by Ponzo, Gary
“That’s my mother and me the winter before she died,” the woman said. “I was three-years-old then.”
“Rachel. You’re Rachel?”
The woman nodded.
I looked at the next picture. It showed a little girl in a pink dress on a carousel. It was exactly the same photo Angela had shown me less than an hour ago. All of a sudden the house seemed to warm. My stomach was queasy and my hands were clammy. I asked Henry for some water. He brought me a large glass.
“You don’t look too good,” he said. “You’re not going to faint are you?”
I forced myself to take deep breaths. “She touched me,” I gasped. “She was real.”
“You don’t know how ludicrous this sounds?” Henry said. He sat with his elbows on the table and ran his hands through a thick crop of hair. “Every birthday for the past twenty years a stranger knocks on my door and tells me that a woman named Angela wished me a happy birthday.”
I swallowed some water.
“When I show them a picture of my dead wife they all have the same look you have right now. Some faint. Some throw up. Some run out the door quick enough to make Olympic sprinters jealous. At first I was furious. Why would someone prey on my emotions like that? But I’ve come to accept it. I’ve grown to embrace it. Whatever is happening in my life at the time, when my birthday comes around I’m always here, with Rachel, waiting for the doorbell to ring. I sit and talk about Angela to a total stranger. They tell me wonderful stories and my heart soars. Life is no longer a mundane chore that I have to tend to daily, like taking out the trash, or making the bed. It’s a glorious celebration. Each breath brings an opportunity to experience something new, something fleeting that you can’t ever keep, but you can treasure forever in your mind. A beautiful sunset. A child’s first steps. I live each day knowing that when I lay my head down on my pillow at night, I’m one day closer to being with Angela once again. For eternity.”
“It’s all my fault,” Rachel’s voice cracked. “If I hadn’t taken the candles out of the cart she wouldn’t have had to go back to the store and—”
“Stop it, Rachel,” Henry scolded. “You were only a child.” He looked over at me and said, “Just in the past month Rachel remembers taking candles from a shopping cart the afternoon her mother was killed. Angela’s accident happened on her way back to the store. Rachel feels responsible.”
Suddenly I remembered something Angela had told me.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“What?”
“Your mother told me about her trip back to the store. She made it a point to tell me it wasn’t your fault. She’d left her wallet back there. That was the real reason she went back, not for the candles. She was probably too embarrassed to tell anyone.”
“You’re just saying that,” Rachel said, her eyes swelling with hope.
Henry smiled knowingly. “He’s right, Sweetie. We never did find Angela’s wallet. It was never your fault.”
Rachel convulsed into a giggle-cry while Henry rubbed her back.
“You see,” he said. “Your mother loves you very much. She didn’t want you feeling guilty.”
We passed around tissues for a while, then Henry cut us each a piece of birthday cake. We traded Angela stories back and forth. Both of them were fascinated with my twenty minute conversation with her.
“She leaves an indelible print wherever she goes,” Henry added.
After a while I said my goodbyes. Henry walked me to the car and put his arm around me as natural as if he were my own father. “That was awful kind of you to make up that story about Angela going back for her wallet,” he said. “You have no idea the comfort you just gave Rachel. She hasn’t slept well for weeks.”
“I’d love to take credit for that,” I said, “but that story was true. It came right from Angela.”
Henry smiled. “Her wallet was in her purse the whole time. I still have it.” Then he looked up to the sky and whispered, “Thank you, Sweetheart. I love you so much.”
Glassy-eyed he waved to me as I drove away. My cheeks hurt from the smile painted on my face.
The next morning I put on my only suit and went downtown to the National Bank building. The one with the clock. I got off on the fourteenth floor and paced outside of the only law office in the building. After twenty minutes of waiting, I decided it was a silly notion. What was I doing there? I turned to leave when a tall, slender woman in a gray business dress exited the elevator. Inexplicably she slipped and fell directly into my arms. The notebook she was carrying went flying and papers were strewn everywhere. Embarrassed, she showered me with thanks while I helped her pick up her paperwork. I asked her what her name was even though deep down I knew the answer.
