Rebecca's Road

by Marlene Lee

  Thus when they were reunited in Shanghai he did not have to take a second wife. Yu Ling and her new husband joined him in the room assigned to him. They insisted that, because of his age and prior distinction, he must take the double bed beneath the portrait of his deceased wife.

  Gui Wei clasped his hands behind his back. Now his daughter and son-in-law lived in America. They enjoyed clean air, two bathrooms, and democracy. He remained in Shanghai, far from his daughter. He unclasped his hands and touched the ache near his heart. The twists and turns of life, the flow of China’s blood, his own, was most strange.

  In the distance he saw the American woman sitting on her high stool.

  She craned her neck and solemnly waved to him from across the room.

  ***

  How odd that Professor Wei and his daughter had been alive all these years in China, the same years that she, Rebecca, had been alive in Chico. At this very moment there were people in Russia, Brazil, Iceland, New Mexico, Minnesota that she would never know. The peach orchard and house where she had spent her life was such a tiny part of the world that it almost didn’t matter at all. Mother, herself, her brother Tom, Father, none of them mattered. She looked at Professor Wei with fresh eyes. Although he was a very interesting foreigner, he didn’t matter, either. Certainly the shrieks and laughter in the casino were as meaningless and impermanent as the hotel itself.

  Her widening thoughts made her dizzy. She clung to her perch and faintly heard Mother say:

  “Get down from that stool, go back to your car, and head straight home to the peach orchard. My Becky-Wecky-O has no business driving across the country by herself, thinking strange thoughts.”

  “But I’ve always wanted to travel, Mother—”

  “How do you do again, Miss Quint?” said the professor at her left shoulder. He had approached just as she was beginning to argue. “I wish to introduce my daughter, Yu Ling.” A beautiful, small-boned Chinese woman extended her hand. Rebecca wiped her upper lip with Mother’s linen handkerchief; the casino was cool, but disagreements made her perspire.

  “How do you do,” she murmured.

  “We three shall have tea,” said the professor. Rebecca stepped down carefully from her stool and followed them to a table by the window. Just outside, gray-green mounds of sagebrush grew right up to the concrete foundation of the hotel. A distance away a dry, dirty-white lake—salt? alkali?—lapped at its imaginary banks. A colorless mountain beyond, stubbled with brush, stood flat against a pale sky.

  Professor Wei translated. “My daughter says she has good luck at the table for playing cards.”

  Yu Ling took a packet of candies from her purse and laid them on a napkin. When the waitress came, Rebecca ordered fruit and cheese.

  How strange she should be sitting here with two people from the other side of the world. When she looked out the window again, the sun had turned the mountain pink, and the air was growing blue and restful. The little salt lake now looked as white as snow.

  How strange that the earth grew peaches in some places, sagebrush and salt in others, and that somewhere right now it was snowing. She helped herself to a candy. Mother would not want her to be in the middle of Nevada, sharing food with strangers from China. But the fruit and cheese and candy and tea tasted good, and she liked the sound of the language spoken by Professor Wei and his daughter.

  She watched the desert light change.

  I will learn to make friends with strangers, she thought to herself, and with strangeness, too, for strangeness is in me as well as in the world, and there is much Mother never understood.

  6

  If You Love a Thing

  “You drove all the way from California by yourself?” the man asked.

  Rebecca nodded. She’d found him sitting on a bench in the middle of the University of Montana campus. When they both stood, he would be short, she was sure of it.

  “What route did you take?”

  “Sacramento to Reno, Winnemucca, Challis, and here I am in Missoula.”

  He hadn’t looked away yet. His attention, like so many things on this trip, was a new experience. People were usually not interested in what she had to say. She was boring and odd. She’d been boring and odd for fifty years. She knew that. But right now at this bench she was talking to someone who asked questions and then listened. He looked at her, too. Directly. People so often looked away. She understood that she was an embarrassment. She was very tall. And though she ate bread and dessert with every meal, something Mother had always said she must do, she could never put on the weight her height called for. In addition, her hair was bright red, originally natural, but then she’d gotten old. Mother used to color it, but now Rebecca did the job herself, though as Mother had died only recently she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.

