Random Acts of Kindness

by Lisa Verge Higgins

  “I did.” Nicole shrugged. “Reno is not so far away.”

  Delirious relief seeped through her. Yesterday, Jenna had assured Claire that she would have been thrilled to bring Nicole along on the cross-country trip. It had been an easy enough thing to say after Nicole had turned the offer down flat. But the last thing Jenna wanted to do was share a car for three thousand miles with the Girl Most Likely to Succeed.

  “I couldn’t help but notice that your husband called a few times.” Nicole’s smile was curious. “How sweet that he’s checking up on you.”

  “I’ll call him later.”

  She looked away from Nicole. Jenna was convinced that therapists received special ocular implants along with their licenses, mini-MRIs that beamed through flesh and bone, right to the gray matter where patients hid all their thoughts and secrets, motivations and lies.

  “So.” Nicole leaned back to glance into the open motel room. “Where’s Claire?”

  Jenna gestured to the far corner of the front parking lot where her Chevy was wedged between the concrete base of the motel sign and a muddy Ford pickup truck. From her vantage point on the second floor, Jenna could just glimpse Claire sitting on the hood of the Chevy, her legs crossed, her face lifted to the sky, completely oblivious to the flickering neon sign of the Silver Dollar Motel just above her or the sketchy group of men just by the road, watching trucks rumble down the drag while sucking on cigarettes.

  Jenna said, “She does this every once in a while. Sits for hours. Sometimes in the car while I’m driving.”

  “Meditating?”

  “Lucky will even crawl onto her lap.”

  “I’ll say hello when she’s done, then.” Nicole sank into one of the two slatted chairs and dropped her purse beside her. “This will give us a chance to chat.”

  Jenna slipped a hip onto the metal railing, hoping Nicole didn’t see her knuckles go white. She wondered if Nicole wanted to “chat” as in fill the air between them with empty discussions about the weather or “chat” as in open up a vein and bleed her feelings over the second-floor railing.

  “This trip you’re making with Claire is really wonderful,” Nicole said, tugging on the creases of her tan capris. “It was your idea, yes?”

  Pass the razor, then. “She’s leading the charge. I just showed up on her porch and offered whatever help I could.”

  “Help?”

  “You’ve read the blog, right? I thought Claire would still be housebound. I thought I’d be fetching her meds and taking care of the chickens. But she had other things in mind. Did you know she has a blind possum living under her porch?”

  “Honestly, I’m not a bit surprised. Who’s taking care of that blind possum now?”

  “She left a note for her sisters. She said they’re up her ass 24/7.”

  Nicole choked on a laugh. Jenna felt her face go hot. She didn’t swear by nature, but she rarely had the good sense to filter other people’s comments, either.

  “I remember her sisters from Pine Lake.” Nicole stretched out her legs and squinted into the middle distance. “They showed up for every one of Claire’s fund-raisers. All four of them wearing batik blouses and long auburn braids, looking like the sister wives of some polygamous cult.”

  Jenna remembered them, too, running out of one another’s rooms in Claire’s crowded house, borrowing one another’s clothes as they chatted about hair care and bra sizes and menstrual cycles, the atmosphere so much livelier than her own quiet house with its bubbles of personal space and deep silences.

  Nicole said, “I remember Claire calling them the chick brigade. Though since Melana died, there are only three of them now.” Nicole fingered the cross at her throat. “I’m curious, Jenna. How did an offer to help a sick friend turn into a road trip?”

  Jenna glanced away to scan the trucks zooming by the diner across the street. “She told me what she really wanted to do is get the hell out of Roseburg, Oregon. I said okay.” Jenna shrugged. “I had this crazy idea that maybe that’s what friends do.”

  Nicole’s silence stretched out between them, a yawning gap in the conversation and a shimmering moment of tension. Unnerved, Jenna shifted her weight on the railing. On the trip to Reno, Claire had reminded Jenna that Nicole had a degree in psychology from the University of Chicago. With a pedigree like that, Jenna figured there was no reason to go through the agony of spelling everything out. It wasn’t like Jenna had changed so much since she’d been a gangly, socially awkward mouse in high school. All her life she’d struggled with relationships. She was finally trying to do something about it.

