Second Hand Heart

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  “Um … Is it OK if I don’t know right now?”

  “How about you come to the desk and we can set you up for the three nights, and then if you need to cancel, we can be flexible about the standard notice, seeing as we already have six more people on a wait list behind you.”

  So, there was my miracle. Just when I was sure it was too late to matter. Just when I figured I no longer wanted or needed it.

  • • •

  When I got back to the sun porch with my reservation and my room key and my tuna sandwich and chips and bottle of water, my double seat was still open. On the back was still my wet outer shirt, and on the seat my wet hat. On my wet hat was a single red rose.

  I set my sandwich down on the low stone wall and picked up the rose. Someone had carefully wrapped a square of lodge stationery around its stem, and tied it in place with a thin red ribbon. I untied the ribbon and unwound the note.

  In amazingly practiced and formal script, it said: “Life is often confusing, but ultimately worth it.”

  I poured a little of my water into the morning’s empty coffee cup and placed the stem of the rose in that, so it wouldn’t wilt. There was no place to buy flowers at the North Rim, I was fairly sure of that. Had she had flowers with her when she arrived?

  One of those mysteries I knew I would never solve. I flattened and then folded the note, and held it in my hand for a time because I had no dry place to put it. Then I set it on the plastic lid of my takeout container as I ate my sandwich.

  I watched the light as it gradually slanted and reddened the red of the red-rock canyon, and I did feel a little better as a result of eating.

  I even entertained the notion that I might give Vida one more day.

  Probably a waste of time, but I had come so far already.

  My mind wouldn’t quite settle, though, and I found myself bouncing back and forth between staying another day or giving up and going home. Could I really bear another day of this? Maybe it was time for this whole ordeal to be over. Maybe it was time to move on.

  The best I could manage as far as a decision was this: I would go back to my cabin, get a good sleep, and decide in the morning. Maybe in the morning everything would feel clearer.

  I rose to go.

  I gathered up the leavings of my meal. Rescued my little note. I tucked it into the pocket of my outer shirt, which was now almost completely dry. Then I changed my mind, opened it, and read it again.

  “Life is often confusing, but ultimately worth it.”

  I decided I was spending too much time in the confusing part and not enough time in the part that’s worth it. So I sat back down, determined to at least watch the sun set over the Grand Canyon one more time.

  CHAPTER 11: VIDA

  On Having a Real Life

  It’s Monday morning. (I mention this because I’m starting to pride myself on always knowing what day it is, because we had lost track so completely for so long.) Victor is sleeping really late.

  I didn’t have the heart to wake him, because I know it’s really, really hard for him to sleep in the car. Even though he doesn’t have to share his seat with Jax, like I do. But, then again, I’m not six foot five. So he probably didn’t sleep for most of the night. So when I woke up and it was pretty well into morning, I just let him keep going. It’s not like we’re in any special hurry.

  I guess for a while there, I felt like I was. Because I had this big, stupid fantasy that Richard would come looking for me. Like he’d get my phone message and come racing to the place Lorrie met him, and then we’d see each other there, and it would be something really special.

  But I’m trying to be more realistic. So now I have no idea why I thought that.

  Richard didn’t even want me around when I was around. He didn’t even come see me again when I was in the hospital in San Francisco. Which is less than an hour away from his house. And I could always hear this sort of invisible sigh when I called him on the phone. And even that one time I showed up at his door I knew he didn’t really want me there.

  So I’m figuring it’s time to let that one go.

  It’s sad. But I guess it’s not as sad as holding on to something that was never even true.

  I got up and let myself out of the back of the car, and let Jax out so he could pee. I tried to be as quiet as possible so I wouldn’t wake Victor up, and it worked. He just kept sleeping.

  We were in this nice part of Arizona that’s not like a desert at all. It’s high up, almost like being in the mountains, but flatter, and there were woods on both sides of the road. Every now and then a car went by, but it was pretty quiet all in all.

  Jax lifted his leg on the side of a tree for about an hour. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. For a long time. And then after he was done, I figured out that I was going to have to pee in the woods, too. I never did before, but it’s not like I had very much choice.

  Then after that we just walked around a little. Well, I walked. Jax bounded.

  And I felt happy. I felt like I was really out in the world. Not that I wasn’t before. I was out in the world in Baker, but I was hot, and worried about the car. Now I was out in the world happier, and figuring this was more how it should feel. You wake up and look around and walk around and think, Hmm. This is what it’s like in this new part of the country that I never saw before. It’s nice.

  And then you pee and brush your teeth and whatever, and then that’s your life.

  I felt like I actually had a life.

  I got my toothbrush out of the trunk, which fortunately doesn’t lock. At least, sometimes it’s fortunate. Victor just holds it closed with a bungee cord. There were a couple of bottles of water back there, so I used a little to brush my teeth, and then I took my medication and fed Jax some kibble from the big bag in the trunk.

