“You were just on it,” she says. “There’s a Silver Alert out for Charlie. The police are looking for you and him. Please. You have to go right now. I don’t want any trouble. The cops called last night and I don’t want any trouble for me and Rose. Please.”
“Okay,” I say. I’m barely awake. “Can I say good-bye to Rose?”
She thinks about this.
“What I mean is a good-bye for now.”
She hugs me tightly and I immediately think of Mom and what she must be thinking right this second—now that she’s back in LA. I have so many stories to tell her, but I should be home to tell them to her.
“Is there a bus stop in town?” I ask CC. “Any way to keep going? To get to New York?”
“No, you have to stop, Ted.”
“We will. Gpa and I will turn ourselves in. But I want to keep my promise to Corrina. She doesn’t have to stop just because we do.”
“You take the number thirteen bus. That’ll get you to Glen Carbon, and from there you can get to Alton, where you can pick up an Amtrak to anywhere in the country. But just so you know, I’m going to call the police as soon as you leave. I’ll say I don’t know where you’re going, because I don’t, and I don’t want to know.”
Ithaca, I think, but not really. It’s as if Ithaca doesn’t even exist anymore, gone, lost in the fog of memories, like a memory itself, a thing you can’t hold or touch, or even really see—and only your faith in the story of it keeps it alive.
We wake everyone up, and even though it’s morning, when Gpa is usually at his best, he’s still a little confused, and Corrina takes him and Old Humper outside. I hug CC and Rose. We agree this is the beginning of something weird but honest, something that will continue, but not right now, and I promise I’ll see them both again. With the morning light reaching into the ocean of the sky, Corrina lets loose the Blue Bomber, and we glide back out onto the road one last time.
We’re all quiet as we drive into town. Corrina’s face is the moon, soft and distant in the blue morning sky. She has Jimi Hendrix playing now and she doesn’t have to tell me it’s her favorite of his, the soft acoustic version of “Hear My Train A Comin’.” Those high warbling notes that swoop around each other like one swallow chasing another, but then drop and roll, birds no more, more footsteps slow and heavy, dragging a dusty blues at their heels. Corrina’s singing along softly, harmonizing with Jimi, but I still hear her now just like the first time I heard her voice sail out into the LA sky.
The bus stop isn’t a station. It’s a white rectangle painted on the side of the road in front of an appliance store and across the street from the small, windowless Municipal Building. There are advertisements for Whirlpool everywhere, and I feel like I’m stuck in one, spinning and spinning, and soon I’ll be pulled down into the vortex, sucked back to LA. At least Corrina will make it, even if she has to go alone.
We park the Blue Bomber in the empty lot across the street and wait for the 8 a.m. bus. It’ll be here any minute, and I explain what I learned from CC, and how Corrina’s going to get all the way to Penn Station in New York. She listens and nods. We sit awkwardly in the front seats until Corrina realizes she should grab her bag and guitar, in case the bus only pulls over for a moment. We get out of the car. Two other people have come out from the street behind the appliance store and stand by the pole with the bus sign on it. Another car pulls into the lot. A few people head into the Municipal Building. And then we both see the bus coming down the road.
“I need to do this,” Corrina says. “I need to try. For me.”
“You need to go,” I agree.
“I’ll find you when I’m back.”
“I believe you.”
“No. I will.”
“I believe you.”
“I’m not just saying that, Hendrix.”
“Corrina,” I say. The wind lifts her hair around her face. I tuck some of it behind her ear. “I believe you.” We kiss.
“And I need a favor,” she says. “Please tell the ex-hippies I’ll be back. I’ll be back in time for school. For Rosewood. I will.”
“I will. And I’ll get my license.”
“You better.”
“To come see you at school. I’ll come every weekend.”
“You better.”
“To spring you from that prison.”
“Yes.”
“We’re good at that.”
“Yes.”
We kiss again, until we hear Gpa behind us.
“She’s going to miss the bus,” he says, standing on the other side of the car, arms folded and resting on the roof. He smiles. “Get out of here.”
“I’ll see you back at home,” I say to Corrina.
She hoists her bag on her back, picks up her guitar, and walks to the curb. She turns, standing there, sunglasses catching the light, same twilight bandana tying back her hair as it did that first day on the road. “You and me, Hendrix?” she says. “Badass.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
And then she’s across the street and disappears behind the bus. The windows are tinted so I can’t see where she sits, but I imagine her putting her boot up on the seat in front of her, guitar in her lap, frets by her ear, tuning, ready to sing to the world.
