P. S. I Love You

by Barbara Conklin

  Joe and Paul picked up the bags of lunch and carried them down the narrow path they knew so well.

  “A lot of people visit Palm Springs and never get beyond their motel room,” Paul said. “I feel sorry for them, never to see this.”

  They pushed ahead and held huge branches aside for Kim and me to pass through. Finally we got to a trail made for the tourists. About one mile down the trail we found the waterfall. It was so beautiful, so majestic, I will be able to see it whenever I call on that memory again.

  “If you think that’s beautiful, you should see the one located at the canyon’s head. Come on, let’s go. I’m sure even Kim can make it!” Joe seemed to love to tease my little sister.

  “I can go anywhere you guys go,” Kim said bravely.

  We trudged on, all of us helping to carry the lunch. After about another mile, Joe pointed out an old palm tree. “It has a legend,” he told us. “La Reina del Canyon — the Queen of the Canyon. I guess it is probably the tallest palm in the gorge. It stands alone and the funny thing about it is, it’s completely bare of the brown skirts that the other trees wear. It’s a mystery, a real mystery. No one knows why it is bare and all the others are not.”

  “And over there — that’s Gossip Rock,” Joe told us. He had pointed out a huge flat boulder. “Legend has it that it was so named because Indian women used the boulder to grind out the grain for the evening meal. They’d work and talk among themselves and you can check it out for yourself. You can still see grindstone holes on that rock.”

  Finally we were at the canyon’s head. Joe had been right; it had been worth the hike. The gush of the water over the rocks, pouring splendidly downward, sparkling in the sunlight that filtered through the many different kinds of trees was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen. I’d have to describe it in one of the books that I would write someday.

  “This has to be heaven,” I told Paul. “Thanks for bringing us here. I love it.”

  He nodded and smiled. “I knew you would,” he said, satisfied that he could share the beauty with someone. He looked at me for a moment and a chill went through me. We kneeled down and touched the icy water and then scooped it up in our hands. It had the most wonderful, fresh taste and I drank eagerly.

  We hiked on, the cliffs forming sheer tower-

  ing walls, and we passed caves where Joe told us many visitors had found pieces of history.

  “This land was not only the summer home of the Agua Caliente Indians, but also their farm and grazing land,” Joe told us after we’d found a good spot to eat our lunch. “There was a terrible storm one summer just before the tribe was to move back to the valley. The cloudburst washed away the rich topsoil and the crops that had been packed for the journey. Afterwards there were only huge boulders and a barren gorge.”

  “You said there are other canyons. Are they all like this one?” I asked.

  Joe picked up his chicken leg and reached for a napkin. “They each have their own, well, I guess you can say, unique beauty. Tahquitz is closed permanently to the public now. That’s because of the fear of fire in that area. It’s only one and a half miles from the center of the town. That’s where the movie Lost Horizonwas made. The waterfall you see in that movie is the same one in that canyon.”

  “It’s a sixty-foot drop over sheer granite,” Paul added. “Now that’s a fall I wouldn’t want to take.”

  No one talked for a while, we were so busy eating.

  “Your mom’s a good cook,” Joe said, finishing off another chicken leg.

  “Thanks,” Kim said. “Now we don’t have to carry so much back,” she laughed, watching Paul take his second banana.

  “Hiking sure makes you hungry,” I added.

  “Now if we were in Murray Canyon, we could show you some wild ponies, maybe,” Joe told us.

  “Really wild… they don’t belong to anyone?” Kim asked, wiping off her mouth.

  “We think they’re descendants of horses belonging to the early Indians,” Joe said.

  “Wow!” Kim said in wonder, brushing off her jeans as she stood up.

  “Do you know that people have dug up weapons and utensils around the Indian campsites that date back ten thousand years?” Joe said, standing.

  “And there are naturally hot mineral springs,” Paul added as we began to clean up our lunch.

  “And when does this place officially open to the public?” I asked Joe.

  “Sometime in October,” he answered. “It’s all up to how dry the weather has been. Our greatest fear here is always fire. Perhaps it was to those Indians as well.”