  And I got to thinking about how it was my medication that was going to limit this trip. So I counted, and I have fifteen days’ worth left. Which means I need to be home and at the pharmacy in two weeks. Or less. This is not negotiable. This is life or death. I could reject the heart without them. And the medications are incredibly expensive, so don’t think for a second I could just get them myself out here on the road.

  That put a damper on things.

  Victor was still sleeping, so we walked down the road a little ways, and then back.

  While we were walking back, that’s when I noticed that one of the tires on Victor’s car had less air in it than the others. The one in the front, on my side. Not the driver side. It wasn’t flat exactly. But it looked pretty droopy compared to the others.

  Victor slept some more, so it gave me plenty of time to get caught up writing in this book.

  About Slow Leaks

  After Victor woke up, he looked at the tire with me. He put his ear really close and listened. I just waited, because if I said anything, I might be talking over whatever he was trying to hear.

  Then he straightened up.

  So I asked. “What were you listening to, Victor?”

  “I wanted to see if I could actually hear air leaking out.”

  “Could you?”

  “No.”

  “So that’s good then, right?”

  “Relatively speaking, yes.”

  “Do you have a spare tire?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Good.”

  “But I don’t have a tire iron or a jack.”

  “Oh. I don’t know what those are.”

  “They’re things you need to change a tire.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I guess we just go along as best we can. Maybe it’s a slow leak. Maybe it won’t change much as we drive. Maybe we’ll even see a gas station somewhere along the way.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. Because I wanted this day to still be a good one.

  “I’m going to have to drive a lot slower, though. It wouldn’t be safe to do fifty-five on that.”

  “OK,” I said. “Good thing we’re not in any hurry.”

  •
• •

  We drove for what seemed like a really long time. Like pretty much all day. It felt more like five hundred miles, but probably just because we were going so slow.

  The weather changed, and it got stormy and dark. Finally there was a gas station. There were two big tour buses stopped, with their engines running, which made it really noisy. Everybody there seemed busy.

  I got out and walked Jax around on his leash, and then used their rest room, even though I had to wait in a long line, and while I was in there I washed my face.

  When I got back to the car, Victor said the guy wanted twenty-five dollars to patch the leak and fifteen to change the tire. He wouldn’t just lend Victor a tire iron and a jack. And he wasn’t even sure how long it would take him to get to it.

  So instead Victor just put more air in the tire, and we drove on. Medium-slow.

  It rained like crazy. The wipers could hardly keep up.

  On Finally Getting There

  We drove all the way to the end of the road, which ends at the North Rim Lodge. We parked in their parking lot, and it stopped raining pretty much just in time. Victor got out and looked at the tire again. It had more air in it than it did right before he filled it. But less than it did right after.

  I could tell he was worried about it, and that it was hard for him to think about anything else.

  I was worried about something else entirely.

  We started walking toward the rim. The three of us. We had Jax on leash so nobody would tell us he couldn’t go.

  “You know,” I said. “If this is not it, then I’m really out of answers. If this isn’t it, then I don’t know what is.”

  “I know,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell much from the way he said it. I couldn’t tell how much it would bother him if this wasn’t it. I only knew how much it would bother me.

  Which was bad enough.

  “I wonder what time it is?” I asked out loud. I’m not sure why I thought Victor would know.

  He looked up at the sun, which seemed to be on a long slant. The biggest part of the day was definitely gone.

  “Maybe five thirty,” he said. “Maybe even six or six thirty. Look. There’s a sign that says “Sun Porch.” With an arrow. What you’re looking for is sort of a porch. Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  So we went around the building and came out standing on this little grassy hill, and then all of a sudden there it was. The canyon view, and the stone patio, and the low stone wall to keep people from falling in. The chairs were not just exactly the way I saw them in my dream — more wicker and less wood slats — but I knew they must’ve gotten new chairs in the past few years, because this was definitely it.

  It took me a minute to be able to talk.

  “This is it,” I said to Victor. It came out kind of breathy. Like a whisper. I meant to say it in the same loud voice I’d say anything else. But that was all I could manage. “I found it, Victor. This is what I was looking for, and I found it.”

  We stood and stared a while longer. I felt like I had something big inside me, something that stretched me out, so I had to be bigger than just my actual body to hold it all. I don’t guess that makes much sense, but I’m explaining it as best I can.

  “So,” Victor said. “Now that you found it, now what?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “You want to go sit out there a while?”

  But there were lots of people. In fact, there was only one empty seat, a double, and there was stuff on it, so obviously someone was holding it until they came back.

  “I don’t think there’s a place.”

  “We could come back later.”

  “Yeah. That would be good.”

  “Let’s go see if we can find a place in the campground. Probably not, but we can ask.”

  “OK,” I said. “In a minute. I just want to look for one more minute. Look, Victor, somebody left a red rose on that chair.”

