by Comfort
“Where?”
“What do you care? It’s out of this house. Get your purse.”
To be honest, I’m thankful for the distraction. I follow her out to the minivan.
Fifteen minutes later, we pull up to our destination.
The high school is bathed in lemony sunlight. Bright purple crocuses cover the dry brown ground around the flagpole, reminding me that spring is on its way.
“Are you okay?”
It is a question I’ve come to hate. To answer it requires either a lie or a truth that no one—me included—wants to hear.
“Why are we here?”
“Because it’s where you belong.”
“Is it?”
Stacey says something I can’t quite hear, then gets out of the van and slams the door.
I get out of the minivan and stand on the sidewalk, leaning heavily on my crutches. Gripping their padded handles, I step-swing-step-swing down the wide cement courtyard toward the administrative building.
The Quad is surprisingly quiet today, no kids skipping classes to play hacky sack in the sunshine or looking for a place to kiss or smoke.
Stacey runs ahead to the building and opens the door for me. Familiar flyers—they’re the same ones year after year—clutter the bulletin boards in the hallway. They’re looking for student leaders, and singers for this year’s spring musical, and volunteers willing to decorate for the upcoming dance.
As I approach the main entrance, the bell rings. Within seconds, the Quad is crowded with kids laughing and talking.
When they see me, a roar of recognition goes up. Suddenly I’m Mick Jagger on stage. A star. Everyone talks to me at once, crowding in close.
Stacey squeezes my arm. “This,” she whispers in my ear, “is your real life.”
It takes us the entire ten minutes of the class break to work our way through the crowd and to the main office, where we’re overwhelmed again. Finally, when I’ve hugged at least one hundred people and been welcomed back by even more, we make our way down the hall to the library.
I’m struggling with my crutches at the turnstile, when I hear Rayla’s throaty laughter and scratchy, I-used-to-be-a-Camel-unfiltered-smoker’s voice. “Well, it’s about darn time.”
I push through the shiny metal barrier and find her standing at the checkout desk, with a skyscraper of books beside her elbow. “This is a big job for one woman,” she says with a toothy grin.
I laugh at that. We both know that either of us could easily do it alone. It is a secret we keep from the administration. “Now, Rayla, you know you love bossing the kids around when I’m gone.”
She comes around the desk, her skirt flowing, her silver bracelets tinkling, and enfolds me in a fierce hug that smells of hairspray and Tabu perfume. “We missed you, kiddo,” she says.
I draw back, look down at her. “I’ve missed you, too.” And it’s true.
For the next half hour, we walk around the library, talking about ordinary things—budget cuts, contract negotiations, recent acquisitions, and Rayla’s upcoming spring break trip to Reno.
“So,” she says at last. “When can we expect you back?”
It is the question I’ve been dreading. Back. By definition, it’s a return to what was.
I take a deep breath, knowing there is only one acceptable answer, only one sane one.
Stacey is watching me closely. So is Rayla. They both know. Not everything, perhaps, not all the reasons for my disquiet and my disappointment, but enough.
“Soon,” I say, trying to smile.
On the drive home, Stacey and I are quiet.
I feel like Dorothy, back in Kansas, a black-and-white girl in a black-and-white world, with memories in color.
Beside me Stacey sings along to some catchy, generic song from one of the American Idol runners-up.
Then it’s Bruce Springsteen, singing “Baby, I Was Born to Run.”
Memory overwhelms me. I close my eyes, remembering.
I’m in a red truck, bouncing down a country road, singing along to the radio. I can feel Bobby beside me, hear him laughing.
When I open my eyes—unable to take any more—I see the airport exit.
It can’t be accidental. Stacey never goes home this way.
And I think: Dorothy had to click her heels together three times and say, “There’s no place like home.” Even magic requires something.
Maybe I need to quit waiting for proof and go in search of Hope, like I did before. “Turn here, Stacey.”
“You were never there.” I know how much she hates to say those words to me. It’s in her voice. “You saw your real life at the high school.”
“Please?”
With a sigh, she follows the exit to the airport and pulls up outside the America West ticket counter. “This is crazy, Joy.”
“I know.” I grab my purse and the crutches from the backseat, and I’m off, hobbling into the terminal. At the counter, I find a beautiful dark-haired woman in a blue and white uniform. Her nametag identifies her as Donna Farnham.
“May I help you?”
“I want a ticket to Seattle on the next flight.”
The ticket agent looks to her computer screen, types quickly on the keys, then looks up at me. “There’s a flight leaving in forty minutes. The next one is tomorrow afternoon. Same time.”
I reach into my purse for my wallet. What’s a credit card for if not unnecessary expenditures? “I’ll take a ticket for today.”
“All we have left is first class.”
I don’t even ask how much. “Great. I’ll take it.”
By the time I’ve made it through the security line and find my way to the gate, my hands are sweating and my heart is hammering.
I try to think of Daniel and Bobby, try to believe I can make the magic strike again. I’m Dorothy. There’s no place like home, I tell myself, but my confidence is draining fast, being pummeled by the bright fluorescent lights overhead. In this light, I can’t help seeing clearly.