  “Palm Canyon, what’s that like?” I asked.

  “It’s fabulous for taking photographs,” Paul said. “I mean, people come from everywhere to do just that. There are about three thousand wild desert fan palms on the canyon’s edge. It's really beautiful. And then you hike on the trail down to the canyon floor where there are warm mineral springs bubbling out of the ground.”

  “I could really get my toes into that,” I said with a laugh. “Can we go there today?”

  “No,” Paul said. “It’s best to visit just one a day… if that’s okay with you,” he added.

  “Fine,” I told him. “We’ve got the rest of the summer.”

  “Well, I won’t really have that much time,” Paul told me, helping me climb over a jagged rock. “I’m scheduled to go into the hospital next Monday. I’ve been putting it off for a while.” His face suddenly looked as if an unpleasant memory had crossed his mind.

  We were standing on another rock further down from the falls. It wasn’t as big as Gossip Rock, but it was big enough for several people. Looking around I saw that we had come into somewhat of a circle. Paul’s entrance to the place was just a short distance from the rock we were standing on.

  Paul sat down and I decided to join him. Joe shouted back at us, “I’m going to show Kim the cave I found last summer. Are you coming?”

  “Not just right now,” Paul said. “We’ll catch up in a minute.”

  The sun filtered through the empty spaces between the huge trees and made beautiful lacy patterns of light on the rock. “Why the hospital?” I asked lightly, hoping I wasn’t being too nosy. What if the question had been something a girl shouldn’t ask a guy, I wondered, sorry I had asked. But before I had too much time to worry about it, he was telling me.

  “No big deal,” he said, taking off his tennis shoes. His toes were long and slender. I pulled off my shoes and together we held out our feet, comparing them.

  “They’re huge boats,” I said, meaning my own feet.

  “Then what are mine, aircraft carriers?” He laughed. It felt good to be barefoot. Paul was smiling now.

  “Your toes are fat and pudgy,” he told me. “It looks like you were running too fast and smashed into a stone wall.”

  I picked up my shoe and hit him on the head. “Hey,” he backed away and laughed and then we both laughed together. “C’mon. Feet aresilly looking when you think of it,” he said, chuckling.

  And then, without warning, he went back to the original subject. “I’ve had two cysts removed already,” he said quietly. “They’re like little lumps — tumors — and they grow right under the skin. I had one removed from the back of my ear last winter,” he said, pointing to his right ear. “And then one from under my left arm.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s terrible. Was it very painful?”

  “The cyst or the operation? The cyst doesn’t hurt at all. It’s like a lump, but it grows. It starts out like a little hard seed and then it gets like the size of a pea. The doctor measures it each time you go to his office and then he decides if he really should remove it. As far as the operation goes, you don’t feel anything until after the anesthesia wears off. See this little scar right in back of my jaw?”

  I looked and found the little jagged line. “It’s really not much now, but last year it looked red and ugly and I thought it would be there for life. Now you have to really look to find it
.”

  “And now, this operation?” I asked, gingerly. I sounded terrible.

  “Under my arm — my right arm this time. I’ll go in Monday and come home possibly the next day. No big deal,” he said. “I had a terrible argument with my mother about it; the scheduling. It seemed so unfair to me. It took away our Laguna vacation. It seemed we could have waited.”

  “But isn’t it important to get it done now?” I shuddered. Lumps, cysts — I’d heard those words associated with cancer.

  Paul must have seen the horrified look on my face.

  “Really, it’s nothing. It’s not serious at all.” And then he changed the conversation completely. “Your name, Mariah. How did you get it? It’s so unusual.”

  “You don’t like it?” I asked defensively.

  “No, no.” Paul laughed. “I like it, but it’s so different. How do you spell it?”

  I spelled it out slowly, wondering if he was laughing at me. “When my mother was pregnant with me, my father was working in insurance. But his first love was our little local theater where they’d put on plays and musicals. He loved it so much, it was hard to tear him away, my mother told me. He was doing Paint Your Wagonon the night I was born. My father missed the whole thing. He always laughed about that and said it was far more important for my mother to be present.”

