Just One Day 02: Just One Year

by Gayle Forman

  “Why not?”

  My stomach lurches again. Bram, gone. Yael, all but gone. The houseboat, a signature away from gone. I force a smile. “That is a much longer story and I’m not done with this one.”

  I tell Kate the double happiness story Lulu told me. About the Chinese boy traveling to take some important exam, and along the way, falling sick. About the mountain doctor taking care of him. About the doctor’s daughter telling him this strange line of verse. About the emperor who, after the boy does well on the exam, recites a mysterious line to him. About the boy immediately recognizing the line as the other half of what the girl told him, and repeating the line the girl had told him, pleasing the emperor, getting the job, going back, and marrying the girl. About double happiness.

  “Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration. Red flowers dot the land in the breeze’s chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss.” That had been the couplet. As soon as Lulu told it to me, there had been something instantly familiar about it, even though I’d never heard it before, never heard the story before. Unknown and familiar. Which, by that point, was how Lulu was seeming.

  I tell Kate about Lulu asking who took care of me—as if she knew the answer—and then doing it herself. Stepping between me and the skinheads. Throwing that book. Distracting them so we could get away before we got hurt. Only she got hurt. Even now, the memory of the blood on her neck from when one of the skinheads threw the bottle at her, after all these months, it makes me sick. And ashamed. I don’t tell Kate that.

  “That was very brave of her,” Kate says when I tell her what Lulu did.

  Saba used to say there was a difference between bravery and courage. Bravery was doing something dangerous without thinking. Courage was walking into danger, knowing full well the risks.

  “No,” I tell Kate. “It was courageous.”

  “You both were courageous.”

  But I wasn’t. Because I tried to send Lulu back. Cowardly. And then I didn’t manage to. Cowardly. I don’t tell Kate this part either.

  “So you’re here in Mexico to do what?” she asks.

  I think of the boys. They think I’m here to inoculate myself. To find Lulu, sleep with her a few more times, and get on with things.

  “I don’t know . . . find her. At the very least, set the record straight.”

  “What record? You left a note.”

  “Yes, but . . .” I almost say it. Then I stop myself.

  “But what?” Kate asks.

  “But . . . I didn’t come back,” I finish.

  Kate looks at me for a long moment. The car starts to drift off the road before she returns her attention to driving.

  “Willem, in case you haven’t noticed, Cancún is back that way?” She points in the reverse direction. I nod. “The chances of you finding this girl seem unfavorable enough without you going to an entirely different city.”

  “It wasn’t going to happen. I could tell.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “Because you don’t ever find things when you’re looking for them. You find them when you’re not.”

  “If that were true, nobody would ever find their keys.”

  “Not keys. The bigger things.”

  She sighs. “I don’t get it. On one hand, you put all this faith into these accidents of yours, and on the other hand, you write off the chance of one even happening.”

  “I didn’t write it off. I came all the way to Cancún.”

  “And promptly went to Mérida.”

  “I wasn’t going to find her. By looking.” I shake my head. It’s hard to explain this part. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Meant to be,” Kate scoffs. “Excuse me but I’m having a hard time buying all this woo-woo stuff.” She waves her arms in the air and I have to reach out for the steering wheel until she takes it again. “Nothing happens without intention, Willem. Nothing. This theory of yours—life is ruled by accidents—isn’t that just one huge excuse for passivity?”

  I start to disagree, but then the image of Ana Lucia flits through my head. Right place at the right time. It had seemed like a fortuitous accident back then. Now, it feels more like surrender.

  “How do you explain us?” I point back and forth to me and her. “Right now, right here, having this conversation, if not for accidents? If not because your car muffler broke and put you in Valladolid, where I wasn’t even meant to be?” I don’t mention the flipped coin being a deciding factor, even though it would seem to support my case.

  “Oh, no, don’t go falling in love with me.” She laughs and taps the ring on her finger. “Look, I don’t discount a magical hand of fate. I am an actor, after all, and a Shakespearian, no less. But it can’t be the ruling force of your life. You have to be the driver. And by the way, yes, we are having this conversation because my car—lovely, sweet car that you are,” she baby talks, stroking the dashboard, “had some mechanical issues. But you were the one who asked me for a ride, persuaded me to give you a ride, so you discredit your own theory right there. That was pure will, Willem. Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn’t even show you the door, and you have to build it yourself. But if you keep waiting for the doors to be opened for you. . . .” she trails off.

  “What?”

  “I think you’ll have a hard time finding single happiness, let alone that double portion.”

  “I’m beginning to doubt that double happiness even exists,” I say, thinking of my parents.

  “That’s because you’re looking for it. Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith.”

  “Aren’t those opposites?”

  “Maybe they’re just two parts of the couplet.”

  It reminds me of something Saba used to say: A truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin. It never quite made sense to me before.

  “Willem, I suspect deep down you know exactly why you’re here, exactly what you want, but you’re unwilling to commit to it, unwilling to commit to the wanting, let alone the having. Because both of those propositions are terrifying.”

