Wish Upon a Star

by Jim Cangany

  No.

  If it was that simple, I was pretty sure I'd have done that already. Like, especially after the showdown with Annie over Mom's car. A plan was beginning to form, though. With a tap, tap, tap on the wood railing for good luck, I bade the river farewell and marched back to my bike.

  It was time, once and for all, to deal with the boxes of family records that had been shoved in the spare bedroom closet when I'd moved into the condo. I'd been avoiding them like a sprinter avoiding an hour-long climb. It appeared I couldn't continue that way.

  Pedaling just fast enough to stay upright the rest of the way home, I came up with a plan. I'd go through the boxes, starting with the oldest one first. Items that were irreplaceable, like pictures, would go in one stack to be saved. Virtually everything else, including the documents from Mom and Dad's estate, would go into another stack to be recycled or pitched. I wouldn't dodge the issue by just tossing everything. I'd force myself to take a look at every last scrap of paper.

  If I did one box per day, that would take about a week. The thought of spending that length of time in relationship limbo made me want to puke, but it had to be done.

  With my emotional bank account at zero, I inhaled a plate of pasta and went to bed. I put my phone on the night stand just in case there was a call or text. By the time I fell asleep after tossing and turning for a couple of hours, there hadn't been so much as a low-battery chirp from the stupid thing.

  The steady rain that moved in while I was asleep made avoiding the task before me that much more difficult. With no legitimate reason to delay, I trudged to the closet and carried the boxes, two at a time, into the living room. After four trips, I was done. Seven boxes of McCarty family "memorabilia" and one box from Evan's parents that I hadn't had the guts to open.

  If everyone was right, and it all went back to some suppressed guilt about Dad, I needed to start there. I opened the box labeled "Dad-Legal" and peered in. A flood of memories rushed over me as my fingers ran over the file folders and legal-sized envelopes. I took out one of the envelopes and dumped its contents on the coffee table. It was a mish-mash of Dad's things from his desk at work. Among them were an anniversary card he never got to send to Mom and two tickets to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game he never had the chance to attend.

  After pulling out a couple of pictures, I slid the rest of the documents, including the card and tickets, into a recycle box. The whoosh of the papers as they landed in their new home hurt my ears and I couldn't escape a nagging feeling that I was betraying my father's memory by saying goodbye to the records.

  But these paper documents weren't the most important thing in my life. Annie, my North Star, was.

  I sat up a little straighter and took out a file folder stuffed with documents related to Dad's passing. Given his position with his law firm and the fact that he'd died at the office, an autopsy had been conducted. I'd known he'd died from a stroke and had been gone by the time somebody had found him. Studying the documents in the folder, I learned a lot more. It was a medical report that was the most illuminating.

  According to the autopsy, Dad had suffered a massive brain bleed and had died almost instantaneously. He hadn't suffered.

  I stared out the window as I came to grips with the revelation. I could have been in the room next door and wouldn't have been able to help him. The fact that I'd been twelve hours away at a race in New York hadn't mattered a bit.

  A handful of times, Mom had tried to talk to me about the circumstances of Dad's death. Thinking about it now, every time she'd brought it up, I'd gotten angry and stomped off. Eventually, she'd given up.

  Guess I should have listened.

  I set the doctor's report aside and dumped the rest of the file in the recycle bin. By early afternoon, I'd made it to the end of the first box. With a growing sense of pride, I flipped through my "keep" stack. It was about two fingers high. Giving myself a mental knuckle bump, I threw on a jacket and took a damp walk to get a late lunch.

  After a swing by the record store, I called Miranda to tell her what I was doing.

  "Oh, E.J. that's so great. Audrey forbade me from saying anything to you, but she told me one time about how you'd, in her words, chosen to take on all this guilt about your father's passing. I think she referred to it as the 'Irish Guilt Complex' or something like that."

  I laughed. "Yeah, she always razzed me growing up that if there was anything to feel guilty about, I volunteered, even if it had nothing to do with me."