  “Did you hit any rainstorms?”

  “It was hot and dry. In Nevada, mountains in the distance looked stubbled, like the face of a man who hasn’t shaved. Or like a roast ham stuck all over with cloves.” It was one of her foolish statements. “Try to be sensible,” Mother would have said.

  The man smiled. The clock in the tower struck five and the green campus resonated all around. Since she wasn’t used to happiness, Rebecca stood.

  “It’s time to go,” she said abruptly. “Good-bye.”

  The man stood, too. “Is your family waiting for you?” She’d been right. He was short. She could see the bald spot on top of his head.

  “I’m alone,” she said.

  “Not while you’re with me. Would you like to go for coffee?”

  Rebecca shook her head and looked down into the Montana man’s blue eyes. She couldn’t tell if they were honest or not. “I’m lacking experience.”

  “It doesn’t take much experience to have a cup of coffee.” While she was thinking that over he added, “You’re probably more experienced than you think you are.”

  She remembered the fortune-teller, the hitchhiker, and the Chinese professor she’d met so far on her trip across America and knew he was right.

  ***

  Next day when she crossed the footbridge over the Clark’s Fork River she saw him at the same bench, drinking coffee.

  “How’s the traveler?” He’d turned the bench into a home, with thermos, light jacket, and a scuffed old leather briefcase. “Since you won’t let me take you to coffee, I’ve brought the coffee to you.” He picked up the dark green thermos, removed the cup, and unscrewed the insulated stopper.

  “How did you know I’d be back?”

  “I didn’t.” He poured coffee and handed her the plastic cup. His own was ceramic and had writing on one side: If you love a thing, let it go. The other side said: If it doesn’t come back to you, hunt down the son of a bitch and kill it. She didn’t know if the statement was intended to be funny or not. She ducked her head but lifted it when she remembered the gray roots.

  “Do you live in Missoula?” she asked. Idaho and Montana, she’d read, had citizens who wanted to form their own country. She wondered if this man, like his cup, was extreme.

  “I’ve lived on a ranch outside Missoula for twenty years.” He sighed like an introverted, melancholy person who is tall and thin rather than the short, loose-necked, loose-bellied person he was.

  “Don’t you like your ranch?”

  “I can’t keep up with it,” he said. “There’s a lot of work.”

  “Do you do all the work yourself?” She didn’t think so. He didn’t look like a lean man who works outdoors.

  “I did up until five months ago.”

  “What happened five months ago?”

  “I had a heart attack.” Her own heart squeezed painfully. Mother had died of a heart attack. She’d fallen from the top step four months earlier and rolled to the first landing; her head of white hair had bounced against the maroon carpet.

  The man took the plastic cup from her hands. “You look stricken,” he said.

  “I am.”

  He handed back the cup and looked
her in the eye. “Drink your coffee,” he said. “I’m not going to die today.”

  Rebecca had intended to leave by Wednesday, but on Friday she found herself still in Missoula.

  “Tonight I want to take you to dinner,” Raymond—for that was the Montana man’s name—said as he gathered his thermos, jacket, and briefcase from the bench. Rebecca accepted the invitation because he’d told her he was an instructor at the Institute for Rangers in the United States Forest Service and she trusted him. “My car is in Parking Lot B.” They began walking deeper into the campus, away from the river and footbridge. With one finger Raymond hooked his jacket over his left shoulder. Rebecca carried the thermos, and her straw purse swung from her forearm.

  He pointed to an old brick building with steep stairways and long, narrow windows. “My second home.”

  “The bench is your third.”

  He smiled. He seemed to like her. She was more likeable here than she’d ever been at home on the orchard in the Sacramento Valley.

