Between Two Kingdoms

by Suleika Jaouad

  It’s an old .22, the same rifle that William used to teach his kids how to shoot gophers before they moved on to hunting the elk that throng the woods. When I pull the trigger, my shoulder jerks back from the blast, my nostrils filling with the acrid scent of gunpowder. After more than a dozen tries, I finally manage to hit one of the tin cans, and Erin and Salsa whoop loudly, their cheers echoing through the woods.

  We head back toward the house, and I pack my things and load up the car. Salsa and her family gather around to say goodbye and give me more homemade cookies than I can possibly eat. “So, we’ve been talking,” William says to me. “We’ve been talking, and we decided you can be on our list.”

  “Oh yeah?” I reply. “What list is that?”

  “Our list of non–family members allowed to join us on the ranch in End Times,” William says, appearing serious.

  “Oh, wow, thank you,” I say. My mind flickers back to their cellar, filled with enough canned provisions, emergency supplies, water canisters, and hooch to last a literal lifetime. Their suspicion of mainstream life, stash of guns, and insistence that they can hunt, gather, and grow everything they need on their own land all make sense to me now. Salsa and her family are survivalists. When I ask them about it, they explain that it’s less of a lifestyle choice than a simple fact of life in this part of Montana. But when the world as we know it implodes, they will be prepared.

  “Everyone on the list has to contribute in some way,” Salsa butts in. “You have pretty much no practical skills—you don’t know anything about cattle or ranching, and you can’t shoot a gun for shit.” She laughs, poking me with her elbow. “But maybe you can be our scribe.”

  There is something in this gesture, the idea that I am welcome here in spite of our differences, that moves me. The instinct to be self-sufficient, to cut yourself off from the world, to prepare for the worst—well, those are things I can relate to on some level. It’s what I’ve been doing with Jon and now with Max, guarding my heart against more loss. But for this family, the idea of disaster breeds closeness and generosity. In the fear of death, they have found a source not of alienation, but of intimacy.

  As I leave the ranch, my phone pings. It’s a message from a number I don’t recognize. The text says: Come back to visit—your Montana husband (William’s brother). I expected to feel burned-out, maybe even homesick, by the time I completed the last leg of my journey west. Instead, as I head toward Seattle, I feel none of those things, only spellbound by this country’s wild landscapes and the vibrant characters who’ve so generously welcomed me into their lives. I wonder if this sense of awe is what it means to feel alive again.

  33

  “DOING A BROOKE”

  AS A YOUNG woman traveling alone, I’ve gotten a lot of unsolicited advice from strangers. Everywhere I go—eating at a roadside diner, waiting in line for the washroom at a campground, pumping gas at a truck stop—I meet people with wisdom they’d like to impart.

  Some of the advice has been less than helpful. Before my departure, one wealthy acquaintance mentioned that it might be safer if I hired “a chauffeur” for my road trip. (“Oh! Great suggestion,” I replied politely.) Other bits of advice have been more practical. I stayed for a night on the Oregon coast with a fisherman named Brent who gave me solid driving tips. “When your windshield starts to fog up, press the car dehumidifier thingy,” he said. “Otherwise, you won’t be able to see and you’ll be screwed.” Another host, Wendy—a legendary Portland actress, comedian, and self-described “senior citizen battling food addiction and ‘CJPD: Chronic Jewish Personality Disorder’ ”—offered sound instructions on how to get out of a funk: “1) Write a list of things you are grateful for 2) Get your head out of your ass and take a walk outside 3) If you don’t have an eating disorder, get some good fucking chocolate and a strong cup of coffee.”

  Then, there’s the advice that has been so prescient it’s uncanny, advice that shakes up my inner kaleidoscope, allowing things to settle in a different light. Take Isaac, a young man I met in Seattle; he’d just driven there from rural Alaska, with all of his worldly belongings packed into his trunk. We were staying in the same guesthouse, and he spent much of the weekend on the verge of tears, telling me about his wife who’d just left him. He was bereft, but clearheaded. “Forgiveness is a refusal to armor your own heart—a refusal to live in a constricted heart,” he said, seemingly as much to himself as to me. “Living with that openness means feeling pain. It’s not pretty, but the alternative is feeling nothing at all.”