  “Anyhow,” I went on, “my father sang in the men’s chorus, and one song was “They Call The Wind Maria,” but they pronounced it like my name sounds — Mariah. My father loved that song and so when he finally got to the hospital he asked my mother to call me Mariah. They changed the spelling so that people would not call me Maria by mistake.”

  Paul didn’t speak for a while and then, “It sounds to me like your father must be a very interesting guy.”

  “Oh, he is,” I said, happy that Paul had given me an opportunity to talk about him. “He’s terribly good-looking, too, and talented.”

  “Couldn’t he come to Palm Springs?”

  It always came back to that. No matter what the conversation was with people, I always had to confess that my parents were divorced.

  “No,” I told him, putting my shoes back on. “The day I was fourteen, he left us.” I might as well tell him everything and get it over with, I thought. “He ran off with a woman from his office. They flew to a small town near Chicago, her hometown, and my father got a job in Chicago selling air conditioners.”

  “Are they still together?”

  “No, and that’s a funny thing. Just the other day, I went to my mother’s bedroom to pick up her scarf. A letter from my father was on the bed. I thought it was a recent one and I grabbed it and scanned it. And then I finally looked at the date — way back in January sometime. I know now that that little romance lasted a very short while, and all this time my father has been asking to come back!”

  “And your mother won’t let him?”

  “She’s too proud, I guess. And Paul, I’m only guessing. Why she had that old letter out, I’ll never know, but she must have been reading it again. He begged her to let him come back. He said he wanted to be a good father and husband. He wanted a second chance. Maybe she’s considering it.” I was surprised at myself for confiding in Paul like this. But I felt so comfortable with him, I just let the words come out.

  We sat in silence for a while, Paul looking thoughtful, as though he was wondering about the letter too. And then he broke it. “I guess you have a lot of friends back in Laguna. I mean, you must be pretty popular,” he said, shifting his position on the rock.

  A sudden terror went through me. How could I tell him that I’d never had a date — a real date? Anyhow, why should I ruin my chances with him by letting him know I wasn’t popular at all?

  My mind raced. “Rob,” I blurted out.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Well, of course, I have a lot of friends. I mean, you know, like you have, but then there’s Rob. In the last year and a half I’ve been dating him pretty heavily.”

  It was too late. My imagination had the best of me. The only thing I could do was just keep talking, and maybe, later on, he’d forget the details.

  “Yes, Rob Anderson,” I told him, trying not to blush. “He’s, well, I guess he’s about one or two inches taller than you and he has…very dark hair and dark, dark eyes…and he’s…a football player…he’s a quarterback.”

  “Oh. Then he’s a pretty big man there?” Paul said slowly.

  “Oh, yes. The biggest,” I lied. “Mostly we go to the movies and stuff like that.”

  “I keep pretty busy myself,” Paul said, looking up at the sun peeking through the branches. “Yeah, pretty busy. Jean…she likes to go to the movies too. A real movie buff. She was a cheerleader, too. I guess you could say she’s the best. She’s going to Berkeley, too.”

  My heart turned over in my chest like a pancake doing a somersault. “Jean?” I asked weakly. Of course, what a fool I was. With Paul’s good looks, there had to be someone, maybe a lot of someones. Now I knew how he spent his nights.

  “She has long, blond, wavy hair,” he continued and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. “And her skin, it’s so perfect she never even uses makeup — except a light lipstick.”

  A goddess! I wondered if we should tell Hollywood, I thought sarcastically.

  “And she has the prettiest laugh,” he continued. “Like, well, when she laughs it’s like — ”

  “Like the tinkling of two crystal glasses touching?” I asked, feeling a little mean.

  He gave me a puzzled look and then we both started to laugh. But inside, I wasn’t laughing. Inside I was moaning. I finally had attracted someone and now I’d found that he

  was already taken! And by no less than a potential movie star.

  We sat silently for about three or four minutes more and then I could hear my sister far off in the distance. She was shouting something about a “piece of history” they had found. Joe’s words, I was sure.

