The Devoted

by Blair Hurley

  Leaving the library, she was stopped by an onset of rain, cold enough to remind her that winter was closing in. She stood under an awning with the book clutched to her chest, under her coat. Across the street, a woman took shelter in the open doorway of a fabric store, watching people hurry by with their sweatshirt hoods pulled up. The rain clouds were fast-moving and dark. In the apartment above the fabric store, a light came on, and a woman loosened her head scarf, kissed a golden painting of a saint on the wall. In this moment, every ordinary act, and every common melancholic face, seemed charged with tragedy. She wondered if this was what it felt like to lose belief. It was not rejecting things as absurd. It was not loving what was sacred any less. It was merely saying good-bye to them, to the last of her Catholicism, the part that told her that she was special, she was loved, the world existed as a rune for her to decipher, and it would wait for her to solve its riddles.

  She remembered that girl. So adolescent. Such a child. She couldn’t forget the way the cold rain whisked through that unknown city. She could have called Paul right that minute and told him the jig was up, she wanted to go home. At that time, pay phones were still scattered across any city; there was one across the street. If she’d called, her parents would have been on the next plane. Everything would still be all right, in its own way.

  Winter was coming; she could feel it, bitter and dangerous, seeping into her boots.

  But she didn’t call. She didn’t go home.

  Jules found her still huddling under the awning an hour later. “Man, what a dork,” he said. “Rushing off to the library.”

  When she didn’t move, he sidled up next to her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m an idiot,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  She showed him the book. He looked through it several times, flipping through the pages. “Fuck.”

  “What do we do?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?” He got up, jerking free of her arm. It wasn’t until this moment that she realized how much he had come to care, that the story she’d spun for him was one they both believed in. She remembered that Jules, unlike her, had no one to call, no one who would shepherd him back into an embrace.

  “Is that it?” she asked. “The quest?” But he was already walking away, jamming his hands into his pockets.

  She walked back to the motel, but he wasn’t there; only Eddie came to the door, in his graying underpants.

  She told him, too. They sat on the edge of the double beds, facing each other. “What are you going to do?” he asked. It had been the three of them all this way, but suddenly this was her problem.

  She waited all day. She and Eddie lay side by side while he slowly read the paper from front to back, licking his thumb each time he turned a page. She wished he were not there. She wished he would disappear so she could lie there alone with her sadness.

  Jules returned by nightfall. He blasted into the room and paced around it, stuffing hotel towels into bags. “Who cares if one guy is dead,” he said. “Let’s see the monastery. Was all this just about him, anyway?”

  “No—”

  “Exactly. None of this trip was. None of it—it was about something else, wasn’t it? Yeah?” He grabbed her off the bed, clutching at her waist, her hair. “We’re going.”

  “Going on?”

  “Of course we are. We’re going to see whatever lousy plaque has been put up in this guy’s honor. And we’ll go right on to the ocean. To San Francisco! Where everybody like us ends up!”

  She knew then that he’d taken the money and spent it on whatever shit was making him grind his teeth like crazy as he threw Eddie’s socks at his head, yelling, “Pack, motherfuckers, pack.”

  There was enough money to fill the tank of the car. She could hear it idling out front, its healthy gurgle and roar. As she crunched the yellow pills he’d brought, she could feel his mood spreading like a candy-coated infection, making her heart beat harder. His words were magic. They would take her and hurl her back out onto the road, where she belonged.

  Jules drove them on a wave of Adderall and high spirits. They did not eat or sleep. She curled up on the passenger side, alternately nauseous and euphoric, staring down the white lines of the highway, trying to count them all, to stay clear and focused.

  The Rockies looked like big brothers in the windshield, giant shattered shapes powdered with white. They were close. Most of the time the radio was full of static, but when it spoke, it warned of snow. First blizzards of the season, it told them. Whiteout conditions. “Damn, it’s going to be hot to drive through that,” said Jules. One of their car’s windows was only duct tape; the cold drove her under blankets, whatever flimsy fall coats she could pile on. It drove hard little flakes of snow onto her arms. “I’m going south, I’m going south,” Eddie kept repeating, as though it were a mantra that could protect him from the cold.