  Zoe’s angry words rang in her mind.

  You’re so stupid, Mom. You’re so blind.

  “So,” Nicole said, “I assume your daughter must be out of the house for the rest of the summer?”

  “Zoe’s at Camp Paskagamak until the end of the month.”

  “Camp Paskagamak.” Nicole made a two-fingered salute and recited the camp’s motto: “‘Self-Reliance, Self-Esteem, Self-Respect.’ Do they still expressly forbid communication with the parents?”

  “Except by snail mail.”

  “Wow. I haven’t thought about those musty cabins in years. That place gave me a permanent phobia of spiders. I guess being home with Nate in an empty nest must have been a little unnerving, huh?”

  Jenna regurgitated the easy lie. “He’s working on an installation. Usually he’s mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll, but when he’s in this phase of the process, he morphs into Mr. Hyde. He doesn’t want me around.”

  At least that last part wasn’t a lie.

  Nicole mumbled, “Artistic temperament.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It can be a nightmare to live with, I know. So your daughter is away, your husband in the heat of artistic creation, but how did you manage to get three weeks off from work? Your boss must be very generous.”

  “My boss is a jerk.” Jenna winced at her own reaction. She took a moment to debate what to say and then decided there was no harm in the truth. “He’s the type who’ll scream at me red-faced over the numbers I just crunched ‘incorrectly,’ only to realize an hour later that it wasn’t my report in his hand.”

  Nicole made an empathic grunt. “And then he won’t apologize.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And yet, he let you take off for three weeks.”

  Oh, Nicole was good, Jenna thought, she was really slick, slipping little needles of questions between easy banter. Jenna breathed against the ache in her chest, wishing she and Claire could just get back on Interstate 80 and head east. She breathed in and wondered how much longer Claire was going to meditate amid the rumble of trucks and the burned-roast smell of coffee rising from the diner across the street. Jenna breathed in and wondered why she was bothering to keep so many secrets.

  “Jenna?” Nicole’s voice was hesitant. “I don’t mean to pry…but is there something going on with your job?”

  Jenna turned her face away from Nicole’s X-ray eyes. All during the ride to Reno, Claire kept harping on the fact that Nicole looked stressed and unlike herself. But back in San Mateo, Jenna hadn’t gotten that impression at all. She’d seen a slim, fit woman stretched across a kitchen floor wielding a magnetic screwdriver like a conductor’s baton. She’d seen a woman as calm as a hurricane’s eye while her children swarmed around her setting the table and her strikingly handsome husband made dinner and brought them each a glass of wine with a charming wink.

  The last thing Jenna wanted from a woman with such a perfect life was pity at the imperfection of her own.

  “My boss sold the hedge fund.” Jenna leaned back against the railing and crossed her arms. “He cashed out so he can go build houses in Peru with his fifth wife. Teenagers like to do those things, I’m told.”

  “Oh, Jenna—”

  “I’ve got fifteen solid years of employment. I specialize in the semiconductor industry. I’ll get another job.” Although the thought of writing a new résumé and making cold calls to collea
gues made her blood congeal. She searched for another subject, any subject. “Did Claire tell you we’re heading toward Salt Lake City this afternoon?”

  Nicole hesitated just long enough for Jenna to know that Nicole had noticed the swift change in topic. “On the phone Claire mentioned something about visiting Jin Ng.”

  “Dr. Jin Ng. She works at a cancer center. Claire said she helped her out early in the diagnosis.”

  “And any free bed,” Nicole said, waving a hand at the cracked asphalt parking lot and the haze of highway dust, “has to be better than the Silver Dollar Motel.”

  “Oh, honey, if you’re wrinkling your nose at this you’d never last three days in Wat Ram Poeng.”

  Claire sauntered down the hallway, hauling Lucky under her arm. At her approach, Jenna felt a physical rush of relief that she would no longer be the center of Nicole’s undivided attention.

  Nicole grinned as Claire approached. “That’s not on my bucket list, babe.”

  “As a life coach it should be. A little time spent in a Buddhist temple would be spiritually transforming.”

