All of this will still be here, I think. It’s just me who won’t.
I drop to my knees and grieve for myself with wild, furious despair.
I can’t disappear yet. There’s still so much I want to do.
I want to see the first spring flowers. The last autumn leaves. I want to wake up to the magical first day of snow. Breathe in the crisp, cold air after a snowfall.
I want to drink beer with MacKenzie after a long day at work. I want to enjoy the first sip of coffee on a crisp autumn morning. I want to enjoy the second sip, too. I want to kneel beside MacKenzie and swear as we try to work out how to remove a red wine stain, eventually deciding just to move the couch over it.
I want to eat a tomato that I’ve picked from the vegetable patch. Walk barefoot in the grass by the river. Fall asleep, exhausted, on the couch one rainy afternoon. I want to crack up with laughter at something meaningless with MacKenzie. It has to be meaningless.
I want to make out with Michael and fall asleep against his shoulder. And, you know, everything in between. We didn’t get enough time together.
I wish I could make sure Camila wasn’t lonely anymore. I think she has been. I want to see her laughing again, maybe at something MacKenzie said, maybe while working at the motel with her.
I mourn for the people we were and the people we were forced to become and everything we could be again, if only we had more time. I want to sit in our usual place out in back of the motel, on a line of chairs against the wall, and I want to grow old with them. And most of all, I want them all to be happy. I want to see them strong and free and together.
Like we used to be.
* * *
Camila is the first to emerge, beautiful and composed in a dark jacket, skirt, and black boots. Her heels are high and thin, and they click against the asphalt. Click, click. Slowly, like some kind of challenge. There’s still time, MacKenzie, her heels seem to be saying.
Come on, MacKenzie, I think.
Michael is next. Unbearably handsome in his dark suit. Grown-up. Newly familiar.
I turn away, but then I change my mind. This might be my last chance to look at him, so instead I try to memorize him so well that not even fire and heat and calcination can obliterate it. As ninety-seven percent of me becomes liquid and then sand, the memory of Michael’s body will live on.
I wish life had been different, I wish they had never left, I wish they had come back sooner. Regrets: possibly the ultimate example of how we humans refuse to accept our powerlessness. Even when faced with things that have already happened, we’re unable to accept that there’s nothing we can do about them.
“We can’t leave without her,” Michael says. The funeral begins in fifteen minutes.
“I knocked on her door. I shouted. I tried the handle; it was locked.” Camila runs a hand over her face.
“Maybe she left already,” Michael says.
Camila checks the time again.
Eventually, they get into the car, but they do it as slowly as they possibly can. Swinging their feet in. Closing the doors, hesitating with a hand on the ignition. I see them reflected in the windshield, faint and distorted, as though they’re drifting away from life and not me.
I jump when I hear the engine start. Michael winds down the window and leans out, looking toward the motel. I see his face, one last time, as they slowly pull out of the parking lot.
This can’t be it. Not already.
My legs move without me making a conscious decision for them to do so. Down from the roof, heading I have no idea where.
I’m thinking: Michael.
Then I hear a smashing sound.
It came from my bedroom.
I get there just in time to see MacKenzie hurling my favorite coffee mug across the room. It hits the wall with a dull thud. Old coffee sprays across my cheery, bright-yellow walls.
“MacKenzie!” I protest. “We painted those walls!”
There is a stifling, pungent scent of perfume hanging over the room; my bottle of perfume is smashed in one corner. Three different editions of Michael’s book have been torn up next to it.
MacKenzie yanks my clothes from the wardrobe and then turns her attention to the bedsheets, the embroidered throw I was so proud of when I got it, my pretty blue cushions. She struggles to tear them in two, tugging, ripping and biting until there are feathers floating through the air like snow.
“MacKenzie, stop!” I shout. “Stop this! You’re destroying my things, for God’s sake!”
But MacKenzie’s eyes are fixed somewhere over my shoulder. I turn around and realize what she is looking at. My photos. Lovingly framed and neatly lined up on the dresser.
MacKenzie and me in front of the motel sign, sixteen years old and wearing ugly nineties jeans. She is wearing her flannel shirt, of course.
MacKenzie, Camila, Michael, and me on our way to prom. Me uncomfortable in my tuxedo and MacKenzie dressed, ironically, in a ball gown.
A picture from when the cabins were finished. I saved it purely because it was a picture of Michael and me, even though there are so many others in the shot that only my shoulder is visible. Still, I could see Michael and knew I was standing right beside him, and every time I looked at that picture, I remembered our first summer together.
“No…” I say. “No, no, no.”
The photos are in mismatched frames that I bought over the years. Minimal silver, flaking gold paint, black wood, sleek and elaborate; an odd mix that I thought looked homey. My very first home of my own.
I hold out my arms to protect them from MacKenzie, but she has made up her mind to destroy everything.
She hits the frames against the dresser, smashing the glass into huge, sharp shards, not caring that moments from my life are falling to the floor. Wooden frames snap into uneven pieces. A few of the photos tear with heartrending rips.
When she finally stops, the room is in chaos.
“Watch out for the glass,” I say automatically, but I don’t think I’d actually care if she cut herself right now. Half of the photos are ruined, and the others are in a sorry state beneath their broken frames.