  It wasn’t fully dawn when they reached the foothills. Morning gave the sky a sad, faded light. They began the hairpin turns up the mountain, the car filling with wind and snow. These weren’t the soft, heavy blankets of New England that she loved; this snow was hard and driving, like little needles on her skin. The car squeaked on, shimmying and jittering around each turn. The white mountaintops were all around them now, like the tips of a lotus blossom, ready to close. “Is the monastery at the top?” she asked.

  Jules shook his head. “We’re going through the pass. The monastery is on the other side.”

  The snow accumulated in giant drifts by the road. “We have to make it through or we’ll be stuck here,” said Jules. He pounded the gas. The engine whined; they bucked and skidded through a snowdrift on the road. “Jesus,” she said, but she felt no fear, only wonder. At her right was the drop into space, the tiny pipe-cleaner trees below, the little lit gingerbread houses of the town they’d left behind.

  Home was far behind.

  Jules hit the brakes and they slewed to a halt. To the right, the road moved gradually downward again, back toward the town; to the left, it led steeply down through the pass to the other valley. It was blocked by wooden sawhorses with signs. ROAD CLOSED.

  She opened the door and stepped out. Snow was seeping into all the last warm recesses of her body, but she couldn’t feel it. She crunched to the edge of the road and looked down: lights, a town of some kind, a network of low covered buildings like barns or dormitories. Then her view was obscured by a sweep of snow. “It’s there,” she said. “It’s real.”

  “Yeah, it’s real. And we’re going.” Jules was out, too, and he had one end of one of the sawhorses blocking the road. “Come on, come on, we’re wasting time.”

  “Are you crazy?” Eddie called from the car.

  “Yes,” said Jules, and then there was nothing else to say. She helped Jules drag the sawhorse through the piling snow. I am the snow Buddha, she chanted to herself as she pulled and panted. The goal is within reach. The goal is me.

  Then they were back in the car. Jules gripped the hand brake. What was waiting for them in the valley below? The sleepily alarmed part of herself woke up a little and looked around at the steep slope, the landscape rapidly filling with white. “Jules, wait,” she said.

  But he shook his head. “What?” The hand brake was already up. They were already beginning to slide.

  Time was no longer theirs. Time belonged to the car and the road and the whiteness that was sucking her in, burning down her throat. The car spun on one set of wheels and then the other as Jules careered around a turn, his brow sweetly furrowed with concentration, the rocks and trees around them a blur. Eddie was yelling in the back seat. Jules was telling her, so earnestly, “Almost there—almost there—”

  For a while the car disconnected from the road and flew disembodied, and they were creatures of only snow and air. She screamed but nothing came out, only silence. Jules’s hand grabbed her knee. Later she’d find his fingernail embedded there.

  The car struck a pine tree on the far side of the road and plowed into it enti
rely on its left side. Eddie, in the back seat on the right, was unharmed. Her left ankle, braced on the dash, was shattered.

  Her eyes opened, and her second consciousness began. The car, torn open on one side like the belly of a whale, steaming blood. Her body burning, every hair, every pore, awake and shivering. Snow falling, cold now, real.

  Buddhism teaches that moments of powerful feeling can be used to fuel awareness. Even awfulness. Even despair turns the dharma wheel. She told Jocelyn, “That was my true conversion.” Here is her body, lying in sweat and melted snow. Here is the smell of wet coppery blood, the earthy rankness of someone’s bowels. Jules, dead. Here in the crushed body beside her is the end of something, maybe the end of her.

  Eddie would walk the snowy road to get help, and she’d fly home, her ankle in a cast, her parents flanking her in the narrow seats. The wreckage left somewhere behind in the mountainous dark. Looking out the small plane window, she’d see the great gridded webs that were the cities she’d crossed. Now the places where she’d lived homeless and ragged were drawn in lines of light. She could make out all the places she’d been and the place she couldn’t reach, zooming away into the dark. Then the plane dipped over the great black nothing of the Great Lakes. She saw the drop-off into a deep ocean of lightlessness: perfect, austere. Zen.

