by Lisa Wingate
Birthday . . . Oh, smack, I’d forgotten all about Richard’s birthday. Friday. The day after tomorrow. Forty. Six years older than me. We’d talked about it, like, a month ago while watching the waiters at Chili’s bring out a birthday cake and sing to an embarrassed customer. Richard made me promise I wouldn’t take him anyplace with singing waiters on his birthday.
“Ohhh, your birthday. I’m sorry. I should be there. If I didn’t have to get to Texas and straighten out this family thing, I’d turn around and fly right back.” Forty had to be hard. I was glad I was a long way from forty.
“It’s all right.”
“No it’s not.” In all the talk back and forth about the land deal this week, I hadn’t even mentioned his birthday. Because I hadn’t thought about it. “I’m a really bad girlfriend.” A flight attendant moved to the microphone behind the service desk, and a line began to form in anticipation of boarding. I stood up, grabbing my things.
“You’re just you, Heather.” There was a flat quality to his voice, a matter-of-factness, like The grass is green or The air is invisible.
It stopped me where I was.
The flight attendant announced that due to wind sheers associated with a storm moving over the mountains, all flights had been delayed.
I sank down in my chair. Is that me? The girl who forgets people’s birthdays and kills houseplants, and it doesn’t even surprise anyone? They just expect it?
Plans flashed through my mind—a tidy little suitcase of them that I’d been unpacking during these past months with Richard. Richard and I had a lot in common. We got along well. We were both nearing that age where it seemed like it was time to . . . well . . . fish or cut bait, as the uncs in Moses Lake would have said. Not having settled down hadn’t bothered me in my twenties, but at thirty-four, you feel the fork in the road coming on. . . .
Some of our conversations had clued me into the fact Richard felt the same way. Maybe that was the reason for the melancholy sound in his voice when he mentioned the birthday. I wanted to believe it was, but really, I was afraid that I was the cause. Who wants to be dating the girl who takes off for another state right before your birthday and doesn’t even realize it?
“Well, listen, I’d better let you go,” he said, and I felt myself sinking lower.
Don’t, I wanted to say, Don’t let me go. But the words felt too vulnerable, too raw. I’d never been good at hanging my heart on my sleeve. But this was where so many relationships ended—with the old, You’re an amazing person, but we just want different things conversation. Sometimes I was on the delivering end of that line, sometimes on the receiving end.
“Hey, Valentine’s Day is next week.” As soon as I said it, I felt pathetic, like I was pushing—fishing to see if he had something planned. The ring box I’d been contemplating earlier suddenly seemed miles away. “We could do dinner at the Waterfront Grill, take a walk through the sculpture park if the weather’s all right.”
“Let’s talk about it when you get home. I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
Let’s talk about it when you get home? That wasn’t the response I wanted, not at all what I expected.
Or was it? Maybe I’d been feeling the cooling air around us for a while—like evening setting in, but when you’re busy, you don’t notice. Then you look up, and suddenly it’s almost dark. Chilly. Was that why I was trying to superimpose visions of a Valentine’s surprise—because I was afraid yet another relationship was dying for lack of regular watering and feeding? “Oh . . . okay. We can figure it out when I get back.”
“Have a good trip, Heather.”
“Richard, are we okay?” As soon as the words were out, I wanted to stuff them back in. What was wrong with me tonight?
His hesitation was an answer, even if it wasn’t. “Let’s talk when you get home.”
A wound, raw and deep, cracked open. On an architectural rendering, it would have been on Layer 1—the layer upon which everything else is built. “I’m sorry I asked.” The words were bitter, hard-edged. “But you could have just told me . . . if there was a problem with you and me. You didn’t have to pretend.”
He sighed. I pictured him leaning forward, his short, thick fingers wrapped over his forehead, rubbing, trying to drum up the right words, trying to avoid a confrontation. “Listen, I know you’ve had a lot going on with all the family and the property sale. I didn’t want to add any more . . . stress.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s fine.” But, really, my head was ringing like I’d just had a hard right cross to the jaw. The fact that he was trying to be kind about it only made it worse. Is a gentle smack in the head better than the abrupt kind? It’s still a smack in the head. “It’s not like we were engaged or anything, Richard. We were just dating, right? It’s not like there was any commitment.”