“Kelli Sommers,” she replied.
“What kind of cake do you like, Kelli?” I asked.
She eyed me suspiciously. “Chocolate is my favorite,” she said.
I smiled. “Of course it is.”
THE END
The Wish
If it wasn’t for the rain I never would have stopped the car. The hitchhiker wore a dull green jacket, dingy jeans, and held a saturated cardboard sign with “Las Vegas” written on it. He looked so pathetic. No hat. No umbrella. He just stood there, tall, lean and soaked to the skin.
First he opened the back door and threw his backpack on the floor, then he opened the passenger door. The obtrusive aroma of a campfire followed him into the car as he squished down on the leather seat.
“Name’s Hal,” he said, extending his open palm.
I accepted his moist handshake. “Bill . . . Bill Renton. I’m only going to Kingman. I hope that helps.”
“That’s half-way. That’ll be great.”
He blew into his hands, then rubbed them together for warmth.
“Nice Mercedes, Bill,” he said, inspecting the interior.
“It’s not mine,” I informed him. “It belongs to my uncle. He borrowed my pick up to move some furniture. I’m just going up to switch cars.”
“Nevertheless, it’s nice,” he repeated. When he bent over to absorb the slow-moving current rising from the heater, I spotted the gun. It exposed itself as his jacket folded over the wrong way.
In all of my twenty-three years I’d made a few boneheaded decisions, but picking up a hitchhiker on the entrance ramp to the freeway ranks right up there with the best of them. Especially a hitchhiker packing heat. I immediately played out a couple of scenarios in my head: he pulls the gun, I slam on the brakes and grab the gun while he’s bouncing off of the windshield. Or I could make a restroom stop, then call the police. His reserved demeanor caused me to wait before I acted. All this dread because I couldn’t stand to see someone relentlessly succumbing to such a torrid rainstorm.
“Want a banana?” he asked, wringing out his beard. “I’ve got some in my backpack. Good source of potassium.”
“No thanks,” I said, merging onto the freeway. Showers are so scarce in the desert that driving on a rain-soaked freeway in Phoenix can be an adventure all by itself.
“This is a 2003 model, isn’t it?” he asked looking over the interior of the car.
“Yes, I think so,” I said, somewhat startled.
“Yeah, I used to have a 2001. Before they changed the model to the sleek look,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Really?”
“Surprised?” he said, smuggling a grin from his hardened frame.
“I suppose.”
He pointed to a deep line on the surface of the dashboard. “You can get that scratch out, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Mercedes sells a product called a buff-brush. Works great on dashboard scratches. I think it retails for about forty-nine dollars.”
I took my eyes off of the rain-swept freeway just long enough to inspect my passenger. He still wore the wrinkled green jacket. His hair, long and straggly, his hands creased with the scars of a longshoreman. Yet, he couldn’t disguise his smile. It betrayed him with
a mouthful of exact and sparkling teeth.
“Forty-nine dollars, you say.”
“Sounds steep, I know, but it really works.”
After a long uncomfortable pause waiting for me to respond to his incongruous comments, he sighed. “I used to be a stockbroker.”
I nodded.
“I used to wake up Sunday mornings, sit up in my oversized bed and read The New York Times from cover to cover, with my loving wife next to me. You’d think that would be more than any man could ask for. But no. I needed the action.”
“Action?”
“Stocks, bonds, puts, calls . . .”
“You lost all your money playing the market?” I asked.
“My shrink called it a guilt complex. Supposedly I felt like I didn’t deserve all the success I’d attained, so I found ways to lose it . . . I call it investing heavily in naked options.”
“I don’t know much about Wall Street,” I said.
