“But I would never tell you what to think.”
“I know that. I know. But I'd still think whatever you did. Don't you see? I would automatically think your thoughts because I never figured out my own.”
I sank into a quiet space where I stopped arguing. She had obviously thought this out. Made up her mind. I clearly was not about to change it. “How long is a while?”
“I don't know. Until I can live someplace bigger and nicer.”
“But not here with me.”
“Not with anybody. Except my kids. Not for a really long time, anyway.”
A moment without talking. A moment of desert wind in my ears. The motion of the windmills at the corner of one eye.
“Will I even see you? And Natalie? Natalie and I have gotten kind of attached.”
“Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, we won't be that far. Neither one of us has a car. Or even drives. But we'll figure out a way to visit sometimes. That's nice, that you and Natalie like each other. I really like that she has a guy she knows who's nice. You know. Not like the one she used to know.”
I didn't know what to say next. Part of me wished she would just hurry up and go away. So I could fall apart. “Well …”
“Yeah. I'll go tell Celia we're ready to go.” “In a minute,” I said. “Maybe you could wait in the car for a minute. I need to have a talk with my mother.”
“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU SAY to her?” I asked, not two seconds after we'd closed ourselves inside my little guesthouse.
“What do you mean?”
“She's leaving me to go off and be on her own. Everything was fine between us when she left. What did you say to her all that time you two were together?”
She sighed. Kind of sadly, I thought. “Sebastian. I didn't tell her she needed to be on her own. She told me. But she's right. Really. She has no idea how to have a relationship.”
“But she was all ready to try. Until you came into the picture.”
We were still standing up. Just hovering by the door. Both looking and feeling uncomfortable. I mean, as much as I can judge how someone else feels. I noticed she was holding her right arm against her belly, as if to support it. But I didn't want to interrupt the more important proceedings to ask why.
“She wasn't really ready, honey. She just didn't know she had a choice.”
“And you told her. Great. So she doesn't know how to have a relationship. Big deal. Neither do I. We would have figured it out together.”
“It's not the same thing, honey. It's like … It's like the difference between no credit and bad credit. You just don't have any track record. But she's got repossessions and bankruptcies. She's learned how to do it completely wrong. It takes a long time to sort that out again.”
A long time. Just like Maria said. The hopelessness of my situation descended like a guillotine. I felt like I might be about to cry. But I refused to cry in front of my mother, because I didn't even trust her enough to let her see my weakness.
“But I love her.” Which was not the tough thing I intended to say.
“Oh, honey. I know you do. First love is so hard. I know you love her enough to want to be with her. But do you love her enough to want her to do what's actually the right thing for her? I mean, even if you're not in that picture?”
I tried to think about that, but my mind just curled in on itself and gave up, like when I used to sit in front of my computer and try to understand the concept of infinity.
I said the most honest thing I could find. “But that's so hard.”
She did something unexpected. She took three steps in and put her arms around me. Well, her arm. Her left arm. She pulled me into an awkward one-armed hug. I wanted to pull away. I wanted to yell at her and tell her not to do that. How dare you hold me? Can't you see I'm still angry? Can't you see I'm trying to take you to task for something?
Then I felt her rubbing my back, and I started to cry. There was no holding it in.
“Yes. It is. It's the hardest thing in the world. For everybody. I know people four times your age who haven't even begun to learn it.”
“Then how come I have to do it?” I was a little embarrassed by the childlike misery I heard in my own voice.
“So you can be happy,” she said.
And she rubbed my back for a few minutes while I tried to stop crying.
Just before she opened the door to leave, just before she drove my first and only girlfriend and my little buddy Natalie out of my life, she paused with her hand on the doorknob. Her left hand.
“I know what I did was wrong, Sebastian. You don't have to convince me. I plead no contest. I hurt you by leaving, and it was wrong. I'm going to ask you to try to get beyond that with me. The good news is, there's no time limit. Take a decade. More, if you need it. But if you could just try. That's all I ask.”
“It's a lot,” I said.
“I know. I know it is. I have to get home, but I'll be back next Friday. And we can talk about it some more. If you're willing.”
She didn't wait, to see if I was willing. She just left me alone to think.
NO SOONER HAD SHE WALKED out of my house than Grandma Annie came jogging down the path and held a phone in front of my face. “It's your friend Delilah,” she said. “I took the liberty of telling her about Maria going off on her own. She asked how everything was. I hope that's okay.”
Oh, thank God, I thought. Now I wouldn't have to dredge up those words myself.