  She turns to me and gives me a long, searing look. It goes on a while, and the car starts to drift. Again, I take the wheel to right us. She lets go of the wheel entirely and I grasp it with both hands.

  “Look there, Willem. You grabbed the wheel.”

  “Only to keep us from crashing.”

  “Or, you might say, to keep us from having an accident.”

  Twenty

  * * *

  Mérida, Mexico

  * * *

  Mérida is a bigger version of Valladolid, a colonial pastel-painted city. Kate drops me off in front of a historic peach-colored building that she has heard is a decent hostel. I book myself a room with a balcony overlooking the square and I sit out and watch people taking shelter from the afternoon sun. Shops are closing up for siesta and though I’d planned to scout out the area and find some lunch, I’m not actually hungry. I’m a little wrung out from the morning’s drive and my stomach still feels as if it’s on the bumpy highway. I decide to take a siesta, too.

  • • •

  I wake up covered in sweat. It’s dark outside, the air in my room still and stale. I sit up to open my window or the balcony door, but when I do, my stomach heaves. I flop back down on the bed and close my eyes, willing myself back to sleep. Sometimes I can trick my body into righting itself before it realizes something’s wrong. Sometimes that works.

  But not tonight. I think of the pork in the brown sauce I ate for dinner last night and the memory of it makes my stomach wave and flutter, like there’s a small feral animal trapped inside.

  Food po
isoning. It must be. I sigh. Okay. A few hours discomfort, and then sleep. Then it will be over. It’s all about getting to the sleep.

  I’m not sure of the time so I don’t know how long it takes for the sun to come up, but when it does, I haven’t even touched sleep. I’ve puked so many times the plastic wastebin is almost full. I tried, a few times, to crawl to the shared bathroom down the hall, but I couldn’t make it past my door. Now that the sun is up, the room is heating up. I can almost see the toxic fumes from the wastebin spreading out, poisoning me all over again.

  I keep throwing up. There’s no respite or relief in between bouts. I puke until there’s nothing left: no food, no bile, none of me left, it seems.

  That’s when the thirst hits. I’ve long since drunk the rest of the water in my bottle, and thrown that up too. I start to fantasize about mountain streams, waterfalls, rain showers, even the Dutch canal; I’d drink from those if I could. They sell bottled water downstairs. And there’s a tap in the bathroom. But I can’t sit up, let alone stand up, let alone make it to water.

  Is anyone there? I call. In Dutch. In English. I try to remember the Spanish but the words get jumbled. I think I’m talking but I can’t tell and it’s noisy in the square and my weak voice stands no chance.

  I listen for a knock at the door, praying for an offering of water, clean sheets, a cool compress, a soft hand on my forehead. But none comes. This is a hostel, bare bones, no housekeeping, and I prepaid two nights.

  I retch again. Nothing comes out except my tears. I am twenty-one years old and I still cry when I puke.

  Finally, sleep comes to rescue me. And then I wake up, and I see her, so close. And all I can think is: It was worth it if it brought you.

  Who takes care of you now? she whispers. Her breath feels like a cooling breeze.

  You, I whisper back. You take care of me.

  I’ll be your mountain girl.

  I try to reach for her, but now she’s gone and the room is full of the others: Céline and Ana Lucia and Kayla and Sara and the girl with the worm, and there’s more yet—a Franke in Riga, a Gianna in Prague, a Jossra in Tunis. They all start talking at me.

  We’ll take care of you.

  Go away, I want Lulu back. Tell her to come back.

  Green turtles, red blood, blue sky, double happiness, lalala, they singsong.

  No! That’s not how it goes. That’s not how double happiness goes.

  But I can’t remember how it goes either.

  She left you like this.

  I’ll take care of you.

  French whore.

  Call me if you need anything.

  Wanna share with me?

  Stop it! I yell.

  Take the wheel! Now it’s Kate yelling. Only I can’t see any wheel and I have the awful feeling, like in the dreams, that I’m going to crash.

  No! Stop. Go away! All of you! You’re not real. None of you! Not even Lulu. I screw my eyes shut and cover my ears with the sweat-soaked pillow and curl up into a fetal ball. And finally, finally, like this, I fall asleep.

  • • •

  I wake up. My skin is cool. The sky is purple. I’m not sure if it’s twilight or dawn, how long I’ve been out. I’m coherent enough to know that I’m supposed to be back in Cancún soon to meet Broodje and fly back to Holland, and I need to get word to him somehow, that he might have to leave without me. I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The room teeters before my eyes, but it doesn’t totter over. I plant my feet. I pull to a stand. Like a toddler or a very old man, I take the steps, one at a time, to the lobby.

  In the corner is an Internet café where you can make long-distance phone calls. I feel like I’ve been in the dark for months, the lights from all those monitors hurt my eyes so. I hand over some money and ask for a phone and am guided to a bank of computers with a telephone handset. I open my address book. Kate’s card, ruckus theater company splashed across the top in red lettering, falls out.