  “My clients aren’t looking for spiritual transformation. They’re looking to keep their teenagers away from Internet porn.”

  Claire, her eyes crinkling gently at the corners, handed Lucky to Jenna. “You have your phone back?”

  Jenna patted her pocket in response and let Lucky down to sniff around.

  “That’s good,” Claire said. “We need your phone if we’re going all the way across the country. Mine’s so old I swear it’s powered by mice running on treadmills.”

  Claire settled into the other chair, her T-shirt billowing out and then ballooning back in. Under three pink ribbons it said, Yes, they’re fake! My real ones tried to kill me.

  “So,” Claire asked, her gaze settling on Nicole, “couldn’t resist trying your luck in the lovely casinos of Reno?”

  “You know why I’m here, you manipulative witch. You put the bug in Lars’s ear.”

  “Good man, your Lars. He got any brothers?”

  “He told me I’m banging off the walls in my house. I told him I was fixing them. He told me that if I kept spackling plaster and soaping up double-hung window sliders, I’d completely unman him.”

  Claire raised her brows. “I met the man. I don’t think that’s possible.”

  Jenna bent over to give Lucky a scratch, for no other reason than to hide the fact that she hadn’t a clue what was going on. She was as lost in this conversation as she had been the other day in Nicole’s kitchen. It crossed her mind that maybe this was what it was like to really know someone—to be able to talk past each other and yet still understand, instead of swimming in incomprehension.

  “Lars actually packed my bags,” Nicole confessed. “But he’s not the only reason why I’m here.”

  Claire’s eyes danced. “I put the hook in good, didn’t I?”

  “You told me that you left something unfinished in Pine Lake, something that you had to do.”

  “Now, Nic, it’s not like Jen and I are going to knock off any convenience stores or anything.”

  “Jenna?”

  Jenna started and glanced up to find Nicole tilting her head back, looking at her with those clear brown eyes.

  Nicole prodded, “Do you know what this mysterious goal of Claire’s is?”

  Jenna hesitated. Claire had mentioned going to Pine Lake only yesterday. Jenna had gone along with it, because she didn’t really care what she did for the next three weeks, as long as it took her farther and farther away from Seattle.

  Jenna said, “I’m sure the details are forthcoming.”

  “Oh, it’s hardly anything.” Claire waved her hand in the air. “It’s a whim. You’re both going to think I’m making mountains out of anthills.”

  Nicole lifted her fingers to her cheek in a contemplative way that made Jenna nervous, even though the intensity of Nicole’s stare wasn’t directed at her.

  “This must be really good,” Nicole said, “if it makes you so uncomfortable.”

  “I forgot that you actually get paid for this.” Claire spread her hands in surrender. “Do you remember the senior year trip?”

  “Of course. The whole class rafted the rapids of the Hudson River Gorge.”

  Claire said, “Well, you did, and Jenna did, and the rest of our class did. But I bailed out completely at Elephant Rock.”

  Nicole splayed her fingers. “That’s it? You’re going back to Pine Lake just to ride the rapids?”

  Claire’s grin grew slow and sly, and seeing it, Jenna felt a sinking sensation like the concrete of the walkway softening under her feet.

  “Is it good enough,” Claire said, “to convince Nicole Renard Eriksen to drop everything to join us on a road trip?”

  Chapter Three

  Salt Lake City, Utah

  When Claire had been ordained at Wat Ram Poeng eight years ago, she’d worn a pure white robe consisting of three parts. Under the three-tiered roof of the Siamese temple, she’d lit three sticks of incense and offered three fresh-cut flowers to the abbot. Her host mother had knelt to her right and her sponsor to her left as she’d publicly stated her wish to become a maechi, a Buddhist nun. Then, in old Pali, she’d recited three times the precepts of the triple gem.

  In Buddhism, the number three was sacred.

  Maybe that was why, while being mindful of Nicole at the wheel and Jenna in the backseat, Claire meditated in the passenger seat and experienced for the first time in too many years a rising euphoria, a sense of exhilaration and giddiness, a light-headed rapture, as if she were flying above the white moonscape of the Utah salt flats. What had begun as an impulsive act, hatched in a moment of desperation around her kitchen table, had led her to be part of an unexpected trinity.

