Celine nodded. “More like a full-time adventure.”
“What’d he think he’d get out of it?”
“At night he’d say, ‘Celine, I found part of myself when I found you. Now I have to find the other part.’” Celine’s voice faltered.
Grace leaned across the sofa and gave the young woman a squeeze.
“Look, Celine. I know you want him back. So do I. But I don’t think it’s good for you to be here by yourself every weekend. This isn’t a shrine. More like a tomb. And you’re too young and pretty to turn into a zombie. Let’s plan on coming here together next Saturday. I can help you do a little packing, okay?”
That evening, Grace pulled a wooden kitchen chair into her one-bedroom condominium’s bay window. She sat in the dark, staring out at the blackness of San Rafael Bay in the distance.
If Kenji were hiking, he could walk from here to San Francisco. Or from here to Sacramento. Or to Oregon. He could walk to Canada. So what about me?
***
A few days later, Grace and her sister sat in a bright Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland.
“Did I tell you Harrison got a job offer in Atlanta?” Hope bit into a vermicelli summer roll.
Grace choked on her iced coffee. “What? Atlanta? No, you didn’t tell me. I’d remember something like that.” Her complexion blanched and then regained its color. “Oh, wait. You’re kidding. Very funny, Hope. You had me there for a moment.” She grinned and attacked her noodle dish.
Hope didn’t speak. Grace raised her head. Then she dropped her chopsticks. They bounced off her bowl and clattered to the floor, rolling across the pink and grey linoleum to the neighboring table.
Hope picked them up, wrapped them in her napkin, and placed them with exaggerated care alongside her plate.
“Hope.” Grace flicked her finger insistently against her water glass. “Look at me. Your husband didn’t get a job offer on the East Coast, right? You’re not going to move, are you?”
Hope pantomimed to a waitress that Grace needed another pair of chopsticks.
Grace knocked the hot sauce container against the table. “Look at me, Hope.” Hope raised her eyes. “This has to be a joke.”
“Grace, it’s not that bad. I didn’t just tell you I had cancer. Atlanta’s still in the United States.” Hope waited. But Grace refused to look at her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. Nothing’s firm yet. Harrison flew out two weeks ago for an interview. He got the call yesterday. It’s still being negotiated. He wants more money than they’re offering.”
Grace snorted.
“I know you don’t like Harrison. But he’s trying to do his best for us.”
“Like the way he always forgets his wallet when we go out to dinner, so that I have to pay?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Grace shot her arm across the table. “Oh, Hope. I didn’t mean that.” She took a deep breath and rubbed her crumpled napkin hard against her lips. “It’s Kenj.” Her words filtered through falling bits of paper.
“I know. Now it’s always Kenji. Even if we’re talking about the Wi-Fi being slow or the windows needing cleaning. I can’t get away from him. At the same time, I never want to stop thinking about him.” Hope ran her hand through her thick bob, as though trying to wipe away a memory. Her shoulders sagged. “What should I do?”
“Please stay. I need my little sister.”
“I can’t promise, Grace. I’ve got two kids. And our family’s falling apart.”
“You and Harrison?”
“No. Us. You and me. Mom and Dad. It’s all such a mess now. I used to hate going to Mom and Dad’s on Sundays. They were always fussing over Kenji. Sometimes I thought they wouldn’t even notice if the rest of us didn’t show up. Now I would give anything to do it one more time.”
Grace reached for Hope’s hands and spoke slowly, with a pause between each word. “I want you to stay near me, Hope. But that’s what I want. You have to do what you want.”
After lunch, outside the restaurant, she returned to the subject. “Keep Harrison’s job offer a secret until things are clearer, okay? The last thing we need is Mom going ballistic because her daughter’s moving across the country. Or that she crashes into some kind of depression. You never know with her. She’s like the stock market—hard to predict.”
“I won’t say anything until it’s firm.”
“Good. Mom and Dad both seem so brittle.”
Or maybe, Grace thought two weeks later, that was how I felt.
