“Uh, no, not a relative.”
“A friend, then, somebody you cared about?”
I clear my throat again and I see the bathroom door open. Blossom has been eavesdropping. Normally, I’d be angry about it, except it’s clear I need some help. Or at the very least a little moral support.
“Actually, Roger isn’t anybody I know. I never really met him. I just found his ashes and a funeral home card with his name on the box, and, well, I just decided to take him back to where he belongs. Where I think he belongs, anyway.”
“Wow.”
I shake my head at Blossom to let her know this is not going well.
“That’s pretty nice of you.”
I shrug at my young roommate and she holds up both thumbs as if to say something like, Good job, hang in there, or so I think. Regardless of whether I’m interpreting her gesture correctly, I feel encouraged.
“Are you taking him back to his family?”
“Well, that’s kind of the tricky part. I don’t actually know where to take him. I have the name of the funeral home; but they won’t tell me anything about him. So I hope that when I get there I can convince the funeral director to point me in the right direction.”
“It’s a mission of faith, then.”
I have to say I haven’t thought of this trip in that light, but I guess Phillip is right. “Yeah, I think that’s a good way to describe it.”
“You still working for your dad?”
“Yeah, still at the Times and News. And you?”
“I have an insurance company.”
Another pause.
“Well,” I say. “That sounds interesting.” Although it doesn’t so much, if I’m being honest.
“No, not really, but it pays the bills.”
Is it me, or does Phillip Blake sound depressed?
“I’m sorry, Al, I didn’t even realize how late it is.”
I glance over at the clock on the nightstand. Blossom has left the bathroom and gotten into her bed; her head is on her pillow and she is facing me.
“Well, I’m in Arkansas, so it’s not as late for me as it is for you.”
“Oh, right. How has the trip been so far? Are you by yourself? Well, I mean, I know you have the box, the ashes—Roger, right?”
“Yeah, but I have my dog with me, too. And a friend is traveling with me to Texas.” I look over at Blossom and wink. She winks back.
“Well, that must make it more fun.”
Another pause.
“I’ve never driven across the country before,” he tells me. “I’ve flown to California and Phoenix . . . Seattle . . . but I’ve never driven anywhere except to Florida.”
“It’s a great way to see the country, town by town and mile by mile,” I reply. I sound just like a Greyhound Bus commercial.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.”
Probably on a Greyhound Bus commercial, I think.
“Well, maybe one day I’ll do it,” he says. “Maybe I’ll just head out and drive all the way to the west coast.”
“That’d be nice,” I respond and roll my eyes at Blossom. I sound so stupid.
“I’m glad to talk to you, Al. You were always such a good listener when we were in school together. That’s what I remember, how easy you were to talk to.”
“Thanks.” This reflection surprises me and I make a funny face at Blossom.
“So, maybe we can talk some more, you know, once in a while.”
I feel the flush rising from my neck to my face. Blossom is watching me intently. I slide down some in the bed, pulling the phone closer to me.
“That’d be nice,” I repeat.
“Okay, then. I’ll call you again, maybe when it’s not so late. Or you can call me.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he responds. “Well, sleep well in Arkansas and be careful driving.”
“Thank you.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
I click the phone off, hold it to my pounding heart.
There are no words to express the way I am feeling right now. Without saying a word, Blossom turns out the light. I watch as darkness settles over the room. I close my eyes and breathe. In and out, in and out, trying to understand how nothing and yet everything in my world has just changed.
chapter twenty-two
Iam dreaming of white flowers. A ground cover of Queen Anne’s lace, clusters of fine, delicate blooms, tall bearded irises and datura, perfumed trumpet-shaped flowers that I know open only at dusk, callas and Annabelle hydrangea, iceberg rose and lilac, all white, all blooming and fragrant and alive. I am young in this dream, ten maybe, twelve, not yet saddled with disappointment, somehow not undone by death. And I am happy. I hardly even know this is me as I watch, as I stand in the midst of this garden of green stems, leaves, and stalks and stark white blooms. I am the girl in the garden but I am also watching her. And the air is sweet and the sky is perfect in its blueness, and I can breathe. And I am so full and so light and for the first time I can ever remember, I am completely unbroken.
I hold out both arms to my sides, lift my face to the sky, close my eyes, and twirl. I am laughing and twirling and loose in this wondrous moment, loose in this splendor, this unspoiled delight, and someone is coming to me, someone I am happy to see, and I’m just about to greet them, just about to welcome them . . .
“Rise and shine, sweet friend of mine!”
And the garden and the girl, the guest and the dream, wither in the light.
“What the . . . !?” I pull the pillow across my face. “Blossom, shut the curtains!”
“It’s ten o’clock,” she tells me, like I asked, like I care.
I don’t move and I can hear the curtains close, as well as a long, dramatic sigh. “Casserole and I have already been out twice. You missed the free breakfast.”
I grunt.
“I brought you coffee.”
I try to bring back the whiteness, the flowery dream.
“And a banana and yogurt.”