“You’re lucky. You’ll never live long enough to accumulate the pile of regrets I stare down every night . . .” His voice trailed off while he stared out the window. He appeared to be taking in the rare view of the desert soaking up a long, deserving shower, but he was obviously a million miles away. Around his neck a silver strand hung with a blue, teardrop shaped stone attached. It had an unusual shine. My mind was going to question him about it, but my mouth disagreed.
“What’s with the gun?” I asked instead, with my foot ready for the brake.
“What?”
“The gun . . . inside your jacket.”
“Oh,” he said, casually, “here, take it.” He pulled the gun out and handed it to me butt end first. “It’s not loaded. I just carry it for peace of mind. Hitchhiking can be dangerous. You can hold onto it, if you want.”
I declined.
“You ever fire a gun?” he asked.
“No. How about you?”
“Never,” he said. For some reason this seemed funny to us and we laughed like old college roommates. We talked for an hour back and forth about the usefulness of my business degree. He recommended several books on investing. He even suggested certain strategies I should take with the small amount of funds I had saved. All this from a man who spent the last four days scraping the bottom of a black frying pan for the remnants of fish he’d caught in the Salt River. Yet I listened and knew what he told me came from years of experience working in the trenches of Wall Street.
“I’m much more in tune with the land,” Hal said half proud, half rationalizing.
“What’s in Las Vegas?” I asked.
“My daughter, Heather. She’s seven.” He pulled out a fine leather wallet and showed me a picture of a young girl wearing an Easter bonnet and a familiar grin.
“She has your smile.” I said.
He grew somber, quiet. Again his attention went out the window. In a hypnotic tone he said, “She’s dying. Canavan’s disease. It’s extremely rare. It destroys the central nervous system. She has maybe a year or so left.”
He paused, took a deep breath, and kept his face turned away from me. “After my divorce I hit rock bottom. I was staying at a shelter in Manhattan. One night my wife came to see me. I remember it was a week before Christmas and it was freezing out. It was the last time she was ever civil to me. She knew that Heather was my whole world, and telling me about her condition would destroy every shred of life I had in me. It took her half a night of convulsive shaking and crying to finally tell me. I’ve never felt so alone while clutching someone so tightly in my life.” His voice cracked. I heard sniffles, then I saw his hand reach for his eyes. “With all of my flaws, all the terrible things I’ve done to the people who trusted me. Heather is the only soul on the planet who still loves me, regardless of anything. And she’s not long for this world.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, glossy-eyed.
We drove on through the storm. Sometimes the wipers were barely fast enough to give me a good glimpse of the road. Hal laid his head back and slept long and hard. I couldn’t help but think it was the only time he eluded the pain. When we’d reached Kingman, Hal sensed the car slow as I exited the freeway. He shook his head, wiped his tired eyes, and said, “Let me buy you a cup of coffee. It’s the least I can do”
I agreed, so I pulled into the Denny’s next to the overpass. It was late afternoon and Hal seemed genuinely elated to buy me something, even something as simple as a cup of coffee. We sat in a booth across from the counter and warmed our hands to the steam of hot liquid rising from our mugs.
“So, Bill, do you have a girlfriend?” he asked innocently.
I nodded. “Her name is Janet. We’ve been seeing each other for a year or so.”
“Serious?”
“Somewhat . . . I mean I love her to death, but sometimes I feel like she’s just waiting for a better deal to come along.”
He was playing with the rock dangling from the chain around his neck. He opened his face with a mischievous expression. “How’d you like to get Janet to adore your every move?”
“How’s that?”
His eyes glowed with delight as he fingered the pear-shaped rock. “This is how.”
“Oh, no,” I said, “I couldn’t take that from you.”
He shook his head, “You don’t understand. This rock is a Blue Almandite. It’s a type of Garnet I discovered in South America. I went to Brazil on a working vacation a few years back when my firm was looking at precious metals as an investment. There were four of us, all city boys from New York, peering down mine shafts and nodding our heads like we knew what we were looking for.