Her mother and she stood in the Mori family kitchen. Grace scooped fried rice and garlic shrimp from takeout containers onto plates.
Her mother’s high-pitched Japanese broke the silence. “Dad and I want to move back home to Japan.”
Grace dropped the box. Two shrimp caught in her blouse. Her mother sighed, pulled Grace’s arm over the sink, and shook the sleeve vigorously. The renegade prawns plopped onto stainless steel and slithered into the disposal.
“Sit down.” She led Grace to a chair. “You want some tea?” She pumped a thermos pot. Hot water filled a delicate clay bowl. She swirled the tea around and poured Grace a small cupful.
Grace pushed the cup away. “You are moving back to Japan.” Her Japanese was slow and careful. “After all these years?”
Her mother stood beside her, hands cupping the tea bowl. “Do not worry. We will not go soon. But with Kenji gone, nobody needs us anymore. You have your job. Hope has her family. We think we could have a second beginning back home in Japan. A second spring.”
Grace’s accusing eyes sought her mother’s. “I thought this was your home.” Her finger pointed around the room.
“It is. But we want to go back to where we came from. Where we really belong.”
“You do not belong here? What about Dad’s job?”
“He can retire. He has been thinking about it for years.”
Grace felt dizzy.
Thirty-three years in this family, and I still don’t know what’s going on half the time.
“Mom. I thought we all had to stay together.” The words caught in her throat.
Her mother patted her shoulders. “America has 9-11. The Moris have 4-14. You cannot change that, Grace. Kenji is gone. And from the point we lost him, everything was different.”
A small puff of air escaped Grace’s lips, half sigh, half assent.
“I hope you never know what it is like to lose a child. I would do anything in the world to get him back. Sometimes I feel so sad I think my ribs will crack open. My heart will fall on the floor. But then I remember I still have you and Hope. That gives me the strength to go on.”
“I did not know you feel that way. I guess I cannot really imagine.”
“Dad and I will take things slowly. But in the end, we all have to figure out how to move on.”
On her drive home, phrases reverberated in Grace’s head, bouncing off each other, loud and distorted. Moving. Where we belong. A second beginning. To distract herself, she called Celine at a stop light.
Her fingers drummed the steering wheel while she waited for Celine to pick up. “Celine? It’s Grace. This family’s too crazy.”
“What? Where you at, Grace?”
“In the car. Long story. I’ll tell you when I see you. Have you been to Kenji’s yet this weekend?”
“No, girl. I was waiting for you to call.”
“Want to meet me there now?”
“Now? Okay. I’ll be there in ten.”
“It’ll take me more like twenty. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Move on. That’s what I told Ben I needed to do when we split up. Now everyone in my family seems to have gotten that message but me.
When Grace arrived at Kenji’s, Celine sat on the living room floor, packing her side of the bookshelf into sturdy boxes. A happy pop song played.
“Thought I’d start on some stuff.” Another book flew into the box. “It’s weird, but this is the first time I’m doing this without bawling my eyes out.”
“Funny how what they say is true.” Grace tossed her purse over the back of the couch.
“What do you mean?”
“Time heals all wounds.” Grace dropped to the floor and leaned against the sofa. “I think everyone but me is confronting what happened.”
“I don’t know about that. You’re the one who came over here first. And you can get me started crying again real easy. But tonight I feel like being happy again.” Celine shrugged her shoulders. “I finally changed the playlist on the iPod.”
“I thought this music was different.” Grace watched Celine pack books for a few minutes in silence. “Do you have any more of those boxes?” She pushed herself to her feet.
“Got a ton in my trunk. I’ve been carting them around, like, forever.”
“Can I have your keys? I’m going to start packing that stuff in the other bedroom, okay?”
Celine reached in the pocket of her jeans and threw Grace the set. “You go, girl.”
An hour later, Celine came into the bedroom where Grace knelt on the floor next to one packed box.
