I knew I was different. I could feel the difference in me. And I knew that, whatever you want to call the change, it was never changing back. I had woken up, or grown up. Or both. And once you grow up, you'll never be a child again. And sometimes when you wake up there's just no getting back to sleep.
At first I couldn't even think of a way to describe what I was feeling. But then it hit me. The simplest possible word. I was happy. For the first time in my life, I was happy.
And nothing needed saying.
Maybe that was why Maria didn't talk much. Maybe nothing needed saying.
“How can there be more stars in the desert?” she asked. “That doesn't really make sense.”
“There aren't,” I said. “There are the same number of stars everywhere. But the city lights wash them out so you can't see them. So the farther out you get from the city, the more stars you can see.”
“Oh. That makes sense. So, are you ever going to talk to your mother?”
I tensed up a little at the question. But I tried to relax my chest and my breathing, so she wouldn't know that by feel. “I guess. I don't know.”
“But she's your mother.”
“Then where was she? If she's my mother, why haven't I seen her for ten years?”
I thought I felt something tighten in Maria right about then. But maybe she was just in pain. A weird thought came into my head out of nowhere. All of a sudden it hit me to ask her who this C.J. is. But I didn't. I just waited to see what she would say.
“She was afraid of your father. That's why.”
“I'm not sure that's good enough,” I said. “I know that's what everybody says. But it just doesn't feel like enough. I'm afraid of my father. But I wouldn't have given up seeing her. I would have faced up to him, if I'd known she was there for me to see. I loved her enough to take that chance. Why didn't she face up to him for me? He wasn't going to kill her.”
A long silence. I wondered if I was upsetting her. Though I'm not sure why what I'd just said should upset her. Maybe because I was getting a little mad.
“You don't know that for a fact,” she said.
“He wouldn't have.”
“Well, maybe she didn't know that for a fact.”
I was feeling vaguely irritated, because this was my situation, and I didn't see why she had any cause to argue a different position. Why was she on my mother's side and not mine?
“I think you just don't realize what it feels like to be left by your own mother.”
“Well. I sort of do. My mother died. But I guess that's different.”
“Oh. I'm sorry. How did she die?”
“My father killed her.”
“Oh, God. That's awful. I'm so sorry.”
Silence. So, that explained a lot. I didn't want to talk anymore, because it didn't feel right. I felt it would be insensitive to say more.
After a long silence, she said, “It's okay. My mother died a long time ago. You still get to talk if you want.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Oh, God no. I'd definitely rather talk about your mother. Please.”
Another respectful silence. Then I said, “What's weird is that I sort of know how you feel. I had to get used to the fact that my mother was dead, too. But when I found out she'd been around all this time, I just can't explain how bad that felt. I don't expect anybody else to understand it. How it feels to find out that your mother could have been with you the whole time you were growing up, but she just wasn't. She just decided to be somewhere else. No matter what the reason. I mean, I know. She had a good reason. Pretty good. I mean, I guess it's good. But I just wish she'd fought for me. I guess I just wish she'd stood up to him to get me. I wish I'd meant so much to her that she just had to. No matter what she thought might happen.”
Then we were quiet for another long time. A very long time. I guess she was thinking about what we'd said. But what she was thinking about it, I didn't know.
My thoughts wandered. I found myself watching the stars again.
I started to wonder again if Maria loved me. As soon as I wondered, I wished I could push the thought away. Because it left a nasty little crack in my moment of happiness. And I couldn't get it to go back to how it had been before.
She had never told me she loved me.
I had told her once. I think. I think I told her I loved her that night I asked her to run away with me. But I think I said it in a big rush, like, “I love you run away with me.” And then she was left to answer the “run away with me” part. Which is different than just saying I love you and then waiting to see what the other person will say.
Then again, maybe I hadn't said I loved her. Maybe I'd only thought it. Because everything that happened that night happened so fast. It was hard to remember.
What would she say if I told her I loved her now? And just waited? I was too afraid to find out. So we just lay there, looking at the stars together. But now I wasn't happy anymore. Now I was bothered by not knowing if she loved me or not.
All of a sudden I remembered the tone of my voice when I told Grandma Annie, “I am nothing like my father.” The vehemence of that statement. And even though I tried not to have this next thought, I couldn't help knowing that being too afraid to tell Maria I loved her was being something like my father.
“Maria.” Then I froze a long time. But I had to do it. I had to. “I love you.”
The pause seemed to last forever. I could actually feel my head spin. My lungs felt like they'd been vacuumed out, like I couldn't get any air. I thought she was never going to answer. I thought the world would end if she didn't answer, and it seemed like she never would.
“I love you too, Tony.”
I guess the pause was really only a couple of seconds.
I watched the stars shine even more than they'd shone a moment before. Nothing more needed to be said.
I was happy.
I'm getting too good at writing notes that say good-bye. It's nice to feel like you're talented at something in life, but I'm not sure this is such a great thing to add to the list.