  Dear Sean,

  In Japan, the monks are called home-leavers, and are granted a privileged place in society. They are doing the most difficult thing, breaking the scarlet cord, and this is the first and hardest step.

  It is how the Buddha’s story begins, too. In the tales, when he realizes he must go, he stands in the doorway of his wife’s bedroom and watches her sleep with their newborn son in her arms. He does not approach. He knows that if he touches her, his resolve will break, and he will never leave. So he turns; lets the curtain fall; leaves.

  So the story is about the world’s greatest deadbeat dad.

  Did he come close to their sleeping bodies? Was he near enough to smell his baby’s milk breath? Did he think about his wife’s arms around him? Did he see all the items of their safe, precious world: the ornaments and jewels, the baby blankets, the neat lines of shoes? Didn’t he think, once, My self is here—I cannot leave?

  And when he returns—fifteen years later—his head shaved, his face now serene, his son grown—can he say, “I’m home?”

  Of course not. There is no home for him. Every religion has its sacrifice. Jesus gives up his life; Abraham gives up his name; Muhammad gives up his pride; and for Buddhists, Siddhartha gives up his home. It’s the only way we can prove we are good: we can give something up, the thing we love the most.

  EDDIE

  “Your brother’s right, you know,” Jocelyn said. “You have to see Eddie.”

  “You think?”

  “You have to. Then you’ll be able to put this behind you. You’ll be able to forget him.”

  By “him,” she did not mean Eddie.

  Eddie lived in a high-rise condo called the Brooklyner. On the phone he was effusive. “It’s time we sat down and finally had a long talk,” he said. It sounded almost nice: just the two of them in a cluttered room like his old basement, with his Che posters and his Ping-Pong mallets hanging on the wall.

  But when she arrived at his door, she heard the clinking of glasses and voices of a party. A woman in a black dress and pearls answered the door. She threw her head back without looking at Nicole. “Eddie?”

  “Who is it?” Eddie came to the door. He was still himself, still with that wiry red hair, the pale wash of freckles, the same sleepy eyes. But he had filled out; he bore his own weight with a more dignified air. “You forgot the guest of honor, Mel. This is Nicole.”

  He stepped over the threshold and hugged her, hard, and whispered in her ear, “You’re just the same.”

  “So are you,” she said, though maybe it wasn’t true. Eddie seemed to hear her uncertainty, because he backed away, and smiled with a little shake of his head. How extraordinary it was to see him there, having arrived safely into the prime of adulthood.

  “Well, come in,” said Mel. “I’m Eddie’s fiancée. We’re having cocktails.”

  They stepped into a brilliantly lit, spacious apartment in stark black and white. Black granite countertops, white velvety carpet, black leather sofa studded with silver grommets, black-and-white cowhide by the window. The only color came from the guests, five of them, arrayed around the coffee table in jewel tones. They sat in a low slouch and looked like they’d been sitting and drinking for a while. I’ve walked into the wrong room, the wrong story, Nicole thought.

  “Everyone, this is Nicole,” said Eddie, ushering her over. “They’ve all heard of you,” he told her. He went hastily through the introductions: Emma and her husband, Bob; Mark and his fiancée, Jenna.

  “I wish I’d done something like that when I was young and reckless,” said the woman introduced as Emma.

  Her husband patted her shoulder indulgently. “We went on that safari, hon.”

  Emma turned back to Nicole. “Anyway, it must have been an adventure. Did you have a wild time?”

  “I suppose so.” Nicole sat down at the end of the stiff, glossy couch; Mel poured her a glass of wine, then said, “Or don’t you drink?”

  “I drink.” She took the glass. Tonight I drink. She took a large sip and held it in her mouth before letting the wine burn its way down.

