The Longest Way Home

by Andrew McCarthy

  At the trailhead, the truck to take us back to Arusha is waiting. A bottle of champagne is opened and paper cups are filled on the hood. I toast with the others and hand my full cup back to Zadock.

  “Do you not drink?”

  “I’ve had my share,” I say, and we load in and bounce over the dirt track, down the southern slope of Kilimanjaro. Soon we pass through the village of Mweka, where many of our porters live with their families. There is a workaday bustle to the village of mud huts and cement shacks with corrugated metal roofs. The village has no running water. Children run free in the dirt road. A filthy sign adverting beer (IT’S KILI TIME—MAKE THE MOST OF IT) hangs in front of a bar made of simple wood and mud construction.

  In Hemingway’s story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” there is an epigraph that reads in part:

  Close to the western summit [of Kilimanjaro] there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

  The same lack of explanation may apply to my own journey to the top. I came to Africa to see if I could, as Seve said, “show up” for myself, to try to capture something I felt was missing. I had hoped to come down with a sense of completeness, but instead I’m left with a feeling of detachment. What was all that about? What was the point? Nothing was really achieved. No good was created. Nothing changed. Yes, I have a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. I am glad I made it to the top—having to deal with the irrational metaphors associated with failure would have been an obstacle I’m grateful I don’t need to work through. Yet I feel no great change or release, no greater strength or feelings of manliness I previously lacked.

  The acute sense of longing I felt toward my father at the summit and the realization of the place that longing has always occupied in my body is a discovery not to be minimized, and in some ways, it is a relief. In acknowledging that emptiness, I’m released further into my own life. What more can we ask of our parents than that they teach us what they have to teach and then release us into the world?

  The village gives way to rolling hills and then flattens out. A cluster of activity crowds a crossroads where a large mound of scrap metal is piled out in front of a small shack. An old woman sits beside mounds of figs spread out on a dirty sheet while a man is sanding a coffin as three men watch—half a dozen other coffins are stacked nearby. We drive on. The time capsule of the last week releases me back into the world and thoughts of unattended errands, calls that need to be made and e-mails sent, flood into my mind. I wonder what further wedding plans D has hatched in my absence.

  A river joins our progress by the side of the road, and something about it reminds me of the Catherine River in Patagonia, which ran through the property at Estancia Cristina. I felt so comfortable there in my solitude and wondered how I might ever move from that place of contented isolation to this forward-leaning desire I feel right now toward getting to Ireland and the wedding.

  How many people will make the trip to Dublin, how much of D’s family will be there? I find myself hoping many more will come than I previously admitted. The idea of welcoming a large number of people is a long way from my trying to escape the mere dozen on the bow of a riverboat in the Amazon.

  And as the wind rips in through the open windows of the van, it occurs to me that I desire no secret life; I have no need to flee to Costa Rica, to leave my past behind and live out some idea of an existence. I want to be close to my children, to D, and feel that sense of inclusion I felt in Vienna.

  Maybe a lot more happened on that mountain—and along the way during these last months—than I first thought.

  Far off, across a field of long and golden grass, I see a lone Masai, tall and thin, wearing the traditional red shuka of his tribe. He carries a long walking stick. It’s miles from the last settlement of any kind, and there are no buildings on the horizon. He is erect; his stride has purpose. Suddenly I have the sensation of being out in that field, of the hard cracked earth under my feet, of the late-day sun over my shoulder, of the slight breeze blowing across my arms. My walk also has purpose and my stride has rhythm and power and grace. And then I’m back in the van. I crane my head and look off until the Masai is out of sight.

  Around me, the others are chatting, but their words go past me. My thoughts are now with D. I picture her face, her eyes squinting at me—suppressing a grin and shaking her head as I protest her ever-growing wedding agenda. I can’t wait to be with her, to get to Ireland. Over the thousands of miles that separate us I feel a closeness to her and an excitement about our future, together. I realize that in this sensation, in this desire for unity, I feel like myself—and it’s all I ever wanted.

  On the outskirts of Arusha, I pull out my phone. It finally has service. I text D—“Off the Mtn. Remember me?”

  A few minutes later, my phone pings. “Who are you, anyway?”

  I’m reminded of her first e-mail to me, years ago, when she asked the same question. Now I have the answer. I text back:

  “The man coming to marry you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DUBLIN

  “Everything You Ever Dreamed Of?”

  Five weeks before the wedding there are still no firm plans. Nothing has been decided regarding the ceremony. No musicians have been booked. There is no contingency plan for weather—no umbrellas ordered in case of rain. I have not asked about the lamb on a spit. In addition, there is no certainty that the Irish government will even allow the wedding since we didn’t turn in my divorce papers on time or my previous marriage certificate. And the documents we do have aren’t properly apostilled—I don’t even know what “apostilled” means.

  A pleasant-sounding woman named Patricia from the General Register Office in Dublin, has been e-mailing with regularity, reminding us in the most charming way possible of the urgency to get the documents in because “it can take months,” she writes, for the paperwork to be filed, and there will be “nothing we can do” if everything is not in order.