  “When the weather’s nice I hold all my student conferences outside,” he said. “People usually find me at my bench.”

  “Is it really yours?” She knew there were endowed chairs. He laughed again. She’d never been this interesting before. She imagined Mother beside her, whispering, “Careful, Becky,” and so for a while she stopped talking in order not to undermine the good impression she was making.

  They ate dinner at a restaurant downstream from the bridge. She was prepared to pay her share, but Raymond said she was his guest.

  “Would you like to see my ranch sometime?” he asked. They’d finished their meal and were standing on the river walk by the restaurant. In the twilight a white-haired man in wet tennis shoes floated down the current of the Clark’s Fork in an inner tube.

  “No, thank you. I’m leaving tomorrow on my trip across America.”

  Raymond turned to face her. “I hope you’ll come back and visit me.”

  “I doubt that I will,” she said. She watched the old man in the inner tube twirl once, then kick hard in the darkening water. The tube straightened out and he continued on downriver. “Why do you want to see me again?”

  Raymond’s eyes dimmed for a moment, like lights during an electrical storm, then came on again. “You have no pretense,” he said. “None at all.” He sounded tired.

  Rebecca worried about his heart. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “No,” he said sharply. “My heart surgery was a success. I wouldn’t like to sit down.” Her own heart locked up, then raced ahead. She turned twice in place. On the second turn he took her hand. “I’m sorry I snapped.” He led her to a bench at the edge of the walk. Though he’d just said he wouldn’t like to sit down, he sat down. Rebecca did, too.

  “I try to forget about my heart trouble,” he said. He let go of her hand, plucked the knees of his trousers to loosen them, rested his forearms on his thighs, and leaned toward the river. “I’m lucky to be alive. I know I’m lucky. But I don’t feel lucky.”

  Rebecca looked closely at his collar, neck, and large-lobed ear. She was surprised that such an ordinary-looking man could make her feel so interested. Instead of listening for an imaginary voice, she was paying close attention to a person who was alive.

  “My wife died a year ago tomorrow,” he said, and took her hand again.

  Under the footbridge boys shouted and swung from a rope, the last of the swimmers, the ones whose parents didn’t call them in before dark.

  “Would you like to walk to my bed-and-breakfast? It’s nearby, right on the river. We could sit on the porch for a while.”

  They followed the river walk that led to the Victorian Inn and climbed the eight steps to the porch. Lamplight shone through the screen door. Somewhere inside, a TV was playing. Raymond looked over the railings into both side yards before he took a chair next to Rebecca’s. The porch vine stirred in the breeze.

  “Where will you be this time tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet.” They watched evening come on and the green river turn black.

  “I hope you’ll come back to Montana sometime.”

  “If I do,” said Rebecca, “I’ll go to your bench.”

  Raymond moved his porch chair closer and stretched his legs out in front of him. “You know, when we Montanans see something we like—”

  “You expect it to come back to you.”

  “Of course.”

  “It says so on your cup.”

  Raymond took his legs off the chair and set his feet back on the porch. “You don’t have anything against strong feelings, do you?” He took her hand.

  Although they could no longer see the water, they sat and listened to its flow. After a while she felt a stab of uncertainty. They weren’t talking and she didn’t know how long to sit beside someone and hold his hand if he wasn’t saying anything. As if he understood, Raymond said good-night, descended the porch steps, and retraced his route along the Clark’s Fork River that murmured musically in the darkness.

  ***

  The next day Rebecca left Missoula and drove southeast. At sunset the Wyoming sky was full of pink light. She pulled off the highway, got out of her car, and walked along the shoulder. Flat distances stopped by mountains filled her with loneliness, yet the sky poured so much end-of-daylight over her that she felt bathed in hope; hope and despair as mixed and delicious as—as the hot and cold bath water Mother had drawn for her every night of her life. She stood beneath the fluffy, sunset-shot clouds and wept for Mother; for all the baths she would never take again in Mother’s long, deep bathtub; for childhood that was gone, though it had lasted longer than most.