I bend down and desperately try to pick them up, save them, put the pieces back together, but my fingers just grasp over and around and through them. MacKenzie has slumped down against the wall at the other side of the room. She is curled up with her arms around her knees and is rocking back and forth. She takes a deep, shaking breath, and then they finally appear: the tears.
I’ve never seen MacKenzie cry before. Not once. No matter what she’s been through. Right now, a lifetime of tears is trying to escape. MacKenzie doesn’t care that her nose is running. She doesn’t even care that she’s sobbing. Right now, she is as defenseless as a small child.
She says something, but her sobs are so violent and her breathing so unsteady that I only catch a few words.
“Never. You. Leave. Me. Never. Leave. Were.”
She gasps for air. Squeezes her eyes shut. Wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
Says, “You weren’t supposed to leave me.”
This is how it ends.
A torrent of final memories. Chaotic, one on top of another, like pop-up windows that just keep on multiplying.
MacKenzie and I outside school on our first day. Her enormous coat. The way she had to shake her arm to get her hand free. Friends forever.
The scent of fresh wood and sawdust and warm grass. Michael and I, alone, back when being alone was a luxury. I’m going to call it the Redwood Cabin. A photograph in which only my arm is visible. One day, I’ll leave all this behind.
Cheryl’s smiling face, still tragically familiar but also terrifyingly distorted. A stand on Main Street, back when everything felt ridiculous. Pink sneakers.
MacKenzie’s hard stare. MacKenzie, surviving. MacKenzie, finding her way back to herself.
MacKenzie, taking me to the Dog Bark Park Inn. MacKenzie, never dreaming again.
We’re all together, around the back of the motel. Michael and Camila are with us. One of those long summer days that never seem to end. The sun is on our arms and legs. We’re tanned and covered in mosquito bites.
Together again.
Chapter 18
I Fly Like an Eagle
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…
I’m still here.
As the streetlamps flicker to life, it all starts to feel like a bit of an anticlimax.
That’s when I notice the lights on the road from town. They’re like an uneven string of pearls: one first, then another, then a long dark stretch before the next light appears. They start appearing close together after that, in one long line.
Dolores’s car is the first to pull in. She jumps out before Alejandro even has time to turn off the engine.
“Cookies!” she says. “How are people supposed to fill up on coffee and cookies! If they’d just asked, I could have prepared some food. It wouldn’t have been any trouble.”
“Maybe they didn’t want…” Alejandro begins, but he immediately stops short.
“What? Is there something wrong with the food I make?”
“No, no.”
“And wouldn’t Henny want people to be full after her funeral? Do you think she’d want people to think that we’re stingy? Or inhospitable?”
“No, no.”
“Then stop talking and get frying! They’ll be here any minute.”
I stretch and lean toward the window. “MacKenzie? I think… It actually seems like I’m still here. Maybe we should go down and help out? If there are a whole load of people coming here, Dolores and Alejandro could probably do with a hand.”
When Michael and Camila turn up in the parking lot, I can’t hold back. I run down and follow them into the restaurant. MacKenzie will probably come down, too. I’m sure she will.
The kitchen is already a hive of activity. It seems perfectly natural that they’re all so smartly dressed, as though Dolores always wears a black dress to press minced meat into burgers, and Alejandro would never dream of heating up the fryers if he wasn’t in a suit, his camera around his neck. Camila pauses for a moment, then kicks off her boots and starts chopping onions in her stockinged feet. They’re a team. They move around one another with the silent communication and instinctive understanding of dancers. A hand on a shoulder, a smooth movement behind a back, light footsteps, beauty in constant motion.
Then there’s Michael. He is standing by the wall just inside the kitchen door, trying not to get in the way. He looks shell-shocked, slightly nauseated, as if barely surviving some kind of catastrophe.
His eyes are the only part of him that is moving. Beneath the sheer desperation, I can see something verging on warmth as he watches Camila, Dolores, and Alejandro move around the kitchen. It’s a kind of goodbye, I think, and then he turns his back to all of them.
“Michael!” Camila shouts. She grabs his arm and drags him deeper into the kitchen. “They’ll be here soon. Can you put on some coffee so we can serve that first, before everything else is ready? And when they get here, can you unlock the door? No point making them wait out in the parking lot.” She pats him on the shoulder. “You might want to take off your jacket.”
* * *
Before long, the others arrive. Acquaintances from the past, a couple of old teachers, people I haven’t seen in years. Some I don’t know at all.
I see Buddy and his friend Miguel, plus Miguel’s wife, who I’ve never met. Two handymen who always eat lunch with us and whose names I don’t know. They stick close to Buddy.
Clarence also shows up, with a couple of regulars from the bar. I hope they’ve brought their own hip flasks, because Clarence’s doesn’t usually last long.
They’re here for my sake.
The psalms and uncomfortable black suits have left them depressed and subdued, and they breathe in the crisp autumn air as if they’ve just been released from prison. They relax when they realize that Dad isn’t here, and I see several people undo the top buttons of their shirts and stuff their ties into their pockets.
