Comfort and Joy

by Comfort

  In the other front pocket, I feel something odd. I reach in farther, find something cold and hard. I pull it out and stare down at my hand.

  In my palm is a small, white arrowhead.

  I close my eyes and count to ten. When I look down again, the arrowhead is still there.

  It can’t be. You know it can’t.

  You didn’t walk away from the crash.

  Yet I’m holding this arrowhead. With everything I am, everything I think and feel, I believe this.

  Of course, I’ve believed lots of crazy things . . .

  I walk over to my bathroom and hold my hand up to the mirror.

  There it is: small and white against my palm, like the tip of a Christmas tree.

  I need help. Closing my hand tightly around the arrowhead, I head out of my room. As I pass the bureau, I see the airline ticket and glance at my clock. The daily flight to Seattle leaves in just under three hours.

  What if?

  Once again those two small words infuse my world with hope and possibility. I can’t push them away, can’t stop the swell of longing this time.

  Shoving the ticket in my purse, I leave the house that already feels as if it belongs to someone else and go to my garage, where I limp past the file cabinets of my dreams and get into my Volvo. Behind me, the door lifts open.

  Before I start the car, I look down at the thing in my hand.

  It’s still there.

  Slowly, keeping my foot on the brake, I back out of my garage and down the driveway. All the way to my sister’s house, I clutch the arrowhead and pray it’s real.

  I don’t think my fragile mind can handle another delusion.

  Still praying, I park in Stacey’s driveway, grab my cane, and go to the front door, where I ring the bell repeatedly.

  It isn’t until I hear footsteps that I remember who else lives here and think: This could be bad.

  Thom answers.

  I stare at him, this man who held my heart for so many years and slept beside me and sometimes remembered to kiss me good night. It is the first time in months I’ve been this close to him, and I feel . . .

  Nostalgic and nothing more. Here is my past, my youth, staring down at me. He looks remarkably like he did on the night I met him, all those years ago. Back when we were kids.

  “Hey, Thom,” I say, surprised at how easy it now is to say his name.

  “Joy.” His normally strong voice is a whisper. I can see him wondering what to say.

  “It’s funny how things work out,” I say, giving him time to think.

  “I’m sorry, Joy.”

  I’m surprised by how deeply his words affect me. I hadn’t known until just now that I needed to hear them. “Me, too.”

  After that, silence falls between us. Neither knows where our words should go. We stare at each other; he looks as sad as I feel. Finally, he says, “Is Stacey expecting you?”

  “No.”

  He glances toward the stairs and yells, “Stace. Your sister’s here.”

  Stacey comes down the stairs, looking panicked. She looks worriedly at Thom, then turns to me. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m better than okay, actually.” I grab her sleeve and pull her into the hallway. I should wait for more privacy, maybe take her to a room, but I’m too nervous and excited to be sensible. “I found this in the pants I was wearing on the plane.” I lift my hand and slowly unfurl my fingers.

  Stacey stares down at my palm.

  I can see it as plain as day—a small white arrowhead.

  Please . . . I don’t even know how to finish my prayer. I just know that if my hand is empty, I’m lost. I’ll need—as they say—a long vacation in a rubber room. It takes every scrap of courage I possess to ask her: “Do you see it?”

  “The rock?”

  White hot wonder suffuses me; with it, I can see how cold and empty I was before. “You see it,” I say. “It’s really there.”

  “It’s an arrowhead, I think. What does it mean?”

  “It means I’m going north.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I, but I’m using my plane ticket.”

  That stops her. “Are you sure?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  I see how her face creases at that, how her eyes fill with fear and worry. It’s the crash. Like me, she’ll battle those memories for a long time. “It won’t happen again,” I say gently.

  “I’m going with you.”

  I touch her arm. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think I need to do it just like I did before. Alone. Looking for hope.”

  “I’m driving you to the airport, then. Don’t even think about arguing with me about it.” She runs past me and goes upstairs. I can hear her moving down the hallway overhead. I return to the living room, where Thom is waiting. We stare at each other.