  We chatted a bit more before I couldn't hold back any more. "Any word from her?"

  There was silence on the line for a moment. "Don't worry about Annie. Focus on what you're doing. She's probably spending every minute she can in her hot tub."

  We said our goodbyes with a promise to keep each other posted if there was any word from my North Star. Emotionally wiped out from dealing with box one, I made an early night of it, with a pledge to hit box two right after breakfast. Despite my certainty that the next move was up to me, I put my phone on the night stand before turning out the light.

  A routine soon developed in which I'd get up, have breakfast and then work my way through a box. Some were easier to get through than others. One had contained a bunch of Dad's business records that I had absolutely no use for. The entire box went into the growing recycle mound.

  The first box of Mom's things was a struggle. What made it tough was the diary I found. She'd started writing in it shortly after Dad had died. It contained observations of how she felt, musings on life as a new widow and a few de facto letters to Dad.

  I knew they'd loved each other, but until I read those letters, I never fully appreciated the depth of that love. I added the diary to the "keep" items. If Annie and I could spend our lives together with half the devotion my parents gave to each other, we'd have it made in the shade.

  The strains of Brandi Carlile's "Pride and Joy" coming from my phone roused me from my musings. It was fun identifying callers by ring tone. This ringtone was assigned to Gloria.

  "I haven't heard from you since our chat in the truck. How you doing, honey?"

  "Making progress, literally and figuratively." I told her about the resolution to work my way through the boxes.

  "I've only got two left. Man, I've learned a ton, and being here by myself has given me a lot of time to think."

  "Is that a good or a bad thing?"

  "Little bit of both. Doing this has brought up a lot of memories, and I haven't even gotten to the box Evan's mom and dad gave me. God, I miss them."

  "I know you do. I do, too."

  "But I think I'm getting there. Once I finish with these last ones, I'll have a few visits to make and then it'll be time to go see Annie."

  "That's fine to hear. Have you thought about what you're going to say to her?"

  "I'm working on it. You haven't spoken to her by any chance, have you?"

  Gloria laughed. "That's so you, always fishing for information. I'm sorry honey, I haven't. She made it pretty clear she was leaving this ball in your court."

  "I hope I don't dribble it off my foot." I promised Gloria that I'd touch base with both her and Miranda before I took off, and we said our goodbyes.

  The second to last box contained a bunch of documents from Mom's estate. I decided to keep those for another couple of years or so, just to be on the safe side. After the hoops I'd gone through with the bogus labor claim against VMD, I was in no hurry to pitch legal papers.

  Day eight of E.J.'s Great Purge to Learn to Let Go of the Past dawned clear and cool. Without even a hint of a cloud in the sky and no wind to speak of, I wanted so badly to forget about the box and go for a ride before it warmed up. A picture on my dresser of Annie and me in Ireland, taken during her tour, snapped me back to reality.

  After breakfast and a shower, I dragged myself back to the couch to face Evan's box. In a way, this was the box I'd been dreading the most. With Mom and Dad's things, I had an inkling of what I was probably going to find.


  With Evan's box, not so much.

  I'd used every excuse in the book not to go through this container. It had arrived from Evan's parents a few weeks before I'd left to go on tour with Annie, so I'd told myself at the time I was too busy to deal with it. When we'd returned to Indy over the holidays and then during Annie's chemo treatments, again I'd claimed to have too many irons in the fire to mess with it. After the past week, I knew different.

  I'd been too chicken to open that wound again. But now, it was time. On the count of three, I flipped the lid off. I did a quick scan of the contents and shook my head. It wasn't the Velo Messenger & Delivery mementos that surprised me. Nor was it the clippings of our days racing together. No, what had caught me off guard was the bottle of Jameson's Irish Whiskey, Evan's favorite, with a folded piece of paper taped to it.

  I took the bottle out and placed it on the coffee table. The paper mocked me, daring me to have the guts to read it. Between rubbing my hands and licking my lips, you'd have thought I was getting ready to defuse a nuclear warhead. McCarty, you are so lame.

