
If anyone will understand, it will be Ben. “My father.”
34
By ten o’clock, we are climbing high up into the Sierra Nevada mountains, getting stuck behind motor homes and pickup trucks hauling huge motorboats. Ben’s been driving for six hours straight. The car needs gas again, and we need to figure out a place to stay, but I want to push forward, to get there.
“We probably should stop sooner rather than later,” Ben says.
“But we’re not there yet.”
“Truckee is right outside of Lake Tahoe. It’s summer. Places will be full. We’re better off in Reno. Also, if we stay at a casino hotel, it’s gonna be cheaper.”
“Oh, right.” Hotels. Last night I didn’t have to think about that.
Downtown Reno is garish. Once we pass through the center, with all the big casinos, their marquees advertising bands that were huge in Tricia’s day, it turns depressing: dilapidated motels advertising nickel slots and $3.99 steak breakfasts.
We choose one of the crummy motels. “How much for the room?” Ben asks.
The rheumy-eyed guy behind the counter reminds me of Mr. Purdue. “Sixty dollars. Checkout’s at eleven.”
“I’ll give you eighty bucks for two rooms and we’ll be out by nine.” I plunk down the twenties on the counter. The guy looks at my chest. Ben frowns. The guy crumples the money in his spidery hands, slides over two keys.
Ben pulls out his wallet and starts to hand me some cash, but I wave it away. “It’s on me.”
We walk back to the Jetta in silence, its engine still ticking from the long drive today. It has a bigger one tomorrow. I grab my bag and point toward my room at the opposite end of the complex from his. “I’ll meet you back at the car at nine.”
“Tomorrow’s Monday,” Ben points out. “Maybe earlier’s better. In case he goes to work. You don’t want to lose the day.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve lost all track of time. We’ve already been gone two days. “Eight?” I say.
“Seven. Truckee’s still a half hour away”
“Okay. Seven.”
We stand there, looking at each other. Behind us a pickup truck screeches into the parking lot. “Good night, Cody,” Ben says.
“Good night.”
Once in the room, I contemplate a bath, but when I see the dingy tub and the ring of dead skin, I shower instead, soaking under the weak stream. I get out, dry myself on napkin towels, and look around the room.
Death is the ultimate rite of passage, and it can be a most sacred ritual. Sometimes, in order to make it personal, you must make it anonymous. This was the advice I found in Meg’s decrypted files. Did Bradford himself write that? It sounds like something he might say. I look around the room. This is exactly the kind of place where Meg did it.
I imagine it all, locking the door, putting on the DO NOT DISTURB sign, leaving the note and tip for the maid. Going into the bathroom to mix the chemistry, fan on so as not to alert other motel guests with the fumes.
I sit down on the bed. I picture Meg, waiting for the poison to take effect. Did she lie down right away, or wait for the tingling to start? Did she throw up? Was she scared? Relieved? Was there a moment when she knew she’d passed the point of no return?
I lie down on the scratchy bedspread and imagine Meg’s last minutes. The burning, the tingling, the numbness. I hear Bradford’s voice whispering encouragement. We are born alone, we die alone. I start to see black spots; I start to feel it happening. Really happening.
Except that I don’t want it to! I shoot upright in the bed. I put my hand over my heart, which is beating so hard, as if protesting my thoughts. It is not happening, I tell myself. You did not take poison. You would not take poison.
With trembling hands, I grab my phone. Ben picks up right away. “Are you okay?” he asks.
As soon as he asks it, I am. If not okay, then better. The panic subsides. I’m not Meg catching that final bus, an anonymous voice whispering in my ear. I’m alive. And I’m not alone.
“Are you okay?” he repeats. And it’s a real voice. Solid. If I needed him to be right here with me, he would be.
“I’m okay,” I say.
Ben’s quiet on the line, and I just stay there, listening to the sound of him, comforted by his presence, by the sound of his breathing. We stay like that for a while, until I’m calm enough to go to sleep.
35
I meet Ben at the car at seven with a box of donuts and two coffees.
“What are we, cops?” he asks.
“We are sort of on a stakeout.”
Ben holds up a piece of paper. “I got gas. And directions to your dad’s place in Truckee.”
Dad. Dad’s place. It’s a foreign concept. Like we’re driving to the moon. “Thanks.”
He holds out the paper, and for a second I hesitate. Harry had said that my father had lived at six different addresses over the last ten years. It had given me a bad feeling, though I wasn’t sure if it was because I was scared I wasn’t going to find him, or scared of just what I might find.
I snatch the paper from Ben.
“You want the wheel?” he asks.
I shake my head. Too nervous.
Ben seems to get this because once we’re on the road, he goes all chatty, telling me about growing up in a snowboarding mecca like Bend but never having enough money to hit the slopes, so he and his brothers would do crazy things, like outfit their skateboards and ride
them down snowy mountains. “My older brother Jamie broke both his elbows one time.”
“Ouch.”
“Bend’s a lot like Truckee. Hippie redneck outdoorsy types.”
I nod.
“Here, we’re off the highway now. Direct me.”
A few minutes later we pull up in front of a dilapidated redwood house. The front yard is littered with crap, a rusting lawn mower, a bunch of kids’ plastic toys, a couch with stuffing coming out of it.
“Is this him?”
“This is the address Harry gave me.”
“Do you want to go in?”
I look at the grubby front yard. This is not the nice house of the nice man with the nice family I’d painted for myself. Maybe Harry’s information is out-of-date.
“Or, we could just wait,” Ben says. “See who comes out.”
Yes. That. I nod.
We park the car across the street. Ben drinks his coffee and goes through about six donuts. I watch as the house wakes up. Lights go on. Blinds snap up. Finally, after about an hour, the front door yawns open, and a girl comes out. She’s younger than me, maybe fourteen, and she seems sullen as she halfheartedly picks up some of the crap off the lawn. A little while later the door opens again and out toddles a little kid in a T-shirt and a diaper. The girl picks up the kid. I watch, confused. Is the girl his daughter? Is the baby his? Or does the baby belong to the girl? Or is it the wrong house?
“You want me to go to the door?” Ben offers.
“As what?”
“I dunno. A traveling salesman?”
“Selling what?”
“Whatever. Cable TV. Makeup. God.”
“You need nicer clothes if you’re peddling the Almighty.”
As we contemplate what to do, a low rumbling grows louder and louder until it’s like an explosion, the telltale sound of a Harley-Davidson. It pulls up right next to us, and we both slink down in our seats. The chopper passes and turns into the driveway of the house, where it revs a few times, making the baby scream in fright. The girl picks up the kid and starts yelling at whoever’s on the bike. The rider turns off the noisy engine, and pulls off the helmet. A guy. He has his back to us, so I can’t see him, but I can see the hatred reflected on the girl’s face. The front door bangs open, and a woman with short black hair comes out, a cigarette in one hand, a sippy cup in the other. Stubbing out the cigarette, she picks up the baby and starts arguing with the motorcycle guy.