When they call my flight, I take a step forward.
Then I see the plane.
Images charge me; hit me so hard I almost fall down. I close my eyes and try to breathe, but that’s no help. In the darkness, I’m on the plane again, going down. Flames are all around me . . . I smell the stink of fuel . . . and hear the screams. I’m falling, tumbling, and hitting . . . being carried out of the wreckage. I can see it all: my face covered with blood; my arm hanging down from the gurney; the bone poking up through my torn, bloody jeans. The plane exploding behind me.
The shaking starts in my fingers and radiates outward until I can hardly hold onto my crutches. My palms are slick with sweat; I can’t swallow. Tears stream down my cheeks and blur my vision. Several people ask if I’m okay. I nod and push them away. If I could run, I would, but I’m as broken outside right now as I feel within, so I leave slowly, limping away from Hope. I’d crawl if I had to.
When I finally emerge from the terminal and step out into the bright, sunlit day, I see my sister.
She’s standing in front of her minivan, by the passenger door.
I go to her, clutching my ticket. “I remember.”
She puts her arms around me, holds me, and lets me cry.
TWELVE
For the next three nights, every time I go to sleep, I relive the crash. Over and over again, I wake up screaming and drenched in sweat, lying in the blackness of my own guest bedroom. There are no memories of the clearing left, of my mom telling me to wake up, or of Bobby showing me to my room.
By the fourth night, I get it. I may not be the brightest bulb on the porch, but I can figure out what message my subconscious is sending: You were on the plane, stupid.
You never walked away.
I have been like an anthropologist, looking in darkness for evidence of a lost civilization. Maps, photographs, drawings, they all decorate the walls of my house.
But now, finally, I see the light.
I am the one who has been lost, and i
t’s time to let go.
This is the message of my nightmares: Let go and move on or cling to fantasy and fall. My own mind has taught me the lesson that a battalion of shrinks could not. Too long has my heart been living outside my body—outside the state of California and all semblance of reality.
The next morning, I waken feeling bruised by nightmares, and I know what I must do. I totter out of bed; make a big pot of coffee and a resolution.
Inch by inch, I clear my walls. I start with the photographs of the Comfort Lodge and the map of the Olympic Peninsula. I am halfway done when my doorbell rings. I stand back, looking at my so-called progress. The entire east wall of my living room is littered with pin holes.
Tiny empty spaces where something used to be.
This is precisely the kind of thought I’ve been trying to avoid. When my doorbell rings again, I lunge for my crutches and head for the entry.
There, I open the door and find Stacey frowning at me.
“You look like crap.”
That hurts. “Well . . . you’re fat.” I spin on my left crutch and step-swing into my guest room.
Although I can’t hear footsteps on the carpet, I know she’s following me. I go to the wall and tear down a picture of Mount Olympus.
“You’re getting rid of it all?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Joy . . .”
Something in her voice gets to me. I turn around finally, face her. “I’m losing it.”
Stacey sits down on my bed, and then pats a place beside her.
I hop to the bed and sit down.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“I can’t sleep. Nightmares.”
“Of the crash?”
I nod. “My shrink said I brought it on by going to the airport. Like I needed to hear it was my fault.”
“And what about Daniel and the boy?”
I can hear the question in her voice, the wondering if she should mention the obvious. Actually, I appreciate it. There will come a time—soon, I think—when I won’t want to hear their names anymore. “I haven’t dreamt about them since you took me to the high school. And when I think about them, it’s . . . blurry.”
“What does that mean, you think? Are you getting well?”
I look down at my hands. I’ve thought a lot about this. A woman who can’t sleep has plenty of time to contemplate. “I think . . .” I can’t say it out loud.
Stacey puts her hand on mine.
Her touch steadies me. I look up. Tears burn my eyes, turn her face into a Monet painting. I’m glad. I don’t want this moment to be in focus. “When I first woke up, I was sure it was all real. Daniel. Bobby. The Comfort Lodge. The rainforest. Then I heard the facts, and I knew it wasn’t real, but still I believed. I didn’t know how to stop. I wanted it all so much. I felt so alive there, so needed and wanted, and here . . .” I shrug. “I kept thinking: If only I could find my way back to them.”
“And now?”
I take a deep breath, release it slowly. “I’ve Googled it all, and called information, and read about every town near or in the Olympic rainforest. My town doesn’t exist, neither does the lodge. Therefore, it makes sense that Daniel and Bobby are imaginary, too. It was all my weird way of dealing with the pain and horror of the crash.”
“That sounds like your shrink talking.”
“At two hundred bucks an hour, I listen to her.” I smile, but the joke falls flat.
“You’re giving me logic. I want emotion.”
“I can’t handle emotion anymore. It’s killing me. I’m too old to believe in magic and fate and destiny.”
“So it was the drugs, in other words, and your own subconscious.”
I frown. That’s not quite right. It’s important to me that I get all of this absolutely right. Otherwise I’ll never be able to get past it. “I think Daniel and Bobby were . . . metaphors.”
“I flunked out of tech school, remember? What do you mean?”