  I start to dial. The digits swim on the page and I’m not sure if I have the country code right or if I dialed correctly.

  But there’s a tinny ring. And then a voice: faraway, tunnel-like, but unmistakably hers. As soon as I hear it, my throat closes.

  “Hello. Hello? Who is this?”

  “Ma?” I manage to croak out.

  Silence. And when she says my name I want to cry.

  “Ma,” I say again.

  “Willem, where are you?” Her voice is crisp, officious, businesslike as always.

  “I’m lost.”

  “You’re lost?”

  I’ve been lost before, in new cities with no familiar landmarks to set me straight, waking up in strange beds, unsure of where I was or who was next to me. But I realize now, that wasn’t lost. It was something else. This . . . I may know exactly where I am—in a hostel, in the central square, in Mérida, Mexico—but I have never been so utterly unmoored.

  There’s a long silence on the line and I’m afraid the call has dropped. But then Yael says: “Come to me. I’ll send you a ticket. Come to me.”

  It’s not what I really want to hear. What I want—what I ache—to hear is come home.

  But she can’t tell me to come to a place that no longer exists, any more than I can go to that place. For now, this is the best either of us can do.

  Twenty-one

  * * *

  FEBRUARY

  Mumbai, India

  * * *

  Emirates 148

  13 Feb: Departure 14:40 Amsterdam—00:10 Dubai

  Emirates 504

  14 Feb: Departure 03:55 Dubai—08:20 Mumbai

  Have a safe trip.

  This email, containing my itinerary, comprises the bulk of the communication between Yael and me since I returned from Mexico last month. When I got back from Cancún, a friendly travel agent named Mukesh called to request a copy of my passport. A week later, I got the itinerary from Yael. I’ve heard little else since.

  I try not to read too much into it. This is Yael. And this is me. The most charitable explanation is that she’s hoarding the small talk so we will have something to say to each other for the next . . . two weeks, month, six weeks? I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. Mukesh told me that the ticket was valid for three months and that if I wanted help booking flights within India, or out of India, I should contact him. I try not to read too much into that, either.

  In the immigration line, I’m jangly with nerves. The bar of duty-free Toblerone (meant for Yael) that I wound up eating as the plane descended into Mumbai probably didn’t help matters. As the line lurches forward, an impatient Indian woman pushes into me with her prodigious sari-wrapped belly, as if that will make us go faster. I almost switch places with her. To stop the pushing. And to make us go slower.

  When I exit into the airport arrivals hall, the scene is both space age and biblical. The airport is modern and new, but the hall is thronged with people who seem to be carrying their entire lives on metal trolleys. The minute I get out of customs, I know that Yael is not here. It’s not that I don’t see her, though I don’t. It’s that I realize, belatedly, she never specifically said she’d meet me. I just assumed. And with my mother, you never assume.

  But it’s been almost three years. And she invited me here. I go back and forth through the hall. All around me, people swarm and push and shove, as if racing for some invisible finish line. But there’s no Yael.

  Ever optimistic, I go outside to see if she’s waiting there. The bright morning light hurts my eyes. I wait ten minutes. Fifteen. There’s no sign of my mother.

  There’s a gladiator match of taxi drivers and porters vying for passengers. Psst, they hiss at me. I stare at the itinerary now gone limp in my hand, as if it will somehow impart critical new information.

  “Are you being met?”

  In front of me is a man. Or a boy. Some
where in between. He seems about my age, except for his eyes, which are ancient.

  I give the area one more sweep. “It appears I’m not.”

  “Do you need a driver?”

  “It appears I do.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I recall the address from the immigration forms I just filled out in triplicate. “The Bombay Royale. In Colaba. Do you know it?”

  He gives his head a half nod, half shake that isn’t exactly reassuring. “I take you there.”

  “Are you a driver?”

  He wags his head again. “Where is your suitcase?”

  I point to the small rucksack on my back.

  He laughs. “Like Kurma.”

  “The food?”

  “No. That is korma. Kurma is one of Vishnu’s incarnations, a tortoise, carries his home on his back. But if you like korma, I can show you a good place.”

  The boy introduces himself as Prateek and then confidently threads us through the crowd past the airport garage and to a dusty lot. On one side are the runways, the other, high-rise buildings and even higher cranes, swinging in the wind. Prateek locates the car—something that back home might be called vintage, but when I compliment it, he makes a face and tells me it belongs to his uncle and one day, he will buy his own car, a good one made abroad, a Renault, or a Ford, not a Maruti or a Tata. He pays the skinny dusty boy who was guarding the car a few coins and opens the backseat. I toss my rucksack there and try to open the front door. Prateek tells me to wait, and with a complicated sequence of rattles and twists, opens it from the inside, sweeping a pile of magazines from the passenger seat.

  The car shudders to life and the little brass statue cemented to the dash—a tiny elephant with a sort of smile of the perpetually amused—starts to dance.

  “Ganesha,” Prateek says. “Remover of obstacles.”

  “Where were you last month?” I ask the statue.

  “He was right here,” Prateek answers solemnly.