He didn’t answer at first. Clearly, I’d shocked him by being so blunt, but it was like a knee-jerk reaction, impossible to control. It’s so much easier to reject than to be rejected.
“Sure,” he said, and he sounded like I’d disappointed him in some way.
“I’d better go, okay? It’s time to board my flight.” It wasn’t, but the rip inside me was widening. The only thing to do now was pull it back together before anyone saw.
We said good night, leaving things strangely open-ended, and I dropped the phone into my purse. Beside me, the guy in the business suit ventured a sympathetic glance. He’d heard the relationship drama, of course. He looked like he might be conversational, and there was a dangly fish-shaped luggage tag—the Christian kind—on his carry-on bag, so I grabbed my things, headed for the bathroom across the hall, and locked myself in a stall. The last thing I wanted at that moment was well-intentioned counseling—spiritual or any other sort. I just needed . . . a few minutes alone.
To figure out why.
I could never get.
This one thing.
Right.
After twenty minutes of standing with my back to the stall door and my eyes closed, I still didn’t have the answer—what’s the likelihood of a profound personal discovery happening in an airport restroom, anyway—but I had pulled myself together. After all, Richard hadn’t exactly said we were breaking up. He’d just said we needed to talk, and then he hadn’t argued with what I’d said.
I went back to the waiting area by my gate and took a seat along the windows, away from the man with the Jesus tag on his luggage. He looked my way a couple times, but I just leaned my head back against the metal frame and closed my eyes, letting the cold of the Denver night seep through my body as the stewardess announced an indefinite delay.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers;
For thereby some have entertained angels unaware.
—Hebrews 13:2
(Left by Ruth, who’s seen the proof)
Chapter 3
Greyhound isn’t so bad . . . until you’ve been on one for sixteen hours, driving through the plains of West Texas in blinding snow. What idiotic notion had possessed me to climb into a taxi with the Jesus-tag man—Gary from Fort Worth, dentist, two kids, married twenty-nine years—to head to the Greyhound station, I couldn’t say. He’d awakened me when all flights were canceled, an extremely kind thing to do.
“Hated to just walk off and leave you here sleeping.” The slow Southern cadence of his words had comingled strangely with the fact that I was on my way to Texas, creating the feeling that I’d arrived there already. “Heard you say you had to get to Texas. No more flights going out tonight, and who knows what the backlog’ll look like tomorrow? By morning, they could be socked in here for days.” He’d smiled, his round face friendly, welcoming, sympathetic. “Greyhound’s still moving, if you want to take a chance on it. I’m headed to the station. Tomorrow’s my thirtieth anniversary, and I’m gonna be there if I have to walk in on snowshoes.”
There’s something irresistible about a guy who would combine snowshoes with a business suit and walk through an impending blizzard to get ho
me for his anniversary. I grabbed my stuff, and within minutes Gary from Fort Worth and I were partners on a journey of a thousand miles—the kind that binds you together like two tourists clinging to the same tree as a tsunami washes through.
By the time we reached Fort Worth, I knew all about Gary. Fortunately, he was a talker, so I didn’t have to be. He owned a chain of family dental clinics that was expanding through Texas and the Deep South. He was interested in learning about how ergonomic design might make his clinics more efficient. I gave him my card, even though, honestly, his project didn’t require a fully-integrated solutions firm like ours. Any licensed architect with an office in the back of a mini-mall could handle it. He asked where I was going; I told him. He knew about Moses Lake. He’d been there for a conference at the resort just past the dam. Small world. Amazing coincidence, if you believe in coincidences.
Gary’s wife and teenage daughters were there to greet him when we reached the Greyhound station in downtown Dallas. Seeming completely oblivious to the cast of strange characters that typically inhabit a downtown bus station, Gary introduced me, and all three of his best gals hugged me. Theirs was probably the warmest welcome I’d get in Texas. Things would not go so well for me in Moses Lake, I felt certain. I found myself taking in Gary’s family reunion like Scrooge watching the Cratchit family Christmas through the window.