I didn't tell Tony why I was leaving. In the note, I mean. Just that I was. I couldn't bring myself to tell him about C.J. I guess it was partly because then he would know I lied to him. Even more than he already thought I did. But that wasn't most of it. Most of it was because then he would know I was just like his mother. That I was a mother who would leave her little boy with a father she knew was terrible. Like passing him off for the sake of my own safety. Like sacrificing him to some big angry God to save myself.
Then Tony would hate me. For being so much like his mother.
I could almost live with losing Tony. I can do losing. I've been doing it all my life. But if he hated me … I could never live with that. Same with C.J., I guess.
I woke Natalie with a finger to her lips, and she stayed silent. She was good at silent, Natalie. She knew all about what not to say and when not to say it.
Maybe that's why she's nearly three and almost never talks. Maybe she's afraid of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
I pulled the duffel bag across the carpet. Thank God for the new carpet. It hardly made a sound.
THE SUN WAS ONLY JUST BARELY UP. We couldn't see it or anything. We could just see that the sky was starting to get light.
I barely knew this place, but it was breaking my heart to have to leave it behind. But I had to go get C.J. I knew that now. Where I would go after I got him, well, I hadn't quite figured that out. But I had to get him. Now. Before he grew up and learned to hate me for what I didn't have the guts to do.
The morning air was already warm. More than warm, really. Not hot exactly, but sort of like hot in waiting. Like hot gearing up to go.
And it was clean.
It was different from the air in the city. Like you could blindfold me and plug my ears and I'd still know where I was. Just by the feel of the air.
I looked at the windmills again. For a long time.
I was
wondering how I would ever be able to live without this place that I'd only known for about a day.
Turns out some places leave a tattoo on you that never goes away. And I hadn't known that. Because I hadn't known many places. Please don't ask me how I knew it would never go away. I just knew.
I guess Tony was mixed into that tattoo somewhere. But standing there on the highway, watching those windmills spin and smelling the desert air, I got the sense that this place could mark me forever all on its own.
I stuck out my thumb and we got a ride from an old man in a big Chrysler from the sixties. I was almost sorry he came along.
Kind of glad and sorry at the same time.
He smiled and said good morning and Natalie buried her head in my neck.
“Where to?” he asked.
I said we were going to the bus station.
I didn't have money for the bus. But I still had my pocketful of change. So I could call Stella, though I might have to call her collect. And she would probably buy me a ticket with Victor's credit card. Victor and Stella had plenty of money, especially since Victor never wanted to go anywhere and spend it.
We rolled down the windows because it was getting too warm already.
About a couple of miles later down the highway, Natalie's fur muff took off and flew. I guess she started to drift off to sleep and sort of loosed up her vise grip on it. It flew right out the window. I looked at it in the side-view mirror and watched it land on the center line of the highway.
Natalie started to cry right away.
“Want me to turn around and go back for that?” the old man asked. He was a pretty nice old guy, I think.
“No, thank you,” I said. “It'll be okay.”
I'd been wondering how I'd ever be able to bring myself to keep looking at that beautiful piece of fur. The only thing anybody—at least, anybody who wasn't me—ever gave Natalie. The constant reminder that this guy I left behind, the one I blew my chance with, had been sweet.
Not the best way to solve a problem, but at least it was solved.
The story of my life.
When I woke up, it was barely light. Not even quite dawn. But it was light. I think it was the light that woke me.
I was still on the lounge chair outside. But Maria wasn't lying on me anymore.
I got up, stretched. Went inside.
I could still feel that new feeling. That sense that everything had changed. That I had changed. And that there was no changing back.
And it's a good thing, too. Because Maria wasn't there.
The bathroom door was standing open, so I swung it wider and looked in. In case she was in the tub or something. No Maria.
I peeked around the screen, but Natalie's crib bed was empty, too.
I was just about to go up to the house to look for them when my eyes landed on the closet. The doors stood open wide, and Maria's clothes were no longer hanging there. And her duffel bag was no longer lying on the floor. I just kept looking for a long time, trying to catch up to a place in my mind where I would know what that meant. But I guess I must have wanted not to catch up to that place. I must have wanted that a lot. Because it's pretty obvious. I mean, there aren't a lot of things that could mean. Really just the one. But I just kept staring.
Then I looked at our bed. And, you know, before I even did, I think I knew what I would see there. I don't think it was even a surprise. Not by then.
I must've walked over and picked up the note. But I don't remember doing that. I just remember sitting with it, on the edge of the bed. I have no idea how long.
She said she had to go back.
She said it was true what she said about loving me, but she had to go back.
She said she was sorry.
That's all she said.
I can't tell you how long I sat there holding the note, or what I was thinking. I'm not even sure I was thinking. I think my brain was switched off in a way I couldn't completely control. But I remember my first thought after that long gap. She might only have left a few minutes ago. It might not be too late to catch her.