Gpa and I stand across the car from each other, and then he comes around so we can both watch the bus pull away from the curb. He has Old Humper by the leash.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get us to Ithaca.”
He puts his arm around me. “Teddy,” he says. “Did I ever tell you about how your grandmother and I got married?”
“Ahh! I know. That’s where I was trying to get us, Gpa. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“That was just for our parents. We got married before that. Just the two of us. The hill where we first went. On our nondate? Betty asked if we could get married there first. Just us, none of all the nonsense. Of course, I said. My little romantic. She was so convincing. The rest of our life will be our public promise, she said. Let’s let one moment, one night, be ours, and ours alone. It was just us and the stars above. She was right, she was always right, at least for me, and so we snuck out the night before our wedding at St. Helen’s. She wore a cotton dress with the simplest little frills along the hemline, and I wore her favorite brown corduroys of mine, and a tie, I had to wear a tie, for me. She brought a blanket this time, and we spread it out just as we did that first night. Anyway, we said our words, and the moonlight through the leaves of the trees was just like stained glass in the church anyway, but black and white and gray, and that was the real thing for me. And boy oh boy did we kiss. No holding back that night. We kissed with the whole world around us, alive. I can see the moonlight on her face even now.”
He holds me as he tells me and he knows damn well I’m thinking about Corrina just like he’s thinking about Gma.
“Teddy,” he says, poking me in the chest. “Ithaca is here. With us.”
EPILOGUE
Here’s the situation: We’re stuck on a bench in the Municipal Building in Troy, Illinois, and even though I’ve never been so far away from home, I’ve never felt so close to it. The bench reminds me of the bench in the hall outside the administrative offices back at school, back where I’ll be in a month. It’s a worn yellowed wood the color of the world’s most watered-down honey, and it’s up against the same boring concrete wall, and whether I’m here or there, both are lifeless without Corrina and her voice, and her smile, and her glance, and her pulse.
They got us. After Corrina drifted away on her bus, they came out of the building shouting and waving their laminated badges. The police car parked beside us and they walked us inside, sat us on the bench, and stood over us in their water cooler shirtsleeves and their corkboard ties. They spoke into telephones, and pulled at their beards, and Gpa and I sat on the bench, smiling like idiots with our hands between our knees. They came and they got us, just like we maybe always knew they would.
&nb
sp; But I’m not worried now, and neither is Gpa. He must look like the Alzheimer’s patient everyone knows he is, but they must think I’m the crazy one here. And I am, and I’m okay with that. They got us, but Gpa’s humming to himself, almost rocking himself to a rhythm, and I know he’s not really here on the bench, he’s in his Ithaca, because I finally finished the poem and just gave it to him, and he’s reading and rereading it.
The new plan: We have to try to get him to memorize it, just like all those songs lyrics he remembers—so that he remembers what he already knows and has taught me, that every love story is an odyssey.
WHAT MATTERS
It’s not about how long ago,
It feels like yesterday.
The first time you saw her eyes
Look at you that way.
You knew in your gut so certainly,
But were too afraid to flatter,
Because anyone can fall in love,
It’s the staying in that matters.
Suddenly you got your chance again
When you were at her house,
You in your fraying tie,
Betty her faded blouse,
And she took you to the hillside by the lake,
Away from Ithaca’s chatter,
Because anyone can fall in love,
It’s the staying in that matters.
So you went, again and again,
It was your favorite place,
Staring at your reflections between the stars
In the long, glass-still lake,
“Go ahead and throw your rock,” she said,
“The two of us won’t shatter,”
Because anyone can fall in love,
It’s the staying in that matters.
And under the moon-white tree,
Betty stood with moon-wet hair,
She held her steady gaze and promised,
“Like the moon, I’ll always be there,”
That’s when you fumbled with the ring,
And fumbled how you asked her,
Because anyone can fall in love,
It’s the staying in that matters.
And so when the rest of your life
Feels like one long war,
Where the giants, ghosts, and witches you meet
Are always chasing after more,
Remember you and Betty have built a home
That holds against any storm that gathers,
Because anyone can fall in love,
It’s the staying in that matters.
But I slip off to my Ithaca too, because when I open the HFB to record the last story Gpa told me outside, the one about the two of them up against the world to come, I flip to the back and find an entry I didn’t write. It’s in Corrina’s handwriting:
THE STORY OF HOW CORRINA AND HENDRIX FELL IN LOVE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story is extremely personal to me, and I want to thank everyone in the Kiely family who supported me and put me on a plane to Ireland to travel the south and west coasts with my uncle Bob and my Grandma and Grandpa Kiely, a trip that made me realize how much a young person can learn about love from the generations ahead of him—even when, and maybe especially when, Grandpa had Alzheimer’s, had his bad moments, told stories that wandered off track, often got lost, but still closed with a punch line about why he loved who he loved.