  It was about time she got some Karmic payback.

  A nudge on her shoulder jerked her out of deep meditation. She blinked her eyes open to the sensory assault of the bustle and buildings and traffic of Salt Lake City. She glanced at the dashboard clock. She’d been meditating for a full ninety minutes.

  “Sorry to wake you,” Nicole said, “but we’re only a couple of minutes away from Jin’s office.”

  In a plummy British voice, the GPS announced a right turn in eight hundred feet. The GPS was one of Nicole’s many contributions to the road trip. Before Lars had kissed Nicole good-bye in the parking lot in Reno, she had transferred jumper cables, a pup tent, a medical kit, and an emergency radio to Jenna’s car. The radio was so cutting-edge that Claire wouldn’t be surprised if it could register cosmic microwave radiation.

  Claire unfolded her legs and rolled her shoulders, willing herself to stay loose and relaxed, to not get nervous about entering the office of yet another oncologist.

  “I’m glad we’re stopping,” Jenna said from the backseat. “Lucky just started giving me the yellow eye.”

  Nicole turned into a parking lot. “Tell Lucky I see a tree with his name on it.”

  Once they parked, Claire stepped out into searing ninety-plus-degree heat, realizing how far she’d traveled from the mossy shade of her little house in her uncle’s thirty-acre wood. The modern, glass-faced office building was set in the kind of fanatically clean place that made her wonder where all the green things were hidden. Inside, no amount of air-conditioning could mask the nauseating doctor’s-office scent of magazine ink and antiseptic.

  Claire announced her arrival to the receptionist only to see Jin bound around the central desk, shouting her name.

  The oncologist wrapped her in a hug and nearly poked one of Claire’s eyes out with the pencil tucked behind her ear. Jin was four foot nine tops, her hair so short it stuck up in straight, stiff pieces. Little Jin—everyone had called her that—had been the topper of the cheerleading squad at Pine Lake High, climbing up bodies to perch at the height of a human pyramid and then launching herself off to perform a split in midair. Now, as Jin greeted the three of them, she vibrated like a human hummingbird.

  “Claire
, so glad to see you looking so flush! And, Jenna, is that you? I remember you from last-semester Calculus. Without you, Mr. Walton and his vector functions would have crushed me. And look at you, Nicole.” She poked Nicole in the abdomen with the pencil. “Still fit as always. Are you still playing softball?”

  They chatted for a few minutes while Claire tried not to notice the two patients lingering in the waiting room. One was an exhausted teenager sitting with his mouth open, a sure sign of chemo lesions. Across from him sat a young girl in pink jeans playing a video game, absently tugging on the Hello Kitty scarf wrapped around her head.

  Claire was relieved when Jin finally cut the chatter short. The doctor directed Jenna and Nicole down the street to a French brasserie, where she’d promised to join them all for dinner after she had a chance to meet with Claire “in a more official capacity.”

  Frying pan, Claire thought. Fire.

  Jin’s office desk was swallowed by files, Styrofoam cups, framed photos of her twins, and an array of samples in brown tincture bottles. No sooner had Claire sat down before Jin strapped a blood-pressure cuff over her arm. Then Jin moved her face very close, the way she used to in high school. Claire used to think Jin was really nearsighted, until she realized Jin just had a completely different sense of personal space.

  “It’s a good thing,” Jin said, blinking, “that you are doing this.”

  Claire glanced at the cuff, confused. “Last time I was checked I was a healthy one-twenty-three over eight-two—”

  “No, it’s good that you’re out of your house, away from the sickness and on an adventure.” Jin watched the gauge as she flicked the screw with practiced fingers. “It’s good that you’re with friends.”

  Claire nodded, her feelings of Karmic alignment confirmed. “My six-year-old nephew spins like a top whenever he eats too many Pop Rocks. These past days, I’m starting to feel the same energy.”

  “That’s the power of the mind.” Jin dropped the bulb and tapped her temple. “It’s almost as good as chemo against the cancer. Have you been doing your arm exercises?”