Finally, I stepped back and blinked the bus station into focus, trying to ignore the creepy sensation that it was not the safest place to be on my own. The sooner I was out of there, the better. I’d have to find my way to a cab and then a rental car place, but really, I wanted to be where Gary was, turning the details and the luggage over to take-charge family members.
I leaned close to one of his daughters. “Tell your dad thanks for the help, all right? Tell him he’s got my card, if he wants to get in touch about the dental clinics.”
“Sure,” the girl, Kylee, looked up from texting on her cell phone, and smiled. “Have a nice vacation.”
“Thanks.” Juggling my stuff, I went to get a cab. In short order, I was loaded up and ready to go—until the cab rolled away from the curb, and I reached for my purse to see how I was fixed for cash, and there was no purse on the seat. I picked up my coat, my laptop bag. Nothing. Panic swirled through my tired brain, lighting up circuits that had been lazily flickering a moment before.
My purse! My purse! Where was my purse?
“Wait!” I screamed. Where? When had I seen it last? I remembered looking at my cell phone as we pulled into Dallas, wishing there would be a text from Richard. . . .
The bus! It’s on the bus! While I was gathering my belongings with Gary, sharing the euphoria of having survived our trip, I’d left the efficient-but-fashionable little Dolce purse tucked between my seat and the wall.
My money, my iPhone, ID, credit cards, everything. . . .
“Take me back to the bus station,” I gasped. And as soon as we’d made it to the curb out front, I threw open the cab door, abandoned my stuff, and ran down the sidewalk. One peek around the corner confirmed that the bus was gone. My identity was headed to Texarkana . . . or possibly to some shady computer lab in Russia or Nigeria by now.
My mind whirled as I ran back around the corner to the cab, begged the driver to wait with my things for a moment, then burst into the lobby and scanned the crowd for Gary and family. But they’d moved on. Outside, the cabbie was unloading my stuff on the curb, and a couple of bystanders in soiled overcoats were already checking out the spoils. I hurried out and laid claim before anything else could disappear, and then headed back inside, trailing two homeless guys, one of whom told me I was a dead ringer for Julia Roberts.
Despite assurances that I wasn’t Julia, he called me Julia and insisted on aiding me in finding my way to an official bus station employee, who could help me. He and his friend stood guard while the counter clerk called the bus, now en route to east Texas. My purse was nowhere to be found.
A desperate search of my pockets failed to turn up any folding money for phone calls, but who would I call anyway? All of my numbers were stored in my iPhone, which was who-knew-where at that moment. My fingers settled on something cardboard, and I knew what it was before I pulled it out. Gary’s card.
Oh, thank God. The thought came with an echo of surprise. I’d long since given up attributing much in my life to divine intervention, but right now, the fact that I’d stuck the card in my pocket instead of my purse seemed like a miracle.
The clerk had pity on me and let me use her cell phone, and in short order, my new friends, Harley and Doyle, were walking me to the curb and helping to load my suitcases into Gary’s wife’s Lexus. Gary thanked them and gave them each five bucks to go buy some lunch. Noticing that Doyle’s teeth were in bad shape, Gary dug through the door pocket of the car and produced a brochure for a mobile cost-free dental program, which Gary’s clinics helped to support. Doyle stuck the brochure in his ragged coat, shook Gary’s hand, offered a blessing my way, and pronounced this to be an example of the mysterious workings of the Lord.
I left the Dallas bus station, sandwiched in the backseat with Gary’s daughters, Kylee and Grace, all three of us waving good-bye to Harley and Doyle. There was an odd, tender feeling in the pit of my stomach, and Doyle’s broken smile lingered in my mind as we rolled out of downtown. Despite my lack of confidence in divine intervention, I couldn’t help thinking that if not for a snowstorm, a bus ride, a lost purse, an impatient cabbie, and a business card haphazardly tucked in my pocket, Doyle might never have found out where to get new teeth. Occasionally, luck and coincidence doesn’t explain things as well as you’d like.