“I think they represent the love that could be out there for me—if I’m bold enough to change my life.” I take a deep breath and say: “The truth is, Stace, I’m tired of being alone. I want love, passion, and children. All of it.”
Stacey is quiet for a long time, and then says, “I can understand that.”
“I know you can.”
“And you deserve it,” she says softly.
I glance around my walls, staring at the pattern of tack holes between the few remaining clippings. Soon, this room will be back to normal; all evidence of my impossible journey will be gone. What will I dream about then?
“Come on,” Stacey says at last. “We’re going to be late.”
She ushers me out to the minivan. On the long drive to the doctor’s office, we talk about little things, nothing that matters.
Once there, it takes less than an hour to cut off my cast, take an X-ray, and pronounce me healed. My orthopedist, Dr. John Turner, says, “The break has healed beautifully. As well as we could have hoped. And Mark says the physical therapy is going well.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“How much more will she need?” Stacey asks.
“I don’t know.” He looks at me. “We’ll just take it day by day, okay? How are the headaches?”
“Better,” I say. Mostly, it’s true. The whiplash symptoms are abating slowly.
The appointment is winding down, edging toward goodbye, when there’s a knock at the door. A woman comes into the examining room; she’s carrying a white plastic bag. “Doctor?”
He looks at her. “Yes, Carol?”
“These are Ms. Candellaro’s clothes. The ones they cut off her after the crash. We would have thrown them away, but there were some personal items in the pockets.”
Something about that hits me hard. I don’t know if it’s cut off or crash. All I know is I can’t smile or move.
Stacey takes the bag. “Thank you.”
I’m still vaguely disconcerted as we walk through the parking lot. I’m using a cane for balance, though honestly, I think it’s emotional, a phantom feeling of less than wholeness. In truth, my once-broken bone feels strong.
All the way home, I stare at the bag.
Stacey pulls into my driveway and parks. “Are you
okay?”
“I will be,” I say, grabbing the bag.
“I could take that for you. Get rid of it.”
“I know.” How can I tell her I’m not ready to get rid of it yet? Instead of speaking, I smile and nod and get out of the minivan.
Leaning heavily on the cane, I make my way up to the front door. Behind me, I hear Stacey drive away.
Inside the house, it’s too quiet.
I’ve forgotten to leave the stereo on. I immediately go to the radio and push the button.
Bruce Springsteen is singing. “Baby, I Was Born to Run.” I change stations, find a nice, soothing Elton John ballad.
No more dreams for me. I toss the bag of clothes on top of my bureau and go back to work, stripping the pictures from my wall. When I’m finished, and my butter yellow walls are a desert of tiny gray pin holes, I cram everything into grocery bags and take them out to the garbage can in my garage.
Everything goes in the trash.
A ticket to Seattle.
A white bag full of ruined clothes.
For the next week, these two items—along with the memories they represent—sit on my dresser.
I look at them every time I walk past, but I don’t touch.
No way.
Until my memories of Daniel and Bobby have faded completely, I will ignore the ticket and the bag. By the time I finally reach for them, they will be cold, their power stripped by the passage of days. Someday I will pay the change fee and use my first-class ticket to fly to some other destination. Maybe Florida or Hawaii.
I am studiously ignoring the bag when the phone rings.
I answer quickly, turning my back on my dresser. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Candel
laro?”
I wince at the name and all that it implies. Perhaps, my summer project will be to return to my maiden name. “Yes?”
“This is Ann Morford. How are you?”
“Fine,” I say to my realtor. “You want to renew the listing?”
“Actually, I’m calling with good news. We have an offer on your house. Two hundred ninety two thousand five hundred dollars. I guess when you survived the crash, your house changed from bad luck to good luck.”
“Wow.” I sit on my bed, stunned.
“Do you want to make a counter offer? See if they’ll come up to full price?”
It takes less than ten seconds to make up my mind. I know a second chance when I see one. “No. I’ll take the deal.”
The realtor and I talk for a few more minutes about details. Earnest monies and closing dates and the like. I tell her I can be out of this house by Friday if they’d like, and I mean it. At the realization that I finally can leave, I’m desperate to get going. She faxes me the paperwork, which I sign immediately and re-send.
As soon as I’m done with that, I head for the kitchen to pour myself a celebratory glass of wine. I don’t make it past my dresser, though.
This time, I’m caught. The sale of my house and the prospect of moving has changed things somehow. I’m finally moving, changing my direction. The idea of it makes me feel indestructible.
I grab the bag and carry it to the bed where I sit, staring down at it. Then, very slowly, I open it.
The first thing I see is my left shoe. Just the one. I pick it up. The black-and-white Keds tennis shoe is in perfect condition. No stains or rips or mud.
My sweater has a few dark stains that I know could be either mud or blood or a mixture of both. It isn’t ruined, though. A normal person, looking at this sweater would never guess its history. There’s something oddly comforting in that.
Then I pull out my jeans.
The right leg has been cut and ripped from hem to waist. Dried blood makes the material stiff and discolored.
I reach into the front left pocket and pull out a wadded up Von’s grocery store receipt, an airport parking stub, and seven dollars in cash. In two back pockets I find some spare change and a paper clip. Exactly the things I expected to find.