I took the phone. “Hello, Delilah.”
“I'll be there as quick as I can.”
“Wait. Where are you?”
“I'm home. In San Diego. I got home a little early. Been here for a day and a half. Now I'm getting in the car right now. I'll be there as quick as I can.”
I held the phone for a long time. Wondering how she did that. Where she'd learned that uncanny knack for being exactly where she was needed at exactly the right time.
I DECIDED THAT WHILE I WAS WAITING I'd remake the guesthouse a little. Take away the crib, and anything else that would keep rubbing my nose in the past.
The minute I did, that's when it hit me. It was a nasty surprise. The shock parted, and there was the real bulk of the pain. It almost brought me to my knees. The empty closet. The empty crib.
I started straightening the place up as a way of holding myself together. I folded up the bed into a couch. Wheeled the crib outside. Folded up the Japanese screen to take back to Grandma Annie. I felt almost like I wanted to cry again, but I wasn't going there. I just somehow managed to stay up above it all. I just kept moving.
I gathered up my clothes so I could do a load of wash. Made sure to empty out the pockets of everything. In the pocket of the pants I'd worn on the bus, I found a wad of money. The rest of Delilah's fifty dollars. I saw a scrap of paper wrapped in with it, but I couldn't initially put my finger on what it was. I unfolded it.
It was the warrior note. I was a brave warrior.
I didn't straighten up anymore after that. I didn't stay up above it all. I lay on the rug and held still and let the tears catch up with me. I just let it happen.
“WHAT GOOD IS A LOVE STORY without a happy ending?” I asked Delilah.
We were sitting in my little house. She was fanning herself with the Japanese fan I'd given her, despite the best efforts of the swamp cooler.
“Well, I told you when you first asked that. Do you remember? I said not all of them end happy, and even you know enough to know that. But you tried. Anyway. You gambled everything for love. You were brave enough to try. In spite of everything your father taught you. He did his best to make sure you'd never be alive. But you are alive. In spite of him.”
“I'm beginning to see his point. Why take a gamble if it turns out like this?'
“You don't get to know how it'll turn out, child. That's why they call it gambling.”
“But I lost everything. Maybe he was right.” A terrible thing to say. I know. But that's how broken I felt.
“No,” she said. “Wrong.
You did not lose everything. You got your own place. And a grandmother who loves you. And you got your freedom. You got a whole new life. And you got your mother coming to know you again. You got a lot. Don't make the mistake of failing to see that. You want to know who lost everything? Your father. That's who. Lost any chance he ever had to get anything in this life except you. Then in the end he lost you. That's where all that caution got him. Now, where is that big brave Tony I remember?”
“Tony's dead. Remember? That's how the story ends. Tony gets shot dead.”
“Well,” she said, “good thing for you Sebastian is still alive, then. Isn't it?”
I didn't answer. I was looking at the huge banner signed by all the neighbors who fixed up this house for me. Part of me could feel the truth in what she was saying. I had that, at least. I had this place I'd dreamed of.
“You catch my drift about that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I catch your drift about that.”
“And, Sebastian …” She had never called me by my actual name before. As far as I could remember. “I know this is hard for you to believe. But everybody had a first love and everybody got hurt a few times on the way to the one that lasts. So people are going to tell you they know just how you feel. That's true and it's not true, both. Because unless you're right in the middle of it, you really can't know how much it hurts. You forget in time. So the bad news is, they don't exactly know how bad you hurt. Because they forgot. Only, that's the good news, too. In time they forgot how awful it is. And so will you. In time.”
“I don't think I'm ever going to get over this,” I said. I was being blazingly, painfully honest. Because it was Delilah. And I felt like I could with her. In fact, I felt I owed her no less. I expected her to argue with me. Tell me I was wrong. I was used to being told I was wrong.
“I didn't say you would,” she said. “It's not exactly something you get over. It's like those steel spikes they drive into a tree. If the tree doesn't die, it just sort of grows around it. You sort of make it part of you. You learn how to live around it after a while.”
I was grateful to her for telling me that. Because it was something I could almost believe.
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT, and I still hadn't slept.
Delilah was asleep on the fold-out couch in the main house. I knew she'd be leaving in the morning, which made me feel alone.
I went outside and looked at the stars. Lay on the lounge chair, just the way I had with Maria that first night. But this time, I was in it by myself.
I still felt different, though. Whatever I had gained had not entirely left me. I felt scraped out. Sore in my gut. I had a headache. My eyes burned and ached from crying. My sinuses hadn't quite cleared. I hadn't slept. In short, I felt like hell. But I was alive. Not even a hundred percent sure that was the good news. But I was definitely alive.