I try to make it all return.
“Do you really want to keep sleeping?”
She is not going to go away. The dream is gone, the feeling, the delight; but she is not. Blossom is not going away.
I pull the pillow away from my head and throw it in the direction of her voice. Casserole is now right beside me, breathing in my face. He’s obviously eaten. His breath smells like chicken.
I reach my hand out and give him a pat.
“It’s only about one hundred and thirty miles to Little Rock,” Blossom says. “I thought we could stop for lunch there, take a tour of the capital city, let Roger see the governor’s mansion. I think he needs a little more history on this trip.”
“Of Arkansas?” I finally speak.
“Well, we’ve done mostly cultural stops.”
I assume she means the bars and the live music venues in Nashville and Memphis. That’s about the only culture I remember experiencing.
“Nature walks, a lake.” I didn’t realize Blossom was checking boxes for Roger’s tour, that she had some kind of bucket list of things we needed to share with his ashes. “Church.”
“Church?” I rise up from the pillow. “We haven’t been to church.”
“Well, there was Graceland.”
I drop back down. So there was.
“I just think he needs to hear something about the past, visit a museum, maybe.”
“You do know he’s dead, right?” I throw the covers off of me and sit up. I yawn and stretch and feel my face. Casserole moves out of the way so I can stand, which I’m not quite ready to do. “We have his ashes, his remains. Roger is dead.”
“He still ought to see a museum.”
It’s hard to argue with a girl like Blossom. I finally stand up, and
I glance over at the nightstand, and with the little bit of light coming from the crack in the curtains, I can see my phone. I think of last night, of Phillip Blake, of his voice, of hearing him talk. To me. I remember how it felt to be in the conversation, to be connected to him. I remember how it was to say good night.
“There’s the Museum of Discovery.”
I’m surprised she’s not asking me about the call. I’m surprised she’s not wanting to know when Phillip Blake and I plan to talk again, when I’m going to call him.
“It used to be called the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities. It opened in 1927 on Main Street and its most popular exhibit was the head of a Chicago criminal.”
I switch on the light and glance over at her. She’s sitting at the table near the window, reading a brochure.
“It moved to city hall and then to MacArthur Park and now it’s in a place called the River Market, which is next to the Arkansas River.”
“The head or the museum?”
Blossom glances up from the reading material. She shrugs. “Both, I guess. There’s also the Historic Arkansas Museum and the MacArthur Museum, and farther north from downtown is the Old State House Museum, which is the original state capitol building of Arkansas. It hosted the admission of Arkansas to the Union, a fatal Bowie knife fight between two sitting legislators, the vote to secede from the United States and join the Confederacy, and two acceptance speeches from the president.”
“Well, you have certainly done your research,” I say, scratching and yawning.
“I picked up some pamphlets from the office when I went for breakfast and got you coffee. I’ve had a little reading time.” She picks up a cup from the table and walks around the bed and hands it to me.
I take a sip. She’s added milk, the way I like it. Blossom is certainly the attentive waitress. “Thank you.”
She walks back over to the table, opens up the curtains a little, and glances over at me, her face a question mark. I squint at the morning sun, but I do not yell at her to close them. I start to move in the direction of the bathroom, but finally my curiosity gets the better of me.
“How come you haven’t asked me about Phillip?” I stop and sit on the edge of the bed with my coffee in my hand.
She keeps reading the brochure, shrugs.
“You aren’t going to ask me what he said or when I’m going to call him back?”
She shakes her head.
“You don’t want to know what it was like to talk to him?”
“I think I know the answer to that one. You were smiling even in your sleep.”
That’s interesting.
“But you don’t want to know anything?” I ask her.
She shakes her head.
I lean toward her, studying her. I do not understand this change, how she could be so excited for me one day and then completely uninterested the next. “Blossom,” I say, “what’s going on?”
I can see she has something she wants to say. She chews on her lip and shakes her head again. “I think the Old State House Museum is the best one.”
And this time it is I who shrug, and who, without response, head into the bathroom to get ready for the day.
chapter twenty-three
IT’S raining hard by the time we get to the site of the Little Rock museum. We’re sitting in the car on Third Street, drinking milk shakes we got at a drive-through. Blossom keeps taking her straw out of her plastic cup and sharing some of hers, vanilla, with Casserole. He’s sticking his head between the two seats and waits patiently for the treat.
I’m not sharing mine. It’s chocolate. I’ve tried explaining to Casserole that chocolate is no good for dogs; but he still seems disgusted with me and keeps glancing over in my direction with a kind of repulsed look and then turns back faithfully to Blossom.
We’ve been talking about my most recent phone conversation, the one I just had with my dad, who called me while we were ordering our milk shakes. Not the one from last night, not the one with Phillip Blake. That one she has simply dismissed.
“He sounded okay?” She has the lid off her cup and is stirring her drink.
I nod and take a giant slurp of chocolate. I feel Casserole’s disdain.