After a short conversation, during which I was unable to come up with any good option as to where Gary and his family could drop me off, they made it clear that, no matter what I suggested—the mall, a hotel, a bank location where I could attempt to gain access to my accounts—they were not about to abandon me in a strange town with no money, no phone, and no ID. They would be driving me all the way to Moses Lake. Everyone was surprisingly cheerful about it, and I determined this to be the kind of thing that happened often. Perhaps it was the kindly look of Gary and his family, or the skill that dentists develop for carrying on one-way conversations with unhappy clients, but they were like the Griswolds of mercy meet-ups.
I borrowed Grace’s cell phone and called Trish—one of the few numbers lodged in my memory—so she could take the emergency file from my apartment and call my credit card companies and my bank. I didn’t even bother to tell her the whole story. I was too tired to repeat it, and Trish’s kids were screaming in the background. “Sorry it’s such a disaster so far. Just call me if you need anything else,” she said, and we hung up.
As we rolled southward under a cloudless Texas sky, sharing takeout food on the way, Gary’s family entertained me with stories of past family vacations buffeted off course—or blessed, as they put it—by strangers in need. The day outside was clear and perfect, the sky painted with the long white strokes of winter clouds. I found myself oddly taken in as the countryside slowly changed from rolling plains to hills dotted with live oaks, their green boughs stretching heavy and thick over amber tufts of last year’s grass. Here and there, we passed fields where cattle grazed happily on expanses of winter wheat, the lively green pastures and frolicking calves seeming to promise that the startling color bursts of a Texas spring were right around the corner.
I leaned against the window, my mind traveling back in time. I was curled up in the backseat of my father’s car, gazing out as wildflowers drifted by like spatters of paint on a bright green canvas—the deep azure of bluebonnets, the bright red-orange of Indian paintbrush, the purple of wild phlox, the yellow and crimson pinwheels of Indian blankets, the pale pink and white of primrose. Beside me, my little brother was asleep. Up front, Dad was driving and Mom was popping a new cassette tape into the player.
We were headed off on one of the trips Dad lovingly called Sunday-ventures. Those trips always
occurred after church, which we attended only when my father was not away on business. Generally, following the service, we would pick up my mother at home, and then there was no telling where we’d end up. Sometimes Dad was checking on a Proxica facility, or doing an inspection on a locker storage plant, or taking a look at one of Proxica’s massive farms, where rural families raised turkeys, chickens, hogs, and various produce to fulfill Proxica contracts.
Many of those trips took us far into the country, where Dad spied tractors or cattle in the field and told us stories of his childhood on the family farm in Moses Lake. Along the way, Mom would talk him into stopping so she could climb rocks, hike off down a state-park trail, photograph buildings in some derelict small town, or sit in a stranger’s cow pasture, writing in one of her ever-present journals. I never worried about how long she would be gone when she disappeared into the woods. I knew that my father would be there taking care of us, making a game of her flighty, unpredictable nature.
Of all the things I remembered about him, that one was foremost in my mind. He was a really great dad.
My eyes fell closed as I drifted between a dream and reality, between Gary’s car and my father’s. Finally, all of it faded away, and the long Greyhound bus ride caught up with me.
“We’re here! Wake up, Heather!” My father’s voice probed the darkness, and pulled me away. I snapped upright, smelled water and cedar and the chalky scent of wet limestone.
Outside the window, a sign was passing by. It was old, made of earthy, weathered wood suspended between rock pillars. The etched letters had been newly-tinted with gold paint, seeming incongruous against the burnt umber background.
Welcome to Moses Lake
If you’re lucky enough to be at the lake, you’re lucky enough!
“Hear that, kids?” My father’s voice echoed through the interior of the car. “We just hit it lucky. Anybody bring a swimsuit?”
He laughed, and my mind stumbled into the present. It wasn’t my father’s laugh, not my father in the front seat, but Gary from Fort Worth. The kindly dentist. My rescuer, without whom I’d still be at the Denver airport.