Thank you to Linsey Abrams and Felicia Bonaparte, the powerful godmothers of my graduate school, who guided me out of the doldrums of my life with their love of literature. This book began in their co-taught Narrative Structures class, in which we were supposed to write the first chapter of a book we’d never finish, and for which I didn’t follow the rules, because I wrote the book and that first chapter is now long gone. We learn the rules to break them, don’t we?
The book would have remained a dream, however, without the help of three men foolhardy enough to stick by me in adventure after adventure. Thank you Steve Rosenstein for scraping me off the floor in Las Vegas and driving us all the way to St. Louis, getting lost, and finding Lotus Eaters and a Cyclops along the way. That trip made the book and I’ll owe you forever. And thank you Ted Boretti for the first road trip and the second, and the countless quixotic trips between and after, and for always philosophizing with me deep into the night and teaching me that enthusiasm is a muscle that needs to be exercised. And thank you Perry Hendrix, for, no matter the distance between us, always putting the friendship first and for reminding me why we love what we do and that we must buckle down and do it.
Thank you Matt Kudish for your invaluable discussions about Alzheimer’s. So much of what you taught me is in the book, and even more importantly, contains life lessons about love that I hope this book does some justice to. Thank you Brenna Larson for your wisdom and compassion for this story. And thanks to Nina Czitrom, Allie Jane Bruce, Jason Reynolds, and Daniel José Older, whose early reads helped me think and write more thoughtfully—I’m deeply grateful for your friendships and generosity.
This book would also have been a wandering mess without the help of David Groff. Thank you, as always, for your deft guidance and inspiring encouragement. And thank you Rob Weisbach, who, more than an agent, as a friend always reminds me to get out of the head and back into the heart—it’s the home I’m aiming for, and I’m so grateful for your steering me back there. And thank you to the whole S&S and Margaret K. McElderry team—especially Ruta Rimas, whose wisdom and excitement I am so grateful to partner with on multiple books, and whose patience and vision pushed this book into the book it wanted to be—thank you! And once it was there, thank you David Arnold, Jasmine Warga, Daniel José Older, Julie Murphy, Ava Dellaira, and Corey Whaley for your generosity and early support of the book. I’m so humbled by this extraordinary publishing team and world of wonderful colleagues. I’m grateful to know and work with all of you.
I’m also grateful to the enormous circles of family, all the Kielys and Shannons and Aherns and Chaffees. I’m especially grateful to Emma for her advice about LA, and to Heide Lange for her advice, care, and navigation around the world. Special thanks to Aunt Pat for her care, enthusiasm, and advice. And thank you Grandma, your love and patience and heart that’s bigger than the sky is all over this book and will always be my north star for living a life of compassion and care. And of course, the model love story is the one I grew up witnessing everyday, and any love story I try to write now will always be informed by learning from you, Ma and Dad. Because not everyone is lucky enough to fall in love. Not everyone is lucky enough to stay in love.
But Jessie, you make me the luckiest person I know. Thank you. I love you. Here’s to learning how to love each other in all ways and for always.
Photograph by Gary Jason Cohen
BRENDAN KIELY received his MFA from the City College of New York. His debut novel, The Gospel of Winter, has been published in ten languages, was selected as one of the American Library Association’s Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults 2015, and was a Kirkus Reviews selection for the Best of 2014. He is also the coauthor of All American Boys, which received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor and the Walter Dean Myers Award. Originally from the Boston area, he now lives with his wife in Greenwich Village. Find out more at BrendanKiely.com.
Margaret K. McElderry Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Brendan Kiely
Jacket hand-lettering copyright © 2016 by Jen Mussari
Map on p. vi-vii by Cate Evans
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kiely, Brendan, 1977– author.
Title: Last true love story / Brendan Kiely.
Description: First edition. | New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, [2016].
Summary: “Hendrix and Corrina bust Hendrix’s grandfather out of assisted.
living, and leave LA for New York in pursuit of freedom, truth, and love”
—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015036953
ISBN 978-1-4814-2988-7
ISBN 978-1-4814-2990-0 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Love—Fiction. | Self-realization—Fiction. |
Grandfathers—Fiction. | Alzheimer’s disease—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.K5398 Las 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2015036953
The Last True Love Story Page 20