This time, though, the bus station was right on the main street of this little town. What little town, I don't know. I couldn't even have told you what state we were in. But there was a little market a few doors down. And I ran for it.
I passed a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant and a Children's Hospital thrift store on the way there. Bought a big bottle of Advil, 120 count, with Delilah's money, which I still had in my jeans pocket. Wrapped around her warrior note.
On the way back, I stopped for a second in front of the thrift store.
In the window was a mannequin wearing a dark green cloth coat with a fur collar. I was wondering if it snapped off. On the mannequin's hands was some kind of piece of fur, too. White and brown in patches. Long fur. It seemed strangely out of place on a June afternoon.
I ran inside.
“What's that thing on the mannequin's hands?” I asked the woman behind the counter.
“That's a muff,” she said.
“A what?”
“A muff. Something ladies put their hands in. To keep them warm. Never saw one before?”
“I don't think so.”
“I guess its old-fashioned now.”
She stepped into the window and pulled it off, to show me. I looked out through the window and kept an eye on the bus. Made sure the door was still open. That it wasn't about to take off without me.
She set it in my hands. “Rabbit fur,” she said.
“Wow. It's so soft.” I touched it to my cheek. Got a flash of insight into what made Natalie tick.
“It's got a bad spot on it, though,” she said. “Right here.” She pointed out a place near the seam where the fur had been rubbed or torn away.
“How much?”
“Well, it's not what you might call perfect. Six dollars?”
“Sold.”
I counted out seven to cover tax and didn't wait for my change. I ran all the way back to the bus. I needn't have bothered. Nearly half the passengers hadn't gotten back on yet.
I could hear Natalie, but she was no longer wailing. Back to fussing. I wondered if she was happier when I wasn't around.
Maria's face was really showing the strain. From the pain or from the fussy baby, I wasn't sure which. Probably both.
“For you,” I said, and gave her the Advil. “For you,” I said to Natalie, and gave her the rabbit-fur muff.
Her eyes got even bigger, if such a thing was possible. She grabbed it out of my hands and held it to her cheek. Rubbed the side of her face against it. For the first time in hours, silence. I climbed over them to sit in the open window seat. Looked back at Maria.
“That was brilliant,” she said. “Where did you get it?”
“That little thrift shop. It was right in the window.”
“That was so sweet of you.”
“It wasn't even very expensive.”
“Natalie, tell Tony thank you.” Nothing. “Natalie. Tony gave you a present. I know you like it. The least you can do is say thank you.” Nothing.
“It's okay,” I said. “She doesn't have to say anything. Don't force her. I can see she likes it.”
The silence lasted. And with all that silence and the hypnotizing motion of the bus—even in daylight—it was surprisingly easy to sleep. It snuck up on us. And it was more than welcome.
I WOKE IN WHAT I THINK was the middle of the night to hear Natalie fussing again. Urgently, as if to alert us that something was suddenly very wrong.
I turned on my little overhead light. Maria was still asleep.
No muff. She must have dropped it.
I couldn't see it anywhere, but I managed to find it with my foot. But the seats were so small and I had so little leg room that I couldn't reach down to get it.
I heard a guy in the seat behind us say, “Not again.”
I turned it around with my foot, stuck the toe of my shoe into it, flipped it up, and caught it with my left hand. Handed it back to Natalie, who held it to her cheek and stroked it with two fingers. Her thumb went back into her mouth. I turned off the light again.
Maria never had to wake up.
A minute or two later, I heard the soft, wet sound of Natalie's thumb being pulled out of her mouth. “Thank you, Tony,” she said.
“You're welcome.”
Then I couldn't get back to sleep right away, so I watched dark, flat landscape roll by for a few minutes. I was wishing Delilah were here, so I could ask two questions: Is love always confusing like this? And, Are you sure?
I've lived in the city my whole life.
I'm not saying I didn't know all this other stuff was out here. I knew. I went to school. I saw pictures of the country. I watched TV. And I saw some movies. So I knew it was out there. But that didn't exactly prepare me for this enormous world.
I know Mercury and Jupiter and Pluto are out there, too. I just hadn't planned on visiting anytime soon.
Now, I don't want to seem in any way like I'm not happy. Because I am. Very happy. And if there's one thing I really don't like, it's when people get everything they ever dreamed of and more, but they're still not happy. All they can do is complain.
I never want to be one of those people. So I will just say two things very quickly and then get back to being happy.
One. I am in a lot more pain than I realized. I didn't know how bad I was hurt until the Vicodin ran out. Tony was really nice to get me some ibuprofen, and I took about eight, I think, which helped a little but then it also made me sick to my stomach.
Okay, that's too much complaining. I don't like complaining.
Number two is not a complaint so much as a fear: I don't know if Tony's grandmother knows I'm coming. Not to mention me and Natalie. So what if, at the end of the line, she just says no?
I keep telling myself that Tony and I would work out that problem together. And that helps a little. But it keeps coming back into my head.
Enough of that. I'm going back to happy.