  Where does time go? She’d heard people say that before: “Where has the time gone?” They always shook their heads. No one knew the answer.

  Without warning, panic struck, splitting her from forehead to navel. Mother dead. She, herself, fifty. And now Raymond in Missoula with heart trouble. Her own heart swelled unreliably, then collapsed and dropped down what felt like an endless stairwell, bouncing erratically on whatever it struck, faster and faster. She ran back to the car and jumped in. Time was change, and change was everywhere. A minute ago she’d been standing on the highway and the clouds overhead had been shaped one way; now she was inside the car and already they’d blown apart. Already the red sun was sitting on the horizon. With her own eyes, no scientific equipment needed, she watched Earth roll up and cover it.

  She drove as fast as she could to the next town and called Raymond at the phone number he’d given her. She was perspiring.

  “Hello, this is Rebecca Quint. I met you at the bench on the University of Montana campus.”

  “Rebecca. You don’t have to explain who you are.”

  “I’m very frightened,” she said, and began to hyperventilate.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She struggled against the wild sound Mother so hated during these attacks. “Don’t smoke or eat fatty food,” she babbled. “Take care of yourself, Raymond. Don’t fry your food. You don’t fry your food, do you? Don’t smoke or eat—”

  “Stop!” Raymond shouted into the telephone.

  She stopped.

  “Where are you, Rebecca?”

  She went back to the car and got the map. “Remington, Wyoming.” She looked for a street sign. “Fourth and Main.”

  “You’re just over the state line,” he said. “Find a motel and call me back.”

  She did.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said. “Wait for me.”

  Trembling and weak, she went to bed. At three-thirty the next morning she awoke to the sound of a car engine in the parking lot. Barefoot, she ran across the room to the window, peered out between the drapes, and was immediately blinded by headlights. Raymond had come for her. She nestled her blinded face in the crook of her arm. Now that he was here, she didn’t want to see him. She liked the idea of Raymond better than Raymond himself. She was sorry she’d called him. All she really wanted was t
o drive alone across America, feel Mother’s presence, and look at the scenery.

  The headlights and engine went off. She walked to the middle of her motel room and waited for a knock on the door. It came, not loud, not soft. She knew she shouldn’t open the door to a stranger.

  “Raymond, is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  She undid both locks but left the little chain in its track. He stared at her through the crack, then grinned. “See? I’m still alive.” She couldn’t decide whether to let him in or not. He didn’t realize that her panic attacks didn’t last long.

  His grin faded. He looked at his watch, then back at her. “It’s three-thirty in the morning,” he said. “May I use your bathroom?” She undid the chain.

  While she combed her hair she listened to the bathroom sounds and felt—not panic, but grave uneasiness. She heard the toilet flush and said, as he opened the bathroom door and came back into the bedroom, “I can’t have a stranger in my room.”

  He stared at her. “That doesn’t fly anymore,” he said. “We’re not strangers. Just let me sit down for a minute, then I’ll get my room.”

  While he rested at the round table in the corner, Rebecca perched on the end of the bed. The long skirt of the satin robe Mother had given her, with her initials embroidered in a scroll pattern just above the breastbone, wanted to part. She had to hold it together with one hand.

  Raymond looked at her chest and said, “‘RQ.’ I don’t believe I know what ‘Q’ stands for.”

  “‘Quint,’” said Rebecca.

  “Rebecca Quint,” he said. She was ready to jump out of her skin with this man in her bedroom pronouncing her name. “Ah, you said it on the phone.”

  “I can’t talk tonight,” she said. He looked tired. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “It was nice of you to drive here,” she added. “My panic attacks don’t last very long. I wouldn’t have called you if I’d been in my right mind.”

  “How long have you experienced these attacks? Just since your mother died?”

  “Since I was a girl.” She hoped he wasn’t going to play psychiatrist. Mother had taken her to every doctor in Chico.