  “Before they come back,” Paul said in a whisper, “I want to tell you about this rock. This is my rock. Joe doesn’t even know it. I’m really supposed to have him with me if I sneak into the reservations in the summer, but I come here whenever I have to think things out.”

  I smiled warmly at Paul. He had his rock also! “You’re laughing at me,” he said, frowning.

  “No, no,” I told him, reaching out and touching his arm. “Someday I’ll show you my rock, the one where I go to sit and think.” And then we both broke out into great peals of laughter.

  Kim was below Paul’s rock now, holding out a piece of stone, “Look, look,” she called up to us. “Joe says this is a real arrowhead!”

  It looked just like any stone to me, but I’d take Joe’s word for it. Paul helped me off the great boulder, his hand felt warm and rough in mine. Then we started down the trail home. I stopped for a moment and looked back at Paul’s rock. I could see where Paul’s feet had trampled down the weeds surrounding the rock, where he could get a foothold in one of the slabs to pull himself up.

  He must come here often, I thought. To

  think, Paul was a lot like me. I thought again of Jean, and wondered if she knew about Paul’s rock. Whether Paul had taken her here also. Well, easy come, easy go, and laughing again to myself I turned back to the path and walked away. Jean or no Jean, Paul was a friend.

  I had no way of knowing that day, that the next time I saw that rock, my laughter would have turned into tears.

  Chapter 11

  Right after breakfast the next morning, the phone rang. “How would you like to go down to the book shop with me this morning, help me stock some books for Dad?”

  “Sure. Let me see if it’s okay with my mother,” I told him.

  Mom was in her bedroom making up the bed and when I asked her if she needed me she said she didn’t. And then, as I was leaving the room, she said, “Mariah, you like Paul very much, don’t you?”

  “I guess it shows,” I told her, my face and neck quickly catching on fire. I
hadn’t really admitted it out loud to anyone before.

  She came over to me and pushed a few stray hairs away from my cheek. “Go slow,” she said softly. “You have a whole lifetime ahead of you.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. She was trying to tell me not to push my relationship with Paul. Not to get involved too heavy, too fast. I understood. Why then was there this terrible urgency in me to run, to hurry, to establish our friendship, to seal with him some kind of bond between us?

  “I’ll be okay,” I told her. “I left him hanging on the phone. I’d better run back or he’ll think I forgot him.” What a stupid thing to say, I thought. How could I ever forget him?

  “I’ll be ready in about thirty minutes,” I told him, out of breath.

  “See ya,” he said and hung up.

  Paul picked me up in his silver 280-ZX. “I love it,” I told him, sinking down into the red leather seat. “I guess money comes in handy sometimes.”

  “My dad didn’t just hand it to me,” Paul said as we drove down Skipalot Drive, turned down another, and headed for downtown. “Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve helped him in the store. I’ve done plenty of odd jobs for the Abbotts, too. My dad never paid me. He gave me spending money only when I was desperate. But on graduation day, he gave me a little silver box. I thought it was a watch, but there they were, the keys to this baby.” His pride was evident.

  “Very classy,” I said, feeling the red leather. “I’ve never been in anything like this before.”

  “Jean loves it, too,” he said suddenly. It was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown in my face.

  “Yeah,” I said, quickly composing myself, “all Rob has is an old Chevy, but it gets us around.”

  In what seemed like seconds we were in front of the book shop, searching for a parking place. We circled once around the block, then on our second pass, we saw a white car pulling out of a space.

  “We’re in luck,” Paul said as he swung the silver car into the slot.

  The book shop was like nothing I’d ever seen before. All the shelves were organized neatly, and a sign welcomed the customers to the lounge in the back of the store to sit and read, or just relax. A silver coffeepot on a silver tray welcomed customers to have a cup. On another table was a pitcher of iced tea and frosted glasses. Two light brown leather sofas were arranged in front of a glowing fireplace, and because the shop was air-conditioned, the heat from the fireplace was comfortable. Sprinkled throughout the room were other leather reclining chairs and footstools.