“So you were worried for no reason?” She pulls out her straw, heaping a spoonful of milk shake on the end, and holds it out for my dog to lick; then she sticks the straw back in her cup.
I watch this without a word. Most people would probably be a little grossed out about this exchange, but I happen to think my dog has only as many germs as the next person so I’m not at all bothered. It’s just a tiny bit off-putting because I feel like Casserole is assigning a new loyalty to this teenager.
“I guess I was,” I answer.
Daddy is fine, or so he says. He didn’t call right away because he’s been in Raleigh, attending a state legislature meeting. He claims he stayed in town because he was checking out a ’57 Thunderbird he heard was for sale, but I clearly remember the one he had years ago and sold, saying it was just too expensive to keep running.
“Why didn’t you tell him that we met the governor of Arkansas?”
I shake my head and don’t answer. Following the motorcade as it drove up to the governor’s mansion didn’t really seem all that noteworthy, and even though what happened later certainly might be, I still chose not to say anything about that.
I had driven farther onto the governor’s property than I should have as an unauthorized motorist, and after I realized as much, I stopped the car to turn around. But Blossom wanted a picture. Before I could stop her, she jumped out of the car with her phone trying to get a shot of who she thought was the governor. She landed badly, fell on the sidewalk near the front lawn, then lay there laughing hysterically while I yelled at her to get back in the car.
All of this quickly captured the attention of the security detail.
Their rapid response to surround Faramond, and the hour-long investigation that followed, would probably be interesting to a newspaper owner; but I chose not to give that report to my father. I start to remind Blossom that I don’t really think having the car impounded and then the three of us—Casserole included—being taken to a locked room on the mansion premises actually counts as meeting the governor, but I decide just to let that drop.
“I’m pretty sure that one state police guy liked you.” She takes a sip of her shake.
Casserole leans in.
“Which one?” I ask, surprised that she would think any of the security personnel exhibited anything other than sharp investigative skills. If I’m honest, I’m still a bit shaky from the entire incident. It was my idea to stop at the drive-through because I thought ice cream might calm me down.
“The skinny one who stayed behind with the car and then kept walking in and out of the room where they took us, jangling his set of keys like he was more important than the others.”
I think about the men in suits, the uniformed officers, the room where they escorted us. We handed over driver’s licenses, phones, the car registration, proof of insurance, even Roger’s ashes, which they quickly returned. The agent Blossom is talking about was thin and balding, a bit fidgety, and I don’t at all agree that he was interested in me. I think he was just trying to hurry along the entire investigation. He kept coming in and saying that the governor needed to leave, which apparently was a departure we halted with the illegal encroachment, the photo op, and Blossom’s fall on the sidewalk.
He was clearly concerned about keeping the governor on schedule. He did look at me once, long and intently; but I think he was just making up his mind about whether or not he believed the whole “returning the ashes” story, which actually made a couple of the agents smile. Once it was clear that we were who we said we were and we had no weapons or ill intent and that the car wasn’t stolen and that Blossom had permission from her grandmother to travel with me, I don
’t recall him giving me another look.
“Yeah, I don’t really remember it that way.” I watch the sheets of rain fall on the road ahead of us. I’m not sure Roger is going to make it to a museum in Little Rock. It’s already quite late in the day. He may just have to be satisfied with an hour in the governor’s mansion and the thrill of a near arrest.
“And what about your dad?” I ask, thinking about the second call she made after they found out she wasn’t yet eighteen and asked her to go with them to another room, leaving me alone with Casserole and a silent police officer standing at attention in front of the door. She called her grandmother first, who said her travel with me was fine; but then they asked her to call her father as well.
“He was fine—told them I was coming to Texas and that Grandma was right to give me permission to leave.” Another sip of milk shake for herself and then another for Casserole. He spills a little and quickly licks it up.
I nod.
“It’s cool that they got hold of that funeral guy in New Mexico,” she adds.
I have to agree. Mr. Harold Candelaria, owner and director of the Serenity Mortuary of Grants, New Mexico, confirmed that Roger Hart had been cremated at his facility in 2010; but he also told the Arkansas State Police that he did not know Alissa Wells or Blossom Winters and he could not establish that we were, in fact, in possession of his client’s remains.
Still, I’m glad Mr. Candelaria knows we’re heading his way. Maybe he’ll find a Hart family member and have the contact information when I arrive. That would save me a lot of unnecessary research.
“That almost makes it worth that whole bit of drama, don’t you think?”
I peer over at Blossom, who appears well at ease, make a face, and shake my head. I wouldn’t really go that far. Almost being arrested for stalking the governor of Arkansas and trespassing on private property requires just a tiny bit more benefit than a name and number. Besides, I already had the contact information for the funeral home in New Mexico and I can’t say when I’ll quit checking my rearview mirror for police with their guns drawn or freezing up every time I hear a siren. So no, I don’t really believe that side trip was worthwhile. That whole bit of drama makes me want to get out of this state capital as quickly as I can.
Traveling Light Page 10