We made a stop late at night, after dark. It was one of those stops where they turn on the lights and you can get off the bus for fifteen minutes if you want. Go in the station. Walk around. You have no idea how much it means to walk around if you haven't ridden a bus for days.
I thought Tony was sleeping, so I got off by myself. Left Natalie sleeping draped over Tony's lap. Hoping she wouldn't wake up and find out that she had trusted someone in her sleep.
I didn't go inside.
I was just standing in this field near the bus station. Looking at the stars.
I'm pretty sure that, when Tony first told me about the stars, he thought I wasn't listening. You can always tell when someone thinks you're not listening. It makes them talk a lot harder. I was listening, but I was just worried about the thing with the two kids he didn't know existed, and I guess that's why I seemed far away.
I wanted to see so many stars. If that was really true.
Maybe it wouldn't be true until we got to his grandmother's house in the desert. But we had gone far enough that I thought it would pay to check.
I dropped my head back. It was a clear, clear night. There were more stars than I had ever seen in the city. Maybe not as many as Tony said to expect. But then again, we weren't half there yet. Maybe we were picking up stars all along the way.
I decided I could wait.
And, while I was waiting, this was enough in the star department to keep me busy for now.
After a minute I felt Tony move up against my shoulder.
I spun around real quick to see where Natalie was. If she was still on the bus. You can't just leave a baby on a bus. Sick people will steal a baby. But she was sleeping on Tony's shoulder. So I relaxed.
He put his arm around my waist. Soft. Careful not to hurt me. It hurt a little. Everything hurt a little. But I didn't say so, because I didn't want to make it go away.
I said, quiet so as not to wake Natalie, “Are there more stars than this in the desert?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Lots more.”
I lik
ed his voice. It was starting to sound familiar to me. I liked that he was not a guy who would leave Natalie on a bus.
“This is nice for now, though,” I said.
And he said, “You can sort of think of it like a coming attraction.”
Then we were going to get back on the bus, but just before we did, I saw this family—a guy and a lady and two kids—standing there, like they were seeing somebody off. And they had a golden retriever.
Sometimes I'm afraid of dogs, because where I lived in the city, they're not all nice. Not by a long shot. But golden retrievers are always nice. So far as I know. When I was a kid, my best friend, Stacy, had a golden retriever. I loved that dog. He died, though. She said he died of old age, but he was only twelve. That seems too young to die of old age, even though I know they say that's about right for dogs. And even though he did act kind of old. But it still doesn't seem fair.
I went up to the couple and asked if I could pet their dog, and they said I could.
The dog wagged his tail at me, and he licked my hand three times, so that made me feel good.
For a long time, not much has made me feel good, so when something does, I notice. It may be some weirdly small thing that somebody else wouldn't even bother to tell. Maybe wouldn't even notice. But I haven't had as much practice with this happy thing as they have.
I think Tony was afraid of the dog, but I told him to just reach his hand out. He did, and the dog licked the back of his hand, and he smiled.
Then, just as we were getting on the bus, this girl a few years older than me got on with a little boy. A little blond boy about five or six years old.
So, I don't mean to complain, but that's three.
I still did my best to get back to happy. But that little blond boy made it a much longer trip.
There's something about a bus trip that makes you want to sleep. Maybe it's just the sheer boredom of it. The country is so big, and the bus is so slow. You start to ache to put more miles behind you, faster. Sleep is a blessing, because you wake up, and a piece of the trip is over. And you blessedly missed it.
But there's more to it than just that. There's also something about the bus that makes you able to sleep. Something about the rolling, vibrating motion. It hypnotizes you. The flat, monotonous scenery, rolling by the window. The farms and wheat fields that could just as easily be part of the last state, or the next. It's better than counting sheep.
Add to that the fact that I hadn't had one decent night's sleep in probably close to two weeks, and I think it forms a clear picture. I slept most of the first night and most of the second day. In fits and starts. With interruptions for walking dazed into bus stations, where the lights were always too bright, to use a real restroom or buy a bottle of orange juice. But, back on the bus, I'd be back to sleep.
Half the time when I woke up, Maria would be sleeping. Sometimes Natalie would be looking past me out the window. I wondered if she viewed it as something like a TV or movie screen. Or if she fully understood that we were moving miles away from everything we had ever known. My hope was that she didn't fully understand. Because that was a truth I was barely old enough and brave enough to handle myself.
The second night I woke up and knew that, unfortunately, I'd had enough sleep to last me for a while.
Maria was asleep with her head on my shoulder. Natalie was sleeping across both of our laps, her legs and feet on Maria's lap, her upper body on mine. Her thumb in her mouth, of course, and a death grip on that precious piece of fur. One of her elbows was digging into my thigh. It hurt a little, but I didn't want to disturb her.
Her hair was falling across her face, so I reached out and brushed it back again. It felt so soft. I got that feeling again, like when I stood in the thrift store touching that rabbit fur for the first time. The feeling that I understood Natalie and her needs.