  With a sigh, I got up and walked to the patio door.

  "Dammit, Evan. Why the hell did you have to go and leave me a note?" I slid the door open. The warm, humid air assaulted me along with memories of Evan—his booming voice, his long blonde hair, the Metallica tattoo on his shoulder.

  With an unsteady gait, I crossed the patio and grabbed the railing. I sucked in a long breath in an attempt to calm my roiling emotions. I thought I'd made my peace with Evan's passing when I'd visited the pinnacle of Mont Ventoux. While that had been a nice symbolic gesture, I now knew I couldn't put his passing behind me until I read whatever was in the note.

  I pounded my fist on the wrought iron railing. I'd almost made it through this process. Why now, when the finish line was in sight, was I faced with something I wasn't sure I could handle?

  Because this was exactly what this exercise was about: defeating those demons haunting my past once and for all. And moving truly forward, not looking back every time I took a step.

  "Okay, then. Let's see what you left me, Evan." I returned to the couch and pulled the paper off the bottle. After reading the note, I leaned back and let out a loud, long laugh. The instructions from beyond the grave were ones I could handle.

  I set the note aside and fulfilled the first directive by informing Dave and Paul I needed their help with a mission Evan had left for me. Once we hashed out when they could spend an evening at my place, going through the rest of the documents proved to be a cruise around the block.

  That left me with a couple of days until Paul and Dave were coming over. I used that time well. First, I went to Mom's and Dad's graves. It was my first visit.

  In retrospect, I suppose my excuse that I could talk to them whenever I wanted and didn't need to make a trip was just that, an excuse. The dark, foreboding scene I'd visualized never materialized as I pulled open the door and stepped into the mausoleum that now served as Mom and Dad's "home." The polished stone walls reflected the overhead lighting just enough to provide warmth to the large room. The carpet runner muffled my steps as I made my way through the building.

  Mom and Dad had joked that when they died, they were getting "shelved" one final time. I didn't laugh then, but now, as I found their spot about six feet above the ground, I managed a smile. Running my fingers over the letters and numbers that had been engraved into the covering plate, my smile morphed into a frown.

  I'd been wrong not to visit.

  "Sorry it took so long to come see you guys. I suppose you probably know that already." I let out a shaky laugh.

  "I hope you're both okay with me pitching so much from those boxes. Mom, I'm really sorry I never listened to you when you tried to reason with me about Dad's passing. And Dad, while I'll always regret not getting to say goodbye to you in person one final time, it's a relief to know you didn't suffer."

  Once I got going, I don't know how long I talked. With nobody else in the building, I didn't feel pressured to hurry out of there. I told them about Gloria's latest initiatives at the Co-op and Paul's thoughts of opening a second Cycles Forever store. I gave them every detail of Miranda's wedding.

  "You would have loved it Mom. Miranda looked amazing, and her husband Ryan's a great guy."

  Then I told them about Annie. About meeting her in Chicago's Union Station and heading west with her without having any idea who she really was. I recounted the ups we'd been through, like the concert tour, as well as the downs, like her cancer treatment.

  "You'd like her Dad. Underneath the entertainer glitz, she's an incredibly sharp businesswoman. And Mom, well... You told me you wanted me to give your Claddagh to 'The One.' Annie's The One and I did."

  I let out a long sigh. There was one more stop to make before the end of the day. I placed my hand on the space between their names. The marble was cool to the touch and yet somehow comforting.

  "I'm going to go see her in a couple of days. I know what I want to say, but I'm not certain she'll want to listen. As you probably know, she can be kind of stubborn at times. So if you see her dad, Mr. Wilson, up there, can you ask him to put in a good word for me? I'd appreciate it because I... I need her."

  After a step back, I lowered my hand to my side and cleared my throat. "I miss you both so much. I'll try to make you proud and I love you." I turned and strode out of the building. Next time I come back, I'll bring Annie with me.

  My final stop of the day was the Co-op. Gloria raised an eyebrow when I waved at her on my way to the work station area.