I ran out to the street. A neighbor was watering in his front yard. The house right across the way. An older guy maybe in his sixties, bald, in his bathrobe.
“Hi, Sebastian,” he called to me. “We're really glad you're here.” And he waved.
I had never met him or seen him, and at first I had no idea how he knew my name or why he was glad I was here. But I guess everyone in town had been expecting me. Which I don't think I could have wrapped my brain around at any time. Just then it was all quite beyond me.
I ran up to his fence. “Did you see a woman and a little girl leave here this morning?”
“Sure, just a few minutes ago,” he said. “She walked down to the corner of the highway there and caught a ride.”
“Caught a ride?”
“You know. Stuck out her thumb.”
“Oh. Right. Thanks.”
I started running in the direction of the highway. Why, I guess, is hard to explain. Because I had just missed her. Because the ride would have to let her off somewhere. Because the alternative was to do nothing. Because I had to change the ending of the story.
What good is a love story without a happy ending?
Halfway to the highway I realized I hadn't even asked which way she had gone. But I didn't even need to, really. West. The bus station was west. So, when I hit the highway, I went west.
Now, this highway is really just a road with a lane in each direction. And there was nobody out at that hour, anyway. So I ran right down the center line. For about two miles. Could even have been three. I think at some point I might have questioned myself about what I was doing. But, if so, it was in a muddy sort of way. Mostly I just ran. I thought I was going to run forever. I could have. I was into something that was hard to stop. I don't think I could have stopped if I hadn't seen something lying in the middle of the road.
At first I thought it was an animal. I thought it was a rabbit or a cat that had been killed by a car. But when I got closer, I saw it had no head. No feet. No shape to identify it as a living thing. It was just a piece of fur. I stopped in front of it. Squatted down and picked it up.
It was the rabbit-fur muff.
I just squatted there for a minute or two, holding it in my hands. Feeling the softness. In the distance I saw the windmills spinning, but really more in my peripheral vision. But I was aware of them.
Then a car went by, swerving around me and blaring its horn. I didn't move.
First I thought maybe she threw it away on purpose. Not Natalie. She wouldn't. But maybe Maria did. Maybe she didn't want anything to remind her of me.
But then I had another thought, and I liked this one better. I decided that Natalie threw herself half out the window again, to see the windmills. And this time the fur muff didn't land on anybody's feet. This time it flew out the window and landed on the road. And Maria was too timid and shy to ask the driver to stop and go back.
I would never know which was true. But I burned the image of the second story into my brain. I wrote it like a piece of history, so I would always remember it just that way.
I couldn't get up and run anymore, because I knew it wouldn't do any good. And because all the energy and all the fight had drained out of me. As a direct result of knowing it wouldn't do any good.
I stood up and turned around and saw Grandma Annie in her old blue and rust-primer truck. She was just sitting off on the shoulder of the road, watching me.
I got up and walked over. “What are you doing here?” I asked her.
“I saw you running down the road.”
“Aren't you even going to ask me why?”
“Don't really have to.” A long silence. I was looking down at the tarmac. “Come on,” she said. “Get in.”
I walked around and climbed in the passenger's side. Pulled the door shut behind me. The window was rolled down, so I leaned partway out and watched the windmills. So I wouldn't have to look at her.
I was waiting for her to turn around and drive us home.
“Did she have any money?” I heard her ask me. Her voice sounded strangely far away. Like I was partly asleep.
“I don't think so. Why?”
“Maybe she's at the bus station.”
“Your neighbor said she hitched a ride.”
“Maybe she hitched a ride to the bus station. Let's go see.”
“Did my mother go home?”
“No, honey. She's still here.”
A few miles later she looked over at me. Looked at the rabbit-fur muff I was holding tightly in both hands. “She must've dropped it by accident. No way she'd let it go on purpose.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That's what I was thinking, too.”
• • •
MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE I WAS SO UPSET. Because the morning was playing out like a dream. A weird, bad dream. But I fell into my Tony role. When I jumped out of Grandma Annie's truck and ran into the bus station, I felt like the Tony in the movie, running up and down the streets calling for Maria. But I guess I rewrote a little history there, because I realize now he wasn't calling for Maria in the movie. He thought she was dead. He was calling for Chino to come kill him, too.
But he found his Maria all the same. And I found mine.
She was sitting on a hard wooden bench with Natalie by her side. Sitting up stiff, with her back weirdly straight. Looking at something right in front of her, maybe, or maybe at nothing. I couldn't tell.
It was Natalie who saw me. And gave me away.
She pulled her thumb out of her mouth and said, “Hi, Tony.” Clear as a bell.
Maria looked up at me, her face dissolving into layers of shame and guilt and regret. All the things I never wanted to see on her face. There they all were. It was all I could do not to look away.
I sat down next to her. Gave Natalie back her rabbit-fur muff.
“Thank you, Tony,” Natalie said.
Chasing Windmills Page 21