So for a minute I just stroked her hair. Brushed my hand over it, enjoying not only the softness, but the peacefulness of her sleep.
Then I put my hand in the middle of her back and rubbed it softly. Because I knew how much it had meant to have my mother do that for me. Kids need to be touched. Loved in a way they can actually feel. If I was going to be one of the grown-ups in this kid's life, I was going to see to it that she had some of what every kid needs. It's only right. It's just the only decent way to be.
I felt Maria's head shift slightly on my shoulder. I looked over to see that she was awake and watching me.
“It makes me so happy to see you two getting along,” she said.
“I want you to be happy,” I said. And it was true. But we both knew I hadn't done it just for her, because I hadn't even known she was awake. Which, I guess, is part of why it made her so happy.
She kissed me softly, and then we fell under the spell of kissing again, the way we did on Delilah's couch. It went on for a long time. Her tongue felt so velvety smooth against mine, and I remember thinking how real that was. And maybe if that was real, so was all the other stuff that seemed like it never would—never could—hap-pen. But those were just disjointed thoughts in my head, and they didn't even last very long. Kisses like that fill up the whole world. Drive every thought out of your head. Pull you right down into the present moment. Which was probably a good place for me to stay.
In a few minutes we had to consciously force ourselves to stop, because it was pulling us toward a place we couldn't possibly go yet.
Instead she just leaned the side of her head against mine and we talked in a whisper.
“It's hard to stop,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Does your grandmother know I'm coming? Or does she think it's just you? Tell me the truth, now. Please.”
“She knows you're coming. She's fine with it.”
“But she doesn't know about Natalie.”
I got a little clutch in my stomach when she said that. “I'm not sure. Delilah is the only one who's talked to her since …” I trailed off, not quite knowing how to label that Meeting Natalie moment. “I'm not sure if that's something she would have mentioned or not.” I tried to sound casual. I tried not to let on that I was worried about that, too.
“How long can we stay with her?”
“As long as we need, I guess. As long as we want to. She has this little guesthouse.”
I was planning on saying more but she cut me off.
“We'll have our own house?”
“Well, a little one. But I have to warn you. She says it's a mess. It's going to take us probably a solid week of work to get it ready. We'll probably have to sleep on her fold-out couch until then. All three of us. So the first week could be hard.”
“No, that'll be good,” she said. “That'll give us something to do. I'm good when I get to clean or something. Takes me out of myself.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I was wondering if she could even help clean in her condition. I think we were both looking out the window. I know I was. I thought I could see the dark outlines of mountains in the distance. The scenery was changing. Suddenly it felt very real, being in a whole different part of the country. It felt foreign and strange and exposed. I reminded myself of Mojave, and the windmills, because it was something familiar. Something I held out to myself, for down the road. A place I already knew and loved. Even if I hadn't seen it for years.
Then I felt bad for Maria, because she didn't even have that.
“I never showed you the picture of the windmills,” I said. “I brought it with me that first night. That first night you weren't there.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “I don't even want to think about that night.”
“I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault. What did you do with the picture?”
“Oh. It's with me. But it's in my big bag. The one that's in the baggage compartment. Not the one under the seat.”
“Oh,” she said. “I guess it doesn't matter anyway. I'll see them with my own eyes soon enough.” We watched the landscape roll by in silence for a little
while longer. I remember wishing I could lie down. Get into some other position. My ankles and feet felt too big. They were blowing up like balloons. My back had a kink in it. I was beginning to hate the bus seat. It felt like a prison. And we still had so far to go.
I started thinking that maybe it was weird that Maria and I didn't talk much. That she hadn't asked me where we'd stay or how long until now. That she still wasn't telling me more about herself or asking more about me. It hit me that maybe that was weird.
I say maybe because how was I to know? Other than Delilah, I'd never gotten to know anybody. So how could I know if we were doing it the usual way or not? But something felt empty about it. And I couldn't bring it up, because I didn't know how a thing like this was supposed to be.
As if she was reading my mind, she said, “I don't even know your last name.”
“Mundt,” I said.
“Oh. Mine's Arquette. I just thought it was too weird to run away with somebody when you don't even know their last name.”
“Easy enough to fix, though,” I said. Liking that she and I seemed to have been in something of the same place in our heads.
Then she said, “Tell me again about it.”
“What? The desert?”
“Yeah. The windmills and the heat and the mountains and the stars at night. Like you did that night on the subway.”
So I ran through it all again, with all the detail I could possibly remember. I knew she needed it. So I tried to make it feel real.
THE LAST DAY AND A HALF WERE HELL. I don't know how to say it any better or any more plainly than that. It was torture.
First of all, I can barely describe how my body felt after three or four days of sitting in basically the same position. My back screamed with pain. I had a serious kink in my neck from sleeping wrong on it. My feet were so swollen it hurt just to wear my shoes. But I had to, because if I took them off, my feet would have swelled to the point where I doubt I could have gotten them back on again.
Chasing Windmills Page 18