  “You need to get your divorce decree,” D keeps saying to me.

  I have no idea where this is or if I ever even had a copy. I finally ask my ex-wife, who graciously says she will look in her safe-deposit box at her bank. The next day she calls with good news.

  “I have it here,” she says.

  “Great. You don’t by any chance happen to have a copy of our marriage certificate, do you?”

  There’s a pause on the line. “In my safe-deposit box. At the bank. Where I just was,” she says patiently. “I’ll go back tomorrow.”

  I call and ask my mother if she has a copy of my birth certificate.

  “Well, I might,” she replies, “but if I do it’s up in a box at the back of the closet. I can’t reach it. I’ll ask the doorman if he can come up and pull it down. When do you need it?”

  “A month ago.”

  Half an hour later she calls back.

  “Well, you’re in luck . . .”

  When D sees it, she informs me that it’s not correct. “We need the long form.”

  “There’s a long form?”

  The day after my daughter’s fifth birthday, and exactly a month from the wedding day, I head to Los Angeles to direct a television show. Before I get back, D will have finished directing a play, met her writing deadline, and left with our daughter for Dublin.

  On her way out of town, D stops to pick up her wedding dress. From the airport she calls me in Los Angeles. “It got rained on on the way home.”

  “Let’s hope it’s the only time it gets rained on.”

  Three weeks before the wedding there are still no firm plans.

  Two weeks and two days before we are scheduled to get married, I am in Burbank, directing a scene in which a man is trapped under a piece of farm equipment; his left arm is broken just above his wrist and is gushing blood. For reasons I don’t understand, I am unusually tense while directing this scene. At a break in the filming, I check the messages on my phone. I have a missed call from my son’
s gymnastics camp; the message asks me to please call back as soon as possible.

  My son has broken his left arm, just above the wrist—in the exact spot as the man in the scene I am directing. An ambulance has taken my son to the hospital, his mother cannot be found, D is in Ireland. I am three thousand miles away.

  Soon enough, my son’s mother joins him at the hospital, and after twelve hours and multiple doses of morphine, and the subsequent bouts of vomiting, he is sent home with a blue cast from his hand to his shoulder. In the photo my ex-wife sends me, my son looks small, pale, and defenseless.

  In the week before I can get home, my mind is easily distracted. Perhaps I’m misplacing anxiety about the wedding onto my son, but I am preoccupied about his condition. I call his mother often to check on him. I have driven the streets of Los Angeles for nearly thirty years, but twice I take wrong turns on roads I have driven hundreds of times and find myself lost. One afternoon after work, on the way back to my friend’s home, where I am staying, I pull off to the side of the road and dial my phone.

  “Hey, pal,” my father shouts over the line, the way he always does.

  “Hey, Dad,” I choke out back to him.

  He asks after D and the kids—I don’t mention my son’s arm. I ask after his wife. Then I ask if he is going to be able to come to the wedding. He had alerted D earlier that he had a scheduling conflict—it’s his wife’s birthday that weekend and they have already planned a cruise with some other members of her family. But it feels important to ask him myself.

  “We’d—I’d—love to have you there, if you can make it,” I hear myself say.

  “I’m still trying, pal, but the cruise is paid for. I tried calling the general manager, and I’m waiting to get a call back. But I’m trying.”

  When we hang up I sit watching the cars roll past along Montana Avenue. I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or feel a sense of absolution. I had expected no other response, and it was pleasant to hear his voice. I turn and look over at my reflection in the window of a nearby cosmetics store.

  Back in New York, nine days before we are scheduled to be married, the morning my son and I are supposed to leave for Ireland, his mother and I take him to the orthopedic surgeon. The doctor is a big man with an outsized personality. His glasses perch on the very tip of his nose. He inspects my son’s cast and quickly decides to change it.

  “They did fine at the hospital, but let’s set this thing correctly, shall we?” While we wait for results from the new X-ray to come back, I broach the topic.

  “So, doctor . . . we’re scheduled to get on a plane tonight, to Ireland—”

  “What?” He glares at me.

  “Yeah, I’m supposed to be getting mar—”

  “No.” He interrupts me, his head shaking side to side. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This arm is not flying today. Not with this swelling and this fracture. Remember what happened to Serena Williams? She had a broken bone in her foot and flew to Hawaii and ended up with a blood clot in her lung. Almost died, and she’s a pro athlete. No, this boy isn’t flying for weeks. Not for several weeks.”

  I am speechless.

  My ex-wife steps in to help me out. “He’s getting married in Ireland next week.”

  The doctor tilts his large head and lifts his hands in a “well, nothing we can do” gesture. The X-ray comes back and the doctor shows us the multiple fracture. The break is not clean; the bone has splintered.

  “And there’s a chip in the wrist that they didn’t see at the hospital.” The doctor points to a spot on the black and white film. I sit glued to the small stool in the corner. I am numb. The doctor molds a new cast, assisted by his very young and very blond nurse. After a new cast is set, the doctor turns to me.

  “Come here,” he says, and hurries out into the hall.

  I follow.