  * * *

  —

  Night falls swiftly, a pale slant of moonlight streaking the dirt driveway as I pull up to the wooden gates of a home in Humboldt County. This isn’t one of my planned visits. When I mentioned to Brent, the fisherman, that I was looking for a place to stay in Northern California, he gave my number to his son-in-law, who in turn gave it to a friend of his named Rich, who called me up earlier this morning, offering to let me stay the night in a cabin on his property.

  Rich welcomes me with a big, warm smile, the crow’s-feet around his gray eyes crinkling. His wife, Joey, is at choir practice so it’s just the two of us for dinner. “I hope you don’t mind vegan food,” he says as I follow him inside.

  As he bustles around the kitchen, Rich tells me he’s a retired psychologist who now, in his free time, makes sculptures. The house contains several of his creations, twisting statuettes hand-carved from wood. I’m taken by one in particular. It’s bizarrely beautiful, carnal and ethereal—a figure writhing, unfolding, in the middle of a metamorphosis. Rich tells me he made it out of the base of a massive maple tree. He calls it Koschey’s Egg, and explains how in Slavic folklore, Koschey was a sorcerer who hid his soul inside nested objects, like a duck’s egg buried under the roots of a mighty tree, so as to remain immortal. He says he draws a lot from his experience as a psychologist: “I’m interested in how people who are broken by life events are pushed to enter a place where the answers lie beyond our rational and emotional capacities.”

  I nod as he says this. His words certainly resonate.

  We sit in the living room, next to a large adobe fireplace. Over our meal of roasted squash, kale salad, and kalamata olives, Rich regales me with tales of traveling around Europe in a van with his wife and sons in the mid-eighties. He has a theory: When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember. “The key is to try to keep all three as separate as possible,” he says. “The key is to be present wherever you are right now.”

  This advice, more than any, stays with me.

  * * *

  —

  Early the next morning, I rise and begin driving down the California coast with Rich’s theory still ringing in my ears—trying to stay anchored in this road trip, without letting my thoughts time-travel. Reaching the West Coast signals a turning point. I’ve gone as far as I can without driving into the ocean. It’s hard not to fret about what comes next. It’s hard not to think about returning to New York City, and what will happen then. I thought I’d have more answers by now. What I have instead are more questions.

  When I see a trail marker for the Redwood National and State Parks to the side of the road, I pull over to let Oscar out. So what’s the big deal with these redwoods, anyway? I wonder, glancing at the informational placard at the trailhead as I wait for Oscar to finish peeing. Curious, I decide to take a little hike.

  The ocean fog from the Pacific, low and rolling, plumes through the forest. Oscar and I pad along a three-mile path, the sound of our footsteps absorbed by moss. As the path wends deeper, the trees around us grow taller, their leaves knitting together overhead in a thick canopy. I pause in front of an exceptionally large redwood that bears the black, burnt bark of fire scars and touch my fingertips to its trunk. The red
woods are the last remaining species of a genus that dates back to as early as the Jurassic period. They’ve managed not only to survive and to adapt, but to make space for others, sprouting and supporting new life, new growth—the hanging gardens of ferns dripping from their branches, the wisps of chartreuse lichen furring their bark, the huckleberry bushes sipping strength from their soil.

  When we reach the end of the trail, Oscar stops to lap from a pool of water and I take a seat on a rock to catch my breath. Dropping my head back, I peer up at the sky. Topping three hundred feet, the redwoods seem to be omniscient, clairvoyant giants arrowing toward the heavens, overlooking the land. What do you see that I can’t? Where do I go from here? I want to ask them. As I listen to the high-up branches creak in the wind, my breathing slows and deepens. It strikes me that the redwoods have accomplished, without effort or ego, what I have struggled so hard to do. They make existence, as I conceive of it—time measured in hundred-day increments—seem laughably naïve and nearsighted. I feel so tiny and rootless in their midst. Right now, I am no redwood. I am a speck, a spore surfing the breeze, directionless and susceptible, blown any which way, without the faintest clue about where I’ll land.