  “Take good care of her,” I say at last. “She really loves you.”

  “I love her, too, Joy.” I hear the throatiness in his voice and know he means it.

  I feel a pinch at that, a phantom pain, but it’s gone quickly. “Good.”

  A few minutes later, Stacey reappears. Grabbing her keys from the copper bowl on the entry table, she kisses Thom good-bye, then leads the way to the garage. While she’s starting the van, I get my purse and the ticket. Then I climb into the passenger seat and slam the door shut.

  My sister looks at me. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, then. We’re off.”

  Thirty-five minutes later, we are at the airport. We pull up to the curb and park, then get out of the minivan.

  On the sidewalk, she pulls me into her arms and holds me so fiercely I can hardly breathe. “Don’t you vanish on me.”

  “I’ll call you when I get there,” I promise.

  “Wherever there is.” Stacey draws back. “I’m afraid I’ll never see you again.”

  “How can I disappear? I have a wedding to go to in June.”

  Stacey draws in a sharp breath. “You’ll come?”

  “We’re sisters,” I say simply.

  I can see the impact of my words. Stacey smiles, but its watery and weak. “I love you, Joy.”

  And I know then: no matter what I find or don’t find in Washington State, I will always have a place where I belong. It has taken us a long time, but Stacey and I have finally returned to the beginning. We’re sisters again, two little girls in the back of a hot VW bus, experiencing our lives through each other, holding hands when we’re scared.

  “I love you, too, Stace.”

  It takes almost forty minutes to get to my gate, and then another twenty minutes before they call my flight.

  I get in to line.

  To my left, through the dirty bank of windows, I see my plane.

  Can I do it? Suddenly, I don’t know. I can feel my heart beat and the sweat popping out on my forehead.

  I reach into my pocket, coil my fingers around the arrowhead.

  Promise you’ll come back, Joy.

  It’s crazy.

  Head injury insane.

  But I believe.

  It’s that simple, really.

  Crazy or not, I believe.

  Breathing carefully, moving slowly, I enter the aircraft and go to seat 2A.

  There, I pull the seat belt tightly across my lap and check where the exit row is.

  Then I pray.

  THIRTEEN

  I scream when we touch down in Seattle. The sound horrifies me, as does the obvious disapproval of my fellow passengers and the flight attendants, but I can’t contain my fear until we’ve landed.

  I am still shaking as I follow the crowd of my fellow passengers off the airplane and through the busy beige bowels of SeaTac airport. Silvery fish inlaid in the tile lead me to the baggage claim area, where I rent a sensible car and get a map of western Washington.

  Outside, I finally see the famous landmarks that have become so familiar. The distant snow-capped mountains and bright blue
waters of Puget Sound. Mount Rainier rises out of the mist.

  I have to remind myself forcibly that I’ve never been here. I have done so much research on the area I could have a Ph.D.

  Bumper-to-bumper traffic takes me to Tacoma, a city that is low and gray and seems to huddle beneath a layer of ominous clouds.

  Olympia, the state capitol, is unexpectedly rural from the highway. Every now and then I see an official looking building, with a spire or a rotunda or columns, hidden in a thicket of trees.

  By the town called Cosmopolis (wildly inappropriately named, I might add), I am in a different world altogether, where huge stacks pump noxious smoke into the sky, and peeled logs clog the waterways. Here, at the mouth of Grays Harbor, the economy is obviously based on timber and the sea, and both industries seem faded or failing. Houses are run-down, shops are closed up, the streets of the various downtowns are empty of commerce and people.

  At Aberdeen, I turn inland onto old Highway 101, which promises to take me to Queets, Forks, Humptulips, Mystic, and Rain Valley.

  This is it. If my dream is real, I’ll find it on this road, the only one that man has built between the mighty trees of the rainforest and the gray swell of the Pacific.

  I pull off the road and park, suddenly afraid.