  “Where?”

  “Right there on that empty seat. The one with a shirt on the back. And then there’s a straw hat on the seat, see that? And it has a rose on it tied with a ribbon.”

  “Oh. Yeah. What about it?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought it looked nice.”

  I could tell he had stuff on his mind and wanted to go.

  After a while, he said, “What did you think you would do when you found it?”

  “Do you want me to answer that even if I know you won’t like the answer?”

  “I guess so. Yeah.”

  “I think I sort of had this idea that if Richard knew I was coming here, he would drop everything and come here, too. But I really think that was stupid of me now. But anyway, that’s the truth.”

  Victor didn’t say anything. But it was the way he didn’t say anything. Not good.

  So I said, “You want to go look at your tire again, huh?”

  “I was thinking maybe somebody at the campground might loan me a jack.”

  “OK,” I said. “We’ll go see about that.”

  We got another nice little break about the campground.

  There weren’t any spaces. But this nice middle-aged couple who were just checking in heard us asking about one, and they let us set up our tent on part of theirs. They said they came every year, so they knew the campsites were really big, and they were in a little motor home, so really all they needed was just the part of the camping space where you park your motor home.

  They were very nice and said if we were quiet we could park behind them and set up our tent on the other side of their picnic table.

  I think it’s because they liked Jax. They kept fussing over him and saying he looked just like their Casey, who’s gone now.

  See? Told you the dog was a plus.

  They even loaned Victor a great big wrench — which I guess is something like a tire iron — and a jack, and he changed the tire. Which was good. Because then he could start thinking about something else.

  “I think I want to go back there now,” I said.

  “Ok,” he said. “Just let me wash my hands.” They were still dirty from changing the tire.

  “Um. Don’t take this the wrong way, OK? But I think I just need to do this by myself.”

  He took it the wrong way. I could tell. “In case Richard is there?”

  “I don’t think he will be. I think that was a stupid idea of mine. But even so. It’s the place I remember, and I think I just need to go be alone with it.”

  “Fine,” he said. Like it was a cuss word. “Do whatever you want.”

  • • •

  It was a much longer walk than I realized. And I was out of breath from being so high up in the mountains. And I couldn’t go back and ask Victor to drive me because he was pissed off at me. And it was almost sunset, so I would have to walk back to the campground in the dark.

  But I did it anyway.

  I had to stop and rest a lot. But it was important. I just knew it was important. I mean, if it hadn’t been important, I wouldn’t have come such a long way to do this. Right?

  Whatever “this” turned out to be.

  CHAPTER 12: RICHARD

  Sunset

  “Excuse me. Is this seat taken?”

  I knew before I looked up. I recognized her voice. I was surprised and not surprised all at the same time.

  I looked up into her face, shielding my eyes from the low-angle sun.

  “I’ve been saving it for you,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said. And sat down.

  Somewhere in my gut, or in some other cellular location, which might have been every cell in my body for all I knew, I had always believed in at least the chance of Vida’s ability to remember. I knew that now, in that retroactive type of knowing that confirms you’ve known all the time. Only whether or not I wanted to believe it — was willing to believe it — had ever been genuinely in question.

  She was wearing shorts and sandals, and her legs looked so thin I t
hought they must be in constant peril of snapping like matchsticks. And yet they were berry-brown from the sun. I wondered how she did as well as she did out in the world. Better than me, sometimes. Or so it seemed.

  “So this is your red rose,” she said, touching an outside petal. “Where did it come from?”

  “Some woman I never met before. This older woman. She thought I looked sad, and she left this for me.”

  “That’s really sweet,” she said. “So you got my message. I’m really glad you got my message.”

  “What message?”

  “I left a message on your machine. Sunday morning. Maybe nine or ten.”

  “I was already gone.”

  “Why did you come here if you didn’t get my message?”

  “Now that is a very long and complicated story.”

  “We don’t really need to tell any long stories right now. Do we?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  We watched the sunset without talking for a while. How long a while, I couldn’t really say.

  I reached into my pocket for the worry stone. “I think I have something that belongs to you.”

  I held out my open hand, the stone resting in my palm. I expected her to take it. Instead she took the whole hand, and held it, the worry stone pressed between her skin and mine.

  We stayed that way for a time, watching the light change in the canyon.

  “I’m sorry about Esther,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said. She didn’t ask me how I knew. After a while I noticed a very tall, skinny young guy with a big dog standing in the grass above the sun porch. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn he was staring daggers at us.

  I indicated him with a flip of my head. “You know that guy?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I do. I better go talk to him.”

  She let go of my hand, dropping the worry stone. She got up and picked it up again, and went after him. The minute she did, he turned on his heel and stomped off. She ran to catch up, but was no match for his long legs. She really only got to the edge of the sun porch before she gave up. She looked wistfully after him for a moment.