  I unzip my backpack and take out my journal. Lately, every new place I visit, I find myself trying it on for fit, I write. Could I move to this town, this city, this region, this state? Could this be where I finally settle? Just last night, I spent an hour before bed looking at real estate listings in Humboldt County and dreaming about buying land, somewhere quiet and remote, some place I can call my own. In this fantasy, I live alone, with only my books and a couple of dogs to keep me company.

  * * *

  —

  Later that afternoon, I set up camp in a state park in Big Sur, pitching my tent on the edge of a meadow. The sun lowers, its light spreading across the ocean like a broken egg yolk. The air is warm enough that I don’t have to zip the flap of my tent closed right away. I lie spread eagle on top of my sleeping bag, with my muddy boots poking out of the tent. Copying me, Oscar flops onto his back, all four paws in the air. I reach over to rub his belly and he gazes up at me with helpless love. Living on the road together 24/7 has turned us into an old couple who mirror each other’s gestures without realizing it and know exactly what the other needs without having to inquire. It’s hard to believe it’s already been more than three years since I brought him home. “Congratulations, you’re officially my longest, most successful adult relationship yet,” I say, turning to face Oscar, who replies by licking my nose.

  If only all relationships could be so uncomplicated, I think. I sigh as my thoughts turn to Jon. I’ve been too confused to know what to say to him. Other than the text messages we exchange—where he asks if I am safe and I say that I am, and I ask if he is well and he says that he is—we’ve barely spoken at all. Things between us feel tense and pulled taut, and it seems like any day now we might break apart.

  If I could, I would revise the chronology of us. I would have waited to start dating him until I’d found my foothold among the living—or, at the very least, until I was no longer regularly crying over my ex. Maybe then things would have gone differently. But of course, this is the kind of time-travel thinking Rich was just warning me about. I can’t alter what’s already happened; I must decide what to do now. The truth is, I don’t feel capable of loving Jon the way he deserves, much less deserving of the love he’s shown me. It’s not right of me to keep evading the phone calls of a man—a good man, a deeply kind and patient one, who has given me the space I need to figure my shit out—who is trusting that I will return to him once the road trip is over. I’ve been mired in transition for much of our relationship, and I’m starting to think it would be fairer to him if we end things for good.

  Before I can chicken out, I pick up my phone and send Jon a text asking if we can talk. Staring at my screen, I watch the three little dots appear and disappear as he types something and deletes it. I can sense his apprehension through the screen as he formulates a reply. He finally settles on a message saying he’s busy and asking if we can talk this weekend. I’m relieved. I think we both know what will come of this conversation, and neither of us is quite ready for it to happen tonight.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning I make my way onto Highway 1, a 656-mile stretch of road that hugs the Pacific coastline from north of San Francisco to south of Los Angeles. The highway is narrow, an endless series of white-knuckle turns, climbing higher and higher, with only a pathetic metal guardrail to prevent cars from careening over the edge of the jagged cliffs and falling hundreds of feet down into the ocean. I’m muttering f-bombs, clenching the wheel with both hands, glancing in the rearview mirror as flashy sports cars and vintage convertibles line up behind me. As I pass strawberry fields and golden beaches filled with sunning seals, I’ve never felt so awestruck and terrified—or so carsick.

  After four harrowing hours, I turn off Highway 1 and drive toward Ojai, a town nestled in the mountains about eighty miles northwest of Los Angeles. The land turns psychedelic against the twilight: a hilly moonscape awash in an eerie pink glow. I’m on my way to see Katherine, who wrote to me in the aftermath of her son Brooke’s suicide. Letter writing, she explained, was a practice inspired by him. He once wrote a letter to a scientist, telling him how much he appreciated and admired his research; the recipient was so impressed that he invited the young man to his office hours and ended up offering him a job. After that, sending letters of gratitude to strangers had come to be known in their family as “doing a Brooke.” The idea was that if you wanted to connect with someone out in the world, someone far removed from your own life, someone who maybe even seemed unknowable, you didn’t let the distance stop you—you said what the hell, and you wrote. Katherine had reached out to me in that spirit, thanking me for my column: The power of story is to heal and to sustain, she wrote. And if we are brave enough to tell our own story, we realize we’re not alone, again and again.