“One night, the four of us decided to hire a guide to take us deep into the Amazon. Ninety per cent of the world’s semi-precious stones come out of this region. We were taking a tour of the Morro Velho mine when an earthquake hit. I thought it was all over. The power went out and the tunnel we were in collapsed. The guide was peeing his pants. With flashlights as our only aid, we shuffled our way through the maze of tunnels praying for an opening, when I see this iridescent glow around a corner of the tunnel. I get closer and see this rock lying under a pile of dirt and sand. As I dig away the dirt, the rock is beaming like a laser. I was afraid to touch it at first. Finally, I pick it up and the guide sees me with it and he starts bowing and praying like I’d discovered the Ten Commandments or something. He says it’s called Gemseta, the wishing rock. Local folklore claims that three thousand years ago a Native Indian was attempting to cross the Amazon when he got lost. There had been a drought and the Native was in need of water to survive. One night he believes he’s hallucinating. He sees a blue light illuminating the jungle. He realizes that it’s coming from a blue, pear-shaped rock. He palms the rock and it glows even stronger. He felt that the rock possessed some sort of power, so he held it up to the sky and wished for it to rain forever. According to legend, this is how the rain forest got started.”
Hal was hunched over and for the first time I noticed that the blue stone he held was beginning to sparkle. In order to look directly at it I had to squint slightly. Hal closed his hand around the gem and creases of light escaped his fist. I began to squirm, but Hal was oblivious, and he kept his attention square on my face as he continued his story.
“Anyway,” he said, “the four of us were scared to death. We’re trapped inside a gold mine, with a guide on his knees telling us ghost stories. He’s convinced this is the rock that Native found. He says it’s a wishing rock. It allows one wish to the person that holds it. Being a New York smart-ass it takes me all of five seconds to say, ‘All right, I wish we could find a way out of this mine.’ Well, almost instantly a ray of light casts a shadow on my feet. We find an opening and are out of there inside of a minute.”
Hal slowly lifted his cup and took a long sip of coffee. He was enjoying the moment. His shoulders dropped, his face softened. This was more than just cathartic, it seemed to purge from his body like a thorn from the lion’s paw. I stared.
“Well,” he continued, “you can imagin
e what happened next. The four of us are standing in the middle of the jungle, passing this rock around, wishing for a million dollars, a new Rolls Royce, Victoria Secret’s models. Before we passed it around for a second try the guide tells us we’re all wasting our time. Supposedly the ancient stone doesn’t understand materialistic values. Money, jewelry, houses . . . all things completely of the mind. Apparently, the wishing rock allows only wishes of the heart. And only one per person. So all of my friends just pissed away our wishes on things we were never going to get.”
I looked down and realized that my coffee was now luke warm and I hadn’t even taken a sip. Hal removed the stone from his necklace and handed it to me. It glowed gently as I held it in the palm of my hand.
“In the past I’ve tried to convince people of its power, but either they don’t believe me, or they wished for the Hope Diamond. To be honest, I still have my doubts. But I just remember being in that mine, scared to death, and a minute after my wish, we were all believers.”
Hal leaned over and closed my fingers around the glowing stone. “Give it a shot,” he urged. “If you really feel strongly about Janet, wish for her to love you forever. As long as it’s from the heart, it couldn’t hurt.”
The stone grew warmer the tighter I squeezed it. My first thought of Janet was a pleasant one. I watched as Hal encouraged me to make a wish. He nodded his head and prodded me like he was asking his pet dog to roll over or speak. “Go on,” he waved the back of his hand at me. I closed my eyes and made my wish. I felt flush and realized the stone was practically burning my hand. I dropped it on the table and Hal grabbed it on the first bounce with anticipation.
“You did it!” he beamed.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m glad I could do this for you,” he said. “Most of my rides are with truck drivers looking for someone to keep them awake, or worse. You really helped me out. Thanks.”