“Wanted to see how you’re doing.” Celine pushed the box to the side and sat down. “You don’t seem to have gotten far.”
Grace picked items one by one from the plastic containers surrounding them. There were tubs of pretzels, packages of M&Ms, and Snickers bars. Tuna and salmon in resealable pouches. Identical-looking white packets that had Pasta Roni, Rice-A-Roni, oatmeal, and instant mashed potatoes scribbled on them in red magic marker. Plastic baggies of raisins and banana chips. She raised a bag.
“Fish food?”
“Nope. Textured vegetable protein.”
She flung another at Celine. “Cocaine?”
“Funny.” Celine lobbed it back at her. “That’s breakfast shake mix.”
Grace turned over a bin, letting the contents tumble to the foor. “I didn’t even know Kenji liked half this stuff.”
Celine’s careful fingers replaced the items one by one. “Be happy you didn’t live with him. I had to try everything. Instant mashed potatoes with tuna mixed in for five days straight.”
“Why on earth?”
“To see if he could stand it. To see how long it took to cook. I have to say, some of the stuff was nasty. Like this.” She held up a bag labeled corn pasta. “I told him I’d rather starve than eat this again.”
Grace looked as though she were struggling with a difficult algebra problem. “Why aren’t there any canned foods? Or some of those hiker freeze-dried things?”
“Too heavy or too expensive. All this,” Celine encompassed the room with a sweep of her arm, “cost about a thousand bucks. It took him six months to weigh it all and decide what to eat when. See?”
She pointed to a masking tape label on one of the boxes. “The boxes all have numbers. He made a list. It’s here somewhere.” Celine rummaged through a container of maps and other papers. “Here it is.” She handed Grace an Excel printout of each box’s contents, weight, and destination.
“What a waste.” Grace let the printout drop. “I guess I can give the food to a shelter.”
Celine shook her head. “Already asked at work. A girl there volunteers downtown. They’ll take the stuff that’s in glass or a can, but it has to be in the original packaging. And most of this stuff isn’t.”
Grace surveyed the room again.
Enough meals and snacks to last for five months. Expensive clothing and equipment.
She walked to the closet and lifted the green and black backpack. It weighed next to nothing.
She slid her shoulders under the straps and fitted the waist belt around her middle. She looked at herself in the door mirror, pushing her long, highlighted hair out of the way.
“You can’t be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
Grace undid the belt clasp.
It’s crazy, but it feels right. I was looking for a way to move on. Maybe this is it?
She shrugged her shoulders out of the straps and hung the pack on the door.
“I can see what you’re thinking.” Celine’s voice took on the tone of a mother warding off a tantrum. “But that’s five months of hiking. And you don’t hike, do you?”
“I used to mountain bike. We all did. It was too tempting, with Mount Tam practically right outside our door. Mom used to make us wear helmets. Totally embarrassing at that point in life. I dumped mine by a tree on the way up and put it on again before riding home.”
“But that was a long time ago, right? And a few bike rides aren’t the same as hiking for months on end.”
“I know.” Grace nudged a pair of hiking boots across the floor with her sandal.
“You want to hike the PCT?”
“Only if you’ll help me.” Grace faced the younger woman, who still sat on the floor. “I’d need somebody to drop off all those boxes and stuff.”
“Grace, no offense, but you don’t know the limits of your own ignorance. You don’t drop the boxes off at the stops. You take them to the post office. The US government does the rest. The things you don’t know would fill a book.”
“Well, Kenji was counting on you to help him, right?”
“Yep. He was.”
“So you’d help me too?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking. I’m ready to help. But the PCT is serious business.” Celine stretched her slender legs and stood. “Come with me.” She pointed toward the living room.
She walked to the now half-empty bookshelf and squatted to look at Kenji’s side.
“Here.” Celine hefted three thick, heavily worn paperback books from the shelf and handed them to Grace.
“What the heck are these? They weigh a ton.” Grace read the spines. “Pacific Crest Trail guides. Have you read these?”