  "Well, this is a surprise. What brings you by?"

  "Mind if I help myself to some of the junk stuff? I need to build up a bike for a display." I rummaged through the components that weren't up to snuff to be reused. Typically, we let the pile grow until there was enough to take to the recycler to make some cash. The pieces I was grabbing were going to contribute to a higher purpose.

  "What do you mean by a display?"

  I tossed a seat post and front rim onto the frame and fork I'd picked out. "It's part of my letting go. Meet me at the accident site tomorrow at three."

  Aidan helped me haul the bike parts to my car. When we closed the trunk, I turned to him.

  "Be at the accident site at three tomorrow and bring a camera."

  He furrowed his eyebrows. "Okay, but dude, what's going on?"

  "We're going to have a little memorial service for Evan. It won't take long, and it won't be anything formal. But it's something I need to do and I want you and G, and any of the other couriers who can make it there. I gotta go. See you tomorrow."

  I lowered the windows and cranked up the Foo Fighters on the drive home. I felt liberated, singing along with Dave Grohl and the guys. It was almost like a shadow that had been following me for years was fading, bit by bit, into nothingness. But it wasn't because I was running from it. It was because it had reached the end of its journey and had come to a stop.

  My journey, on the other hand, had resumed its course. I'd crashed and landed in a ditch when Annie had left. I'd gotten back on the bike though, and with the help of some dear friends, had gotten moving down the road again, with purpose. Two more lines to cross here in Indy and then it'd be time to win back my podium girl.

  Dave was right. It did feel like I was learning to walk again.

  Once I got home, I set about assembling the bike parts. For this particular project, it didn't need to work, just look like a complete bike. Some parts were rusty and needed a good scrubbing to be presentable, but nothing was bent, so by the time I headed to bed, the bike was assembled. I'd even scrounged up a couple of old tires that were no longer road-worthy. If it would've been rideable, it would have been a single speed rather than the fixed gear that Evan rode, but it was close enough.

  When I woke up the next morning, I went right back to work. I grabbed a can of white spray paint off the shelf and gave it a good shake. It was left over from a project I'd helped Paul with and was almost full. With the can in
one hand, I slipped the bike over my shoulder and headed outside.

  I'd lucked out with the weather. It was cloudy, but not humid, which I hoped would help the paint dry quickly. After a couple more shakes, I started spraying the bike a glossy white. Starting with the rear tire, I covered everything—the spokes, the seat, the handlebars. When I made it to the front, I took a breakfast break, and then returned for a second coat.

  The nozzle on the can sputtered, and the paint ran out before I was completely satisfied with the coverage, but it was close enough. I took a couple of steps back and nodded at my handiwork. Despite the warmth of the day, I broke out in goose bumps as I studied the memorial I'd created for my fallen friend.

  Evan's Ghost Bike.

  A quick drive downtown later, I strode up to the site where Evan had been hit. I had the bike over one shoulder and a backpack full of materials I'd need over the other.

  Aidan rushed up to me and took the bike in his hands. His smile was as wide as an interstate highway as he lifted the bike off my shoulder, clear reverence in this eyes.

  "Dude, this is perfect."

  We walked silently side-by-side the last thirty feet or so, to where Gloria and a few of the couriers were standing.

  "What is that thing," Gloria asked.

  Aidan answered for me. "It's Evan's ghost bike. When a cyclist loses his or her life in an accident, a bike is painted white and attached to something close to where the accident happened. It's a memorial to that person, and to all cyclists who've been hit and didn't make it."

  I pulled a Sharpie out of the backpack's outer pocket. "If you all want, you can write something on the bike before we lock it to that light pole."

  Writing anything more than a few words on a bicycle was hard, so the messages were short. In a few minutes, everyone had signed but me. Like the others, I kept it simple.

  See you at the next finish line Evan. Tailwinds, Mac

  I pulled out a length of chain and a beat up combination lock and chained the bike to the pole. We took turns having our picture taken with the bike. After that, we dispersed with little fanfare.