  “When’s your drop-dead date?”

  While the doctor has been tending to my son, I have been asking myself that exact question. Today is Tuesday, August 16. My son and I were to fly to Galway, in the west of Ireland, tonight, and spend several days together. A father and son trip. D and our daughter were to join us there and we would all travel together for a few days, including a visit to the hotel where D and I first met. We had intended to come full circle, as a family, just before the wedding. Then we would all drive across the country to Dublin on Tuesday the twenty-third; get married in the registrar’s office on Wednesday the twenty-fourth, with D’s immediate family and a few friends present; and then on Sunday, August 28, have the more public wedding and celebration in the park.

  “Next Monday, the twenty-second,” I say to the doctor—trying to convey in those few words the urgency I feel.

  The doctor nods. “Okay.” He holds out his hands in a “stop” gesture. “Let me see what I can do. If the arm doesn’t slip and the swelling goes down, maybe we can make it work. Maybe. No guarantees. It’s a bad break, and with the air pressure in the plane—”

  “I know, doctor,” I say, interrupting him. “But unless you can tell me he’s going to die on the plane, we’ve got to fly.”

  The doctor laughs, and I wonder if I’m joking—knowing at the same time that if there was any risk at all, I would be getting married without my son. And I don’t know if I can do that. He is already worried about being left out of our family—not being in attendance on the wedding day could only exacerbate those feelings. What my son needs to do is be there in person, be a part of it and feel the love that surrounds him, rather than three thousand miles away, having to hear about it for the rest of his life.

  I was not in attendance at my father’s second marriage—it is a history I am not interested in repeating. I was not speaking much with my father at the time when he remarried. I have always imagined that he—wrongly—assumed I wouldn’t have attended had I been invited. For that reason alone, I was never particularly hurt by the omission, but it certainly added further distance to an already remote relationship. My son has to be at my wedding.

  The doctor smiles at me and makes a juggling gesture. Then he laughs again, slaps me on the shoulder, and marches back into the office.

  That evening I let my son sleep in my bed. After he’s down, I call D. It’s late in Ireland.

  “Where are you? You’re not on the plane?” Her voice is rising in panic.

  I explain what the doctor said, leaving out the part that my son may not be allowed to fly at all, for weeks. “We’ll be there next Tuesday morning,” I say, hoping that my voice carries an assuredness I lack. “That way we’ll still be able to get married on Wednesday. It’s not a problem, we just won’t have our time together in the west beforehand.”

  D doesn’t hear any of this; her sobbing is too loud.

  When I climb into bed my son rolls over and slams me in the head with his cast.

  “I’m sorry I can’t go to Ireland, Dad,” he says the next morning.

  “I bet we’ll be able to go, kiddo, don’t worry.”

  “No, the doctor said I couldn’t fly, didn’t you hear him?”

  “I know, but—”

  “I’ll die.”

  Six days before D and I are scheduled to be married, my son and I go back to have the cast changed. I take the doctor aside. “How is it looking?”

  “So far, so good. The swelling has gone down a lot. And already there’s bone being created. If you or I had that break there’d be a dozen metal pins in our arms. It’s great to be young.”

  “So do you think we’ll be . . . ?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Would you mind going in and telling my son that if you let him fly he’s not going to die?”

  “Yup, everything looked good, don’t worry,” I tell D when we connect on Skype. She’s in Killarney with her bridesmaid Louise. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen her face. Over the computer screen I can see the crease between D’s eyebrows is deep; she looks strained. She knows I’m not telling her the whole truth.

  The longer I see her, the more be
autiful she becomes, and then her computer runs out of juice and she’s gone.

  By the time I get to Ireland, if I get to Ireland, the day before the wedding, D and I will not have seen each other in nearly five weeks, the longest stretch since we met.

  Later that evening I make my son take a bath for the first time since he broke his arm. I sit beside the tub and chat with him.

  “I’m sorry this happened, Dad,” my son says at one point.

  “Don’t you worry about it, we’re going to be fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Trust me, we will.” We chat some more about video games he wants that I won’t let him have, and then I get up to make a cup of tea. “Keep your cast out of the water,” I say as I leave the room.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I know,” he says. Within seconds I hear him holler, “Oh, no!”

  “What happened?” I rush back into the bathroom.

  “I forgot. I started to lie down and I forgot.”

  “Are you kidding me? I told you five seconds ago!”

  “I know, I’m sorry! I forgot!”

  “Get out.” The cast is dripping.

  I call D.

  “Where’s the hair dryer?”

  “Hello, my luv. What? Why do you want the hair dryer?”

  “Don’t ask. Do you know where it is?”

  “Oh, no,” she gasps, comprehending instantly. “Bottom of the closet, right-hand corner.”

  I pat down the cast and wave the blow-dryer over it. “Is it wet inside?”

  “No, not really.” Neither of us wants the cast to be wet, but we both know that it is. Despite my son’s still occasional misgivings about the impending marriage, he is looking forward to going to Ireland. I flip off the dryer. The corners of his mouth begin to turn up and we both burst out laughing.