“Are you kidding?” Celine’s nose crinkled. “I never touched them. But Kenji was on them like white on rice. He called them his PCT bibles. So I think you should take a good long look at them.”
“Okay.” Grace flipped through the pages of photos and maps. “I’ll read them.”
“Take your time.”
“Well, honestly, I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to get through it all. Because if I decide to go, I’ll be going soon.”
“No, you won’t.”
Grace’s mouth puckered into a pout. “Yes, I will. I don’t want to wait.”
“You’re gonna have to wait, girl.” Celine stood with her hands on her hips, the image of a schoolteacher reprimanding a rambunctious pupil.
“Why? Doing Kenji’s hike will give me something I’ve been looking for. Waiting’s not an option.”
Celine shook her head. “Well, actually, it’s your only option. Nobody starts the PCT in late June. Five months from then is well into winter. You’d be snowed in before you made it to Canada. You have to start before the desert heat gets too intense. And you have to end before the snow. That’s why people start near Mexico around the end of April. There’s some kind of meeting down there then. The Send Off, or something. Anyway, Kenji was going.”
“I can’t go now?”
“No way, José.” Celine folded her arms and spread her feet apart. Then she shrugged. “Hey, look, who am I to tell you what to do? You’re the psychologist. But this whole thing is a mother effin’ crazy idea. And wanting to start now doesn’t make it sound more sane.”
As Grace drove home later, the three massive books slid aimlessly on the passenger seat.
Hope’s thinking about moving to Atlanta. Our parents are moving back to Japan. Celine’s playing happy music again. I’m not going to be the one who’s stuck, glued to the same place I am today. Single. Lonely. Without a clear purpose. Kenji’s hike, no matter how crazy, is my answer.
***
On the ridge, Grace shivered with fear and cold as a strong gust from the storm shook her bivy. She burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag.
Back then everything—the pack, the food, the boots—felt right. But I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself
into.
Chapter 9
At the same time as Grace marched unawares on the trail toward the blizzard at the top of the Desert Divide, a different storm of sorts was gathering much farther south.
At Lake Morena County Park near the Mexican border, almost five hundred wannabe thru-hikers assembled for the annual Day Zero Pacific Crest Trail Kick Off, known in the PCT hiking world as simply the Kick Off.
Experienced backpackers, complete novices, and all in between congregated for three days to socialize, prepare, and reminisce. Most were young, some had grey hair and wrinkles, and a few represented the middle age cohort. Overall, about a third were women.
Successful PCT end-to-enders from previous seasons returned to the Kick Off for the nostalgia, while rookies took the opportunity to gather valuable last-minute information about water caches, trail angels, gear, food, first aid, bears, and cell phone reception. Several hikers who started the trail earlier hitchhiked back to participate in the festivities. By day, people poked through vendors’ displays of tents, hats, and packs. They attended lectures. Made new friends. At night, campfires provided the backdrop for camaraderie and song.
Hikers referred to this mass of northbound thrus as “the herd,” a group of disparate souls united by love of the PCT. Some hopefuls would not survive the initial twenty, waterless miles. But at the Kick Off, all struggles still lay ahead. A NASA scientist, three dot com millionaires, sixteen ministers, thirty-eight camp counselors, and fifty-four marathon runners were among the hundreds gathered. Five had their pilot’s license. Two had served time.
One had almost killed a girl. And one didn’t care at all about the trail, only about revenge.
The majority of thrus took hiking seriously. But the lure of continuous partying drew a small number. These young, strong, mostly male hikers prepared for the weeks ahead by funneling vodka, gin, and rum into their water containers, concealing marijuana and other drugs in the small pockets of their packs, and drinking as much beer as possible while it was still readily available. Pulling down big miles to get to Canada interested them far less than hiking quickly to hit as many bars as possible along the way. Ultimately, if they ended their hike at Lake Tahoe, that wasn’t going to be so bad, they thought.
Wild Within (Wild at Heart #1) Page 7