After a while the moon came up over the horizon. I had never seen a moon like it before. It was almost full. Just one edge was a little lopsided. Not sharp and clear like the rest of it. But nearly full. It was about three times the size of any moon I had ever seen before. And it was yellow. Not really white. Yellow.
At first I couldn't figure out why. Especially I couldn't understand why it was so big. But the higher it rose, the closer it got to the way I was used to seeing it. I guess it's biggest when it's just over the horizon. You never really see the horizon in Manhattan. You see the moon when it's up above the skyscrapers. You never really see it rise.
I thought about the time Delilah told me to go out into nature. Find something that was not man-made. I thought about the times I looked up at the moon before I left New York. And told it, Thanks for nothing. Couldn't thank it for my life because I didn't have one. Back then I didn't.
“Thank you for my life,” I said. Out loud.
And here's the part that might be hard to explain: I meant it.
At least I had a life. I'd never had one before, so it was painfully easy to tell.
So, now what? What had Delilah said I was supposed to do next?
It didn't take long to remember. She said I was supposed to put one foot in front of the other and see what life had in store for me next.
I looked at the windmills in the moonlight, and wondered if Maria was looking at them, too, from the other side of the mountain. Maybe not, but she always could be.
I don't know if I'm that guy my mother talked about. If I could love her enough to send her away, if away is best. But I know I want to be. And maybe that'll have to be enough for now.
I decided the best thing I could do for right now would be to go inside and get some sleep.
It was the first night in our new place. I was sitting there watching my children sleep. It's just a room. Like the size of a normal motel room. So it's hard not to be right there with them all the time.
That's okay, though.
Just before he went to bed, this is the last thing C.J. said to me: “I hate you for making me come here.”
And you know what I said? “I'm sorry you feel that way, C.J. But this is the way it has to be.”
I thought that was big progress for me.
I really know what Celia meant about being afraid of her own kid. Not like afraid he would hurt her or anything. I think she meant afraid he wouldn't like her. Like he would say “I hate you” or something.
I've been afraid of my kids. In some ways I guess I still am. But I didn't act afraid when he said that. So I had to give myself a pat on the back for just looking him right in the eye and saying it's going to be that way anyway. For acting like I'm the mother.
It's the decision I made. It's what I thought was right. Now that I get to do the thinking.
If he ever asks me why we can't live with his father, I'll tell him the truth. But I don't think he'll ask. Because he knows the truth. Already.
Then I couldn't help worrying about how much stuff I still needed to find out, figure out. Do. I had to find day care, and it had to be something that would fit into what I'd be making. I had to figure out how soon I could actually work with my ribs and all. But fortunately the people at the motel pretty much made it clear that I could have the room until then. They said I was a friend of the family.
I'm pretty sure once I pay for day care and buy our food, there won't be a cent left over. I won't be making much because the room is part of the pay.
But, anyway, we won't die.
AFTER A WHILE I went outside and sat in this little plastic chair outside our sliding glass door. Close enough to hear my kids if they cried.
I looked at the windmills and thought about Sebastian. And, also, I thought about how it felt to be free.
Terrifying. It was so scary it hurt. But on the other hand, there was something about it. Like, I wasn't going to trade it back.
I thought about how Sebastian is free now, too. And I think that puts him in a much better place than if he was trying to earn enough money for four people, and trying to learn how to be a boyfriend and a father at the same time, not to mention trying to raise a boy who would never give him a break.
I wonder if he sees it that way. If he feels like I do, like the part of life down the road is an empty blackboard just waiting for me to pick up a piece of chalk.
Probably not. But I still think it's true. I still think it's best.
I wish I could see him more, but probably that would just make it harder for me not to change my mind. Besides, I can always look at the windmills in the moonlight from where I am, and know that he's looking at the same windmills in the light of the same moon. And in a weird sort of way, that might tie us together well enough.
Anyway, that's what I think.
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MARCH 2009
Copyright © 2008 by Catherine Ryan Hyde
All rights reserved.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries is a
trademark of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
Hyde, Catherine Ryan.
Chasing windmills / Catherine Ryan Hyde.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Teenage boys—Fiction. 2. Women—Fiction. 3. Mojave Desert (Calif.)—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3558.Y358W56 2008
813'.54—dc22 2007013093
eISBN: 978-0-307-47243-4
www.vintagebooks.com
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