  Through a cloud of red dust, I pull up to a small white house that sits at the base of a mountain. Katherine, a high school English and French teacher, opens the screen door, all bienvenues. Her border collie, Atticus, shuffles over to the car, thumping his tail in welcome. Katherine looks dignified in a crisp white oxford tucked into jeans, a black flat-brimmed cowboy hat, and matching black cowboy boots with spurs. Her thick dark hair, streaked with gray, is so long it skims her waist.

  When she proposes a quiet night in, just the two of us and our dogs, and a dinner of seared tuna steaks, I nod gratefully. We take our plates and wineglasses to the back porch. Looking out onto the darkening valley, we dive deep without any warm-up chatter, and as we speak, I feel like I’ve known her my whole life. I recognize myself in her posture, in the grief that flashes across her eyes in moments. I notice the words she chooses and the ones she omits. The connection between us is instant, the trust implicit.

  When Katherine asks how I’ve been, I tell her the unvarnished truth: I’ve been driving with the ghost of my ex riding shotgun, and despite my best efforts to be present I feel chased by my past. I tell her about Melissa and the others I’ve lost; about Max, who is recuperating from surgery at his family’s home in Los Angeles, and how I’ve been too much of a coward to call. I tell her about my relationship with Jon and how I’ve decided to tell him it’s over the next time we talk.

  Katherine doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t avert her eyes. She doesn’t try to placate me with platitudes or direct me with advice. She listens with her whole body, leaning forward in her seat, nodding ever so slightly as I speak. When I finish, she tells me she relates to all of it, and that she’s so glad the universe saw fit for our paths to cross. “Grief isn’t meant to be silenced,” she says, “to live in the body and be carried alone.”

  We stand up and take our empty plates and glasses back inside the kitchen, then move into the living room, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves
overflowing with books. On the coffee table there is a mandolin that Katherine tells me she’s learning to play. I pause at the mantel, which is cluttered with framed photographs of her children—three girls and one boy. That must be Brooke, his handsome, intelligent face illuminated by votive candles.

  * * *

  —

  The next afternoon I’m standing with Katherine in the stables near her house, where she has just given me a refresher course on how to ride a horse. She’s a seasoned equestrian who goes on weeklong pack trips in the Sierra Nevada with her students and her beloved gelding, Blue, and she makes it look so easy as she mounts. I haven’t been on horseback since I was a teenager and the pair of old cowboy boots I’ve borrowed from her are a size too big. I slip a little as I place my foot in the stirrup and attempt to hop up, nearly catapulting over the horse. But once I’m settled in the saddle, muscle memory takes over, and I quickly fall back into the posting rhythm as we trot through an orange grove, past her house, and onto a long winding trail that takes us up into the mountains.

  Katherine tells me that Brooke loved to come out here to think. We approach an enormous sandstone boulder—“his favorite,” she says—then dismounts her horse, walks over to the rock, and places her palm against a plaque engraved with Brooke’s name.

  “What was he like?” I ask.

  “Oh, you two would have been such great friends,” she says. “He was an extraordinary soul—a linguist-science-oriented-outdoorsman-climber-dude, and so joyful and wicked smart.” She tells me about how he spoke fluent Mandarin and was interested in everything, from baking bread to organic chemistry. After graduating from college, Brooke moved to Vermont, where he worked as an arborist and volunteer firefighter. But Brooke had secretly struggled with depression since his freshman year of college, and in Vermont, he suffered a severe bout followed by his first manic episode. It was a terrifying descent into madness that landed him in a psychiatric hospital for weeks, and though Brooke tried to contain what he called his “demonic condition,” he lost hope that he would ever be in control—at least not in a way that he could trust and depend on, in a way that those who loved him could trust and depend on. Bipolar disorder expresses itself differently in each organism it takes hold of, Katherine tells me. Like any disease, some cases are more virulent than others, some organisms more vulnerable. On a cold morning in November 2009, Brooke took his own life. He was twenty-six years old.