  “What was Eddie like then?” asked Jenna, a thin woman in a fuchsia sheath dress with matching clawlike fingernails and blank, bird-bright eyes.

  “I was a raging little Communist. Ask Nicole,” said Eddie from the kitchen.

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “And you were going to some sort of—commune?”

  “No,” she said, but did not want to explain further. She was exhausted already, a little sick. Eddie came out from behind the counter. He was anxious, too, she could tell, trying to set the story straight. This was his chance to tell it right, the way she had told Jocelyn. Perhaps these friends of his would understand.

  “I was going to South America to fight for the proletariat,” he said. “Nicole was going to join a monastery and get enlightened. We had very different goals, and one car.”

  Everyone laughed at this. She felt their eyes move along her body, from the rain boots to the dragon skirt to the moon barrette in her ruffled hair. She’d worn the dragon skirt for Eddie, to remind him of their time together; now she could see how perfectly she fit into his plan of show-and-tell. How entertaining it all was.

  “Nicole, they’re finding it hard to believe that a person such as yourself and I would be friends,” said Eddie. He was explaining the joke to her, thoughtful him. “With my job—”

  She raised her hand. “Let me guess. It’s the kind of job they didn’t have a name for fifty years ago.”

  “It’s the kind of job they still don’t have a name for,” said Bob.

  “You know, it’s simpler than most people think,” said Eddie. “You see, Nicole, if you have a lemonade stand, and you want to buy insurance for when you don’t have enough lemons to meet demand—”

  Oh, Christ, thought Nicole. He’s going to very patiently explain the dogma to me, with kid-friendly metaphors, so that a layperson like me can understand. And then he’s going to explain to me why he changed, grew up, put aside childish things. He’s going to laugh at himself, at the fool that he was, at how natural it was to put that person aside. Well, we were fools. But weren’t we brave as well? She pressed her palms together, looked for any place in the austere apartment where her gaze was safe, where she could avoid their scrutiny.

  “Of course, you know what I’m talking about,” Eddie finished. “We were wild then. It’s so strange to see you here.”

  “Was Eddie a good survivor?” asked Mel. “Did he scrounge for your food? Did he panhandle? God, how did you bathe?”

  Nicole tried to think of what to say. “We survived. We did a little of everything. We were cold
and dirty. But it didn’t matter. None of that mattered. We were young.”

  “Did you sleep under bridges?”

  “Mostly we slept in the car.”

  “That wreck,” Eddie inserted. “You wouldn’t believe what it looked like by the end. I had to junk it.”

  “Did you have sex anywhere crazy? Like in a telephone booth? I always wanted to have sex in a phone booth, and now I fear I’ve missed my chance.”

  “Jesus, Mark.” Mel jerked his empty glass from the table. “A little decorum.”

  She was beautiful in the way only New York women seemed to be: possessing a kind of savage elegance. Moving swiftly from kitchen to living room and back again with cutting boards of cheese, bottles of vodka and gin. Her black dress severe and fashionable, the plunging V exposing a marble, jutting breastbone. The lines of her jaw and chin, aristocratic in their force.

  “Eddie and Nic’s excellent adventure,” laughed Emma.

  “And Jules,” Nicole started to say, but Eddie interrupted: “Guys, enough with the third degree.”

  “It’s always so interesting to get a glimpse of a friend’s past,” Emma said. “Nicole, you have the secret of Eddie. And Eddie, you have the secret of Nicole. Has she changed much?”

  He hesitated, looking at her. Everyone was studying her now. In a flash she was back in Buffy’s living room at the party that had first driven her to flee Boston. So many people looking at her then as now, thinking they knew who she was. And they were always wrong.

  “It’s a fricking twenty-first-century miracle,” said Eddie. “We could have pulled her right out of the time capsule.” He leaned on the back of the couch, gazing out at his view of Manhattan.

  Nicole realized that whereas the story of the trip had been her guarded secret, for Eddie it had been his currency, the adventure he had aired for all his friends.