The first few people in line hesitate, wallets in hands, but Dolores firmly waves away any offers of payment. She is still muttering “Cookies!” to herself.
The atmosphere in the restaurant soon becomes much cheerier. The aroma of Dolores’s cooking drifts in from the kitchen, and Alejandro and Camila are running back and forth with plates.
“It was just how Henny would have wanted it,” someone says ironically. “Especially the psalms.”
“I’m sure Henny would have liked to hear something by Bruce,” Buddy says, and by that point they can even laugh at the whole wretched state of affairs. Everyone but Buddy, that is. He was being serious.
Clarence pulls out his hip flask. You drink, Clarence, I think fondly.
Michael has rolled up his shirtsleeves and is walking around the room with the coffeepot. When it gets too hot inside, he goes outside and leans against the wall. The air out there is cool and crisp. His breath forms small clouds, and with no one looking at him, his face relaxes into tired hopelessness.
Camila follows him out.
“What are you going to do now?” she asks.
Michael shrugs. I don’t think he can reply.
“Are you going to leave?”
“Henny loved this place,” he says in spite of himself. “Not just the motel. This whole dumb town.”
Camila nods. She waits in silence, but places a hand on his shoulder. I think what she really wants to say is that he isn’t alone.
“I should leave,” he eventually says. “There’s really nothing worth staying for now. But I also can’t get away from the feeling that I have some kind of unfinished business here. Like Henny still wants something from me. You probably think I sound like an idiot.”
Camila slowly shakes her head. “No, I know what you mean. Sometimes I think I can feel her presence at the motel.”
“So you’re going to stay?”
“I don’t have much choice. But yeah, I’m going to stay.”
I smile. That’s enough for me. And then I can’t stay still any longer. I spread my arms and run around like I did when MacKenzie and I were kids, pretending we were eagles.
I’m trapped in rash, irresponsible happiness, a kind of quivering feeling in my chest; a spontaneous, swelling gratitude at everything there is to see and hear and smell in life.
I run around and around the parking lot. I circle the parked cars and do a lap of the whole motel. I’m still here, I’m free, and I gallop between the apple trees, the cucumber and tomato plants, eventually heading back to the parking lot.
MacKenzie should be here.
She has made her way down to the reception desk and is alone in the darkness. I stand next to her in front of the closed automatic doors, and we both peer over toward the restaurant.
“MacKenzie, you know you don’t have to be alone like this, don’t you?” I say. “And you definitely don’t have to be standing in the dark. Okay, so you didn’t go to my funeral. I don’t know why you cared about Dad and Cheryl, but they’re not even here tonight. Your friends are. At your motel, in your restaurant. Why aren’t you over there with them?” I press my nose to the window.
But MacKenzie isn’t listening. She is staring intently toward the restaurant, and when I follow her line of sight, I realize that Camila has come outside again. She wraps her arms around herself in the chilly air, and it’s possible that she notices MacKenzie’s presence, because she suddenly looks straight toward us in the dark reception area.
I glance back and forth between them.
Neither moves. Two women, both standing in darkness, watching each other.
Camila is first to look away. She takes a
deep breath, as though something has just surprised her. There’s an odd warmth in her eyes, a half smile on her lips. She is studying the motel with an understanding that seems to surprise even her, and looking at MacKenzie with something verging on tenderness. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with these new feelings. She is frozen in the night, as unmoving as MacKenzie, though I suspect she is longing to keep her company.
MacKenzie’s face says, Don’t ask. Don’t even talk to me.
So Camila doesn’t. She just stays where she is, keeping her company from a distance.
Chapter 19
I Follow a Smile
I swear the sun is brighter, the air crisper, the autumn colors more beautiful than ever. I’m pretty sure that never in the history of Oregon has there been a sunrise like this morning’s.
And the most fantastic thing of all? There’ll be another one tomorrow.
During breakfast, I stand with my nose in the coffee machine, breathing in the steam as the hot water hits the finely ground coffee. It’s as close to a cup of coffee as I can get.
Dolores is alone in the kitchen, but she seems to be enjoying it. The funeral has set something inside her free. It’s as if she is done with grieving and has given herself permission to get back to work. She whisks the pancake batter with strong, steady arms. Strips of bacon sizzle on the griddle. She cracks eggs to make scrambled eggs, adding salt, pepper, and a few handfuls of cheddar cheese—then another, just to be on the safe side.
I walk over to the griddle and breathe in the scent of the thick slices of ham keeping the bacon company. Perfect avocados become avocado butter. Huge containers of apple juice clink as ice cubes are added.
I might not be able to eat anymore, but isn’t the smell of food almost as good as the taste?
Food I would like to eat: A sun-warmed tomato. A grilled cheese sandwich. Or a steak salad with dark, freshly grilled meat and crisp, fresh leaves. And nachos! A whole mountain of them, with chicken, I think, and jalapeños, sour cream, and cheese. Dolores’s birthday breakfasts. I always looked forward to them with a certain sense of dread, because who can eat waffles and syrup, fried chicken, a breakfast burrito, scrambled eggs, bacon, roast tomatoes, toast, and cheap sparkling wine secretly blended with orange juice in a single sitting?
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