  “Get a grip, Joy,” I say out loud, trying to use my best librarian’s voice, but I am like one of my own students—unconvinced. With shaking hands, I open my map.

  The town names taunt me. Which one of them is “my” town? Or will they all be unfamiliar? Am I looking for Daniel and Bobby and a lodge by a silver lake or was that all just a promise, a signpost to a future that hasn’t begun yet? Am I supposed to find a man like Daniel? Is Bobby the son I may someday have?

  It overwhelms me, that thought, leaves me shaken. How will I know what I’m looking for? I reach for my cell phone and call my sister, who answers on the first ring.

  “Damn it, Joy, it’s about time. I have no fingernails left.”

  “You had none to start with.” I stare out the windshield at the empty road. “I don’t know where to go, Stace. It all looks . . .”

  “Take a deep breath.”

  I do.

  “Again.”

  I draw in a deep, calming second breath and release it.

  “Now,” she goes on, “where are you?”

  “A logging town on the coast. About an hour from the start of the National Park. What if I don’t find this place I’m looking for?”

  There’s a crackling pause before my sister says, “You will.”

  “How can you believe that?”

  “Because you do.”

  Her words sink in and settle. They give me something to cling to, remind me that though I may be crazy, I’m not alone. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll be sitting by the phone, you understand that, right?”

  “I’ll call.”

  “Where’s your first stop?”

  I glance down at the map. “Amanda Park.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  It rings absolutely no bells in my head, but then again, my head is clearly unreliable. “Yeah. Talk to you later. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I hang up, return to the road and drive north.

  As I near the start of the Olympic National Forest, the view changes. Here, the landscape is unexpectedly shorn of trees. The area along the highway has been logged and replanted, but in the distance, I can see the white-capped peak of Mount Olympus rising into the gray sky.

  There are hardly any mailboxes along the road, and the few homes I see are mobile or manufactured, set back on clear-cut lots with no hint of landscaping. Perhaps this place can’t be clipped and claimed and domesticated; it can only be taken by force and held onto by luck.

  Amanda Park is a quaint town on the shores of Lake Quinalt.

  Neither of which I recognize. I drive up and down the streets but nothing is familiar, so I return to the highway and continue north.

  A sign welcomes me to Queets. I follow the old, poorly maintained road toward the town and through it. Nothing is familiar.

  Back out on the highway, I take a sharp turn to the right, and there is the Pacific Ocean. Endless gray water, dappled by a sprinkling of rain; white, roaring waves. I pull off to the side of the road again and get out.

  The driftwood is exactly as I remember it. So are the wind-sculpted trees. Only the sand is different. On my beach night, I stood in ankle-deep California pale gold sand to dance with Daniel.

  In reality, the sand, like the sky and the sea today, is a shade of gray.

  The entire coast is a riotous band of emerald green—huge bushes and stunted trees and mammoth ferns. I recall from my reading that it is the longest wilderness coast left in the world. Then, I was captured by the word “coast.” Now, standing here, I see the word that matters is “wilderness.”

  As I get back into my car and drive back onto 101, I am tangled in my own emotions. Amazed by the parts of my dream that were accurate, and heartened by them, and disturbed by the pieces that were wrong.

  Several more towns welcome and disappoint me. Though the landscapes are familiar, none of the towns are the one of my dreams.

  As I leave the wild gray shores of the Pacific and head inland again, the landscape becomes wilder and more primitive. Here, the trees are gigantic and straight, blocking out most of the sunlight. Mist clings to the old asphalt and gives everything a mystical, otherworldly feel. I drive through town after town and find nothing that speaks to me. By late afternoon, as the golden sun sets into a cache of thick, black shadows along the roadside, my faith is beginning to fade, too.

  Then I come to a sign made of sculpted metal that welcomes me to Rain Valley.

  Rain Valley.

  My foot eases off the accelerator. There’s a nervous flutter in my stomach that I haven’t felt before.

  I coast forward. In a way I’m moving against my will now, being drawn forward.

  I’m afraid to believe I may have found my town . . . and more afraid that I’ll be wrong again. There are only a few more turns left, here in the deep woods, and only Mystic and Rain Valley are near lakes.

  I turn onto Cates Avenue and roll into Rain Valley.

  In the middle of the road, I hit my brakes.

  It’s “my” town.

  And it isn’t.

  I pull over to the curb and get out of the car. I can feel the moisture in the air, hear it drop from leaves and boughs and plunk into potholes in the road, but it isn’t really raining. By the time I reach the sidewalk, the sun is breaking through the clouds, gilding the grassy lawn. Dew sparkles on the green carpet.

  I feel as if I’m in a Twilight Zone episode. The town—this town—is the funhouse mirror version of my remembered town. There is a park in the center of it—but it’s nothing like I imagined. There’s a gazebo in the center of the park also, its stanchions twined by wisteria that is moments away from blooming. Concrete benches and fountains are everywhere. Off to the left is a covered barbeque area surrounded by picnic tables. A shallow wading pond catches the slivers of sunlight greedily; its rippling surface seems to catch fire in streaks.

  Leaning on my cane, I walk across the spongy grass to the main street of town.

  My town was comprised of wooden buildings with big windows and cutesy names like the Wizard of Paws pet store, the Hair Apparent beauty salon, and The Dew Drop In diner.

  I stop in front of Lulu’s hair salon. To my left is the Raindrop diner.

  Only the ice-cream shop is exactly as I imagined it. And the church.

  My version is so close that I feel weak in the knees, and so different that I am sick to my stomach.

  Was I here or wasn’t I?

  Am I crazy? Brain damaged?

  Just as I imagined, the town is a sparkling jewel set against a backdrop of the endless Olympic forest. One million acres of trees and mountains and wilderness, without a road to drive through it. The street lamps hold hanging baskets now, their sides thic
k with brown vines and winter-dead geraniums. A few hardy pansies show their colorful faces.

  I walk into the diner first. There is no wall of pamphlets, no man drinking coffee at the bar. There is no bar.

  An older woman with a Lucille Ball–red beehive hustles toward me, smiling. “Welcome to the Raindrop. What can I do yah for?” She hands me a plastic menu.

  “I . . . I’m looking for the Comfort Fishing Lodge.”

  The woman stops and frowns, her heavily made-up eyes almost close completely. “Honey, I’ve lived here for forty years. There ain’t no such place. But old Erv Egin, he’ll give you a hell of a charter. Come salmon season, that is.”

  “Is there any fishing lodge?”

  She shakes her head. “We ain’t that developed yet, though the good Lord knows we could use a little tourism. There’s a motel out on Fall River that makes a mighty fine breakfast, and the resort out at Kalaloch, and that place up at Lake Crescent in Port Angeles, but there ain’t really fishing at any of ’em. Your best bet is a charter. In May . . .”

  “Daniel?” I whisper his name, feeling like an idiot. “He has a son, Bobby.”

  “You talking about the O’Shea’s? Out on Spirit Lake?”

  My heart skips a beat. “There’s a Daniel who lives on the lake? And he has a son named Bobby?”

  The waitress takes a step back. She’s eyeing me hard now, and I don’t think she likes what she sees. Her gaze pauses on the cane, then returns to my face. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Joy. I’ve come a long way to find them.”

  “They’ve had their share of trouble in the past few months, and then some. What with the accident and all. They don’t need no more.”

  “I’ve had some trouble of my own. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them.”

  It seems to take forever, but the woman finally nods. “They’re out at the end of Lakeshore Drive.”

  I can’t help smiling. I even laugh a little, though it sounds hysterical. “Thanks.”

  I limp out of the diner. I am in my car, easing away from the curb when I realize I didn’t ask for directions.

  But my heart will lead me. I’m sure of it.

  I drive out along the park to the old highway.

  And keep going.